Mistakes Christians Make

“Mistakes Christians Make”

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Are you a Christian? Do you ever make mistakes? Yes you do!

If you’re sitting there thinking, I bet I am the only one in this church that makes mistakes; I am the only one who takes two steps forward and one step back in my Christian life. You would be wrong!

We all do that sometimes.

The Christian life is a series of new beginnings. Sometimes we say, “God is the God of a second chance”. Well that is partly true; yes God is the God of the second chance…but God is also the God of another chance. God doesn’t limit us to 2 chances, aren’t you glad of that!!

God is a God of mercy and forgiveness.

-“It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness”.

Every single one of us make mistakes, we sin, we say the wrong thing, and we do the wrong thing.

If you are here and you are considering Christianity, I want to be honest with you and tell you that Christians are not perfect people.

We are forgiven, but we are not perfect! If you look close enough, long enough you will find that we don’t always live like we should.

We love Jesus and we desire to live for him; but our sinful nature often gets in the way.

Don’t let the mistakes Christians make, keep you from trusting in the perfect son of God!

If has become open season on criticizing Christians; and sometimes we deserve it. But criticizing Christians can easily become just another excuse for not coming to Jesus Christ for salvation.

But as Christians we need to be concerned that we are helping people come to know Jesus, not standing in their way.

If we want to help people come to Jesus, and we want to please Jesus with our life; there are some mistakes we need to avoid. The mistakes that the disciples make in these verses; are the same mistakes that Christians make today.

Luke paints 4 scenes for us, and in the 4 scenes he gives us the 4 mistakes that Christians most often make.

Let’s identify these mistakes, and ask God to help us avoid making them.

Mistake #1:

1. Failing to Rely on the Power of God.

V:37-42.

In this first scene Jesus, Peter James and John have just come down on the Mount of Transfiguration. They are met by a large crowd of people; the crowds were always coming and going to hear Jesus, be healed, and experience the miracles of Jesus. Picture in your mind the camera taking a wide angle shot; and you see people, throngs of people gathering around Jesus.

Then imagine the cameraman, zooming in on one particular man in the crowd, he has a desperate father, who has a demon possessed son.

The father is desperate, broken hearted; desiring his son to be set free from the grip of Satan.

This boy’s problem was more than a physical, emotional, or mental problem; it was a spiritual problem. Satan had a grip on his life, and was seeking to destroy him. Here he is a reminder that Satan desires to destroy you, your marriage, and your children. The book of Mark says that the demon often threw the boy into the fire and water trying to kill him. Satan’s chief desire is to kill, and steal and destroy.

Satan desire to take control of your life, no matter how old you are; to Satan the younger the better.

Please hear this parents; the Devil wants to get ahold of your children while they are young!

His desire and plan is to get them as young as he can, and wreck their lives as quick as he can!

The Devil is doing all he can to capture the minds of your children. There are Jr. High kids that are Alcoholics, and doing drugs, and very young kids selling dope, 12 yr. old girls that are pregnant, there are boys hooked on pornography, young girls with eating disorders, and youth people who are cutting themselves.

Because the Devil starts early to do then harm, you better start early to do them good! You better get interested in the spiritual welfare of your children from the moment they are born; because the devil is interested in them when they are little boys and girls. He wants to get ahold of their minds.

That's why it's very important what you allow your children to watch on television, internet, and what they read. Control what they listen to; don’t let them listen to music that would give Satan a straight shot into their mind and heart. Don’t let them spend time with other boys and girls that are a bad influence on them.

God help us to be sensitive and serious to protect our children from the things and people that Satan would use to destroy them. God help us to pray that our children would be saved at an early age. If is important beyond words not to lead our children through a false experience; we want to be sure we do not put pressure on them, and that they are ready to be saved. But we must also be sensitive to sense when they are under conviction, and understand that they are lost and need to be saved. It is a fearful and exciting time when your child wants to be saved. Don’t sell our young people short, I believe they can come to an understanding that they are sinners and Jesus is the savior at a young age! How young? The Bible does not tell us…

If a little boy or girl can be filled with the Devil, alcohol, drugs and sex, he or she can be filled with the Holy Ghost and things of God!

