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Getting Passionate about Christ
A Sermon Preached by
Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va.
October 17, 2004
Scripture: John 1:14; Eph. 5:14
During our Forty Days of Purpose we are kneeling at David’s
brook. We need five smooth stones to be able to stand against the Goliaths of
our day. The first Sunday we picked up the smooth stone of Worship. Last week we
picked up the smooth stone of Fellowship. This morning we kneel and pick up the
smooth stone of Discipleship: You were created to become like Christ.
A gifted public speaker was invited to speak to a
Toastmaster’s Convention. (Toastmasters is a secular business club to teach men
and women how to speak publicly.) In younger days he had been very active in the
Toastmasters so he was delighted to accept. On the day of the convention, it was
about a two hour drive to the convention center. He arrived shortly before he
was to speak.
His host breathed a sigh of relief at his arrival and then
said, “Remember, you are giving the keynote address.” He nodded and then said,
“Remind me where these people are from?” “Well,” said his host, “They are the
postmasters from everywhere.” The speaker’s eyes grew big. “Postmasters? I
thought you said, Toastmasters.” “No, why would I say that. I am a
postmaster, you know.”
The speaker was planning to talk about how to make a
speech. The audience was expecting a speech on postal regulations, stamps, care
of customers, and the like. What would he do? He decided to speak on something
he felt strongly about, the loss of passion in modern life. So he spoke about
renewed passion for our marriages, renewed passion for our jobs, and being
passionate about our faith. It turned out to be a rousing success. Half way
through people broke out in applause. Some cried. When he had finished he got a
standing ovation. He had touched a nerve. Life without passion is empty.
When you study the life of Jesus two things will embrace
you immediately. He was passionate about who he was, what he did, and he had his
purpose in life nailed down. It was so deeply nailed down that his enemies
nailed him to the cross because of it.
There is a place within us from which Passion comes. The
Bible calls this the heart. It is that spiritual part of us from which our
outlook, our beliefs, our choices, our actions come. It is the primary residence
of God. It is the character building part of us. Turn to Luke 6:45, 1602: “The
good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart and the evil
man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the
overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” Jesus mentions heart three times in one
verse. The heart is the seed-bed of a life of delight, or of degradation.
What are you passionate about in your life. Politics,
sports, good grades, being a success, raising your children? In church, people
are passionate about music, missions, prayer, the Bible, reaching the lost,
feeding the hungry, ministries to children and youth and seniors, and so on.
But have you ever heard anyone say they were passionate about following Jesus
Christ, about Christ being formed in them, about being his apprentice, his
disciple?
Suppose you and I were to embark upon a life of drawing our
life from Christ. How would we do it? How would we begin? To become dedicated
about discipleship, we need three things.
We need to become passionate about who Jesus was.
We need to become passionate about what he taught and what
he did.
We need to become passionate about drawing our life from
him.
Passionate about Who Jesus Was
In John’s Gospel, 1:14 is the heart of it all. It is a
declaration that still sends chills up and down my spine. And it gives our
Muslim and Jewish friends all kinds of problems. It is the firm declaration that
Jesus, as God incarnate, the living Word of God, came in the flesh and dwelt
among us.
Look closely at two words with me here. Look at flesh.
“The Word became flesh.” Flesh did not mean the physical body. It meant the
tendency for humans to be weak, wandering, faithless, and sinful. For the first
century religious mind, flesh and God were opposites. To say that God would
reveal himself in the flesh was unthinkable.
But John goes further yet. He says that the eternal Word of
God dwelt among us. There are two delicious meanings here. Dwelt was the
ancient word for “tabernacle” and was a metaphor for God’s presence. John is
saying that God’s true Spirit, his true presence, was in this man. But the other
delectable meaning is that this word, scanao, is the word from which we
get scene. Hear this translation: “In Christ, God made the scene among us and
still does.” The skeptic asked then and still does, “How can one say that a man
who experienced hunger and thirst, who knew fear and trembling, who died on a
cross as a criminal – how could this one be God?
But God saw, God knew, that some time we would discover
that to truly restore someone spiritually, you have to have been where they have
been. Alcoholics Anonymous has proved this again and again and again. It isn’t
the preachers, the rabbis, and the Imams who restore alcoholics. It is the
alcoholics who in their togetherness restore alcoholics to sobriety. Apply that
to my Lord Jesus. In order to become Savior of the world he had to have lived in
the world we live in, work in it, suffer in it, die in it.
