.This is part three of my message based on the text found in Genesis 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
We began this series focusing
on verse one in which God told Abram: “Go forth from your country, and your
relatives, and from your father’s house, to a land which I will show you.”
And simply said: “Abram
followed Him.” But Abram isn’t the only person whom God has ever called to
follow Him. Old Testament history is abundant testimony of how often God said
to His Chosen people through the prophets, “Follow Me.” The New Testament
gospels also give ample testimony of how often the Lord Jesus said to those of
His day, “Follow Me.”
There are many reasons
God calls us to follow Him – besides the obvious, “He is our Creator.” We saw two
weeks ago that He calls us to follow Him because He alone has the words of
eternal life. Last week we reminded ourselves that it is only to those who
follow Him through obedience to the Scriptures that enjoy God's spiritual
protection.
Today I want us to look
at a third reason God calls us to follow Him, and it is this: We are, as the
apostle Paul told the Christians at Corinth (1 Corinthians 3:9) “God’s
coworkers.” The Creator of heaven and earth, of all things in the earth and
the universe – He gives those who follow Him the incomprehensible gift and the
wondrous and inexplicable privilege of actually joining with Him to not only
RESCUE men and women from the earthly ravages and pains of sin, but to also
work with Him to bring them to eternal life.
I will not spend a lot
of time this afternoon talking about that horror which awaits EVERY man and
woman living in Ashwood Meadows today who have rejected God's offer of eternal
forgiveness and eternal life. Such a wondrous gift is offered only to those who
will come in humble repentance and obedience to the Savior.
But for now, let this
picture say what a thousand words could not adequately say. Most of you know
the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, found in Luke 16. The rich man lived in
splendor, while Lazarus sat outside his gate, covered with sores and begging
for crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. When both eventually died, the
rich man went to what we would call hell. Lazarus went to what we would call
Paradise. We pick up the dreadful story in verse 23 of chapter 16 with the Rich
Man:
“In Hades he
lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in
his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me,
and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off
my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’
Scripture paints a
terribly clear picture of what is the sure destiny of those who reject Christ’s
atonement for their sins. That destiny is an eternity in torment. I could cite
dozens of such passages in both the Old and New Testament, but I will not
because I do not want to focus our attention today on that particular reality –
except to assure us that when we REALLY follow Jesus – and not just ‘play
church’ – when we really follow Jesus, we have nothing to fear of death or of
hell. Rather, when we really follow Jesus, He permits us to actually work
together with Him to RESCUE others from that horrible and inevitable fate.
Just think for a moment
what it means that the Almighty King of the universe invites us to work with
Him to pull to safety men and women who are without Christ’s atonement for
their sins and therefore lost to an eternity of unthinkable horror in the Lake
of Fire.
Fanny Crosby, who was blind
since infancy, urged us well: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; Weep o’er the erring one, lift up
the fallen, tell them of Jesus the mighty to save. Oh, Rescue the perishing,
care for the dying; Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.”
So, as I said, I will
not spend any more time today talking about how following Jesus lets us work
with God to pull others from the Lake of Fire. Instead, I want to take us down an
overlapping road we walk when we follow Christ. That road is the one on which, working
together with Christ, we save men, women, boys, and girls also from a life of
loneliness, isolation, despair, emptiness, and a deep sense of worthlessness.
Think of THAT glorious
truth – a truth I certainly can attest to as true, because I can easily
extrapolate where I’d be today if Christians along my path had not told me
about Jesus. I can infer from my past life – just as many of you can also draw
conclusions as to where YOU would be today if no one had told you of Jesus.
Those who were blasphemers, sexually immoral and perverse, drunkards and liars,
murderers and adulterers, self-righteous and thieves – the list of sins that
men and women – even some of us here – the list of sins people commit and have
committed seems endless.
But – and this is the
point – the Almighty and utterly holy God grants all who follow Him the right
to work with Him to save those who were just like we were. He grants us the
privilege to pull them from that kind of life in THIS life.
Now, if I was talking
to a group of teenagers or 20 or 30- somethings, most would not have an idea of
what I’m talking about. But we in our 60s, 70s, 80s and older know from
personal experience what it’s like to reap the sorrows of sin’s wages. We know
from personal experience the truth of Jesus’ statement in John 10:10 “The
thief [Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that
they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
To ‘steal and kill and
destroy.’ Listen to only some of the evidence of the Thief’s work: Nearly 50
million Americans 12 years old and older are addicted to drugs. Recent divorce
statistics tell us nearly 45% of first-time marriages are dissolved. But it
doesn’t get any better for subsequent marriages. Sixty percent of second
marriages and nearly 75%(!) of third marriages end in divorce. And on that same
subject, did you know that nearly one in four children under the age of 18 live
in one-parent homes? Furthermore, did you know that children in Christian homes
are just as likely to be living with only one parent as those in non-Christian
homes?
