WANTED--"GAMBLERS"

Responsive Reading Page 574

Second Reading "The Gracious Invitation"

Old Testament Lesson Issiah 42:1-23

New Testament Lesson St. john 19:23-24

Our Scripture text this morning says that Roman soldiers gambled at the foot of Jesus' cross. The scriptures tells us his robe was seamless, and therefore, of no use when torn in pieces to be divided among them. So they cast lots for it. Lloyd Douglas wrote a great book about this event and he called it The Robe, he wove an imaginative and exciting picture of what happened to the Roman soldier who won the toss of the dice. --Gambling at a crucification.--- This is a story of a crude, cruel heartless Roman Soldiery.

But when we look closer at these soldiers, we hardly know what to censure most--their brutality or their insensitivity. For directly above their heads the greatest game was on. It was being played for high stakes--the souls of men--

Studdert Kennedy put it in blunt and vigorous verse:--and I quote--

And sitting down they watched Him there.

The soldiers did;

There, while they played dice,

He made His sacrifice,

And died upon the Cross to rid

God's world of sin.

He was a gambler, too, my Christ,

He took his life and threw

It for a world redeemed.

Gambling like all other vices, is the perversion--the turning away from--a good instinct. There are no bad instincts, just as there are no bad notes on a piano; there are only bad players, who make discord out of notes meant for harmony. And what we call gambling--punch boards, race tracks, give aways, and all the rest of it--is a degrading misuse of that spirit of adventure that God has instilled in each of us.

You can never destroy the gambling instinct in man without destroying the soul of man, for instinct is part of the original greatness of our being. God has set man down in a world of uncertainty, in a world where man never knows what the next day might bring forth; in a world where he must take risks to live. Or as the Bible puts it, he must live by faith. Man plants his crops by faith, he takes his mate by faith, he makes investments by faith. If he will not risk he will not live.

The eleventh chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of men who live by faith. They were great gamblers these men. By faith Abraham went out, not knowing whither he went; he took a chance with God. By faith Moses identified himself with Israelites' struggle for liberty. These and the rest of them lived by faith.

Today in our world civilization the thing we seek most is security. We seek security in every avenue of life. A civilization that devotes it's major energies to taking the risk out of life and thereby reducing it to a life of comfort and convenience cannot be Christian and cannot long be civilization, For as Toynbee says, it bleaches out of the human spirit that quality of adventure that makes civilization.

The American revolution was a great gamble staged by men who wanted to establish something never before established--they wanted liberty or death.

Now today it's security we want. We pray---Lord make us comfortable; keep us safe; make the job last and keep wages high; let us live a long time, even if we don't live well. What are we doing? We have taken a religion in which goodness meant a cross and reduced it from a revolution to a refuge. People today are flocking to cults that promise comfort without a cross. Jesus said, "He that saveth his life shall lose it. He that loseth his life; that risketh it for my sake, shall keep it unto eternal life." Jesus described what he meant in the parable of the talents, in the picture of the man who was so eager to protect himself that he hid his talents in fear. He won nothing because he risked nothing; he got no where because he started nowhere. Any life dominated by this impulse of security, condemns itself to become uneventful, and in the long run unendurable.

The people of Sweden live under a secure socialized type of government with doctors, dentist, medical and old age benefits which are very adequate--yet Sweden with all this security has the highest per capita suicide rate of any country in the world. A life of security without risk indeed can become unbearable.

Here then is the curious thing. How does it happen that an age who's dominant search is for security is also an age in which gambling is at an all-time high. "America" says a national magazine,"is on it's worst gambling spree in history; the cost of it is in the billions, more than the nations spend on education, medical care and all the churches put together.---Why?---

The answer is spiritual starvation. Jesus taught about a man who could not have a vacumn where his soul should be. When a house is empty something gets in--usually rats. When men will not be greatly good then they will be greatly evil. Gambling is the perversion of a mighty instinct that must find an outlet somewhere, if not on the High level of achievement, then somewhere.

The sin of gambling is that men should take this God given instinct of adventure and waste it on petty issues, demoralizing themselves and society by the misuse of a power meant to mold the world into better form and to lift men up.

Let us look at this cross again, this cross with little games below it and the Great Game on it. I want to emphasize a few of the things on which Christ staked His life; and a few things God wants us to take great risk for now.

