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[ Music ] >> Practicing your purpose, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [ Music ] [ Silence ]

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[ Music ] >> Before the service begins, I'd like to share a personal word with you as a tape listener. This last week I was talking to an older individual in our congregation, and I asked this question, "What is the greatest thrill you have ever known?"

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The immediate response was, "Why, I have not known my greatest thrill as yet." They were suggesting an exciting life, a life in which every day brings the possibility of new opportunity and thrill and excitement in Christian living. Now that experience should be typical of all Christians, and it's toward the accomplishment of that experience

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that my thoughts on this tape are directed. I hope they will be of help to you. God bless you, my friend. >> The 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, the 19th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

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Let us be upstanding for the reading of the Word of God. Matthew 16, beginning at the verse numbered 13. "Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, 'Who do men say that the Son of Man is?'

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And they said, 'Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.' He said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,

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but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,

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and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem

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and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, 'God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan.

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You are a hindrance to me, for you are not on the side of God, but of men.' And then continuing the reading from the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 19, beginning at the verse numbered 45. And Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold,

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saying to them, 'It is written, "My house shall be a house of prayer," but you have made it a den of robbers.' And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principled men of the people sought to destroy him,

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but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people hung upon his words." And may God bless these words to our hearing and our hearts to their understanding. Please be seated. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Two weeks ago, I was spending a Tuesday morning studying in the library of Fuller Theological Seminary. I took a little time off to go over and visit a homiletics class, which was being conducted by Mel White, who is a professor at the seminary.

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In the course of his lecture, Professor White told of taking his little girl to a circus. As they entered the circus grounds, a great big clown, fully attired in a clown's regalia, approached the little girl with a flower for her to smell. And just as she bent down to smell the flower, he pulled a little cord and the flower bent away from her.

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And he laughed and walked away. That night, when Mel was having his regular prayer time with his children, that little girl turned and looked at her daddy and said, "You know, daddy, I never got to smell that flower." Now that's a very simple vignette out of life, which involves two characters.

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A clown, who accomplished his purpose and went away laughing, and a little girl, who did not accomplish her purpose and went away lamenting. And there are a lot of people who are like that little girl in life. They never seem to be able to get their nose quite up to the blossom.

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And their times of prayer are spent beseeching God to bring into their lives some of the joy and the beauty and the excitement that they seek. They are aware of a great emptiness inside themselves. Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, has said that emptiness is the central neurosis of our time.

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Rollo May, the distinguished American psychologist, has written, "The chief psychological and psychiatric problem of our century is emptiness." Viktor Frankl, the founder of the psychological school called Logotherapy, has written that the state of inner emptiness is the major challenge to psychiatry in this day.

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Visit any campus. See how many of the young people seem to be without purpose and goal, talking about taking a year off in order to get things together and to determine which way they're going to go. Or sit on the opposite side of the desk from those who come into my office, while the very carpet of that room is soaked with the tears of people

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who are announcing nothing other than their emptiness. They want to know the wine of the sweet communion of God, and they don't. They want to know what it's like to stand in the flow of God's power, and they don't. They want to be able to reach out and take the blossom of real joy,

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but every time they bend forward, it somehow seems to elude their grasp. And they feel very sorry for themselves, but generally not sorry enough to really do anything about it. The tragic thing, the most tragic thing about these people is that they are not actively pursuing that which they lament the absence of in their lives.

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If only they would give themselves to discovering God's purpose for their lives, and then seeking to fulfill that purpose. You cannot, you see, know joy until you are actively engaged in pursuing what God has made you to be and to do. If you are not fulfilling your purpose, then you will have no sense of accomplishment.

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If you have no sense of accomplishment, you will have no sense of meaning. If you have no sense of meaning, then you will feel empty. And if you feel empty, you will not know joy. Now Jesus was one who pursued and practiced God's purpose in every moment of his life.

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And he was one who even in the times of greatest trial could announce to others that he was filled with a deep and abiding joy, and he was one who promised that same joy, full, pressed down and running over to everyone who would practice their purpose as he did. And that means that you, you can know that joy.

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You can know the smell of that blossom. If you'll just follow the three principles with regard to purpose that were basic to Jesus' way of life. The first of them is simply put this way. Jesus knew where he was going.

