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[Music] Does the world really need another person like you? A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Let us stand for the reading of the Word of God.

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The reading is from the 20th chapter of John's Gospel, beginning at the verse which is numbered 19. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

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Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

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And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. You may be seated. Let us pray. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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This is the time of year when invitations start coming in for campus baccalaureates and commencement services. And I always enjoy participating in those services. It's good to get back on the campus again to try to forget you're a middle-ager and to be young once more. Someone has said that a disease chronic to middle-agers is that it would be easier for a breeze to blow through a billiard ball

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than for a new idea to get into their heads. I find when I get back to campus that I have to be thinking new ideas. The campus is considerably different from the way it was when I was there. For example, it's very hard now many times to tell the boys and the girls.

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I read about a poster they had outside a dance at MIT, and the poster read--it was for a dance that was being given-- and the poster read, "Boys, 99 cents. Girls, 1 cent. Judges' decisions are final." On the campus where I went for my Bachelor of Arts degree, they now have these dormitories where the fellows are on one floor

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and then the girls and the fellows and the girls, alternating floors in the same dormitory. They had a meeting at the beginning of the procedure and explained that there would be fines if you were found on the floor of a dormitory when you weren't supposed to be there. The first time you were found, it was a $5 fine.

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The second time you were found, it was a $15 fine. The third time you were found, it was a $25 fine. Whereupon, one of the students raised his hand and inquired, "How much is it for a season pass?" I was on one campus recently where they told about two of the campus students were standing on one corner

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and there were two adults standing on another corner, and the adults looked across and the ones said, "Isn't that terrible? You can't tell which one of them is a boy and which one of them is a girl." And the other adult said, "Well, I can tell. The one on the right is a boy and the one on the left is a girl." "Well, how do you know?" "Well, the one on the right is my son and the one on the left is my daughter."

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"Oh, well, naturally you'd know them. You're their mother." "No, I'm not their mother. I'm their father." And the children who grow up on campuses, you know, the sons or daughters of the professors are pretty sharp, too. Recently at a campus in Ohio, a little incident occurred which was interesting.

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In the local newspaper, there was a want ad, and the want ad read as follows. "Hyperbole, anti-disestablishmentarianism, superbulous, regnant, Johnny Jones." Now, the editor of the paper wondered why these five big words appeared in an ad, and then Johnny Jones. And he knew Johnny Jones. It was the son of one of the English professors on the campus.

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So he called home, and he asked to talk to Johnny. Little Johnny got on the phone, and he said, "Johnny, why did you run an ad like you did?" He said, "Well, our teacher told us that the first one of us that found those five words in the newspaper got a day off from school, and so I ran them all in an ad." Now, see, that's thinking ahead, and our kids think that way.

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My brother took his six-year-old in for his vaccination. Kurt walked up to the doctor and said, "I'm here for my fix." There's a new vocabulary, there's a new mood, there's a new spirit, and I think it's good to get on the campus, to get with young people, to discover that. And I said to one college president, "I'm to preach the commencement address there. Would you like me to speak on some aspect of the nature of God?"

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Well, he said, "That would be all right, except most of our kids believe in God. The difficulty is they don't believe in themselves." That's interesting, isn't it? That's something that hasn't changed. That was true when I was on campus, too. I'll bet it was true when you were there. Most people don't believe in themselves.

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Lord Acton's dictum is correct, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But I'll give you a dictum that's more correct, "Weakness corrupts more people than strength." Occasionally we have a water gate in the nation's capitol, but as a minister there's not a day goes by that I don't come across somebody who's had a water gate of the Spirit. Where, because of lack of that strength, which really belongs to all of us, because of lack of confidence in oneself and in one's relationship with God through Jesus Christ,

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someone surrenders, someone cracks up, someone fails. I asked the question, which is the theme of this sermon, to 15 people throughout the course of last week. To each one of these people I said, "Does the world really need someone like you?" And all 15 people answered, "No."

