TITLE: Avoiding Short Cuts
OPEN: Several years ago the Chattanooga Free Press told the story of a woman who had decided to take a short cut to cleaning the birdcage that housed her favorite canary Chippie. Having a busy schedule that day, she decided to clean the cage with the vacuum cleaner.
Shortening the process even further, she took off the attachment & was using the full hose to remove debris from the cage. Suddenly the telephone rang. She turned to answer it when she heard the loud “whoosh.” She knew immediately what had happened: Chippie had been sucked into the vacuum bag. Quickly she hung up the phone, opened the bag and found Chippie – still alive but filthy. She went to the bathroom, turned on the faucet full force and stuck Chippie beneath it. A few minutes later he was clean but shivering. Seeing the hair dryer on the counter, she picked it up and turned it on high and quickly had Chippie dry, warm and back in the cage. The entire procedure had taken only a few minutes.
Days later, someone asked, “How is Chippie?”
“Well,” she said, “he seems OK except that he doesn’t sing anymore. He just sits and stares out into the room.”
APPLY: This lady had decided to take a short cut… and nearly succeeded in taking the life out of her poor bird.
There are times when shortcuts are ok. But there are other times when you don’t dare take those short cuts. One of those times is when you’re dealing with your faith and your relationship with God. If you take short cuts with your Christianity, you can end up taking the life out of your faith
The leaders in Jerusalem understood this, that’s why (when they heard about the exciting things taking place in Antioch) they sent one of their best men - to find out what was going on.
I. Just to give you a little background…
Three years before, the church had undergone the most terrible experience in its existence. A deacon by the name of Stephen had been stoned to death by an angry Jewish mob. And this set in motion a powerful persecution of the church that forced many believers in Jerusalem to flee to places like Antioch, a city about 2 or 3 days travel away.
In spite of that experience however, these believers refused to be cowed into silence. They were fired up about Jesus … and they began to talk to others. Sharing their faith. Baptizing converts right and left. Holding impromptu church in each others homes. And before you knew it – there was a growing multitude that began to get the attention of the church in Jerusalem. And so.. they sent Barnabas to Antioch to check this all out.
II. But, why send Barnabas?
Why not just let the church at Antioch do “their own thing?” It was a growing church, and an exciting situation. Why not just leave them alone?
Well notice - when Barnabas arrives - he does two things (vs. 23). He sees “the evidence of the grace of God” and he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.”
The Church at Jerusalem wanted to have Barnabas do just that. They wanted him to discover if these were genuine believers. And if they were – he was to do everything possible to make them successful.
When he finds out that they are, indeed, genuine believers, he encourages them to be faithful in their Christianity. BUT THEN he notices that there is a great need in this church that he can’t handle by himself. So, he sends for Saul to come help him. AND when Saul arrives, for a full year, the two of them focus on something they know is necessary to make that church at Antioch successful.
III. What need did Barnabas see at Antioch that was so crucial for the believers there?
Well, let’s look at verse 26-27 and find out.
“Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people.”
What did Barnabas & Saul do for a whole year? (wait for answer…) they TAUGHT the believers there. Why teach them?
· Hadn’t they already come to Christ?
· Hadn’t they been in worship with other believers?
· Hadn’t they begun to apply Christ’s principles to their everyday lives?
What else was there to know?
IV. To help us understand why Antioch needed such intensive teaching it’s helpful to realize that there are several stages to Christianity.
Peter writes about this in I Peter 3: “(God’s) divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Peter 1:3-8
The 1st STAGE for Christians is always faith. A faith based upon feelings. This is where everybody starts out. You FIND OUT who Jesus is, how much He loves you, what He wants for your life… and you can’t wait to belong to Him.
You can’t wait to repent of your sins, confess Him as your Lord and be buried with Him in the waters of baptism. At this point, church is so important – you wouldn’t miss it for anything. You love singing the songs, you really get into prayer.
It’s an powerful rush, an excitement that’s hard to even explain. It’s a faith that leads to changes in your life. There’s a goodness that begins to begins to take over the closer to Christ. You try to be “like Him.” You try to please Him. And SO you ADD to your faith – goodness.
This was the stage Antioch was at when Barnabas came to visit. They loved Jesus, and they were trying to live for Him. BUT, they needed to ADD something more to their lives. They needed to add knowledge. In fact, this “Knowledge” was so crucial that Peter seemed to imply that all our other growth as Christians would depend upon how much we “knew.”
