In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Last night, I think it was last night, things get mixed up, I listened to part of the sermon of the Reverend Billy Graham. I don't know where it was. It was in a huge stadium. And I don't know how they produced this marvelous community music without a million rehearsals.
But anyway, it was a pretty effective program. Now, the one thing, whatever anybody may say about that sermon that I heard last night, maybe some of you heard it too, you cannot escape the fact that Billy Graham was talking about God, and talking about our obligation to serve God. That is absolutely unmistakable. The music was the same thing. Very simple, various sorts, but it emphasized in a very primitive way, let's admit it.
But there's nothing wrong in that. Christ said, you should be simple as a little child. Remember that. We don't have to listen to Bach all the time. But the hymns, and you could understand every word that they sang, And the whole thrust was God and me, but with relation to God.
Not me in relation to my fulfillment and all that nonsense. This was absolutely unmistakable. And yet, within the last month, had a shall we say, I Oh, yes, I dialogued. I dialogued. I didn't have a discussion.
And the thrust of it was this business of loving God and neighbor. And this was this was is what I was told by, I suppose, a good Catholic, an Obstac Catholic. That this commandment that Christ that I've just read to you from our blessed Lord's own lips, that that was superseded when he said in the Gospel of Saint John, a new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you. They threw that at me as a contradictory Well, not a contradictory, but as the latest development of Christ's commandment of love, and that it superseded the one that I've just read to. And that I And which most of us know by heart.
Now, what do you think of none? And that is not uncommon. We have gotten away from the idea of personal holiness to what we call peace and development. And that's not just my opinion, that's a quotation from a very recent magazine of a very serious writer. And he's talking about the Catholic church.
Peace and development. Not a word about God in those. I received a certain missionary magazine from a certain missionary society that was founded specifically for the missions of China. Give one guess. I'm not naming it, of course.
It will remain anonymous, you know. You can read the magazine from beginning to end, as I have, and scarcely does the word God come up. Everything's about man, and doing good to man, and all this stuff. There's nothing wrong about being kind to your neighbor. There's nothing wrong in trying to make this a better world.
There's nothing wrong in aiming for peace, whatever it means. There's nothing wrong in aiming at development. There's nothing wrong in trying to be everything you can be. There's nothing wrong about any of that. As a matter of fact, if we love God some of that's going to have to be in our lives.
You can't love God without it because that's what he said too. He said, whoever says he loves God and hates his neighbors a liar. And so, but you see, you know, plenty of times when I stand up here in this pulpit and, let us say, talk about it in synagogue, I often wonder how many get the connection between what I'm saying and God? Do I get it sometimes? And yet, unless God's in there, unless God is the focus, unless God is first, with my whole heart, with my whole mind, with my whole soul, and with all that I am, That's what Christ said.
That's how I have to love God. Notice, that's a pretty all embracing statement. Unless that happens and is an actuality, what matters all the rest? What matters? Now, I'm not saying it doesn't matter.
I'm not saying that a good honest to God materialist hasn't something to offer. Far from it, I've known them and you know them. Now, today we call them the secularists, secularists, humanists, and so forth, or logical positivists, or utilitarians. The All of these people had a lot to offer. And some of them led sacrificial lives.
But so what? We can admire them, we can honor their memories, but don't let's call it religion. Don't let us call Don't let us ever make the mistake that any of these goals can satisfy. It's been tried. John Stuart Mill with his altruism.
Jeremy Bentham with his utilitarianism. Men that were who were dedicated to uplifting society and all of that in the nineteenth century. These names are familiar to you. And they were good ideas, and they did help, but quit on eternity talk to me. What does it matter?
These things as ultimate, as ultimates. If there is an ultimate, if there is. But all Christians assume their whole life is based on the idea that there is an ultimate. What is it? And what is it in fact?
What is this objective that is adequate to give meaning to life? What is it? The answer is God. Saint Augustine in the very first sentence of his confessions. Very first sentence of his confessions.
And remember, this is the fourth and the fifth century A. D. Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts will not be at rest until they rest in you. So, it This is not an easy doctrine folks. This is not easy at all.
This is what makes a Christian life so difficult. That we have to put God first and not be relinquished in our daily duties. That we cannot afford to be absorbed by the very responsibilities we have to acquit ourselves of to be true Christians and true lovers of God. This is where the conflict comes. A man and a woman with a family, a child with an ailing parent, parents who the husband's out of work, all of these things.
They thought how can a person not be worried and anxious? We are not all saints. We can't all say, oh, well, God will take care of us and go blithely along. Because if we do that we are not loving God. Because we're not doing our duty in life to those for whom we're responsible.
And yet, it's so easy to be lost in our very responsibilities and forget what it's all about. God. In the name of the Father and the Son, most worthy.