← ArchiveSunday, June 8, 2014DateJune 8, 2014Speaker—TextJohn 12Passages in this sermonJohn 121:18John 12:261:49John 317:231 John 218:11Philippians 3:718:56Ephesians 2:826:33John 1027:34John 828:322 Corinthians 534:06TranscriptClick any line to jump there.0:00Because it is because, you know, we can think all day long about what we do, but it isn't about what we do. It's because of what God did in these young people's lives years ago when they came to0:25confess him as their Lord and Savior and decided that they were going to let their life be different from the lives of those around them and allow Jesus to reign and rule in their life. Now, they're still working on it. There's not any of them that I know out there that are perfect. Some of them think they are, and some of them will try to convince you that they are, but they're not. But then again, there's nobody in this building today that's perfect.0:52We're all working on what Christ has given us and the opportunities that he's provided us. So today, this was accomplished, and you heard that testimony because of what Jesus Christ is doing in the life of this church. And that's the beginning. You know, last week, Brother Scott came, Scott Dawson, and he shared a tremendous message from John chapter 12, but he stopped a verse short. I didn't want to correct him in the middle of his message because that wouldn't have been1:22nice. But I want you to follow with me, and I want you to turn in your Bibles to John chapter 12. And let's look at that verse that I may have read it, but I don't think he did. But he did a great job with the message that he did bring. Amen? And we're glad to partner with him and his ministry and have him back, and he loves coming back to Bethel. He shared that with me. But in John chapter 12, verse 26, it's only one verse, and we'll look at it.1:49But as you come to that verse, I want you to think about what we're doing this summer. It began. It's underway. Today, there'll be new ministry opportunities for you. If you go online and look under Bethelnet.com, you're going to find Love Serves. And when you look up Love Serves, you're going to find opportunities to go do something with another group or go do it by yourself.2:17I know that Bud and a group go out to the nursing homes. And what they started last year during Love Serves, they kept up all year long. And that's what it's all about. It's not about doing one thing during the summer and saying, well, I've accomplished something for God. I'm going to get my badge, and then we're going to move on. Love Serves is a lifestyle. That's what we're going to talk about this morning. What we're doing is just encouraging and challenging you, the body of Christ, to develop a lifestyle that honors God through service, that honors God through giftedness, that honors God in2:47the opportunity of obedience and ministry. It's very, very simple. The tragedy that has occurred for so many years is that the church, and as the church, we got used to the church being what we're doing right now. This is church. We come together. We sit. We sing. We stand. We give. And we leave. And we wait till the next week.3:17And if we feel like it, we come back. We stand. We sing. We sit. We give. We pray. We hear preaching. And we, you know, that's just one minute iota of the church. This is supposed to be a teaching time. This is a learning time. Now, for the majority of you, you really don't need this time to be fed, because if you understand Paul's writing in Corinthians, when it talks about feeding, Paul says, you know, I wish3:46that I could feed you meat, but you're little children, so I must feed you milk. Now, I want to share with you the tragedy of someone saying in church, if you're a visitor from another church here, or if you're a member of this church, when somebody says, well, I'm just not getting fed, let me share with you what you're saying. First of all, I have a grandson.4:14His name is Grant. Now, Grant is what, seven months old? And I'll tell you what, we kept him last night, and I have two other grandsons that came with him, and that was Hunter and Evan. Now, Hunter and Evan, their parents brought them some pizza with them to eat, and so we throw, we undone the pizza, Gail put it in the microwave, laid it out. Guess what the older children did?4:44They sat down, and they said, Pop, feed us. No, they're not babes anymore. They're young men. They're young men. They picked up their food, and they ate it. They didn't need me to sit down and feed them. But guess what Grant did? I thought a piece of pizza in front of Grant. Go for it, big boy.5:13He never even looked at it. But because he's a babe, I had to take these new, wonderful things that you can get, and you pop the top on, stick it in their mouth, and they, and suck the life out of it. They're babes. They have to be fed, because they can't feed themselves. And so as a Christian, sitting in the pew, if I've been sitting in the pew of a church5:42for years, and I use to leave that church, or come to another church because I haven't been fed, I'm saying I'm a baby, I need somebody to stick a spiritual bottle in my mouth and hold it until it's empty, and burp me in the middle of it, so that when we get through, I feel full. But if I'm an adult in the Word of God, and I've been in church long enough