| |
August 27, 2006
|
Discipleship
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
"A Disciple's Message"
Acts 20: 1-20
- A woman called her pastor first thing one morning.
Her tone was so flippant that he was insulted and nearly hung up on her. But then he realized her flippancy was the result of an internal panic. In five minutes he was at her home asking what was wrong. She sat in her living room and said: "It was 18 years ago, and I thought it was all over and forgotten. No one was hurt, really; it was just something that I did wrong, and I have lived with it. I thought I could forget it, but since I have been attending your lousy Bible Study, I cannot stop thinking about it. It is as real as if I had done it last night. Is there any hope for me? I feel that I am the most defiled person on the face of the earth."
Anyone been there?
Time does not erase our transgressions. They are offensive to God, and time does not take them away. They transcend time because they are part of an eternal, infinite relationship. For a crime against the state, we can pay our dues, do time in prison, and be released and the offense dwells in the past. But this is not true with a sin in your relationship with God. Time will not remove it, hide it or fade it. (from This Day with the Master, Dennis Kinlaw, Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, c.'2002, August 23).
So this pastor was able to lead this woman to the single means available for the cleansing from sin, and that is the gift of life through Jesus Christ. This is the message that has been preached since Christ. The "single message" which Paul solemnly testified to all: of repentance to God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we have been listening to and singing several renditions of this message which is every disciple's message. It is a simple message, but how many like this woman refuse to bring that "thing" to God. Yet this is the first step, to turn to God in repentance, in other words, to turn away from sin.
But, sin keeps a strange hold on us.
We would rather bury it, deny it, rationalize it, justify it, wallow in it, than be done with it.
We know it was wrong, whatever it was, but still we refuse to be done with it. Or we turn to God with it, are cleansed and then run back to the sin as if it was that old, frayed sweater we slip into on cool mornings.
All the counsel of God's word says, confess it, die to the sin, consider yourself dead to it.
That is what it means to repent.
I remember another pastor sharing his own effort to control what his eyes looked at. He told me, "I finally just considered myself dead to looking at anything that inspired me to lust." To consider himself dead meant to practice never looking twice, to practice looking away and reminding himself, "I have died to that."
Repentance, the turn toward God, must then also include a placement of faith in Jesus Christ. No longer trusting in ourselves, our ability to forget, or bury, or deny, but trusting in Jesus who alone cleanses and forgives. This faith in Jesus is an active choice, day by day, a reception of the power through Him to continue to say "no" to sin, to stay "dead" to that which has bound us.
It is replacing Sin with Jesus that changes our lives. This is what the great missionary Hudson Taylor spoke about as the Great Exchange: exchanging my life for His. Friends, as you think about the people you meet day by day - can't you think of some who need to hear this message? Can't you think of someone perhaps like the woman who has been in church but never been forgiven?
I think of Krista we met on the MAX en route from the Portland Airport who is a cutter as are too many youth today. They cut their skin to check through pain if they are really alive. They feel so dead inside they have to feel pain to believe they live. Her shoulders and upper arms were covered with scars her lower arms, covered with sleeves most likely with now cuts beneath them. She needs to know the message. We had a brief time on the train with her. Grace only had the opportunity to learn her name, but now we can pray by name for her.
I think also of Bill. 77 years old and attending church with his wife all the years since they had married 50 years before, but in all those year, Bill had never met Jesus. Oh, he had heard about Jesus, and believed in Jesus, but never had received Jesus, never had accepted the Gospel for himself. HE was like this woman. HE had never made the great exchange. HE had never fully turned to God in repentance and to faith in the Lord Jesus. Until the night of the revival when CV Elliott spoke about the greatness of the love of God and that night through CV's voice Bill heard the disciple's message for himself, he came forward and was saved.
Who do you think of?
Take a moment, pray for this person, and pray that Jesus would give you an opportunity to be there when they are ready to hear this message.
Now pray for yourself. Have you allowed Jesus into your whole life? Have you truly repented of all that is past and allowed Him to heal you?
Pray…
|
|
|