Sermon
Lord
April 8-9, 2000
Pastor Ralph Huddleston

I'm glad you're here today. I kind of have a sermon. I'm reluctant to call it a sermon because it's probably more a real-life experience and then God puts the Scripture verses to it you know. And it actually was created or changed on Thursday of this last week. And I probably have to be pretty careful here because of the circumstances. I'm still a little tender, and I say that it's a nice way of saying on the verge of tears. How's that? And I don't mind it when you do that, but it's really ugly when I do that. But as you know, on Thursday a horrible thing happened on the Bay Bridge; where a man provoked the actions of the CHP, and in that he lost his life. A real tragedy. Either you saw it on TV or you were part of the 12 hours of traffic jam clear back to the racetrack there over by Golden Gate Fields. It was a horrible thing, and nothing in us would ever say yeah that was good. It was needed, but it wasn't good. And my part in that was that I had the privilege or the responsibility, or both, as their chaplain to defuse those two officers that were forced to make the decision, forced to use deadly force on that individual. When they came back to the office we spent some precious time together, and then on the next day I was part of the crisis team that debriefed them, and with that came four or five other officers that were involved in the backup. It was an emotional time. It was something you can't even imagine what happened, and how their lives would be influenced for the rest of their lives. Something great happened from it. Their peers that had been involved in these kinds of things before came to support them and lift them up, and we spoke of the spiritual things where through God's mighty hand that no one else was hurt. Not one car was struck. Not one officer was struck, and there was gunfire everywhere. You see only God's mighty hand can do that.

And when it was all over and I was driving back home on Friday after that, I begin thinking about the individual and I said; you know Lord, it just grieves me that here is a situation even though I've been around death many times, you have to, both family and friends and maybe through the military. This was the one time in my life where I thought you know I can almost be 100 percent sure that that individual is spending an eternity in agony, and it really struck my heart. It didn't come into play as to what he had done or how it happened, it just was a fact here is what he had in store for him the rest of his eternal life. And I began to think about it, and I spoke to the Lord. I said you know Lord, if he had called You Lord and Savior, this didn't have to end this way.

Now I don't know what happens to you but when I talk about other individuals and their spiritual walk and the maybes and the ifs and the how bouts, He always turns it on me. And He makes me the center of attraction at that point. And in His special way He said, am I your Lord? And so for that if I were going to title this, and I wouldn't give you notes because I didn't know how to punctuate this, and didn't know how to make it sound like it needs to sound. We call Him Lord, and we do, don't we? And He began to ask me. Began to interrogate me as to, am I Your Lord? You call Me that. You saying that to Me. You say praise the Lord with it's almost flippantly thrown out there sometimes. We're just so familiar with it, and we're going to talk about that name, Lord.

I strain like you strain all of the time to know Him better, to see Him better, and yet it seems like I only have glimpses of Him. When He's done a miracle in my life, when He's literally saved my life, there He was. Click, a flash. There He is. And I make a decision. I find out that He made the decision and I let Him. Bam, there He is again. It's kind of a flash picture of Him. He's always there, but we squint to see Him through the darkness of our days. Whenever there's a flash of light and He reveals Himself.

It kind of reminds me of a story Elmer Townes wrote. Elmer, if you don't know Elmer, is kind of like the Who's Who in church growth. If there's a resource or a book on discipleship, he probably wrote one of them. If there's something on prayer and fasting, he probably wrote that. If there's a way to grow your church, he probably wrote that. How to start a new service within the framework of your schedule, he probably wrote that too. And he was on vacation; he was going to visit Mount Rushmore. And he had it in his head to get there in the early evening so that he could see Mount Rushmore, but with all of the lights on it. A little bit different than noontime. It would offer different angles and shadows, and bring out the features of those great men. But on vacation things just don't happen that way all the time, do they? Sort of like things just don't time out right. Well he arrived there about ten minutes after the lights went out. So it's dark. And the imminent storm that's coming over the hill didn't allow for even any moonlight. And so he thought, boy, what a day. And what he thought was going to be something tragic he writes, turned out to be a blessing. Because as the storm started and the bolt of lightning, each time a lightning bolt would hit, he'd see just for an instant the face illuminated of one of those figures. Now in his mind's eye he had a preconceived idea of what they looked like. So now he was busy comparing. And they were just boom, boom, boom, boom. And he writes it was magnificent. Something that went beyond his wildest expectations. His eyes were squinted and had narrowed down to just those faces, nothing else went in. Isn't that how we are in our lives when we try to squint to know Him better. Squint to see Him even, but it seems like there are just little flashes in our life; a miracle, a blessing, savior from something. Little, little flashes, and we have already a preconceived idea of what He looks like and what He is, but this kind of adds to it.

