Christian Living

M05050

TITLE: THE EXCESSES OF

READ Eph 5:18-21

OUTLINE:

I. Introduction

II. EXCESSES OF WINE

III. EXCESSES OF NEED

IIII. EXCESSES OF MISSIONS?

V. Conclusion

I. INTRODUCTION

We are vitally interested in Missions and use every opportunity we are given to speak of missions. I included missions in my Christian Education courses, in my Theology courses, and naturally in my mission courses. Some might wonder how I fit missions into Theology. I noticed in studying for my classes that many of the topics of theology are actually missions related.

If you consider the section we call "MAN SIN AND SALVATION". If that isn't MISSIONS in a nutshell I don't think that you will find it in a nutshell. We are to be talking to lost men about their sin and possible salvation.

As I was considering the Attributes of God. Many of the attributes of the Lord are the prime movers in His working in lost mankind's lives. Love of his creatures, Justness of offering salvation to ALL mankind, Compassion extended to the lost. Many many others.

As you consider Bibliology, the study of the revelation. Why would God want to bother revealing His Word to us if it weren't to COMMUNICATE TO ALL OF MANKIND?

Let it suffice to say that MISSIONS should be an integrated part of our lives - EVERY BELIEVERS LIFE!

II. EXCESSES OF WINE

I would like to share with you in this study a few thoughts from my past - a time, which I am not terribly proud of - but a time that the Lord allowed me to go through.

I was saved in my senior year of High School and the man that led me to the Lord did nothing to teach me or disciple me in the things of the Lord.

I could stop here and share a message or two on the importance of discipleship after you lead someone to the Lord, but we won't take time for that. Let it suffice to say that much of what I am about to tell you of my time in the Navy could have been eliminated from my life with a few hours of discipleship.

Some say today that we must experience things to really know what they are like. I disagree with that philosophy. You do not have to try drugs to know what they are like and know what their effects are. You do not have to try alcohol to know what it is like and what its affects are like. To those that tell me they have to try it to understand it I say, "Then why don't you see what suicide is like." YOU DON'T HAVE TO EXPERIMENT.

Much of what I am going to share with you is a result of two very common errors of philosophy in our current society, indeed of some of our churches in America.

The first is that we get people saved, but never do we take time to disciple them. We ought to be teaching our new converts the basics of the faith!

The other philosophy that I am speaking of is "SOCIAL DRINKING.” Many churches are discussing the topic of social drinking again. Let me say to those that say social drinking is okay. "Why are so many alcoholics started down that road by "SOCIAL DRINKING" if it is okay? Social drinking and experimenting in alcohol led me down a four-year course of wasted money, wasted time and wasted spiritual life!

The day I was discharged from the service I began drinking in San Francisco. The next morning I woke up in my brother's house in the Los Angeles area. I do not remember the trip at all. "SOCIAL DRINKING" and "EXPERIMENTING" are really nothing but tools of the devil.

Let me begin with the first Christmas that I spent in the Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. In the Navy it is traditional on many ships and duty stations to have a Christmas bash - I mean Christmas party. On the Hancock it was no different.

The Hancock had over 3000 men and officers aboard so they planned a very large get together. They rented the top of the Mart in San Francisco. It is a large building and the top floor has a fantastic view of the city. The ship rented the whole top floor of the Mart Building.

The night came for me to go to the party - you see they ran the party three nights and divided the crew into thirds for the party. I was enjoying the party and the friends that I had made on the ship. Within a couple of hours I was basically under my friends control. I did not care what I was doing. They would say, "Let's go listen to music so they would lead me to the music. This went on for about an hour before I decided I needed to sober up a little. I was going to go out for some air. The ship, fortunately had the foresight to station SP's (the navy equivalent to MP's) at the front door of the Mart building to assist people like myself back to the ship. I remember part of the ride back but very little else till morning.

At one point during the party I had my head lying down over the back of a chair. One of my friends called my name. I tried to raise my head but didn't make it. He reached over and - you are going to find this hard to believe" He reached over and grabbed my hair and lifted my head. The next morning the top of my head was very sore around the hair roots.

The next part of what I want to share comes from a time on Okinawa an island in the Pacific Ocean. I was stationed on a troop transport at the time. Three of my friends and I were nearly broke. We pooled all our money and found that we had enough to go to the Air Force base and have a pizza and a very few drinks. We went and enjoyed our pizza. As we left the base be passed a bar that was selling drinks for 25 cents. Drinks usually were a dollar plus. We decided that was a very good deal. We went in and started buying rounds of drinks from our pooled money. We didn't want to pass up a sale!

