Heroes of Failure

Tony Khalil

Midland SDA Church

April 2, 2016

Twenty three years ago, I graduated from Andrews University.  If you are a Seventh - day Adventist in the state of Michigan, It’s a pretty good bet that you are at least somewhat familiar with this institution.  During the summers while I was a student, I worked with a Catholic friend in my home town of Grosse Pointe who would often refer to my school as St. Andrews.  I don’t recall if I ever corrected him or not, but it was a somewhat understandable mistake.  After all, he knew it was a Christian University; it's not that big of a leap to assume the Andrew in Andrews is in reference to the disciple of Christ we read about in the Gospels. 

If you did not know it previously, you learned a month ago from David's Sermon titled "The Rescuers" that Andrews University was in fact named after the early Adventist pioneer J.N. Andrews.  David gave a brief synopsis of Brother Andrews’s life and accomplishments including his leadership in the church, the influence of his teachings and writings on the formation of Adventist doctrine, his remarkable intellect,  the grief he experienced in losing both his wife and daughter to premature death, and his work as our first official overseas missionary.  From a human perspective his story is a bit of a sad one, a man with so much promise, dying an early death from a painful disease.  You might say "well, in spite of his shortened life and great grief, he had the satisfaction of accomplishing a great deal for the Lords work."  But on July 22, 1883 just three months before he would breathe his last breath, on his birthday, he penned these words in his Diary.  "Today I enter my 55th year.  My life seems wholly filled with faults.  I pray that I may be thoroughly cleansed in the blood of Christ."  Then on September 7 of the same year while speaking with his sister-in-law Martha he said.  "I have reached a point which I compare with a vessel nearing port.  It is no longer in mid-ocean, open to the fury of the storms.  The cliffs of the shore keep off the winds, the sea has become quite, the waves vanish, the calm appears.  Martha, my life has been a total failure.  There is not one among those who have endeavored to spread the truth who has failed as I have.  Nearly all my efforts for the advancement of the truth have come short, and what I have done has not borne the fruit I expected.  May God forgive me.”  Do these strike you as strange words coming from the lips of perhaps one of the most influential men in the shaping of the early advent belief?       

There is a chapter in the New Testament that is often referred to as the faith chapter.  Can someone tell me which book and chapter this is?  (Hebrews 11)  That's right, and in this chapter the author recites a list of old testament figures that demonstrated great faith.  This list is sometimes referred to as the heroes of faith.  The list is quite diverse containing individuals from Enoch to Rahab the Harlot.  Although the inclusion of Rahab tends to get much scrutiny, she is not the only one listed that had moral failures in their lives.  Turn with me if you would to Genesis 9:20-27...

²⁰ And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a      vineyard. ²¹ Then he drank of the wine and          was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent.²² And Ham, the father of Canaan,          saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers           outside. ²³ But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both   their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness     of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not      see their father’s nakedness.

            ²⁴ So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son   had done to him. ²⁵ Then he said:

                   “Cursed be Canaan;
                   A servant of servants
                   He shall be to his brethren.”

                        ²⁶ And he said:

                   “Blessed be the Lord,
                   The God of Shem,
                   And may Canaan be his servant.
                        ²⁷ May God enlarge Japheth,
                   And may he dwell in the tents of Shem;
                   And may Canaan be his servant.”

So here is the scene.  This is after the flood, so Noah is at least 600 years old at this time.  He brews up some wine, drinks enough of it to get intoxicated to the point he removes his clothing and falls asleep drunk and naked right in the middle of his tent.  Then failing to accept responsibility for his intemperance, he curses his grandson after learning that his own son had seen him in such a state.  Certainly not one of Noah’s finer moments.  An what about the ineffectiveness of his preaching.  This brother preached for 120 years without a single baptism.  Do you think Noah might have felt like he had failed. 

What about Abraham?  Let's turn to Genesis 16: 1-4...

16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And        she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. ² So       Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from         bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall           obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of           Sarai. ³ Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the           Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife,       after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. ⁴ So he          went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she       had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.

We are all familiar with this story.  A failure of faith in the life of Abraham.  God had promised him descendants that would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens, but he did not trust God enough to wait on his timing and created a contention between his offspring that lasts to our day. 

Continuing on down the lineage of Abraham, we find his grandson Jacob.  Flip over to Genesis 27: 15-20...

            ¹⁵ Then Rebekah took the choice clothes of her elder son Esau,       which were with her in the    house, and put them on Jacob her        younger son.¹⁶ And she put the skins of the kids of the goats on         his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. ¹⁷ Then she gave         the savory food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the      hand of her son Jacob.

            ¹⁸ So he went to his father and said, “My father.”

          And he said, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?”

            ¹⁹ Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn; I have           done just as you told me; please     arise, sit and eat of my game,       that your soul may bless me.”

            ²⁰ But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so      quickly, my son?”

          And he said, “Because the Lord your God brought it to me.”

