The Curse of Apathy

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Transcript:

I’ve spent most of January talking to you on Sunday nights about reasons why we should make disciples, why we should share the gospel with people, and once they’ve trusted Christ, why we should teach them to follow him. Tonight, I want to switch gears, and for the next few Sunday nights, tell your reasons why we shouldn’t. I know, I see some surprised looks.

Reasons why we shouldn’t, or better said maybe reasons why we think we shouldn’t sometimes. We’ve talked about the reasons for sharing. I want to talk about what the objections are for sharing, what the objections are.

The reasons that we have, whether we admit them to ourselves or not, why we don’t share, why we don’t tell people about Christ, why we don’t reach and teach, so to speak, what our objections are. Because if we can be honest with ourselves and with each other about what our objections are, the things that get in our way and keep us from talking to people about the Lord, whether they’ve never trusted Him and need to trust Him, or whether they’ve trusted Him and they’re and like it, the things that keep us silent when we should open our mouths. There is a time to open our mouths to people.

And if we can get honest with ourselves about the things that prevent us, and honest with each other about the things that prevent us, most of the things that we’re going to discuss in the next few weeks have a remedy, have a readily available remedy. It may not be something easy, but it’s something simple, something as simple as, well, we need to study the right things and know the right things. One of the objections we’re going to talk about is the fear of not knowing the right things to say.

Well, folks, there’s a remedy to that. It’s called preparing ourselves ahead of time. As the Bible says, to be prepared in season and out of season.

Be ready at all times to give an account to other people of the hope that’s within us. And I know I’m paraphrasing those verses, of course. Tonight, we’re going to start out by talking about what I call the curse of apathy.

And the reason I say the curse of apathy, It’s not in a sense that it’s a magical spell, but it’s a curse as opposed to the others that are predicaments or fears because apathy is the hardest of all of our objections to overcome. If we’re afraid of rejection, if we’re afraid of failure, if we’re afraid of I don’t know what to say, folks, those things can be overcome. Maybe not easily overcome, but those things can be overcome if we have a drive and a desire to do what God has told us to do in sharing Christ with people, in making disciples.

If we have some kind of desire to do those things, then we can learn, then we can be trained, we can do all these things to overcome the fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of not knowing the right thing to say. Apathy is something that we just can’t easily overcome. Apathy, and when I say we can’t overcome, if you’re apathetic, you’re probably not even caring if it’s overcome.

What I mean is we as a church can’t overcome it in the people around us. We can’t make somebody desire to make disciples. We can’t make somebody desire to evangelize.

As a matter of fact, if we get some visitation started here and some things that maybe we need to do, get some discipleship groups going, if there are people in our fellowship now or in the future that come in here and we have to force them, we have to twist their arms, we have to guilt them into going on visitation, if we have to guilt them into passing out tracts, if we have to guilt them into being involved in discipleship groups, they’re probably not necessarily the people that we want to put right out in front and say, you’re the ones that need to go tell other people. If they’re apathetic and don’t care and they’re just doing it because we twist their arms, that’s something God has to overcome. But sometimes we are apathetic, even if it’s not just a trait that we’re always generally apathetic towards sharing the gospel, toward making disciples.

At times, even the ones who are most zealous among us are apathetic. We have our moments when we just don’t consider, don’t care too much about the souls around us, don’t care too much about the people around us. And I promise you, I promise you, I promise you that it is, I won’t say coincidence, but it’s purely unintentional on my part that we’re talking about apathy on the night that churches across the country are empty.

This is about normal, I think, for a Sunday night crowd for us. But churches across the country are having an attendance problem tonight because people say, I’m not going to go to church, I’m going to go watch the Super Bowl. And some people in some churches use that as a ministry opportunity, and I don’t want to knock that.

But I just want you to know I didn’t sit down and say, hey, tonight we’re going to talk about people being apathetic and not caring about the gospel on Super Bowl night when people aren’t at church. As I said, I didn’t realize until yesterday that today was the Super Bowl and I’ve had this schedule of messages planned out for several weeks, so purely unintentional. I don’t know if he’s popular here. Have you all heard of Jeff Foxworthy?

