LIVING WHEN DYING IS GAIN
(THE RISK AND THE REWARD OF THE RADICAL LIFE)
Matt 10:39 (p 688) Oct. 23, 2011
INTRODUCTION: If someone asked you “what does being a follower of Christ mean to you? “ And I suppose I’m asking those individuals who have made the decision public…If you have not done so I might pose this question…”what have you seen in individuals that persuades you this person is a follower of Christ.”
What answers would you give…they go to the church a lot….they pray….they read the Bible…they do good stuff….they give…they’re nice….
Would that definition be different in China…or Syria…would that definition be different in first century…34AD Jerusalem?
My question is really an honest and sincere one…”what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ.”
Does it mean something different now than it did then? Has time, location, culture, politics, changed this definition? It is my firm belief that what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ has not changed…
Its radical…it’s extremely risky…it’s costly and sometimes painful and lonely…
Jesus says to those who would be His followers…
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
You see most of us would like to add Jesus to our lives…kind of attach Him like training wheels on a bicycle…Help me learn to ride…keep me from eaten the pavement…give me security and safety…and then when we get it figured out…we take him off and ride on our own.
But Jesus said, “anyone who follows me risk their safety, they risk worldly security, they give up all the things that use to give them satisfaction…However…following me leads to a radical reward…not just heaven when you die…but real abundant life now…”you think your losing your life following me? Nope...Following me is when you’ll fine real life….I AM that life.
What did he tell His disciples to remember as they sought to fulfill this call?
I LOSE YOURSELF IN THE NEEDS OF OTHERS:
This challenge in Matt 10:39 comes at the end of a startling speech Jesus gave to his disciples.
He is sending them out into the world…and he shares the risks they will have undertake in following him
He says, you’ll be surrounded by great need….His instructions “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with Leprosy, drive out demons.”
Jesus is saying these are the people you will encounter…the diseased, the dying, the despised and the dangerous…
Lose yourself among these people…show them me.
Walk into the hepatitis soup of New Orleans, and clean out that house and rebuild it for Shavian and her little girl...leave your white collar microwave security for the dirty streets of Haiti and hold that baby in your arms…Head to Joplin Mo…to the trash and rebel of peoples’ lives and seek to rebuild more than a building.
Jesus is good! And His good even when he calls you and me to places that are dirty and disease ridden.
{In the chronicles of Narnia…Lucy the little girl asks Mr. Beaver about Aslan, the Lion…Lucy’s question…Is He safe….and Mr. Beaver response was no child…he’s not safe…but oh is He good!]
It will not always be safe to lose your life in the needs of others….but Jesus will always be good because He has met us at our deepest need and now uses us to show his glory and to advance his gospel among the places of greatest need in the world.
How about these words of Jesus
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves” (Matt 10:16)
II LOSE YOUR SELF IN DANGEROUS PLACES.
Have you ever been around sheep? I have a little, and they are the most helpless and needy animals in existence.
They are idiots {During a live nativity at Anderson C.C. my buddy Clayton borrowed this sheep named Lucy for the presentation…He tied her to the fence…and the entire night Lucy ate grass, chewed grass and did nothing….Lucy was a family pet…As Clayton and I closed up shop for the night…He unhitched Lucy…comatose Lucy…and for just a moment he released his grip on the rope…and Lucy took off….straight toward 127…a busy highway….and I whaled Clayton…[who looks exactly like Elmer Fudd…..break the spread of sound calling Lucy and tackling her before she got run over….sheep are idiots] they have no defiance mechanism, except to run!
As a result, the dumbest thing a sheep can do is to wander into a pack of wolves…
So why in the world was Jesus, the Good Shepherd, telling his followers to hang out with wolves?
He’s telling them and …in truth us as his followers…”I am sending you to dangerous places, where you will find yourself in the middle of ferocious, vicious people. And you will go there by my design.”
That’s crazy! That’s radical---Go to places where people will say “Are they serious? That’s way too dangerous…they have no idea what they’re getting into!
Jesus says “This is what it means to be my disciple.
We think…”the safest place to be is the center of God’s will…if it’s risky…if it’s dangerous it must not be Gods. Will.”
But what if the opposite is true…what if the center of God’s will is in reality the most unsafe place for us to be?
It’s not safe to serves Jesus as a Pastor in Iran…It wasn’t safe to worship Jesus as the only God under Nero…It’s not safe to leave your family and security to go to “MARA”….and yet one of us would double God’s will in those matters…or His power to protect…and if not protect…glorify Himself.
[I played the part of Jim Elliot in a play called the Bridge of Blood my freshman year at Johnson Bible College, Jim Elliot, Wale Saint, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming and Ed McCully felt God’s call to go to Ecuador and bring the gospel to the Huaorani people…these people were unreached, known only for hunting and killing…Their initial contact was friendly...3 days later all five men lay butchered on a beach near the river.
It’s been 40 years since these missionaries were slain on the sandbar…and we now use this story to emphasize the noble sacrifice and the follow –up work done by Jim’s wife Elizabeth and Wales’s wife Rachael…their work has inspired a generation of Christians to go into the danger---to live a mature and sacrificial Christina life.
But would I do that and trust God to work in Kari’s life and my children’s? Would you be willing to see 5 husbands and Fathers lives “forfeited” for unknown future glory?
