True Commitment, Part 1
Selected Scriptures
Now, we've been talking about commitment in relationship to the study of the Apostle Paul, and we've been hitting it from all different angles, and...and I wanna just kinda sum up some passages that we've used in the past and pull together some loose ends maybe, and just present to you what I believe to be the basic principles of commitment. Certainly, as we've studied the Book of Acts, we've become very much aware of the nature of the commitment of the Apostle Paul. The man was a totally dedicated man. He stands for all time as the perfect example of a man sold out to something that he believed in. And I wanna just kind of use that as a...just a beginning contact point for your past study of the Book of Acts, and just go from there.
One of the students in Denver this week probed my own personal viewpoint a little bit more than the others, perhaps, and...and he asked me to explain to him the difference between an effective servant of God, whose life is really blessed and whose ministry is fruitful, and one whose is not. He said, "What is the difference? What makes one man's ministry God blessed and fruitful, and another man's not?" And I said, "It's very easy question to answer. One man is committed and dedicated to Biblical excellence in all things, and the other is willing to compromise. That's the difference." The same thing is true in the Christian's life. What makes the difference between a Christian who is blessed and fruitful and effective and one who is not, and the difference is one is totally committed to Biblical excellence in everything. The other is willing to compromise. It's that simple. One is satisfied with God's best and nothing less. The other will settle for less.
We talked this week to this particular student and to others a lot about Biblical integrity. Some people are totally committed to doing everything according to the Word of God. Some are willing to give in and do some things according to the Word of God and other things just to kind of pass the Word of God by or ignore it. That's the difference. One individual functions solely on Biblical principles. The other mixes in worldly wisdom. In the ministry, you ask, "What makes the difference between an effective church...and by this I mean effectively as God measures it...and one that is not effective in terms of producing disciples, in terms of God's measurement. And the difference is one functions biblically. The other is willing compromise for some effect that they wanna get. You see, the Christian life in terms of its successes or in terms of its excellences or in terms of its fruitfulness, is simply a question of whether or not you're totally committed to the principles that are in this Book...If there is one thing that I would strive for in the church here, it is integrity. That is, consistency with the Word of God. And if there's one thing I would strive for in my life, it's the very same thing. He even probed deeper, the student did. He said this, "How can you make yourself study five to six hours a day? How can you push yourself to do that? How can you force yourself to study that much?" He said, "Don't you think that most ministers float?" Well, if you've been in athletics, you know what the term float means. It's like pacing yourself. You only crank it up when you have to. You sort of just take it easy until the crisis comes, and then you get it on.
"Don't you think most ministers float?" he said. Well, that's a very interesting question, and I probably would say, "Yeah, I imagine most do." "But how do you discipline yourself to study so much and to commit yourself to these things?" Well, I simply said this, "That's also easy to answer, and it boils down to this. Do I care more about myself or about God's honor? Do I care more about my own comfort and my own ease, or do I care more about the maturity of the people God has given me? Am I concerned with my own life, or am I concerned with perfecting the saints? Am I concerned with the prestige of being the under-shepherd, or do I really care about the flock?" That's really where it boils down. I mean you go into the office, you can sit there, and, frankly, nobody tells me what to do. Believe it or not. I mean I arrive on...on Monday, and I just about do what I want all week, and it's very easy to just say to yourself, "You know, it sure is a nice day today. I just don't feel like studying at all. And I think I'll just go and take my golf clubs and dust them off and, you know, spend a day or two doing that." And then you think to yourself, "But now wait a minute. There's gonna be a flock of people there, and they're gonna say, 'Feed me,' and you make a decision, don't you?" It's the same thing in the Christian life. It's just a question of what are you committed to? It all boils down to that. There is always a price to pay for effectiveness. Remember, so many times hearing my football coach in college saying, "Men, if you're going to win, you have to pay the price." And the price was daily pain for five days to win on the sixth day. Pain and more pain. He used to put signs up, "Enjoy pain."...There was a price to pay, and you did enjoy it. When you made a good hit in a football game, you paid a price, pain. You always think that only the guy who goes down hard hurts. No, the other guy hurts, maybe as badly, only the psychological factor of having hurt somebody else helps you overcome it.
