Jesus has called us to crown him as Lord…to know and love him…and he has commanded us (given us the privilege) to go and make him known to others.
The gospel is how the world is changed…God has called us to be a part of his plan to change the world.
For 35 years we have partnered with Youth Horizons to make Jesus known among at risk youth and their families.
We have a new opportunity to impact families in a profound way for the gospel through our partnership.
12 women & 2 Men are currently going through a training program called “Getting Ahead” at Youth Horizons.
These adults are looking getting to break cycles in their lives…generational cycles
They are receiving life skills training that will include what is essentially an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.
They will focus on an area or areas of key improvement that could lead to real and lasting change.
Here is where our opportunity comes.
Mature Christians, like you…will received two hours of training…and matched to come alongside one of these adults.
The commitment is for one year.
One in person meeting per month
One touchpoint per week (via phone, email, in person, whatever works for you both)
That’s it…and yet that is so, so much.
As I said you will receive training; I am working to schedule it here at the church in early November.
-One time, couple of hours…good training.
*Many in our church mentor youth at YH, some have told me they would be better suited to mentor parents of these youth.
Opportunity to reach parents, families with the gospel.
Opportunity to impact generations.
Opportunity to make positive changes in our community.
*There is so much complaining and hand wringing about how bad things are…doesn’t take a genius to point out problems, or post junk online…it takes grace and grit to be a part of the solution.
*This is how the world is changed…one life at a time.
If you are active in a small group and would like to attend the training, or get more information, fill out a welcome card.
*It would be ideal if a group could become involved, but we need a point person.
WE are praying for the gospel to spread, for the world to change…here is opportunity being handed to us.
You don’t have to have it all together or know a lot about a lot…all you need is to be willing to say “yes.”
I am not selling here…I am telling.
This is an opportunity that I believe has potential for real and lasting impact.
Bruce Brown: Rachel
- Tell us about the room Bruce occupied, that story tells a larger story.
- What about the nurse who wouldn’t let others touch Bruce?
- You saw Bruce live his life…with joy, with investment in men…you saw him die well…how do you explain this?
- Bruce trained for godliness…he made choices to see to it that he would live and die well…he lived a decided life.
*What did this training look like?
Thanks Rachel:
“Yes, Terry, Bruce did all that but he still died!”
All men and women die, not many live or die as well as he did.
The explanation for his life is that he made Jesus priority in his life.
Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 8:18
When Jesus saw a large crowd around him, he gave the order to go to the other side of the sea. A scribe approached him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” “Lord,” another of his disciples said, “first let me go bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” As he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly, a violent storm arose on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves—but Jesus kept sleeping. So the disciples came and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to die!” He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him!” When he had come to the other side, to the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him as they came out of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, “What do you have to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” A long way off from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding. “If you drive us out,” the demons begged him, “send us into the herd of pigs.” “Go!” he told them. So when they had come out, they entered the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and reported everything, especially what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.
Did Jesus teach that in order to follow him you must be homeless, and that you can’t attend family funerals or even say goodbye?
Jesus is not giving New Testament “laws,” he is giving THE core discipleship principle.
Following Jesus must be priority over everything else and everyone else, in your life.
Following him is not a part-time undertaking…or a part-heart undertaking.
You may be called to leave your home and family, but that is not the point he is making.
The point is that Jesus has command authority over every single aspect of your life.
He decides how you spend your time, what you do with your money, and what are to be your life priorities and activities.
This is precisely what it means for him to be “Lord.”
We can be Christians and struggle with his Lordship at times.
We can be Christians and rebel against his Lordship by refusing to obey him at times.
We cannot be Christians if we refuse to crown him Lord of our hearts and lives.
If this sounds oppressive, let’s reframe it.
Everyone has a master.
Your master may be your own desires.
Your master may be the opinions of others.
Your master may be your possessions.
Your master may be the guilt of your past, or fear of the future.
Your master may be your own pride, that will leave you empty and unprepared for what is ahead of you.
Your master may be Satan, the great deceiver himself.
