Sell Out, Or Sold Out
7/28/2002 Genesis 26:1-11 Luke 14:25-33 Matthew 13:44-47
If somebody asked you, on a scale of one to 10, with one being very low and 10 being the highest rating you could have, “how sold out to Jesus are you”, what number would you give yourself? Now if the same question was given to Jesus about you, would Jesus give you a higher number or a lower one.
What keeps us from being sold out to Jesus, is that all of us are tempted to sell him out. Have you ever put confidence in another person, and just knew they were going to come through for you only to have them sell you out in the end? What feeling did it leave you with inside? Do you think Jesus ever feels that way about us?
We saw what was a sold out situation turn into a sell out. Rebekah was one fine and good looking sister. When Isaac first saw her, there was not a happier man anywhere around. He was sold out on his wife. Then one day, a famine came to his country and he went to the land of the Philistines. He was tempted to go down to Egypt like his father Abraham had done many years earlier. But God told him, “Do not go to Egypt. I will take care of you in this land. Stay in this land for a while and I will bless you. Because of a promise I made with your father Abraham, I will make your descendants to many to count.”
Now with a direct word from God like that, you would have thought Isaac would have been sold out to God. He was in the place that God had told him to be. Yet, the temptation to sell out God was still there. Isaac got to thinking, “ok, God I’ll do what you told me to do, but I’ve got to have some room to fix this thing up.” Isaac looked at his wife, and how beautiful she was, and decided, he loved her, but he loved his own life a little more.
When the men asked him, who was that fine looking woman traveling with him, he would say, “that’s my sister.” He was afraid if he told them that was his wife, they would kill him in order to get to her. But to save his own skin, he put his wife at risk of being raped or kidnapped by the men of the community. His fear of what might happen to him, turned him into a sellout rather than being sold out for God and his wife. If you were Rebekkah, how would you have felt about this? How do you think God felt?
The thing Isaac thought God couldn’t handle, the moment it became known that she was his wife, God touched the king’s heart to give special protection to Isaac and to Rebekah. This was God’s plan from the beginning, but whenever we choose to sell out, we miss out on God’s best for us.
Let’s look at a couple of parables that Jesus told to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven. The first is found in Matthew 14:44. It says in Matthew 13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Jesus uses the familiar experiences of his hearers to get his point across. Now not many people would have found a treasure, but the people did know a lot about the practice of hiding things of value in the ground. People did not have banks and safes to keep their wealth in, so they would protect their valuables in a secret spot in the ground.
Whereas when we need money, we go to the ATM machine, when they needed money or decided to sell or trade some jewelry or other item, they would go the place at night, uncover the jar or storage box, take out what they wanted and rebury the rest.
Since Palestine was a constant battleground for foreign armies for hundreds of years, families would often bury things to keep the enemy from finding them. Many of the treasures remained buried and their location was unknown if the owner died suddenly or was forced off his property and deported to a foreign country. The treasure would then be forever lost unless someone accidentally discovered it.
In the story, the man may have accidentally trip over something sticking out of the ground, or maybe a severe storm had come through and the water had washed away some of the dirt that was covering it. The man dug at the site and discovered a great treasure.
The Rabbinic law at the time provided “that if a man finds scattered fruit or money, it belongs to the finder.” If a person came across money or other valuables that were obviously lost and whose owner was dead or unknown, the finder had the right to keep what was foound.
This man wanted the treasure for himself, but he wanted to have it in a completely legal manner. He could have simply taken the treasure and run off with it, and no one but him and God would have known about it.
The man knew that whoever owned a piece of land, would have the right to everything that came with the land. He knew the value of the treasure he had found and was willing to be sold out to obtaining it. He went and sold everything that he had in order to buy the field so that he would have an indisputable claim upon the treasure. Nothing he had could compare to what it was he was receiving. He chose to give it all, in order to purchase the field.
There are several interpretations of this parable. One school of thought has the treasure being Israel and the field being the world. Another interpretation focuses in on Christ being the treasure and the field being all the things that Christ requires of us. Today I want us to focus in on the latter interpretation.
We often times think, that we one day found Christ in the same way that this man found this treasure in the field. It is only after we have been saved for a period of years, and we look back over our lives that we discover, we did not actually find Christ. Christ had been placing events and circumstances in our lives to lead us to him. He chose us in order that we might come to Him.
When this man discovered the treasure, his joy over what he had pushed him to a number 10 on the sold out chart. He placed everything he had on the line in order to get that treasure. Earlier I asked you what number were you on the sold out chart from 1 to 10. In our New Testament reading, Jesus began to give us a basis for how we arrive at our sold number. You see if we are less than a five, we’re not sold out to Jesus, we’re selling Jesus out to the world.
There were crowds who were coming to Jesus. Many came for their own reasons, some of which had nothing to do with growing spiritually in Christ. For some, they were hoping to see a miracle or to get some more free bread and fish. Some were looking to make a dollar or two selling stuff to people who were there.
