That whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Notice that it says, whosoever. That means there are no restrictions. It doesn’t matter where you come from, who you look like, or what’s going on in your life, how bad you’ve been, how much money you’ve got. None of those things matter.
God so loved all of us, the world, that He gave His only Son, that you might have eternal life. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of our praise team this morning, and Miss Sharon, Miss Vicky is out sick, and so thank you guys for, doing such a fantastic job. You know, I love worshiping God in so many ways. You understand that when we say, well, we’re gonna have a worship time and then preaching, it’s all worship.
It’s all worship. You see, we worship God through song. We worship God through giving. We worship God through hearing of his word. We worship God through reading his word.
We worship God through praying, and we worship God through living our lives. It’s all worship. The problem is sometimes that last part, the living of our lives, we find ourselves not living it in worship, but instead living it selfishly, or living it in some way that’s not necessarily pleasing to God. So here we are in a brand new year, 2025. It’s we’re almost halfway through the month.
It’s rushing by already. It’s incredible. And God was placing something on me, and so the the the sermon title today is Lord or Not. There we go. I wasn’t on.
So we as believers often say, he is Lord of all. Right? Do I hear you guys say that? Do you say it sometime? Let’s say it together.
He is lord of all. He’s lord of all. We say that a lot of times. He is lord of all. Jesus is lord.
As I explained to the children, that means master. That means king. You can look at it any of those ways. He is lord of all. We know that scripture tells us Jesus is lord of all.
It says he is lord of lord and kings of kings. We know that scripture tells us that. So we understand in our mind, Jesus is lord of all. He is lord. Now the question today is this.
In your life, is he really? Is he really lord of all? Is he really lord at all? Is he the one that is lord in your life? The reality is too many times we say with our mouth, Jesus is lord.
But is he really? Is he lord, or is he not? Here’s the thing. He can’t be lord sometimes and other times not. If he’s lord of all, he’s lord at all times.
Is he lord or is he not? The definition of lord is someone having power, authority, or influence, master or ruler. There’s a word in there that most of us do not like, master. Well, come on now, preacher. That word master, I mean, you know, we equate that with slaves, and and we don’t want a a master over us.
We don’t we’re not we’re not slaves to anyone. Well, the scripture tells us that we are bondservants if we call Jesus Lord, and that bondservant means slave. It means that we are a slave to him, but we are a slave because we choose to be, not because he forces us to be. You see the difference when we look at is he master or is he not master is do you choose him as master? You see, when we put that connotation in our mind and we say, well, we don’t like that word master.
Those masters were ones who the people under them had no choice. They were forced into that servanthood. They were forced into that. Jesus will never force you. God never forces us to serve him.
He gives us a choice. He says, if you confess with your mouth. The point is, is he lord? Have you chosen to serve him? If he’s lord, understand that means master.
That means he’s over everything. He’s over you on Sunday just like he’s over you on Friday night. He’s over you on Monday just like he’s over you on Wednesday night. The reality is if he is lord by that definition, master or ruler, then he is over everything. So is he lord of all, or is he not lord at all?
We love to live in gray areas all the time. It’s a gray area. It’s not a gray area. Is he lord? Is he not?
England has a king. King Charles. Right? England has a king. First time they had a king in a long time.
Had a queen for a long, long time. Now they have a king. England has a king, so, of course, he’s in charge. Right? He’s the king.
Well, here’s the reality. He is king in name only. The royal family has been in existence in the country for centuries. They have kings, they have queens, they have princes, princesses, duchess, dukes, all the different stuff that they have. Right?
They have all these things. They’ve been there for all of this time. But one thing every single one of those titles has in common in that country is they have no real authority. They have no authority. The king cannot make a declaration of war.
The king cannot make laws. The king cannot even enforce the laws. The king is nothing but a figurehead. The king over the king of England, basically, he is there in name only. And the country pays them to be king.
Ain’t that amazing? Country pays him to be king. He’s king with no authority. Too many people try to make Jesus lord with no authority in their life. Oh, they say he’s lord.