Truth and righteousness first. Christ died for that. The communists of Russia are so sure that we can't get anywhere with truth that they have adopted the big lie as their chief weapon of aggression. Everywhere there seems to be a depreciation of the truth. We are told that you have to keep people fooled, frightened, and outwitted, above all, never tell anybody the truth.

Wanted-- great gamblers. People ready to risk something on the possibility that this world was made by God and designed to be run by Him. Religion is betting your life that there is a God. Betting your life--standing up in the midst of the crookedness and saying, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth"--risking something on the possibility that the world was made for righteousness, This and nothing less is what God expects of each of us.

Then there is brotherhood. Christ died for that; He threw his life into the balance on the proposition that all mankind was one family in God. He taught that to people, and it seemed to them an ideal so dangerous to their supremacy and security that they pushed him out of the synagogue and up on a cross. Millions today are betting their lives on white supremacy, but what if we are wrong, and what if Jesus was right about brotherhood of all colors. What if the Gospel had truth when it says that God made of one blood all the races of men that they stand equal before Him and therefore equal before each other? What if our ideas about our own superiority are as fictitious as the pretensions of the Pharisees with whom Jesus clashed.

Finally, while men gambled at the foot of the cross, revealing the worst side of human nature, Christ was staking His life on the best side of human nature. He was putting His life down on the proposition that men were better than they knew and were created for something infinitely greater than they understood. Jesus believed in human nature. To be sure man is desperate sinner, but Jesus believed in human nature so much that He bowed his head and died in the confidence that men had it in them to walk in the high path He had opened, and that His cause could be trusted in their faulty human hands.

We marvel at that faith, that He could believe so greatly when the odds seemed so against Him.--Murdered there between two thieves by people who were behaving more like beasts than men. Jesus knew much about the shabbiness of human nature, but nowhere does he talk down to human nature. He never talked down to anybody as we sometimes think we must. He never offered a cheap way to anybody, never like the modern politician offering a chicken in every pot to get votes. He treated every person--even Zacchaeus and the sinful woman of Samaria--as great creatures. He counted on something in even the lowliest to respond to the highest truth.

Jesus said, "if any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross". He wagered his life on the fact that if he gave men a task they would respond. He said, "if I be lifted up above earth, I will draw all men unto me." They will come. If I give them a cross to follow, they will come.

What if it is true that each of us is made for something greater than we have imagined, and that conversion is the process by which we accept the challenge and put our lives down on the possibilities? Ask yourself these questions now, for God needs great gamblers. --Now-- Today--

Prayer

Dear Lord Jesus thou who has called us to help build the city of God, enrich and purify our lives and deepen our discipleship. Help us daily to know more of thee, and through us by the power of thy Spirit to show forth they self to other men. Make us humble, brave and loving, make us ready for adventure. We do not ask that thou will keep us safe, but that thou shall keep us loyal, who for us didst face death unafraid, and who dost live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Benediction:

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen

Processional Hymn #162 O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing

Hymn of Preparation #251 Take Time to be Holy

Hymn of Dedication #460 Lord Speak to me That I May Speak

Nottingham UMC

Nottingham Village, Cleveland, Ohio

July 9, 1964

Sin and Forgiveness of Sin

Old Testament Scripture--Psalms 85

New Testament Scripture--Luke 5:17-20

Responsive Reading--Pg.571

Eighth Sunday-First Reading

"A Prayer of Penitence."

In order to reach Jesus, a palsied man was let down through the roof by his friends. Our Lord confronted the patient with an unexpected greeting. He said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you."

That situation is deeply suggestive for our own day. The crowds still gather wherever there is hope of health or help. Yet with all the worthy effort put forth to lift the burdens and banish the fears and worries of men, I believe Christ would stand among us and say, to us as to the man at Capernaum: "Man, your sins are forgiven you." Too many of us are trying to feel good without first trying to be good. We seek Comfort before we seek forgiveness.

We bright modern people rush around too busy to bother about our sins, but the stubborn fact of sin remains. In our sophistication we may soften the old word "sin" with a new psycological term and call it a complex. Deep in our natures, passions seethe with sinful tendencies and often erupt with volcanic force.

The biggest business of our day is to keep the sin of war from utterly destroying our civilization.

