And I remember when he asked this question, I thought it was a very profound question.
A very old preacher said that a man came to him when he was young.
And he asked him a question. He said,
Do you want to shine or do you want to burn?
Think about these words. Do you want to shine or do you want to burn?
Now, what does it mean to shine?
The Bible says that John the Baptist was a burning and a shining light.
What does it mean to shine?
Well, when I think of shining, somebody wanting to shine, maybe they want to look good.
They want people to know about them. They want people to see them.
They want to be successful. They want to be a big shot, maybe.
They want to shine. They want to be pretty. They want to look good.
They want to be popular. They want to be well known.
They want to be accepted. They want to shine. They want people to see them.
A lot of people want to shine, but very few people are willing to burn.
What does it mean to burn?
Well, I was thinking about the illustration that God uses of what God wants us to be like.
And God compares us, as Christians, to like a candle.
Turn, if you would, to Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5. I'm going to read some familiar verses for you here.
Matthew chapter 5.
The Bible reads in Matthew 5, verse number 14 through 16.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.
And it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
So God says, you are the light of the world.
And at another point, Jesus said, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
But of course, Jesus has already died and been buried and rose again.
He's ascended up to the Father.
And now he says that we are the light of the world.
Well, God, what kind of a light do you want me to be?
Do you want me to be like an incandescent light bulb?
I mean, what do you want me to be, God?
He says, I want you to be like a candle.
He says, let your light so shine.
Well, how?
Like a candle.
You see, a candle gives light, but in the process of giving light, it's constantly burning.
And in the process of giving light, it destroys itself.
Think about it.
If that candle is being used, if that candle is shining, if it's giving out light,
if that candle is burning, in the process of giving light to the world, that candle is destroying itself until eventually it's gone,
until eventually there's nothing left.
Stay in the book of Matthew and turn, if you would, to Matthew 27.
And I'm just building the foundation for the message right now, but look at Matthew chapter 27.
And I want you to read with me verse number 42 of Matthew 27.
The Bible says here in Matthew 27, 42,
He saved others. This is about Jesus Christ.
He saved others, Himself He cannot save.
That's what the Pharisees, that's what the Sadducees, that's what the Romans said to Turian,
that's what the Jews who didn't believe on Jesus Christ,
they looked at Him from the outside as an unbeliever and said,
He saved others, Himself He cannot save.
Boy, they were mocking, they were making a joke.
They were saying, ha ha ha, He saved others, He can't even save Himself.
But what a profound statement that they were making to sum up the life of Jesus Christ.
He saved others, Himself He cannot save.
And I want to ask you this morning, as a Christian, as a child of God,
are you just interested in signing or do you really want to burn for God?
You see, Jesus Christ, it is said of Him when He broke the bread at the Last Supper.
He broke the bread and He said, take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you.
You see, Jesus Christ destroyed Himself in order to save others.
He burned all the way out to give light to a world of darkness.
Now stay in Matthew chapter 27, I want to read this account for you and I want you to look at this with me.
Look at Matthew 27 verse number 26.
The Bible says here, Then released He Barabbas unto them.
And when He had scourged Jesus, He delivered Him to be crucified.
Now let me tell you what it means to be scourged.
Scourging was a process where basically they would take the hands of the perpetrator,
of the criminal that they were doing this to, they would take their hands and tie them up like this above their head.
And then they would take a whip and they would take that whip and a big strong man,
I mean this was his whole job was to beat people with a whip all day, so this guy was big.
And he would take that whip and as Jesus' hands were held up like this,
he took that whip and slammed it into his body.
And that whip wrapped around his body and he'd pull off the whip.
And you know what was left behind when he pulled the whip off?
The Bible says that there was a bloody stripe all the way around his body where that whip had just removed the skin.
And then he'd take that whip a second time, wham!
And rip it off him again and he'd have a second stripe.
And that was done to Jesus Christ thirty-nine times he was beaten with this whip.
Thirty-nine times, it's so easy sometimes to read over the Bible and not really put together what you're actually reading.