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And that's the wrong answer, because the world really does need someone exactly like you. I'll prove it to you. Think of this first of all. When God made you, he knew what he was doing. You are an original work of art.

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You are not a copy. You have not been mass produced. The Almighty himself has written his signature across your life. You are an original work of art. Like two snowflakes are different, so the mystic material out of which all things are made has been fashioned together in a very special way to make you, and there is none other that is exactly like you. If you've ever been in love, you know what I'm talking about.

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That person whom you love is altogether unique. There's no one else in the whole world like that. Whether you're loved at this moment or not, that happens to be true of you. And that's something to sing about. In the stage play, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," there's a scene where Charlie Brown sings a song that goes, "I'm awful glad I'm me."

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And every one of you should be singing that song. You see, you're much more important than Kleenex or Saran Wrap. You're a much greater gift to the world than that. You are absolutely unique. I was walking across the campus of UCLA about a year ago, and I saw a girl, a blind girl, with a seeing-eye dog, and the girl was trying to go to the right, and the seeing-eye dog was trying to go to the left.

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And I walked up and I said, "Can I be of some assistance?" And she laughed and she said, "Oh, no. We're just having a little family argument." He knows that I'm supposed to be going to class, and I'm trying to cut. Well, there are an awful lot of people today who are trying to cut. They're trying to cut out from all the capacities which are there.

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Now, this is what Jesus, who knew more about men than anyone else who ever lived, this is what he had to say about us. He said, "We are the salt of the earth." That means we bring season and flavor to life. He said, "We are the light of the world." That is, we reveal the greatest beauties in the world that there are to be seen. And probably the most perfect story he ever told, the parable of the prodigal son.

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The first climax of the story comes when? When, Jesus says, this young man in a distant country came to himself when he began to realize everything that he was. Jesus says the first commandment is to love God, and the second commandment is to love your neighbor. And how are you to love your neighbor? As you love yourself.

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Pointing, you see, directly at you and the miraculous, marvelous thing that you are. And to climax it, he says at one point, "The kingdom of God is where? The kingdom of God is in you." That's what he said. I was on the campus of Hope College about two years ago during a spiritual emphasis week.

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And on a Sunday afternoon, a group of about 110 of us were gathered in the school cafeteria going through some relational exercises. Attempting to get to know each other better. And the last thing we were doing in the afternoon was a color exchange. A color exchange is where a group of people get together and after they've gotten to know one another,

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each one of them tells the others what color they remind them of and why. Now I was in a group of three others, and one of the people in this group was a little girl. Very plain, very quiet, very shy and withdrawn. The whole afternoon had been very difficult on her. You could tell that she lived inside a shell.

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There were many times in the conversation when her lip was quivering and her eyes were watering and she was right on the verge of tears and she never said anything but with the utmost hesitation. Very inhibited. But she stuck with it all afternoon, and so when it came time for the colors,

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the first girl said to her, "To me, you are bright green. Because green is the color of growth and I see you growing. I know this afternoon has been a growing experience for you." The fellow who was next said to this girl, "To me, you are pink.

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Because red is the color of love and I think you have a very gentle love about you, so I don't make it bright red, I make it a very soft red pink. You're pink to me." And the next person said, "Well, to me you're bright red, because I think of red as gutty and courageous. And I know this has been very hard on you, it's been tough all afternoon, but you're stuck right in there.

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To me, you're red." And then it came my turn, and I looked at her, timid, shy, retiring, plain, dressed in a very unattractive way, bearing the burden of everything that had happened all afternoon, and I said to her,

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"To me, you are gold, because you're priceless and beautiful and of infinite worth." Now I wasn't saying a lie when I said that. I was practicing my faith. Faith, you see, is going ahead on the basis of what you expect to be true. I knew those things were in that girl. God made her and God knows what he's doing.

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So I was simply asserting that in advance. I said, "You're gold." She said, "Do you really think I'm gold?" I said, "I do." "What's your name?" Her name was Gail. "Gail, that's a nice name, but Gail speaks to me of storm. You know, storms and gales."

