CASUAL OR EXTRA-SPECIAL?

TEXT: Mark 11:1-11

INTRODUCTION:

Opening Illustration:

A preacher was riding on a plane filled with people and cigarette smoke. (Of course, this had to be some time ago since we know that smoking is now banned on airplanes.) The preacher knew he would have to take a bath, and send his clothes to the cleaners. He felt like he had been charcoal-broiled, Burger King style.

Suddenly he turned to a woman and said, “Would you like to chew my gum for awhile?” The lady was insulted. “What in the world do you mean?” she snapped. The preacher calmly replied by saying, “I’ve been smoking your secondhand smoke ever since we left the city. I thought you might want my secondhand gum.”

Brothers and sisters, that is what I call “indifference.” Many people are completely indifferent to those around them. They don’t know and they don’t care. They don’t know who they are and they don’t care who they are. And they don’t care if their smoke gets in someone else’s face.

Indifference is bad. It’s a bad trait in anybody. It’s a bad attitude. If Scripture teaches us anything at all about life it teaches us that we are to be considerate of the people around us: at home, at work, at play, etc.

Rom. 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” We are not quick to do that, but we should be.

Indifference is bad when it is aimed at people. It’s worse when it is aimed at God.

Our text deals with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The words “triumphal entry” indicate a good response to Jesus, but it wasn’t always that way.

Most people respond to Christ in one of two ways: Casual commitment or Extra Special commitment.

1. CASUAL COMMITMENT/ATTTITUDE

This was the kind of commitment that the people surrounding Jesus had demonstrated…they were just there in Jerusalem, not to see Jesus but to see Lazarus who had been raised from the dead.  They followed Jesus in a certain degree and about certain teachings, but not really yielding to His will, not really committed to Him.  When it comes to the hard teaching of Jesus, they would say, “Take it easy Lord.”

Dr. Margaret Mead, distinguished anthropologist and author, made a very interesting observation in an address some time ago. She pointed out that for a long time it was the universal custom to say on parting: “Good-bye,” which is a shortened form of “God be with you.” Today it is quite common instead to say: “Take it easy.”

Many people have the “take it easy” attitude about a lot of things in life. Don’t take it seriously. Take it easy.

This is also the attitude, the casual attitude that many people have toward God and Christ and the church. Don’t worry about it. Don’t take it seriously. Take it easy! And that attitude has been demonstrated not only by the crowd but also by the Pharisees and Teachers of Law at the Triumphal Entry of Jesus!

They have not responded positively to Jesus…And even today, a lot of people are not always responding positively to Jesus, to His life, to His ministry, to His love.

John 6:66 “From this time many of his disciples (followers) turned back and no longer followed him.”

Some disciples stopped following Jesus because they didn’t like or receive His teaching. It’s easy to have an indifferent or casual attitude when you don’t like what is being taught.

Illustration:

The young preacher thrilled his congregation with his first sermon. But the next Sunday he preached the same message. And the third Sunday he preached it again. Finally, one of the deacons was getting concerned. He went to the young minister and asked, “That’s a great sermon you’ve been preaching, but don’t you have another sermon you could preach?”

The young preacher replied, “I’ve got quite a few sermons, and as soon as you do something with the one I’ve been preaching I’ll preach a new one!”

Brothers and sisters, I try to make my sermons as interesting and as clear as possible. I want to bless and benefit people, not blister or bust them up. I want to help people.

But even in my sermons there are things that I present for you to do and to respond to. A lot of people when they hear preaching about Blessings, Prosperity, Success, Hope, etc., wow, you’ll hear them say a loud, “Amen!”  With matching clapping of hands…But when the preaching is about commitment, giving, attitude, character, etc…wow, people are looking at you as if they are going to eat you up!

Illustration:

Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted employees, “Look, I’m going to leave. And while I’m gone, I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I’m away. I will write you regularly. When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip.”

Everyone agrees. He leaves and stays gone for a couple of years. During that time he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns. Finally he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess–weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows broken across the front of the building, the gal at the front desk dozing, loud music roaring from several offices, two or three people engaged in horseplay in the back room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss. Without hesitation he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, “What happened? Didn’t you get my letters?” You say, “Oh, yeah, sure. We got all your letters. We’ve even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have ‘letter study’ every Sunday. You know, those were really great letters.”

