INDIANAPOLIS (BP)–When Christians pursue God’s will as Jesus did, nothing will keep them from fulfilling it, California pastor David Jeremiah told Southern Baptist Convention messengers June 15.
Preaching from several passages from the Book of John, Jeremiah, in one of a series of “Kingdom Challenge” sermons, said Jesus knew His earthly purpose was to “give eternal life to as many as you have given Him,” quoting John 17:2.
“Jesus Christ knew why He was here,” said Jeremiah, who serves as pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, Calif., and whose messages are broadcast on radio and television. “He was empowered by the Father and filled with the Holy Spirit and He maintained His focus to the very end and to the cross.
“I’m just flesh and blood. How can I do that? I can follow the lessons that I learn from my Savior and I can become a Kingdom pastor, not certainly at the place He was but at the place where God will enable me to be.”
John mentions “the hour of our Lord” seven times, Jeremiah noted. For example, in John 17 Jesus spoke of the hour of the cross, “and that hour was the thing that governed His life,” he said. “And it’s a reminder to me that just as our Lord did not live by years and by months but by hours and minutes, so you and I as pastors, Kingdom pastors, have to live the same way and when we do, some great things will happen in our life.”
In researching the places the hour of the Lord is mentioned in John, Jeremiah said he discovered promises of encouragement “for me as a pastor and as a Christian.”
Christ’s hour is first mentioned in John 2, where Jesus is at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee, turning water into wine while warning his mother His hour had not yet come.
“He was saying that the ‘time for Me to be submissive to the authority of man in the hour of My crucifixion is not here yet.’ … The first thing you learn when you live according to the divine plan of the Kingdom is that nothing can distract you. Isn’t that where most of us get lost, in the distractions?
“Jesus would not let the distractions keep Him from His purpose.”
The second time the phrase occurs is in John 7:30 and again in John 8; both speak of no one laying a hand on Him because His hour had not come, Jeremiah said.
“I submit to you that when you live according to God’s plan not only can nothing distract you, but nothing can destroy you,” Jeremiah said. “Jesus did not fear destruction because He knew His purpose was the cross. He was not there yet. The cross was not looming in front of Him and the Scripture says that no one could touch Him because His work was not done.”
There is a courage that comes from knowing one is in the will of God, Jeremiah said, recalling a slip of paper someone once gave him that read: “God’s man in the center of God’s will is immortal until God is finished with him.” As Christians further engage cultural erosion, “some of us are going to have to go back and review this promise again and again.”
In John 12:27, Jesus told the Father His soul was troubled and “He asked not ‘What shall I choose,’ but ‘What shall I say?’
“He understands that for this hour He has been born,” Jeremiah said, “and this tells me that when you live according to God’s purpose nothing can distract you, nothing can destroy you and nothing can discourage you.”
In John 16:32, Jesus prophesied to His disciples that the hour was coming that they would be scattered and leave Him alone with only the Father.
“[The] same pattern is repeated today if you haven’t discovered it already,” Jeremiah said. “… If you’re a cut above the average in terms of what God has called you to do, you will often stand alone. Sometimes you will feel as though that nobody in the world can understand you. That is the way it was with Jesus and if ever there was a time that He could have given up His goal, this would have been it.”
Finally, in John 17:1, it is taught that living according to God’s plan means nothing can defeat the believer, Jeremiah said.
“Remember here that Jesus is speaking in victory. He’s not speaking in defeat,” Jeremiah said. “He lifts up His eyes to heaven and we hear Him saying, ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify You.’ This is the hour for which He had been living since the moment He was born in Bethlehem.
“And if we follow His example, we can enjoy the same kind of victory He did.”
Jeremiah recalled how his father, also a preacher, during Jeremiah’s ordination service, exhorted him to do the work God would give him to do in his generation “and I’ve been trying to do that ever since. And that’s what God is calling you to do….
“And we cannot be discouraged by all of the tremendous challenges that we face, because the God who has called us is also the God who has enabled us and the God who saw His own Son go all the way to the cross, never getting distracted, never getting discouraged, never getting disappointed, [and] is the same God who fills us when we take on the responsibility to do His will.”
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