It's the same in the Christian's life. There will be a price to pay for commitment. You have to discipline yourself. You have to say no to the things that your flesh would say yes to. You have to endure some suffering, some persecution, some rejection, being ostracized. But commitment is wanting God's honor, God's glory, and Biblical integrity at any price. That's commitment. And you're willing to pay that price, you're on the wavelength that Paul was on, who said, "Hey, I know that when I get to Jerusalem, bonds and afflictions await me. But none of these things...what?...move me. Neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I may finish the course, that I may complete the ministry the Lord Jesus has given to me."
Now, let's look for a minute at Ephesians 6:14 as kind of a springboard, and just to show you a principle of commitment to begin with. You have here the armor of the Christian, and in Ephesians 6:14, you have particularly one piece of armor that really isn't armor. It's more dress than armor. But it begins this discussion. Ephesians 6:14 says, "Stand therefore, having your loins girted about with truth." Now the first piece of equipment that a Christian soldier puts on is the girdle or the belt of truth. I think you'll recognition that this is a warfare with Satan that we're talking about in the passage. And if Satan primarily attacks in the area of false doctrine, which he does, then it is important for the Christian to be equipped with truth if he's gonna counteract false doctrine. Now a Roman soldier always wore a belt, because his tunic would just flap around in the breeze. And if he was out in the battle and his thing was flying in the air, somebody could pull it over his head and that would be it, see. So you...and you didn't wanna try to fight a battle with your dress blowing around, so you made sure you got your belt on. They'd strap the belt very tight, take the four corners of the tunic, pull it up through the belt, and turn it into kind of a mini-tunic in order that they might be mobile and flexible and not be encumbered at all. Now, the belt, then, was that which got everything together. It pulled up everything. It cinched up everything. The weapon was attached to the belt. The metals were attached to the belt. The belt was kinda the coordinator of the whole outfit. Now, if you look at the word "truth" here, a better way to translate that word would be truthfulness. He is saying, "You need to be belted together with truthfulness." Now, that concept is sincerity or integrity or commitment. Real love for the truth is what he's saying. A truthful commitment. In other words, you can't go into battle unless you've gotten it together, and you get it together when you cinch yourself up with a commitment to victory. When the soldier got his...his belt on and pulled the corners of his tunic in...inside that belt and strapped that thing tight and hooked on his sword, he was saying, "I am now ready to fight the battle." The belt of truthfulness. Truthfulness means sincerity, real love for the truth, total heart, soul, mind commitment to what is right. And if it is right to defeat Satan, that's what I'm committed to.
Frankly, people, I feel that most Christians lose in the Christian life, because they don't care about winning that much. It's a question of desire. It's carnality, and, of course, it's selfishness when you don't care. But when you do, that's desire, and that's the basis of commitment. Now, it's for sure that there's a lot of misunderstanding about commitment. When we say we get committed to something, I wonder, sometimes we think that means a mental institution. That...that word is used. But certainly not in a Biblical context. But there are other strange ideas about commitment. You know, some people think that commitment is sort of a feeling you get. That you sort of feel. You go to a...a service and you're moved, you know, by some...some real power-packed high...high impact kind of sermon. And you feel sort of spiritual goose bumps and...and then you say, "Oh, I dedicate my life." Or you get rededicated, re-consecrated. It goes on and on and on, you know. And it...it's just a pattern of life for many people.
In fact, it...I was in a church this week in Denver where they have altars in front of the church. They had altars, huge altars stretching as far as this building. Then more of 'em in the back, just a massive, gigantic altar. And they say, usually, at every service, there are at least 150 people down there getting rededicated. Well, I'm not sure they understand what that means if they have to go down there all the time at that altar. There's a lot of things that we don't understand about dedication. I always think about the kid at camp who came up and...and said, "I wanna dedicate my time to the Lord," and threw his watch in the fire. It was one of those services where you throw a stick in, and that was a nice gesture, but, you know, you gotta buy a new watch. Let's face it. It's poor stewardship. He didn't really understand what dedication was. You know, and he had tears in his eyes when he did it.
You know, there's a lotta misunderstanding about what dedication is. Or what commitment is. Commitment is not a feeling. A commitment is not the act of going down the row and stopping at the front. There may be times when that kind of an action is helpful. What is commitment? Lemme give you some principles. And these are things that'll be fresh in your mind today after we've reviewed them a little bit. One, commitment begins with a commitment to love the Lord Jesus Christ. Dedication in the Christian's life, integrity in the Christian's life, girting up with a belt of commitment begins with loving the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I invite you to turn to John 21 for a minute, and I wanna show you some things in that chapter that are very, very basic...
