4 After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. 3 And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, 6 and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.
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I can be talked into a number of
things. If you suggest something and it
sounds like it might be fun, I’m usually pretty willing to try it, even if I
have no prior experience or no idea how such a thing might get done. This is how I was convinced to be a
cheerleader my senior year of high school.
I believe the exact sentence was, “Keith, come and be a cheerleader with
me.” I didn’t put up much resistance.
In a similar vein, a good friend
convinced me to run the Chicago marathon with her my senior year of
college. It didn’t take much convincing,
but I’ll admit that I was a bit nervous about running that marathon. The idea of running a race that would take 30
minutes to drive has always been intimidating to me. I went running last Friday and it felt like I
had ran for about 30 minutes. Sure
enough, I had been running for an entire 12 minutes. Olympics, here I come.
So I set out to train for the
Chicago marathon over the summer. How
does one go about training for a marathon?
How would you prepare to run for 4 hours? You run.
A lot. It’s not much fun,
either. By the end of the summer, I had
upped my distance to about 12 miles.
Otherwise known as about half of a marathon. I was running a lot, and yet I wasn’t even
close to my goal. The only way to get
there, though, was to run even more.
How does the story end? With a glorious finish of a great race? Nope.
I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t have survived the race, but it
worked out ok, since I tore my knee up and needed surgery anyway. I’ve never been so happy to tear
cartilage.
The moral of the story: don’t run marathons. It’s a race that killed the first guy that
ran it. It’s just not a good way to
start a tradition.
The second, and more important
moral?
The only way to become good at
something is to practice it.
Want to be a better runner? You need to run.
Want to be a good cook? Spend time in the kitchen.
Want to be a great writer? Write constantly.
Want to be a great parent? Spend lots of time with your kids.
We could go on and on and on, but
it holds true for anything—if you want to be very good at something, you
practice it over and over and over and over.
If you know you have something ahead of you, it would be wise to invest
your time practicing for that event.
The reason for this discussion on a
sermon about why we give?
Because we have heaven in front of
us. And if heaven is going to be
eternity caught up in the essence of God, we should do everything we can to
prepare ourselves for that. Which means
that we need to be thinking about what kind of traits God has. Who is God, at his very essence?
I believe that God, at the core, is
a generous giver.
Why do I believe that?
Well, let’s read this scene from Revelation
4.
After
this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice,
which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I
will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the Spirit,
and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. 3 And he
who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne
was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. 4 Around the throne were
twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed
in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 From the throne came
flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne
were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, 6 and
before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.
Now, does that sound like a picture
where anything is lacking? Does that
sound like a scene where, if you were in the middle of it, you’d feel
empty? You could get used to this,
right? You wouldn’t feel compelled to
add anything, would you?
But God wanted to include others in
this. He wanted to include us. He didn’t need us. He didn’t need to create anything. God wasn’t bored. But God is so generous that he decided to create
humans and then invite them into this amazing reality.
So God creates an entire universe
out of love, freely, and then creates humans in his own image. Guess what the humans do?
They turned their back on God. Treated God like God was nothing.
What does God do? Does God retreat to the perfection of
heaven? Does God turn his back on his
ungrateful creation?
He does the opposite. He continues to reach out to us in love, he
continues to send prophets and messengers to call his people back. He longs for his people to live in communion
with him, and he’ll do anything he can.
Even send his own son to die on a
cross to redeem the people. There is no
expense too great for God to stand between him and his creation.
All of this is done as a free
gift. We haven’t earned it. We don’t deserve it. When we were dead, God gave us life. When we were mired in despair, God gave us
hope. When we deserve to end our lives
at the grave, God builds a bridge and invites us into this throne scene that
John depicts in Revelation 4. We are
given a scene in the midst of this! God
has freely prepared a place for us in this room!
It’s all a free gift from a
generous God. It’s an amazing, wondrous
gift. Freely given.
So that’s the type of God we
worship. I believe that this God, the Trinitarian
God who dwells in eternal perfection, is a generous God, constantly giving to
us. The very essence of the Trinity is
generous—God is constantly pointing to Jesus—This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased—who is constantly
pointing back to God—that they will see
your works and give glory to my Father in heaven—and the Holy Spirit is
pointing others at God. It’s a big
circle of selfless love.
And we’re going to be invited into
the midst of that.
So how do we prepare to be
swallowed up in the generous love of God?
We live generously. In order to prepare for the eternal
generosity that is before us, we ought to live with generous hearts. Our giving here on earth prepares us for the
reality of heaven. God has given freely
to us, and so we ought to give freely to others.
Friends, God has given freely and
generously to you. The life that beats
within your chest? It’s a gift. The last breath you took? A gift.
Your ability to work? Gift. Family, friends and other loved ones? Gift.
Hope beyond death? A gift. Salvation from sin? Gift.
It’s all a gift, freely given. When we give, we imitate Christ, who
selflessly gave everything, to the point of death on a cross. When we give, we are at our best, living
closest to the image of God in which we were created. When we give, we are reminded that it is all
a gift, that it is not ours, that our purpose is not to hoard but to glorify
God. We use our gifts to direct praise
to God, to affirm that all that we have is not our own, that all people are in
this together, to affirm the common good within one another.
To whom much has been given, Jesus
says, much is required. Let us give
freely, for we have freely given entrance into the throne room. May we spend our time here on earth
preparing.
Let us pray
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