And today we’re going to talk about one of the names of God, one of the names of Jesus, and it's Lord. Because I think it's very, very significant. You know how we name things, and through the ages since the beginning of time, naming things has been very, very important. It's been important to the Lord. I want you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 through 5. You're going to see there in the very first paragraph of the Bible God begins to name things. We also talk about some of the other names of Jesus, but were going to focus on Lord. I want you to keep that in your mind's eye. Chapter 1 verses 3 through 5 in Genesis, then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God said that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was an evening and there was a morning, and He called it one day. All right, on the second day He created an expanse and called it Heaven; verses 6 through 8. On the third day He named the dry land Earth. And then in verses 9 and 10, the gathering of the waters he called and named the Seas.

And sometime after the creation of man on the 6th day, God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and immediately put the poor guy to work. Doing what? Naming the animals. Which ones Lord? All of them. And his work began. Another significant fact about names is that they often convey something that refers to the person's birth. Take Isaiah. Now here we've got Abraham. He's 99 years old, and God says to him, Abraham you're going to have another son. Well Abraham falls down on his face laughing, and God tells the wrinkled up old skeptic and you're going to name Him Isaac. What do you think Isaac means? Laughter. How would you like to have that as a handle the rest of your life? God put it to good use. Also how about the Pharaoh's daughter? She takes a three-month-old baby out of the water of the Nile River in a basket, and she names Him Moses. And that name means drawn out. Yeah. There are scores of names in the Bible that have these significant meanings, in not only their lives, but in our lives as we go down through the ages of Scripture. Names can also reveal aspects about an individual. Very often that name given to a man or woman can be like a one word summary of their life, of their influence on the rest of the world. For example, Alexander the.... (Congregation says great) William the.... (Congregation says conqueror) Hey we have some history buffs here. All right. John to.... (Congregations says Baptist) OK. How about Simon the.... Zealot. Who said surfer? (Congregation laughs) He might have been that too. All of this is especially true concerning Mary's son Jesus. His names are so significant, but most of all His name Lord.

Seven hundred years before His birth, God not only predicted that His Son would come from a virgin, but He also gave Him a name. Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: And behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a Son, and she will call His name Immanuel. That means God with us. Not God visits us for a little bit of time. It's God with us, walking every step with us from that day all the way through our lives. God with us. Isaiah also penned another prophecy containing names that reveal more about the nature and the work of the Messiah, chapter 9:6. For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Even during the proclamation of the coming or of the pregnancy of Mary, there were given some names. Son of the Most High, Son of God, and again, Immanuel. Now during the three years of the ministry of Jesus, as an adult, people got to know Him even better, and they'd often begin to alter what they called Him. Is that like us as well? Can you remember when you first asked Jesus Christ into your life? I can as though it was yesterday. It's nearly 21 years ago. What I can't forget is the lightness of my body it seemed to have as all of that stuff from my past was lifted, and I called Him Savior. But it was through my experiences then that I've learned to call him Lord.

Now the same is true if you go to John chapter 9. You look here were Jesus healed the blind man. At first when the crowds questioned the beggar regarding who had healed Him, he simply said the man who is called Jesus. That's all he knew. Later when the Pharisees interrogated him, his view had changed and he called Him by a more important name. Same chapter, verse 17, they said therefore to the blind man again, "What do you say about Him since He opened your eyes?" And he said, "He is a prophet." So already he's elevated Jesus Christ. Finally, around verse 34 after the Pharisees had thrown him out of the temple, the same man encounters Christ again, believed in Him as the Son of man, and called Him his Lord. Yes. So he started out as a man, and then He was Son of man, and then He was a prophet, and then he was most importantly Lord. It all goes back to that mighty name. It's very, very significant. And so when the Lord asked me on my way home, am I really your Lord? This is where I was. I think nowadays this term, this name, might be used just a little bit too much. It's a little too common. We have T-shirts with ‘Praise the Lord’ on both sides, and by the way when you're wearing that T-shirt are you acting like the Lord? Wearing that T-shirt with ‘Praise the Lord’ on both sides and doing 75 miles an hour down the highway. Is He your Lord? Worse yet, as you're driving 75 miles an hour down the highway, and you've got half your body sticking out the window of the car screaming at somebody because they cut you off. Now is He your Lord? Isn't it amazing?

