Who Has The Last Word?                                                   7/23/44

 

Scripture:  (Read Psalm 67-68:6)

 

Text:  I Corinthians 6: 19b;  “Ye are not your own.”

             I Corinthians 6: 20a;  “For ye are bought with a price.”

 

In his first letter to the Corinthians (the sixth chapter at the nineteenth verse) Paul remarks to them, “Ye are not your own.”  “Well, for that matter, nobody is his own,” remarks the late Dr. Clelland B. McAfee, whose thought in a sermon on “The Final Voice” I am largely following this morning.

 

Nobody can do exactly as he pleases, unless he pleases to take into account, in large measure, other people.  Whosoever thinks that he can do exactly as he pleases, because he is after all his own, is not rational, but is a wild man.  The Greeks had a word for a man who tries to be just himself, taking no account of anybody else.  They called him by a word from which we got our harsher word, “idiot.” 

 

A small boy was chafing under certain restrictions.  He said to his father, “When will I be old enough to do just as I please?”  His father replied, “I don’t know; nobody has ever lived to be that old yet!”

 

We are not our own.  A man who is running a business may be referred to as his own boss.  He makes every effort to master that business - to run it instead of letting it run him.  He lays his plans to be away from the city on next Thursday.  But he finds that an old customer with a substantial account on his books is to be in town on that day.  Or an important manufacturer will be in on Thursday to renew his contract for a large quantity of materials.  You know what happens!  The businessman revises his plans to be away and leaves, if he goes, on Friday, or some other day.

 

The mother of small children plans, with her husband, to enjoy a delightful evening with friends at dinner.  Much preparation has been made.  But as she is ready to leave the house, passing through the children’s rooms she finds that one of them is restless and running a high fever.  There is an epidemic in town and it is probable that this means its arrival in that home.  Does the mother claim her individual right to go ahead and enjoy herself?  A hurried telephoned “regret” to their hostess is the likely answer to that question.  The mother is not her own.  Neither is her husband, the father.

 

And whose is the doctor, though he may have the most rigid hospital routine and dispensary house?  Any telephone call in the night; any discovery of unusual, unexpected emergency settles the question about whose he is.

 

Most of us have a good deal to say about what we expect to do, and certainly about what we shall be.  But every little while, we discover that we are not our own last word, and that someone else, or something else has the last word.  Many voices speak to us, in varying degrees of authority - but with authority.  And our own voice is properly among them in its place.  But there is usually some one voice that supersedes all others with a definite finality.

 

When it is urged that, for the Christian, the voice of God as it is heard in Christ, is final, there is nothing new or unusual about that.  Nor is it abnormal.  It is merely recognizing the best and wisest voice we know in its rightful place - a place that it will take anyway, whether we like it and grant it, or not.

 

Our Lord once told a story of a certain man who found himself unexpectedly prosperous.  His lands, under skillful hands and favorable growing conditions, had turned in a bumper crop that season with a harvest so great that he was unprepared to handle it.  His barns and granaries wouldn’t hold it.  There is no hint that he had been dishonest or dishonorable at any point.  He had the stuff on his hands, through good fortune, and he had to do something about it.  He made perfectly normal plans.  He said he would pull down his little barns and build bigger barns in which to store his grains and produce.  And at last he would be able to take it easy.  He would be able to say to himself, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”

 

There was no throwing them away, wasting them, plowing them under.  He was going to take care of the goods as it seemed to him he ought to, and use them for his comfort.

 

The noticeable thing is that he kept saying, “I, My, mine” over and over again.  He thought he was running his own business, and he could do with his harvest as he thought best.  Jesus adds that on that very night, a voice spoke to him and told him that he would have to leave it all on that same night.  [Luke 12: 16-20].  Then whose would be all these things?  Would they go to his sons; to some slick and grasping shyster; to some tax collector?  Well, at any rate, they would not be his.  Whoever held them, he could not.  “You can’t take it with you” is the phrase around which a delightful modern play is built.  A higher voice speaks, and the man rises up to obey it though his own plans are never to be carried out.