I think the president would then ask, “But what did you do about my instructions?” And, no doubt the employees would respond, “Do? Well, nothing. But we read every one!”

And I have noticed that many times our response is not overwhelming. In fact, often it is ho-hum. It is casual. It is “take it easy, preacher. Calm down. Cool it. We’ll do it if we want or when we get around to it.”

But that is the wrong attitude to have toward the Lord and His Word, toward the presentation of His Word. IF THERE ARE THINGS THAT WE SHOULD BE TAKING EASY IS COMMITTING SIN!

John 14:23 Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” I say, “Come on in, Lord! Make yourself at home! Here, have my recliner! I’ll sit here before you!”

Brothers and sisters, a casual attitude is not kosher. It is not condoned in Scripture nor by the Savior.

2. EXTRA SPECIAL COMMITMENT/ATTITUDE

And that’s what we have seen in the life of some Greeks in the Triumphal entry of Jesus…they said, “We want to see Jesus.” They traveled and squeezed in to the crowd, not to see the Festivity but to see Jesus…that’s really an extra special commitment…  A few rare souls become committed in their action to a cause or a person.

Illustration:

In 1873 a group of women at Hillsboro, Ohio, met and prayed and then read the 146th Psalm. Then they prayed and pleaded with the saloon keepers to give up their business. Church bells tolled simultaneously with the crusade of prayer and persuasion. On the second day one saloon keeper gave in. He gave his entire stock to the women saying, “Do as you please with it.”

At the end of eight days, every one of the eleven saloons in the town closed. The brewers of Cincinnati offered $5,000 reward to anyone who would break up the movement. One unusually courageous man tried to do so. In four days he threw up his hands and surrendered to the women. This crusade of prayer and persuasion led to the formation in 1874 of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

I call what those women did “committed action.”  Their commitment is EXTRA SPECIAL! They were committed to their cause and they acted strongly on their commitment. We need more people like that in the Lord’s church.

In prayer, in serving God, in our desire to follow Christ, we must be fully committed…And even in our finances, the Lord must be LORD, amen!

Illustration:

Dr. R. E. Neighbour was in the baptistry with a railroad engineer. The pastor was ready to proceed with the baptismal service. “Wait!” whispered the engineer; “I forgot something. I want to return to the dressing room, and get my billfold and let you baptize it with me!” that all the aspects of my life is surrendered to Christ!

That’s committed action! That man recognized the importance of surrendering his whole life to the Lord, finances included. MARAMI KASI ANG NAGSASABI, “LORD, I GIVE MY ALL…BUT DON’T TOUCH MY MONEY, MY FINANCES…”

Illustration: (Bro. Balong, about money, said… SOMETIMES GOD IS TELLING ME TO GIVE MORE THAN WHAT I WANT TO GIVE…THE ONLY REASON WHY I’M ABLE TO GIVE IT IS BY SAYING TO MYSELF THAT I’M JUST A MANAGER OF GOD’S RESOURCES…SA KANYA LAHAT ITO!”)

Generally, if you can get a person to surrender his finances to the Lord, you’ve got his heart and his whole life. Money is the mover in most people’s lives. It moves them in one direction or another: toward the Lord in appreciation or away from the Lord in selfishness.

• Now in the area of loving others, this is what the Bible is telling to us:

John 13:34 Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

Demonstrating love for one another sounds so simple, but it is sometimes hard to do. Especially, when we think in terms of loving people like Jesus loved them. Even those people who are not lovable…(Mga nagtatapon ng basura sa tapat mo…you pray for them, hindi para kunin na ni Lord kundi sila din ay maligtas.)

Illustration:

An experienced surgeon addressed a question to a young intern assisting him during an operation. “Young man,” he asked, “Whom do you consider the most important person in this room?”

The intern groped for an answer. He thought of responding, “You are, Sir,” but he couldn’t believe that his mentor would be that self-serving. Finally, thinking he would sound gracious, the intern replied, “Well, I suspect it would be the nurses who assist you in such an efficient manner.” The surgeon shook his head. “No,” he said, “The most important individual in this operating room is the patient.”

