My thanks to Dr. Veda Kowalski for sharing an excerpt of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s Sermon, But If Not. Ive posted the entire sermon here for you to view. Please take a look at Dr. Kowalskis focus on Civil Disobedience which is about a paragraph and a half down. Powerful Stuff!!! Video in case you want to watch and listen: https://youtube/watch?v=pOjpaIO2seY But If Not There was a day when many of the Israelites found themselves in bondage in Babylon. There was a king of Babylon by the name of Nebuchadnezzar, you read about him a good deal in the book of Daniel, and it stands as an epic that will remain stenciled on the mental sheets of unfolding generations. Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty king, and when he ruled, he ruled and when he issued an order he meant business. And Nebuchadnezzar issued an order. He made a golden image and his order was that everybody under the reign of his kingship had to bow before that golden image and worship it. Now those of you who read the Bible remember that story. One day Nebuchadnezzar called in the judges and the governors and the sheriffs, and they had a dedicatory service for this golden image, and then he said to them Im instructing you to see that everybody bows before this golden image. But there were three young men around there. Ones name was Shadrach, the other ones name was Meshach, and the other name was Abednego. And they answered--and I read it from the scripture--and said to the king O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this manner [sic]. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. [1] Now I want you to notice first, here, that these young men practiced civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is the refusal to abide by an order of the government or of the state or even of the court that your conscience tells you is unjust. Civil disobedience is based on a commitment to conscience. In other words, one who practice[s] civil disobedience is obedient to what he considers a higher law. And there comes a time when a moral man cant* obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust. And I tell you this morning, my friends, that history has moved on, and great moments have often come forth because there were those individuals, in every age in [and?] every generation, who were willing to say I will be obedient to a higher law. These men were saying I must be disobedient to a king in order to be obedient to the King. And those people who so often criticize those of us who come to those moments when we must practice civil disobedience never remember that even right here in America, in order to get free from the oppression and the colonialism of the British Empire, our nation practiced civil disobedience. For what represented civil disobedience more than the Boston Tea Party. And never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal! It was legal to do everything that Hitler did to the Jews. It was a law in Germany that Hitler issued himself that it was wrong and illegal to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitlers Germany. But I tell you if I had lived in Hitlers Germany with my attitude, I would have openly broken that law. I would have practiced civil disobedience. And so it is important to see that there are times when a man-made law is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe, there are times when human law is out of harmony with eternal and divine laws. And when that happens, you have an obligation to break it, and Im happy that in breaking it, I have some good company. I have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I have Jesus and Socrates. And I have all of the early Christians who refused to bow. Now the second interesting point is that these men never doubted God and his power. As they did what they did, they made it very clear that they knew that God had the power to spare them; they said that to the king: Now we know that the God that we worship is able to deliver us. And that grew out of their experience. They had known God, they had experienced God in nature and they knew God as the creator. And then they had seen God in history. And then they had seen God, Im sure, in their personal lives. They never doubted Gods power to deliver them. [break in recording?] But let me move now to the basic point of the message. Know this morning, if we forget everything Ive said, I hope you wont forget this. It came to the point after saying Our God is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, but! if he doesnt deliver us, we still are not gonna bow. But if not -- do you get that? That these men were saying that Our faith is so deep and that weve found something so dear and so precious that nothing can turn us away from it. Our God is able to deliver us, but if not... This simply means, my friends, that the ultimate test of ones faith is his ability to say But if not. You see there is what you may call an if faith, and there is a though faith. And the permanent faith, the lasting, the powerful faith is the though faith. Now the if faith says, If all goes well; if life is hopeful, prosperous and happy; if I dont have to go to jail; if I dont have to face the agonies and burdens of life; if Im not ever called bad names because of taking a stand that I feel that I must take; if none of these things happen, then Ill have faith in God, then Ill be alright. Thats the if faith. You know, a lot of people have the if faith. Jacob found himself in that dilemma once, and his faith was contingent on an if. And he said Now if God will be with me and if he will keep me in this way that I go; and if God will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, that I come again to my fathers house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God. [2] Thats the if faith; Jacob hadnt quite gotten to the essence of religion. There is a though faith, though. And the though faith says Though things go wrong; though evil is temporarily triumphant; though sickness comes and the cross looms, neverthless! Im gonna believe anyway and Im gonna have faith anyway; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, the LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. [3] And old Job got to that point, he had a though faith. He looked out and everything that he had had been taken away from him, and even his wife said to him Now, what you ought to do, Brother Job, is to curse God and die. God has been unkind to you, and you should have let God know a long time ago that you would only follow him if he allowed you to stay rich, if he allowed your cattle to stay in place. You ought to curse him and die, Job, because he hasnt treated you right. But Job said Honey, Im sorry but my faith is deeper than that. Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. My faith is a though faith. And this is the essence of life and religion. The question is whether you have an if faith, or whether you have a though faith. You know what this says in substance, that ultimately religion is not a bargaining matter. A lot of people bargain with God. If you just let me avoid pain, God; if you allow me to be happy in all of its dimensions; if you dont allow any suffering to come; if you dont allow frustrating moments to come, then Ill be alright, Ill give you a tenth of my income [2], and Ill go to church and Ill have faith in you. But religion is not a bargaining experience, its not a commercial relationship. And you know, no great experience in the bargaining atmosphere. Think of friendship, think of love, and think of marriage. These things are not based on if, theyre based on though. These great experiences are not based on a bargaining relationship, not an if faith, but a though faith. And Im coming to my conclusion now. And I want to say to you this morning, my friends, that somewhere along the way you should discover something thats so dear, so precious to you, that is so eternally worthful, that you will never give it up. You ought to discover some principle, you ought to have some great faith that grips you so much that you will never give it up. Somehow you go on and say I know that the God that I worship is able to deliver me, but if not, Im going on anyhow, Im going to stand up for it anyway. What does this mean? It means, in the final analysis, you do right not to avoid hell. If youre doing right merely to keep from going to something that traditional theology has called hell then you arent* doing right. If you do right merely to go to a condition that theologians have called heaven, you arent doing right. If you are doing right to avoid pain and to achieve happiness and pleasure then you arent doing right. Ultimately you must do right because its right to do right. And you got to say But if not. You must love ultimately because its lovely to love. You must be just because its right to be just. You must be honest because its right to be honest. This is what this text is saying more than anything else. And finally, you must do it because it has gripped you so much that you are willing to die for it if necessary. And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you arent fit to live. You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause--and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; youre afraid that you will lose your job, or youre afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or youre afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but youre just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice. These boys stand before us today, and I thank God for them, for they had found something. The fiery furnace couldnt stop them from believing. They said Throw us into the fiery furnace. But you know the interesting thing is, the Bible talks about a miracle. Because they had faith enough to say But if not, God was with them as an eternal companion. And this is what I want to say finally, that there is a reward if you do right for righteousness sake. It says that somehow that burning fiery furnace was transformed into an air-conditioned living room. [light laughter] Somebody looked in there and said We put three in here, but now we see four. Dont ever think youre by yourself. Go on to jail if necessary but youll never go alone. Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you and criticize you, but you never go alone, for somewhere I read that One with God is a majority, and God has a way of transforming a minority into a majority. Walk with him this morning and believe in him and do what is right and hell be with you even until the consummation of the ages. Yes, Ive seen the lightning flash, Ive heard the thunder roll, Ive felt sins breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul but I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on, he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone; no, never alone, no, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. Where you going this morning, my friends, tell the world that youre going with truth. Youre going with justice, youre going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship. And the world will look at you and they wont understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but youll go on anyhow. But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:36:28 +0000
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