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[silence] [music] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman,

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"Be Careful Not to Be Too Careful," number five in the Lenten series. When the voice stops on side number one, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

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Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. If you would like a catalog listing additional tapes,

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please write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette. [music] [music] [music]

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[music] [music] [music] Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word.

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There are three passages in scripture in which the personality of Nicodemus is revealed to us. The first of these is the third chapter of John, which we will not be reading this morning. It is the great narrative of Nicodemus coming by night and concludes with the affirmation, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,"

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one of the most known and beloved passages of scripture. The second is recorded in the seventh chapter of John's Gospel, where an attempt is being made to arrest Jesus. Picking up the narrative at the 45th verse, the passage reads as follows.

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"The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, 'Why did you not arrest him?' The officers answered, 'No man ever spoke like this man.' The Pharisees answered them, 'Are you led astray, you also?

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Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him?' But this crowd, who do not know the law, they are accursed.' Now Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before and who was one of the Pharisees, said to them, 'Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?'

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They replied, 'Are you from Galilee too? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.'" And the third reference to Nicodemus occurs on Calvary. It is recorded in the 19th chapter of John's Gospel, and specifically in the 39th verse.

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"Nicodemus also, who had at first come to Jesus by night, came now bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. And they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen claws with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews."

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And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Nicodemus was one of those who sought to render Christ a kindness on Calvary.

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Tragically, his kindness was stained by his cautious nature. The goodness of what he tried to do was tainted by his tendency to be too careful. Nicodemus was the kind of man, you see, who wore both a belt and suspenders. In the three instances in which we encounter him in Scripture, we find him being too careful.

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First, in John 3, we read of him coming by night, entering into his conversation with Jesus without making any commitments, and leaving it in the same way, keeping all of his options open always. The second experience is in John 7, where the Pharisees are planning to arrest Jesus.

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Now Nicodemus' heart says to him that he should take a stand for Christ, but his head tells him that this would not be the prudential thing to do. So he enters a legal caveat. Doesn't the man have the chance to defend himself?

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But the Pharisees respond vehemently, "Do you think that a prophet can come out of Galilee? You know our holy books better than that." And Nicodemus says no more. He made an effort, but being too careful, he made no more than an effort.

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The last reference is in John 19. Joseph of Arimathea has requested of the Roman authorities the body of Jesus to bury it in his tomb, and Nicodemus comes with some spices with which to anoint the body. It's interesting that in one of the Gospels it says that Nicodemus came secretly for fear of the Jews.

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Again, you see, being very careful about what he was about to do. Here was a man who in all of his contacts with Jesus, each and every one of them a kindness in its own way, tended to be so much less than God gave him the capacity to be.

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He was, you see, not careful enough in being too careful. Now why? I thought a lot about that. Could it have been that Nicodemus did not move out adventurously because he had no self-confidence? Was the difficulty simply that he didn't have enough belief in the capacities which God had placed in him

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to begin to assert himself on behalf of this figure from Galilee who so much intrigued and entranced him? Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman philosopher, wrote, "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it." Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was probably the third greatest mind that America has ever produced, wrote,

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"A man is what he thinks about all day long." And William James, one of our most noted psychologists, said the same thing in other words when he wrote, "There is a deep tendency in human nature to become precisely that which you habitually imagine yourself to be."

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Is there the possibility then that Nicodemus imagined himself to be so insignificant, thought of himself to be so without capacity, made his image of himself so insignificant that when the time came for him to step out, he didn't have anything to step with?

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I know that feeling personally. I remember when my seminary career was coming to an end, halfway through the last term, I decided not to go into the ministry and actually began to prepare my things to leave the seminary.

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I'd heard a little story, you see, about a minister who moved into a new town and asked a youngster where the post office was. And the boy gave him directions and then the minister said, "Come to church next Sunday and I'll tell you how to get to heaven."

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Whereupon the little boy responded, "Nope, I won't come. I figure you won't be able to tell me how to get to heaven if you can't even find your way to the post office." Well, I knew there were a lot of ways I didn't know and that I wasn't going to be very good at pointing out directions.

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And consequently, I was very fearful about going into the ministry and particularly into the difficult charge to which I was called. I decided I would go and become a pastor scholar. I would spend most of my time in my study.

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I would labor over my sermons, hoping perhaps to publish them sometime. And I would seek to lead my people from the sacred desk. The first day I was there, one of the members of the board of trustees, a man named Joe Johnson, came.

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He was a florist by trade. He brought me a beautiful plant. And after he got me all softened up with a plant, he said, "Now look here. This church has been asleep for 15 years. This church is not being what God wants it to be.

