Many people did believe in him, however, including some of the Jewish leaders. But they wouldn’t admit it for fear that the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue. For they loved human praise more than the praise of God. John 12:42-43
The Word of God for us, the People of God .
The people who believed in Jesus didn’t go far enough;
they believed what he was saying is true, but they behaved
as if having everyone like and respect them was more important than following
Jesus. They fell victim to the oldest of
traps when they Let the idea of being Good Become the Enemy of the Best…following Jesus.
There are plenty of things
I can do in life, but not all escape the stupidity rating. I can, for instance, legally build a
grotesquely-ugly statue on my front lawn, knowing the little kids next door
will be afraid, and my grass will be safe from being trampled by little
feet. But that’s stupid if I hope to
have peace with my neighbor, and any chance at all to win my neighbor to
Christ. My personal freedom of choice
does NOT trump my responsibility to live my life as a serious follower of Jesus
Christ.
Legally I can do whatever I want with my front lawn; as
a Christian, I need to give it plenty of thought what my neighbor will
think. In the context of Paul’s advice
to the young Christians at
Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others. 1 Corinthians 10:24
Christian Correlation: Be ready to please God by impacting people’s
lives for Jesus
Here are four phrases which define the
acting-out of this life’s philosophy of not letting good things become the
enemy of the best:
Holy Living
Holy living has to do with worshipping God. The Israelites forgot that. They slipped into worship of idols.
Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used or using anything that is meant to be worshiped. [1]
·
Friendship is a good thing.
It can become the enemy of the best if my friendships get in the way of
living in a holy manner before God.
·
Vocation is a good thing (puts potatoes on the table), but it
can become the enemy of the best if it requires of me questionable practices
(selling lottery tickets, or constantly missing worship).
·
Sex is a good thing.
It can become the enemy of the best if my appetite for sex overwhelms my
respect for my wife, and I treat her casually.
Holy living has more to it than watching the things I
do – it is a matter of how I think about what I’m going to do,
and what that will do to me, and to others.
So, Holy Living means we must also take
care by Right Thinking.
Right Thinking
What goes on between the ears has a lot to do
with Paul’s philosophy.
·
It’s not about
knowing all the commandments, memorizing all the Psalms, Proverbs and Gospel of
John.
·
It’s not about
keeping the law.
Right thinking has an accurate view of one’s own
heart, and the condition thereof. It’s
knowing that you are as likely to fall as the worst drunken bum on the streets
of New York City.
If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12
Falls come in all sizes. I was listening to the car radio one day.
They had a call-in time for folks to tell stories about kids. One lady told how her family had company for
dinner Saturday night. She put all the
food scraps in a big black trash bag, and put the bag out on the porch,
forgetting to take it to the trash can.
Next morning the trash was all over the deck and back yard. The family dreaded coming home to pick it all
up after church.
During church, the pastor called all the kids up for
the children’s sermon. He was going to
teach them about keeping God’s earth as good as it used to be in the Garden of
Eden. He had a black plastic trash bag;
he emptied it on the platform – coke cans, papers, and wrappers all over. He then asked the children, now
what does that look like? The
lady’s son stood right up, hands on hips and said for the entire church to
hear, well it looks JUST LIKE MY HOUSE!
Right thinking has an awful lot to do with reading and
accepting what Scripture says. Soren
Kierkegaard said, when you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, It
is talking to me, and about me.[2]
That’s Holy Living propelled by Right
Thinking!
And that’s when Loving Relationships
become possible.
Loving Relationships
Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others. 1 Corinthians 10:24
Many people would call this unselfishness; however it
is the absolute description of love. It
is easy to weep with those who weep, but even the thought of rejoicing with
those who rejoice leaves many of us cold.
Competition is the methodology in the holy grail of
success in
Paul says that you’ll never impact someone else’s life
for Christ while you’re leaving them behind in the dust. When you look at others as possible
runners-up to you in anything, you have missed the point. You have let the idea of victory (a good thing)
become the enemy of the best brotherhood.
If we are to have loving relationships it does not
mean we must force others to love us, or even like us. The idea of love does
not depend on response; it depends on doing what is as close to the
best as we can get, so what we do does not become the best’s enemy!
An example of this is the election a few weeks from
now. For me, this is a repeat of 2016; I
do not care for the way either candidate acts.
But I do care deeply for which candidate I will pull the lever on
November 3rd. For me, it will
be about doing the most loving thing for the country, based upon what most
closely defines what the Kingdom of God demands. At the risk of turning this into an election
rally, let me tell you the criteria I use to judge this: life above all.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. John 14:6
This represents the Kingdom’s standard….God: truth and life …. Evil: lies and death. That simple!
The two parties represented in the upcoming election
couldn’t be clearer, and further apart on this issue of life. One party fiercely supports a woman’s right
of choice; the other party firmly holds an unborn child’s right to be
born. If you question which is more
important, choice or life, let me
remind you there are many persons on death row right now because they chose
to end someone else’s life. If people who kill outside
the womb must be held accountable, what makes us think killing that which is within
the womb is something of a “right”?
I will not have a difficult choice on November 3rd;
I will not let the “right” afforded persons to choose murder become the enemy
of my vote.
Holy Living,
Right Thinking, and Loving Relationships add up to the
main result:
Worshipful Witness
Worshipping God and winning men – such is to be the
life of a committed follower of Jesus Christ, if we accept the best, life,
and don’t settle for the good of rights.
Sometimes in the church we settle for fellowship
instead of sincere discipleship. Now
fellowship is a good thing. However,
when we expend our time and available resources for fellowship, with no eye on winning
souls, we have let the good become the enemy of the best.
All our organizations – Sunday School classes, missions’
groups, worship services and programs of any kind must be about bringing the
lost to Jesus Christ. We have no valid
purpose, no reason for being here if we miss that point. Our job is worship and witness; frankly, the
world is doing a better job of serving-up their stuff than we are at inviting
souls into God’s Kingdom…restaurants, fishing and golf equipment stores, TV,
vacation spots, and much more are not evil, but they are good things becoming
the enemy of the best when we choose these pastimes and pleasures and won’t
even think about sharing Christ with a neighbor.
Our worship and witness must all focus on bringing
folks to Jesus. And it can happen
anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, IF the
believer is committed to Christ, and ready to be a bold witness.
I heard about a doctor that gave that kind of witness. It was while I was listening to that call-in
show on the radio. The caller was
another Mom. She told about her father
in
The choice is always between good and best. Friendship is good; forever friends is
best. Getting ahead is good; helping
others get ahead is best. Choose the
best; never let the good become its enemy.
Let the church say, Amen!
Our Prayer
Let
it be so in each of our lives…Amen!
Title Image:
Pixabay.com
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation Matthew
10:24-39©
[1] Augustine, Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 4.
[2] Leadership, Vol. 2, no. 4.
[3] WBFJ
Radio,
No comments:
Post a Comment