Line in the Sand

Jim Bowie was the inventor of the heavy fighting blade known as “the bowie knife.” What many don’t know about Bowie is that he was also a card cheat, slave trader, and swindled people in land deals. He also fought duels. He killed a man in near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1827 in which he literally brought a knife to a gunfight. So Bowie spent much of his life on the run.

He ended up in Texas as an officer in charge of the garrison at San Antonio… until it was learned that he was never in the army. Col. William Travis took over as commanding officer, but the two came to share leadership when they found themselves together two years later at a little church outside San Antonia called “The Alamo.” It was there that Bowie stopped running.

When it became obvious that their cause was hopeless, Travis drew a line in the sand with his sword asking all who were with him and with Texas to step across the line. Everyone knew that to stand their ground in the Alamo meant certain death. Jim Bowie, confined to his bed by tuberculosis, had four of his men carry him, bed and all across Travis’ line. Jim Bowie stopped running at the Alamo.

This is apparently where we get the expression, “to draw a line in the sand.” When we draw a line in the sand, we make a commitment, we take a stand. To draw a line in the sand is to make commitment where there is no giving up and there is no going back.

Paul told the Romans that baptism was their line in the sand. They could not “go on sinning so that grace may increase” (Rom 6:1). I don't think I have really ever heard someone saying that in so many words, “God likes forgiving sins; I like sinning. What a country!” Most Christians believe sin is serious business that should be avoided. But many Christians also believe that grace somehow makes sin somewhat less serious. After all, nobody is perfect! The sin that was such an ugly, monstrous beast has somehow been domesticated because we understand all this grace stuff. Sometimes we act as if sin doesn’t matter quite so much anymore.

Paul didn't think so and he says so quite profoundly in Romans 6. Paul saw baptism as a line in the sand in Romans 6:3-4,

“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

In baptism, we participate in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. In baptism we die to sin. Paul doesn’t say this to give us argument to prove the essential nature of baptism. He assumes baptism (a strong argument in itself) to drive home the point that we made a commitment when we were baptized. We drew a line in the sand and burned our bridges (how’s that for mixing metaphors?). We cannot continue to live in sin because Jesus died to forgive us and we died with him. Yes, He was raised and so are we raised. But we were raised to live “a new life.”

Grace should not let us get more comfortable with sin. No, grace points us to the terrible price that was paid to free us. Baptism is our line in the sand; we crossed over and we can't go back.

Monday, Monday

For awhile there, I was on fire picking teams in the NCAA tournament, but I cooled off in a hurry. If a couple of the squeakers would have just gone the other way... I do have 7 of my Elite-8 still alive-- I really thought Texas would beat Duke. But don’t tell Angelynn; she is this huge Duke fan. I don't know when she became such a Duke fan, but it was sometime before she was 7. Arkansas beat Duke for the 1994 national championship and she didn't speak to me for two weeks (OK, I might have rubbed it in a little).

I finished up my sermon series yesterday entitled “Old-New Questions.” These were questions to which everyone once knew the answer. But the world changed and people change, and now the old questions are new again. You can see the questions and the sermons themselves at my sermon page. One of our members said yesterday that she looked forward to finding out what question I was going to cover each week, kind of like watching a TV series. She was a little miffed that yesterday was the season finale without having any advance notice. Maybe I should have had a cliffhanger.

I made a mistake the other day and read an article on “How to Have an Effective Blog.” There were 20 points or so on what makes a blog effective. Like I said, it was a mistake to have read the article… although I think I do OK on point #6.

My next sermon series is on the book of Amos. I haven’t chosen a title yet, but I’m thinking maybe something like “The Cows of Bashan” or “Let Justice Roll” or maybe “Neither a Prophet nor a Prophet’s Son.” I am open to any suggestions. And I think my next Wednesday night class series is going to be “The Christian and Angels.” Why those two topics? I’ve never preached a series on Amos or taught a class series on angels.

I’m trying hard to think of something else to write about. As soon as I finish this blog, I have to start ripping up carpet to get ready for ceramic tile in our utility room and downstairs bath. There had to be a better way to spend my half-day off!

Living Faith

Fred Winters was the Baptist preacher who was gunned down two weeks ago during the Sunday morning service at First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois. Terry Sedlacek, a 27 year man that the church did not know, walked into services and shot the preacher. He fired 4 times before the gun jammed and two members wrestled him to the ground.

Yesterday, Fred's widow Cindy Winters was interviewed on the CBS Morning Show. Her words were about faith, forgiveness and the love of Jesus. Rather than anger for the man that killed her husband and took her girl's father away, she expresses concern for Sedlacek's parents and that Sedlacek himself would come to know Jesus.



What a powerful witness to living faith in a living God. May God bless this good Christian lady and her girls as they heal from this horrific tragedy and loss. And May God continue to use her witness to bring healing to others.

The More Things Change

Five years ago, I referred in a sermon to the “Beloit College Mindset List.” Each August for the past eleven years, Beloit College Here are things about the college freshman of 2008-2009 that you have to know to understand about their world. The list reminds us that people can live in the same neighborhood and not be from the same planet. I have abbreviated the list below for the sake of space… and because I didn’t know what in the world some were about! You can see the whole list here. The list really has changed in five years... because the world continues to change.

• Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
• Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties.
• Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
• Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando.
• Grandma has always had wheels on her walker.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
• Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
• Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.
• IBM has never made typewriters.
• There has always been Pearl Jam.
• The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.
• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
• Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.
• Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.
• Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the U.S.
• Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.
• Caller ID has always been available on phones.
• Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
• Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
• Soft drink refills have always been free.
• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.
• The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.
• 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.

