Matthew 3:1-12
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Matthew
Matthew 21:1-11
Sermon
Matthew 16:13-20
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,[a] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[b] will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[c] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[d] loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Listening guide
the promise to be an unstoppable force
“on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys”. (verse 18-19)
Jesus upholds both ________________ and ___________________ responsibility
We have the key to be a powerful, unstoppable force.
“this was not revealed to you by men, but by my Father”. He also says, “on this rock I will build my church”. (verses 17-18)
The key is both revelation and rock. It is both inspiration and foundation.
Confess and we can conquer.
Discussion questions
None this week
Sermon
I don’t think it’s a surprise for me to tell you all that I’ve had my share of questions about God. There was my time of, I don’t know if there is God. I don’t think there is a God. Really?
I’ve also felt afraid of God. There were all the questions of approval, acceptance, and status before God. And sometimes, depended on how I felt about those questions, I was angry. Other times sad or elated. I was all over the place.
I've felt the whole range of feelings about connection with God and others. Sometimes, I’ve felt so intimate and close to God and others. Other times, life is nothing but loneliness, isolation, and even abandonment or betrayal.
Extraordinary
One of the things that has even surprised me at times...
I’ve seen that confessing faith in Jesus makes a difference, not just in my own life, but in the lives of the people around me. Confessing does something.
Prayed for baptism, that week people got baptized
Telling Stephen I feel alone. A week later, we have conflict and go through reconciliation.
Or worship. Gathered for worship one time. Go through the service. A guy was there. He watches and afterward he comes up and he says, “What do you people believe?” I don’t go to church anymore. That was incredible. I’ve never seen people so engaged. What do you believe?”
Adventure/Discover/Promise
That’s what Jesus wants to give us today. The confidence to confess because it makes a huge difference in our community. This is a pivotal moment in the life of Jesus.
Jesus has arrived at Caesarea Philippi. It grows out of the rocks and the water that feeds the Jordan River. People marvel at the temple there. The city is a favorite with kings. Herod, his sons, and the Caesars all enlarged the city.
Jesus asks what many consider one of the key questions of history: who do you say Jesus is? Peter answers, “you are the Messiah” or if you have an older translation, “the Christ”.
His name is not Jesus Messiah or Jesus Christ. It’s a title.
Literally it means, “Anointed One”. Jesus is the one anointed to be king. He is not just a king. Peter says, you are the anointed king. Then comes the twist. “Blessed are you”.
To know Jesus is king, to believe Jesus is the chosen king, and to say as much is a blessing all by itself. We call it confessing. Confess means you speak with the Christians who have come before you. You speak with the apostles. Ultimately you speak with God. This will do so much.
The more clearly we confess Jesus, the more we’ll be a powerful force to conquer evil. [the promise to be an unstoppable force to conquer evil] 1) who has this force 2) the power or the force itself
Development
The first thing Jesus says is that you, not you individually but you collectively have the key to be an unstoppable force. He says, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys”. Then at the end he ordered all his disciples not to tell, showing it belongs to them all. Can you believe that?
He doesn’t say, if you are good enough people you will have authority and responsibility. It’s not, if you live properly and act properly I will make sure that doors open before you in life.” There is nothing like that.
He says, “I give you the keys. They’ll work here on earth. And they work in heaven. I'm giving you the responsibility. I'm giving you the authority. “Fix it” Yes, under my power, under my grace. But I give you the keys.
There is this scene in the movie “Bruce Almighty” with Jim Carrey. He is walking down the street and he snaps his finger at a fire hydrant. All of the sudden it explodes with water. In the background the song, “you’ve got the power” is playing. That is what Jesus is saying. You’ve got the power. You’ve got to the authority. You’ve got the responsibility.
Don’t hide behind the idea, I hope God can get it done. Look, he has given you the authority to get it done. He has given you the responsibility to get it done. If you are looking at a friend who is hurting and you keep saying to yourself, gee I hope God helps this person. You realize what you are saying? God gave you to help that person. Stop waiting!
Culturally there is a strong pull to hide. We don’t think we have the authority or the responsibility. Let me give us this famous example from New York in the 1960s.
There was a woman named Katherine. She was attacked on her way home from work early in the morning. Her neighbors heard her shouts. 38 of them turned on their lights and looked out their windows. The assailant ran away and hid.
None of the neighbors came down. None of them came to help. None of them even called the police. The attacker waited about 5 minutes. When the police didn’t come and no one came, he realized that no one was coming. He went back. He found the woman crawling around. He killed her and took $49 dollars.
Sad story. Some of the people probably said, “It’s not my problem. It’s not my responsibility.” They’re all about personal responsibility. I’m sure other people said, “Someone else will call the police. Someone else will take care of it. Those people believe in collective responsibility. Did you notice Jesus believes in both?