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Now I believe you've been called to be here. I know that God is in you and I know that you are in you and I expect you to do something about it. And I want you to start right away. And I want you to understand from the very outset that some of the people are going to hate you at the beginning

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and more of them will probably hate you at the end. But the fact of the matter is that this church has a mission and I think that you're the one to get it going." And those words terrified me.

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And then he said, "I've got some verses I want you to read." So he gave me a list of verses and I went home that night and I read the first verse and it read like this. "Ye are the salt of the earth." Wow.

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Jesus was saying, "You, Bruce, you're the salt of the earth." Next verse was, "You are the light of the world." The light of the world? Well, I began reading these verses again and again and I decided I was going to believe Joe and I was going to believe God.

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And I started into my ministry and it was just like he said it would be. They hated me. For the first three months the Board of Trustees did not pay my salary. That's the only time in my life that I was ever ordered out of a church meeting.

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Couldn't even sit in the meetings. I was told I could come in and say what I had to say and then I had to go while they made the decisions. And that's the way it was at the beginning. But God was there and moved and my confidence in what I was called to do grew.

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And when I left that church at the end of nine and a half years, the congregation was larger. Many people had come to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. Instead of having one minister, we had five and one of them was black. We had the most significant interracial ministry in the city.

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We were the only church asked to participate in the memorial services for Martin Luther King and I myself was asked to preach the sermon. We occupied three buildings instead of one. Our annual budget had gone from $28,000 a year to $112,000 a year. And even the mayor, whom we helped to throw out of office through our radio broadcasts,

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said we had a significant impact on the town. That happened because I believed God. You are the salt of the earth. It's too bad that Nicodemus didn't come out openly enough with Jesus to have heard that.

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Maybe it would have made the difference. Or maybe the reason that Nicodemus was so careful and so cautious was that he thought he was too old to get involved. There are a lot of people that feel that way. You know, I'm just too old to get involved. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Once the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

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Let these young fellows carry it on. We've done a lot of stupid things in our society. But none of them is more stupid than this notion we have that when a man gets to be 65 years of age or a woman reaches the same age, that they are therefore no longer of any worth to our society.

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It amazes me that in a country where we have learned to make things, and then to make things out of everything that's left over from what we made in the first place, and then to make things out of everything that's left over from the second place. I read of a slaughterhouse back in the Midwest that slaughters pigs,

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and they have a sign which reads, "The only part of the hog we throw away is the squeal." Well, we've learned how to use everything, but we very casually turn around and throw human beings on the scrap heap just because they happen to be 65 years of age or older. What could be a more costly mistake?

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The finest pastoral ministry to Shuttians that I've ever seen in all of my ministry was carried out by Gail Barnett, sitting right down here this morning, and he started his ministry in this church when he was 75 years old. The best camp director I've ever known, and I've known an awful lot of camp directors,

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first time I ever encountered him, is named Charles Augustus Howard, and out of his camps have come presidents of universities and colleges and big businesses, industries across the country. More men honor the name of C.A. Howard than any other camp leader I've ever known.

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And the first time I ever met C.A. Howard leading his camp, he was 74 years old. A few weeks ago, I was out with one of the ladies in our church. I don't want you to misinterpret that sentence. About a pastoral matter.

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And during the course of this conversation, this lady, who is active on three different committees in the life of our church and is very generous in the gifts of her talent and also of her treasure to the support of the church, in the course of the conversation, she three or four different times talked about old people,

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about old men and old women, old girls and old guys. And everything she said was very reasonable, and I went along with the whole conversation and listened to it all with great benefit and made my part of contribution. And when it was over, I was driving home, and it suddenly dawned on me

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that this lady who had been talking about those old people had passed her 70th birthday. But she was absolutely right in what she was saying. I was watching Johnny Carson the other night because I was very tired. That's the only time I can watch him is when I'm very tired.

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And he introduced a lady by the name of Lillian Williams, and she came out through the curtains. She was an older lady. She was wearing a lovely lavender dress and a great big orchid, and she had her white hair all piled up on top of her head, and she looked very nice.

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And he introduced Lillian Williams and said that she was from Clarksburg, Arkansas, and she was a piano teacher in that town, and she was 81 years old. And he said, "Lillian, you just look wonderful tonight." And with that freedom and lack of pretense that you would expect from someone from Clarksburg, Arkansas,

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she said, "Well, thank you very much, Johnny." And he said, "My dress was given to me by the Chamber of Commerce, and my flower was given to me by the Eastern Star, and the ladies in my Sunday school class paid for me to have my hair done."

