Too Little Too Late
?A close up of Joseph of Arimathea
Scriptures: Luke 23:50-54; John 19:38-42
Christianity is something which is meant to be seen. As someone has well said, "There can be no such thing as secret discipleship, for either the secrecy destroys the discipleship, or the discipleship destroys the secrecy." A man's Christianity should be perfectly visible to all men.
-- William Barclay
We are beginning a sermon series today that will take us through the next five Sundays. I believe that for some, this could be a life changing experience. We are calling the series, ”Flirting With The Faith”. I will be talking this week about Joseph of Arimathea, Pastor marc, next week will be looking at King Agrippa. The following week I will be preaching about the rich your ruler. Palm Sunday will bring us the sermon in musical and dramatic presentation, “Bow The Knee”. And then Pastor Peter on Easter Sunday will be delivering the message as people respond to the challenge of a personal declaration of faith. I would ask every praying person to take this to your heart and faithfully seek the Lord’s blessing as we look for folks to declare Christ publicly on Resurrection Sunday.
Today, we look at Joseph of Arimathea, the secret disciple. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? Does the scripture offer him to us as an example to follow or to forsake? The challenge this Easter season is to the secret disciple, the person who has made a decision for Christ but chooses for a variety of reasons to keep their experience with God very private. There comes a time when every person will be faced with the need to publicly declare him or herself.
1. His Profile
Was he painted well in the pages of scripture?
· He was a man of great resource
· He had tremendous influence.
· He was a disciple. Based on the way that scripture seems to treat Joseph, it would seem that it is possible to be a follower of Christ without paying the same price as the chosen 12.
· He was a secret disciple
2. His Problem
What kept him from declaring himself?
· He was afraid of the personal consequence. The scripture tells us that we was afraid of the Jews.
Sanhedrim — more correctly Sanhedrin (Gr. synedrion), meaning “a sitting together,” or a “council.” This word (rendered “council,” A.V.) is frequently used in the New Testament (Matt. 5:22; 26:59; Mark 15:1, etc.) to denote the supreme judicial and administrative council of the Jews, which, it is said, was first instituted by Moses, and was composed of seventy men (Num. 11:16, 17). But that seems to have been only a temporary arrangement which Moses made. This council is with greater probability supposed to have originated among the Jews when they were under the domination of the Syrian kings in the time of the Maccabees. The name is first employed by the Jewish historian Josephus. This “council” is referred to simply as the “chief priests and elders of the people” (Matt. 26:3, 47, 57, 59; 27:1, 3, 12, 20, etc.), before whom Christ was tried on the charge of claiming to be the Messiah. Peter and John were also brought before it for promulgating heresy (Acts. 4:1–23; 5:17–41); as was also Stephen on a charge of blasphemy (6:12–15), and Paul for violating a temple by-law (22:30; 23:1–10).
The Sanhedrin is said to have consisted of seventy-one members, the high priest being president. They were of three classes: (1) the chief priests, or heads of the twenty-four priestly courses (1 Chr. 24), (2) the scribes, and (3) the elders. As the highest court of judicature, “in all causes and over all persons, ecclesiastical and civil, supreme,” its decrees were binding, not only on the Jews in Palestine, but on all Jews wherever scattered abroad. Its jurisdiction was greatly curtailed by Herod, and afterwards by the Romans. Its usual place of meeting was within the precincts of the temple, in the hall “Gazith,” but it sometimes met also in the house of the high priest (Matt. 26:3), who was assisted by two vice-presidents. ?
· Unable to “sway the system”. Often the reason that people downplay their faith in their own systems is that they believe that they will jeopardize their ability to have a positive influence on their organization if their faith is evident to those around them – Strange idea when you think about it. They believe that if people discover their professed relationship to Christ then they will be written off by the negative stereotype that many Christians represent.
I had one Christian friend who told me that he was a social drinker because he felt that he would be unable to witness to his friend if he did not drink with him.
· Didn’t understand the idea of “offering himself”. There are many secret disciples who do not understand the difference between the things that we give up and the things that we offer up.
3. His Proving
What is it about him that we want to applaud?
· He was divinely appointed.
· He was uniquely gifted.
· He was ultimately vindicated.
Christians need to take a public stand with God, no matter what the cost. We also need to take a stand for our faith and have the courage to say, "I'm a Christian." If we are to have revival in this nation, that's what Christians will have to do.
-- Robert Vernon, assistant chief of police, Los Angeles Police
Department, in Christianity Today, 3/18/89
Your Life Is Jesus To Someone
YOUR LIFE is Jesus to someone,
though tattered and torn it may be.
Though often times weak and unstable,
you're all of God someone will see.
YOUR TONGUE is Jesus to someone.
That idle, insensitive word
reflects to at least one searching heart
an idle, insensitive Lord.
YOUR GOALS are Jesus to someone.
What you put first, they believe,
are the goals of God for the Christian.
Your life is all they receive.
YOUR FAITHFULNESS... that's Jesus to someone.
Their judgment of how God is true,
rests unquestionably in the faithfulness
they see day by day in you.
YOUR LOVE is Jesus to someone--
that someone who is seeking to know
that Jesus will follow and guide and
befriend wherever in life they might go.
SO BEWARE lest others blaspheme
God by what you say or do,
for the only Jesus that someone knows
is the Jesus they see in you.
Posted From [Lola Conley's Devotional]
William Barclay writes:
It's possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one's weight. Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, "So and so tells me that he was one of your students." The teacher answered devastatingly, "He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students." There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in the Church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.
The trouble is that the whole "accept Christ" attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to him. It makes him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting his verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life.
A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)