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[Music] On feeling you've swallowed a sunset. A message by Dr. Vince W. Fielding. [Music] The scripture reading of the morning is taken from three places in the New Testament.

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I shall read first from the Gospel according to Matthew, the ninth chapter. Secondly, from the Gospel according to Matthew, the fourteenth chapter. And thirdly, from the Gospel according to John, the sixteenth chapter. Will you please be upstanding for the reading of the Word of God?

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Beginning at Matthew 9, verse 1. "And Jesus entered into a ship and passed over and came into his own city. And behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy,

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Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee. And behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?

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For whether it is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk, but that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, than saith he to the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose and departed to his house.

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And when the multitude saw it, they marveled and glorified God, which had given such power unto men." Reading then from Matthew, the fourteenth chapter, beginning at the verse number 22. "And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship,

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and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray. And when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary.

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And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a ghost; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid."

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And then reading finally from the Gospel of John, at chapter 22, beginning at the twenty-first verse, twenty-fifth verse. "These things have I spoken unto you in Proverbs; but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in Proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you.

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For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father." His disciples said unto him, "Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things; and needest not that any man should ask thee.

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By this we believe that thou camest forth from God." Jesus answered them, "Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

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These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And may God bless to us these readings from his word. Will you please be seated.

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Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, I believe I've heard everything now. I came across a letter which was written by the Chamber of Commerce of a certain Midwestern city

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to the Office of Civilian Defense in Washington, D.C., and the letter read as follows. "Dear Sirs, We noted in your recent publication of prime target areas in the United States that our city was not listed. It is our opinion that this city, with its industry and residential sections, is as vital an area as any published in your list. Please consider revising your list to include our city as a prime target for nuclear attack."

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I'll say it again, I think I've heard it all now. It would be my surmise that most people believe that there is enough trouble in life without the necessity of any of us going looking for it. I think most people would affirm that life is not something lived out on a Hollywood soundstage.

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It's no celluloid prevarication. It's lived out from under the lights with a very tough script and with an audience that many times is most unappreciative. Did you hear of the man who encountered another man about to jump from a bridge and he went up to him and he said, "Why are you going to do such a thing?"

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And the man who was about to jump said, "Oh, there's no good in life. Everything is bad. Everything is going to the dogs. The economy is terrible. There are wars and rumors of wars and expressions of peace that aren't really peaceful. And there's marital discord and family disruption and UCLA lost to Notre Dame.

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The multitudes are unemployed and you can't trust anyone anymore and there's despair everywhere." And when he had completed the list, the men joined hands and jumped off the bridge together. I think any of us, if there's in us that which enables us to see life truly and if we're not inhabiting a cocoon but are out where things are really going on,

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know that there are as many lumps in life as there are lollipops. But do we know this too? Do we know that there is one who is ready to take up residence in us? Do we know that there is one who loves us enough to live within us?

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Do we know that there is one who is ready to give us, in the midst of all the terror and terrific discord of our time, the blessings of his pardon and of his presence and of his power? Do we know Jesus? And do we know the wonder of his cheer? When you do know that, well, you feel like you've swallowed a sunset.

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Think, for example, of the cheer of his pardon. In the gospel according to Matthew, in the ninth chapters, there's the story of some friends who brought a young man who was paralyzed to Jesus. Now, this young man was paralyzed because of his sense of guilt and inadequacy.

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We are all sophisticated enough to understand that what you think in your mind can very much affect your body. I can tell you this morning, for example, of a woman who lives in an eastern state whose husband died a very early death two years ago. She has convinced herself that in large measure she was responsible for his death

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because of her very sharp and vituperative tongue. She has so convinced herself of this that in the period since his death, she has lost completely the power of speech. Now, that's how an attitude in the mind can affect the body.

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And this young man brought to Jesus evidently had such a sense of guilt that he had become paralyzed. And Jesus, on meeting him, bent low, took his hand in his, looked deeply into his eyes, so deeply that he could see what was at the center of that young man, and that young man looked at Jesus so deeply that he could see what was at the center of the Christ.

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And in that moment of transference and understanding, utter, deep understanding, Jesus said, "Be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you." And the young man got up and walked away. Now, there are people today who are still paralyzed by their sense of shame and inadequacy and guilt.

