The Broad and Narrow Way.

May 1st Message at Craigieburn Salvos: ( if you are interested)

In Johns gospel, the sequence of writing is interesting, in the order of events recorded.

Just before the account of the Easter story,  we read of Jesus teaching his disciples about how to keep a fruitful life, and a healthy fruitful church. I don’t know about what you want for your life, but  I can honestly tell you, that for my life I am wanting a fruitful life and not the opposite to that, which is barrenness…

I want to achieve something with my life,

I want purpose

I want results… fruit …

What about you…do you want to live a fruitful life ?  or do you want to achieve nothingness  ?

John 15 : Jesus tell us clearly what must be done in our lives and in our church to make it fruitful, and what must be done to keep it fruitful year after year…. And what must be done to get rid of the bad stuff…

I think we can, and actually we are, learning from this and you will see some tweaking of church process here in the coming weeks and months, so that we may become more fruitful.

It’s interesting to me that just after this account in scripture, Jesus prays for Himself, and  for His church, his followers and then the whole world…

Shortly after He is killed off… and the Christian story unfolds to this day in which we live.

There are a few verses I feel compelled to just mention today, and I will in just a moment after I  talk to you about our journey.

The Journey:

We are all on a journey, our destination is the same, every one of us will face God, one way or the other… but we are all on different stages of the journey and at different levels of understanding.

Some have turned their back on the destination and have chosen a different destination than heaven and all that is required to get there.

For me I find it hard to understand why anyone who has ever had a good view of Jesus and His plan and the reward that He offers all people, would simply say or decide that Nah..  don’t want that,

I get It that the world and sin is attractive……..

I understand that booze numbs the senses and makes you feel good, relaxes you… for a moment or so…

I get it that drugs do that too..

That normal red blooded males love to look at  a sexy woman..

I understand the temptations of this earth, I am human just like you are…

BUT if we have decided to follow Jesus, we have also decided to turn our backs to these things of this earth and set our focus on heaven and  our journey path changes.

You can’t have it both ways…  but many Christians try…and that’s why they are weak and powerless and lack in commitment and fervour, for they are simply trying to walk on two paths at the same time…and gradually as the paths separate, and your legs get wider apart you realise you will need to decide on one path or the other..

And the journey continues either one way or the other….

Staying true and committed on the journey towards heaven, requires sacrifice….

It requires a commitment to the goal..

The journey is hard because it is laced with pressure to give up and go the easy way  all the time voices are yelling,

come over here it feels good here…

one drink won’t hurt you,

one look won’t matter,

one taste…you can repent tomorrow…

and before you know it, 

that one drink,

 that one taste,

 that one look has led you onto a path that takes you away from your journey to Christ and His heaven, that one day in your life you said you would give your whole life to..

some people have preached the truth… and now don’t live it.

Have taught the truth and now live in absence of it…

Some sung one day on a stage just like this one about it, and now have completely lost the song…

And the journey continues….

But what now is the destination ?

This very old picture from my dad’s treasures…..  (google "the broad and narrow way" picture and you will see this image, see its history on google.

Matthew 7:13-14   (on screen)

The journey continues for everyone…everyone is on a journey somewhere…its just that the destination isn’t always the same…

It’s our choices that determine our destination.

So let’s get back to Jesus and hear what He says to us all today…

John 15:1-14.

John 16: 1

It’s so easy for us to go astray….

Its harder to acknowledge that…

It takes humility… to admit that we have made a mistake and gotten ourselves on the wrong path, I guess that’s why its so hard to get people into church, or to come back to church, the world and its ways, the attraction of the world, and it’s ways…

It’s way easier these days to just go with the flow of what everyone else is doing…but seriously  do you want to have what they are having and get what they are going to get in the end ?

Sadly, for many who are already travelling it, their hearts and minds have grown cold to the things of God…. They try to put Him to the back of their thinking, if they think of Him at all…

The world has yelled loud and for some people it’s all they can hear now… its all they want to hear…

Church is all a bit boring and a bit of chore that interrupts my worldly  pursuits,

In other words, there isn’t any room any more in their lives for God and His church.

And that kind of thinking has put them on a road, a journey, that simply doesn’t lead them to Heaven.

It’s a small, narrow, lonely road that leads you to Jesus…

So what does a Church do in response to all this… what does a Christ follower and leader in the Vine…do  about it..

5 things today that I think we need to do, if we are serious about the  church thing and God.

1.       Determine to stay on the narrow path no matter what the world is yelling.

2.       Commit yourself to staying on this path and helping others to stay true too.

3.       If you are feeling the pressure of the “yell” from the other path, seek support to stay true.

4.       If you think you are dabbling legs astride both paths,  get both feet on the narrow path quickly.

5.       Try and help rescue the perishing and bring them home.

I think why God has led me to this message today is that He is longing for His church to be true and real and committed.           To stay the course.

