Following Jesus at Any Price 02: Following Him

Pastor Mabio Coelho

Midland SDA Church

August 7, 2021

Introduction to the series:

My friend, more than anything in the world, I want you to know Jesus! I am not satisfied with you knowing about Him. I want you to know Jesus for all that He is, so that you can have a daily walk and real relationship with Him. Over the course of five weeks (or so) we will study exactly that, in a sequence of themes from which this is the second.

On the first theme we talked about the Call, the invitation, that Jesus gives us. He invites us into a personal, unique and special relationship with Him. He doesn’t care who we are, or who we think we are. He does not care about our past, for He invites us to come as we are. You can come to Him with your problems and mistakes. Jesus is not interested in your preparation, in your credentials, but in your availability. Come to Jesus with your problems, addictions, stresses, confusion and fears. Come to Him with your guilt, shame and the weight of all your painful memories and let Him guide you towards wholeness and peace.

Today we are going to discover together how to respond to this invitation to come to Jesus. Since the relationship with Him is personal, my response and reaction do not work for you. So let's find out together what are the possible ways to respond to this call.

(Intercessory prayer)

Before we begin this afternoon's study let's go, I want to tell you that this is not a sermon or a monologue. It is a conversation where you can participate from wherever you are. Let's pray once more to ask God for guidance as we open His Word and try to learn from it together.

(pray specifically speaking….)

Last time we stopped at Jesus' invitation to follow Him, and now we will continue exactly from where we left off. To refresh our memory, let us read Matthew 4:19: “And he said to them, Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Jesus did not change Peter's profession. He continued to be a fisherman, but a different fisherman. He wanted to change Pedro's focus, as well as change yours and mine. Jesus did not change Peter's profession, but He elevated it...

Now we are going to look at another story. An encounter between Jesus and another individual who has a little bit of each one of us. Just like the last time, as I tell the story, put yourself in it, imagine yourself living it, being the protagonist of the story. Imagine the following: (Tell today’s story personalizing it for the congregation)

(Highlight the paragraph bellow if prompted by the Spirit durring your retelling of the story)

The church of those days marginalized people like Matthew. He represented the disreputable social and religious scum. Without naming any labels, I just want to make a little digression to underline that is sad to realize that many saints today act in the exact same way to other classes of people whose sin are different than their own, their favorite secret sin. What Jesus is trying to teach us is that Today, in a world where people are lost and in pain, we (His saints) are send out to do the work He did. We are as broken as the next guy so we have no right to look down in anyone. We have to love them, support them, be there for them. But to do that we need to realize we are all sinner in need of God’s mercies and that my sin is not better or worse than the other guy’s sin. Our only difference is that we go to Jesus every time we fall and allow Him to take over our lives again. That is what Proverbs 24:16 teaches us and what Jesus taught in His life.

(Highlight the paragraph below at the end of the story)

He saw Matthew, just as he sees you and me, as a follower, a faithful disciple. The naked truth is that we are not what we think we are. We are not what the others say we are. We are not what we desire. We are not what we do; our behavior does not define us. Our identity is only found in Jesus, our maker; the one in who we are made to reflect God’s image and made to be kings and queens, co-regents with the Lamb, to sit with Jesus in His throne to judge and reign.

Matthew did not know that yet and upon hearing this call, Matthew could not believe his ears. Did Jesus what the other thought and said what Matthew were. He knew what Matthew himself though he was), but Jesus also knew that He was the only one who who really knew who Matthew was (as He is the only one who know who you and me are). Once Matthew realize Jesus was for real, he looked at his table with the coins carefully arranged... He looked long and fixedly at his money, his tax office and his comfortable life... And he left to follow Jesus (Matthew 9:9).

Like Peter, he understood Jesus’ call and followed Him. Now let’s look at what it is like to follow Jesus and how we can do it. Let's consider some questions to help us discover our own personal answer.

1 - Why would you follow Jesus? Let's explore some Bible passages for reasons to follow Jesus:

- John 6:35

“And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (to find out what it really takes quench our hunger and thirst)

- John 8:12

“Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.’ ” (to have a change in life)

- John 14: 6

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

(To meet the Father and live a true and fulfilling life)

2 – Let us read Matthew 9:9-13. What do you think Matthew abandoned to follow Jesus?

(Matthew, much more than riches, he abandoned the self as the center of his life)

“9 As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.

