[Darris McNeely] I’d like for you to imagine you’re in a hotel room. It’s late at night. You’re asleep, and you’ve just dozed off, and suddenly on your door someone starts to knock very, very loudly, shaking the wall, and screaming at the top of his lungs, “Get out! Get out now!” And you awake from a stupor, half asleep, half awake, and you are confronted with that command, and the decision to get out now.

What do you leave behind in that room, and what do you take with you from that room? That’s a question that I start with this morning.

You know, such a thought, and such an action sometime happens. I know, I’ve been there, and you all may go through the little parlor game that we might play at times, you know, where you’re sitting around with a group of people, and the question is asked, “If your house is on fire what did you leave behind? What did you take out having, in most cases most of us never having gone through something like that, having to fact type of decision.

You know, the Bible talks about things having to be decided in a swift second, or at a moment’s notice, or at least with a little bit of thought. In Matthew 24, the Olivet Prophecy, Jesus talks about that. He talks in an enigmatic language when He talks about two are at a well, one’s left, the other’s taken. Two are grinding at the mill, one’s left, the other’s taken. And He says that in the context of people being caught up in life as in the days of Noah.

And He kind of ends that section, verses 36-44 with the instruction to “Watch. Be ready,” He says. In another line He says, “Pray that your flight not be on the Sabbath day,” and He talks about a time of trouble, and a time at the end of the age.

That type of language is in the Bible not only from Jesus but the apostle Paul, the other prophets as well. To be girded up, have our loins girded, to watch, to be ready. Paul used the language of a thief in the night, and it conjures up that type of a quick decision that has to be made.

I’d like to take you through a story this morning of a real life set of decisions that had to be made by a group of men about a hundred years ago on an expedition, on a journey that they had embarked upon, and what they did, and what they had to decide, and what they had to leave behind, and what they had to take with them. Things changed on the course of their journey, and the lessons that we can learn from the things that they left behind, and the things that they took with them. And I think it offers us some very important spiritual lessons for us to think about at any point in our life, and at any time, and to think about the things that are really important and vital to us.

The story that I’d like to work this sermon around is a story that began one hundred years ago this coming August, 1914. One hundred years ago when an expedition sailed out of England under the direction of a man named Ernest Shackleton aboard a ship called the “Endurance”.

Ernest Shackleton was one of the last breed of a group of explorers, men who wanted to go out and map the polar regions of the earth.

On this particular voyage they were going out to Antarctica, sailing south, and their goal was to not get to the south pole, that had already been done a few years earlier. What they were going to do was, hopefully, to be the first expedition to go across the pole of Antarctica from one end to the other, and get from one end to the other via the south pole, mapping and charting it along the way. They would be the first group to do that as it was in the age of exploration to be the first to do something, or the first to find something as in our own age when we were the first to set foot on the moon. Those things are big, to be the first to do something at any time when this comes up. This was their goal.

And so they sailed out actually, just as World War I was beginning in Europe. In August of 1914 they began their trip. They made a few stops along the way, and eventually began then going into Antarctica, and sailing toward their point where they were going to disembark and make their trip. But because of delays, and because of some of the problems with probably an early weather change the ship, the “Endurance” got stuck in ice, and it couldn’t move.

And as the ice began to build up it began to rock the boat, and forge big holes into the hull of the ship, water kept pouring in, and weeks after week went on like this. They were manning twenty-four hour around the clock shifts to pump the water out by hand to keep the ship alive, hoping that they could at least endure through this time until the ice would thaw, and they could continue going.

But as the days wore on it became evident that the ship was beginning to break up. The ice was just jamming it, and turning it, and wrenching it, and the ship was going to eventually break up. One day when they saw a group of Emperor Penguins just across from them uttering a very low,  ominous moan they realized it was time to go. And so they were going to have to abandon ship in the middle of this arctic icebound wasteland. And so they took their belongings off the ship, and they had some decisions to make.

This was a fully loaded ship with provisions, and scientific equipment, and personal belongings that all the men had brought along with them on this trip that was going to last for some time, and they were well-prepared, well geared-up, as we say. But now they were going to have to make an over three hundred mile trip back across the frozen ice to an island where there was habitation, and that trip was going to be very dangerous.