But that is not the end
of the evidence of the Thief’s ongoing work. Let’s look at suicide statistics. Suicide
is the second leading cause of death for CHILDREN between the ages of 10 and
14. And those aged 75 and older had the HIGHEST suicide rate among all age
groups. And what about the 65 million babies killed in abortion clinics since
the Supreme Court signed their death warrants in 1973? Sixty-five million.
That’s more than the combined populations of Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
I could stand here and
cite yet more mournful proof of the Devil’s work in our world, but why? It’s
clear we are in a deadly spiritual and supernatural battle – a battle to which God
actually invites you and me who follow Him to rescue those who
are trapped by Satan’s talons, and those who are on the edge of being trapped.
Oh, may God help us understand
the wonder of what He grants those who follow Him. God help us know the
immeasurable gift He gives us to rescue the perishing and care for the dying. He
offers us the right and the privilege to rescue people not only from an eternal
grave in the lake of fire, but also from a lifetime of regrets in this life. You
know from experience – and I certainly know from personal experience – how sin
results in broken homes, broken bodies, and broken hearts. We know from
personal experience how sin takes us farther than we want to go. It keeps us
longer than we want to stay. And it costs us more than we want to pay. Sin
GUARANTEES the sinner a life of regrets.
A life of regrets.
As I
prepared this message, I thought of the man whom Nancy and I met very briefly nearly
25 years ago as we waited to board a boat for an evening cruise around the San
Diego harbor. His name was William. I didn’t know why he started talking with
me, but I mostly listened as he related his story.
He’d just turned 64 a
few months earlier. He’d been 17 when he enlisted in the Navy at the beginning
of Viet Nam. By the time he was 18 he was already an alcoholic and his life on
the path to ruin. And ruined, he was. Eventually he lost his wife, his three
children, and couldn’t hold a job. When we met him, he was living in a local
flop house for about $100 a month.
Have you known men or
women like William? Whether it’s alcohol, or drugs, or pornography, or whatever
the addiction, William and those like him live with a ton of regrets and a
history of wrong choices that beat them into the
ground.
And that is where you
and I who follow Jesus – who REALLY follow Jesus – where we come into the story
of men and women living with regrets or who are on the path of eventual
regrets. Listen to what the Lord Jesus told His disciples: (John 4:35) “Do
you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’?
Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are
white for harvest.”
Do you WANT to work
with God in the whitened fields? I’ll ask the question again as I asked earlier
– think of where YOU would be today, what YOUR life would be like today if no
one had told you about the love and mercy and forgiveness and new life – NEW
LIFE – offered by the Father through Jesus Christ.
Someone told YOU, and
now YOU have the opportunity to tell others, and in so doing, work with God to
snatch them from disaster.
And what can you tell
them? That’s easy. Tell them what God has done for you. How He changed your
trajectory as you moved through life making one bad choice after another. Tell
them.
But I find in talking
and listening to other Christians that so many of them are unwilling to be
honest AND humble with others about their past failures and current flaws. And
in being resistant to admitting their faults they erect a wall between them and
those in need because those in need do not believe the Christian can truly
understand what they’re going through.
And therefore, the Christian MISSES the opportunity to be a co-worker
with God for the person’s rescue.
It is for good reason
the apostle Paul – and if you are familiar with his epistles you know he was
very open with others to tell them of his own failures – and so Paul wrote
these words to the Corinthian Christians – words that certainly ought to
encourage us today: (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) “Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all
comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be
able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with
which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Are you following him? Are
you humble before others, willing to talk of your own failures and flaws, and
how God came to you IN those failures and flaws? Listen, God is not expecting perfection
in our work with Him for the Kingdom. He knows our frame. He is mindful that we
are but dust. But the question remains: Are you following Him? Are you trying
to please Him? Because if you are, He WILL use you. All He’s looking for from
us is our willing and open heart. The rest will come. Perfection – as much as
is possible in this life – perfection in our working together with God will
come.
Does Jesus have your
heart? Are you asking Him to make you fall more deeply in love with Him? If you
are doing these things, then be ASSURED, He WILL use you in His vineyard.
God called Abram to
leave his friends and neighbors and, very likely, many of his own family
members and follow Him to a place as yet unknown. In a similar way, when God
called me back in December 1972, He called me to leave all that I had once
embraced and follow Him. Follow where?
At the time, I did not, nor could I know. And here I am today.
In a similar way, when
God called YOU, back whenever it was, He called you to leave all that YOU once
embraced to follow Him. Follow where? At the time you didn’t know, nor could
you know. But here you are.
You and I followed
because we knew, at least intuitively at the time, that He alone has the words
of eternal life. We followed because we knew, at least intuitively at the time,
that He would provide us supernatural protection from theological heresy.
And we follow Him
because He offers us a job – so to speak. He offers us a CRITICALLY important
role in His kingdom, and that is to work WITH Him not only for the eternal
salvation of souls, but to also lead others by the hand away from the broad
road that leads inexorably to heartache, loss, and a ton of regrets.
Christian – are you
following Him? The fields are truly white and waiting for harvesting. Then ask
Him now – today and every day – ask Him how you can work with Him every day in
His vineyard.
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