UNrighteous - 4
Notes
Transcript
What about you?
What about you?
We are going to wrap up our series today, but first I want to backtrack and talk about each of the previous weeks
why are you here - We are here to Know Jesus, and make him known. there is no other reason
Why are you righteous, I kind of made fun of this question - but we aren’t and we are desperately in need of a savior. we have to learn and teach ourselves how to carry the cross we are given in Christ, and that sometimes means getting rid of things that we love
B2SB - we went to camp and heard homer preach some of the SAME exact messages that we had heard here…
last week - Why are you wrong, we are wrong, and Jesus died on the cross for that, but he didn’t just die, he was tortured, ripped apart, his flesh was abused in an incredibly grotesque and vile way.
Over this series we have talked about the purpose of us being here on this earth, we have talked about what truly carrying our cross looks like and what Jesus truly did when he was put to death and tortured in his crucifixion.
I am not going to lie, this series, has been impactful, yall have responded, I can see it. Lives are changing and people are opening their eyes to the message that the Lord is giving us. That’s great, but the job is not finished until everyone has heard the name of Jesus.
And today, our question that will finish this series is
“WHAT ABOUT YOU?”
Homer did have this question, but there is no better way to round this out than through this message...
As we go through life, we learn, we do, we gain ability, but if we do not continue to practice that ability, we lose it.
Think of someone who is in the gym working out, every day for a year, they will get pretty lean. In good shape, good muscle definition, but then, they stop for a whole month… What happens?
They lose it!
SOO extremely often in our spiritual life, we have these times where we work out our faith and we get caught in this wonderful time of worship and reflection, and then slowly, we fall away.
A lot of times, this is at Camp. Camp is great, but how often do we feel so good, and then come off of that time at camp and feel on fire for the lord, and a month or two later, we would claim ourselves as unrecognizable.
There is a key issue here that we fail to address, and it’s the constant pursuit of Christ
“IF YOU ARE NOT CONSTANTLY PURSUING CHRIST, YOU WILL FALL AWAY FROM CHRIST”
as i said earlier, I have seen lives changed, of those who may be in this room. I see people who are pursuing the sharing of the gospel, and that is wonderful. But if you become content and stay happy about this time, you will fall. We must always seek improvement, we must have a lot of hard and rigorous truth poured into our life, to know that a pursuit of Christ isn’t easy, but it is necessary.
This is talked about in the book of Hebrews, one of the passages where we will be today.
But lets get some context.
Hebrews is a weird book. We do not know who wrote it, we do not even really know who it was directed to.
We do know they are talking to people who are Jews. Hence, “hebrews”. And we know these people are not coming to Christ.
And the writer is sick of teaching the same lessons.
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The author here is saying, You have spent so much time in the Torah, the Tanakh, the old testament, YOU HAVE HEARD THIS STUFF. You should be teaching it, someone doesn’t teach something until they have an understanding of it, right? So these people have seen the word, studied it. But they still don’t get it.
He then gives a metaphor,
You need milk, not solid food.
Babies drink milk because their body is not ready to process the solid food. It feeds them so they can train their body to consume the solid stuff later right?
The author is saying, you can’t even take smashed up food, spiritually, he says you are spiritually still needing to drink milk. I can’t even attempt to show you the solid stuff, because you couldn’t handle it.
He says, someone who lives on milk is “unskilled in the word of righteousness”
He says all this as a rebuke, trying to get these people to open their eyes to the word God is actively giving them, and stop being so blind and comfortable to drink spiritual milk.
But after this is said, we turn into chapter 6, and it says this
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
We have to grow up. going back to the metaphor on the gym, when you start out, maybe you lift 20-30 pound weights to get trained, but what happens if you only sit on those same weights for forever?
What happens if a baby is ready to eat baby food, it has more substance but its still blended up, but the baby continues to drink milk? will it grow?
We have to grow up, in our faith. the faith you have now is not enough. The faith I have now is not enough. We have to pursue christ.
Why do you have to keep growing? because if that baby keeps drinking milk, it will eventually die due to lack of nutrition.
“If you are not growing, you will die”
Hebrews is a hard book… I honestly would encourage you to NOT read it right now… and because of that I am going to skip some verses because they bring big topics that take a lot of explanation that we don't have time for. If you are interested, I can share with you later.
But I want to show you this
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
there is a group of people think this is saying, you can lose your salvation. But that is not what it is saying at all. This is a hot topic, but I think this is important for you to know
I am confident in this explanation, as I think it is directly correlated to what the author is saying 2 verses before.
