A few years ago a large group of Vietnam veterans met in New York to commemorate the Vietnam War and its effects on their lives. Many were still suffering emotional wounds from that devastating conflict. A Vietnamese Buddhist monk came to the gathering and told a moving story.
During the war, a young Vietnamese woman was killed. She left behind her husband and her young son. The husband, needing to provide for himself and the boy, traveled far and wide looking for odd jobs. Often he left the child with neighbors. After one long trip looking for work, the man returned to find his village demolished and his neighbors gone. Searching thru the rubble, he found scattered about some small bones. He was sure that these were the remains of his beloved son. He wrapped the bones in cloth and carried them with him everywhere he went.
Many years passed, and one night the old man heard knocking on his door. He called out, "Who's there?"
"It is your son!" the voice outside replied. "My kidnappers set me free, and I have spent many years trying to find you!"
The old man yelled, "You are a fake and a cruel man. My son is dead. Leave me alone!" He would not open the door.
The pounding continued for a while, but then it stopped. The young man gave up and left.
The old man never found happiness. And he lost his son who was still living. Why? Because he was determined to hold on to the bones of the past.
Our message today is also a challenge: "Set Free in '93." That's my prayer for each of us.
This is the first Sunday of a new year--a great day for letting go of the bones of the past. Someone once said that God created us with eyes in the front of our heads so that when we tried to look back we would get a stiff neck. The possibilities of the future call us to look forward. The good news for us at the beginning of this new year is that God has set us free--free from the bones of the past. How does such freedom come? The Apostle Paul tells us.
First of all, we are set free when we realize that we have been chosen! Paul writes to the Ephesians, reminding them God has blessed them "with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world." God "destined us for adoption," Paul writes, "as his children through Jesus Christ."
The words "in Christ" appear 10 times in the book of Ephesians. "In Christ" we become children of God. In God's great realm there are no grandchildren, there are no stepchildren, there are no illegitimate children, because each of us is a child of God "in Christ"! We are set free. We are chosen. There is great freedom in a feeling of "chosenness."
I believe Fran Tarkenton is a man with a feeling of chosenness. Fran was for many years the scrambling quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings and before that the University of Georgia. He was one of the most prolific passers in NFL history.
The son of a minister, Tarkenton has always had a good sense of who he is. As one of his teammates on the Vikings once described him, he has "a stranglehold on reality." Since leaving professional football he has amassed a personal fortune of over $60 million.
In a recent interview, Tarkenton revealed for the first time how he became the starting quarterback in college.
The University of Georgia was playing the University of Texas.
Tarkenton was the 3rd-string quarterback on Georgia's team with no one predicting he would advance beyond that lowly position.
In this particular game Georgia was having a difficult time moving the ball. Indeed, late in the 3rd quarter they did not have a single first down. Now they were backed up near their own end zone. It was third down. Suddenly, this young 3rd-string quarterback started out onto the field.
No one had told him to go into the game. However, no one tried to stop him either. The first-string quarterback saw Tarkenton heading to the huddle and assumed that the coach had decided to replace him, so he trotted off the field. Tarkenton took charge, led the team down the field for a touchdown, and the rest is history, as they say. He was started on one of the most remarkable careers the sports world has ever seen.
Can you imagine a player on a major college team having the chutspah to step out onto a field under those kind of circumstances? That's confidence! That's a feeling of chosenness. You and I can operate with new confidence--new freedom--in this new year, because we, too, have been chosen by God.
We are set free, in the 2nd place, when we realize that our sins are forgiven! To encourage the Ephesians Paul wrote, "For by the sacrificial death of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven." (TEV) There are no deadlier bones to hold on to than the bones of guilt. The wrongs we have done often are a primary source of our feelings of unworthiness. In Christ, however, we are forgiven and given another chance.
The Apostle Paul serves as a powerful example. Paul wrote, "For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am." (I Cor. 15:9-10) Even though Paul once persecuted the church, thru the grace of God he was forgiven and given another chance. With his new life, Paul set forth proclaiming the message of salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike!
Country Western singer, Willie Nelson recalls his boyhood days attending a small Methodist church. "I was one of those kids who kept going down front when the preacher called for converts at the end of each sermon," Nelson wrote. "I'd see somebody next to me start to the front, and well, there I'd go again.