I mean you read it and say, okay they scourged him.
And you're done reading it in half a second, just five little words and they scourged him there.
But you have to understand what this was. I mean this is brutal torture that they're doing to him.
Look at the next verse.
It says he scourged him, he delivered him to be crucified.
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall.
So on the way to him being crucified, they took him aside and gathered under him the whole band of soldiers.
And they stripped him, they ripped his clothes off him and put on him a scarlet robe.
So they stripped him down and they put on this fancy king's scarlet robe, like a reddish purple type of a robe.
And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head and a reed in his right hand.
So they're going to make fun of him. So they strip all his clothes off him.
They put this scarlet fancy robe on him.
They put a reed in his hand, that's a big stick, they put a big stick in his hand.
And then it says that they platted, platted means braided, they braided together thorn bushes.
Now it's interesting, I find it interesting that in Arizona a lot of the same plant life around Arizona
is some of the same plant life that you'll see in Israel.
Because it's kind of a desert type of a region and a lot of the wildlife that's in Southern California and Arizona
is the same as what's over in Israel.
And you know there's a lot of pretty mean looking thorns around here.
I took my kids to the zoo and I saw just some vicious looking thorns.
I couldn't believe that they didn't have any kind of a fence around or anything.
A little kid could just walk up and just be sliced open by these thorns.
But imagine they took this crown of thorns, they took thorns and they braided them together and formed a crown.
And the Bible says they put this crown and shoved it onto his head.
Boy can you imagine the pain that your head bleeds unlike any other part of your body.
The two parts of your body that probably bleed the most are your hands and your head.
And they took this crown of thorns and they shoved it down into his head.
Blood's running down his face.
You've got this jacket, think about how this, you've got to picture this.
They beat him 39 times.
Then they stripped his clothes off him.
Now imagine what it feels like when you, let's say have you ever cut yourself
and your clothes become part of the scab?
You know it kind of dries on and then you kind of rip that off.
So I think when they ripped off these clothes it probably reopened every wound on his body.
And then they put another robe on him that's going to be sticking to those stripes.
And then they shoved this crown of thorns onto his head.
They put this stick into his hand.
And then read on in verse number 29 it says,
And they put it on his head, a reed in his right hand, and they bowed the knee before him and mocked him,
saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
And they spit upon him and took the reed and smote him on the head.
So they get down on their knees and start saying, Oh, Hail Jesus! Ha ha ha, you idiot!
And then they took the stick and just hit him in the head with it.
Cracked him in the head with that thing.
And then they spit in the face of the Son of God.
Can you imagine that? Have you ever had somebody spit in your face before?
There's something about it that just kind of makes your blood boil.
I've had people spit in my face several times.
And when somebody spits in your face, somebody who's normally even a calm person,
somebody who's even a really nice person,
boy, there's something about somebody spitting in your face
that just makes your blood boil. It makes you enraged.
And here Jesus is, the Son of God. He could have stopped this at any time.
He could have commanded them all just to be destroyed. I mean, he's God.
And yet he allows them to mock him, to harass him, to spit on him, to hit him in the head,
to abuse him, to laugh at him.
And then it says after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him.
But yet imagine how that must have felt.
His whole body is covered in these stripes from being beaten.
And put his own raiment on him and led him away to crucify him.
And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name.
Him they compelled to bear his cross.
And when they were coming to a place called Golgotha, that is to say a place of a school,
they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall.
And when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink, and they crucified him.
And verse number 36 says in sitting down, they watched him there.
They sat down and watched it like it was some kind of a show that was going on.
Now if you would turn back to Psalm 22.
I'm going to show you a little more about this crucifixion that Jesus Christ went through.
Psalm 22, this is right in the middle of your Bible, the book of Psalms.
If you just open it right in the middle, you'll probably be in Psalms.
Psalm number 22, the Bible says in verse number 1,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring?
That's what Jesus Christ is feeling on the cross here.