It the Devil can claim their minds for sin and wrong, we can claim their minds for Jesus and righteousness.

The father falls before Jesus and cries out to Jesus with a sense of desperation and urgency. He tells Jesus about the demon that’s destroying his son, and he ask Jesus to deliver his son.

The father tells Jesus; V:40-“I asked her disciples to cast the demon out; and they could not”

I believe this is one of the saddest statements in the Bible.

Imagine the cameraman, swinging the camera from the face of this desperate father, and demon possessed son, and puts the camera on these defeated disciples. I can picture them looking down, looking around, embarrassed, ashamed and defeated because they could not do what this father asked them to do, and what this boy desperately needed.

This father brought his son to the ones he thought would be able to help him; to the representatives of the Lord Jesus. And yet they were powerless to do anything to help this boy.

Why? Why couldn’t they cast out this demon?

Jesus had told him in -“Jesus called his 12 disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases”.

And we read that they had gone out and cast out demons and healed people. Yet on this occasion they failed! The disciples failed not because of a lack of effort, but because of a lack of faith in the power of God! It was not because they had lost their power, or because they were use the wrong technique for casting out this demon.

It was because of their lack of faith to trust in Jesus power and authority to cast out this demon.

How do we know this? Because this is what Jesus said!

V:41-“Oh faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you, and suffer you? Bring your son here.

Who was Jesus talking to when he said that? He wasn’t talking to the father, the father’s faith was amazing. It is amazing that the father stayed around, and came to Jesus asking for Jesus to deliver his son; after the miserable failure of Jesus followers. It is encouraging to me to know that people still come to Jesus, even though Jesus disciples mess up royally sometimes.

If you unsaved, don’t let the failure of the disciples of Jesus; keep you from coming to Jesus.

The ultimate need of your heart is to experience the forgiveness of sins; and that can only come through Jesus! Don’t let hypocrites, keep you from trusting in Jesus Christ as your personal savior!

The boy is brought to Jesus, and Jesus cast the demon out of the boy, and gives him back to his father. Jesus did for this boy what the disciples could have done if they had only believed in the power of God to do what they could not do.

Jesus rebuked his disciples for not trusting in his power to deliver this boy.

The disciple’s lack of faith to trust in the power of God grieved the Lord Jesus greatly. You can sense his sorrow in the question

V:41-“how long shall I be with you and they are with you?

I’m so thankful that the Lord is patient, and that he puts up with me and you.

This is one of the great mistakes that Christians make; we fail to rely on the power of God to do what we cannot do! We try to serve God in our own strength, as the disciples did, and then nothing happens, or nothing happens with any supernatural power. The main point of this episode is not that we need to trust God to help us cast out demons, which is something most of us will never do. The point is we need to trust God to do all the spiritual work that only He can do!

We need faith in the power of God when we struggle against temptation.

We come up with all kinds of methods to manage our sin, but the real transformation in your life happens by trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ to change your heart and mind.

We need faith in the power of God:

To restore broken relationships.

To do the work of the ministry.

To bring sinners under conviction as we witness.

To break the chains of addiction in our lives.

To help us love the unlovable.

Make no mistake about it: God is the only one who can do any of these things! Therefore, we are called to trust God to do only what he can do! The mistake of the disciples, doesn’t have to be our mistake today. You and I can’t change people’s hearts and lives! But God can if we will trust in him!

The disciple’s mistake was trusting in themselves, and their process, rather than in the one who is the source of the power. It is an easy thing to do; if we are not careful we will find ourselves putting our faith in the process, our preaching, teaching, music instead of in the one who causes things to happen!

Mistake #1: Failing to Rely on the Power of God.

Mistake #2:

2. Taking our Eyes Off the Cross.

V:43-45.