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And I said to her, "I'm going to give you a new name. I'm going to call you Gloria. Gloria, that seems to me to be what you are. Gloria, Gloria, from now on you're Gloria." The next day she entered in much more actively to the various discussion groups that were held on the campus. The next day on Tuesday I saw her on campus with a boy, first time I had seen her,

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and she was dressed more attractively than I had seen her. She walked taller and she had about her a kind of a freedom. And on Wednesday night at the end of the chapel service she came up and she took my hand and she said, "I want to thank you for helping me to discover what's been in me all the time.

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God put a treasure there and I never knew about it." And I said, "You know, that's just what Jesus said about you. He said, 'The kingdom of God is in you, and don't you ever forget it.'" Gloria, does the world really need another person like you?

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You're darn right it does, because when God made you, he knew what he was doing. Now the reason that most people answer that question negatively is this. In all of their lives they keep focusing on what God has already forgotten. I was doing a preaching mission in Northern California about three months ago,

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and one afternoon to the hotel there came a young lady, very attractive, mother of four children, husband a successful businessman active in the church. She came to see me like Nicodemus, secretly, and she came in and she confessed that eight years ago she had, for a period of two years, been engaged in an adulterous relationship.

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And after confessing this, and this was six years previously, you see, I said to her, "Is this the first time you have confessed this?" "Oh no," she said, "I've confessed it to God many, many times. There's not a night when I go to bed that I don't confess what I have done.

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I just realized what a sin it was." And I said to her, "Well, tell me, what is it that has led you to decide that God lies?" She said, "What?" I said, "Well, you just said to me that God is dishonest.

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Now, I'd like you to prove that. I don't think of God as being dishonest. What makes you so sure that God is a liar?" "Why," she said, "I've never said any such thing." I said, "Well, you certainly did.

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The Word of God says if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness." "All right, you confessed your sin, but you keep on confessing it again and again, which means obviously you don't believe Him when He says that He has forgiven you.

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You've been confessing the wrong sin, girl. You've been confessing the sin of adultery when you should have been confessing the sin of unbelief because you haven't been believing what God said. You're trying to play God.

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You're trying to judge yourself when God has already forgotten about that. Don't you understand that you're bigger than anything that you have ever done? Why are you focusing on what God has forgotten? Just because you find it hard to forgive people doesn't mean that God does.

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Just because if someone chisels you 50 times and then comes back and asks for forgiveness of you and you can't give it to them doesn't mean that God can't. God is infinitely loving. God is much more than you are. God's love is deeper than all of man's sin.

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God stands ready to forgive. God has forgiven. Don't hang on to what God has already thrown away. I've discovered in my ministry that most people fail because they judge themselves. They see themselves as guilty.

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They don't accept the forgiveness which God has given and then their unconscious goes to work and leads them to failure. And that failure, you see, is a kind of punishment which they inflict upon themselves because of this guilt which they're still carrying and don't have to carry.

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What you've got to do is to learn how to see things from the God perspective. I like to collect mountains. And to me the most marvelous mountain I've ever seen is the Matterhorn in Switzerland. It's at Zermatt. You drive your car to a little Swiss village called Santa Claus, famous Santa Claus.

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You park your car in a meadow there. You get on a cog railway and you go up to Zermatt. And there in Zermatt you see the Matterhorn. It's a magnificent peak. It stands amongst a lot of other peaks, the Scharnhorn and the Breithorn and Paulus and Castor.

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All of these peaks are around, but it stands alone, a great finger of stone pointing toward the sky. The Swiss have a saying which says that mountains can talk, but the Matterhorn doesn't have to say anything. That's the way it is.

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I'll never forget the time I went to the top of the Matterhorn. I like to pause a minute after I say that so you can think about that for a minute. No, I didn't climb there, but I went in a helicopter. It was a Swiss air rescue team and a friend made arrangements for me to go.