We're seeing a little bit into the mind of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Look at verse number 6, But I am a worm and no man,
a reproach of men and despised of the people.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn.
They shoot out the lip.
They shake the head saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.
Let him deliver him. See, he delighted him.
Look how he's saying, everybody's just mocking him and despising him.
They hate him.
And he's on the cross being tormented and tortured.
He even feels like God has forsaken him.
And look at verse number 14, it says, I am poured out like water
and all my bones are out of joint.
You see, when they crucify Jesus on the cross,
when they nailed him to the cross, obviously they nailed him to the cross on the ground
because they can't hold him up and nail him to a cross.
And so they laid him down on the cross, they nailed him to the cross,
and when they dropped that cross into the hole that was prepared for it,
the Bible says that his bones were all taken out of joint.
And so here he is on the cross, his body being broken for you and me,
sacrificing himself for us.
And the Bible says that all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax.
It is melted in the midst of my bowels.
Verse number 15, my strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou has brought me into the dust of death.
For dogs have compassed me.
The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me.
They pierced my hands and my feet.
And look at verse number 17, I may tell all my bones.
They look and stare upon me.
He said I can, he said I can, now the word tell there,
has anybody ever heard of a bank teller?
Or like an ATM is an automatic teller machine?
Tell, the word tell used to mean count back when the Bible was written.
And the teller at the bank is called such because they count the money as they give it to you and so forth.
And he's saying I can tell all my bones.
He says I can count my bones because they look and stare upon me.
So here he is on the cross.
He's been beaten so many times that I whipped 39 times that he can look down
and I mean you can see I think the bones of his ribcage just exposed.
Because it says that they look and stare upon me.
He says I can count my bones.
Wow, this is maybe a little different than the little painting that you might have seen of some,
you know, little effeminate looking Jesus with his long sissy hair.
And he's got a sweet little look on his face,
a little trickle of blood coming down his forehead, a couple of stripes right here.
No, this is a very brutal picture.
The Bibles, let me show you one more passage and I'll move on from this point.
Look at Isaiah 53 and I'll show you one more account of this crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
And by the way, these passages that we're looking at in Isaiah and Psalms,
these were written 700 to 1,000 years before Jesus was crucified.
These are prophesying into the future of what it was going to be like when he was crucified.
But look at Isaiah and actually we're going to start reading in verse number 52.
I'm sorry, chapter 52, Isaiah 52.
Let me show you this in Isaiah 52, 14.
The Bible reads, find my place here, Isaiah 52, 14.
As many were astonished at the, his visage, visage means face,
his visage was so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men.
It's saying that his face was so marred from just being beaten and spit on and hit in the face
and the Bible says in other places they ripped his beard out of his face
and so they beat him so bad that the Bible says that his face was more marred than any man.
I mean, it was like almost non-human to look at his face
because it was just beyond the realm of being like the sons of men the Bible says.
His face was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men.
Look at verse number 3 of chapter 53.
I'm just showing you the main points here.
He's despised, that means hated.
He's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief
and we hid as it were our faces from him.
He said we didn't want to look at him, it was so grotesque.
He was despised and we esteemed him not.
Surely he had borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions.
Transgressions means sins.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth.
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb
so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment and who shall declare his generation
for he was cut off from off the land of the living.
He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death because he had done no violence
neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.
He had put him to grief.
When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
You see, Jesus Christ didn't just come on the scene and just shine and be popular and preach and everybody loved him.
No, the Bible says that he was despised, he was rejected.
He was a man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief.
And Jesus left us an example that we're to follow in his steps.
You see, it's not always popular to be a Christian.
It's not always popular to be an independent Baptist.
It's not always popular to take a stand for what's right in a wicked and ungodly day that we live in
to stand up and say, I am going to be a light that's going to burn for God and shine in this dark world that we live in.
The glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So point number one is that God wants us to be, not just to shine, but to be a burning and a shining light.
But number two, God wants us to give him everything.
God wants us to give it all to him.
