In Luke 12, while Jesus was warning his disciples and large crowds of followers against the hypocrisy and religious superficiality of the Pharisees, he made a very pregnant statement. He said, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” Folks, don’t think any secret will remain a secret for very long. Don’t think you can hide what you truly are for very long. Don’t think revelation won’t happen to you.
As we close our “crashing the bike” conversation this morning, I go back to something my friend Paul DeWeese said. As I said last week, a little over five years ago, Monica and I were in a serious motorcycle accident. My friend big Paul DeWeese, who also just happened to be Ely’s resident mortician at the time, was riding his big, beautiful blue Honda Goldwing right behind me. Big Paul’s description of the accident will always stick in my mind. As I heard him describing the accident to the rest of the church later, he said, “Well, first I saw my pastor’s motorcycle go end over end and then I saw my pastor go flying through the air and land on his head. I was completely certain I was going to do my pastor’s funeral and then, to my surprise, I saw how much my pastor loved his wife.” Apparently, even before my flying body came to a complete stop, I was up and stumbling back to where Monica lay by the bike. It didn’t even occur to me to check myself for injuries – my love for Monica overwhelmed me.
And in the next months as she recovered, I did a lot of things for my Monica without thinking about it. I had a friend from church build a ramp over the stairs in the front of the house and, because I knew how much my Monica still wanted to be outside walking, I took her for longer walks in her wheelchair than we had ever taken on foot. I got a little bedside table and fast internet connection set up for her and served as her messenger boy taking her office paperwork back and forth while she worked at home. I did all sorts of things for her because our accident revealed to me how terribly close I had come to losing her. My love for her was revealed to me in that accident as nothing else in 23 years of marriage has ever revealed it.
There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed. What are we when all our bikes crash and revelation suddenly happens? What are we when all the polished words and polite, religious speech are stripped away and we are left exposed for all to see? What are we in a genuine crisis – when things go terribly wrong? What are we when evil people treat us badly?
I spent a couple days home sick this week. Out of sheer boredom, I had opportunity to channel-surf a lot of daytime television. Eew! If ever there was an incentive to get out of bed and go immediately back to work, it is daytime television. I was amazed by the amount of pain, ignorance, perversion, anger, broken and miserable people. If daytime television is any sort of defining revelation of our culture, our culture is very diseased indeed. It was almost nothing but one angry crashed bike story after another; nothing but sad people lashing out.
I don’t want to be like those angry, nasty, broken people. I don’t want to be like them. When my bike crashes, as it occasionally and inevitably will from time to time, I don’t want painful, despairing and angry nastiness coming out of me. I want love and grace coming out.
But unless I prepare myself, unless I intentionally choose to fill my mind, heart and life with all the right things ahead of time – all the good and godly stuff will not be there to come out of me when the bike crashes and I am revealed for what I truly am. I will be just as awful, nasty, and angry as anyone. King David, in Psalm 37, gives us some very healthy instructions in how to prepare ourselves to live in a world filled with crashed motorcycles and angry people.
Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
If we want to be the kind of people who bleed grace when we are struck, who respond with love whenever the bike crashes, this passage gives us several ways to prepare ourselves.
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, David tells us to trust and delight in God. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you your desires. Don’t just recite some rote, sinner’s prayer or agree to some doctrinally correct religious creed. Get in the habit now of trusting and delighting in God! Trust Him so much you will act on that trust. Trust Him so much you will constantly want to do good in His Name. Trust Him so much you will delightfully settle down in whatever land He plants you and allow Him to give the safe pasture He’s always wanted for you. In order for each of us to stand as our Heavenly Father wants us to, we’ve got to trust and believe exactly what the old evangelist D.L. Moody used to say, “God never made a promise too good to be true.” The promises God makes to us all in His Word are really true. They can be trusted! We will not be able to stand against the bike crashes and genuine forces of evil buffeting us in this world unless we really and truly trust God and demonstrate that trust in our actions.
