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[silence] >> Tapes to Live By, tape number 2002, side two. Reverend Bruce Thielman with the message originally delivered to Glendale Presbyterian Church on March 16th, 1969.

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The title of this message, "The Man Nobody Loved." Book of Second Chronicles, beginning at verse 16. "Moreover, the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and of the Arabians that were near the Ethiopians.

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And they came up into Judah and break into it and carried away all the substance that was found in the king's house and his sons also and his wives, so that there was never a son left him, save Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons. And after all this, the Lord smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease.

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And it came to pass that in process of time, after the end of two years, his bowels fell out by reason of his sickness, so he died of sore diseases. And his people made no burning for him like the burning of his fathers. Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign.

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And he reigned in Jerusalem eight years and departed without being desired. Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the king." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Far be it from me to match my meager intellect against that of the great New England sage,

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Ralph Waldo Emerson. And yet this morning, I quite deliberately and consciously want to take exception with one of his most well-known sentences. In his essay on love, he has a line with which many of you are familiar.

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He has written, "All the world loves a lover." And with that line, I wish to make serious difference. Indeed, I would rewrite the line in this way. "Whether all the world loves a lover or not depends upon what and whom the lover loves."

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And as exhibit A, I advance Jehoram, the king of Judah. For the last few weeks, we have been wandering through the Old Testament graveyard, resurrecting the characters of little-known individuals. We've not been doing this because their lives were exciting or dramatic or curious or lusty,

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although in fact their lives were all of those things, but principally because we've been discovering in lives lived yesterday the kind of guidance we need for the living of life today. This morning, we go far off into a corner of the graveyard, to a shady, rarely-traveled area,

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and we push aside the vines and the thistles and the weeds upon the grave of Jehoram. And we find there his stone, and on the stone, the last words the scriptures utter of him. And he departed with no one's regret. You can tell a great deal about an individual by looking at his epitaph.

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I remember once in flushing New York seeing the tombstone of a dentist, and on it were written these words, "Here lies Dr. Smythe, filling his last cavity." Well, that tells us something about the man, and something about his attitude. I remember one very cold and frosty morning coming out of a hotel in Zermatt, Switzerland,

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and walking a little distance to a cemetery located at the very base of the most staggering peak in Europe, the Matterhorn, and this cemetery is reserved only for those who have lost their lives in seeking to climb that great mountain. And I walked through the cemetery and I studied the stones, and there's one of them I'll never forget.

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A father and mother had caused to be carved on the stone of their young son these words, "He gave his heart to the dawn." Well, now that says a great deal about that boy, doesn't it? Not far from the church where I served before coming here to California,

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there was a cemetery in which there was a very tiny grave, and over it a stone which bore this epitaph, "'Tis a little grave, but oh, have care, for worldwide hopes are buried there." "You can," you see, "say a great deal in an epitaph."

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And the epitaph on the tomb of Jehoram reads, "And he departed with no one's regret." And Jehoram was a lover. The difficulty was, he loved all the wrong things.

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First of all, he loved the wrong man. By that I mean he loved himself. His father was Jehoshaphat, one of the finest kings Judah ever had. Because he was the oldest son, he inherited the throne upon his father's death.

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But his father also left to his other six sons treasures of gold and of silver and certain cities over which they were to have jurisdiction. This was an unusual practice. Evidently, the boys meant a great deal to their dad.

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But what did Jehoram do upon ascending the throne? The record is writ large in the 21st chapter of 2 Chronicles, for there it says, "When Jehoram had ascended the throne of his father and was established, he slew all of his brothers with the sword."

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Deliberately, savagely, violently, he murdered the sons his father loved and killed his own brothers. We don't exactly know why this was so, but there are only three possibilities. It could have been that he was jealous of their popularity. There is no question of the fact that they must have been outstanding men,

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for the very fact that their father left such significant inheritance to them indicates this. This was not the custom in that day. Not only that, later in 2 Chronicles we read a letter which Elijah addressed to Jehoram after Jehoram was king, and in the course of that letter, Elijah says,

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"All of your brothers were better than you are." And perhaps throughout all the course of his life, Jehoram had been contemplating the fact that his brothers were more popular than he was. They were loved, of course, because they in turn loved.

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No one who is unloving will be loved. And of course, the contrary is true. The man who is constantly concerned about how much he is loved by others, Jehoram in this instance, is incapable of giving love to others,

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focused always inwardly upon himself. I remember once traveling from New England to Pennsylvania by way of the Pocono Mountains in New York. It was late in the afternoon, a summer's afternoon.

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The mountains stretched on endlessly in front of me, and there was that kind of rainbow mist which often settles over those mountains at that time of day, and it was quite beautiful. And yet the one impression that I have of the journey was the impression of death.