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And that was beautifully refreshing. And he said, "What ever led you to start teaching piano 65 years ago?" She said, "Well, I looked around our town one day, and I found nobody knew any more about piano than I did, so I figured I should be the one to start teaching them."

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And I thought that was beautiful. And then he said, "How many students do you have now?" And she said, "Forty. Forty students. Eighty-one years old." And I thought to myself, "Now, if she'd have stopped right there, that would have been impressive enough."

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But she didn't stop there. She said, "I have 40 students, but I don't think of them as that." She said, "It's my job to teach 400 fingers every week." Four hundred! He said, "How many fingers have you taught in all of your life?"

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She said, "I don't know. I don't know. I can't count. All I can do is play." And with that, she got up and went over and played the best ragtime piano I've ever heard in all my life. Eighty-one years old. Douglas MacArthur, when he was 80 years old, uttered these words,

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"You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts. You are as young as your confidence and as old as your fears. You are as young as your hope and as old as your despairs." Eighty years old when he wrote those words.

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It's too bad that Nicodemus didn't know Jesus well enough to have heard him say, "Those who are of the faith are like little children in the kingdom of God." Maybe that was his problem. He just thought he was too old.

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Or maybe he was afraid to risk his religious security. He was a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders of the people. And it is a strong possibility that he was unwilling to accept the new teachings of Jesus fully, and openly at least, because were he to accept them,

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he would have been saying in his acceptance that some of the things he had been teaching for so long had been wrong. And he was unwilling to launch out into something new, and unwilling to say that what had been before was not as good as what could now be. Maybe he was afraid of losing his faith security, shall we call it.

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I heard of a Sunday school teacher who was teaching a class on justification and sanctification and a lot of the other Asians. And toward the end of the class she said to her students, "Now, have you ever heard the word procrastination? What does it mean, procrastination?" And one of the students said, "Well, I don't know what it means, but I'm sure my church believes in it."

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Well, there are a lot of churches that believe in it. I've always been trying to find a church which acted on an idea the same decade in which it thought of it. The point is that there are a lot of people within the realm of the faith, authentic, genuine believers, who are always afraid to think new thoughts with regard to their faith,

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lest this in some way undermine what was before and take away some of their security. The saddest thing that I ever heard a church member say was this, "If you never try anything new, you'll never run the risk of losing anything." Now, that's very sad because it's so dead wrong.

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You see, if you never try anything new, you do lose something. You lose everything you might have gained because of that new adventure. It's very important for us to recognize that every time we make a choice, we take a chance. If the choice is that we will stand where we are,

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we take the chance of losing everything that might have developed from a new adventure in faith. And if the choice is to move ahead, then we take the chance of losing some of the things that we might lose because we are launching out into the deep, and there is risk, and there is peril involved.

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But whether you stand pat or move ahead, no matter which choice you make, you run the risk of significant loss. And also, insofar as the future is concerned, and moving out into newness is concerned, discovering things which will transform and uplift your life.

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I know a lot of Christians who think of themselves as being successful Christians. Now, I'm not saying that critically. I don't mean that they boast about their Christian faith or that they're arrogant about their Christian faith. It's just that they look at their lives and they think, "I am living a happy life.

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I am living a fulfilled life. I am seeking in everything I can do to honor Christ. I am not having any great reverses." I would say that I am succeeding in my Christian adventure.

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Now, I'm sorry to have to say that many people that I hear say that are really spiritual failures. They're failures, you see, because they are judging their success on the basis of what they are, not on the basis of what God gave them the capacity to be. What you are may be good until you measure that up against what God would enable you to be

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if you trust Him enough to try Him. When our building fell down across the street, there were a lot of people who said, you know, "Oh, we'll never be able to build a new building. We'll just move over into Kerr Hall and that's where we'll continue.

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That'll be the beginning and the end of it." Well, here we are, and it's not bad. And if we had set that as our goal, to move into this place and worship here, then this is a complete success.

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But what kind of a success would that be when measured up against what has happened? There were others, you see, who wanted to launch out. So they brought in some plans for a new building, a beautiful thing, an efficient thing, to strengthen the outreach in this community.

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And they brought those plans in, and some people looked at it and said, "Well, look, we can't do anything like that. That's just completely beyond us." And they brought up an idea that we erect something across the street which resembled a cheese box. Now, that's what we ought to do, and if that's what we were going to do,

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well, the cheese box would already be over there. It doesn't take long to build cheese boxes. And if that's what you want to build, a cheese box, then when your cheese box is up, you have succeeded. Mission accomplished. But what accomplishment if that mission is something that really isn't worth accomplishing?

