God’s Gophers

by Dave Wilkinson
Romans 10:8-15
October 4, 1998

Did you know that gophers have beautiful feet?

I’m not talking about the feet of the little rodents that infest yards, leaving a trail of tunnels and destroyed plant life. I’m not qualified to comment on the attractiveness of their feet -- though, from the number of gophers, I do not doubt that other gophers find them irresistible.

Rather, I am talking about the human gophers who go for people who are apart from God and introduce them to Jesus Christ. I am talking about those to go for God into places of profound human need. To paraphrase the fifteenth verse of Romans 10: "How beautiful are the feet of those who go for God to bring glad tidings of good things."

The great South American evangelist Luis Palau wrote: "The British missionaries who led my family to Christ made all the mistakes in the book. I remember as a little boy sitting in the front row, watching this poor man. Being a proper Britisher, he not only wore a teed suit, but a vest and thick socks. He would stand there sweating and sweating. I remember looking at the poor fellow and saying: "Why doesn’t he take his coat off?" But a proper Britisher in those days kept his coat on and toughed it out. He massacred the Spanish language and had strange foreign habits. But because of that fellow, my father went to heaven.

Palau continues: "I thank God that the missionaries who led me to the Lord Jesus Christ have planted churches all over the world. And I thank Him because now there are missionaries from all nations to all nations. Hispanics minister with the Muslims, Asians, so proper and correct, come to Latin America, The contrast is amazing. Thank God for missionaries."

Today is World Wide Communion Sunday. Today we celebrate what God has done through the missionary movement as we share in the Lord’s Supper with millions of our brothers and sisters in faith all around the world."

I am excited that we are having the Mission Fair today on the patio. You have the opportunity to learn more of what God is doing through his church in the local community. In many of the Sunday School classes. the young people will have the opportunity to learn more and ask their questions. One reason I am glad that we are doing this is because I know important it is for a congregation to keep a focus outside its own life.

Some years ago, a youth worker in Washington D.C. wrote a modern parable on what can happen to a church hat doesn’t remember why it’s there. His parable is called "The Life Saving Station."

"On a dangerous sea coast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a little life saving station. He building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea; and with no thought for themselves went out day and night, tirelessly searching for the lost. Some for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew.

Some of the members of the life saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the life saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life saving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in the clubs decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half drowned people. They were dirty and sick. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting there was a split in the clubs membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saying station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of the people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet, another life-saving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown."

I do not believe that our church has lose sight of its original goal as a life-saving station. But there are still many who drown. Even with all of the churches in Moorpark, there are still only about 20% of the people who are churched. The church cannot afford to become drawn inside itself because the church will die --.not as an institution but as a place of hope.

Paul's point in this passage is this. We’re saved by faith and faith comes by hearing the word of God but people cannot hear unless someone talks to them.

There is a very simple truth that we tend to ignore. If you don't share the good news, it will not get shared. A very small group hears the gospel when all of the preaching is left to the pastors. Think for a moment of all of the people we come into contact with over a week and then think of all the people whose lives intersect ours as a group. You know and influence people we will never meet. If you wait for us to tell them, it just won't happen. You have more to do than just listen to the sermon. The sermon is delivered on Sunday in order to equip you for service on Monday. We need to realize that Jesus didn't say we were to be His witnesses as an optional extra in the Christian life. It is a command.

The reaction I can almost feel here is "I can't do that! I don't know what to say." A little girl was watching her father prepare a sermon She asked, "How do you know what to say?" "God tells me" he answered. "Then why do you keep crossing it out?" she asked. Some of us feel if we tried to share our faith we simply cross out everything and be left with nothing to say.

Don't worry about sharing the whole heights and depths and mysteries of the faith. Share yourself. That's what the word "witness" means --.something we testify to by our own experience. If it hasn't happened in us it's not evidence.. It’s hearsay.

Watergate figure Charles Colson wrote this about his own conversion: "I remember the first day I walked into: the executive suite of Tom Phillips in 1973. I had not seen him in four years. Within minutes it was obvious that he was a changed man -- kind, compassionate, caring about me. It seemed incongruous somehow; this self-made, hard driving young man had catapulted in a few short years from a middle echelon engineer to president of Raytheon, one of the largest corporations in America. Yet he was gentle in his demeanor.

"When I pressed him about, what had happened he replied, "I have accepted Jesus Christ and committed my life to him.". It was said as matter-of-factly as he might have described the plate of ham and eggs he had eaten for breakfast. I was stunned at the strange sounding words I had never heard before. Yet that bold witness led me later to make a similar decision which radically transformed my life.

"Tom told me later that he had prayed the night before our scheduled meeting. The answer he seemed to get was; 'Tell Chuck Colson about me; he needs a friend." This was not easy for Tom Phillipa. His natural reserve rebelled against any outward show of religiosity. He knew nothing about the inner hollowness in my own life that I had experienced since election night, 1972. I had disguised my torment well.

"Tom had carefully rehearsed what he would say. But the next day when I walked into his office, seemingly proud and confident, he suddenly felt timid, fearing that I might think him some sort of religious fanatic. He took several deep breaths and found an opportunity to make his statement of faith. When I failed to respond positively he was dismayed, convinced he had failed. "To this day I wonder what might have happened if Phillips at that critical moment had flinched and ignored what seemed to be God's clear call. Neither of us in our wildest dreams could have imagined what would follow from that one moment in the spring of 1973."

Phillips didn't try to cover the whole ground. He shared the hope he had found in his own life and God used that.

Shortly after the Second World War, a devastated city in England began its heartbreaking and wearing work of restoration. In the old city square had stood a large statue of Jesus Christ, with his hands outstretched in an attitude of invitation. On the pedestal were carved the words, "Come unto me." The statue was shattered by a bomb blast.

In the process of the restoration of the statue, with the aid of master artists and sculptors, the figure eventually was restored except for the hands, of which no fragments could be discovered anywhere in the surrounding rubble. Someone made the, suggestion that, since the former hands could not be found, the artists would have to fashion new hands.

There came a public protest, couched in the words, "No, leave Him without hands." So, today, in the public square of that English City, the restored statue of Christ stands without hands and on its base are carved the words, "Christ has no hands but our own."