All In - Sermon 3 - Logos Sermons

If you have a Bible, turn over to . We are going to read a lot of Scripture this weekend and I think that’s ok because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is where we anchor our faith. So we are going to read quite a bit of Scripture and unpack it together. I’ll give you a minute to get there.

This is a tough one to end because I think all of us have been challenged. I don’t know about you, but I want to continue to be challenged. So we’ve given you pictures of what it looks like to go all in with God, to push all your chips to the middle of the table and say, ‘God I belong to you.’ What does that look like? Well, for a guy named Noah, it was building an ark in the middle of the desert. For a guy named Abraham, it was putting his son Isaac on the altar and offering what was most precious to him to God. For Elisha, it was slaughtering his oxen and following the calling that God had placed on his life. Then remember last week, don’t you love Dick Foth! Going all in as a little boy saying, ‘Here are five loaves and two fish, it’s all I’ve got but you can have what is in my hand.’ And Jesus takes those five loaves and two fish and He does what He does, miracles, and He feeds 5,000. But more than anything else, going all in looks like the sinless Son of God hanging on an old rugged cross offering his life as a sacrifice for our forgiveness and our freedom. It is not about what we can do for God, it is about what He has already done for us.

If you have a Bible, turn over to . We are going to read a lot of Scripture this weekend and I think that’s ok because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is where we anchor our faith. So we are going to read quite a bit of Scripture and unpack it together. I’ll give you a minute to get there.

This is a tough one to end because I think all of us have been challenged. I don’t know about you, but I want to continue to be challenged. So we’ve given you pictures of what it looks like to go all in with God, to push all your chips to the middle of the table and say, ‘God I belong to you.’ What does that look like? Well, for a guy named Noah, it was building an ark in the middle of the desert. For a guy named Abraham, it was putting his son Isaac on the altar and offering what was most precious to him to God. For Elisha, it was slaughtering his oxen and following the calling that God had placed on his life. Then remember last week, don’t you love Dick Foth! Going all in as a little boy saying, ‘Here are five loaves and two fish, it’s all I’ve got but you can have what is in my hand.’ And Jesus takes those five loaves and two fish and He does what He does, miracles, and He feeds 5,000. But more than anything else, going all in looks like the sinless Son of God hanging on an old rugged cross offering his life as a sacrifice for our forgiveness and our freedom. It is not about what we can do for God, it is about what He has already done for us.

Do you know that many religions are about what you can do for God or what you have to do for God? But Christianity is all about what God the Father has done for us through his Son Jesus Christ. So you could say that religion is spelled D-O do, but I think you could also say that Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. It was done at the cross and with the resurrection that God accomplished his purposes and all we have to do is receive it. So this is almost the trick right here to living a life where you follow Christ. It is understanding that it doesn’t start with what you can do for God, it starts with what God has done for you. So when you begin to realize that He loves you, then you start loving other people the way He loves you. And your life becomes an expression of who God is. Essentially, you begin to do what God has done for you. It really is as simple as that. So us going all in is a response to the God who has gone all in for us.

Let me be up front, I want to challenge you to completely submit your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. By the time we’re done, if you are holding out, you are missing out. I want you to experience the fullness of joy and the fulfillment that comes when you begin to give your life to the One who has plans and purposes for you that are way beyond anything you can ask or imagine. He demands and deserves nothing less.

How cool is that! What she did is being celebrated 2,000 years later. We don’t know the exact value of this alabaster jar, but it was enough to shock the disciples. In fact, they call it a waste. It is so shocking that it had to be extremely valuable. This was the most valuable thing she owned. In fact, I would suggest that this alabaster jar of perfume probably represented her life savings. And that is significant. She wasn’t just pouring perfume on Jesus, what was she doing? She was giving her life to Jesus. She was offering her life to Jesus.

It is interesting to me, how ironic that the very next vignette, first we have this woman who goes all in, breaks open her alabaster jar of perfume and pours it on Jesus, here’s what happens next. Verse 14

14 Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests 15 and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. 16 From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

Would it be fair to say that Judas wasn’t all in? Can I just put this in monetary terms? I hate to reduce a relationship with God to this but it sure seems to me like Jesus wasn’t worth 30 silver coins to Judas. I’ll let that just set out there. What a contrast to someone who is breaking open life savings and pouring it on Jesus to someone else who opts out, isn’t all in but opts out for 30 silver coins.

This is a place where we come and we acknowledge our sinfulness but we celebrate the forgiveness of God. There is not one of us that deserve to be at the table. We aren’t there because we deserve it. All of us have betrayed Him. We are there because God doesn’t have a love that reacts to how we are acting, God has a love that is proactive. We don’t have to change for God to love us, his love changes us. His love begins to do a work in our hearts and lives and it changes us from the inside out and we become a different person.

I want to tell you that it wasn’t nails that kept Him nailed to that cross. It was his love for you. He wasn’t willing to come off that cross because He wasn’t willing to let go of you. And until you personalize that, you’ll never have the kind of experience when you come to the Lord’s Table. I hope that it is not diminished by the fact that maybe you are taking it with a couple hundred people at whatever location you are at. Maybe when it was 12, it felt like He loves you one-twelfth, but maybe you feel like God loves you one-two hundredth or whatever, no, no, no. He would have died for you if it was only you. That’s not a cliché. We’ve got to personalize that because when we do, it begins to change us because we begin to understand how much He loves us.

What is Jesus referring to when He reference the cup? Please dial in because if you’ve never heard this before, it will change the way you take communion. You need to understand this to have a full understanding of what the cup represents. Jesus is alluding to the cup of wrath, sometimes it is called the cup of sorrow in the Old Testament. It is referenced in multiple different places but what it symbolizes is our punishment for sin, that when we sin, the punishment is this cup of wrath that we must drink. And everyone must drink it. But Jesus drank it for us.

