Go For God!

Go for God!

Luke 14:15-23

Sermon by Rick Crandall

McClendon Baptist Church - Feb. 17, 2008

*Are you on the way to heaven this morning? -- If you have trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you are going to Heaven. But you are only going to Heaven because someone else was willing to go for God.

-Maybe they told you their faith story.

-Maybe they explained the Good News to you.

-Maybe they simply invited you to church.

-But God used them to change your life forever. -- And now God wants us to go.

1. Go first because of God’s great provision.

*I am talking about the rich blessings of Heaven. One of the men eating with Jesus talked about Heaven in vs. 15 when he said, “Blessed (or supremely happy) is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” That man was thinking about Heaven, and that’s a good thing to do. Most of us don’t spend enough time thinking about Heaven.

*Georgia pastor Victor Pentz once said: “Most of us have such a puny view of Heaven, we’d rather spend a wet weekend in Waynesboro.” -- And that’s about right. (1)

*Nothing against Waynesboro. After all, it’s the “Bird Dog Capital of the World!” You can look that up on e-podunk.com. But compared to Heaven, all the glories of the finest cities in the world are nothing!

*God is rich. He owns everything in the whole universe and beyond. Think about the amazing riches of the kingdom of God! God is rich. And He is richly generous. He wants many more people to have the rich blessings of Heaven. God wants to share His riches with you!

*The New Testament often stresses God’s richness toward us.

-In Rom 10:12-13. “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

-In 2 Corin 8:9, Paul said, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”

-In Eph 1:18 Paul prayed constantly for the believers that they would know “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”

-Then in Eph 2:4-7, Paul told Christians:

4. God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

5. even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

6. and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

7. that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

*God is richly generous. -- And He wants to share His heavenly riches with you. In Luke 14:15 we see the riches of fellowship and food: “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

*This heavenly food is just a tiny portion of the provision God has made for His people in Heaven. And it should move us to do all we can to help more people live forever in that wonderful place. Go for God because of His great provision.

2. But also go because of God’s great preparation.

*Think about the Lord’s great effort to get things ready. Jesus began His story in vs. 16-17 with these words:

16. A certain man gave a great supper and invited many,

17. And sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’

*Any decent meal takes a lot of preparation, but nothing can compare to the preparations God has been making, -- extraordinary preparations, royal preparations. He started before time began, and as He created the world, God had this forever feast in mind.

*He has gone through incredible trouble to make things ready. In the fullness of time, He even sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Because that is the only way He could make us ready for His supper.

*He was willing to do all of that because He loves us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

*Our Heavenly Father has gone to infinite trouble to make everything ready for us, because He loves us. We need the Father’s kind of love in our lives.

*Max Lucado explained it this way: “When my oldest daughter, Jenna, was four years old, she came to me with a confession. ‘Daddy, I took a crayon and drew on the wall.’ (Max added: Kids amaze me with their honesty.)