10 Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.

11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners [to repentance].”

- What do you think He won?

(Perhaps, in addition to all that you said, in addition to peace and security, he gained a new lifestyle. Following Jesus and keeping the status quo don’t go together. Everybody’s circumstances are different and every invitation from Jesus is different. The only commonality is the certainty that your life will change [and perhaps keep changing] and so your lifestyle).

3 – How would you follow Jesus today? Think about your current conditions, your profession, your self-image, your desires, your behavior, your faith and your belief system. With all this in mind, how would you follow Jesus today? Let's see what this means in practice by reading a bit more from the Bible:

(a) Read 1 John 2: 6

“Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (NIV)

We need to live as He did. If we study Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in order to discover how Jesus lived His life on earth, we will also learn how to answer this call. Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is a lifestyle! We must learn to live as Jesus did. How???? Search the Scriptures to find His priority, His attitudes, lifestyle, and mission. See how He worshiped, how He treated people, and how He served others. Then go and do the same... It is hard! I try it every day and I fail every day but I keep trying because just as He walked, if we want to remain in Him, we must walk too.

(b) Read Psalm 119:105 and see how the Word of God is described:

“Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.”

(What this means for you? What this tells you how to follow Him?)

How do you and I need to use the Bible so that it can provide direction for our lives?
(We have to learn to think differently! When we have a problem in life; when we want to decide our future or perhaps make life-altering decision how we go about it?

Usually we go and look at culture, societal norms, we look inside to our preferences [what we think and like], same times we consult peers or people we trust. All that may be appropriate in most cases but get very hard to silence the cultural and political noise in order to take the right decision, a godly decision.

If we look back to Jesus, we don’t see Him running His life to conform to what society would expect from Him, or doing things to appease His friend group or this other group. We see Him doing what is right according with the will of God. And that is a change in paradigm. We can still do what we do [e.g., consult friends and trusted individuals, look to what is culturally appropriated, etc], but the only way to do like Jesus did is to allow God to have the first and the last word in every issue. In other words, before we look to other sources, lets go to the source of God’s revelation, the Bible, and study the subject. Then we go about our process and check other sources.

But all in a prayerful spirit. And, before we take our final decision, we have to let God have the last word, as we struggle with Him in prayer and meditation on the Scripture, lets collect our thought and see how they harmonize all that we discussed and discovered with what God reveals through scripture while trying to be sensitive to God’s voice.

We wait for the final insights from Him and we will be walking as Jesus walked. The challenge is that, as humans, we tend to jump the gun and not wait. We ask and we don’t wait for the answer… That is why prayer is so important on the process, because help us to humble ourselves and be patient while we wait God’s answer. But we will talk more about that in our next encounter.)

Dear Friend, now I want to say something very serious to you: it Does not matter if you already know Jesus for many, many years, or for a few months, or even if you don’t know him at all. It's time to reset the clock and start a new walk. I invite you to read Scripture so that you will know for yourself how to follow Him. Do not be satisfied with merely hearing what others say about Jesus. Read “as someone who is with hunger” to get to know Him and follow Him to the end. That is a opportunity of a lifetime that you cannot pass by.

Now, as we close our discussion for Today, I want you to think about one thing:

4 - What positive results can happen if you decide to follow Jesus daily? (Closure)

(Closure: You will get not necessarily what you want but what you really need. According Ecclesiastes 3:11 we have a God-shaped whole in our heart that nothing can fill up. That text says that “He [G’D] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” What that means is than money, love, influence, or whatever else attracts you cannot fulfill you. Nothing in creation, not even all creation combined, is big enough to fill eternity. Only God. When we accept God’s call and follow Him, we get closure because even if we don’t have much we have Him, and that is enough for us. That bring us joy and peace that are beyond understanding. And is that Joy and Peace I want you to have. That is how God design us to live.

That is way Matthew left a comfortable and prosperous life behind Him to walk with Jesus. What Jesus is calling you for? What you have to leave on the side of the road to follow Jesus and to have the joy and peace of having Him on your life, guiding you every step? It is time now to do that first step on faith and follow Jesus’s invitation of leaving our own natural desires and will aside and surrender to him allowing Him to guide you and to car for you.

5 - Let’s take a practical step right now to follow Jesus. (This is between God and each one of us. Take a moment to decide what to do to follow Him and reinforce this decision each day.)