You see, again the illustration about a candle, that burning and shining light.
The candle doesn't hold anything back.
The candle has no agenda of its own.
It has no ulterior motive, no goal.
Its goal is to be used to produce light in the darkness.
And in the process of doing that, it knows it's going to be destroyed.
It knows that it's going to suffer.
It knows that it's going to burn out.
But John the Baptist, the man who was called the burning and shining light said,
I must decrease, he must increase.
And so do you want to shine this morning or do you want to burn?
That's the question that I'm asking you.
But number two, it says we need to give God everything.
Let me just read these verses for you for the sake of time.
Exodus 29, 18, the Bible says, and this is talking about some of the sacrifice of the Old Testament.
This is talking about the ram, the sacrifice of a ram on the altar.
Of course the lamb of God, that picture is Jesus Christ and the bullock picture is Jesus Christ.
But look at this.
And thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar.
It is a burnt offering unto the Lord.
It is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
And then Psalm 51, 19, speaking about the same thing, the Bible says,
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt offering and whole burnt offering.
Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.
God is saying in the Old Testament here, I want you to offer me a ram on an altar and I want it to be a whole burnt offering.
He says I want you to put the whole thing on the altar.
But you see that ram represents a man.
That represents us.
That represents a human being.
You see if you remember in Genesis chapter 22, the Bible says that God would provide himself a lamb for a sacrifice.
And then if you remember the ram that was caught in the thicket represented Isaac who was, you know, he was substituted for that ram.
And then one day the true lamb of God would come and be the burnt offering for sin.
But God wants us to be a living sacrifice.
He said I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice to God.
Holy and acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service.
And so God is saying here the offering that I will accept is the whole offering.
I want the whole thing.
I want all of you on the altar.
I want the whole ram and I want it to be a burning offering he says.
One of my favorite passages, 2 Timothy chapter 4.
Paul is coming to the end of life.
Talk about a man who burned for God.
Talk about a man who was a burning and shining light, the apostle Paul.
A man who gave his life, he spent his life preaching the gospel.
Remember how we talked about Jesus was beaten 39 times?
Paul received that beating on five different occasions.
39 stripes.
Five different times Paul received that.
One time Paul was stoned to death and they thought he was dead.
And he got up and walked back into town and he obviously had to recover for several days from that.
But they stoned him to death and they thought he was dead.
One time he spent a whole day and a night out in the Mediterranean Sea being shipwrecked out of a ship just treading water in the sea for a whole day and a whole night.
I don't know if he was floating on a piece of driftwood or what.
I mean we're talking about a man who was shipwrecked I think three different times.
A man who was hated, he was thrown in jail, he was beaten, he was scourged, he was beaten with rods three different times.
We're talking about a man who said, I don't want to just shine.
I don't want these people to know my name.
I'm not just worried about myself.
But I want to be a burning and shining light.
I want to burn for God.
And boy, burn he did.
And this is what he says at the end of his life.
He's in jail writing this.
He's in Rome. He's in prison.
He's spending his last two years in prison before he's going to be beheaded by Emperor Nero, before he's killed for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And this is what he says in 2 Timothy 4 verse 6.
For I am now ready to be offered.
You know, kind of referring to like we talked about that offering in the Old Testament, that burnt offering of a ram for a sacrifice.
He says, for I am now ready to be offered.
And the time of my departure is at hand.
I have fought a good fight.
I have finished my course.
I have kept the faith.
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.
And not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
You see, Paul said, I've fought a good fight.
I've lived my life. I've given it everything I've got.
I've burned and burned and burned for God.
I've shined for God.
I've shined the light of the gospel.
And all of Asia, all over Greece, all over the world, he preached the gospel.
And he says, now I'm ready to be offered.
And the time of my departure is at hand.
See, God had revealed to him that he was going to die, that he was going to be given his life for Christ soon.
And he could look back on his life and say, I've fought a good fight.
I've finished my course.
I've kept the faith.
And henceforth there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness.
