And again today we have a heart-to-heart talk with Jesus as he speaks with his disciples
in Mark 16.
Last words are heart words.
They express deeply felt emotions, thoughts, and concerns.
The Gospel of Mark includes, as does Matthew, a recapitulation of the great commission of
Jesus, His command to His followers to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world.
But before those words in the Gospel of Mark, there is another conversation recorded.
The words themselves are not there for us to study, but the occasion is there, and as
Jesus speaks heart-to-heart with His disciples, let's say it's a difficult conversation.
Verse 14, afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table,
and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not
believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.
You will notice that this verse follows verse 11, where it says, when they had heard that
He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.
Then the report came of Jesus appearing to two men on the way to Emmaus, and it says
in verse 13, and they went away and reported it to the others, and they did not believe
them either.
I think it is instructive that these conversations, this conversation of Jesus with His eleven
disciples is included in the text where it is, that is given before the Great Commission
was given.
For before the disciples were prepared to hear and to obey the commission of the Lord,
their heart attitudes had to be corrected.
And of course that is still true today.
Although we can be used of God in the Great Commission in reaching people near and far
with the gospel, our heart attitudes also have to be right.
We are quick to condemn the sins of the flesh.
We are sometimes less quick to condemn the sins of the Spirit.
That's probably because the sins of the flesh are visible, measurable, and easy to
confront in a certain sense.
But I believe that we can say that perhaps the greatest sins, that is the most damaging
of sins, the most hindering of sins, are rather those of the heart, of the Spirit, where our
attitudes germinate and take root.
These are attitudes that are invisible, of course, at least for a while, and yet these
invisible attitudes eat away at our spiritual vitality just like cancer does to our bodies.
These sins are harder than some others to detect, even for we ourselves to detect them.
Probably the disciples did not realize their heart condition as they gathered in that upper
room.
They were there in fear of the authorities.
They were there in unbelief of the resurrection.
So much so that when Jesus did appear, it says, they thought at first they were seeing
a ghost.
Probably they did not realize the heart condition into which they had slipped, but Jesus knew
it.
The apostles had work to do, but first Jesus needed to expose their attitudinal sins that
stole their energy and their hope that day.
Like the apostles and like the saints through the ages, we today face the jeopardy of attitudinal
sins, heart sins, that can rob us also of spiritual vitality and prevent us from being
used by God in the harvest of the world.
As I look at the contemporary church today, at Grace Church Roosevelt, and my own heart,
it seems to me that there are some attitudes that we must examine for.
The first attitude is that of presumption, presumption that the church can make it without
everyone's participation.
There is a subtle attitude that has grabbed the hearts of God's people in our day in particular
that says, the church will get along all right without me.
Others will fill the needs.
Others can give.
Others can teach the children.
Others can help out in the services.
Others can sing in the choir.
Others can even attend faithfully.
The church will carry on without me.
So we have a director of children's ministry whose perpetual job seems to be to recruit
people.
Now in a certain sense, that's inevitable when there are hundreds of people to recruit,
to fill the slots that are necessary in the nursery and in the children's ministry.
But the job is aggravated because people who volunteer do so for a month at a time, or
a quarter at a time.
If someone volunteers for a full year, it's almost a miracle anymore.
Too much pressure, too much stress.
The church can't get along without me.
The Sunday school's always been there.
It'll always be there.
The nursery's always open.
The services are at the church.
I don't need to volunteer.
Somebody will do it.
I'm with these kids all the time.
I need a break.
It's too much stress for me to have to come to church and deal with kids there, too.
Let others take care of it.
And there is this basic presumption that somehow ministry is just going to happen without everyone
participating.
Let others go to the conferences that we have.
I'm busy.
Our family has things to do.
Let others go to the Bible conference.
I'll be very honest with you.
I am reluctant to have a Bible conference at Grace Church, Roseville, because of the
pathetic attendance that we have.
I'm sorry to have to say that, but it's true.
I'm reluctant to ask someone of a national stature to come in for a Bible conference
because on a Monday night we'll be lucky to have 200 people who show up in a church that
has 1,800 people who claim to be active in it.
That's shameful.
We have special events here occasionally at the church.
Outreach events, we call them.
We pray for that.
We ask people to invite others.
And I'm glad for all who do that.
But do you know this last Christmas season, if it hadn't been for the guests who came
and people from the community who came to our music events, it would have absolutely
been embarrassing because so many people who are a part of Grace Church, Roseville, don't
come.
There is this underlying attitude somehow, it's just always going to happen.
It doesn't count on me.
It doesn't make any difference if I'm there, if my family is there.
Some of us are doing serious thinking as to whether we ought to even have Christmas concerts
in the church.
We fell far below the financial budget that was necessary to pay this last December.
And there were hundreds of people in our church who didn't even bother to come, let alone
invite somebody else to come.
