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This is Tapes to Live By, tape number 2015. Two messages by Reverend Bruce Thielman, originally delivered to Glendale Presbyterian Church. This is side one of the tape,

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and it features Reverend Thielman's message of Sunday morning, November 13, 1968. This message is entitled "The Miracle of Newness." [Music]

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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It is, I believe, quite generally known that President Charles de Gaulle of France, although bearing the colors of distinguished military service, has never in actual fact won any major military engagement

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in which he has been engaged. But most people are not aware of how he lost the battle of New York City. It happened a few years ago, when he was being shown about New York City

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by one of our undersecretaries of state. When they passed the George Washington Bridge, this undersecretary said, "On your left, General de Gaulle,

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you will see the George Washington Bridge, one of the most remarkable bridges that has ever been constructed, an outstanding engineering accomplishment completed in only three years." General de Gaulle immediately replied,

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"We put six bridges across Le Grand Rue de Paris, the Seine River, six bridges in only a year and a half." They went a little further, and the undersecretary decided he would try again.

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They passed the Museum of Modern Science, and he said, "This magnificent building houses some of the most advanced scientific paraphernalia in the world, and the entire structure and everything within it

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was gathered together and assembled in just five years." And General de Gaulle immediately replied, "You have heard of the Eiffel Tower. It stands in the midst of our capital city.

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It's the highest object in Europe, and it was built in only three years." And by this time, the undersecretary was somewhat disturbed, and so when they passed the Empire State Building,

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he didn't say a word. And the general looked up at it, and he said, "What is the name of that building?" And the undersecretary said,

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"I wouldn't know. It wasn't there when I came to work this morning." And that's how General de Gaulle lost the Battle of New York City. We all have, though, don't we,

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an attraction for speed, progress, things that are new. The manufacturers of bridges and buildings and even common kitchen gadgets know that. I'm told that a woman is a new woman when she has a new hairdo.

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I'm quite convinced that the reason gentlemen like to play golf is the simple fact that in every game they get 18 chances to start over again. Always something new. That's one of the excitements and joys of childhood, isn't it?

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Have you ever watched a little girl's face as she followed a butterfly floating like a flower on the wind? Have you ever studied the fascinated gleam in the face of a child when he watches a bumblebee spin-drying its wings?

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Have you ever seen the face of a little boy when he's tied to the sky with a kite string? Or meets his first policeman? Or rides his first fire truck?

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The joy and excitement of the new. One of the ladies in my congregation back east recently traveled quite some distance to visit her grandchildren. They live many thousands of miles from where she lives,

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and consequently she does not see them often and has had little opportunity to come to know the youngest of them, four years old. And on one occasion during her visit he climbed into her lap, and looking up at her he said, "Grandma, do you love me?"

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And she answered, "Oh, Kurt, I love you more than I could ever tell you. I love you more than anything else in all the world." And the youngster was delighted with this pledge of love, and he was thrilled, and he wanted to say something

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that was really important and meaningful and significant back to her, and his mind was racing, and he came across the newest word that he had understood, and because things that are new are exciting, he thought this would be the word, and so he looked at her and he said, "Oh, Grandma, I think you're a think."

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Well, we all become attracted and thrilled by the new, and that's what makes it such a glorious thing to be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ and a communicant with the Holy Spirit.

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For we have a God who has said in his word, "Behold, I make all things new." Consider three illustrations. The first, from the dimension of time. Consider how God makes us new with the gift of sleep.

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Are you aware of the fact that each and every one of us spends approximately one-third of our lives asleep, and that means that most of you who are past 60 have already eclipsed Rip Van Winkle, and the rest of us are fast upon your trails?

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And what a glorious gift sleep is, to be able just to stretch out, to let go, and let God, to leave off the conscious control of all the experiences and events of your days and to entrust yourself totally into the hands of the one who made you

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and sustains you and will in the end claim you for himself. You can get a good idea of the value of sleep if you just contemplate for a moment what happens when you don't enjoy its benefits. Talk to an insomniac, one who has not known that balm of hurt minds

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that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. Or read the writings of those who have known the most sadistic of all tortures, brainwashing, and you'll come to understand that sleeplessness is an important part of that fiendish process. Following the Second World War, a survey was taken in London

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to ascertain what dimensions of the terrible bombings of that city had the most adverse effects upon the people, and it was astonishing to discover that it was not the destruction of their property, it was not the anxiety of their losing their own lives,

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it was not even the loss of their loved ones. It was the simple fact that the tension of the night after night bombing put them so much upon edge that they could not sleep and, in the very words of the report, consequently lost the appetite for life itself.

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So great is the refreshing and the renewing power of sleep. I've developed a little device which is helpful for me. At night after I have retired, I visualize before me a sink, and this sink is filled with dirty water.

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All the dirty, used events of the day, the clotted catastrophes, large and small, the scummy thoughts and impure words and improper actions, they're all gathered together. And in my mind's eye, I pull the stopper, and I watch them run out. And then I watch the sink being refilled again with the water of life,

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which is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And then I go to sleep, and I awake renewed, for George MacDonald was right when he said that sleep is God's contrivance for getting into man what he cannot get into him while he is awake.