See, he was looking forward to the day that he could stand before Jesus Christ
and have Jesus Christ say to him, well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
And crown him with that crown of righteousness that he'd earned through being faithful to Jesus Christ
for being a burning and shining light.
We need to be willing to serve God with our life.
We need to be willing to let it all be used for God.
To give our whole life to God.
Not to hold back anything and say, well, I go to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
But the rest of the week it's just kind of, I live like everybody else.
I live for me.
I'm just your average guy.
No, that's not what God wants.
God wants a seven-day-a-week Christian who's going to live for God every day and give it all to God.
You see, Peter said to Jesus in John chapter 13, the Bible says,
Peter said on him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now?
I will lay down my life for thy sake.
Peter says, I'll do anything for you, Jesus.
He said, I'll even lay down my life for you.
He said, I'll die for you.
But watch what Jesus responds to him.
Jesus answered him, wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.
He says, look, you're telling me you're going to lay down your life for me, Peter?
Before this day is over, before the cock crows like tomorrow morning,
before the next day comes, he says, you're going to deny that you know me three times.
Three times you're going to be ashamed of me.
And, of course, we know the story.
Peter is sitting around the campfire with a bunch of worldly, sinful-type people and he's hanging around with them.
While Jesus is on trial, he's going to be crucified the next day.
Jesus is warming his hands at the fire with these people and they say, hey, wait a minute, don't I know you?
You're one of Jesus' disciples, aren't you?
Because they were kind of talking about this trial.
I said, well, you were with him.
And he says, no, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know him.
Then a woman, I mean, just a woman who's serving the food and the drinks and everything,
the waitress comes out and says, weren't you with him?
And he's intimidated by this waitress.
I mean, he's a big, burly guy and he's a fisherman.
And he's intimidated by this woman saying to him, weren't you one of his disciples?
I know you. You were one of them.
And he says, no, no, I don't know him. I don't know what you're talking about. That wasn't me.
The guy who just said he died for Jesus Christ, now he won't even say that he knows him.
Then the third time somebody else comes out, one of the other servants, says, look,
I know that you're one of his disciples because I can tell that you're a Galilean by your accent.
I can tell that you're from up north where he's from.
Your speech agreeeth thereto, he said. You were with him.
And he said, listen to me. And he started cussing and swearing.
Peter, I mean, the great apostle Peter, starts cursing him out, saying, listen, you blankety blank blank.
I don't know him.
And finally they said, whoa, man, I guess if he talks like that, maybe he doesn't know him.
Maybe he's not a Christian. Whoa. And they backed off and they left him alone.
But what's Jesus trying to show us here?
He's saying, look, Peter, you say that you're willing to die for me.
You say that you're willing to give your life for me, and yet you can't even live for me.
You know, you can't even take a stand for me. You expect me to believe that you're going to die for me?
You don't even have the guts to open your mouth and make known the fact that you're a Christian?
I think what Jesus is saying here, look, you're not going to go the distance when the pressure's on.
When the pressure's on and it comes down to the wire and there's a time where you may have to lay down your life for Jesus Christ,
there's a time when you may have to suffer for Jesus Christ.
He says, you're not going to do it unless you're living for God right now, is what he's saying.
Today, before the cock crows, you're not even going to live for me. You're not even going to obey me.
You're not even going to be bold. You're not even going to take a stand for me.
Why do you expect me to believe that when it gets really hard you're going to take a stand for me?
And that you're going to give your life for me? No.
See, if you want to be one of the people that stands up for God one day when it gets hard,
when there's a price to be paid to take a stand for the things of God,
well, you've got to be taking a stand for God right now.
You've got to be taking a stand for God today. You've got to be obeying God today.
Don't tell me that you're going to give your life for Jesus Christ and that if it came down to a man,
if I had to choose between denying Jesus Christ and dying for my faith, I'd do it.
Well, do you go to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night?
Do you go soul winning? Do you ever open your mouth at work and tell people that you're saved,
that you're a Baptist, that you're a Christian, that you believe on Jesus Christ?