Wow! I can get passionate about the Christ who dwelt among
us.
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I can follow a guide who knows the way because he knows the way
around heaven and the way around earth.
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I can trust a Savior who understands my weaknesses but is
constantly pulling out my strengths.
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I can let him help me find my purpose in life, because he lived
out his purpose in life to the full.
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I can let him take care of the mistakes and sins of yesterday and
get on with the possibilities of today.
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I can look death in the face and see beyond, because he did.
As you can tell I am passionate about who Christ was. I
need a God who understands because he has been here.
Passionate about What He Taught and What
He Did
Jesus said, the location of what is really happening to you
is within you. We are prone to look for the reasons for our delight or
disillusionment out there. Adam started it when he placed the blame on Eve and
she placed it on the Serpent – the devil made me do it. Jesus said look within.
Start with yourself if you are going to point fingers.
T.S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as
that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good.
Jesus would say, that is not the issue. Any human system will work well if we
are good, and no system will work well if we are not. Jesus would say if the
heart is not transformed, everything else is doomed to fail.
John Grisham’s novel Bleachers is about a fictional
town called Mussina. The town lives and dies around high school football. The
legendary coach, Eddie Rake, is about to die. He coached for 34 seasons before
being fired because he lost, He was coach during “the streak,” 84 wins without a
loss. Much of the novel takes place from the bleachers. Players from those 34
years have come back for the funeral and gather on the bleachers, looking out on
the field where every Friday night 10,000 raving fans watched them live out
their 17 and 18 year old hopes and dreams.
Happiness for Mussina citizens depends upon whether the
team wins or loses. Remembering it all one said, “It was silly. Grown men crying
after every loss. The entire town living and dying with each game.” The main
character is Neely Crenshaw who was a high-school All-American but got hurt
after he went to the University. He football career was over and he is still
trying to put his life back together again. For old times sake he walks through
the halls of the High School that made him All American. Nobody knows him,
remembers him, or even speaks to him.
Human kind has an uncanny temptation of trying to borrow
our well-being from sources outside of us. If everything goes fine, we are good.
If things slide we are in the pits. Jesus said, “The world’s way won’t work.”
Life-giving joy comes from inside you, where I am, not out there. Dive inside
your heart. That’s where you will meet Me, says the Lord. That is where you will
find forgiveness, joy, mercy, peace, and overcoming. That is where you will
discover the purposes for which you were made.
God’s location is in the heart, not in the
headlines.
Passionate about Drawing Life From God
In John 1:12 it says, “As many as received him, to them
gave he power.” In John 10:10 it says, “I am come that you might have life to
the full.”
Sheldon Van Auken wrote that the strongest argument for
Christianity is Christians when they are drawing their life from God.
When Jesus invaded this bent-out-of-shape world, he came to
revolutionize the heart:
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The way we look at things
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The way we look at ourselves
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The way we relate to one another
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The way we relate to our Lord Jesus Christ
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The way we look at why we are here.
The story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is something
of a parable of all of us. In spite of the fact that the dwarfs risked their
lives for this foolish girl, she ate the forbidden fruit and fell asleep and
broke their hearts. Then came the Prince. He awakened her with a kiss. She found
new life in him and they are together.
It not this our story as well. How many have given their
lives for us, beginning with our mothers who went through the gates of pain to
bring us to life and fathers who got up with us in the middle of the night. And
all of the others who brought us along, taught us how to live, even prayed for
our well-being. But we ate the forbidden fruit. We have fallen under the curse.
We are among the living dead. Then comes the Prince, the Son of God and our
Savior. He comes to kiss his bride, the church, with life. And in an
unpredictable way, with the kiss of the Spirit, one wakes up, and then another,
and then another. All drawing their life from the One who gives life because he
created life. That kind of life can be taken anywhere – to work, to church, at
home, at school, on the playground.
Paul’s letter to his friends at Ephesus has some lines that
must have been common among the early churches. (Eph. 5:14)
Wake up, you who are
asleep!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
It is time to get passionate about living life with the Life Giver, Jesus Christ
our Lord and a passionate commitment to let him transform us.
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