Kingdom Commitment

Good morning. I want to share with you some inspiration and excitement and challenge that I've received from reading two books recently: the Young Readers Edition of Alone in the Antarctica about Richard Byrd and from Williams Law's A Serious Call to a Devout Holy Life.

Let's begin with the story of Richard Byrd, and you will see I'll have a picture of Antarctica. Richard Byrd started a second expedition to Antarctica in 1933 and 1934. Unfortunately, there were delays, and they got there in early 1934.

They reestablished their base on the edge of the Ross Sea and called it Little America II. This was a base that was actually underground because it was so cold and the wind and things like that.

Their dream, Richard Byrd and the other scientists of his expedition, was to make an interior weather station in Antarctica—no one had ever done this before—and spend the winter there. The winter in Antarctica is about five to six months long, with temperatures from 50 to like 70 below zero Fahrenheit and with virtually no light. Once the sun goes below the horizon, it does not come out again until like the end of August, September, because their seasons are different than ours.

So they set out to make this—what's called the Bowling Advanced Weather Station—in March 1934. It took approximately two days for Byrd and his crew to do this. The temperatures were approximately 60 degrees below zero, which means metals such as nails, screws, bolts, and nuts are frozen solid, and if they're hit by metal or turned by a screw, they shatter. So to remedy this, the men had to take their gloves off and warm the metal in a bare hand at approximately 60 degrees below zero, which means by the end of the day they had burns, frostbite, nails damage, and things like that. They did get their shack, what was called, and here's a picture of Admiral Byrd in the shack put together about the beginning of April 1934.

Byrd had a commitment to be in the shack approximately five months, and he would see his men—he was going to be there from April to about the beginning of October. Everything looked good. He had a stove. He had plenty of food. The shack was virtually underground. They were, I think, a little bit stuck up because of the high winds and blizzards and the cold. Everything was underground. He thought everything was shipshape.

He came into a routine. He checked the weather instruments. He cooked supper. He went to bed. He remembered the warnings that he had drilled to his men and to himself: "Be careful. Be careful. Be careful." In the book, they had given two examples of when he forgot to be careful.

For exercise, which was a daily part of his regimen, he went up topside, and he would be out on the Antarctic, which was called the barrier. He had set up some bamboo posts with strings so he could walk back and forth and hold it even in the depth of night and the blizzards.

One day, he went more or less out, and he went just beyond his pole, and he was just kind of contemplating his life. One of his cardinal rules is if he ever went up topside, he had to turn his stove off. Well, he forgot to turn it off, just like we have done, I think, many times about when we give ourselves a warning or our children. They forget because they hear it so often. Instead of thinking, he started panicked, and he ran straight back to his cabin.

Midway across the ice, his feet went out from under him like he had been clubbed, and he blacked out. When he came to, he was dangling over the edge of a precipice in the ice, and he thought he came close to falling in and losing his life. Another time, he was out in the evening, and the wind was blowing, and he was just kind of contemplating life again, and he wasn't paying attention to where he was going. When he came to, his life rope was nowhere to be seen, and the snow was whirling.

Well, he didn't panic, and he said, "I will figure out what to do." Admiral Byrd was a navigator, and to navigate, you have a starting place and an ending place. So he made a little pile of snow as the starting place, and he went different directions, first 100 paces, and he did not find anything.

Then he went back to his pile of snow, and he went approximately 125 paces in different directions. Finally, he found his life rope and got back in. Admiral Byrd started noticing in like April and May, he started feeling strange, depressed, irritable, headaches, nausea.

He thought maybe because he was lonely, because he was alone, he was nobody there but him and God.

He thought, "Okay, it's dark," and he made the comment that man is created for the light because in Antarctica there is no light for approximately those five months. He was starting to get very depressed, and so he thought, "Okay, I will put a lot more light on." So he actually more or less turned a blow torch on every evening to put more light in his cabin.