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Well, they try to cover it up in a variety of ways, but it is paralysis still. For example, there is the individual who feels himself so caught up in evil that he just gives himself over to it, surrenders to it, yields to it. I will never forget talking to a young man who had impregnated a young girl in our congregation

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who had not been married. And I asked him why he had done this, and his response was very simply this, "What else can you expect from someone like me?" There was one, you see, who had such a low view of himself that he could not aspire any higher than that,

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and he had surrendered completely to it. That's a kind of paralysis of the will. Or there are individuals who try to avoid their sense of guilt and shame by drowning their sorrows in alcohol or popping one pill after another. The Irishman seeks to get away from his difficulties by drinking as much as he can hold,

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and then he meets the priest, and the priest says, "Does it work?" And the Irishman responds, "No, Father, I've only discovered that the devil can swim." Well, most people don't discover that until it's too late. And by the time they do discover it, they have become so chained, so bound to their addiction,

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be it alcohol or pills or what have you, that that is a kind of paralysis. And then there are people who try to avoid their sense of shame over the fact that they haven't done what they ought to have done, or they have failed to do some things which they very much should have done. There are some people who try to cover that up with a kind of arrogance and braggadocio.

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Because they're rather annoyed with what is inside, they try to establish an outside which looks like an endless pageant and parade. "Don't touch me, I'm a star." I will confess to being very much impressed by individuals who are successful in the world of business. I like the way they talk, I like the way they move, I like the way they manage to have their weekends off.

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I'm impressed by those kinds of people. But I have sat enough times across the desk from that kind of person to know that many times patent leather shoes and tailor-made suits and Cadillacs and big houses are only a kind of, I was going to say iron, but I'll say instead a kind of gold lung in which they live.

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They're paralyzed, stocked still inside, because they feel rotten down deep. That's a kind of paralysis. And some people try to cover up the reality that is by throwing themselves into a frenzy of work. They're going to work, work, work. They're going to crowd every minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.

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They're going to jam their days with all kinds of worthwhile activities. Every time the door to the church is open, they're going to be here. Every religious discipline that they can adopt for themselves, they adopt. They give themselves to social service, they give themselves to welfare service,

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they give themselves to neighborhood involvement. They spill themselves out in every way that they possibly can and try to cram their days with a frenzy of things which will justify the feeling of hurt that's down inside, the feeling of inadequacy and not being able to cope.

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I'll score so many points that no one will ever know that I really lost inside. What those people are doing, you see, are donning the braces of rigid activity. And that's just another kind of paralysis. Well, I wish this morning that I could take everyone who bears that kind of burden

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and bring them so into the presence of Jesus that they would hear him say, "As he looks at the deep in them and they look at the deep in him, be of good cheer, for your sins are forgiven you." You see, folks that bear the burden of that kind of guilt are very much like the young man

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that I stopped to visit last November. He has feelings of real incapacity. He's constantly punishing himself. He happens to be a rather accomplished pianist.

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But even in that area of his life, he faults himself consistently. "I don't practice enough. I don't want to play enough." He puts himself down. It's almost impossible to get him to play. And in his home one night, I said to him, "Won't you play something for me?"

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And after a little persuasion, he agreed, and he went to the keyboard and he sat down, and he played those majestic opening chords of the Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp. And just as he'd gotten to the third chord, his father said, "You can't play that. Stop that." And with that, he closed the piano, left the bench, and didn't return to it all night long.

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Now, you see, we do things like that to one another. We say, "I'd like to hear you play," and then when someone starts to play, we say, "You're not playing well enough," or we start another conversation which indicates that we're not really interested in their playing at all.

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And in either instance, we make that individual more sensitive to their own incapacities, their own inadequacies. They didn't feel good before. Now they're sure they're no good, and so they do one of the things which we just mentioned. They may sit down and just close the piano.

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Or they may pound the piano harder than they ever pounded it before to try to drown this out. Or, instead of that, they may smash the piano to bits before us. Or they may practice and practice and practice and practice until they become so good that we cannot criticize what they're doing.

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If they would meet Jesus, they would experience him coming over and sitting down at the piano with them. And he says to them something like this, "Your hands are very beautiful. They've been made by God to play. And I know that there is music inside of you. And I understand why you want to play, because all of us want something of accomplishment in our lives,

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and all of us want to know a little bit of the applause of things. We want to be able to do and to be. So let's start out with something. Do you know chopsticks? Can we play at four hands?"

