A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak
with a friend of mine who’s a business man in Orlando, and he was telling me all about
the latest developments in the international world of finance, and he talked about a study
that had been made of international corporations in terms of their future planning, and he
mentioned that there were Japanese corporations that didn’t have simply three year plans
or five year plans for their businesses, but some of them extended their business plans
out into time a hundred and two hundred years so that they had an overarching goal that
they kept before them at all times so that they could check periodically to make sure
that everything that they were doing in their company was on target. After this business man related all this to
me about what was going on in the international field of finance he looked at me, and he said,
“Now about the Christian life, RC,” he said, “tell me, please, what is the big
idea?” What’s the bid idea of Christianity? Now, I have to admit that when he looked at
me straight in the eye and said, “RC, what’s the big idea?” I flinched a little bit, and I had a flashback
in my own mind to my mother standing there when I was a child with her hands on her hips,
and then she would take her right hand and point it at me and she would say, “What’s
the big idea, young man?” Now, obviously that wasn’t really a question
that she was trying to find out what I thought was the quintessential purpose of my life,
but she was really giving a thinly veiled accusation like, “You have no possible justification
for what you’ve just done now in your behavior. What’s the big idea?” But from another perspective, that is a crucial
question. We listen to sermons, we read the Scriptures,
we get caught up in the maze of the details of theology, but we long for the opportunity
to cut through all of the fine points, the particulars of Christianity and get down to
the core, the very essence of what the Christian life is all about. That’s what we mean by discerning the big
idea. So when this businessman said, “RC, what’s
the big idea?” I thought about it for a moment, and the answer
that popped into my head came out of the sixteenth century Reformation when the Protestant reformers
of that time had to define themselves to a watching world, and so they had to crystallize
the essence of what their ministry and their movement was about, and out of that crystallization
process came a phrase – of course it was Latin – that was introduced and used frequently
by Martin Luther to declare the essence of the Christian life, and Luther used this phrase:
that the essence of the Christian life is to live one’s life “coram Deo.” Now that may be a strange phrase to you – “coram
Deo.” Literally what it means is “before the face
of God,” and what Luther was saying simply was this: that the Christian life means to
live all of your life in the presence of God. There are some times we behave and perform
with our lives not for God but for an audience to see it and that our behavior when we’re
in secret may be different from how we behave when we’re in the presence of people whose
judgment or approval we seek. We think, for example, of the prodigal son
when he pled with his father to receive his inheritance early, how he squandered that
money. But before he squandered that inheritance,
what did he do? He went away into a far country where he was
anonymous, where no one knew him, where he didn’t feel like he had to live under the
scrutiny of somebody who might possibly disapprove of what he was doing. Now, Luther says we should live our whole
lives, not as people seeking the cover of darkness where we have a secret life, a private
life that is hidden from the gaze of our friends or of authorities, but that our lives should
be lived openly in the presence of God, before the face of God, practicing a kind of consciousness
of God from moment to moment. Now, we add to that a couple of other ideas,
but the big idea of Christianity is to live “coram Deo” – to live all of one’s
life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and to the honor and to the glory
of God. Let me say that again. The big idea – “coram Deo” – is to
live one’s life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the honor and
glory of God. That’s what it’s all about. Jesus said it succinctly this way: “If you
love Me, keep My commandments,” which is to say, “If you want to please Me, you please
Me by doing what I have commanded you to do.” But to live this kind of life, obviously at
the outset sounds rather idealistic, doesn’t it? There’s nobody that lives all of their life
in the constant sense of the presence of God, and none of us is so righteous that everything
we do is in submission to the authority of God and done unto His honor and to His glory. We can say that religiously and define it
