Men Seeing Jesus on Their Knees

My name is Randy Darnell, I’m the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Gray and I’m a Jesus follower.

What I want us to discuss this morning is Bible reading and prayer and I’ll confess to you before we begin, that sounds about as dull as dirt.

In fact, I quit a Sunday School class once because of this very topic.

My class used the Sunday School quarterly and every Sunday it seemed like the lesson was about reading the bible, or praying, or giving, or telling people about Jesus.

And then the topics would repeat.

Different scripture of course, but they always seemed to end up at the same destination.

You can tell two things by looking at me.

One, I am well fed.

And two, I’ve been well fed for a long, long time.

And all of my life I’ve had pastor after pastor, lesson after lesson telling me to read my Bible and pray.

Gentlemen, I’m not here to tell you to read your Bible and pray.

If you don’t know that already, then you are either not yet a Jesus follower - which I hope after today you will be

Or you are dense as a brick because if you’ve just bumped up against a church, someone has told you how important it is to read your Bible and pray.

So my goal for us today is not to be reminded to read our Bibles and pray.

Our goal for the time we have together is to learn HOW to read our Bibles and pray.

And I want to start by talking about my Grandfather.

One of the most fortunate things to happen to me as a little boy was living next door to my Grandmother and Grandfather.

Nanny and Granddaddy lived about a football field’s distance from our back door.

From the time I was three until I started first grade, I stayed with Nanny and Granddaddy while my mom worked.

Granddad worked shift work with Dixie Steel in Atlanta.

He was a pipe fitter and ended up retiring on medical disability after he broke his back at work one shift.

When Granddad was at home, I was his shadow.

We were poor as gully dirt, my family said, although I didn’t know it.

I knew our cars were raggedy - but so was everyone else’s I knew.

I knew we didn’t eat at restaurants much - but neither did my other friends.

And when something broke, we didn’t buy a new one - we fixed what was broken.

Granddad had a third grade education.

His dad pulled him out of school after the third grade so he could plow behind a mule.

Granddad knew how to work hard - and he could do almost anything.

And I was his shadow.

I don’t remember him showing me how to hold a hammer.

I don’t remember him showing me how to turn a screwdriver or use a wrench.

I just remember being with Granddaddy and being everywhere Granddaddy was.

Granddad could talk to anybody and everybody about any topic for hours on end.

He’d go to Rebel’s Trading Post out in Socktown and drum up a conversation with the folks stopping in to get gas or a coke and candy bar.

And I was his shadow.

Until I started getting older.

I had other things to do, other places to go and other people to meet.

But I can still sling a hammer and screw with a screwdriver.

And I joke on a regular basis that I’m just too dumb to know that I can’t fix everything.

Because when something breaks at my house, my first thought is, “how do I fix this.”

I’ve had a few folks say I have a natural talent - and maybe so

But mostly, Red Stephens had a natural talent.

And I was his shadow - I followed Red Stephens every where he went.

Follow doesn’t mean you know about someone, it means you know them

We’ll be looking at several different passages of scripture today.

The first one is in Luke so if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Luke’s gospel, chapter 9.

Chapter 9 is a conglomeration of some really big stories

But it ends Jesus walking down the road, probably hot and tired if the earlier verses are any indication

And this happens:

Luke 9:57–58 ESV

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

I’m sure some of you remember these verses.

This is the first of three people that want to follow Jesus, but they tell Jesus they have to do something else first.

And Jesus’ reply sounds kind of harsh really - at least to me.

I have no where to sleep.

Let your dead father bury himself.

If you’ve got to go tell everyone goodbye, you can forget heaven.

It sounds to me like Jesus wasn’t very seeker sensitive.

We interpret what Jesus says to these guys in light of verse 23 - Luke 9:23 “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

So we say, if we are going to be a Jesus follower, we’ve got to be all in.

We’ve got to deny ourselves - we’ve got to die to ourselves.

Nothing wrong with that - it’s correct - there’s just one small problem.

What the dickens does that mean?

How do you do that?

Well you start by you reading your Bible and praying, right?

That’s what I was told.

Where else can you go to learn about Jesus?

Do you remember some years back, WWJD?

What would Jesus do?

Before you did anything, you were supposed to look at that armband on your arm that says WWJD and ask, What would Jesus do?

Well, how do you know what Jesus would do?

Well, you’d read all about Him in the Bible and pray.

But now, there’s a word I’ve used a couple of times that bothers me.

It’s the word about.

If you want to know ABOUT Jesus, you read the Bible and pray.

But what do you do if you want to KNOW Jesus?

Do you see the difference?

In Jesus’ day, to be the student of a rabbi - and that’s what they considered Jesus to be for a long while

To be the student of a rabbi meant that you lived with the rabbi.

