Ex-Quarterback
and ESPN commentator Joe Theismann, allegedly explaining to his soon-to-be-ex second wife why he had an affair: "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy."
What do you think about that? "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy."
Does God want Joe to be happy? Do you think that ex-wife wants Joe to be happy?
Before you answer, let me read you another quote by another “fascinating”
celebrity: Marla Maples.
Ms. Maples
is probably best known for being one of the ex-wives of Donald Trump. Now,
don’t get ahead of me here. Our focus this morning is most definitely not on
ex-wives (thank goodness). I just happen to have quotes that deal secondarily
with that. Marla Maples was asked about her religious roots. She believed in
the Bible, she told interviewers, then added the disclaimer, "but you
can't always take [it] literally and be happy." C. Colson, The Body,
p. 124.
What do you
think about that? Can you take the Bible literally and be happy? Does God want
you to be happy? For those of you that have kids, I think that answer is pretty
easy. Do you want your kids to be happy? Of course you do. Just the same, God
wants His kids to be happy as well. Now, as far as taking the Bible literally,
can that make you happy?
Let me ask
you a question. Is our happiness the goal of the Bible for our lives? If not,
what is the goal of the Bible for our lives? I believe the goal of the Bible is
to make us more like Jesus. From the Old Testament to the New Testament we see
models for how to live our lives to ultimately become more and more like Jesus.
Since that is the goal, then obviously happiness is out, right? I mean, we know
that Jesus wasn’t happy. He died on a cross. He lived His life in poverty.
Surely He wasn’t happy. Right? Wrong.
We have
talked just recently about how the Bible says over and over that He had great
joy – even just before His death on the cross. Yet we know that joy and
happiness are two different things so what did Jesus know about happiness? I’ll
tell you by doing something I wouldn’t normally do. I want to read the last
verse of our sermon passage this morning and I want to read it first.
We will read
the whole thing again in just a minute so don’t worry if you can’t find John
chapter 13, verses 1-17 in time. I want to read verse 17 first because to me it
is fascinating. John 13:17 says, “Now that you know these things, you
will be blessed if you do them.” Did you see that? The word “blessed
“means “happy”. The King James says, “…happy are ye”. They mean
the same thing. Jesus is telling His disciples – including us as His disciples
– how to be happy.
Do you want
to be happy? Sure you do. Everybody wants to be happy. So, how do you get
happiness? If you listened to the TV the happiest people are the celebrities
with their big cars and fancy houses and beautiful faces. You know the ones I’m
talking about. I mean the ones who commit suicide and get multiple divorces and
go to rehab as often as most of us change socks. The world wants you to think
those are the happy people.
But Jesus,
like so often happens, says something just the opposite. He is concerned about
your happiness and tells us the secret of it right here in John 13:1-17.
Let’s read the whole thing right now. If you grab the Bible in the pew in front
of you it is probably on page 763.
It was
just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to
leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the
world, he loved them to the end. 2 The evening meal was in progress,
and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray
Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his
power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God;
Now, stop
right there for a second. Stop right there and think about that last sentence. 3
Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that
he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so…
Now if you
didn’t know the story what do you think might come next? Because what comes
next; what comes after “so “will tell us a lot about the One being talked about
here. If God has put all things under the power of Jesus; if He had come from
God and was going back to God don’t you think the next words would be something
like, “so He called out with a loud voice and the earth quaked and He called
for a legion of angels to bring His royal crown! Then with just His voice He
ripped the temple curtain in two and Satan Himself bowed down and worshipped
Him!”? Wouldn’t you think that is how it should read? But let’s continue to see
what it actually says.
So he got
up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his
waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash
his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my
feet?” 7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but
later you will understand.” 8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never
wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” 9
“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my
head as well!” 10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need
only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not
every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and
that was why he said not every one was clean. 12 When he had
finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place.
“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them.13 “You
call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now
that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one
another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I
have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater
than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now
that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
I have an
idea that the disciples learned more from Jesus on this day than most of the
days put together. Poor Peter! He was constantly saying something or doing
something wrong but can you imagine being in his place? He is sitting there
watching the One he knew to be the Messiah washing the feet of the other disciples,
making His way around the room and when He gets to Peter, Peter can’t bear it.