I had to think of the name. Okay. I figured you might have.

He’s popular at home, the redneck jokes he tells, and things like, I can’t remember any of them, but you might be a redneck if this or that, and especially don’t want to repeat any of them if they apply to anybody. There have been one or two that have applied to me. And after hearing his routine, especially, I’ve thought, when did he come to my family reunion?

But he tells the jokes about you might be a redneck if this, and he’ll give some outlandish story, and some of them not so outlandish. But his whole fame is predicated on this idea of you might be a redneck if. If you’ll turn with me to Romans chapter 9, And as I was reading through Romans chapter 9, the beginning part of it, and reading what Paul says about himself and his desire to reach his own people, the Israelites, with the gospel, it occurred to me that there are some attitudes in here that Paul exhibits that are not in line always with our attitudes.

In other words, Paul is not the picture here of apathy, but in this passage he’s the opposite of apathy. And when we don’t share these attitudes that he has, we might be apathetic. And so tonight I want to talk to you about you might be apathetic if.

Here are the ways that we’ll know if we’re apathetic towards sharing the gospel, towards making disciples. Because we may sit here and think, well, sure I care. Yeah, I believe in evangelism.

I believe in discipleship just as much as anybody else. Well, let’s look at what somebody who really cares about missions, evangelism, discipleship, all these things. Let’s look at the picture of what somebody who really is on fire about these things looks like.

And let’s compare and contrast ourselves. And I’m not going to ask any of you to take a test and show us your numbers. But I’m saying I need to compare myself here to what Paul expresses, as do we all, I think, and see if we’re really as caring as we think or maybe we’re a little apathetic and we need to ask God to help us deal with that because, as I said, apathy is not necessarily something we can deal with on our own.

Romans chapter 9, verse 1 says, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, excuse me, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. So he started in verse 1 and says, I’m telling you the truth. I am telling you the truth.

I don’t lie. On top of telling you the truth, I’m not lying. So he really wants to drive home the point that he is being completely honest and very thoughtful about what he’s saying.

These are not just words that he throws out carelessly. He has thought this through, and he’s being very honest about the condition of his heart and his conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Ghost, that when he examines his spiritual condition, the Holy Ghost to his conscience verifies that what he says is true, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Now, I don’t think Paul was terminally depressed.

I don’t think Paul was gothic or suicidal or anything that we associate with continually having this great heavy sorrow. But the fact is, Paul says, I’m being completely honest and completely truthful and completely thoughtful about the fact that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. We know what those words mean.

Those words mean close to the same thing today as they did when this was translated into English about 400 years ago. But there’s something, there’s some nuance, for lack of a better word, that sometimes gets lost over the centuries as our language changes. And the first word here, this heaviness, indicates grief.

He grieves in his heart. He’s deeply, deeply sorrowful. We know what it’s like to grieve when we lose a loved one, when we lose a career, When we lose something near and dear to us and we grieve over it.

Well, then there’s this second word here, continual sorrow in my heart. And the word that they used there is related to the word that they would use for a woman in childbirth, in labor. The pain and suffering that she goes through.

Man, we don’t know what that’s about. We don’t really know what that means. I thought I had it bad.

I’ve got a picture. I had it bad when Christian started going to labor with Benjamin. And I told her, you know, if it hurts, you can squeeze my hand.

She did have a C-section. It was planned that way, and they got her on her epidural very fast. But before then, I’m sorry, but when she was squeezing my hand because it hurt, it was when they were trying to put the epidural in. Okay, she didn’t like that.

And I said, if it hurts, you can squeeze my hand. Well, I thought I had it bad because I’ve got a picture where you can see my hand is bright red except for these pale white finger marks in my hand. That hurt.

That is nothing compared to what she went through with the C-section and the epidural and nothing compared to what a woman goes through with the travail, is the word the Bible uses, of childbirth. Yes, it’s a joyful thing to bring a child into the world, but it’s hard work and it’s pain and it’s sorrowful. And the Bible says that it would be.

