The Triumphal Entry
Tom Shrader traces the events surrounding the Triumphal Entry, beginning with the plot to kill Jesus after the raising of Lazarus and culminating in Jesus' cleansing of the temple, which He uses to signify the end of the sacrificial system and His own coming death as the one true sacrifice. Drawing on John 12:20–26, Shrader connects the arrival of Greek seekers at the feast to Jesus' declaration that His hour had come to be glorified through the cross, emphasizing that salvation comes through Christ alone and not through religious ritual or moral self-improvement. The sermon closes with a call to follow Jesus through self-denial, service, holiness, and faithfulness to Scripture, and with a strong encouragement that personal and corporate spiritual vitality is renewed through sharing the gospel with others.
“If you want to see God really glorified, then He is really glorified through the process of evangelism — through the process of the proclamation and the declaration of the gospel.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2005)
Recorded: 2005 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 48 min
Themes: sacrifice, salvation, self-denial, following Jesus, holiness, sharing the gospel, religious ritual, triumphal entry, spiritually dry, struggling with religion over relationship, seeking meaning, new believer, questioning faith, feeling spiritually stagnant, young adult, long-time churchgoer
Scripture: John 11:47, John 11:53, John 11:55-56, John 12:1, John 12:12-15, John 12:20-26, John 2:13-16, Mark 10:33, Mark 11:2-3, Mark 11:7-10, Mark 11:13-14, Mark 11:15-16, Zechariah 9:9, Psalm 118, Matthew 10, Matthew 25, John 4:22, John 7:6, John 7:8, John 7:30, John 8:20, Genesis 39:2-3
Theological Themes: atonement, substitutionary sacrifice, soteriology, salvation by faith alone, temple cleansing, biblical authority, glorification of Christ, christology
Full Transcript
Setting the Scene
Open your Bibles to two spots, because we are going to begin today in John chapter 11 and also turn to Mark chapter 10. We will go back and forth, making one pass into Mark's Gospel and then back. We are simply continuing our study in the life of Christ, and this may even seem strange. This is the opposite of the Christmas season — we are examining the last week of the life of Jesus.
As I said, it may seem a bit odd, but one of the things that East Valley Bible Church does very well is help you resist the temptation to celebrate little baby Jesus, meek and mild, and to keep Him in the manger. He grows up, He lives a perfect life, and He came to die. That is what we are examining at this point. As we look at these two passages, I also want to do what we try to do every week, and that is pull some practical application for you and me out of this study.
The Plot Against Jesus
John chapter 11, verse 47. What has happened here is that Lazarus has just been raised from the dead. Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, "What are we doing? This man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him." At that point they are saying: we will lose our jurisdiction, we will lose our power, we will lose our prestige, and we cannot allow that to happen.
Consequently, verse 53 tells us: from that day on, they planned together to kill Him. Jesus removes Himself, and where we are in our study is John 11:55 — Jesus is moving toward Jerusalem. "Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves. So they were seeking for Jesus and were saying to one another as they stood in the temple, 'What do you think? That He will not come to the festival at all?'" The chief priests and the Pharisees had given an order that if anyone knew where He was, they were to report it so that they might seize Him.
Here is the scene. You have all sorts of people filled with anticipation of what might happen if Jesus comes. They are excited to see Jesus arrive in the city, wondering what He might do. They are also aware of the orders given by the Jewish leaders, and there may be a little NASCAR element to it — they may be waiting for a car wreck, waiting for the huge explosion that would take place. But certainly they are filled with anticipation as the Passover comes.
The Triumphal Entry
And now we have what is referred to as the triumphal entry. John 12:1 — "Therefore six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead." Look now at verse 12. Jesus spent some time there, an incident we looked at earlier. "On the next day, the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, 'Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.'" And Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it, as it is written. He quotes from Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9: "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your King is coming, seated on a donkey's colt."