All these masters will enslave us…they take our freedom…they take our lives.
There is no freedom in getting whatever we think we want.
There is no freedom in giving ourselves over to our own desires.
You may think being master of your own heart will make you free…it will not
It will only make you empty and anxious and unprepared for life and for death.
When Jesus is our master, then we are free indeed.
When Jesus is King, and we enter his kingdom by being born again…we live in the kingdom of light, and we have escaped the domain of darkness.
He commands that we follow him in order to leave behind a life of bondage to sin, death, and fear.
Jesus commands absolute authority in our lives because he has absolute authority in the world.
To live otherwise…is to try to live outside of reality.
Because ll authority on heaven and earth is his.
Jesus revealed his authority over death, storms, demons, and illness.
When Jesus is truly our master, no one and nothing else can be.
You can have only one master, and Jesus alone is the master who makes his people free.
Don’t fear what he asks of you, and don’t hesitate to say “yes” to him.
There is no need to fear the path of his Lordship, because it is the only path of human freedom.
That’s the gist of this passage, and the essence of the gospel.
Now, let’s go back to the passage.
Large crowds followed Jesus and frequently he would leave an area to escape them.
This seems strange…if you are trying to start a worldwide movement you would want more “followers”…just ask any internet influencer.
The crowd would grow when he fed them, healed someone, performed some sign.
But the signs pointed to something greater…to Jesus.
He wasn’t a doctor, a miracle maker…he wasn’t trying to gather crowds…he was the savior.
He was seek to gather followers, disciples.
When the crowds got large, he would move, in this case, he got in a boat and went across to the other side of the sea (lake) of Galilee.
Sincere followers would follow him; others would get distracted…not think it worth the effort.
A scribe approached him and declared, “Teacher I will follow you wherever you go.”
Scribes in ancient Israel were scholars whose business it was to study the Law, transcribe it, and write commentaries on it.
Jesus didn’t say, “Alright, I finally have a scholar who wants to follow me, instead of these knucklehead fishermen, how can I make sure I keep him on my team?”
Instead, he tells him: “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
What happened to the scholar?
We don’t know…he probably went back to his home and his studies.
Then another guy steps up, this one we know is a follower of Jesus.
He makes a reasonable request…”I’m in, and I’ll be back right after Dad’s funeral.”
Jesus said…”Follow me, let the dead bury their own dead.”
Seems harsh
He isn’t showing a lack of compassion…he is using very direct language to make an eternally important point.
You can only have one life priority…only one…that’s what priority means.
You can have stacked, or triaged priorities…but something is on top of the stack…something is first in a triage.
Maybe Jesus pulled the guy aside later and said, “go bury your dad, catch up to me later.”
Maybe, knowing his heart…he knew that this was a true Lordship issue, and he held his ground.
But either way…the point was…Following Jesus is priority…period.
Every human heart has a throne and someone or something sits on that throne and issues commands to the little kingdom that is your life.
If family, or friends, or money, or health, or self…sits on that throne, they are the master of your life.
If the throne is occupied, by anyone or anything…there is no room for Jesus on it.
He won’t share it, because he can’t…it is not possible.
Repentance is turning from sin to Christ…it is also, essentially, dethroning self and enthroning Christ.
Jesus said, no one can serve two masters.
This is a claim of absolute authority over our hearts and lives.
What happens next is a demonstration of the Lord’s authority.
His disciples follow him into a boat.
A sudden storm threatens to drown them, and they cry out to him, as he slept…”Save us, we are going to die!”
He rebuked them for their fear…then he rebuked the wind and waves…and then there was calm.
Calm in the physical world…and calm in his hearts of his friends.
Calm and amazement.
Here is Matthew’s point so far:
-Jesus made a claim of absolute authority over our hearts.
-Jesus demonstrated his absolute authority over the physical world.
Communicates and demonstrates…he was the master teacher.
The boat arrives on the other side of the lake and two demon-possessed men, living in a graveyard come towards him.
This is terrifying…real life Halloween stuff.
