Avoiding Spiritual Complacency

I want to read a passage from Matthew chapter 26 if you would find that in your Bibles. I want to start with verse 31 and read through verse 35. Matthew chapter 26 verses 31 through 35. Well, I didn't even say anything good yet. Wait until I say something good. Then you can say amen. Makes me think I'm doing bad. Jesus' disciples had a really difficult time. They had good things happen to them and right on the heels of that, bad things happened to them. They had some wonderful things happen to them and right on the heels of that, bad things happened to them. Jesus said to them, now the time is coming when I'm going to be crucified. This is it. It's here. That had to be overwhelming to them. Their leader for three years that they'd lived with every day was telling them he's going to be crucified. It had to be a shocking thing for them. He'd been warning them but now he's saying the time is here now. Then immediately the very next thing they went to a meal and Jesus was there eating and a woman came in. She took some very expensive perfume, thousands of dollars worth of it, and she broke the bottle and poured it on Jesus to anoint him, to give him this honor, great honor for him. In the middle of this, great gift that this lady gives to Jesus. The disciples start quarreling. Judas started it and he said, why in the world are you taking all this money and pouring it out on Jesus and it's gone when we could feed a lot of people who are hungry. So they didn't enjoy even the presence of Jesus' great honor that is given to him. They came into the city of Jerusalem and Jesus said we're going to go now and celebrate the Passover. They sat down at this meal. Here's Jesus who is telling them the story of Israel's escape from captivity in Egypt. They're reliving it step by step in this great celebration of God's healing power in their lives. And then in the middle of this service, Jesus says to them, one of you is going to betray me. Boy, in the middle of the celebration that would put a chill on everything that's taking place. All of them began to say, is it me? Surely not me. Surely not me. Jesus said to Judas, yes, it's you. Jesus knew what was taking place. And then he moved on to the end of this service in which he changed the Passover meal just a little bit. And he took the bread and said, this my body, take and eat. And he was saying to them, I've come as a human being into this world and I'm giving myself to you as if my life were broken apart, my body was broken apart in little pieces. I'm giving everything for you. And then he took the drink and he said, this is my blood, given to enact the new covenant with you. Now this was a very special thing for them. Jeremiah, hundreds of years before, had said, someday God is going to do away with the old covenant made at Mount Sinai and make a whole new covenant for the people of God. Jesus was saying to them, the prophecy of Jeremiah is fulfilled right here in this room. Now can you imagine us reading in the Bible something that happened thousands of years ago and us to believe that that promise was being fulfilled in this very room? That had to be staggering for them. Jesus said, this new contract or covenant is given so that you receive forgiveness of sin. Everything you've ever done in violation of what I want now is paid for. What a momentous event. They get up from this table and then they start out away from the room to the mount where they're going to stay. People had to stay sort of in the city of Jerusalem on Passover day and this was a place nearby where they could stay for the rest of the night, probably about midnight whenever this took place. And Jesus is not through with them. He says to these people, I want you to understand that I know that all the promises you've made to me, you will break. That your promises to live in obedience to me are not going to last. Failure on your part is inevitable. After the great excitement they had, that had to be a really shocking experience. This is what Jesus said. Then Jesus told them, this very night you will fall away on account of me. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I've risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. Peter replied, even if all fall away of you on account of you, all fall away on account of you, I never will. I tell you the truth, Jesus answered, this very night before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times. But Peter declared, even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you. And all the other disciples did the same. There is a fact of human nature. And that is that whenever you do something a long time and you do it often, you just get complacent about it. I don't know if you adults can remember whenever you got the opportunity to start driving. You get in the car, if you had one of those standard shifts, which some of you are old enough, that's all they had back then. You start out and you get your everything braced and you try to get the gears right and let the clutch out right and you're all tense about it, driving down the road, just looking carefully at everything around you. Fifteen years go by, 30,000 miles go by, you go out and get in your car, your mind's on something else, you turn on the key, start the car, drive down the road, and you haven't thought one single thing about driving. You're just doing it by automatic reflex. You become complacent about it. It's the same way when you start doing any kind of job. You start out, you're really careful, you try to be careful with everything you do, but after a while, when you settle into the routine, you become complacent. I read about a company the other day that had started a business trying to help businesses train people in their jobs so they would cut down on their accidents on the job and they claimed that these little training events that they give them reduced their accidents 25% in the