John 11:45-57
Viewing entries tagged
Lent
John 13:1-17
Listening guide
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (verse 2)
(picture of foot washing)
“Now that I … have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (verse 14)
“Teacher and Lord, that is what I am” (verse 13)
These are ____________ to ______________.
(communion hands)
Sermon
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. I agree with people that it was a magnificent way for him to serve them. I’ve never been particularly interested in washing your feet. Or the feet of anyone else, for that matter.
That’s why we don’t do it. Not because I don’t want to serve you and serving the people of Otsego Plainwell. I do. I just don’t see the value in it. We don’t wash our feet when we come home. The only time I wash my feet is in the shower.
I want to serve people in appropriate ways. I’m always trying to figure out what that looks like based on people’s needs, the Bible, and the way people respond to me. In my mind, as a pastor, serving people in appropriate ways looks like:
· Listening and encouraging as we candidly discuss the sorrow and joy when a loved one dies
· Providing guidance for following Jesus at home, at work, or as a citizen
· Being a listener, a sounding board, and a little bit of an advisor when someone needs to discover their identity
· Giving hungry people food
· Installing ramps for people who need help getting in and out of their house
· Assuring guilty people they are forgiven
And the list would go on a lot from there. You can imagine that I am frustrated a lot because not only do people skip this kind of relationship with me. Often they even reject me. They refuse to allow me to serve them.
What I mean is, there certainly are plenty of times when I tell someone,
· “Let me know if I can do anything” and they ignore me.
· I say, “let’s get together and talk about this” and they never accept my invitation.
· Or I tell them “I’d love to go through this with you” and they never ask for advice
And the frustration is not just that, but often
· I express concern and people say get out of my life.
· I send positive encouragements like “hey, I’m cheering for you today” or “God bless you” and things like that, and they say, “what do you want”
What I want is to serve people appropriately. And I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not alone in wanting to make a difference in people’s lives.
That’s a very common theme. Many people want to make a difference.
Adventure
And that’s what Jesus wants us to get today.
Maundy Thursday is a big day. Jesus says, let’s take on some of your biggest problems – sin, death, and the devil. Here is why we’re doing this. Not so you can “make a difference in the world” as good as that might be. But to actually help people.
Let’s get some hands that help.
Development
This is the thing that Jesus got more than anyone else, I think. This event we call the foot washing … We have some problems timing it. I think a good time is right before the Last Supper. Jesus was quite busy.
He didn’t concern himself with the supper preparations. He wasn’t distracted by all the conflicts with the Jewish leaders. And he didn’t lash out at the man who was going to betray him. He focused on the people right in front of them. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (verse 2) I know that this gets mentioned constantly. I find this so impressive.
There is this story from Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov that illustrates it well. A wealthy woman asks an elderly monk how she can know if God exists. He tells her no explanation or argument can achieve this, only the practice of “active love”. She confesses that sometimes she dreams of a life of loving service to others. At such times she thinks perhaps she will become a nun, live in poverty, and serve the poor as humbly as possible. But then she imagines how ungrateful some of the people she would serve are likely to be. She imagines they would complain that the soup wasn’t hot enough or that the bread wasn’t fresh enough or that the bed was too hard. She admits that she couldn’t bear that much ingratitude. Her dreams about serving others vanish and she finds herself wondering if there is a God. The wise monk responds, “Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” (Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, pg 165)
He could have said, one of them is betraying me. He could have thought one of them will deny me. They’ll all run away. Jesus was not distracted from serving the real people right in front of him.
(picture of foot washing)
He loved them up to the end of his life. He accomplished his goal of loving them. And now he was loving them to the purpose of their lives.
He got down on his hands and knees. He went around the table. He washed their feet. I think a lot of us know this. Washing someone’s feet at that time was something only slaves did. It was illegal for Jews and even slaves to do it. Yet Jesus Christ took the position of a slave below slaves and he turned to his friends and he said, this is what I’m all about. This is even what life’s all about.
Jesus wraps it up; “Now that I … have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (verse 14)
I’m sure a lot of us are saying, is that what life is all about for all of us? Even for me? That’s a fair question.
Someone might say, I want to take care of my family. I don’t want to worry about serving. Someone else might say, I just want to do my job. I don’t want to worry about serving.