Jacob, along with his mother Rebecca, scheme to deceive his blind father into giving him the firstborn blessing, thus robbing his brother.  Not only does he lie to Isaac but he drags God into his lie in attempt to add legitimacy to his story. 

And then there is Moses, a man so holy that God did not leave him in the grave.  Moses was however not without his moments of faithlessness.  He murdered a man and tried to hide the evidence.  He openly disobeyed God by striking the rock rather than speaking to it as God had instructed him which lead to God withholding the promised land from him.  And there are other moments of frustration in the life of Moses that caused him to falter.  Turn with me to Numbers 11: 10-15...

¹⁰ Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their      families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of         the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased. ¹¹ So    Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You afflicted Your servant?    And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me? ¹² Did I conceive all these   people? Did I beget them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them        in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,’ to the land      which You swore to their fathers? ¹³ Where am I to get meat to   give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, ‘Give     us meat, that we may eat.’ ¹⁴ I am not able to bear all these people       alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. ¹⁵ If You treat me         like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in      Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness!”

Is it just me, or did that sort of sound like Moses was telling off God?  He was certainly feeling overwhelmed and at the point of failure. 

The scriptures are full of stories of the failures of God's Faithful.  Have you ever felt like a failure?  Have you ever looked at certain events in your life story or at your life in its entirety and felt discouragement and hopelessness?  Does it seem like you fall time and time again evaded by victory once more?  You are not alone.  Failure is unfortunately part of being human in a fallen world.  It is not unique to you or me and we don't need to be conquered by it.  There is a song about this aspect of the human condition that speaks to me and gives me hope in my times of discouragement.  The title of the song is Coming Home and it uses metaphor to convey ideas that harmonize with today’s message.  Allow me to quote some of the lyric from the first verse of this song.  "You say you want a living sacrifice, well I am a burnt offering, crawling off the altar and back into the fire."  Right from the start, we see the contradiction.  God wants a living sacrifice, but that is not what we are.  Yet we attempt to follow his will by crawling off the altar only to return to the fire, Failure!  Next line..."And with smoke filled lungs I cry out for freedom, while locking and chaining myself to my rotting desires” Here is the struggle, we all fight against the old man of sin within us.  Paul says it this way in Romans 7:15-20...

¹⁵ For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to       do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. ¹⁶ If, then, I        do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. ¹⁷ But        now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. ¹⁸ For I    know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to          will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not           find. ¹⁹ For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I        will not to do, that I practice. ²⁰ Now if I do what I will not to          do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Sound familiar?  Back to the lyric.  "And I hate the stench but I swallow the key, and with it stuck in my throat can you hear me."  There is a struggle going on here.  On one hand, we are locking ourselves to our sin and swallowing the key, but while it is yet in our throat we are calling out to God.  Pathetic, isn't it.  But who sitting here today cannot at some level identify with this scenario?  If this was the end of the song, or worse yet, the end of our story, we would be left hopeless and depressed, but in the chorus we begin to see a ray of light in the words...."I'm coming home, I’m coming home, but I'm still a long way off."  Perhaps my favorite part of this song is the refrain because of the image it evokes, reminiscent of the return of the prodigal son in Jesus parable with the questioning..."Will you run to me?  Will you come to me?  Will you meet me?  Will you greet me?  Will you drag me home cuz I'm still a long way off."  The answer to all of these questions is yes, of course he will.  God is there waiting for us to return to Him.  He longs to give us help.  He wants nothing more than to give us victory over the things that separate us from him.  I believe he will even drag us home if we ask him to do so.  The truth is we are a long way off.  We are so far off, it is a human impossibility to close the chasm between God and us, but God is not limited by human impossibility and he is the only one that can close the gap between us. 

The Battle is real and we will have failures.  Accompanying each stumble or misstep is the enemy, doing his best to discourage us, telling us that we are hopeless, and he’s partly right.  We are hopeless in our own strength.  But our God will meet us and make up the difference where we fall short, which not surprisingly is in every way.  It is not likely we will ever feel like we have arrived, but do not be dismayed.  Do not give up the fight.  We don’t finish the race alone.  He comes to us, He runs to us, and He takes us home. 

In Titus 3:3, which was part of our scripture reading today, Paul once again describes our sad state of being as…

“foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and        pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one       another.”

Amazingly, amid all of this God draws closer to us, His great love for us is not altered by our great sinfulness.  Right in the depth of our shame we read the next verses 4, 5, &6…

⁴ But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward       man appeared, ⁵ not by works of righteousness which we have        done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the      washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom     He poured out on us   abundantly through Jesus Christ our           Savior,

It is in this hopeless condition of sinfulness that He saves us. 