Oh, yes. We we say he’s lord. We call Jesus lord, but we don’t actually give him the authority that he has. We call Jesus lord without allowing him to be lord. Oh, yes.
Jesus is lord of my life. Is he lord of everything? What do you mean is he lord of everything? Well, is there anything you put above god? What if, let’s just say, everybody knows I love football.
Right? What if God put in my heart, you know what? You need to leave football completely alone. You just need to forget about football. Don’t do anything, have anything at all to do with football.
Don’t even need to watch it ever again. You need to take that time that you were watching football. You need to spend it in studying God’s word or praying or going out and reaching people. If God put that in my heart and said, you just need to leave football alone. Now the question is, will I accept that?
Will I allow it? Will I say, okay, God, or now I’m gonna start bargaining. Right? Wait a minute, God. You know, I I mean, I can go out after the game.
Right? I can go out before the game. I can read my bible later on. I can do what god’s no. This is what I want.
Am I gonna allow that to happen? Am I gonna make him lord? Because if I’m not gonna make him lord and obey that, then is he lord at all? Does he have any authority in my life for you? Maybe there’s something in your life.
Maybe it’s, I don’t know, golf. Maybe it’s work. Maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s money. Whatever it is.
And god says, that is not got a place in your life. I want you to put it aside and fill it with me. Will you do that? Or will you say, I I can’t? Because if we say, I I can’t do that, then is he lord at all?
Because if he’s supposed to be lord, master, king of everything, he rules your life. If he’s ruling your life and you refuse to follow that, is he lord at all? Is he lord at all? We say Jesus is lord, but then we try to limit what he is lord of. We wanna limit it.
I tell people this. When you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord, this is the throne of your life. And you say, god, I want you to be lord of my life. Here’s the throne. You take it.
You sit on the throne, god. You give me direction. You tell me everything that I am to do, and I will be a loyal subject, and I will follow what you ask me to do. God says, I want you to go and be a missionary. You say, hang on.
Hang on. Get up. Move over. Wait. No.
Let me sit back down here. No. I can’t do that. That’s not me. I can’t do that, lord.
You just pushed him out of the center of your life. You just pushed him away and said, no. You’re not going to be my lord because you want me to do something that I don’t wanna do. Understand that when Jesus called the disciples, he told them to leave what they were doing and follow him and follow him completely. He said, you follow me, I’ll take care of the rest.
If you have called Jesus lord in your life, he said, you follow me. I’ll take care of the rest. The royal family is a pretty figurehead for England. Oh, they dress up nice. They have all these crowns and robes and gowns and all the amazing things, and they have all the pomp and circumstance, and the horses, and the carriages, and, man, they have everything.
Oh, it looks beautiful. It looks beautiful when you’re looking at it on the outside. Sometimes, that’s what we want to do with God. The actual running of the country is done by parliament. The king’s not part of parliament.
The king has no vote. King has no say so. The king, while having the title, is actually king of nothing. Does Jesus’ title of lord act the same way in your life? Does he have the title lord, but he’s actually lord of nothing?
We call him that. Do we like to parade Jesus around and say, Jesus is my lord. And then after people look at us, we push him back in the closet and say, but not today. We just make decisions without him. I came to know Jesus Christ 10 years of age.
10 years of age, and I look at my life, and I look back at the things that I did. And I was just sharing with someone the other day the importance of asking God his plans for your life. I made decisions about what I was gonna do as an adult in life, how I was gonna make a living, all the choices that I made. I made every one of those decisions, and not once during all of that time did I ever pause and say, god, what is it that you want me to do in this life? I said, this is what I’m doing.
God bless it. I made the decision. Now you bless the decision I made. If he’s lord, that’s not the way we do things. It wasn’t until I was 38, 39 years old, I was getting ready to retire from the military, and I was looking at what am I gonna do after military life.
Oh, I had some plans, and I was already starting to pursue those plans. And one day, a pastor preaching a sermon said, are you on God’s agenda? I don’t know. I never asked God what his agenda was. Maybe I should do that.
