Why Do You Call Me Lord And Not Do What I Say?

Title: Why do you call me Lord?

Text: Luke 6:46-49

Date: 7/13/2008

Location: Sulphur Spring Baptist church

Introduction: If Bobby Knight calls time out with 10 seconds on the clock and sets up a play for his star player to take the last second shot, but the guy who is supposed to pass him the ball decides that he wants to be the hero and takes the shot and misses, then I guarantee you he’s going to be running wind sprints and doing push ups the rest of the night.

If your boss gives you an important assignment on Monday morning and tells you to have it done by the end of the day Friday and you decide that it’s not worth the time and effort then there’s a good chance you won’t have a job come Friday afternoon.

If a soldier deliberately disobeys a commanding officer’s order that results in his platoon suffering major casualties that soldier can and should be brought up on charges and court-martialed.

We don’t have any trouble understanding that the consequences of each of these actions were deserved. But when those of us who are serving in the Lord’s Army choose to ignore or blatantly disobey His commands we wonder why God disciplines us. We wonder why the storms of life come crashing down on us.

I want to use one verse of Scripture to expose what I believe is one of the main problems confronting Christianity today. Turn in your Bibles to Luke 6:46, Jesus said, “WHY DO YOU CALL ME ‘LORD, LORD AND DO NOT DO WHAT I SAY?”

Let me ask you a question this morning? Who do you think Jesus was talking to when he asked that question? We would like to think He was talking to the Pharisees or the Chief Priests but He wasn’t. He was talking to His Apostles as well as His disciples. The people who had been following him from village to village listening to him teach and watching him heal the sick and open the eyes of the Blind.

Okay, so we know who the question was addressed to but have you ever wondered why Jesus asked the question in the first place. Why would he have to ask the people who were following him all around Galilee why they called Him Lord but didn’t do what He said?

Jesus was the son of God and He knew their hearts were not pure. He knew that they were just curious onlookers, pretending to be His disciples. So He looked at them and bluntly said, “WHY DO YOU CALL ME LORD, LORD, AND DO NOT DO WHAT I SAY?”

In other words Jesus was saying, “You call me Lord, and you claim to be my disciples but yet you refuse to submit to my authority and refuse to do what I tell you to do?

Which brings me to my next question or next point.

3. What had Jesus told them to do that they hadn’t done yet?

I don’t know for sure by I suspect a lot of things. Jesus had just finished what we call the Sermon on the Mount. In that Sermon he told them that they should be doing several things that they weren’t doing and that they should stop doing several things that they were doing.

For instance: In Matthew 5;13-14, He tells them that they are the Salt of the Earth, and the Light of the World. Which meant that they were to make a difference in their society, and that they were to do good deeds so others would see their good deeds and glorify the Father.

But they weren’t doing it any more than you and I are? Their society was just as spiritually dead as ours is. The cold hard truth was that the majority of them were good for nothing, they were completely useless when it came to the Kingdom of God, and unfortunately things haven’t changed much in our day and time.

Illustration: a group of college students were having a Bible study one night where they were discussing this passage of Scripture. More specifically they were discussing how we as Christians are supposed to be the Salt of the Earth. During the discussion they mentioned several of the uses and benefits of salt. Such as it adds flavor to food. Someone else mentioned that salt is a preserving agent and keep food from decaying. Then one young lady spoke up and said, “Salt makes you thirsty.” They all got quiet and the Holy Spirit began to convict each one of them because they knew it had been a long time since any of them had made anyone thirsty for Jesus.”

How long has it been since you made a difference in our society? How long has it been since you made someone thirsty for Jesus?