Ending Elevator Christianity

My circumstances in bringing this message to you are unstable at best. I'm presently displaced as a evacuee from Hurricane Irma, as I had to flee Florida at the last moment, driving 19 hours on no sleep, and I'm physically run down with bronchitis and on top of that an emotional wreck. But I can say with the Apostle Paul, therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I'm weak then I'm strong.

I pray that God will undergird this message, friends, with the power of His Holy Spirit, because I have a burden to bring this message to you. The message I have to bring before you today, friends, has the very potential to transform your entire Christian life if you will let it. This sermon is my magnum opus, so to speak, on what God has taught me through the years and learning how to live for Him.

Such an important sermon should have a more distinguished title than the one I gave it, but I've reduced complexities to simplicity by entitling it merely Ending Elevator Christianity. Let me ask you, friend, are you tired of an up-and-down walk with God? Do you hunger for consistency? We don't hear many messages today on the lordship of Jesus Christ. I believe the last preacher who made that message central to his preaching ministry was Dr. Stephen Offred, and it seems that when God called him to glory, that particular doctrine kind of died out with him.

You'd be hard-pressed to walk into a church today and hear the doctrine of the lordship of Christ, but if we want to become what God wants us to become in Him, if we truly desire further usefulness to Him, if we hunger for a consistent walk with Him, then this message on the lordship of Christ is utterly essential, friends, to entering into each of those things. I believe the reason why so many sincere Christians struggle to live a life of consistency with God is that they have bypassed some key aspects of living under the lordship of Christ because they just weren't familiar with Him, and I wish to focus on these vital and often overlooked aspects of the teaching of the lordship of Christ. Take out a pan, friend, and jot them down as we proceed.

Number one, first and foremost, is the doctrine of brokenness. One cannot even attempt to go any further with God if we overstep this central aspect to the lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives. He will never be a complete master over us if we miss brokenness, for if you miss brokenness, you will break out from under His lordship to assert your will, to cater to your flesh, and to fall into sin, for if you miss brokenness, your walk with God will lack consistency, miss brokenness, and you will struggle with a up-and-down walk that I call elevator Christianity.

Elevator Christianity is one day you're living the life of victory in the penthouse suite, then strangely, the very next day, you end up in the basement of defeat, even though you long for a consistent walk with God, and you say with your lips you pledge your allegiance to God, and you vow your obedience to God, you never quite attain it because self keeps breaking out and asserting itself and running all over you. A self must be dethroned by brokenness so Christ the King can be enthroned and rule in the seat of our hearts. We must come to the place of brokenness before God.

An example of this, my daughter grew up on a farm and she rides horses and trains others to ride horses. There is a lot of work involved in breaking a horse, some of you know of which I speak. The horse has to learn to trust you.

Once a horse's loyalty depends on the training or breaking it receives, horses that are broken to follow their leader out of respect are much more enjoyable than those that follow out of fear. A horse is not useful until it is broken. So too, brokenness is central to the Christian life and vital to our usefulness to God.

Our will, our self-life, the entire fabric of our being must enter into a place of true brokenness before God. I agree with the statement by Alan Redpath that he said, before God can use a man he must first smash him. Why, we will never see the lordship of Christ in all its splendid colors of his authority, his majesty, his anointing or his power until we are broken and yielded our whole hearts to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

In Psalm 34 18 we read, The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and save us such as be of a contrite spirit. And it's true friends, in Psalm 51 we see King David's brokenness before God after he's convicted of his sin with Bathsheba. It took the prophet Nathan to come preach a story about a little lamb taken from its master's bosom that brought conviction of sin into king's heart and ultimately brokenness before an offended God.

In Psalm 51 17 we hear the cry of David's penitent heart as he is a broken man before almighty God. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God that will not despise. You see David had backed away from God, he backed away from God by asserting his self-life over the will of God in his life.

Self-gratification became first in his life but with that disobedience also came dryness in the spiritual life. David's heart has grown cold toward God. Do you know what I mean friend? Where your heart grows cold for the things of God, the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit has been grieved away by sin.

The heart has become hardened. In Hosea 10 12 we see a picture of this. It reads, break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord until it comes to rain righteousness on you.

Fallow ground is ground that has once been tilled but now it's hard and lies in waste. In order for it to be soft again it needs to be broken up. So too the backslider needs his heart broken and made soft, made sensitive to the things of God once more.

Therefore brokenness is essential to a life lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Look at boastful Peter before he denied his Lord and look at him after that extended period of brokenness to where Jesus reinstates him by the seashore inquiring about Peter's love for the Lord. But proud Peter had to be broken before God could use him in such remarkable ways.

