Jesus Strong 3: Because He Will Change You Series

Today, we’re going to wrap up the message series, “Jesus Strong.” Our text, if you’d like to go ahead and turn to it, will be Luke 10:27. That’s Luke Chapter 10, verse 27. We’ll read it together in just a minute.

Just a refresher where we’ve been that last 2 weeks, the first message of this series, 2 weeks ago, was, “Jesus Strong: Because You’re Not Strong Enough”, then, last week was, “Jesus Strong: Because His Grace is…” and now today I want to ask this question:

What happens to me when God’s strength is placed in me? How does that change every aspect of my life? So, today’s message is entitled, “Jesus Strong: Because He Will Change You.”

Before I get into that, though, last week, I joked that one bad thing about Debbie leaving to teach Children’s Church is that I miss having her honest opinion of my sermon. She knows me best, and certainly isn’t afraid to tell me when I blow it.

Well, this week, as I looked through lots of material preparing this message, I came across this story:

An elderly pastor was searching the closet for his clerical collar before church one Sunday morning. In the back of the closet, he found a small box containing 3 eggs and 100 $1 bills.

He called his wife into the closet to ask her about the box and its contents. Embarrassed, she admitted having hidden the box there for their entire 30 years of marriage. Disappointed and a little hurt at the admission of the long-kept secret, the pastor asked her, "WHY?"

The wife replied that she hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings. He asked her how a box with a few eggs and cash could have hurt his feelings. She said, “Well, every time during our marriage that you delivered a poor sermon, rather than say anything to you, I put an egg in the box.

Well, he thought about that for a minute, and decided that 3 eggs meant only 3 poor sermons in 30 years! That was certainly nothing to feel bad about, so he asked her what the $100 was for.

She replied, "Each time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them to the neighbors for $1."

<<<PAUSE>>>

Oh, and I almost forgot, Debbie asked me to announce that she has eggs for sale after Church!

Alright, let’s dive right in to our text, shall we? Luke 10:27, if you missed it before. I’ll be reading from the New Living Translation, which I’ll have up on the screen as well:

“The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’’” (Luke 10:27 – NLT)

As I said a few minutes ago, today, I want to ask the question, “What happens to me when God’s strength is placed in me?” What kind of changes will that make in me?

I believe that our text today gives us the answer to that question. Now, I know that this was a statement of the law, but this is also a result of what God’s strength, working in and through me will bring.

If you remember back the last couple of weeks, we talked first about how I can do all things through Christ, because He is the strengthener, His strength gives us victory, and that we need to trust Him more, and stop trying to carry all the load.

Then, last week, we learned that God’s grace is sufficient to meet all of my life’s challenges, and that only by pushing myself aside, getting out of God’s way, can His strength really work in and through me, and that, by trying to do things myself, my faith actually grows weaker.

But, when we get out of God’s way, when we learn to trust in His Omniscience (His All-knowledge) and His Omnipotence (His all-power) the first result is going to be that we learn to:

1: Love as He loves

Listen, love as we see it in our text, doesn’t come naturally. Love the Lord with all of your heart, mind, body and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself… that doesn’t just happen naturally. Our natural instinct is to “look out for number 1”… I mean, if I don’t look out for myself and my own needs, no one else is gonna’ do it, right?

You might’ve looked on a few verses if you read this in your own Bible and saw that Jesus launches from this verse into the parable of the good Samaritan. You know the story, a man is attacked, beaten, robbed and left to die on the side of the road. Two respected religious men, a Priest and a Levite, walked by one after the other and avoided him, and ultimately, it was a Samaritan – a person who, to the Jews was hated – who took compassion on the man, performed first aid, got him to help and paid his bill.