to go to the6:08table, you know what? I'm telling you what, you put the hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, and pink-eyed purple hull peas with some corn, and you better get out of the way. I say, boys, y'all are still at home.6:35I've got to feed you. No, they are big enough to come to the table and eat themselves, and so they do. And so there's no qualms. I never had one of them say to me, Dad, I'm leaving home. I don't feel fed. Now, they have said, Dad, I'm leaving home. Mom's cooking that stuff again. I don't like. And John's mom's having hot dogs. Sometimes we don't like what we get fed.7:06You know, there are people that are challenged by service, and they don't like to get fed on service. They don't like to learn that in reality, what we're doing is an outcropping of what God has done in us already, that we're not doing anything new. What we're talking about up here and what we're going to be teaching up here isn't something that you really need to be taught. It's just a time that we can come together as the body of Christ and be reminded of who we are. And it tells us right here, you've got your Bibles, you've looked it up.7:36John chapter 12, verse 26. Jesus is talking. If anyone, what does it say? Serves. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. And where I am, there my servant will be also. If that's an interesting little lesson that Jesus taught there.8:05He said, if anyone wants to serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, my servant will be there. Well, let me go on. If anyone serves me, listen to this one. If anyone serves me, the Father will what? The Father will honor him. Wow. So, it's a very simple passage. If anyone serves me, he'll follow me.8:35Where I am, my servant will be also. When my servant serves me, my Father will honor them. You know, I don't know how simpler it can be taught to us than out of the mouth of Jesus that we come to understand the greatest lessons that we could apply to our life during this time and that ought to be applied to our life on a daily basis. I had someone back in seminary make a statement.9:03I thought about it for a long time. The statement was very clear and very serious. And he said, this country would never need Social Security if the churches were allowed to do what churches are supposed to do. I want you to think about that. If the churches were doing what we were supposed to do and if we could do what we were supposed to do, we wouldn't need a Social Security to come in and take care of because we as the body of Christ would be so reflecting Christ in the world9:32by ministering to and meeting the needs. Just like what you saw up here this morning of families and individuals that can't help themselves. Now, I don't think the church ought to get caught up in helping someone that can help themselves. We call them out of that sin and out of that lifestyle that says that I am deserving of everything everybody will give me to help us understand the only thing that you and I truly, really deserve here today is hell.10:00But the one thing that God gives us is grace and mercy. And so the question is that I have for you this morning, who or what are you following today? Everyone's following something or someone. The other day, I got behind a car on 411. It was going 40 miles an hour.10:30The speed limit was obviously 50. And then it dropped down to 35 miles an hour. And I thought to myself, can I do it? Now, you all know what I'm thinking. Because I am sick and tired of following somebody doing 35 miles an hour in a car that I know will beat that. But as usual, I don't know what's going on in the car in front of me.10:58It may be somebody that just knows. They're ticking me off because they recognize my car. And they know how I'm bonctious, around bonctious I get, how impatient I am. And so they thought, well, I'm going to show the preacher up at Bethel something and just see what he does about it. So what I did was stay two cars behind the car that was slowing everybody down. You may think you're not following, but you are. You may think you're not following, but you are.11:28Very few people blaze their own trails today. Very few people step out and do what has never been done before. And it's not because there's nothing out there that's never been done before. What we find out in every generation is that there are people always prepared to do what's never been done before, and they blaze new trails. You know, it's amazing how many things that are accomplished by people who've never done things, but they decide they're going to try them. I got tickled.11:58My mother had surgery this week. That's not what I got tickled at. But she had a hilt replacement. And while she's there, her deacon from her church came and was sitting there with us. And it just so happened to be a lifelong friend that I'd known all my life. He's older than I am. And he was talking about he was a pilot. And he liked to, back when he was younger, he flew these planes for people to jump out of. It was part of a parachute club. And so, anyway, he said he had this man to tell him.12:26He said, listen, I want you to take me and my granddaughter up. And he said, I want to jump with my granddaughter. I want you to know that. I don't want my granddaughter. You don't ever take my granddaughter