My oh my just look at his powerful sermon at Pentecost which brought conviction to sin to his hearers turning that room entire Bethel where sinners were crying out what must I do to be saved. Listen friend brokenness is the place where one learns how to follow the master in a life of willing obedience for the glory of God. Notice I said willing obedience for the glory of God.

Too many are unwilling to submit to the utter reign of the Lordship of Christ in their lives but through brokenness one sees the beauty of the Lordship of Christ in a life of submission to him. It is there friend through brokenness that you have your first taste of the sweetness of the Lordship of Christ. It is here his yoke becomes easy.

For it is God who gives us power over sin. Once you have that you will never want to go back to the way things were. I can promise you that.

Rather you will hunger for more and more of God each day. The second aspect of the Lordship of Christ is this we must place ourselves under self-examination. We must come to a place of honesty.

Self-deception is rampant in the church today. The Laodiceans believe themselves to be rich and to lack nothing. But how tragic is their self-deception.

They were satisfied in their eyes. But the Lord Jesus sees them quite differently. He tells them thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

How this should make us shudder and bring conviction to our consciences. However there is a breakthrough with God friends when we get honest with ourselves and honest before God. One cannot serve God with a divided heart.

In Amos 3.3 we read can two walk together except they be agreed. If we want a close walk with God and unbroken fellowship with him then we have to stop playing footsie with the world and stop trying to accumulate as much the world as we can. It is imperative for us to make a clean break with our most beloved sins.

We must be honest enough for there to be a acknowledgement of our rebellion and sin in our lives. In Isaiah we see a clear definition of what sin is. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way and that's what sin is friends. It's going our way when we know it isn't God's way. Ownership of sin and admitting our backslidden condition is central to coming under the lordship of Christ.

There must be open confession of sin before God and repentance to God and a turning away from all known sin that separates us from God. There must be a death involved regarding our beloved sins. They must be relinquished through an utter crucifixion and buried in graves if I may so speak.

As we die deaths innumerable to gain freedom from these tyrants of sin. This is done when we give up all our rights and claims on ourselves in an utter annihilation of self as we submit to the lordship of Christ in our lives that his will and that his glory supersedes our desires and our will as we take his yoke upon us. This is the path friends we must trod where we take up a cross and renounce self as we follow a crucified Christ and the power we receive from Christ as Lord in our lives will give us the divine hammer to smash those idols that stand between us and a thrice holy God.

The third aspect of the lordship of Christ is this. There must be an acknowledgment of Christ as Lord of all. Lordship is a theme seen throughout my entire bible.

When you see this in scripture friends everything opens up to an acknowledgment of Christ as Lord. Is Jesus our good shepherd? Well take a look at Psalm 23. It declares his lordship.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Take this theme throughout this psalm as David delights in his Lord. In essence it can be read the Lord my shepherd maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

The Lord my shepherd leadeth me beside the still waters. We must acknowledge that to be led by Christ we must be in subjection to him as a sheep is to the shepherd. When the sheep breaks out from under the care of the shepherd and runs off on its own course it often ends up in a ditch and lands in trouble and exposes itself to danger.

Lordship means subjection. I resign all my rights to a sovereign king. I trust myself to his rule to his reign over me and this occurs through an absolute surrender to the lordship of Christ in one's life.

I believe this stage is the hardest to achieve because satan will fight you every step of the way. Your flesh will fight you every step of the way but to experience his lordship it it's imperative that we enter into the place of absolute surrender. Oh how the flesh will rise up against this.

There has to be such an utter submission to his will in our life that we place the yoke of Christ upon us and come under all the rights and claims that the gospel has on a person. Our self-life must go to the cross. Our will must go to the cross.

Everything we hold dear in life that we're hanging on to must and has to go to the cross but we cannot hang on to things that separate us from a full surrender to God. In the jungles of South America there are animal traders who catch monkeys to sell them for a profit and to catch a monkey they take a nut that the monkey likes to eat and they drop it into a narrow necked heavy jug. The monkey will squeeze his paw into that narrow opening and grab that nut.

Why he can't wait to eat it but he'll make a fist and try to extricate this paw from that jug but his clenched paw won't fit through that narrow opening. Then the strangest thing occurs when the trappers come and see the monkey and he sees them even though he knows his danger that monkey won't let go of that nut so it is caught. The worldly believer who tries to cling onto the things of this world will one day be snared by the very things he now treasures.

I repeat friends all must go to the cross for the true Christian life is lived via the cross. You must enter into the reality that your time is not your own. Your money is not your own.

Your body is not your own. Christ must be a complete master. In first corinthians 6 20 we read for ye are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.