And I began to pray about it, and god started calling me into ministry. Of course, you’ve heard the story. I said, no. No. That can’t be me.
You’ve gotta be wrong about this. I fought it for a long time. But here’s what I think about. If I called Jesus Lord at 10 years old, if I listened to him and asked him what he wanted from me in my life at 18 years old, would he have said, I want you in ministry at 18 years old? Perhaps, I should have been serving him in ministry, in vocational ministry for 20 years before I started.
What difference could that have made in not only my life, but also the lives of many people that I came in touch with? Does Jesus’ title of lord act like a figurehead and not as an actual lord in your life? Look at me to Romans chapter 10 verse 9 and 10. Romans chapter 10 verse 9 and 10. Many of you are very familiar.
I’ve quoted the first part of this verse 2 or 3 times already this morning. Romans 109 and 10 says this, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, a person believes resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth, he confesses resulting in salvation. If you confess Jesus as lord. Have you ever done that?
If you confess Jesus as lord, reality is that you are given the choice to accept the call of god in your life to confess that he is lord, meaning you have given him the kingship of your life voluntarily. You gave it to him and believe that god raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. Have you voluntarily given him the kingship of your life, and are you allowing him to stay on the throne or are you pushing him out of the way? Understand what this means if you confess. You proclaim that Jesus will be your lord, your master, your king, your number 1 in your life.
You make a public proclamation of that. Right? Because we say that if you confess Jesus as lord, then you need to confess him before men so he will confess you before his father. So we have people come forward and they say, I proclaim Jesus. I accepted him into my life today as lord, and it’s a public profession.
Then we have baptism, which is another public profession that the old you has died, and the new you has risen to walk under the lordship of Jesus Christ. But do we accept that, or is it simply words? Here’s the simply words. You give him your life in exchange for salvation. Understand that.
You surrender your life to him just as surely as if you could pull the actual life out of your body and hand it to god and give it to him, and then he puts it back. You give him your life in exchange for salvation, a life that doesn’t end, a life that goes on forever and all eternity. It says if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord and believe that god raised him from the dead, you shall have eternal life. You give him your life, and in exchange, you receive salvation. But do you really give him all of your life?
Do you really give him all of your life? So When you’re in the privacy of your home, when you’re away from church, when you’re in a place where you’re not even gonna see the people that you go to church with, Maybe you’re away from even your family. Is he still lord? Is he still the one that you’re seeking to find out what you’re to do every day? Do you get up each day and recommit that to him, god your lord?
Bible says, take up your cross daily. Daily. Deny yourself and take up your cross daily. Every day, it’s a brand new surrender. It’s a brand new surrender to him, because we tend to have short term memory.
Oh, yesterday, I gave my life to Christ, but that was yesterday. Today, I got these other things. Daily, we’re supposed to give our life to him. Now listen. I’m not standing before you today as a person who has always followed the right path, and I’ve always given my life to god every single day, and always allowed him to be lord in my life.
But I’m a man that stands before you today just as you looking at me probably realize I need to work on that. I need to work on that. Every day, we need to give him our life. The phrase, either you’re lord or you’re not. I heard someone say, a new believer that had a lot of things in their life that they were trying to do.
And they were saying, god, what do I do? What what do I need to do? Show me the directions I need to do. And god said, that video game system that you love so much, you need to do away with that. He said, oh, come on.
Not that, god. He’s looking at it, and he’s going, not that, but that’s I love doing that. He said, okay. Either you’re lord or you’re not. And he packed up the box, and he sent it to the palm shop.
Got rid of it. He said, I gotta get rid of it. That’s what God has told me. Is there something in your life that God has shown you that needs to go, but yet we keep holding on to it because it’s one of our favorite things. Is there something in your life that god has shown you you need to do, but you keep putting it off because of every excuse in the world?
Perhaps there’s someone that god has said, you need to talk to them. You said, yeah. I can’t do that. Is he lord or is he not? In the military, if they gave you an order and said, go do this, and you said, I ain’t doing that, there’s punishment involved in that.