To feel the urgency of bringing lost people home.

To know that the world and its ways is only going to make it  harder to reach those travelling in it…

So many people, even in the church just can’t make up their mind about eternity….

It’s like we have become complacent about the urgency of the gospel, a message that Jesus the son of God died for…for you and for me…

Eternity  where…?

Many here today would be familiar with the name….Arthur Stace.  Probably most of us know nothing about him and his life….. he was born in Balmain, in the inner-west of Sydney. The child of alcoholics, he was brought up in poverty. In order to survive, he resorted to stealing bread and milk and searching for scraps of food in bins. By the age of 12, Arthur, with virtually no formal schooling, had become a ward of the state. As a teenager, he became an alcoholic and was subsequently sent to jail at 15. Afterwards, he worked as a "cockatoo" or a look-out for a Two-up "school". In his twenties, he was a scout for his sisters' brothels. At age 26, in March 1916 enlisted for the Great War (World War One) with the 19th Battalion 5th Brigade AIF, entering with the 16th Reinforcements, service number 5934. Suffered recurring bouts of bronchitis and pleurisy which led to his medical discharge 2nd April 1919.

Arthur Stace converted to Christianity on the night of 6 August 1930, after hearing an inspirational sermon by the Reverend R. B. S. Hammond at St. Barnabas Church, Broadway. Inspired by the words, he became enamoured with the notion of eternity. Two years later, on 14 November 1932, Arthur was further inspired by the preaching of evangelist John G. Ridley^[2], MC on "The echoes of Eternity" from Isaiah 57:15:

"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

John Ridley's words,"Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You've got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?" would prove crucial in Stace's decision to tell others about his faith. In an interview, Arthur Stace said, "Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write Eternity." Even though he was illiterate and could hardly write his own name Arthur, legibly, "the word "Eternity" came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it, and I still can't."

After eight or nine years, he tried to write something else, "Obey God" and then five years later, "God or Sin" but he could not bring himself to stop writing "Eternity".

The Sydney City Council brought him to the attention of the police as they had rules about the defacing of pavements, so much so that he narrowly avoided arrest around twenty-four times. Each time he was caught, he responded with, "But I had permission from a higher source".

Several mornings a week for the next 35 years, Arthur would leave his wife, Pearl and their home in Bulwarra Road, Pyrmont around 5am to go around the streets of Sydney and chalk the word "Eternity" on footpaths, train station entrances and anywhere else he could think of. It is estimated that he wrote the word around 500,000 times over the 35 years. Workers arriving in the city would see the word freshly written, but not the writer, and so, "The man who writes Eternity" became a legend in Sydney. The mystery was solved when Reverend Lisle M. Thompson, who preached at the church where Arthur worked as a cleaner, saw him take a piece of chalk from his pocket and write the word on the footpath. Thompson wrote about Stace's life and an interview was published in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on 21 June 1956.

In 1963, photographer Trevor Dallen cornered Arthur and asked to take a few pictures of him writing his famous phrase. After four photos, Trevor ran out of film and asked for Arthur to stay put while he got more film. Upon Trevor's return, Arthur Stace was gone.

Arthur Stace died of a stroke in a nursing home at the age of 83 on 30 July 1967. He bequeathed his body to the University of Sydney; subsequently, his remains were buried with those of his wife at Botany Cemetery  around two years later.

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds one of Arthur Stace's iconic 'Eternity' signs, which he chalked on a piece of cardboard for a fellow parishioner. The museum also has an Eternity gallery, inspired by Arthur Stace's story. The gallery features 50 personal stories from ordinary and extraordinary Australians. The stories are tied together by emotional themes including joy, fear, separation, chance and loneliness, which are all elements of Stace's story.

In Sydney today, the word "Eternity" can still be seen written in three places:

• On Stace's gravestone in Botany Cemetery.
• Inside the bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled during World War II. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing it they noticed, inside, the word "Eternity" in Stace's chalk. This is the only surviving "Eternity" by Stace's own hand in Sydney. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up).
• In Town Hall Square, between St Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a wrought aluminium replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a fountain as an eternal memorial to Arthur Stace.

As a tribute to the man known as Mr Eternity, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up with the word "Eternity" as part of the celebrations for the beginning of the year 2000

Stace sensed in his life the urgency of the gospel and then lived his life out with the message that there is an eternity and everyone us are given the chance to live with Jesus in heaven in that time.

I pray that today we each will just do a check of the life we are living and why we are living it the way we are…who we are living it for and where we will spend our eternity.

The broad and narrow way are the two options, choose carefully.