Good bunch today, Spirit lead worship, important Word. If you werent there, we missed you! Here is transcript of message! Our Day Nineteen Walk This Way 8 Follow Me II When we met last week, we discussed the obligation we have as followers of Jesus Christ to point people to Jesus. In fact, you don’t see a lot of that in the New Testament, there is some. In reality the most common evangelistic behavior I have noticed in the New Testament, has to do with His Followers, bringing people to Jesus. ‘Come and see the man I told you about, the One Who knows everything about me, the Messiah, the Redeemer’! How is it this behavior has evolved into, ‘inviting people to Church’? Instead of inviting people to a building, a system or a show, maybe our focus should be like the line in Chris Rice song, ‘Come to Jesus’….. “Weak and wounded sinner, lost and left to die, oh, lift your head for love is passing by, come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to Jesus and live”. We bring people to Jesus and feed them with the resources of the Church. We bring people to Jesus and encourage them by the Words and actions of the Church. We bring people to Jesus and teach them His Way through the Church. Bringing people to Jesus involves the Church, I think the two are inseparable, and the Church isn’t the only place for people to meet Jesus. Christians need to realize that we are the evangelistic arm of the Church. Rather than always bringing people to a service to find God, whenever possible, we need to introduce people to Jesus, bring them to Him wherever we are, and bring them to the Church to learn about Him and be ministered to and encouraged. I think any expression of Christianity that excludes the Church is unbiblical. And sadly there are a lot of organizations called Church which in practice, in reality exclude Christ, which is also unbiblical. It makes me sad to consider all of the experimental programs, systems and arrangements we have developed over the centuries, only to be failing so miserably in bringing people to Jesus in our day. I wonder, how many otherwise good Church going Christians fail to mention the Name of Jesus to their friends, coworkers or family during any given week. His Name should be the first out of our mouths, never the last, the first thought, our first attempt, the original solution, for He is the answer to every situation, every need. I have been studying the first Chapter of Mark this week and would like to share some things the Lord has convicted me of from these verses. Mark 1:14-15 14 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Jesus had been ministering throughout Judea during the days when His and John’s ministries overlapped. John had spoken out against Herod the Tetrarch because he had taken his Brother Phillip’s wife as his own. Political leaders, and powerful people often feel like they are above the law, even God’s law, and they often rear ugly heads when confronted with their offense. Celebrities flaunting their sin, politicians with way too much assumed power, wealthy capitalist to selfish, abusive parents or other authority figures, all have one thing in common, just like all the rest of us, they are subject to the greater, greatest Authority, the Lord God. Jesus spoke the Words ordained for eons, describing the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, not in a political sense, although the Word says in Proverbs 21:1; The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes. Jesus explained the Kingdom of God was near them, not in a geographical sense so much, even though they all understood the Words of Moses in Deuteronomy 10:14, “to You O God belong the heavens, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it”. In declaring the Kingdom of God, Jesus was saying it was fulfilled in Him, made complete and had come available to them, in Himself. He was saying, and nothing has changed, the Authority of God rested fully in Him, He literally is King of kings and Lord of lords, and we could say, Authority of authorities. No matter what you have been doing, how you have been worshipping or what authority you assume or submit to, if it is not God, in His Son Jesus the Christ, it is wrong, incomplete, impotent and insufficient, you are heading in the wrong direction, you had better turn around! The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in this good news! For more than 2,000 years the Jews had been waiting for an event, for God to establish His Kingdom on earth. They had seen glimpses of His Kingdom through the lives of men and women, sold out to Him, and still they were holding out for a political, military, geographic or economic kingdom, when all along all He wanted was to be King of their hearts, and Lord of their lives. They had been looking for a system, a socio-political-religious system for all those years, by and large and for the most part, missing His Heart and missing His Plan. For centuries they had tried to satisfy themselves with religion and religious observances, lifeless religion. Jesus told them look to Him, turn their lives to Him, surrender their hearts to the authority of God in Christ and through faith, (believe), be