Jesus Most Important Question

Well good morning everyone. Welcome to Redeemer Community Church, the home edition.
I'm Bob Lapine. I'm the lead pastor. We're grateful that we have technology that
makes it possible for us to still be able to gather together virtually on a day
when we have a snow day like this, and I hope you're all safe and warm and dry.
And we just didn't think it was a good idea to try to get out on the roads or
to risk it with a parking lot that is still snow covered. We'll let things melt
off and hopefully be able to worship together again next Sunday. But this morning we
do want to spend a little time in prayer together and we'll look briefly at God's
word. And again I'm glad we can get together this way. So thanks for joining us
this morning. If you're tuned in and you're not part of our local church but you
were looking for a place to worship this morning and you thought well since we're
home let's see what's going on at Redeemer. Welcome glad to have you joining us and
if we can be of any help to you spiritually we'd love to do that. You can reach
out to us. I imagine you're on our website redeemerlr .org. You can send us an
email info @redeemerlr .org and we'd be happy to get in touch with you.
Pray with you. Do whatever we can to help you in your spiritual journey. So we're
gonna look at one verse of scripture together this morning. Just spend time
meditating on this one verse of scripture. Before we do that,
let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we are grateful again to you for all of
the ways that you provide for us and care for us. Lord, we thank you that in the
midst of this storm that we've gone through. You have kept people safe. We thank
you that there have not been many power outages as of yet, that people have been
able to be housed and cared for and fed. Lord, we thank you for your creation,
for the beauty of your creation, and even as we look out at snow -covered
neighborhoods and streets, we thank you for the magnificence of your beauty. We do
think about people this morning. I'm thinking about those in Los Angeles and the
ongoing battle with the fires there Lord And we don't presume to know your mind on
these things But we do pray for protection and for provision. We pray that you
would be with the firefighters keep them safe We pray for these fires to be
contained and we pray that All of this might stir people's hearts to reconsider you,
your glory, your your power, and might cause them to stop and think about eternity,
and their need to have a relationship with you. So Lord, would you use that in the
midst of these terrible circumstances that are going on in Los Angeles? We continue
to pray for people in our church who are experiencing health challenges, who are
receiving radiation treatments or chemotherapy for those who are going through these
processes. Lord, we pray that you would keep them in your care, that they would
keep their hearts and minds fixed on you, that the peace that passes understanding
would surround them. We pray for healing for their bodies again, and just ask that
you would be with them in a special way during this time. And Lord,
now as we turn our attention to your word. I pray that you would give us ears to
hear, eyes to see what your spirit is saying to us in your word,
and give us hearts to obey. We pray. We ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So if you have a Bible nearby on a device or an actual hardcover edition of the
Bible, I want you to turn to the Gospel of Luke Chapter six, that chapter is
what's called the Sermon on the Plain. You've probably heard of the Sermon on the
Mount in Matthew chapter five, six and seven. Well, this is Luke's version of these
same themes, many of them covered in the Sermon on the Mount, but this is called
the Sermon on the Plain as Jesus is teaching and preaching throughout Galilee, early
in his ministry. And in the middle of the Sermon on the Plain in verse 46, Jesus
asks a provocative question that I think is a good one for us to grapple with this
morning. He says to the people, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord,
and do not do what I tell you?" That's a good question.
Why would anyone say that Jesus is his king, his master,
his Lord, And then when he commands something, ignore that command. Some of you have
been in the military and you know that in the military you have a commanding
officer. In the Army, for example, the commanding officer of a platoon is called the
platoon leader. The commanding officer of a company is a company commander. Commanding
officer of a battalion is the battalion commander. A brigade has a brigade commander.
So imagine that you're a private And you're in the army and your commanding officer
comes to you and says, "I'm your platoon leader." And you say, "Nice to meet you.
How do you do?" And the platoon leader says, "Nice to meet you. I need you to
fall in with the rest of the men. We're going to have inspection now." And you
say, "You know, I'm really busy right now." Or maybe you say, "Yes, sir." And you
salute him, but you just stand there and you don't fall in.
Or you Don't say anything. You just stand there and look at him. Well, what's gonna
happen to somebody in the army who responds to a commanding officer that way?
Who says yes, or who says nothing when he receives his command?
If you refuse to obey in the army, you'll be disciplined. You'll be court -martialed.