And what Paul is expressing here is that not only in his heart does he have this heaviness, this grief, but he’s got this continual sorrow that is like, in a spiritual sense, the pain of childbirth endlessly, if you can imagine that, in his soul. Now what has got Paul so sad? Sad is such a weak word to use in this instance.

But what has gotten Paul into this frame of mind? Verse 3 says, For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites. He’s talking here about the Jewish people, and he’s talking about their spiritual state.

That he indicates, here he talks about being accursed from Christ, talks about being separated from Christ, and how he could wish that he were separated from Christ for the sake of his people, the Israelites. What Paul is talking about here is his sadness, his sorrow, this grief over looking at his people, the Jewish people, and realizing that they have rejected Christ and his sorrow over their spiritual state. Who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises.

He says these things are given to the Israelites. Adoption, that they were adopted into God’s family. The glory and the covenants.

They were God’s chosen people. He gave them the law. He made these covenants with them.

And the service of God and the promises, these promises of the Messiah and all the restoration that Israel was going to go through. He says, these things were all given to Israel by God, and yet they rejected Christ. Paul is sorrowful over this. And he says, whose are the fathers?

And of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. And he says, Israel even is the vessel that God chose to use to bring Christ into the world.

Christ who is God-blessed forever. And he said Israel has all of these spiritual gifts that God has given. He’s given them covenants.

He’s given them the law. He’s given them adoption and glory and the service of God and the promises. And most of all, he’s given them Christ. And yet they have rejected Christ as the Messiah of God.

And Paul is brokenhearted over this. Folks, some of you can identify with this passage when you consider loved ones. Maybe you have a child.

Maybe you have a sibling or a parent or a cousin or spouse, somebody that you care deeply about. That’s an understatement. Somebody that you love deeply, that you have prayed for years, that you have witnessed to for years, hoping that their eyes would be opened, that they would see their need for the gospel, that they would see their need for Christ, and yet they have rejected Christ, and you’re brokenhearted over it when you think about it.

I know some of you can relate to that story because some of you have told me stories just like that. That’s exactly what Paul is going through here. Except for Paul, he’s not just talking about his immediate family, his loved ones, his brothers and sisters, his parents.

He’s talking about his entire nation that he came from, the Jewish people. He’s talking about people he had never even met, and yet they were his kinsmen. And Paul says all of this sorrow that we’ve already talked about, he’s emphatic and tells the truth.

And he says basically in our words, as God is my witness, I have this heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart Israel and for their state because they have rejected Christ. He’s broken hearted because they’ve rejected Christ. Folks, the picture that we have here of Paul in the beginning of Romans chapter 9 is the opposite of apathy toward evangelism and discipleship. If we want to see the perfect picture, and Paul would probably dispute this if he was here today because he called himself the chiefest of sinners. And I’m not saying Paul was a perfect man, but if we want to see the perfect picture of somebody with a zeal for evangelism and discipleship, a zeal to go to reach and teach people other than Jesus Christ, it would be the Apostle Paul.

And folks, if I compare myself with the Apostle Paul in this passage, I fall far short. I’m ashamed to say. And the sad thing is I think most of us do.

The sad thing is that even in his day, most believers fell short of what he’s expressing here. Tonight, I want to talk to us about apathy, looking at what he’s got here and comparing and contrasting. Folks, you might be apathetic if you feel no sorrow over the lost condition and eternal condemnation of those around you.

You know what, let me rephrase that. We might be apathetic if, because I don’t want it to just sound like you, you, you. We might be apathetic if we feel no sorrow over the lost condition and eternal condemnation of those around us.

See, he says here in verse 2, and we’ve already talked about it, that he has this great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart. He’s got not only this grief similar to the loss of a loved one, but also this great heaviness in his heart, similar to never-ending childbirth and the sorrow that’s involved there over people that he’s never even met. We’ve talked about, we talked for a week and then, for one Sunday night and then a portion of the next one about the great need for the gospel.

