If Jesus were to come into your house, what do you think the first question he might ask you would be? Are you a believer in me? What is happening in your life? Why didn’t you take the trash out when you were asked?
What would he ask? As I look at the Scriptures, I believe the first thing he would probably ask us is "Do you love me?" It is what he asked Peter in John 21:15-17 after his resurrection. I believe it is the question that he asks us today. Sadly to say, I don’t think a great number can answer the question with an unconditional yes. I am talking about people who attend church, make confession of faith as believers, yet when it comes down to the final analysis of their belief, they could not answer Yes when the Savior asks do you love me. You see, you can’t fake it when you have God asking the questions. He has the ability to cut through the shucking and jiving to get right down to the real truth.
There is a test of truth in answering the question. Jesus gave the test to Peter and history shows us he passed the test. Jesus has given the test to you. Can you pass? The test is not in a blanket answer, Do you love me, Yes Lord I love you. No actions speak louder than words, and Jesus applied this in his comments to Peter. Do, you love me Peter? Yes, Lord I love you. Then feed my sheep. (Do you love me ___________; Yes, Lord I love you, Then feed my sheep).
There is a lesson being taught in this passage that is deep. The love of the Savior, the devotion for Jesus Christ needs to be followed up with the action of ministry. When you love, you will do something for the person you love. You will work to show your love.
I like the instruction Paul gives to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth."
But I am getting ahead of myself, because we cannot be a workman until we can honestly say yes to the question, Do you love me? that Jesus has posed. For unless our service is motivated by an intense love for Jesus Christ, even if we do work, and so many do work, and so many do not, but if our work our service is not motivated out of that intense devotion to Jesus, it becomes a duty, it becomes something that we do because we think we are suppose to do it but it is not something of devotion, it is not something of passion in our lives. Do you understand what I am saying tonight?
Love. It is where the rubber meets the road. It is what separates the truth from the half- hearted. It is what leads one to an intensity that moves beyond just knowledge, it takes one to the very heart of passion for whatever the focus of that love concerns.
Church, I want to re-emphasis my focus for Sunday nights. While in the morning services I address the needs, the questions for the seekers, people who are asking questions, seeking answers for life, in the evening I want us to move to a deeper, meatier approach and understanding of Jesus and His teachings to us. And before we can go deeper, we need to cover in the next several weeks, some basics. We need to make sure we can accurately answer Jesus question, Do you love me?
I enjoy the game of basketball, and in the last two seasons, in particular the play of the Chicago Bulls. Although I disagree with the off court lifestyle of some players, in particular Dennis Rodman, the team has taught me something that applies to my life as a Christian. The Chicago Bulls do not win games because they put in every shot, they win games based on what they do with the missed shots. They score on the rebounds.
This is somewhat like the Christian life. We all take bad shots. We know where the goal is, the hoop, and we know what the ball looks like, we have dribbled it, passed it and taken shots with it and sometimes, the hoop and the ball don’t meet and we have missed shots in life. Can you relate to this? But the issue is not one of trying and failing, the issue is one of trying and rebounding. It is what you do when you have missed the mark. Do you get back up and get into the game?
Let me put this another way. What do you do when you have allowed something other than Jesus to take center stage in your life. When you cannot answer the question, Do you love me in the affirmative. When you have gotten off-track, when you have missed the shot. I want you to know, the game is not over, you can rebound. You can get the ball and put it up again and you can score, and come out in the end, a winner in life. And who has not fallen? The question becomes more, but who has not yet gotten up.
The greatest commandment given by God is found in Matthew 22:37, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."
The primary thing that God is looking for you our lives is our love toward him. Love comes before our working for Him, for if we work without a holy passion, we labor in vain.
How do I know. Jesus said it was so. Turn to Revelation 2:2-5
I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men, and you put to the test those who called themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My names sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place---unless you repent."
When Jesus looked at the church at Ephesus, he saw a lot of good things. He saw good work, hard work, continual work. These were not lazy people. They had endured hardship and persecution for the name of the Lord. They preached the word, they upheld the word, they ran off false teachers, these people knew their Scriptures. A pastor’s dream team.
Jesus said there was only one area they were coming up short. Can you image, just one are that the Lord could find fault with them. This is a church that must be getting an A instead of an A+, only missing one on the test. But it was a big miss, for he said they have left their first love. They had left the love of the one who was the reason for all their work. They had become efficient in their lives, but it was coldly efficient. Somewhere along the line they had lost their love for God, somewhere along the line they had become cold and lifeless.