It has been observed that, on cold wintery days at Niagara Falls birds will swoop down to take a drink from clear water. Each time they dip down for a drink a bit of ice forms on their wings until they are so weighted with ice that they can no longer rise up and they are swept over the Falls to death.

Sin is a deceptive as the sparkling water of Niagara's wintry rapids. Dip in to it once to often and we are not able to "Layaside every weight, and sin which clings so closely." (Hebrews 12:1)

We human beings are not sufficient unto ourselves in handling our sins. Martin Luther saw this when he said, "Forgiveness of sin is a knot which needs God's help to untie."

Confession of sin is not a very popular note in contemporary preaching. The last few decades have seen a decided change of emphasis in our presentation of religion.

Where the burden of preaching in our Grand-father's day was to save hearers from their own sins, our modern congregations seem to want preaching which will protect them from the evils which others may inflict upon them. We are not half so worried about divine judgement as we are about social dangers.

However, I would certainly not suggest reviving the kind of sermons that picture sinners in the hands of an angry God, dangling over the brink of a fiery hell. Jesus did not present fear as the motive of salvation.

God is a father, not hostile to us, not even angry with us, but rather eager for our reconciliation and redemption. What the gospel seeks to show us is that sin is a violation of love and not merely a violation of the law.

God is eager and ready to forgive the wrongdoer but he cannot forgive until the sinner confesses and repents. When a child in the home hurts his brother he hurts also his father, because the father suffers not only with the child who is hurt but also with the child that does the hurting. The father looks with loving compassion on both of them equally.

So also with our heavenly Father. He loves all his family, whether they live in America or India or Russia, whether their skins are white or black or brown. His heart aches over their quarrels and divisions and injustices. He suffers with those who do the sinning. He loves them and longs for their peace and happiness, he "gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

When we confess our sins, therefore, we are not trying to placate an angry judge and thereby lessen our punishment. We are responding to violated love and seeking to comfort a suffering Father. If we are not restrained by fear of hurting one who loves us--that wife who has been our partner in sacrifice and suffering, that child who looks up to us and bears our name, that brother or sister who was our comrade in play and our standby in danger--if we are not restrained by the fear of hurting our Heavenly Father who doubly suffers for us, if we are not sensitive to wounded love, then we are headed to hell.

When we see how deeply sin hurts both our fellowmen and our Heavenly Father, if there is any spark of decency in us we will confess our sins.

Romans 10:10 says:" For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved." There is great value in putting our sins before ourselves audibly. "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire uttered or unexpressed", to be sure we can pray silently. But just as the home relations of husband and wife grow slack without some words of affection, so our fellowship with Gods needs words to keep it vital. We need to be on speaking terms with our Lord. We need to unpack our hearts with words.

It is one thing to run through the Lord's Prayer, saying in chorus "Lord, forgive us our trespasses." It is quite another to pray, Lord forgive my meanness to Mary, my words of gossip about George.

In court of law conviction is not won on blanket indictments but rather on specific charges. Likewise, convictions of sin are best secured on specific confessions. This leads us to repentance, when the life and love and death of Christ really sink home in our hearts we advance from self-centered remorse to Godly grief over our sins.

Saint Paul drew the distinction when he wrote where lies the deepest hurt and also the highest hope. Love is one commodity which grows by consumption.

The Prodigal son discovered that though his sin had taken him away from his father's house it had not cut him off from his father's love. That love was waiting for him with outstretched arms. Prodigals down through the ages have found the same welcoming love. This same love of God awaits each of us today, the requirements are, repentance, faith and a contrite heart.

The question is not what will God do with us, but rather what will we do with Jesus?

He stands at our hearts door seeking entrance in order to cleanse us of our sins, but we must open the door.

What will you do with Jesus today?

Let Us Pray -

Our Dear Heavenly Father we acknowledge our transgressions; our sins are before us. Have mercy upon us, O God, according to thy loving kindness. Blot out our transgressions wash us and make us, whiter than snow. Keep us in the center of thy will, that we might be acceptable before thee, and bring joy to thee. Amen

Let us join together in the singing of the benediction

Hymn no 372

And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, the Communion of the Holy Spirit, Be with you all. --Amen

Used at Nottingham Methodist 8/26/1962

Used at Collinwood Methodist 5/5/1963