Get Your "Stuff" Together Series

Title: Get your “stuff” together

Text: Eph 4:1-6

Date: 3/23/17

Bottom Line: Jesus never said get your _______ (stuff) together and then come follow me.

Intro

Good morning Real Life… We are kicking off a new series this week called Misquoted. There’s a lot of people going around quoting Jesus, but the problem is a lot of those quotes don’t actually come from Jesus. Maybe more then anyone else, Jesus has been misquoted time and time again.

We’ve all heard these phrases before. Maybe in a passing conversation. A hallway in Church. Or scrolling through your Facebook feed. You don’t have to look far to find someone misquoting Jesus.

We’ve all seen the Facebook post that has a picture of Jesus and says “If you loved me then you would share this photo” Guess what? Jesus never said that. It’s not in the Bible that if you love Jesus you have to type amen…

While we all know that’s not true there are other misquotes out there that are doing actual damage. And we are doing this series because we want to clear the air on a few of these things.

There are some of you in this room that you’ve been hurt by these misquotes. Here’s what you need to know, Jesus never intended that. There are others of you in this room that maybe haven’t been personally effected by these. But you have people in your life that have. We want to address some of these issues and talk about what Jesus actually did say.

This isn’t new, this has been going on since the Church began. Historically the Church has been know for building up walls and telling people you cannot enter unless you look like this or act this way. They misquoted Jesus and kept a lot of people out that desperately need to hear the hope that Jesus brings. From the early Church and the apostles to now, we have a habit of misquoting things Jesus said.

And now we have a divided church over these misquoted things that Jesus never actually said. Jesus came to unite and bring us together. But we’ve taken so many things out of context and misquoted Jesus that we have brought division.

I think that this series is now more important then ever for us specifically. Because I believe we have lived up to the name that is on that banner on the street. Real Life. We aren’t fake, we don’t pretend to have it all together. And this season we are heading into where we are finding a new normal, it’s so important that we intentional focus on this. And make sure that we are standing on the things Jesus said and not misquoting Him.

Maybe this is your first time in Church, or maybe you just started coming and are figuring out who this Jesus guy is. Or maybe you are one of the people that’s been hurt by someone that misquoted Jesus, This is a great series for you to catch a glimpse of what Jesus actually is about and what he actually said.

Maybe you’ve been coming to church for awhile and you’ve been a Christian for many years. This is a great series for you because you represent Jesus everywhere you go, and it’s important that you are representing Him well.

Tension

To start this series off There’s many misquotes that we could used… But we landed on this one because it is maybe the most damaging misquote that the Church has told people… Here it is… Before you enter these doors you have to fix _____ in your life. Everyone is welcome here, unless you have that sin in your life. You can’t come in here unless you look like…

See, here’s the misquote… Jesus never said Get your stuff together and than come follow me. He never said, why don’t clean yourself up a bit before you come follow me. You know what I have this image to maintain, so if you want to be my follower you got to look a little better. He never said you know what I’ve seen the way you treat your kids, cheat your employer out of that money, I know what you looked at last night, I know that four letter word you like to use when you stub your toe, your life is just a mess, and I can’t have that kind of person follow me. So if you want to be my disciple, if you want to be apart of my church then you better go get your stuff together first. Jesus never said that.

Yet we today tell that to people all the time. Now we might not come out and say it that, but that’s the perception people have. That if you want to go to church you have to act the part. And there are these unspoken rules that if we are honest we are pretty comfortable with.