You ate with him, you slept in his house.

In fact, you make sure he had food to eat and water to drink.

You made sure his clothes were clean and you got him whatever he needed.

You hung on his every word.

You never let him out of your sight if you could help it.

You wanted to see how he talked to people, how he touched them, who was important to him, who wasn’t.

You tried everything you could do know him inside and out, up and down.

You wanted to be just like him if there was any way in the world you could.

You didn’t want to know about him - you wanted to know him

And - And - you wanted to act like him.

Just like I did with Granddad - this is not weird or unusual.

So, here’s the question, how do we stop reading the Bible and praying so we know ABOUT Jesus and start reading the Bible and praying so we know Jesus?

Turn with me to the 23rd Psalm.

Psalm 23:1–6 ESV

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

You’ve only heard that a few thousand times, right?

Probably the most popular psalm ever.

I would guess half of the funerals I preach, the families want me to read this Psalm

And for families who don’t follow Jesus, this is absolutely the go too.

And why not?

This is pretty much what we imagine when we hear the 23rd Psalm, isn’t it?

This is a fairly pastoral scene.

This picture was taken by Andy Cook and his Experience Israel Now team in Bethlehem.

I think Andy came here, to Bradley, didn’t he?

Andy’s team took this picture.

And this picture as well.

All taken on a hillside in Bethlehem.

Where King David was born and raised.

Where young David was a shepherd.

If you were a sheep and you lived here, life wouldn’t be so tough, would it?

I mean there’s plenty to eat.

With this much greenery, there has to be water nearby.

You could live comfortably here just knowing about the shepherd right?

You know you can count on the shepherd to take you to pasture in the day and to the sheep pen at night.

You’d know what he sounded like

And mostly when he called, you’d go.

Not so much to obey but just to not get left behind.

If the shepherd is calling, it’s got to be time to eat, time to drink or time to sleep.

This really is how we follow Jesus.

We mostly live beside still waters.

We mostly have plenty to eat.

We mostly can make our way ourselves

Sure every now and then another sheep will bite us on the rear

Or we bite another sheep

But all in all, we pretty much make our own way in life.

We know about Jesus.

We know that He provides us with all we have.

He’s the one that set this rock to spinning and placed me on it in a place that really is green pastures and lots of water.

And I pretty much can take it from here.

But what if, instead of being in Bethlehem,

David was here when he wrote Psalm 23.

This is the Negev in southern Israel.

Your Bible translation may refer to it as the wilderness.

John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan River not very far from here.

This is where Jesus was when Mark wrote: Mark 1:13 “And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.”

I took this picture last May.

I took this picture too.

I was standing across the road from where I was supposed to be.

I wanted to stand in the actual desert itself - even if it was only a few feet off the road.

And as I stood there, see the little hill to the right

Those sheep appeared just out of no where.

It’s hard to see but there are at least 3 shepherds with them.

And that’s when I heard it in my soul, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

I don’t know if David was here or not.

I do know the springs at Ein Gedi are just a few miles from here.

David knew where they were.

He roamed these hills when he was a boy with the sheep.

Now, here are the questions:

If you are a sheep here, and you try to make your own way, what happens to you?

You die.

Some of these hills are really steep, if you wander off the path and fall, what happens to you?

You die.

If you hear the shepherd calling and you don’t come and you get separated from the flock, out here, what happens to you?

You die.

What happens if your shepherd out here is just a kindly old gentleman who is sweet and kind and just watches you from a distance?

You die.

You can barely see it in this picture, but up in the upper left side is the barest sliver of green.

According to the locals, it had rained here about two weeks before we got there.

Two weeks is time enough for some grass to green up and grow.

Did the sheep have a clue?

None - not a clue in the world.

But the shepherd - he knew and he was leading them to the green pastures.

And not very far from here, he knew where there was still waters.

In this environment, I don’t want to know about the shepherd, I want to know him.

Where he is, I want to be.

I want to be first in line.

If he yells for us, I want to be the first one running.

When I hear a wild animal stalking us, I want to be right beside the shepherd.

I don’t want him out of my sight.

I want to know him so well, that I can sense when he is about to turn.

I can sense when he is about to get up or lay down.

I want to know him, because I know, as long as I am with him, I am alive.

Gentlemen, the devil has convinced us we live in the fields of Bethlehem.

The grass is green and the water is plentiful.

We are free to roam as much as we want.

We have so much we have to rent bigger barns to store stuff in.

All while our kindly shepherd watches over us.

And our biggest concern for Him is, “how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?”

Let’s stop a second, and ponder a pretty important question

How do I really want to know Jesus?

Am I happy with life exactly as it is right now?

