Declare What God Has Done

"Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."

Luke 8:39a

In Luke chapter eight we read the story of a demon possessed man who was healed by Jesus. The demons have been cast out of him, and in verse 35 we see the man who just a few verses before was naked and living among the tombs now sitting at Jesus' feet and in his right mind. The people of the region are terrified and they ask Jesus to depart (which is the reaction people have when they are confronted with the holiness of God) and this formerly demon possessed man begged Jesus to let him go with Him. But Jesus sent him back to his home to proclaim what God had done for him.

This is a pretty interesting story, and one I'm sure that we have all heard many times before, but have you ever stopped long enough to think about what Jesus told this man to do and about the implications that this has for us? Every Christian, myself included, would love nothing more than to spend our whole lives with Jesus away from the day to day routine of our lives. How wonderful it would be just to spend all day at His feet in fellowship and learning directly from Him. But that is not why Jesus saved us. Sure, there will be times when we get to come alone and be with Jesus where we can pray and read His word, but that is not what we were saved for; we were saved so that we could go back to our homes, to our families, to our friends, to our coworkers, and tell them what God has done for us.

This is what the formerly demon possessed man in Luke chapter eight did; look at what the end of verse 39 says:

And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

Luke 8:39b

So how are you doing? Are you proclaiming to all those around you how much Jesus has done for you? If not, why not, this is what Jesus has commanded us to do.

How To Kill Sin

I am currently working on 2 new posts, but since neither of them are ready to go up yet I thought I would share a couple sermons that I just recently listened to. These are 3 of the best sermons I have heard in a long time, and they are dealing with a subject that we don't hear much about these days - how we are Christians are called to make war against the sin in our lives. So while I finish up writing the next 2 posts take some time to listen to these messages by John Piper and learn how to kill sin.

How to Kill Sin - Part 1
How to Kill Sin - Part 2
How to Kill Sin - Part 3

Have a great weekend!

What Are You Doing With Your Talents?

For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

Matthew 25: 14-15

Today we come to another parable that Jesus used to teach us the truth of the kingdom of heaven. This parable, known as the parable of the talents, teaches us the necessity of making the most of our spiritual opportunities. In this story we see a man who is going on a journey so he calls together his slaves and gives each of them some money before he leaves. The text tells us that he gave the first one five talents, the second two talents and to the third he gave one talent. According to one source I looked at, a talent is a very large sum of money. Each talent is equal to about 6,000 denarii , and a denarii is the equivalent of one days wages for a laborer.

While the man was gone two of his slaves put his money to work and they doubled what they had been given, but the third took the one talent that he had been given and he hid it in the ground, doing nothing with it. When the man returned he called all of his slaves together and examined what they had done with what had been given to them. The first two were praised for what they had done, but the third who only returned what he had been given, because he had done nothing with it, had his one talent taken away and he was thrown out. He was not able to share the joy of his masters kingdom with the other slaves who had used their talents to enrich their masters kingdom.

So what does this mean for us today? Each of has has been blessed beyond measure by our Heavenly Father, and as His bond-servants (slaves) everything that we possess belongs to Him. He has entrusted each of us with varying degrees of ability, talent, and money. These are all gifts from Him and they are given to us to use to advance His kingdom. But are we using what God has given us to advance His kingdom, or are we consuming it all for our own comfort and pleasure? Or even worse, are we just hiding it away and not doing any good for anyone with what God has given us?

We cannot earn our salvation, but God does expect us to use the gifts and talent He has given us to bring Him glory. Are you doing that today?

Examine Your Motives

Matthew 20:1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

Jesus has just had a conversation with the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22) and then told His disciples that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven that it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Peter then asks Jesus since he and the other disciples have given up everything to follow Him "what will there be for us?"

Jesus says that they will be rewarded for their labor, and tells them that many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. Then He tells them a parable; He says the kingdom of heaven is like a land owner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. Many have misrepresented this parable by saying that the wages paid to the workers represent eternal life, or that the wages represent rewards for service, but neither of these are what Jesus was trying to teach His disciples (or us).

First, He can't be talking about the wages being salvation because that would mean that they were earning their salvation, and the Bible clearly teaches that salvation is by grace and that we cannot work for it (Ephesians 2:8-9). Second, He couldn't have meant rewards either, because they all received the same amount, and the Bible teaches that God will reward us individually for what we have done (1 Corinthians 3:8). So what was the point of this parable?