He was more cheerful, but he did notice the fumes from the gasoline, and he noticed he felt more and more sick. Well, May 31st, he had a radio appointment with Little America II, and he was on air. He had turned the generator on. He was on the air. He was speaking with them. All of a sudden, he noticed his voltage meter went down, and so he told the men on the line, "Hold a second." So he went back and opened more or less they had a side door into more or less tunnels that were made beside his shack because everything was underground. Well, the tunnel was full of fumes, and he saw the generator, so he reached down to turn the generator off, and he blacked out.

Well, it took approximately 20 minutes before he came to, and when he came to, he had a horrendous headache. He was dizzy. He could barely see. He could not figure out. He could barely function. He did get back on the radio and signed off from his men and went back to his bunk and collapsed.

On June 1st, 1934, his nightmare began. He realized that for the two months he had been slowly but surely been poisoned by the carbon monoxide from his stove and from the generator, and he was 123 miles away from Little America II. What should he do? Should he call for help? He had specifically told his men, "Do not come and rescue me at anything." He had that much care and concern for them. He did not want them to risk their lives for his.

So he went through the motions. Because of the carbon monoxide poisoning, he was nauseous. At first, he could barely keep any food down. If he ate even like a small bowl of soup or a cup of tea, he vomited immediately.

He realized his stove was both his friend and his enemy. If he turned his stove off, he would freeze to death. If he turned his stove on, he would die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Slowly but surely, he got some strength back, but he had to keep the stove off more or less most of the day just enough to heat and cook his food. So as a result, his cabin slowly but surely got colder and colder, and ice started to form. When he had vomited, the vomit actually froze on the floor. It was so cold. Well, he went through June like this. He was going up, and we went down, up and down.

Every time he talked to Little America II, he did not tell them about the situation. He did not want them to risk their lives for his. Well, they started to get a little concerned about. They just had a premonition that something wasn't right there.

They had first talked among themselves, and they wanted to go out and rescue him, but they realized he had given specific orders: "Do not make any rescue." So they talked to him and asked him just about his things, about how it was going in Little America, but they never brought up about his health.

I think it was July 4th or July 5th, his radio went down another time. The generator completely conked out, and he got out the emerging generator that had been done by hand. Because he had to crank it by hand, it brought everything back again.

Not just the nausea—he had nausea every day—but just the horrendous nausea that he could not keep food down. Because it was getting colder and colder, he was slowly but surely going down. Thankfully, while he had that little strength before this happened on July 5th, he had brought in extra fuel and food into the shack by his bunk so he would not have to get out any far.

Well, when he talked to Little America, he told them what happened, and he was using the hand crank generator, and it was very hard. They more or less made the comment after they were done, "A normal healthy man would have no issue doing it by himself." So they decided to make a rescue attempt, ask permission to make a rescue attempt in the name of science. They wanted to observe the stars, the meteors, the falling things like that in Antarctica, and this would give them a reason to both observe it because there's no light pollution and to come see him at the same time.

So they proposed that to him, and he gave them permission on the case that they would follow the trail from Little America to where he was that they had made earlier and that in no way would they risk the lives of his men. He made that specific, "I do not want you risking the life of you guys to rescue me."

So Little America slowly got ready. In the meantime, Admiral Byrd had ups and downs, but as a whole, he was going down. He was getting very depressed. He could barely make it because of the carbon monoxide. He was always cold, shivering. I don't know. He never said how cold it was in the shack, but above the surface, it was anywhere from 40 to 70 below zero.

I said like underground that he could turn his stove on. It said he could put clothes on. He could eat food. He never felt warm. He got depressed again, so he started actually turning the blow torch on again for light.

Well, at the end of July, they sent their first rescue mission out, and the tractor got to approximately 50 miles on the way to Advanced Base, and there was a big crevice. They went around the crevice, and they could not find any more of the flagged trail markers they had left. It looks like they had been blown away in the snow.

What makes the blizzards awful in Antarctica is when you get 40, 50, 60 below zero, snow ceases being snow and more or less becomes ice. So you get wind as it's blowing it. It feels like you're getting hit by pellets of ice or pellets of sand.

So they had a horrendous blizzard, and they came back to Little America II. This was near the end of July 1934. They, of course, radioed him, and he was able to have a little bit of radio contact, barely, but he was able to keep it up through that emergency generator.