So to say, is all of life really about serving, that’s a good question. We don’t have time to answer it all.
Let me give you just one way to frame this. One way to think about this.
Let’s say you find a machine. It’s 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?”
Let’s say a friend asked, “what’s it for?” And you said, “I don’t know. I wonder the same thing.” Then you would all say, “what good is it?”
What would you do? You'd have to ask the manufacturer. You’d have to ask the engineer. No matter what it does, how much it beeps and boops and everything else, you still have to ask the manufacturer. You have to do that, even if no one else wants the machine or knows what to do with it. That’s the only thing you can do.
What we've got here, we’ve got the manufacturer speaking. Jesus says, “you also should wash one another’s feet.” If you want to know what you’re supposed to do with life, this is it.
See friends, I can’t promise you that your friends, family, neighbors, and citizens will always know what you’re doing. They might look at you and say, that is the craziest machine I’ve ever seen. That guy beeps and boops and bleeps and doesn’t seem to do anything.
But they haven’t asked the manufacturer. You’ve been made by him!
What I think is so incredibly powerful about this entire event … Here we have Jesus. He is God so great that the highest heavens cannot contain him. He is the God to whom the entire universe is nothing more than a piece of belly button lint. He is the great “Teacher and Lord, that is what I am” (verse 13) He doesn’t belong on the floor.
No, as this story takes place, where he belongs is across town in the temple. Jesus should be in the temple that he cleared out a day or two ago. He should be washing his own hands in the great pool that sits next to the altar. Behind a thin curtain, he should be putting on, not a dirty towel, but the fine and ornate garments of the priest. He shouldn’t hear his disciples saying, don’t do that Jesus. He should hear all the Jewish people cheering him on and encouraging him. And he should be washing not feet, but the holy altar of God with the lamb that was sacrificed. That’s what he should be doing.
What’s going on here? The answer is that he is giving up that spot so that he can remake you.
He is the Lord who has become the slave to treat you as his lord. He is the king who has become the servant to treat you as his king. He is the priest who has become a pauper so you become a priest.
The maker of the universe has placed his hands on you in baptism, his Word, and in his Supper so that he make you into a marvelous machine for his purposes.
That way every time someone doesn’t want you and you wonder, what am I doing? Or someone ignores you and you say, what am I hear for. They reject you, someone ignores you, you can say, I’ve been made by his hands.
And you can go on and say, my hands to you are his hands. I’m offering his hands. These are hands to help.
Action
The Lord’s Supper can be the greatest place where we get hands to help. In 2015 there was a young lady who decided to attend a church service.
At the end of the sermon and prayers, the pastor announced they were going to have communion.
(picture of hands)
Instantly, the young lady panicked. She said, “my palms got sweaty and my brow furrowed as I thought to myself, what do I do?”
She had just come back to church after 14 years of pushing all religious beliefs behind her. She was filled with hurt.
Then the bread and wine came by. She had all kinds of questions, "why do I deserve this? Why should I be good enough to take part in this ceremony? I was a cast off, a sinner, and someone who abandoned religion long ago. …. I’m not good enough.” She said, I passed the bowl of bread and just looked at the seat in front of me. I knew I didn’t belong here in this moment. This was for people of faith, not for people who might want to look for faith and Jesus just because something is missing in his life, so he decides to go to Church once in a while and figure out what he wants to be and where he wants to go.
The girl was empty. She was a nobody and a nothing.
Then she felt something touch her hand. Her friend asked her for her hand and she did something I couldn’t believe, or would have ever expected. She split her bread in half, soaked it in wine… and then gently placed it in her hand. She said, “My mind tuned out everything around me, and I still, to this second as I write this, can’t recall what I thought."
That's the moment where God makes us. Hands that help remake us, empty, broken, destructive, sinful, hurting people and give us new hands.
We’re going to have communion in just a moment. Let’s prepare for that. May the hands that touch us in this sacred act be hands that help.
www.thisisvillagechurch.com/sermons-media/blog/communion-right-or-privilege/
Written February 11, 2015
Hebrews 5:7-10
7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Listening guide
Discussion questions
(no discussion questions for this time, please join our study group looking at vocation)
Sermon
Hebrews 5:7-10
Peace Lutheran Church
Nathaniel Timmermann
3/21/2021
Sermon Number
Lent 5
The perfect partner
About halfway through the pandemic, a young man I worked with on some projects switched jobs. I asked him why he switched. He mentioned a couple of ways he could use his skills at the new job. The main reason he said, he said that he wanted to work with people.