I know we live in an unredeemed world, one that John said in 1 John 2:16 comes with a formidable enemies one of which is the very world we live in that includes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
This is why I want to talk about the love of Christ and things that can rob us from that very love. I want us to have an understanding of the consequences of allowing this lack of love to continue in our lives, and then in the weeks ahead, I am going to be addressing the issue of regain and developing our true love for Jesus Christ. Some practical application for our lives today. Are you with me?
We live in a society that finds love as a relationship to have, hold and discard. In fact, if we were to go back over the last 30 years or so of country, pop, and rock music and eliminate the songs that deal with someone leaving his or her lover, we would cut the available list of tunes in half. One that would definitely have to go is a hit by Paul Simons in the 70’s, "50 ways to leave your lover."
Looking at the music that is being turned out, and the pull back to these songs of the 60’s and 70’s, we could rightly conclude that America is involved in a love crisis. And it is a two fold crisis. 1] No one, according to the music, seems to know how to keep love alive, the flame lit, and the fire burning; and 2] Everyone seems to be stepping out on his or her true love.
The church also has a love crisis. Isn’t that what we just read in Revelation 2:4?
Have you ever been driving, made a wrong turn and discovered you were on the wrong road, heading to the wrong location, and basically, you were just plain lost? Now if you are like me, you want to return to the right road as quickly as possible to continue your journey once you have found yourself going the wrong way. But before you can get back, you need to know where you are. Women seem to like to stop and ask the first available gas station the where and how of getting back to the right road. Guys on the other hand, prefer the lost method. Drive around until a sign along the road lets you know which direction you are traveling, and how many states out of the way you have already driven.
If it is possible to get lost along the way in your love for Jesus Christ, and we know it is because He said so, then it is best that we know the attitudes and actions that can side-track us in our journey so we can avoid them, or if they have already gotten us lost, so we can find our way back to Jesus again.
The area I will be dealing with tonight comes in the form of spiritual carnality. God has too many children who are not sure to which family they belong. They are trying to be part of His family and yet stepping out with the world at the same time and this leads to unanswered prayer, emotional and physical weakness, loss of peace, loss of joy, lack of stability, and all manners of ill.
Now understand me here. I am not saying that every time a Christian has a problem it is because he or she is carnal. But I am suggesting that far too many of us are having far too many failures because we are carnal and half committed to the Gospel.
What is a carnal Christian? Simply stated, carnality is the spiritual state where a born again Christian knowingly and persistently lives to please and serve him or herself rather than Christ, and in reality, the very state of their salvation might be questionable based on their lifestyle and actions. But there are those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth. The people Jesus addressed in Ephesus in Revelation 2 are classic examples of carnal Christians. Jesus addressed them as Brethren, part of the family of God.
Carnal Christians are stagnant Christians. Look at 1 Corinthians 3:2-3 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly.
Christians, saved, yet demonstrating little or no spiritual growth. This is a disturbing thing in the church today. Christians who can come week after week, month after month, year after year and making no progress in their spiritual growth. They still commit the same sins in the same way, they still refuse to think biblically, to relate to God as he demands. But they are in the same seat on Sunday morning, faithfully. In fact, no one else had better take their seat. Performing but still wrestling with stuff they should have taken care of a long time ago.
Paul states what marks a carnal believer is their inability to eat solid spiritual food. In other words, they have the inability to get into the deeper things of God.
Many of us want to give God everything but what God requires. We want to offer him a little of this and a little of that, but our spiritual engines don’t roar because we are not giving what God requires: a committed life, using the time we have for spiritual development.
Many Christians are carnal because they have stalled, they can’t move forward no matter how they spin their wheels, stuck in a rut that they have made from their own choosing by failing to move from milk to solid food. Their spiritual growth is measured by how much they are entertained, not by how much truth they have been exposed to. They want to feel good without learning anything. They want someone else to feed them the Word, they don’t want to have to use their silverware to feed themselves.
We can excuse a baby, a newborn in Christ for behaving this way, but grown Christians, they are without excuse. Like the people described in Hebrews 5:11, they have become dull of hearing. The word dull here is used of a mule. So carnal Christians have become mule-headed, stubborn, refusing to learn and apply the truth of God which stalls their spiritual development.
Carnal Christians are fleshly minded. 1 Corinthians 3:3 You are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?
Paul is saying that Carnal Christians develop a mind set of disobedience, seeking to gratify themselves rather than pleasing God. Paul mentions four types of people in Corinthians.
