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Short Clip
Consecration means we give back to the Lord all of our life. Our body, our future, our time, and all our resources – all are to be consecrated to the Lord. Let’s go back to Cairo for a moment by way of another pastor who has written about his impressions as he also saw the King Tut exhibit in Cairo. Here are his words.
The King Tut exhibit at the Egyptian National Museum was mind-boggling. Tutankhamun, the boy king, was only seventeen when he died. He was buried with solid gold chariots and thousands of golden artifacts. His gold coffin was found in a burial site filled with tons of gold. The Egyptians believed they could take earthly treasures into the afterlife. But all the treasures intended for King Tut’s eternal enjoyment stayed right where they were until Howard Carter discovered the burial chamber in 1922. Tutankhamun’s tomb glittered with unimaginable wealth.
There is a second, lesser-known grave in Cairo. It stands as a powerful contrast, a lesson to all who will reflect for a moment. May I take you there? You have to choke through the gray dust of the city of 12 million Egyptians. Down a long dirty alley and into a fenced cemetery only findable by a guide lays the Protestant Cemetery of Cairo. In a plot of overgrown grass stand rows of sun-scorched tombstones. If you dust off the right one these words faintly appear: “William Borden, 1887-1913.”
Below those words is etched an epitaph that testifies of his love and sacrifices for the kingdom of God and for Muslim people. The words end with a penetrating phrase: “Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.” May I fill you in on that magnificent life of William Borden this morning? He is the one buried in the other tomb in Cairo. In 1904, William Borden, a member of the Borden dairy family, finished high school in Chicago and was given a world cruise as a graduation present. Particularly while traveling through the Near East and the Far East, he became heavily burdened for the lost. After returning home, he spent seven years at Yale and Princeton University, the first four in undergraduate work and the last three in seminary. Rejecting a life of ease to reach Muslims, he gave away his fortune. After he did so he penned these words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.”
On his way to China to witness to Muslims, he stopped in Egypt to learn Arabic. As he studied there he penned these words in the back of his Bible under the no reserves. He wrote: “No retreats.”
After 4 months of intense studying and regular evangelism among the poor of Cairo he contracted cerebral meningitis there in the slums he ministered in there in Egypt. He died within a month at age 25. His mother arrived from Chicago at his bedside just an hour after his death. As she was looking through his Bible she discovered the third and final set of words: “No regrets.”
So William Borden’s life was a life consecrated to Christ’s call, and he summed it up in only 6 words – No Reserves, No Retreats, and No Regrets! Are you struck by the contrast between these two graves?
• Borden’s grave is obscure, dusty, and hidden off the back alley of a street littered with garbage. Tutankhamun’s tomb glitters with unimaginable wealth. Yet where are these two young men now?
• Tut’s life was tragic because of an awful truth discovered too late-he couldn’t take his treasures with him. William Borden’s life was triumphant. Why? Because instead of leaving behind his treasures, he sent them on ahead.
• He wants us to store up treasures; he’s just telling us to store them in the right place! Anything we put into the Father’s hands will be ours for eternity. If we give instead of keeping, if we invest in the eternal instead of the temporal, we store up treasures in heaven that will never stop paying dividends. You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.