 

Those who know the story, say that in a certain Wall Street section of New York City a large project was under consideration, with many men directly interested in it.  One man held the key to the situation, with his property holdings, his money, his consent all necessary.  A representative group of the interested men gathered in his office to present the matter to him.   When they were through, he said, “Gentlemen, as you say, I have the last word on this, and the word is no.  I will not let you do it.”  Just then he slumped forward in his chair, and it didn’t take a doctor to tell that he was dead!  His had been a high voice.  Now a higher voice spoke and he had not the last word after all!  He was not his own.  Nobody is his own.  Another voice is always the final voice to our human wishes, plans and decisions.  Even the family who plans a picnic knows that.

 

How does this simple reality apply to our present world conditions.  It is a noisy, shouting, grim world.  A man and his cohorts in Italy shouted until Albania, Abyssinia and most of North Africa were overrun with men whose presence changed the whole government and future of those areas.  A man in Germany shouted and defied and threatened and commanded until power over Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, France, Holland, and great areas of Russia changed hands; for he had hundreds of thousands to shout with him and not only to “heil” but to “hit.”  Voices in Japan, increasingly incensed by Chinese tactics spoke the clipped, grim words that plunged the greater Asiatic nation into the horrors of warfare and slavery; and then the thousands on the islands of the Pacific.

 

And now other voices are heard speaking of liberation, of four freedoms, of stern justice.  They command guns and planes that seem destined to silence the former voices and overpower the strength of their arms.

 

The din arises to the very heavens, making it difficult to hear the final, controlling voice over the human order.  All the world had better listen for that voice including, and especially, our own nation.  The power of a victory, even a prospective victory, in arms, is a terrible power for weal or for woe!  Every nation approaching the peace is going to come with the blood of enemies - military and civilian alike - on its swords and hands.  Each had better listen in eager humility for the higher voice of God in His moral order.  Else the devil’s voice will take charge, throwing cursing men and screaming women and children right back into the brew of another holocaust.

 

Dr. McAfee remarked, some time ago, that he had been invited for a number of years each year to preach in a large eastern college for women.  One of the dining rooms on that college campus was large and spacious, accommodating at one sitting several hundred young women, all cultured, courteous, thoughtful.  Yet at times the din of conversation among those hundreds at meal time rose to a deafening roar with each one nearly shrieking to make her words heard by her neighbor.  No one meant it so.  And they devised this simple plan; any member of the Student Government could lift her hand when the din arose, whereupon her own table would fall silent at once; others observing the signal would fall silent also.  In less time than it takes to tell, the whole room was silent.  When she lowered her hand quiet conversation was resumed, all the din ended.

 

Can there be some hands, to be raised at the choice of the nations, at whose signal the nations will fall silent from their shouting and screaming, and begin again - in peace - to tackle the perplexing and tremendous problems that vex and well-nigh baffle even our most experienced statesmen?

 

Every American ought to remember that our great Constitutional Convention had prospect of breaking up in deadlocked disagreement and continued disunity; that a layman in that convention suggested that they should approach the Almighty in their sessions; and that the force of a Voice which answered their prayers, uttered daily thereafter, became the steel-hardening agent which forged our constitution into a workable whole!  Let not even the toughest agnostic forget that.

 

The souls of all men ought to be on the knee in humble, mighty, prayerful search for the will of the Eternal, as we set about pulling out of the blood and sweat and tears and sin and sacrifice of this warfare, the raw materials from which a master architect and his devoted servants may build lasting peace.

 

Let each frequently keep the silence that enables him to hear the final voice, whatever it may have to say to all of us.  If we pass judgment on other nations, let us be perfectly clear that that judgment is not final - that it does not even seriously matter unless it represents, in our human terms, what the Final Voice would say.