So what’s the point? First, we serve an unchanging and unchangeable God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Second, the language and life experience of people around us are changing constantly. If we want the people around us to come to know our unchangeable God, then we must constantly change the ways we seek to relate to them. The world and the church of the 1950’s no longer exist. I think I get that. Neither do the world nor the church of the 1990’s exist. I haven’t gotten that one quite so well.

No Cussing Club

McKay Hatch was an eighth grader when he started a “No Cussing Club” at his school. Today, the No Cussing Club has 20,000 members in all 50 states and 30 different countries around the world. Hatch has been interviewed on TV by Jay Leno, Dr. Phil, Ryan Seacrest and many more. He has also had death threats, had his web site hacked and his address posted online, and someone even sent prostitutes to his house. But McKay refuses to be intimidated away from doing the right thing.

This worldwide movement began when Hatch just got tired of people cussing around him. He told his friends that “If you want to hang around me, I don’t want to hear cussing.” And they stopped, and the idea spread. Hatch says that he wants to next go after violence—“Most fights start with words—cussing at each other and making each other angry.”

Hatch told CNN Nicole Lapin that his club was about treating people with civility and respect. He said, "It's about talking to people with civility like you said, and making people feel good about themselves and talking to people with respect. That all starts with your words and how you choose to use them." Words are far more powerful than we sometimes realize. Words that we toss off as meaningless can impact others in ways we don’t realize. James 3:5-8 says—

5 The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, 8 but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

The amazing part of the story of “No Cussing Club” story is how it started with one middle school student and has spread all over the world. When we do the right thing, it has an impact on others. Sometimes that impact can be seen. More often, the impact is in small and hidden ways that later “raise a harvest of righteousness” (James 3:18).

The Franchise Agreement

My friend Alan Smith sent me a copy of the "Church of Christ Franchise Agreement" from Jay Guinn's blog "One In Christ."  Since I'm preaching Sunday on the true church and I am also running a bulletin article (from one of my earlier blogs) along the same lines, I thought I would reference this blog as well.  Just in case the other two don't get me in enough trouble, this one surely will. 

Guinn in a (very, very) humorous way suggests a charter that includes all the unwritten rules that many of our churches have operated under for years.  If we're going to have a franchise charter, it's much easier to follow if it's written down, right?  Of course, then that would be a creed which like the denominations, and they're all going to hell (you'll have to read Guinn's blog to get that one).

Religious Identification Survey

I guess it is one of those good news, bad news things. According to the recently released “Religious Identification Survey” from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, 75% percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Well, 3 out of 4 isn’t bad, right? The bad news is that back in 1990, 86% of Americans identified themselves as Christian. Christianity is loosing ground to other religions, but the biggest reason for this shift is the rejection of religion altogether.  The fasting growing religious identification in the country is nothing at all.

The number of people who consider themselves "born-again" or "evangelical" has increased since 1990.  About 33% of Americans identify themselves as evangelical, and the number of people who are members of “megachurches” has grown from 200,000 in 1990 to 8 million in this most recent survey. What does it suggest that overall church membership is decreasing while membership in megachurches is increasing? It suggests that people are leaving smaller traditional churches for larger ones. That doesn't sound much like church growth.

Factoid: I read recently that membership numbers in the Sothern Baptist Church are greatly skewed by the number of Baptists who are officially members of two churches. They are on the membership books at the church at home where they grew up in while at the same time being members of the larger church where they now attend. It is easy for the numbers reported in surveys to become skewed. I’m not sure we need to panic at this point, but these surveys can be a bit disturbing.

In an interview with CNN, William Donohue of the Catholic League suggested that the growing rejection of organized religion reflected by this survey itself reflects the movement towards radical individualism seen in the last 25 years or so. People have been leaving churches because they don’t want religious authority telling them “thou shalt not” in their moral choices. Donahue says, "Notice they are not atheists-- they are saying I don't want to be told what to do with my life."

Paul said that a time was coming when “people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4:3, NLT). But that was already happening as Paul wrote; he ends his description of “the last days” in 2 Timothy 3 by telling Timothy “Have nothing to do with them” (2 Tim 3:5b). The decay of the influence of the church (if that is what’s happening) in America does not mean the end of the world. What it does mean is that we as Christians must redouble our efforts at living our faith in a way that impacts others.

Tuesday Afternoon

I worked at home yesterday all afternoon as I waited for the dishwasher repairman. All they could tell me was that he would be there sometime between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. So I took all my stuff and worked from home while I waited for him. Well, he showed up at 4:45-- about the time I get often home. So I waited all day for nothing. And it took him 5 minutes to fix the thing

But then I got work done at home so the day wasn't wasted, right? Well, I did get a start on Sunday’s sermon, so that is good.However, my fancy USB drive that I carry around on my key chain, the one on which I saved all my work, literally fell apart or me. The case came complete apart as I removed it from the drive. Not to worry, I duck taped it all back together. I just inserted it into the computer here and the good news is that everything was saved properly. The bad news is that I didn’t get as much done as thought.

On another front, I guess now it is officially official now. Tressa’s little dog Bella is now our little dog Bella. Tressa got her just before Christmas, and we kept Bella while Tressa had an apartment full of company. Two things seemed to have happened during the time we were dog-sitting. First, Tressa got over her “I want a dog to keep me company” stage. Second, Lynn fell in love with the little fluff ball. So we are now the proud owners of a 2 pound Maltese; Tressa took her money and bought a Wii. Don’t tell Bella (or Lynn), but I think I’d rather have the Wii!