Living the Adventure

By Pastor Samuel Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

Port St. Lucie, Florida

^{(The Adventure’s cost: God’s tab)}

I. Living the Adventure

…I’m sure most of you have figured out by now is the “adventure” I’m referring to is the adventure of following Jesus Christ. You live in a world that assures you that the greatest adventure in life is to follow no one… to live completely outside the lines… to live consumed by the pursuit of personal happiness.

There is one huge problem with that kind of thinking. You were not created by your creator to live independent of him.

He fashioned you with an inner need to follow him!

We were fashioned to follow the one in whose image we were created!

When we attempt to live life any other way we may have some adventures in life but we are completely missing the Great Adventure for which we were put on this earth. I’ve heard so many hundreds of personal stories over the years of people who spent their lives searching for something that would make life make sense but found nothing to fill the hole in their lives until they discovered the piece that was designed to fit the hole exactly.

You were created by God to live in personal communion with the God who created you. When mankind rejected his Creator, God himself came in the form of a man, was born into this world to a virgin Jewish girl, lived three decades spreading the truth of Gods love and his desire to restore the relationship between Himself and His lost Creation. Most importantly Jesus, God’s Son took on himself your sins, and the sins of everyone else who would ever be born…. He paid the death price for you so you didn’t have to pay it yourself! He took on the very forces of evil and death itself and then rose victorious over sin, and satan, and death, and hell, and then offers to each one of us forgiveness and eternal life.

Nothing you can ever do will earn you the right to be forgiven.. Every one of us have sinned a lot starting with Adam And there is only one solution for our sins:

(Romans 5:6-21) You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us….. sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ…just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness …brings life for all men…just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous…. just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (NIV)

The beginning of living the real adventure of this life is when you repent of your sins, put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, and accept him into your life as your Lord. You begin “really living” when you begin to explore what it really means to be a “follower of Christ”.

Are you, this morning, a follower of Christ? Does that define your life? Does that describe your reason for being on this earth. Everything else you do, whether it is keeping the power plant running, or investigating crime, or protecting the freedom of our country and the ensuring freedom for others, or ______________

whatever defines your daily living….

To truly be living this life the way you were designed to live it…all the rest of our life pursuits are subtitles that must fall under the main title: I am a follower of Christ!

Following Christ is about positioning a living Savior, as our singular passionate pursuit. With every thought, every choice, moving us closer and closer to intimacy with the Person who gave His life in our place. It’s about receiving love from, and giving love back to, the God who created us, the God who has every right to tell us what to do, but chose to become one of us and show us instead.

II. The Adventure’s cost: God’s tab

Many of you this week have already attended Mel Gibson’s Passion movie. There were many critics, most of which had not actually seen the film, who said it was not an accurate historical account. If you are a student of the Bible you know that with a few exceptions, that Gibson himself admits were licenses he took to flow the story line or to get a point across, the events of the movie were taken almost directly from the text of the gospels.

One of the most striking aspects of the movie is that fact that it shows more than an hour of brutal torture inflicted on Jesus. He falls under the pain of it, then like a great boxer seems to shake it off and get up ready to take even more. Several critics said that the violence to Jesus was far outside the realm of what really happened to him and his struggling back up to take even more punishment was Gibson writing his own macho movie personality into this film. Is that true?

Let me clarify some things here: I’ve spend thirty years of my life studying the Bible and study about the Bible and studying the events around the Bible and studying the events that lead to the Bible, and studying the culture around the Bible and I can verify certain things for you.

The Romans were horrifically barbaric people when it came to human life. When our soldiers go to the battlefield they follow certain strict rules of engagement our American minds do not easily comprehend the Iraqi Bathist who can kill, and maim, and torture, and rape just for the sport of it. To us the idea of a person today wrapping themselves in explosives, boarding a bus, and exploding themselves and as many other unknown people as possible into pieces is as evil as anything we can imagine.

Let me remind you that is was the Romans who started the Circus’. but their circus acts were not trapeze artist but Christians being put into an arena with wild animals and they made it a family day of fun to watch people being torn into pieces and eaten. It was the Romans who hung Christians all along the Appian way coming into the city of Rome and everybody grew calloused to the daily viewing of more dead bodies. Emperor Nero eventually started covering them pitch and lighting them as torches for his garden parties.

Was the movies portrayal of Jesus suffering for your sins an accurate picture. No it was probably actually much, much worse than that. Did Jesus just keep coming on for more and more like a charging elephant…? Undoubtedly! He was taking the punishment for the sins of all mankind on himself.

What you didn’t see…and couldn’t see, in the movie was the fact that the destruction of his body on the outside was only the tip of the ice-burg to what was happening to him on the inside. In those few hours he was taking on himself the sins of every homicide bomber and every serial killer, and every rapist, and he was also taking everyone of your sins on himself and paying the price to the fullest for everything you and I would ever do wrong.