theologically, but to put that into actual living practice is not a simple thing to do. We can get excited and emotionally moved and
have spiritual experiences where we make vows and promises – “O God,” you know, “my
life is yours. My heart is on the altar. I’m going to please you and live for You,”
and so on. But through the day-to-day activities and
the pressures that come upon us, that zeal and that excitement begins to fade, and we
fall back into our old patterns where we live in the absence of God, in defiance of God,
and to our own glory. So what it means to please God is not simply
to make a commitment or a vow, but to press forward through those moments and times where
we are paralyzed and frustrated in our spiritual growth. Let me ask this question of other people. How many of you have ever taken piano lessons? Let me see your hand if you’ve taken piano
lessons. About three out of four in the audience have
responded here that say that you have taken piano lessons at some time in your life. Are any of you, incidentally, at the present
time functioning as a concert pianist? Can’t find any of those in here. Isn’t it strange that every year – well
not just every year, but over a course of – just literally millions of people in the
United States of America start piano lessons, but there are so very, very few that ever
become concert pianists like Von Cliburne or even great famous jazz pianos – pianists
– like Thelonius Monk or Oscar Peterson or Sharinger or one of the others. I remember when I started taking piano lessons
my mother had a big idea, and she said, “Young man, you’re going to start taking piano
lessons,” and so she sent me off to this woman who was 110 years old, and she lived
in a house that was 150 years old that was so musty and creaky and scary, and I had to
walk over a mile through the woods and across a highway to go the house of this piano teacher
whose name, incidentally, was Miss Bliss. Do you know what a misnomer is? That is a misnomer. That woman’s name was called Miss Bliss,
and she brought anything but bliss into my life doing all of these exercises; but I remember
vividly my first lesson. I came into this scary, creepy, old, musty
house, and I sat down on this bench next to this woman who was as scary and creepy and
musty as the house was, and she opened up to the first lesson of John Thompson’s piano
book series; and she showed me on the keyboard where “middle C” was located, and then
she told me to play “middle C” with my index finger, and I followed the first lesson
on the page. I even remember the words to it. As I would strike “middle C” repeatedly
with my index finger on my right hand, the song went like this: “I am playing ‘middle
C’.” Those of you with perfect pitch know I’m
not singing “middle C,” but that’s the way the words went. “I am playing ‘middle C.’” Then the
left hand – hit the same note. “I can play it well, you see.” I said, “Hey, this is a piece of cake.” I started piano lessons with a flurry, with
gusto. It was simple, and I ripped through the first
half of John Thompson’s in just a few weeks, and I had visions of becoming a great pianist. Five years later, I quit taking piano lessons,
and I was only in the middle of John Thompson’s second grade book. My development as a piano player was arrested. It was frozen. It reached a point of difficulty that signaled
a plateau where I was stuck, and so I gave it up. Several years later after I was married, I
was in seminary, we had a dear friend in our home community who was an excellent piano
teacher whose students were winning the Volkwein Studio “Piano Player of the Year” award
in Pittsburgh, and I went to her, and I said, “Mrs. Winnerling,” I said, “would you
be able to give me some piano lessons?” She said, “Oh, absolutely. I’d love to give you piano lessons,” and
so I went to my first lesson with Mrs. Winnerling, and I sat down. She said, “Well, what do you want to study?” And I said, “Oh, Mrs. Winnerling,” I said,
“I have fallen in love with the music of Chopin, and so first thing I want to do is
I want to learn Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat. And she looked at me and smiled. She said, “Fine.” She said, “How much piano training do you
have?” I said, “Well, I made it through the second
half of John Thompson’s – the first half of John Thompson’s second grade book,”
and she smiled and laughed, and she said, “Well honey,” she said, “you can’t
possibly play Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat. You have to have – be like a six grade level. We’ll have to pick up where you left off,
and we’ll build up to that, and maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to start
you on the Nocturne.” I said, “No, you don’t understand, Mrs.
