Lord, Remember Me

Humility: the place of history, fluctuation: the place of the leader, politicization: the place of the prophet, which is proclamation: that's what we are called to do. And I want to point out three things to you, very quickly, before I move to the final thought here. There is a cost in preparing, and the cost goes way beyond ourselves. I often wonder, even when my mother didn't know Christ, how much time she actually spent on her knees asking God to intervene in my life. I think of Hannah going to the temple and using the words, "God, remember me, remember me". You go through the Bible and look at the "Remember mes" and you'll find how crucial they are.

Samson, when he walked away from God, walks into public and says "Lord, remember me". The thief on the cross about to die, Lord, remember me. And here's Hannah saying, "Please remember me". And God blessed her with that son, Samuel. Hannah was behind it. Susanna Wesley was behind John Wesley. History tells us little. Eternity will tell us wherein lay the real powers before the anointing and the calling of people, people whose names we will never know, who prayed and who called upon God, and who coveted God's work on an individual's life.

I want to talk to you, three things very quickly on the calling of a prophet. Number one is the cost. The cost. When I look at some of my younger colleagues, sometimes I really feel like shedding a tear for them as I say to myself do they really know what all could lie ahead? It's great when you start out and it's wonderful. Cost of it, the expression of it, you can't have duplicity, you can't have distortion, you can't have deception, you cannot preach yourself, that's Paul's 2 Corinthians 4. And I'll move on. And you have to see the unseen and the chariots of fire that God is going to provide for you wherever you go. The place of the miracle: affirmation. History: fluctuation. Leadership: politicization. Prophetic voice: proclamation. Place of the miracle, affirmation.

I have so much to tell you here, but this is a sermon all in itself, the place of the miracle. But I won't go into details: I've got two pages of scientific facts here that I want to give to you. I'll leave it all out for now. Maybe it will be a talk for Wheaton or something, when I'm with you, Stuart. But I want to conclude in the miracle section with just this: when you look at the full laws of nature as they talk about it, you've got the law of gravity, you've got electromagnetism, you've got the strong and the weak nuclear forces, and you take those and multiply them into all the contingencies that need to be exact and precise of such extraordinary magnitude that scientists themselves will tell you, those who think water into wine is tough, this is ten time tougher.

They believe in a miracle. Listen, for example, to what it is that sir Frederick Hoyle talked about in protein formation. He says this, "It is an outrageously small possibility", he goes on to say that he calculated the odds that all the functional proteins necessary for life might form in one place by random events, and he and Chandra Wickramasinghe, who is a professor of mathematics from Cardigan Wales, professor Hoyle, at that time, in Cambridge of astronomy, they calculated the odds of this happening in a random setting is greater than 1 in 10th to the 40.000th power. That means one followed by forty thousand zeroes.

And then he goes on to say this, "Since there are only 10th to the 80th power atoms in the entire universe", here's what Frederick Hoyle says, "It is an outrageously small probability that simply cannot be faced, even if the whole universe at its beginning consisted of merely organic soup". Then he goes on to say this, and I quote, "Life could not have originated here on earth". Did you hear what he's saying? It could not have originated here on earth. Nor does it look as though biological evolution can be explained from within an earthbound theory of life. Genes from outside the earth are needed to drive the evolutionary process, this much can be consolidated by strictly scientific means by experiment, by observation, and calculation.

What is he saying? The panspermia theory: seeds had to be brought from another planet in order to make it possible for earth to breed life. That's what he went with. That's what he went with. And then you listen to this comment here, Steven Hawking, "Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that we collapse from those that go on expanding forever. So that even now ten thousand million years later", (that's U.S. 10 billion), "It is still expanding nearly at the precise critical rate. If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a thousand, million, million", (that's a U.S. Quintillion, by the way), "If it had changed one second after the big bang by even a smaller part than one in a quintillion, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached the present state".

And then he makes this comment, "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations, that's all it is. My question," says he, "What is it that breaths fire into the equations and makes a universe for then us to describe. The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer these questions of why this should be a universe for the model that we have to describe, and why the universe goes to all the bother of existing". So Francis Crick comes in and says this, "An honest man with all the knowledge available to us now could only state that in some sense the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle. So many other conditions which would have to have been so strictly followed".

I want to leave you with this application and then close my final thought here. And it is this: a miracle, I believe that the average naturalist doesn't go with the miracle because he doesn't like where it's going to lead him. If they would observe the simple sublimity of life... You know, I've become a grandfather in the last year, and you take a tiny little baby in your arms and you actually see them very differently to, even in a way you saw your own children, and I have a theory on that. But you see this tiny little one, and you watch the crawling start, the attempt to walk, the laughter, the smile, the tears, the names, the reaching out of the arms.

And, you know, when you're married as long as I have been married, my wife knows everything I'm going to say. And I've noticed of late, whenever I think I've come up with anything profound, and I want to back up and smile and think that was a great thought, she'll say, "Well, it's not just that," and then she'll come up with something else. So I call it that "Not just that" moment. But recently I gave her my theory of why grandchildren are seen the way they are. I said, you know, when you're a parent you're expending so much of energy just taking care of them, and if you have an X amount of energy locked up within you, it's all expanded in just giving and taking care and sleepless nights, and all of that, you don't have a chance just to sit back and marvel at all of this grandeur until you are in your old years and then came the "Yeah, but not just that".