As the evening went on things were getting a bit out of control. Several of us had a little more money put away for special things coming up in the future. We began spending that money because we were out of the pooled resources. Needless to say when we left the bar that night we were very fortunate to make it back to the ship.

I wasn't so bad that I didn't know what was going on but there were times that night that I could not get myself to do what I wanted to do. I went down to take a shower and forgot to take off my clothes as I remember. I was so tired I slipped down into the bottom of the shower and fell asleep with the water running. One of my friends happened into the shower area and woke me up and headed me to bed.

I trust that a couple of things are true. Number one is that none of you will find this exciting and decide that you want to try it. That would be foolishness plus. There is nothing glorious in not being in control of yourself! Number two is that none of you will take offense to these accounts.

I hesitated several days before I set this study to paper because I feared that some would take offense or feel it completely out of line for a worship service.

The reason that I went ahead with this study is that my God and Lord is the one that chose the drunkenness of man to illustrate His truths at times in the Scriptures. If God wants us to relate to what He says we must know something about the illustrations that He uses.

Not that we have to go get drunk to know what He is speaking of but that we understand the principles of what the illustration is saying. Being drunk is basically the idea that the person no longer has complete control of himself. The alcohol has completely fogged his mind and the alcohol is in a sense controlling the person.

This is why people cannot speak clearly when drinking, it is why they cannot walk properly, it is why they cannot drive properly when they have been drinking excessively.

I trust that none are offended with what I have said. I also trust that there are many here today that have not experienced what I have been talking about today, and that you will vow to your Lord to never find out what it is like to be drunk. I hope that term isn't to offensive but it carries the idea much better than some of the $24 words we use today to make the alcoholic feel better, you know words like disease, substance abuse, bad habit.

III. EXCESSES OF NEED

I am only going to share one fact with you and move onto the next point in my outline. Today we have several thousand lost people going into eternal torment in every single hour. That is LOST people. Most of these people have never heard of the Gospel and many of them have never heard the name, Jesus Christ.

As we sat through a Sunday school class several thousand lost souls died on planet earth and are in torment with the man of Luke 16 that cried to Abraham, "I am tormented in this flame!"

IIII. EXCESSES OF MISSIONS?

Some today accuse missionaries of being extravagant. I was in a pastor's office one day while on deputation and the pastor was holding a letter from a missionary that was trying to raise $2400 per month of support to go to the field. He said something to the effect that if I could explain why the missionary needed so much money he would give me a meeting.

I told him that I did not think that the amount was out of line for the ministry that he was entering into. He was with a service men's group that supplies housing and meals on weekends for servicemen abroad. They have to have a large house with room for the men and the Bible studies etc.

As I began to explain the costs of missions the pastor began to be more quiet and I think that he was properly informed for the first time of the costs of missions today.

No, I didn't get a meeting in that church. I do think the other missionary did however, which was great.

I think that missionaries could tighten their belts some and many are doing just that. We were appointees to Ireland for five years. The missionaries with our mission turned down cost of living increases yearly because they were making due with what they had.

When I hear of pastors wanting missionaries to tighten their belts I feel like asking them how tight their belts are. An American Missionary Fellowship missionary spoke in chapel at Frontier and mentioned that he was told by a pastor that he was resigning and seeking a new church. He wasn't being paid enough. The missionary asked how much he was receiving. The pastor replied that he was receiving $48,000 per year.

I certainly do not want to downgrade pastors but let me tell you, we have many men coming out of our schools and seminaries that are looking for positions and not ministries! Their first priority is not how may I minister to you people it is how much are you going to minister to my pocket book.

With this type of people you cannot build missions.

We have been speaking in churches for several years all over the western part of our country and there aren't more than four or five that have any type of outreach program for the lost in their church.

We attended one little Baptist church two or three times in a year and a half period and they had had two outreach programs. Something has to be right in that church!

As to the excesses of missions I personally believe that they are few. Most missions in fundamental circles operate on a shoestring and that shoestring usually is tied together in several places to get it to wear a little longer.

We do not have excessive workers today. Most missions could put 50 workers to work immediately in areas where they want to start works.

We do have an excessive amount of financial problems today in missions.

