Looking Up

[Note: the following article is the transcript of the 3 January 2010  radio message by Christian Observer Contributing Editor the Rev. Dr. Joe Renfro, whose program “Christ Over All” is broadcast on Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on station WNEG-AM630 in Toccoa, Georgia, U.S.A.]

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Looking Up

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Nehemiah 8:1-10

Philippians 3:1-14

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I was at a nursing home visiting one of the members of the church I pastored.  The man had been fighting prostate cancer for a long time, and he had finally reached the point where the doctors said there was nothing more they can do.  To many people that would be very discouraging, but this man replied: “I’m looking up.”  Attitudes are vital, for you can’t change what might have been, but you can make the best of what you have.  Bemoaning what might have been is useless.  But God calls us all to look up in Jesus Christ. Look up! It is doubly effective when you positively also look up to God. In each chapter in life-be it a new year, a new opportunity, or an important change, God calls us to look up!

In many churches we sing that wonderful hymn, “Victory in Jesus.”  God calls us to victory, even when we have seemingly insurmountable problems.  But do you feel this victory in your soul?  Whether you are slipping and sliding downwards or claiming new heights daily depends on three things: your direction, your motivation, and your empowerment. This ties in very much with what your relationship with the Lord is.  Some look up, while some try not to look, and others seem always to just look down.  But everybody chooses a way; for some it is vitality, for others stagnation, and even some choose decay!  Is your life a smell of freshness? Or is it just bland or even one of decomposition?

Back during Christ’s ministry, as he Lord was teaching the apostle Thomas asked, “How can we know the way.” The Lord Jesus said back, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  This is the direction, the motivation, and the empowerment for looking up. Jesus said, when he said:  “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  Yes, the way is the direction, the truth is the motivation, and the empowerment is the life. Faith in Christ is eternal optimism. Look up!  Optimism is what the teakettle has when it is up to its neck in hot water.  It just keeps singing.

The “way” is the direction, the motivation is the “truth”, and the empowerment is the “life,” and it all unites in Christ!  Are you realizing this promise?  Are you standing on and claiming the promises?  Are you looking up?  These three unite to make a tripod pointing up!  This tripod is most stable.  Many press on with Christ!  Others might listen to the message, but choose not to get too excited about it.  But God wants us each to realize his direction in his way in the life of faith.  He wants us each to find that motivation that comes from the realization of casting our whole hope on his truth.  He calls us to be empowered in all of life with his love to which we are conformed when we know Christ.

The Lord gave his all for us, but sad to say, many give but a pittance back to him.  Have you met anybody like this?  I have met some who just downright rejected him.  But the focus here is on those who are looking up and are filled with excitement, living to God’s glory.  Are you panting in defeat, moping along in boredom, or breathing victory in Jesus?  God calls you to look up!

There is God’s call to each of us in every church to look up, to know the upward way and the joy of God’s deliverance. Don’t get bogged down in the mire of discontent, of being judgmental, being pulled down in mire of self-righteousness.  Don’t get pulled down in the mire of corruption and defeat.  Don’t let the mire of this world’s corruption pull you down.  But look up!

Michelangelo and Raphael were great Italian Renaissance painters.  The story is told that Michelangelo, eight years older than Raphael, came into Raphael’s studio and examined one of Raphael’s early drawings.  Picking up a piece of chalk, Michelangelo scrawled across the painting the Latin word, “Ampilius, which means “greater” or “larger.” To the older master’s trained eye, Raphael’s painting demonstrated too little vision.  Michelangelo insisted that Raphael think bigger and paint better.  Surely this is what God calls each of us to do, as we hear that call in each of our lives to look up.

Do you know the joy in Jesus?  God calls all of us to look up to claim the victories he has for us.  We affirm our faith as we sing, “The Crown Awaits the Conquest”. But in order to be victorious you must personally find Christ as the “way, the truth, and the life.” God calls us to spiritual victory. Live in it!

God has blessed each of us in all kinds of ways.  Count you blessings.  But God’s blessings are not realized in the past, as they are known in the present and future. We can remember the past, but God calls us to particularly look up, not just back, for if is hard to move forward, when your focus on backward instead of forward. Don’t rest on your laurels, but press on to the promises.

A little girl defined promises as “what my sister says I can have tomorrow, because she doesn’t want me to have it today.”  But God’s promises are continually ours to receive.  So look up in faith today!

A.J. Cronin was a British physician who became an author and visited the city of Vienna shortly after World War I. He had known the city before the war and was looking forward to revisiting it.  But when he finally got there, he was deeply distressed as he saw the whole city in ruins, racked by the ravages of war.

