This coming Sunday is typically a big Sunday in many households in America. Although this year may be different due to the current political climate, especially as it relates to the National Football League. This Sunday evening the two best football teams will square off in Minneapolis. But there is another competition that also occurs that evening. This competition occurs mostly in the first half of the football game. It isn’t between two teams, but rather many companies. It is the competition for the best television commercial during the Super Bowl. The commercials are one of the reasons that the Super Bowl is one of the most viewed sporting events of the year. And to have your company and product featured comes with a high price. In fact this year, each company is going to fork over about $5 million dollars per 30 second commercial. That seems like an exorbitant amount of money to pay for 30 seconds (and in my opinion it is). However, when you consider that approximately 110 million people will be watching, that is a lot of exposure for your company and your product. It seems as though companies are willing to do whatever it takes to get their message and their product in front of as many people as possible. But what does this have to do with Christians?
Simply put, what are we willing to do in order to get our message of the Gospel in front of people? We have something far more valuable for the world to hear than any commercial you may see this Sunday evening. In Matthew 10 Jesus told His disciples about the cost of being His disciple. In one place Jesus said, “don’t fear those who can kill the body, but not kill your soul.” In another place Jesus said that brother would betray brother and even a father would betray his son to the point of death. Then starting in verse 37 Jesus said some very interesting statements. He said, “‘The person who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; the person who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. ‘And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Anyone finding his life will lose it, and anyone losing his life because of Me will find it.”
Those seem strange because they seem contradictory. However, what Jesus is speaking of when saying that we are to love Him more than our father and mother is that our love for Him is to be so strong that it looks like we hate those closest to us. Jesus is telling us that our strongest and most important relationship is the one we have with Him. Then Jesus says we are to be willing to lose our life for Him. That is we are to love Him so much, we are to desire to spread the Gospel so much that we are willing to lose our life so that the Gospel can go further. So I will ask the question again, what are we as Christians will to do so that others can hear the Gospel?
Pastor Justin