Do you think that pleases God?
Do you think that Jesus is happy with that?
This risen Lord who comes to his disciples and severely rebukes them for their unbelief
and hardness of heart?
I don't think so.
Let others support the church's ministry.
I'm in debt, I have a home to pay for, I don't earn enough money.
Let others carry the financial load.
That whole idea has seeped into our church from our culture, our welfare culture.
And there are a lot of people who are part of Grace Church, Roseville, who are welfare
Christians, who are depending upon others to pay for the utilities and the building
and the heat and for the staff and for the ministry and for the curriculum.
Let them care for it.
I don't really have enough money.
I need to pay off my debts first.
Do you think that those are attitudes that please the Lord Jesus Christ, that free him
to work in our church to fulfill the Great Commission?
I don't think so.
I think that our church, like a lot of churches today, is in need of a severe rebuke by the
Lord Jesus Christ for our attitudes that somehow ministry is just going to happen.
We presume it's always going to be there.
It doesn't depend upon us.
In the 25 years that I've been in the ministry, I've never seen higher expectations of what
the church ought to do and less willingness to give and to participate than we see today.
If we want to talk about worldliness in the church, let's not think about dancing and
drinking and smoking for the moment.
Those are external problems.
Let's talk about the heart problems that really evidence worldliness in the Church of Jesus
Christ.
Ministry doesn't just happen.
Ministry requires dedicated people to cultivate it.
If those people will not cultivate it, ministry will not happen.
It will falter and fail.
The Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ will not be fulfilled, not because he's incapable,
not because he hasn't given us the power of the Spirit, but because attitudinal sins in
our lives have robbed us of spiritual vitality.
There's also an attitude in the Church of Christ today regarding faithfulness and how
to define it.
A popular radio commentator says that we have defined deviancy downward.
In the Church of Jesus Christ, we have defined faithfulness downward.
Faithfulness used to mean consistency, reliability, and devotion.
But in our modern church culture, if one is occasional, if one is involved when it's convenient,
if one keeps his commitments when it's easy to do so, then that's faithfulness.
We have redefined faithfulness downward.
What would someone think of a spouse who was committed to the marriage most of the time
and only committed adultery now and then?
Is that faithfulness?
What would you think of a postman who delivered the mail only half the time?
Sounds like real life, doesn't it?
Is that faithfulness?
What would happen to the rain, the hail, the sleet, that old statement?
What would happen if a minister showed up to preach two or three Sundays of the month
and the other Sundays didn't come?
Would he be considered faithful in his charge?
The attitude that interprets faithfulness in actions that are careless, sporadic, and
undependable and easily deterred.
The attitude that interprets faithfulness that way is choking the Church of Jesus Christ.
What would you think of a new automobile in which almost everything in it worked?
What would you think about that automobile company?
Well, you know, I've got power windows and half of them work.
The two back ones don't, but that's all right.
What a faithful company.
You expect it to work.
You expect it to work all the time.
What would you think of the furnace in your home that came on most of the time, especially
in weather like this?
You know, a couple days a week it didn't work at all, but the rest of the time, that's
a good furnace.
That's a faithful furnace, right?
Of course not.
And yet why is it that when it comes to the work of Jesus Christ, we excuse ourselves,
call ourselves faithful when we're here half the time?
Why is it that we call ourselves faithful when we bring our offering if we have enough
left over at the end of the month?
That is not faithfulness.
That is unbelief and hardness of heart that Jesus rebuked his disciples for.
Now I am sympathetic and I think that Jesus Christ is sympathetic to the busy and demanding
pace of life that we have in our world today.
My question this morning as I address this attitude about faithfulness is, where are
the priorities that put first the kingdom of God and His righteousness?
Where are the priorities that put first the kingdom of God and His righteousness?
Underlying almost all of the other attitudes is this one.
Well, whatever he says, it doesn't apply to me.
It applies to others undoubtedly, but I am an exception.
And here's why it doesn't apply to me.
Here's why I am not involved in that.
Here's why that doesn't mean me.
And we begin to rationalize and excuse ourselves until we sound like teenagers.
Well, here's why I can't.
Here's why I don't.
That doesn't mean me.
And perhaps it is a spiritually juvenile attitude, I'm not sure.
We are geniuses at making excuses for ourselves, rationalizing away the demands of discipleship,
at least those ones that we don't want to meet, those ones that will inconvenience us.
Now notice what Jesus rebuked in His disciples on this first Easter morning.
And I need to point out that this was a particularly severe reprimand.
There is no other occasion that you come to Jesus Christ interacting with His disciples
when He so severely rebukes them, and it's Sunday and it's Easter Sunday.
He has just been raised from the dead, having died on the cross for their sins, and it is
on that day that He finds it necessary to reprimand His disciples.
