“Journeying
Of Jesus” By Bob Heirtzler March 10th,
2013
The Theme for
this month is, “The Path of Jesus.”
Parrish shared with us last week.
It’s really hard to put a message on “The Path of Jesus” into a forty
minute sermon. There is a lot
there. If you really read all of his
notes from last week, you probably spent the entire week and still need more time
to go over what was said. He taught us
that, whoever this person was that was coming, he had to live up to all of
those prophecies in the Old Testament; not just some of them—all of them. Parrish left off
when Jesus was in the Temple at twelve years old, and they were surprised by
the knowledge that He had. Do you think
that these doctors and degreed people knew who this was, standing right before
them? They probably heard about the
prophecies; they probably heard about this miraculous birth that happened
twelve years ago, but, do you really think that knew who this young kid
was? If somebody was going to be born
into a royal family, do you think that they would choose a barn to be born
in? God came in a humble way, to walk
among us. So, I’m going
to begin when Jesus was twelve years old in the Temple. You realize that they were travelling, and
they realized Jesus wasn’t with them, so they turned around and went back? They had gone a day’s journey, and turned
around and headed back. They found Him
talking to the doctors about their doctrine, and He was answering their
questions. For all the young people,
Jesus left a message for our young people, too (those that are below eighteen
years old). ” Luke
2:46-52 …was subject unto them… The part to
the young people: He was subject unto
them). He had to listen to His
parents. The message is that Jesus did
it, so that kids today can’t say, “See there? Jesus did what He wanted to
do…” No, Jesus left a little message, to
teach us to respect our parents. What threw me
off, preparing this message, was what went on between the time He was twelve
years old and thirty years old. I got
thirty years old because: I was thinking
about it, and thinking about it, and it dawned on me, about two o’clock in the
morning, He spoke in parables. A parable
is a story—a true story, that happened—that we can use to teach a lesson. We hear it all the time in the messages, and
we also do it ourselves, to teach each other.
So, what are some of the parables that Jesus taught? Anybody want to throw out some? The Parable of
the Sower (Luke 8:3-8); the Parable of the Rich Man (Matthew 19:23-26); the
Parable of the Virgins with the Lamps (Matthew 25:1-13); the Parable of the
Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32); the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30);
the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Matthew 13:31-32); the Parable of the Wheat
and the Tares (Matthew 13:24-30); the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price
(Matthew 13:45-46); the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). If He was
sharing actual stories in His messages, these could have happened during His
teen years, or His twenties. He was
sharing things that He experienced when he was growing up. It might be; it could be. It’s just a thought, but He could have been
sharing some things with us about His youth.
We knew that He was a carpenter by trade, and we knew that He was around
people that could share stories. I
thought I’d just throw that out there; it’s something to think about. As we move on,
we’re going to go on to the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3:13-17. The other references are: Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22, and John
1:2-34. The baptism of Jesus was so
important that all four Gospels record it; we’ve got two and three and four
witnesses of it. So, as we know the
story, it says that Jesus was walking down the path, and John saw Him, and
said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” Jesus walked up, and said, “I need you to
baptize Me.” John’s reaction was, “No,
You need to baptize me.” Jesus said,
“No, I need to fulfill all righteousness.”
When Jesus got dunked in the water, and came back up, a Spirit that
looked like a dove came down, and descended upon Him. He had to fulfill all righteousness. Now, the
meaning of baptism didn’t come until a little later on. We read in Romans Chapter 6, it talks about
what baptism represents. All that’s ever
been baptized, according to Romans 6, Here’s Jesus
fulfilling all righteousness, and He doing it, actually for our testimony, for
us to learn from Hi that we need to get baptized too. And He was talking to Nicodemus, telling him,
you can’t get into the Kingdom of God without this. John 3:1-5 …Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So, church
family, we have entered into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is within us. We put on His Name when we came up out of the
water; the Spirit of God is within us.
Now, our job is to reach out to other people, with the Kingdom, to share
with other people, to see the family grow.
Noah and his wife’s family grew, right?
That’s why we’re all here. If
they were wiped out, there’d be nobody here talking right now. So, we know
that He did that for a reason, to give us a greater understanding of the Spiritual
Birth in Romans. Now, back in Matthew 4,
(you can go so many directions with this thing). Let’s go to 1 John 2:15-17 (keep your finger
in Matthew 4, we’re going to go back to that in a minute). 1
John 2:15-17 … the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life… This Scripture came alive to me, because
Jesus taught this when He was tempted in the wilderness: Matthew 4:1-11
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit
into the wilderness…
It says that
He used the Word of God to talk to Satan.
