Live a Life That Makes a Difference

I want to take you on a journey. How many of you saw the movie some years ago, The Miracle Worker? Anybody see that? Admit your age? Not too many of you. That's kind of a surprise to me, because it was a classic. I think the actress in the movie won an Academy Award. Helen Keller lived a remarkable life. She lived from 1880 to 1968. She is still well known around the world in what she accomplished in her 88 years of life. She was both blind and deaf. Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf. It was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted a disease that doctors described at that time was an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain. It might have been meningitis, it might have been scarlet fever. And of course, she lost her eyesight, she lost her hearing, and it was a result of that disease.

Well, Queen Victoria of England asked Helen Keller a fascinating question when they met many, many years ago. The Queen of England asked her, how do you account for your remarkable accomplishment in life? How do you explain the fact that even though you were both blind and deaf, you were able to accomplish so much? What a fascinating question. Because we normally think of somebody who has challenges like this, physical challenges. Well, how did you accomplish what you did? Her answer was very surprising. If it had not been for Anne Sullivan, the name of Helen Keller would not have been known around the world. It would have remained unknown. Well, the answer was a tribute, of course, to her teacher, her friend, her mentor, Annie Sullivan. Well, what about Annie Sullivan? She, of course, was actually handicapped herself as a young lady.

She was actually put in the basement of a mental health care facility in Boston because she was, quote-unquote, unsalvageable. She was quite a young woman. She was angry, almost to the point of being violent. And in that generation, in that era, her caregiver said, there's nothing we can do with this little girl. We're going to resign her to the basement. And we'll just come in during the day and we'll talk to her a little bit.

But really, Annie didn't want to talk to anybody. She ignored you at best. Sometimes she would throw a food, a plate at you. So her caregivers didn't really give her much care. They didn't know how to handle her. So they locked her up in a basement in a mental institution in Boston as a young girl.

Well, it was very interesting because it was a kind, elderly nurse. Frankly, I don't know the name of that nurse. I, frankly, never found it in my research. But a kind, elderly nurse began to mentor Annie Sullivan. She felt, well, maybe sorry for her, but she had a lot of love, a lot of compassion. She began to talk to little Annie and mentor her and cherish her, unlike the caregivers who, frankly, did not handle her. And little Annie began to blossom. So they had conversations, and she began to really blossom as a young person and through the concern of this elderly, kind nurse.

She began to recover when she had love and compassion shown to her. Well, because of this wonderful, elderly nurse who believed in little Annie Sullivan, Annie Sullivan decided, I'm going to try to accomplish something in my life. I know what this wonderful friend of mine has done in my life. Maybe I can do something for somebody else. Well, if you've seen the movie or read the book, you know the story, because Annie Sullivan applied to be the caretaker for Helen Keller.

And Helen Keller was a bundle of fire. If you've seen the movie, as I have, I never read her autobiography, but she would go into these violent temper tantrums, usually at dinner. Her father was quite well off, and they had a staff there, and even a staff was afraid of Helen Keller. But again, blind and deaf, her world was virtually nonexistent in terms of relationships.

But they hired this Annie Sullivan to mentor her. Well, one week went by, and Annie knew what to do. She said to Annie's dad, I want the room in the back of the place. It's a separate house. I want to be there with your daughter day and night for one week. And the father reneged and said, that's all right. You go ahead and do that.

And in one week, Helen Keller began to blossom. Now, if you saw the movie, there was this really interesting relationship between the two. They were outside, and Annie Sullivan was beginning to try to get through this concept of words to Helen Keller. And she couldn't understand words and objects. So she had the old hand pump of years gone by, began to pump the water out, and then she spelled out W-A-T-E-R.

And she kept repeating that spelling into Helen's hand. And she'd pump more water and spell out W-A-T-E-R. And then pretty soon, Helen Keller, just like the light went on, and she began frantically to communicate in her own way, I want to know what else is around me. So pretty soon it was Earth, E-A-R-T-H. It was Sky, S-K-Y. And she also began to know her name and her parents' name. And by sundown that night, 30 words were now communicated to Helen Keller.

Again, tremendous light went on. She also had a doll, and so Annie Sullivan began to spell D-O-L-L, and saw this raggedy doll, her best friend in the world, and she understood this was a doll. And on and on it went, she understood the difference between mug and milk, and the verb drink, and that was hard for her. She either got it as mug or milk, but not the verb drink.

