Viewing entries tagged
Encounters with Jesus
John 11:17-45
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles[a] from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus Raises Lazarus From the Dead
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
The Plot to Kill Jesus
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Listening guide
The questions are coming ….
“this sickness … is for God’s glory” (verse 4).
If Jesus is the resurrection and the life, __________ ___________ comes from ___________.
“the one who believes in me will live.” (verse 25)
Real physical life is available to each person because of who ______ ________, not who _______ _________.
take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (verse 44)
Death is the _____________ ____________. Let’s live!
Discussion questions
Sermon
Questions are coming – what's going on with this? Is God punishing us? Are we in trouble? What should we be doing and learning?
That’s good.
One thing this is not. God is not weeding some out or selecting some to get rid of.
That’s what a purely irreligious or naturalist view says. “This is nature’s way to make sure the fittest survive.” I don’t know if anyone is saying that about this event. Certainly people have said it about past events.
God wants life. Real, physical life.
Adventure/Discover
What embracing real, physical life does.
This is just the right time. Nicodemus - new life; woman at the well - stop chasing
Part 1: The resurrection to life matters
How does the resurrection to life matter? If the resurrection of the dead really will happen, then what does that mean for life?
Time is linear not cyclical
Who we are is more important than what we do, because something of who we are will go on into our new person
Eternity will be a better reality.
You will someday get that new start – forgiveness is the best thing, but there is often this residual blame or shame we feel.
The people we love will live again.
The biggest thing...
Jesus hears Lazarus is sick. When he hears, he says, “this sickness … is for God’s glory” (verse 4). He doesn‘t mean every sickness is for God’s glory. Every sickness is a chance for his glory to appear. This one is special.
God’s glory is his weight, his impact. He is going to show off. When that happens we get to see who he really is. What does he show?
(verse 21, 22) The friends and the family are “sitting shivah”. He meets Martha.
She says, in short, you’re too late.
She also says, I trust you.
Jesus confirms her trust - “I am the resurrection and the life”
A few minutes pass …
(verse 33) He meets Mary
She is crying. She says, “you’re late.”
Jesus is “troubled”, in a minute he will weep with her
Jesus relates well to us. I compare what he is doing to what is going on in our life.
We on a search for some locks. I know I brought them in from the car, I just can’t remember where I put them in the house.
The other day, a kid says to me, “Which car were you driving dad?” It took everything I had to not say be snarky.
Jesus relates really well to us. He is fully God, fully man
Not 50/50 - not part God, part man.
He naturally affirms our full trust in him for life.
He naturally displays his own vulnerability.
But there is more to it.
Jesus, fully God, fully man, is the giver of life. Your life comes to me.
If Jesus is the resurrection and the life, our life comes from him.
Just think about this. One of things people have said, heck, I’ve said it sometimes is, “why should I listen to Jesus? Who is he to run my life? Can’t I do whatever I want with my life?”
That question makes all the sense in the world if we’ve come from nothing and we’re going to nothing and we don’t depend on anything else. If it’s true, we can destroy ourselves and others. Life is meaningless.
But if Jesus is the giver of life, then my life, your life, our life comes from him. That’s the place to get life.
Part 2 Life is possible for you
That’s what Jesus wants to make a reality for you.
When Jesus walked up, he told Martha, “the one who believes in me will live.” (verse 25) And I think that for the most part, we can say Martha accepted that fact. She says to him, “I believe you are the Messiah.” (verse 27) She accepts he is the one God has chosen. But she doesn’t trust him.
Jesus goes to the tomb and he says, “take away the stone.” Martha responds, “He stinks”. She basically denies.
I love. What does Jesus do? He doesn’t tell at her. He doesn’t criticize her. He raises Lazarus anyways. I love this.
God doesn’t bless you and me because we’re so great, or even because our faith is so awesome
Only unbelievers say that God both loves and accepts everyone no matter who they trust. It’s just as unbelieving to say, “God let’s good people live.” No he doesn’t. When God works a miracle to give people new physical life, he does it for people who trust him. He doesn’t measure your life, your faith or anything else.
It’s not about you. It’s about him. And he has made the life he has available to you all.
Real physical life is available to each person because of who he is, not who you are.
Part 3
Let’s get ahold of this life.
This is hard stuff. What Jesus says in verse 44, “take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (verse 44) He is telling Lazarus, you can walk away from death. Death is defeated and you can just walk away. The right way to look at death is to say death is a defeated enemy.
It’s still an enemy! Christianity is incredibly realistic about the suffering of our lives. Sin, Satan and death are my enemies. They are bigger, stronger, and I can’t control them.
If these enemies are bigger and stronger than me, then the gospel isn’t primarily a message of personal empowerment. It’s not primarily a message to make me bigger and stronger. Those enemies will always be stronger.
What the gospel says is these enemies have already been defeated for you by the grace of Jesus Christ and you get to experience that reality every day. It’s to change your whole life and death.
We can see this, as painful as this is, as hard this.
It is painful. It is hard to live in the middle of death. The gospel says your suffering is real, but your life is real too. Rise up and live it.
AN story – raised in an abusive situation – physical, emotional, verbal. She also grew up connected to a Christian church. She enjoyed the relationships with people at the church, including the pastor. She never really believed the gospel.
Later she met a young man. He connected with her. He shared the gospel with her. He also joined her in her suffering. He was with her as she relived the painful experiences and began to process the fear, guilt, and shame that she felt.
There were a lot of painful moments along the way. He was there. So was a group of Christians that she met along the way. She heard the gospel for the first time in a safe, protected environment and it started to mean something to her.
She believed it. She wanted the new spiritual life of Jesus. She got baptized.
Then a close relative got deathly sick. She was not there when grandma died.
Initially she felt a lot of guilt. Then things started to change and she said, “I don’t feel that badly.” They talked about the situation. Part of it was probably denial – one of the stages of suffering. The other part was that she could say, my relative lives, I will live, and life lives. “I don’t feel bad and guilty.”