We have many appointees that are taking longer to raise their support than they are taking to prepare for the ministry. That is four years of college and then five years of deputation. We have appointees that cannot get to the field. While on deputation we ran into a number of pastors that were ministering in churches because they could not raise support to get to the field.

Several of these feel that this was God's way to help them realize that He wanted them to minister here in the US.

My wife and I spent over five years on deputation trying to raise support to go to Ireland. We, today feel that for now God wants us helping train others to go where we could not.

When we first arrived at a teaching ministry in Wyoming we sent out over 150 letters to churches and pastors in the area to see if we could come and present the work of the school and the work that God has called us to. From the 150 letters we were able to schedule one meeting. That meeting was canceled because the church closed before the meeting.

I mention this to acquaint you with some of the problems of missionaries today. We have missionaries that are veterans trying to return to the field for their fourth and fifth terms and cannot because they have lost so much support.

We have missionaries come home in the middle of the term to raise enough support to remain on the field till furlough.

Most missionaries find that if they send out 100 letters and follow the letter up with a personal call to the pastors that they will get ten meetings. Of those ten meetings there will be one church or individual that will take on support.

These are facts that are about three years old and I suspect that they are even worse now from what I gather talking to missionaries.

Mission excesses? I don't think so for the most part.

V. CONCLUSION

Now let us look FINALLY at a Scripture passage that we can tie all of this together with. I have purposely not brought us to a conclusion until now. We have seen the excesses of wine and the drunkenness that causes one to loose control. Indeed the alcohol takes control of the person.

We have seen that there is an excess in the needs of the world today. There are millions dying without the Lord and no one is telling them about salvation. We have seen that the mission organizations are not being excessive in their sending out of missionaries. Indeed most missions could, TODAY, send out large numbers of workers if they had them available.

We need now to consider what drunkenness has to do with missions. Let's read a very familiar passage. Eph. 5:18-21 "And be not drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God."

Now I realize this is a text speaking of our community worship and times together. I do not want to detract from that interpretation of this passage. I want to however, spend some time thinking of verse 18 and how it may relate to the way we live our lives in 1996 America. "And be not drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit,"

Now, remembering it was God, the one that inspired the Scriptures, that chose the illustration of drunkenness. It is God that decided to compare the filling of the Spirit with the drunkenness of wine. Not Stan Derickson.

Now, if you will remember that the alcohol brings the person into a state where he no longer is able to do those things that he wills to do. That drunk driver coming at you wills to drive between the lines on the highway yet he is unable to.

Now how about some spiritual application? If the Spirit of God is controlling us, as He desires to, we will no longer do those things that WE WILL but those things that HE WILLS.

It isn't that we are slaves to the spirit but it is that we want so much to do what God wants us to do that our own desires fade into the sunset, or fade into His desires.

When it comes to desiring and willing to buy a new car when the old one is still running very nicely it is submitting to the Spirit and doing something else with that money. Might we suggest the missions offering?

When it comes to desiring and willing to stay home super bowl Sunday, and you are perfectly free to do so - it is doing that which the Spirit would move you to do. Go to church and fellowship with the children of God. And I don't mean bringing your 5" TV so you can sit in the nursery and watch the game as one woman did in Salem one year.

Let us think about these ideas of the Spirit controlling us as alcohol controls the drinker.

The Spirit is desirous of seeing all of God's commands and requests of us to come to pass in our lives.

The Lord has given each one of us the command to go.

The Lord has given each one of us the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors of God to bring the lost world to Him.

The Lord has promised to provide our needs.

God is the commander in chief of the spiritual forces.

He commands all the angelic host and he controls all the human host. Or does He?

Can we think along these lines for a few moments?

He is the commander in chief and distributes His forces as He sees fit.

He has a spiritual warfare in progress. The United States is today primarily the home base for God although that is changing. The United States is one country that still holds forth God as very important to them.

The war is taking place primarily in the rest of the world.

Now, we know by facts and figures that around 90% of God's Christian workers are in the United States and about 10% of his trained workers are in the rest of the world.

Consider World War II when Hitler and Japan were cleaning our plow. If the president had stationed 90% of the trained troops on the west and east coasts and sent only 10% to the front how long would he have remained in office?

I rather think that there have been marching orders sent out to God's workers but they have been drunk with money, power, prestige and everything else. The Spirit has not had the control that He needs to move that person on out to the front.

