But I Do Love You
GNLCC 9/18/2005 Deut. 8:6-20 John 21:15-19
When James saw Carlita, he knew that this was the woman he had been waiting for all his life. He knew that she would be able to do for him, things that nobody else could. It was a whirlwind of a romance, and one day he proposed to her. Tears of joy flooded down his face when she said yes. She said, “I can’t believe you’re actually crying.” He told her, “you don’t understand, I never knew love like this before. I pledge to give you the best that I’ve got. They planned to get married in nine months.”
About a month later, James lost his job and found himself needing help with his apartment. He turned to Carlita, and she said, sure I’ll help with your rent payment. James said, “ I sure do love you.” The next month he needed help again, and he also asked her to help keep his cell phone on. She agreed to do both. James said, “but I do love you.” She asked James if he could come over and do some painting at her house since that’s where they would be living once they got married. James said, n”o problem sweetheart. I do love you.” It took James two weeks to show up to paint, because he had to work it into his schedule. When he did finally show, he only did half the kitchen and left. Carlita paid someone else to finish the job.
Even though he was unemployed, he was busier than ever. He didn’t have as much time to give Carlita as before. She tried to be understanding and supportive of him. Carlita was being patient with James as she worked his bills into her budget. She knew it would end soon. Slowly but surely James started to add the phone number of other women to his cell phone. When Carlita asked about them, he said, they were just friends needing help with their men. He was trying to help them see things from a man’s point of views. He told her, with the love I have for you, no other woman stands a chance of stealing my heart. James was doing a lot of counseling on the phone that Carlita was still paying for.
In order to help his good friend Kita out, James agreed to be her escort to high school reunion. James knew that Carlita would not be happy with this, but he was going anyways. He had a great time. When Carlita mentioned she had heard about him and Kita, James couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Again he reminded Carlita of how much he loved ,her and how he appreciated all that she was doing for him. In a couple of months they were going to be married. Without her, he would be nothing.
Things finally took a financial turn for the better with James. He got a $5000 inheritance check. He quickly took the money, went on a shopping spree and got him some fabulous designer clothing and three of the finest suits. He had never spent as much money on a ring as the one on his finger. He arrived at Carlita’s house looking as though he had stepped from a ebony fashion runway. When he told her what had happened and what he had done, she asked the question, “did you think about me in all this money.” He replied yes I thought about you, you know I love you. I went and paid the last two months of my rent, so now you don’t have to pay them. Isn’t that great.
How many of you think that Carlita is being played for a fool? How many of you would say, “I don’t care how sweet he sounds each time he says I love you, run for your life and get away from him.” How many of you think that James has some serious problems that he needs to deal with, including the need to grow up?
How many of you know there is a lot of James living inside of us when it comes to our relationship to God. We initially see a real need in our lives that only God can provide. We enter into a relationship with God with the idea of becoming totally committed. We let God know that we love Him. And then things happen. God provides us with a number of ways to meet our needs, and yet there is no time to serve the Lord when God needs us.
We find ourselves filling our lives with other things and other people. We put ourselves in situations we ought to avoid, knowing they can be a challenge to the commitment we have made. We bring Kita’s into our lives, and Kita come in all different forms and shapes, from people, to careers, to hobbies and a host of other things. Kita’s slowly steal our hearts from God. When we are blessed unexpectedly, we think first of spending on ourselves and offer God what we might have left over forgetting all that God has done for us. When we look at James and tell him, “you ought to be ashamed of playing Carlita for a fool”, James can look back at us and say “is it any worse to play God for a fool.”
There is an unpleasant part to the gospel. That part is simple. It says that all of us are really just like James in our hearts. We are unfaithful, we are selfish, we will use others, we are ungrateful and we will say whatever we need to say to get our needs met. We are messed up and broken because of our rebellion against God. The word of God says, because we have chosen to sin, we deserve to die and after we die we will be judged. None of us will be good enough to escape the final judgment which is to be cast into the lake of fire. The Bible is clear that all of us will rise and all of us will be judged.
God has told us what will happen. God demonstrates His love toward us by making it possible to be found guilty of sin, and yet still escape the fires of hell and spend eternity with Him in heaven. Because God is both holy and righteous someone has to pay the penalty for the wrong we have done. God says, I love you so much, I will pay the penalty myself through my Son Jesus. The price for sin is the death of someone perfect who has never done wrong. That person is Jesus Christ. God says to us, if your put your hope and your trust in My Son Jesus, you will be saved. If not you will continue on your journey straight to the lake of fire.