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God's purpose was in his heart. Do you remember that scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice comes up to the crossroads and she says to her guide, "Which way shall I go?" And he says, "That depends on where you are going."

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And she replies, "I do not know where I am going." And he answers, "Then you can take any road you wish. It really doesn't make any difference." Well, there are a lot of people who never get anywhere, who never get somewhere in their experience, who never fulfill their purpose

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because they don't know what that purpose is. They don't know where they are going. You know, as I study the life of Jesus, I have become convinced that Jesus always planned backwards. Now, we talk about planning ahead.

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I don't see evidence for that in Jesus' life, but he carefully planned backwards. He knew what his purpose was. He knew what his goal was. Moving from that goal and that purpose in a backward direction, he began to establish the steps that were necessary to fulfill that purpose.

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And then, after that plan was established, he began here to move there. Back in the early 1960s, when John Kennedy committed us as a nation to a race for the moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration developed a technique, which they called the PERT technique, the Performance Evaluation and Review technique,

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of accomplishing that tremendous goal. They established as their goal that moonwalk, and then they built back from that a whole series of steps that had to be accomplished, and only after they had carefully charted that entire process did they begin.

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They planned backwards. When Neil Armstrong took that first step out onto the moon, he could move ahead because they had looked backwards first and planned accordingly. Look at the scene which is before us this morning, set in Caesarea Philippi. Jesus had been with his disciples for quite some time.

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He had, across the course of that time, accomplished various goals which he had established. He had also been building in them a growing consciousness of his incarnational self. He wanted them to know who he really was. Now, Jesus built in to this planning backwards process a series of tests to establish

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how well the disciples were grasping what he was teaching them, such as sending them out two by two and things of that kind. Now he wants to determine whether they have grasped the most essential aspect of the faith he was seeking to build in them, who he was. And he chooses the ground for the test very carefully.

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He takes them to this city of Caesarea Philippi. Now, even today, if you go there, you will find in the area no less than the ruins of 14 different Syrian temples which were built to the worship of the god Baal. You'll also find there a great red rock wall and a deep cavern in that wall.

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And in that cavern, the Greeks believed that the god Pan, the god of nature, had been born. In fact, they called that place Paneas. Those who were in the Holy Land with me two summers ago will remember when we visited there, it was called Baneas, a corruption of Paneas.

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This place then was sacred to the Syrians and also sacred to the Greeks. But it was also sacred to the Jews because in that same cavern, in that red rock cliff, the Jews understood to be the headwaters, the source of the Jordan River. And you know how important the Jordan has been in all of Hebrew history.

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This was a very sacred place to them also. And finally, Herod had built there a great white marble temple to the honor of Caesar as god. This was a place sacred to the Romans. So, in the precincts of an area known by the Syrians and the Greeks and the Jews and the Romans,

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all as a sacred place dedicated to a concept of god far apart from that which Jesus was seeking to teach them, there, right there, on such a spot, Jesus produced his test. Who do men say that I am? And when Peter answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,"

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Jesus immediately responded, "Now, on to Jerusalem. Now, on to the cross. Now, on to Easter. We go to the city, I will be killed, and on the third day I will arise." You see, another step in the plan had been completed. The test established that.

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And so he immediately announces that he will go on to the next step and the next one and the next one until his purpose is fulfilled, the redemption of the world. Because, you see, he had this kind of ongoing purpose, and because he was moving at it as he did, he never would be discouraged.

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He was not discouraged moments later when Peter said to him, "Oh, you can't let that kind of thing happen to you." And the reason he wasn't discouraged by individual instances in the process was because he always had the goal in mind. He didn't lose himself in peripheral matters, momentary discouragements, because he always had the target before his eyes.

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That's what he was shooting for. Sidelines never became slide lines with Jesus. "Get thee behind me, Peter," and he goes on, because his eye, you see, was always on the goal. Abraham Maslow, who was one of the founders of the school of psychology called Third Force Psychology,

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tells of encountering a young lady who was very timid and shy, backward. She was unable to make even the simplest decisions. Everything seemed to be beyond her. She lacked the courage to take any real steps in life.