Shackleton’s desire was to get the men back. He promised them. He said, “I will get you back home.” That was a literal promise he made to them but they had some decisions to make as they went along the way. They were going, and traveling with full pack and gear. They had to begin to travel light, and they had to unburden themselves of that equipment that they had brought along to face any contingency, any need that they thought that they would face, and now they had to get rid of it, and they had to sacrifice all of that for speed because they had to get back to a habitable point, and they had to do it as quickly as they possibly could if they were going to survive, and live to tell about it from that point on.

The decision was made to allow each man to take the clothes on his back, two pairs of mittens, six pairs of socks, two pairs of boots, and a sleeping bag. Beyond that Shackleton ordered the men the maximum of two pounds of personal possessions from that point on. And so they had some decisions to make because now they had to leave some things behind, and they could only take two pounds of personal items with them.

What would you take? What would you leave behind. Let’s look at the list of what these men left behind and what they took with them to think about this. Shackleton, being the leader that he was, he set the example. He walked out in the middle of the men who were standing next to the collapsing boat on the middle of this ice field, and he took with him a Bible that had been given to him by the queen of England before he left in which she had inscribed an inspirational passage.

He took this Bible, which in itself, certainly the Bible being very precious, having been a gift from the queen that added more to it, and he tore out the Twenty-third Psalm, and a passage from Job, and he threw the Bible down in the snow. He put the pages in his coat. He pulled out a gold watch, a gold cigarette case, and a few gold coins, and he threw those down on the snow. He didn’t need those where he was going.

And from that point on he began to say to the men, “What are you going to put on the ground? What are you going to leave behind to get to where you want to go?”

It’s a critical decision. In Luke 12 Jesus, not thinking about, perhaps of an iced down voyage like that of the Shackletons but having the wisdom to think about life took some time in a parable and other statements here in Luke 12 to talk about this in verse 15. He made a comment here at the beginning of this parable of the rich fool.

Luke 12:15 – And He said to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things that he possesses."  The word covetousness, it’s at the heart of one of the commandments. “Our life,” He says, “does not consist of the things that we possess.”

Now we all possess a lot of things. These men who had gone to Antarctica with Shackleton, they had a number of possessions, certainly not everything that they owned probably with them but what they thought they needed for that particular voyage. And what they were going to have to leave behind now was even paring their life down to the absolute minimum. Two pounds of personal possessions along with, literally, the clothes on their back.

What things would you carry, and should you carry in your journey in your life. Think about that in light of what Jesus says here in this story we’re working our way through. What weighs us down, and what keeps us from the goal that we have?

Here in Luke 12:31, Christ sums it up, and He says, "But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.” That’s the destination that all of us have. That’s our goal, the kingdom. That’s the journey on which we have embarked, and to which we are going. And in all that He says in this particular passage in the intervening verses, which is well worth a personal study for all of us. Christ is saying, “Your life doesn’t consist of your possessions.” Pare it down. “Take with you on that journey to the kingdom only what you need to get to the kingdom.” That’s essentially what He’s saying. That’s the subtext of it all.

The Shackleton voyagers needed to get back to a habitable location and their island, and that was going to be a very, very difficult matter for them to do with over three hundred miles. What would they need to get there? What do we need for our journey to the kingdom of God?

Going back to the story of the Shackleton expedition, Shackleton set the example by throwing his golden watch, cigarette case, and money into the snow. And one of the men said, “There are times when gold can be more of a liability than an asset.”

We see a lot of adds for gold on television you’re watching. Especially if you watch “Fox News”. I notice that’s where all the gold stores advertise. And, you know, I have a gold ring. My wife has some gold jewelry, wedding rings, and things like that. I have a little gold coin that was passed down from my father, a little two and a half dollar double eagle gold piece. That’s the only gold monetary matter that I have in my life. I’ve never bought anything else, and I watch those commercials, and I kind of think, “Well, maybe I should buy some, (laughing) silver to diversify my investment portfolio but I haven’t done it. Yeah, I make other investments, and try to save, and do those things. There’s a time for that but there’s also a time when money, things, debt will shackle us, for they will.

Debt shackles us and it binds us in worry, it binds us in debt, and in action. It’s one of the greatest enslavements of our life if we allow debt to get beyond what we can appreciably manage.

Accumulating large troves of things and possessions, shiny objects of whatever they might be that might be our particular desire themselves don’t always bring lasting satisfaction. And sometimes those things that we collect cause us to invest a lot of time to either use them or to take care of them.

