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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. I would ask you to come with me this morning 20 billion years back into history, 20 billion miles out into the limitless reaches of space. We are present at the beginning of the act of creation when the flaming fingers of God ignite an explosion so vast, so immense, so catastrophic that no one has the ability to describe it. Out of the center of this cosmic explosion come great surging masses of gas, and this gas begins to fall in upon itself. Under pressure it gathers closer and closer upon itself, and as the pressure of the gas cloud increases, the temperature within it goes up until it reaches approximately 20 million degrees Fahrenheit.

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At that moment there is an explosion, much like what we would call a hydrogen explosion, a series of explosions. In that moment you see a star is born, and a star is a series of these explosions. Now, for as long a time as the elements necessary for the explosion continue, the star continues to exist, but eventually the supply of hydrogen and other gases is lost. And when this happens, the star, if it is large enough, begins to swell and turns red in color. Astronomers still are observing this phenomenon in the heaven. They call such stars red giants. And at that moment, when the supply of gas is exhausted, there is one last immense explosion which shatters the stars into tiny smithereens which go out and spangle all of surrounding space.

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And those bits of stellar debris, those bits of star mixing with the primordial elements of the universe, bring into being every other heavenly body. All the stars, all the asteroids, all the planets, all the comets, each one had its nativity in such a way. And if we are riding on this planet, our Earth, this cosmic mud pie, if you will, on which we are riding through space, is actually much more than mud. It is made up, quite literally, of the debris of previous stellar explosions. We are riding on what is the dust of the stars. And if it is also true, and it is, that we are made from the elements of this planet, then we are quite literally made from the dust of the stars. And every time you have a tendency to think ill of yourself, remember that it took God 20 billion years and 20 billion stars to make you just the way you are. The heirs of the heavens we are, the children of the constellations, the product of the infinite ingenuity of God.

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But more than that, greatness within the universe is measured not so much by size as it is by complexity. Those great stars might be quite immense, but they are very elementary in their makeup. We are far more complex. More sophisticated, for example, than one of those stars can be a single molecule. More advanced than a molecule, a virus. More complex than a virus, a cell. Many cells gathered together can form a plant. A greater number of cells can form an animal. And at the apex of the pyramid of cellular construction stands man. One hundred billion cells arranged in such a way that we can see and hear and smell and taste and dream. We are the product of the infinite ingenuity of God, made from infinity by the divinity, but a little lower than the angels.

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And yet that's not enough, is it? It isn't enough to know that we're made of the dust of the stars. That doesn't speak to the ache in the heart of man. It isn't enough to know that we are the most complex of all the created beings that spangle the universe, for that doesn't speak to what's in our hearts either. What we want most is not this knowledge, but the knowledge that we belong. I speak to a woman and comment about where she lives. "It's lonely out there," she replies. "It's lonely everywhere, isn't it?" Beckett sits down and writes a play, "Waiting for Godot," and in that play he pictures two people at a corner waiting for someone to come and care for them, and no one ever comes. The sociologists get together and write books about our time. They call our time the time of the lonely crowd. And a group of physicians get together in Kansas City and denounce that the great psychological killer of our day is loneliness. The plain fact of the matter is that though we understand whence we've come, you can't get a hug from the heavens, and you can't get comfort from a constellation, and you can't get a slap on the back or confidence from all the scintillating bodies that spangle space.

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We want somebody to care about us. We want, most of all, to belong. And that's the reason this passage of Scripture from the book of the Acts of the Apostles means so much to me, because it's all about belonging. In the first place, it announces that we belong to God. Peter preaches his great Pentecost sermon. It's the passage of Scripture which immediately precedes what Kent just read for us. He sings, as it were, the love song of God to all those who would listen. He carols how God cares about each one of us as if there were only one of us about which to care. And the people hear this song. Whenever I think of this, I'm reminded of an episode that happened in the Middle Atlantic states in the very early days of our country. The Indians, finally giving up all hope with regard to any honesty or honor amongst white men, decided to go on the war path, and they did very successfully, the Senecas and the Shawnee and the Delaware. All the settlers gathered together, even the Quakers. This is the only incident in American history in which the Quakers actually took up arms. But they joined together, and they defeated the red men.