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When I first started preaching, I used to conduct Sunday afternoon homiletic autopsies. I would take the sermon that had been delivered in the morning and would dissect it, examining very carefully all of the errors and examining with equal care any successes that might have accidentally been a part of it.

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Now I've changed my tactics. After the emotional strain of preaching, I go home, pull out the plug on the telephone, and go to sleep. God renews and refreshes me, and his Spirit uses the words that were uttered as his Spirit wills. God, you see, makes us new again with the gift of sleep.

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Consider another illustration, this time not only from the dimension of time, but also from the dimension of eternity. Consider how God makes us new with the gift of conversion. There are, I think, basically two kinds of faith.

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The first kind of faith can be described as heirloom devotion, that which has been handed down from generation to generation. Because Mother and Father believed, we too believe. After all, it is the thing to do.

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But this kind of faith is at best second-hand and antique. And like most antiques, it cannot stand the strain of real wear. And I have discovered in my own short ministry that those who try to exist upon this second-hand faith, and let us not be unjust or uncharitable by suggesting that there is in this faith any dimension of hypocrisy,

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that is not so. This is the best that these folks know. But this kind of faith, in time of stress or strain, collapses. It falls apart. It will not hold up. But there is another kind of faith.

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And this kind of faith occurs when an individual meets Jesus Christ face to face and heart to heart and spirit to spirit. And that kind of encounter always has about it different dimensions. The first of these dimensions is that you come to know Jesus Christ really as a person. Now I'm sure you're aware of the fact that there are different ways in which you can know an individual.

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Imagine that someone moves in next door to you. You can watch the furniture being carried from the van into the house. You can notice the way in which they cut their lawns and prepare their flower beds. You can see how the children behave in the neighborhood.

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You can read the family name off the mailbox. You can gain a certain amount of knowledge about the folks next door and really not know them at all. Now you fall into a conversation with the person who lives across the street who knows the people who live next door very well. He tells you where the man works, where the children go to school, what the interests of the wife are, what their religious persuasion is.

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He can fill you in with a vast number of details about your next door neighbor. You know more about them than you knew before. But you still don't really know them. Until that night when your lawnmowers meet at the edge of the lawn and you begin to talk.

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And after you talk and after you begin to grow in kinship and fellowship, you stop saying things to each other and begin to say yourself to another person. And he says himself to you. And in that exchanging of selves, in that mingling of heartstrings,

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in those occasions when you share your hopes and your dreams and your triumphs and your tragedies, when there are no holds barred and you feel altogether safe with the person, then it is that you can really say that you know him. Now that kind of person-to-person, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit encounter with Jesus Christ

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is the first essential in really personal faith. And inevitably, with that kind of encounter, comes a sense of guilt. Now I want to be very careful in defining this word "guilt." For it is not a fear guilt. It is a love guilt.

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It is not as if you hear some cosmic policeman blowing a whistle, warning you that all of your life has been wrong and is unseemly in the extreme. It's not a whistle. Instead, it's a whisper. It's a whisper that says, "I love you in spite of yourself."

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It's not as if you see an angry deity pointing a damning finger. It's rather that you see an outstretched hand which is nail-pierced and is trying to lift you up from the level on which you're living. Now in the face of that kind of encounter, you feel ashamed.

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And that shame is the love guilt that I'm talking about. When I was a very little boy, I was visiting in the home of my grandmother, and she permitted me to play in the backyard, with the warning that I must not push my way through the hedge into the next yard,

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because in that yard there was a very vicious pit bull dog that had been turned and angered against children and about which children were not safe. And with this warning and my solemn promise that I would obey it, my grandmother went back into the house and I began to play.

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I was no more distinguished for my obedience then than I am now. And consequently, curious to see this ferocious beast in the next yard, I pushed my way through the hedges and was attacked by the dog, and I bear upon my body to this day the marks of those minutes.

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The barks of the dog, the snarls, the growling, and my screams of absolute terror brought my grandmother, who at personal risk, pulled me away from the dog and back through the hedges and into the house. And all of a sudden, I was no longer afraid of the dog.

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I was very afraid of my grandmother. And she washed the wounds and fixed them as best she could. And then she seated me upon the chair in the kitchen of 1067 Allison Avenue, Washington, Pennsylvania. And she knelt down beside the chair and she prayed.

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She thanked God for my mother and father. She thanked God for the gift which she saw in me coming from God's hand. She thanked him that by his providence she had been where she could save me from this animal next door. She asked that God would attend me throughout all the days of my life

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and committed me to him as I had heard her commit me to him so many times before. And then she concluded her prayer and gave me a piece of cake. And I was more ashamed than I think I've ever been in all of my life. Now it's that kind of guilt which comes from an overwhelming consciousness

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of the love of the one whom you have offended that possesses you when you meet Jesus Christ face to face. And when you have that experience you inevitably and invariably respond by offering yourself, little as that is, into the hands of your Savior

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and at that moment you are born again. And life becomes new. All of the past is changed. The errors of yesterday are now seen as the stepping stones to the salvation which you know today.