Some did have anything else to do on that day. Some were there simply to meet other people who they thought might be there. These people were in the 0-5 range on the sold out chart. There were others though who were trying to get to know Jesus, and still others who had made a commitment to him, and still others who wanted to seriously follow him by listening closely to his message.
Jesus made a distinction between our salvation and our choice to be a disciple. Not everyone who comes to Jesus for salvation moves on to being a disciple. Salvation is a great big door that is open to all who will come by faith. Salvation means coming to the cross and trusting that Jesus died in your place.
But discipleship is for believers willing to pay a price. Discipleship means no longer looking up at the cross, but rather carrying the cross and following Jesus. It’s possible to be saved, without ever moving to discipleship.
The word of God teaches that there will be those who are saved, but will have nothing to show for it in heaven. They will be like a man who went and bought a field because they thought it contained a treasure, and it actually did contain a treasure, but they never made use of any of the treasure because it involved some work to get at the treasurer.
Jesus wants as many sinners to be saved as possible, but he cautions us not to take discipleship to lightly because there is a price to pay. There are many people who want Jesus, but do not want to pay the cost to have Him. They have Jesus for salvation, but not for sanctification. We may call the person a hypocrite, but in reality the person has not moved from the foot of the cross to being nailed on the cross.
Discipleship is the process by which we start becoming more like Jesus. Jesus never saw discipleship as an automatic process of accepting his death on the cross. He said, “If anybody comes to me and does not love me more than family and more than personal comforts and pleasures, the person simply cannot be his disciple. Jesus knew there would be those who would come to Him, but not give Him the place in their lives that he deserved.
Then he says, anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. We forget, that when Jesus called us, the call was not come to a wonderful life. The first step is to come to the cross and die. Jesus died on the cross in our place.
The exchange is that we now die to ourselves to give Jesus the chance to live in us. We come to the cross, to be nailed to the cross, not just to feel sorry for what we have done. We come to be enabled to be sold out to Jesus.
On the cross, we identify with Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s complete commitment to be sold out to God. Jesus had the right and the ability to come down off the cross.
If he had of said, “nails and spikes release me, and wind gently lower me to the ground, they would have had no choice but to release him because all creation obeys his word.” But it was a sold out commitment to the will of God that kept him there.
A cross is something we willingly accept from God as part of His will for our lives. It means death to self, to our plans and our ambitions. Is Jesus at the center of the goals we have for our lives for the next five years? Is He free to change them? Is He free to say, “wait on this, I want you to help out over there first?”
Is He free to say, “that’s not the person for you? “ Will you listen if He says, “your lifestyle leaves you very little to support the kingdom of God. Change it on your own, or I will change it for you.”
It is so easy to sell out on Jesus. Everything around us cries out for us to betray God. The world can seem so beautiful at times. But nothing that it promises actually fulfills in the way that we think it will. The very people we sometimes admire and practically worship from a distance, will be willing to let us know, what they have is not all its cracked up to be.
Yet we keep running to become more like them, but to do it means selling out on Jesus. Before we pattern our future off of someone else, take some time to find out if they truly are happy with what they have.
Some of us have homes with kids with nobody on drugs and nobody cheating on each other. Do you know how blessed you are to be in that situation? Do you know how blessed you are to have parents interested in growing in the Lord even though they still make mistakes, or children who are interested in God, even though they to do some immature things.
Money can’t buy a home where the people in it love each other. Fame and fortune is no guarantee that you will have a successful marriage, in fact, it almost guarantees the opposite. Living lives in such a way that we all benefit is what we start to experience when we move into the realm of discipleship for our lives.
Let’s look again at how sold out we are to Jesus. Is Christ really first in our lives, even before family and self? Are we willing to make the same kind of sacrifices for the mission of Christ as we are for our own comfort and pleasure?
Do our lives actually indicate that Jesus is making a difference and would our friends or co-workers be able to say it’s the case? If the answer to these questions are maybe, kind of, once in a while, or I’m not sure, then we can know that somewhere we have chosen to sell out Christ.
What does it cost us to be sold out to Christ. It costs a whole lot.
It cost us our heart. We accept that because of His love we are not free to fall in love with things or even with certain individuals. It cost us our minds. We submit our thoughts to His thoughts because we are not free to come up with our own solutions to problems facing us without checking whether or not they fit with the word of God. We don’t check a horoscope, we check in with the word of God.
It cost us our eyes. We voluntarily choose not to watch everything we might like to see, because we know it is not pleasing to God and is a stumbling block to our own spiritual growth.. It cost us our ears. We examine what we choose to listen to.
It costs us our hands. We’re careful what we touch, what we pick up and what we choose to take home. It cost us our feet. We seriously ask if taking Christ to this place is a good idea. It cost us our mouth. We watch the words that come out and the type of drinks that come in.
It costs us our desires. We choose to wait on some things and to let others go altogether, because obeying Christ gives us more pleasure than things. It costs us our energy. We voluntarily sao no to some things, to make ourselves available to be used by God in the lives of others.
