“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”Matthew 7:13-14
When most everyone we know in rodeo and bull riding identifies as a Christian, how is it possible then that only a few will find their way to Heaven?
What Jesus is saying is that a lot of us really don’t know him in the sense that we’ve experienced a real relationship with him where we’ve truly believed in him, his death for us and his resurrection and truly repented of our sin and asked for forgiveness. And if we don’t have a genuine relationship with Jesus, he’ll also say he doesn’t know us.
Matthew 7:22-23On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Whether we do what look like great things or commit terrible sins, those actions don’t give us or destroy a relationship with Jesus, only belief in him, true repentance, confession of our sin and asking to be forgiven can save us. The good we do becomes evidence of our saving faith in Jesus.
Most of us believe a mixture of ideas of what a Christian is, but those ideas aren’t the gospel that God uses to save them. That also means that many of us care so little about our faith that we’re not seeing this potentially soul-saving post. That’s because nothing in us has been changed by Jesus to drive us toward learning more about him and God’s word to us in the Bible.
While we don’t profess to be the best teachers, too many people are not reading their own Bibles and not seeking knowledge from other teachers, whether it be this ministry or anywhere else. That breaks our hearts because we want everyone to experience a real, saving, life-changing relationship with Jesus. In rodeo and bull riding, we’re a family, and because you’re family, we love you and want you to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we know the truth of Jesus’s words and for those verses above to be true, most of the people needing to hear this have scrolled on past and the ones reading it are the ones we’re already blessed to get to know and serve through this ministry
Sometimes my 12-year-old son picks on his six-year-old sister. Obviously, there’s a big difference in size, so he has a distinct advantage. I always caution him to be his sister’s protector and never to use his size and strength to make her scared or do what he tells her. I try to teach him that as men and generally being physically stronger and more durable, we are to give honor to the women in our lives as weaker vessels that are precious and to be handled with care.
Yet, there are times when my daughter is a pest and my son gets to the end of his patience and uses his greater strength for pest-control, or even times when he just tries to return the favor by annoying her, which inevitably leads to a squabble. I always ask him, “Son, why did you do that?” I ask because I want more than his obedience – I want him to acknowledge the brokenness of his heart and seek repentance and transformation through his relationship with Jesus Christ.
But let’s be honest – most of us don’t know why we do the things we do. It’s difficult (nearly impossible!) for us to assess the motives of our own hearts.
Nevertheless, I want to ask each of us that question with respect to our decision to follow Christ – Why did you do that? Why do you follow Jesus?
For many, the answer is that it’s what they were taught as children – Christianity was “our family religion.” In other words, Jesus and the Triune God are all you knew – that’s all your family ever taught you, so that’s what you believed. Praise God, you weren’t born to Hindi, Buddhist, or Islamic parents, or exposed to any of those various worldviews in your formative years! Traditional faith (whatever that means) is what saved you from being a pagan or an atheist.
For others who grew up on hellfire and brimstone preaching, there are only two options: “turn or burn” – give your heart to Jesus and start living right or suffer immensely and eternally in hell. The obvious choice is Jesus, so we “invite Jesus into our hearts” by praying a prayer, getting baptized, and trying really hard to live right so God doesn’t change his mind about us. Religious adherence is what saved you from the fires of hell. But keep it up! Don’t fall off the wagon into sin, or God will let you break the deal you made for your salvation! Be sure you do plenty of good deeds, because you never know when you’ve done enough good to outweigh the sin you’ve committed!
In Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer” he says, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Knowing what your family believes about God and Jesus doesn’t equate to salvation. Making the choice to “ask Jesus into your heart” and trying really hard to live a good life won’t punch your “get out of hell free” ticket. Only knowing God as his Son Jesus Christ has revealed him brings eternal life! Religion is always about man’s path to find God, but Christianity isn’t a religion! Quite the opposite of religion, God made a path to reconcile mankind back to himself through Jesus. Christianity, therefore, is a relationship with Jesus.
I have been married to my wife, Sarah, for almost 16 years. I love her dearly. I’ve studied her. I know how tell when she’s angry, when she’s worried, when she’s sad, when she needs some space, and when she needs a hug. I know her well because I’ve intentionally pursued growing in my knowledge of her because I love her and want her to be a significant part of my life. When we come to know Jesus, we receive justification – all our sin erased, our debt paid in the blink of an eye. However, that is not the end of our relationship with Jesus. As we pursue and grow in our relationship with him, we experience sanctification, increasing salvation from the power of sin, and eternal life.
How God works out that process is difficult to understand, but I have serious concerns for people whose relationship with Jesus never grows or remains at the level of a casual acquaintance. If we love someone, we seek to deepen our relationship with them by increasing our knowledge of them so that they we can do life with them in increasingly intimate and meaningful ways.
Knowing Jesus is eternal life. How well do you know him?
Some of us worry about the future. Some because of difficult circumstances, some because it’s just what we do. Some of us don’t give much thought to anything and plunge forward into whatever comes next. Some face what’s ahead fearlessly with a mature understanding of verses like Matthew 6:25-34 that go to great lengths to assure us not to worry because God will take care of us.
Matthew 6:25-27Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Matthew 6: 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
This can feel impossible to some of us and the reality is, it takes a lot of maturity in our faith that some of us may never even reach to be able to let go of worry. But at a minimum, these verses should be a comfort for what they tell us about how much God values us over everything He has created.