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And as he sits there close, his body touches yours, and as you feel touched by his body, you feel the warmth of it, the love in it. And eventually your breathing becomes synchronized with his breathing. And he looks up at the piece of music on the music stand in front of us,

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and he sees all the red marks where we've made mistakes, and he says, "That's nice music, but let's forget about it for now." And he takes that music and he lays it aside. And he begins to move his hands on top of ours, and we start to play, slowly at first.

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But the music that's down inside of us starts to bubble to the surface, and it comes up at first very awkward and stale, but after a while, as it keeps on coming, it comes more freely, it comes more beautifully, and there is about it a kind of majestic grace,

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and we sit there and continue playing till we want to say, "Rubenstein, move over!" And all the time he keeps on saying, "Spiro, your sins are forgiven you. Play on. Play on." And when you experience that, well, you feel like you've swallowed a sunset.

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Or think about the way in which Jesus gives to us the cheer of his presence. There's a great story in the 14th chapter of Matthew which illustrates this. Now, Galilee is a very beautiful scene, and when you look upon it, your heart is lifted within you because of its beauty,

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but it's also a very treacherous body of water. At one end are high hills. They're very much in the news today. They're called the Golan Heights. And on the other side are low hills, and oft times the cold air from the high hills

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comes down and meets the warm air from the low hills, and it meets right out over the water, and the water can be made choppy very quickly. The waves can be very high and treacherous. Now, the disciples were crossing that water, and they encountered just that kind of circumstance,

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and they were having a rather tough time. And then it was that Jesus, who was not on board the ship, but who was on a hillside where he could see the whole thing, came hurrying down to help them.

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And you can get a picture of the scene as he hurried across the water to them, and the water splashing on the bottoms of his robe and up over his shoulders made him wet so that the robe was clinging to his body. You could see the strong carpenter's shoulders revealed.

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And as he comes, the splash of the spray wets his hair, which, because he was a Jew, would have been heavily oiled. And so it's running down over his face, and his beard is parted by that wind so that part of it is blowing over his right shoulder,

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and part of it is blowing over his left shoulder. And he wants the disciples to know that he's coming, and he's waving like this as he comes across the water, and the wind catches the folds of his robe and blows it out behind him.

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And the disciples, who are having a tough enough time as it is with the boat look-up, and they see this wild, waving, white thing coming at them across the water. And they're suddenly gripped with fear. There was an awkwardness about it. He was a land man, he wasn't a sea man,

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and he ran across those waves like we'd run skipping puddles. And as he came closer, waving like this, "I'm coming, fellows! Cheer up, here I come!" It must have been a great moment for them after they got over the initial fright of it. And that's a great moment for any person who gets caught up in the storm of life,

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and then suddenly looks up and hears Jesus say, not what the King James Version says, "Be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid, but hey, guys, here I come, you need a helping hand!" That's what he's saying as he comes across the water. Life is tough. We've acknowledged that together.

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And not every problem in life is going to be solved because we have faith. You read that sad story in the newspapers, just like I did, about that little boy not far from here who had diabetes. His father assumed that faith would be sufficient to conquer diabetes,

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so he took away the medicine, and the little boy died. And then the father would not let the little boy be embalmed because his faith was great enough so that the child would return to life like Lazarus, and the little boy did not return to life. And after he was buried, the father sat by his grave for three days waiting for him to be resurrected

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because his faith was great enough to see the boy resurrected, and the boy was not resurrected and will not be resurrected until Jesus Christ comes. And I don't know what's happened to that father since, but I'll wager that either he's punishing himself because he doesn't believe that he had sufficient faith,

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or he's angry at God because he feels that God has not kept his word, or he's developed some kind of theological loophole that he's sneaking through to try to justify what he has maintained. To argue that your faith is going to solve every problem in life is a lie, and you're going to get caught on the horns of it,

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because the time will come when you'll pray and pray and believe and believe, and it won't happen the way you want it to happen. Please turn your cassette to the other side. See, the fact of the matter is, Jesus did not go through life with a smile frozen on his face.

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He was not icily cool in every situation. Instead of that, he came into the midst of the storms of life, and he says, "Look, I'm here with you to help out. What is there that you and I can do together?" He rolls up his sleeves and plunges in with his bare hands until his hands come up bleeding.

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He goes ahead of us on the highway, calling back, "Watch out for the falling rocks!" And they so fall upon him that he comes back with his feet broken. And he says, "Look out, there are thorns over here!" And so that we'll see them clearly, he flaps them into a crown and wears them on his head.