Death is the defeated enemy. Let’s live!
John 13:1-17
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Listening guide
Develop your purpose.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
This is what I’m living for: _______________ ___________.
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ______ _________ into their life.
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life.
Viktor Frankl - “ I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.”
Make his love fill us with purpose.
Discussion questions
Sermon
Nathaniel Timmermann
Peace Lutheran Church
March 22, 2020
John 13:1-17
Encounters with Jesus: Make his love fill us with purpose.
Prayer
Intro
The PG story – Found out she hadn’t eaten much lately, she probably hadn’t taken her meds. I asked if I could help out at all. She said she would be okay. After we talked, I called another person and asked her to call the first person and check on her.
A few days later, I called the woman back. I asked “How are things going? Have you been taking your meds?” She said, “I’ve been taking my meds. I ate breakfast and lunch. And some other people and I have been talking. I’m feeling better.”
The physical things are very important – food, meds, even human connection. All of that does something else for us. Behind all that, especially the human contact, reminds us there is purpose and meaning behind our existence. “I do have a purpose and meaning in my life.”
Human beings can do incredible things when we have a sense of purpose or meaning.
Stories of people lifting cars or during other heroic actions.
Viktor Frankl – Jew, captured and placed in the prison camps during WW2, including Auschwitz. Eventually become someone who started logotherapy, an important psychology practice.
He spent a ton of time thinking about this one question: what is it? what caused some people to survive the camps and not others?
Lots of factors: previous state in life - were people healthy and well before they came, their social structure, morality or lack of it, luck/fortune/grace
“Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward.” (Frankl, Viktor E.. Man's Search for Meaning (p. 72). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition)
You see that? “Inner strength … by pointing out to him a future goal”.
What is that? That’s purpose.
We deeply resist people forcing on us a purpose for our lives. If you dislike your job, it doesn’t matter how much you get paid, at some point you’ll get sick of it. You’ll start to say, “This paycheck is not worth the work I’m doing.”
If you have a sense of purpose, if you have the inner strength that points you to a future goal, you can go through almost anything.
Discovery/adventure
Jesus invites us to develop our purpose.
What a great time to do it. On the one side, we’re experiencing this crisis in America that is raising many questions. At the same time, he has given us this new life, this new vitality in our study over the last few weeks.
You can see who you are, can’t you? Take the vitality you have and use it in a specific direction.
Three things: What it could be, two things for making that happen
First what it could be
Jesus is with disciples for the Passover. … John tells us what is going on in his head. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
What a cool thing to say. What does that mean? He loved them to the end. It’s not just a time thing. It’s not just his goal to love them. He actually loves them to get them to their final purpose. He loved them into the completion. He loved them into the goal.
Jesus is about to ascend to the heights by descending to the depths. Jesus Christ is about to pull off the greatest victory by being captured and tortured and oppressed and murdered. Jesus’ understanding of power and success is so completely topsy-turvy that there is not a single culture or ideology that can really understand or accept it. It cuts against everything we know. We’ve talked about it before. Jesus says, “The way up is down. The way to power is to serve. The way to get happiness is not to seek your own happiness but the happiness of somebody else,” an inside-out understanding of greatness.
Jesus Christ here in John 13, is illustrating with his deeds what he tells them with his words in places like Matthew 20 and Luke 22. He looks at them and he says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served”
The word serves that he uses is a word that means the most menial and the most humble of all kinds of service. Jesus basically says, “Who is greater? The person who sits at the table at 4 Roses, or the busboy?” He says, “I walk in the shoes of the busboy, the grease monkey.” Why would he actually use that as the paradigm for his career?
What he does here in John 13 is he gets down on his hands and knees and begins to wash their feet. We know (we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago) that washing someone’s dirty feet in that environment was something only slaves did, and in many municipalities it was even illegal to make a slave do it, it was so disgusting and so low and servile. Yet Jesus Christ takes the position of sort of a slave below slaves, and he turns to his friends, and he says, “O friends, O dumb friends, how many times do I have to tell you? This is what life is about. This is what I’m about. This is what I live for.”
If somebody gave you a machine, and it was all full of lights and wheels and beeps, and they said, “Here, this is a present for you …” And it’s big. It’s very impressive. You’d say, “Well, it’s very busy, it’s very impressive, but what is it for?” What if your friend said, “Well, I don’t know what it’s for?” You’d say, “Well then what good is it? We have to find out what it’s for. Let’s ask the ones who made it. Is there a label on here anywhere? Let’s find out the manufacturers and ask the ones who made it.”
Now look at yourselves. You’re so busy. Your lives are full of lights and beeps and wheels. on steroids that nobody can turn off, and here you are in the middle of it. You’re so busy, and your life is full of lights and wheels and beeps. Some of you have beepers on this morning. The question is … What is it for?
There is a strong sense that so much of it is meaningless. Isn’t there? Don’t you sense it? Don’t you feel it?
["The works of modern authors … reveal “the persistent need for meaning and the gnawing sense of its elusiveness.” (Tim Keller, Making Sense of God, pg 62) ]
Do you see what happens? As soon as you begin to think into life more than six inches deep, you’re into religion. As soon as you start to ask any kind of substantial question … “Look at this wonderful machine. Look at my life. Look at all the wheels and the lights and the noises and the bells and the beeps.” As soon as you say, “What is it for? What really matters? What is life all about? What does it mean?” you’re into religion.
Because in the same way, the only way you’re going to find out what this machine is for is by getting in touch with the manufacturer. The only way you’re going to find out what life is for and what life is about is to get in touch with the manufacturer. Here you have the manufacturer, and he is saying, “Let me tell you what life is about. Let me tell you what I am about. Let me tell you what you should be about. It’s for this kind of greatness. It’s for this inside-out greatness. Life is about kneeling love. Life is about love that gets on its knees, that comes down out of its place.”
