2020: A Year of Celebration!

Image Bearers Steward their Relationship with Jesus!

(John 21:15-22; Luke 22:31-34 & Romans 12:1-8)

Memorial Day Weekend

What is most important to you?

Let’s take a moment to ask God to tell each of us the truth. I invite you to a conversation with Jesus that God is initiating through me to you. As we go to prayer right now, with each person entering into a space of grace, hear Jesus ask you: “Do you love Me more than these?” 

Time of Silence

From John 21:15-22, listen to a dramatic exchange between Peter and Jesus with Jesus starting the conversation with Peter the same way God just started the conversation with each of us:

So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?”

[Peter] said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

[Jesus] said to [Peter], “Tend My lambs.” [Jesus] said to him again a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”

[Peter] said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

[Jesus] said to [Peter], “Shepherd My sheep.” [Jesus] said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”

Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” And [Peter] said to [Jesus], “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”

Jesus said to him, “Tend My sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.”

Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, “Follow Me!”

We usually cut this story short, in verse 17 with Jesus’ third “tend my sheep” and talk about how Jesus is forgiving Peter for his three denials after his boastful declaration that he would never forsake Jesus. From Luke 22:31-34, we hear this earlier exchange between Jesus and Peter:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

But [Peter] said to Him, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!”

And [Jesus] said, “I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.”

While this conversation and Peter’s actions are the context for the exchange between the resurrected Jesus and the demoralized and discouraged Peter in John 21, we must keep reading to the end, verse 22.

“If I want [John] to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!”

Jesus doesn’t give you a job to do or a comparison to make with someone else’s life, but a relationship to have with Him!

This is what is first and foremost in the heart of God for all of His Children. So, I say to you, repent and return to your first love. Steward your relationship with God as your most precious possession and most important choice! Everything else flows out of what is on the throne of you heart. What is most important to you?

“Tend My Sheep” and forget that Jesus’ first and last words to all His disciples are “Follow Me” (Mark 1:17 & John 21:22).

Christians, especially those diligent serious ones, became like Martha—worried and bothered about so many things! And they forsake the one thing that actually makes them a Christian—though they do plenty in the name of Jesus, are the spending time seeking the face of Jesus?

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

I have heard people, church goers and great volunteers, even comment that if we were all like Mary then who would get the work done… My answer is: God through us instead of us for Him. I wonder if we’ve tried to co-opt the Christian life that is for a Kingdom not of this world into making our lives work out better for us in the here and now.

We are worried and bothered about so many things because we have forgotten that we are human beings, not human doings! Our primary job is to follow Jesus by getting in His yoke and learning from Him how to be “gentle and humble heart”, then we no longer be “weary and heavy-burdened” by all that presses upon us, but we will find “rest for our souls” in the finished work of Jesus, the sovereign grace of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, today, I am calling you to back to the biblical priority of your life as Image Bearers of God—your relationship with God through the only mediator Jesus Christ.

Hear this invitation from Paul’s words in Romans 12:1-8.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Every member of God’s Family is invited to be absolutely dependent on God (“a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”). This is the only way for His body—the Church—to function under one rightful authority—the headship of Jesus Christ (emphasized in 1 Corinthians 12:12-30).

This is a posture of your heart and a priority of your life. As Pastor Andrew Murray wrote in his 1897 classic Absolute Surrender,

Oh, become nothing in deep reality, and, as a worker, study only one thing—to become poorer and lower and more helpless, that Christ may work all in you. Workers, here is your first lesson: learn to be nothing, learn to be helpless. The  man who has got something is not absolutely dependent; but the man who has got nothing is absolutely dependent. Absolute dependence upon God is the secret of all power in work. The branch has nothing but what it gets from the vine, and you and I can have nothing but what we get from Jesus.[1] 

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Paul calls us to eliminate false worship and competing distractions from your life (seeing messages #2 & #5). Apart from this, members of God’s Family are chasing after the desires of their own hearts, which God wants to give you, but only after you seek Him first (Matthew 6:33).

It’s like I often teach you, your relationships (marriage, family, etc.) are for your holiness before your happiness, your sanctification before your satisfaction, your godliness before your goals. If you try to use people to make yourself happy you will neither be holy nor happy, but if you seek first godliness in your relationships, you will find you are both happy and holy.

Idolatry with people, work, hobbies, etc. is a subtle shift. You can enjoy the best this world has to offer, God has created it for us to enjoy, but let us not be like those in Romans 1:25-32:

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Jesus has established it that the world will know those who are following Him and Him alone. Those who follow Jesus will walk in oneness with Him, just like Jesus walked in oneness with His Father (John 17:11 & 22). Paul knew this and called every follower of Jesus to respond to the grace of God. From Romans 12:3-8,

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

We are absolutely dependent on God and mutually dependent on one another as fellow members! Humbly seeing oneself by the measure of faith given to us by God allows for God’s Family to be at its best and most reflective of God’s glory. We are the one body of Christ being built up in love for the glory of God (Ephesians 4:11-16). This is the work of the Holy Spirit—the faith and the gifts all coming together so that we are seen as one mature body with Jesus Christ as our head.

When the world sees you, they see what you reflect and what you reflect is your god. That’s the way God designed you as His Image Bearer. What are you reflecting? That’s what tells you who or what your god is! And your god is always what is most important to you.

That’s why it is important to realize that Jesus’ conversation with Peter ends with these words, because they are the words that the Gospel of John ends for every believer: “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!”

Listen to the Message here:

To watch the video click HERE

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender, 76.