Am I content with my church, with my family, with my marriage, with my job?

Am I satisfied coming to church and pondering what is sin and what isn’t

Having the occasional argument about the second coming or how someone is saved?

Are you the guy that can say, “I’ve got about all of the Jesus I need?”

I will confess, I would never have said those words out loud

But I pretty much lived that way.

Most everyone I know lives that way.

They know about Jesus - and they are happy right where they are.

What about you?

How do you really want to know Jesus?

If you want more, let me coach you on a couple of things.

The answer is still read your Bible and pray - that will never change.

What will change is how - listen close.

First, read your Bible humbly

And this is what I mean.

I was raised with the idea that the Bible is God’s instruction book

That it contains all I need to know in order to live a life pleasing to God.

So if I had a problem, I could read the Bible and find the answer to it.

And that if I did what I found, everything would turn out OK.

Maybe you are familiar with Charles Stanley.

Former pastor, now deceased, of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta.

I loved to listen to him preach

But, he had one thing he did that just annoyed the stew out of me.

At the end of many of his sermons, he would say, “If you would just do these three principles,

“If you would just do these 5 things, these 7 things, these 10 things.”

I told a friend of mine once that if I kept a list of everything Dr. Stanley said I should do, I would have hundreds of rules to follow

And I can’t do that - I can’t keep the basic 10.

Maybe I’m the only heathen in the bunch of us, but I have trouble keeping all of the rules

And mostly, what they do for me is make me feel guilty because I want to do them

But every time I turn around I mess it up.

And you do too.

The way we are doing things isn’t making us holy like we want to be holy.

It really, just kind of frustrates us.

So what if...

What if instead of looking at the Bible as God’s instruction book,

What if we looked at the Bible as the story of God from cover to cover?

What if, instead of looking for solutions to all of life’s problems, we simply looked to see if we could find Jesus?

Are you saying Pastor, that when I read my Bible, I should forget my problems with my wife and children, I should forget that my boss hates me,

I should forget about how I’m broke or I’m addicted or I’m whatever and simply look to see what the Bible says about Jesus.

And my answer to that is yes.

Absolutely.

Listen, this isn’t some hypothetical I learned in school.

I started doing this after Israel and after I read a little book called, ““Before You Open Your Bible: Nine Heart Postures for Approaching God’s Word” by Matt Smethurst.

I’ve read though the Psalms this way, I just finished with Proverbs.

I’m reading through Exodus again.

All asking, what does this say about who the Lord is and I’m telling you, it’s crazy.

It’s like the scripture opens up and you see God all over it - and

AND - you end up hearing how to live your life - and you weren’t looking for it.

It like the Lord says, “See who I am - now let me show you how to do what I do.”

I know this sounds unusual, but I don’t want to know how Jesus wants me to live.

I want to know Jesus and once I know Jesus, I’ll know how to live.

Make sense?

Last thing - Approach the Scripture prayerfully.

Before you read the first verse, stop yourself for a moment and pray something simple but heart felt.

Something like, “Father, all of my life I’ve been looking in the Bible for me.

“But I don’t want to know about me - I want to know you.

“Really, truly, honestly, know you.”

“You know I’m weak and you know I won’t do this well - but Lord, please - let me see Jesus.”

You’ll be amazed.

Listen to me, if John 15:5 is true: John 15:5

John 15:5 ESV

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

If this is true, shouldn’t I do everything I can possibly do to know Jesus?

Don’t I want to know that the voice I’m hearing is His voice and not someone saying it is Him?

Don’t I want to know exactly what He has truly promised He will do and not what I’ve just heard someone say?

I want to know Jesus.

I want you to know Jesus.

Before I write any sermon, I think about why I am preaching it - what I want to see happen.

And I always write it down.

For today I wrote, “to help men know how to see Jesus.”

That’s my heart’s desire.

I want you to know how to see Jesus.

I don’t want you to look for what you’ve got to do to do it right

Or to be a better person or dad or husband

Or to be clean, sober

Whatever you think you need.

When you know Jesus, all of those things will take care of themselves.

Jesus says this in Revelation 21:5

Revelation 21:5 ESV

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

All things includes you and me.

He’s making us new.

AND - these words are trustworthy and true.

This tells us something we need to hear.

We should pray expectantly.

We should expect Jesus to show us what we need to know even when we don’t know we need to know it.

You know what I’ve found since I started this?

Jesus will do exactly what He says He will do.

And what He does, is exactly what I need.

Gentlemen, read your Bible and pray to see Jesus.

If you aren’t reading your Bible regularly, start with one verse a day.

Start in Luke or John - one verse a day.

And ask the Lord to show you Jesus.

Your life will never be the same.

Let me pray with you.