The best way I can illustrate this to you is many years ago I traveled to Greece and I visited the ancient ruins of Ephesus. Perhaps some of you have been there yourselves. It's truly remarkable to walk those streets and see the sights that Paul and John saw.

In Ephesus I found a place called an agora which in the greek is a outdoor mall so to speak. A marketplace where items were bought and sold. Slaves were purchased in the agora.

Now a greek word for redemption is agorazo. It's got that word agora in there and agorazo means that Christ purchased us with his blood. He went into the marketplace of sin so to speak and purchased us.

The cost was his own blood on the cross. Now there's a little word ek which means to take out of so attach that little word ek to the front of the word agorazo and you have ek agorazo which is another word for this sense. Christ not only entered the marketplace of sin and bought us with his blood but he took us out of the marketplace of sin because we have power over sin.

His death on the cross removes the penalty of sin but it also gives us power from sin. There's enough power and provision in his lordship to deal with any sin in our lives and here is the proof text for experiencing the reality of the lordship of Christ. Look in your bibles friends to second corinthians chapter 3 and verse 17 for here's where it all comes together.

Listen to the freedom that resides in this verse when one enters into his lordship. Now the lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the lord is there is liberty. In other words there is liberty from sin where Jesus is lord.

Did you get that? Where Christ is lord there is liberty. The lordship of Christ is liberty. When we enter into the place of absolute surrender to the lordship of Christ in our lives then with that comes liberty and a life of victory.

Oh if you could only see that friend your life would never be the same. Where Christ is lord there is liberty and with that freedom comes power and authority from on high over sin. Why it's utterly impossible to live the christian life on mere vows and commitments to God.

It can't be done. We must access the power of God over sin. It's a supernatural process that only comes through a life lived under the lordship of Jesus Christ and lastly number four we must give ourselves to God in consecration.

Proverbs 23 26 declares my son give me thine heart and let thine eyes observe my ways. Here is where we find commonality with men like George Whitefield and D.O. Moody, David Brainerd and Robert Murray McChain. Each of these men sought God with their whole heart in a life of consecration to God.

Robert Murray McChain longed for a holy walk with God and he often prayed Lord make me as holy as a saved sinner can be. This friend should be the cry of her own heart as well. We should hunger after righteousness as we give Christ our all in a life wholly consecrated to him.

The self-life is gladly exchanged for the Christ life within. When we give ourselves to God in a life of consecration it brings God glory. This is the fruit of a life lived under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

I believe more than any other man I knew this was personified in the life of Dr. Stephen Alford. He truly was a man of God who come to the place of surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ and he lived a consecrated life unto God. You could just tell it by looking at him.

A life of consecration unto God is a daily application of the doctrine of the cross in the life of a believer. Stephen Alford used to tell me that a Christian should walk with God beneath a cloudless sky in regard to sin and if any temptation came by and reared its ugly head to block fellowship with Christ Dr. Alford would glance heavenward and say with conviction, nail it Lord, nail it. In other words take it to the cross by asking the Lord Jesus to bear his authority down over that sin and to crucify that temptation by giving us his power over sin through his redemption on the cross.

When a believer sees the power available to him through the Lord Jesus there comes I believe a cross and a once personal Rubicon. It's a powerful moment in the spiritual life. The change point for D.L. Moody came when he heard a minister tell him the world is yet to see what God can do with the man whose heart is fully consecrated to him.

The light came on from Moody and as Moody walked away his head bowed down he muttered under his breath, God make me that man and God did just that for D.L. Moody shook Great Britain with the gospel because he was a man who was wholly consecrated to God. Oh what does a life of surrender mean you may ask. You may be afraid to give God all the reigns of your life because it might interfere with your life's plans that you've made for yourself.

I can honestly say friends your life will be different when you sell out to God and go on to out and out for him. In Matthew chapter 16 we read in verses 24 and 25 then said Jesus unto his disciples if any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whosoever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. As I read those verses years ago I sat at my desk in my study and I bowed my head in prayer and I made a vow to God that particular day the vow I wrote in the front page of my Bible I'm looking at it now oh this is what I wrote those many years ago oh what is my life that I should keep it selfishly for me I choose to lose it so completely and have it found in thee I won't go into the details friends but God stripped me of everything I held dear in life so I could gain him what does a life of surrender mean it is you friend surrendering yourself to God completely holding nothing back for how can we hold anything back from him who on the cross held nothing back for us a life of surrender means death to sin and resignation and trial all that matters is the glory of God pleasing Jesus on his throne oh well I hope this little message on end in elevator Christianity through the lordship of Christ has been fruitful to you I urge you friend to apply these truths to your own life and cross over your own personal Rubicon as you embrace the yoke of Christ's lordship as you live for him and the glory of God and you'll be glad you did let us pray