up unless I'm with her. I want to jump with her. She wants to come and jump. He said, okay, we'll go Saturday morning. He said, we got up to 11,000 feet. He said, we're circling. He said, I said, okay, everybody get ready. Fixing to cut the motors. He said, the doors are off the plane. You know what, I've always been just like you're sitting there thinking right now, why jump out of a good plane with a good engine?12:52But they do that kind of thing to have fun. And so, he said, they're over there and they're ready. And he said, what they do is they reach up and grab the crossbar. They're leaning out the door. They reach over. He said, I put the brakes on on the wheels of the plane. He said, she steps out on the wheel of the plane. And he said, before I knew it, she's let go and gone. Granddad's right behind her and he's holding on and he's froze. And some people are just not used to blazing new trails.13:22And he said, I looked back and I said, what are you, tell him to go. We're getting over the drop zone. Tell him to go. He said, he won't let go. He said, I'll let him go. He said, I'll put the plane in a dive and I whipped around. And he said, it put all the forces in the Gs and he went, oh.13:50And he's stepping out now. He's got his foot on the wheel of the airplane. He said, I can't land with him like that. The plane's tilting. We're told about it. He said, so I'm going, get him off. He said, I can't. He said, by George I will. He released the brake. The wheel turned. And the man flops out. Sometimes we have to be, extraordinary circumstances have to be used to get us out of the plane.14:14Folks, sometimes extraordinary circumstances have to be used to get us out of the church building. Sometimes we get so caught up in a lifelong ministry of doing nothing but sitting in a pew that we have to be pushed out to go do something to realize how important it is for us to do it right. Can I tell you what happened to the guy? He didn't get killed.14:43It was a static cord. So as soon as he fell out of the airplane, his chute opened. But he was one mile from the drop zone. And he said, when I landed, one of the guys came up and said, one of your parachutes is a mile away over there in a field. We saw him come down. He said, you better go get him. He said, I ain't going to get him. He said, he had every opportunity to drop out right over this field, but he didn't do it. He said, he can walk. You know, and that's the consequences of when we said, and we let everybody else hit the target.15:08And we don't hit the target. Well, what am I talking about? I'm talking about what Jesus says right here. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. The instructions with an opportunity are there. The instructions are very simple. Sometimes we're looking for such complicated instructions. We're looking for the Bible to hold some mystical, instructive way that we can kind of, you know, be an Indiana Jones with the Bible.15:33But that's not how God ever intended the Bible to be. He intended for us to understand very clearly what he's trying to teach us so that we can be about his business. And so what is he trying to teach us? He's trying to teach us to let go. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. The opportunity is there. The instructions are there. Follow me. Jesus is not telling you to go off on your own.16:03He's not trying to knock you out of an airplane that you've never been in before. He's not trying to push you out of the church into an area totally, so that you're totally unfamiliar with, without first instructing you and enabling you to go and do what he's called you to do. If you follow me, you'll serve me. If you're going to serve me, follow me. God, I don't want you blazing any new trail that he hasn't already blazed for you. Now, I do understand we do have a deacon in our church that did that jumping,16:35and he went skydiving here a month or so ago, and they strap you to the guy that you're skydiving with. And he jumped out of the airplane and said, man, you need to go do it. And I thought, man, I will. My wife sat next to me. She said, oh, no, you won't. But Jesus has blazed the trail for us already. He's already gone out into the world.17:03He's already been a part of love serves. You know, God doesn't continually have to teach you or share with you that he loves you. He's already told you that before. You know, we don't need to get on our hands and knees and say, God, I love you. Please tell me you love me when God has already told us that he loves us. John 3, 16, for God so loved you, already loved you. God has already loved you. God loved you before that. God loved you before he was ever created. Before the world was founded, God loved us because it was before the foundation of the world17:30that he and the Trinity got together and decided that he was going to die. And so God has already told us that he loves us, and he's already gone out before us, and now he's set the pace for us, and all we're asked to do is follow. If you love me, if you're going to serve me, you're going to follow me. The plan is there. I tell you, it's much easier to go on a trail that has already been blazed17:56than it is to try to blaze one yourself when you don't know what you're doing. Listen in 1 John 2, verse 3. By this we know that we have come to know him. If we keep his commandments, the one who says, I have come to know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God, has truly been perfected.18:26By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. In other words, we're going to walk like Jesus walked. We're going to follow the trail already blazed for us. Philippians chapter 3, verse 7.18:56But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ. For Paul to follow Christ meant that he must take his eyes off all the things that he had already gained. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surprising value of knowing Jesus, my Lord. Paul saw it a valuable opportunity for him to follow and love Jesus.19:23More valuable than anything that he could accrue on the earth. Now, I'm not saying that riches are bad on the earth. I'm not saying that enjoying the things that God is giving you bad. I don't believe that at all. I think if those are the things we're following, that's what's bad. If I'm following a paycheck, that's bad. If I'm following the dream of having a particular house, that's bad.19:49But if I'm following the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm seeking to follow him by being obedient to the commandments and the life that he's given me, and the house is there, and the income is there, and the blessings are there, and the car is there, those things are not bad. It's when those things are what you are following instead of Jesus. I have found out a long time ago, the closer I get to the Lord, the wealthier I get in the things and the blessing that God brings to my life.20:14I'm not trying to teach a health wealth lesson. I'm just saying that there are a lot of things that I thought I had to have that I really don't need anymore, and the things that I never knew that I would need now bring me great joy because I'm following Jesus. Listen to some of the sayings that I just picked up. A man ought to live so that everybody knows he's a Christian, and most of all, that his family.20:44I repeated it. The preaching that this world needs most is the sermons in shoes that are walking with Jesus Christ. Do you realize that you young people preached better sermons than me this past week?21:10Be careful with saying that so loud. You young people and you adults that were with them preached greater sermons than I did by the example of sacrifice that you were willing to give. But you know something, guys, you have the opportunity to do that as well as we continue in our love serves opportunity through the summer.21:37As we pick up and follow the Lord Jesus Christ this summer through ministries, the Hope Lodge, through going to the nursing homes, through doing various other opportunities that arise that we didn't get completed or didn't get a chance to work on, Brad can look back and we can look and see some of those things. We can put together teams. We've got so many things.22:06We had over a hundred things last year. It overwhelmed people, and people couldn't choose from them. So we've cut it down, and we're not asking you to do anything you can't do. Can I ask you something? How many of you can push a lawnmower and go cut somebody's grass beside your own? Somebody can weed eat. Go weed eat. Somebody can get a chainsaw. By the way, Brad, is my chainsaw okay?22:35We'll talk about that in the morning too, won't we? Okay. So the opportunity's there, folks. It's just a matter of whether or not we're going to take advantage of the opportunity that God has given us. Listen to this. Shame on the Christianity of the 19th century. It is weak and sickly thing. Would to God we had a few men like Daniel living today. Not the 20th century.23:06That was the 19th century. There is no man living that can do the work that God has got for me to do. No one can do it but myself. And if the work ain't done, we will have an answer for it. We'll have to answer for it when we stand before God's bar in heaven. The if in the text should cause all of us to stop and consider the probability of a no answer.23:30Remember, he said, if anyone serves me. If is a tragic question because it makes us come to think that there might be the opportunity for us not to. The actual ability to participate in the task is for saved people. It's for people who are sharing and taking light out in the world.24:00The teaching is an invitation to join the master in his work. I don't know anybody that would rather work with a boss. And we get to work with a boss when we go out into the field and do the work that the boss is already doing. According to Henry Bockeby, we don't have to go find something new. We just need to find out where God is. And the easiest thing for a child of God to do is see where God is working and go work where God is. And we can do that.24:30The ability to complete any task comes when someone has a good teacher. You know, I had some good teachers in high school and I had some good teachers in elementary school. And then I had some that I didn't feel like were so grand. But the teachers that I felt like were good, I remember who they are till this day. And I thank God for their persistence and their paddlings and all that they did to try to help me become everything that I was. But I also thank God for godly men who set a good precedence before me in my life.24:59When I think back of