The Meaning of Passover
It is the Passover time, one of the most important of the festivals. It is a time that commemorates the passing over of the houses of the Israelites as the angel came and slaughtered the firstborn of the Egyptians. It had a ceremonial law aspect to it. It is a festival mentioned in Scripture only once between the Exodus and the entrance into Canaan.
One of the other authors writes this: it was primarily a commemorative ordinance reminding the children of Israel of their deliverance out of Egypt — we understand that — but it was no doubt also a type of the great deliverance to be wrought by the Messiah for all the people, from the doom of death on account of sin and from the bondage of sin. It is this moment, not just to look back, but also a time of anticipation of the Messiah's arrival — the Messiah who would deliver them not from the bondage of Egypt but from the bondage of sin, not from being tied to their Egyptian slave owners but from their slavery to sin.
I think that is exactly why this moment is here. Jesus comes at this Passover time and He comes into a city that is chaotic. Estimates suggest there may have been as many as a million pilgrims crowding into the city during this festival, and as many as 250,000 sheep slaughtered at this very Passover.
The City at Passover
Let me give you a description from one of the historians speaking about the city at this time. He writes: "The city itself and the neighborhood became more and more crowded as the feast approached. The narrow streets and the dark arched bazaars showed the same throng of men of all nations as when Jesus had first visited Jerusalem as a boy. Even the temple offered a strange sight at this season, for in parts of the outer court, a wide open space was covered with pens for sheep and goats and cattle used for offering. There was the shouting of the merits of their beasts as sellers worked in the area. Potters offered a choice of huge stacks of clay dishes and ovens for roasting and eating the Passover lamb. Booths for wine and oil and salt and all else needed for sacrifice invited customers. Persons going to and from the city shortened their journey by cutting through the temple grounds, often carrying burdens. Stalls to change foreign money into shekels of the temple, which alone could be paid to the priests, were numerous. The whole confusion made the sanctuary a noisy marketplace."
That is the backdrop.
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem
Jesus comes to town. It is arguably, aside from the birth and death of Christ, one of the most familiar incidents from Jesus' life. Jesus is coming to this town at this time for a specific purpose. Let us turn to Mark's gospel — we will return to John's gospel shortly — and be reminded of that purpose.
Mark chapter 10, verse 33 — Jesus is speaking, and we looked at this last week. He said, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, but they don't have the ability to execute Him, so they will turn Him over to the Gentiles. They will mock Him and spit on Him and scourge Him and kill Him, and three days later He will rise again." So that is what we have in front of us now. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem.
He has hidden Himself from the scribes, the Pharisees, and the chief priests. There have been times where they have literally had Him circled, and He vanishes from their midst. He has avoided them deliberately, leaving the city, but now He is back in the town for the specific purpose of what is about to take place.
Jesus Is in Control
He even sent His disciples ahead. Look at chapter 11 of Mark's gospel. It is the companion passage to what we have already read, so it should sound familiar. It reminds us that Jesus is in control of the event.
As they are approaching town, He said to two of His disciples, verse 2, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter, you will find a colt there on which no one has yet ever sat. Untie it and bring it here, and if anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' you say, 'The Lord has need of it,' and immediately he will send it back here." They went away and found a colt tied at the door outside on the street, and they untied it. Some bystanders said to them, "What are you doing untying the colt?" and they spoke to them as Jesus had told them, and they gave them permission.
They brought the colt to Jesus, put their coats on it, and He sat on it. Many spread their coats in the road. Others spread leafy branches they had cut from the fields. Those who went in front and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna" — Hosanna means "save now" — quoting from Psalm 118, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest."
That is the scene we looked at. Jesus arrives in town, the palm branches are there. They represent the nationalistic desire of the nation of Israel to be delivered. The palm branch would have been on much of their coinage. That is the picture, and that is the cry: Hosanna — save us now.