The word is used elsewhere in Mark 15, verse 32, where in this case it is the crowd saying,
Let this Christ, the King of Israel, come down from the cross so that we may see and
believe, and those who were crucified with Him were casting the same insult.
That's the same word as the word reproach in the next chapter.
Jesus insulted His disciples.
That's how strong a term this is.
On another occasion when He was speaking to the cities who had had His ministry and rejected
it, He pronounced a roll upon them.
He pronounced judgment upon them, and Matthew says He reproached them.
The very same word is used here when Jesus severely rebuked His disciples.
Two broad categories were on His heart that day as He spoke to them.
One was unbelief, failure to accept the truth, failure to act upon it, repeated reports of
His resurrection had been disbelieved, and hardness of heart.
The word is sclerocardium.
Sclero is the word for hard or hardness.
You may be familiar with the term sclerosis of the liver.
It is a hardening of the tissues in the liver, or we sometimes speak of multiple sclerosis.
It is a hardening that takes place, and what Jesus is concerned about with His disciples
this first Easter Sunday is the hardness of the heart, sclerocardium.
This is not the only time Jesus rebukes His church.
It is interesting that by the end of this century Jesus writes seven letters to seven
churches, and in five of the seven it is necessary to rebuke them.
Let me just remind you of what He rebukes them in the first century and see how these
apply to the church of Jesus Christ today.
In Revelation chapter 2, the church at Ephesus, He rebukes them because of the loss of fervency
in their lives.
He says, You are involved in all these nice, good things, but you have left your first
love and rebukes them for it.
In the same chapter, another church rebuked for compromise with false teaching.
They have allowed a false belief system to creep into the church and they were adopting
it.
In the same chapter, He rebukes the church at Thyatira for accommodating an immoral lifestyle.
They were allowing immorality in their own midst.
In the third chapter, in Sardis, He rebukes them for satisfaction with just being external
and living on their reputation.
He says, You have a name that you live, but you are dead.
Now Jesus is speaking to the church, not to the world.
He says, You have a reputation, you have a name, but the truth is that you are dead.
Repent.
In the last church of Laodicea, we have a church that is self-sufficient.
Jesus rebukes them for their spiritual arrogance.
He says, You think you have it all together.
The truth is that you are poor, you are naked, you are blind, you are miserable.
Repent.
So when we talk about the church repenting, we are talking about the church doing something
that it has needed to do since the first century.
When we talk about Jesus having a heart-to-heart with His disciples, we are talking about something
that He has had to do again and again and again throughout the age.
Jesus having one this morning with Grace Church Roosevelt and its people.
I recognize that in a certain sense on an ugly day like this I am preaching to the choir.
That is, I am preaching to people who are faithful, who are here.
I understand that.
I thank God that you are here.
You are bearing the brunt for those who are not here, I guess.
But the fact is that all of us, even those of us who come on tough days like this, need
to examine our hearts.
We need to dig out the unbelief and the hardness that is there and the ways that we have compromised
and accommodated and redefined faithfulness and say, God, bring me back to the basics.
Lord, I want my heart to be the kind of a heart you can use in fulfilling the great
commission.
So the best of us today needs to repent, to repent for our own sins, not for the sins
of our brother and our sister, but for our own sins.
But when we have repented for our own sins, we can also repent for others.
What does that mean?
I think, for example, of the godly Ezra, a man who was without reproach the servant of
God in the Old Testament, but he stood up to pray with the people and very rarely in
his whole prayer of confession does he say, I.
He says, we.
He repents for the whole nation.
Today we can repent for ourselves.
We can also repent for our church, for Grace Church Roosevelt.
We can repent and change our hearts.
We can ask God to change the heart of our church and to forgive us for our unbelief
and hardness of heart.
It really is useless for us to talk about the great commission until our heart attitudes
are right, for the heart attitudes that are sinful preclude the possibility of the great
commission being fulfilled through us.
And so even the most mature and experienced of Christians who are here today, like the
apostles, must carefully and sincerely examine our hearts to uncover any attitudes that are
squelching the Spirit of God.
On this Sunday, as we remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ as we do the first day of
every week, Jesus comes to us and he meets with us.
Before he can get into the job we have to do, he needs to talk to us about our heart
condition.
I invite you to pray with me.
Lord Jesus, some of us don't even realize you're here this morning.
Our hearts are hardened.
There's unbelief in our hearts as there was in the hearts of these disciples that we read
about in Mark.
We as a Church have said that we are a mission center and we have the commission to fulfill
and we want to be busy doing that, and yet you have a prior concern.
Speak to us about that today, and wherein our heart attitudes are sinful, may we repent.
Repent for ourselves, repent for our Church.
Let's remain for a moment in the attitude of prayer.
I'm going to ask that we have a music instrument play for us, number 371, the words of which
are familiar.
If you want to learn more, script the voice, prayer, and ask us where we are where everyone
is located on, infrastructure, or officer.