SINGLE SERMON SERIES
TIGERS IN THE DARK
DR. JIM DIXON
1 JOHN 4:16
APRIL 14, 1991
Gunther Gebel-Williams was a lion tamer. He retired but he trained lions, tigers and performed in circuses all over the world. On one occasion, Gunther Gebel-Williams was surrounded by twenty Bengal tigers. Now when you stop to think about it, most people surrounded by tigers are only surrounded on one occasion, but for Gunther, this was routine. On this particular occasion, however, as he was in the midst of his performance in the arena, something went wrong. The lights went out. Perhaps somebody pulled the switch. Maybe there was an electrical short but the lights went out and it was utterly dark. Gunther and the crowd in the arena couldn’t see anything.
Now I don’t know what you know about tigers, but they are amazing animals. They are the largest member of the cat family, larger even than lions. Tigers weigh, typically, 400 to 500 pounds. They can weigh as much as 900 pounds. They can jump 30 feet through the air with a running start, and even from a standing position their spring is formidable, and they can kill a man with a single swipe of the forepaw. And of course, they can see in the dark.
Now Gunther and the crowd couldn’t but they could hear the tigers in the enclosure and the sound of Gunther’s whip lashing the enclosure floor. When the lights finally came on, the crowd was relieved to see that Gunther Gebel-Williams was still alive. Afterwards, when they interviewed him, he said he was more than a little relieved himself. He confessed that he’d been very much afraid. He said there had been twenty lion tamers killed this century. He didn’t want to be the 21st. He knew, of course, that the tigers could see him but he also knew, he said, that the tigers didn’t know that he couldn’t see them. So he tried to act confident and he held the chair in front of him and he began to cast his whip in virtually every direction, that he might hold them at bay, waiting for the lights to come back on as finally they did.
It occurs to me that all of us must face tigers in the dark. We live in a world of darkness. That’s what the Bible says. We face many tigers. I would like to explore a few of them this morning. The first tiger is failure. This is a tiger that a lot of people don’t want to face. We live in a world where tons of people have fear, tremendous fear of failure.
I want to tell you a story of a boy whose name was Sparky. Of course Sparky wasn’t his real name but that’s what people called him. Kids viewed him as a loser. Sparky didn’t do well in school. He flunked 8th grade. In fact he flunked every single subject in 8th grade. In high school, Sparky flunked physics which is understandable, but Sparky didn’t even get a 59 or a 50. Sparky got zero, the lowest score in physics in the history of his high school. He flunked algebra, Latin and English.
He didn’t do well in sports. He did try out for golf. He had two matches and lost both. It wasn’t that the other kids hated Sparky. They didn’t care enough to hate him. Sparky didn’t have many friends. We really don’t know how Sparky would have done in dating, because in his high school years, Sparky never had a single date.
Now all of this didn’t bother Sparky, too much, but when he submitted a drawing to his school yearbook, a drawing of cartoon characters and the school yearbook staff would not accept it, Sparky was angry. He was angry because he really believed that he was skilled in drawing cartoons and comic strips, and yet others didn’t seem to think so.
After high school, Sparky wrote to Walt Disney. He wanted to draw cartoon characters and comic strips for Disney. Disney wrote him back and asked him to draw some of the Disney cartoon characters performing some task and they would evaluate his drawings, and so he did this and submitted them to Disney. Then he got another letter back, a formal letter, explaining that Disney only accepted the most gifted drawers and Sparky was not one of them.
He failed again but he didn’t give up. Sparky began to draw cartoon characters in a comic strip that was based on his own childhood experiences. The main character in this comic strip is based on Sparky’s own life. People began to like it and it became popular. Today everybody knows this comic strip because it’s called “Peanuts” and the main character is Charlie Brown, and of course Sparky is Charles Schultz.
Now I have been told that Charles Schultz had a deep faith in God. I can believe this because it takes a deep faith in God to handle failure in life and to persevere and keep on. That’s the kind of people God wants us to be. We’re all going to fail and some are going to give up. God doesn’t want us to give up.
You know, the Apostle Paul had failure in his life. He received 39 lashes at the hands of the Jewish authorities five times. Three times he was beaten with rods. They tried to stone him to death. He was shipwrecked three times, adrift at sea. He wasn’t apparently particularly good looking and his speaking was not always impressive. He had many failures. He was kicked out of cities. He had to flee for his life time and again. He was thrown in prison more than once, incarcerated, and in the end, beheaded by the Roman Emperor Nero.
This falls a little bit short of success by the world’s way of thinking. I think in the eyes of Jews, Paul was a failure. I think the Greeks and Romans pretty much viewed him as a failure. But, you see, before the end of his life, Paul said, “I’ve fought the good fight. I’ve finished the race. I’ve kept the faith.” God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, shook the earth through the Apostle Paul in the Gentile world. It’s never been the same because Paul lived. And so you see that’s the kind of commitment, perseverance and faithfulness Christ wants from you and from me in the midst of failures… that we would persevere and continue to try to serve Christ and do all the things that He’s called us to do.