The Fig Tree
Jesus entered Jerusalem and came into the temple, looking around at everything. He left for Bethany with the twelve since it was already late and He needed a place to stay. The next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry. Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again," and His disciples were listening.
Now, what we will see in a moment — because we are going back to John's gospel shortly — is that though they are listening and observing all of this, they do not understand what is going on. They do not get it. There will be a time in the future when they will look back and understand, but as this is unfolding, they are not getting it at all.
Cleansing the Temple
Then they came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
Let me read to you from John chapter 2, because we see a virtually identical scene earlier, right after the miracle at Cana. In John chapter 2, verse 13, John writes: "The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." This would have been a different Passover — this is not the same event. "He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. He made a scourge of cords and drove them out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen. He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And to those who were selling the doves He said, 'Take these things away. Stop making My Father's house a place of business.'"
That sounds almost identical to what we have in front of us in Mark, and at this point it essentially is the same situation. Two things are going on here worth focusing on. First, there are money changers. In the temple, only a certain type of currency could be used. You would come in with the currency you used in your regular business affairs, but that currency was not accepted there. It had to be converted to temple currency, and in that process they would extract a huge profit, exploiting the people.
The same was true of animals brought for sacrifice. Inspectors would examine the animals and declare them inadequate — a blemish here, not a perfect sacrifice. They would direct the worshiper to a pre-approved pen of sheep, goats, and oxen, and send them over to purchase from there. Again, at an exorbitant price. Jesus is seeing this exploitation —
The Significance of Stopping the Temple Rituals
What separates this event, other than the timing, from the first one is verse 16: He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. In and of itself, you might look at that and wonder what it means or what possible significance it could have. Let me read from one of the authors, Ray Stedman, on this point.
If we refer to the book of Leviticus and Numbers, we see that God instituted a certain set of rituals for that temple, which necessitated that the priests would carry many things through it. They had to bring the animals into the temple, bind them on the altar, and slay them. They had to catch the blood of these animals and carry it in basins into the holy place to sprinkle it on the altar of incense. They had to take the bodies of the sacrifices after they were burned and carry them back out again, so that there was a continual procession of priests through the temple all day long, carrying out the system of rituals which God Himself had given to the nation.
But on this day, when Jesus came to the temple, He stopped it dead in its tracks. Stedman quotes Mark 11:16: He would not permit anyone to carry anything through the temple. This means that as the authorized King of this nation, He rejected its worship and refused to acknowledge it as of any value any longer. Though the Jews later restored this traffic and kept it up for forty more years until the temple was destroyed, never again did those sacrifices have any meaning before God. This represented the cursing of the heart of the nation, because it had nothing but leaves.
The Fig Tree and the Nation
That is what we looked at when Jesus saw the fig tree. The fig tree becomes a picture of the nation. Lots of leaves, looking good from a distance, going through all the rituals, doing all the things, following the ceremonial law — but it had nothing but leaves. It appeared to have life, but in reality it did not. It appeared to offer hope to men and women from all the nations of the earth.
From all over the earth, people were coming to the temple of Jerusalem, hoping to find an answer to the emptiness and burden of their hearts, but finding no help there at all. Then Jesus comes in, and He says: this is what we have done for hundreds of years, but it has been nothing more than a picture. When John the Baptist saw Jesus, his first response was, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." The picture has now become reality.
Two hundred and fifty thousand animals had been slaughtered, and Jesus says no more — it does not have to be done anymore. There is going to be one sacrifice. It is the sacrifice that happens a week or so from this moment we are looking at. That sacrifice is Jesus Himself.
What Religion Cannot Do
Stedman's phrase is a wonderful picture of religion — of what religion does. By religion, I mean anything other than orthodox, biblical Christianity. You come with your heaviness of heart, you come with your burden, you come with your emptiness, saying you want help. And so you go through this ritual, you go through that ritual, you join that church, you do this, you stop doing that — and it is empty.
