“I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.”

(John 10:10)

“Is there life on Mars?”  Our space agency experts are now making a valiant effort to answer this puzzling question that has disturbed earthlings for centuries.  To solve this mystery astronomical sums of money have been spent.  The talents of our best American scientist have been employed to determine whether or not life exists or ever has existed on Mars.

But a Dallas minister last week, watching the TV pictures of that tiny robot moving across the brick-red Martian landscape remarked: “There is a more pertinent question that has troubled countless souls on this earth: Not the question – ‘Is there life on Mars,’ but the question: ‘Is there life on earth?’”

“In the long ago there was One who insisted that life was more than food and clothing; more than what moth and rust could consume or thieves break in and steal; more than could be analyzed in a test tube.  He said, ‘I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.’” (Martin Pike — Presbyterian Outlook)

Our Creator, Father, God, has gathered and delivered and made available for us, His well loved children, an incalculable fortune, but our poverty stricken, pitiable, suffering, unhappy lives are lived out in misery and despair because we will not take what our monarch wants us to have.  The recurring human tragedy is always re-enacted in terms of man’s poverty in the midst of God’s affluence, which man cannot or will not take and enjoy because man will not fulfill the terms of the transfer.

Jesus said His purpose in life was to help people to fulfill the conditions of entering into their rich inheritance here and hereafter.  “I am come that men might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.”  This statement and His striking Parable of the Good Shepherd, the Sheep, and the Sheepfold, are not in the narrative context of His healing of the man born blind.

It is as if the Lord Jesus were saying to everyone of us who feels himself or herself bereft, or shut out, or cut off from the good things of this life here on earth: “If any one of you comes to God through me, no one, but no one, can ever cast you out.  The riches of the Kingdom of Heaven shall be yours, and you shall have forever the comfort and security and plenty of my Father’s inheritance.  I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”

The conditions for making the transition from Man’s poverty to God’s affluence are set forth so clearly in the Parable of the Good Shepherd and the sheep.

The first condition is plainly this: everyone must enter by the door of faith.  “I am the door,” says Jesus. “No one comes to the Father but by me.” For everyone to get into a proper place of safety and refuge and the ready supply of all their needs in this world and the next, one must enter the right door.  Jesus is the door through which believers enter into life with God.

This human life here on earth is lavish with its benefits.  God has stocked His universe with alluring and priceless treasure.  Yet nothing is more sure than that it is through Christ that we acquire what matters most.  He is the door that leads to the most prized possession.

All through the Gospels Jesus is constantly claiming that He and He alone can give what the world can never give: “It is through Christ that one enters into and enjoys the peace that passes understanding.  It is through Christ that one gains the joy of the Lord that is our strength.  It is through Christ that one attains to life that is life indeed.” (A. J. Gossip – Interpreters Bible on Text)

Out in Oklahoma they still tell the story of how one of their earliest and richest of the fabulous Oklahoma oil wells was brought in.  It was located on the former property of a poverty stricken elderly couple who had migrated from North Carolina.  For years they had farmed that barren land and eked out a painful existence from the niggardly yield of those dusty acres.  Their children one by one had grown up and moved away, leaving the parched, poverty-stricken neighborhood knowing there was nothing there for them.

One day some stranger had appeared at the door of the unpainted cabin, asked for a drink of water from their well, and taken some of the water away with them in a bottle.  The strangers, coming back a few days later, offered the old man and his wife what appeared to be a fair price for the worthless farm.  When the deal was consummated they brought in a drilling rig and crew, and sent down a shaft between the back steps of the cabin and the cow shed, and the quantity of the flow of oil from that well became the wonder of the surrounding country.

One day someone overheard the old woman say to her husband as they watched the oil well operations: “Just to think, we slaved here all those years and barely made a living and all the time, right beneath our doorstep, was all this wealth and we never knew it.”

Yes, and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is “nearer than breathing and closer than hands and feet” to all those who trust in Him, is their refuge in every storm, their source of comfort and peace and power, their treasure and their joy.  Yet, it is tragically possible for men and women to live out their lives in poverty stricken godlessness, if they will not go through the door of faith in Jesus Christ.  “I am the door,” says Jesus.  “By me, if any man enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

But there is a second condition for making the transition from our human poverty to God’s affluence: it is to stay within the protective moral and ethical walls of the Good Shepherd’s sheep fold.

How many disillusioned disciples of Jesus Christ there are who, having thought that entrance through the door of faith was all there is to this business of being a Christian, and have made of their lives, as C.E. Montague points out, “a collection of experiences after the fashion of the avid stamp collector.  Esteeming every new experience of any kind (to be) an addition to their store, they will  get drunk simply for the experience, touch unholy things just so they can taste the whole of life – not realizing, poor duped fools, that in life, as arithmetic, there is a minus sign as surely as a plus sign, and that certain experiences do not add to, but subtract from, what we had and were before – with each new indulgence in forbidden things leaving us poorer, leaner, emptier, and at last (bankrupt).  It is only the pure in heart that see God, and whatever else others may gain, if they miss that vision and that experience, surely their life has been a futile failure.”