Winnerling.” I said, “I want to learn the Nocturne now
– right now.” And again she smiled. She knew me, she knew my impetuosity and all
the rest, and she said, “Okay.” She said, “I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll work on the Nocturne right now as
long as you promise to do these exercises that are remedial along the way,” and so
she assigned me the first measure of the Nocturne for the first week. And after six months I finally was able to
play the piece, but then my piano studies were interrupted by going to Europe to graduate
school, and I reached another plateau of playing piano where I was stuck. I was frozen. I couldn’t go any further. Fifteen years later I met a man who was a
jazz player, and I listened to him play jazz, and he just blew me away. And he gave me incentive to start up again,
and so I began once more to take lessons, and again was able to move to another plateau. Well, I don’t want to bore you of with the
story of the history of my involvement in piano playing, but what I learned about life
from studying piano is this: that we have a tendency to make a running start at certain
enterprises and get all involved and all engrossed in what it is that we’re trying to learn
or trying to achieve or trying to do, and as soon as we run into an obstacle, or we
reach one of those difficult plateaus where we are temporarily paralyzed, that’s where
we quit. We say, “I’ve reached the limit of my
ability. I’ll go no further,” but the only way
to advance in any enterprise is to persevere through that level of paralysis so that we
can get beyond the roadblock and move ahead. In fact, if you look at something, you will
see that the higher we go in our attempts to master a procedure, the easier it is to
get better and better after we learn how to make it through the plateaus. Now, what does that have to do with pleasing
God? Obviously not all of us are called to be concert
pianists, but all of us are called to please God. I’ve spoken many times on the priority of
the Christian life as Jesus declares it in His teaching when He tells His disciples to
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these other things will be added
unto you. Elsewhere, Jesus makes a very strange and
cryptic statement about this kingdom of God. He speaks about the kingdom of God appearing,
and He calls His disciples to press into the kingdom of God, saying that the violent take
it by force. Now, that, perhaps, may be a negative idea
suggesting that the enemies of the kingdom of God use violence to try to oppose God’s
reign, or it may mean – and I think it means – that what He is saying is that those who
mean business about pleasing God are not casual or cavalier in their pursuit of the kingdom
of God, but they are like men of violence who storm the battlements of the enemy until
they break through. Jesus said, “That’s the way the kingdom
is. It’s like,” he said, “a woman who has
lost a coin who sweeps the entire house – turns everything upside down. She’s obsessed until she finds that coin.” I can’t imagine how Jesus was insightful
enough in the first century to tell a story based on the life of my wife. If you would see what happens in my household
when my wife loses her purse, you would know what Jesus had in mind when He talked about
this woman sweeping the house clean to find that coin. My wife is always hiding things to keep them
safe from burglars or from – I don’t know what she’s hiding them from, but she has
these wonderful hiding places for her jewelry and for her purse. The only problem is that after she hides them,
she forgets where she hides them, and they have been such wonderful hiding places that
she can’t find what she has hidden, and then we have to go through the procedure – lifting
up the rugs, taking the drawers out of the cabinet, going through the winter clothes,
everything to try to find this thing. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like
a man who finds an extraordinary pearl that is so precious and so valuable – singular
in its magnificence – that that person has such a profound passion to posses that pearl
– which is more costly than any other pearl – that he goes and sells all that he has
that he might posses that one single pearl.” Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like
a man who lost his son.” I’ve already mentioned that son, the prodigal
son, who goes to the far country, squanders his father’s inheritance. You see these vans, RVs on the highway and
bumper stickers on the back of them where you see this nice retired couple driving this
wonderful Winnebago down the highway, and it says on the back of thing, “We’re spending
our children’s inheritance.” Well how about when your children spend your
children’s inheritance before you die, and they – what about a sign on the kid’s
– on the back of the kid’s car that says, “I’m spending my dad’s retirement money.” That’s what the prodigal son did. He went out and squandered everything that