 

The issue of the future can be stated just this simply: that if we can listen attentively enough to hear and heed the final Voice, a working, durable, lasting peace can be built.  And without that Voice much of our own brave judgments will prove just so much useless rubbish.

 

A psalmist feeling in his day the same deep concern over conditions we face in our day, says that light did not break on him until he “went into the sanctuary of God;” and then he “understood their end.”  [Psalm 73: 17].  He had, and we have, to be thrown back of God and His right to the last word!

 

Now let us leave the struggles and the fate of nations for a moment to consider what light this observation throws on personal human weakness or strength.  “When is a man weak and wrong; when is he really heroic and strong?”

 

The story, expressed in language as fanciful as poetry in Genesis, of how sin got its start among men is profound moral truth.  Sin comes from getting our motives out of balance and disregarding the final voice as though it had no power.  It comes from the blind, stubborn supposition that our own voice is final with no other to have the last word.  Our individualistic conception of personal liberty faces its greatest danger right here.  Not one of us is, even a little, god!

 

The Genesis story is that man had learned that a certain tree was not for him - that it was in some way forbidden - taboo - to him.  It didn’t seem reasonable to his mind.  The fruit seemed to be good for food.  Nothing physically wrong with eating that for which one is hungry!  The tree looked good.  Is not beauty to be enjoyed?  In this story, the tree had the power to transmit wisdom.  The intellectual motive is a good one.  There was also an impulse to share the tree and its fruit with another - a social motive on which good folk constantly act.  There they all are in the story - four fundamental motives, each good.  Why not obey them?  For one good reason: the moral motive, the ultimate motive of duty to God, was against obeying the others.  When it appears that these common motives involve violating the highest motive humanity has, the highest takes precedence - or evil consequences follow.  [Genesis 3: 1-24].

 

In that way came sin to humanity.  So it continues to come.  Every evil can be defended on some good ground.  We can see that clearly in the machinations of the other fellows’ propaganda.  It is much harder to be sure we can see it among our own motives.

 

When is a man heroic and strong?  When he says “no” to motives that may be perfectly natural in order to obey, persistently and at any cost, the highest motive.  His natural impulses, the counsel of his friends, his immediate interests all urge him to one course.  But there comes to him a conviction, no matter how, that God calls him to another course; then he refuses the other course and follows the voice which is for him the last word.

 

A soured skeptic said, when he heard a man speaking words about the future: “Isn’t that just like a Christian - talking about God in a day like this?”  What he meant for a sneer was a profound observation.  A true Christian is just the one to talk about God; what else is there to talk about if one is to keep up his full courage and his moral strength?

 

One more word while we are on the subject.  That verse in First Corinthians is followed by another: “Ye are not your own” - “For ye are bought with a price.”

 

In a great eastern city a man was known some years ago for his zeal in being helpful in as many ways as possible.  He had a strange knack for being on hand when need arose in the personal lives of others.  When he could help, he did so; when he needed more help, he enlisted the aid of others.  One day someone asked him directly how he came to be so active in helping other people.  He replied, “A man once died for me.”  It came out that in an emergency when his own life hung in the balance, another man had thrown himself into the breach and saved him from death, though it cost the other man his life to do so.  And he always felt, after that, that he owed double duty to the world for that.

 

Over on your right hand are two flags covered with stars.  Two of them are gold.  Maybe you don’t know the two young men for whom those stars stand.  But there they are - and there are others on the similar flags in other churches, and places of business and even home windows of our community.  And every last citizen of us in this community owes a debt of better citizenship because these have died for us!

 

And that isn’t all.  It is no made-up tale that all of us ought to be “helpful for two.”  For a Man once died for us - the most persistently hopeful, helpful Man the world has ever seen. Never since that day, hundreds of years ago, have any of us been our own.  We belong to him.  He paid for us.  His is the last word.  And life is infinitely worthwhile when we listen to Him.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, July 23, 1944.