We go back to , verse 17 and verse 22

Awake, awake, rise up O Jerusalem. You who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, you who have drained it to its dregs the goblet that makes men stagger.

Let me summarize, you don’t want to drink this! This is what you don’t want to drink, the cup of wrath. Verse 21

Therefore, hear this, you afflicted one made drunk but not with wine. This is what your sovereign Lord says, your God who defends his people, “See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger, from that cup, the goblet of my wrath, [are you ready for this? It doesn’t get much better than this.] You will never drink again.

The prophet Isaiah is talking about this cup of wrath, that he is looking forward to the day that Jesus Christ would drink it for us so that we never have to drink it again.

Here’s the connection. Have you ever noticed in as you read the account of communion there what the communion cup is called? It is called the cup of thanksgiving. I think

that this is one of those beautiful pictures where you have two cups, a cup of wrath and a cup of thanksgiving, and Jesus does this thing and says, ‘Let me drink the cup of wrath to its dregs so that you can drink the cup of thanksgiving.’

Are you grateful today? Are you grateful today that He took our place, that He drank the cup that we deserve?

This week, Lora and I were in California. I spoke to some pastors in Sacramento and then we had a day with no agenda. Those days are few and far between. We hung out with Scott and Sue Ottman who were on our staff years ago and went sent them to plant a church in Pal Alto, California, so they hung out with us and we drove from Sacramento down to San Francisco. Lora had never been so I wanted to take her there. We made the drive and had a blast and hung out at Pier 39 and ate at the Stinking Rose. We walked the city and drove down the crookedest street. But on the way from Sacramento to San Francisco, this totally unplanned, but they said, ‘Do you know we are driving through Napa Valley?’ So we went up Route 29 and we drove through Napa Valley and we stopped at a winery to take a tour. So we went through and in the cellar they had their big casks of wine, and they had wine sampling. Here’s the deal about wine sampling, in my expert experience, they just give you a little bit. I don’t even know if it qualifies as a sip! What is smaller than a sip? Is there a word in the English language that is less than a sip? A drop? So people are there doing this thing and I was chuckling because I’d never had that experience before and it was interesting for me to see it. I shared that as a picture because I wonder how many of us have only sipped the grace of God. We’ve only just had a little sip of his love. We’ve only tasted just a smidgen of his power and we don’t even know what we are missing.

When I read this, part of what catches me in Isaiah is this little phrase ‘drained to its dregs.’ I don’t know why I like the word ‘dregs,’ it almost feels manly saying it, like a pirate. Dregs are what are left when you have drunk everything in the cup. It is the remains. It is when everything is gone but just that little residue that’s left. Jesus didn’t just sip the cup of wrath, He drank it to its dregs, every sin that all of us collectively throughout history, Jesus drained that cup of wrath to its dregs. What does that mean? I think what that means is we better drink the cup of thanksgiving to its dregs. That’s all He wants! It is not what we can do for Him, it is us having a heart that is so overwhelmed with gratitude for what God has done that we drink that cup of thanksgiving and we drink it to its dregs and we say thank you God.

The Bible says do not be drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit. You know what I think that means? Let me put it in plain terms. I think some of us, when we worship God, we have never worshipped God without inhibitions because we’ve never gotten drunk on the Spirit of God. We have never been so intoxicated with the love of God that could care less what other people think. You know me well enough to know what I’m saying. I’m saying that I just felt so strongly in my spirit that God wants to keep taking me to a new place. I am hungry for God to do new things in my life. I want to experience Him in new ways and that means I can’t just do what I’ve always done. I’ve got to get on my knees and seek God in a fresh way if I want a fresh experience with Him. I’ve got to drink the cup of thanksgiving to its dregs. I need God’s Spirit to fill cavities in my heart that I didn’t even know were there and then I need God to expand my capacity so that I can be filled with his Spirit and He can do something through me that I can’t take credit for.

capacity so that I can be filled with his Spirit and He can do something through me that I can’t take credit for.

Are you hungry for that? Are you willing to go to that place? Is there any place that you shouldn’t be willing to go to if Christ was willing to go to Calvary? It is disingenuous to say to the God walked and carried that cross to Calvary, to say, ‘I’m not willing to go there?’ It doesn’t work that way. If He was willing to go there, then I better be willing to go here, there and everywhere because He demands it.

I don’t know what God is demanding of you, but He gave everything, and that means we better give ourselves back to Him.

I’m going to close with this. Here is what I believe, I believe this is a moment for some of you. I want to challenge you to make a defining decision. I want to challenge you to make a daily decision. Let me summarize this, I don’t think we make too many major decisions in our lives but we spend the rest of our lives managing those major decisions. So there are a few defining decisions that will forever change the trajectory of our lives. That doesn’t need to scare us because God goes before us and He is ordering our footsteps. So you can live in holy anticipation. You don’t have to worry about it if you’re walking the path that God has laid out for you. But you still have to make those defining decisions. There is a defining decision above all others and it’s the decision to bow your knee and kneel at the foot of the cross and submit your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to acknowledge that He is who He said He was. That’s a defining decision. Many of us have made that decision. Some of you, I challenge you to make that decision today.

Then what? Then come the daily decisions. Our destiny is as much defined by daily decisions as it is by defining decisions. It is about living it out. So here’s what it means to follow Christ in a nutshell. You make a defining decision where you bow the knee and you submit your life to Christ. Then you get up and you make a daily decision today, tomorrow and the next day, to take up the cross that you have knelt before and to carry it. What does that mean? That’s what Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” In other words, ‘I went all in for you, now you go all in for me.’ And if you go all in for God, your life will never be the same. Let’s pray.