saved. Come to Jesus. I’m taken by the similarity in our own day. For more than 2,000 years, the Church has been waiting for an event, for God to establish His Kingdom on earth, for the Lord to make all things right and return for His People. We wait for someone else to start a revival. We wait for the right time, when God moves us off of high center. Wives wait on their husbands, husband wait on wives. Children wait on their parents and we wait on our children. We wait till we find the right congregation, until everything lines up in perfect parallel, until all our wild oats are sown. And you know, not one of those excuses will hold up in God’s Courtroom come judgment day. It will not matter that you rejected His Salvation, or His Call to Discipleship because someone else didn’t respond with you, or you prefer contemporary to traditional music, or think the Church is full of hypocrites. In such a large way, we have satisfied ourselves with religion, lifeless religion. Entertainment, occupying time and consuming precious resources. What are we waiting for? Nothing that counts. Nothing that matters. The response is the same to us as it was to them, as fresh and new as if He spoke those Word to us this very morning. Look to Him, turn our lives to Him, surrender your heart to the Authority of God in Christ, and through faith in Jesus, be saved and follow Him. Come to Jesus. Be known by God, by the God of Life, the Lord of lords, the Authority of authorities! Live the Life! The good news, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is simple and it is life giving. Father God, Jehovah is Lord of all, He is Holy and Pure, Just and True, He loves you with His God sized heart, and your sin has separated you from Him forever. He has been calling mankind to Himself ever since the garden, and He has been calling you to Himself all of your life. His call comes from His Spirit, and He has used all sorts of means to communicate His love and authority to His people for thousands of years, natural phenomena, miracles both physical and spiritual, He has sent prophets, angels and all sorts of people and situations, His call is for your heart, your complete love and devotion, for He is life and we have no hope apart from Him. In later years, He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to reconcile sinful man to Him, by living a sinless life, and dying a cruel death on Calvary’s Cross to pay for our sin that separates us from God. Having done so, the Lord conquered both sin and death to live and reign forever at the right Hand of the Father, and will save to Himself, fully reconciled, fully forgiven, fully redeemed, everyone who will by faith believing, place their trust in Christ and follow Him. He will bring us to the Father. That is the good news. God has made a way to bring us to Himself, for life, not through religion, politics or military or economic power, but through His Son. The time is fulfilled. No more reason to wait! Come to Jesus, repent, He is near, the Kingdom of God is at Hand, He is near your heart, near your very soul! Turn around and believe! Repentance alone is not enough to save you. A lifestyle change may be a good thing and in order, and a lifestyle change will not save you. The Word says, repent and believe. Turn from sin to Savior, believe in Him, belief becomes behavior. That is the sequence. Behavior rarely becomes belief. Positive faith in Jesus Christ, faith in action, belief in His promise of salvation will bring us to the Father. Nothing else will do. Last week we discussed the fact several if not all of the first half dozen or so apostles, were disciples of John the Baptist. These were men, seeking God, looking for more than their religion had to offer and true to His Promise in Jeremiah 29:13, the Lord found them when they sought Him with all of their heart. So many today, feel like they cannot find God because they are looking in the wrong places, and not seeking with all their heart. They have become discouraged by failures, their own and other peoples, and many have searched for Him in various congregations, systems and programs, in Christian celebrities, even outside of the Church walls, even in themselves and have not found Him. John pointed his followers to Jesus, and they brought their friends and families to Him. Some time had passed between their introduction to the Messiah and their actual call or commitment to discipleship. After John was imprisoned, Jesus took His message to Galilee. This was always part of God’s plan. In Isaiah’s prophecy of the destruction of Samaria, Judea etc at the hands of the Assyrians, as discipline for their rebellion, to call them to repentance, he stated, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, these Words found in Isaiah 9:1-2, Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, As when at first He lightly esteemed The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles. 2 The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. Zebulun and Naphtali would be the first to fall to the hordes of Assyrians, and the Lord made good on His Promise to send light to that region, which includes Capernaum. He always