He was tired of working alone. He found it hard to stay motivated working alone. The organization he had been part of was changing rapidly. He worked alone a lot. The new job would be a very different situation. He would be part of a team again.
I’m not breaking any confidence saying that. This was public.
It was like a mirror though for me.
I never realized how alone I would feel. I assumed as an adult and a pastor, I would always be with people. I would always be connected with people. But I feel so alone!
Especially when things aren’t going well. Especially when stuff isn’t coming together. Especially when things are going badly. And I feel the most alone when I have conflict with people close to me. I feel alone as I experience the difficulties and the sadness and the pain of life.
So I was struck one time reading some words by Victor Frankl. Frankl was a Jewish man during WW2. He was captured by the Nazis. He lived in the concentration camps. He survived. He eventually became one of the fathers of a kind of mental therapy in the 20th century.
One of the insights he gained from the camp...
Most prisoners died on the inside from emptiness, desolation, and spiritual poverty. The worst part of the camp was not the physical part but the emptiness and desolation.
Some prisoners got through it by a more intense inner life. For example, this is what he had one 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. …. 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. (Frankl, Viktor E.. Man's Search for Meaning (pp. 39-41). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.)”
Adventure
In Frankl’s words, what got him through the pain and the suffering? “She was there”.
Frankl points us to this truth. The writer to the Hebrews says that whatever your wife could do for you is only a start.
This is a great relevant question: What gets us through the sufferings of life?
For most people the single biggest challenge to belief in God is this. The problems, the sufferings, the evil in the world.
It’s not the amount of evidence for God. It’s not the fact that belief is unpopular.
This is part of the answer.
Development
God starts like this: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect”. I want you to notice this Jesus.
This isn’t Jesus who challenged Nicodemus.
This isn’t Jesus cleaning out the temple.
This is not a powerful Jesus. What kind of a Jesus is this? [“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect”]
· This Jesus cries out.
· This Jesus cries tears.
· This Jesus submits.
This Jesus suffers.
There are basically two reasons given for suffering in life. The most common reason given for suffering is the circumstances of our life. These words hint at the circumstances when they say, “save him from death”. They’re suggesting that Jesus suffered in connection to his death. We do the same thing. If I walk up on a group of people all wearing muted clothing and some are crying, what kind of an event do you think I’m at? A funeral. External circumstances can cause suffering. There is another.
The other reason for suffering is personality and character. There is this hint here as well. Jesus had “fervent” cries and tears. This is his personality and character coming through. He suffered because he was passionate. Well because he was fervent. We notice the same thing. We say little things like “don’t worry, be happy”. If someone’s pet dies, someone might “it’s just a dog”.
But if ever there was a person who didn’t suffer because of his personality and characteristics, and didn’t suffer because of circumstances, it was Jesus.
I don’t care whether you believe in Jesus or not, everyone agrees he was a good guy. He isn’t suffering because of his personality and character. He had no character problems. And he was completely innocent. There was no reason for his external circumstances to cause him soul pain. He should have been angry. He should have been furious. But he shouldn’t have cried!
What I’m trying to show you is this. Personality plays into suffering. Circumstances play into suffering. But even good people, the best person suffered. There is one little word here you need to see.
The word “save”. Jesus cried out to the one who could “save” him. Jesus had to be saved? The best human being who ever lived had to be saved? As if death held something over him? As if there was some power in his life that forced him and controlled him and caused him to suffer and to die?
Yes.
Suffering is not just circumstances. It’s not just personality. Suffering is the expression sin.
I know most of you are going to agree with me. But some of you are saying, I don’t know. You’re trying to tell me there is some supernatural force out there or maybe in here (point at chest) that is crushing me and destroying me and hurting my life. And I don’t know about that, because in my experience most people are pretty good and the systems aren’t perfect but they aren’t bad.
So I just don’t know if I can buy that suffering is the expression of some supernatural force called sin.
You certainly aren’t the first person to say that. For example, I’ve told you part of the story of Langdon Gilkey before.