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That's Jesus saying to us, "Look, I'm here with you in the midst of every bit of it. Cheer up!" God does not promise that everything will be easy, but he promises to be with us in the midst of everything that is easy or hard. He promised it to Abraham with a covenant.

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He promised it to Moses with a cloud by day and fire by night. He promised it to Joshua with the presence of the ark. He promised it to Elijah with a thin, small voice. He promised it to the disciples by showing them the wounds in his hands and his feet.

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And he promises it to us by saying, "Lo, I am with you always." And when you suddenly get hold of that, well, you feel like you've swallowed a sunset. Let me digress here for a moment to say something which is very, very hard to say. And something that I'm not going to be able to say well,

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but I trust the Holy Spirit to bring it home to your hearts. Our dependence is always to be upon the presence of this Jesus who comes to us in the midst of storm. Not on anything else and not on anyone else, finally, but him. What happens to many people is that after they give themselves to him,

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they begin to try to lay hands on more and more of him by crowding their lives with spiritual disciplines. And these spiritual disciplines are good. Do not get the understanding that I am criticizing them. But what happens to some people is that they get to the place where they depend more upon the disciplines than they do upon him.

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And what is even sadder is that some people become so strong and self-assertive in those disciplines that other people begin to depend upon them instead of upon Jesus. And that's a very sad thing to see. There's a man by the name of Dean Kelly who's written a book called "Why Conservative Churches Are Growing,"

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and it was one of the most popular religious books in America for the last two years. And the thesis of the book, which he proves quite conclusively, is this, that the churches that have very strict rules and regulations and make high requirements of their people, those churches are the churches that are growing.

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So someone comes to me and they say, "Let's become more strict in our discipline. Let's make our requirements higher. Let's tighten up this ship, and then the church will grow." That may very well happen. But what are we trying to build here?

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Are we trying to build a church? Or are we trying to build Christians? Are we trying to give people some authority other than Jesus that they can rely upon? Some theology, some form of church order, some discipline or doctrine that they can build their lives upon

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and say, "If I only cling to that, then I'm going to make it." There are some preachers that would like to have it that way. They like to present themselves as sources of authority who are able to answer any questions that you may present to them. I'm sorry I cannot do that.

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I'm sorry that some of you get up very tight when I talk about my own weaknesses in the pulpit. But I want you to know that I'm no spiritual guru for you. My feet are made of clay exactly like yours. I fail as you fail. I fall as you fall. I sin as you sin.

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And this congregation is not going to be to you the sure and certain thing which you can always depend upon because there are times when the people in this congregation will turn their back upon you when you need them the very most, just as in any other fellowship of which you might become a part. We're all in this boat together.

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And in the midst of this boat, we've got to pull together. But our final dependence is not upon each other, and our final dependence is not upon good rules of seamanship, and our final dependence is not upon understandering the wiles and ways of meteorology. Our dependence is upon the one who comes and says, "Hey! Cheer up! I'm here! Where do you need a hand? I'll give you mine."

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He does not call upon us to be successful religious people, whatever that is. He does not want us to be little saints carved in the image of God by other people who carve us the way they think God looks. He wants us to be free people, people who need people, yes, but people who most of all need a relationship to him as a person. That's what he wants, and that's what we want if we want to be like him.

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And when you get hold of that, you feel like you've swallowed a sunset. And let me share with you just one other thought, perhaps more personal than either of the other two. We've got to be aware also of the cheering of his power. My favorite New Testament scene is the Last Supper.

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It's not the part of the scene where Jesus washes the disciples' feet because I would be as uncomfortable and bad as Peter was. And it's not the part of the scene where Judas is dismissed because I would feel very much like I was being dismissed. It's that warm and intimate time afterwards when Jesus talks about forgiveness, and I need that, and where Jesus talks about sympathy, and I need that,

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and where Jesus talks about the gift of his power, and I need that. It's where he says, "In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." Now, I suppose that almost all of the world's great religious leaders have said words like those at one time or another. Mohammed said things like that until June the 8th, 632 A.D., when he died and his body was buried so that it rotted and mingled with those Eastern saints.