Jesus said, “That’s what I’m about and that’s what you should be about.” That’s what life is about. Until you understand that, all the beeps and all the whizzes and all the whirls and all the lights mean nothing. So basically what Jesus is saying here is, “Here is how life gets purpose, gets meaning. This is what I’m living for, this is what you’re living for: Kneeling love.”
Jesus puts it into action in 2 ways.
He came down
First, “so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (Jn 13:4-5)
Jesus is thinking about his mission, about his career, and there are two parts to it. First of all, he gets down. Just as he leaves his place of honor at the table and sets aside his normal garments, in the same way, the Bible tells us that though he was God, though he was the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, though he was the God who’s so great that heaven and highest heaven could not contain him, the God to whom the entire universe is nothing more than a piece of belly button lint, that great God came down and became a human being. We sing about it at Christmas each year when we sing …
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Jesus takes the time to get down into our lives.
You haven’t yet started to serve people if you aren’t physically getting down into the mess of their lives.
That’s a lot harder than I would like to admit. Just take the simplest act, listening. Listening is physical work. But you can listen up and stay out of someone’s life, or you can get down into it.
This week, I was on the phone a lot. I called one person. Someone was talking. There were emails coming in. Someone walked through the door. I said, uh huh, uh huh. Then they said, well, thanks for the talk pastor. Have a good week.
I didn’t get down into their life at all. I stayed in my own life.
Point 1: To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to go down into their life.
I’m so thankful for all the doctors and the nurses and the medical assistants and the paramedics who are getting down into our lives. Would you join
The first step in getting meaning into someone’s life, is getting down into their life. Whether you are a doctor or a nurse or someone else, don’t we all have the opportunity to get down into someone else’s life?
Wash
But that’s only half of the career, only half of the mission. Not only does he come down from God to be a man, but secondly, he doesn’t come just as a man but as a servant.
He goes to wash Peter’s feet and Peter says, “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)
I love this. Jesus doesn’t come down as someone to lead a great political party to victory, but instead he comes to take their sicknesses, diseases and plagues on himself.
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life (wash the crud).
One of the most powerful things that happens on the cross is that Jesus says I will take your sin, I will take your guilt, I will take your blame and put it on myself. And in the waters of baptism I’m going to wash your mess away. I am glad to do that so you can really do what you are called to do.
That is even harder to do. There are so many times I would love to wash away the junk of your life. Jesus says I will actually take the junk of your life.
When you have experienced, when you have tasted what it is really like to have that sin and that mess washed away, you will know, there is meaning to everything you do.
One of the great examples of a person who finds meaning in life not through his work, not through his skills and abilities, but because someone got down into his life and cleansed his soul, was that man Viktor Frankl.
He has a number of experiences that helped him find meaning. He tells one of them.
Viktor Frankl -- Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. . . .
Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there.
That’s an example of what a wife can do for a husband, even if she isn’t there. How much greater can’t it be if you and I have a sense and an awareness if the king of heaven and earth has come down into our mess and cleaned away that crud? How much greater can’t the purpose and the meaning of our life be if we are aware of that?
What’s the awesome take away from this? You and I could search for meaning and purpose for our lives. I’ve asked this question as much as anyone else
Do my days really mean something to someone else? As I sit here and make my little speeches or my phone calls.
Yet it was this point...When his love becomes real, it fills you with purpose and it fills others with purpose.
Make his love fill us with purpose. When his love is real to you, that will fill you and us with purpose. That will matter whether you are a doctor or a nurse on the front lines, working in the factory, or caring for your family. Make his love fill us with purpose. We’ll have incredibly meaning for our lives.
Let’s pray
Heavenly Father, very often we turn to the weak and the shallow for a sense of meaning and purpose. Rather than receiving from you the love you want to give to us, we look to money, power, fame, family, to give us our sense of purpose and meaning. I pray that in this important time you would power us with your love. Then we can flow that love out into the lives of others, and together enjoy the meaning you have for us. We pray this all in Jesus’ name, Amen!
John 9:1-41
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The Pharisees Investigate the Healing
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Spiritual Blindness
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said,[a] “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
Listening guide
Can we gain spiritual sight?
“Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
No one __________________ sees ____________________.
Spiritual blindness =
“You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
You see differently when ________________ _________.
Sermon
I’m a slow learner. It’s taken me 10 years to recognize the spiritual effect I have in my wife. Making some area of the house clean, picked up – shame
JS – sensing her guilt, assuring her that this doesn’t mean she is a failure
Big topic of the week. Peeps are out for Easter. It’s true. Did you see Meijer, Walmart? Lots of Peeps. Just kidding.
COVID-19.
Discover/adventure
This kind of spiritual sight is more than just personality. More than training
You can each have spiritual sight that brings healing, forgiveness to relationships
Sure maybe I have more than some of you because true spiritual sight is a gift. That’s my training and experience.
Some of you probably have a lot more of it than I. All of you can have it to some extent. True spiritual sight that makes a difference in the souls of others is a supernatural gift from God
Part 1
Jesus is with his disciples. They meet a man born blind.
The disciples ask a very basic question: “Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
We need to see where we stand with other people.
Are we good?
Are we bad?
Did I wrong you?
You’ve wronged me.
We all do this.
Then you can see what Jesus does. Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (9:3)
This blows me away. You and I living in the 21st century live in what’s caused a closed box universe.
It’s slowly reopening, but for the most part, it’s closed. What do I mean? I’ve talked to a lot of people about the coronavirus this week. Do you know how many people have asked me about the spiritual implications or even commented about them? Fewer than 5. Talked to a lot of people but the number of people who say, “what’s God up to here? What is God going for? What would cause God to let this happen.” or the people who have said, “It’ll be okay. I’ve done everything I can and I trust God to take care of me.”
You might say.... That is the very essence of a closed box universe.
A closed box universe says, “the material world is all there is. There is only physical stuff. There is nothing more than what we can touch and feel and see.”
I can completely understand someone in the 21st century not thinking about God. … meet someone in the store. .. But look at these disciples
They don’t think about God either.