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I would say to you I was scared stiff, but you really couldn't be very stiff in it. You were all bent up like this. We took off, you know, I left my stomach on the ground behind me. We took off and soared out over the shoulder of Montarosa,

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which is the second highest of all the Alps, and started down the valley toward the Matterhorn. We zoomed in over the Finghelm Glacier and then over the Gornerglaciers, and you could see those huge crevices that go down hundreds of feet.

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It's very treacherous ice on those glaciers, but I'll tell you right at that moment I'd have rather been standing on those glaciers than riding in that plane. Bouncing up and down, we were at 9,000 feet and no pressurized cabins. I'll never forget it.

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And then we approached that mountain, standing before it. It usually wears a white plume of clouds, but the plume wasn't there. It was as if it had thrown the cloud aside and said, "All right, here I am. Come on up if you dare."

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That's the kind of mountain it is. It dares you. It challenges you. It thrills you. It kills some people, but it just stood there, austere, pristine. And we went around it once, and then a little bit higher, and we went around it twice,

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and then a little bit higher, and we went around it three times, and then on the fourth time, out over the top. I'll never forget it. Everlasting blue, everlasting white, crags and minarets of stone all about us,

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and right on the top of the Matterhorn, the cross. Someone had put it there a long time ago. The cross. Oh, I found out what the psalmist meant when he said, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help."

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There I was, looking down on everything, and you know, as I stood there and looked down on things, like God must look down on things, I couldn't see anything ugly. I couldn't see any sin. I couldn't see any hurt or agony or sorrow. I couldn't see any of that.

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That, in the perspective of all the greatness that God had fashioned, seemed like nothing at all. That's the God view. When God looks down on you, he sees all the greatness he's invested in you. He understands that you are great enough to respond to the greatness of the mountain like that.

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There we were, flying above it, but a little lower than the angels. That's what the Scripture says. And as we flew above it, I became marvelously aware of the fact that something in me was responding to this something that God had spread out before me.

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And that's what God reaches into us for. We're bigger than anything we've ever done. We're more important than every sin we've ever committed. So God is ready to throw these things aside.

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Don't focus on what God has already forgotten. And don't you see, when you understand yourself to be an original work of art, and an original work of art whose past has been paid for by the cross that rises over the mountain, when you can forget about that past and look into all the opportunity of the future,

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what kind of a person does the world need more than that kind of person? A person like you. Just exactly like you. And when you add to that, this.

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That when you understand that you can't shake God, and therefore you never have to let anything else shake you. I mean by that, when you understand that God is at your elbow in all of your life, that's the plain fact of the gospel, you know.

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Not only that he made you, not only that he loves you and forgives you in Christ, but that he is with you always. When you understand that, well, you never have to quiver in nervousness before anything again.

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A businessman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was recently converted. One of the first things he did was start to have family devotions in his home. A little family gathered about the table, sharing in prayer and the reading of scripture. One night his little boy was coming to the table for dinner.

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He said, "Wash your hands." The little boy said, "I already did." He said, "No, you didn't. I can see your hands aren't very clean. They're covered with germs. Now go wash your hands."

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The little boy turned and walked away, and as he walked away he said, "Germs and Jesus, germs and Jesus. That's all you hear around here, and you can't see either of them." Well, that's true, you can't see either of them. But just as the effect of germs becomes evident,

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so the effect of the presence of Jesus in a person's life becomes evident. That Savior at the elbow, that Master at your shoulder, that friend who stands behind you, that shield and buckler that is before you. It's as if you went to your mailbox tomorrow morning,

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and you pulled out an envelope, and in that envelope was a letter and a check. And both the letter and the check were signed by the richest man in the world. And the letter said something like this, "I understand that you can use this money,

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so I've sent it along to you to do anything with it that you want. And there are no strings attached, absolutely none. And there's more where this came from. If you need any more, just let me know." Now, the wise man would look at that check and he would say,

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"It's true, it's nothing but a piece of paper, but I can take it down to the bank and they will honor it. And this man has a lot of money, and he's a smart man, and he can do with his money what he wants.

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And if he decides to give some to me, I will accept it joyfully and use it." And he would go ahead and do that. But there are some individuals, you know them, who would look at that and say, "Oh, that can't be true.