Verses 1 through 4 was the lust of the flesh. Verses 5 through 7 was the pride of
life. Verses 8 through 11 was the lust
of the eyes. We need to know the word of
God, when things come against us. We
need to know the Word so that we can share the Word. We know that newborn babes in Christ, that’s
like the hardest time, when Satan hits them the hardest. Everything is thrown at us: Mine was my family, the Helm Club on the
base, things that I did that I shouldn’t do…
Everything came against me, but I needed to know the Word to stand on,
and the only thing that I knew was, “He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved…” (Mark 16:16) and that’s what I stood
on; that’s all I knew at the time. So I
needed to study the Word. It’s more than
just sitting here in the sanctuary—and I know you guys do this, you take the
notes home and you study; that’s encouraging—we’ve got to keep doing that. We get together on Wednesday nights and other
nights and break bread and talk. We’ve got to know the Word. We need each other, we need fellowship, we
need prayer time, sometimes we also need those quiet times in God when we have
to sit at the feet of Jesus and get that strength. The other night I just wanted to be quiet; I
got off late after a thirteen hour day, I just wanted quiet time. I went to the Olive Garden, I sat down, and I
ended up talking to seven people. I
walked out more refreshed than I went in.
I just wanted to sit and be quiet, and God just opened doors to talk,
talk, talk, talk, talk. You know what
the opening conversation was about? fishing.
A grandmother turned around and said, “You fish?” and boy, I couldn’t
get her to stop talking. I talked about
the youth group; I talked about how I used to teach a class out at Chain
O’Lakes.
She lives in Lindenhurst; I asked, “Do you know Mike and Mary
Ogden?” She said, “Yeah, the name rings
a bell.” I said, “She’s a retired
Captain.” She said, “I think I do know
her.” So, Mike and Mary may get some
visitors; I didn’t catch their names, so, sorry… We’ve got to be that light wherever we
go. Does that make sense? Now, Jesus
began to preach. He did this to show us
what we need to do. We don’t have to
wait until some special moment, we can start now. God’s called us to be that light. Matthew
4:18-25 … Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their
synagogues… It
tells us that He was walking by the Sea of Galilee, and He saw two brothers,
one named Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew. He told them, “Drop your nets; follow Me, and
I will make you fishers of men.” They
dropped everything and went. Jesus
continued to walk on, and came across James and John; they were in their ship
with their father, mending their nets. He called them, and they left the ship,
and their father, and followed Him.
Here’s Jesus, a perfect stranger, He walks up, and four guys just
automatically follow. That tells me,
that tells us, that the Spirit of God was resting thickly upon Jesus at the
time. I’ve
seen people, “Hey, you need to get baptized in Jesus’ name,” and they said,
Okay,” and they did it right away. Then
you’ve got people that need to understand a little bit more. Some takes time, some just say okay. I was one that said okay. A week later I got a Bible Study on baptism;
Jim Ottoson gave it. Something about
that message that night, I just knew it was right, and I walked up and got
baptized. In
verses 23 and 24, it says that He healed all manner of sickness and all manner
of disease. That same Spirit that was in
Jesus is in us. We have all kinds of
people come to us that need healing, too.
We have alcoholism going on today; we have drug addiction going on
today; a list of things going on and on and on.
We have to be there for them. It
could be 9:00 in the morning, putting gas in your car; it could be 6:00 at
night at Jewell. It could be somebody
looking for that light. It could be us,
and they’re drawn to us. God says, “Go
talk to that person.” One
day, I was fishing… Fishing was my god,
and I had to let it go. I gave away all
of my gear, all my tackle, all my rods and reels... I had to let my god go, for twenty
years. What’s Pastor Lantis preached a
message about having a ministry in your ministry, and I wanted to teach the
kids how to fish, just like my dad taught me.
At that time, kids didn’t have anything to do; they were just playing in
the street. It gave them something to do. Where I’m going with this is, I said, “God,
if this is real, then I need to know, because I don’t want this to become my
God again.” God spoke to a young lady
(she had been praying, “Where is God?”) so God woke her up at 6:00 in the
morning, and said, “Get up, go to Wadsworth Road, at the Des Plaines river, and
you’ll meet a man that can tell you about God.”
She came to church the next day, and that’s when she told us, “I had
been praying and God told me to go fishing.
One of the most ridiculous answers I ever had… We can’t have our little gods come in between
us and our God. We’ve got to separate
things. The
Sermon on the Mount ripped me apart when I first read it, years ago. I’m going to pick a few Scriptures from
chapters 5, 6 and 7. I realize that
Matthew 5:1-16 we hear about all the time.
