What Will You Do With Christ?"
Matthew 16
10/5/97
Intro: Did you ever hear about the Sunday School teacher who wanted to find out about the level of Bible knowledge her children had. She started asking them different questions. She said,
"Johnny, who knocked down the walls of Jericho?" Johnny said, "It wasn’t me, teacher!" She was really amazed, because Johnny was a deacon’s son. After class, she went to Johnny’s father and said, "I asked Johnny in Sunday School who knocked down the walls of Jericho, and he said it wasn’t him." Johnny’s father replied, "Well, Johnny’s been a pretty honest boy, and if he said he didn’t do it, I believe him, he didn’t do it." The teacher was appalled that the deacon had such little Bible knowledge, so she thought her pastor should know about this. She said to him, "Pastor, you’ll never believe this. When I asked him, Johnny said he didn’t knowck down the walls of Jericho, and his father said he didn’t do it too!" The pastor, with a kind and loving look replied, "Well, I’m sure we don’t need to make a big fuss about this. Let’s just take a special offering and see if we can’t get them rebuilt!"
Many times, we are confused about what we see and hear. We’ll see some of this confusion today, as we look at Matthew 16.
I. The Denial of Christ - 1-12
Pharisees and Sadduccees, enemies, join together to question Jesus. They come to test him, because they had seen the miracles, yet refused to believe.
*Red skies - they had interpreted the signs of the sky, but failed to interpret the signs of God’s working among them
#often we fail to see the signs of the Lord’s working
#often we don’t accept God’s word at face value
#often we are influenced by hypocritical Christians
#often we fail to look to God to work in the same way he has worked in the past
II. The Declaration of Christ
opinions about Christ: normally wrong
truth about Christ: he is the Messiah, the son of God
Satan is powerless to defeat the church: but often we defeat ourselves, Satan deceives us
"you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free"
III. The Demands of Christ
God calls us
* to persecution
-not to be resisted, but not to be brought upon self
*to sacrifice - deny self, take cross, follow him
*rewards
Conclusion: If we really get serious about Christ, how will our lives be different?