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Nobody's going to send me anything like that, it's just a joke. I don't want to take that down to the bank." Well, they'd laugh at me if I'd walk in with that. It's a good joke, but that's all.

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And they'd put it on a little frame maybe and put it up on the wall where they could look at it and point at it every once in a while and say, "Isn't that a wonderful joke?" And that's stupid, you see. That's downright stupid.

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What I'm suggesting to you is that Almighty God puts a check in your mailbox every morning. And right above his signature, he puts this, "Whatsoever you ask in my name, this I will do for you." It's out of the Bible.

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And that check is there waiting for you to cash it. Don't hang it on the wall. That's negotiable. Move out of the strength of that.

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It's yours. His free gift. Please turn your cassettes to the other side. I think of a woman in a sanatorium here in Southern California.

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In the depths of despair. A woman who one time had faith and had lost it. Who now denied the reality of everything that was good, of God, of all that's gracious. She threw it all aside.

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And she was lost in complete despair, almost unable to communicate. One day she was sitting in this sanatorium. Her minister had tried to reach her many times without success. And a young doctor walked by.

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The doctor looked at her and said, "Good morning." She didn't reply. She didn't even look up. "How are you today?" No response, whatever. "Well," he said, "just remember my name. My name is Dr. Heaven."

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It wasn't spelled like we spell Heaven. It was spelled H-E-V-E-N. "But my name is Dr. Heaven." She looked up at him and there was a kind of a hungry look in her eyes. And she said, "What did you say your name was?"

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"My name is Dr. Heaven." And with that she looked down again. Not another word. And he walked on. Now somehow or other, I don't pretend to understand how it happened,

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but somehow or other, and as confused as this reasoning is, that woman began to think to herself, "If Heaven is here, then this can't be Hell. And if Heaven is here, then God must be here."

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Now I realize that's an irrational thought, but that's what she started to think. And the next day she began to walk around that sanatorium. And as she walked around, still with the same terribly depressed look on her face, still looking down, she kept mumbling to herself,

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"This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." She kept saying that again and again and again. Evidently it had been dredged up from down deep in her years in Bible school, long, long, long before.

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And the next day as she went around that place, asserting that same sentence, she was actually smiling. And gradually the knowledge of the reality of the presence of God so flooded into that woman that she made a complete recovery

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and has been teaching school here in California for the last nine years. Now that's what the reality of the presence of God can do when you cash the check. Or you say to me, "Look, this is just wishful thinking. It's just the exuberance of a preacher who gets paid to be exuberant like that."

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If that's what you want to think, that's all right. That's your right and that's your privilege, and I would not dispute your right, and I would not argue against your privilege, but I want to point something out to you.

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There are a lot of people whose lives have been transformed by cashing in the check of the presence of God. Now you say they're making a mistake, that he's not really there. Well, if they are making a mistake, the results are still quite beautiful to see.

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If they are making a mistake, it's leading to victory, not to defeat. On the other hand, if you are the one who's making the mistake, if you are the one who's not cashing the check, and you're the one who is wrong,

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your wrongness is not leading to victory but to defeat, not to beauty but to ugliness. If they're making a mistake, it's a triumphant one. If you're making the mistake, it's a tragic one.

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You've got the presence of God promised you. Free! And free people can free other people. That's the reason I like this 20th chapter of John's Gospel I read just a few minutes ago. In that chapter, there are three stories of Jesus appearing in the resurrected form to people.

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First, he appears to Mary in the garden, and she's all bound up and afraid and thinks he's the gardener. And when she suddenly discovers who he really is, right away she starts running out to tell people, "Free!"

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Next is the scene I read to you. The disciples are in the upper room. Why are they there? It says, "For fear of the Jews they were hiding." Jesus appears to them.

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The reality of his presence is such that he frees them, and they go out and turn the world upside down. That's what it says in the Book of Acts. The last scene is with Thomas.