It would be nice to have a couple of homes, three homes, five cars, sometimes I think when I read these stories of all the people like that, and I wonder, “How much time do they have to use all of these” because they only have the same amount of time that I have. And I guess you could be retired, and you can do that but how many homes do you need, and how many rooms, and how many homes do you need to live in, it’s often asked?

Those are all questions that we have to manage and think about because at the end of the time when we take stock of our life, what we really do need, or the things that are of true value in life, and that’s relationships, and experiences, and acts of service, and kindness to others. Those are the real matters that in the end serve us, and serve us well.

In Ezekiel 7:19, there’s a passage that talks about a crisis, and a time that came for the people in Judah. It will come again because it’s said in the context of the Day of the Lord.

Ezekiel 7:19 – It says, “They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be like refuse;…” and like the men on the Shackleton voyage the gold literally became refuse, thrown into the snow. “…Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they will not satisfy their souls, nor fill their stomachs, because it became their stumbling block of iniquity.”

And in Ezekiel’s prophecy at the time of Judah’s time of downfall that happened. When the day of the Lord comes with its full wrath and fury upon the world that too will be the same scene because gold and silver will not be the ultimate source of salvation.

I tend to think of that when I see some of these gold commercials. Again, I’m not saying, “Go buy gold, or invest in gold” but sometimes the mentality and the tactics that are used to prod people to invest in gold speak perhaps to those qualities of my life that I don’t want to have to be spoken to – fear and suspicion, and not of faith in God.

And so, when we look at a scripture like this, if it tells you something about money, gold, silver, things – but the things that are going to be more important to us, and getting through to the kingdom are the relationships, and the experiences, and the acts of kindness that we build in over in those relationships.

Looking again at what they left behind. They left behind clothes. Interesting, I said that they were given what were on their back, and the rest they had to leave behind. They had an extra pair of mittens and an extra pair of shoes. But you know, sometimes when we come down to what we do have, and what we do accumulate, this translates into something for us to think about.

When we joke about closets full of shoes and I know the Marcos’ and the images that that conjures up, and I recognize that dates me to even say that but what is it, twenty, twenty-five, years ago when Imelda Marcos, wife of the president of the Philippines, when he left office her pictures were all over the place about the amount of shoes that she had, and how many shoes do you need? Well, again, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes but I know that talking about that gets pretty close. But stop and think about it. What do we really need?

Back in Luke 12, just to back to what Jesus said, and this is not to say that we need to limit our wardrobe to what’s on our back and an extra pair of shoes. That’s not the case but sometimes we all need a reality check.

Luke 12:23 – Jesus did say this, He said, "Life is more than food,…” in the context of this passage, “Life is more than food and the body is more than clothing.” That is applied, and should be applied at several levels, and the deepest is the spiritual level to at least ask ourselves to think about what it is that we do value as we, perhaps appreciate quality clothing, and more than a couple of changes of our ties, suits, clothes, shoes, whatever it might be. That we do, at times, stop to think about just how many do we really need?

Are there things sometimes as useful as at the end of every season? Just look at what you didn’t wear that season but you thought you were going to. You pulled it from the basement or from the upstairs closet, or whatever, thinking that you would wear it in the winter or in the summer, and if you didn’t wear it ask yourself, “Can it be left behind to someone else, benefit from it?

We went to Africa for the feast a couple of years ago, and I deliberately expected to leave some clothes behind just for the weight of what I would need to exchange for some things I picked up over there. I also knew that I could do without a suit and a pair of shoes, and so I left them behind. And others of you have done things like that to as you’ve gone to those areas of the world or you’ve sent clothing or you’ve left behind various things like that. So, think about that in a very real and a very practical way.

A third thing that they left behind on this journey was scientific instruments. Remember, this was a journey to map the Antarctic continent as they went across the pole from one end to the other so they had the latest instruments, full gear in order to do that job. And that was the purpose of the expedition but once they had to abandon ship their whole purpose changed, it changed. It was no longer to map Antarctica. It was survival. It was to get back home. And so their goals changed, and they didn’t need all the scientific equipment. They left it behind, and they took only what they would need to get across the ice, and across probably one last passageway where they got water to an inhabited island. And when they did, the navigator that got them across in one boat, the initial group that went across had to do a remarkable feat of navigation, essentially using their eyes and stars to get across. The goal had changed.