Washing feet was the job of the most menial slave and here was the King of
Glory making Himself low as the lowest slave.
The Gospel
of Luke writes that just before Jesus did this that the disciples were arguing
over which one of them was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom. Can you
picture this? Here they are sitting around (or actually more like laying
around) a table with Jesus and they are arguing about which one of them was the
best. That’s like a bunch of bicycles sitting around the Ferrari dealership
arguing over which of them is fastest.
The
disciples were all about following Jesus. They were all about hanging out with
Him and eating with Him and watching Him do amazing things. But they weren’t
really motivated to do the hard work of discipleship. Do you remember what my
definition of a disciple is? A disciple is someone who learns from Jesus and
then teaches and encourages others with what they have learned.
These 12 men
with Jesus were all about that first part. They enjoyed learning from Jesus.
They just weren’t motivated to teach and encourage others with what they had
learned because sometimes what we learn from Jesus is difficult. Sometimes what
we learn from Jesus involves turning the other cheek. Sometimes what we learn
from Jesus is that the first shall be last and the last shall be first or that
we are to forgive, forgive and then forgive again. Sometimes He teaches us to
give all we have and sometimes He teaches us to just be still.
Learning
from Jesus can be fun. I love to go to Sunday School or Sunday evening or
Wednesday evening Bible study and learn through others more about Jesus. I love
to just be around my church family. Being at church is fun. We learn. We share
our lives. We support each other. We make fun of each other. We jab each other
with spoons while playing games after church. It’s fun and we do that because
we love each other and our one common denominator is our love for Jesus.
The difficult
part is having the motivation to teach and encourage others with what we have
learned because teaching and encouraging is not just the transfer of facts from
one brain to another. It often means doing just what Jesus did through sacrificial
love (write on board). That is how Jesus motivated His disciples. He
showed them sacrificial love.
One of the
things I love about Cody is his enthusiasm. If you have spent any time at all
around him, you know he is not afraid to speak to somebody about God or to invite
somebody to church. He was around here
the other day and decided he was just going to go door to door inviting people
to Christ Fellowship and so he did. He
loves this church but his motivation for telling people is because he knows
what God has done for him and he wants other people to have what he has.
We were
talking the other day and I told him what I have said before that if we really
knew how wonderful Heaven was going to be and how horrible Hell was going to be
then we would probably be stopping passing cars to tell them the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. He said, “I know!
I just want to shake people and scream at them about how good God is and
if they don’t listen I want to punch them in the face!” I told you he was enthusiastic.
But as much
as we want to preach at them and lecture them or maybe even punch them, believe
it or not, those methods rarely work in making disciples. Cody, come up here for a minute please. May I wash your feet? Sit down in that chair for a minute.
I believe
that Jesus washed the feet of the disciples for a reason. For one thing, I’m sure they needed to be
washed. They walked everywhere in
sandals or even barefoot and their feet would get dirty pretty easily. But this was not something one did for a
peer. This was something done by a slave
and since there were no slaves with them, I’m sure their feet were dirty so
Jesus washed them.
But
obviously there was much, much more to this.
The great commentator Warren Wiersbe says: It is remarkable how the Gospel of John reveals
the humility of our Lord even while magnifying His deity: In chapter 5 Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing of Himself.” In chapter 6 Jesus says, “For I came down from Heaven not to do my own will.” In chapter 7, “My doctrine is not mine.”
Chapter 8, “I seek not my own
glory.” And in 14, “The word you hear is not mine.”
That is true
humility. That’s not faked. It’s not ginned up or exaggerated. Jesus had one goal and that was to make God
the Father known. Just like John the
Baptist had one goal and it was to make Jesus known. Paul had one goal. Point to Jesus. That’s the purpose of the New Testament and
ultimately the whole Bible. Point to
Jesus. That is our whole purpose as
well. We are to point to Jesus and we do
that by showing sacrificial love.