As the cold night fell, he sought sleep in a small, dimly lit church.  Sitting down to wait out the winter rainstorm, he turned to observe an old man coming into the sanctuary.  Clad only in an old suit but standing painfully erect, the old man walked down the aisle carrying a little girl in his arms.  When he placed the cold, poorly dressed little girl down, Cronin saw she was paralyzed.  But the old man supported her, as she knelt at the altar and clung to rail to pray. After a few moment of prayer, the little girl placed a candle on the small stand adjacent to the altar.  Then he picked her up and started down aisle with his precious bundle.

Cronin followed them out of the church and watched the man gently place the girl in a dilapidated wagon and pull a potato sack over her twisted limbs. Unable to hold his silence, Cronin asked the old man if the war had maimed the child. The old man replied that she had been crippled with the same bomb that had killed her father and mother.  Then Cronin went on to ask if they came to church often, and the man said, “Yes, daily, for we want to come to show God we aren’t angry with him, but only thankful the war is over and we are both still alive.”

There is the call to look up and go forward in the way of faith.  From Nehemiah we find the exiles returned to Jerusalem to worship and follow God completely. They were called to look up!  They first proposed to rebuild the walls to protect the city.  They were tired of the down hill slide!  They had known the bondage of sin and the enslavement, but they wanted to change direction.  They didn’t want to just change places, but they wanted to press on the upward way.  They wanted to look up.

Christ spells victory in our lives.  Do you know that victory in your soul? Yes, we are called to be more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. There are trials and temptations.  There are defeats and frustrations, but we can be of good cheer because we know that Christ has overcome the world. Remember those words of Scripture, “I can do all things though Christ which strengtheneth me.”  There are many people who don’t know victory because they major on minors, rather than that look up to what really matters.  I heard that an ulcer was what you get when you start mountain climbing over molehills.

In Philippians, Paul writes about his past life of religiosity, and how it had become a downhill slide.  But he changed direction and found God’s motivation in his soul and empowerment in his life. He said, “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Paul pointed to the motivation “that I might know him”. Here is the motivation to realize God’s truth and see his high calling of hope.  Here is the empowerment the Scripture refers as available in Christ as we are realize the power of his resurrection, the “power of his resurrection,” as affirmed in the word. Realize this resurrection power in your life for God’s glory, as you find that inner motivation to realize God’s truth and the great hope it gives to all who know him.  It is the call to keep pressing on regardless of the obstacles.

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan wrote about a man whose shop was destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871.  The next morning after the fire the man arrived at his place of business that had been destroyed. He set up a table in the mist of the charred debris, and above it placed a sign that read, “Everything lost except wife, children, and hope.  Business will be resumed as usual tomorrow morning.”  His store was gone, but at least he had a table to start another one the next day.

The motivation and power are yours, if you will but receive them!  God wants you to realize the upward way.  Look up!  I recall that conversation with the man who was at death’s door.  He told me, that in Christ, “he wins either way in life or death,” whether we could find healing or was to die and realize fully that eternal life that he was on God’s side.  God wants to bless us all in Christ.  We are called to respond in faith. We have hope that shines eternally.

The Christian hope is pronged, spreading out.  Not only does hope give us victory in life’s current crises, but it also give us the assurance of rest and peace with God when this life is over.  The hope presented in the Bible points us to true confidence and expectation.  Hope is assurance that is absolute.  Paul wrote about this in Romans 5:2, “…we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”  God calls us to look up in hope!

When we look back to the message from Nehemiah around 450 B.C. we see it says, “And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded to Israel.” They looked to God’s word!  The message of the New Testament is, “…faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” The word of God is the only map to the upward way. To move the upward we must look up!

Part of pressing on the upward way is to get rid of the weights of sin that hinder.  Sin is “any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” Sin is what we don’t do right and what we do wrong. “Yes,” and sin is in varying degrees present in all of our lives.  Sins are bad plays.  Ben Franklin said, “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful.” God calls us to overcome sin continually.

Nehemiah was a man of prayer, courage, patriotism, perseverance, and action.  He motivated the people to repair the gates of Jerusalem, to repair and rebuild the walls, and to reorganize the national life on the foundation of faith in God and his promises.  The people didn’t just sit still, but they reversed the down hill slide!  They looked up!  At the conclusion of that first worship service the message was “…neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” Praise the Lord!

We are called to feel the joy of the Lord as our strength!  Booker T. Washington, the most influential black leader a century ago said, “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”  Don’t push down, but pull up. I know on the weight machine, when I pull down on 165 it dangles me in the air, and I have to brace my legs under the rail for the exercise, as I weight only 150 pounds. You can pick up way more than you can push down!

