Why Did You Sign Up?
GNLCC 11/10/2002 Job 1:6-22 Luke 5:1-11 Text Acts 12:1-4
Eric Jackson was a nineteen year old junior in high school who wanted some excitement in his life. He had failed the proficiency exams three times and it didn’t look as though he was going to graduate next year. He was tired of teachers getting on his back about assignments. While watching BET one day, he was captivated by the commercial “an army of one.”
There on the tv screen, was a young man with a rifle in his hand, with a special helmet equipped with night vision glasses, and a host of high tech gadgets strapped on his belt running across the terrain in the country. That young man was an army of one. The more Eric thought about the adventure, the excitement, the thrill of it all, the more he decided to quit school and join the army.
What Eric signed up and what he got were two different situations. Eric barely survived boot camp. The hikes and the exercise routines were the first real physical tests in his life. He hated getting up early in the morning. He hated the sergeant yelling and telling him what to do. He hated not being able to go where he wanted to go and to do what he wanted to do.
The freedom he thought he would find in the commercial was missing. Instead of being an army of one running in the countryside, he was in the kitchen cleaning the floors in the dining hall. There was somebody else with an agenda already set for his life, and he had to fit within their plan. Eric thought to himself, “this is not what I signed up for.” Eric decided to go AWOL. That’s absent without official leave.
Do you think Eric was justified in running away from the army? Should the army have the right to place soldiers in assignments and positions that will best suit the needs of the army, even if the soldier is unhappy with the assignment?
We are soldiers in the army of God? When we accepted Jesus Christ, we enlisted in his army. But why did you sign up for cause of Christ? Have you come with certain expectations like Eric, that you are going to find a certain type of life with all kinds of benefits to it?
Did someone promise you a life of joy, peace, health and wealth? Did you want to impress someone, or did it in order to make yourself more attractive to a certain guy or girl who was already signed up? Did you sign up because other people had come forward and you did not want to be left out?
Did you sign up because of a promise you made, “Lord if you heal me”, “Jesus, if you get me out of this jam”, “God, if you do this for me, then I will sign up for service?” It’s important for us to know why we signed up, because that’s going to determine whether we go AWOL or not.
In our Old Testament reading, we ran into a man named Job. Now Job was very wealthy and did his best to live as righteously before God as possible. Job had signed up to follow God. Job felt, serving God was the best way to ensure peace and prosperity for his life. But Job was a soldier and not the commander in chief in the army.
When Satan and God engaged in battle, Job was the weapon in God’s hand. God was saying, “with this man, I will defeat you Satan.” Satan laughed and said, “you’ve got to do better than that God. The only reason this guy serves you is because you’ve given him every blessing there is on earth. If he lost his family, his money, and his property. He would curse you to your face.”
Job did not know that this spiritual battle was going on in heaven. All he knew was that his life had been turned inside out and upside down. The previous night he had gone to bed and all was well. When he rose the next morning, the sun was shining, the day looked promising and breakfast tasted mighty good. But before the sun had gone down that day, four messengers had come to Job with four bad reports.
Not only was Job completely bankrupt having lost his financial possessions, but all of his children were tragically killed. He had gone from one of the richest man in the country to financial disaster. The seven sons and three daughters he loved dearly were gone.
Who do you blame in a situation like this? Who do you get angry with when you’re in this kind of pain? Job could have cried out, “God this is not what I signed up for in living for you.” Job did not know it yet, but there were still some more awful things about to come into his life.
All of us are going to face some severe trials in our lives. Things are going to happen that we did not intend to have come. There will be job losses. There will be sickness. There will be deaths, there will be broken homes. There will be children who turn into great disappointments and heartaches. We need to know in advance, why did we sign up to follow Jesus Christ, otherwise when these things hit us, we will be like Eric, gone AWOL from God.
We never know the full picture that God has in mind when he calls us to sign up. God calls us to come, but God never promises to treat us all the same. At times that can be hard, because one of us appears to have a testimony of God’s provision and the other one does not.
There was an old fisherman in the bible who had passed down his fishing business to his sons. His name was Zebedee. Old Zeb and his wife had two boys by the names of James and John. They had taken over the fishing business with the large wooden boat and the huge nets that needed constant repair.
In order to increase their profits, they had hooked up with another fellow by the name of Simon who was also later called Peter. Peter had a few guys working for him as well.
