Yesterday I preached on Philippians 1.27-2.11 with the main theme is Jesus simply your savior or is he the Lord of your life? It was interesting to watch they congregation, more to listen to the congregation, it was dead silent. Honestly, I didn't know if I would be able to preach this sermon, but I feel that it went really well.
The thing that really seemed to silence the crowd was the question I asked about the biggest threat to the church. It isn't the government. It isn't Islam or any other religion. It isn't Atheism. The biggest threat to the church is disunity. If the church has made Jesus the Lord then we are united around him, but if the individual members of the church haven't submitted to him as Lord, simply accepted the grace from a savior we aren't unified.
A savior is easy to have, because a savior just gives, he doesn't ask for anything but out sin, the stuff we don't want anyway. But the Lord demands all of you, he deserves all of you. This is where it gets hard.
In the sermon I used the illustration of oral hygiene. Hopefully everyone brushes their teeth, but that is not total oral hygiene, that's the basic entry level part of it. There is also mouth wash, and mouthwash is great. It takes 30 seconds and it gives your mouth a nice minty fresh taste, it gets some of the stuff that brushing missed. But brushing and mouthwash aren’t enough. There is one more part of oral hygiene, a part that less than half of Americans do daily, but it is the most important part, flossing. Regular flossing aside from just preventing gum disease and bad breath is also linked to a reduced incidence of heart disease, and can actually increase life expectancy. Flossing can make you live longer. So why don’t more people do it? It’s time consuming, it’s hard, it hurts.
I think the savior and Lord thing is like that. Everyone breathing is alive, that’s like brushing your teeth, you just kind of do it. You have life, but not full life. Then one day someone introduces you to Jesus, they tell you about this awesome guy who wants to take your sin from you and give you eternal life you pray a simple prayer and you're forgiven. That’s like mouthwash, it doesn’t take much time or effort, and it leaves your life feeling minty fresh. But then you go deeper with Jesus, your relationship with him become more intimate, and you realize you need to become less as he becomes more, that you need to give him control of your life, and that you need to become the servant and he needs to be the master. You make Jesus your Lord, that’s adding flossing. Yeah it takes some time and effort, it might hurt a little bit, but studies show that flossing can increase your life expectancy, and the Bible tells us that the life we have with Jesus is better than any life without him. It’s defiantly worth the time, the effort, and the struggles.
Are we willing to floss our lives for Jesus?
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