On the way home, on that same trip home, while this is all going on in my mind, down below the church here the telephone company was digging a big old hole on our property. We knew they were going to. They were going to put in some new telephone lines. But I looked in the parking lot down below as you know it's usually full, I mean, full. And they had a lot of equipment down there so I was kind of panicked. And so there was three big burly guys, construction type guys, so I walked my little self across the street and I asked them, gee whiz guys when are you going to be gone, by Sunday morning I hope? And they assured me that all of the equipment would be gone by that time. But one of them, the biggest one, the most burly one, he says, well what do you use that for? I said it's the church parking lot. He says I'm saved, and we both said praise the Lord and I walked away. All of this is going on in my mind at the same time, and I'm thinking is He my Lord? When I say that, do I mean that every time I say it or is it just like a greeting? Have I reduced it to just that? Sometimes I believe that's true.

As you look back, you look at the first gospel writer Mark, he uses it a couple of times in that sense. And Matthew, a few more times. And Luke, about 17 times. And even more in John. But you get to the apostle Paul in his epistles, him alone, the reference is over 200 times. Sometimes 12 or 13 times in one chapter. Maybe if we went through what Paul went through we would have gotten it right too. Nowhere do I see him writing in a flippant way, praise the Lord. I believe that he meant it clear to his bones, down to the bottom of his soul did he realize Jesus Christ was Lord. At one time he had been lord of his own life and he had turned that over to Jesus Christ.

Now turn with me to Philippians chapter 2 verses 5 through 11. A very small section of Scripture, very significant, very glorious because it takes us from heaven to the cross and back in just about that much time (shows a small amount with hand) on a page in your Bible. Here it says have this attitude in yourself which also was in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Now think about this. All of us, every human being who has ever lived, both saved and unsaved, will one day confessed this one name that God gave to Jesus, and with that confession enter into either eternal joy or endless agony. It should hurt our hearts when we think about those that we suspect went into endless agony, but it should hurt our hearts more if we are saved and we've entered into eternal joy, and I don't doubt that. What I want to communicate here this morning, this afternoon, is that if we're not treating Him and calling Him exactly what He is, and living that ‘Lord’, that we rob ourselves of the joy right here. Do you ever get tired of making decisions? Especially when they go bad. Do you ever get tired of running things? Do we think He's not capable? Is Jesus capable of running our lives? Sure He is.

The Greek term for Lord is kurios, which had been widely used even before the church started using it. And one historian, I'll read quickly, tells us in his study in detail the atmosphere of authority which it carries. First of all the word is a word of domestic authority. It describes the authority of a father to the family. Okay dads, as the leader and the authority of the family, is Jesus Christ your Lord? The direction that you give your family, the discipline that you give your children, the advice that you and your wife give to one another, was that the Lord's or was that yours? It's a good question, isn't it? If we're given that authority we must make very sure that we don't abused, and the only way to ensure that it is not abused is letting Jesus Christ be Lord. Let Him give you the answers to those problems. You've got to be tired of doing it yourself.

He goes on and writes, it's the regular word for a master as opposed to a slave, or the regular word to describe the undisputed owner of any property, or one who has authority to make decisions like a general. But theologically no other word is like Lord when it is used in the sovereign authority sense. And it is little doubt to me as I read Scripture that when the early church ascribed this title to Jesus, to them it signified one who had the right to rule over them. My question for me and for you is, is this still true here today for us? Everyday? Not just on Sunday. Not just when we're going through our personal devotions, but everyday when we get up in the morning when we look in the mirror, who do we see? The lord me? Or do we sense the Lord Jesus Christ? For me folks most of the mornings when I look in the mirror, I've got the day pretty well planned. I have lorded over it. I have loaded up my daytime. How many of you have daytimers or a scheduler of some sort? Come on, you can fess up. Yeah. You got it all prioritized. You've got a plan. Has God ever taking your daytimer away from you or hidden it from you, and does panic set in? Yeah. He doesn't want panic to set in. He just wants you to give it to Him. Not only you, but all of you; all that you have, all that you are, all that you possess.

You know no other title turns the controls over to Jesus liked kurios does. To call Him by that name means that He alone is our authority above any other. And this is what put the early church on a collision course with the Roman Empire. Here's something that they had to go through. Every year they would have to go forward and burn a pinch of incense, and say aloud ‘Caesar is Lord’. Everybody had to do that. And then once they did that they could go and praise any god they wanted to. If they didn't do it, they died. And the Christians refuse to do it. Now I don't think there's anybody here who's been called to do that, yet. The point of this is are we prepared to let be put to death our possessions, our will, our positions, our families, all those things? Are we prepared to wrap them up and just give them to Jesus? Nobody's telling us we have to die. What we have to die to is our will and our way, because the two cannot live together.