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After the defeat, they found in many of the Indian villages children who had been kidnapped by the Indians across the years. Some of them had been in Indian villages for many years, some for a short time. They brought all these children together at one place, and all of the settler parents who had lost children to the Indians came to claim their youngsters. The difficulty was that in some instances, so many years had elapsed that the parents were not able to recognize their children, and the children were unable to recognize their parents. And then someone had a wonderful idea. "We'll send the mothers," they said, "down into the group of children, and we'll ask the mothers to sing very softly the first songs they sang to their children when they held them at their breasts. Those earliest melodic memories would reach something in the hearts of those children." And so a mother would go down into the group, crooning some song that she'd sung to her child so long before. And then a young stripling over here or a beautiful maiden over here would jump up and come running forward. Mother, they were united, you see, by the sound of the music.

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Peter gets up, and he makes the music of God. He sings of the love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ in his great Pentecost sermon. And the people hear it, and the Scriptures say they were cut to the heart. "What shall we do?" they cry out. And Peter says, "Repent." Now, what does the word "repent" mean? To repent simply means to tell all your secrets to God. Secrets are what set us apart. Secrets are what give us individuality. I remember when I was a child, I was convinced that my mother knew absolutely everything about me. I could be in an altogether different room from where she was, and yet she could call me and warn me about what I was doing without ever seeing it. And then there came the day when I knew something my mother didn't know. And what is more, I knew that I knew it. I had a secret, and there was great power in that. You remember how when you were a youngster, you'd say to the kid next door, "Nah, nah, I've got a secret," something that set you aside? Some of you parents of junior hires are noticing they go out, and they come back, and you say, "Where did you go? Out. What did you do?" Nothing. Secrets.

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And with those secrets comes independence, and with that independence, you see, there is separation and differentiation that makes you a little bit nervous. Here's a fellow and a girl, and they're standing outside one of the dormitories on campus. And they hold on to each other for a long, long time, and they share with each other their deep secrets. And it may very well be that they decide to be married, but that's a secret which they keep for themselves until that moment when they decide to share it. And they, and they alone, are the only ones who can announce it. Here's a fraternity or a sorority on campus. They have secret liturgies and rituals, and they resent it terribly when some heavy-footed college administrator walks into the middle of their privacies because their privacies set them apart. It is secrets that give us individuality. To repent is to tell all your secrets to God. It's to offer all of those things you don't offer to anybody else to him. It is to offer that which sets you apart and different to him so that you become one. When a little girl climbs up on the lap of her daddy and whispers all of her secrets to him, she is saying, "I belong to you, and you belong to me." That fellow and girl embracing, they're outside the dormitory. They are sharing their secrets. They are saying, "I belong to you, and you belong to me."

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When a woman reaches deep down inside of herself and brings up those secrets with whom she's never shared, the ones she's told no one, and offers those secrets to God, that is such an act of belonging that the Scriptures say the very angels in heaven sing anthems about it. The beautiful time of being one, of belonging. Now, we don't have to tell God our secrets because he doesn't know about them. God understands and knows all things, but it is in the voluntary offering of these secrets that we become one with him. Peter says to them after they hear the melody of God, "Repent, which is, tell God all of your secrets, and out of this will come great joy and fullness." And it was so. But the belonging in this passage only begins with their belonging to God and God's belonging to them.

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The passage goes on to say that these early Christians also came to belong to themselves. When they got a grip on God, they got a grip on themselves. When they came to understand their very personal and intimate relationship with him, they gained a self-confidence they'd never known before. Out of their repentance came the filling of the Holy Spirit and boldness. No more mincing ambiguity in their lives, but now certitude and positivity. They knew what they were about and why they were about it, and they went after life with confidence and gusto.

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If you want to see that kind of living exemplified in our own day, I would point to the life of Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. In my opinion, he is the greatest living human being on the face of the earth today. Imagine, after 60 years of atheistic totalitarianism in Russia, the greatest, the most well-known and honored Russian on the face of the earth is a Christ-loving, Christ-honoring Christian. At great cost, imprisoned, tortured, ridiculed, separated from his family, now driven from the land he so much loved,

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still Solzhenitsyn remains strong in his faith like some Old Testament prophet. He stands and announces what is true. Do you remember a year ago when he stood on the baccalaureate platform at Harvard University and said words like these? "Man has forgotten that he is God's creature."