Gilkey was this guy who ended up in a Japanese internment camp during WW2. He is so interesting because he believed that people were basically good until he was placed in this camp about as big as our soccer field for a couple of years with 2,000 other people (https://timfam-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/nathaniel_timfam_us/EfB1HeDdSqpEhrH7ynp4OfkB8PeNktzl2vtWzSd2tGthAA?e=WgURI1)
Gilkey said, “Nothing indicates so clearly the fixed belief in the innate goodness of humans as does this confidence that when the chips are down, and we are revealed for what we ‘really are,’ we will all be good to each other. Nothing could be so totally in error.”
I understand that we all want to be pretty good. I understand that we all want to think everyone else is pretty good. And that suffering isn’t fair or right.
But the goodest person of them all (and yes, I made up that word) suffered the very worst stuff.
All so that you could say, without a shadow of doubt, that as much as suffering is with you, the God of the universe is with you just as much and more.
It says Jesus was “made perfect” by what he suffered. That means many things. It doesn’t mean there was something wrong with Jesus. He means the perfect place for Jesus in life was representing you, in all of your weakness, to God. What does that look like?
Like many people, I have offended individuals along the way in life. I did or said the wrong thing. One time I offended a gentleman. We weren't friends, just acquaintances. I said something he didn't appreciate. To this day, I'm still not sure exactly what I did or said. I tried talking to him and even visiting him at his home. But it didn't work. So eventually I asked an older gentleman I know to help me out. I asked him to be my advocate. He wasn't really good friends with the man, but they were much better friends than this other man and I. I asked him to help me offer a sincere apology to this other man.
So that is what we did. We sat around a table. I apologized. We talked through the situation. This other man assured the man I had offended that my repentance was real. He accepted my apology and we went on in life.
He put his reputation and years of hard work on the line so that I could experience forgiveness and reconciliation.
I didn’t even really think about it at the time, but he endured the embarrassment of representing me. He experienced the shame of having to assure someone else that I was genuinely sorry. He endured the guilt connected with my name. He dealt with an expression of sin for me.
That is what Jesus did.
There is no expression of sin in our lives, no suffering, that Jesus is not willing to take on himself so that God would know that you are sorry for your sins and you want nothing more than to feel his love, his acceptance, and his pleasure.
This is the main reason that Christians insist God can be trusted. “the main reason that Christians insist that God can be trusted in the midst of suffering is that . . . God himself has firsthand experience of suffering.”233 (Keller, Timothy. Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (p. 147). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition)
Nothing can change your suffering more than the tears of the one who has cried for us. He is the perfect partner for our pain and problems.
Action
You’ve got a perfect partner for the pain and problems. “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
Jesus is a priest. What does that mean?
A priest is someone with us who gets what we need from our god. He is more than an acquaintance, more than a friend. He is a partner.
You don’t wait for your best friend or your spouse to ask you questions about all the problems and the worries and the mistakes and the failures and the guilt of your life.
You don’t wait for your best friend to say, how did you mess up today? You don’t wait for your spouse to say, what made you ashamed today? You don’t wait for your best friend to say, what hurt you today?
No, you say, I’m feeling ashamed because I ___ . You say, I’m feeling guilty because I did ____________________. I was hurt today when this happened. I was ashamed because this happened. You don’t make your partner ask. You just tell him or her.
Jesus has got to be more than just an acquaintance or even a friend. He has to be your partner.
Is he your partner? Don’t make him wait. Tell him every problem. Tell him you love him before he asks. Praise him without prompting.
He is the perfect partner for the pain and problems.
Romans 8:1-13
Sermon
I think you know that in January we took a little vacation to visit our friends in Florida. And for a whole week, that family of 6 was invaded by a family of 7.
I bet you can imagine, we made a mess of their life!
Meal planning, there were lines for the bathrooms. And there is lots of good. Lots of friends, half as much cooking. Double dates.
That only begins to make a mess of your life. A week. Some of you have taken a loved one in for months. Years at a time. That really messes up your life. All of your time, your schedule. Even all the way down to your desires and preferences. Everything changes.
Now if that is true if someone moves into your house for a little bit, what does that mean if someone moved inside you - permanently? Because that is what Paul says in these verses this morning. He says, “if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you” (verse 9).
Adventure
For the last few weeks, God has put some big stuff before us.