It costs us our options. We are not free to choose certain courses of actions to cover up our sins. Abortion isn’t just another way to get out of a jam. Divorce is not the first option to pop in our minds in a rocky marriage. Throwing them out may not be what Christ is calling us to do even though they may deserve it.
When we consider all these things, where are we on our chart of 1 to 10 in being sold out for God. The main reason we should be sold out to God is that God voluntarily chose to be sold out to us. From God’s perspective, we may be the treasure in the field. Jesus gave up all the splendor and majesty of heaven, to purchase us out of the world. He values us, more than we value ourselves.
In our New Testament reading in which it said, Luke 14:28-33 (NIV)
"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, ’This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
We often think that the person building the tower or the king preparing for war is us as we consider whether or not its worth it to follow Jesus. But Cambell Morgan argued that in this passage, the builder and the king preparing for war is Jesus. Jesus is the one who is counting the cost to see whether or not we are the kind of material He can use to build the church and battle the enemy.
It’s very hard to build the church or the kingdom with a bunch of 1 through 5. Not only are we doing some evaluation this morning, Jesus is also assigning us numbers.
You may ask, does it really matter what number I have. Yes because our number shows us where are hearts truly are,. I’ll close with one final story of Jesus and you decide if there is a reason to be alarmed if you are choosing to not be the kind of material that Jesus can use.
Matthew 13:47-50 (NIV)
"Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Only you can ever determine whether or not you are a sell out for the cause of Christ, or whether you will be sold out to Him. Know that He has given everything He has to offer to make it possible for you to have life today and eternal life tomorrow. If you choose to reject it, then what a bad decision you have made for your life. If you accept it, your life may never be the same again.
is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
J. We Determine Whether We Sell Out Or Are Sold Out
1. God Has done His Part
2. The Choice Is Left Up To Us
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Sermon Outline—Pastor Rick “Sell Out, Or Sold Out”
7/28/2002 Gen. 26:1-11 Luke 14L25-33 Matt. 13:44-47
A. Where Do You Rate On The Sold Out Scale
1. My Rating, Jesus’ Rating 1 to 10
2. Anybody Have Someone Sell You Out
3. Isaac, Rebekah, Too Beautiful To Be Ignored
4. God’s Promise & God’s Instructions
5. I’ve Got To Fix It---She’s My Sister
6. Missing God’s Best Because Of Selling Out
Matthew 13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
B. Jesus Reaches Audience At Their Level
1. People Did Not Have Banks For Deposits
2. Hide It In The Ground—Early ATM Machines
3. Treasure Buried—But Owner Not Returning
4. Rabbinic Law—Finders Keepers Almost
5. Man Wanted The Field For The Treasure
6. Two Schools Of Thoughts On The Parable
7. We Did Not Find Christ—He Led Us
C. What It Is To Be Sold On The Treasure
1. Went And Sold Everything
2. Crowds Coming To Jesus But Why
3. Miracles, Handouts, Network
D. Jesus Issues Two Challenges
1. Call To Salvation—Come To Cross
2. Call To Discipleship—Die On The Cross
3. Wanting Jesus Without Wanting The Cost
4. Discipleship Is A Choice And Not Automatic
Luke 14:25-27
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
5. More Than Family, Self, Comfort
E. The Importance Of The Cross
1. Identify With Christ’s Sufferings
2. Right & Ability To Come Down
3. Could Speak To Nails, Spikes, & Winds
4. Being Sold Out, Kept Him There
5. Cross Is Willingly Accepted
6. Death To Self, Plans, Ambitions
7. Is Jesus Free To Speak, To Change, To Question
8. You Change It Or I Will Change It For You
F. The Temptation To Sell Out Jesus
1. How Beautiful The World Can Appear
2. Admiring & Worshipping What’s Not There
3. Remember Your True Blessing
4. Money Can’t Buy, Nor Fame Or Fortune
5. Discipleship Can Deliver
G. Doing The Examination
1. What’s Really First In Our Lives
2. Our Pleasure Vs. Christ Mission
3. Anyone At Work Willing To Testify About Us
4. Maybe, Sometimes, I’m Not Sure
5. Yes, We’re Selling Out
H. What Will It Actually Cost To Be A Disciple
1. Our Eyes---Voluntarily Will Not Watch
2. Our Ears—Examine What We Listen To
3. Our Hands—Careful What We Touch & Take
4. Our Feet—Should We Take Jesus There
5. Our Mouth—What Comes In—What Goes In
6. Our Desires—Getting Things—Obeying Christ
7. Where Are We 1 To 10
8. God Was Sold Out To Us
I. The Challenge—Is It For Us Or For God
Luke 14:28-33
"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, ’This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
1. Campbell Morgan—Jesus The Builder & King
2. Jesus Examining The Materials Presented
3. Does It Really Matter What Our Rating Is
Matthew 13:47-50
"Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49This