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And so he helped her establish certain goals, goals he called "be values," being values. Essentially, they're Christian virtues and Christian goals. And she set those virtues out in front of her, and then keeping those in mind, he set up a series of little tasks for her to do, planning backward, you see, from here to here,

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little decisions like, "What dress will I wear today and what will I have for dinner tonight? Should I buy a new hat or not?" And as she made these little decisions, she gradually gained the kind of strength necessary to make bigger decisions. And as she became more capable at making these decisions, she accomplished things.

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And every time she accomplished things, her ability to accomplish was strengthened and reinforced until when she came to the greater challenges, she was able to rise above those and move on toward the goal which was hers. Now Maslow, a 20th century Jew, learned that from a 1st century Jew named Jesus. And we can learn that too.

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Now the second principle which Jesus had in mind was this. Always remember that as you are practicing your purpose and pursuing that purpose, always remember that you're not going to reach it without some risk. Some wit has said that even a turtle owes his progress to the fact that he sticks his neck out.

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Well, that's true. That's what has to happen if one is going to accomplish one's purpose. I think Lord Halifax, the great Britisher, put it very beautifully when he said, "He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do few things." And that's very true.

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In the process of accomplishment, there is of necessity going to be risk. If you're unwilling to risk anything, you're not going to gain anything. And not only that, but your life is going to be boring. And if there's one thing which the Christian experience cannot be, it is boring.

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Take this scene from Luke's Gospel, Jesus cleansing the temple. In the accomplishment of his purpose, it was necessary for him to do that. Now that was a very risky thing to do. He was going in and piercing the image of these pious, pompous priests.

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Now that wasn't the riskiest thing. The riskiest thing he was doing was he was picking their pockets. Now you can hit a person right square in the eye with some spiritual truth, and they'll turn away and won't notice it at all.

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But you hit them in the pocketbook with a spiritual truth, and brother, they'll notice that and they'll respond plenty. That's the reason it is that people resent stewardship sermons so much. They suddenly become very religious when you start talking about stewardship.

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They discover, you see, in the light of that truth, that a cheap religion is worth exactly what it costs. Well, Jesus there in that temple scene was hitting them in the eye with the truth and in the wallet with the truth.

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It's a magnificent spectacle. This strong carpenter's son standing there with muscles flexed, calling out the words of Jeremiah, "You have made my house into a den of robbers," making a whip out of leather thongs and swishing it before him,

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knocking over their tables, sending the coins splattering across the sidewalk and disappearing into the cracks, sending the money changers running off and disappearing like insects into shadowed alcoves, setting the doves free so that they flew up into the air,

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thrilled with the new freedom which was theirs. That's what he did, and the people saw this, and the people thought it was tremendous. The Scriptures say they hung on every word he said. Why?

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He was doing what they'd always thought about. He was accomplishing what they'd always talked about. He was fulfilling the purpose which they had seen for themselves but never fulfilled. Why? Because he was willing to run a risk.

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That's what made the difference. On February the 18th, 1952, a man named Roy Gabby was driving a truck on a highway ten miles north of Houston, Texas.

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Behind the cab of his truck there was a great trailer, 14 wheels on that trailer. Suddenly a man under the influence of alcohol in an automobile pulled out of a side road in front of him without stopping.

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He swerved the truck in order to miss the man, went off the road, and crashed into a very, very large tree. The huge trailer behind him then telescoped on top of the cab. It jammed the doorways of the cab shut so that they could not be opened.

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The engine hitting the tree came back and forced the steering column right up against the man's waist and so twisted the pedals that they wrapped around his feet. He was trapped. He couldn't get out. The crowd gathered immediately.

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They fastened a tow truck to the front of the vehicle and tried to pull the cab open that way. It didn't work. They put another truck in front of that and two of them pulled and it wouldn't work. Then they put two trucks at the other end of the accident

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and they pulled both ways simultaneously. Nothing budged. And then a horrible cry was heard, "My God, it's on fire. He's going to be burned alive." And it was true. The flames were already licking up under the cab

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and coming dangerously close to the gasoline tank. Now everyone about tried to do everything they could think of. They were pulling with their bare hands at the metal, trying to get it open. They knew there wasn't time for anyone with a torch to get there to cut the way in.