Now imagine how complicated that can be. But all of this was communicated to her by this wonderful mentor and teacher. So at a very young age, Helen was determined, though, to go to college and make something of herself. In 1898, she entered Cambridge School for Young Ladies to prepare for Radcliffe College, and she entered Radcliffe in the fall of 1900, and got a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in 1904, the first blind deaf person to do so.

She really did break down the door. We heard about a door earlier, Mr. Eliot's message, and she did break down the barrier, the door, of people who have severe handicaps challenges to actually go to college. In her autobiography, The Story of My Life, which was published in 1903, and that appeared serially in Ladies' Home Journal for a number of years, this book was translated into 50 languages, still remains in print to this day.

Now, that book is well over 100 years. What an accomplishment. She wrote over 475 speeches. She wrote essays. She wrote books on topics such as faith, blindness, birth control, the rise of fascism in Europe, and atomic energy. She used a braille typewriter to prepare for her manuscripts, and then copied them onto a regular typewriter.

She traveled around the world to meet in dozens of countries, received several honorary degrees, and met dozens and dozens of world leaders, including the Queen of England. Now, remember this is a chain of redemption, we could call it, a chain of redemption, because remember it was the little—and I don't know her name of the nurse, the elderly nurse in the basement in the mental institution of Boston, but it was this young nurse who began to take interest in Annie Sullivan, and that changed her life.

And then, of course, Annie Sullivan changed Helen Keller's life. Otherwise, as she told the Queen of England, you wouldn't know my name. It goes back to, again, an earlier person in this regard, Annie Sullivan. So this chain of redemption is quite remarkable. It happens. Now, God calls us, brethren, doesn't he, out of the basement, so to speak. We were spiritually blind. We were spiritually deaf. God called us out of that basement and changed our lives.

You think about people in your life that really made a difference, an impact. Who would that be? A lot of you would say probably your parents, your mother, or your father, or both. A lot of us would certainly have mom and dad on that list. Who else has changed your life, really added to your life, been there for you, who has been that part of the process of redemption, as we might call it?

Well, it could be a teacher at school. It could be someone in the church. Very likely, if you'd been in the church some years, you'd say, well, there's this person that's really special to me. Now, today, if you're married, you would say, well, my husband or my wife has been tremendously important and helped me a lot in my life. Whoever names come up, brethren, will really result in people in our lives who have changed us, adopted us, and to one degree or the other, moved us out of the basement. Now, basements in some part of the country, you don't have them because they're in earthquake zones or you can't get through the hard soil, but we've all been in the basement.

God has moved us out of that basement himself. Who, brethren, really ultimately has made more difference in our lives than any other being? Well, of course, that's God. And let's turn to a couple of scriptures here as we go through a sermon that I entitle, Living a Life That Makes a Difference, a Godly Difference. Living a Life That Makes a Difference, a Godly Difference. Turn with me over to Luke 7 and verse 20.

Luke 7 and verse 20. Well, Jesus Christ has talked about the change as God the Father, brethren, calls us to His church and to Himself and to Jesus Christ. And He calls us to a change, Luke 7 and verse 20. Notice the introduction here in Luke 7 and verse 20. And when the men came to Him, He said, John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, Are you the coming one or do we look for another?

In that very hour He cured many of infirmities and afflictions and evil spirits, and to many blind He gave sight. And Jesus answered and said to them, Go and tell John the things that you have seen and heard, that the blind see, the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

And blessed is He who is not offended because of me. And that's really, brethren, all of us spiritually. Now we may be physically gifted and we may not have an infirmity like these folks. But spiritually, we're there. We're in the basement. You know, we really are. That's where God finds us. And that's really where the world is today. They may think they're not in the basement. They may live a different life. But that's really where they are spiritually. And God has called us to see things spiritually and hear the truth.

One point in your life, brethren, like me, you didn't understand. You didn't see. And God the Father opened our minds and opened our ears to hear as well. So, yeah, there is a chain of redemption, as we call it, certainly in all of our lives. Well, why isn't that? Well, because God loves His family.

He cares. Now, the unnamed elderly nurse cared for Annie Sullivan. She was a reject. Oh, my. What a tough thing to be. Oh, my. Probably eight or ten. And in a basement, and people saying, you're just mentally ill and there's no hope for you.