You'll be dishonorably discharged eventually. You're not gonna continue as a soldier
in the army if you refuse to obey your commanding officer. In fact,
to call someone a commanding officer and then not obey that person, that's a
contradiction in terms. If you said, "You're my commanding officer," and then when
your commanding officer makes a command, you ignore it, the implication is, "He's not
really your commanding officer." And I think we've become very them to titles that
we use for Jesus. Titles like King and Lord and Master without stopping to think of
what those titles actually mean. They become descriptive titles or just cliches
almost. We don't have monarchs in our day. We don't have lords in our society.
We don't have masters and slaves like they did in Jesus' day. these terms as a
result when we reply them to Jesus and call him a king or a Lord or a master,
they kind of lose their effect. But to call someone your Lord defines his place of
authority over you. If someone is your Lord, you are their servant. If someone is
your master, you are their slave. If someone is your king, you're a subject.
So here is Jesus saying why would you call me your Lord and then not be my
servant? Why would you call me king and then not acknowledge my right to rule and
reign over you? If somebody calls somebody else Lord and then does not obey that
person We would say that person is a wicked or an unrighteous servant. That's what
the Bible says about him You call somebody a king and you don't obey them. You're
an unworthy subject of the king. If you call someone your master and you're their
slave, you're a wicked slave if you don't obey them.
But we call Jesus, king, Lord and master and yet we don't obey him perfectly. In
fact, none of us do. And in fact, I wanna suggest in our time together this
morning, four reasons Why it might be the case that someone would call Jesus Lord
and then not obey him here. Here's the first reason why I think this happens And I
think this is the most common one for most Christians We don't obey Jesus because
even though the spirit is willing The flesh is weak Paul talks about this in Romans
chapter 7 where he says there are things I hate I end up doing. I want to obey,
and yet my flesh doesn't allow me to obey, or my flesh overwhelms me.
The first reason many of us don't obey Jesus, like Paul,
like Peter, who said he would obey and then fell away,
or like James and John, who couldn't stay awake when Jesus said, stay awake with me
here. We give in to our flesh. We don't do battle against the flesh.
We're tempted and we give in to the impulses or the deeds of the flesh.
If we're going to call Jesus Lord, part of that call means that we are going to
intentionally be at war against the impulse of the flesh in our life. And the Bible
talks about this. It tells us to put off those things that are fleshly and put on
those things that are spiritual, to die to the flesh. In fact, the word the the
Puritans use is to mortify the flesh. That means to kill the flesh, to be actively
working to kill the impulses of the flesh, and then at the same time to enliven or
to vivify, that's again the old word that the irritants use, vivify the spirit.
So you, you starve the flesh, you feed the spirit. You do this for the purpose of
godliness. We have to be actively engaged in saying these fleshly impulses,
appetites, desires. I'm going to seek to kill these appetites, to put them off,
to no longer let them have sway over me and I'm going to work to try to enliven
or to feed the impulses of the spirit. So again why would somebody say Jesus is my
Lord and then not do what he says? It's because we're weak, the spirit is willing,
the flesh is weak, and as Christians we want to grow stronger spiritually.
We did a whole series on this back in the fall where we talked about mature
spiritual growth. How do we grow stronger spiritually? It's what God calls us to and
if we're going to respond to Jesus as our Lord we're going to have to strengthen
our spiritual muscles. Here's the second reason why people might say Jesus is my
Lord and then not do what he says. It's not as common but it's a reality. Some
people don't obey Jesus because they're deceived. They have believed a lie. They hear
some smooth -talking charlatan, or they pool their ignorance with other people who are
relying on their own wisdom, and they wind up doing what is right in their own
eyes. They're not obeying Jesus because they have been deceived about what Jesus
expects of them, what Jesus wants from them. In Genesis 3 that was the case when
when the woman when Eve was tempted with the first temptation She was deceived.
She was tricked She she bought the lie of the devil Romans chapter 1 talks about
the same thing It talks about those who have exchanged the truth of God For a lie.
So one reason people don't obey Jesus is because they have believed the lie.
They have not been diligent to pursue the truth and have become susceptible to a
lie. When I was growing up there was comedian on television whose name was Flip
Wilson and some of you who are my age remember what he was famous for. He used to
do a routine where anytime he was doing something that was clearly wrong he would
he would stop and he would say, "Well, the devil made me do it." Well, there's a
real sense where the devil doesn't make you do it, but the devil who is a liar
and the father of lies and a tempter does what he's doing all the time, lying and
tempting and causing you to weaken in the face of this.