They told him that the first attempt failed, so they tried a second time, and again, the second time failed. Now, August 4th, they were going to try their last one, and Admiral Byrd was going up and down. He couldn't shave. Well, actually, he did shave for a while, but he couldn't shave anymore because he had no strength. He couldn't cut his hair.

He obviously couldn't take a bath. They said his place was full of filth that was frozen, half-eaten thing everywhere, half-open cans of soup and fruit and vegetables. He had virtually no energy. He just barely had enough to survive.

Well, they said they started out, I think, August 2nd to come rescue him the third time, and they went out a couple of miles, and the tractor's clutch broke, so they had to limp back to Little America III. They were going to take another tractor, but they realized the other tractor had broken the previous summer when they were there, and it had never been overhauled. So they put everything they could to fix the tractor. They put headlights on it. They had it where there was a bunk in there. Not quite sure how the bunks were there. Here's a picture of that tractor, but they had it where they had heaters and everything that they could travel more or less 24/7.

Well, they finally got, and they let Admiral Byrd know that he couldn't hear them very well, but no, they couldn't hear him, but he could hear them. They let him know that they finally left. Well, this time, as they went out, the head guy's name was Poulter. Every little bit, a couple hundred yards, they would make a snow mound and put a tin can with either a flashlight, a lantern, or candles to give them a mark so they could keep a straight course because this is before the time of radar. They could only navigate by the stars and compass, and they were more or less going blind from Little America II to Advanced Base. Remember, this was still winter, so the temperatures were anywhere from 40 to 60 below zero Fahrenheit both day and night.

It didn't warm up. So they kept Admiral Byrd abreast of their progress, and they were getting there, and they gave a big commitment to Admiral Byrd, "You must light and let us know where you are." If you remember what I said previously, the shack or the Advanced Weather Base was more or less buried underground, not completely, but I think just a foot or two stuck up. With that issue and the ice and snow on top of it, they could go right by him, and they'd never see him. There was no light except by the stars. So Admiral Byrd, with all his remaining strength, took up flares, a signal kite, and pots that he filled with gasoline and cans and things like that.

It took virtually all of his strength. He got a message from Little America II that they were getting closer, and so Admiral Byrd went out one day, and he thought he saw something on the horizon. It ended up only being a shooting star, but he got his hopes up. He lit a signal flare. He lit the signal kite. He lit the smoke pots, and he realized it was false hope.

Then, it was like August 9th, he got a message. Poulter and his men were approximately 30 miles away. They should be there sometime tomorrow, which was either August 10th or August 11th, depending on how you see the date.

So Admiral Byrd more or less pushed his hope down, and he went to bed. At 5 o'clock on August 10th, he woke up, and he went out, and he lit the signal flares and the smoke pot, and he looked, and nothing.

He went back in. He was depressed. He came up again at 6:00 and did the same thing, and then he went back down and more or less fell asleep. It sounds like he came up at 7:00, approximately one hour in a row, and he tried again, and he thought he saw something and nothing there. He was so exhausted he more or less fainted on his bed, and when he woke up, it was approximately an hour and a half later, and he was just about giving up, and he said he would try one more time. He got some things from the medicine cabinet and drank some hot tea and was able to get him just enough stimulant that he was able to go up one more time.

He lit a flare and lit his smoke pots, and he saw a flash of light. He turned around thinking, "This can't be true," and he looked again, and the flashlight was still there. He actually heard a horn honk, and he knew they were within 5 to 10 miles away. So Admiral Byrd went back down and turned on his stove to heat some soup up, and he came back, and within an hour, the tractor crew came.

Of course, there was, "Hi, how are you?" things like that. But the thing that really struck me is Admiral Byrd did not say a lot about what happened, and his rescuers, Poulter and the other two men in the tractor, did not berate him. They showed him honor and respect and love. They did not ask him a lot of details of what he went through.