I think that Jesus was trying to make us see that we need to watch our motives. Remember, Peter was asking what he was going to get in return for all he had given up, and Jesus was letting him know that he would be rewarded for his work, but just because he was one of the first to follow Jesus didn't mean that He would be first in the kingdom of heaven. The person who will be first is the one who serves Christ for the sake of serving Christ, not for what he will get in return.

Warren Wiersbe writes, "It is a solemn thing to realize that Christians whom we may admire today will be “last” at the final reckoning at the Judgment Seat of Christ because their motives were wrong."

So today remember that our motives are important and that our service to Jesus should be motivated by our love for Him and not what we will get for it.

Possessions, Or Eternal Life

Matthew 19:21 "If you want to be perfect," Jesus said to him, "go sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me."

The man we know as the Rich Young Ruler has come and ask Jesus what he needs to do to to have eternal life. If someone came to you and asked you that question what would you say? I bet it would not be what Jesus said here. First Jesus told this young man that if he wanted to receive eternal life he should keep the commandments. The young man responded, "Which commandments?" Jesus replied, "do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, love you neighbor as yourself." The young ruler then replied that he had done all of this since his youth and asked what else he was lacking. So Jesus told him; if you want eternal life, sell what you have, give the money you make to the poor, and follow Me. And the man went away grieving because he had a lot of stuff.

So what we see here is Jesus sending away a man who genuinely wanted eternal life. The problem though was that he was not willing to give up his possessions and could not admit that he was a sinner. This man had made an idol out of his possessions; they had taken the place of God for him, and when Jesus confronted him on it he chose his stuff over eternal life.

The other thing that Jesus did was tell him that he needed to keep the commandments, which he said he had done since his youth. Jesus has been making the point throughout His ministry that keeping the commandments goes beyond mere outward obedience (see Matthew 5-7) and that even if a person keeps the law perfectly on the outside, we are all still guilty on the inside. The response of this man should have been, "I am a sinful man and I have broken these commandments in my heart, how then can I be saved?" But the mans pride would not allow him to do this.

The last thing that Jesus said was "follow Me." It is not enough to say that you believe in Jesus, or to just say a prayer asking Jesus to come into your heart, we need to follow Him. That means that we need to know Him, to study His word, and do what He did. This does not mean that we are earning our salvation, we could never do that - Jesus did it all. But if we are truly born again we will want to do everything that we can to please our Lord.

The Cost of Discipleship (Part 1)

"The person who loves father of mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; the person who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And whoever doesn't take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me."

Matthew 10:37-38

These are some pretty harsh words; it says that if we don't love Jesus more than our parents, or our children, or even our life, we are not worthy of Him. But this is exactly what Jesus is telling us here. John MacArthur, in his commentary on Matthew said that the mark of a true disciple is a "willingness to forsake everything, including one’s own family if necessary, for Christ’s sake." I think this is a foreign concept to a lot of us here in America; we have a kind of Christianity that tolerates everything, and doesn't want to offend anyone. We have taken tolerance to the point that we never hear anything like this preached from most of our pulpits anymore. It is a very rare preacher today who will say, "if you are not willing to give up your family in order to follow Jesus then you are not worthy to follow Jesus."

As foreign as this sounds to us here in America, the idea of giving up ones family in order to follow Jesus is not that unusual for people living in most of the rest of the world. In fact, in the Islamic world when a person decides to follow Jesus they are often disowned by their family, and in some cases even killed by them. These people know the cost of following Christ - of being His disciple, but here in America have so taken for granted that we are not often required to go to this extreme. But this is the standard that Jesus set for His disciples.

But please note that this passage is not teaching that we have to give up our family, only that we must be willing to do so if necessary. Jesus is to be first in everything; nothing is to come before Him, not our parents, not our children or grandchildren, nothing. He is to be our number one priority and come before everything.

The other thing that Jesus tells us here, and again, something that we don't hear much today, is that we must also must give up our very life to follow Him. That does not mean that we must die, even though that could very well happen in some cases; what this means is that what we want is now superseded by what He wants. We are no longer to live life for ourselves; we are to live our life for Jesus. Our will is now to be subjected to His will. Jesus gave us the perfect example of this in the garden the night before He was crucified. While praying that if there was any other way that He would not have to drink the cup of God's wrath, He said, "nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done." (Luke 22:42)

This is the cost of discipleship, so today, spend some time with your Heavenly Father and ask Him to show you anything that has become an idol in your life, whether it be an object, your family, or even your own life. Then repent of whatever it is He shows you; you will be glad you did.