Commitment to love the Lord Jesus Christ is illustrated here in this chapter. Just to give you a little bit of a background, and the chapter is really an important chapter, because it's post-resurrection chapter, and it discusses an interview that Jesus had with Peter after He rose from the dead. And so it's a great confirmation chapter for the living Christ, the resurrected Christ. Now, just to give you an idea of what happened, prior to chapter 21, Jesus had appeared to the apostles together at least twice in the upper room. Once Thomas was there and once he was not. Just to help you remember the two times. And so He had appeared to them on two occasions. They had seen Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Then He had sent this group of disciples up to Galilee, which, of course, was to the north of Jerusalem where they had seen Him. And He said, "You go in the mountain and wait for Me there." The Gospels tell us this, other than John. "And you wait in the mountain until I come and manifest myself to you and give you the directions for the future operation."
Now, they knew that they had been commissioned, in a sense, to proclaim the resurrection of Christ. They knew that He was alive, and they knew that there were going to be...they were gonna be empowered with the Holy Spirit, because Jesus had told them that. And so they're now told to wait in the mountain until He gets there. But, of course, Peter up there just can't hardly wait for anything. He was impetuous. He always had sort of an itchy tunic or whatever. He was a in a hurry. He's standing up there on the side of the mountain looking at his sundial about every ten minutes, and...and saying, "Wait a minute, you know, we've been here a long time. I don't understand what's going on. Where is Jesus?" And he begins to reflect on his own life, apparently, and he begins to remember that every time he has ever faced a crisis, he has always failed. And he begins to talk himself out of the capability of ministering for the Lord.
And so, as he goes through this problem, he decides that he's gonna forget the whole thing and return to this former profession, which was what? Fishing. So watch what happens. Verse 1, "After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias...that's Galilee...and in this manner showed He Himself: There were together Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee...that'd be James and John...two others...would be Andrew and Philip, most likely...Simon Peter said to them, 'I'm going fishing. I am returning to what I used to do.'" And, you know, it had to be the result of a just waiting and waiting and waiting and then talking himself into the fact that he just wasn't adequate, that he was always a failure, that he had promised so many things to Jesus and failed every time. And even though he had already had a personal interview with Christ post-resurrection, according to 1 Corinthians 15, apparently, it didn't confirm him in his own confidence.
So Peter says, "I'm going fishing." Well, he was a leader, right? So when he said that, all the rest of the guys said, "We're going, too." And like a buncha little rubber ducks, they all waddled down the hill to the boat, without any thinking on their own part, just in submission to the leadership and the dynamic of Peter. And, of course, you remember the story. The Lord rerouted all the fish in the Sea of Galilee. None of them went near the boat. And you can imagine that Peter was saying, "Well, there's one thing I know how to do, and that's fish. I'm going fishing." Went back, and nothing. All night. And, of course, to make it worse, in verse 4, "In the morning, Jesus arrived on the shore and said, 'Have you caught anything?'" You know, which is like sticking the knife in and turning it. "Jesus said unto them, 'Children, have you any food?' And they answered, 'No.'" We don't know what else they may have said under their breath, but the word "no" is recorded. "He said, 'Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you shall find.' They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fish." The Lord gave a supernatural whistle, and the fish just attacked the right side of the boat. They couldn't even get 'em in.
Well, finally, the got to shore, John said, "It is the Lord." And Peter couldn't wait, dove in the water, and swam while the rest of the people tried to get the fish and the boat in. And the Lord had made breakfast. They sat down. In verse 12, "Jesus said, 'Come and have breakfast.' And so they ate." When they had finished breakfast, Jesus confronts Peter. And you can imagine Peter now sitting at that breakfast on the shore, a breakfast made by the Lord Jesus Christ. I've told you, you know how the Lord makes breakfast? Breakfast. And, you know, He had created it right there on the spot, probably, and here they were. And here's Peter sitting there with the Lord of glory eating breakfast. You know what's gotta be in his mind? "Peter, you stupid clod. You...you disobedient, inadequate person." He's failed again. He just does not seem to be able to succeed in obeying the Lord at all. He always fails every test that he's given. And there must have been tears in his eyes and in his heart and grief and pain as he looked at Jesus.