Folks, we understand perfectly that people without Christ have no hope. There is no hope outside of Christ. There is no hope for heaven. There’s no hope for forgiveness.

There’s no hope for fellowship with God outside of Jesus Christ. And how can they believe if they don’t hear. And we know that we have a responsibility to make sure they hear because there’s a great need. And if we can hear the great need and not be moved to do something to fill it, there’s no way that we can say that we have this same sorrow over the lost condition and eternal condemnation of those around us that the Apostle Paul had.

I cannot say, when I had to study that for a week and talk about the great need and had to stew in that and think about it and get ready for it and preach it, I was broken hearted about it and wanted to do something about it, but I cannot stand here tonight tell you that I rose to this level, or sank to this level, depending on how you want to look at it, of deep sorrow and great heaviness of heart, continual heaviness of heart. I can’t tell you that what I felt over the need reached this point of being what the Apostle Paul described. And most of us probably can’t say that our feelings toward the lost, toward the fact that they are lost, toward the fact that they will die and go to hell unless they hear and receive Christ, we can’t say that we are on the level of the Apostle Paul because we’d be doing a lot more than we are.

We’re sometimes apathetic. Folks, I don’t believe as a church that we have a habit of apathy. There are some people that claim to be Christians that don’t care whether anybody around them ever trusts Christ or not.

They don’t care whether they ever tell anybody about Christ or not. I’m guessing that we are not those people. If you were those people, if I’ve made you feel a little bad, I’m sorry, not me, the Holy Spirit, if I’ve made you feel a little bad, let me make you feel a little bit better.

Now, if I can, if you were apathetic people as a habit, you would not be coming here and sitting Sunday night after Sunday night after Sunday night listening to me harp on evangelism. You just wouldn’t. I believe you’re here because you want to know what God says about evangelism and discipleship and want to know how we can do it better.

So don’t think I’m telling you you’re just apathetic as a habit, that you don’t care anything about seeing people come to Christ. The fact that you’re here tonight, the fact that you’re here on a regular basis wanting to hear God’s word, The fact that some of you have come to me and said, how should I approach so-and-so? How should I pray for so-and-so? That tells me that the people in this church care.

What I’m saying is that none of us rise to this level of being able to say we have great sorrow and continual heaviness of heart that the Apostle Paul had. And that’s what we need to have. Because when that gets a hold of us, we won’t be able to do anything but disciple people.

We won’t be able to do anything but reach people and teach people. And there are times that even the best of us, folks, just don’t care. How many times has the Holy Spirit told me when I’m out somewhere, you need to go talk to that person?

I’ll look at them. They’re not going to listen to what I say. God, I’m busy.

I’m guessing it’s not just me. That’s one of those times apathy sneaks up. I don’t think I’m apathetic all the time about evangelism and discipleship, but yet it sneaks up on me from time to time.

And folks, apathy is a curse because it will stop us dead from witnessing to people. We might be apathetic if we feel no sorrow over the lost condition of people around us. We might be apathetic if we’re unwilling to sacrifice anything to bring the gospel to other people.

If we are not willing to sacrifice anything, anything at all, to bring the gospel to other people, folks, that’s a sign of apathy about this. And again, before I make you feel too bad, you’re here. You’re sacrificing your time to hear me harp on evangelism.

And I do feel like that’s what I’m doing a little bit. I’m harping on evangelism. You’re here listening to what’s being taught on evangelism and going through this series where hopefully we don’t just deal with the reasons to do it, reasons that we make up not to, and then how to address those, how to actually go do it.

You’re here. You’re listening to these things. But folks, there are times that we just don’t think the sacrifice is worth it.

What did Paul say here? He said, For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. That word accursed there means anathema, and I think I preached on that in Galatians chapter 1, where he says, If any man preaches any other gospel than what you’ve received from us, let him be anathema.

