MAKING MUCH OF JESUS

Introduction

-When a New Year approaches, we always take time to reevaluate our priorities. Sometimes this reevaluation turns into making resolutions that we may or may not keep. But, hopefully, it’s a time to get refocused on the most important things for us as individuals and as a church.

-What today’s passage represents reminds me of a story from many years ago: In 1959, Vince Lombardi took over as head coach of the Green Bay Packers. The team had gone thru some rough years of not being very good. {I know it’s hard to imagine that the GB Packers were anything but championship material at all times, but that’s the way it was.} Coach Lombardi approached the team in preseason training with a football in his hand. He looked at these players, most of whom had played for many years, and said with authority, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Lombardi then proceeded to go over the very basics with the team and build from there. He took his team out to the field, explaining where the out-of-bounds lines and the end zones were. He explained all the rules and organization of players. After he laid out the basics of what football was all about, he went on to build a team that won six Division championships, two conference championships, and two Superbowls during his tenure.

-so today I want to have our own little bit of a “Gentlemen, this is a football” moment—Ladies and Gentleman, this is a church, and this is what the church is all about, and what we find well defined in today’s passage that we exist to MAKE MUCH OF JESUS

~The church doesn’t exist to maintain a building or a program

~The church doesn’t exist to push personal agendas or fulfill our every whim

~The church exists to make much of Jesus

-That is a completely different mindset than the age we live in right now----We live in such a consumerism age, that we have brought that attitude to the church—just as business and marketing seeks to please us and feed into our wants and desires, many churches got into this thinking that if we don’t feed into people’s wants and desires, if we don’t give the people what they want, then we’ll never grow—Well, guess what, I’M NOT BUYING IT, because the Bible shows us that is not what church is about

-Look at the early church in the NT=they didn’t have all the extra stuff that we think churches can’t live without (not that they are bad in themselves), but without all the extras the church exploded in growth thru the power of God because they made much of Jesus

-I want to look at this passage and get that picture of us MAKING MUCH OF JESUS:

John 12:20–32 ESV

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. 27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

-How did they make much of Jesus

I) The Masses seeking the Messiah are led to His presence

-So here in our passage we have some Gentiles who are God-fearers: they believe in and worship Jehovah-God, and they have come to Jerusalem to worship God during Passover

-but when they get into town, they seek after Jesus—I find that so fascinating; they come to worship God, but somehow they made the connection that to do so involved Jesus

-So, they approach Philip, most likely because he has a Greek name—Philip brings them to Andrew because it seems Andrew is the man who ushers people into Jesus’ presence, and then they all come to Jesus

-Now think about this: When people who were looking for the truth about God thru Jesus approached His disciples, the disciples didn’t try to hide Jesus from them, they didn’t obscure their need to see Jesus, they didn’t try to dissuade them in any way—they just simply took them straight to Jesus because Jesus saves

-Why I think this is so important is that it shows the church is meant to be a conduit thru which people who are lost/hurting/in despair can be brought into the presence of the only One Who can do anything about it

-Yet there are seeker-sensitive churches out there that are so worried about offending people, that they don’t mention or preach about the only One that can save and heal; they try to hide Him or make Him obscure

-It’s like they say: “YOU KNOW WHAT, I KNOW YOU’RE LOST and GOING TO HELL, BUT BECAUSE I VALUE YOUR PRESENCE IN MY CHURCH MORE THAN I VALUE YOUR SOUL, OUT OF FEAR OF OFFENDING YOU AND SCARING YOU AWAY, I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT JESUS OR ABOUT HOW TO BE SAVED; INSTEAD I’M GOING TO TELL YOU HOW TO LIVE A STRESS FREE LIFE and HOW TO HAVE YOUR BEST LIFE NOW

-That’s just plain crazy----tell me how can a church call itself seeker-sensitive, when it is not sensitive enough to bring the seeker to the One that they’re seeking?

-Imagine that you feel miserably sick, so you go to the doctor. You are brought into the room and you sit there, and the doctor comes in. The doctor starts making small talk with you and he tells a few jokes. Then the doctor gets up, shakes your hand, tells you how happy he was you visited him today and he hopes to see you again next week. Not once did he check you and tell you what was wrong with you and not once did he tell you how to fix what’s wrong with you. You’d be a little perturbed, and you’d probably call that doctor a quack. What doctor wouldn’t examine you, tell you what’s wrong and tell you about the cure.

-Yet right now in churches there are lost people all across this great land, knowing something’s wrong, but not being told that they are sinners separated from God, and the only way to fix that is Jesus Christ----May that never be us

-when people come to this church: yes, they will meet friendly faces and loving fellowship, but before they leave here, they better be brought into the presence of Jesus----if we don’t do that, then we’ve failed as a church

II) The Message of the Messiah is boldly proclaimed

-when they came into Jesus’ presence, Jesus didn’t shirk back from telling them the hard truths of His message—He didn’t water anything down, He didn’t soften the blow=this is Jesus telling them and us the message that He proclaims, and therefore it is the message that we are to proclaim and live by:

A) A message of death and life

-Jesus uses an agricultural picture to get those listening to understand a great theological truth

-v. 24=Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

—here’s the thing, only when a seed is buried in the ground and dies does it allow the plant to grow, so the plant grows fruit which bears more seed to be spread

-if a seed could make the decision to not bury itself, it may still be alive, but it would be all alone—only when it dies does it reproduce

-Jesus was pointing to the fact that only when there is the death of One, will there be the life of many--and obviously He is talking about Himself

-Even though they still didn’t get it quite yet, Jesus is expressly telling His disciples that only by His death on the cross, His burial, and then His resurrection will there be any spiritual fruit born in the form of mankind’s sins being taken care of, and all Who believe on Jesus becoming the people of God