businesses where they were by just reminding people of the things that they did when they started the job. We get complacent. We start out in our life filled with enthusiasm about anything and the more you do it and the more routine it becomes, the less it seems to stimulate us. The sad part is it's true about most everything in our life. Marriages, when you start, express love often and frequently. Time goes by, they're less and less, and just get complacent in our relationships. It's also true spiritually for people. Whenever you come to find Christ and you have never had Him in your life and all of a sudden you live with someone who's so close to you and the spiritual realities are so real to you, they're just powerful. I remember going to Butch after he started coming to see me. He lived in a house on the east side of town. He said, I stayed up all night reading the Bible. I just couldn't put it down. I bet you don't do that anymore. Now he's lied. Not only is he not reading the Bible, he's lying to us. It just happens to us. You start at the end of the routine. Even you develop a lifetime of prayer, come to church on Sunday school, Sunday morning, Wednesday night, Sunday night. You grow in your Christian faith. All those things don't seem nearly as important as they did when you first started. There's a complacency, a normal complacency that sets in on all parts of our life. And you have to really work hard to make sure you don't get that way. That's why a company develops a program to train people on the job so they do not get complacent. And they make millions of dollars doing this. God doesn't want us to become complacent, but we all do. You just settle into a routine to where things in the spiritual world become normal to you and they no longer have the appeal of newness. Well, Jesus is dealing with this very issue with his own followers. He's been with them three years now. He's talking to them here in the way that God always does. He helps us to know the things that are going to happen to us to prepare for it. See, that's why Bible reading in the morning is important. It's why prayer in the morning is important. It's because it's in those moments that God who knows the things that are going on. In this event, God knew what was going on in the Pharisees' minds. He knew what was going on in the minds of the people on the Sanhedrin. And he was telling Jesus that now is the time and this is the day that all this is going to happen. Jesus, closer to God than the rest of his disciples, is given the task of helping them get ready for what's going to happen that very night. Now, here's a very important thing you need to learn about God. He wants you to be prepared for the things that you're going to face. He wants that so much that just like Jesus was there with these disciples, so the Holy Spirit of God, one of the Trinity, is available for every follower of his. The same Holy Spirit that communicated the Father's will to Jesus in this event is now available to all of us who are followers of Christ. So that as you live your life, God wants to prepare you every day for the events that are going to take place. So you get in the middle of the day and everything goes differently than you thought it would and it overwhelms you. God wants to prepare you for those events. He may not tell you the things that are going to happen, but he will prepare you for the events that take place. He might say to you now, remember this is important, that you be patient with people that are around you and they're especially obnoxious. And you may have that as you read the scripture or you pray that morning. Then in the middle of the day, lo and behold, the most obnoxious person you work with does something that's really terrible to you and you get angry about it. Then the Holy Spirit reminds you, I warned you about this. Here's the way I want you to react. God is in the business of guiding the lives of his followers, just like Jesus did here. He wanted to let them know what was going to take place. This is his instruction to them. Then Jesus told them, This very night you will fall away on account of me, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. Now, what Jesus was doing was preparing them for what was going to happen. He knew that the trial was going to take place and he knew that the crucifixion was planned for him. And he knew that there would be tremendous pressure on the people who were there because all of them were of the same mind. This man must be killed for the benefit of this country. And that every person who was with Jesus would also feel danger for themselves and they would face a great risk of acknowledging that they even knew who Jesus was. So he was warning them, You are going to face this trial and you will fail. That's not a pleasant word for any one of us to hear. But the fact is that every one of us fails Jesus. There are times and events in our lives when we know what we should do but we don't. There are times and events in our lives when we know what we're not supposed to do but we do. What Jesus is alerting his disciples to is that failure is inevitable to you and tonight is one of those times in which you are not strong enough to face the temptation that comes to you. I'll tell you this too. There's not anybody listening who is strong enough to resist all the temptations that come to you. You may master some of those and get the best of them but I'll promise you in every one of our lives there are times, events, and people who just get to us. And no matter how much we love God and no matter how much we want to live the right way and have the right attitude when those times come we collapse. Jesus knew his disciples. He knew what they were like. He knew what would happen when they came to the time whenever they might face their own death if they acknowledged that they knew Jesus. And he knew that they were not strong enough to face this. And