I think they are a little ahead of us. They think about other people. … Listen to the people talk about coronavirus. They say, “I’ll be okay. My family will be okay.” It’s not about you. It’s about what you might do to someone else. These disciples are at least that far ahead of us. Still...
They don’t say, “Maybe God is punishing him.” They don’t ask, “Jesus, why did God let this happen.” … This is spiritual blindness.
No one naturally sees spiritually.
We all know this blindness at times. Everybody goes through a situation where you really blow something, a relationship, a job, or a project. You look back five years, and you say, “I was so blind. I knew it, but I didn’t know it. I had the data, but I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t get it. It didn’t sink in. I was such an idiot.” What is that? It’s not like you got new data. It’s not like you actually, literally, physically didn’t see something. It’s that you realize you were spiritually blind.
What is spiritual blindness? Here is how Martin Luther put it, believing we are “free, happy, unfettered, able, well, and alive” when we are not. (Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will)
Free – I can make choices for myself and they will benefit other people
No one naturally sees spiritually.
Part 2
If we are unable to see ourselves and other people for who they are,
We don’t have time for this today... Maybe you can look at this at home. But
If we don’t see spiritually naturally, if we don’t have natural spiritual sight, what do we put in place to guide these relationships?
Later on the religious leaders say, “we follow Moses.” The religious leaders have Moses – they have religious rules
His parents also get involved – family norms.
Everyone experiences this spiritual blindness. If we don’t gain spiritual sight, then we put something else in the place to help us see how we relate to other people.
Gaining sight
When it comes to gaining sight, there are really a number of things that should be said
Spiritual sight comes in a community
Faith is instantaneous and complete, sight comes in stages
Jesus went and endured the darkness. The darkness swallowed him and snuffed him out. And because the light of the world was extinguished, we can see. It’s a trade.
That’s not what we see here. This story tells us something else of gaining sight.
Jesus sees a man born blind
“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”
There is a physical, tactile experience. Part of gaining spiritual sight is a physical experience. And not just any kind of experience
Spiritual sight comes from physically living out God’s Word.
Almost all of us, I think I can even say all of us, deal with something physical in order to gain real spiritual sight. Money, careers, health, retirement, family.
If you haven’t gained spiritual sight, Jesus says, “Wash that away.” Let me give you the gift that washes. Not baptism. The gift of forgiveness.
At the end of the event, after all the discussions and debates, Jesus comes back to the man and says, Jesus says, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” (verse 37)
If you want spiritual sight, not only does it mean forgiveness for the physical ties you love so much. It means getting seen, being known by the one who sees all things.
He sees you and when you see that, then your eyes will be opened from your blindness.
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At the age of nineteen months, she became ill with what was at the time called “brain fever.” She had been left blind and deaf as a result of the illness. Helen could not see any light or objects, and her ears could not conduct sound either through bone or via air. This situation continued for almost six years. Years later, Helen wrote about that period in her life:
I had no concepts whatever of nature or mind or death or God. I literally thought with my body. I was like an unconscious clod of earth. There was nothing in me except the instinct to eat and drink and sleep. My days were a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without interest or joy.
Then Keller met a woman named Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866–1936). Miss Sullivan had been working with Helen on spelling words over and over with her fingers. Miss Sullivan kept spelling the words over and over! Finally, she took Helen to the pump house; and as she pumped with one hand, she spelled water with the other. According to Helen:
She spelled w-a-t-e-r emphatically. I stood still, my whole body’s attention fixed on the motions of her fingers as the cool stream flowed over my hand. All at once there was a strange stir within me—a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after being dead! … Now I see it was my mental awakening. I think it was an experience somewhat in the nature of a revelation.
That wasn’t the end. Helen went to a school.
John Hitz was the person who brought Emanuel Swedenborg and his religious teachings to Helen’s attention, giving her a copy of Heaven and Hell when she was fourteen. She writes:
The words “Love” and “Wisdom” seemed to caress my fingers from paragraph to paragraph and these two words released in me new forces to stimulate my somewhat indolent nature and urge me forward evermore. . . . I was not “religious” in the sense of practicing ritual, but happy, because I saw God altogether lovely,...The Word of God, … has been at once the joy and good of my life.[3]
As she writes: “I do not know whether I adopted the faith or the faith adopted me. I can only say that the heart of the young girl sitting with a big book of raised letters on her lap in the sublime sunshine was thrilled by a radiance and inexpressibly endearing voice.”[9] In speaking of Divine Love and Wisdom, she writes, “[it] is a fountain of life I am always happy to be near. . . . I bury my fingers in this great river of light that is higher than all stars, deeper than the silence that enfolds me. It also is great, while all else is small, fragmentary.”[10]
You see differently when you’re seen.
Conclusion
These kinds of times we see a community’s true colors.
You will see differently when you’ve been seen. You’ll have a love for the greediest, the most selfish, or the foolish out there and you will have a justice that upholds what is true and good and defends the helpless.
You will literally see things differently.
That’s what happens when you get seen.
You see differently when you’re seen.
John 4:5-29
5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
Discussion notes
Phenomenal story: Jesus and the woman
What gives you life?
“you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10)
Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No
If so, what is it?
The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life.
“the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14)
What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________
Everyone needs something _____________ (inside) filling them with life.
Live for what gives life.
Sermon
Phenomenal story. It’s about Jesus and a woman who lives with another man. They meet at the local watering hole about noon. Literally, the watering hole. Not the bar.
When the whole thing is done, look at the end of this story. The woman runs back to town. She tells all these people, “I’ve met someone who has told me everything I’ve done. Come and see.”
Here is why that is incredible.
First, have you ever, ever met someone who said, “I met someone who told me all the bad things I did in life and told me that I was worse off than I imagined. It was so awesome. You’ve got to come meet this guy.” That’s what she was saying to the other people.
The reason she met Jesus in the first place is that whether they excluded her or she just felt excluded, she was filled with shame. She didn’t go to the well with everyone else.