his father worked so hard to earn, and then he disgraced the family with his riotous living. You know the story; but yet when he came to
himself, and in utter degradation and humiliation after he lived with the pigs and smelled of
swine, with his head bowed, and in tatters, he started to make his way home. He said to himself, “I will arise, and I
will go to my father.” But the point of the story is that when that
son was still off in the distance, the anxious father who knew nothing of what had happened
to his son since his departure, saw his boy coming back in the distance, and we are told
that the prodigal father leapt from his place of sitting and ran down the road – I mean
in those days, the Jewish patriarchs wore robes. Now, I can just see this man, bare-kneed,
rushing down the road to find his son, and when he found his son, he threw his arms around
him and embraced him, and he ordered his servants to kill the fatted calf, get the family ring,
and he bestowed honor upon his son. He said, “Because this is my son who once
was lost and now is found.” All of those parables – the prodigal son,
the lost coin, the pearl of great price – are parables that emphasize the importance of
pressing into the kingdom of God – of pressing beyond the points of paralysis, the plateau
where things become so difficult that we stop. Now, you who are Christians, remember the
beginnings of your Christian experience, the zeal and the fire and the passion you had. You probably turned off all your friends because
you were obnoxious and too pushy, and you were so excited you wanted to tell everybody
about what happened to you, and so on. We all went through that, but then we have
learned how to adjust to accommodate our friends, and we’ve learned how to adjust our goals
downward because as we started to grow, with sort of like a puberty spurt, then we suddenly
reached that plateau, and we cooled off. We said, “Oh, I’m going to read the Bible
from beginning to end.” We went through Genesis, we went through Exodus,
and then we hit Leviticus, and many of us fell off when we hit Leviticus. Some persevered through Leviticus all the
way into Numbers, and after they got into Numbers, they said, “I can’t do anymore,”
and so they quit. And this is what happens: We start, but we
don’t finish what we start. Ladies and gentlemen, what pleases God is
somebody who signs up for the duration, somebody who prays every day, “Thy kingdom come,”
somebody who spends his life – not just the beginning of his life – his life seeking
the kingdom of God. Again, Edwards made this statement: that,
“The seeking of the kingdom of God is not something that unbelievers do. The seeking of the kingdom of God is the chief
business of the Christian,” and it’s a life-long enterprise. It’s a life-long pursuit, and I think that
that’s what it means to be a disciple – is to come under the discipline of someone more
mature. If I were to get over my periods of paralysis
where I was stuck in music, I had to go to a teacher, a teacher who was on the other
side of that plateau who could help bring me across the threshold into a new liberation
and a new freedom, and I think the same thing’s true in spiritual life and in spiritual growth. Finally, let me give you this one illustration
of how God is pleased by those who seek His kingdom. Again, when I was a boy, I went to a movie,
and I don’t remember even the exact title of the movie or who even starred in the movie. It had to do with the adventures of Robin
Hood, and I don’t know whether it was Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. – I think it was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
who played in this particular version where Basil Rathbone was the Sheriff of Nottingham;
and I saw this magic story of Robin Hood on the screen, and I was captured by it. What a tremendous story! The king of the land – Richard – has to
depart and go on a spiritual mission, and while he is gone, his reign and his power
and his authority is usurped by wicked Prince John, his younger brother. Now, Robin Hood is loyal to the king, but
the king’s gone, and so Robin Hood and his men are forced to live out in the woods finding
shelter there in the countryside. And so a price becomes on his head, and you
see the conflict throughout the whole story of one who is loyal to a foreign king, to
the king who is gone, and he will not submit to the usurper who has supplanted the rightful
king. Robin Hood lives to please King Richard, not
Prince John. And then at the end of the movie, Sir Richard
knights Robin Hood, making him the Earl of Loxley because he persevered. He lived – Robin Hood lived in the presence
of his king, under the authority of his king, to the honor and to the glory of his king. I see no finer parallel to the call of the
Christian who would please his God than to serve the one who is now enthroned as the
King of kings, and in His absence seek to please Him, to honor Him, and to obey Him.