Theodore Roosevelt said, “The only people who never fail are the people that don’t try anything.” And that is so true. You know as a church; we don’t want to play it safe. We don’t want to be too afraid of failure that we never try anything. If we were just playing it safe, we wouldn’t have a mission church meeting today. If we were just playing it safe, I can promise you, we wouldn’t have this vision that’s leading us to Highlands Ranch. But when God calls, what He expects of His people is obedience, not fear of failure, but obedience and a willingness to risk failure for His kingdom’s sake. He wants this for us corporately. He wants this of you individually as you seek to serve Christ.
I think another fear that people have is rejection. This, of course, is a type of failure, rejection is more inter-relational. It’s very personal, very painful.
Some time ago, there lived a woman who some people called the ‘woman in white.’ She was born December 10, 1830. She lived her entire life in a 2-story red brick house in Amherst, Massachusetts, 208 Main Street. She was very slight of build. She had big eyes, dark hair. She rarely came out of her house. When she did, she usually wore white. That’s why she was sometimes called the woman in white.
She was a mystery to the community and to the neighbors, and they rarely saw her because she rarely came out of the house. On occasion, they would see her in the garden behind the house, walking with her little puppy. Flowers, sunsets, and solitude was what she desired. She spent most of the time in her bedroom on the second floor of that house. After her father died, her fear of people became phobic and for the final twenty-six years of her life, she virtually never left that house. People wondered what she was doing the fifty-six years she lived in that house. After she died, they went into her room and found 1,700 beautiful poems. These poems have been published now and this “woman in white” is considered, along with Walt Whitman, one of the greatest poets in American history. Her name was Emily Dickinson.
Emily Dickinson had an incredible fear of rejection. She was so afraid of rejection that she could not risk forming relationships with others. Those who have studied her life claim that when she was younger, she fell in love with a man, and he did not return that love and rejected her. The pain was so great she couldn’t love again so she stayed in her house. She wrote letters. They found these letters in her room. Apparently, she had planned to send them to people but she never sent them because she couldn’t handle the potential of rejection.
Maybe some of you, in some measure, live like that and you’re afraid of rejection. Maybe you’ve been burned before or someone’s really hurt you. Maybe your husband left you or your wife has left you. It’s fear of rejection that keeps some people from dating and marriage. It’s fear and rejection that keeps some parents from having children. It’s fear of rejection that keeps some people from having friends. It’s fear of rejection that keeps some Christians from sharing their faith in Christ with others because they don’t want to be rejected.
The Bible says, “He came unto His own people and His own people received Him not.” Jesus said, “A prophet is without honor in His own country” and He was rejected by man, and ultimately scourged and beaten, spat upon, rejected and crucified. He knew before he ever came to this world that these things would happen and yet he came anyway, Knowing He would be rejected. He came and He loved anyway.
If you believe in Him and if you belong to Him, the same call is upon your life and my life, that even though we might be rejected, we love anyway for His kingdom’s sake. You risk rejection every time you love and we’re called to love for Christ’s sake and for His kingdom’s sake. If you’re confident of Christ’s love for you, you’ll face this tiger because there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear.
There is a final tiger I wanted to mention this morning. Death is a great fear for some people. The Bible says many live-in bondages to fear of death. Some people have a hard time living in life because they’re so afraid of death. I think some people fear death because of the separations it brings. Maybe they don’t fear their own death as much as the death of their loved one. They don’t want to be separated.
Harry Houdini was perhaps the greatest escape artist that world’s ever known. He couldn’t escape death. It’s a fact of history that when his mother died whom he loved very much; he would carry on one-sided conversations with his mom who had long since departed this world. Harry Houdini sought out mediums that they might somehow bring him into contact with the spirit of his departed mother. By this, he exposed many mediums as frauds but he wasn’t going to those mediums in order to expose them as frauds. He was going to them because he wanted to talk to his dead mom.
Thomas Edison claimed that he could create a machine that would enable people to talk to the dead. He told Scientific American Magazine in 1923 that he really believed he could create a machine like that. He was a great inventor. He invented the phonograph and electric lighting. He perfected the inventions of the telephone, typewriter, motion pictures, and electric generator. He almost invented the radio. He came close. He was the greatest inventor in the history of the world, and yet, of course we did not have the power or ability to create a machine that would enable people to talk to the dead. But if he was able to make a machine like that would you buy it? Wouldn’t everybody buy it? Isn’t there somebody that is dead that you would like to talk to? A wife that you lost? A husband? A child, A mom or dad? Grandma, grandpa? A good friend? Separation is painful and that is why a lot of people fear death.
But you see Jesus has a message for us. He wants us to know as Christians as believers in Him that separation is really just a drop in the bucket compared to the span of eternity. It is a separation that is only temporary. Jesus said to His disciples, “A little while and you’ll see me no more. And again in a little while, you will see me. You’ll weep and lament but your sorrow will turn to joy.” When he was crucified and died they were devastated. He was their best friend. When he died, they wept but a few days later when they saw him, their sorrow turned to joy. Jesus Christ wants us to know that our loved ones in Christ will be seen again.
In the meantime there is pain and he understands but He calls us to faithfulness. Don’t let your life be consumed by fear of death and certainly not your own death because if you belong to Jesus Christ and you believe in Him, then you’ve already passed out of death into life. “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing His praise than when we first began.” Let’s close with a word of prayer.