The reason she didn’t go to the well with everyone else was that she was divorced five times. Even today in our free sex life, people don’t divorce 5 times. I tried to look up the number of people on their fifth marriage or divorce. Couldn’t find it. Send em over if you do. Stop googling. Do it later.
She was also one of those free religious thinkers. You know, the kind everyone hates because they’re always saying, “yeah, but what about?” By the way, I think I’m one of those. Somehow every time all the pastors get together, I get ‘em all worked up.
She basically says to Jesus, I’m thinking about which religion to be part of: Samaritan or Jewish. What do you think?
She has done all that stuff. She comes back to the people in town. He told me I’m a mess. Come and see.
Who does that? There are a few. There’s a writer I enjoy, Mark Clark. He grew up an atheist. He did drugs as a kid. He stole. He got Tourettes and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His dad was a deadbeat who died when he was 15. When he was 17 he said he believed in Jesus. He is one of the few guys I know of who gets up, and he can kind of smile and say, “I’m a mess. I’m a wreck. This guy Jesus told me about it. You should come and check him out.”
Discover
Last week was the gospel for the insider. The person who has their life all figured out, they just need to hear, look, as long as you think you don’t need life, you don’t have it.
This week, the gospel for the outsider. The person who desperately searches for new life, tries drugs, or sex, or career, or marriage, and can’t find anything that will give them life.
The question is just this: what gives you life? Where do you get meaning, satisfaction, and vitality for every day? What gives you life?
What we need for life
First thing to get here is what we need for life. Jesus says to this woman, “you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10)
This is a big deal. Water and air are our most basic physical needs. Without air a person dies in minutes. Without water they die in days. Water is so plentiful for us that we don’t even think about a world without water. One of my college classmates worked on a nonprofit that dug wells. About 10% of the world doesn’t have a basic drinking water source and almost 30% of the world drinks from a contaminated source. We’re blessed, kind of like this woman at the well, to have drinkable water. So Jesus is really talking to people like us when he says, “I can give you living water.”
What does that mean? It means the most basic thing in life – water – can't really make you alive. It can’t give you life. You need something else to make you alive.
If Jesus says, I can give you living water, what do you think are the odds that you have living money? Or a living marriage? Or a living career? What I mean is, if water the most basic thing in life is not really alive enough to give you life, what do you think is the chance that anything else physical actually gives you life?
This has been a big struggle in my life because even if you think I’m a heady guy and I like ideas, I like physical stuff as much as any other guy. I have found it so hard to get my life and happiness from something other than physical circumstances. I remember one guy who asked, are you happy? I said, eh, I’m working on happiness apart from circumstances. He said, good, that’ll help. Tough, but it’ll help. Just the other day someone asked, is that part of life “life giving”? I said, “eh”. I still have a ways to go.
Let me ask you:
Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No
If so, what is it?
Here is our first takeaway for today if you’re following along. The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life.
Where it is
This is just the beginning. Jesus wants to make an even stronger point. He says, “the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14)
This is another stunning point. Remember in the ancient world people basically denied their feelings. They said, the mind is everything. Control your feelings. Control what comes from within. In the modern world, we say almost the opposite. Just notice how people talk. We say, “I feel that we should do blah blah blah.” That’s probably not even correct. What they mean is, I think. Pretty much everything is about what we feel. Jesus says, I can give you something that will fill you on the inside. It’s not thinking or feeling that is right.
Your entire thinking, your feeling, and even down to the very convictions of your life can be filled with a vitality, a liveliness. I think in my own life there are a few people who have been so filled with life that is just dynamic. It’s flowing over. And it doesn’t come from outside them.
One of my favorites is my grandma …. knee surgery …. moving …. husband has heart failure and surgery …. Life is no longer flowing to them. It’s flowing from them. What he is showing her, and us...
Everyone’s life has to flow out of something. Some people get life from physical things. They know who they are from the stuff they have. They know what groups they belong to from the things they own. They know where they are going from the things they want to have. If you say to yourself, “my goal right now is life to have a cabin by the lake” what is that? That’s a goal that’s filling you with life.
And some people don’t even need physical things. I think I’ve told you about the famous comments from Bruce Becker before. The great tennis star Bruce Becker had everything, but for him it wasn’t about the possessions. It was the drive to be the best. “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. . . . I had all the material possessions I needed.” But even that drive isn’t life giving. It won’t fill you with life. He went on to say,
“It is the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. I had no inner peace.” See, Jesus isn’t saying, you can’t have an identity. He isn’t saying you can’t have a sense of belonging. He isn’t saying you can’t have goals and purposes. He is simply saying those things can’t drive your life. Something else has to drive you and fill you with life.
What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________ Think about that a little. Maybe like Becker, it’s not even really the physical stuff. Maybe it’s the drive to be the best.
Everyone needs something _____________(inside) filling them with life.
Part 3
There is a neat illustration someone else came up with for this source of life.
Imagine a man wandering through a desert with bottles of water on his shoulder. He conserves his water careful until it is all gone and then he begins to get thirsty. That thirst gets deeper and deeper until he sees a pump and runs to it. He lifts the handle and pulls it down but all he hears is the sound of metal on metal. He starts to panic. Then he sees a tin can at the bottom of the pump and in the tin can is a message. “Dear traveller do not despair there is enough water here, just follow the instructions. Lift the handle of the pump, bring it down and when you hear the sound of metal on metal discouraging you here’s what you do. Under the pump in front of you there is buried under the sand a bottle of water. Do not despair. Pick up the bottle of water pour it into the cylinder and start priming the pump. The moisture will get the system to work. A rush of water will start gushing out of the pump. You can drink all of the water you want, fill all your bottles but do not forget to fill up the bottle again and leave it for the next passerby. Warning: you’re going to be tempted, when you see this one bottle of water, to drink it. But you’ll be so thirsty again and so will everyone else who goes by. Empty it out as instructed and you will have all the water you want and so will everybody else going by”….