We easily get distracted, even in the midst of doing spiritual things, we take our eyes off of the cross of Jesus Christ. Immediately after the deliverance of the boy, while the people were still marveling at everything that was done, V:43-44“And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God. But while they wondered every at all the things which Jesus did, he said unto his disciples, let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”.

Jesus was calling his disciples to look again at the cross, the main reason, the great reason he had come into the world. How easy it is to get caught up in the wonderful things that God is doing; and miss the main point of the ministry. It had only been a week since he told them that he would be rejected and suffer and be killed and rise again.

And now he is telling them again! The main message of the gospel is not that Jesus can perform exorcists, and work wonders, and do miracles; the main thing is Jesus came to suffer and die for our sins, and the sins of the world!

Jesus said, I will be delivered into the hands of men. Jesus was speaking about his crucifixion; soon Jesus would be nailed to a cross and left to die!

The disciples did not understand any of this; V:45-“but they understood not the saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceive it not: and they were afraid to ask him about it”.

The disciples didn’t understand because they refuse to accept the fact that the Messiah would suffer and die.

The disciples had turned their eyes and heart completely away from the cross, and were not willing to accept Jesus dying on a cross. They were unwilling to ask questions that would lead them to understand the purpose of the cross.

We know better this morning because we know the end of the gospel story. Through the eyes of faith we have seen Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead. We know the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection: because we have put our faith in Jesus and have been saved.

Yet if were not careful we still make the same mistake the disciples made; we failed to keep the cross at the center of our heart and lives.

Too often we take our eyes off the cross. We’re not willing to suffer the embarrassment of talking about Jesus to our friends, or risking our careers by taking a stand on a biblical principle, or to give up the comforts of life as we know it to take the gospel to unreached people. We do not want to suffer, even for Jesus; so we take our eyes off the cross. Jesus calls us to keep the cross at the center of our heart and life! We are to be like the apostle Paul who said in: -“I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”.

The cross must remain at the center of our personal evangelism, it is what we tell people about, it is through faith in Jesus death that a person is saved!

The cross must remain at the center of our stewardship, we sacrifice and give of our time and money, because Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross that men may be saved.

The cross must remain at the center of our worship, we sing, and praise, and lift up our hands in worship to a savior who bled and died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the grave and lives forever more!

The cross must remain at the center of our family life, we are to love our wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. We give, we love, and we serve our family like Jesus.

Mistake #3:

3. Seeking Greatness for Ourselves.

V:46-48.

In this third scene Luke gives us the third mistake that Christians most often make. The disciples are seeking greatness for themselves rather than seeking greatness for the Lord Jesus. In V:46, the disciples are having a dispute among themselves about which one of them would be the greatest.

Someone said, this is the most pointless debate in human history. We’re not told who started this argument, maybe it was Peter or James and John who bragged about being on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. And they said you know he likes us best, we were on the mountain and you weren’t. Maybe John says, it’s certainly not Peter he said the dumbest thing on the mountain. Maybe they were getting ready to ask Jesus which one of them was the greatest; but in V:47, Jesus perceived in his heart what they were talking about and he brings a little child and sets the child in the middle of them and says, V:48-Read.

This debate was so stupid; because like us none of the disciples were all that great in the first place. Remember, these were the men who could hardly stay awake to the end of a prayer meeting.

Jesus had been telling the disciples to deny themselves take up their cross and follow him, but rather than carrying their crosses, they’re trying to climb the ladder.

Jesus uses a little child as an illustration of humility, because children were the lowest in society in Jesus day.

Though loved and cherished, a child was the smallest and most powerless individual in Hebrew culture. Jesus tells the disciples that greatness in his eyes was not just associating with the world’s so-called great people. But humbling yourself, and ministering to the least, the lost and the lonely; the hurting and rejected of society. The disciples once tried to stop children from coming to Jesus, because they consider Jesus too great to receive children.

But the fact is Jesus was so great that he would receive children. Jesus says when you receive the least, like this child; you are actually receiving me.

