BETTER BODY BUILDING (part 2) All my sermons use illustrations from SermonCentral.com I also use the NIV Bible unless stated.
LISTEN TO YOUR TRAINER
Back in November I spoke of a series of sermons I was writing entitled “ Better Body Building.” With the start of the New Year many people will be looking to get into shape and make changes that will make them better people. This series of sermons, is written in hope of allowing us, (with the blessing of God’s Word) to make those same kinds of changes to our body, our church, the bride of Christ. The first sermon written for this series, which I preached back in November, spoke of how the Scripture tells us that the church is ONE body, made of many parts. You folks sitting here this morning are a part of that body; if you have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of your life and have been baptized into that new life, which He alone can provide, than you are a part of the body of Christ.
This morning I want to speak with you about one of the most important parts of getting a Better Body, and that is “Listening to Your Trainer.” Our trainer is the author and perfecter of our faith - Jesus, and Jesus once told us, John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command. Folks, I truly believe that one of the most difficult things for people to do is LISTEN, I mean to do what we are told, especially when it does not make sense to us.
One of my favorite movies of all times was the original “Karate Kid” In the movie, after the kid decides he really wants to learn Karate, he goes to the master and begs to be trained. In his first lesson, as you might recall, he is told, “Wax on, Wax Off!” (Making the motions) and he thinks that it is STUPID. I wonder what the original 12 disciples thought as Jesus taught them that the greatest would be the least and if they wanted to be FILLED, they must first be emptied.
There is no greater example of how our culture finds it difficult to accept the truth, then the example that comes from our youth today. In Bill Gates’ new book Business @ The Speed of Thought, he lays out 11 rules that students do not learn in high school or college, but should. He argues that our feel-good, politically correct teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality who are set up for failure in the real world.
RULE 1 - Life is not fair; get used to it.
RULE 2 - The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
RULE 3 - You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a VP with a car phone, until you earn both a high school and college degree.
RULE 4 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.
RULE 5- Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it opportunity.
RULE 6 - If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills; cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try "delousing" the clothes in your own room.
RULE 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they will let you try as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
RULE 9 - Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time. RULE 10 - Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to their jobs.
RULE 11 - Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
I think we should be very honest with ourselves as we start this new year, LISTENING is not one of our strong suits! BUT if we are to build a Better Body, a church that is on the move, a united group with one common goal, WE MUST LEARN TO LISTEN TO OUR TRAINER!
John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command.
Let’s look at this scripture and answer some questions:
1. How can we Show our love for Christ?
2. What does OBEY imply?
3. What is it that Jesus’ commands?
I. IF YOU LOVE ME
The first thing we need to see in this verse is the word “IF.” It is the word that changes ALL things, for ALL of us. You see I have met so many people that tell me they love Jesus, I was sitting in a Taco Bell shortly after Faith was born in 1999, and I remember seeing a fella that had many tattoo’s, he had many bracelets on as well, about ten of them saying W. W. J. D, or What Would Jesus Do, a few minutes later I heard so many explicit words come from his mouth it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The Bible tells us “Let NO unwholesome talk come out of our mouths . . . . EPH 4:29, and at that moment I was convinced the bracelets were just as much a fashion statement, as the letters on the bracelets were a question for this young man. “IF” - means that we must show something to answer the question, the question is “IF”. Now I know that many people claim to love God, to put Him first, to have Jesus in the center of their lives, but the little two letter word IF makes us think - we can’t just claim Christ anymore.
Do you remember the bumper sticker that said, “God is my co-pilot” ? I do, and at first I thought it was really cool, and then I saw that many were attacking the statement, most of it because, if God is second seat, that means you are first. IF you love Jesus you will OBEY what HE commands. So many people today, go here or there, and then ask God to bless what they are doing. This is not allowing God to lead, and too many people are under the understanding that if they place Jesus in the equation somewhere, God will see it as love. Last week I expressed the observation, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in your garage makes you a car.” We can’t put Jesus in the equation somewhere, He must be the center of everything. I know that if you want to Build a Better Body, you cannot look at the trainer and say, “I know you said I needed to run a mile, but walking the mall is just as good, and that is all you will get from me.”