When you come up against Christ he offers you that drink, that living water to free you from all your sin and give you life that lasts forever. If you take the littler water of your own life and pour it out on yourself you will soon be thirsty again and so will everybody else who comes across your path. But if you draw from the deep well of God, you will never run out of water.
But you have to ask, who filled the water bottle first? Where did that water first come from?
It was because Jesus was thirsty. It was because the divine Son of God, the maker of heaven and earth, had emptied himself of his glory and descended into the world as a vulnerable mortal, subject to becoming weary and thirsty. In other words, she found the living water because Jesus Christ said, “I thirst.” That is not the last time Jesus Christ said, “I thirst,” in the book of John.
On the cross just before he died, he said, “I thirst,” and he meant more than just physical thirst. There Jesus was experiencing the loss of the relationship with his father because he was taking the punishment we deserved for our sins. There he was cut off from the Father, the source of living water. He was experiencing the ultimate, torturous, killing, eternal thirst of which the worst death by dehydration is just a hint. That is both paradoxical and astonishing. It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied.
Live for what gives life. Everyone lives for something. Are you living for what really gives life in the end? Live for what gives life
John 3:1-16
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[e] 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[g]
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Sermon
Do you realize that the founder of one of the great movements of Christianity, one that we’re a part of, was a 37 year old adult convert?
Did you remember that he was highly religious – a monk and a scholar – for about 15 years when he thought heaven was closed to him?
Do you know it after that time that he risked his significant political position?
I’m talking about Martin Luther. Martin wasn’t the only one.
Do you know William Wilberforce? What great thing did William Wilberforce do? William Wilberforce was the most influential figure in the end of the slave trade in England.
He was 27 when the slave trade became an abomination to him. 27 when the whole creation sang in praise on an Easter morning.
Chuck Colson
The “hatchet man” of President Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
He was 40 years old when he professed faith in Jesus.
He never read a Bible growing up. He only went to church for nominal visits. His mother said he should be a pastor for “social reasons”.
If it holds, I think probably the most radical conversion of my lifetime will probably be Kanye West.
Kanye is 5 years older than I am. He has experienced every level of fame, wealth, and significance. He is married to an American icon, Kim Kardashian.
It’s at 42 he says he is a born again Christian and is saved by faith in Jesus Christ.
In today’s lesson, we’ve got a guy just as famous, popular, and out there. And yet he is promised, and I’m pretty sure receives, an awesome, new life.
Discover
You know what is the greatest threat to your new life, a life that makes a difference? It’s not your age. It’s not that you grew up in an irreligious house. It’s not that you grew up in a religious. It’s not your education. It’s not your morality or your immorality.
Jesus invites you today not only to identify the threat to your new life, and the new life.
Part 1 – the threat to new life
If anyone had found the foundation and secret to a great life, you might think it was Nicodemus. He is a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. Verse 1 tells us he was
Male – important in a patriarchal society
Older
Pharisee
Ruling council – one of the 70 most important men in Israel at the time – more elite than our Senate.
He calls Jesus, “Rabbi”. Could have been some sarcasm here or insincerity, but also some incredible generosity. Uneducated teacher d
Jesus tells him, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (verse 3)
Even if you are person who doesn’t have a specific idea in mind when you think of the “new birth”, I think it’s really easy to have a specific idea in mind. It can be easy to think it’s like this:
Really bad people – drug addicts, abusers; people like Chuck Colson, maybe Kanye West
But what about Martin Luther? What about Nicodemus?
The foundation and secret to a great life, a new life cannot be more traditional morality or religiosity. It’s not immorality, but it’s not for morality either. It can’t be. Nicodemus represents everything of traditional morality and religion.
If traditional morality and religion was the secret to a great life, a new life, Jesus would tell Nicodemus, you must be born again.
This is the number one threat to the Christian faith. It is not various kinds of sexuality. It is not stealing. It’s not lieing and all the rotten things people say about one another, although that is a close second. It’s pride. I’m just going to speak for myself here for a second.
The times when I experienced the most conflict in my life, the most struggle, intense self-doubt, where the times when I thought I could do it. I had it covered.
It’s a life about me. Lifting myself up.
Everyone needs the new life. The greatest threat to the new life is thinking I don’t need it.
Part 2 – the new life
So what is the foundation and secret of a new life?
Jesus says “they are born of water and the Spirit” (verse 5). Supernatural cleansing as well as a supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit. I cannot do this on my own.
He is flashing back to Genesis where he says darkness is over the surface of the deep and the spirit hovered. We’ve got to start creation over again. We need a new creation to happen to you.
I realize that a lot of us perhaps, most of us, were baptized as children. For many of us then, it’s a far off, a distant experience.
Basically every adult who stays around the Christian life has a time and probably multiple times when they can say, that baptism that happened long ago, it’s real. I have been born again. For me, 2 times 1) is God real; 2) do I need everyone else’s approval.
I’m going to stop trying to call the shots in my life
Jesus stops being a facet of your life and a component of your life and he starts being your life.
That’s two things.
First, Jesus says, “be born again”. No child births themselves. It’s mom’s anguish. It’s mom’s burden. She does it for you.
You cannot make yourself
Salvation is God’s labor. It’s God’s bleeding.
You can’t cause it control it
But you absolutely can benefit from it.
You know it is there. There is evidence, very clearly. Jesus says, “the wind blows where it pleases”. Do you think really the new life of God could blow in your life without messing up your hair?
You’ve got let the new life happen to you. The first thing is to just “endure” or “pass through”
The process that brings new life doesn’t just say, “I’m sorry for the bad stuff I’ve done” it also says, “I’m sorry for the good things I've done that I thought count for something.” They don’t, they don’t count at all. To see that it’s his works that have saved us.