my home church and I think about the men that made a difference in my life. Shelly Ezell, my pastor, Everett Henley, a deacon in that church. And other men just like him that were willing to set the pace for young men. Not because they wanted somebody to follow them. But men who humbly served the Lord before us. And we saw what they were doing. And I saw the heart that they had to do it with.25:29And I said to myself, that's the kind of man I want to be. One who follows so close to God that you see God all over his life. And I want to tell you something, that's the kind of men we need to stand up today in the church. We don't need to meet men stand up and say, I'm just not getting fed. We need men that are feeding themselves from the meat of God's word. And serving God out of the strength and work of the Holy Spirit that's taking place in their life. There's the promise of an everlasting ending.26:00And where I am, there my servant will also be. Well, that could be duplistic. He could say that where I am now, there my servant will be. Where I am, my servant will be there right then. But you know, I like to think also of the promise that he gave the thief on the cross. Today, you shall be with me in paradise. One day the servant will be with the master. And one day we will stand alongside of him. We will give the account. To be where he is, you must know how to get there.26:29Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you have been saved through faith and not of works. See, it's not these works or things that we're doing, not of yourself. It is the gift of God. Not as a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Wow. That passage sums everything up for us today.27:00I'm not saved because I'm good enough to be saved. I'm not saved because I'm a part of love serves. I'm a saved person to do love serves. God saved me and he created me for the work that he has set before me. And that's why it's so important that I be about the business that the father has set before me. The only way to get where he is, is by faith.27:26To join Jesus in his service, we must know him. You've got to know Jesus, John 10, 26. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. What a tremendous promise to those who are following the Lord Jesus Christ.27:52No one should ever have to ask us if we're believers in Christ. They ought to be able to see us by the deeds and the actions and the results of our lives. You ought to know somebody loves the Lord Jesus because they love other people like themselves. And they are serving other people like they would have themselves be served.28:19True servants serve just like they are taught. Jesus says in John 8, 2, You see the importance of learning, the importance of seeing who we are and what we're about28:35is the ability that God has given us to get into his word and to read his word, understand his word, and then get up and do his word. It's very foolish as James points out to have faith and not have works. Not that works creates faith, it doesn't. Faith comes by the blessings of God into your life.29:05You follow God by faith and that produces works. That produces the kind of works that great missionaries like Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong set before us. Great missionaries like the five that went down into the Ecuadorian jungle and four of which lost their lives because they were willing to follow God wherever God would have them to go. And we would say, oh, what a terrible loss. There's no loss there. From their deaths where they went to heaven came the saving of tribal people29:34who had never heard the gospel and many of them had never seen even a white man. But because of their deaths, they were able to give the gospel to those people and those people were able to believe and trust God and allow God to change their lives. And I want to share with you the final important part of this message. This is the most exciting one as you look at the 26th verse.30:00If anyone serves me, he must follow me. And where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, you finish it. Let's do that together. The father will honor him. Now, you know, we don't do things to be honored by the father, but why did Jesus put it there? To let us know that the father will honor obedience.30:31The father is not going to honor all this junk stuff going on in the world today. Listen, you know, I don't know that we need to draw all the attention of all the sins that are going on in our society. We just need to lift up Jesus more. We just need to talk about the fact that the father has a plan for our life. And that ultimate plan is to one day be with him. And that as life continues, it's not the things in this world that are going to bring great joy.31:00Listen, I want to tell you something. I don't get any greater joy out of my life than spending time with my family. I'm sorry. I know I enjoy spending time with my boys, their children, my wife. I just like it. It's fun. It's funny. There are things that happen that never happen anywhere else. Amen, grandparents? Isn't that right? I like to be around other people's kids. I like to walk over to the week here, sit down, just listen to the children talk.31:27I do a devotion in here during the school year, and I have three grades that come in here. And I just love