makes good on His Promises. The Lord moved His ministry and set up headquarters of a sort in Capernaum, the home port of the fishermen He had met a few weeks down on the Jordan. Mark 1:16-20 16 And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 17 Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18 They immediately left their nets and followed Him. 19 When He had gone a little farther from there, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending their nets. 20 And immediately He called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after Him. Because of His Authority, Jesus was able to call these men from their previous occupation of fishermen, something that may have possibly been all they had ever known, or their fathers had ever known for generations. It was no small thing to interrupt their livelihoods and follow Jesus. They were not priests or rabbis, they were fishermen. This was contrary to everything they had ever been taught, this sort of thing just did not happen. But I believe this was the sort of call God had been issuing to His People all along, and still does I am not saying we are all called to be Pastors or Evangelists, nor are we called to change careers or vocations. I am saying however, Jesus call is for our complete lives. Knowing and following Jesus is the first and most fundamental responsibility for everyone. We have to be willing to submit to His Authority in all things. He alone has such authority. We submit to other authorities every day, and we should, yet every authority of man, literally every authority in heaven and on earth are subordinate to Christ Authority. He must come first! Jesus had met these men, and they had recognized Him as Messiah several months before and had trusted Him for salvation. This was not their initial call to faith and salvation. In fact several times over the next 3 years they would waiver and even doubt, they would be astonished at things Jesus would do and say. I think if we could talk to Peter or Andrew today, even John or James, they would say, “even here in Glory with the Lord, we are astonished at things He does and says”! The Glory of the Lord will never end! Following Jesus is a journey, it is not an event or destination, there will always be times when we encounter doubt, when we waiver, and yet we follow, even when we cannot see him clearly, we follow! So this was not the initial call to salvation, this was an initial call to discipleship. These fishermen had ‘taken the bait’ and Jesus had captured their hearts and minds, and now Jesus is calling them to a deeper relationship. I think we tend to confuse Salvation and Discipleship. They are not the same. Obviously one cannot become a Disciple of Jesus Christ unless he or she has experienced the new birth through salvation by faith in Him. And while I think it is quite understandable to expect everyone who makes a profession of faith in Jesus Christ to immediately become a passionate disciple of the Lord, it doesn’t often happen that way. There is no sweeter moment in anyone’s life than that instant of realizing your sinful, helpless estate and turning it all over to Jesus, experiencing the new birth and forgiveness of sin, knowing real life for the first time. And I think that is the moment the Church should really step up and plug a person in to learning and applying the teachings of Jesus in their lives, and we fail miserably at that. And more often than not, it is right here where Satan’s attack comes hard against a new believer. And all sorts of problems come up, all kinds of temptations, each one designed to create doubt and confusion and stop the forward momentum of walking with Jesus. We go back to our routine, normal lives, very often immersed in sinful behavior and demonic influence. Then we mess up, sometimes big and then we give up and often those people God put in our lives give up on us. And we stop following. Instead of teaching people about the Master, we teach Church membership. Often the demands of Churchlikeness are more difficult to achieve in a person’s life than Christlikeness and we get discouraged or turned off. Andrew, Peter, Nathaniel, James and John, all left the Lord in Judea somewhere and went back to Galilee and resumed their daily routine of professional fishermen. And Jesus did not hold it against them. One day He walked up to their workplace and said Follow Me. They dropped their nets and followed Him. This was a call to discipleship. A call everyone who comes to Jesus receives. And I find it unrealistic and very Pharisaical to demand of God that we all receive or respond to this call exactly the same way or exactly at the same moment in our walk. The reality is becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ is a process requiring a lot of different things to occur in every life, which by nature of our different situations and uniqueness cannot be the same. The key part here is that we do in fact become disciples. We need to understand more about this, and I don’t have all of the answers today. But I think we need to know more about discipleship. So I googled discipleship and found a terrific definition from GotQuestions.Org, it