True greatness in the eyes of God comes we take the lowest place, seeking no recognition for ourselves, but showing concern for the weak and helpless.

What a terrible mistake it is to seek greatness for ourselves. The Bible says God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. The book of Proverbs says that God hates pride. The book of Proverbs says that pride goes before a fall.

My church is better than your church, my worship is more pleasing to God than your worship, my ministry is more important than your ministry, my way of living the Christian life, or educating my children, or witnessing is better than yours.

J.C. Ryle said, “Of all creatures none has so little right to be proud as man, and of all men none ought to be more humble than Christians”

Everything we have is a gift of God; one of the best ways for us to show our gratitude to God, is by loving the people who are usually overlooked.

This means caring for children in a Christ-like way, seeking what is best for them. Loving them, protecting them, teaching them inside and outside the church. Showing compassion to the orphans and street children around the world. If God lays it on your heart adopt a child.

Charles Swindoll said, “We need to stop galloping through life on our high horse, and dismount, and make room for the least among us, then we will be like Jesus”.

If all of your friends are the great, well-off, the educated, the accomplished, the comfortable who are living the American dream, that is not good.

We need to receive into our circle of lives people who are lost and messed up in their sin, people who can really do nothing for us in return.

God help us not to seek greatness, and surround ourselves with only great people; but to humble our heart and love and serve others; even the least in society.

Beware of the cancerous sin of self-importance!

Mistake #4:

4. Fighting the Wrong Enemy.

V:49-50.

The fourth scene that Luke paints for us, shows the mistake that we often make of fighting the wrong enemy. The disciples just kept making mistakes, and yet Jesus just keeps instructing them. Maybe John thinks, well I know I’ve done at least one thing right; V:49-“John said, master we saw one casting out devils in your name; and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us”.

John was probably expecting a pat on the back; however Jesus gives him a lesson on the different between a friend and an enemy.

V:50-“Jesus said to him, do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side”.

John thinks because this guy is not following Jesus like us, something was is wrong with him, and he needs to be stopped. Jesus could have pointed out that they did not have a monopoly on doing God’s work.

It is a dangerous thing to assume that God approves of no other work but yours. That fosters a spirit of pride and pettiness! But Jesus simply said: do not stop him, for he that is not against us is for us!

Here was a guy who was trying to serve Jesus, but was not a part of their group.

The man casting out demons was not against their ministry, or against Jesus and therefore they had no business trying to stop him. Jesus is teaching his disciples that it is a mistake to fight against the wrong enemy! I’m not talking about the fundamentals of the faith, but fighting against other believers who don’t do things exactly like we do. Unless you have been given the position of spiritual oversight, it is not your responsibility to correct people who you think are wrong in the way they carry out their ministry.

If the Gospel is being preached, and sin is being opposed, and the devil’s kingdom is being pulled down.

Praise God for souls that are being rescued from the fires of hell through that ministry, though you would never join it; don’t oppose it!

Make no mistake about it; other Christians are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy, and we should do everything we can to encourage other Christians in the battle against him!

Luke gives us these four scenes that show us for mistakes that Christians make:

· Not trusting God to do only what he can do.

· Taking our eyes off the cross.

· Seeking greatness for ourselves.

· And fighting the wrong enemy.

Sooner or later we all make these mistakes, we do things in our own strength, not trusting the power of God. We take our eyes off the cross, seeking satisfaction in earthly things, rather than giving our lives away for Jesus. We exalt ourselves, rather than putting others first. We wound our brothers and sisters with the friendly fire of a critical spirit.

You look at these guys and wonder did Jesus make a mistake in choosing them? No he did not!

Jesus is patience with people who make spiritual mistakes: thank God he is!

How can you avoid making these mistakes in your Christian life?

· Depend on the power of God.

· Stay near the cross of Jesus Christ.

· Bow your heart before God.

· Live a life of love and grace.

-“Jesus is longsuffering to us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.