We talked about this in Priority Living this week. We have guilt, and there is nothing wrong with guilt. There are a great many people who want to get rid of guilt, but you do not want to simply get rid of guilt — especially if you are sinning. If you are sinning, you should feel guilty. If you are sinning and you do not feel guilty, you are pathological at that point.
So you should feel guilt. What can you do to get rid of it? We typically see four answers. Number one is to deny it — just pretend it is not there, rewrite the rules, rewrite the laws, do away with God, do away with judgment. Number two is to admit it and be filled with despair. That is Judas. He is guilty, he understands he is guilty, and he sees no hope. The third option is to admit it and then attempt what I call moral realignment — in other words, get spiritual. That is religion.
Every day becomes New Year's Day for you. Just as on New Year's Day you say you are not going to eat this anymore, not going to do that anymore, you are going to start something new — all of a sudden, the church, Priority Living, becomes the equivalent of LA Fitness. You start going to church, you join a Bible study, you take a class, and it lasts for a while, and then it fades away, because there is no power there.
The One True Path
If you are guilty, you can take any of those three paths — deny it, despair over it, or try to fix it yourself — and all three are wrong. The one true path is to admit it, see that your sin has separated you from God, and come to Christ in repentance and faith. That is what Jesus is saying right here.
Jesus does not come and say He is going to show you the way. We are not saved by His teaching or by His example alone — that may have some merit in some place, but that is not what saves us. We are saved by the death of Christ. He does not say, "I will show you the way." He says, "I am the way" — with the definite article, meaning there are no other ways.
What Jesus has just done to the sacrificial system and ceremonial law — obliterating it and saying it is no longer necessary, that He will make that sacrifice for us — is what we can say of every religion other than biblical Christianity. You can come broken, you can come with your burden, and find in Him what no ritual or religion can provide.
Direct Access Through Christ
You can ask all the right questions and identify all the right problems, but if your answer is anything other than biblical Christianity, you will be absolutely miserable. It will not do what you are wanting it to do, because it cannot save you. It cannot change you, it cannot cleanse you. That is the wonderful picture taking place here. Jesus not only takes the temple and in a sense cleanses it, but at the same time He is saying no more of these goings-on. To the priests He is saying, time out, you are done. We do not need a priest, we do not need a rabbi, we do not need a go-between or an emissary anymore. We have direct access through Him. "I am the way." That is what He is saying.
The Greeks Who Sought Jesus
Now back to John's Gospel. We will spend the rest of our time in John chapter 12, verses 20 through 26. "Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast. Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, Sir, we wish to see Jesus." These are Greeks, Gentiles, who were there for the feast. They go to Philip. We do not know exactly why Philip. It may simply be that they knew he was with Jesus and he was available, or he was the first person they stumbled into. Philip is a Greek name, so it may be that they felt they had a better chance with him than with someone like Matthew. Philip seems perhaps uncertain, and it may be that he did not feel comfortable going directly to Jesus in the chain of command.
Up to this point, when Jesus sent the disciples out two by two, He said in Matthew chapter 10, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles or into the city of the Samaritans, do not enter, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." He told the Samaritan woman in John 4:22, "Salvation is of the Jews." Now certainly Jesus was not filled with prejudice or bigotry or hatred. It is a matter of timing, which we will examine in a moment. But it may be that Philip, having heard this instruction, felt uncertain about how to respond to these Gentiles, and so he goes to Andrew. Andrew and Philip then come to Jesus together and tell Him that this group is there to see Him.
The Hour Has Come
In verse 23, Jesus answers them, saying, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." We have seen throughout John's Gospel how significant this moment is. At the miracle at Cana, when Mary came to Jesus, He said, "My hour has not yet come." In chapter 7, on two occasions, in verses 6 and 8 and again in verse 30, Jesus says, "My hour has not yet come." In John chapter 8, verse 20, the Jewish leaders had decided to kill Him, but He escaped from them because His hour had not yet come. Now His hour is here. It is time. Jesus is saying that the moment has arrived. The hour has come for the Son of Man — Jesus' favorite autobiographical description of Himself, used about eighty times in the Gospels — to be glorified.