He's tricking you. He's deceiving you. We have to be alert to the schemes of the
devil. So how do we keep from being deceived. Well, you keep yourself from being
deceived by immersing yourself in the truth.
You've probably heard this illustration, but I'm told that FBI agents, in order to
spot a counterfeit, they spend a lot of time looking at authentic bills and seeing
the uniqueness of an authentic piece of currency. They don't spend a lot of time
with the counterfeits, they just need to know the real things so they can spot the
counterfeit more easily. In order to be less susceptible to the lies of the evil
one, we have to be immersed in what is true. We have to decide that what God says
is true is more true than what we think or what we feel or what our intuition
tells us. We have to be committed to the truth of God's word, we have to be
committed to knowing God's word and believing God's word. That's what the walk of
faith is all about. I was talking to a college student a while back and he was
talking about friends who get drunk and I said, "Do you think that's a sin?" And
this college student said, "What can be?" And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" And
he said, "Well, you know, if a husband and wife were having dinner at their house
and they open a bottle of wine and they get a little tipsy. He said, "Is that a
sin?" I don't think so. Besides, where's the line between getting tipsy and being
drunk? Well, here's what I wound up saying to that young man.
Are you believing what the Bible says is true about the debauchery of drunkenness?
Or are you asking yourself, what seems right to me?
How do I process this so that I can get closer to the line without crossing over
it? We have to be committed to the truth of God's word, not the legalism, not to
saying, well, here's where we must draw the line when the Bible doesn't draw the
line in a particular place. But we need to be committed to God's word being true.
And even when our instincts tell us differently or we'd like it to say something
different, or we're still committed to the truth of God's word.
That's one of the subtle ways we can deceive ourselves. Let me give you a third
way that I think people, a third reason why I think people would say Jesus is my
Lord and then not obey him. And it's a particular reason that I think Jesus had in
mind in this sermon. There are some people who will say, "Jesus is my Lord," and
then not obey him because they are pseudo disciples. They are not true disciples of
Jesus. They like Jesus well enough. They like being in the church.
They like being around church people. They like maybe teaching a class or being
recognized as a good person because they go to church. They like fitting in with
the church folks, the benefits of being around godly people, but when you dig below
the surface what you find is that this person has constructed a fine -looking church
going life on a foundation that will not support his life. In fact Jesus follows
this whole question about why would you call me Lord Lord and not do what I say
by talking about the one who builds his house on the sand versus the one who
builds his house on the rock. And this gets to the heart of why some call Jesus
Lord and don't do what he says. It's because the foundation on which they have
built their life is a wrong foundation. John MacArthur called Matthew 721 where Jesus
says, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, "will enter the kingdom of heaven."
He says that's one of the most frightening passages in the Bible. Martin Lloyd -Jones
called it a sober and sobering passage. So these are people who are self -deceived.
They think that somehow they're disciples of Jesus, but in reality they're not. They
call him Lord. They may be people who speak publicly about the goodness of God.
They may be people who have cast out demons or have done miracles. That's Matthew's
description. description. People who come to Jesus say, "We did this, we did this,
we did this." Jesus said, "You've not done the will of my father and you have
practiced lawlessness." Professing that Jesus is Lord is necessary for salvation,
but it's not sufficient for salvation. Did you catch that? We must agree that Jesus
is Lord in order to be saved, but simply professing that he is Lord is not
sufficient for our salvation. According to Romans 10, no one who is saved is not,
no one is saved unless they confess that Jesus is Lord, but it's possible to
confess that Jesus is Lord and not be converted. You can make an intellectual
declaration that he's Lord. You can have an initial momentary response that he's
Lord. John in his Gospel in chapter 2 talks about when Jesus was in Jerusalem at
the Passover during the feast. He says many believed in his name observing the signs
he was doing, but Jesus on his part was not entrusting himself to them for he knew
all men.