But regardless of how we face the coming year, as Christians, there are a couple truths we can focus on. God is in control and His will, will be done. Nothing happens without Him but what He commands us to do through Jesus is this:
John 13-34-35“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Matthew 28: 19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
If we focus on those commands, whatever challenges, trials or struggles we face, we can still see such positivity in the world around us because of what God can do with what we put into it. In and out of the rodeo and bull riding circuits, in and out of the cattle markets, in and out of the job you do or the school you attend, what are YOU going to put into 2022?
One of the greatest plagues of Western Christianity is that so many who profess the name of Christ remain in perpetual spiritual infancy, and that many “Christian infants” are not following Christ at all, but simply wanted the fire insurance that is promised to those who belong to Jesus.
That’s why so often, you see one of the few, or even only times, you see a cowboy or bull rider pray is behind the bucking chutes before competing in sports that can get him killed.
As a retired bull rider now pastoring a church, when I started with them, I made it clear that my ministry would be focused on leading our congregation to pursue a mature faith in Jesus Christ as true disciples. One of the deacons told me he felt like that was a bold (maybe risky) way to approach what was essentially a job interview – to begin by suggesting we’ve been lax in pursuing maturity, content to be comforted with bottled milk and pacifiers rather than to graduate to the strength-giving meat and potatoes of a deep and growing dependence on Jesus. But, what else can you expect from a guy who spent ten years of his life riding bulls?!
But hard questions are important. Are you growing in your faith? Do you even care if you aren’t? Have you become satisfied with a little bit of Bible knowledge and a little bit of doctrinal understanding?
Satisfied. That’s where the audience of Hebrews was.
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14)
These people had heard the message of true discipleship so many times without acting on it that their ears had become dull, and their hearts had become calloused to it. It was time for them to be shaken awake in hopes that the scales would fall from their eyes, and they would realize the great reward of knowing Jesus – a reward that they were forfeiting by their complacency.
1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:1-5)
Notice here that Peter suggests that those who don’t “grow up into salvation” have not truly “tasted that the Lord is good.” You see, salvation is achieved at a moment in time when we truly believe (known as justification) but it is proved over time (from the moment of our justification to the moment we are home with Jesus, called sanctification). If there is no sanctification – a constantly continuing work throughout our entire lives – there was no justification either; and if there was no justification, there is no salvation!
Are you being built up as a spiritual house with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Together, are you becoming a holy priesthood – those who lead others into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ? Are you offering spiritual sacrifices? Are you eager and zealous to know Jesus more deeply today than yesterday and to become more like him tomorrow than you are today? Many people get offended or become defensive and deny the evidence when these types of questions are asked. Please remember: the grace of Jesus has freed you from the need to do that! All your shortcomings are covered by the blood of Jesus, so in Christ, you are free to be brutally honest about where you are right now. And what’s even better is that same grace is what will continue the work of God in you – not your own efforts! And that grace can be released to do its work when you get honest with God. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
Beloved, God’s work in you is not done yet, nor is it done in me. We are free to struggle with sin and failure, but we do not struggle to be free. And if indeed we have been set free, there is still growth ahead.
From nativity scenes to Christmas specials, we have the idea that the three wise men, or Magi, were there with the shepherds to see the baby Jesus in the stable.
Scripture tells us something different.
These men, called magi, were likely priests from an eastern culture like Persia, led by what appeared to be a star, to see the king they had heard about.
King Herod, like most, did not fully understand that Jesus was not here to replace his rule, but for a much greater purpose that would pave the way for all to be able to find salvation through his eventual death on a cross. He asked the Magi to report back to him the location of this king, lying about his intent to have the baby killed.
The Magi were warned in a dream to not return to Herod who was left without the location of Jesus.
Instead, what we have is a very grim part of the Christmas story in which Herod then ordered all children two years or younger to be killed.
Matthew 2:16When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
Verse 11 told us the ‘wise men’ arrived to see Jesus at a house, not a stable, and in this verse, we see it was as much as two years after Jesus was born.
Those who work in the rodeo and horse industries know how animal rights activists have extremely wrong ideas about the treatment of animals.
Much of their information is passed on from person to person and without digging in to learn from accurate information, they simply believe what they have been told, without question.
The lesson for us in this story about the wise men is the importance of taking our Biblical knowledge directly from scripture.
What we assume we know from what is passed on by others isn’t always true. It’s how most people generally overlook the fact that when we die, we don’t actually ‘get our wings’ or become angels.
Psalm 8:5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
The “them” being referred to in the Psalm is humans, while Genesis 1:25 describes the types of angels God created and 1 Corinthians 6:3 references people judging angels. The distinction is clear that people and angels are never the same.
Following these common misunderstandings about the Bible don’t cause harm to God’s plan for our salvation, but they show us the need to not just rely on what we think we know about the Bible, but to dig in for ourselves to all that God’s word has to offer us.
The Christmas story is a far more beautiful story when we understand it correctly and how it shows us just how much God loves us. We need to understand the story starts with the birth we are celebrating but it leads to Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection so that through faith in who Jesus was and is and by asking to be forgiven of the sins that separate us from God, we can be given an eternal home with him in Heaven–not as angles but as the perfect creation God made us to be.
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