New Hope Notes
Jesus: Pure and Simple
A New Hope 2012 Small Groups Series
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
October 7, 2012 - W1241
“When you cannot remember the 22 characteristics of a good wife, the 7 steps to authority, or the 9 ways of love…
It’s time to get back to Jesus.
When a speaker insists (again) that you need to stop your bad habits, increase your devotion, reduce your worry, augment your faith, or banish your fears…
It’s time to get back to Jesus.
When you’re overwhelmed by testimonies of others praying all night, fasting forty days, raising the dead, and leading thousands to the Lord on their airplane rides home…
It’s time to get back to Jesus.” - excerpt from the Introduction to Jesus: Pure and Simple by Wayne Cordeiro
Being a Christian can seem very complicated, but Jesus did not come to complicate the gospel, He came to simplify it. When Jesus came there were so many rules and regulations in religion. The Pharisees were leveraging off of these rules to make the people’s lives complicated and confusing so that the Pharisees could weave and maneuver around the rules and manipulate the people. But, Jesus brought to the people a “new way”. And that was to simply follow Him. Jesus made it simple by introducing “a Person” to follow and by inviting everyone to simply “come, follow me”.
When I used to live in California and just starting out in ministry, our music group needed to find an address in an obscure area. So I stopped at a Hispanic service station and asked for directions. I was so overwhelmed by all the numerous instructions for right and left turns that I couldn’t even remember the first part of the instructions. I stopped at a second station which gave me much of the same disorienting directions. Then a person drove up in a Winnebago motor home and asked if I needed help. I showed him the address and he said he was going there then, so he said “why don’t you just follow me”. Instead of all the confusing directions, it was so much easier to follow a person.
That’s what we are talking about in this series “Jesus: Pure and Simple”, because it is all about Jesus. The Pharisees with all their laws and regulations started to get upset with Jesus. One of the Pharisees wanted to know what the “Main One rule” was. And Jesus said that it is to “love your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and then to love your neighbor”. There will be a lot of rules and regulations in our lives because we need instructions. In America and the world, there are rules that prevent us from harming our children and spouse in any way. But I personally don’t fret or struggle over those rules and regulations. Why? Because I love my children and I love my spouse. So those things are not hard at all because of LOVE. And Jesus says that in spite of all these rules and regulations, “if you get closer to me and follow me with all your heart then everything gets simple”, because He came to make life a whole lot simpler. It is the Enemy that complicates things just as it says in 2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”
There’s something about Jesus that makes everything so Pure and Simple. If there is anything about your devotion to Christ that is NOT pure & simple then your life will get mutated and the devil can get a foothold because it is his goal to make our devotions to Christ complicated. Jesus just instills in us to simply “Follow Me.”
And we need to ratchet ourselves back to Jesus. In this series we will hit upon some main points that will help ratchet our devotion back to Christ so it can become pure and simple. There are three keys to following Jesus and they are Love, Obedience, and Repentance.
You know the older I get the more I realize I don’t have a choice. When I was younger I thought I had the right to make my own choices. And I wanted God to bless MY goals and MY desires but as I got older I realized that I was bought with a price. Scripture says that when I become a Christian, my former self has died. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me. And the life I live is not my own but Christ’s. This makes my devotion easier because now I no longer need to be struggling with God. If I make my own choices then I have to arm wrestle with Him and I have to negotiate with Him. That would make my devotion to Christ very complicated. We are reminded of the serpent in Genesis who convinced Eve that she could make her own choice by eating of the fruit but this action complicated her life. If we can realize we are not owners of ourselves, or owners of our marriage, or owners of our children and that we are only stewards of them for the sake of the kingdom then our lives will be less complicated. So the first point to understand is that:
Obedience precedes Simplicity because I am not an owner. I am simply a steward. God has given us life, a family and He has given us breath in our lungs, but it’s not ours. We are only stewards of these things. In the scriptures we find the perfect example through the obedience of Jesus as we read in John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but the will of Him who sent Me.” Even as a human Jesus radiated total obedience to His Father. And we continue to read in Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom but those who do the will of My Father in Heaven.”
