All For Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
What is good for God? What blesses Him? What makes Him happy?
How do we glorify God? Make Him famous? Do we want to? Is that the driving ambition of our life? Do we see our faith as the thing which gives our life purpose?
According to the data, 86% of Americans believe there's a “universal, shared purpose” that human life possesses. About two-in-three respondents (66%) believe they have a “unique, God-given calling or purpose.” But only 18% believe the universal purpose is “knowing, loving and serving God.”
“Even among the 71% of Americans who consider themselves to be Christians, fewer than 20% adopt the biblical view that our purpose is to know, love and serve God,” an analysis of the data reads. https://www.christianpost.com/news/few-americans-see-lifes-purpose-as-knowing-loving-and-serving-god-poll.html
Knowing, loving and serving God do not define the life purpose of Christians today. How in the world did we get there? The answer is really simple: We have made everything, including a relationship with God, about us.
The church joined the “Me Generation” “The "Me" generation is a term referring to the baby boomer generation in the United States and the self-involved qualities that some people associate with it.”
We went from the “Me Generation” to the completely self-absorbed generation…one in which books like “Your Best Life Now” can become a best seller…in the church. God became a cosmic Santa. Religion became utilitarian in nature.
Utilitarian — “A doctrine that the useful is the good and that the determining consideration of right conduct should be the usefulness of its consequences.” —Webster
Churches began to preach sermons on the basis of how useful the information was to the successful life of listeners…not successful in terms of God’s glory but success in terms of worldly definitions…how does the information help me become healthy, wealthy and happy?
God became something we used to our own ends. Church was attended in order to get something from God. People came to faith in order to escape hell. Everything became man centered…there is another word for that…humanism.
Humanism — a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values — Webster
The church in the United States has largely bought into a humanistic ideology. The church has become utilitarian in nature…judging everything it does or teaches by the measure of whether or not it furthers my wants, desires and values.
Plastic
Plastic
But this isn’t what Christianity is all about. Jesus said if we want to be His follower we had to take up our cross and follow Him. There was one thing you knew about a man carrying a cross…He wasn’t coming back. He was going to his place of death and it would be the end of himself.
How can we defend a utilitarian, humanistic teaching in our churches when the very center of the gospel says in order to actually be a Christian one must die to self???
Wants — To desire to have or experience something
So anyone who wants to know Jesus…wants to have Jesus…wants to experience Him…they must...
Deny — To deny strongly with the implication of rejection.
Take up His Cross — Death to self…completely die to all that we are. Die to our humanistic, self-centered way of existence. No longer do we live for our selfish ambitions.
If you want to live for yourself you can do that. You can try to live in order to be healthy, wealthy and happy. But in the end you will lose it all and have none of the three! Even if you were to be a wildly successful person in the world’s definition of such…you became the wealthiest, healthiest and happiest person alive…you still lose.
Why? Simple…because you have been keeping score wrong. You based your success on something that doesn’t matter at all. You have been living for trinkets and sold your soul for plastic.
What an incredible tragedy to live your life making the things of least value of most value.
Think about that statement…It is not that the things of this life have no value…the beauty of the rocky mountains at sunset is a sight to behold. The colors, red, orange, purple and gold blend with the sky and clouds to take our breath away…but how might they pale in comparison to the sky we will one day behold when our eyes open to the wonders of a world yet not seen…a world untouched by sin…heaven.
Yet we continue to value the present as if it was of infinite value to us. We seem to live our life by the adage a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush…as if what we can see, hear, hold and experience now is better than God’s promised reward.
Rewards
Rewards
Jesus says that someday He is going to come with His angels in the glory of the Father and will reward us for what we have done.
We will get back to the rewards in a moment but let’s talk first about why they are given in the first place...
They are given to those who died to self in order to follow Christ…in order to live a life like Jesus lived. And how did Jesus live His life???
John 17:4
I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
Jesus came to earth in order to glorify the Father by doing the work He had been given to do by the Father.
If you and I are going to follow Jesus then our life is about glorifying Him. To make much of God…to make Him great in the eyes of this world…to live in such a way to make Him known.
God rewards those who live their life for the purpose of making Him known…making known the reality of His existence, character and power. This is real life…this is what it means to really live. In short…when we live our life for God, we are living for what really matters.
We sing, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.” But do we really, truly believe this? Do we believe Jesus is worthy of our whole life? That there could be nothing of greater value than Him?
We sing, “All to Jesus I surrender. All to Him I freely give.” Is it true? Do we see our life this way? Do we see our God that way? That He is worth giving our time, energy, talents…our life?
Those who answer yes will one day be rewarded but those who receive such rewards will already be fully satisfied in Him.
We cannot imagine the reward of knowing and experiencing God in heaven. Every dream, desire and hope is fulfilled in Him. Our need for love, security, peace and comfort will be found in Him…completely in Him.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby Eliason—over 80, single all her life, a nurse. Poured her life out for one thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places. Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities, and in her retirement, partnering up with Ruby. [She was] also pushing 80, and going from village to village in Cameroon. The brakes give way, over a cliff they go, and they’re dead instantly. And I asked my people, “Is this a tragedy?”
Two women, in their 80s almost, a whole life devoted to one idea—Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places. And 20 years after most of their American counterparts had begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico, [they] fly into eternity with a death in moment. “Is this a tragedy?” I asked. “No!” “It is not a tragedy,” Piper affirmed. “I’ll read you what a tragedy is.”
He pulled out a page from Reader’s Digest. (“I don’t know where I got it, because I didn’t subscribe,” Piper remembers now. “I must have found it in a doctor’s office somewhere.”)
He read it to them: ‘Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.’ “That’s a tragedy,” he told the crowd.
How are you keeping score?
Are you living as though the things of this world are invaluable? Are you living for trinkets? Things that will burn up one day? Things you cannot take with you beyond the grave? Things that don’t matter for eternity?
To put it simply…are you living for God? Does pleasing Him, glorifying Him take precedence over any and everything else in your life?
Decide today that, compared to your relationship with Christ, all else will look like it is…trinkets, plastic and even refuse.
What or who are we living for?