Pastor Jonathan Burgess
November 23, 2014 - W1447

God is handing us something valuable tonight, and if you're like me, you feel the pressure because you’ve dropped it so many times.  And speaking of drops – there was this guy named Jack who stood in line to be the absolute first one to get an iPhone 6.  But with the TV cameras on him, he opened the box and dropped the phone! So now instead of being the 1^st guy in the world to get an iPhone 6, he will forever be remembered as the 1^st guy to drop an iPhone 6!

And I think that's ?? that's kind of like what we get with the holiday season.  We get handed something beautiful, but all eyes are on us, and all the pressure is on us.  And you know what we're reminded of?  All the times when I've dropped it, all the times when I've messed up. 

You and I are sitting in here sometimes defined by our drops, sometimes defined by the valuable things that have been handed to us, and we have dropped it, the things that God has entrusted to us. 

 And that's why it all comes in the holiday season; right?  The broken marriage; right?  The son or the daughter that's been estranged or has left the house, that grudge that you've been holding against some other members, against your family, and you can't even remember why, but it's just been for generations that you don't talk to them and they don't talk to you.  The money that you're supposed to have, but because you lost your job, and now you can't give your kids what they say they need; right? When we're around holidays, it's like instant replays of all of our failures.

 Are we destined to just constantly drop the great opportunities that God has given us? Or is there a way to be restored?  Is there a way to be not defined by our failures but for what God wants to do next?  We can't go back and change what was dropped, but we can learn from the things that we have dropped, why we dropped them, so we don't keep dropping them in the future, the things that God is handing us.  Perhaps you and I could pick up again that calling that we have left behind because of sin.  Perhaps you and I could see some of those relationships that have been shattered actually healed in the holiday season. 

 Let's learn from our mistakes.  Let's learn from one of the most epic fails of all time, a fail that we are still talking about 2,000 years after it happened, a fail that Pastor Wayne was talking about in last week's message. 

 Luke chapter 22:54 through 62 says, ^“Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance.  And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.  A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.”

 But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said.

 A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.”

“Man, I am not!” Peter replied.

 About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.”

 Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.  The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.”  And he went outside and wept bitterly.”

 Now, this is what I'm calling the drop heard round the world.  When Jesus needed Peter the most, Peter not only denied knowing Jesus but cursed at the very mention of his name and any association with him.  Now, you and I have failed big time.  You and I have felt the very same thing Peter is feeling in this moment because God has handed us something precious.  Jesus has trusted something into our hands, and we have failed. 

 So when it says he ran away crying and weeping bitterly, some of us know that exact feeling, that brokenness.  In fact, we may even be in the room right now not even sure why we're at church feeling that exact thing and that distance from God.

 You and I are going to see our relationships restored both horizontally with each other and vertically with our God because we are going to stop dropping the things God is handing us by dropping the three E’s. 

 First one is this.  Let's surrender the enticements.  Now, here's the definition for an enticement.  Something used to attract or to tempt someone, a lure, a temptation, a lure, attraction, appeal, draw, pull, bait, charm, seduction, fascination, enticement of color packaging and clever advertising.

 I once saw a picture of a Maple Bacon doughnut on the internet and I wanted it! When my mom said I should not eat it I really had to have it!

 That's how enticement works.  It grabs you.  And then all of a sudden when God says through a sermon or something, hey, stay away from this, watch out for this, immediately the kind of flesh kind of rises up and says no one tells me what to do.  I'm an adult.  I can make my own choices. 

Jesus gave Adam and Eve one rule only.  They could have everything else.  Just stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Just one, one thing they could not eat. 

 Whatever that fruit looked like, it looked something like this, all shiny, all beautiful.  You can almost just feel the drip of the juice down your cheek.  And though you hadn't eaten all the amazing things that God had made in the garden, you wondered, that sure looks good.  Just ?? just one bite. 

 You see, the enticement of sin, it never looks foreboding.  It never looks like something we should fear.  And we don't realize that we've lost until the aftertaste because the first bite is so sweet.  It looks so good.  It promises you everything, and then takes it all away.  Until you and I are willing to drop this, we're going to drop everything God hands us.  We're going to be lured into every false relationship.  We're going to fall for every lie of the enemy.  Until you and I can drop that and truly surrender and say I'm going to say no to the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.  I'm going to say no to the lust of the flesh because it's not from the Father.  I have lost so much, God.  Would you restore that to me tonight?

 You, see, character is what we do when no one is looking, and the enemy is going to use enticement to draw you in when no one is looking.  He may even use family and friends as a clever packaging to say, hey, they're doing it.  Look, they're fine.  Why don't you go ahead and do it too.  He pulls us in that way, the same way he did with Adam and Eve.  It's the same trick. 