This says someone has tasted, shared, and been enlightened
*Dropper*
Did you taste it? Who consumed it?
This verse is saying someone can get so close they can taste the heavenly gifts, they can taste the goodness of god, they can get so close that they can even have felt the holy spirit move across their life, but this person has denied the truth of the gospel. this person was so close, but never actually was saved. And with their rejection after being so close to heaven, it will be impossible for them to return to repentance, because they rejected it, when they have everything they could need to believe, and chose not to.
I do not want that to be any single one of you and I hope you do not miss this for yourselves. Close doesn’t get you into heaven. Close doesn’t bring eternal life. Which side will you be on?
The life that is in pursuit of Christ is not easy, it is definitely hard, but it also so much more gratifying and rewarding.
The devil will be hot on your tail and you just got to hold on to jesus to keep letting him lead you away from the devil no matter how hard he hits and trust me he hits hard.
But are you even being chased by the devil? think about this.
How many of you play basketball? like even just pickup basketball. not for a team, maybe just with friends.
Who gets the most defense? IF you are 5v5 and you know your boy is the best defender, who is guarding the other best player. Your boy is.
but What’s the most disrespectful thing you can hear on the court. “LET HIM SHOOT”
Why?
because it means you don’t need defense,
satan himself is gonna guard you when you follow christ. He isn’t gonna send the demons, he is gonna take care of you himself.
But the worst thing you want to hear, is Satan telling his demons to let you shoot. because he knows you aren’t gonna make anything change
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
John writes down Jesus saying this. Are you bearing fruit at all? Are you just getting the “let him shoot” call?
Maybe you are someone else, Maybe you have fruit. Maybe you have done some great work and it bears a wonderful fruit, but what happens if you leave that fruit there. It shrivels and dies.
We have to prune our fruit, which means we have to take it off, so that more fruit can grow, we can not be complacent with our faith. It has to be ever growing and in pursuit of Jesus
Listen to me when I say this, IT IS HARD. But, it is necessary.
Salvation is knowing Christ, and do you know Christ? Or do you just know of him?
Later in this same chapter of John, Jesus says this
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.
The world hates Jesus, and if you follow him, the world may hate you too. That’s hard to hear, and for some of you, you may be asking the question, why is it even worth it then?
Its worth it because one, the choice you have is either this, a potentially tough life on earth, and a peaceful eternity with God in heaven, or a “easy” life without struggle, and a painful eternity in hell. And the choice is only YOURS.
Going back to that same analogy with working out, do you get in shape and gain muscle by being complacent, or by hard work and struggle.
If your Christianity and faith in Jesus Christ, does not cost you friends, opportunities, comfort You ARE doing it wrong. You are not saved. It will cost you something
It is your faith that is your pursuit, there will be things you can not take with you, I use the analogy of the cross a couple weeks ago, and it sucked but I had to learn in my life that I couldn’t pursue a career in football coaching, which is something I wanted for over a decade.
it was hard, I cried on my wife's shoulder multiple times, but I am not in a place where God has blessed me as I am following him not only into something “I DIDNT WANT” but also something I ran so far away from, in ministry.
But I did that because Jesus is my Lord. He is not Just my savior. HE IS MY LORD, and that means that HE GETS TO TELL ME HOW I LIVE.
It is not about my comfort, its not about my fun and happiness, it is about carrying that cross that was meant for me. The cross he took on when It was mine to carry.
I Can not call Jesus lord, and ignore his commands. I must follow him. I am to do as he says, and he commands a lot.
And for a lot of Christians, they think it is about self empowerment and how god has their back. And while Jesus absolutely does have my back, I have to deny my self, not empower it.
This gospel we preach is not a invitation to add Jesus in your pocket and carry him. it is a call to be willing to give up everything for HIm.
and that sounds bad, but he has already given up everything for you.
He surrendered his godliness, he left his perfect peace in heaven, took on the flesh that we bear and the temptation and struggle and he came to this earth not to condemn it, but to redeem it. He came to give us the chance that we have never had and he came because HE LOVES YOU SOOOOO MUCH that he could not leave you behind.
He paid the price, of death, torture and pain. he defeated death three days later by rising from his grave, and calling us to follow him.
But we are too worried about our comfort, and what others think of us, when the one who created us, and our entire universe cared for each of us so much that he surrendered all power to come to save you.
God loves you so much, that he came down from heaven to make you have the ability to come join him in a perfect heaven.
Do you even care? Does your life show evidence of you caring about that for your self or even for others?
What about you? Will you surrender all to him, and he gave up everything for you?
