50 Days to Pentecost

Pastor Sam Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

(Drop your Nets!)

Introduction: Text from last week…

(Mark 1:16-20) As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. (NIV)

…..At once they left their nets and followed him.

In order to follow Christ each of these four men had to drop their nets! The nets were the symbol of what stood between them and giving themselves to God’s service.

We all have nets…

A net is anything that inhibits or prohibits our non-negotiated commitment to follow Christ!

We looked last week at:

A) The Net of Other People

Is there anyone in your life that you are putting ahead of God or that you are not relating to in the way Christ commands you?

B) The Net of “Things”

Jim and I spent the last two days in the poorest society in the world…Haiti. It is amazing to me the change that has taken place there in the 14 trips I have made to that country. In a society that has very little… you can see the love of “things:

Creeping in to some of there lives…with them it’s not expensive cars and 150” TV screens. It tends to be the type of things that were the “must haves” when I was young. Oddly, in the past I’ve come back from Haiti and told you that it was there lack of focus on the “things” of this world that gave them such a pure focus on God. Now I am seeing that as the thirst for things grows in their lives, the thirst for God seems to be diminishing. I implore us all to take that as a lesson…. We’re light years ahead of them technologically, and every few weeks the newest development comes out and we are pummeled with the fact that if we do not purchase the newest thing our lives will lose all meaning.

That’s a total lie from the evil one!

(Matthew 6:31-33) So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. - Jesus (NIV)

C) The Net of Money

Do I have enough? …but rather…

Do I have enough to do all I want to do?

Will God ask you to take some of what he has blessed you with and give away what you have worked so hard to accumulate?

Yes! Yes He will!

Either you let God master your money or your money will master you!

Lets bring in a new net:

D) The Net of Personal Ambition

Many of us, particularly when we are younger have huge dreams of what we would like to accomplish with our lives. We build big thoughts in our mind and then plan everything around bringing them into being. ( I don’t want for a moment to discourage you from dreaming or planning for the future….Everything of value that has ever been done in this world has been done by someone who dreamed beyond the status quo. It’s just that so often in the “human-ness” of our dreaming we tend to make all our plans…then we get on our knees and ask God to bless what we have decided we are going to do!

I’ve been a living for almost 50 years and one of the bitterest pills I have had to swallow is when I have to put aside my own ambitions because God obviously has different plans for me. Sometimes our own ambition runs, not only ahead of Jesus plans for our lives, but actually contrary to them.

When Jesus’ plans for your life conflict with your plans for your life… are you willing to drop your plans to embrace what he is leading you to do. Sometimes it simply doesn’t occur to us that his plans may be far superior to ours.

Let me remind you of proper theology:

God is already living in the future of your life!

E) The Net of Wrong Attitudes

So much of following Jesus in our lives starts with exchanging our normal sinful attitudes for the attitude of Christ. God commands us to leave behind our attitudes of self centeredness, of putting others down to lift ourselves up, of malicious sinful thinking about others.

He wants to replace those attitudes with Christ-like attitudes of serving, and loving, and caring, and humility, understanding, tolerance. All the attitudes of Jesus are supposed to be reproduced in us!

Think about your attitudes this last week:

In what way were your attitudes and actions like Jesus would have acted in your place? In what ways were your attitudes and actions totally different than Jesus would have acted in your place.

The important thing for you to understand is that wherever you are in the scale of sinful behavior vs. righteous behavior: (whether you came into this room with no real relationship with God whatsoever or whether you’ve been a believer for many years)

God’s plan for you in this life is that you will use this lifetime to

(1) change from a sinful lifestyle modeled after the evil one’s plan for your life to

(2) a righteous lifestyle modeled after God’s plan for your life.

Let me assure you of something we often only think of at funerals:

One minute after you die the only thing that will matter to you is how well you pursued choice #2!

So often I meet people who are proud of their sinfulness; they’re just expressing their individuality and if they ever want God’s opinion about their lives they will ask, until then God can butt out! Oddly, whenever someone reaches the end of this life or when ever someone we love hangs poised to cross into eternity…..I find that all of a sudden everybody get very, very focused on what this life was supposed to have been about anyway. ( even if only for a few days before they return to their old was)

One minute after you die the only thing that will matter to you is how well you pursued a righteous lifestyle modeled after God’s plan for your life!

Your attitude must increasingly model the attitude of Jesus! Attitudes that are quick to condemn others, insensitive to the concerns in others lives______________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________ are not the kind of attitude’s Jesus wants to build into our lives.

Anger is an attitude opposite to the attitude of Christ!

Pride brings attitude totally contrary to the attitude of Jesus!

F) The Net of Secret Sins

The pull of secret sins is a very large net in our all our lives. We all tend to put on our best actions when we are around other believers. God doesn’t base our sincerity on what we act like when others are watching…He bases the depth of our commitment to him on how we act when no one is looking. ______________

Dropping out nets for some of us will demand that we reject certain types of activities in our lives. We aren’t to stop doing some secret wrong action because we feel guilty or are afraid we will get caught. We stop the wrong action because we love Jesus and the sinful action is destroying our relationship with him!

Jesus doesn’t just ask for a piece of this part of your life and a piece of that part of your life…He asked for all of your life! He wants to be the leader of all that you do and he wants to guide you into all that you do not do!

He is demanding that you and I drop all the nets that keep us from totally following him…

When I chose not to drop the nets in my life and do what he is asking me to do…I am not simply rejecting his plan for my life…I am rejecting Him!

Every time I refuse to drop a net in my life. I am telling Jesus just how unimportant, he is in my life… When I choose the sin instead of the Savior I am making a very bold statement about what I think of God and his leading of my life!

What we chose to do with the nets in our life shows very clearly what we really value…what we say means very little to what we actually do with our actions.

When a real follower of Christ drops the nets in his/her life he is saying to

Jesus…this is how much I love you!

Hands that are filled with the nets of our own pride and stubborn and sinful actions are hands that are not raised to God in worship and submission!

When I let go of the nets in my life, I am doing so to embrace the God of the universe, It is to this Person that I am surrendering all that I presently am, all that I will become, all that I now and ever will possess.

Conclusion:

The disciples did not drop their nets to take on another project…they dropped their nets to embrace a Person.

When I let go of the nets in my life, I am doing so to embrace the God of the universe, It is to this Person that I am surrendering all that I presently am, all that I will become, all that I now and ever will possess.

I’m not rejecting the call to a new project in my life…..I’m rejecting a Person and His call for my to abandon all and follow him.

What nets do you need to drop today?