You don’t refuse an order. This is an order. You go do it. But somehow when god gives us a directive, we think it’s debatable. We wanna say, ah, man, you know, send somebody else.
I’m I probably wouldn’t be good at that. And Moses did the same thing. Right? He said, no. I can’t do that.
I can’t talk. I can’t do the one be the one that speaks and does all of that, and he kept arguing with God. By the way, Moses did eventually speak to the people. Aaron wasn’t continually always the one that spoke. Eventually, Moses did, but he gave Aaron to speak for him until he got him broke in.
The reality is, it’s a process that we all have to learn. We have to give it to God every day. Do we really give it to him? Do we understand? We gave him our life.
Are we really going to give him all of our life? Is he lord or is he not? It means every single area of your life belongs to him. It belongs to him. When you’re in the military, they tell you this.
They say, you know what? You’re now government property. That doesn’t sound good. I went to basic training, and they said, you gotta get a haircut. I had pretty short hair, you know, about like I have now.
No. No. You need a haircut. They sat me down that chair, and they didn’t leave me any hair. I had to I could feel it, but I couldn’t grab it.
There was nothing there. It was gone. Man, that’s horrible. Of course, everybody, they shaved all their heads like that. We all walked out rubbing our heads.
Immediately got in trouble because we’re supposed to have our hat on. That night, one of the men decided, you know what? If they took that much, I’m gonna take it all. So he got a razor out, and he shaved his head all the way down to bald. Nothing but skin.
Next day, falls out in formation. Do physical training and we don’t wear a hat then. Drill sergeant came up and said, what did you do? He said, well, I just went ahead and shaved all the hair off my head. He said, did I tell you to do that?
Did anybody give you a direction to do that? That is destruction of government property, and you can be subject to article 15 because nobody told you to do that. Wow. What if that’s what god did? Did I tell you to do that?
You’re in trouble. I’m gonna punish you now because you didn’t do what I told you to do, or you did something I didn’t tell you to do. What if god did that? He doesn’t. But what if he did?
Think about it like this. If if we can commit to a organization, a government organization, a military, and follow every rule they tell us that we have follow and do everything that they say we have to do? Why can’t we do that with God? Why are we not willing to do it with the one that is above all? Why do we have to do it our way?
The reality for all of us is we have to learn to submit. We don’t like that word either, especially Americans. We don’t like that word submit or surrender. We want to be in charge. Every once in a while, one of the leaders would put a junior person in charge and go, okay.
You’re in charge now. No training. No telling anything. Just you’re in charge. And you know what happened every single time?
They messed it up. You know why they messed it up? Because they didn’t know what they were doing. But they wanted to be the one in charge, so they got put in charge. God will never mess it up.
Everything he does, he knows exactly what he’s doing and why he is doing it. It might not make exact sense to you, but he knows what he’s doing. Do you ask god daily what he wants? The majority of us probably don’t. We ask god at some point, what do you want?
We went in that direction, and we didn’t ask anymore. Daily, we need to be asking, god, what do you want from me today? Maybe there’s a new person in your life, and he wants you to talk to them. Maybe there’s a habit in your life that you need to break. Maybe there’s something that you need to start.
Whatever it is. What do you want today? Are there things in your life that he wants you to give up? That’s hard, isn’t it? Are there things in your life that he wants you to give up?
Man said he prayed to god, what do you want me to do that I might be a better servant to you, god? God said, you play too much golf. You need to cut that out. This man played golf 2, 3 times a week. He said, nope.
Put the golf aside. That was hard. But he said what he found when he did it was God filled that time that he used to go play golf with opportunities to share Jesus to those that don’t know. God gave him opportunities to do things that he never would have had the opportunity if he spent all that time playing golf. God taught him things that he probably never would have listened to if he was busy with that what was going on in his life.
Are there things in your life that you have resisted giving up? Are there things that God said, get it out of your life, and you’ve resisted and said, no. I I don’t wanna I wanna keep doing that. Or are there things that he wants in your life, but you have resisted? God said, go.
I want you to be a minister. I want you to be a vocational minister. I said, that can’t be me. I resisted. I fought.