This applies equally well to the man in the pew as well as the man in the pulpit. There are, I would suspect many that have been called but that have not responded to prepare and to go.

I am not pointing the finger at anyone. It is just illogical to believe that the Lord would distribute the troops as they are now distributed.

Another area that we might think about for a few moments is the area of praying. While on deputation, we challenged many congregations with the lack of prayer in our churches.

The Lord told the disciples to pray therefore that the Lord of the Harvest would send forth workers. We today have the same Lord of the Harvest. He is God and He has not changed. We have workers trained ready and desiring to go to the foreign field but cannot because of lack of funds.

Is it a financial problem - is it because of the economy? No, for the Lord still has the cattle on a thousand hills that He hasn't sold.

If there is a problem in the trilogy of Lord of the harvest, workers and prayer I think we all know where the problem lies. We do not pray in the church in America!

There is a story that I once read that was supposedly true of a church in mid-America that was having terrible financial troubles. They ask one of their deacons to be treasurer of the church. Not being excited with the financial problems he stated that he would take the job for one year on two conditions. One that he would not be ask any questions, and two that he not give a report until the end of the fiscal year when he left office.

The deacons knew and trusted the man so agreed to his requests. At the end of the year the treasurer stood and gave his report. He had paid the entire church mortgage, he had paid all unpaid bills, and had excess in all funds of the church. The pastor in amazement asked the deacon how in the world he had accomplished all that he had done.

The deacon said, "Well pastor as you know this is a farming community and most of our members are farmers. I work at the elevator here in town and when the members came in with their loads of grain I totaled their loads up and took 10% of their yield and placed the money in the church’s general fund.

Now, folks I don't recommend that method of church giving, however it points up the fact of what we could do in America if all believers would only tithe.

The facts and figures show that the majority of giving in evangelical circles comes from a very small percentage of the overall church membership.

In two years we as believers spend more on Christian tapes, records and concerts than we do on missions in a year. You apply the needed truth of those facts to the church today.

Now, let's spend a moment or two with the person that feels that he is called to be a layperson ministering in the local church. Maybe you are giving 20% of your income to the church, and maybe you teach Sunday school class and maybe you are at every service of the church. You may be the model churchgoer. FANTASTIC - KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Do you witness for your Lord?

Every one of us is an ambassador and not a one of us has any reason not to be witnessing for our Lord.

I am a little technical in my definition of missions. Many today say that missions is witnessing at home. In a general sense, yes, that is true. In a general sense we are all missionaries, however if you look at the early church our missionaries were a bit different from the normal, stay in Jerusalem believer.

The missionaries of Acts were CALLED, they were SENT, and they were sent to particular geographical locations at times. We are all to be witnesses yet the missionary is someone that is called to do a specific work for the Lord.

Take time to commit yourself to the concept of the Spirit having such a control of your life that you are always doing what God wants you to do.

Such control that you are always open to his leading in witnessing, in serving, in going to the foreign field if that should be the case.

I trust that you will meditate on the comparison that the Lord supplied to us of being so controlled with the Spirit that we are like the drinker that is controlled by the wine.

It is not that we are to be out of control because of the Spirit. That is a false understanding of the verse. It is that He is in control of our lives so that He can guide and direct us into those things that the Lord would have us to do, be it giving, be it witnessing, be it going, be it praying, be it cleaning, be it sharing, be it anything.

Challenge yourself and your family and your church family to be filled or controlled with the Holy Spirit.

I trust that the thoughts haven't been too mundane and heavy for you.

I will close with one final illustration. A pastor that taught a class I was in during College mentioned that he was at one time an assistant pastor in a very large church. The church was so large that it had several pastors and assistant pastors. For some reason all of the staff were on the platform for one of the final sessions of a missions conference at the church. The speaker had been giving a real challenge to the people about dedicating their lives to the Lord. The pastor mentioned that he had been considering the message but knew that it wasn't for him for the Lord had led him to be the assistant pastor of this church. As the speaker went along the man began thinking and the Lord began moving and at the close of the service the man was really wondering if the Lord would have him leave his position and go to the foreign field.

The speaker began some final challenges and the final of these went something like this. If nothing else you folks in this church have a bunch of pastors - why don't you send one of them to the field. The speaker was pointing point blank at the man. He, before the closing prayer had committed himself to go to the field and made public his decision that morning.

What has God been doing in your life this month? What will you let Him do in your life in the coming weeks?