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And the anxieties about the future, they vanish away. Your orientations are different toward God and not toward yourself. Your directions are different outward not inward. Your motivations are different. God's will, not your will.

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You become a new creature. Three months ago I was on a platform in western Pennsylvania with an old doctor. And he gave one of the most scintillating, brilliant, entertaining, effervescent lectures I have ever heard. And when he came back to sit down I leaned over to him and I said, "Doctor, how old are you?"

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He had many ears collected. And he said to me, "I'm four." And I said to him, "You mean you're 84?" He said, "No, I'm four."

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I said, "How could you be four?" He said, "Four years ago I met Jesus Christ and I became new again." And his whole life was testimony to it. Undeniable, indisputable, unarguable. He was a living example of how God makes things new in the miracle of conversion.

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One last illustration. This time, not from time, and not from time and eternity, but from eternity alone. Consider how God makes us new in death. We do not like to talk about death.

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We don't even use the word. We say that he has passed on, gone on, joined his maker, joined his loved ones, or if we're feeling irreverent, kicked the bucket. But we will not say that he died. I was in a funeral home just a few weeks ago. I greeted everyone in the room.

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I then went up and paid my respects at the casket. And as I looked at that corpse, I could not help but say to myself, he was unquestionably the healthiest looking individual in the room. He looked exactly like he had just returned from four weeks in Southern California.

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See, this chamber of commerce spirit that exists out here has already affected me. There he was, all dressed up, nowhere to go. Everyone describing him as being natural, as if it is natural to put on your best suit and stretch out in a box that's six feet long and two feet wide.

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All these efforts made, you see, to conceal the fact that the man was dead. That's how we fear death. But our Lord Jesus Christ did not so view death. When he spoke of death, he spoke of it in terms of one of the shortest parables he ever told.

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He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it." Now in Jesus' day, the diamond was so rare as to be virtually unknown. The pearl was considered to be the most valuable of all gems.

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He grew up in Nazareth, not far from a Caravan route. He no doubt heard about the fabled pearls of that part of the world. And so he tells us here of a trader, well, not so much a trader, rather a collector or connoisseur of pearls, who has a fabulous collection and then discovers one pearl that is of infinite value,

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absolutely perfect, and he promptly trades in all of the pearls that he has in order to own the one pearl of greatest price. And Jesus says that is what death is like. Death is the time when we take the pearl of our possessions,

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all that we've worked so hard to gather, and turn it in. When we take the pearl of our wisdom, all of the knowledge we've collected across the years, the wisdom, tinctured with tears and rounded out with love, and turn it in. The pearl, the pearls of our loved ones that we most treasure, even these pearls, we turn in.

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In order that we might have the one pearl of spending all eternity in the presence of God and his holy angels, made perfect even as he is perfect, made new again in a final newness which is forever. One of my closest friends recently died. When he contracted the disease which took his life, he weighed over 200 pounds.

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At the time of his death, he weighed less than 60 pounds, was blind in both eyes, and had lost much of his power of speech and knew unceasing pain. On the last occasion in which I visited him, we talked together and laughed together. You know, Christians can laugh even under those circumstances.

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Not only Christians, but Christians can laugh even under those circumstances. And we prayed. And then I took my leave, and as I rose to go, he said to me, "Bruce, remember, very soon I'll be as good as new."

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He winked at me with a blind eye, and I winked for my eyes were tear-filled, for I knew just what he meant, that soon he'd be with his Father in Heaven, and in that moment he would be totally and altogether new again. And that night, it was so.

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This then is my message to you from God's Word on October the 13th, 1968. We have a God who makes all things new, and that means that when you go to bed tonight, you can breathe a silent nunct dimittis, "Now let us, thy servant, depart in peace," so that God will refresh you before tomorrow.

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And that means that when next you pray or read scripture or come to this place or any other place of sanctity to worship or talk with friends about the things of Christ, in those moments you can open yourself to him, feel and be conscious of your sin as you perhaps have never been conscious of it before, and offer yourself to him,

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and understand, undergo, and enjoy an ennobling, enabling newness that will beyond every power of description which is be yours. And that means that at the moment when you say goodbye to a loved one, you may shed a tear, yes, for the lack of laughter you'll know in your life,

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for the sound of footfalls you will hear no more, and for the touch you've grown accustomed to that will no longer be yours. You may shed a tear, but remember that even then, you can praise God, for in the moment of dying,

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your loved one will have become by God's power, God's masterpiece. [Silence] Our Father, if any word which has been spoken is true, then write it forever upon the tablets of our hearts.

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If any word has been spoken which is not true, then drop it into the deepest seas of our forgetfulness, for we would remember only that which is of thee. And the Lord bless you and keep you.

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The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give to you and to all those whom you love his peace. [Silence]

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This concludes the message on the first side of this tape. At this point, please stop your machine and run the tape forward to the end of the reel, then turn it over for the message on side two. [BLANK_AUDIO]