is so good in fact, I want to read some of it to you. By definition, a disciple is a follower, one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another. A Christian disciple is a person who accepts and assists in the spreading of the good news of Jesus Christ. Christian discipleship is the process by which disciples grow in the Lord Jesus Christ and are equipped by the Holy Spirit, who resides in our hearts, to overcome the pressures and trials of this present life and become more and more Christlike. This process requires believers to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to examine their thoughts, words and actions and compare them with the Word of God. This requires that we be in the Word daily—studying it, praying over it, and obeying it. In addition, we should always be ready to give testimony of the reason for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15) and to disciple others to walk in His way. According to Scripture, being a Christian disciple involves personal growth characterized by the following: 1. Putting Jesus first in all things Mark 8:34-38. The disciple of Christ needs to be set apart from the world. Our focus should be on our Lord and pleasing Him in every area of our lives. We must put off self-centeredness and put on Christ-centeredness. 2. Following Jesus teachings John 8:31-32. We must be obedient children and doers of the Word. Obedience is the supreme test of faith in God (1 Samuel 28:18), and Jesus is the perfect example of obedience as He lived a life on earth of complete obedience to the Father even to the point of death (Philippians 3:6-8). 3. Fruitfulness John 15:5-8. Our job is not producing fruit. Our job is to abide in Christ, and if we do, the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit, and this fruit is the result of our obedience. As we become more obedient to the Lord and learn to walk in His ways, our lives will change. The biggest change will take place in our hearts, and the overflow of this will be new conduct (thoughts, words and actions) representative of that change. The change we seek is done from the inside out, through the power of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t something we can conjure up on our own. 4. Love for other disciples John 13:34-35. We are told that love of other believers is the evidence of our being a member of Gods family (1 John 3:10). Love is defined and elaborated on in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. These verses show us that love is not an emotion; it is action. We must be doing something and involved in the process. Furthermore, we are told to think more highly of others than of ourselves and to look out for their interests (Philippians 2:3-4). The next verse in Philippians (verse 5) really sums up what we are to do when it comes to everything in life: our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. What a perfect example He is to us for everything we are to do in our Christian walk. 5. Evangelism - Making disciples of others Matthew 28:18-20. We are to share our faith and tell nonbelievers about the wonderful changes Jesus Christ has made in our lives. No matter what our maturity level in the Christian life, we have something to offer. Too often, we believe the lie from Satan that we dont really know enough or havent been a Christian long enough to make a difference. Not true! Some of the most enthusiastic representatives of the Christian life are new believers who have just discovered the awesome love of God. They may not know a lot of Bible verses or the accepted way of saying things, but they have experienced the love of the living God, and that is exactly what we are to share. I think these are great examples of discipleship, things we should follow every day in our own lives, and build up in the Church. Warren Weirsbe says, ‘the good qualities of successful fishermen would make for success in the difficult ministry of winning lost souls; courage, the ability to work together, patience, energy, stamina, faith and tenacity. Professional fishermen simply could not afford to be quitters of complainers”. I think that is true, and boy do we need such qualities in the Church of Jesus Christ today. Courage. The ability to work together. Patience. Energy. Stamina. Faith. Tenacity. We simply cannot afford to be quitters or complainers. And we don’t have to have a background of professional fishing for the Lord to use us and to develop these good qualities in us. He gives us these things as gifts when we commit to Him and surrender fully to His Authority. Obviously this isn’t all there is to it! But a great place to stop for today. Next week we are going to continue this discussion of Christ’ Authority from Mark Chapter One. Until then, are there things in your life, in your soul, privately you need to surrender to His Authority? Have you tried making Him Savior, and not Master? Your life will never work for you until you give Him your entire heart and soul, mind and strength and love Him fully. Will you do so now as we pr
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:04:03 +0000
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