Halfway Christians? by John

Halfway Christians?
Luke 9:57-62

1. Last Sunday I said you must make a commitment after you believe in Jesus. Until that commitment is made, you are not a Christian.
(1) Repentance, Belief, and Commitment all three are necessary parts of being born again as Jesus put it in John 3.
(2) So many only accomplish that middle part, belief.
(3) We need to remember that even the devil believes, but he is still lost! If that's all you do, you are still lost, too.
2. There were doubtlessly lost people in the first church in Jerusalem, just as Judas Iscariot was a lost Apostle!
3. Thousands of lost people were added to churches across the empire when the Roman Emperor Constantine ordered all of his soldiers to accept Christianity as their religion.
(1) For the most part, the soldiers met the basic physical requirements, such as some form of baptism.
(2) There is little indication that any of them met the spiritual requirements.
4. Halfway Christians are not just a thing of the past. Today's churches have many, many people on their rolls who believe in God and Christ and have made a commitment to the church, but not to Jesus! As someone said, "They have believed, but they have not received."
5. We have already said that this is not a new thing. Jesus faced this very thing in our text, and He refused to accept these three men as they came. (I believe He would have accepted them if they came surrendering everything to Him).
6. Matthew 8:18-22 contains another account of this, but Matthew only included two of the men who came to Jesus. Luke included all three, and that's the reason I used Luke for our text.

I. Saying the Right Words Is Not Enough!

1. This first man said the right words, didn't he?
(1) He said to Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you go!"
(2) What's wrong with that? The answer is, nothing!
2. Jesus challenged people to think when He said, "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?" (Luke 14:28)
(1) Is it possible this man had not counted the cost of following Jesus?
(2) So many preachers have proclaimed Christ as Savior without telling the hearers that there is a cost involved!
3. Jesus' response to this man was, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."
(1) Jesus knows us! He knew this man had his own reason for following Him.
(2) He knew exactly what was in this man's heart, and He knows exactly what is in each one of our hearts right now!
(3) Many people today choose their place to worship by the size and beauty, or by the stately formality, of the building and the services held in it.
(4) Others choose the place of worship by how modern the service is, by the lifting of hands, the shouting, or the speaking in tongues! (5) A friend told me that he asked a lady how she liked her new pastor, and she said, "Oh! I just love our new pastor! He makes me cry so good!"
4. There is nothing wrong with any of the things I've just mentioned as long as they don't hide the truth.
5. The only good reasons for becoming a Christian or for joining a church is to have your sins forgiven, to enjoy a right relationship with God and to gain a home in heaven!
6. If it costs everything to achieve those goals, then Amen! It is worth it!
7. As far as we know, this man, like the rich young ruler, went away lost and sorrowful. He was not ready to pay the price Jesus asks!

II. Can Filial Responsibility Keep You Out of Heaven?

1. This second man certainly believed in Jesus.
2. And Jesus invited him to be His disciple.
3. The man indicated he would be, but he wanted to stay at home until his father died.
4. That sounds like the beginning of a successful relationship, doesn't it? But the man put in a condition.
5. This man placed his family, specifically his father, above his own need to follow Jesus.
6. Jesus knew what his problem was, and He told him what to do in v. 60. "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
6. Personally, I wonder if this man gave his real reason. I see so many people who want to live all their lives like the devil and then follow Jesus at the last moment so they can make it into heaven as if by the skin of their teeth!
7. People who think like this are gamblers. They are gambling that God won't call them home until they are old and worn out!
8. There is no promise of tomorrow! This could be the last day, in fact, the last moment of life for any one of us!
9. The song, "I Surrender all" tells us what our safe place is: "All to Jesus I surrender. All to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live."
10. It's dangerous to put off trusting Jesus and committing your life to Him, and it is dangerous to count anything of more importance than giving yourself immediately to Jesus!

III. A Lack of Purpose Caused the Third Man to Be Rejected.

1. Why did God want this account included?
(1) When you read it, it seems almost identical to the one just before it.
(2) There must be a specific reason to include it, right?
2. Broadman Commentary on this passage says this: "The third man finds it difficult to cut the ties that bind him to his past and his culture. He lacks the decisiveness and commitment with which one must face the future to which God has called him. In order to plow a straight furrow the farmer must choose a point of orientation and move toward it. He must keep his eye fixed on the goal. In the same manner the kingdom of God is all-absorbing, all-demanding, requiring that those who give
themselves to it do so without qualifications, reservations or regrets."
3. Jesus told the man in v 62, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
4. To become a real Christian requires more than a halfway commitment!
5. A hymn in our book says it well, "All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live. "
6. The prophet Elijah was about to be taken into heaven. Prophets in the school of prophets knew it. Elijah told Elisha, his understudy, to stay at Gilgal because the Lord had told him to go to Bethel. Elisha already knew what God was going to do, and he told Elijah, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." (II Kings 2:2) The prophets at Gilgal asked Elisha if he knew God was going to take Elijah, and he told them he did.
7. Elijah told Elisha to stay at Bethel because God had called him to Jericho, but Elisha gave him his same answer.
8, At Jericho the prophets asked Elisha again if he knew God was going to take Elijah away, and he told them he did.
9. In v 9, Elijah asked Elisha what he could do for him before he left, and Elisha told him, "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit!"
10. Just like Elisha yearned to serve God with all the power he could, we have to determine that we will give ourselves completely to God in Christ!
11. That's what it takes to be saved. That's what it takes to serve the Lord!