The truth is that most of us don’t really display the “IF” through our actions, the Bible tells us Matt 7:22-23 Many will say to me on that day, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ’I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Now I know that people will say, I never claimed to drive out demons, or perform miracles, BUT have you claimed Christ? Have you told people that Jesus is the center of what you are? Have you said, “I love Jesus”, and if so - can you say I have obeyed what He has commanded. I CAN’T. I mean I try, but I am smart enough to know that no person will ever succeed in being what they should be in Christ, the question here is one of effort and consistency. How do we model Jesus for the world to see?
Many of you I’m sure remember Charles Barkley, the NBA Basketball star who didn’t want people watching him too closely. People were disappointed with his actions and attitude on and off the court and challenged him to be a better role model. His response was basically, “Hey, I’m a basketball player. I didn’t ask to be anyone’s role model and I don’t need that added responsibility.” As an NBA star, Barkley didn’t have the option to choose whether or not he wanted to be a role model. That decision had already been made for him when he signed a contract to play in the highly publicized NBA. The same is true for those of us who call ourselves Christians. Once we make that decision to follow Christ, people are watching. Whether you like it or not, or whether or not you think it’s fair, you’ve become an example for the family of God.
II. YOU WILL OBEY
Jesus, goes on to say, “IF”, then you will OBEY. Our culture and our world are not one keen on the word or idea of obedience! In a culture that has been turned upside down by liberal thinking, and a belief that there is NO ABSOLUTE truth, obedience is becoming relative just as truth has.
Can we go back to the concept of listening to our trainer for just a moment? Remember, we are attempting to build a better body, and there will be times when the trainer will tell us that we NEED to do something that we do not think is necessary. In the beginning, God told Adam and Eve they NEEDED to avoid the tree in the center of the garden, or they would die. Satan comes along and says, “Surely you will not die!” Our trainer tells us that we need to spend 30 minutes warming up so that we don’t pull a muscle and we say to ourselves, “surely I do not need to waste 30 minutes warming up.” Jesus says, I you love me you will obey . . And we think to ourselves, “obey, when it is convenient, not ALWAYS”
A little boy always went next door to play even though his mom had warned him against doing so. This worried his mom so badly that she asked him why he was so disobedient. He replied that Satan tempted him so bad and he did not know what to do. His mom then advised him to say ’get behind me Satan’ whenever he was tempted. She then built a fence around the house. This worked for a week, then one sunny afternoon his mom looked out the window and there was her son playing on the neighbors lawn after having cut a hole in the fence. "Jeremiah", she yelled, "come here!" She then said "did I not tell you to say ’get behind me Satan’ whenever he tempted you?" "Yes", the boy replied, "I said, ’get behind me Satan’, then he went behind me and pushed me through the hole in the fence." (source: jokes.christiansunite.com)
I have encountered this first hand, asking my own children why they have broken a rule, only to be told that the rule has changed, unbeknownst to me. I think that we Christians have a tendency to do the same with our loving Father. Obedience means that we will do what God says and we will do it His way, no greater example of obedience is there on earth than what Jesus did. And folks, it is really ALL about our attitude.
Phil 2:5-8 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross!
Three chefs were working in a restaurant one day, when their kitchen supervisor approached them with an order, and instructions on how to properly prepare it. The first chef looked at the instructions, and said "You can show a recipe to 100 different people, and each of them get a different meaning. You can’t understand recipes, so why even read them?" The second chef took a slightly different angle. He said "I don’t believe this recipe to be the literal directions of our supervisor. I believe the ingredients all have hidden meanings. I think the meat represents one thing, the spices and other ingredients symbolize something else, and the time and cooking temperature are some sort of mysterious allegory." While the other two were engaging in their debate, the third chef simply took the recipe, and prepared the dish according to instructions. The dish turned out to be delicious, and I’m sure you can guess what happened next. This chef was rewarded for following directions properly, while the other two were reprimanded, or worse. While this little story may seem somewhat silly, it sadly illustrates the attitude that many people take toward God and His Word, the Bible, which is to be OUR instructions, our "recipe," for how to live our lives.