Second, Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up”
But what happened in the desert—you find it back in the book of Numbers 21:4-9—is that the children of God had sinned. Israel had sinned. And God sent a plague of snakes, venomous snakes, and they bit them and they were dying. And in a sense, the venom represented sin in their life. Basically, the venom represented in their bodies what was killing them in their soul. And what Moses was told to do was to take a bronze serpent—an image of the thing that was killing them—put it up on a pole (you know, “as Moses lifted up the serpent”), and all they had to do was look… because some of them were so sick, and so immobilized, they couldn’t possibly go over to it and rub it or touch it or any of that. All you have to do is look. I should even just say, all you can do is look.
The second thing is to look.
You can have a new life.
Can you pass through the experience, whatever God in his Word might ask you go to through?
Can you look at someone taking your sin?
Conclusion
I ask you sometimes, “What is God up to in your life and the lives of the people around you?” Some of you look really uncomfortable by that question. Jesus says “no one can see the kingdom of God”.
You can see God’s kingdom. Not directly. You see the effects of the wind. How can the power of the almighty God blow in your life and you
Is it reasonable that the power of the almighty God would blow around in your life and it wouldn’t blow around your hair a little bit? your money, your relationships, your time, your priorities.
Bottom line: Get a (new) life.
2 Peter 1:16-21
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[a] 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.
19 We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Sermon
Even as a pastor... I don’t know, maybe especially as a pastor, I’m constantly finding areas in my life where the Bible doesn’t have very consistent influence.
For example, this last week I was talking with a friend. He was telling me about this project he did for a church one time. The pastor assured him as he started this project, and it was a pretty big project, that when he was done the whole city would be able to make use of his work. He wasn’t just doing it for the church. He was doing it for the town.
As he finished up the project, the church leadership came to him. They said, nope, we aren’t going to let other people use this. This is just for our church.
I thought, man, that’s too bad. Isn’t that sad? I’m sure the pastor didn’t mean to lie or deceive. For whatever reason, he just wasn’t able to act with integrity and honesty.
When I worked on this lesson from 2 Peter, I thought, woah, what about me? How consistently does the Bible influence my life? I thought about this time I told people, sure we can do this project for the city. We can include others. And it didn’t work out. I think about the times when I’ve said, yes, the church is about forgiveness, but then I refused to forgive this young lady who sinned against me. I think about my own failure to let my whole life be a life of repentance even as I’m asking other people to repent, and then someone says to me, “where is your empathy?”
This is pervasive.
If you think the Bible consistently influences your life, I want you just to really think about it for a minute. I’m pretty sure that we are all really selective about the times we let someone else influence and the times we listen to ourselves. I’ve got an acquaintance, not one of you, not near here.
He is really aware of his forgiveness. When the Bible speaks about his forgiveness, he takes that seriously. Takes that to heart.
But when the Bible says, “be subject to the elders and clothe yourselves with humility” he says, no way. He admits that most of the time he makes people earn his respect before he gives them respect.
What’s going on here, and I'm going to summarize what author Tim Keller says. He says basically “The root idea of modernity is the overturning of all authority outside of the self. In the 18th century European ‘Enlightenment’ thinkers insisted that the modern person must question all tradition, revelation, and external authority by subjecting them to the supreme court of his or her own reason and intuition. We are our own moral authority.”
What he is saying is, in the modern age, we’ve set up life so that we get to pick and choose when we listen to any external authority or influence and when we don’t. We’ve set it up so that when it is convenient for us to say, Oh sure, the Bible is the number 1 influence on my life, we’ll say it. But when it isn’t convenient, we’ll say, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” We can do both. No one questions it. That’s just the way it is.
Don’t think this happens, or happens to us? Just watch what happens in Bible study where there is a formal authority figure. If we’re sitting around with friends or relatives at a birthday party and we start arguing about some moral issue, let’s say we’re talking about marijuana. Some people will get really quiet because they aren’t talkers and don’t have anything to say. Some people will get really animated. In that environment, there is no universal authority or influence. Everyone can basically say whatever they want. In a Bible study with a formal authority figure, it’s very different.
This has been a tough thing to figure out as a pastor. Just this last week, I asked one of those bad teacher questions, the factual kind that only has one answer. I won’t tell you what it was. Doesn’t matter.
There were some good answers, some not so great.
There was at least one time that I said a pretty short “no”. You should have seen the room deflate. If I say a flat “no” to people, you can just watch the whole room deflate. It’s like you pushed a pin into a balloon. Why is that? It’s because we all say, I’m in charge of my self. I get to decide what is right and wrong for me. Who are you to tell me? If someone says, you’re wrong, you’ve got to defend yourself or you’re crushed.
You lose all your identity. Your sense of self. Your sense of worth. Now it doesn’t have to be that way.
I remember one Bible study with a group of people who saw the world much more black and white. They weren’t really shaped by the rejection of external authority. They were a group of people who said, I submit my whole life to the Bible. I’m going to let God and his Word speak to me. And no matter how wrong it is or how bad it makes me feel, I’m going to get at it. It was this Bible study with about 10 people. And it was intense. It was probably one of the deepest biblical discussions I’ve ever had.
There was nothing about “you make me feel like less of a person”. Or “you’re taking away my authority over my life.” It was completely, “I will let God influence every step of my life. I will let the Bible influence everything I do.”
Those people weren’t perfect. I’m not saying they were. But it was a really cool experience for me. Peter invites you and I to the same thing as we get ready for Lent. What consistently influences your life? Is it you? Or could it be something else?
Discover
What could consistently influence your life?
Part 1 External evidence for the Bible
The first thing Peter tells us to help the Bible properly influence our lives is he says, “We did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
He is getting at what we would call the historical nature of the text, something we even might call the genre of the Bible. This is the external evidence for the Bible There were some people who called the information about Jesus and the Old Testament “cleverly devised stories”. That grew out of the complicated religious time they were living in.
What we know is that culturally, there were a lot of religions at Peter’s time. On top of that different ethnicities had different expectations. Jews demanded signs. People had to do miracles to demonstrate their religion.