That word means accursed plus so much more. It talks about removing them from the church, not listening to them, that they are banned and accursed and that God will punish them for what they’re saying. And Paul is saying here, he says, for I could wish that myself were anathema and everything that means from Christ for the sake of my kinsmen, for the sake of my people, if it would somehow make a difference.

And I studied at this verse, I know I tell you sometimes that there are verses I struggle with and have to wrestle with before I can come teach them because I don’t know what they mean. This was the granddaddy of all struggles. My wife kept asking me, what are you studying on now?

Romans 9. 3. What are you studying on today?

Romans 9. 3. I’m trying to understand what it means.

And reading the commentaries, and folks, they don’t know either. All the brilliant theologians, and sometimes I say that sarcastically, I’m not today. Some brilliant men that I sometimes look to help me shed light on other things, they didn’t know either.

They came up with what they thought the answer was, but they didn’t know. Some people said, well, he can’t really be saying what he’s saying here because he’d be saying, well, I’m willing to give up Christ for the people of Israel and that means that he loves Israel more than Christ and that doesn’t sound like the Apostle Paul. I thought, well, maybe that’s right.

Well, no, what he would be saying here is, I love the people of Israel more than I love me because it would pain Paul to be accursed from Christ. And some other people had different explanations about what Paul was saying because nobody could come to grips with the fact that Paul was saying here, I wish myself a curse from Christ for the sake of my people. And then after days of wrestling with this, I realized it was the simplest issue that it could possibly have been that all the writers of these different commentaries I had looked at had overlooked a word, and I had overlooked a word. And I made it more complicated than it needed to be.

I was doing computer searches and looking in books and trying to figure out the Greek and the verb tenses, and I don’t speak Greek, and it was Greek to me. And trying to figure out what this word meant, it was some kind of conditional word, and I said, Why did they translate it? For I wish that myself.

. . Oh, wait, that’s not what it says.

It says, I could wish. See, I had been overlooking the word could. And the writers of the commentaries.

. . These guys ought to have their doctorates revoked posthumously.

These writers of the commentaries had overlooked the word could. Paul’s not saying here, I wish myself a curse from Christ. He’s not saying, I wish I could give up my salvation for them. I wish I could suffer in hell.

And that opens a whole other can of worms. if Paul’s really saying here, I wish I could suffer in hell so that they could be saved. There’s not one of us who could suffer in hell enough to pay the penalty for anybody else, let alone everybody else. What he’s saying here is, I could wish.

My sorrow in my heart is so great that I could wish. I’m not saying I do. But hypothetically, if it were at all possible, if there’s something I could do, if I could even wish myself a curse from Christ for their sake, not because I love them more than Christ, but because I love them more than me.

If I could, I could wish myself a curse from Christ for their sake. Folks, Paul was under no illusion that he could give up his salvation. Paul was under no illusion here that he could suffer and pay the penalty for other people’s sin.

What Paul was saying was that if my sacrifice would even make the slightest bit of difference, if me being a curse from Christ would somehow make them listen, if my being a curse from Christ would change anything, I could wish myself a curse from Christ. I could wish myself a curse from Christ for their sake. Folks, it’s that simple. It doesn’t need a big, deep theological explanation.

What Paul is saying is that there’s nothing he would not give up in order that Israel would accept Christ. Leave it to the theologians to make it hard. Leave it to me to make it hard. You know, if I’d just gone back and re-read for the 50th time what the Bible actually says and realized I was skipping over a word, we didn’t need all the big, difficult explanations if we just go by what the Word actually says.

I could wish myself a curse from Christ. Paul says here that there’s nothing he wouldn’t give up if it meant that Israel would accept Christ as the Messiah that they’d been given. And in a purely hypothetical way, he says, even if it cost me my own salvation. And it’s clear, if you read back into the previous passage in Romans chapter 8, Paul knows full well that it’s not possible.

Because he says that nothing can separate us from Christ. But if it were possible, there’s nothing I would not give up if it would make any kind of difference. Somebody that says, if it were possible, I would be willing to be accursed from Christ for their sake, is not going to have a problem with giving up some time to go and talk to his people. Somebody that was willing to go that far would not have a problem giving up a little bit of money to send somebody to talk to his people.

