The Story - Chapter 23

people. Joseph and his family, every year, took this trip. Not all the Israelites did, they were supposed to, but not all of them did. What you see in this family is a family that said, God, we know what you've told us to do, and we are going to do it regardless of the cost. And that's the foundation stone that Jesus had for his own lifestyle. He saw in his parents faithful people dedicated to serving God. He saw in his parents people willing to do whatever God asked them to do, regardless of the danger, of the cost, or the difficulty. He had the foundation in his life that allowed him to have the ministry that he had. That's why we have our Sunday school programs, that's why we have our Wednesday night programs, that's why we're concerned to be able to teach our children how to trust God at a very early age, when they learn to trust God for the things that have happened in life, like the storms that come, or the loss of family members, or even pets. We're teaching them from the very beginning what it means to trust God, to build that foundation, because the problems that happen to you after your past elementary school do not get easier, they get harder. Jesus had underneath his own life that foundation stone of a family that cared about obedience to God. But it's not impossible for you if you don't have that kind of background or your own family nature. You can build that yourself. And that's what it means to come to follow Christ, is you come to the place in your life where you say, I want to place my entire life in your hands, and I want to build my life on the things that you say are right, and I want to get out of my life on the things that you say are wrong. But before you can be engaged in the ministry God has for you, that's what has to happen. You have to lay in your life the foundation stones that allow you to do the things God wants you to do. Jesus grew up in that family, twelve years old, he was already clearly, deeply interested in the things of the Father in heaven. Not only his earthly family, but the Father in heaven. But the Lord did not start him on his real mission in life for a long time. He grew up, started his own career in the construction business, and he waited until he was thirty years old. And I don't know why God did that, maybe he was waiting for the right time, maybe he was waiting for maturity in Jesus. We know now that late twenties, a person's mind gets to where you can make good choices and decisions. Maybe God was waiting until his own son got to the place where he had the full capacity to do everything he needed to. We don't know. At thirty years of age, Jesus now begins his ministry with that foundation firmly and fully in place. He goes to John the Baptist and he wants to announce his commitment to the mission that God has given him. He was baptized to show his old life of the construction man was over and his new life of the Messiah was beginning. I think that was a part of what was taking place. And whenever Jesus finished that baptism, then the Holy Spirit took him out into the wilderness. In Luke chapter four, the story is told of what took place when Jesus went there. Chapter four of Luke verses one through twelve. Jesus had just come out of the water. The Holy Spirit in visible form had come to indicate that the Spirit of God was in this man's life. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, and when it means full of the Holy Spirit, it means controlled completely by the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert. The Spirit is actively now guiding Jesus' life, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to them, If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered, It is written, Man does not live on bread alone. The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered, It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus answered, It says, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Jesus was in the wilderness forty days and nights. He was tempted of the devil. Now what does the devil tempt you to do? He tempts you to do the opposite of what you know you are supposed to do. What Jesus did in the wilderness, we don't know. He didn't give us a detailed explanation about all that happened, but there were forty days and nights. Such turmoil in Jesus' life that he didn't even eat. What was going on here was that the Holy Spirit had brought him there to find out what his mission was about. Satan at every point of the Father's instruction to him was trying to get him to deny the role that he was to take and to take another. Here we have just three examples of that kind of temptation. The temptation to do what you think is the best thing. To do what you think is safe. Now he was out there a long time, forty days and forty nights. I try to figure out how long that is. And I say he slept eight hours every day. He was out there in communication with the Father for the equivalent of what would be eleven college courses. Like I went to school three hours a week for twenty weeks. He was listening to the Father all that time. And the devil was attacking everything the Father was saying in his life. The Father could teach Jesus because Jesus had come to say, I lay my life in your hands. You can begin the ministry and mission that God has given you in this world with the foundation that has been laid in your life of the knowledge of the scriptures and everything God wants you to know. But there is more to it than that. Excuse