One day Jesus appeared on the scene. The fisherman had heard about him, but they did not really know Him. Peter and his crew had pulled their boat up to the shore. James and John had also docked their boat. It had been a night with a lot of waiting, but very little catching of fish. There would be no money in their wallets this day. Both groups of men were cleaning their nets of the junk and debris that had been caught in the nets through the night. It looked as though it was a wasted evening.
Jesus came by and sat in Peter’s boat and asked him to move into the water a little bit so that he could talk to the people. Peter did so, and Jesus preached. To show Peter he had appreciated the use of the boat, he told him, “Look, you ought to get paid for you work today, go out into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch of fish.” Peter told Jesus, “well I appreciate the gesture, but I want you to know we worked hard all night long and didn’t catch a thing. But simply because you said so, I’ll let down the nets again.”
Simon Peter and his men rowed further out into the deep water and let down the nets with his men. They could not pull the nets back up again because there were so many fish. He signaled over to James and John to quickly get in their boat and get out there to help them. James and John, they got into their boat with their nets and rowed as quickly as they could to Peter. In a very short while both of their boats were nearly sinking, because they had so many fish in them as they emptied their nets..
Simon Peter immediately recognized that Jesus was more than just a good man. He fell on his feet at Jesus knees and said, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He knew a miracle had taken place and he was astonished by it all. James and John could not believe it either. Jesus told Peter “don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.”
Peter, James, and John on that day left everything they had to follow Jesus. That day of fish was their greatest catch ever, but they left it to the other workers to sell the fish. The three men found following Jesus was a greater reward than the money the fish would bring. They signed up because they believed that Jesus was the Messiah which was to come.
Old Zebedee must have been mighty shocked when his boys came home and told him, their fishing days were over. They were giving him back the business so they could go and follow Jesus. It’s hard to know whether Zeb was happy or sad about their decision. His two boys who had been skilled fisherman, were now going to be preachers.
As time went along, Zeb had to have been somewhat proud of his boys because word got back to him that his two sons had been chosen by Jesus to be among Jesus’ 12 disciples. Not only that, James and John were reported to be in the inner ring of Jesus’ disciples along with another fellow by the name of Peter.
When Jarius’s daughter died, Jesus only allowed Peter, James, and John to enter into the room where the little dead girl lay. They were the only disciples present to see Jesus say to the little girl “Arise”, and to watch the little girl sit up. Peter, James and John were the only disciples that Jesus took up on the mountainside with him to enter another realm of existence. On the mountain, Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with Jesus. Jesus’s clothes became whiter than anything on earth. Jesus would not allow the three to tell anyone about the experience.
Peter James and John were the only three disciples Jesus took deeper into the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was to be crucified. He specifically asked for the three men to pray for Him because he was overwhelmed with sorrow even to the point of death. It would appear that Jesus was preparing these disciples for a special kind of ministry. You would think that God’s plans for them included very similar kinds of future. But when we sign up to follow Christ, we do not know what our future really holds regardless of how much we have prepared to do ministry.
There is always something unknown ahead in our lives when we make that decision to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus does not come with a set of guarantees for how our lives will unfold, but like the song says, “when you can’t see God’s hand, then trust God’s heart.”
Peter, James and John were all great preachers who God used to touch people’s hearts and lives. Yet God’s plans for their lives were very different. One of them had less than eight years to live after Jesus’s resurrection. Another had 31 years to live and another had 62 years to live. One would die at the hand of soldiers, one would die by crucifixion, and one would die exiled on an island as very old man. As soldiers in the army, God was the one who assigned each to his place.
In the book of Acts, James is doing a very fine job of preaching. The Jewish leaders are very upset with the early church and with its leaders. They want the church to simply go away, but that’s not going to happen. In chapter 12 of Acts we find a politician who is looking for a way to gain some popularity points. He knows that his approval rating is very low among the people.
His name is King Herod. This King Herod is the grandson of Herod the Great who tried to kill Jesus when Jesus was a baby. This Herod is also the nephew of Herod Antipas who had ordered the cutting off of the head of John The Baptist. This Herod was cruel and ruthless regarding the lives of others.
A lot of the Jewish people were opposed to both Herod and to the church. Herod figured he could gain their approval by persecuting and destroying the church. He went after James who was one of the leaders in the church and had him arrested. No doubt the church went into prayer for James and the others who had been arrested. As they were praying fervently for James, release, Herod sent his assassins to the prison and they James to death with their swords. News of the execution of James quickly spread through the church and the community.