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And there were some people who said, "If we could raise $300,000 for our new building, it would be a success." And there were other people who said, "If we could raise $400,000 for the new building, it would be a successful drive." And we raised $886,000 in one morning, and it's continuing to climb even now. And that, you see, is the beginning of the kind of success which God had in mind.

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But if we'd have satisfied ourselves with what was going on back here, we would have never known the thrill and the excitement of this. We must not let ourselves to be entrapped by our faith securities of yesterday. If only Nicodemus had heard Jesus say, "You have heard that it has been said, 'But I say unto you, a new commandment give I unto you.'"

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But I guess Nicodemus never heard those words. He was so careful being careful. Maybe his problem was that he was unwilling to risk the financial peril of it all. It's obvious that he had a lot of money. Those hundred pounds of spices which he brought for the body of Jesus were very costly.

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That was the amount of spices regularly used to anoint royalty. It was a great gift. He had the fanciest basket of flowers at the funeral. But maybe the reason that he held back from risking himself for Christ more openly earlier was the fact that he was afraid of losing some of that financial security.

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That might have been his big problem. [Pause] There are a lot of people who think of every question about the faith in terms of dollar signs. You bring in some idea, some concept, some dream for the glory of God, or at least you think it's for the glory of God,

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and they say, "Ah, yes, but what will it cost?" And people think about that for a moment, and after they've thought about that for a moment, the whole idea is thrown out the window. It makes no difference what the worth of the idea is. That kills it right there.

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Now, if the church were principally a business, then that's the first question that should be thought of. What will it cost? Because that's what business is concerned with and ought to be concerned with. Or if the church were in the political business, then we ought to be thinking about our image, and that ought to be the first question.

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Or if we were in the entertainment business, we ought to be thinking about Academy Awards. That should be our standard. But we're not any of these things. We're the church, and the primary concern of the church, or of every Christian, is what is the will of God, and what can happen through this to advance and further that will?

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That's the question. And when that question is answered, yes, then you can go on to talk about other things, but not till you've first answered that question. And when you've indicated that you're willing to adventure with God, God goes on to answer those other things.

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I know a young man in the East who, when he was in high school, decided he wanted to have a paper route. And in those days, everybody had paper routes. And he knew he couldn't get a very big one, so he tried to think of something he could do that would be a little bit different.

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And he prayed about it, and he got the idea of launching out into a paper route that delivered nothing but the New York Times. And that involved a considerable investment on his part every week, because he had to buy those papers differently than the other papers, and any one he didn't sell was going to cost him 50 cents apiece.

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And he was only in high school, and everybody told him he shouldn't do it, but he was going to try it anyway, because he felt God was leading him in this, and he was going to go ahead, and he was a double tither even then when he was in high school, and he did it. And within six weeks, he was delivering 450 New York Times every Sunday afternoon and Sunday night,

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and he made enough money to put himself through the University of Pennsylvania, which is a pretty expensive school. And while he was in that school, every decision that he made, and many of them seemed very risky and very perilous, every decision he made began to bear more and more fruit. He entered into the stock market just when he was a young man in college.

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And sometimes some of the things he did, not everything came out exactly the way he wished it would have, but he was moving ahead on the basis of what seemed to him to be right. He always sought the moral implications of everything he would buy or everything he would not buy. He picked his wife that same way.

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I remember when I first met the girl he was going to be married to, I almost fell apart. I thought to myself, "No, Bill's too deliberate for this girl. She's much too far ahead of him. He'll never catch up with her." Well, he has been running ever since he married her, but it's been the best thing that ever happened to him. And he just moved ahead, and he moves ahead, you see, always the same way.

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Their faith is contagious. They went and they had four girls, one, two, three, four, in that order, four girls. And these girls are wonderful girls. And after they had the first one, he was working for Westinghouse at that time, and he prayed about it,

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and he thought the Lord said to him, "You should be getting more for your work than you're getting, so that you can give more to me and my efforts." So Bill went in and told him that. Westinghouse was not impressed.

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So he said, "Well, if you don't give me any more, I'll go somewhere else, and you'll find out how much I'm worth." And they said, "All right, go somewhere else. There's the door." So he did, and he went with Burroughs. And about six months later, they came back to him, and they said, "We know what you're worth now. Come on back."

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So he did, and he's still with them today. And he's doing fabulously well in everything that he touches, even to the place where after having four girls and not having any sons, he decided that God wanted him to have a son.

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Now, you know, after you've had one girl, the chance of having a boy is so-so. After you've had two girls, the chances are even less. After three, the chances are even--after four, no chance. Can't happen. So he and Mickey, his wife, started to plan on having a boy.

