FOLLOW ME

Matthew 28:18-20

What I would like to do this morning is to get you to stop being a Christian.
Do I have everyones attention?
The last words of Jesus before he ascended into heaven were these:

Matt 28:18-20 "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 "Go
therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. "

Luke 9:23-24: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross daily, and follow Me.

This happened in Luke 9: Jesus and his disciples were walking along the road and a man
said, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus replied, Foxes have dens and birds
have nest but the son of man has no place to lay his head. And he said to another man,
Follow Me. But he replied, Lord, First let me go and bury my Father. And Jesus said to
him, Let the dead bury the dead but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. And still
another man said, I will follow you Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my
family. And Jesus replied and said, No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back
is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

Do you see what Jesus wants? Jesus wants disciplesfollowers and not Christians.
Did you know that Jesus never asked anyone to be a Christian.
And did you know He never asked anyone to accept Him into their heart.
But, He did invite everyone to follow Him.

Let me ask you this: Today what does it really mean for something or someone to be
labeled Christian?
The truth is it means hardly anything at all.
You can do anything, be anything, think anything, say anything, and be Christian.
A word that once implied a total devotion now merely suggest a casual association.
In other words today you do not have to actually follow Jesus in order to be a Christian.

Today to be Christian means you have given Jesus a minimum amount of attention.
Just enough to get your go to heaven card stamped but little more.
Christian is not a bad word but it has become an empty word.
That is why surveys consistently show that even though a majority of people say they
like Jesus, surveys show they dont like Christians because they dont see a strong
identification with Him.
Christian today means you like Jesus. It no longer means you are like Jesus.

The word Christian is not a word used very much in the Bible, only three times.
And to our knowledge Jesus never used the word.
But there is a word that He used a lot.
It is found 256 times in the New Testament.
It is the word disciple.
It means follower. It means learner. It means intern.
So, instead of more people becoming Christianswe need more people to become
followers.

But even the word followers has problems. Because today what does it mean to follow
someone?
I have a Twitter account.
On my Twitter account I have a few people who follow me.
I have never met most of themand they dont know me.
I have no relationship with them.
And I dont expect anything from themand if they choose to unfollow me there are no
consequences.

And so today the word follower has its difficulties but in spite of that it is the word that
Jesus used.
And let me tell you what the people that Jesus spoke to heard when He said, Follow
Me.

They didnt hear make a place for Me in your life.

They heard, I want first place. I want your life to be all about Me. The imitation of Me.
The supremacy of Me. The accomplishment and the pursuit of My agenda.
They heard a daily decision to die to self.
Luke 9:23: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross daily, and follow Me.
So following Jesus means we are offering our lives to Jesus.

When they heard follow Me they did not hear like Me.
They heard, come be like Me.
I think, in the most common expressions of Christianity today, we have lost that.

We have, if you will forgive the pun, watered down baptism.

Today baptism means, I believe in Jesus. I get my go to heaven card punched. I have
arrived at the desired Christian destination.

But in the beginning baptism was a portal. It was literally an immersion into a new life
where you were going to pursue radically what it meant to think like, to walk like, to talk
and to be like Jesus.
But that is not what it means anymore to be a Christian.

And so we can fill rooms with Christians but how many Christians will leave the room to
seriously follow Jesus?

I think we are all familiar with the story about Jesus and the soils.
 He knew that His seed, His word, His invitation to follow Him would fall on different
kinds of hearts.
In that day they didnt have fences to separate fields so they made paths between
different pieces of property where people would walk and the ground would get very
hard.
Some of that seed would fall on that hard ground and it would very rarely penetrate and
become a crop.
Some of that seed would fall on soil that was actually quite shallow because just a few
inches below the ground was a limestone ledge and at first the crop would grow but in
Jesuss words, when it got higher the lack of depth of roots would cause it to wither and
die.
Some of that seed would fall on thorny soil. That doesnt mean that there were thorns
growing out of it. That means that there was thorn seeds already in it and they grew
with the good seed and choked it out.
And some of the seed fell on really good soil and the roots grew deep and gave
evidence that there was life in that seed.

Now we usually use that parable to explain why some people do not accept Jesus or who
do not remain faithful to Jesus.
But it seems to me that that parable also speaks of Christians today.

Today you can be a Christian and absolutely refuse to allow some of the things that Jesus
said to penetrate your heart and change your life.
The kind of Christian that loves the baby in the manger but doesnt have a lot of use for
the Sovereign on the throne.

A few months ago I encountered a Christian man who was very demeaning and
disrespectful of the President
And I said It doesnt matter if you like the man or not. The Lord did say that we are to
give respect and honor to our leaders.
And his response was, I dont care what the Lord says. The President isnt worthy of
honor and respect.