I joined the Methodist Church at least 30 times when I was a kid. Every time I'd do something bad, I'd go join the church again. I'd walk down to the front and renounce my sins and ask Jesus Christ to come into my heart. And all of a sudden I had a new slate in the eyes of the Church. Then I'd slip off and smoke a long strip of cedar bark rolled up in a newspaper--and suddenly I was back facing the fiery furnace again."
"Each time I went to the front and rededicated my life," Nelson wrote, "I wanted to leave my sins with God and walk away clean. I felt I shouldn't have gotten off so easy. I mean, the Church had let me off, but I hadn't let myself off." Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. We are set free in Christ. We are forgiven through Christ.
And finally, we are set free when we realize that we are not trapped by what has happened to us in the past. Many of us get stuck because we remember and relive old, painful memories. We get stuck and become paralyzed by old bones.
Last May, on Johnny Carson's very last program, he acknowledged the presence of his family in the audience. One of his sons had been killed in an automobile crash a year or so before. Johnny said, "Life does what it's supposed to do." Then he said something to the effect, "And then you move on." For some of us, last year was the worst year ever. Many people lost jobs, many were laid off, many found themselves having to cope with less income and more stress.
Others experienced death in their families which left them hurting and grieving. Whatever might have happened to us in the last year, the start of a new year is a time to free ourselves from the past and start over. NEW BEGINNINGS ARE POSSIBLE.
Richard Speight tells of one such new beginning. He was on a plane and took out a Bible to began working on a Sunday School lesson. This caught the attention of the man sitting next to him. However, Richard didn't want to engage in conversation. He had work to do. Then he noticed the man had a Bible of his own and decided to talk with him. The man was a new Christian who had a powerful story to tell.
Things had gone from bad to worse and then to unbearable, the stranger said of his life. At first it was a single drink to be sociable, then it was 2, then several. Before long, there was a bottle in the desk drawer to make the long afternoons more bearable.
"You wouldn't believe how much booze I could put down in a single day," he told his seatmate. "I would start with a juice glass full in the morning." Then he began to tell of his business going nowhere. He spent a lot of time trying to make his new business successful. Eventually his wife and children, in tears, left him. "All I wanted was my friend, the bottle," he said.
A business trip took him out of state one day. "I was drunk, driving a rental car," he said. I pulled up to an intersection. The cross street I was facing was a main highway." he remembered. He thought he had stopped, but in his drunken state he rolled thru the busy intersection and was hit broadside by a truck. "I was thrown out of that car with terrific force. My body skidded along the pavement; all of my clothes were torn off. I was bloody, raw, and battered, but I was alive."
He continued his moving story. "The next thing I remember was two medics standing over me." They thought he was dead and so did a policeman. "I watched him as he felt my pulse and listened for my heartbeat. He said I was dead, too." But they decided to take him to the hospital. He could not make a sound. "I prayed and prayed the whole time. I promised God that if He would help me get their attention, if He would help me get out of this, I would never touch another drop of alcohol again, and I would be His servant forever."
"The next thing I remember is sitting on a gurney in the emergency room, talking to the doctor. The medics and the policeman were still there. They were absolutely astounded!" He was not seriously injured. After he was cleaned up, he was released. He decided to get some rest, so he checked into a local motel. He bought a 6 pack of beer, opened a can and laid down in bed.
Flipping thru the channels, he encountered Billy Graham leading a crusade. "He was looking right at me, pointing a finger," the man recalled. "You have made promises to God today," Dr. Graham said, "that you haven't kept." This hit home. "I buried my head in my hands," he recalled, "and leaned over, almost touching the ground with my face. I had admitted my weakness to myself for the very first time."
In this time of struggle he discovered answers in the Bible. "The Holy Spirit came into my body and into my life," he said. The Spirit gave him the strength "to open those beer cans, one by one, and pour that beer out. That's the hardest thing a drunk can do," he testified, "I couldn't. The Holy Spirit did it for me."
This was a time of new beginning. He was set free from the bones of the past. We, too, can be set free. We have been chosen. We have been forgiven. We are set free in '99!