Encompassed in that glorification process here on earth is the death, the mocking, and the scourging. But we also find ourselves praying all the time, "God, let us glorify You. We want to glorify You." How do we do that? We do it in a variety of ways through how we live.
Glorifying God Through Evangelism
Listen to what James Boice writes: "If you wish to see Christ glorified, and you should if you are a Christian, then seek to help others find Him. Lead them to Jesus. I am sure that if you do not, Jesus is still honored by your praise of Him for saving you — at least I hope you are praising Him for that. But what if you also lead others to Him? In that case, I am convinced that even your praise will be better. And besides that, there will be two or more voices to give glory to Him."
Now we might immediately want to say, wait a minute, I did not think we could lead anyone to Christ. Boice understands that. He understands the theology here. He understands that God is the one who saves and that the Holy Spirit is the one who must accomplish that work. He has all of that figured out. But what he is saying is this: if you want to see God really glorified, He is glorified through the process of evangelism — through the proclamation and declaration of the gospel.
Evangelism and the Vitality of the Church
I want to take this one step further and think this through together. I have spent a great deal of time over the last six to eight months, perhaps longer, thinking about the church. One of the things that has happened as we enter our fifteenth year is that more and more people are coming to us and raising questions about church. What is church? What should church do? How do you keep a fourteen-year-old church vibrant, fresh, and relevant? My first reaction was discipleship. But now that I have pondered it further, I understand that discipleship is part of it — the real key, however, is evangelism.
What is true for us collectively is also true for us individually. If you are sitting here today thinking your spiritual life is not so strong, here is how to jump-start it: begin to share Christ with the people around you. Think about those times when you felt spiritually alive and vibrant. You might listen to a recording and it fires you up, or you read something that stirs you. But if it stays only with you, it has a very limited shelf life. The minute you begin to take that truth and share it with others, all of a sudden you own it. You are not merely fired up — you are on fire. There is a difference. When I look back at the times in my life when I experienced the greatest growth, one of two things was happening.
Pouring Into Others
Somebody was pouring into me, or I was pouring into someone else. Early on, there is going to be more and more of people having to pour into you. But as you have been a Christian for a while — and I do not think that means a decade; I think that means a year or two — you begin to pour your life into others. These should be taking place simultaneously. Somebody is pouring into you, you are pouring into somebody else. You are a protégé and a mentor all at once.
I am really convinced that the key to keeping a person, a church, an institution fresh, vibrant, and alive is people. Not diminishing the study, not diminishing any of that — I am saying it is people. It is growing together, sharing together, serving one another. It is going beyond yourself and sharing that gospel.
Right now it is so simple. The whole culture seems fired up over whether we should call it a holiday tree or a Christmas tree. We have radio shows, probably led by people who have never been to church, chastising us because the doors are closed on Christmas Day. Well, they are open here all the other time — we would love to have you. All of a sudden there is a Narnia out there. People are searching, and left to themselves their answer is going to be some version of religion. You come along and say, "No, it's Jesus," and God uses you to bring that truth into another person's life.
Once that process starts, you are lit on fire. Small groups, discussion groups — all those things have a place. But what fires me up, what keeps me going, what brings the scene to life, is when I see God begin to transform other people's lives and you are a part of it. It is a huge thing, and God is glorified in the midst of all of it.
Two Kinds of Christians
Because of the dichotomy of what I do here at the church and then at Priority Living in the marketplace, I deal with a lot of different types of Christians. I deal with a lot of Christians who spend a great deal of time trying to hone their doctrinal truth — and I am not minimizing that at all — but people can get in the way there. I also spend a lot of time with people who say, "Yes, doctrine is really important and I have to get it, but doctrine is not the end. It is a means to the end, which is me beginning to live this thing."