The Christians were devastated by their loss. How could such a prominent leader be executed simply for Herod to score some political popularity points? What about their prayers? What about all the work Jesus had poured into James? Surely God must have known all that James still had to offer the early church? The only thing Acts tells us about James is that he was killed by Herod. Nothing more is said about him in the bible.
Why did he die so young in the prime of his ministry? All I know is that God chose to allow it to happen. God does not always intervene in our lives to perform a miracle. Sometimes we are called to simply learn from the circumstances themselves with little explanation. We are called to have faith in God regardless of our circumstances. Our testimony is not that God has to do something. Our testimony is that our God is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, we will remain faithful to Him to death.
There are so many situations in which we just wished God would have shown us what was about to happen so that we could have prevented something from taking place. When my own brother committed suicide, I just felt God could have done something to let me know to have encouraged him in some way. The reality is that we are not God, and we really don’t know if we could have made a difference or not.
The Jewish people cheered on Herod for his stance against what they believed to be a false religion. Herod was so happy and delighted to have the support of the people for a change that he tried to increase his popularity even more. This time he had Peter arrested. Peter was the leader of the church at the time in Jerusalem.
Just to make sure the church would not attempt to rescue Peter, Herod assigned sixteen soldiers to guard Peter while Peter was in prison. Peter was bound with two sets of chains and had to sleep between the soldiers.
Once again the church went into prayer. But this time, the night before Peter was too be brought before trial and then executed, God intervened. God sent an angel into Peter’s cell. The angel spoke and the chains fell off Peter’s wrist. The guards were in a kind of suspended animation. They did not hear the angel’s voice, nor could they see what was actually happening.
Peter got up, put on his clothes, and the locked door unlocked itself. Peter followed the angel and walked right past the guards and out of the prison. When the angel and Peter got to the gate which locked up the city, the gate opened by itself and Peter walked on past. Nobody saw anything, did anything, or knew anything until Peter was long gone.
Now what was the difference between Peter’s situation and James. God was able to deliver them both, but He did not do it. He only delivered Peter. It was the same church praying for them both. But the will of God was different for his two soldiers. If we do not know why we signed up to follow Christ, we can let something like this cause us to go AWOL.
We can become envious and somewhat angry or disappointed with God. We say,” well God you healed her husband, why didn’t you heal mine? God you gave him a job, why didn’t I get it. Lord she got a husband, what’s wrong with me. God their loan went through for a house, but why didn’t ours. God I started this ministry for you at the same time as he did, but why is his growing so rapidly and here I am struggling just to get a handful of people.”
There is only one legitimate reason to sign up to follow Christ. That reason is that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and there is no other name by which we can be saved. Jesus Christ has made our salvation possible. Without Christ we are doomed to destruction for all eternity because of our sins. Jesus Christ can do a better job with our lives than we can do on our own.
Our acceptance of Jesus is always going to have to be on His terms. We come to Jesus by faith, we live for Jesus by faith, and we die for Jesus by faith. When we enlisted, we recognized that as commander in chief, Jesus has the right to assign us to missions and to specific plans and purposes.
Jesus knows the struggle we’re having to go through to be faithful to him. It’s part of our boot camp experience to become one of his finest soldiers. It is foolishness to think we can in walk in Jesus’ footsteps and avoid the kind of pain, suffering and sacrifices that Jesus knew while he walked on the face of this earth.
One lesson that everyone of us here constantly needs is how to be completely obedient to God. We pray often, Lord help me to be a better Christian. By that, we often mean, help me to be a more obedient Christian. The bible tells us how Jesus learned to be more obedient. Not only did Jesus pray “not my will, but Your will be done”, the Bible tells us in Hebrews 5:8, “although He was a son, He learned obedience from the things he suffered.” The only way we grow in the Lord is by overcoming the tests and the trials which come into our lives.
If you did not sign up to follow Christ wherever your life may take you according to His will, you signed up for the wrong reason. Let me tell you in advance, none of us will ever fully understand why certain things happen in our lives or why God even allowed them to happen. We continue on with God, because we know that God is God and that He’s still in control.
There is a benefits package that comes with knowing Jesus Christ. There is first peace with God. You are brought into a right relationship with God through Christ. There is the benefit of purpose and meaning in life. You know that God has a plan for you. There is the benefit of eternal life. Death is not the end nor something to be feared. There is the benefit of untold blessings in terms of relationships and material goods. Jesus said, whatever you give up to follow me, I can return many times over.