So then when Jesus says, “if any of you would come after me, you have to make up your mind to go against your own desires, you have to stop trying to do your own thing, you have to decide each day to follow me”, he’s letting us know that this is the alternative is if you don’t want to end up in hell. Now Jesus assumes that even though it is in their best interest to follow Him, most people are going to choose to not follow Him.
The option to follow Jesus is not like choosing whether to play football or soccor, or choosing rather to go to Ohio State or Tri- C, or choosing whether to become a doctor or factory worker. The option to follow Jesus is like choosing to leave a burning building or choosing to stay in it, or choosing to abandon a sinking ship or choosing to stay in your cabin, or choosing to get off the beach when a hurricaine is coming or choosing to stay in your beach chair and wait it out. It is a life and death decision.
What brings us to Jesus, is a realization that we are not good enough to be what we need to be to others, to ourselves, and to God. Even when we want to do the right thing, we find ourselves doing wrong. We admit that Lord what you have said about us is absolutely true. But the only thing that will keep us in Jesus is a genuine love.
When Jesus walked and lived on this earth, he chose 12 men to be his disciples. For about 4 or 5 years he poured himself into these men, teaching them, loving them and being there for them. One of the 12 that he was really close to Jesus was named Peter. Peter thought that he would be willing to give His life for Jesus under any circumstances. But then Peter got in a jam, and he wanted to save his own life. When they asked him, if he was a friend and a follower of Jesus, 3 times Peter denied even knowing who Jesus was. This was shortly before Jesus was crucified.
Three days after Jesus died, he came back to life again. He walked, he talked, he ate and he did a lot of other things. Jesus knew Peter had denied him 3 times, so when they got alone together Jesus brought up this incident. He did it by asking Peter 3 times, do you love me. Each time Peter said “yes Lord, I do love you” , Jesus gave Him something to do.
There are four things that indicate where our love for God truly is. The first is deliberately choosing to spend some time with God. There is no way you can be in love with someone and not spend some time with the person. It’s one thing to be in a group, but most of us want to spend a little time where it’s just the two of us. If we are going to grow spiritually, we need a place each day, where we can thank God for being God, praise God for what He has done, confess to God specifically where and how we failed, pledge to God our love and obedience for this day, and present to God our prayer requests.
We need a plan to read some portion of God’s word. Either read the Bible or get you a devotional book which explains a verse. We will not develop a genuine love for God without giving Him time. When Jesus was on the earth, we see again and again that He took time out to pray. We have exaggerated our sense of importance if we have convinced ourselves that we are too busy too pray. Lack of prayer is an indication, that we love something more than we love God. God is more interested in our relationship with Him, than God is what we’re going to do for Him.
The second indicator of our love for Jesus is our obedience. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Many of us will argue with Jesus on this point. We want to put love on the level of feelings. Jesus puts it on the level of obedience. Disobedience is nothing more than choosing to please ourselves rather than pleasing God. We say, but what I’m doing is not nearly as bad as what others are doing. Let me ask you this, is what you’re doing any worse than Eve choosing to eat from the tree that God told her not to eat from, or Adam choosing to take a bite from something his wife gave him. The issue is not how big the disobedience is. It’s the choice to reject what God has told us.
We can pray until Jesus come and sing all we want to about wanting to be more like Jesus, but if we have chosen to sin and to sin regularly, loving Jesus is not going to happen. Sin is like the phone numbers James kept adding to his phone. They hindered him from getting closer to Carlita even though it was intention to get closer. We will not grow in our love for Jesus without a willingness to admit, “Lord your word is true. What I’m doing is wrong. I admit it, and now I’m going to stop it”. For most of us, it is not some great big sin that we are doing. It’s our attitude in everyday life that keeps us from growing in our love for Christ.
The third indicator of our love for Jesus is our service. When God saved us, it came with a couple of strings attached to it. Ephes. 2:8-10
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- [9] not by works, so that no one can boast. [10] For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
God did something marvelous for us, and He tells us right from the start, you have been made special in order for you to do something for me. Everybody has been called to do a ministry and a mission. We learned that ministry is what we do for God in the church or in the body of Christ. Mission is what we do outside the church for God. If you do not have a ministry in the church, you are outside of God’s will for your life. There is not a part of my body, that does not do something that helps the rest of my body. What is your ministry at Glenville besides sitting in the pews? It’s a lie to say, I would serve if I had time. God has blessed us all with 24 hours. How grateful we are for the 24 will determine if any of it gets to be used for God.