They actually had names for her. The staff called her names. Well, of course, Annie Sullivan came in and changed her. Or the nurse came in and changed Annie's life. And she changed Helen's life. And the story of Helen Keller is world-renowned for what she did in her life. So let's also turn to Philippians 2 and verse 5. We talk about making a godly difference, brethren, in our lives.

God is first. He makes that difference for us. Philippians 2 and verse 5. Now, very familiar because Paul is talking about this change, this difference in our lives, how that happens. And we want to key in here to Philippians 2 and verse 5 and the verses right after verse 5. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now, we're going to discuss that today in detail about, rather, how to be... how to have a changed life, how to be somebody that makes an impact in other people's lives.

How's that going to be done? It's through changing our minds. Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. The ultimate crisis, brethren, in each of our lives is... What is the biggest challenge we have in our lives?

Every one of us. The surrender of self. Think about it. That's something we all share. That's not easy, is it? Giving up self? What did Christ do? He gave up Himself. That's what He did. Was that easy? No, because Christ was human.

But He had a full degree of God in Him. But He had to give up self. So we have to give up ourselves. Notice what happens in verse 6. "...who being in the form of God..." Well, indeed, Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, Emmanuel. "...did not consider a robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and becoming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, and He became obedient to the point of death, even to the death of the cross." Now, that's the ultimate giving up a self, isn't it?

Is there anything bigger than that? Now, just say on the day of the Torah, we're giving up three meals. Sometimes I just think I'm not going to live to say, "...that son go down." Or, you know, there's a trial. We all have trials, and they're severe, some of them. And they're real. But that's the most severe trial I can ever imagine, and that's dying for somebody else. You don't deserve it, but you're going to give your life. That's what He did, giving up self. Then He goes into verse 9, "...therefore God also has extinged, exalted Him, and given Him the name of which is above every name, till He says, All finally..." Or we could assume that, we hope that.

"...but it may not be that everyone will bow to the Jesus Christ, but that is the Father's will and hope, and those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess it, Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Well, brethren, to me, that's... We're going to make a difference in our lives. That's what it's going to cost. Is yourself. Now, is that a bad thing? That's a good thing. Why? Because self is not good.

Self doesn't bring joy. Self does not bring a difference. Everybody who's ever lived has self to overcome. Some have maybe a little bit more of that, in a way, by nature, by background, but still, we all find it. It's the surrendering of ourselves. The end thing is Jesus Christ did, as we saw in these verses. So, come with me to Luke 9 and verse 20. Please turn over to Luke 9 and verse 20. Now, Jesus was questioning here about who they thought the public thought Jesus was, and Christ, in verse 20, asked the question, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter, the boldest of the group evidently, in many ways, he answered and said, The Christ of God. And he strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to Nolan, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Now, what is he saying here? In essence, he's saying, Brethren, Christ is going to go to the basement. He's going to be rejected. He's not going to be popular. Now, he was a Jewish teacher, some like Jesus, the broad group of public that heard him did.

But he said, these people in particular, they're going to be like the mental health professionals in Boston, and they're going to put me in the basement. They're going to throw away the key. And they're going to say, I'm really wrong. I'm really bad. To the point, he said, I'm going to have to die for them, and I'm going to die for everybody else. That's what was about to take place.

Verse 23, He said to them all, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow me. And whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Now, verse 25, For what profit is it to a man, if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? Well, rather, a lot of people have a lot of things, and then they die.

It's all gone. We say there's nothing certain in life except taxes and death. And in more recent years, we realize how true the former is. The taxes are real. They're increasingly real. They're increasingly hurting the American public. But death is real, too. It's something, brethren, we're all going to die.

What do we do in the hyphen between our names, or our birth dates? Our birth date, I'll get it right. The birth date and our death. You know, you go to the cemetery, and everyone has that birth date and death date, and the hyphen in between. That's what we're trying to do. We live a good hyphen, a life that makes a difference, because Jesus' life made the biggest difference of all. Now, in verse 26, For whoever is ashamed of me, in my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory, and in his fathers, and of the holy angels.

But I tell you, truly, that there are some standing here that shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. We're referring to a vision that three men received. Brethren, it's the emptying of self. That's the biggest challenge. As we do that, we grow, we develop, we change, we come out of the basement, God reveals us, sunshine, spiritually we hear, spiritually we see, we get it, we grow, and our lives are tremendously different.