Do you ever take a stand for him now? Do you obey him now? Do you read the Bible now?
But do you expect God to believe that you're going to make some heroic step of being a martyr for Jesus Christ?
Absolutely not.
See, the Bible says in Revelation 12-11, it says,
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,
and they loved not their lives under the death.
And Jesus says, Be thou faithful unto death, and I'll give thee a crown of white.
See, that's the kind of commitment that God expects.
God expects us as God's people, as Christians, to be faithful to him to death.
He says, Be faithful to death, and I'll give you a crown of life.
And the Bible talks about these martyrs in Revelation 12. It says,
Are you willing to give it all for God? Are you willing to be a burning and a shining light?
Are you willing to maybe lose your life or be destroyed so that others can have light?
Which leads me into my third point.
See the big picture. Point number one was be a burning and shining light.
Point number two was give it all to God. Don't hold back.
And point number three is see the big picture.
What do I mean by that? What do I mean by see the big picture?
Well, there's more to life than just my life.
There's more to this world, there's more to God's plan, there's more to our nation,
and there's more to this world than just me.
The whole world doesn't revolve around me, and the whole world doesn't revolve around you.
I must see the big picture.
I must see the big picture that aside from my little life here,
there's a whole multitude of people that are not saved.
They're going to go to hell when they die unless they get the gospel.
I need to see the whole big picture of a whole nation that's in trouble this morning.
A nation that's going downhill like a downward spiral that's getting worse and worse and worse.
Look, I'm only 24 years old, and in my short life, I have watched the downward spiral.
I've seen the decay, just even in the last five years, even in the last ten years,
of the morality in this country just go down the drain.
The homosexuals are out of the closet.
Now there's some big movie.
I don't even know what's going on with the movies and everything,
but I heard that there was a big mainstream movie, a big famous movie,
some kind of a cowboy movie where it's just all about the queers, and it's a mainstream movie.
I mean, this isn't some back alley somewhere.
This isn't some deep, dark theater that you go to in some alley and watch some filthy movie.
This is on the big movie screens at the big theater right over here a few blocks away.
You could watch this filthy movie about the most filthy, ungodly things in this world.
Don't tell me that our country is not headed for trouble,
because it wasn't like that even five, ten years ago.
It's been changing fast, and it's only getting worse and worse and worse.
The crime is going up, because what happens when you kick out God,
when you kick out the things that God and invite the queers in,
crime increases, everything's getting worse, and so we've got to see the big picture.
We've got to do something to stem the tide.
We need to do our part to stop what's going on in this country,
and you say, well, what are we going to do?
Well, what if every independent Baptist preacher, just the independent Baptist preachers,
forget everybody else, what if just every independent Baptist preacher
would actually get up in their pulpit and preach the truth
and not give some little sugar-coated, candy-coated little thing,
but actually take a stand against this garbage and say it's wrong and it's sin and I'm going to fight it,
and if you don't like it, then there's the door.
But see, the problem is they don't see the big picture.
This is what they see. They see their wallet. They see their checkbook.
They see their attendance. They see what they want out of life,
and they're more worried about their little church, and they're more worried about their little bank account,
and they're more worried about their little group of people,
and they don't want to offend Aunt Plutie in the back row by preaching the truth.
And what do they do? Nobody wants to be a burning and shining light.
They all just care about themselves and what they've got going on,
and nobody wants to be the one to be a John the Baptist,
to be a voice crying in the wilderness, to be a man of God that says,
I don't care. I'm going to preach the truth because there's more to life than just me.
It's about my children. It's about the next generation. It's about the whole world.
It's about this whole nation.
And so somebody's got to see the big picture and say, you know what?
Maybe I won't be able to have a rock band and bring in crowds of people
and have a big church worship service and preach a little 20-minute feel-good message.
Hey, what's the point, man? What's the point?
If you want entertainment, then go to the movie theater and watch that queer cowboy movie.
But if you want to hear the word of God, then go to a church where the word of God is preached.