Oh the poor, destitute, pitiable people who thought they had entered into their complete inheritance as the children of God when they made a profession of their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and becoming completely careless about the moral and ethical walls He has thrown up about them for their protection, soon found their lives a chaotic, poverty-stricken wasteland.

Some of us can remember the fervent debate that took place in Memphis and Shelby County thirty years ago over whether or not it would be a good thing to legalize the sale of liquor by the drink. It was argued then that legalizing liquor by the drink would be good for the economy of West Tennesseans.  Our local news media those days were full of expressions of the follies of not serving liquor by the drink while it was dispensed here legally by the bottle.  Making it available by the drink would bring in more conventions, increase the tourist trade, and put more money into the pockets of everyone.

In my time in the ministry I have seen a lot of liquor by the bottle and by the drink and by the case.  I have put in many man-hours with alcoholics and the human wrecks strewn about them, including jobs lost and relationships violated, and families blasted; including the mangled corpses they have produced in traffic catastrophes, including the cold suicides they have left in cluttered bedrooms, including listening to the babbling of the burned out brains they have devastated.

What liquor by the drink or by the bottle or barrel has meant for our economic gain, I don’t pretend to know – this I do know, surely, soberly, sadly: that there is nothing in the whole American economy that has a higher production potential for physical and spiritual poverty and misery and despair among God’s children.

The Eternal God has invited and encouraged all His children to enter into His incalculable wealth and joy, but some will not and cannot because they will not stay within the moral and protective spiritual walls He has provided.

The third condition for making the transition from our human poverty to God’s affluent plenty is to remember that the source of the Christian’s wealth and welfare is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  In His parable of the Sheep and the Shepherd, Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep . .  I know my sheep and am known by mine. . . and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:11,14,15)

No matter how distant you and I may be in thoughts and trustful companionship with Jesus Christ, we are related to Him through our common humanity, and through Him to our Creator, Father, God.  The New Testament always insists that the life and wealth and good fortune available from God is always inherited, not earned as wages, nor won in a gamble or lottery.  It is an inheritance which comes to us only through a costly death, and is ours only because we stand in a personal relationship of trust and love with Jesus Christ who says, “I am the good shepherd, and I lay my life down for the sheep.”

Dr. John Krumm says there is a great contrast between physical and spiritual health.  “When someone is physically ill the doctor protests that he never cures anyone, he simply tries to remove the obstacles or overcome the infirmities so that the latent and frustrated powers which the body itself possesses can function effectively.  But this is not the way spiritual health is attained.  A man is spiritually healthy only when he is invaded and taken over by some purpose greater than himself which focuses his loyalty and captures his energies and enables him to forget himself altogether.  This is how the spiritual wealth of the Lord of this universe is acquired and transferred.

Dr. Victor Frankl, the famous Viennese Psychiatrist, insisted that his research into the emotional and mental health and sickness of people revealed that only when the self is lost in its pursuit of a cause or supreme meaning or value does it achieve true identity and fulfillment, experiencing happiness as a by-product.

Thomas Chalmers back in the 19^th century preached a sermon, which he called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, in which he showed that just as some of the dead leaves of certain varieties of oak trees never fall to the ground all winter long, but cling to the branches and are only discarded by the new life of the sap rising in the spring to displace them with new leaves, so the dead instincts of the human soul can be expelled and overcome only when something new and powerful and alive takes possession of that soul.  No one of us can deal effectively with our own sins.  Our seeming progress becomes an occasion for new sins of pride and self congratulation. (Krumm – The Art of Being a Sinner)

Our only hope is through continuing, unbroken loyalty to Jesus Christ – an abiding personal companionship – best described in His own words: “Abide in me and I in you. . . I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me you can do nothing. . . As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; continue in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:4,5,9,10)

PASTORAL PRAYER

O Thou God and Father of us all, who hast gathered us now in this place, and art bidding us to come to worship Thee for the refreshing of our souls and the glory of Thy Name, but Thou knowest, O Lord, with what difficulties we come.  Our fickle thoughts dart here and there.  We are anxious and concerned about many things.  Thou art the source of our life, the lover of our souls, our constant defender from all harm both night and day; who healest all our diseases, forgiveth all our iniquities, who crowneth our days with honor, tender mercies and loving kindness.  O Lord, help us now as we seek to worship Thee.  Hold our wandering thoughts in reverent attention upon Thy waiting presence that we may really present unto Thee our prayers and petitions we so gravely need and Thou art so eager to grant.

For Thy church we pray, and our own congregation there gathered, that Thy Holy Spirit may dwell among us deepening our spiritual life, perfecting the gifts of Thy grace among us, empowering us for the works of compassion, reclamation, and brotherhood that Thou art calling us as a church of Jesus Christ to perform.

For the sick, we pray Thy healing and the gift of quiet, patient courage.

For the bereaved, we ask Thy comfort and such a faith in the unseen, eternal world that they may endure all the losses and trials of this mortal life with steadfast hearts.

For all young folk, we pray bright visions of unselfish service and for those who are growing older assurances that they are loved and needed.  All these, our petitions, we pray for Jesus sake, Amen.