Never to be the same again with God's help and God's direction.

Turn with me now to Matthew 26 and verse 36, please. Matthew 26 and verse 36.

Now, as we heard in the announcements and as well in Old Brown, the Passover is just around the corner. It's Holy Days or earlier this year. Someone was saying, well, they've never understood the Holy Days to be this early. That's because, brethren, we haven't lived long enough. The minister was pointing this out to me. I thought, you know, that's very interesting.

He's been around about 60 years. And he says, I've lived over three 19-year time cycles. But he says, I haven't lived long enough to see it all. That was a big, that was an interesting observation. Just because we haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So, yes, the Passover is right around the corner, isn't it? And verse 36, Jesus came with them in a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be very sorrowful and greatly distressed. And He said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me. And He went a little farther and fell on His face and prayed, saying, O, my Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. No, we know, brethren, He did this three times. He kept coming back, and the disciples were, as we heard in Mr. Eliot's sermon. What were they doing? Were they for their brother? Were they there for Him? Could they stay awake one hour while He prayed? Could they do some laps around some of those olive trees? Just to be there when Christ came back from praying and saying, We're with you. No, they were asleep, both physically and to a degree spiritually. They did not have God's Spirit yet, and they didn't understand how much their lives were going to make a difference. That was yet to come. So He would go back and He would pray and fall on His face and pray and come back, and they were doing the same thing. But ultimately, brethren, we know that's us too. If it would have been Peter and the sons of Zebedee, what would have been doing?

We're no different than them. We're just not them, but we're really them. We're living in the 21st century, and they were living when they lived. And that's just human nature. So He didn't have the support. Nobody was supporting Jesus Christ at that time. He said, I'm going to be in the basement. I won't be praised. I won't be given honor, except by a handful. A handful did really give Jesus encouragement and hope in that sense of just honoring Him and encouraging Him, if you did.

Now, where is the New Covenant written, brethren? The New Covenant that we're a part of is written both in our head and our heart. I think it helps to understand why some are not, in a sense, well, as Mr. Elliott mentioned, there are five members of the church, if we take the parable, who weren't awake. Even though we're all sleeping, we didn't have God's Spirit to alert us and jar us awake and to keep us out of that basement.

And if that New Covenant isn't written more than in our heads, it's not going to work anymore for ancient Israel. It has to be written in our heart. That New Covenant has to be written in our heart. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Turn with me to Psalm 34 and verse 18. And that's what the psalmist is writing here in Psalm 34 and verse 18. Where that New Covenant, in fact, is the Passover, is emblematic of the New Covenant, the broken body and the blood of Jesus Christ.

In fact, that has to be written more than just in our head. That has to be written in our heart. Psalm 34 and verse 18. The Lord is near, as David writes, to those who have a broken heart and save such as have a contrite spirit. Now, those are simple words, but they're very, very deep. That, brethren, is where the New Covenant is written, in a contrite, open, teachable heart. A hard heart doesn't want that spirit of God to change them. They don't want to make a difference in their lives. They're happy living in the basement and doing their thing until... and that's the hyphen.

The hyphen really isn't worth too much until God changes their lives. And that person will live, they'll die, they'll come up later, and then they will understand. Our time is now. That hyphen we're writing day to day. So that New Covenant has to be written in our heart. First of all, in our head, you know, we get it.

Now I understand about the Sabbath day, I understand the Holy Days, I began to understand the plan of God. That's the head beginning to be educated. And like little Helen Keller, as a young girl, she couldn't understand verbs. I empathize, I couldn't understand verbs. That is an interesting concept, verbs. Past, present, and the future. Remember that in school? We used to conjugate verbs. And so Helen Keller began, after this wonderful, loving teacher, patiently began to spell things out and then put her hand under the water faucet, the pump.

Bingo! This wonderful, delicate, wet stuff is what Annie is putting into my poem in terms of sign language. And then she began to understand the object to the concept in her head, and words began to blossom in her head. Very intelligent person. And as I mentioned, she learned 30 words before the sun went down that day.

So the words were written in her head, but, brother, we need to go beyond that. You know, God can spell out new covenant, but that's not enough. God has to go into heart. And I think that's really the difference between just life, even in a church, versus somebody who really gets the truth and lives that truth. Don't you? I think so. I think that's the difference right there.