 Little by little, bite after bite, they take us away from the very God that we have been called to love and serve and give our lives to.

 Ephesians 4:26 through 27 says, “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”  Unless we surrender the enticements, we'll give the enemy a foothold in our life, and he's never satisfied with 1 foot.  He wants to stomp all over the beautiful thing that God has given you.  And if you're tired of dropping stuff, start here.  Give God those enticements, those beautiful things that promise you so much and give so little.  Surrender the enticement.

 Secondly, we need to surrender the entitlements.  This is the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something, the feeling or belief that we deserve to be given something more.  Do our advertisements play into this during the holiday season or what?  Hey, you're not going to be happy unless you have this; right?  And fill in the blank of whatever it is.  No other place do we feel more entitled than when we have been wronged, than when we have been slighted, than when our right, the right that we have as God?honest Americans, when that has been slighted, we feel entitled to let somebody have it.

 As we build up the church in Kona, I continue to be the pastor barista.  And when you're a barista, you run into the sense of entitlement all the time. 

 You, see, lot of the people that yell at us in the drive?through at Starbucks, they don't realize that one of my fellow baristas just lost a loved one.  They don't realize that another one of my fellow baristas is fighting cancer.  No one ever takes the time to find out who's behind the apron.  All they do is they're entitled to what they want, and because they've paid for it, they get to treat us like trash.  That's what entitlement does.

 You see, scripture tells us that we'll be crowned as sons and daughters of the king when we meet him in heaven, but right now we don't wear a crown.  We wear an apron, just like our savior did when he came down.  He put on an apron and he washed our feet even to the point of killing himself, being destroyed, taking sin upon himself so that you and I could one day know crowns of righteousness.  It's really hard to live in an entitled life and actually watch the Christian life.

 Philippians 2:3-7 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

 What rights do you and I need to surrender, refresh, and anew so that we no longer live the entitled life and drop the very opportunities God has given us to serve?  You see, entitlement is about what I deserve.  Christianity is about where I serve.  It's a whole flipping of the way that we're living, and you and I need to let go of that.  We need to surrender our rights tonight or we'll never be able to pick up the cross and follow Christ.  Surrender your enticements.  Surrender your enticements. 

 And, finally, surrender the embellishments.  What's an embellishment?  That's a decorative detail or feature added to something that make it more attractive.  A detail, especially one that is not true added to a statement or story to make it more interesting or entertaining, elaboration, addition, exaggeration.

 My family and I were supposed to go to a Four Square conference near Disney World.  The hotel had a four person per room limit and my family had five people so we told the little white lie that only four people would stay in the room in order to save money.  Later, I felt so guilty that we changed it to five people.  I should have trusted the Lord to provide for us from the beginning.

 What about you?  What tiny little place has there been a lie in your relationships, a lie about who you are, a lie about what it is that you've been doing, and God is saying, unless you surrender that tonight, you're not going to be able to pick up what it is that I'm giving you. 

 The entire holiday season according to our culture says you will just keep putting up the front and putting on the lie. No wonder we've been dropping the ball every holiday season.  God wants to set us free.

 What lies are you telling yourself and others that's keeping you distant from God?  Peter, he didn't just tell one lie, not just two, but three. 

But look at this narrative here.  So beautiful.  John chapter 21 verses 13 to 17 and verse 22 say, “Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord.  Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.  When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’

‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.’

‘You must follow me.’”

 You and I are in that place where Jesus is looking us in the eye, just like he did with Peter, and he's saying, “Do you love me?  Then let this go.  All of your failure, all of your mistakes, all of your sins that have defined you for years, leave it right here and follow me.”

 He was restoring Peter to his original calling.  Peter no doubt felt that he would never ever be used by God again, and some of us feel that in this place tonight, and God is saying that's a lie.  And He wants to restore you tonight.

 Matthew chapter 3 verse 16 through 17 says, “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”

 What the Father was speaking then is what the Father is speaking to you and I now.  I am pleased with you.  I am proud of you.  I love you all the time no matter what.  Jesus loved Peter the same, uniformly.  There wasn't any more that Jesus could have loved him in Acts chapter 2 than he did when Peter dropped the ball at the crucifixion. 

 How awesome would it be if you and I returned to that joy tonight, the joy of the arms that are always open, the joy of the one who would speak to Peter, look him in the eyes and say, I'm just as proud of you today as I was when you sinned.  I'm just as proud of you today.  You're still my son, you're still my daughter, and I'm calling you home.