Jesus was deadly serious about what he was going through for you.. and he fully expects you to be deadly serious in how you respond back to him.

All week, as I look at my own life I have been asking myself the question: If Jesus was willing to go through all of that for me…what should I be willing to go through, in return, for Him?

III. The Adventure’s cost: Our tab.

Pastor, you’re stepping over a line here…the whole point of Jesus paying for my sins is so that there is no cost to me. Salvation is free…Jesus paid it all!

It’s true…He paid the price for your sins… There is nothing you can possibly do to erase your own sins. He took your place, took the weight of your sins, paid the whole price to the point of death so you wouldn’t have to, so you would have to pay it yourself. He then offered you the free gift of salvation, All you have to be willing to do is to repent, and believe, and accept his gift.

If you have never repented of your sins, believed in Jesus as your Savior and accepted him into you life I am going to give you that opportunity at the end of this sermon……

So the free gift of salvation paid for by Jesus death and resurrection mean you get a free ride to heaven??? Not so fast…

For all of us the free gift of salvation is the easy part…the following Christ part is a bit more costly!

God says about our salvation:

(Romans 5:17) For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (NIV)

(Romans 6:23) For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV)

(Ephesians 2:8) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- (NIV)

Jesus doesn’t use the same kind of language when he talks about following him:

(Mark 8:34) …"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (NIV)

(Matthew 10:38-39) and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (NIV)

Do you see what word Jesus is using here to describe our following him? _____________

Cross! That word has a lot more meaning to many of us than it did one week ago.

There is only one definition of what a cross is: It was the Roman instrument of torture.

The fact that a pop singer can wear one around her neck today and sing the most lurid lyrics all the while planning a wardrobe malfunction rather cheapens the word in our society; but it doesn’t change the fact that a cross means a titanic struggle is coming. I think it’s doing our world a whole lot of good to finally visualize the difference between “The Cross” and the cute little piece of jewelry around their neck.

Some today, are trying to market Christianity as a program on how to feel better about yourself and enjoy life to the fullest. I walked into the family room this week and one of my family had on a television evangelist that was assuring every one that God ultimate plan for their lives was that they would be wealthy and have all the goodies in this life that their little hearts desired.

Can anyone seriously believe that Jesus Christ would have gone through the torture that he endured on our behalf so that in our few short years here on this earth we could have a larger bank account??? Come on!!!

(Mark 8:34) …"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (NIV)

If you have a few extra shekels in the bank, be thankful, but that is not a sure sign that you are following Christ. In fact a sure sign that we are following Christ has to do with a cross, and the Cross of Christ was where he poured out all of himself, not where he received all that the world had to offer.

We have with us Sam Streu this morning who miraculously made it out of Haiti on Thursday. This week he faced an armed gang who demanded that he turn over all the security guard weapons and assured him that they were willing to kill to get the weapons. Sam had to make the hard decision of whether the orphanage would be more or less of a target without the white man there and made the decision that his presence would attract the gangs…now he sets here with a breaking heart thinking of those he left behind. Now that’s a cross!

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Examples of cross bearing<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

There are more people dying right now as martyrs for their faith than in all other seasons of Church history combined.

By contrast many of the crosses we are called on to bear seem to be made out of Styrofoam.

When I looked a my Savior mutilated on the cross Wednesday evening, the thoughts about what could make my life easier, less stressful, less challenging, more fun, more entertaining; they all kind of faded from significance.

The thought that keeps pushing to the surface is: If Jesus could go to that great extent for me…what extent should I be willing to go to for him in return?

Should I be looking for how Jesus suffering should free me from all hardship, and trial, and suffering, and fill my life with ecstasy 24 hours a day or should I be asking myself :

How does Jesus cross affect the shape of my cross.

I’m struck with the similarities of being a Soldier of the cross of Jesus and a soldier of the United States Army. Can you imagine these soldiers sitting here being told:

You are going to Afghanistan…don’t worry…it’s going to be a walk in the park.

The whole purpose of you serving your country is for you to constantly feel the greatest amount of personal pleasure. This is after all, not really about sacrificing yourself for a bigger cause, this is primarily about you and your personal fulfillment…… They’d say that’s nuts. We are going there to give ourselves in service to our country, If that means sacrifice; so be it, if that means hardship; so be it, if that means putting our very lives in danger…we are taking up our cross for our country.

Conclusion:

Perhaps it’s time for us all to ask the hard spiritual question… If “taking up his cross” to Jesus meant the complete giving up of all he was on my behalf….what does “taking up my cross” mean for my life??

If he was willing to do that for me, what should I be willing to do for Him?

(Mark 8:34) …"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (NIV)