me. The training that God needs to give you. He needs to help you understand what your role is. There was no model for Jesus' life. No one ever wrote a story saying this is what Jesus is supposed to do. This is all he is supposed to accomplish. And I will tell you the truth about yourself. There has never been a book about your life either. Telling you what you are going to do in the future. What your next day is going to be like. What the Father was doing with Jesus was teaching him how to listen to him. How to live according to the instructions he learned in the Bible. A lot of people know the Bible. They don't know how to live it. They don't know how to trust God. They don't know how to put into practice the things he has told them they should do. They know what the Bible says, but they just can't live it. I have heard of people who have told me about their family lives. They would have a family member, brother, cousin, aunt, uncle, mom or dad. They knew the Bible and when they got really roaring drunk they would preach the Bible and teach the Bible and tell about the Bible. But they could not do what the Bible said they should do. What Jesus was learning is not only the scriptures that he had already learned from his parents in the synagogues, but he was learning from the Father how to put those in practice when the storms hit. How to take care of it when you have to walk on water and no one else has ever done that before. How you can have the confidence to take a little bread and fish and feed thousands of people. He was learning in those moments not about those experiences, but how to be able to know what God wanted you to do when he told you. To know the difference between your own mind and his. To know the difference between Satan's words and God's words. That course that he had, everyone needs to take. You need to learn how to tell the difference from the voice of God, from your own mind and your own will. What I am trying to do in the church is teach ourselves that we do not operate by what you want or what you like, but what God tells us is right. If you do not have that, you will have fighting in your homes, you will have fighting in the church, you will have differences of opinion and people fight to the death over them. This church split one time because they were trying to decide whether or not they should build a building years and years ago in the 60s. Those that did not want to build a building left the church and went out and built a church building for them to be in. If you were in the middle of that fight, it made sense to them, but it is stupid to us. If you do not learn how to know the difference between what you like and want and what God likes and what he wants, you will be caught in that stuff all the time of your life. Jesus was learning it. We have a couple of examples of what Satan did to him. He said, gosh, you are so hungry, you have been out here all this time, look at these rocks. You know, you are the son of God. You could say, let there be the sun and the sun, you could say these rocks, let there be bread and it could be bread. Satan was saying, God has given you all this power, why don't you use it for yourself? It is kind of like someone in charge of the money who has taken a few dollars on their own, you know, using it for themselves. Jesus made it clear that a man did not live by the bread alone, but he lived by what God says was the right thing and the wrong thing. He was tempted also to avoid this big suffering he was going to have to go through. Satan said, you go up and you get on the roof of the highest point in Jerusalem and you jump off, God is not going to let you die, he will save you. Everyone will say, this must be the Messiah. You can fulfill God's purpose, but do it a simpler, easier way, one that you think is better than God's. That was the temptation. A lot of times you come to the place where you know what you should do, but you don't want to do it because it is hard. So you figure out there is a way you can do it easier and get the same result that you think God wants. That is what Jesus was dealing with. He knew to stop and say, no, that is not what you do, the word of God is what I follow. What Jesus was going through in this small place in his life was fighting to discover, am I going to take the message of God and that alone in my life? Or am I going to do what I want or other people around me want and all through his life Jesus was faced with this. His own disciples often said, you don't know what you are talking about. People around him, religious leaders, people who knew the Bible backward and forward were telling him he was demonic. He had to have such a firm grip on the reality of God's presence in his life that nothing could turn him aside. You are not going to be successful in your ministry whether it is raising your children, having a marriage or helping God through the church and the work he has given you to do until you have a grip on God and you know how to tell the difference between what he wants from you and what you want for yourself and what everybody else around you thinks they want. Jesus had that grip and only then was he ready then to begin the work that the Father had given him. Nothing was written out about it. He didn't know exactly what all these rules were but he knew how to listen to God. He knew that everything that he came to, if God wanted him to do something, it would be clear and plain and he would understand it and when he did it, it