Conclusion:

1. Is that what you've done?
2. If it isn't, do you really want Jesus to be your Savior?
3. If you do, you must commit yourself to Him as your Lord!
4. All of the things about us in this world can hinder us from making the right choice with the strong commitment that we must have.
5. We must be willing to count all those things as worthless in order that we may have Christ as our Lord, and as our Savior!
6. We invite you right now as we bow our heads in prayer to make that decision for Jesus and to commit yourself without any reservation to Him!
7. When you do that, you can be sure your own Lord and Master will never reject you!
8. Your life will change right now, your destination will change from hell to heaven, and your future will be filled with the brightness of God's presence with you!

Emmanuel Community Church, 3/19/2006

Free Indeed by John

Free Indeed
John!12:31-36

1. The title of this message comes from the last two words of the text.
2. The first two verses tell us there is more to being a Christian than just believing.
(1) The Jews to whom Jesus spoke believed, but they needed to go further.
(2) They needed to commit themselves to follow Jesus.
(3) Many people today believe in Jesus. They will not be true Christians until they commit themselves to follow Jesus.
3. Our text tells us that when we trust Jesus we are free! That’s right now in the present. We are free indeed!
4. But Satan uses the world to enslave us.
(1) We are enslaved by debt. Did you know that Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich
rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
(2) Commercials are designed to entice you beyond your limits. If you allow that to happen, it will enslave you!
(3) Credit card companies intend for you to never get out of debt. That’s slavery!
5. Only God sets us free, but if we aren’t very careful in living according to His plan for us, the forces of Satan will get us back under their control.
6. Every day I hear someone talking about how the government keeps adding more regulations for all of us to carry out. You hear it, too, don’t you?
7. We don’t usually think about it, but every law, every regulation, every zoning ordinance takes away an individual person’s freedom.
8. The hew and cry of legislators is that laws are made to HELP US! When we are chaffing because of one of those laws, we feel like asking, who is “US?”
9. Laws are made for groups of people, and they are definitely put in place to GOVERN US, and that’s another way of saying, you are not free to do as you please, right?
10. Obviously some limit is required. Restrictions on the human race started with creation in the Garden of Eden.
(1) Adam and Eve had just one restriction, “Don’t eat of the tree in the midst of the garden.”
(2) Satan tempted them, and they sinned by eating the fruit of the tree we call the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
11. Satan tricks us into believing we are wild and free when we sin, but sin always enslaves us.
12. No one knows how sin enslaves human beings better than God does.

I. God Sent Jesus to Free Us.

1. How could He free us? Well, we need to understand several things.
2. First, we need to know God Who created us is in control, and He always has been, and He always will be.
3. As our Lord God Almighty and our Creator, He decrees what will be done about anything and everything.
4. He is the One Who said, “The soul that sins must die.”
5. He is the One Who said He would send a Redeemer to save us from our sins.
6. He also laid down the Law that our Redeemer had to be one who had experienced temptation to sin just as we have, but did not yield.
7. He is the One Who decided that the Redeemer could only be another human being.
8. Because all human beings have sinned, because all human beings do sin and because all human beings are the children of Adam and Eve who were sinners, that human Redeemer had to be very, very special.
9. God decided that only His Own Son could do it.
10. He sent an angel named Gabriel to tell the young virgin Mary that she would bear a child of God, and she would call Him Jesus which means Savior!
11. It happened just the way God said it would, and strangely enough there were people far away from Bethlehem who knew about it ahead of time. The Bible calls them the Magi, and they brought gifts for Jesus.
12. God sent Jesus to free us by dying in our place at the hands of sinful men!

II. Jesus told us Knowing Him Would Set Us Free.

1. That’s what we read in our text.
2. He did not tell us right there how His death freed us, but put it in words His disciples understood at that moment. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31,32.
3. You see, the disciples were just like you and me. They were enslaved by sin when Jesus called them, and they were not freed from the penalty and power of sin until Jesus died for them.
(1) They have all gone to be with Jesus, of course.
(2) That means they are now also free from the presence of sin!
4. In John 1:11-13, the Scripture says, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, not of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
5. That happened when Jesus died on the cross, and immediately His death freed all believers from the penalty and power of sin!

III. When we are in Jesus, we are free.

1. We lock criminals away in prisons. Their crimes and society’s decision enslaves them. Some hope to be free, and some make it, but all the time they are locked away is lost forever!
2. Paul writing about his life before he met Jesus said, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” (Philippians 3:7-9)
3. Paul had a great education. He had a high position in the Jewish Religious Community, He was already achieving fame when He met Jesus, but He tossed all that aside for the freedom he had in Jesus.
4. It’s strange, but it’s true. John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained was free to write in prison, and his life has affected thousands upon thousands of people through what he did with the spiritual freedom he had while in prison.
5. As surprising as that is, Paul the Apostle also did some of his most powerful writing while being shackled to a Roman soldier in prison. Although his body was imprisoned, his spirit was free to serve God, and he did.
6. The freedom we have in Christ cannot be taken away from us ever! We are free right now! And one day that freedom will take us into the very presence of the Most High God, and do you know what we will say then? We will simply say, “Father! Father!”

Conclusion:

1. Do you belong to Jesus? You are free!
2. The world can enslave our bodies. The world can even kill our bodies, but we are still free in Jesus!
3. God planned our freedom, and He sent His Son to pay for our sins. Jesus came and made that payment by living a sin-free life among us, and then by dying for our sins.
4. Now we are free in Jesus, and one day we will be in the presence of our Heavenly Father.
5. Paul wrote about his own freedom in I Corinthians 6:12. He said, “Everything is permissible to me - but everything is not beneficial - everything is permissible for me - but I will not be mastered by anything.”
6. Christians, we belong to Jesus, and we are free!
5. If you have not committed your life to Jesus, He invites you to trust Him and be free forever!
6. Starting today you can be free forever!

Emmanuel Community Church 3/12/2006