And I can't understand somebody who wants to be in the middle.
Look, either be hot or cold, God says.
Either be on fire for God. Either be a burning and shining light.
Either be fundamental, King James Bible, independent, Baptist.
Or why don't you just go be a flaming liberal and live it up, man?
But I can't understand these people who want to straddle the fence.
And I'll tell you, there's only one reason why people want to straddle the fence.
It's because they don't see the big picture.
They're just thinking about how it affects them.
They're not seeing the big picture.
I don't care so much about me. I care about my kids right here in the front row.
That's who I care about.
I want my kids to know what's right and wrong.
And so I'm going to preach what's right and wrong in this pulpit.
I want somebody to know that there's somebody who's not going to give in to all this garbage
and sugarcoat the message because I want to see the big picture.
You need to see the big picture.
Everybody in this room needs to see the big picture.
Don't live a life for yourself.
You may have to burn out so that somebody else can have light.
You may have to be like Jesus Christ and your body may have to be broken so that others can be saved.
You see, it's not just about how successful we can become.
It's not just about getting all our ducks in a row and getting our little life perfect with our little picket fence
and all of our ducks in a row and everything's just perfect and pretty and nice.
No, we may have to make a little bit of a sacrifice.
And we may have to burn a little bit because we want to see the kingdom of God go forward.
It's not about us. It's not about anybody in this room.
It's about Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ suffered for us.
Jesus Christ gave his life for us.
We can't live for ourselves.
We're supposed to be living for him.
You see, John 3.16, the most famous verse in the Bible says,
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
That's salvation.
But then, listen to this, 1 John 3.16.
So John 3.16 is telling us God loved us and he gave his life for us so that we could be saved,
so that we would not have to perish but that we could go to heaven.
Then 1 John 13, listen to this, it says,
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
You see that?
John 3.16 is saying God laid down his life for us.
And then 1 John 3.16 is saying our response to that is that we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
That means that we may not always be the issue.
We need to be willing to lay down our goals.
We need to be willing to lay down what we want and say I'm going to live for Jesus Christ.
I'm going to lay down my life, if need be, for the brethren.
You see, it's not about any of us.
It's about something much bigger than any of us.
It's about Jesus Christ.
It's about salvation of souls.
It's about saving this nation.
It's about the things of God being passed on to the next generation.
It is a much bigger picture than what we may see.
And so we've got to see the big picture.
You see, being a burning and shining light is for a John the Baptist who sees the big picture.
He wasn't worried about his own ministry.
His ministry lasted six months.
John the Baptist's ministry lasted about six months.
So for six months he preached the gospel.
He was a burning and shining light.
Multitudes came and heard him.
He shined, but he burned because six months later he was in a jail cell
and shortly thereafter he had his head chopped off for preaching the gospel.
But it didn't matter to him because he wasn't living for himself.
He wasn't living for John the Baptist.
He wasn't trying to make a big name for John the Baptist.
No, he was preparing the way of the Lord before him, making his path straight.
He was the forerunner of Jesus Christ.
He was just offering himself as the sacrifice, as the burning and shining light
to point to the coming Jesus Christ who six months later would come on the scene
and point at Jesus Christ and say,
Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.
He didn't point at himself.
He didn't point at some church.
He pointed at Jesus Christ and said,
He must increase, I must decrease.
Look at him.
Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.
Don't look at me.
He said, Don't look at me.
I'm not important.
I'm not the issue.
Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, I thank you so much for this great passage
and the great example of a man like John the Baptist.
And Father, I just pray that you'd help us all to be more unselfish in our lives.
Boy, it's something that I struggle with.
It's something that we all struggle with, dear God,
just being selfish, living for ourself, not really seeing the big picture,
not really seeing the fact that there are other people
who are relying on what we do and what we say and how we live, dear God.
God, help us to not just have this desire to shine where we get all the glory,
but Father, help us to really, truly be willing to burn,
to be a burning and shining light.
Father, I thank you so much.
Thank you so much.