You know, our goals change when we think about this as a symbol in our life. Sometimes we plan. We set out professionally, personally, especially when we’re young to chart our course in life. We have dreams, and we have plans, and goals, and a vision of where we want to be in our life. It’s maybe instilled by a parent, maybe our background, or by some story we have read, or we start out on that, and then things change. We’re dealt a different set of circumstances, and we have to adapt. We have to change.

Illness, jobs, a factory shuts down. How many men have had to retool their life to get a job after twenty years in a factory that closed down, and there was no hope that they were ever going back into that business because it was now off to Mexico or someplace else? I’ve known a number of men over the years that have had to do that. They’ve had to go back to school to re-tool, and they  learn to be a computer programmer, or to get into a different field, and that sometimes happens as well.

Think about it in regard to whatever plans you had as you were going along in life before God called  you because every one of us when we were called by God our plans changed. Our goals changed. No longer was it retirement by forty, and moving to whatever, or wherever one can do whatever we wanted to do. No longer was it just money. Now we have a spiritual goal in life, and we have to learn a different set.

In Philippians 3 the apostle Paul faced this. The apostle Paul had a now plan in his life. He had goals. He was set on a course. He was of the tribe of Benjamin verse 5 tells us.

Philippians 3:5 – “I was circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews;….” Proud legacy, proud people, and he had the means to whatever family that he was born to educate himself because he went to Jerusalem, and he sat at the feet of one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the day, Hillel, and he said, …“concerning the law, a Pharisee.” He had entered into that mindset, that world view of a Pharisee.

V. 6 -  “concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” This is the set of instruments Paul had with him as he had set out in his life until that one day on the road to Damascus, with all the zeal that he describes here, God struck him down and changed his life, and he was no longer Saul. He eventually became Paul but now his whole life turned around and became something different.

He left behind the pride that he had as a Jew, as a Pharisee, and all the zeal that it says in other sections of Romans, all the zeal he had, the righteousness of the law, he recognized it was all worthless. Without Christ in his life, without the grace of God, and the forgiveness of sin, the spirit of God now in his life he was a good Jew but he wasn’t fully complete. Now he had a different instrument in his hands, in his life, the holy spirit, and that’s how we are as well. Conversion brings a change in course, and a with it a new set of instruments to help get us to where we want to go.

The Shackleton group had to also leave behind a number of things. They left behind books. They had brought their favorite reading material. The long nights and hours that they would have had but that’s extra weight and size, and there was no way that books would be brought along. I mentioned that Shackleton actually didn’t take a full BIBLE. He just tore out Psalm 23, and a passage from the book of Job, and that was his favorite. That’s what he then would look at and read,  not the entire Bible. So all the others had to leave their books behind.

Now what they may have learned from those books they had to apply to survival, and that teaches us a lesson as well. We love books, I love books, we have the ABC library here full of books, that if you had the time to plumb all of them you’d have a lot of knowledge and understanding there. I have a lifelong love of reading books myself, and we study our BIBLES, and we realize there’s much to learn and grow in understanding.

All of us also should realize that at some point we have to put the book down even the Bible. We have to live the BIBLE. We have to put the book of theoretical knowledge down whether it’s – business, history, leadership, whatever it is, or something that we’re reading, studying, and we have to put it down, and we have to go out and we have to live according to what we learn, and put those principles into practical application in our life. The theoretical becomes practical, and we should have in our hearts what the books have taught us, and certainly what the Bible teaches us in that way.

These men didn’t need their books to get back home. They had to put it aside. Jesus did that on one occasion in Mark 6. We won’t turn there. I’ll just relate it to you but in Mark 6 there’s a wonderful story of where Jesus fed five thousand, taught them, and then in the very next verse He sends the disciples out into a boat on the Sea of Galilee and goes up into a private place for a time. The men fall asleep in the boat, and the waves come up a sudden storm and they’re asleep, and they’re fearful when they wake up, and Jesus is walking toward them. You know the story, and it’s a wonderful contrast there between Jesus teaching earlier in the day, and then that night the men having to apply the teaching that they should have been listening to - of faith, and of courage for instance, but they panicked.

