Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Last Supper, Part 12 of 15
TEXT: John 13:33-38 – "Little children, I shall be with you a little longer. You will seek me; and as I said to the Jews, where I am going you cannot come, so now I say to you, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus answered him, "Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you shall follow me afterward." Peter said to him, "Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for your sake." Jesus answered him, "Will you lay down your life for my sake? Most assuredly, I say to you, the rooster shall now crow till you have denied me three times."
IDEA: As followers of Christ, we may be most dangerous when we think we know something perfectly and we may know very little, and what we know is still imperfect.
PURPOSE: to help listeners realize that while we may become Christians immediately, we become disciples gradually.
Have you ever heard this definition of a sophomore? "A sophomore is someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not."
I. The disciples who were the first followers of Jesus thought they knew about Jesus. But it turned out that they didn't know.
Many of the disciples thought that Jesus came to save the Jews from the Romans.
If you asked them, "Describe what you think it will be like," what would they have said?
Were they right? Did that response help them in following Jesus or get in their way?
II. We may have a concept of who Jesus is, but we think we know when we don't know.
Like the disciples we may hear that Jesus is going to die, but we could not accept it.
In our day, we know that we are Christians by trusting Christ, but we think that that means that God will make our lives comfortable and we're very disappointed when that doesn't happen.
Conclusion: What we think we know about Christ may hinder us from really hearing all that may be involved in being a follower of Him. We will hear but we won't hear because what we think we know gets in the way of really knowing.