Eventually, as he does, god won. I look back at my life now and and I don’t know how I would have ever survived had I not done what he told me to do. If we call him lord, but do not surrender everything, he isn’t really lord. That’s pretty simple fact. If we call him lord, but we do not surrender everything, he isn’t really lord.
We’re still lord. We just let him hold the role like the king of England. We let him walk around being the one that’s pretty and everybody understands, yes, he’s lord, but he’s not. The biggest problem is we convince ourselves it’s okay to only surrender part of our life. It’s fine.
No problem. You know, I gave God the big parts. I do most of everything that God puts on my heart. I ask him about a lot of things, but, you know, I don’t want to bother him with the little stuff. I don’t wanna bother him with questions about the day to day, the mundane.
I don’t wanna bother him with that. Listen, if he knows how many hairs are on your head or lack thereof, he wants to know every detail. He wants you to keep him involved in everything. He doesn’t ever want you to do it on your own. In fact, scripture says, apart from me, you can do nothing.
He wants to be part of all of it. It’s not okay to only surrender part of your life. What if he only partly gave you salvation? Okay. Your right arm and your right leg are saved, but rest of you still in question.
I’ll give you salvation, but only for a 100 years. After that, you’re on your own. Yes. You can you can be in heaven, but it’s on a trial basis. I can cancel your subscription at any time.
What if he only gave us part of salvation? Because we only gave him part of lordship. We don’t like it going the other way. We think it’s fine. We convince ourselves it’s alright when we’re doing it to him.
But if he did it to us, how would a partial salvation even work? Here’s the reality. It can’t. There’s no way that a partial salvation could ever work. Neither can a partial surrender.
A partial surrender doesn’t work either. We convince ourselves it’s okay, but it doesn’t work. Have you spent time seeking what god wants from you? Remember, I’ve shared with you before, the average Christian, on a daily basis, spends less than 5 minutes a day in prayer, and that includes asking blessings over their food. The average Christian the average Christian does not spend time asking God what he wants.
The average Christian tells God what I’m gonna do and ask God to bless it. Have you spent time seeking what God wants for you? Well, listen, preacher. I’m, you know, 8 plus years old, and and I’ve I’ve lived my whole life. And so, you know, I’ve done the things before, but I I don’t really have left things left to do.
How do you know? Have you asked God? At a 100 years old, God told Abraham, you’re gonna be a brand new daddy. He wasn’t done with him yet. If you’re still breathing here today, he’s not done with you yet.
Have you asked God daily, what does he want from you? If you’re a young person here, have you asked God, what does he want? Are you looking at your future and making decisions? Are you asking God, what does he want? You said he’s lord.
Let him be lord. Ask him what he wants. Let him tell you his plan for you. Follow what he has. Surrender.
Submit to everything that he wants for you. Perhaps there are things in your life that are preventing full surrender. Maybe there’s something in your life that is preventing full surrender. You know, oftentimes when a person comes and they give their life to the Lord, there are things that have happened in their life, and and nobody’s ever taught them to let it all go. And they’re still holding on to that, and they’re going, I can’t serve God because of this thing in my life.
They if they found out that I used to do that, there’s no way they would want me to do that. There’s no way I could I could do this because of those things I’ve done. No. When you gave your life to God and you said, I want you to be lord, when he became your lord, he took everything that was not good in your life, every sin that you’d ever committed, and he cast it as far as the east is from the west. And if he took it all out, then there’s nothing to prevent you from full surrender, except you.
You’re the only one. You’re the only one that can do that. There’s nothing in your life that’s doing that. God took it away. These are the things that you have to start with.
The first question is, have you ever truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Did you ever truly ask him? Anybody here ever go to Vacation Bible School? A few of us, right, went to Vacation Bible School. You know it’s amazing.
When you have Vacation Bible School, almost every year when you have Vacation Bible School, you’ll have several children that make a profession of faith. It’s an amazing thing. I love Vacation Bible School. Here’s the problem. A lot of times when you have Vacation Bible School, you have children that are coming that have never been in a church before.