Those are the kinds of questions Matt 10 poses for each of us….Are we willing as the first disciples were, to be the pioneers into danger and possible even die…(All of them but John did according to history) in order that those who came behind us might experience of the fruit of our sacrifice?
What if that kind of sacrifice is exactly what it will take for many unreached people in the world who presently are hostile towards the gospel to one day surrender their hearts to Jesus?
Jesus continued by telling His followers
III MY FOLLOWERS WILL BE HATED, BETRAYED AND PERSECUTED!
Matt 10: 21-23
Here’s a radical statement…”If you want a safe trouble free, comfortable life….”STAY AWAY FROM JESUS!”
We don’t think like that do we…most of us think “If we would all just become like Jesus everyone in the world will love us.”
The reality is…If we genuinely become like Jesus the world will hate us…why? Because the world hated Him….”all men will hate you because of me” (Matt 10:22)
That doesn’t mean every person on earth will hate you…but the picture is clear whether it’s your family, the government, the religious establishment or someone else…you will be hated…
Maybe this is why we seek and settle for a casual relationships with Jesus and routine religion in the church….it’s safe there…and the world like us there….the world likes us when we are pursuing everything they pursuing, even if we put a Christians label.
If we operate like the world…If we go after the same successes as the world in the same way…even if we call it Christian, very few have a problem with it.
But if we identify with Christ, we will lose much in this world…Jesus said, “Everyone who is fully trained will be like His teacher.”
That should wake us up if we are following Jesus…
He’s saying…As you grow in me…As you become more and more like me you will experience what I experienced….you’ll be hated, mocked and persecuted.
Jesus lets us know…if you are really following me don’t be surprised when someone comes after you…hate’s you, under rules you….
And it might be someone in your family, your church, your community…persecution makes the follower of Christ…they are no fun…but they are true identifiers, none the less.
“It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him” (Phil 1:29)
The Apostle Paul isn’t joking when he says…here’s one of the gifts Jesus gives you for following Him…”Suffering” Happy birthday!
In the first 2 hundred years of Christianity, before Emperor Constantine gave Christians his stamp of approval…followers of Christ dug nearly 600 miles o tunnels beneath Rome…called the Catacombs. Tombs were Christians secretly gathered for worship…..1, 0000’s of Christians buried here because of intense persecution….
Archeologist have identified a common inception the Greek word “ichthus, it’s an acrostic for Jesus Christ, God’s son, The Savior”… it’s a fish symbol.
And now it’s best known for being on the Hatchback of the family van…back then it identified a martyred brother or sister in Christ….It marked their grave.
The Language of Matt 10 almost gives the picture of Jesus as a Military Commander sends out his troops to war…his soldiers…going forth with a mission. The disciples knew there would be dangers and they were headed out for battle.
In the late 1940’s, the United States government commissioned William Francis Gibbs to work with United States Lines to construct an eight- million-dollar troop carrier for the navy. The purpose was to design a ship that could speedily carry fifteen thousand troops during times of war. By 1952, construction on the SS United States was complete. The ship could travel at forty-four knots (about fifty-one miles per hour), and she could steam ten thousand miles without stopping for fuel or supplies. She could outrun any other ship and travel nonstop anywhere in the world in less than ten days. The SS United Stated was the fastest and most reliable troop carrier in the world.
The only catch is, she never carried troops. At least not in any official capacity. The ship was put on standby once during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but otherwise she was never used in all her capacity by the U.S. Navy.
Instead the SS United States became a luxury liner for presidents, heads of state, and a variety of other celebrities who traveled on her during her seventeen years of service. As a luxury liner, she couldn’t carry fifteen thousand people. Instead she could house just under two thousand passengers. Those passengers could enjoy the luxuries of 685 staterooms, 4 dining salons, 3 bars, 2 theaters, 5 acres of open deck with a heated pool, 19 elevators, and the comfort of the world’s first fully air—conditioned passenger ship. Instead of a vessel used for battle during wartime, the SS United States became a means of indulgence for wealthy patrons who desired to coast peacefully across Atlantic.
Things look radically different on a luxury liner than they do on a troop carrier. The faces of soldiers preparing the battle and those of patrons enjoying their bonbons are radically different. The conservation of resources on a troop carrier contrast sharply with the opulence that characterizes the luxury liner. And the pace at which the troop carrier moves is by necessity much faster than that of the luxury liner. After all, the troop carrier has an urgent task to accomplish; the luxury liner, on the other hand , is free to casually enjoy the trip.
When I think about the history of SS United States, I wonder if she has something to teach us about the history of the church. The church, like the SS United States, has been designed for battle. The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission. Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner. We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for the souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world. This makes me wonder what would happen if we looked squarely in the face of a world with 4.5 billion people going to hell and twenty-six thousand children dying every day of starvation and preventable diseases, and we decided it was time to move this ship into battle instead of sitting back on the pool deck while we wait for the staff to serve us more hors d’oeuvre.
Are we willing to obey the orders of Christ? Are we willing to be like him? Are we willing to risk our lives to go to great need and to great danger-whether it’s in the inner cities around us, the difficult neighbor across the street, the disease-ridden communities in Africa, or the hostile regions in the Middle East? Are we willing to fundamentally alter our understanding of Christianity from a luxury-liner approach that seeks more comforts in the world to a troop-carrier approach that forsakes comforts in the world to accomplish an eternally significant task and achieve an eternally satisfying reward?