Would not have a problem with giving up a little bit of comfort getting up from in front of the TV one night a week. Would not have trouble folks even giving up a little dignity saying, yeah, they might laugh at me, but I’m going to go talk to them. What Paul is saying here, I believe is that there’s nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice for them to hear and receive and accept the gospel.

And folks, the opposite, complete apathy says we’re unwilling to sacrifice anything to help other people, to help bring the gospel to other people. Now folks, you’re obviously not in that camp as a whole. Because this church gives to missions, this church prays for people, the people of this church talk to other people about Christ, you’re here wanting to learn about evangelism.

But even among people that care enough to sacrifice, we sacrifice our time, we sacrifice our money, we sacrifice whatever, there are still times when God calls on us to give something and we say, God, it’s just too much. God, I don’t have time to go talk to them. God, they’re going to laugh at me.

I am not going to make a fool out of myself going to talk to them for the 15th time. And that’s when apathy creeps in. That’s when we’re apathetic, when we say, I’m not willing to sacrifice anything.

Paul said, I’m willing to sacrifice everything. Folks, that’s what I desperately want to be, to say I’m willing to sacrifice everything. And just like this morning, I’m not there yet.

Finally tonight, we might be apathetic if we do not regard the lost the same way that God does. All too often we look at the lost. This goes back to not being willing to sacrifice our time or money or whatever. So many times we look at lost people.

Or we look at, as I’ve been talking about evangelism and discipleship, it’s not just limited to lost people and taking them to the gospel. It also includes new Christians who need to be taught and need to be discipled and taught how to follow Christ. So many times we look at them as inconveniences. Oh, Lord, why do we want to bring people in here that are just going to, they’re not going to know the right words to say.

They’re going to cuss in the foyer because they haven’t learned better. They should know better. There was a day and age in this country when that kind of thing wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, but that’s a whole other story.

I was not born in that day and age. Y’all should be telling me about that day and age. But people, why would we want to bring people in here who don’t know just the right thing to do?

Why would we want to bring people in here who don’t know that that’s not the way you act yet? Why would, folks, we view them as an inconvenience, or we view them as a project, somebody we’re supposed to fix. We view them in all these ways where, quite honestly, sometimes Christians have a bad habit of looking at the lost world and saying, I’m way better than you.

You don’t even deserve my time or attention. That’s why one of my favorite books of the Bible is the book of Titus. It’s short, and it’s to the point, and it’s very direct and very challenging.

And in Titus chapter 3, I believe it is, before he talks about the gospel, he reminds Titus, Paul reminds Titus of what he was like, what Christians were like before they came to Christ. He talks about just the wickedness, and I won’t go into all that. It’s either Titus, well, it’s in the book of Titus. I should remember that.

I’ve written extensively on that chapter. Go read the book of Titus sometime. He gives this description of how Christians were, and then the grace of God appeared.

Then God, according to his mercy, saved us. We forget where we came from. We forget what we used to be, and we think that we’re something better because we’re good people, And we don’t realize, we don’t remember sometimes that it’s God that made us that way.

We didn’t start out that way. We started out these vile creatures that God had to pull out of the gutter, and God had to clean up, and God had to make stand on our own two feet, and God had to make to act right. And who are we to look at anybody else and say, you’re not worth my time?

We have a bad habit. When I say we, I don’t necessarily mean east side. I mean Christians in general. We have a bad habit.

And you know what? The world sees it, and the world has called us on it. And a lot of people, yes, it may be an excuse, but it’s not an excuse that’s not without base sometimes.

That the world looks at us and says, why would I want to be around you people when you think you’re so much better than I am? Folks, we’ve got to remember, Paul here sees the people of Israel. He could very easily say these dirty, filthy Israelites, how dare they reject God?

How dare they reject this message? Shame on them. I’ll see them burn and, you know, all these things.

No, that’s not what Paul says at all. He talks about these Israelites. He calls them my brethren, my