Transcript

Good morning. On this lovely winter morning I invite your attention to a very interesting sentence to be found in the first Psalm. The ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. When grain is threshed the kernels which have food value are kept and the chaff which is nothing but husk is blown away. The threshing process is a sort of judgment day separating the useful from the useless, the good from the bad, and that judgment is not capricious or arbitrary. It is based on the character of the material threshed. The farmer does not decide to keep the kernels from one sack of wheat and the husk from another. He invariably keeps the kernels and discards the chaff. The fate of the stuff fed to the threshing machine turns upon its quality. Five hundred years before Christ lived a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus said this, character is fate. Certainly character determines the fate of the individual. For instance in the hour of opportunity character is fate. A mother had just gone through a major operation the shock of which took most of her strength. Her doctor decided she must have a blood transfusion. Her two grown sons volunteered to give their blood and their blood proved to be the right type but the blood of one son could not be used. It was tainted with disease which he had acquired in dissipation. By his transgressions he had robbed himself of the opportunity to help the one he loved most. He was willing and eager to help but by his own act he denied himself that privilege. He had to stand helplessly by while his brother gave the blood that restored his mother to health and strength. To stand helpless in the hour of a loved one's need and know that your inability to help is due to your own sin. That is a hell more terrible than any Dante ever pictured. When the opportunity to help comes character is fate. If a man's character is chaff he has nothing to offer. If his character is sound he has much to offer and he can enter into the joy of service. In the hour of trouble character is fate. On her maiden voyage the Titanic struck an iceberg and went down. How did the passengers react to this disaster? Well some of them rushed madly for the lifeboats and fought each other in a mad scramble to save themselves. They believed that the jungle law of self-preservation was the first law of life. They had to be held back by the pistols of the crew but the crew and most of the other passengers quietly stepped back and let the women and children into the lifeboats first. These people scorned the law of the jungle and heeded a higher law. The law which says greater love can no man show than this that he lay down his life for his friends. You see the circumstances were the same for all hands but what a difference in reaction and that difference was determined by character. The frost falls alike on all the fruit trees. Under the touch of the frost some fruits ripen and others rot. The difference is not in the frost but in the nature of the fruit. Pain and suffering like frost come to two men. One man's disposition becomes sour and he becomes bitter and cynical about life. He degenerates more and more into a bundle of self-pity and complaint. Pain rots his soul. The other man touched by the same kind of pain becomes sweeter in disposition and more mellow in outlook. He grows in gracious graciousness and in understanding of his fellows. Pain ripens his soul. They suffer alike but they do not react alike. The difference is to be found not in what happens to them but in the character of the faith each had developed before it happened. One man had one for himself of vital faith so that he can endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. He had learned that to trust in God is to have peace in the midst of life's storms and power to face suffering with courage. Because he has a strong faith he is able to rise above pain. The other man never bothered to win a vital faith. He built his life on the shreds and patches of a shallow philosophy that left God out. Because he has no faith he becomes the victim of pain. What suffering did to each of these men was determined by the kind of faith each had one for himself in the years before suffering came. In the hour of trouble the kind of faith a man has is decisive. When the storms of trouble sweep over the soul the ungodly are like chaff which the wind driveth away. In the hour of temptation character is fate. A dam built to give the people of the valley protection against floods suddenly broke and their homes were washed away. For 20 years that dam had stood and it had withstood similar floods. The engineers sent to find out why the dam broke reported that the dam would not burst because the spring rains in the mountains were unusually hard. The dam broke said the engineers because for years a dry rot had been sapping its strength. It was not the intensity of the flood but the character of the dam which determined the fate of the valley. So it is in life. Here is a man who for years has lived a respectable life. Suddenly he is overtaken in an act of immorality and the community is shocked. People are puzzled to know why he suddenly cracked up morally. If they had known what went on in his mind through the years they would not be puzzled. It was not the sudden temptation that caused him to go down. It was the rottenness of his mind that caused his downfall. For years he had allowed his mind to play with immoral thoughts and they finally mastered him. To toy with an evil thought is like pressing the trigger of a revolver. Press long enough and it will explode into action. The character of his inner life determined his fate in the hour of temptation. When the tempest of temptation blows the ungodly are like chaff which the wind driveth away. In the judgment day it will be found that character is fate. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire. I was hungry and you gave me no meat. Look at those people on the judges left hand. They had lived respectable lives. They had kept the commandments and everything else they could grab. They had lived self-centered lives utterly indifferent to the cry of the needy. Yes they were good people just as good as trying not to be bad could make them. But from the point of view of Jesus they were good for nothing. If they had been admitted into heaven they would not have felt at home there. Selfishness can never feel at home in the presence of him who died upon a cross. Did these people not believe in Christ? They probably did but they failed to make him a vital part of their lives. They probably thought of him as a fire insurance policy against hell or as a passport to paradise and of course he is neither. In life they fed their souls on chaff so in the judgment they were blown away. God's judgment like a flail separates the wheat from the chaff. Yes in the judgment hour character will be fate. Character is fate in the realm of government. Our national Constitution is the charter of our freedom and the bulwark of our rights. Yet in a very real sense our government rests not upon the Constitution but upon the character of the people. If the principles in the Constitution ever drop out of the hearts of our people the Constitution will then become a scrap of paper. The Constitution was written by men who staked their lives on the love of liberty protected by law. It will be maintained only by people who love liberty more than they love life and put public welfare above private gain. Abraham Lincoln described the American system as government of the people by the people and for the people. Alas in many of our cities government has degenerated into bossism and we have government of the politicians by the clever for the criminals. We who love the democratic form of government need to remember those wise words of Herbert Spencer. There is no magic in political forms to reduce gold and conduct from lead and instinct. So long as men are greedy there will be graft in government whether that government is democratic or totalitarian. So long as men are unjust no legal system not even the jury system will turn out justice. Trial by jury is perhaps the best method of arriving at justice yet devised but it will not work until the judge and the lawyers and the jurymen and the witnesses love justice more than they love anything else. That stern old maxim of the poet's pen what constitutes a state? High-minded men hold such a wealth of truth when one reflects it seems more like a sermon than a text. In this country we're cursed by our lawlessness. Our national crime bill is appalling. We are one of the most lawless nations under the stars. Why do we have so much lawlessness? A few years ago Chief Justice Taft said the prevalence of crime and fraud is due largely to the failure of the law and its administration to bring criminals to justice. It's true that some of our enforcement officers are inefficient. It's true that a few of them are corrupt. Some of our lawlessness is due to the lack of character in our public officials. Yes but more of it is due to the lack of character in our people. We need to remember that that community is best governed not where the law is best enforced but where the law is best observed. People of character observe the law. We need better character both in our officers and in ourselves. The fate of the nation depends upon character. Finally character is fate in the realm of social progress. On every hand men are saying let us build a better world but you cannot build a better world out of bad men or a friendly world out of men who hate. You cannot build a Christian world out of pagans and God is not going to create the city of God and hand it to us on a silver platter. If he did we would soon make it the city of dreadful night. We must build it for ourselves and the place to begin is with character. Give us men who have in them the spirit of Christ and who walk close enough to feel the throb of his love for humanity. Give us men who dare to practice his principles. Men who in business and in politics and in all their human relationships strive to do unto others as they would that others should do unto them. Give us men who love their neighbors as themselves and that means men who will seek for others the same rights the same privileges and the same opportunities they seek for themselves. Give us men who look upon every human being whether black or white as a child of God. Too sacred to be held in contempt. Too sacred to be exploited. In short give us men of real Christian character and we can build a better world.