Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 43 – Nov 1985
Under New Management
Sermon by Rev. A. De Graaf on Lord’s Day 48
Readings: Psalm 72; 1Cor. 15:12-28
Songs: P.H. 170:1,2,3,4; 172:5,6; 431:1,2,3; 337; 431:9; 490.
Above the door of the run-down business a notice has appeared:
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
“About time!” says the customer
who has grumbled about bad service for many months already.
“About time!” says the neighbour
who was getting sick and tired of angry creditors knocking on HIS door
asking why they were never home next door.
Under New Management! – says everybody heaving a sigh of relief.
But it had been running down for so long, the new boss needs – or he will just TAKE some time to get things straightened out. For one thing, the workers, the staff, have to be re-trained, to do things properly. That takes a while.
They especially have to unlearn a lot of wrong stuff they picked up under the old crook boss.
And yes, they have to learn a lot of new stuff, new attitudes, new priorities…!
And then: The customers will have to learn to trust this business: that it isn’t bad any more, they can now trust them again and place orders with confidence.
That kind of thing is the most important.
Then, later, there will be the outside, carpenters will come to remodel things and make the rundown show attractive again.
And painters will make the whole shop shiny.
Well, it all takes time, but at last something is becoming visible of at radical change: this business is UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
* * * * *
You know the word ‘Kingdom’ in the Bible original, both the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek means not only ‘kingdom’, ‘realm’, but also ‘kingship’, ‘management’.
When we pray for God’s Kingdom to come, we pray that the world will get God as boss, undisputed; we also pray that the bad management of the devil and of that crook manager, sinful man, may at last come to an end.
But the sign is already up, you see: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
It is a peculiar story with that kingdom of God.
You remember Jesus’ first sermon?
You read it in Matthew 4:17 – After He overcame the temptation by the devil.
Then He – just baptized and commissioned by the Spirit – goes preaching and this is what he says:
“REPENT…!
NOT: Because the end is near…
BUT: because the KINGDOM, the KINGSHIP,
the new management of GOD –
the Kingdom of Heaven,
IS AT HAND… has come close!”
And then all kinds of signs are done,
all kinds of things to prove that this is fair dinkum
that this is for real.
John the Baptist hears about it in prison as his disciples report:
lepers get cleansed, and blind people see again,
deaf people can once more hear
and even dead people rise from the grave
Yes we can add to that:
Hungry people get bread and fish a-plenty
and the wine of joy flows at a wedding feast.
Things begin to happen.
As C. S. Lewis put it in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’
The big winter is ending,
the signs of thaw are setting in:
The evil witch is losing her power
– or in this case: satan is losing his grip.
Yes, but the sign was not up yet, then. Not until the King had died.
And sealed the deed with His blood.
Not until He had risen from the grave
and shown that satan and sin and death
no more had the last word on this planet.
Then the sign goes up, as Jesus says on His way to the throne:
“Now is given to me all power, all management, all Kingship, all rule.
Now is given to Me all authority in Heaven and on earth.”
Note that: AND ON EARTH.
Now the sign is up, HERE: “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT”.
But the big clean-up is not there all at once.
The new boss is there and he is in control, but he starts renewing and restoring things at the very spot where things had started to go wrong:
In the inside of man…!
You could say: He starts off with the bookkeeping department
the wiping out of debts, the bad service,
and the re-training of the personnel.
Only later will he do the outside, the carpentry work and the coat of paint.
But the staff, the personnel, is learning all the time.
Ah! says the boss,
the King, the new manager,
and what you have to learn especially is to pray: THY KINGDOM COME.
For you see when you forget that,
and you just WORK for the Kingdom you just WORK for the business,
then before you can say: “knife” you make it your OWN little business,
your OWN little imitation-kingdom again.
Then you no longer let ME rule
and you no longer expect it all from ME,
no you then try to somehow pick a part of the world,
a part you can manage not the whole show of course,
that’d be too much, too difficult, but just a part,
say, the CHURCH,
and you say: Well that IS the kingdom.
You then will make the Kingdom of God manageable, attainable…
you bring it down to your size.
But…! says the Lord, that is too small for me:
I want the lot, for I paid for the lot.
You pray: Thy Kingdom come,
and stop being content so awfully quickly.
It is not your little kingdom, it is GOD’s Kingdom.
Time and again throughout history
man has stopped praying and thought: HERE we’ve got it,
HERE WE made it,
but we always started on the outside:
that carpentry work, that coat and another coat of paint!
The church, outward pomp and splendour, an airtight organisation.
But King Jesus knew better.
Remember when He said the Kingdom was coming close?
Remember what He started that sermon with?
REPENT He said.
REPENT: He always starts with the re-making of the personnel, the people.
The machinery can wait: first things first.
Otherwise, if it is our piecemeal version of the Kingdom,
our business we set up,
it’ll be pretty much the same old stuff as before.
Nothing new:
The same old quarrels, same old self-seeking pride.
Pray Jesus says, now that the sign is up already;
the sign UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
Now, pray with hope and with endurance:
FATHER, NOT MY, nor OUR, but T H Y Kingdom come.
Now look away from ourselves to Him, to our Father, to HIS ideas.
Not our little kingdoms come,
our manageable little kingdoms
where we get big and where we get comfy and honoured,
but Father, THY Kingdom!
