Message 01-27-08

Series:            Following

Scripture:            Matthew 4:23-25

Title:                                        The Fight of Your Life

Let’s talk about going to hell.

I realize that’s not a popular subject, but last week I ended my message with those words and it feels like it might be right to start this week right there. Jesus says to us, “Count the cost. Take a hard look at what you’ll be missing. You can either come with me and change the world or you can spend your life making money, and living in a nice neighborhood and work to obtain everything you want, living life like everyone else… and go to hell.”

So, what’s that about?

What Jesus is talking about when he calls us is choosing life or choosing death.

We’re just jumping into today, aren’t we? Life, death, heaven or hell – all the big subjects, but this is what following Jesus is all about – the big subjects, life and death.

Jesus came to lead us out of spiritual death. Spiritual death is hell. Spiritual death is living away from God and connections with life. God is the only source of life and if we live without God in our lives, we work against life. We choose death. We choose hell.

What does spiritual death look like?

Spiritual death looks like my bank account. Do you know what I mean? What I mean is that my bank talks to me regularly about regular payments, automatic bill payment, connecting my mortgage payment to my account. You see banks know about spiritual death because one of the strongest characteristics of spiritual death is inertia. Banks know that I have a tendency toward doing nothing. My bank wants me to hook up with automatic payments because they know that, left to my own, I’ll forget. I’ll get busy. I’ll not being involved. They know I’m thinking about other things and they want me to be diligent. They want me to be involved in their business. So, they don’t want to depend on my participation to get my mortgage payment or car payment. They want it to be something I don’t think about. They’ve found a way to get around my inertia. Spiritual death looks like inertia. Spiritual death looks like doing nothing. Spiritual death looks like just living, instead of being alive. We have to fight really hard against doing nothing because doing nothing is so easy.

And it’s important to remember the bank is different than Jesus. You see the bank doesn’t really want me to change. They just want to figure out how to get around my inertia and still take care of business. So they tell me how easy, how simple, how helpful this will be. And it is helpful, isn’t it? It’s nice when we don’t have to think about things and it’s nice to just stay the way we are, naturally.

It’s nice when someone else makes the choices. That’s why it makes sense to hesitate in coming to Jesus. When Jesus calls us he calls us into life. He calls us to become engaged. He calls us to move. Those are the first words of the call – follow me. And he doesn’t stop.

I think one of the most disturbing things about Jesus is that he keeps moving. If you really want to get a picture of the work of Jesus find an old, wooden translation of the Gospel of Mark. Mark, the author of the Gospel had this tendency to start his sentences with the word “immediately.” If you find an old, right from the Greek, translation you find that Jesus is just moving constantly. He teaches in the synagogue and immediately he goes to fellowship with Peter and immediately he goes out to the seashore and preaches to the crowds and immediately he feeds them with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread. This guy is crashing around the countryside and it feels like the disciples are just running along trying to keep up.

When we start coming to life in Jesus we can feel like that. Jesus is about changing the world. He’s about setting us free from doing nothing, just being alive. He is about getting us involved and engaged in reality. He sets us free from all the things that will enslave us in doing nothing.

You see we have a world that creates ties that bind as quick as it can. Our society sets up laws that keep us from doing anything that will make life better or help us become alive. We have all sorts of laws to live by that do nothing – you can’t have dandruff, you can’t be chubby, you can’t have acne, you can’t smell… whatever. If you ever want to explore the law and slavery of our society, don’t find a lawyer; find a teenager. In fact, find a teenage girl.

Some teenage girls are consumed by law. They can tell you everything down to the shade of color that can be worn, said, heard or seen. And the world they are living in is teaching them every moment of every day how to stay put in the whims of the law makers.

Young women, listen to me for a moment. You will be told how you will dress and how you will speak and what music you will listen to and the amount of make-up you should be wearing, down to the length of your jeans and whether or not you can wear jeans. The reason for that is people want to enslave you. They want to own you and to have power over you because it makes them feel good. And you have to decide whether you want that or not. You have to decide whether you want to be a slave to your friends’ opinions, a slave to waves of fashion or a slave to a boy. You have to decide are you going to get down on your knees in front of some person’s opinions and let him tell you whether you’re good enough. That is death. It is death to your spirit and death to your soul.

You are worth so much more than that. Do you want to be a slave or do you want to be free? Jesus said you were worth dying for.  He came to give you freedom, to discover the value you have. Take hold of this because even people who love you will choose wrong things for you. Even your mom, who loves you probably more than you’ll ever know, will ache so deeply for you to be accepted by friends that she’ll send you out of the house looking like nobody cares what you look like. If the only thing that attracts boys to you is the length of your skirt or what’s written on your clothes they aren’t attracted to you.

Let me give you a picture to consider at this moment. I was walking into a Starbucks with my daughter and son-in-law a little while go. As we went in we passed a small, blond woman standing outside the door talking to someone. She was in a running outfit with the word, “Juicy” on her pants. As we passed, Erik said, “Nice.” Now, my first was that’s a little inappropriate for my son-in-law to be saying out loud with his wife a step ahead of him and his father-in-law a step behind. But as we got inside my daughter turned to me and said, “Dad, did you see her?” I’m kind of a blank when it comes to celebrities and so I asked, “who?” And she and Erik then named the woman outside the door as a local pastor, a well-known local pastor.

Now, do you think a pastor should be wearing an outfit like that? Now before anyone moves to justify that or claim that people can wear anything they like, let me say, “That’s true”. People can wear anything they like, but do you think that someone who represents Jesus needs to call attention to their body that way? Do you think that men will not be looking at a woman’s body and so need to have directions painted on their clothes to say – Look here? Do you think that women will not be comparing themselves to another woman’s body? Do you not think that our society is working itself to death to try to enslave everyone in thinking about sexuality and youthfulness and comparisons? Are people who follow Jesus supposed to be working for that same thing?

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

We are called to follow Jesus and that doesn’t mean that we become dull, backward, unattractive nerds. It means that we come to life. When Jesus calls us, he calls us to become strong, resilient, capable and loving true human beings.