What Will You Do With Jesus? Surrender To Him! Series

What will you do with Jesus?

Surrender to Him Romans 10:9-11

Focus: Hearing the good news of Jesus demands a response… will it be fully surrender?

Function: To call hearers to hear the call to surrender and make Jesus Lord IN their lives.

In 1997, Leonardo DiCaprio stood on the bow of the world’s most elegant ocean liner and shouted out the words which expressed the hopes & ambitions of the Titanic itself… “I am the King of the World!” he said.

• The irony is-- the movie about one of history’s greatest disasters became just that at the box office… ‘King of the world’ and the highest grossing film of all time; making DiCaprio and the film’s director, James Cameron ‘Kings’ themselves-- in Hollywood at least.

• I didn’t think the movie was all that good, myself, and certainly didn’t appreciate how it depicted the love story, but I wonder… how many of us have quietly expressed DiCaprio’s ambition?

• How many of us would secretly like to be ‘King of the World?’

I suppose it’s a part of the Human condition; a part of fallen humanity?

• We all have a desire to be ‘king’ in some sense.

• We want to be the master of our own destiny! Men, we are taught very early that we ought to wear the pants in our families! (of course if we’re honest we’ve got to admit that its our wives who keeps them washed, pressed & mended), but WE want to wear them!

• We want to be the ‘boss’; we want to be ‘in charge’. We don’t like being told what to do. We don’t like anybody telling us how we ought to live our lives or run our households!

• Some of us are even like that about church. We don’t like that the preacher said I ought to give part of my income back to the Lord. Or we don’t like that the Elders said they expect us to be here every Sunday- as long as we are able. Some of us even resent the insinuation that there may be sin in our lives. We don’t come to church to hear that! We come to be uplifted and inspired!

• We have trouble with texts in the Bible that mention words like ‘submission.’

Eph 5:22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

Rom 13:1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, Eph 5:21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Yet, the call of the gospel is a call to … SURRENDER!

In the text that was read a moment ago in Romans 10, we see that very plainly.

• We’ve looked quite a lot at Romans 10 through this series. Down in vs. 17 we see that “faith comes from hearing the word of Christ” and I asked you (in that 1st week of this series) to “LISTEN TO HIM”; to HEAR what Christ has to say to our lives. Then I challenged you to “TRUST IN HIM”; to have FAITH in Him, which is borne out of that hearing.

• Here in vs. 9, Paul has just mentioned that “word of FAITH” and he says that part of that word is in God’s promise..

9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11 As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Romans 10:9-11NIV

• What a tremendous promise! If we ‘confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord’ we will be saved! Vs. 13 loudly proclaims, “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved!”

• What is Paul’s point in all of this?

What does it mean to “confess” that Jesus is Lord?

• To “confess” according to Strong’s & Thayer’s Bible dictionaries means to acknowledge something fully, openly & joyfully; to profess, to agree, to promise!

• What are we professing openly & joyfully? That Jesus is the Christ; the Lord, the Messiah… the King!

I. It is a call to Fully Surrender to Him!

A. Think for a moment what a counter-cultural call that is!

1. Everything in our culture tells us to ‘have it our way’; that we deserve to be happy and so we should do whatever it takes to make that happen.

B. To acknowledge Jesus as Lord is to say, “I am NOT!” And that’s tough for some of us.

1. I think of it like this: We all have a place within us; a seat of decision making power; that place in our heart out of which our lives are guided, steered; a driver’s seat or a throne.