“make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 1:5-7)
It’s a stair-step diagram of our growth pattern as Christians:
***********************Love
*******************Brotherly kindness
****************Godliness
************Perseverance
*********Self-control
******Knowledge
***Goodness
Faith
One level of our Christianity is built upon another. There’s no room for shortcuts. Each stage depends in part upon another. But getting back to our main question:
V. Why would we need to “make every effort to add knowledge to our faith?
Because if we don’t, we’ll not be able to be as effective and useful for God as we’d like.
We’ll remain (pause…) like infants in our faith.
The writer of Hebrews tells readers: “you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:12-14)
Now infants are cute. I think that’s women keep having them – they’re cute. As I was preparing for this sermon, I was working with the Laptop at Taco Bell. As I was lost in thought, a couple came in with their baby girl. I looked up to see her looking my way. I waved… she waved. I waved… she waved. Lot’s of smiles. Lot’s of amusement.
Babies are cute. They say cute things, they do cute things, you can dress them up in all kinds of pretty clothes. They’re cute.
But babies have their drawbacks. Outside of ‘peek-a-boo’ & waving: it’s kind of hard to play games with them.
THEN of course, there are the messes they make, that we have to clean up. After they eat, you have clean up the table, their clothes, the floor. And when they’re not eating, you have to change their diapers.
And they wake you up in the middle of the night because… they need you. In fact, they need you for a lot of things: they can’t dress themselves, they can’t feed themselves, they can’t protect themselves, they can’t do hardly ANYTHING for themselves.
That’s how we can appear to God, if we don’t eat the “solid food” of the Bible. We’ll be cute, but we won’t be able to DO much of anything. We would be helpless.
Paul writes: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
The writer of Hebrews declares: “…the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
Did you ever wonder why I read so much Scripture to you every Sunday morning, and why I wait so long for you to find the text…? It’s because - what the Bible says is more important than what I have to say. When I was a boy, it was so frustrating to hear the preacher tell us to turn to Matthew 25. But as I was trying to find the passage… he’d already read it and moved on. That helps no one to know their Bible better.
ILLUS: I preached once at a church where the preacher hadn’t done his job right. How did I know he hadn’t done his job? When I asked people to turn with me to the opening scripture – no one opened a book. No pages were being turned. He had failed to train his people to expect to bring their Bibles to worship.
But this should be the focus of everything we do in this church. Whether its me from the pulpit. Or Brad with the Youth group. Or the teachers on Sunday Morning. Or the Jr. Church leaders. Whoever it is, and whatever capacity they serve in… their job is to get the people to fall in love w/ the Bible & what it says.
ILLUS: Bob Parsons once said “My Sunday School teachers didn’t mind telling the same story over and over again. And because they didn’t mind telling it, I loved to hear it.
That’s our job – to make God’s word interesting because it’s interesting to us. That’s OUR job
YOUR JOB is to expose yourself to as much of God’s Word as often as you can. So that you don’t end up helpless and useless in your faith.
With that end in mind, we always offer
o Bible study classes every Sunday morning
o and on Sunday Evening we study God’s Word
o And now we’re working to offer you in-home Bible Studies
SIGN UP SHEET FOR IN-HOME BIBLE STUDIES
CLOSE: The reason we’re so insistent on these kinds of classes, is because, we know - inside the pages of the Bible are the most valuable gifts we can have as Christians.
Dear Abby once told of a young man from a wealthy family was about to graduate from high school.
It was a custom in their affluent neighborhood for parents to give their graduating children a new car, and the boy and his dad had spent weeks visiting one dealership after another.
The week before graduation they found the perfect car.
The boy was certain it would be in the driveway on graduation night. On the eve of his graduation, however, his father handed him a small package wrapped in colorful paper. The Father said the package contained the most valuable gift the dad could think of. The boy unwrapped the gift and found… a Bible!
The boy was so angry he threw the Bible down and stormed out of the house. He and his father never saw each other again. Several year later the news of the father’s death finally brought the son home again. Following the funeral, he sat alone one evening, going through his father’s possessions that he was to inherit when he came across the Bible his dad had given him. Overwhelmed by grief, he brushed away the dust and cracked it open for the first time. When he did, a cashier’s check dated the day of his high school graduation fell into his lap --in the exact amount of the car they had chosen together. The gift had been there all along. All he had needed to do was accept this gift his father had given him.