Kurios is kind of a powerful one-word creed. One that we should never take lightly because Jesus certainly never did. I'm a pretty simple person and when you deal with me you get simple stuff, and for this reason I offer you today kind of an ABCD arrangement to help you and to help me remember the things that we've talked about here today. The next time that we called Jesus Lord this is what should go through the rest of our mind and our heart. Maybe you want to write it they're on the pages of your Bibles somewhere. A - that we would affirm our allegiance to Him. You say again, as often as it takes, affirm our allegiance to Him, to nothing else just to Him. B - to bow to Christ's authority. Boy that's difficult, isn't it? To bow to somebody else's authority. I am used to taking care of myself. Everything in me says I do these things. And C - to commit to Him all we are, all we have, and all we hope to be. Man. And the last one is just as difficult. D - to dethrone my will and my way. It means to take me off the thrown. When I look in the mirror I don't see me. I am no longer lord.

Lordship means ownership. The apostle Paul explained it this way, 2 Corinthians 5:15, and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Who are you living for, and who is in control? When you say Lord those are the next two questions you've got to ask yourself. There is a book, a great book, you might want to read it, "Call To Discipleship" by Juan Carlos Ortiz. And he brings home a great truth of what it means to call Jesus Lord. If you'll allow me just very quickly I’m going to read an excerpt from that and then we will close. He writes, when a man finds Jesus he marvels at such a pearl and says, I want this pearl. How much does it cost? The seller says, it cost everything you have; no more, no less so that anybody can buy it. I'll buy it. Well, what do you have? Let's write it down. I have $10,000 in the bank. Good, $10,000. What else? I have nothing more. That's all I have. Well where do you live? I live in my house. The house too then. You mean I have to live in my car? You have a car? I have two. Good, both become mine, both cars. What else? Are you alone in the world? No, I have a wife and two children. Your wife and two children too. Too? Yes, everything you have. Now what else? I have nothing else. I am left alone. O, you too. Everything? Everything becomes mine; wife, now listen to this, children, house, garage, cars, money, clothing, position, promotions, everything and you too. He goes on and says now you can use all those things here, but don't forget they are Mine as you are, and when I need any of these things that you are using, you must give them to Me because now I am the owner. That's what Jesus means when He says I am your Lord. We call Him Lord.

Let me ask you this as an exercise for you, is there a particular possession that you have not giving Him Lordship over? Or position, as in your career? Is there a relationship, married or otherwise, that you have not clearly given to Him? Or an ability? That's a good one. O we are just so good at stuff. Well where do you think that came from? Did you just wake up one day and he became that? The Lord of lords, King of kings, created you with that. You may as well give it to Him because someday you're going to give it to Him. Isn't it always easier to do it of your own freewill? It's a lot less painful. Sit down. No. Sit down! And you're down. That smarts. Take some time to think about maybe you're refusing His complete authority in your life. Take those things whatever they are and wrap them up in a bundle and give them to Him. It can be done just like that (snaps fingers). As quickly as we gained forgiveness a little while ago around the Lord's Table, and maybe these things we didn't think about, now we are, and now we're responsible for them. The next time we say Lord, let Him not say, are you sure that I'm your Lord? You call me that.

Present these things to the Lord and commit them individually to His ownership, and I believe that wonderful things will begin to happen, even on top of what you think has been wonderful in your life that God will begin to bless you in ways you've never dreamed.

Would you stand with me? As we pray that God would just walk with us through this whole process. Heavenly Father, there is no more important moment of this day than now when we say down deep in our hearts where no one else can see, I acknowledge you Christ as Lord, my Lord. I affirm I allegiance. I bow to Your authority. I commit all I am, and all that I have, and all that I hope to be. I dethrone my will and my way and I put You and You alone as Lord on the thrown. Father help us as we progressively released to You the things that we have held on to, in fact, we have clutched with a death grip. Teach us how to let go and dethrone our own will. Stay near us. Encourage us. Comfort us and quite our fears. Reassure us that with You all is safe. We thank you for the names of our Savior. We thank you at this moment for the name Lord, and we acknowledge Him and pray in His precious name. Amen. Amen. I pray that God continues to go with you and richly bless you and touch your lives. Have a wonderful afternoon. God bless.