I love the well-known story Bill Hybels told on an old Preaching Today sermon about a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls. It seems that “a famous tightrope walker once strung a cable across Niagara Falls from the American side all the way to the Canadian side. To the applause of thousands of people, he would walk across that tightrope right on the very edge of the falls, the rushing, cascading waters thundering underneath him. He would walk back and forth, people applauding wildly. Then to further wow the crowds, he would put a blindfold on and go back and forth. Then he would ride a bicycle back and forth, and then he would push a wheelbarrow back and forth. Every day, people came out to watch him. He was quite simply the greatest. As the story goes, one day while pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, he called out to the crowd on one end, inquiring whether or not they thought he could successfully push the wheelbarrow across with a human being riding in the wheelbarrow. The crowd went berserk: “Surely you can. You're remarkable. We've watched you for days. We understand and appreciate your skills. We believe in your abilities. You are the greatest.” On and on they went, to which he responded, “Then someone volunteer. You come right up here, single file, form a line, and get in the wheelbarrow to prove your trust in my ability.” A deafening silence overtook the crowd. There were no takers.”
Get accustomed to climbing into His wheelbarrow! Unless we are in the faithful habit of trusting God and delightfully climbing into His arms and making Him our refuge, we won’t have a reservoir of trust when the bike crashes. We won’t trust when evil does its worst. Trust God.
The second preparatory element is also enormous. If we ever hope to truly trust and delight in God, if we ever hope to truly stand strong in the bike crashes and everything this world will inevitably throw at us, then we’ve got to commit to Him now above all else in life. David says that we must “commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
But what does it mean to commit your way to the Lord? Pastor Dale Hays told a great, but strange story years ago of how, on a recent trip to Haiti, he heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total and absolute commitment to Christ. He told a parable that explained commitment in a rather unique way that each Haitian in the room clearly understood. He said: “A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one uniquely Haitian stipulation: he would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the front door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So first the owner went out and found the nasty carcass of a smelly dead dog, and hung it from the nail on the house that he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. The Haitian pastor then concluded: “If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will always return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation.”
Committing our way to the LORD means all sorts of very important things, but one of the single most important things it means is that we don’t leave the devil anything in our house he can hang his rotten, smelly stuff on. Committing our way to the LORD means sweeping and keeping the house so completely clean and filled up with goodness, Almighty God will be able to make our righteousness shine like the dawn when the crashes and the revelations come.
Closely related to a call to commitment is the third and final element. We are called to trust and delight in God. We’re called to commit our way to Him. But even if we do these things, there are going to come times when the temptation to despair, rage and anger will still be very severe. There are going to come times when the injustice and evil will become so very severe we will feel completely justified in our anger, wrath and hatred. The closer and closer we come to the end of the age, the more difficult it will become to love as we should.
But God tells us to refrain; don’t succumb to the temptation to rage! Come what may, whatever the crash; we must train ourselves to refrain from anger; turn away from wrath.
If we want the love of God to come out when we are abused, if we want the love of God to flow out of us when things all go wrong, when the accidents and the ugliness of all sorts happen, then we have to make the daily, conscious and constant decision to turn away from all temptations to anger, rage, hatred and bitterness. We must make intentional choices to not coddle anger any place in our hearts, even when the anger might feel justified.
Jesus told us in Matthew 24 that in the end times “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” It is going to be increasingly difficult not to be angry and unloving at the sin, brokenness and wickedness around us. It is going to be difficult not to feel like we’re entitled to our disappointment and discouragement when the bike crashes. It is going to be harder and harder all the time. And so we prepare ourselves now. Refrain!
There are a lot of crashed bikes in this room this morning, aren’t there? Some of us have been badly crashed by health issues, some by workplace or economic stuff. Some of us may well have been crashed by things done to us by angry, evil and broken people around us in the world. Some of us may well have even crashed ourselves in one way or another. And some of us might even broken-heartedly feel God Himself has crashed our bike. There is a lot of twisted steel and confusion in every grouping of people like ours…
But it isn’t the crash that matters, folks. It is our response. Sooner or later, we’ll all be crashing the bike. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. And those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
What are we preparing ourselves to reveal at the scene of the accident? What will people see in us when our bike goes end over end? What land are we preparing to inherit?
Amen.