Peter got up and tried to walk on water. He did for a little ways until he realized what he was doing, and he began to sink when he took his eyes off of Christ. There’s a lot of lessons there but in the way it was set, one story, earlier in the day teaching on the hillside, eating literally with food, a few hours later they’re on the storm tossed lake, and they have to apply what they learned earlier in the day. And that story teaches us a lot. And that’s how it is with God and in our relationship with God, and we study, we read, we learn but eventually we have to apply what we have learned, and that’s what these men had to do as well.

Interesting, another thing that the Shackleton adventurers left behind, their suitcases. They left their suitcases behind, but before they did that, these were leather suitcases in that day. They didn’t have the lightweight nylon materials that we have in our suitcases today. They cut up their suitcases and made extra shoes out of the leather on the suitcases. They didn’t need the suitcase. What they needed essentially was what the suitcase was. Now, think about that.

I used to kid my daughter-in-law when we would travel with them, particularly at the feast. They had twice as much luggage as we did, and we would break our backs getting it in and out of the cars. Now I made enough cracks that the last time we traveled together I noticed that they had about half the luggage on that particular trip. You know the old adage, “When you travel take half as much clothing, and twice as much money.” (Laughter). You know, we have to learn those things, and we don’t always need as much as we usually take on a major trip.

There’s a lesson beyond even just paring down the things that we own, to peeling back. These men actually literally did with the suitcases, peeled it back and made shoes out of the leather, and took only what they needed from that.

Now it’s a symbol for us in our life. We have to peel back so much that we think we have to carry with us and becomes a part of our life, and not understanding that we have to peel that back and find out really, get our lives down to the most important essentials in the area of our own core beliefs, just to use that. We’ve even been peeling back this world, peeling back this culture, this society that is around us, and we absorb, and attacks us, and we’re immersed in it throughout every day. We have to peel that back, keep it at arm’s length, and recognize what it is and what it may be doing for us, and to really find the things that we need in our old beliefs, our core values, there may be a reason.

In Ephesians 6:15 when Paul was describing this armor of God, when he came to the shoes he said, “Put on your shoes, let your feet be shod with the gospel of peace.” The gospel of peace is what’s he’s used there as he connects to the shoes. When you really stop and think about the gospel of the kingdom of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God, you begin to understand what it is that is at the very core of our belief.

That gospel, and it’s not the messages that we receive through media and popular culture that it’s peddled to us, around us all the time. We’ve got to peel through all of that and get down to the core, make sure that the core of the gospel is what is on our feet, if you will, moving us forward.

This is what those men needed to get across the ice for the protection on their feet, shoes. If we take Paul’s analogy, we need the core of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God to properly discern our times and our twenty-first century culture. Label it for what it is, and move ahead of it, move beyond it. This culture’s hollow at its core. We need to take what’s essential in our own life.

I was amused as perhaps you were at the latest political crisis that took place, and came to light this week in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christy, who got caught as the story goes, his operatives, some of his aides, key aides, decided to exact some political revenge upon the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey by shutting down the George Washington Bridge back in August for a few weeks, at critical hours, tying up traffic, and creating a general mayhem for that.

When it all came to light, according to the story, whether it’s true or not, we will find out all the facts, I’m sure. It was his operatives, it’s his chief aides, that he didn’t know anything about it. But you go deeper into the story, and you look at really what was taking place, and you look at the texts that they were sending. “Shut down, there needs to be some problems on the bridge,” and you look at those as I was looking at it in an article, and you realize these people are taking language right out of the “Sopranos.” It’s payback time against their enemies.

The mayor didn’t support the governor’s re-election bid, and whether or not he encouraged it by a flippant remark, kind of like King Henry II did when he was so nettled by Thomas a Becket that he said, “Is there anybody that will rid me of this pest? So some of his lead men went and killed him as he was praying at the altar, and martyred Thomas a Becket.  

You have to wonder if Christie did the same thing but when you look at what his people were texting back and forth you realize these were young people operating at a high level of politics with power at their hands, and they in a sense were kind of emulating television drama. And actually, the way it went back and forth, as somebody was pointing out, it sounds exactly like a line on the “Sopranos.”

And the point was that these people think that that’s real life, and they didn’t understand that they were tying up ambulances, school busses, people getting to work, people going about their lives. All because they could, and they didn’t think they’d get caught because on television they don’t always get caught, but in real life eventually you do at that level. And it illustrates how hollow, certainly politics if anyone ever thinks that’s the solution for the kingdom or for this world today. It isn’t but that’s our culture, and that’s what we know about, and that’s what we watch, and that’s what we are familiar with.