One example is a book we call the “Greek Magical Papyri”. There is this huge book, you can buy it if you are interested, with hundreds of incantations and stories of miracles. There were stories about Jesus going around too. One of my favorites is a story about Jesus and birds. The story goes that Jesus was playing by the seaside on the Sabbath. He made 12 clay birds. The other kids reported that he was working on the Sabbath. As his dad came to yell at him, he breathed on them and they flew away. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas)
People were really good at telling stories to prove their religion. In one sense, there is nothing wrong with that. If you come to me and say, “hey Nathaniel, why do you accept the Bible? Why should I accept the Bible?” I’m going to offer you some different evidence. Some of what I’m going to say will be stories.
I’m going to tell you that maybe you heard the Bible we have is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and along the way, the meaning has changed and gotten all messed up. I’m going to say, that isn’t true. For more than the last 500 years, every translation – that's what this English Bible is – goes back to the earliest Hebrew and Greek texts we have. They go back to the earliest. And yes, there are some problems with the earliest manuscripts. Just like if you look at the meetings notes from the meetings of this church – the council and the voters – you are going to find some typos, some copy paste errors, some word order problems or other things, you will find the same in the Bible. In the end, out of all those problems, only about 40 make any difference in the meaning. That’s it. 40. They weren’t in the original editions. Maybe someday we’ll figure them out. There are definitely a lot fewer than 500 years ago. 500 years ago we maybe had 100. That isn’t really a story. That’s just a piece of external evidence. We’ve got consistent manuscripts. One reason for the Bible to influence your life is consistent manuscripts.
I’m also going to tell you a story. I’m going to say, one time there was a prominent Christian pastor and scholar on a panel with a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam. These are the three great religions of the world. They agree they have a lot in common. They all accept one god. They rely on texts. They all said, there is one big difference. The big difference is Jesus. Who is he, what did he do. The Bible has unique content – Jesus. One reason for the Bible to influence your life is unique content – Jesus.
Everyone uses stories to support their religion. That just is. Peter says, at some point, you need more. You have to look at the whole Bible differently. Peter says "we did not follow cleverly devised stories”. When he says, “follow”, you think, how do you follow a message?
At some point you’ve got to stop saying, I’m going to prove this piece of it or that piece of it. You and I can discuss pieces of evidence and I can tell you stories all day long. If you say to me, pastor, I really have a problem with this whole judging sin thing. I don’t want to tell people they are sinners. I will say to you, Imagine you go to the doctor. The doctor finds you have cancer. Don’t you want to the doctor to tell you? Shouldn’t the doctor say you have cancer? I’ll tell you that story.
We can go on. At some point, we have to realize what Peter says, “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Who is we? He is talking about the people who actually literally saw Jesus himself, saw what he did, heard what he said. He gives one example: the transfiguration, which, is one of the more supernatural events in the history of Jesus’ life. He’s talking about those people who actually saw Jesus and therefore, they are the sources of what he said and did. They’re the New Testament authors.
He is saying, the Bible is an incredibly unique religious book. The Bible is the only religious book that gives you first-hand, eyewitness testimony over almost 2,000 years that says, “this happened for you”. Every other religion is going to say to you, let this text personally influence you and change your life. Let it rule over you. Islam says submit. Buddhism says suffer.
They all say, if you do that enough, suffer enough, submit enough, eventually God will save you. The Bible says, “look, hear this, listen to this. Jesus saved you. It’s done. End of story.” The Bible is an actual historical account of our salvation.
When you get that, your skepticism and questing starts to melt away. As a pastor, I’ve been baffled by two things. Everyone, even long time Christians, has questions. At the same time, the questions of Christians amplify grace. Christians can stand around and say, wow, isn’t that suffering terrible. It’s awful. What a tragedy. And they say, thank God protects us from that tragedy.
I don’t think I’ve heard of a better example of this than a Frenchman named Emile Cailliet. He grew up an agnostic right before WW1. He graduated from college without having seen a Bible. He served in WW1. He was overwhelmed by the human condition, the awfulness of humanity.
He got shot. He lay there in the hospital recovering. He longed for, in his words, “a book that understand him.” He was a thinker, a philosopher. He wanted something that helped him make sense of his life. See who he was and who he could be.
He didn’t know of any such book, so he started writing down passages from useful books that he read. He read a quote, then would write it down for later. He was really excited to read it all some day. He expected it would lead him through fear and other stages and finally to supreme joy.
One day he sits down to read. Disappointment washes over him with every page. He recognizes all the passages and he remembers when he wrote them, but they no longer apply to him. It’s not a book that understands him. It’s a book that tells his story. Then he realized, “the whole thing would not work, simply because it was of my own making.”
His wife walks by. She just met a pastor. He gave her a French Bible. She gives it to him. He reads it. He is no longer filled with all these little questions of, “how many angels were at the resurrection” or “why do I have to tell people they are sinning.” He realizes this is the only possible book that could tell him a story “not of his own making”.
That’s exactly what happened. He says, “As I looked through the Gospels, the One who spoke and acted in them became alive to me... This is the book that would understand me.”
What happened? As he got past all of those questions and the Bible stood all by itself before him, Peter’s words were true for him. Peter said, “prophets spoke from God.” Suddenly this whole thing came together saying, “here is where you’re coming from, here is who you are, and here is where you could go.” Wouldn’t you like to go there?
Don’t you see? If you understand that no prophecy came from the prophets own thoughts, but men spoke from God, suddenly there was one consistent influence to make sense of his life.
Don’t you wonder what it could be like if you could say, this is the book that understands me? If it is was the one consistent influence of your life?
I know a lot of us read our Bibles. A lot of us don’t. Do you think we can read it each of the 40 days of Lent. If you’re not a reader, there are ways to listen. You can even watch. To encourage you, let me give you this. If you want, each one of you can ask a question or make a comment to me this week. I won’t think of it as boasting or anything. Just say, I was reading this and I had this question.
What could it be if the Bible was the consistent influence over your life?