First, he really forced the question, who or what is your God? He wants to be your God and provide you with your identity, belonging, purpose, forgiveness, and approval – all the things you need.
Second, he has said, I can be a pivot place in your life.
Today he wants to say, look you realize if God moves into your life that is going to make a mess of some things, that is going to mess stuff up, but that is also the only way you are really going to come alive!
It’s a little uncomfortable to accommodate somebody like this, but at the same time is more uncomfortable to not accommodate the company. You’re going to have to lay down some of the things you want and do. When you’re done you will be so much better, you will have more than you imagined.
Come alive
We’re going to be in Romans 8 today, starting with verse 5.
Content
One of the things I think is neat and is a sign of hope is that our younger people are much more willing to admit that we are spiritual beings and there is a spiritual side of life. In my experience, you’re much more willing to deal with what Paul addresses here.
Paul says, “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” Paul is talking about body and soul. Then he says there is a third thing, a higher thing, called the Spirit. This is what I’m saying young people are good at doing.
Young people are known for being spiritual but not religious.
You’re the ones, more than anyone, who will say this event, this gathering is just so dull and lifeless.
Let me give you one funny example that shows, a little bit, how much things might have changed. 1977. Famous song from the BeeGees. Stayin Alive. Lyrics go
“Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'
And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive
“Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me
Somebody help me, yeah
Fun song. I enjoy it. The song asks for help. “Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me.” What strikes me is the spirit the song wants. What is it? “Stayin alive, stayin live”. The writer isn’t saying, I’m so down on my luck and I’ve been kicked around and beat up, and now I feel dead. He says, I’m down and I’ve been kicked around and the city is breaking and everyone is shaking but I’m staying alive!
Fastforward 40 years. One of the main songs of the hit movie “The Greatest Showman” is titled “Come Alive.” It starts with almost the exact same context. Life has been really hard. You’re down on your luck. You’ve been beat up. So what to do? “Come alive, come alive, go and light your light let it burn so bright.”
Do you hear the difference? One said, my circumstances stink but I’m fine. I’m going ahead. The other said, no my circumstances stink and you know what, so does my spirit. It’s dead. I need to come alive.
You will say something that 40, 50, maybe 100 years ago no one would have ever said. Paul says, “the mind governed by the flesh is death”. And there are plenty of people who would say, Amen, Paul. Right on.
Who here needs to say, I’m crushed. Who here needs to say I’m broken down. Who here needs to say, I’m lifeless. I’m spent. My spirit is empty! I need a new spirit.
Friends, your mind is dead inside. If you feel dead on the inside, I want you to just sit back for a moment and take a big breath and say, I feel dead inside.
And if you don’t, first good. I’m glad for you. I want you to notice something here. Be careful. Paul says, people who “live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires.” He contrasts that with living according to the Spirit because you have your mind set on what the Spirit desires. Do you see what he does there?
He says, I can tell what you really love in life by what you life for. What you live for shows me what you love. Living a good and right life not even as easy as saying, I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Lord. New spiritual life is not some trite simplistic thing.
Maybe I can put it this way. At the end of the section, he adds this. He says, “people who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God”(verse 14). And he says, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” (verse 9)
He doesn’t say, “children of God are led by the Spirit of God”. And he doesn’t say, “people who belong to Christ have the Spirit of Christ.” He says the opposite.
This is NOT, this is not undoing faith in Jesus. People who believe in Jesus are saved. Boom. End of story.
He is saying, look. Faith is more than your words. You can’t just claim “Jesus is my Savior and Lord”. You got to have the Holy Spirit in your mind. In your self. In your gut.
Let me come back to that original picture. Imagine that you’ve got someone coming over to your house. They knock on the door. You got to let them in.
And you have to actually let them rearrange your house. But here is the problem.
You let them in because you know should and it’s the right thing to do, but you don’t really want them there. You’re ashamed of your house. It’s kind of messy, it needs updating, and lots of things need repair. You don’t like your couch because it is the same one that you had in college and you took it from your parent’s basement. You don’t really have any groceries or food in the house. No one is really comfortable in your house.
Whether you don’t believe in Jesus or you claim Jesus but you are really focused on the flesh, you are dead inside. This is worse than we might have thought or imagined.