Even though we say “I obey God”, we need to know the difference between Agreement and Obedience. When God tells me to do things I agree with and I do it, He blesses me and I am happy. But, when God asks me to do things I DON’T want to do then my flesh rebels. This is the difference between agreement and obedience. A lot of us have agreed with God but we haven’t obeyed God for years because when it comes to a choice we tend to choose our own way and let God “hang”. But when we agree with God on things that we like to do and know that God will bless us then that is nice. It is when God asks us to do things that our flesh disagrees with - and those times WILL occur - our flesh will rebel. But, we should do it anyway, because our flesh is not subject to conversion as it will never get saved. It is only subject to discipline. It is important to win over our fleshly rebellion. We all have a flesh part of us and a spirit part of us and the flesh part is the part that bites us. In Romans 7 it says there lies in me a spiritual part of me and a fleshly part of me and they war against each other. But when God is going to ask me to do something that my flesh wars against it’s better when I choose to do it anyway. It is then that flesh part starts to die and the spirit part takes over. And If I don’t, then the flesh part will bite us and will overcome us. But if we obey the Lord’s will for us then Transformation comes with each act of obedience. In other words every act of obedience produces transformation. When we have a choice and we choose to do it God’s way then a part of the fleshly side will die away and the spirit side grows stronger and then there’s a transformation. That’s why we read in God’s word that from glory to glory we will be transformed: 2 Corinthians 3:16,18 “But whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away…and we will, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory…”
We too often try to set our own goals, our own plans and we ask God to help us get through all this because we want to simplify our life. But, we ask him to bless us, promote us, make us richer or popular or better looking, and the Lord says, “that’s not how it works because the spirit and the flesh will fight one another and I’m not here to be your rabbit’s foot, I’m here to transform you so there is less of you and more of Me.” An example is if we have a life where everything is MY plans, MY goals, MY life, MY everything - it’s like a giant puzzle of life where the pieces do not fit. Then in spite of the numerous conferences or advice we seek, our life is still going crazy, still so topsy turvy. We end up pleading with God by saying, “I’m trying everything I can but still it’s not working out”. Then when we don’t know what to do we go to Jesus. But, when He comes into our life He takes over and everything changes to HIS goals, HIS plans, HIS money and THEN life becomes simpler. Why? Because now we realize none of these are our own but God’s. We understand the example that Jesus set before us when He said “it is not Me but my Father’s [goals, plans, money]”. Then we will begin to see the heart of Christ. That’s why we read in John 3:30 “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
When we choose God’s way and obey Him then life will get a lot simpler and we will be transformed glory to glory into His image. But if we continue to fight with Him then our life will get more and more complicated. Obedience is the key so that everything will fall into place. Don’t worry about messing up; all He asks is that we simply “Follow Him”. And each time we choose to obey Him we will see a transformation in our life and life becomes simpler.
There is an example regarding King Saul and even though he messes up in the end, when he DID obey God this is what happened, 1 Samuel 10:6 “The Spirit of God will come mightily upon you and you will be changed into another man.” Obedience is the beginning of transformation. So all you have to do is love Jesus with all your heart, choose to obey Him and make your greatest desire to please God. You will find everything will get simple. But when we mess up, lose our heart or fall away, there is a way back. That way back is through repentance because Repentance produces a pure heart. When was the last time you repented? Repentance is not simply a public declaration. It is just a simple means to change your mind. If a relationship is going the wrong way, change your mind. If something is not going well in your life, then change your mind. We need to repent a lot in order to have a clean heart as it states in Acts 3:19 “Repent therefore and return so that your sins may be wiped away and times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” When we repent then our heart becomes pure again and it is stated in Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
In our October 7 bulletin there is a prayer instructive for our nation, because like Israel, when they pushed God away, their lives became complicated and harsh. Ours too is headed in that direction because we have also pushed God away. When the 10 tribes turned away from God and started to worship idols, the Assyrians took them captive. After the Assyrians fell away, the Babylonians took the Israelites. God kept sending prophet after prophet with one warning after another pleading with Israel to repent. God judged the nation by sending one calamity after another until the Babylonian nation came upon them and they fell into captivity for 70 years. Our country was once founded on the principles of God and God is sending US signs and prophets pleading with US to repent also. However, our nation has pushed God so far away. And like the nation Israel, the Babylonians are upon us. The capitol of Babylon was once Nineveh which is now in modern Iraq, a city named Mosul. A lot of our troops are stationed there and have become casualties of war. This war has cost us trillions of dollars. Where once God protected our country because we were founded upon Him, now, by turning away from Him, we have met with disasters like 9/11 and our financial crisis. So we need to pray for our nation. As is stated in 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people who are called by My name shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Can we pray for our nation? Let us start first by being obedient and repentant because obedience and repentance will lead to simplicity and purity. Then please pray for our country, and choose to vote on principle and not by political parties. Because we need God to heal our land and we need to be a people of God and humble ourselves and pray. But first we must become a people who are obedient and when we sin are repentant so that we can become transformed into a people who live a life in Christ, a life in Jesus - Pure and Simple.
Study Suggestions
1. What are the things in your life you need to turn over to God to make your life simpler?
2. For what do you need to repent?
3. How can you become more obedient to doing what God wants you to do?
4. What are the 3 keys to following Jesus?
5. What’s the difference between Agreement and Obedience?