Full On Surrender // Overboard with Jesus, Part 8

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

There's a description of God's people that pops up several times in the Bible, it's the adjective 'stiff-necked', an interesting way to describe the stubbornness of Gods people. I'm guessing that it points to their unwillingness to bow down their lives in worship to God. I wonder if you know anyone like that.

We live in a world where we're taught to be proud of who we are, you can be who you want to be, you can do whatever you want to do. If you work hard you can achieve whatever you want to achieve and when you do be proud of what you've achieved. The problem is though that pride so often comes before the fall.

I remember when I was a young lad learning to ice skate. Now physical co-ordination, that's not one of my strengths so my bottom spent a lot of the time making contact with the ice. And you know every time I thought 'there you go Berni you've got it, you're doing really well' and I'd look over at mum and dad to show them how clever I was, oomph, down on the ice I'd go.

Pride is actually quite a terrible thing, it's something that God always, always, always opposes, James chapter 4 verse 6:

God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.

But pride takes all sorts of different forms. As we chatted yesterday on the program, sometimes pride stops us from admitting that we’re wrong. The more you invest in a course of action or in a way of life, the harder it is to admit that it was the wrong way to go about living life.

I mean, you've invested a lot in your approach. People have watched you, some have admired you, to turn back from that, to turn away from that, to admit that you were wrong, well you lose face don't you? Losing face is only a problem if you care what other people think about you.

I used to care a lot what other people thought about me. Well, I wanted them to think well of me, I wanted to impress people, I wanted them to speak well of me behind my back. When you think about it that's why some people buy the most expensive cars that they can afford to make a statement. That's why some people buy grand houses in grand suburbs with so much space and so many rooms that they don't need and swimming pools that they don't swim in to make a statement that says, "look at me, I am someone, I've made it."

Not everyone, but a lot of people are like that. Never mind that they're desperately unhappy in their flashy cars and grand mansions and even if you're not rich you can find yourself clambering after a successful career or a bigger pay check or a promotion, whatever it is to build up the image that other people have of you.

And when you do that, let me tell you from experience (because all the things I’ve just described I’ve been there, done that, got the t shirt) you realise when you do that, you start believing your own propaganda. You get a puffed up image of who you are and what you're worth as you look down your nose at the mere mortals who surround you.

Moses … Moses is up on the mountain with God receiving the Ten Commandments, have a listen to this, Exodus chapter 32 verses 1 to 9:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, 'come, make gods for us who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us out from the land of Egypt, we don't know what's become of him.

Aaron said to them, 'take off the gold rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters and bring them to me'. So all the people took off the gold from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took from them the gold, formed it in a mould and cast an image of a calf and they said, 'these are your gods O Israel who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.

When Aaron saw this he built an altar before it and Aaron made a proclamation and said, 'tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord'. They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.

But the Lord said to Moses, 'go down at once. Your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them. They have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it and said, 'these are your gods O Israel who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

The Lord said to Moses, 'I have seen this people, how stiff necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them and of you I will make a great nation.

Hmmm, isn’t that what we do? We say that we believe in God, but left to our own devices we become stiff necked, prideful, we make idols of the things of this world and the more we chase after them the less inclined we are to bow down our lives to God, and when that happens God’s anger burns against us.

Let’s get a revelation about that today. Yes, God loves you but when you're more inclined to chase after the things of this world than bow down your life to worship Him, in His eyes you become stiff necked and His anger burns against you.

We're in the middle of a series of messages at the moment called Overboard with Jesus, about living our lives full on for Christ but so often our pride, well we delude ourselves into thinking we can put God on a leash and have Him follow us around at our beckon and call, but if you want to live your life full on for Christ, that's not the way to live.

Who or what is your golden calf? Who or what in your life, in your possessions, in your priorities are you putting before God? You see the alternative is to have a heart like the psalmist who wrote Psalm 95 verses 6 and 7:

O come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand.

There's a man with his life bowed down to God. You can't call him stiff necked.

Paul the Apostle puts it this way in his letter to the Church in Rome in the New Testament, Romans chapter 12 verse 1:

I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship.

The sorts of disciples that Jesus is looking for today are men and women who are prepared to present themselves as living sacrifices. That right there would have to be the complete opposite of being stiff necked wouldn't it? Living sacrifices, which is your spiritual worship.

Interesting the word used there for worship is the Greek word 'latreo' from which we get the word 'lateral'. Some translations render this word as service not worship, actually it means both, it means to live out our lives in such a way that everything we do is an act of worship to God.

Every thought, every motivation, every action done for Christ because that's what it means to be a living sacrifice, to give up our way, our lifestyle, our desire, our comfort, our want for material possessions and success and reputation or what other people think, to lay down all of those things, to make a golden calf of none of them and instead to bow our lives down in service and in sacrifice and in worship for God.

Want to live the life that is full on for Jesus? Want to go overboard with Jesus to unstable, uncharted territory where the only thing that is going to stop you from sinking is the hand of Christ? This is the sort of life that you are called to live. Not a comfortable life, not a life where you chase after the things of this world, but a life where you lay everything down.

You see the alternative, the alternative is that you will, I guarantee you will, you'll grab onto something of this world and you'll make an idol of it, you'll put it before Jesus in your life. The choice is yours, I can't make it for you, the choice is yours and yours alone.