Really? What else is there that the Lord says that you dont care about?
You see, today there is a big difference between being Christian and following Jesus.

And so today you can be a rapper and put a cross around your neck and call yourself
Christianwhile you sell millions of albums in language that just demeans and denigrates
women.

And they can put the microphone in front of the Christian athlete after the big game and he
says, I just want to give glory to God, just after you heard him drop 5 F-bombs, and he
has 8 kids by 4 women he is not married to.

And apparently today being Christian has nothing to do about the way I express my
sexuality because I can sleep with whoever I want, whenever I want, whether I am married
or not, whether I am the same sex or not.
Jesus has a lot to say about itbut I am going to do it anyway.
You see, today you can be a Christian and refuse to allow some of the things that Jesus
said to penetrate your heart and change your life.
But you cant do that if you are a serious follower of Jesus.

And then there are Christians that are shallow.

They havent let the word penetrate very deep.
A Christian that is built on clichs and bumper stickers, slogans and refrigerator magnet
sayings.
They wear T-shirts that preach Jesus.
But in Jesuss own words when the heat is on and the trials come and life gets hard,
and life always gets hard, what becomes very clear is that this Christian is shallow.

You know it is easier to start following Jesus than it is to stay isnt it?
Following Jesus requires depth.
It demands more than just a superficial relationship with Christ.
And if you are to acquire that depth you will need to spending time in the word, time in
fellowship, time in prayer, time in confession; these things help to produce depth..

But we live in a day when the average Christian family spends 30 to 50 hours a week
watching TV.
The average Christian teen spends two hours a day doing this (texting).
And if you ask the average Christian teen to spend 15 minutes in Bible study and
prayer they will say, I dont have that much time.

Let me tell you, if you dont think like, and act like, and talk like Jesus, especially when the
pressure is on (in the midst of trials) then you probably have a pretty hollow follow.

And then there is a kind of following that gets choked out by the world.
A Christianity that is so consumed by the pursuit of the pleasures and treasures of this
world that there is no discernible difference from the value system of the world and the
value system that real Christianity ought to be rejecting.

I cannot tell you the number of Christians who have accepted Jesus but are so busy into
making moneyand going to resorts and exotic placesand participating in the popular
attractions to the point that the only way you ever know that they have ever acknowledged
Jesus as Lord is if you ask them.
And they will tell you, Yes, I am a Christian. I named Jesus as Lord and asked Him
into my heart 20 years ago. They will tell you that but they live like a pagan.
Their initial follow is completely gone.

Jesus wasnt interested in attracting a big Christian crowd that he knew would crowd him
out of their everyday lives. He was interested in people who would follow Him no matter
what the situation was.
For example in John chapter 6 after he starts talking about drinking His blood, and eating
His flesh, vs. 66 says that many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him
anymore.
Now I want you to look at the next sentence.
I want you to experience the humanity of Jesus, the emotion.
Can you feel the tension in His heart when He turns to His disciples and says, You
dont want to go away also, do you?

Can you hear Jesus ask you that question?

And Simon Peter answered him and said, Lord, to whom should we go? You have the
words of eternal life.
He is not saying, I am not going to do that; That is too deep for me; I have other things
to pursue.
He is saying, Lord, I am not going away. I have unconditionally surrendered. I am
following you because I have found something in you that is worth losing everything
else for.

Now, producing people that will say that, and then do that is the mission of His church.
That is why we exist. To produce people that will say like Peter, I am not going away.

Frankly, I believe that a lot of people became Christians by whatever means they chose to
because they wanted their get to heaven card stamped.
But when Jesus said, Follow Me, He is saying that there is so much more to it than
that.
You see, He died for us so He could live in us, and live through us.
Following Jesus is the out living of the indwelling Christ.
It is the most costly, and the most daring, and the most wonderful life possible.
So Jesus says, Dont just accept me into your heartfollow Me.

Two challenges: the first is to all the Christians listening to me. Stop it! For too long we
have said that the point of the gospel is to answer the question, If I died tonight do I know
that I would go to heaven. And I hope that you can answer that question. But the gospel is
so much bigger than do you know where you will be if you died tonight? A better question
is, Do you know who you will be if you wake up tomorrow. And I hope you will be like
Jesus.

And, to all the seekers who are here this morning: Please dont miss Jesus because of
Christians. Chase Jesus. Read about Jesus. Talk about Jesus. Ask Jesus to show up in
your life because if you do you will come to the place in your life where you will ask, Can I
be baptized. I want to follow Jesus.