so he confronted them with the reality of their failure. The word that's used here to fall away is a word that's found in the Greek language that describes a person who's walking down the road in the night and they stumble over a rock that's left in the middle of the road and fall down. It's our word for scandal, a disaster, destruction. You're going to be going down the road thinking everything is okay and tonight something's going to pop up in front of you and you're going to fall over it flat on your face. You're going to be overwhelmed by what comes. But don't be surprised about this, Jesus said. In fact he said Zephaniah years ago prophesied. He said, quoting Zephaniah, Zechariah chapter 13 verse 7, Zechariah said, Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. Now what he's talking about is just kind of a basic principle. If you have a leader that's very strong and people are following that leader, if you take the leader away there's confusion that comes. Back in the Revolutionary War, Marion Fox, they call him the Swamp Fox, was leading American revolutionaries against the British armies. Now the way the British army operates, and all our armies operated that way at that time, you march out, get ready to fight in an open field and you line up a long line of people. I don't know how they could ever stand to do this but they did. Two people, two lines, front line would kneel and the commanding officer would tell them line up, will give the order for them to line up, for a first line to kneel, mount your rifles, load your rifles, all these instructions and then whenever the soldiers got close enough he would say, first line fire. They would fire. Second line then fire. Then they would fire at will. The Americans didn't have that kind of trained soldiers. They didn't have enough soldiers. So he had to figure out a different deal. So what he figured out was, we'll go out and we'll act like we're going to fight these people and when the war gets ready to start and the bullets start, we'll back off. And I'll place in the trees good marksmen. They had good marksmen because they were hunters. And then as the soldiers progressed toward us, the commanding officers who were always in the back on their soldiers, our snipers will just kill them. And they kill the general in one of those battles and the soldiers seeing that their general, the commanding officer who was going to tell them what to do, was killed, they just all ran different directions. Kill the leader and the followers will scatter. It's just a principle. Now when Jesus uses this passage from the Old Testament, he changes it a little. I will kill the shepherd, Jesus quotes Zechariah as saying. He didn't say it's from Zechariah but he quotes the passage but he changes it instead of strike the shepherd to say I will strike the shepherd. This is an important change. What Jesus wanted to say to his followers was, do not think that the events that are going to take place tonight are by random chance or that the devil is in charge of the world. God has said I will strike the shepherd. So whenever this night comes and you see that they've captured me and taken me on trial and are ready to kill me, do not think the world is outside of God's control. I am still in this process and I have chosen my son to give his life. It's really an important thing for us to understand. If you've given your life to live in obedience to Christ and day by day you're trying to listen to him and ask his direction and guidance for yourself, you may come across times and circumstances that are absolutely overwhelming. And you may feel like your whole life is out of control. Remember this. Nothing in this world is outside of God's control. It will be out of your control. It will be overwhelming to you. But it's neither out of God's control nor is it overwhelming to him. So when you're following him and you have a leader who's in control and knows what's taking place and knows how to get through it, you ought to have all the comfort in the world that God is there in the middle of your disaster. That's what he was giving them. The confidence and comfort of knowing that I am there. I will strike the shepherd and you will flee. Now, God knew that these men were not capable of resisting the temptations that they faced. Jesus knew it too. God knows about your life that you are not capable of resisting the temptations that Satan brings to you. You may make a pledge to God to say, I'm going to give you my life and live in obedience to you. And you mean it with all your life. But then a situation comes up in which it's just so hard for you. And you know that you should do one thing, but you do another. You know you shouldn't do something, but you do it. The power that you have is not there. And God knows that there are times you're going to fail. What Jesus said to them after that gives us a clue as to what he wants. But, after he said that, he said, but, a different direction, after I've risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. If Jesus' death was like the death of any other person, it would be the end. But he gave them this word of hope. After you've stumbled and after you've fallen and after you've scattered, I will be raised from the dead and I will come to lead you to Galilee. What he's telling them is, it's not over when I'm dead. I'm going to be raised from the dead and then I'll be there to lead you. Now, for us, it's a different story. It's not the resurrection of Jesus that gives us this hope because he's not going to come physically to us. What gives us hope is the reality that the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, that gave him the direction, is available to every follower of Jesus Christ. If you've surrendered your life to him and said, I'm going to live in obedience to you, then the Holy Spirit comes in your life and he's with you all the time. And when you're in the middle of that