Retrieving Luggage from a Burning Plane

I used this illustration in yesterday’s sermon.  It comes from the story of the Emirates Airline plane crash in Dubai on August 3 of this year.  The plane crashed while trying to land, catching fire and burning off its roof.  Tragically, one firefighter died, although, in His mercy, God spared all 300 passengers and crew.  Here’s the link to the story, including a video that was taken on board the plane while people were trying to escape:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36963112

The most shocking and scary thing in this video is people halting their escape, in order to retrieve luggage from overhead compartments.  Not only that, in their delay they are hindering the escape of other people!  My passage yesterday was Matthew 24:15-35, where Jesus speaks of the coming destruction of Jerusalem (in 70 AD), as well as the tribulation that is still in our future.  In that passage, He tells people to focus on what is most important.  At the moment of danger, instead of going back into your house to get material things, RUN.  Save your life.  The message and application for us is clear: value your life and your soul over the things of this world.  Don’t remain in the burning plane to get things that don’t matter!

The plane analogy can be taken a bit further, as well, to demonstrate our evangelistic mandate.  On a plane, if you sit on the exit row, you are taking responsibility for saving the lives of those around you.  You know the way out, and by sitting there you are committing to point people to that way.  As Christians, we are sitting on the exit row!  We know the only Way out of judgment (John 14:6) – through the mercy found in Christ’s cross.  Value your soul above anything in this world, as well as the souls of others around you.  Help them to find Jesus, Who is the only Way out of the fire of judgment.

This illustration could be used for any passage that deals with materialism, setting our minds on things above (Colossians 3), or evangelism.

 

Tags: Matthew 24, Matthew 28, John 14, 2 Corinthians 5, Colossians 3, Jude 22-23, Evangelism, Priorities, Materialism

Jekyll and Hyde

John Stott in The Cross of Christ:

“There is, therefore, a great need for discernment in our self-understanding.  Who am I?  What is my ‘self’?  The answer is that I am a Jekyll and Hyde, a mixed-up kid, having both dignity, because I was created and have been re-created in the image of God, and depravity, because I still have a fallen and rebellious nature.  I am both noble and ignoble, beautiful and ugly, good and bad, upright and twisted, image and child of God, and yet sometimes yielding obsequious homage to the devil from whose clutches Christ has rescued me.  My true self is what I am by creation, which Christ came to redeem, and by calling.  My false self is what I am by the Fall, which Christ came to destroy.  Only when we have discerned which is which within us, shall we know what attitude to adopt towards each.  We must be true to our true self and false to our false self.  We must be fearless in affirming all that we are by creation, redemption and calling, and ruthless in disowning all that we are by the Fall.  Moreover, the cross of Christ teaches us both attitudes.  On the one hand, the cross is the God-given measure of the value of our true self, since Christ loved us and died for us.  On the other hand, it is the God-given model for the denial of our false self, since we are to nail it to the cross and so put it to death.  Or, more simply, standing before the cross we see simultaneously our worth and our unworthiness, since we perceive both the greatness of His love in dying, and the greatness of our sin in causing Him to die” (285).

Several parts of this quote would be great for use in sermons on the battle between the Spirit and the flesh, as well as the image of God, or the new creation we are in Christ.  Or, you could take Stott’s use of the story of Jekyll and Hyde and run with that.

Tags: Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Jeremiah 31, Romans 6 (especially verse 4), Romans 7, Romans 13, Galatians 5, Ephesians 2, Ephesians 4, 2 Corinthians 5, Hebrews 8

Getting to the Root of the Problem

My Honda Pilot’s map light went out, and you don’t realize how much you use those until they die.  I didn’t know how to change the bulb, so next time I went in for some other maintenance work, I asked the service representative to have it fixed.  He comes back a little bit later and tells me that it is not a bulb problem; instead, the socket itself has a short and needs to be replaced.  It would’ve been over $1oo and I was already having some other expensive work done, so, needless to say, my map light is STILL out.

I could have replaced bulbs in that map light 100 times, but until I got down to the real problem, the map light would not have worked.  The bulbs not lighting up was just a symptom of a deeper problem.  We try a lot of things to give us happiness, forgiveness, peace, and fulfillment, but nothing is going to work until we get past the symptoms and deal with the ROOT of the problem.  Only the gospel of Jesus Christ does that.  The Holy Spirit has to come in and rip out that old nature (like the shorted-out socket) and put in a whole new nature.

This could work with Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, 2 Corinthians 5 (especially verse 17), Hebrews 8, and a lot of other passages dealing with sin, regeneration, and the gospel.