I see two radically different mindsets. There is the mindset that says, "Let us get everybody together, have our little huddle, keep it holy, keep it pure." And there is the mindset that says, "We want to be a huddle, we want to be used, but part of that is being in the world." Those two orientations produce very different manifestations of faith. Ultimately — not always, but often — the first leads to a stale, closed legalism, while the other has a vibrancy and a freshness to it. Neither one is selling out truth.
The Hour Has Come
When I read that from Boyce, it rings clear to me. Jesus said, "The hour has come" — the hour of His crucifixion. That is how He saves us. He saves us by going to the cross, not merely by His teaching or His example. He said, "I am the way" — not "I will show you a way." He is not telling us to go do this on our own or to hang in a tree ourselves, because we are not going to be able to save ourselves. He said, "I will do this for you. I will save you."
Verse 24: "Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit." That is contrary to our instincts. He goes on to say that whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Our instincts go something like this: if I want to save my life, I ought to save my life. We are very concerned about the protection of life. We will take people who are eighty or eighty-five years old, very sick, with perhaps six or eight months to live, and spend millions of dollars on heroic measures to keep them alive. I am not trying to get into a debate about that. I am simply saying we love our lives — and that is exactly what He is addressing.
He uses two different words here. Whoever loves his life — loves the psyche, loves the ego, loves the things of this world — is ultimately going to lose it. What we ought to pursue instead is eternal life.
Four Ways We Follow Jesus
He said, "If you serve Me, you must follow Me." James Boyce is really helpful here. He talks about four ways in which we follow Jesus. The first is self-denial.
Haley and Tyler, along with Tyler's parents, came over last night. Out on the lake was the boat parade — fourteen boats, about five minutes long. Susan had spent the day making great soups: a split pea soup and a navy bean soup with cornbread and syrup. We had a wonderful time. They were there from around three or four o'clock to a little after seven.
In that time, Haley went through her four-hour routine that she is now in with the baby: eat, wake, sleep — eat, wake, sleep. She said, "Dad, it's the same every four hours." When she left, I did the math: that is six times a day, seven days a week, for an awfully long time. I will admit most men are not particularly drawn to babies at this stage — after ten or fifteen seconds, he has pretty much exhausted his bag of tricks.
Following Him Through Self-Denial
Haley said that changing a boy is a bit more of an adventure than changing a girl, so I'm going to take her word on that. But you go through that, and you deny yourself. That is a pretty selfless way to live. When he cries, he needs attention. You need to feed him, and he doesn't do much with that food — he doesn't expend a lot of energy except to get rid of it. She just came out yesterday with a clean diaper, put it in the garbage, holding him. I said he was making an odd sound. But you deny yourself there because you see the long-term benefit.
All through this — here we go, we're doing this — and then the Heisman comes on, and it goes to Reggie Bush. You watch Reggie Bush, and there's a tendency to say he's really gifted, which he is, and that it comes naturally. No. That comes from years and years of hard work. If I'm going to follow Him, part of what I'm going to have to do is deny myself.
George Mueller is one of those great saints of the faith. He is known for many things, but perhaps the most important is his belief in God, his faith, and his power of prayer. He was operating an orphanage, and the story goes that one night he had these boys and girls gathered there, it was time to eat, and there was not one gram of food in the place. He gathered them together and prayed, "Father, thank you for this food. Thank you for this food that nourishes our body. Father, thank you for the food — it just reminds us of our daily dependence on You." And there came the evening meal.
George Mueller wrote this in his diary: "There was a day when I died. I died to George Mueller, to his opinions, his preferences, his tastes, his will. I died to the world, its approval and censure. I died to the approval or blame of my brethren or my friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved to God."