A verbal profession of faith is evidence of the work of God in somebody's life,
but it's not conclusive. religious activities will almost certainly be associated with
genuine faith but as the Pharisees show that's not conclusive. In fact let me tell
you Jonathan Edwards said here are the things that a genuinely converted person will
do or will look like. He wrote a book called "Religious Affections" and in that
book he said someone who is genuinely converted will demonstrate the supernatural kind
of love for others that Jesus talks about in this sermon. So true repentance,
true faith, is going to manifest itself in a particular kind of supernatural love
for others. True faith will be characterized by a decline in sinful patterns in
someone's life and a growing presence of holiness in that person's life. True
conversion will be evidenced by a devotion to service to God, and that will become
the main business of somebody's life.
And true repentance and faith will be manifested through persevering through trials.
In fact, that's one of the key indicators that somebody is genuinely saved is you
go through trials and you hang on to Jesus, you don't fall short.
I don't know if you've heard about Permajack Foundation repair, the company that you
hire if you're having foundation problems, but I went to their website and Permajack
is a system that stabilizes the foundation of structures that are settling, such as
a house or a building, and And to permajack your house, they drive steel piers into
the bedrock or equal load -bearing strata to provide underlying support.
That's what each of us needs in our lives. We need a permajack foundation that
we're building our lives on, building your house on the rock in order for it to
stand. We need genuine conversion. So why would people say Jesus is Lord and then
not do what He says? I think it's because they have fallen into the trap of
thinking that they are pseudo disciples, and they need to recognize the reality of
the fact that their verbal profession of faith is less than it should be.
Now I say all of this because I think we need to look at our lives and ask the
question, do we ever call Jesus Lord Lord and not do what he says? That's true for
all of us. There's a reason why when we gather for corporate worship, we confess
our sins on a Sunday morning because all of us fall short of the glory of God.
All of us don't do what Jesus says. I love the old Anglican prayer of confession
that says, Father, we've sinned against you in thought word and deed by what we
have things we've done and things we've left undone. All of us can look at our
lives and say we fall short in terms of honoring God. So when we talk about
somebody who calls Jesus Lord but does not do what he says, all of us can raise
our hands and say at some level that's me. This is where the gospel comes in
because Jesus says "I know you're weak." Remember when the disciples fell asleep in
the garden? He knew their weakness. He compensates for their weakness. When Peter
denied him three times, Jesus came back along and restored him. That's the good news
of the gospel. That in Christ, when we fall short, we have a God who is full of
grace and mercy and compassion, who knows our frailties, and who restores us.
But it's also important for us to be looking at this question and saying, when I
call Jesus Lord, am I acknowledging that he's my commanding officer? Am I saying
that I'm gonna follow what he tells me to do? That I'm gonna obey what he's
saying? We don't want to to casually call him Lord and then ignore what he is
calling you to do. We should be starting each day by asking ourselves this question,
Lord Jesus, you are my Lord. What's your assignment for me today? How can I serve
you? How can I love you well? Let's pray together.
Lord, we thank you for your word and for the sobering challenge that is provided
for us in this passage. We don't want to be people who are casual in a profession
of faith. We want to be people where that profession of faith is real and true and
meaningful. We want it to be at the heart of who we are. We want to build our
homes on the rock of a genuine conversion, not on the shifting sand of some
momentary emotional experience. So I pray for everybody who is watching this service
this morning, that we would do the heart examination to say, are there,
first of all, is my professional faith genuine? Do I really love the Lord? Do I
fit those categories that we talked about this morning? Do I see an ongoing death
to sin in my life? Am I growing in grace? Do I have a supernatural love for
others? But I also pray that as we look at this question that each of us would be
examining our own hearts to make sure that we're in the faith and then that we
would, if in fact there's any reason we're not sure about that, that we would cry
out to you and that you would do a genuine work in our hearts, a transforming work
in our hearts to convert us and to save us, that we might be genuine followers of
you, that we would be people who, when we call you Lord, we would do what you
say. I ask this in your name.
Well, I hope the rest of your Sunday is good. I hope that the sun comes out and
melts off some of this snow, and that the roads become passable, and we can get
out and be back together again next Sunday. Thanks for joining us this morning for
an abbreviated worship service. Again, if you have any needs or cares,
any concerns, or if you'd like to know more about our church, we'd love to have
you get in touch with us. Info @redeamerlr .org. That email address will come to us
and we can get back in touch with you, or feel free to reach out to any of the
staff. We always love hearing from you. Hope you have a great week and hope the
rest of your Sunday goes well. We'll see you next Sunday.