This is like a check-off list. Matthew 5:1-16 …Blessed are they
that… That’s all I
heard, but, when I kept reading on, it got really personal. It’s not just me as a Temple, well, yes it
is, but it’s us as the Body of Christ.
We have to check off this list and make sure that we’re not doing the
things that the list says we’re not supposed to be doing. Matthew
5:17 …Think not
that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets… I kept reading: Now it’s getting personal. Now I’m not responsible just for my actions,
but I’m responsible for my actions and
for my thought process. As I kept
reading: Matthew 5:23-24 … be reconciled to thy
brother, and then come and offer thy gift. I do my best
to make sure the sun doesn’t go down at the end of the day if I offended
somebody and I have to chase somebody down.
If I offend Jimmie, then he’s going to get a call from me. If he doesn’t answer his phone, then he’s
going to get a knock on the door. If he
doesn’t answer the door, then I’ll kick the door in. If he’s not at home, then I’m going to hunt
him down. If I’ve offended Donna, then
I’m going to call her until I get her.
That’s just the way I am. I don’t
want to let the sun go down, and wake up the next day with that on my
heart. I realize that there have been
some scenarios with my own natural family where I wasn’t able to do that, but
God will know that I did my part, and they’ve got to do their part, too. So God didn’t hold that against me, because I
did my part. This Scripture
came alive to me this morning, it’s not a natural thing; it’s more of a
spiritual thing. Spiritual adultery is
one of those little gods that tries to come between me and my God. That’s why I had to let fishing go; to me,
fishing was committing adultery, because I was loving something else besides
God. I had to let it go. It could be a car, it could be a stereo
system, it could be an F-150, it could be anything. I realize that we can’t allow that stuff, not
just me personally, but us, as the Body of Christ, God doesn’t want us to be
like another ministry; God wants us to be this ministry. God wants us to become the largest Jesus’
Name church in the world. He doesn’t want
us to be like the mega-churches. Jimmie
and I went to one for a seminar one time (I think it was you and I) and they
just get together on Sundays, but you could tell there was no fellowship among
them during the week. That’s what I like
about this ministry here, there’s fellowship 24-7. Any time of any day I can call somebody. There, you call, and you hear the answering
machine, “I’ll get back to you later.” Matthew 5:38 Ye have heard
that it hath been said, An eye for an eye… That was my favorite Scripture, man;
somebody hit me in the eye, I hit them back.
They took my tooth, I took theirs.
Somebody broke my arm, then I broke theirs. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Matthew 5:39 … right cheek, turn to
him the other also… Man! That’s a rough one, but I’ve got to do
it. And then verse 43 was a good one for
me, too. Matthew 5:43-44 …Love your enemies… Enemies, with
an ‘s’ at the end of it; so, all your enemies, not just one of them. I used to pray to God to come down and kick
their tails. Pray for them. We, as a ministry, we can’t have this
floating in our veins. If we have this
floating in our veins it will keep us from doing what God wants us to do. Matthew 6:1-8 …when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet… Pastor Paine
talked about this a few weeks ago, keeping your prayer life to yourself, so
that Jesus can reward you openly. I know
there’s a lot of testimonies in this room here we’ve burned the midnight oil
and God has answered prayer. Jimmie,
you’re up front, so I’m picking on you:
Your wife prayed to God for a sign, and then you woke up from a coma,
opened your eyes, and smiled at her, and then closed your eyes again. That was all she needed. God does answer our prayers. It’s not a microwave process now, it could be a crock pot
process. The Bible tells us that Paul
asked God three times to remove something (2 Corinthians 12:7-10), and God
said, “You need that to stay humble.” He
answered no, but God does answer prayer.
Any witnesses in this room? Parrish talked
about the Lord’s Prayer, so I’m not going to spend time there, but they asked,
“Lord, teach us to pray.” Matthew 6:9-13 Our Father… Verse 24 refers back to the adultery
part: Matthew 6:24 No man can serve
two masters… We can’t sit on the fence post every
day, and say, which way do I go? The
Bible teaches us in James that a double-minded man is unstable in—what?—all his
ways, right? (James 1:8) We’ve got to
serve God only. There’s only two choices: God or Satan.
So this is a check-off list for me, but as I keep going through, verse
33 says: Matthew 6:33 Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God, and His righteousness… Greg
Greshen shared a story, last winter, it was during that blizzard, he was doing
everything, but he said, “If I had prayed first,
I would have been given the answer, ‘Call the Navy’” and the Navy showed up and
rescued his co-workers. Sometimes we
can’t allow God to be last on the list.