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He wasn't there for that upper room experience. And he puts his hands near the wounds of Jesus. And he is freed so that he goes out and founds the church in India, which is the oldest Christian church in the world today.

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And he dies with a song on his lips, and that song is still sounding down across all of the centuries. These individuals were freed. That's the reason Jesus said to them in this passage,

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"If you free people, I will free them. Everyone you free on earth, I will free in heaven. Everyone you bind on earth, I will bind in heaven." Which is to say, everyone to whom you reveal,

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everything that I have given you to reveal, they will discover the same beauty in life that you know. And everyone to whom you don't reveal the difference I make in a life, that person will go through life chained just like you used to be.

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You're freed. Free others. Have you ever seen one of these Michelangelo statues? Michelangelo has about 45 statues, but only 14 of them are finished. And if you look at all the ones that are unfinished,

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there's a great big block of stone, and maybe you see an arm carved out of it, part of a torso, or a bit of the neck and the head. That's all. Well, people are like that. They're trying to free themselves of everything that chains them,

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of everything that blocks them in. They're trying to take off their disguises. They're trying to take off the thing that distorts the reality that they really are, that inhibits the humanity which is authentically and genuinely theirs.

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But no one, you see, can do that for themselves. We have to do that for each other. And Christians, the Easter people, are the ones who are to be engaged in that ministry. That's what the whole thing is all about.

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Jesus says, "So send I you." Free people. A long time ago there was an Olympic racer by the name of Charlie Paddock. And Charlie Paddock brought home two gold medals from the Olympics. And he gave a speech at the East Technical High School in Cleveland, Ohio.

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And he talked about how you can do the things that God has given you the capacity to do, and beyond those things, because of the presence of God in your life. That's what he said. And he ended his speech by saying,

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"Perhaps there is some Olympic champion of the future right here in this room." And after the program was over, there was a little spindly-legged black kid came down the aisle and went up and said, "Mr. Paddock, do you think that I could be an Olympic champion?"

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And Paddock repeated the same thing to him. And in 1936, that little black boy went to Germany, and he brought back four gold medals, his name was Jesse Owens. And when Jesse Owens got home,

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Jesse Owens was riding through the streets in a motorcade, being honored. And a little boy ran up to him and said, "Mr. Owens, do you think that sometime I could be an Olympic champion?" And Owens remembered that he had asked that same question once,

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and so he said to that boy, "Look, God has put all kinds of potential in you. You can do this if you and God will seek to do it together. Now get started." And that very day, that boy went home and told his grandmother,

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"I'm going to be an Olympic champion." She laughed. But in 1948, in Wembley, England, six men lined up to run the 100-yard dash,

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and the man in the outside lane broke at the very beginning, and he led the whole way, and he won the gold medal, trying, tying Jesse Owens' record, and he went on to win three other medals as well.

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Harrison "Bones" Dillard was his name. You see what happened? When three people, three other people, has there ever been a world like this world?

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A world where the whole potentials of outer space are open to us in new ways? I always thought I knew how big outer space was until just the other day someone told me that if I placed a telephone call from here to Alpha Centauri,

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it would take me eight years to find out that I got a wrong number. That's how big space is, and that's open before us, and the whole world of inner space is opening up before us. Fields like parapsychology and the like are intriguing us.

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This is a fantastic world. There has never been a time when it's more exciting to be alive in it, and you come into the midst of it, an original addition, an original work of art signed by God,

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with, by the power of Christ, all of your past paid for, and all of the future free before you, with God at your elbow. Now I ask you,

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does the world really need another person like you? Why, there isn't another person like you. And the answer is yes. Men need you to set them free.

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Let us pray. Oh God, oh God, is this true of me?

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Is that whisper I hear down inside my heart right now that says, "Yes, if you'll let it be," your spirit? Is any doubt I feel at this moment not of you, but of evil? Am I under special attack at this moment

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because the vision has been put before me, and right now all kinds of negative things are being pushed upon me so that I won't accept the reality of the vision? Oh God,

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I am one of your people. I am one of your people. Amen. You