Not our imitations, but the real thing of God!
Under NEW management, not the same old stuff again.
That means three things:
1 – Subject at last
2 – Free at last
3 – Home at last.
1. SUBJECT AT LAST
The revolution will at last be over and from every pocket in God’s wide world it will be gone, also from every nook and cranny of my own restive heart.
At last I and you will be rid of that divided heart.
Listen how I say: I and you – For this is the only place where I must come first:
I must be broken first. God wants broken-hearted Christians, someone said to me this week:
When we never say to God: Yes… BUT…!
Now when Jesus preaches about the Kingdom, he begins by saying: REPENT!
Get changed!
But the first sign of repentance in a Christian
is that he sees that even THIS he cannot do himself.
He prays YOUR KINGDOM COME.
Lord please CHANGE ME!
Then we become subject to God,
He is boss, He is Lord,
He has the say.
Then WE get off our little thrones, at home,
little tyrants that we were,
in our sick bed
(oh how we can use sickness to blackmail both people and the Lord,
let them run on our little strings!).
The Church and human society, subject again to God,
God ruling them by His word and spirit,
He having the say how we spend our money and use our time.
God having the say what girl I shall marry and what job I shall be after.
God having the say … and I merely subject.
Obediently listening to His word – – as I read it,
as I seek to apply it to my life…
as I hear it preached…
Subject at last – God bring it about… the end of my rebellion!
But then He smiles back at me as I pray!
“Look!” He says.
Look at the sign, it’s up already you know:…
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT!
To me was given all power!
Pray like mad!
Pray and listen and work ..
But never despair my little one, He says.
Yes, a lot must yet be done.
Not just people are critical of the system and of the society.
I am, too.
I have my ideas about justice and they are in My word.
And I can get very angry, says God,
when I see how in the name of the bible
people sit fat and flabby on the cushions of the status quo.
But do not despair, says God,
the sign is up, you know:..
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT!
Pray and it will come: Subject at last…!
Also…
2) FREE AT LAST.
For what is freedom?
That you can do your own thing?
But how do YOU know what is good?
As long as you do not know the rules of the road,
what good is a car to you… OR a driver’s licence?
You will kill and get killed yourself!
Do your own thing? My foot!
No, do MY thing … then you’ll be free, says Jesus, the new manager.
When a bunch of Christians, set afire by the Kingdom idea last century,
obediently established a Christian University,
they called it THE FREE UNIVERSITY.
Because they knew that the worst tyrant on earth
is the man who rebels against God.
That tyrant will say what we may find in nature and what not.
That tyrant will say what we may do in science and what is just out.
But God’s son, who created the universe,
from whose infinite mind sprang the milky ways and the stars
and the insects and the sea weeds,
says to us: never mind the dictators.
Just look at the things I made with liberated eyes.
Everywhere where you come you can serve me.
In the meantime it has become clear
that even when you study and teach at such a university
you have to pray hard: Lord YOUR Kingdom come!
As soon as we think WE made it
and especially when the world praises us
and says we now are so RESPECTABLE,
then we start again just working on the outside,
coats of paint and face-lifts
and whatever we do to impress the neighbours.
And we forget to repent of sin and so sin comes and makes us slaves again.
How easily that can happen.
So we look ahead
and we pray for the day that we cannot be trapped like that anymore.
Thy Kingdom come we pray
– and we sigh: Free at last!
And then finally…
3. HOME AT LAST.
The world belongs to God!
But until everything in that world praises Him we are not allowed to make our home in it.
In a way it’s like Abraham in the Promised Land –
we have to live in tents here,
never accepting the show for what it is.
The exile in occupied country
– for all His thankful enjoyment of the gifts of God –
says: Lord your Kingdom come!
He sees the start, the wiping out of the debts,
the settling of the accounts,
but because it is only a start…
He can at times sigh: Lord why are You taking so long?
We pray that at every sick bed and at every graveside.
We cry it when we see evil tyrants in the world
and when we see a church become unfaithful.
We pray it when political systems promise much
but then turn out giving so little: when corruption proves too much.
Again and again we think: THIS is IT …
but then, no, we were fooled again.
Lord YOUR kingdom… YOUR kingdom!
The pilgrims are under way
and as the Lord teaches you to pray this prayer
He forbids you to settle for the little compromises:
No peace with the status quo!
The Russian church cannot do this.
And the Indonesian church cannot either.
But do you think the Australian Christian can?
The true employees of the new boss are learning all the time.
They also learn not to be too easily satisfied.
They can be very critical for all their being loving.
Lord we are sick of all those half-pie managers!
Lord Jesus, we want YOU and YOU alone,
ruling in your beauty and in your righteousness!
Lord we are sick of all those two-bit tyrants.
O.K. says the king,
pray then: Father, YOUR Kingdom come.
That Kingdom in which we will be home at last
and ALL your creatures will be
and we have compassion with them when we pray this.
Father your Kingdom come,
When at last that board can come down
that sign: Under New Management!
Because then there is no longer any need for a sign like that.
Then everybody will see it!
Then my work will be truly joyful labour,
and love will be an unending bridal song.
Then we will throw our crowns at his feet:
We, then truly under: new management.
And who said Christians shouldn’t be radicals?
The most radical cry in the world is this prayer: THY KINGDOM COME!
Amen.