Ty Gibson in his book In The Light of God’s Love, tells a story of a woman that attended a series of meetings that he was holding.  During a conversation with her one night after the meeting, she shared her great discouragement.  Apparently she had been told that if a person is truly converted, all sin has been removed from their heart, and the true Christian will not sin as long as he remains born again.  If you do sin, that means you never really were a Christian, or you are no longer converted because a converted person does not sin.  You can imagine how utterly discouraging this message was to her, it overwhelmed her with despair.   She recounted that she thought that she loved Jesus and that He accepted her, but after hearing this, she was certain that she had never really been converted.  Ty responded with a series of questions and their conversation went like this…

Ty:  “Do you love Jesus with all your heart?”

Woman:  “Yes… well I thought I did, but…”

Ty:  “Save your but’s” he stopped her “Do you love Jesus?

Woman:  “Yes I do” she said with tears forming in her eyes.

Ty:  “Why do you love him?”

Woman: “Because he died for me”

Ty:  “Did you invite Him into your heart as savior and into your life as     Lord?”

Woman:  “Yes…but”

Ty:  “No but’s.  Did you?”

Woman:  “Yes”

Ty:  “Then you are truly a born again Christian.”

Woman:  “But I have sinned since I gave my heart to Jesus.  Not only       have I sinned, I have been painfully aware of defects in my character that I know God must not like.  Doesn’t that prove that         I’m really not a Christian?”

Ty:  “Do you long to please Jesus and hate it when you fail?”

Woman:  “Yes I love Him and it so grieves me when I fail.”

Ty:    “You are a true Christian if I’ve ever met one.”  He assured her         “and if what you had been told is    true, I’ve never met a true     Christian.”

All of us stumble and fall, we all have failures.  1 John 1:8 tells us…

          If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth    is not in us.

You may say that Jude 24 tells us He is able to keep us from stumbling, and you would be correct, His power is sufficient to keep us from falling, but the fact that we fail is not evidence that His power is inadequate, rather it’s an indication we have allowed our weakness to prevail.

We must keep in mind that it is Satan’s plan that we focus on our failures and doubt our Christian experience.  He wants us to wander in the darkness of discouragement and he does his best to disconnect us from our savior by “Stealing our Faith” and “Crushing us with Dispair”.  So how do we go forward without giving up?  Turn with me to 1 John 2: 1, 2

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not   sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father,         Jesus Christ the righteous. ² And He Himself is the        propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the    whole world.

We find two fundamental truths in this passage.  Simply stated, God’s empowering Grace is able to keep us from falling into sin, and his pardoning Grace is there to pick us up when we fail. 

Many of the thoughts I just shared were borrowed from the book I previously referenced.  I would like now to read a segment on true conversion directly from pages 74 & 75 of the chapter entitled, “When I Fail” 

True conversion is a radical change of heart, of motive, of direction.  However, the born again believer is not made miraculously sinless.  There are defects of character and weaknesses of the flesh with which he must do battle in the strength of his new faith.  As he fights the good fight of faith, he is likely to get knocked down on occasion.  His failures will not be willful or intentional, for he loves his Lord and longs to please him in all things.  The steady direction of his new life will be onward and upward.  He will sincerely grieve over his mistakes and get up and go forward. “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again” (Proverbs 24:16)

Our standing of justification in Christ is not revoked every time we err.  “For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)  When the genuine desire of the heart is to please and honor God, and faithful efforts are put forth to this end, the Lord Jesus looks on this heart-attitude as the best we can offer.  He makes up for our deficiencies with the merits of his own righteousness.  In moments of failure He does not disclaim us as his children.  At such times He draws all the closer     to persuade us of his unbroken acceptance and deliver us from the clutches of despair.  In the words of King David (Psalm 37: 23, 24)

          The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord,
          And He delights in his way.
            ²⁴ Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down;
          For the Lord upholds him with His hand.

          Jeremiah proclaimed, “His compassions fail not.  They are new      every morning” (Lamentations     3: 22, 23)

Earlier I shared some quotes of Brother Andrews as he was nearing the end of his life.  They were words of discouragement, words of questioning, words of faltering faith.  I would like to end with a couple more Andrews quotes.  These are later ones, right before his death.  As he lay on his death bed he said..."  God is holding my hand, Although going down the stream, my feet have not lost the bottom.  They are still resting firmly upon the Rock of Ages.  It seems to me that I cannot stop repeating, The Lord is good, the Lord is good; oh, what goodness, what goodness, what goodness!"  Then later while lying in his bed, moaning he said ..."The pain intensifies, Intensifies, O God!  Have mercy on me in this my extremity!  Then with his voice rising gradually into a triumphant shout he said "I am satisfied, satisfied, SATISFIED with the Christian religion!"  And recited the scripture "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death; I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."

Brothers and sisters, We are living in a sinful world, and we are not untainted by it.  But praise be to God that our salvation is not dependent on our own strength.  We all have failed, and going forth the struggle will be ongoing, but by the merits of Christ’s sacrifice, we can find power to resist temptation and forgiveness when we fail.  Don’t give up, he will not give up on you.