Sacrificial
love is not something that the world is known for and when they see it, whether
they want to admit it or not, they know it is different. When they see it in your life they know you
are different and that is exactly what we are commanded by God to be is
different, set apart…holy. What makes
someone holy? Is it being pious,
religious and holier-than-thou? Or is
it, as has been said, not thinking less of yourself but just thinking of
yourself less?
That is
exactly what Jesus did and that is how he perpetuated the disciple-making
process. He started by just attracting
people and while that can be our most difficult part of this process we do it
by meeting the needs of the people we meet so that they visit our church or
come into our lives just long enough to say, “Those people aren’t so bad. I
think I’ll listen to what they have to say.”
Then while
they are in our church or in our lives in any way we model, because we have
seen Jesus model how we are to pray and worship and have faith. Now, we are really starting to get somewhere
with people. They see that we are not
perfect but that what we say starts to make sense and they want to know more so
we start to teach them what we have learned from Jesus.
We give them
the basic tools and set them up for success just like Jesus did for His
disciples and if and when they fail, they learn a valuable lesson. But they do it in the context of going and
doing not just being and sitting.
Then because
we have seen Jesus attract, model and teach, we are motivated by His
sacrificial love that He not only showed to His disciples when He washed their
feet but He also has shown it to us. How
has Jesus shown His sacrificial love for us?
Well, the Bible says that we are all sinners; that we have all done
things that displease God (Romans 3:23). It also says that the wages of that sin; what
we deserve to get for displeasing God is death, meaning eternal death and
separation from God and everybody else in Hell (Romans 6:23).
That’s the
bad news and it is horrible, horrible news.
But the Good News is that Jesus showed us sacrificial love by taking the
penalty for our sin and dying on the cross to pay that debt that we would never
be able to pay. He sacrificed His life;
He gave it up to be THE sacrifice once and for all and just like He washed the
feet of all 12 disciples including Judas whom he knew would betray Him, he died
on the cross for every person, even those He knew would never accept Him as
Lord and Savior.
So, we have Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23 that tell us the bad news. But John
3:16 tells us the Good News that God so loved the world that He gave His
only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal
life. “Whoever believes in Him…”
That “whoever” includes you
and all you have to do is accept that He died for you and that He will forgive
all your sins if you will repent and turn away from those sins.
There is
nothing more important in this world than for you to make that decision and if
you have not yet made that decision then I will be right here, as the music
plays, to pray with you about that or anything else that you need prayer for.
Invitation
Well, we did
it! We made it to the end of the
disciple-making process. We have seen
how Jesus did it and now we can go through the process just like He did in our
own individual ways and when we get to the end of the 4th step we
can check that discipleship box as completed and we can relax and sing “This Is
The Day” and go home with a job well done, right?
We know it
is going to take a while to go all the way through the process. It took Jesus 3 years to do it and we know we
aren’t Jesus. But when we get done we
can just relax and let others go through the process. That’s fair, right? Well, while there is some truth in there it
doesn’t mean that we are off the hook for making other disciples. I know that because we got here because of
what Jesus said in the Great Commission in Matthew
28. Do you remember?
“Therefore go and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, 20 and
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.”
He says go and make disciples, not a disciple, but disciples plural and
He says it in a way that we know He means continually and constantly. Oh great!
That means that we have to do it all over again??? Yes, repeat!
(Write on board and draw arrows from each one to the next and back
again.)
But wait, wait, wait! This is a
good thing. Do you know why? Sure, we want other people to have what we
have. We want them to have eternal
salvation and eternity in Heaven but do you know what else we get and, in turn,
what others get as well?
Do you remember how I started out talking about happiness? Read verse
17 again. “Now that you know these things, you
will be blessed if you do them.”
You will be blessed! Jesus says
you will be happy if you make disciples as He did. Jesus was concerned about our happiness. We want to point to Him and make Him
glorified. He wants us to be happy. Repeat, repeat, repeat! That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
You know what? This IS the
day. This is the day that the Lord has
made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.
This Is The Day - 359
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