hearing, I ask them questions, and I learn a lot about parents. A lot of parents don't have good sense. You know, a lot of parents don't know what their kids know. A four-year-old child knows more than the parents do. And I enjoy that conversation and some of the things that they say and some of the things that we do. And I try to engage in conversation with people of my like mind under five,31:53five and under, eight and under. Because you learn so much. You know what I find? When you like to be around them, they like to be around you. They do. And I tell you what, they come to the house and know they don't get away with murder. We have our moments of discipline.32:22We have our moments of, hey, you say that again? Nope. One of them's smart. I won't say anything because I don't want no parent to get on their child. But one of them said something smart to Mimi and I looked at him. I said, hey, boy, your daddy didn't talk to your nanny that way, your Mimi that way. And you're not going to talk to your Mimi that way. Do you hear me? Yes, sir. Good. We're good. Come on. Let's go play. I'm going to tell you something, friend.32:51I want to be around Jesus. I want to be around my master one day. I want to walk with him through his creation. I want to feel the joy and truly see all that he has done for me. But what's it going to take? Love serves.33:22My servant will be also, excuse me, there my servant will be also, if anyone serves me, the father will honor him. The father will honor him. I don't know how that'll happen. I don't care how that'll happen. I can just imagine. The Bible teaches, and I wrote down some of the texts concerning those rewards that God has for us. In verse 26, he reinforces his instructions regarding sacrifice, but commanding us to do as he does.33:52And the following him will ultimately lead us to stand with opportunity and privilege before the Lord. For we must all appear before the Lord, in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 10, the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. At the end of our lives, we will receive from God what we are living. God wants to see us living like him, and he will honor those who do.34:22Wow. So, if I'm serving like he served, and that's what he did, he will honor me. That's simple. You know what that says? Chris, get out there and find something to do for somebody, and quit worrying about what somebody's going to do for you.34:52Because that's how we think sometimes. So, I want to challenge you as a church to quit focusing on what can be done for you and start thinking about what you can start doing for others. And we can change the world we live in. Eleven men that followed Jesus, God honored and changed the world.35:19And now a church that would seek to follow God, God would honor and follow him. I think it was D.L. Moody that said, only God knows what could happen with one man totally and completely sold out to God. When we quit looking in the mirror to see if we're all right and start looking at the world,35:48at how we can help it, we'll change it. Let's pray. Father, as we gather here today, we are challenged to serve. We are challenged to serve you. We are challenged to serve our brother. We are challenged to serve in our world. God, we need your guidance and your leadership. For, Lord, we know that the world would take advantage of you and take advantage of your servants.36:17And so, Father, we pray for your leadership. And, Father, I would pray today that, God, if there's someone here today that's lost, they don't know you as their Savior, their life would never show any means or signs of knowing you. They're good people. They're nice people. But, God, they're not saved people. And I would pray for their salvation. And, Father, today, if there's someone that's been, Lord, they've just been not willing to serve. Lord, they're not looking.36:48They're not trying. They're just sitting. I pray God change their heart and challenge this church. It's not what the other churches are doing that set the pace for us. It's what you're doing that sets the pace for us. And now, God, I pray, use us to your glory that we may honor you today, that you might honor us tomorrow. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I'm going to ask you to stand for a hymn of invitation.37:16During this hymn of invitation, if the Holy Spirit has spoken to your heart, and you don't know Christ as your personal Savior, you, I invite, first and foremost, step out. Don't wait. You come. You don't let somebody else set the pace for your life. You set the pace because the Holy Spirit's spoken to you. And today, maybe you say, you know, I've not been a part of love, sirs. I don't need to go out, but I'm going to change that. I'm going to go home. I'm going to find out something that I can do today, and I'm going to go do it. Well, I know for a fact in Pale City, restoration is going to be meeting today.37:46And if you'd like to know more about restoration, you just see one of us. It meets up in Pale City. We'll see that you get instructions. You can go up there, and you can worship with people who have hurts, habits, and hang-ups and are looking for somebody to pace their life after. Let us know. We'll be glad to help you. We'll be glad to help you.38:11We'll be glad to help you.More sermons on John →