These men were violent and they menaced the people who tried to come near Jesus and shouted at him…
“What do you have to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
This is interesting…they knew they were doomed to defeat but they also knew, somehow, it wasn’t supposed to be time yet.
They knew Jesus wasn’t going to let them stay in these men, but they wanted permission to remain in our physical sphere.
We don’t know how all this works, and we would be wise to not over speculate on these matters beyond what scripture has revealed.
If this story sounds strange and somehow “not really real”…it is because we have been over impacted by western materialism.
But the cosmos is not only a material thing…is a material/spiritual thing.
*Years ago Earnest Alexander was singing at a church in a small Island nation.
-In the town there was a well-known demonized man…he slept in the graveyard, went around unclothed, frightened people.
Once Earnest walked towards him on a street and the demonized man crossed the street to avoid him.
At one of the meetings in the open-air church with no closed windows, as Earnest was singing, he looked over and saw this man outside the window opening…with a long pole and a kind of hook on it…trying to reach in the window and “hook” Earnest’s piano player as he played with his back to the window.
Quick Backstory: His piano player was, at the time, trying live in two worlds…trying to have two Lords.
-He claimed to be a Christian, but he was not living in obedience to Christ.
Earnest rebuked the man, and he disappeared.
Later, the man came walking down the aisle of the church through the front door…as Earnest confronted him he said, “I don’t want you; I want him.”
Pointing at the piano player.
Needless to say, the piano player was shaken up.
In regard to the demonic we can make two mistakes:
-Give the devil too much attention
-Give the devil no attention
The Bible keeps this balance well…it gives the facts; it doesn’t glamorize or emphasize these evil beings.
We should not dabble with darkness; we should not play with the demonic…it is no game.
I am not afraid of the devil…but I am no match for him…if not for Jesus, he could destroy me.
So, I try to stay close to Jesus and to give the enemy no room.
With Halloween just a few weeks away and all the weirdness of horror movies, making light of human skeletons, and death and darkness…we must not live in fear, but we must not take evil lightly…it is no game.
As for pumpkins, and black cats, God made them…they are good.
As for costumes and candy, ringing doorbells…it’s all good, fun stuff.
My family reframed Halloween and enjoyed it…we didn’t give the enemy the day.
But we also did not play games with evil.
The point of this historical narrative in Matthew’s gospel is authority…a focus on Jesus as priority.
Jesus claimed absolute authority in our hearts…then he demonstrated authority in the physical world and then he demonstrated his authority in the spiritual world.
Wind, waves, demons…must obey and submit to his authority
Human hearts…well, we can obey if we will…the question is…will we?
Look what happened back in the town.
The pig farmers went into the city and reported everything, especially what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.
That seems strange to me.
But it is a fairly common response to Jesus’ display of authority.
People hear the gospel, they see the impact of Jesus in the lives of others, like setting these demonized men free…they recognize his power and authority.
They don’t make him Lord…they send him away.
Why?
We don’t want to give up authority.
We are afraid, of handing operational control of our lives over to the Lord…we want our hands on the steering wheel.
We operate with the illusion of control…we have been given very limited power as image bearers, and we exaggerate the scope of that power.
The Illusion of control is a cognitive bias…or a kind of stinking thinking.
We have been given agency…the ability to control some important outcomes…but we exaggerate the scope of our agency,
We have been given creative power; this is part of what it means to bear the image of God.
We can travel to the bottom of the oceans, or to the moon.
We can send craft deep into space and retrieve large amounts of information.
We can make machines that can compute at amazing speeds…and machines that can move vast amounts earth.
We can come up with medicine and treatments that cure human illness.
We can make art, and music and craft brilliant words into books.
We decide to get up, go there, do this or that…make money, buy stuff…impress others, be impressed by others.
All this can put a kind of spell on us…we can live under an illusion of having more power than we actually do.
Jesus said, “We can’t add a single hour to our lives.”
“Oh no, Terry, science is prolonging life…who knows how long we will live.”
God does…and we will not live past that date.
It is appointed to men once to die and after that to face judgment.