I thought about that. These men, obviously, I would have to say, showed devotion and allegiance and loyalty and love for Admiral Byrd to risk their lives in the middle of the Antarctica winter. Like I said, there was no light. There was no map, no radar. They had to more or less blindly navigate. Yes, they knew how to navigate, but it was by the compass and by the stars to find him. I thought about that and how much more important and how much greater is Christ's kingdom and our allegiance for it. That was the topic of my sermon today.

Have we made the commitment to Christ and his kingdom? I wanted to find a few words in this. The first word is devotion. It is the love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause. The next one we have is allegiance, which literally means devotion of a peasant or obligation or allegiance to his vassal.

Loyalty, a strong feeling of support or allegiance. Then, enthusiasm, it's a strong excitement of feeling or zealous or fervor for a cause. Commitment is the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause or activity. Then, of course, love is defined by 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Remember what the two greatest commandments are. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and thou shalt love your neighbor as yourself.

William Law defines devotion as this: "Devotion is neither private nor public prayer, but prayer is whether private or public are particular parts or instances of devotion. Devotion signifies a life given or devoted to God. He, therefore, is the devout man who lives no longer to his own will or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety by doing everything in the name of God and under such rules are conformable to his glory."

William Law answered the question which I think we all ask: Why do we fall so short of the holiness and devotion of Christianity?

His answer, I think, is obvious because we never intended so to do. Here's what he says: "It seems that a small and necessary part of piety to have such a sincere intention as this and that he has no reason to look upon himself as a disciple of Christ who is not thus far advanced in piety, and yet it is purely for want of this degree of piety that you see such a mixture of sin and folly in the lives even of the better sort of people. It is for this want of this intention that you see men that profess religion yet live in swearing and sensuality. It was this general intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety and made the goodly fellowship of saints.

If you will stop and ask yourself why you're not as pious as they were, your own heart will tell you that it's neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it. When you fully intend to be like them in your ordinary common life, when you intend to please God in all your action, you will find it is possible to be strictly exact in the service of the church. When you have this intention to please God in all your actions as the happiest and best thing in the world, you will find it as great an aversion to everything that is vain and impertinent in common life, whether a business or pleasure, as you have now to anything that is profane.

You will be as fearful of living in any foolish way, either of spending your time or fortune, as you are now fearful of neglecting the public worship. Now, who is this that wants this general sincere intention can be reckoned a Christian? Yet, if it was among Christians, it would change the whole face of the world. True piety and exemplary holiness would be as common and visible as buying and selling or any trade in life. This doctrine does not suppose that we do not need divine grace or that it is in our own power to make ourselves perfect. It only supposes that through the want of a sincere intention of pleasing God in all our actions, we fall into such irregularities of life as by the ordinary means of grace we should have power to avoid and that we have, not that perfection which our present state of grace makes us capable of, because we do not so much as intend to have it.

It only teaches us that the reason why you see no real mortification or self-denial, no eminent charity, no profound humility, no heavenly affection, no true contempt of the world, no Christian meekness, no sincere zeal, no eminent piety in the common lives of Christians is this: because they so do not much as intend to be exact and exemplary in these virtues." In a way, I thought William Law was speaking very correctly what he was saying.

I wanted to share some scripture verses. Look at these verses here. These verses are on the whole subject of devotion and allegiance and loyalty. The first scripture verse, Romans 12:1: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is a reasonable service." 1 Corinthians 6:20: "For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirits, which are God's." 1 Samuel 12:24: "Only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart, for consider what great things he has done for you." 1 Thessalonians 2:12: "That you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory."

A very telling verse on loyalty. Ruth 1:16-17: "And Ruth said," and this was to Naomi, "'Entreat me not to leave you or turn back from following after you. Wherever you will go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord so do to me and more also, if anything but death parts you and not me.'" Luke 16:13: "No servant can soothe true masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." Matthew 16:25: "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." 2 Timothy 2:3-7: "You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engage in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. And also, if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rule. The hardworking farmer must be the first to partake of the crop. Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you all understanding in all things."

John 14:15: "If you love me, keep my commandments." Luke 14:25-33: "Now great multitudes went with him, and he turned and said to them, 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it? Last after he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish it, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build, was not able to finish.'