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For on every hand were blighted trees, or trees that were beginning to experience the blight. Seventeen years before, the seventeen-year locust had come through, had planted its eggs, and now after many winters and after many summers, those eggs were breaking open and admitting their horrid host, and this blight was settling upon all the trees of the Poconos.

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Death was on every hand. Well, it may very well have been that years before in his life, Jehoram had had the seeds of jealousy, jealousy of his brothers who were more popular than himself, planted deep in his heart, and now when he ascends the throne, the egg of hatred breaks open, and with the sword, he murders them.

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There's another possibility. He might have done away with them because he feared their power. They had been given cities over which they had sovereignty. He was, of course, the king.

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The real power was his, but perhaps he was the kind of individual who could not tolerate any power other than his own. Perhaps he was the kind of individual who so loved himself, who so sealed himself within the circle of his own understanding, that he was unable to permit any opinion which might be contrary to his own.

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It is good, of course, for a man to have a certain amount of self-confidence. If you do not, you will amount to nothing. Your life will profit you and others nothing. But when an individual becomes so self-confident that he is unable to tolerate other selves,

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then a serious situation has developed. For you see, individuals who progress along this line of thinking, if they are consistent, end up in an insane asylum. The lunatic behind bars who is convinced he is Napoleon, you see, believes totally in himself, and is utterly unwilling to accept the opinions of others.

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The poet who drowns himself in alcohol because society, according to his judgment, is not sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the brilliance of his verse. The actor who goes downhill and ends in despair and tragic circumstances, and who curses the world because the world is not sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the insight in his acting.

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The California teenager who went home after school one day, climbed a tree in the backyard, and hanged himself, and left pinned to his t-shirt a note in which he affirmed that he was going away because no one appreciated the genius he really was. Those kinds of individuals are sick, unable to tolerate any opinion other than their own.

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And perhaps as Jehoram looked at his brothers, even though their possessions were much smaller than his own, even though he was seated upon the throne and had the orb in one hand and the scepter in the other, although sovereignty was his, he could not abide the presence of anyone with power. And so he had them killed.

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And there is a third possibility. He might have had them eliminated simply because he wanted their possessions. Greed. They had gold and silver and cities, and he wanted them. And it's true, he had more gold and more silver and more cities, but he wanted what they had.

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It's the old story. Jim Elliott, the fine young missionary who gave his life in trying to reach the Alca-Indians in Ecuador, wrote in his diary early in his life these words, "There is no such thing as attainment in this life. When one arrives at a long, coveted position, he only jacks up his desires another notch or so

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and looks for higher achievement, a process which is ultimately suspended only by the intervention of death." And that is true. There are so many who are never satisfied, who when they gain more, want more. Count Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a man who was given the right to own all of the land

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which he could circumnavigate between a sunrise and a sunset. And so the man set out at sunrise, convinced that he would walk six miles in four different directions and thus have for himself 36 square miles of all his own. But at the end of his walking six miles, he wasn't tired, and so he walked nine,

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and then he walked 12, and then he walked 15. And he believed that he would walk out an area that was 15 miles on a side, and having walked 15 miles, he turned eastward and walked 15 miles. And sure enough, just when the sun reached its zenith at noon,

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he arrived at the end of his second 15-mile length, only 30 miles to go. But he was tiring and the sun was hot, and so he began to remove from himself anything that might encumber him in his journey. He took off his coat, he took off his vest, he took off his hat, he took off his shirt, and on and on the journey went.

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Every mile seemed to come harder, every step was more difficult, until finally, just when the sun was beginning to set, he came in sight of the point from which he had begun. Now stark naked, he fell across the finish line, dead.

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And all he had for his efforts, six feet long, six feet deep, and 24 inches wide. He'd wanted more and more and more, and it killed him. Well, I don't know why Jehoram murdered his brothers, whether it was because he was jealous of their popularity,

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covetous of their power, or covetous of their possessions. I don't know why, but he murdered them because he loved himself more than any other man. And when he died, they put on his tombstone the words, "He departed with no one's regret." Not only did he love the wrong man, but he also loved the wrong woman.

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In the fourth verse of the 21st chapter of 2 Chronicles, we read these words, "Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." Now you remember Ahab, that weak and spineless king of Israel,

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who selected as his bride a gal named Jezebel, the most wicked woman in all of the Old Testament. I asked an artist once how he would paint her. He said he didn't know. He only knew what colors he would use, black and red. Well, that's quite a comment on a personality.