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There wasn't time for the fire trucks to get there to put out the flames. And a black man who had been standing watching calmly walked down into the midst of the group and he gently pushed some of the people aside.

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And he walked up to the doorway of the cab, which was now hot with the heat of the fire. And he put his naked hands onto that door. And he tore it loose and he threw it to one side. And then with those same hands he beat out the fire in the mat on the floor of the cab.

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And then he tore out that mat and he threw it aside. And then he climbed into that cab and the flames all the time moving closer to that gasoline tank. He wormed his way in. He squeezed his way in over the body of Roy Gabby. And he grasped that steering column and he pushed it forward.

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And he reached down and took hold of those pedals and he bent them back. And then planting his feet on that floor aflame again and bending his head, he put his neck and his shoulders against the roof of that cab. And he pushed with all the strength which was his.

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His body was burned, his flesh was bleeding, his clothes in squeezing into the cab had been almost torn from him. And that roof did not move. And he turned and he looked at that fire with an awful hatred in his eyes. And he went back again and putting himself between that floor and that roof,

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he pushed upward until with a mighty rip that roof leaped back and sprung open. And then he stood there while they removed the body of Roy Gabby. And then he climbed from the cab himself. And the people watching the scene looked at him as if he were a miracle.

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He wasn't a miracle. They had a purpose, the same purpose they did get him out of there. But he was willing to run a risk. He was willing to be burned.

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He was willing to bleed. He climbed into the place of danger right into that cab and getting into that place, every cell in his brain was producing at the maximum. Every nerve in his body was tingling with power.

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Every muscle, every gland was putting out everything of which his body was capable. That didn't happen until he risked. You've been in a situation. And then gotten out of it and later said, "I don't know how I ever was able to do that."

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I know a woman who took care of her husband who had a stroke. He weighed 200 pounds. She weighed 92 pounds. She lifted him four times every day for seven years. And when it was over she said to me, "I don't know how I was able to do that."

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I know a man who brought his own daughter into the world in the middle of a living room floor and said to me, "I don't know how I did that." And two years later he brought his second daughter into the world in the backseat of their automobile. And he said to me again, "I don't know how I did that."

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I know a woman who sat in her kitchen one day and saw her boy working under his car. And the car slipped off the jack and onto the boy. And she, 128 pounds, went out and grabbed the bumper of the automobile and lifted the car until her son got out from under it.

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And she said to me, "I don't know how I did it." When you get into a situation of risk, when you get into a place of danger, then it is that you begin to produce at the maximum the powers hidden in you suddenly come surging through you.

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And you can do things that you yourself do not begin to understand. And if that's true of anyone, that's especially true of Christians. A man with a purpose will accomplish more than a man without a purpose. A man with God's purpose will accomplish more than anyone. Why?

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A man who risks will accomplish more than the man who does not risk. But a man who risks because he loves God and loves other men will accomplish more than anyone. Why? Because when your purpose is God's purpose and your risk is built upon God, then it moves out of the realm of risk into the realm of faith and trust and believing.

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And when that happens, God honors the belief with victory. That's what Jesus knew. That was his third principle, that after purpose and risk came faith and believing, which meant victory.

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There came a moment at the end of his life when he summed up everything he had accomplished. And he summed it up with one word. In the Greek it's one word, tel-telestai. In the English it's three words, it is finished. In a world that despised Jews, behind the Roman curtain,

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in a town called Nazareth which even other Jews looked down on in contempt, the son of a peasant, poverty stricken, never owned anything, was even buried in a borrowed grave, never visited any of the world's great centers of learning, Athens, Alexandria, Rome. He had seen none of them with his own eyes.

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He had no very important personages as his friends. His friends were fishermen and crooked tax collectors and whores. And this man, this man could say, after he had redeemed the world, set loose a force which has transformed society and changed the whole course of civilization,

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this man could say, "It is finished! I have fulfilled the task which was mine." You say to me, "He could say that because he was the son of God." Well, in a certain sense that's true. There is no other name under heaven or on earth like his.

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But new chapters in the Book of Acts are being written every day by individuals who know themselves to be saved by him, are permitting themselves to be inspired by him, and are living as he would have them live. They have a goal, they're willing to adventure, and they're willing to trust.