Moses is a perfect example: Every
time something happened, he dropped to his knees and started praying. Every time.
When he got an answer, then he got up and stood firm. Matthew
7:1-5 Judge
not, that ye be not judged… So many times
I’ve been guilty of correcting another person and I’ve been guilty of it,
too. It’s not a comfortable
feeling. We’ve got to help each other
out. A lot of times when I’ve judged
somebody else for what they were doing, I was guilty of it, too. Then I realized that I can’t have that in my
heart; it’s all about action, now. It’s
on the outside, but the inside has to be right.
If you don’t know the scenario, then ask. If I see something happening that doesn’t
make sense to me… If I see Jeff back
there pull a stunt, and I say, “Parrish, did you see Jeff…” I should’ve went to Jeff! If I say, “Donna, I saw Sony was
cooking…” I should’ve went to
Sonya! Nature teaches us that if this
person tells that person tells the other person, pretty soon, people are thinking
Sonya’s a bad person, because I made the wrong decision. Our words become like weights, we have to
watch what we say. Matthew
7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find… The word shall
means it will come to pass. Should means
it could. Shall’s pretty much, it’s
going to happen. If you ask, seek, knock,
you’re going to find it. You might not
find it today. Parrish shared last week
about a woman that stopped praying. You
should keep praying for things that you aspire to do. You should keep praying; it’ll come to
pass. For example: What does Bill Blackwell want to do? Buy an
RV and travel around the country spreading the Gospel. He’s still praying for that. If he strongly believes, and I know he does,
it will happen. He’s still seeking; he
hasn’t given up on that dream. You’ve
got to ask, seek, knock, kick the door in, it’s going to happen. We don’t want
to be in that category. We want to give
our best to God. We need to help each
other out with what we have. Matthew
7:24-27 …a wise
man, which built his house upon a rock… The rock is
Christ. If you listen to chapters five
six, and seven, and apply it, He will liken you to a wise man or woman. For those that don’t, those are the ones that
build their house upon the sand. We know
that Hurricane Sandy (how fitting!) hit the shoreline of New Jersey—some of our
families were affected by that—there’s a lot of sand that’s waaay up the street from the beach along
the coastline. That tells us that if the
storm hits us, and we’re built on the sand, then we’re not going to last. The lighthouses that were built on the rock
are still there, shining the light.
We’re the lighthouse, and we’re on the Rock, and we’re shining the
Light. Matthew
7:28-29 … he taught them as one having authority… Now I’m moving
to Matthew chapter 10: When Pat
Taylor, Jay Hunemuller, Cedric Christian, and I did Headline Talk at Emily’s
Pancake House, we picked four of us, so that there would be two of us, in case
of conflicts. Sometimes it was just one,
but at least someone was there. So,
don’t wait, move forward. I was talking with
a brother before service, who said, “You know what we ought to do?”. I said, “What are you waiting for?” Don’t wait—do it now. Then it can come full circle, and you can
teach other people how to do it. Just
move forward. They had a meeting two
weeks ago, and now they’re doing things, amen.
Get going. Do it. If the ladies go out to do whatever it is
that the ladies do… You know, what
happened yesterday? I went out to Bass
Pro Shop, I spent two hours there, and walked out, and I did not buying one
thing; that’s a miracle. We did talk to
a lot of people. I didn’t buy anything. I had things in my hands, but I put them
back. I promised God, no. “Oh, I really need tis, but, no, put it back
on the shelf.” Matthew
10:11-14 …if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it… Respect where
you are. It teaches us that not everyone
is going to hear what we have to say. We
have to have the mentality to say, “Next,” or go on to the next person. God will cultivate that ground; you’ve got to
trust that God does deal with everybody that we come in contact with. He wants everybody to make it to Heaven. There is a Heaven to gain and a Hell to shun.
His desire is for everybody to make it
to Heaven, so don’t give up on those people, keep them in prayer. It’ll come full circle; you’ll talk to them
again. My closing
scripture here: Matthew 10:19-20 it shall be given you in that same
hour what ye shall speak. God will give
us words to speak. Don’t worry about
it. If God’s moving in your life, and
you have an opportunity or a question comes up, then God’s going to fill your
mouth with those words to share. Of
course, for that to happen, we have to have our house built on the solid rock,
we have to have a testimony of ourselves; we can’t be wishy-washy jellyfishy
with no backbone. We’ve got to have that
strong testimony in God so that people will come to us and talk to us. Everybody in this room God can use. There’s not one person He can’t use in this
room. Everybody that’s home sick today,
God can use. It’s not that there’s this
person on this list, and this other person on this other list, no, we’re all
part of the family. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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