Verse 15, "When they had had breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, 'Simon, son of Jonah...called him by his old name, 'cause he was acting like his old self...lovest thou Me more than these?' He says, 'Peter, you love me more than these?" More than these what? Well, maybe more than these things: the boat, the fish, the nets, the sea, the whole fishing thing. "Do you love Me more than those things?" Or maybe He's saying, "Do you love Me more than these disciples love Me?" Because Peter had claimed that he did. "Peter, do you really love Me?" And He uses the word agapao, which is a kind of a supreme love. The highest kind of love. Jesus says, "Peter, do you really love Me? Do you super-love Me?" You see, this is very basic. At the commissioning of any man of God, for any service, it must be established that he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I'm trying to say. Jesus wants to know one thing out of Peter. "Do you love Me, Peter?"
John Calvin said, "No man will steadily persevere in the discharge of his ministry unless the love of Christ shall reign in his heart." End quote. That's nothing but saying what Paul said. In 2 Corinthians 5:14, "For the love of Christ does...what?...constrains us." Loving the Lord Jesus Christ is basic, and I believe very tearfully, in verse 15, Peter replied. "He said unto Him, 'Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.' He said unto him, 'Feed My lambs.'" And Peter, you know, didn't use agapao. He didn't use Jesus' word. Listen to this. Peter used filleo. Jesus said, "Do you super-love Me?" Peter said, tearfully, "I like You a lot. I like You a lot." Now I believe Peter felt that his love was the superior love. I believe, in his heart, he felt that his love was supreme, but, you see, he couldn't claim that kind of love because of his disobedience. It would've been ridiculous for him to say, "Lord, I supremely love You, beyond everything, agapay in its fullest sense, I love You." And then the Lord would've said, "Yeah, right, sure, and that's why you disobey Me all the time."
I always remember talking to a little five-year-old kid here, and I said, "How could you show your parents that you love 'em?" And he says, "I could obey 'em." He's right...Don't claim that kinda love if there's no obedience in your life. So Peter doesn't. Peter is saying, "I admit I'm far from loving You as I oughta love You, and as You're worthy to be loved. I can't claim the highest, the noblest, the purest love, although I feel it. I can't claim it. I do love You, if not perfectly, truly." And Jesus will settle for that. And He says, "All right, feed My lambs." Now what is it that Jesus wanted Peter to do? He wanted him to feed his lambs, right? But before He could ever commission him to feed His lambs, He had to determine that Peter what? Loved Him. You know, you're not gonna serve the Lord Jesus Christ with any kind of commitment until you love Him. So He calls Peter to the ministry of feeding the lambs. That is the ministry. Notice whose lambs he feeds. My lambs. Christ's lambs. You know, one of the reasons that I'm so committed to teaching you people is because you're not mine, you're His. And I've been given a stewardship. I told this to the young men this week. "When you get a glimpse of the fact that the flock in your congregation isn't yours, but it's the one which the Lord has purchased with His own blood, it'll give you a new commitment to teach them, to feed them."
I'm responsible to exercise a stewardship before God as one who must give an account to God, according to Hebrews 13. I must give an account to God for what stewardship I have, and you are my stewardship, and you are God's flock. You are Christ's sheep, and I am only the one who is given the responsibility of feeding you. I don't own you. But I must release that responsibility with the greatest care, 'cause you are His most precious possession.
So He says to Peter, "Feed My precious possession. My lambs." The word "feed" is bosco, and the word means...it's a durative present. It means keep on feeding. And it is not anything more than just feeding. It isn't herding or leading or anything. It's just pure feeding. The priority of the ministry is to do what? Feed. That's one thing that people say when they come to Grace Church is they usually say we came here because we were getting fed. Feeding, that's the ministry. "Feed My lambs." Durative present. It's still the same pattern.
Acts 20:28, we studied it recently, didn't we? Paul says to the Ephesian elders, "Feed the flock of God over which He has made you overseers. Feed them." Peter said it in 1 Peter 5, "Feed them." Now, notice the second thing. And Peter had denied Christ on three occasions, so the Lord gives him three times to redeem himself. Verse 16, "He says to him a second time, 'Simon, son of Jonah, do you super-love Me?'...agapay...He said unto him, 'Yes, Lord, You know that I like You a lot.' He said unto him, 'Feed My sheep.'" What's the difference between sheep and lambs? Well, one's mature and one's immature, right? You know, what a minister of the Gospel has to recognize? That in a congregation he's got sheep and he's also got lambs. And the word that he presents should be that which is fitting for lambs and fitting for sheep. And so we say that, in all messages that we teach, there should be some milk and some meat. Now, the word that He uses here is a little different, poimino. Poimino means to feed, but it also means to pastor. It is the word for pastor. It involves leading and caring and ministering and everything included in shepherding.