This is far worse than we imagine because we’d love to hope that we don’t have to let anyone inside. We’d love to imagine there is no mess or at the worse we can clean it ourselves. Are you tracking with me? We’re talking about all the stuff that is going on in here. Your disappointments. Your anger. Your bitterness. Your hostility. All that stuff.
But God says is maybe the problem is worse than you realize because you think you’ve actually dealt with the stuff but if there is no one in there rearranging things, then woah.
And so what God promises to you here is if you let the Spirit inside, you will come alive. The first thing is that you have to know that when you receive God, you get the Spirit. No matter. They are a package deal.
If you look at verses 9 and 10, you see there it says, “you … are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you...” Isn’t that cool? It doesn’t matter if you get God, you get Christ, or you just get the Spirit, it’s all the same thing. The Spirit is God. He is the third person of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let’s start to unpack what this means.
In just a moment, Paul is going to use this famous line that says we cry out, “Abba, Father” because we are children of God. Not just any children but little children. He says that is the relationship we have with the Father. And in fact, you can’t have that kind of child – Father relationship with the God of heaven and earth if you don’t have the Spirit. If you want a father, you get the Spirit.
Similarly he says, we’re heirs. When Jesus died, everything that belonged to Jesus, was given to you. The Holy Spirit takes all of the riches of heaven and earth, all of the rewards, and he transfers them to you. If you want to be an heir, then you got to take the Spirit.
Come back to my imagine of God coming into the house. God says to you, I don’t care how ugly your house is. I don’t care how messy your house. I don’t care how little food your house has.
And I’m talking about your spirit now, so let me be more specific.
Some of you really want people to approve of you. I get that. I’ve been there. That can make an ugly mess of your life.
You’re afraid of people not accepting or approving of you
You’re angry when people don’t approve of you
You’re desperate for people to like you
If you feel like this, you know it can make a mess. One of the things I’ve seen make the biggest difference is to ask, what is God up to here?
It stops assuming that I’m right and need to be proven so and instead assumes that God is the one who is right and he will do what is good. More often than not that is exactly what he does. He works what is right and I, others get life.
The Spirit gives life because of righteousness. (verse 10)
When you can say God come on into my life. Whatever you work will be good. Yes, you’re going to get messed up. You’ll get changed. You’ll finally come alive.
Action
Breathing the musty dirty air of this life will never give you life. You need to bring some new air inside. Balloons.
My family has this running practice that we constantly tell each other that we can stay with one another for as long as we want, but we don’t really do it. None of us like it. When my parents come, you notice, they stay for one night.
We don’t want to move into someone else’s life and we don’t want someone else to move into our lives.
That won’t work. You need a new spirit inside to come alive.
Relish who you are as a child of the eternal Father. Relish who you are as an heir of an eternal inheritance. Relish who you are as the home of the Holy Spirit.
Let the Spirit inside and come alive!
Dear Jesus, The biggest problem in life is not that we don’t know enough or that the circumstances are insurmountable. The biggest problem is that we forget what you say. We fail to believe. We fail to have your life giving truths burned deep into us. Renew us. Make us come alive, to the glory of your name. Amen.
Genesis 28:10-17
Listening guide
Discussion questions
Sermon
In 2006, I was riding the train from Beijing XiZhan to Wuhan. I was reading Mark Paustian’s Prepared to Answer.
In 2009, I was standing in the northeast corner of Messiah Lutheran Church in Green Bay, WI. I wasn’t far from the baptismal font.
In 2012, I was riding in the car from Denver airport to Fort Collins, CO.
In 2017, I was getting installed here at Peace. I was sitting right in that chair.
I remember pretty clearly all the physical locations where I have had significant conversion experiences in my life. Each one of those has been a huge shift, a huge turn. And after each one of them, I’ve received some incredible blessings in my life.
I’ve marked each of those locations, at least in my mind.
Adventure
That’s what God wants for you and me today.
One of the words used all the time in 2020, and I’m so tired of it, was pivot. But there is truth to it. There are so many times when what we’re doing just doesn’t cut it. Where we are heading in the wrong direction – even if we think it is the right direction – and if someone doesn’t intervene, we won’t be okay.
Let’s give you a pivot
Development
In Genesis 28. We’re a couple hundred years after last week’s lesson. Isaac’s son, Abraham’s grandson. Jacob. The story starts like this...