Following Him Through Service
So I'm going to follow Him through self-denial, and I'm going to follow Him through service — especially service to those who can't really return anything to you. Jesus said this in Matthew 25: "Inasmuch as you've done this to the least of my brethren, you've done this to me." To serve those around you, to serve those perhaps outside — something like the toy sale, something like the need you see in your community all year long.
Following Him Through Holiness
If I'm going to follow Him, there is going to be holiness. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." You strive to be holy. You strive to eradicate sin from your life. And when you do sin, you are broken over that sin — it is not something to be laughed at or minimized. It is something that breaks your heart, because God has called you to be holy, to be set apart, to be unique, to be different.
Following Him Through Faithfulness to His Teaching
If I love Him, I'll follow Him through self-denial and serving, through holiness, and lastly by being faithful to His teaching — faithful to the doctrine and to the truth. You may say you're not in a position where you're teaching. But you are teaching all day long. If you have kids, you're teaching kids. If you're dating, let me tell you something — if you're a Christian on a date, you are delivering God's view for how a person ought to conduct themselves the entire time. The same is true as a worker, as a business owner.
Charles Spurgeon wrote this: "Proud man has a desire to preach a new doctrine, to be an original thinker, to judge and consider and do anything but obey." Most of the time, I feel like I'm up here saying exactly the same thing week after week. And if it feels that way to me up here, my assumption is it might have that same feeling out there as you're listening. But here's the deal — there is nothing new to say, really. The Christian life is pretty simple to understand. It is not very easily executed, but it is pretty simple to understand.
I remember dealing with somebody at a national radio show. I was recommending a speaker to talk about marriage, and they asked what the speaker would talk about. I said they would talk about wives submitting to husbands, how a husband loves his wife, how children need to obey, and how we love — that love is Christ, love the future, all of that. They said, "Oh, all the same old thing. We're looking for something new." Well, we are saddled with the same old thing. This is what He says. This is the prescription He gives us.
United With Him
"If anyone serves me, he must follow me. Where I am, there my servant will be also." All of a sudden, I am united with Him. I follow Him in His sufferings, and He is with me. God indwells me.
We just completed a study of Joseph in Priority Living. In Genesis chapter 39, Joseph has been sold into slavery — and then sold again into slavery — to Potiphar, who is the captain of the Egyptian secret service, if you will. He is there as a slave. And ultimately, Potiphar takes all of his household and all of his enterprise and gives everything over to Joseph's control. Here is why. Genesis chapter 39, verse 2: "The Lord was with Joseph." And verse 3: Potiphar saw that the Lord was with Joseph.
So here is the question. If you follow Him, if you love Him, if you serve Him, then the Lord is with you. And if the Lord is with you, the people around you should see this. There should be a visible manifestation of it. As we leave this place, we can apply this word right to us pretty easily.
A Life of Self-Denial, Service, and Holiness
Just as the grain of wheat falls into the earth, we are not to fall in love with this life, this world, and the things of this world. We are to serve Him, and that means to follow Him. That following requires in our hearts a sense of self-denial, a sense of service, an attitude of holiness, and a faithfulness to the teaching of God found in His Word.
Closing Prayer
Father, this is our prayer: that in our lives we have just read a description of ourselves — that we are people who are willing to die to ourselves, to serve, and to live a holy life based on the faithfulness of the teaching we have before us in Your Word. God, we want to follow You. We love this promise that where You are, we will be also, and that if we serve You, the Father will honor us. Thank You for that promise.
We pray that as we begin to live lives set apart for You and to You, that You will use us in mighty ways. Put in our lives a passion for people — for those You have touched and saved, and for those who are not yet followers of Yours — that we would live this gospel in front of them. May that heart of evangelism and desire to share Your truth not only keep us faithful, but keep us vibrant and alive, fresh in our love for You.
Let this not become a dead, dull faith of "do this and don't do that." Instead, light us on fire, that we would burn brightly for You as we leave this place. God, use this army of willing soldiers to touch the community in which we live. We pray this to You, in Jesus' name, amen.