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And that makes all the difference. Last Sunday morning, sitting right back there in the sanctuary, there was a man who if I'd have known he was here then, I'd have had him up here, for what he would have said would have been so much more important than anything I could have offered.

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This last Tuesday I had lunch with him. He was called to Jesus Christ as a disciple in 1957 in Los Angeles. And he understood his great purpose to be to bring the word of Jesus Christ to his fellow black men and women.

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And so he went to Mississippi where the problem was the very worst. And seeing that purpose, he established, planning backwards, a series of goals. And the first goal that he was going to go after was a simple thing, child evangelism, and that's what he started to do.

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And then after that he moved on to the establishment of some economic cooperatives, feeding out the bread of life and the bread for the body as well. As these cooperatives became more successful, as the church, which he had become a part of, began to grow, as his ministry became more prominent, he became better known.

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And when you're a black man and you're well known in Mississippi, you're running a risk. But he was not afraid to run a risk, because he knew where he was going, and he had faith and confidence that he would reach that goal. And every time he accomplished another victory, that strength and confidence was underlined and made more powerful.

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So a bunch of redneck policemen arrested him. Don't judge all policemen by what these policemen did. They arrested him, and they beat him for four hours, they beat him, until his blood was all over the floor.

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And then they got word that the FBI was coming, so they ordered this man so wounded to clean his own blood off the floor, and he did. And the FBI didn't come. And they began to play jokes on him.

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They took a pistol, and they spun the chamber where the bullets were, and then they put it to his head, and they pulled the trigger. That kind of risk. And one of them took a fork, and he took the middle two prongs of the fork, and he bent them down,

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and he took the other two prongs, and he rammed them up the man's nose, till the blood ran down his face. And then they knocked him unconscious. And he continued to go after his goal.

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And Tuesday, this last Tuesday, in this year of our Lord, 1974, I asked him how things were going. And he told me that now they not only had the church, because that purpose of bringing men to Jesus Christ, that's been the goal all along, never forgotten,

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always held out there, everything a step toward that goal. They now have the church that's the strongest church in the area. They have 25 economic cooperatives. They have a tutorial center.

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They have a gymnasium. They have the only black-owned and operated medical clinic in Mississippi, and it's so good that even white people come there to see patients. They've established the first black campus ministry on the campus of Jackson State.

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A book about his life is going to be published in just one more month. And groups from all over the United States are coming to Mendenhall, Mississippi. The mission which we support through John Perkins and Dolphus Weary and H. and Terry Spees there. They're coming to talk with John Perkins, to discover what he has.

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And the thing that overwhelmed me as I talked to him on Tuesday was this, the man's constant, deep, and abiding joy. Joy! He built a castle in the air, and he spent all of his life putting a foundation under it, and it's magnificent to see the peace that radiates from the man.

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He's grabbed the flower. He knows the sweetness of the wine. He knows what it is to stand in the flow of the power. And you can too.

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Make a list of what God's purposes for you are. Read that list every day. And then having read that list, plan backwards and start on the first step. Set some easy tasks at first.

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If it's hard for you to make decisions, then make little decisions. If you brush your teeth when you get up in the morning, don't brush them until you're ready to leave for the office. Make that kind of a decision.

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If you think this kind of thing sounds silly, then for you it is silly. Because self-negative prophecies concerning yourself will always be fulfilled. If you're going to laugh at this, then laugh at it, for for you it won't work. But if you will begin to make decisions,

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and then to build more significant decisions on top of those decisions, and to be looking always toward what God would have you do, and to start to risk in the accomplishing of it. If you will put yourself into situations like the cab of that truck,

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into situations for the faith in which you have to risk, you will discover the power which is available to you. And your whole life will be transformed. My brothers and sisters in Glendale Presbyterian Church,

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don't you ever settle for being a good loser. You don't have to. You can be a good winner in the race for the roses. Let us pray.

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O God, so fill us with a sense of our purpose. So drive us into the practice and the pursuit of it. So make us willing to risk as we gain greater confidence with each little victory which is ours. So lead us to faith and trust and confidence in Thee,

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that the whole world will be turned upside down by what we do here. We pray it in His name. Amen.