11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.
Jacob is in polite exile. He has cheated his brother out of both the birthright and the blessing. He deceived his father. His dad has actually sent him away to work and get married.
I think that Jacob is quite relatable. He has a lot of the same hurts and frustrations that many of us feel. He felt a lack of fatherly affection. He had a significant sibling rivalry. At this point, he has no money. He basically has no home – he is not welcome back in his home. He has no meaningful claim to a family. What I mean is, he can claim to be Isaac’s son, but that doesn’t bring him a sense of belonging.
And honestly, I don’t think he was a very religious person. For example, when he talked with his mom about deceiving his father, he basically said, “Won’t my father figure it out and I’ll bring down a curse rather than a blessing?” People notice, he didn’t say, I’d lie to God and he didn’t say, God would curse him. He said, I’ll bring down a curse. Almost like a superstition. I think it is fair to say that Jacob didn’t want religion or church or God.
At this point he was lonely, frustrated, and in despair. And I bet all he wanted was a little bit of success, acceptance, and belonging.
Some people would expect me to say, what Jacob needs to do he needs to get religion. I don’t think that is the point because Jacob grew up in a religious home.
Jacob did not have this irreligious, godless upbringing. Jacob did not grow up in an alphabet soup house – a house full of acronyms to try to figure you out. His family did not only go to church on Christmas or Easter. There wasn’t a vague spirituality in the house.
His grandfather was one of the most famous converts from paganism in the whole world. His grandfather was the founder of the Hebrew nation, the Jewish peoples and the Islamic peoples as well.
He needs more than religion. Whatever has driven his life to this point, it’s not working. He is sleeping in the middle of nowhere on a rock. We often think the ancient people weren’t fancy. Sleeping on a rock is as low as it gets.
12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you
Look again at verse 13. So Genesis 28: 13, is what I'm looking at. Here's the catch that word above it in almost every modern English translation, so the nitv, the nasb, the ESV, the NLT and so on and so forth. almost invariably there will be a an asterisk by that word.
The reason for that is because what you have here in Hebrew is a preposition, all which is typically translated above or upon or beside, and then you have a third masculine singular suffix as an object which their masculine singular subject, I'm sorry, object is essentially him or it so you can translate this This tiny little word a bunch of different ways you could say above it. Or you could say, beside it, or you could say, above him or beside him. And I think it's that I think it's above or beside him, which changes the meaning of the lesson.
The meaning of the text is that Gods standing above the stairway. You could say they're above Jacob stood the Lord. Why would I go with that interpretation? Well, because look, here's what I think happened. I think Jacob saw stairway he saw angels going up and down on it. And then the Lord came down. In other words, I don't think God is yelling to Jacob from heaven. I think God came down the stairway, to be close to Jacob, to have an intimate relationship with Jacob to be near to Jacob.
And I believe that because I think that's the main message of the Bible. There is not primarily a stairway that goes from earth to heaven, which is the basic understanding of every man made religion. But it said the gospel really says there's a stairway from heaven to earth. And God the Savior comes down that stairway.
It's really interesting when you evaluate the religions of world history, including the worship structures of the ancient civilization. So for instance, in the ancient Near East, the primary worship structure was something called a ziggurat, and you have not exactly the same but similar structures amongst the ancients in South America, and Africa and Asia. And you have these pyramid like structures that are terrorists, like a staircase. You see them all around the world in ancient times. Many commentators will say this is what we see in Genesis chapter 11 with a tower of Babel. They were trying to create a staircase to God, that was certainly the spirit of the people at the Tower of Babel.
They were people who said we can make a way for ourselves to heaven. We do it through our own efforts through our own goodness, through our own ingenuity we can get to God we can get to heaven we can attain salvation, if we just offer the right sacrifices in the right prayers and do the right deeds and are comparatively better see it's it's step upon step upon step. And consequently every world religion throughout history has had a series of steps a staircase, a stairway, from Earth to heaven.
It doesn't matter which religion you're looking at, whether it's Buddhism and an Eightfold Path of enlightenment, or Judaism, and 10 commandments, or Hinduism and Four aims, or goals, or Islam and five pillars, these are stairways to heaven, not stairways from heaven, which is what Jacob sees.