If you could afford it, you could live like Bryan Johnson, a tech millionaire featured in a Netflix documentary, who dedicates his fortune to an extensive anti-aging regimen aimed at extending his life.
He spends millions of dollars annually on experimental treatments, diet, supplements, and a team of experts to monitor and try reverse the aging process in his body…good luck Bryan.
He spends all day, everyday…trying to get more days.
So, he is wasting his life trying to prolong his life.
He is the un-Bruce.
Bruce faithfully, did what he could to maximize his natural life in order to enjoy his family and to live for Christ.
But Bruce did not make an idol of life….so for him, to life was Christ, to die was gain.
Bryan Johnson is desperate fool whose mind and his money have given him an illusion of authority and power that he doesn’t have.
If he saw Jesus raise Lazurus from the dead…literally giving him more days…would he follow him?
If he saw Jesus’ authority over the wind and waves and demons would he follow him…or would he send him away?
Bryan Johnson is not my concern or yours…our concern is our hearts.
In John 21, Jesus told Peter some things about the kind of death he would suffer…then he said, “follow me.”
Peter immediately turned around and looked at John and said, “What about him?”
Jesus in essence said, “He is none of your business, he is my business. As for you, follow me.”
Jesus says to you and to me…”he or she” whoever they are, “Is not your concern”…
“You…follow me.”
Quit looking around at others…to see if they are smarter, richer, more well known.
Quit looking around at others…to see if they have more influence, better ministry, better family, better health, better gifts.
Did God give them a better deal than me?
Quit looking around…look to your own heart.
Crown Jesus as Lord there…this, you can be sure is how you will live your best life.
Your best life is not more money, or days, or influence, or notoriety…your best life is Jesus as Lord of the hours and opportunities that he gives to you.
When someone or something unseats him…he will allow it.
He commands the wind, waves, and demons…they have to comply.
You…he gives the choice.
He will allow us to unseat him…but the result is never freedom only bondage.
The result is not power to control our own lives, but the loss of power to live thriving and free lives.
Jesus is a good Lord…all other masters, including your own self-will are terrible tyrants.
If Jesus sets you free…you are free indeed.
Do not fear his authority in your life…fear anyone or anything else sitting on the throne of your heart.
I’ve going to use some sayings, that I use all the time.
I use them all the time because what we let stay in our minds, is what will shape our lives.
These short, memorable sayings have a load of biblical truth standing behind them.
I choose three that will give us a handle on what it means, practically, to keep Jesus seated on the throne of our hearts.
Live decided.
What if you quit deciding if you will keep Jesus on the throne…but only lived deciding how to live with him as Lord?
This sounds simplistic but it’s not.
It is simple, not complicated…but it is difficult..it takes constant attention, and action.
Here is I have framed it in my own life.
“Lord the answer is ‘yes’, now what’s the question?”
It cannot be, “Lord tell me what you want and I will decide if I want to do it.”
Over 45 years ago, as the Lord revealed them to me and as I remembered, I started going back to people I had sinned against in order to ask them for forgiveness.
It took probably a year; there was no internet and some I didn’t know how to find.
I remember the day when I got to the bottom of my list…there was a call on my parent’s landline…an actual phone with wires connected to other phones.
On the line was a young lady I had not heard from in years…she said, “I heard you were trying to find me.”
I said yes, “Years ago I sinned against you in this way, I have followed Jesus, would you forgive me.”
She said, “okay,” clearly thinking this was strange.
I hung up the phone and was filled with tremendous joy and freedom.
I have had to go back and ask people for forgiveness since then…but I have not, since then, built up a long list.
I have lived, messing up and fessing up as I went.
This is what Jesus as Lord looks like.
Not perfection…but a settled direction.
If this sounds anything other than wonderful and powerful and like freedom…I am not telling it well.
Jesus as Lord, is your life as freedom.
He calls us to make him Lord of all…because he loves us, because he is so, so good.
If we could see it…we would not send him away…like the townsfolks…afraid of his authority.
We would invite him into our hearts and continually crown him as Lord of all.