I said here it comes. And this is not just one of those "Not just that's" and I think it was very well done: I have to admit it in public. She said to me it's not just that, I think. She said, you know, maybe when we're older we know what really lies ahead in life, and your heart reaches out with this sense of joy, but also a little bit of apprehension of what may lie ahead of them. The world knows this. The world knows this. And the ultimate battle is between good the evil. If the battle is ultimately between good and evil, then let me end by saying to you, what is the answer?

A rock musician said, "Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door? There's a thousand, million questions about hate and death and war. Because when we stop and look around us, there's nothing that we need in a world of persecution that is whirling in its greed. Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door"? And then he says this, "I'm looking for a miracle in my life. I'm looking for someone to change my life".

The rock musician says that. Why do we never get an answer? I'm looking for a miracle. That's the greatest miracle you and I can witness and spread to the world: that God can change the heart of a person bent towards wickedness and evil, and transform that individual for good and the glory of God: that's why this ministry exists.

I will close by giving you this simple little illustration and closing it with a piece of poetry. Please follow me, I want to pull it all together now. I know we wandered a lot in a place of politics, place of history, the place of the prophet, and the place of now, we come, rightly, ultimately, in the miracle, and now to the place of the message. When I arrived at Angola prison, just as soon as I got off my plane, turned my blackberry on, there was a message from Nancy, she's on our staff. Nancy, as you know, has been with me for about 27, 28 years. She said, "Ravi, a lady just got on our website and found out that you're going to be in Angola prison, and her son Melvin is in prison. She's hoping and praying you might be able to see him".

So as soon as I got into the car I talked to the chaplain, I said here's a name and here's a number, is there any way I can see this young man before I left, and I left it with him. The day went and I never heard anything. And then we come to the moment when I'm about to speak, and as we're about to speak, this guy walks in. But let me back up to two scenes before that. The one scene is I'm speaking to 90 students who are studying theology in the prison: they are never going to get out, but they're studying to become pastors to the prisoners. In that prison today no profanity's allowed by staff or inmate. The place has been cleaned up by this Godly man who had a passion to come and make a difference and become one of the safest prisons in the country. And they've got a theological institution, 90 students enrolled.

And as I'd finished speaking, one young man came up to me and he said, "I want to thank you". He said your books, and this and that, we were talking. I said, "Are you here for life"? He said, "Yes, sir". I said, "How do you cope"? He said, "The only thing that really makes me uncomfortable, two things," he said. He said, "I used to belong to a cult," and he names the cult, and he says, "And the other thing is Sunday morning when I watch the prosperity Gospel people on television and I say to myself look at the lies. The prisoners here are never going to get out of here, and they're giving them all kinds of false hope".

He said, "It really bothers me". He said, "But the thing that bothers me most is not that I'm in here for my life sentence, I can live because I've now found Jesus Christ in my life, but my parents are still locked up in this cult and I'm wishing desperately somebody will take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them". That evening he was in the musical group singing before I spoke, and then when I went to the death row place and about the place of execution, I saw two paintings on the wall. One painting on the wall was Daniel in the lion's den, to intimate to the person about to be executed as he's kneeling, that you can still be rescued, maybe, and you pray. But if you're not rescued you look at the other wall and there's a chariot of fire taking Elijah up into the heavens, if you're not rescued this way, you'll be rescued that way: painted by the prisoners.

The evening begins and a man, I'm about to speak and a man comes hat in hand like this, and the chaplain comes and says this is Melvin. He says, "How are you, sir"? I said, "You're Melvin"? He said, "Yes". I said, "Please sit down". He said, "I can't, I should sit in the back". I said, "No, you sit down here. The warden is here, it's okay". He said, "Are you sure"? I said, "Yeah". Sat down like this and I said, "Melvin, I got a letter from your mother. She's praying for you. She's hurting over what's happened to you". And his eyes lifted, and he's going like this.

I finished preaching, gave the invitation, several came forward, I walked back to Melvin, he's standing there hat in hand, I put my hand on his shoulders, I said, "Do you have a Bible"? He said, "Yes". "In your room"? He said, "Yes". I said, "Do you read it"? He said, "No, sir". I said, "I hear you used to go to church. One time you said you believed all this". He said, "Yes, sir". I said, "Why aren't you reading it now"? He said, "I don't know". I said, "Are you please with what brought you here"? We chatted. At the end of it, as his tears rolled down the face, I had the privilege of leading him to Jesus Christ.

You should see the letter his mother wrote to us afterwards. She said I just jumped into the air when I heard this and found out what's happened to my boy at Angola prison.

I've often talked to my team, and I say this to them again as I say it to myself, if in any one moment any one of us thinks we're the cat's whiskers, and thinks we've got all the intellect going and all the education going, and we're some pretty big deal, that's iron at the core beginning to bring about your implosion.

Humility is the Hallmark, it is the Hallmark of a great leader, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant.

Humility is the Hallmark, it is the Hallmark of a great leader, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant.

That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.

-Ravi Zacharias (The Skeptic's View VI)