failure and disaster and you feel so ashamed and unsure of yourself, stop then to remember God is here. He's with me. He's present in my life. Then Jesus said, Then Jesus said, I will go ahead of you to Galilee. Now, that may not mean much to us, but he's talking about sheep and shepherds. If you drive cattle, you have to get behind them because if you get in front of them, they'll go wherever they want to go. You have to get behind them and make them go where they're supposed to. If you lead sheep, you get in front of them. The shepherd walks in front. They know who you are and they follow you. He was saying to them, So the shepherd has been killed and you've been scattered. I will be raised from the dead and I will come again to gather you together and I will lead you to the next step in your life. When you're overwhelmed with the disaster and shame of what you've done or what you've thought or what you did not do, when that disaster comes to you, as a follower of Christ, He knew your strength. He knew your weakness. He knew you would fail. And He's right there with you to be able to say, Okay, let's get it back together. I want you to acknowledge your weakness and failure. I want you to ask for forgiveness for it. I want you to ask for the power to live a stronger, better life. And I want you now to do what you're supposed to do. Put this behind you and follow Me. He never intends that these disasters would overwhelm us. He intends that we will be stronger because of these things taking place. We will learn from them. We'll learn our own weakness and we'll learn the strength of God. That's what His plan is. Jesus teaches us by this event in the disciples' lives exactly how to deal with the failure that is going to happen in the life of every follower of Christ. But there's a problem. Sometimes we just get so filled with our own abilities that we pay no attention to God. Jesus warned them, every one of you are going to stumble tonight. Peter, who was the leader, and this is a problem oftentimes with leaders. They feel some kind of pressure to be bigger and stronger than everybody else. And here's Peter, the spokesman of the group, one of the leaders of the group, one of the most prominent of the group. Peter replied, even if all fall away on account of you, I never will. I mean, you just heard Jesus say this. And he turns to Jesus who said this and said, you're wrong. You may be right about all these other weak-kneed followers of yours, but boy, I am really strong and I will never give in. That kind of complacency is a guarantee for disaster. What Peter said is, I am capable. Peter didn't know his own weakness. He didn't know his own strength. He thought he was stronger than he was, but he was weaker than he thought he was. Disaster loomed. The great problem comes, you know, whenever we have great times in our lives, spiritual victories, spiritual successes, great danger for Sunday school teachers, pastors, leaders in a church. You may be doing the work of God and great things can happen, and you begin to feel like, you know, I can really do this. I'm really strong. I'm going to be able to make this work. I don't have to do all the routines that everybody else has to do, read the Bible every day, pray. I read one time, it had a survey of pastors, average pastor prayed five minutes a day. It's a disaster. You get so used to reading the Bible and studying the Bible and talking about religious things as a teacher, preacher, that you forget that you need the strength greater than your own and the wisdom greater than your own to do this. That was Peter. In his own mind, I think he believed what he was telling. And I think in his own mind he intended to do this. He just didn't know the power of Satan or the weakness of his own heart. That's why you experience sometimes the great things in your life that are so wonderful and so fulfilling, and then it seems like the very next day the bottom falls out. That's the way it happens. Satan attacks us, oftentimes in the great times of victory in our lives. It's not like you're on a scale of 1 to 10 at 10 one day and next at 1. It's like you're at 10 one day and the next day at minus 10. And that's overwhelming to us. They had gone through these wonderful things with Jesus, and then they were going to face death, their own death, if they admitted they knew Him. They had no idea how devastating that would be to them. They went from the highest mountain to the deepest pit of fear. Peter couldn't imagine what it was like. He'd never been in that circumstance before. Jesus said, Peter, I have to tell you what is really true. This very night, before the rooster crows, that would have been the night from 12 till 3 in the morning, this very night, during that period of time, you will disown me, which the word means completely deny Jesus. Absolutely say, I don't even know anything about Him. You will do that three different times. Peter was so confident of himself and so self-assured, we might even say so arrogant, that he replied to Jesus a second time, even if I have to die with you, I will never completely disown you or deny you. But he wasn't alone. All the other disciples did the same thing. When Jesus was taken to trial, when they captured Jesus, Peter did try to defend Him. He picked up a sword and tried to defend and fight for Jesus. Cut off a man's ear and Jesus stopped him. And then they took Him to trial. All the other disciples ran away and hid. Really courageous bunch. I think they all meant it. Like every one of us who stand in the baptistry and say, Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life from now on. We mean it. But we just don't know what's going to happen the next day. We don't know what's going to happen five years from now. We don't know how hard it is to be faithful to Him. And everyone was sure they would. But you see, Jesus tried to prepare them. He said, you're going to fail. Don't be