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And Zoroaster said things like that until his body was laid away in a tower of silence from which the vultures carried his flesh to the skies. And Buddhists talked like that until he was buried in the shade of the bow tree that he sat under. And Confucius talked like that until he died and went to join the ancestors he spent so much time talking about. And Judaism. Judaism talked like that until it gave itself only to illegalism,

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and now even less than that, to a few square yards of real estate at one end of the Mediterranean Sea. But today, two thousand years after Jesus said that, I say that again to you in his name, that he has overcome the world. And more people own that to be true today than adhere to any other faith system the world knows. And more people own that to be true of him today than ever before in the history of the world.

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When Jesus came in to that upper room and testified to the reality of his having defeated death, he laid claim to a power which no one has ever been able to take from him. A power which defeated everything in life that is inimical to him. For in defeating death, he defeated it all. Do you understand why that's so?

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There was a German philosopher by the name of Martin Heidegger, who said in one of his books something which is very true of the non-Christian world. He said, "All of human life is unto death." Seins und tot. All life unto death.

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Now what he meant by that was this. That every moment of our lives is touched with death. Because every moment of our lives, we're getting closer and closer to our time of dying. And because in the end we will die, if that is the end of it all, then that means that every one of those moments of our life is stripped of its meaning.

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It's like going to school and working very hard on your papers all day, and when the bell rings at 3.30, the teacher comes around and tears them all up and throws them away. What is the point of crowding meaning or worth into any moment of your life if in the end you're going to die and all of it eventually is going to pass away?

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It will be worthless and of no account. No one will remember it finally. It will disappear in the midst of time. What point is there in any moment? If it all ends when you die, or when those who follow you die, it all ends in death in any case. All life is unto death.

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That's what Heidegger said. And for the non-Christian, that's true. But for the Christian who understands that Christ has defeated death and given to life an eternal dimension, suddenly that affects not only the Christian's dying, but every moment of his life before that.

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Because that means that what you do in this moment does have eternal significance, and what you do in this moment does live on in the councils of eternity, and what you do in this moment is crucially important so that all of life suddenly becomes alive.

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Every moment is full of every moment that will come after it. When Jesus defeats death, then, Jesus defeats anything in life which has about it the stink of death. And that's what took those eleven disciples in an upper room and made them so important to themselves and to God

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that they went out and turned the whole world upside down. That's why the Communists have not been able to finally destroy or to deter God. Their arms are too short to box with Him. And that's why the Humanists have been unable to put aside the faith,

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why even the state of the environment testifies against them. And that's why the scientists have been unable to fashion a world in which He is an important. They create a society of nuclear giants and ethical infants. And He rises above it all, supreme in His importance.

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I close my eyes, and I see all the conquerors riding by, and I hear the tramping of their horses and their men, and you see empire on empire rise up like a tide and flood the earth, and then drift away again.

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And you see a thousand banners catch the flash of the sun, and cities burning on countless plains. And you see men loaded with silk and gold, the plunder that they've taken from the places they've broken down.

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You see the conquerors riding by, splashing through floods of war, and the crescent is over some of the hosts, and the barbaric scimitar flashes in the sun, and you see continents of moving spears and storms of arrows in the sky,

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and all the instruments that men have designed to take the lives of other men. You see the conquerors riding by, cruel lips, faces white, musing on the kingdoms that they have sacked and burned.

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Here's the Mongol Genghis Khan, and here's Alexander, like a god trying to meld the world into one. And here's Caesar with his laurel wreath, and there's the hellish visage of the Hun,

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and leading them all like a star in the van, heedless of all the upstretched arms and groanings of the wounded and the dying of the world, like inscrutable Napoleon goes, dreaming of his empire all alone. And then, and then they all perish from our sight,

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just as they disappeared like fleeting reflections from a mirror in history. And conquering down the centuries comes Christ, swordless and riding on a donkey. And as he goes by he says,

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"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And when I hear that, I know that his victory is mine, because I belong to him. And I know that because it's mine now, it's mine always,

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and because it's mine always, it's mine forever. And that makes you get soft inside, and warm, hot, till everything in you that shouldn't be there begins to melt, and your heart catches fire, and you become molten.

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You feel like you've swallowed a sunset. I pray for you the cheer of his pardon, the cheer of his presence, and the cheer of his power. Let us pray.

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Father, thou knowest those who, hearing these words, need cheering up. Send thy Holy Spirit to touch them, to make them whole, strong, beautiful. For Jesus would have it so.

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We pray in his name. Amen.