would be absolutely the right thing. Jesus had a job to do but he knew that he couldn't do it alone. It is another big mistake people make. God has called me to do this. I want to jump in and do it sometimes in church. You get so overwhelmed and burdened that you just get worn out serving God because we try to do it on our own. If you are ever going to be successful in the ministry you have, whatever it is, you have to have people around you to support you and encourage you and to help you. So what Jesus did in the very beginning, one of the first things that he did was he went looking for the people that God had for him to help him. That is a good word, looking for the people God had for him to help him. Every person that God calls to do work in the kingdom of God he has support people for, people that pray for them, people that help them with the work. You know that you are messing up if you are doing the work God has given you and all of a sudden you get worn out about it. The Bible says when you are doing what God wants you to do you can run and not get weary. How can you do that? Well you have someone who is energizing you. So Jesus, one of these days Jesus went out into the hills to pray and spent the night praying to God. How do you find the people that are going to help you? You pray. You ask God to call people to help you and you ask God for you to recognize the people that he has asked to help you. Then you ask God to give you the ability to give away some of the things that you are doing so that they can help you. So Jesus now begins to pray, send me the people. When the morning came, all night he prayed about this. He called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them whom he designated apostles. Simon who he named Peter, his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus and Simon who was called Zealot and Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor. Now all the people you have to work with and help you are going to do a good job. Some of them are just not there yet. But you are always taking these people. You know why Jesus did this? He knew he was going to die. You guys that are Sunday school teachers in your classes, how many of you don't think you are going to die? You are on a stewardship committee or deacons or wherever you are at church, do you think you are going to live forever? See the clear plain task God gives us is surround yourself with the people I have given you, ask me who they are, I will provide them and when I do you begin to train them to do the job I want done. The job Jesus came to do was proclaim the message of salvation to the world. It wasn't over when he died, it was starting, continuing. The work that God has given us to do is not over when you die or you leave or whatever happens to you, it is a continuous job. What God asks is find the people that I have given you, begin to let them see what you do, that is what Jesus did, explain to them how you do it, teach them how to do it so that when you are gone there will be someone who can take that in their hand and continue to do it. It is one of the reasons we have on our committees a rotation, so every five years or so people are off and we find a new person that can come on and begin to be training to do the work that God gives us to do, that is a biblical concept. God gives us clear indications of how to do the work of the church that he has given us, Jesus learned that. But the most important thing Jesus did was he learned to tell the difference between the voice of God and the voice of the people around him, even his own disciples. There were several times in which Jesus heard his disciples come up and say that isn't going to work, we don't think that is right. He had to believe so much in the voice of God that he knew exactly what God wanted him to do and you are never going to succeed in the mission God has given you, whether it is your marriage or whether it is raising your children or your work in the church until you can know the voice of God. This is what I have for you. Jesus did something else and I want your help with this. You have been in chapter 23 and you have read the Bible and you know. Jesus didn't go and find him an office and sit in his office. He went out among the people and touched their lives. Who are some of the people that you have been reading about in the scriptures this week or in the past that Jesus like touched? I want you to speak up loud so I can hear you. I don't hear very well but I can hear you. Who is it that Jesus ministered to and touched? Mary? The Samaritan woman. He found a woman at a well when he was waiting to get a drink and eat food and there he helped her. Just an ordinary person in the street. Get another one? A blind person. Jesus met someone who was blind and in that situation helped to heal that person. The man who was paralyzed they let down through the roof. An ordinary person who was paralyzed and he was there because people had gathered around him everywhere asking him questions about how to be able to live their lives. Another one? Peter's mother-in-law healed her. Came home from one of his missions she was sick. Went in and he healed her. There is a theme here. Ordinary people. Jesus got out of the temple and he went to see people and when he saw them he found around him people who needed help. Now there is another clue. Jesus said one time, I only do the things the father tells me to do and I say the things the father tells me to say. This is a great