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Or again, "Man has neglected his religious responsibility." Anyone with intellect enough to understand and courage enough to confront the reality of what he was saying squirmed at those words. It was a call to repentance. If you want to understand the place that repentance has in the life of Solzhenitsyn,

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you've got to go back beyond Gulag Archipelago 3 and 2 and 1 and back beyond Cancer Ward and back beyond First Circle and back beyond the day and the life of Ivan Denisovich. You've got to go back to an essay written many years ago by him called "Repentance and Self-Limitation." And in that essay, written in the rich Russian, which he can use better than anyone else, he has this to say,

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"Repentance is the first bit of firm ground underfoot, the only one from which we can go forward. Repentance is the starting point of spiritual growth for men and nations." He is announcing something which is as old as the book of the Acts. Out of repentance comes the filling of the Spirit, and out of that filling comes boldness.

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You get a grip on God, you've got a grip on yourself. The military attitude of the soul is restored. So many of us, you see, have furled our flags and sheathed our swords and doffed our armor and bad the trumpeters of the Spirit be quiet.

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We've shaken hands with the enemies of God and entered into an immoral pacifism with evil. Unsure about God, we're unsure of ourselves. Unrepentant, we remain unfilled. But then you encounter those individuals who are sure about God,

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who know that they belong to him, that he belongs to them. And into them there floods that confidence which leads them to belong to themselves as well. You see that kind of life? In the last year, think of the servants of Jesus Christ possessed by that

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who have lived courageously in that knowledge. Their lives thunder out across history just like the thunder pealed across this city last Monday night. Harold Bowman, missionary flyer,

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murdered by the enemies of Christ in Sudan. Peter Weiss, medical doctor serving Christ in Thailand, killed by the enemies of Christ in that country. Hans Werner, servant of Jesus Christ in Bangladesh,

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cut down by the enemies of God. Doug McClure, missionary servant of Christ in Ethiopia, slain in his service. Archbishop Luan and nobody knows how many others,

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killed in the service of Jesus Christ in Uganda. Glenn Extruth, Belgian Christian, cut down in the service of Jesus in Zaire. The Roman Catholic Church lists 30 martyrs for the faith,

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including one cardinal, Emile Bayende, who died in Brazzaville in Africa last year. These people had a grip on God and a grip on themselves, not only on the mission field, but in ghettos and boardrooms

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and colleges and universities wherever a man or a woman takes a stand for Jesus Christ. Here's Christ's words that the gates of hell will not be able to stand against the church and believes it.

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Steel in their spirits, iron in their souls. It was said 200 years ago by an enemy of the gospel, "I would rather face 200 men with drawn swords than one Presbyterian convinced he was doing the will of God."

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[laughter] That's the spirit that belonging brings. And one thing more, not only belonging to God and belonging to self, but this passage of Scripture also says

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that these early Christians magnificently belonged to each other. They shared everything. They shared their homes. They shared their food.

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They shared their prayer, their study of Scripture. They shared their worship. They shared their possessions. They sold what they had in order to meet one another's needs.

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You see, having repented and being filled by the Spirit and being given a magnificent boldness, they not only told their secrets to God, they also told their secrets to each other.

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And out of that comradeship, that belongingness, came special blessing. I'm fascinated by the way our society is addicted to television. I think a lot of it has to do with the absence of belonging in our time.

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There's a radio station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which earlier this year offered 125 families $500 each if they would simply turn off their television sets for 30 days. I think you will be interested to know

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that 93 of the families contacted wouldn't even enter into the proposition. They couldn't even contemplate turning off the tube for 30 days. Why is that? Why do people sit up late at night and watch the inanities of Johnny Carson?

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Why do people really watch the pseudo-sophistications of a man like Phil Donahue? Why do people sit down and become utterly fascinated with the totally fictitious soap operas, the tales of misery which are dragged across our screens on Sunday afternoons?

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Why is it that we think it important to go fishing with Robert Redford or see Cheryl Tiggs in her own living room? I think it's because we want to belong. I think it's because we want communication.

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The great tragedy is, of course, that in television the communication is only one way. We learn about them. We hear what they have to say.

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We discover various dimensions of their lives. But the sad thing is they never learn anything about us. We never have the opportunity to communicate anything to them which is in us. That is adumbrated communication.

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It is inadequate. It does not meet our needs to belong. And I think Christians understand this. Let me illustrate that one way and then I'm done.

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I was participating in a conference on Christian communication many months ago now. In the morning I'd given some talks on the subject. We had lunch together.