Well, turn with me also to Mark 4. And in one scripture, a series of verses, this lady isn't named, but in John 14, I think I said 4, it's chapter 14, sorry, Mark 14, verse 1, she is named. And a great story about this wonderful person, and again, leading up to Jesus' death, as verse 1 is saying, only two days before the Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, I think that's in italics there, but certainly they associated the Jews at that time Passover with Unleavened Bread, as we do, but it's two days before Passover, and the chief priests and the scribes saw how they might take him by trickery and put him to death.

But they said, now, not during the feast, unless there be an uproar of the people, but being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, he sat at the table, and a woman came having an alabaster flask, a very costly oil, a spike nard, then she broke the flask and poured it on his head. And then the argument came up here in verse 4.

But there were some who were indignant among themselves and said, why is this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and given to the poor. And they sharply criticized her. You know, we kind of have this saying, oh, okay, when I do good, they criticize me. They leave no good deed undone in terms of penalty.

And they were certainly penalizing this woman for this wonderful act of service. She wanted to make a difference in Christ's life. He was about to go to his death. And I don't know if she understood that part of his life, in terms of the imminent death, only a couple of days away, but she understood how to make a difference in his life. She offered the very best she had. This was expensive oil. This was a spicy mix, an earthy mix, a musk fragrance that has historically been considered one of the most precious of incense substances at that time.

It was very costly. Now, this was Mary, by the way, doing this. She was offering the very best she had to Jesus Christ. She was really, in a sense, anointing his body for the future burial. And that, of course, was a custom in the least at the time.

They would fragrance the body after death. And she was really doing that, honoring him with the very best she had. Some say, well, it's actually picturing a royal messianic anointing. I'm going to certainly picture that. Some say it's picturing even a dowry, which contained fragrances like this. But whatever, Mary's attitude was honoring Christ that day. It refreshed him.

It comforted him. It moved him. And then, unfortunately, we... Well, let's get to the good part here first, and then we'll see the unfortunate side of the incident. Verse 6, Jesus said, Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for me. Verse 7, he says, You have the poor with you always, whenever you wish you may do good. But me, he says, You don't have always. She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial. So he explained what she was doing. This would be very appropriate.

She wasn't going to be able to do that, but that opportunity arose, and she took advantage of it. Assuredly in verse 9, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done, also, he says, will be told, is a memorial for her.

Isn't that a remarkable deed? Now, in one of the... As we see, not all the gospels really give us the name of this lady, but she is named as Mary. I don't know the nurse, the elderly nurse, in the basement with Annie Sullivan. Maybe it's there. I frankly don't know the name. But what she did years and years ago has been recorded. It's part of Helen Keller's life and Annie Sullivan's life.

Even on a greater scale, what Mary did that day has been recorded as a part of the gospel, as a memorial, he said for her. Now, verse 10, And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray him to them, and when they heard it, they were glad. This is hard to read, isn't it? They rejoiced. Oh, good. We're going to kill this man. Yeah, we know how to do it now. We know where he'll go. It's a Passover. Jesus is going to keep the Passover.

He's coming to Jerusalem. We are going to kill him. He's coming to us. And then, I promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray him. And, of course, Judas Iscariot, brethren, did one of the Scripture states, stole offering money. He was the treasure. He took money from the bag, one of the Scripture states, and used it for his own purposes. And Jesus, of course, washed his own feet at that Passover service. Well, how do you, brethren, change your life? How do you make your life different? Well, we've heard today, we've heard in the earlier message, brethren, it's really setting aside self.

That's the number one battle we all have. Christ had to give of himself, give of his life, give of his time, give of his enjoyment, and give all that for us to be saved. Well, a remarkable flow of redemption started with the nurse, Annie Sullivan to Helen Keller. And as the rest, they say, is history. So if you ever get a chance to see The Miracle Worker, it's well worth a two-hour evening to do that or read the book of the autobiography of Helen Keller. And, you know, like Queen Elizabeth said, I was told, you wouldn't have heard my name except for Annie Sullivan. And then, of course, Annie Sullivan gives the nurse the credit.

Christ has made all the difference along with God the Father in our lives. So, let's not just live a life, let's just not spend a life. Let's allow God to invest in our lives. And by doing that, your life will make a godly difference.