But if you choose to sign up for the benefits that come with knowing Jesus Christ, let me inform you that with all benefits packages, you first have to have a job. Our job is submit ourselves to the will of God in good times and in bad, when it’s easy and when it’s not, whether we enjoy or whether we dislike it, when we understand or when we’re left in the dark .
Jesus does not allow us to pick and choose our lifestyle as a soldier in the army of God. He tells us, here is what you are to do and the attitude to have when you do it. He’s got a battle to win, and He knows how to use us to make it happen. Can Jesus count on you in that situation you’re facing today. If not, why did you sign up.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick 11/10/2002
Why Did You Sign Up?
Job 1:6-22 Luke 5:1-11 Acts 12:1-11
A. What Do We Get When We Sign Up
1. Eric Jackson Seeking Some Adventure
2. B.E.T. TV And An Army Of One
3. The Soldier Of The Future
4. Boot Camp & A Whole Lot More
5. Where’s The Freedom I Once Saw
6. AWOL Absent Without Official Leave
7. Justified Or Not
B. Guess What—You’ve Enlisted In The Army
1. What Put Your Name On The Dotted Line
2. Promises, Expectations, Love, Pressure
3. Bargaining With God—It’s Good To Know
C. Job—A Very Righteous Man Seeking The Lord
1. Just A Soldier—Not The Commander In Chief
2. God And Satan Go At It
3. Job Is The Weapon In God’s Hands
4. Job Didn’t Understand, But What A Spin
5. How Do You Handle Losing It All
6. Is This The Time To Get Angry
7. But This Is Not Why I Signed Up
D. Jesus Has Made A Promise In John 16:33
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
1. The Trials Are Coming—No Stopping Us
2. All Kinds Of Hurts, Disappointments
3. Time To Question Our Signatures
4. God Calls Us All To Come But
5. God Never Promises Equal Treatment
6. Not All Testimonies Are The Same
E. The Tale Of Some Fisherman
1. Zebedee Also Called Old Zeb
2. Fishing Business, Nets, Boats
3. James, John, Peter Fishing Partnership
4. Jesus Comes On The Scene
5. The Preaching In The Boat
6. Was It Going To Be A Wasted Evening
F. Jesus Truly Is The Son Of God
1. Throw Your Nets Into The Deep
2. Too Few Boats And Too Many Fish
3. James & John To The Rescue
4. Peter’s Declaration Of Jesus
5. Jesus Issues A Call
6. They Left Everything To Sign Up
H. The Fishing Partnership Is Reborn
1. Among The 12 & The New Inner Circle
2. Jarius Daughter, Mt. Of Transfiguration
3. Garden Of Gethsemane
4. The Plans For Each Were Not The Same
5. Unknown Factor When We Sign Up
6. “Can’t See God’s Hand, Trust His Heart”
I. What Will Be Ahead In The Future
1. How Long To Live—8, 31, and 62
2. Murdered, Crucified, Exiled
3. James Preaching In Acts
J. King Herod --- The Politics Of Popularity
1. Grandson Of Herod The Great—Baby Jesus
2. Nephew Herod Antipas—John The Baptist
3. Hated, Despised, Opposed By Jews
4. Attack The Church—Arrest James
5. The Prayers Of The Saints For James
6. The Assassins Strike With Sword
7. The Church In Turmoil Over James
8. But James Had So Much More To Offer
9. Where Was The Miracle From God
10. Our Testimony Is “That God Is Able”
11. If Only God Had Given Us A Sign
K. King Herod Is Encouraged By The Jews
1. With New Popularity, Peter Arrested
2. 16 Soldiers Assigned To Guard Him
3. Bound With Two Chains
L. The Church Goes Into Prayer Again
1. God Intervenes With An Angel
2. The Miraculous Escape From The City
3. Why God Acted Differently
4. Watch Out For Envy-Leads To AWOL
M. Only One Legitimate Reason To Sign Up
1. Jesus Is Who He Said He Was
2. Jesus Can Do A Better Job
3. We Sign Up On Jesus’ Terms
4. Jesus Sends Us To Boot Camp
N. The Prayer We All Share
1. Lord Help Me To Be Better Than I Am
2. Jesus Shows The Way
Hebrews 5:8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
3. Signing Up For The Right Reason
4. Know That You Not Understand It All
5. There Is A Benefits Package Available
6. You’ve Got To Get The Job First
7. Jesus Gives The Assignments