One of the major things that Jesus has been trying to teach us in life is that the patient is most important.  People are important…All the more those people that hurting people are most important. That we should love them as He loved them.

And we should not be casual about it. We should be committed to them with loving actions.

• In the aspect or area of serving God, I want us to analyze what Jesus asked from His disciples at:

Mark 11:2 Jesus said to his disciples, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there….untie it and bring it here….”

Mark 11:4 “They went and found a colt outside in the street…”

I realize that what Jesus commanded his disciples to do regarding His triumphal entry was extremely simple, but still, they did what He said. Sometimes it’s is the so-called simple stuff that we fail to do. A lot of times we hear preaching about serving God and using our life in service to Him, it’s so simple to understand, but we find it difficult to do, why, maybe because our commitment or attitude towards God is just casual and not extra special…Simple to understand, but difficult to do.

I want us to understand today that you were shaped For Serving God.

The Bible says this, let’s read it together in Eph. 2:20, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. The word workmanship means we were designed and molded by God for a purpose. We were made to make a contribution in life. God made us to make a difference. How we live is much more important than how long we live.

Is there anybody here who wants to live to be a 100? And how many of you would like to live that long and look back over their lives and say, after 100 years, I still have not made a difference for anybody? We’re all meant to give something back. We’re all meant to make a contribution. The Bible says we’re created to serve, we’re saved to serve, we’re gifted to serve, we’re shaped to serve. Brothers and sisters, we don’t do these things to serve the Lord because we want to be saved, but because we are saved! We’re commanded to serve God in response. Good service is evidence that something good has happened in our hearts and lives! We all should make a deep thinking of giving an extra special commitment this year in serving our God…We all need to think about what we can do to serve the Lord in 2010!

Now whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He never gives it to us without equipping us first. And in the next verse Job says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.” (Job 10:8). God uses five things to shape us. Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences. That spells ‘SHAPE’. Those five things make you, and God uniquely shapes you, different from anybody else in the world, for a purpose. And that purpose is to serve Him.   I do want you to notice this, God made you unique and your uniqueness is not for your benefit.

Let’s read this verse aloud: 1Pet. 4:10, “Each of us should use whatever gift he’s received to make a lot of money”. Oh! That’s not what it says! It says we’re to use whatever God’s given us to do what? Serve others! Your talents are not for your benefit. Do you remember what I said before with our life’s purpose… That “It’s not about us, but it’s all about God.” Your purpose in life is to be what God made you to be. And He gave you gifts and talents and abilities and background and experiences and all these things for the benefit of other people, to be used by serving others.

One of the important purposes that a Christian must accomplish in his life is serving God and serving others. We were put here to serve God and the way we serve God is by serving other people. Now, some people want to serve God; they just don’t want to serve others. But you can’t do that. The only way you can serve God is by serving others. Do you see why the purpose of fellowship is so critical. We need each other in order to serve each other.

Now the Bible has a word for serving others, it’s called “ministry.” When people hear the word minister, what do they think of in their minds? A priest or a pastor? But the Bible says every believer is a minister. Now, not every believer is a pastor, but every believer is a minister. Ministry simply means using my life to help somebody else in the name of God. Any time you use your talents, your abilities, your background, your experiences to help somebody else, you know what that’s called?  Ministering. And you know what you are? You’re a minister.

In the Bible the word “service” and “ministry” are the same word. And in the Bible “servant” and “minister” are the same word. So all of us are called to ministry. You don’t need a title to be involved in ministry. You simply need to be actively doing something. If you are called to salvation, you are called to serve.

Turn to the person next to you and say “You’re a minister”.

• Cite some examples in the areas they can serve God…

But the truth is every Christian is a minister. Any time you use your talent to help somebody else, you are ministering. You are serving. All women are ministers. All men are ministers. All little kids, all old people, if we’re believers, we’re all called to serve Jesus Christ.

CONCLUSION:

Casual attitude or committed action? Which characterizes your life in relation to Christ?

Illustration:

Church members may be divided into three classes: wishbones, jawbones, and backbones. The wishbones are always wishing and hoping that their church will somehow grow but without their effort. The jawbones talk a lot, but do little. And the backbones do the work.

Casual or extra special? Which are you?