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In the afternoon there were to be small discussion groups. I was with a group of seven men in a cabin on this campground. We had no sooner gotten together when one of the men, a young man by the name of David, spoke.

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And he spoke with such aggressiveness, with such intensity that he captured our attention. It was not so much what he said as the way he said it. He started off like this,

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"I don't believe anybody can be a good communicator unless they're a good Christian." There was a great quiet in the room. Every one of us knew from the way the words had come forth

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that there was more there to be said. Everyone in the room was a Christian. There was a spirit of belongingness. And the sense of that belongingness encouraged him

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and we all turned to him with total attention. "You know what I mean," he said. "If you're rotten inside, if you're going to manipulate people,

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if you're going to be cruel and mean, not only to your peers but to those who are younger as well, if you're going to live a life that's not worth living, then you can't expect to be able to communicate anything

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that isn't ugly." I think at that point we all knew that there was some great stone down inside David which was rolling toward his lips

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and by our very presence we were helping it roll. By our very belongingness we were drawing it forth out of him and we did not have to wait long for it to come. In other words, you shouldn't be like me.

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You shouldn't have the ugliness in you that's part of me. Do you know what I did? Well, this last week I almost killed my wife. We'd had a bad day.

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All right, nothing unusual about that. Days like that come and go in every marriage relationship. It was a ho-hum day. We went to the park and somehow or other in all the crowd

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our five-year-old got lost. He was only gone for a minute and a half. It wasn't anything serious. But when we got her back, I turned to her and I said,

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"You are really stupid." And she turned and looked at me and said, "Yes, and you are really cruel." And she turned and walked away.

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And I called after her, "Come back." And she didn't come back. And I called her back again, "Come back here." And she wouldn't come back.

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And as he said this, he reached into his back pocket and I could tell that he was reaching for his handkerchief but he couldn't find it. And he brought his hand forward and his knuckles were as white

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as if he held the handkerchief in his hand. And she wouldn't come back. So I ran after her and I grabbed her by the shoulder and I spun her around.

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And as I reached for her shoulder, somehow my hand bounced off her shoulder and hit her in the neck. And there was a kind of a little cough

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and then she couldn't breathe. And I thought that I'd broken her windpipe. And with those words, he convulsed into sobs. And I could remember how his tears rolling down his cheeks

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fell onto his knees and made gray, dark blue spots on his jeans. "She's all right," he said. It was over in just a moment.

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"She's all right. But what about me? What about me?" And with that, he broke into the deepest kind of weeping.

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And one of the men walked over and looked out the window. And one of the men turned the pages of his Bible. And one of the men reached over and began to play with the fringe on the edge of the chair.

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And one of the men, a young fellow named Chris, got up and walked across and took David by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet and put his arms about him and held him very tight and said, "Christ, David.

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Christ." And with those words, every one of us, as though drawn by some kind of magnet, moved and tangled our arms and our bodies

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and our heartstrings and wept and held onto each other and loved each other and belonged to each other. Now, if you've had courage enough to follow me this far, I mean, if you've begun to feel as David felt

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and for David and with David, if you can see that group of men without any of their armor and any of their masks and any of their pretense,

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if you can see them unashamed holding to each other, belonging to Christ in each other, if you can see that, you are seeing God's plan

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as it stretches across 20 billion years of history. You are seeing man truly as the crown of creation. Do you see that? Do you see that this is the reason that Christ died,

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that we might love one another like this? Do you see that this is what happens when we tell secrets? Do you see the boldness and the togetherness that is here?

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Do you see that this is the dream of God to melt us into one, to mold us into one, to make us into one? Do you see that this is the promise of heaven,

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the eternal unity which will be ours when we hold fast to each other and hug each other and encourage each other and enable each other and enthuse each other and ennoble each other?

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Do you see that? Do you see that this is God's dream for us, that we might never be without belonging, that we might never be alone again?

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Do you see that this is his promise to Christians for all eternity? Do you see that? If you see it,

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then why not let it begin in your life? Let us pray. God's seeing isn't believing. If we see it,

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by thy spirit help us to believe it. Grant that we might belong to thee, get hold of ourselves, and touch one another.

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For our sakes, for the world's sake, and for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray,

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Amen. These tapes are produced by the Sanders Christian Foundation, P.O. Box 384, South Hamilton, Massachusetts 01982. And our series continues with tape number three

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on "The Art of Preaching." A seminar by Bruce Thielman. [end]