-If Jesus never died, sin was never paid for, all people are still in their sins and separated from God—only with the death of Jesus will much grain/fruit be born=eternal life for the believer

-That is the message we proclaim=a crucified, buried, risen Savior==our message is not a message of I’M OK, YOU’RE OK, SO GOD IS OK WITH YOU JUST AS YOU ARE; LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO BE PROSPEROUS

-Our message is that we’re not OK, but God still loves us anyway, in fact God shows His love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us

-but Jesus takes this message a little further, in that He was not the only One to die:

B) A message of example and commitment

-Jesus then goes on to tell all those listening, that, yes, He has to die to give eternal life to the believers and He is the only One Who can----but, those who truly believe will follow His example in that they too must die=not necessarily physically, but die to self and commit themselves to Him

-Think again about the picture of the seed—if we want to see spiritual fruit born in this world, we, like the seed, must die

-v. 25=Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

—a disciple of Jesus no longer believes that he/she belongs to himself/herself, but have been bought with a price by Jesus thru His death, therefore our entire being belongs to Him, not ourselves

What this entails is:

1) surrender

-Jesus, Who is Lord, Creator, Sustainer of all the exists, surrendered all His rights and privileges that came with being God, and humbly obeyed the Father, not even considering His own deity something to be grasped onto so closely that He would not fulfill the Father’s plan----So God the Son surrendered Himself and became obedient unto death

-that is the example for and the commitment called upon for Christians—part of the message is surrender; it is also:

2) self-sacrifice

-and as Christ sacrificed Himself for the salvation of many, we don’t consider our own lives something to be lived for ourselves, but we sacrifice our lives…time…resources…body… mind, out of love for others for the good of others to the glory of God—we give things up for ourselves so we can give to the benefit of other people, just as our Lord

-If we love our own lives in this world so much that everything we do is for personal gain and benefit, we lose out in the long run; but if we by comparison hate our life in this world so much that we willing sacrifice it to God, we gain so much more than this world ever would have to offer

But it also means:

3) service

-v. 26 speaks about servants and service—the life of a Christian is a life of service to other people as the means by which we serve God

-as much of our energy that is possible is to be expended upon waiting and ministering to others

-here again, we see that the church is about Jesus and ministering in His name----church is not a place for selfish ego-stroking----it is a place of unselfish giving of ourselves, where we surrender our own will to God, we sacrifice ourselves for the good of others so that we may serve God by our service to others

-That is the message: Jesus died to save us so we can die to serve others----come to church with that mindset: because Jesus sacrificed Himself for me, what can I do to sacrificially serve others

III) The Majesty of the Messiah is what draws the people

-v. 32=And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

—there is a double meaning to what Jesus is saying here----when He is lifted up from the ground on the cross, that will be the means by which He draws people to the Father

-but that word for “lifted up” also means EXALTED—when Jesus is exalted, people will be drawn to the Father thru Him

-Do you understand what that’s saying? When we make much of Jesus, people come to Christ and get saved and become His followers and join the church

-When Jesus is lifted high in a church, then the church grows----Look at the apostles at Pentecost=the only thing that the apostles did that day is that Peter preached and made much of Jesus; that was it…and do you know what happened? 3000 people got saved and were added to the church

-when we exalt our music over Jesus, people don’t get saved and the church won’t grow…preacher over Jesus, people…programs over Jesus… nothing more and nothing less than Jesus

-but some of you are thinking—AL, DON’T YOU KNOW THAT IF WE DON’T GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, THEY WON’T COME and STAY, and WE WON’T HAVE THE BIG NUMBERS THAT ARE SO IMPORTANT TO OUR CHURCH’S EGO and SELF-ESTEEM—yeah, just what I want as a pastor, a church full of self-centered egotists running around

-I don’t want people here for the wrong reason—I want them here for Jesus—that’s what they need, that’s what we are called to give them—now, I am calling on you to join me in this—the church doing what it’s supposed to be doing, MAKING MUCH OF JESUS

Conclusion

How are we going to accomplish this in 2020, beginning a new decade?

1) preaching of the gospel

-plain and simple, the gospel message of redemption thru Christ as is given throughout the entire Bible will be preached—the message of salvation always given

2) discipleship of the believer

-People learning the Word in order to live the Word----{GO & GROW----cultivate our soul}

-I want everyone trained on how to reproduce themselves---that is, I want everyone here to know how to be saved and how to tell others to be saved in a way that they will be able to tell others, so on and so forth----we are going to be training trainers

3) evangelism of the world

-spreading the gospel throughout the world--and the world includes Madison county and the world includes Africa and Japan and all over—we are going to make much of Jesus everywhere

(Reach the Harvest)

4) ministry to the community

-that is, we will serve other in the name of Jesus not only within the church community (as we take care of 1 another), but also ministry outside the walls of the church

-I want this mindset to permeate every single thing that we do==Brian, when he does music, make much of Jesus; James, in the youth…Chad in the Children…Life group leaders… make much of Jesus

-whenever we do something, start something, teach something, in the back of our minds we have to ask ourselves the question: Does it make much of Jesus?----and if the answer is no, then we have to ask ourselves, why are we doing it

-ladies and gentlemen, this is not a football, this is a church----everything we do needs to build on this basic: we need to be making much of Jesus

-Maybe you’ve been looking for a church home that will be grounded on what the Word says in service to Christ—you’ve found it, would you join us in this endeavor?

-maybe there are church members that want to come to the altar and commit themselves in their lives and thru the church to make much of Jesus

-Yet, I’m sure there are many here who have never believed in Jesus’ sacrifice for their eternal life—you’ve been trusting yourself or the church or anything but Jesus—I tell you today, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved—come forward during the invitation and let me help you do that