I had to learn some of the dialogues. I never watched any episodes of the “Sopranos” but I watched episodes of other things, and I know dialogue as well back and forth. I recognize that you can learn certain things but you want to draw the line but you realize that that’s not real life, and you know it’s entertainment, and what’s reality. And reality is when you’re finally able to strip away the things down to what we really need, and put on our feet at our heart and core the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. All those things that they left behind.

Let’s look at a few things that they kept, and learn a few lessons. When I was reading through this story I was amused at what they kept. This was the first item that was on the list. They all kept toothbrushes. Why did they keep a toothbrush? I guess you could run a finger across your mouth or whatever but hygiene, as mundane as keeping your teeth clean they recognized was important. They didn’t need any problems with their teeth that could literally bring them down. And so they kept a toothbrush, and they used it. Even in that direst of time they used it daily.

Now we all recognize we brush our teeth every day, multiple times a day. It’s something we do. We do it by habit. We don’t even think about it at times. It’s kind of a mundane thing but it is a very important thing. I’ve known people who have died because of tooth decay that can go to their heart and create heart problems. It is a very important, critical part of our body to keep up, and yet it’s kind of a daily thing that needs to be done, and this is what they did and maintain on a daily basis.

There are a lot of things in life that require daily maintenance to keep on top of the things in our life, and we apply this to a spiritual lesson for us. Probably the most important thing, or certainly one of the important things that we need to be doing daily is prayer with God, and that’s not mundane, and that’s not just ritual but it is important, and it is critical but it’s a daily thing that we have to take with as well. To that we attach Bible study, and occasional fasting as well.

But just as these men recognized that it was important to keep up this daily habit as a part of their survival kit. You look at that. “We’ve got to take prayer with us, on our knees, in our hearts, in our minds, praying in the spirit, continually in prayer,” as Paul would say at times, and being at times in a prayerful spirit as we’re going through certain things, and about to go into. We may not have a chance to go into a private place and kneel privately before God but we can certainly pray in our heart and our mind, and ask God for wisdom with a critical meeting or situation that might be coming up that we need help with but it’s that contact with God that is on a daily, regular basis that we need.

And they also took with them photographs. That was the most universal thing that the men chose to take. Photographs of their loved ones back home they took with them. They were isolated at the bottom of the world, going across alien land, terrain that. A look, a glance at someone they knew was a connection to home that helped keep them encouraged and reminded them that there was something worth fighting for each day to put one foot in front of the other to keep going when depression, despair, discouragement was right on the horizon ready to drag them down to defeat.

We look at that as a symbol for our life. Relationships are truly the most important and valuable things in our lives. The connection that we have with friends, with family have been proven by people time and time again to be one of the most single, biggest contributor to happiness. It’s not the things, it’s not the amount in the bank account, it is those connections. How many people who have said at the end of their life they just wished they had put more time into their relationships? They look back fondly, and regret not investing more time at any given point in our life. The beginning of a new calendar year, the beginning of a new day, a good question for each of us to ask ourselves is, “What relationship in our life needs mending today?”

What step can we take today to mend a relationship or to nurture a relationship by a smile, a card, a call, some token gift, something silly even? Whatever it might be. And what effort might we make in investing our time, swallowing our pride to try to mend a relationship that has been broken.

They also took a banjo with them. At least one of the men had a banjo, and that was heavy. It was a heavy banjo, weighed twelve pounds but Shackleton said, “We’ve got to replace something every day with music. We’ve got to bring some joy, some encouragement, and a diversion that is profitable in this way every day in our lives to get our minds off of the cold, the darkness, the gloom, and the depression.

There’s a lot of things we’ve got to do each step of the way to fill our lives with good, and it goes even beyond good music, and encouraging, uplifting music that can be a diversion, and to help us re-orient and refocus. Many of us have enjoyed music. We have our playlists. We have playlists of encouragement that we may put together on our I-pods or MP3, and we listen to encourage us, to kind of fill a time when we need a little bit of diversion. But the principle is to fill our newly created space in our lives to do good just as they did.

