Sermon nuggets Monday April 28, 2008
Theme- Discipleship
John 6:60-61 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you?”
The Offense of the Gospel
I think the passage of the study for this week is a hard one because it faces the challenge of discipleship. Christianity too often is presented with mankind as the center of all attention instead of the Lordship of Jesus who is to be followed and to whom we are called to be faithful.
Juan Carlos Ortiz in his book, Disciple, writes “We modern ministers have not only diluted the gospel of the Kingdom we have set it up in comfortable monthly payments. It’s like buying a car with $100. You get the whole car, but then you keep on paying.
Maybe we’re trying to sell the Gospel like we sell cars. We say, ‘You want to be saved? Just raise your hand, that is all’ How is that all? That is the first payment. After a while one will say, ‘we’re going to have a baptismal service soon…we’ll heat the water and a group is going to be baptized. Why don’t you be baptized now? That is the second payment. And if the person says, ‘Oh no. I really don’t care to’, we say, ‘fine, of course not. You can wait until you are ready.’
This was not the message in the primitive church. They said, ‘Repent, Be baptized.’ It was a command not an option.
Then after a long while come another payment. ‘You know brother, we have to support things we’re doing here in the church so we tithe our money. But it is not as bad as it sounds, because when you tithe the 90% goes further than the 100% did before; God will stretch the money for you.”
It’s a man centered gospel. Jesus said, “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you”
If a person from another planet were to come and see how many Christian live he would think that Jesus had said, “Seek ye first what you are going to eat, what you are going to wear, which house you are going to buy, which car you are going to drive, which job you are going to take. Who you are going to marry and then if there is any time left and if it’s not too uncomfortable, please do something for the Kingdom of God.”
This week we will study a group for whom the call to follow Christ was more demanding than they thought and decided to leave. Surprisingly, Jesus let them go. What does that say to us today? Are you willing to follow, no matter what?
Pastor Dale.