And they see Johnny go up, and they think, well, that’s what I’m supposed to do, so they run up too. And they heard what Johnny said, and they say the same thing, and we say, hallelujah. You just gave your life to the Lord. They don’t have any idea what they just did. They don’t have any idea.
They said some words. They don’t know what it means. They weren’t convicted to come forward. They followed little Johnny. But some take that profession and baptism that follows and say, I’m saved.
And they live their life saying, I’m saved. But they’ve never given their life to God. So the first question is, have you actually ever truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Have you truly given yourself to him at some point? Have you ever done that?
You know, I always think it would be great if I could just look out, and there would be, like, you know, a halo over everybody that gave their life to Christ, and not over the ones that didn’t. And I can focus on the people that I know do not know Jesus, but I can’t see that. The only thing God sees it all. You know, if you ask yourself that, was it a true salvation? It’s an amazing thing.
I have a friend who was going to seminary, going to be a pastor. He came home from seminary 1 weekend, and there was a a service going on, a guest pastor preaching, and that pastor preached on the wheat and the tares. They look so much alike that it’s very hard to tell the difference. But when you throw them up in the air, the wheat falls down and the tares blow away. At the end of the service, when a pastor opened up invitation time, he jumped up.
His wife said, where are you going? He said, leave me alone. I gotta go get saved. He ran up to the front, and he said, I’m a tear. I’ve been a tear my whole life.
I’ve been living like I thought I was supposed to live. I look like a Christian because I go to church. I sing the songs. I read my bible. I even go into seminary.
But I’ve never truly accepted Jesus as my savior right that moment he got saved. I said, well, what’s the next step? He said, well, I gotta go back to seminary class on Monday and explain to the class that that I was lost, But now I’m saved. I said, do you think you’re still supposed to be in seminary? He said, I have no doubt.
He said, that’s the thing that pushed me to the point to know that he’s my savior and I want to serve him forever. First question is, have you ever asked Jesus, truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Have you accepted him fully, completely, ever? If so, then it’s time to let him be lord of all. Today, as we think about this question, is he lord or is he not?
You’re the only one that can answer that. When you take a deep examination, has he given himself have you given yourself to him, or are you just walking the walk, talking the talk, but not really doing it? You’re just pretending. Or have you given your life to him? And if you have, then the next question is, are you allowing him to be lord or are you still trying to be lord?
We look around the world today, and there are lost people everywhere. We look around the churches, and we say, why are the churches not full? Why are there so many people that are walking away from Christianity? Why are there so many people that despise Christianity? Why are there so many people that don’t understand they need Jesus in their life?
Well, one of the biggest reasons is that there are not enough people treating him as lord and following what he wants us to do. Churches should be full every Sunday, and they’re not. People should understand that the number one thing they need in life is salvation because of the sin in their life, but they don’t. If nobody tells them, how will they know? Nobody shares the gospel, how will they be saved?
They’re not gonna get it through the Internet. They’re not gonna get it on the television. They’re not gonna get it through going to the nightclubs and all of the things they’re doing in life. How will they know? Are you allowing God to be lord of your life or not?
If you’ve called him lord, you’ve confessed with your mouth and said, I want you to be lord, and you look in yourself today and you say, I’m not letting him do that, then I’m gonna ask you to recommit today. I’m gonna ask you to confess again. I want you to be lord. Help me to surrender all to you. If you don’t know him, you’ve never come to know him, you maybe you’ve been at church, you’ve done the things that Christians do, but you’ve never accepted Jesus, then I’m gonna ask you today, don’t wait anymore.
Accept him into your life and then follow him as lord of your life. He always knows exactly what’s the right thing for you, And he is the only one that can provide the salvation that you so desperately need. I’m gonna have a time invitation in just a moment. As we do, I’m gonna ask you to come forward. If you need to come and and ask Jesus into your heart, come today and I’ll tell you exactly what to do.
Maybe you wanna come to the altar and you wanna recommit to him. You wanna surrender again. It’s open. Whatever you need to do, I ask you to submit to whatever god puts on your heart this morning.