One last thing that they took with them that I found interesting was, the men they took their diaries. Those who kept diaries but were allowed to bring them along with them, and they later proved to be a valuable resource of information to reconstruct the days of that particular journey for not only the members but also later historians who looked at the details we have from those who took diaries that they were allowed to take that along with them.

Every year I give a talk to the ABC group about the importance of keeping a diary, keeping a journal in your life as a way to begin to understand your own life, your personal history, to write it down in some form, electronically, handwritten into a notebook, whatever it might be but to keep a progress of our life, of a trip, of a Feast of Tabernacles experience, or a time or a passage in our life. It’s an invaluable tool, and it was for these men on the Shackleton voyage. Sometimes it’s very instructive to go back for those that have done that, to look at the experiences that have made us today.

Periodically I will pull off my shelf one of my diaries, one of my journals, and just kind of thumb through it, or just kind of open it randomly, and look at it. Sometimes I’m surprised at what I wrote. Sometimes I’m surprised at who I was when I wrote what I wrote. Sometimes I don’t even know who that person was but as a lifelong habit it can be very, very profitable to understand who we are and what we’ve come from, and helped to even work through certain episodes of our life.

I’ve used it as a tool to work through a time of crisis personally and within the church, to write down certain observations, reflections, feelings, whatever. You know you’ll probably will never read them again but just scrawl it on a piece of paper that I can fold up and put back on the shelf and it’s been very, very helpful, many different applications there.

So they left things behind, and they took things with them. I opened with that story of a knock on the door late at night, and being awakened with that question. I’ve told this story before but I that  literally happened to me back in November of ’05 in Jordan after the Feast of Tabernacles. Scott Ashley and I had taken an extra week to travel through Israel. We had crossed back over into Jordan, and we were going to fly out the next day, back home when at eleven o’clock at night when we were both sound asleep. We were awakened, and we were given that command. “Get out now!”

What had happened, we didn’t find that out until about two o’clock in the morning after shivering several hours in the streets of Amman outside the hotel that bombs had gone off in I think it was three other hotels that night, American based chain hotels, and about a hundred and fifty people had died because of a terrorist bomb incident that night, and they didn’t know if our hotel was going to be attacked so they evacuated everyone. You could hear the ambulances going through the streets, and it was awhile before they told us what had happened.

Fortunately our hotel didn’t blow up, I kept looking for it to happen. I kind of figured out it out it must have been a bomb threat, and that’s why we were out there, and that’s why I kept looking for it to just kind of go up in smoke but it never happened, and we were let back in.

What did I take with me? What did I leave behind? I left behind everything but my passport and my airline ticket. I figured I was not going to see that room again, and I wanted to just get out of that country.

What did Scott Ashley take with him? He took his cameras, and he was nursing his cameras down the elevator or down the steps and out into the street, and those were the most valuable things to him. He had all of those pictures of the trip. If you know Scott, he loves photography. That’s what was valuable to him.

I didn’t take anything else but my passport and my airline ticket. That was a split second decision that we had to make but it’s been on my mind ever since, having lived through something like that. And to go through this exercise, I think is something that is very profitable.

Let’s turn back to Philippians 3 where we began reading. The apostle Paul had to jettison his past life when he came to a knock down on the road to Damascus and in a confrontation with God, and as we were reading he turned away from his past and in verse 7 Paul says,

Philippians 3:7 – “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

V. 8 – “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” What he counts as rubbish was his heritage as a Pharisee. The training that he had he recognized as incomplete. It didn’t have Christ in it. It was rigorous indoctrination in the law, and Judaism as it has developed since the exile at the end of his day, but Christ was not there. And he’d come face to face with Christ on that road to Damascus, and that was rubbish to him. That’s quite a step.

A man who has put time toward a diploma that they hang on the wall that says, “I graduated from this school, and I’ve attained this mark of education, or this distinction with service,” or whatever it might be, to say, “That’s rubbish.” And to take perhaps what’s at the core of it and apply it to truth, that’s a big step. This is what Paul did, and he came to understand, as he said,

V. 10 – “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,

V. 11 – “if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

V. 12 – “Not that I have already attained,” he said. He knew that he was on a journey. “…or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

V. 13 - “…I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,

V. 14 – “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

He sums it up very beautifully in this passage here. All that he thought he knew, all that he had accomplished, all that he was he counted as rubbish, and now he was pressing forward. We have to come to that point in our life as well, and we sometimes have to stop, take stock of what we have, and determine what it is that we need to leave behind, and what it is that we need to take with us.