afraid of the failure. Now let me give you just a picture of two people. Judas, who betrayed Jesus for some money, he was sorry that he did it. He tried to give the money back to the people at the temple, but he never rejoined the disciples to try to continue the calling Jesus placed on him. He was upset that he'd done the wrong thing. He never asked for forgiveness for it, nor did he resume his disciples' life. And he was so overwhelmed that he killed himself. Peter denied that he even knew who Jesus was three times and cussed once when people pressed him about it. But when he realized what he did, he was brokenhearted about his action. He wanted forgiveness. He wept bitterly. And he came back to the same group who knew that he denied Jesus three times and said, OK, this is who I am, but I'm not giving up. I made a promise to follow Jesus, and I will follow Him to the end of my life. He was forgiven and given a key place in the leadership of the church the rest of his life. You see, it's not that you can't fail. It's that what you do with your failure determines your future. If you want to fail and feel sorry for yourself and moan and cry, you can. But if you want to get something different to take place in your life, you stop and you admit your failure, openly acknowledge it to God, ask for forgiveness for Him, commit yourself anew to live in obedience to Him, recognizing your weakness, you say to God, Please help me to be stronger. Give me the strength that I do not have to live. It wasn't many days after all this took place. They were gathered in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit had fallen on them. And you know who stands to preach? Who stands in front of the very same people he denied that he knew Jesus before it was Peter. He got back up in his place. He did what God asked him to do. And the courage of the Spirit of God made him able to look the same people in the eye and say, Not only do I know Him, I will tell you He's the Son of God sent to redeem us. Judas goes to his grave in shame and despair. Peter goes on to live his life, a glorious follower of the Lord, a powerful influence on all of the Christians to follow. You have the same options when you fail God. You can wallow around in your misery. You can even ask for forgiveness but not accept it. Still hold yourself guilty for what those things are that you're asking forgiveness for. But if you'll ask for forgiveness and then forgive yourself as God forgives you, and if you'll simply get up from your misery and your pain and renew your devotion to be obedient to God, you will find your life becomes the same useful tool that Peter's was. God says, I want you to come and follow me. But I'll promise you, even though you stand and say, I give my life to Jesus Christ, even though you stand in the baptistery and say, my old life is over and my new life has started, you are going to fail. But this is how I will handle your failure. Do not be afraid. I am with you. I will guide you. Now if you've made that kind of promise to God and you look at your life and you say, boy, I'm not living up to that, welcome to the group. But what are you doing about it? Are you saying to God, okay, I failed you. Forgive me. But I'll tell you, tomorrow I'm going to get up and do the very best I can to be obedient and faithful to you. If you do that, you will find God's forgiveness and a life of useful power. Would you bow your heads please for a moment? The first thing that makes you a follower of Christ is to begin by saying, I know that my life has been directed primarily by the choices I want to make. I haven't taken in consideration what you want in my life before. But beginning right now, I want to begin to follow you. Sitting right where you are, you can make that promise to God. You can say, I want you to enter my life. I want you to direct me. I want you to provide for me. I want you to protect me. I want you to help my life be worthwhile, meaningful, valuable. And I want you to work with me in everything that comes up that I might have the assurance that you're going to take care of me. That's a promise you can make to God right now. If you do, you begin this journey. But I'll tell you, you'll fail. But today you've learned how to handle that failure so that in every failure you become stronger and stronger and stronger. For Jesus will lead you. Maybe you're in the middle of one of those failures for yourself. You can feel disoriented, unsure. You can feel overwhelmed. What God wants you to feel is confident. Tell him what mistake you've made, what sin you've committed. Ask for his forgiveness. Ask for his strength. And then begin again doing exactly what you're supposed to. So, Father, we thank you that you know us better than ourselves, that you know how to be able to help us to live, face the things that we face. What I ask for now for me and all of us here is that you would tell us today, like you did those disciples, what you want from us. Give us the courage to do what you tell us. For those who've never begun this life with you, I ask today that you would let them know that this is the day you want them to become your follower. Make that overwhelmingly clear to every person. For those, Father, who've made this promise to you, search our hearts, help us to see our own weaknesses. Tell us what we need to do right now and help us to focus on that area of our life. And, Father, we want to encourage and support everyone who's following you. If there's anyone here today who needs prayer, who needs to make public the promises they're making to you, we're going to provide in this time an opportunity for them to come, for us to pray for them, for them to make openly and publicly the promise they make to you. So if there's someone you want to do that today, make that really clear to them that this is the opportunity that you've made for them. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.