When I was in high school I’d had my eye on this freshman girl for quite some time before I finally got up the nerve to ask her out.  At the time, I couldn’t have possibly known that I was about to learn one of life’s most valuable lessons; looks can be deceiving.  It’s not always that way.  Sometimes what you see is what you get.  Sometimes, you get more.  One of our dear ladies was bragging on Joel Pulis’ giftedness and character recently after the Ordination Council had listened to his testimony.  She said, “You know pastor, Joel’s as good as he looks.”  To my knowledge, I’ve never had that said about me.  People look at me and just hope there’s more in the storeroom than I advertise in the window.  With Joel, apparently, what you see is at least as good as what you get. 

But, that night years ago, I found that looks could be deceiving.  This girl was as cute as they came, I thought.  Once we got in the car, though, the conversation just died.  In fact, it was never born.  We couldn’t find one thing to discuss.  We drove around in silence for what seemed like an eternity.  Finally, I just gave up and took her home two hours early.  Her memory of the date may not be any more favorable than mine if she remembers it at all.  But, what I learned was that, sometimes, what attracts you to a relationship is not good enough to keep you in it.  Sometimes, for one reason or another, it’s just best to walk away.

It’s fascinating to me that Jesus offers us that option.  Now, I was raised to embrace the good Baptist doctrine, “once saved, always saved.”  What we mean by that doctrine is that our salvation is based more on God’s faithfulness to us than our faithfulness to him.  Thank God!  What God starts with us, he will finish.  (Philippians 1:6)  The real question is whether, what we’ve started with God, we’ll finish.  It’s the question posed by the text we’ve read this morning. 

Jesus has just been telling his disciples the truth about what a relationship with him would involve.  It would be all consuming and demand absolute faith in him alone.  Apparently, at that point, some of his disciples learned that what had first attracted them to a relationship with Jesus wasn’t good enough to keep them in it.  “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him,” the scripture says.  We have no record of what became of them; all we do know is that, having decided to follow Jesus, they were now turning back to another way. 

From the way Jesus finishes this conversation with the disciples it appears that one acid test of what it means to be his disciple is that you finish what you start.  In the two verses we did not read that finish out this text, Jesus describes one of his own disciples this way, “Did I not choose you, the twelve?  Yet one of you is a devil.”  John, then says that Jesus “was speaking of Judas . . . for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.” (John 6:70-71) 

Jesus chooses us, in the act of salvation, but he will not choose for us.  It works something like this.  The only way you won’t be a survivor on heaven’s island is if you vote yourself off of it.  To be a disciple of Jesus, then, one must choose to follow Christ and then, having made that choice, finish what she starts. 

It’s that way in any relationship of significance.  With marriage, for example, what first attracted you to your mate may not be good enough to keep you in the marriage years later.  But, what makes you faithful in marriage is not just what you say at the altar.  It’s whether you finish what you started at the altar. 

When I was a little boy a younger friend of mine challenged me to a foot race the length of the sidewalk in front of my house.  It couldn’t have been more than about forty or fifty feet and I was certain that, because I was older, I could beat him easily.  But, within a split second of the beginning of the race, I realized that Doug was going to beat me.  So, in an effort to save face, I just quit.  I figured that if I didn’t finish the race he couldn’t say he beat me.  What I didn’t know was that my dad was watching the whole thing from the garage.  When he saw me quit it made him angry.  He came out of the garage and right there on the front lawn gave me a lecture I’ve never forgotten.  “No matter what,” he said, “even if you think you’re going to lose, you never, ever, quit before you cross the finish line.”  The true test of one’s character, he was teaching me, is as much or more in what you finish as what you start.  Jesus teaches the same lesson.

In the apostle Paul’s testimony, looking back on his life shortly before his death, he wrote this as his personal testimony.  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  (2 Timothy 1:7)  On more than this one occasion he described his relationship with Christ in terms of a struggle, a fight to the finish.  In one of the most poignant moments recorded in scripture, as Jesus sees some of his “disciples” walking away, he turns to the original twelve and asks, “‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’”  (NASV) 

A couple of weeks ago I made the statement that the problem with the faith of some is that they’ve failed to keep it up to date.  They haven’t finished what they started.  Meshing all of this together, the apostle Paul’s testimony and Jesus’ question to his disciples, it all comes down to this.  Have you ever started following Jesus and, if so, are you finishing what you started through to the end?

The thought of turning your back on Jesus is chilling, isn’t it?  What might be the consequences of that kind of decision?  What would it cost to do that?  And, if we choose not to follow Jesus, to whom would we turn?  What hope do we have?  That is specifically what Peter wants to know.  Jesus has asked if any of the twelve, having calculated the cost, want to choose another course.  Then, Peter asks one of the most significant questions to be found in all the New Testament followed by the central affirmation of the Christian faith, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Peter was simply affirming what every true believer knows.  There is no hope apart from Christ.  If it weren’t for Jesus, Peter said, there would be nowhere to turn.  The apostle Paul later wrote along these same lines in a letter to the church at Corinth.  “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  (1 Corinthians 15:17-19)

If it weren’t for Jesus, both Peter and Paul have said, they would have no hope.  The question is, whether we, each of us individually, have come to that same conclusion.  It’s one thing to read that affirmation in scripture.  It’s another thing altogether to affirm it for yourself.  To come to the place in your own heart where you conclude that you have no eternal hope apart from Christ.  To come to that conclusion, and then to finish the race you started with Christ, is what it means to be his disciple. 

In so very many ways that is the nature of our Rebirth commitment at Cliff Temple.  More than anything else, this is our way of saying that we will finish what we started with Christ.  We know that Christ, by grace, has chosen us, now, by faith, we will walk with him each step of the way, no matter what. 

Perhaps you read this past week about the twenty-year-old mother in Florida who walked away from her three small children.  When arrested on child abandonment charges she said her reason for leaving them in a public library to fend for themselves was because she just needed a break.  Now, any person who has ever cared for three small children at the same time can appreciate what it means to need a break.  But, no self-respecting parent would ever take that need for a break as a license to abandon her children.  Good parents don’t just bring children into this world, they walk with those children every single day until those children can walk on their own.  They finish what they started.  They pay the price in care and discipline and nurture until the job is done.  And, the problem is, it never really is done.

It’s not easy to be a good parent.  Sometimes it gets hard.  Real hard.  It’s the same with marriage.  Sometimes it gets hard.  Real hard.  With both marriage and parenting it’s far easier to start than to finish.  By the way, I heard this week of a company, The Empty Nest Company.  It was started by some folks who figured there was a way to cash in on the sentimentality of parents who just turned their last child loose and have forgotten for that brief moment just how hard it can be to raise a child.  For a fee they will come pick up your car, keep it out all day and bring it back dirty and empty.  Just in case you forgot.

There are very few spouses or parents who haven’t at least thought about giving up.  It’s the same with being a Christian.  Sometimes it gets hard.  Real hard.  William Barclay once wrote that “it is not the intellectual difficulty of accepting Christ which keeps men from becoming Christians; it is the height of Christ’s moral demand . . . a man’s refusal of Christ comes, not because Christ puzzles and baffles his intellect, but because Christ challenges . . . his life.”  (Barclay, source unknown)  To be Jesus’ disciple, you have to accept the challenge and then finish what you started, because, when the thought of quitting gives you pause, you know you have nowhere else to go.

And, sometimes, that is what it takes.  Coming to some place in life where you know you have no other options.  You’ve tried everything else and nothing else works in terms of making sense of life or giving it significance or filling it with hope.  Some people come to Jesus in the innocence of childhood because they’ve been taught to trust even as they took their first steps.  Some come to Jesus later in life after all innocence has been stripped away and there is nothing left but shear desperation well seasoned with cynicism.  The good news is that Jesus loves desperate people just as much as he loves innocent children. 

For some reason, of late, it’s been hard.  For me and for some people I love very much.  Hard to keep doing that which Christ’s call means for our lives.  Maybe that’s why I found myself teary-eyed this week when listening to Iris Dement’s Blue Grass Gospel as she sings a pensive tune.  “Troublesome waters, much blacker than night, are hiding from view the harbor’s bright light.  Tossed on the tumult of life’s troubled sea, I cry to my Savior, ‘Have mercy on me.”  Troublesome waters around me do roll, they’re rockin’ my boat and wreckin’ my soul.  Loved ones are drifting, and livin’ in sin, the treacherous whirlpools, are pullin’ them in.  When troublesome waters are rolling so high, I lift up my voice and to heaven I cry, ‘Lord, I am trustin’ give guidance to me, and steady my boat, on life’s troubled sea.’   Then gently I’m feelin’ the touch of his hand, guiding my boat, in safely to land.  Leading the way to heaven’s bright shore where troublesome waters I’m feeling no more.”  (Iris DeMent, Troublesome Waters)

Jesus takes all comers.  Innocent children.  Heart-broken parents.  Frightened spouses.  Even weak-kneed preachers.  In some ways, desperation is the best qualification you can have for coming to Christ.  When you’ve decided you have nowhere else to go.  All he asks is that, if you start the journey, you finish it. 

Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, was the child of Presbyterian missionaries serving in China.  She says she has no conscious memory of when she first trusted Christ.  It happened so early in life she cannot recall the moment.  What she says she does know is that she is trusting him and following him now.  Some people would question whether Ruth Graham is even a Christian because she can’t remember when she first trusted Jesus.  But, if I’m not mistaken, we’ve read about a Savior this morning who is more concerned with those who are finishing what they started whether they can remember where they began or not.  People who have looked at all the options and concluded that, if it weren’t for Jesus, they’d have no place to turn.  Then, turning their face to the rising sun and with the lines of the old gospel hymn they commit, “I have decided to follow Jesus.  No turning back.  No turning back.”  I think I’ll keep walking, just one more day.