Philippians 4:13, Paul came to a point where he put this spot into his letters but he ties it in with everything. He said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That was what he recognized was the strength, the encouragement that he needed to take with him as he moved forward.

At times you and I may come to a point of taking stock and deciding what it is that we need to change and what we need to do to go forward. We have to make certain decisions, and it’s far beyond just leaving something in a hotel room, or leaving it on an ice floe, or walking out of a room away from it.

A lot of the things that we need to leave behind are past mistakes, past problems, failures that we have made personally, collectively. Don’t blow on them once we repent. We can think a lifetime of redemption but we must do that with the calm assurance that we have been given mercy. We have been given forgiveness.

Sometimes people do bad things in their life, their pre-conversion life as a young person, or whatever. They do bad things, and then they are converted, truly converted by Jesus Christ who forgives us, and the gift of the holy spirit. Even people in today’s world, they will turn around from a drug habit. They will turn around from all that. A life of years, and decades even of waste in their life and clean up their life, and in an effort to seek redemption they will do good things.

I used to watch the radio disc jockey that is out of New York, Don Imus. For years he was on MSNBC simulcast, and I would tune in to him early in the morning at times to get the news and be entertained by Don Imus, and as I got acquainted with him I realized that here was a man who, by his own admission, decades in the,… He didn’t know “what happened in the 70’s or 80’s” he said, because of drugs and alcohol.

He had money, and he was a big time disc jockey, and he just wasted it, and he jokes about it. But he cleaned up his life. He not only cleaned up his life, but then he began to do something. And he started, he bought a ranch out in New Mexico, and for years he has sponsored children with cancer to go and spend a week at this ranch roping, tying, and riding horses. And he’s doing, he still does a lifetime of good works with these kids with cancer. He’s a guy who lives with cancer himself, and he’s been living with it a few years, lung cancer.

As I listened to him, and watched him go through his spiel I realized, “You’re going to spend the rest of your life, Don Imus, trying to get redeemed for your wasted years.” And that’s okay. You figure out sometimes what motivates people. I figure that he’s doing this, in a sense, to redeem himself for all the years that he wasted, and others get the benefit from it, and that’s good.

Sometimes we may never be able to forgive ourselves, and we think we, it’s only good works, or good service, or whatever that will do that, and those are good too, and those are important, and “We should not leave them,” as Christ said, “undone.” But we have to come to a point in our heart where we recognize we have been forgiven, and we leave those things behind as we move forward to the good, and the light of God’s grace, and so we don’t need to dwell on our past mistakes and failures.

Sometimes we don’t need to dwell on our past deeds and successes. That by itself is not enough. We have to do further good deeds and have further successes, I suppose, but don’t just blow our glory. That too can be a mistake.

What Paul summarizes here in verse 13 is moving forward with Christ in us, and in our minds and hearts in the holy spirit, and that’s what strengthens us. That’s what gives us the ability to move forward. And this is how we come to a point in our life where we can put them behind us, leave certain things behind, and then take only what we need as we go forward in life.

In Colossians 3 Paul went deeper into this in verse 5 where he said,

Colossians 3:5 - Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth:… and he began to list them, this long list of sins beginning with …fornication, and uncleanness,… andall of these matters. Put them to death. These are the things to leave behind. That is what he’s really saying. Leave them behind. Put them under the blood of Christ and move forward. And then when he comes down to verse 14, he says,

V. 14 – (But) above all (these) things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

V. 15 - And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Leave behind this list of sins but take with us a love of God, and that relationship with Him, and the calm assurance and knowledge of forgiveness, and a strength and of help to live our lives going forward. This is how deep, and even deeper some of the passages we have studied that Paul wrote and learned about them in his life.

The story of Shackleton voyage ended on a good note. As I said, Ernest Shackleton promised his men that he would get them home, and he did. Every one of the men made it back home. Sadly, some of them later died. They got back home, I think it was 1917. World War I was still going. Some of them immediately enlisted, and two or three of them died in World War I after having survived that ordeal. But they did get off of Antarctica, and they got home, and their story teaches us a very important lesson.

Two questions to consider and to think about as we look at our own lives: What is it that we should leave behind? What is it that we should take with us?