In our scripture from Philippians 3 there is call to the upward way. The Judaizers had come into the church at Philippi, trying to enslave the Christians there with unnecessary rules and regulations. They were being weighted down, so they could not run the race of faith effectively.  This problem could be compared to the church today getting involved in so many things of the world or man’s rules that it neglects the primary focus, the gospel.

The Apostle Paul had all the Jewish credentials.  He had a doctor’s degree in religiosity!  He was a Hebrew from both parents, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, and kept the law without blemish, having a Master’s Degree in self-righteousness.  However, when he came to know the new life in Christ this all became insignificant.  It was not the past that mattered, but the goal before him, as he pressed on the upward way in Christ.  He looked up! God calls us to look up and be empowered in our lives with his love.  We can’t do it without his love in our lives.  We are to look up in his love!

One of the largest art museums in the world is the Louvre in France, and it covers more than forty acres.  Among its 5000 paintings, there are two that are particularly relevant to the necessity of love. In the first painting, an indignant angry father is ordering his son out of the house.  The father’s finger is raised in anger against the wicked son.  The weeping mother and sisters and brother cower in the background.

In the second picture there is a contrast, as the same family members are shown, but the scene is very different.  Here the father lies on his bed, and the family is kneeling beside the bed with the wife’s face buried in her hands. The door of the little cottage is open, and the rebellious son is just coming in the door with deep grief written across his face. He has come home, but it is too late-too late for the boy to confess to his father and ask his forgiveness.

It was too late for the healing touch!  But God calls us to not let it be too late. He wants to empower us with his love in our lives.  And he calls us to open our spirituals eyes to see it.

I am a Presbyterian minister, and it is interesting that Presbyterians oftentimes suffer from spiritual presbyopia.  Medically it is an eye disease that is a form of farsightedness, which comes with old age. I don’t think Presbyterians are the only denomination to suffer from this, however.

I remember when I first realized my presbyopia. I was preaching one Sunday morning up at the Lavonia Presbyterian Church.  I was about forty-five years old, and for some reason I couldn’t see the scripture clearly enough to read it.  I found I had to get glasses!  But the real problem is not with the physical presbyopia, as it is rather with the spiritual presbyopia.

Just because we are not the only ones with the problem of spiritual presbyopia doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem.  God wants us to have a clear vision of Christ.  We do this by looking through the glasses of faith in God’s word.  We do this by cleaning the lenses of our souls.  Also we do this by just being willing to open our eyes to the upward way and the rich promises God has for us in Christ.  Do you see the Lord Jesus high and lifted up?  Are you pressing on the upward way in Christ?  Are you looking up?

God calls us in all his churches to realize revival. Revival is a renewal and reformation of the church.  “How can we have revival?” someone asked the great, evangelist Gypsy Smith. He took a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the floor.  Then he stepped inside the circle and prayed:  ‘Lord send a revival inside this circle.'”  The action of renewal, revival, and reformation begins now, right here in your life.  What way are you going?  Do you feel the upward climb in your soul, or are you caught in a down hill slide?  Maybe you are just floating along, doing very little for the Lord.  But God is calling his churches to revival, and it must start within each of us.

We can’t change the past, but we can help determine the future. In an affluent, suburban church in Chicago there was a woman who attended a Billy Graham crusade.  She found that she had never really come to know Christ before.  Oh, she had for many years had a good case of religiosity! But she just had never before really seen Christ as her Lord and Savior.  But, praise the Lord, she responded in faith, and received Christ as her Savior.

It happened that a year later she was asked to speak at the church.  She did, gave the invitation, and eighteen young people trusted Christ.  The church was shook up.  During the next week, even the pastor got saved.  Praise the Lord!  Things were looking up.  You know there are many preachers who have a degree in religiosity and have never known that B.A. degree of being born again.  However, after this pastor got saved, he preached the gospel, gave the invitation and almost 200 people, many for the first time, came forward to commit their lives to Christ. This is how revival took place at that particular church in Chicago.

God calls us to look up and find his reviving power in our lives. The upward way is one of revival. Look up!  God wants us revived.  He wants us bubbling with new life in Christ.

Back about 2,500 years ago in Jerusalem, the people gathered at the Water Gate, and the book of the law was read.  It was read from early morning until midday.   Ezra stood on a wooden pulpit, and he read God’s word for hours.  The people were excited.  No one was concerned about the time.  No one went to sleep. They cried and they rejoiced.  It even says in Nehemiah 8:6 there was an “Amen Corner”, as the people said, “Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground. ”  Revival took place because the people looked up to God

In each new chapter of life we are called to look up. Know that direction that is the way of faith.  Realize that motivation which is grounded in God’s truth and fills your soul with hope.   Find that empowerment that can fill you life with God’s eternal love.  It is the way to keep looking up!

AMEN.

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