Or what king going to make war against another king does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000 to beat him who comes against him with 20,000, or else while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple."

The last one, Titus 2:14: "Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works." I wanted to share some other examples about people who have given themselves wholly to Christ and his kingdom. We all remember the 12 apostles. We remember their failure when they all said they would not deny Jesus, both before and at the Garden of Gethsemane and what happened. They all denied him, including Peter who said he would not deny him, and he denied him three times. But do we also remember what happened in Acts when they all repented and were filled with the Holy Spirit, that they surrendered and gave themselves wholly to Christ, and they shared the gospel of the good news throughout the earth.

Here's a picture of the ancient Roman Empire and a picture of Rome and then a picture of Jerusalem. Do we know what happened to the apostles? The historical evidence says that the apostle Peter was martyred by Nero in Rome and his wife as well.

We know the apostle Paul was martyred also in Rome by Nero. The other apostles that we have some information about, John the son of Alpheus, not Alpheus, sorry, John the son of Zebedee, had been arrested by the emperor Domitian and was sentenced to exile on the island of Patmos. He was released at the death of Domitian in 8096 and died a natural death. Some of the other apostles, Thomas was martyred in India sharing the gospel.

James, not James, Judas, the son of Alpheus, he had a brother, James, he shared the gospel in Edessa, which was between Rome and Persia, and then he went to Persia and shared the gospel. He was also killed in Persia. We also have two disciples that the scripture tells us historical evidence.

James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John, was murdered by King Herod Agrippa, and James the Just, the brother of our Lord, was taken to the top of the temple by the Pharisees who wanted him to deny Christ. Instead, he preached Christ, and they threw him off the temple. He did not die from the fall. They stoned and clubbed him to death. Legend says that the other apostles were all martyred as well. Unfortunately, we do not have any historical evidence. The other person that I would like to share who gave himself wholly for Christ and his kingdom was Patrick of Ireland. He was a saint, but not in the way the Catholics. He was a saint because he followed Christ.

He was kidnapped at age 16 from Great Britain and brought to Ireland as a slave. Somewhere in that time period, he gave himself wholly to Christ and became a Christian. He began praying to Christ, sorry, praying to God every day, approximately 100 times throughout the day and as much as he could at night.

Sometime, approximately six years after that, God miraculously answered his request in a dream and said, "Your boat is ready." Patrick was on the west side of Ireland facing the Atlantic Ocean. He traveled to the east side facing Great Britain, and there, yes, there was a boat. They took him on. Unfortunately, they were merchants, and he became their slave, but he was only their slave a couple of months. He made it back to Great Britain. He wasn't sure what to do, how the best to serve God. He had a dream again that the people of Ireland came over with letters asking him to come and dwell among them, which he states in his own testimony.

Patrick wanted to go back to Ireland and share the gospel of the kingdom. Unfortunately, it took approximately 25 years before he got to go back. He was probably about 45, 46, and he shared the message of the gospel of the kingdom for about 23, 24 years in Ireland. He finally died on March 17th, which is where we get the day of St. Patrick. That is a historical day. That's not something made up.

Again, I want to ask you if you've made the kingdom commitment. This is not a commitment we make lightly or from emotion, but it's something that we should think about. It's very serious, but I wanted to read with you how William Law described the kingdom commitment. This is not talking about an artificial surrender, but it's talking about living the kingdom life that thousands have done before, such as the early Anabaptists and Waldensians. Here's what William Law says: "Let it now be a rule of your life to look up to God in all your actions, to do everything in his fear, and to abstain from everything that is not according to his will. It must be the subtle purpose and intention of your heart to will nothing, desire nothing, do nothing, so far as you have reason to believe that it is the will of God, that you should so desire, desire, and do.

You are therefore to consider yourself as a person who has no other business in the world but to be that which God requires you to be." I hope I challenge you. I know as I studied this, I was very challenged in my own life to renew my commitment to God and his kingdom, to give everything wholeheartedly for him, and to leave nothing out. May God bless you.