Furthermore, notice who this staircase is coming down to, it's not coming down to a highly motivated, self empowered, comparatively righteous man. No, no, the stairway comes down to an utterly broken man. Jacob has deceived his father, he's stolen from his brother. He has disappointed really everybody in his life, that means anything to him. In other words, this is a non deserved stairway from heaven. This is a stairway of grace by which God comes down and he meets you, in your messed up lost broken, worst moment.
Now bring this home. The work of Jesus. Jesus has one of his early followers is named Philip. And Philip is excited that he's met the Messiah, he's met God's Son, and he's ready to tell everybody about that. And he goes to his friend, Nathaniel, and he says, You got to come meet Jesus. He is the Promised Messiah that we've been waiting for this. It's Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathaniel was quite skeptical at that moment, his first gut reaction is Nazareth, what good can possibly come from Nazareth. And again, the basic idea is God shows up not where the world would expect him because he doesn't operate by the instincts in the values of the world. He shows up where we least expect them.
And Philip keeps encouraging Nathaniel and Nathaniel goes to meet Jesus. And as Nathaniel is approaching Jesus, Jesus starts telling him everything about himself. Everything about Nathaniel In fact, he starts talking about what Nathaniel was doing when he was sitting under the fig tree where Philip first approached him. Now, we don't know what Nathaniel was doing under that fig tree. But apparently, whatever he was doing whatever he was thinking, it was so private, that he's convinced the only person who could possibly know what he was doing at that point must be God. And so at that moment, the light goes on, Nathaniel realizes Jesus must be God. And Jesus says, You know what, if you think if you're impressed by that, you haven't seen anything yet.
And in john 1:51, Jesus says, Nathaniel, very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
Now, every Bible scholar will tell you that phrase, as an overt call back to Genesis 28. Jesus is saying, this story of Jacob in the staircase are pointing directly to him. And the gospel of this lesson, of course, that is what Jesus essentially is saying, you cannot build a stairway to money, health, blessing, and the good life, I came to be your stairway. I didn't come to give you steps to a better life, I came to take care of the steps for you.
On the cross, he says, I paid for each and everything you did wrong. I also paid for all the things you didn’t do. I also paid for all these things all the other people did and did not do. On top of that, in my resurrection I accomplished all the things that you should accomplish with your life. I also accomplished everything that everyone else should do. I did not leave anything undone that should be done.
He is the staircase. He is the path. He have brought you the good life, all the blessing that you could ever want. Now just walk in it.
And the remarkable thing, for Jacob, as for you and me, is that Jacob experiences such a good life after this point that it is hard to imagine. When Jacob gets to Laban’s house, he has nothing. 20 years later when he leaves he has at least 13 children and thousands of flocks and herds.
This point in his life is a true pivot place of grace.
The world's solution to the good life is that we fall down but we pick ourselves back up and we keep going. The Bible says no, no, you're not capable of doing that. And very often you will wreck more with your work than you actually fix.
What you need is a pivot. The Gospel says we fall down. So God comes down with his grace.
Action
I know a whole lot of you out there need this pivot place of grace. And I have to admit, honestly, that I can’t tell you how to get it into your life. Look at this story. What does Jacob do? Nothing. This is the thing.
God is absolutely drawn to your brokenness, not to your bravery. Did you notice in this account, Jacob was not asking for anything? He was not praying to God. He was not worshiping God. He is completely isolated because he has spent his whole life pretending that he is someone that he isn’t.
That probably describes more of us than we care to admit.
When you've done your absolute worst then you are at your absolute worst. And at the end, despite all of that, you still hear God standing over you, not scolding you, but speaking words of unconditional love, speaking unbreakable promises of blessing for your future, that you don't deserve it. With God saying, it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter who hates you, it doesn't matter who approves of you, or who's rejected you, how much you have or how little you have. He says, I love you. And here's what I have in store for you.
You see what Jacob does with that moment. “Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.” (verse 18)
What stone marks your pivot place?
I’ve got a board out there full of memorial stones, marker stones. I want to invite you all to
And if you haven’t that pivot place, I want to invite you to consider your own brokenness, your own lostness. Maybe today is your pivot place. Because God wants nothing more than to say to you, here I am with you.
God gives pivot places.
Genesis 22:1-18
Sermon
Luke 18:9-14
Listening guide
Discussion questions