"Play It Again, Sam."

Setting: The Café Americain.  In walks Lisa, sees Sam, the pianist, and utters this now famous phrase, "Play it again, Sam".  Or did she?  Well, in reality, in this now famous Hollywood production of "Casablanca", what Lisa (Ingrid Bergman)  said to Sam, Rick Blaine’s (Humphrey Bogart) friend, were THESE phrases: "Play it once, Sam, for old time’s sake.", and "Play it, Sam. Play."  Rick later says something related to Sam: "You played it for her and you can play it for me.", and "If she can stand it. I can! Play it!"

I keep referring to the daily devotionals which The Fayetteville Church published for the three weeks surrounding and including this holiday period, I hope you don’t mind.  A few men authored these gems of encouragement and motivation, including, I believe, Don, Ted, James and Sam (Laing, not the pianist).  Today’s lesson was titled, "Hearing the Call...Again."  We are encouraged and challenged to once again pause in our busy lives and reflect once again on our baptism and how we have changed over the years.  We are also cautioned that unless we do this often, over and over again, we might lose sight of its importance and how it signified how we once changed our lives for the good.  But time, ugly old mean time, can often lead us down paths we don’t need to (nor should) go.  

Another setting: The Nation of Israel, 626 BC.  Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, is called by God Himself to tell (prophesy) the Israelites that Nebuchadnezzar was going to seize Jerusalem  (which did occur 40 years later in 586 BC).  Reluctantly, (unlike Isaiah, but similar to Moses and most of us) Jeremiah accepted the mission from God---recall how he told the Creator that he was only a child and did not know how to speak?  However, once he made that decision, he went full bore over and over telling the people that because of their sins, God was going to put them in bondage in a far away land.  

If you read the books Jeremiah and Lamentations (both of which are mostly attributed to the Prophet Jeremiah) you will see how he played the same tune over and over.  In Jeremiah 7:13, he said "While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer."  Four chapters later (11), in verse 7, he once again quotes God: "From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, ‘Obey me.’" Then again, in chapter 25, for three straight verses, starting in 3. Jeremiah tells of the impending doom because of their hard-heartedness: "For twenty-three years--from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day--the word of the LORD has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened. And though the LORD has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention. and if you do not listen to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I have sent to you again and again (though you have not listened)."   Five more times in his book, Jeremiah uses the term "again and again" in describing how the Israelites failed to listen to or obey the commands of God.  If you were one of the people in Israel to whom Jeremiah originally addressed his warnings, I bet you’d probably be thinking, "here comes that ‘Play it again, Sam’ fellow."  Too bad the people didn’t change their sinful ways.

Another setting:  Your life.  Today. 2012.  You go to church again and again.  You read your Bible again and again.  You pray to God again and again.  BUT, you also willingly and willfully sin....again and again.  It is now Satan’s turn to use the Casablanca misquotation, ‘Play it again, _____’ (fill in your name).  And to use the actual quotes: "Play it once, ____, for old times sake." "Play it _____. Play it."  That’s right, Satan wants each of us to play our sin again and again....for HIS sake.  It doesn’t matter if the house in which you live is green, brown, yellow or white (uh......casa blanca...~smile~), we do NOT need to hear the music of sin over and over.  

The warnings are clear today as they were some 2600 years ago.  Today, it is not the destruction of a city that should scare us, but the destruction of our very way of life.  And our lives our not movies, in which clichés are created.  Our lives are real, and also in real danger.  Again and again we here preaching on God’s Word.  Again and again we go to church to worship God (and to get rejuvenated???).  Again and again we can read God’s warnings (try Galatians 5:21 on for size).  Again and again we can pray for His help.  We can do all those things many times, but we DO need to stop any sinful behavior in which we might be, well, behaving.  God, if He spoke to us, He’d tell us to obey Him, to love Him, to worship Him.  And once we do that, He’d tell us, "Play it again, "Sam"!