Some of us are hoping that the pastors will lie at our funerals. We’re hoping they will say we were good and faithful servants, ready to meet God. If the truth were told, we’d be saying she was more faithful to the stories than to bible study. He spent hours at the club regularly, but didn’t have time for church. She complained about being bored all the time, but would not volunteer for anything. She was waiting for a voice from heaven to tell her what to do. She would have liked to have done more for God, but between shopping, movies, and trying to make more money, there just wasn’t the time.
In filling out the applications for the student scholarship from our denomination, for some of our young people we could say many things about how they had impacted the church an been involved. For others, there was very little at all that could be said to justify why they deserved a scholarship. We were almost embarrassed to send in their recommendations because we had so little to say. There are some of you, if you died today, we only need one sentence to say what you did in the life of the church. Can you imagine standing before the throne of God, and having very little to say about being involved in the body of Christ other than one day you intended to do something. Isn’t it time you started to rewrite your future so that it says, but Lord I do love you.
The fourth thing that indicates our love for Christ is what we do with our money. Jesus is the one who said, you cannot serve God and money. Jesus is the one who said, where your money or your treasure is, there your heart will be also. God has placed enough money in our church to fund everything we need. Our problem is that we do the same thing as James did with his blessing. We ask first, what do I want to do with my money. Some of us remember to give God our first fruit, but most of us choose to give God our leftovers.
We need to understand God’s principle of blessings. God tells us to give to keep from making money and things our new god, and God tells us to give because God wants to reward us for our giving. God knew in advance that we would not give Him the credit for good things He does in our lives. Look at Deut. 8:17-18 You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." [18] But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.”
Giving to God is always going to be a matter of trust and love. If our hearts do not settle the money issue of whether Jesus is going to be Lord it will never matter how much money we make, because there will always be new bills, new things to buy, and new things we feel we just have to have. We never will become tithers. Some of us will have lived 35 to 90 years and never once gave a tithe. Yet you have a perfect credit record of all kinds of payments. You never once cheated a creditor. Yet God will show us the trips we took, the new cars we bought, the homes we lived in, the things we owned and the entertainment we had and ask us to explain why we never were able to consistently tithe.
Pastor Toby and I have invested at least $120,000 into the ministry of Christ at this church through our tithes and offerings. When we obey God in our giving it is an investment. God used that money in a far greater way than we ever could have, but just as importantly God has blessed us beyond what we thought possible. You never lose by being obedient to God.
One day we will stand before God to give an account for our lives, and how we lived them. What is our testimony going to be as spoken through the decisions we made in life. How many of you want to hear God say to you, “yes you did love me and it showed.”
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick 9-18-2005
Deut 8:6-20 John 21:15-19
A. When A Man Loves A Woman
1. James And Carlita
2. Can You Help Me Out
3. Too Busy To Work
4. When Kita Comes In
5. The Blessing Of $5000
6. Playing Who For A Fool
B. The Unpleasant Part Of The Gospel
1. Who We Really Are—Broken
2. Our Destiny—The Judgment
3. God Demonstrates Love In Christ
4. Choosing To Change Our Destination
C. Jesus Gives Us The Option & Challenge
1. A Different Kind Of A Choice
2. Come To Jesus Out Of Need
3. Stay With Jesus Out Of Love
4. Jesus & Peter Get Together
5. Jesus Gave Peter A Job
6. Making The Choice To Fall In Love
D. I Want To Spend Time With You
John 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
1. It’s Good To Be In A Group But
2. Making Time Meaningful Together
a. Finding The Place
b. Thanking God For Who He Is
c. Praising God For What He’s Done
d. Confessing Our Failure Specifically
e. Pledging Our Love For Today
f. Presenting Our Request
3. Choosing To Read The Word
E. I Want To Do What You Want Me To
John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command
1. How Love And Commandments Work
2. Just How Bad Is It
3. Sin Is Like The Phone Numbers
4. The Sin Of The Attitude
D. Yes Lord, You Can Count On Me
Ephes. 2:8-10 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- [9] not by works, so that no one can boast. [10] For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
1. God Did It First, Now It’s Our Turn
2. Ministry-Work For Christ In Church
3. Mission- Work For Christ In World
4. All Parts Have A Job
5. Please Tell Lies At My Funeral
6. If The Truth Were Known
E. I Love You Enough To Keep You Lord
Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
1. God’s Principle Of Blessing
2. Following The James Principle
3. God Made It Possible
Deut. 8:17-18 You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." [18] But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
4. Matter Of Trust & Love
5. How Hard It Is To Be A Tither
6. A $120,000 Investment
7. Choosing What We Will Hear From
God.
