God's Total Commitment
Notes
Transcript
1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Commitment, Cost Of
A hen and a pig approached a church and read the advertised sermon topic: “What can we do to help the poor?” Immediately the hen suggested they feed them bacon and eggs. The pig thought for a moment and said, “There is only one thing wrong with feeding bacon and eggs to the poor. For you it requires only a contribution, but for me it requires total commitment!”
Almighty God, You have called Your Church to witness that in Christ You have reconciled us to Yourself. Grant that by Your Holy Spirit we may proclaim the Good News of Your salvation so that all who hear it may receive the gift of salvation, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
John’s treatment of the Passover is different from that of the Synoptics. In his Gospel, we see the depths of the relationship that exists between Christ and His disciples. We are told, back in John 13:1 “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Love - ἀγαπάω - is not a shallow, casual thing as our Lord shares HIs heart with the disciples. It involves a commitment from Christ that includes leaving His fellowship with them, surrendering to the will of His enemies, allowing them to fulfill their rage and take away His life unjustly without complaint.
The first part alone meant leaving what has been a close relationship for the past three years, during which time Jesus revealed the Father to them, and explained the Kingdom of Heaven to them. True, it is only for three days, but those will be the most excruciating three days known to man, when Jesus has “descended into hell.” Jesus must bear the weight of the sin of the world upon himself, while being completely innocent of even one of them. If they want to show him that they are as committed to Him as He is to them, there is but one way to do so: keep His commandments.
This is a heavy burden, for His commandments are perfect, and they will break one in just a little while, when Jesus tells them, in the garden, to watch while he went to pray. As Jesus said later, recorded in Mark 14:37–38 “And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.””
But that is later; right now, Jesus reveals to the disciples the level of commitment that God is making towards their justification and sanctification. Although Christ is leaving, the Father is going to give them another Comforter, one like Jesus - the Spirit of Truth. The Father does this for His children. Unlike what the Prophet Joel spoke and Peter declared in Acts 2:17:,
“ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams;
This is not that which is going to be poured out upon all flesh. This is the Comforter, who is given to the children of God as the guarantee of our inheritance. Not only with us, but in us, He will empower us to walk in the Truth. God is pleased when His children walk in the Truth, and He is not leaving us to struggle in the weakness of our flesh. Psalm 103:14 “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” and 1 John 3:19–20 “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”
The Lord promised not to leave us comfortless or alone in this world that rejected Him and rejects those who are His: John 14:18-20
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
This is the line that separates those who are His from those who are not. It is not what you say, nor is it what you do in your own strength. It is in your faith, your trust in Gods’ faithfulness to keep His word. If Christ is not risen, you are dead while you stand. But because He is risen, “because He lives...
I can face tomorrow,” The knowledge that we have by faith in the Son of God, is a knowledge that the world did not give, and the world cannot take away. The knowledge that we are in Christ, and the Spirit of Christ dwells in us comes, not by self-affirmation mantras, not by looking at the work of our hands. This knowledge comes to those who hear the Word of the Lord as He declares, through the servant of the Lord, those exceeding great and precious promises whereby you will escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. John 14:21
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Later, the Apostle John would write, in 1 John 2:1-6
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
Walking in love, the love of God Who has sealed us to Himself by the Holy Spirit of promise, takes Jesus’ words, “If you love me, you will keep My commandments,” and clings to them, not as holding onto the tail of a tiger, but as holding onto a rope that keeps you safe. Jesus is not making a threat, but a promise. It is a promise based, not upon our investment in God, but on God’s investment in us. Acts 17:28-31
for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
God claims Man - Adam - as His son. Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” In Psalm 2:7 “I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” St. Paul preached the fulfillment of the prophetic song when he preached in Acts 13:32–33 “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “ ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’” St. Peter confirms the word of promise in his first epistle, for after laying the foundation of God’s planned work in us in 1 Peter 1:2 “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” Peter then gives God the glory declaring, in 1 Peter 1:3-5 You have been begotten by the Holy Spirit, through the
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
The Lord Jesus Christ knows what He has invested in you. He knows that the seed He has sown is good seed, He knows that the Word He has declared concerning you is God’s strong Word, and He knows that He is able to fulfill what He has declared, as it is written, Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Like the chicken, our obedience is a contribution. It is good, it is a blessing, and it is enjoyed by those who receive it. But I give honor to Jesus Christ our Lord, Who made the total commitment of His life for our justification, to the praise of God’s glorious grace.
We might not see it now, it might not look like it today, but hold on to God’s promise! God’s got it all in control, as it is written, Num 23:19
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
One the day when He returns, with all authority, to execute the righteous judgment, we shall behold Him, as we gather for the Feast of Victory, when all is fulfilled, Rev 21:3-4
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And the peace of God that passes understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