I think sometimes we are hoping that God REALLY does not mean we need to humble ourselves, or God is going to come up with a new thing. I can tell you, the Scripture is forever and it will not change, God is not going to do a “new thing” that is not in His word, anymore than you might hear a DAD say one of the following10 statements:
10. Well, how ’bout that? I’m lost! Looks like we’ll have to stop and ask for directions. 9. You know Pumpkin, now that you’re thirteen, you’ll be ready for unchaperoned car dates. Won’t that be fun? 8. I noticed that all your friends have a certain hostile attitude. I like that. 7. Here’s a credit card and the keys to my new car. GO CRAZY!! 6. What do you mean you wanna play football? Figure skating’s not good enough for you, son? 5. Your mother and I are going away for the weekend. You might want to consider throwing a party. 4. Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with your car. Probably one of those doo-hickey thingies--ya know--that makes it run or something. Just have it towed to a mechanic and pay whatever he asks. 3. No son of mine is going to live under this roof without an earring. Now quit your belly-aching, and let’s go to the mall. 2. Whaddya wanna go and get a job for? I make plenty of money for you to spend. 1. What do I want for my birthday? Aahh, don’t worry about that. It’s no big deal. (Okay, they might say it. But they don’t mean it)
God has made it perfectly CLEAR what He expects of us.
III. WHAT I COMMAND
That brings us to the final aspect of today’s lesson on Better Body Building, we as individuals, and we as a church must show our love for Jesus by obeying, and it could not be anymore simple as to WHAT we must obey. Not only is the Bible clear and absolute, it is simple as well. It is WE that try to make things complex, it is we that muddy the waters and twist the truth. Jesus answered the question: Matt 22:37 Jesus replied: "’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
In other words we can not simply say we love God, remember Jesus told the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, Matt 15:7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8 "’These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. We are NOT to simply talk about how we love God but to show it with our hearts, and our soul, and our minds. 2 Cor 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
This is what takes us full circle in our Better Body Building lesson for today, we MUST Listen to our trainer if we are to build a better body of believers. Jesus tell us that IF we LOVE Him we will do as He tells us to do, so listening is much more than hearing, it involves a response on our part. If we are to obey His commands, then we are to NEVER allow the arguments and lies of this world to creep in and tell us that God does not really know what He is talking about. We can not believe that there is a better way to achieve the better body, there is ONLY one way, THE TRUTH and the LIFE, Jesus Christ. Jesus gives us the command to love God with ALL we are and then HE says this: Matt 22:39 And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’
How do you show the world that you are SOLD OUT for Jesus, by loving your neighbor as yourself.
A Fellow was sitting at a stop light. The lady in front of him was going through papers on the seat of her car, and when the light changed to green she did not obey its command - a green light is a commandment - NOT a suggestion. When the light turned to red, and she had still not moved, He began (with his windows up) screaming and beating on his steering wheel. His expressions of distress were interrupted by a policeman, gun drawn, tapping on his window. Against his protestations of, "You can’t arrest me for hollering in my car," the officer ordered him into the back seat of his patrol car. After about two hours in a holding cell, the arresting officer advised him he was free to go. He said, "I knew you couldn’t arrest me for what I was yelling in my own car. You haven’t heard the last of this." The officer replied, "I didn’t arrest you for shouting in your car. I was directly behind you at the light. I saw you screaming and beating your steering wheel, and I said to myself, "What a jerk. But there is nothing I can do to him for throwing a fit in his own car. Then I noticed the ’Cross’ hanging from your rear view mirror, the Jesus is Coming Soon’ bumper sticker, and the Fish symbol, and I thought you must have stolen the car."
Can others see your love for Jesus, or do you have to tell them about it? Are you sold out for Jesus, looking for His instructions and never questioning His wisdom? This morning as the musicians come forward, are you ready to build a better body? Would you join with this church in becoming a force in our community. Have you accepted Jesus in the waters of baptism and made Him Lord of your life? Perhaps you are at a place wandered for a time and you know you need to come back to Jesus? I know that I came to a place where I knew I needed to get myself back in shape, and it seems like a very long and difficult path, but if you have wandered in your spiritual life and need to get back in shape, Jesus is waiting with arms wide open, won’t you come back?
INVITATION