Third time, verse 17, "He said unto him the third time, 'Simon, son of Jonah...and He used Peter's word, listen...do you really like Me a lot?'" Oh, that hurt. You see, Jesus said, "Do you super-love Me? Do you super-love Me?" Peter said, "I like You a lot. I like You a lot." Jesus said, "Do you really even like Me a lot?" You know what He was doing? He was even questioning the level of that love. He was saying, "Hey, Peter, by your behavior, I'm questioning even that."
"And Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, 'Do you like Me a lot?'" He wasn't grieved 'cause He asked him three times. He was grieved because the third time He used Peter's word and questioned Peter's testimony. "And he said unto Him, 'Lord, You know all things.'" That's a great statement. He appeals to omniscience. He says, "Hey, Lord, You know everything. Don't hear what I say, look at my heart." And when I grew up as a little kid, I used to think about the doctrine of omniscience. You ever realize that God knows everything? Did you ever get that one thrown at you when you were a kid? My dad used to say, "We may not know, but God knows. He sees what you do, Johnnie." And, boy, you know, I...I remember one time when I was...my dad was an evangelist, meeting back in the Midwest. And he was preaching all week in a church, and a little kid next door to the house, we were staying in the pastor's home, and a little kid next door wanted me to go down to the school. School was out on a Saturday, and he talked me into vandalizing it. And so we turned over all the desks and all the inkwells, all over the floor, all over the desks. We dumped all the sand boxes that were in the classroom, where they were doing something on the floor. We ruined the school. Was a terrible thing we did. We climbed up the wall and cut the school bell rope at the top so they couldn't ring the school bell.
Oh, we did awful things. You know something? My father never knew about that. I didn't tell him till I was 18...Then I was out of his control. He never knew. But, you know, the next day some people came to the door of the parsonage and said, "Oh, a terrible thing has happened. The school has been just ruined." It was a terrible thing. Well, you know something? I had been so drilled on this idea that God watched everything I did, that I went around like this for years, 'cause I knew God had seen that. Well, I used to think of the doctrine of omniscience as a terrible thing. You know, why would God wanna waste His day by just watching what I do?...Then I, of course, matured in my understanding the doctrine. You know, when I grew up, and I realized this, that I'm like Peter, and there are some days when the only way that God would ever know that I loved Him was if He was omniscient. And I realized that doctrine has a positive side. Aren't you glad for it?
Aren't you glad that in the days when your life doesn't make the testimony very clear, you can say, "Lord, I'm sorry about the way I act. Would You read my heart and know I love You?" that's what Peter did. Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep." And He uses the term there for dear sheep, and He totals up the lambs and the sheep into dear sheep. "Feed my lambs, immature. Feed my sheep, mature. Feed both, My dear sheep. Since you really love Me, give your life to shepherd the sheep." Now what kind of love is He talking about? Now watch this. What is this love? Is it... is it an emotion? Is He saying, "Peter, I want you to go up to all My sheep and just love 'em." See, emotionally.
You know, when I came to Grace Church, I had a hard time with that, 'cause I wanted to love the whole church. And I understood the various passages in the Bible about loving the flock as a pastor. Now I was a pastor, and this was the first place I'd ever been a pastor. And I...I wanted to love them, but I couldn't, emotionally, I couldn't love everybody, 'cause I just, you know, you're not attracted to everybody on the same level. You don't just go up to anybody and everybody and say, "Oh, you just thrill me." It just isn't that simple, you know. There are...you're a certain type of person, and they don't feel the same way toward you, either. There's just a personality thing in this. And...and, yet, I think we've tried to tell people that that's the way they have to love. But it isn't that at all. I even have times in my life when I don't just jump up and down and...and feel this warm feeling toward Christ. I mean it just isn't an emotional thing.
Now, I think for many people today in churches, all they try to do is whip up that kind of an emotion toward Jesus. That's all it is. Lemme give you a definition. Look at verse 18, and I'll show you what real love is. "Verily, verily I say unto you, when you were young, you girded yourse