1] The natural person, 1 Corinthians 2:14 A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. A natural man is another way of saying non-Christian. The natural man has two main traits. a] They don’t welcome spiritual things. Although they might go along with them to a degree, they don’t want God’s truth’s to control their life.
b] Spiritual things seem like foolishness to them. They cannot grasp spiritual truths because they lack the capacity to interact with these truths without the Holy Spirit. These people want to talk about everything except spiritual things.
2. The second type of person Paul talks about is the spiritual person, 1 Corinthians 2:15-16 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ
The spiritual person is the mature Christian who has learned to think like Christ thinks. The mind is the key. What the brain is to the body, the mind is to the soul. The Spiritual person has learned to think God’s thoughts. He has reached the point where he consistently although not yet perfectly, appraises, evaluates, or examines life from God’s perspective.
Now let me ask you, in your decision making, your planning, your whole orientation to life, do you regularly raise the question, What does God think about this? If this does not occur, it is because you are not a spiritual person yet. A spiritual person thinks like Christ. Spiritual people are able to connect present decisions with future consequences because they are mature. Immature people do not make this connection. They live for the moment.
3. The third type of person, babes in Christ, is found in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it.
These are infant Christians, people brand new to the faith. They have not been saved long enough to become spiritual.
Now for some new Christians, they seem to just take off and soar after they are saved. A baby Christian can be Spirit controlled, but he or she cannot be considered mature because maturity takes time.
Paul attached no blame to these people for their immaturity, you don’t condemn babies for being babies. That is all we can expect them to be.
4. This bring us back to where we started the fourth person, the carnal person that we described in the start of 1 Corinthians 3:3, for you are still fleshly.
The key to the carnal person is the word still in this verse. Still implies there has been opportunity for spiritual growth, but it hasn’t happened. Same old, same old. In Paul’s case, he had known these people for 5 years yet he found they had made no progress. Of these four people Paul describes, the carnal Christian is the only one who is not acting the way he is suppose to be. You can’t expect a natural person to be nothing more than natural. You can’t blame a baby for being immature. You can’t fault a spiritual Christian for growing like he should. But the carnal man, he is disappointing because he has had time to grow and has become stunted in his growth.
Which really brings us to my last point tonight, a carnal Christian is a rebellious Christian. 1 Corinthians 3:3-4 Are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am Paul and another I am Apollos are you not mere men?
Have you ever had someone tell you, well, I am only human? That, church, is non-Christian talk. Well everybody is doing it. More mere men talk
Paul in this passage is describing jealousy and strife concerning various human leaders. Taking sides, pitting one leader against another. Pastoral change in churches is many times a difficult transaction because we have a tendency to compare the current with the past. It shows our carnality, our rebellion to the will of God when we allow this to happen.
We who have children understand rebellion. Our kids have gone through it in most cases, particularly in the teenage years.
When you tell them to do something and they think because they are older they can say no. That is a rebellion problem. They are acting unlike you have trained them, so you have to deal with their rebellion. And what parent would not.
The same is true with Christians who have been saved a while, but are still living in the pattern of the flesh. It is not because he cannot help himself. Lets be honest. He acts the way he does because he refuses to help himself, because living the carnal life is a decision of his will.
I realize people have problems that need to be worked on, they get trapped in all sorts of problems and bondage’s and they need help, they can’t do it for themselves, but in honesty, for the older Christian these problems are either precipitated or perpetuated by willful decisions that person makes. Christians are never the helpless pawn in the devils hands.
When you see a child playing in the dirt, you don’t give it a second thought. Kids play in the dirt.
When you see a 21 year old man playing in the dirt, rubbing himself with it and trying to eat it, you have a serious problem on your hands. But the only difference between the child and the man is time. By 21, the man should know dirt is not a toy.
We have too many Christians who have been saved too long still playing in the dirt spiritually and having fun in it. Christians who have been exposed to the Gospel for a long time should be able to tell the difference between mud.
The dirt the world has to offer can only look good to a Christian who has left his first love.
Tonight, I want to challenge you to examine your life and to determine if you are a natural man, not saved; or if you are a spiritual person, seeing things from God’s viewpoint; or if you are a babe in Christ, brand new; or are you a carnal Christian, not living like the new person you are in Christ. If you are a natural person, I invite you to allow Christ to become central to your life. If you are a carnal Christian, I want to urge you to return to God’s first commandment, Love the Lord your God. Return PRAYER