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So Jehoram, in seeking someone with whom to walk the journey of life together, selects the daughter of the insipid Ahab and the wicked Jezebel. That's a tragedy. You see, a marriage to be a successful thing has to have a husband and wife

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who are of mutual assistance and help to one another. I, of course, have been much moved by the death of a very close friend, Dr. John Tate, who was to have been our Lenten speaker here in this church this year. Dr. Tate suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and for 14 days passed between life and death,

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finally going to be with the Lord. Many times during the course of that 14 days, I talked with his wife, Margaret, and with his fine daughter and his fine son. And after John had gone to be with the Christ he loved so much, Margaret said this to me,

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"Well, at least, Ruth, every time he regained consciousness, I was there." And I think that was a beautiful thing to say and a beautiful thing to be able to remember. Every time he regained consciousness, every time he was aware of his need again, she was there, ready to help, ready to do whatever was within her power to do.

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She was ready to do it. And that's the kind of a relationship which must exist between husband and wife if marriage is to be a magnificent thing. And that's what troubles me when young people are often in so much of a hurry to get married,

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not having considered all of the things that marriage is, that they rush in ready to become man and wife. Sometimes it's because the girl is already pregnant. Having a child out of wedlock is never justification for marriage.

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There are a multitude of institutions of adoption with thousands of parents or thousands of adults who are unable to have children and who want to have children, waiting and pleading for young people, adults, husbands and wives, who have had the opportunity to become husband and wife,

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who will afford to that child a much better home than two young people who don't know each other well enough to begin marriage, let alone parenthood. Pregnancy is never justification for marriage.

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And sometimes they want to hurry up and get married because of the physical attraction they have for one another. And of all the bases on which to build marriage, this is the least significant, because physical attraction will pass away.

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And if this is going to be that upon which the marriage is built, then the marriage will pass away. And sometimes they rush in and they want to be married because they're having trouble at home or trouble in school or trouble in their job,

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and they want someone who will support them, someone whom they can lean upon, someone who will be a source of strength to them. But marriage, you see, is not two trees, one growing straight and tall and the other one leaning against it.

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Marriage is two trees that grow side by side, and they're both straight and they're both strong and they're both tall, and what they do is they tangle their branches and become mutually supportive and encouraging and helpful.

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This is the kind of relationship that has meaning. This is the kind of relationship that is necessary if people are to walk the road of marriage triumphantly. I don't know what Jehoram was thinking when he married that girl.

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He certainly knew all about her. Maybe he thought he would change her. I always like to ask young couples when they come in for marital counseling, "What changes do you plan to make in your wife?"

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or "What changes do you plan to make in your husband?" And sometimes they fall in the trap and they'll say, "Well, first of all, I-- and I wait until they're all finished,

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and then I say, 'My friend, the gal or the guy you're going to be standing beside on the day you're wed is the one, pray God, you'll be standing beside a half a century from now, and the personality that is is the personality that will be,

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and you're not going to change it.'" Maybe Jehoram thought, "Well, opposites attract." Of all the old wise tales that are associated with romance, that's the most absurd.

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Every study of marriage, marriage that's succeeded or marriage that's failed, they're all unanimous in affirming this, that what tie a husband and wife together are not the things on which they differ, but the things on which they are at one.

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Maybe he thought, "Well, it's true, we're of different religions, but we can talk about that later. I'm not going to enter into any interfaith marriage harangue this morning. The statistics make the case so convincingly

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no word of mine could add to their effectiveness. But I do feel it's crucially important to point out that the center of a marriage must be the God who invented marriage in the first place. I encounter marriages where the wife has been put at the center of the experience,

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and because every woman that's ever lived makes mistakes and fails, if the wife is put in the center of that marriage, that marriage will be a mistake and fail. And I encounter marriages where the husband is put on some kind of pedestal

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in the center of the marriage experience, and because every man that's ever lived has feet of clay that crack and sometimes lead him to fall so that his face is in the muck, if that is where the marriage is built, then that marriage is going to fall

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and it will end up on its face in the muck. The only one who can stand at the center of the marriage experience, the only one who can be the sun at the center of that solar circle which marriage is, the only one who has the warmth and the power and the light to fuse,

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to weld by some strange alchemy to create an adhesive between two personalities so that they literally become one personality, one being, the only one who can do that is God. And it's a tragic thing when people start out on the highway of marriage

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and the very place where it's most important for them to be one, they are two. Jehoram loved the wrong woman. And when he died on his tombstone they wrote, "And he departed with no one's regret."

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And one last thought, Jehoram loved the wrong God. It hadn't started out that way. Jehoshaphat had been a fine and noble man who loved the Lord. He'd reared his son in the ways of the faith. He had been a monotheist, a worshiper of Jehovah.