truth. If Jesus had taken the burden of every human being who was alive in the nation of Israel at that time he could have worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and died in a year. Jesus only helped the people that God told him to help. He only did the work God told him to do. God will never overwork you. Knowing the difference between what God tells you to do and what your own ambition tells you to do and what other people tell you to do is a critical ingredient in the life of Jesus and it is in yours and it is in the life of the church. There are many things we can do but the only things we have to do are what we know God has said this is your job. And then we must do it with all the energy that we have because the time is coming when we won't be here anymore. Jesus when he gathered his disciples around him at the end of his life he was talking to the father in chapter 17 of the book of John and he was talking about you as well as the people who were there. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is the truth. As you sent me into the world I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself that they may be truly sanctified or made holy. When Jesus finished his ministry he said I've done everything the father asked me to do now I pass the baton to you. And when the disciples died they passed the baton to the next generation and when that generation died they passed it to the next and now you have it in your hands. You see the story of Jesus' ministry is the story of your life as a follower of Christ. Build that firm foundation of knowledge of the scripture. Build in your life that commitment to be obedient to God regardless of what anybody says, regardless of the temptations of Satan. Attach yourself to the church. That's what the body of believers Jesus had was. Attach yourself to the church. Find the people that God has given you to help you. And when you start doing the work that God has given you bring someone along with you to train them what they're supposed to do. And when your last days on this earth in God's service come you can say Lord as you've given me this mission so I pass it on to the next generation. And that way God's intended his ministry to never cease. There are lots of books telling us how to be the church, how to have Sunday school, how to do the things of evangelism. But there is only one source of reliable information. What does God want? What does he tell us to do? And while we have a lot of books that purport to tell us what to do there is only one genuine source as to how to be married, how to raise your children, how to have a family, how to build a church, how to reach people for Christ. And it is God who speaks to us by the presence of his Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that guided Jesus guides you. And the same result that came from Jesus' life should come from our lives. Because the mission of Jesus was the mission that he gives to us. And the same way he found out how to do it is how we find out how to do it. To place our lives in his hand and be obedient to everything he asks of us. Would you bow your heads please for a moment to pray. So the most important thing you do is to say to God, I am ready to say to you, I will build my life exactly as you tell me it should be built. Do you know the Bible? Your first commitment is to begin to read it, listen to it, and put its practices in your life. If you begin to do that, the second thing you need to do is to find yourself a group of people who are also committed to do the same thing. You need to say to a church, I want to become a part of this church. I know God wants me to be here. He wants me to do the work here. And we will surround you with people who will pray for you and help you and carry out your mission that God has given you. And then you begin to say to God, what is it you want me to do for your kingdom? You ask God for guidance, and you take the job God gives you. And you begin to do it and teach others to do it until you die. Christian retirement is the funeral. It is the burial. It is the burial. It is the burial. Not until then. Where are you in this journey? God wants to give your life the powerful ministry he gave his own son. He wants to raise you as his child to be a powerful influence as all of his children. So you ask God, at this point in your life, this place in my life, with what I am, what is my next step? And you listen to the thought that comes to your mind. Unless it is something evil or wicked, it is God's direction to you. And so you say, okay God, I will do that. Lord, I have told these people, if they ask you what the next step in their spiritual life was to be, you would tell them. I have done that because it is a promise you make to us. So I ask in these moments to anyone who has asked you, it would be clear and plain what you want. We are going to have time in our service to ask you to say yes to God. You may want to come and share with us that there is some kind of promise you make that you want the support of the church in or you want us to pray for you. Maybe God is asking you to become part of this church. Maybe asking you to be baptized. Maybe asking you to stand publicly and say, this is the promise I have made to God today. But this is a time that God talks to you. So if you want some support from others, I will be here, others at the front, we will pray for you. What is God saying to you? Do it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .