Monday, December 15, 2014
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Ellis Island was the first piece of America that millions of immigrants ever saw – ever touched. Perhaps it was that way for somebody in your family. Ellis Island was the point of entry for all the immigrants coming through New York; a little island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
When you visit the island you see this long, granite wall with thousands of names of immigrants who passed through there. When the boat landed, they would step off carrying all their belongs in a basket and enter this long, red brick building. The inside of that building is cavernous. It echoes on the inside. Can't you just kind of hear it and see it in your mind; this rich mixture of voices and languages?
Actually, Ellis Island was, you know, like just a waiting station. They weren't going to live on that island. Out of all those thousands who came there, not one ever set up a house on Ellis Island. They weren't going to be there for very long.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Basketful of Earth."
Which leads us to our word for today from the Word of God, in 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse 1. Peter writes to, "God's elect, strangers in the world." Now, remembering that image of believers, in verse 17 he says, "Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear." In 1 Peter 2:11 he continues, "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires."
Peter is saying, "Hey, this isn't home." It's like that old hymn, "This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue." See, we're all immigrants according to the Bible. Earth is our Ellis Island. We've got maybe seventy years here; seventy years that are just the preparation for billions of years. But the quality of the billions of years is determined by how we live the seventy or whatever.
Now, here's a question. If we're just immigrants passing through earth, why are we saving up so much stuff here on our Ellis Island? In Luke 12, Jesus addresses this issue of accumulating earth stuff. He says in verse 22, "Do not worry about your life or what you will eat or about your body what you will wear." Then he says some radical stuff in verse 24, "Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap. They have no storeroom or barn. Yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds?"
He's saying that for your security you don't need this big, stored-up reserve somewhere. But, of course, that's the opposite of everything we've been taught about security. But here's biblical security. "Your Father knows you have need of these things. Sell your possessions; give to the poor. Provide purses for yourself that will not wear out; a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near or no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
There's no storeroom, no pile of earth stuff. No, you send it on ahead to the place where you're going to live forever. You don't move it all into the hotel. You send it on to home. Don't accumulate it in the place that you're just visiting. We're all guilty of the sin of accumulating. We kind of keep building our earth kingdom, those earth reserves, what the earth calls security.
One day I wonder if Jesus is going to come back and say, "What are you doing holding onto all of that; tying up all of that? I had a world to reach." He calls us to live simply on this immigrant island, and to pour everything else into causes that will last forever.
Give to that for which He gave everything He had. Look, do you want a bank full in heaven, or just a basketful of earth?