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They thought boy. They talked boy. Everything they bought was blue. They allowed no other possibility. Two months ago, they had a bouncing nine-pound baby boy. And if you think he was enthusiastic before, you ought to see him now.

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Here's a guy, you see, who doesn't let financial considerations rule his life, but moves out into all dimensions of adventure and trusts God to work it out. I didn't think there used to be any relationship between faith and money. And I still don't think there's a relationship like some people do.

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Some people think, you know, that if you've got a lot of faith, that means you'll have a lot of money. And if you don't have a lot of faith, that means you won't have any money. I don't believe that because I've known too many rich people that don't have any faith.

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But I do know this, that when you do have faith, when you do have confidence in Christ, there is a power and an enthusiasm and a dynamism set loose in your life which makes you more productive. And that's the reason that so many Christians go on to become successful in this kind of world. And success is not a sin.

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If only Nicodemus had been brave enough to have been present that day when Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of these other things will be added to you." But he missed that, you see. He was being careful. There's just one other possibility.

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He may have held back from the risk that faith involves because his friends had too negative an influence upon him. I was told in seminary to stay away from people who were always looking down on things. They would poison your view, and you know that's true. That really happens. When Vince Lombardi took over as head coach of the Green Bay Packers,

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he gathered all the team together in the locker room the first day he was there. They had just completed a season in which out of ten games, they had won exactly none. And he had essentially the same team that had been there the year before. Very few changes, none of them of great significance.

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He sat the players down, and this is what he said to them. "Gentlemen, we're going to have a great football team. We're going to win games. Get that. You are going to learn to block. You are going to learn to tackle. You are going to learn to run. You are going to outplay every team that comes up against you. Get that.

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And how is this going to be done? You are going to have confidence in me and in my system and in our working together, and the secret of the whole matter will be what goes on in here. Hereafter, I want you to think of only three things, your religion, your home, and the Green Bay Packers,

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and think of them in that order, and let enthusiasm take hold of you." And that year, that team went out and won seven out of its ten games, and the next year it won its division title, and the next year it won the world championship, and it went on to amass the greatest record of any professional football team in history.

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Why? Because champions make champions. Vince Lombardi was an enthusiastic, dynamic champion, and when others associated with him, that rubbed off, and just so, you get somebody in there who's a real pickle-puss and they'll sour everything.

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Have you ever been in a meeting where everything's going along great until one person speaks, and when they're done, everybody in the whole room is depressed? I heard a person say on one occasion, he was speaking about a guy, we'll give him a phony name, we'll say his name was Jerry.

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Boy, we sure are lucky to have Jerry on our committee. If there's anything wrong with an idea, Jerry can find it. Isn't that a terrible thing to say? There's something wrong with every idea.

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There's never been an idea that doesn't have something wrong with it. It takes no skill whatever to find out what's wrong with it. What we need to be with are people who find out what's right with it, and go on from there, like Vince Lombardi did.

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Maybe that's what happened to Nicodemus. He spent so much time with those Pharisees, that he could never get to the place where he heard Jesus say, "With God, all things are possible." Well, last Monday I picked up the paper,

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and I read a story about a preacher who preached a sermon over here in Pasadena. He's an Anglican bishop. His name is John A. T. Robinson. About ten years ago, he wrote a book called Honest to God. And in that book, he denied the fatherhood of God, he denied the deity of Christ,

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and he denied just about every doctrine that's at the heart of our faith. And he's written 14 books since, every one of them emphasizing those denials. And this man got up to preach a sermon over here in Pasadena, and the pastor of his church, an Episcopal church over here presenting him,

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introduced him, and this was recorded in the LA Times, as being one of the most brilliant and incisive representatives of the Christian faith and the church in the world today. And this is what he said. Here it is.

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This is the gospel according to John Robinson. "I see the whole world going downhill, and I have no hopes and see no seeds of any improvement." I wanted to scratch out his name and substitute the name Nicodemus.

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Nicodemus. That's not the gospel. This is what Jesus said the gospel was. "You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.

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Do not be overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Become a child in the faith, that's the way you inherit the kingdom. A new commandment I give unto you. Behold, I make all things new.

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Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of these other things will be added unto you with God." Nothing is impossible. The things that are impossible with men are possible with God. If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed,

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you will say to this mountain, and it will move. And all things will be possible to you. That's the gospel. And brother, don't you be so careful that you miss it.

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Let us pray. Make us adventurers for Christ's sake and for our own. Thrill us with what everything the faith can mean in our lives. Charge us with the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Renew us. Give us a vision of what we can be, Lord. Help us to go forward, forward, always forward with Christ. Amen.

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