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But he married this gal, and before long we read of him, "Moreover he made high places," that is, worship centers. "He made worship centers in the hill country of Judah, and he led the inhabitants of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness,

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and he made Judah go astray." Oh, he did not turn his back on Jehovah. It was not that he said Jehovah is not God and Baal is God. It was not that he stopped going to church at the same time that he entered in

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to sensuous and perverted orgies which were sexually centered and debauched everything about a human being that was dignified or decent. It was not that he said no to this and said yes to this. It was that he tried to say yes to all of it, and you can't do that

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because allegiance is not divisible and loyalty cannot be fragmented. You cannot run two flags to the top of the same mast, to the top of the same mast. This is the reason it is so tragic in our time to see individuals who call themselves Christian

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bow low at the shrine of education, and they serve themselves heartily on the smorgasbord of academic retreats that our schools spread before them, and they believe that what they know will lead them to triumph in life.

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And that divided allegiance will not succeed. And there are those who bow down at the shrine of science, and they say what we master will lead us to salvation. And the scientist is perhaps the most pathetic man on the face of this earth today,

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for he no longer belongs to himself. He's been chained in his laboratory, and the politicians and militarists decide what will be done with what he discovers and masters. And there are other individuals who bow low in the temple of the nation,

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and the left-hand side of that congregation says we'll turn this nation inside out to make it what it ought to be. And the right-hand side of this congregation wraps itself in pious patriotic platitudes and stands fast for the status quo. And they both worship the flag, and the flag is a poor substitute for the Savior.

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I sat in my study late one night this last evening, thinking, this last week, thinking about what I'd be saying to you this morning, and I will confess to you now that there came over me an awful feeling of despair and hopelessness. The only word I can think of to articulate it is the word, the German word "angst."

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The whole bottom seems to have fallen out as I look at the world and see us, as the Old Testament says, going whoring after gods that are not gods. The war. On the altar of the God battle, we spread the bodies of our sons and little yellow people from across the world who don't even understand what it's all about.

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Our cities. The God greed. And people who live in affluent communities like Glendale own tenements there, and they offer to that God babies whose legs have been bitten by rats and food that roaches have crawled over. And I look at our racial turmoil, and I think of the God of prejudice,

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and I see so many of our people dancing naked and obscenely before that God and glorying in the fact that their skin is pink. And crime, the God of evil, and prostitution goes unrestrained, and pornography is displayed and called social commentary, and we foul ourselves, and Hosea said to his people, "Have you forgotten how to blush, and is that what has happened to us?"

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Tell me! Tell me where evil gets its energy! How is it that the apostles of atheism cry out long and loud while we whisper in our stained glass sanctuaries about the things that we believe? Would you explain to me why it is that our television sets are filled with the proponents of discord, and we do not hear the voices of the individuals who preach the gospel of peace?

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Why is it that those who have in mind only destroying are willing to offer themselves and everything they have in behalf of their gospel of destruction, and we, who are to believe in the gospel of building in one of the richest communities in America, take five weeks to raise $4,600? We make a movie called "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," and it's a comedy! And it's not a comedy! It's not a joke! There's nothing funny about it!

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We live in a world that's going to hell, and in the midst of that kind of world, we stumble along without enthusiasm, without energy, without zeal. I talked to the secretary of our division of evangelism. I say to him, "What is our denomination going to be doing in evangelism this next year?" And he said, "Well, we wanted to get someone to teach personal evangelism, but we couldn't find anyone who knew enough about it to teach it."

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And then we thought we'd make a television program that could be broadcast, but we decided we didn't have anything to say. We could only title it "Mission Impossible." Is that it? Is the mission impossible? It says that Jehoram was able to lead all of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness, and all of Judah into unrighteousness. Why is there no man in our day, no collection of men and women, no congregation so on fire with the faith, so filled with the things of Christ, that they'll turn their community upside down?

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Why doesn't it happen here? Well, I suppose I've talked too long about Jehoram, or maybe not enough about Jehoram and too much about other things. So we'll leave the cemetery and push all the vine branches back over his tombstone and leave him there until some other preacher a hundred years from now drags him up and parades him before a congregation. When he died, they put upon his stone, and he departed with no one's regret.

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Which is to say, he was the man nobody missed, because he loved the wrong man, and he loved the wrong woman, and he loved the wrong God. It does seem to me, however, that there is a question we should carry away from this cemetery with us today. And that question is not, "What is in store for me in the life that is ahead?" but rather, "When my days on earth are done, what kind of life do I want to be able to look back upon?" When my days on earth are done, what kind of life do I want to be able to look back upon?

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Oh God, it must be tragic to die and not be missed. To pass away and have no one care about you, because in your life you chose to care about no one. And so, I think it is a good thing that we are all here today. I think it is a good thing that we are all here today. I think it is a good thing that we are all here today. I think it is a good thing that we are all here today.