I want to follow that guy. And whenever I was, I don't know, young 20s, I had this
thought a lot of times of, if I could go back into the Bible, at any time in the
Bible, when would I go? You know, it's kind of a fun question, maybe you think
about it. Would you want to see Noah? Would you want to see the beginning? Would
you want to see Abraham? Would you want to see David? I mean, there's a lot of
cool stuff to see in the Bible. But I always immediately was like, I want to see Jesus.
I would just want to walk with Jesus. I would want to follow Jesus. I would want to be
right there. I mean, no questions asked, following Jesus. And I always thought
about that, and then one day I kind of like woke up to that thought and I
realized, no I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't follow Jesus if I lived in that time
because in my life I'm not even following any church really. I'm not even
going to church consistently. I'm not even reading my Bible consistently. And I
think that I would just be the guy following Jesus Christ. So then I said,
well Jesus, you know, He's infinite. He created all things. He created me.
There's a purpose for me being on this earth. If I really would have followed
Jesus, wouldn't He have put me in that time? I mean, if that was when I was
going to really do the biggest works for God, when He was going to really use
me the most, wouldn't He have put me in that time? But He didn't. He put me in today.
So if I really would have followed Jesus Christ, I just immediately realized I
would follow the greatest man of God on this planet today. I mean, if I
truly would have followed Jesus Christ, if I would have been given forsaken
everything and followed Him, then I would, if I was going to do that today, I would
probably follow the greatest Christian on this earth. I'd probably try to find
who is most Christ-like, and I'm going to go follow that guy. If I
want to even try to be realistic about that vision, if I want to even try
to be realistic about that thought, if I don't want to just be a hypocrite and say
that. So, you know, why did I come to Fayetteport Baptist Church? I felt
like Pastor Anderson was the greatest guy that I could find that was
following Jesus Christ. So I decided I want to follow this guy. You know, I
think a lot of people in this room, maybe you've had a family member or
you've had a friend or someone criticize you, say, oh, you're just
following a man. Oh, you're just following some guy. Amen. I'm just
trying to find a guy that loves Jesus Christ, that wants to do the
things of Jesus Christ. And I want to follow his example. I want to follow
the things that he's doing. It's a good thing to follow a man. And we're
going to see some examples of that. Go to, uh, go to Matthew 23. I want
to show you something. So how can you tell if you're following a man
that's good or bad? I mean, that's kind of the question, right? Because
obviously following a man isn't always good. It isn't always
something that we should be doing. But when you're picking a guy, this
is how you know, when you're following a man's right, when you're
reading the Bible and the Bible is your final authority and you
finding a guy that's matching what the Bible says, you say, well,
what does the Bible say I should be doing to find somebody to
follow? And then you find the guy according to what the Bible
says, and then you follow him. But the opposite of that is when
you find a guy that you really like, that you like his
personality, like what he says and what he says, doesn't line
up with the Bible. It goes against the Bible and you decide to
just follow him. Anyways, you say, well, I know that he's
not teaching the Bible. I know he's getting contrary to the
Bible, but I'm still going to follow him. That's following a
man in a bad way. I was thinking about Matthew 23 verse
nine, the Bible says, and called no man, your father upon
the earth for one is your father, which is in heaven. We
see a lot of people that they are following the Pope and
they call him his father. They say, Hey father, but guess
what? That's contrary to the Bible. So following a man that's
going to go against the clear scripture is going to go
against God's word is not the right example of somebody that
you should follow. You shouldn't be following that man. You
should be going to the Bible and saying, what does the Bible
say? What does the Bible teaching me? The person I
should be following and then finding the guy that lines up
with that, because the thing that's, that's the best
about this is the Bible never changes. So if you know
what the Bible says about following somebody, even if that
guy were to fall away, then you just find the next guy
that matches up with this book says, and you can just
always be grounded by following the guy that the
Bible's telling you to follow. But if you're following
just one person that's against the Bible, when he changes,
everything falls away. Now you're stuck and you have
nobody to follow. You don't know what to do because you
were following just a person. You weren't actually
following what the Bible said. So of course, I'm not
teaching that you should elevate man above the Bible, but
the Bible does teach a very positive example that we
should follow a man.