Jesus said, “I will give you the keys” and the you is Peter. So that is personal responsibility. It’s Peter’s job. But at the end he warns all the disciples not to tell. That’s collective responsibility. You all be careful with this responsibility, this authority.
.Jesus upholds both personal and collective responsibility.
We have the key to be a powerful, unstoppable force.
That’s the first thing. The who. Next. What is it? Let me start and give us an example of actually taking responsibility. Using the authority.
I’ve been reading this book Leadership Pain by Sam Chand. Sam tells how he was born in India, came to the United States, and finally enrolled in Beulah Heights Bible College in the 1970s. He was a poor, barely educated, colored man. He was quickly smitten by a young lady working in the president’s office, but in the 1970s in Georgia, white girls and colored men did not mix.
The dean told her that if she kept seeing Sam, she would go to hell. One day, Sam gave the young lady flowers. He soon was asked to return to India, and got on a plane. A couple of years later, they returned to the church they had both served at during school. The girl had led the nursing home ministry. Sam had led worship and directed the choir. They asked the pastor to marry them. He said flatly, “No. I don’t think your marriage can work. She’s white and your Indian.”
10 years later Sam was a pastor in Michigan. His church began sending money to Beaulah Heights Bible College. He began to speak at events at the school. Then he agreed to be a member of the board. He invited board members over and they spoke at his church. A few years later, the board asked him to be president of the college.
Over the next 15 years, enrollment increased 10 times. They got accredited. The dean was filled inspiration. He kept cheering, saying, “the best is yet to be. We haven’t seen all that God is going to do here.” Sam had started it all.
When he came to the college, he said to the dean, “Years ago … you threatened to expel me. Now I’m your president. I’m okay with you.” He said that he always though these men just didn’t know how to reconcile their faith in a gracious, welcoming God with the racism in their country. (Sam Chand, Leadership Pain, 48-50)
I hope you aren’t distracted by the racism involved. I’m so struck by what happened. I want you to notice two things that made this possible. Jesus tells us them in this lesson.
First, Sam said reconcile their faith in a gracious, welcoming God
Jesus said it this way, “on this Rock I will build my church”.
There is always the question, why should I bring anyone else into my life? Why should I be gracious to people? Why should I be just? Why should I show mercy? Why should I be compassionate?
People who believe in personal responsibility tend to say, I show mercy because of me. Through my life experiences and education and failures and success, I’ve learned to practice mercy. But what about when you are so wronged?
People who believe in corporate responsibility tend to say, we show mercy because that is who we are. We were shown mercy by the seas or the heavens or this nation when we formed. We have shown mercy ever since. This is who we are. But what about when the group of people have wronged themselves? What about when the people are a boiling hotbed of wrath and hope?
People who believe in the keys Jesus give say, I show mercy because Jesus did not receive mercy so that he could show us mercy. People who believe in the keys Jesus give say, I practice justice because Jesus endured divine justice so I can be justified. People who believe in the keys Jesus give say, I practice forgiveness because Jesus was not forgiven, not excused, for all my sins so that we are.
The key is foundation.
Second, the dean said, the best is yet to be. We haven’t seen all that God is going to do here.”
Jesus said it this way. “this was not revealed to you by men, but by my Father”.
Another what is right? What is wrong? Is there eternity?
People who believe in personal responsibility have to say, I have to discover all the answers. People who believe in corporate responsibility tend to say, we can figure out the answers. Our collective knowledge.
People who believe in the keys Jesus give say, I haven’t discovered the way but Jesus is the way. I haven’t figured out the truth, but Jesus is the truth. I can’t give you life, but Jesus is life.
The key is also inspiration. It’s not what we discover. It’s revealed to us. The key is both foundation and inspiration; revelation and rock.
Jesus is this for all humanity.
No one, not death, not sin, or even hell itself can stop him.
The gates of Hades will not prevail. Gates are meant to keep people in and out. They are not offensive. The gates of hell itself have been unlocked from the inside by the resurrection of Jesus. You can charge them. They must break in front of you
Confess and we can conquer
Action
Friends, nothing does more to conquer than to confess.
I’d love for you to join me to confess Jesus Christ more clearly, more forcefully, more strongly and to watch that confession conquer all evil. I don’t know if any of you have seen the new TV series, “The Chosen”. It’s about Jesus and the disciples he chose to conquer evil. I brought a copy to give away to one of you today. Maybe you want to watch it yourself. Maybe you want to give it to a friend. If you want to put your name in for it, you can text me at 269-694-6104 or
Let me close with this little illustration. When the Union army pushed the Confederates back into Richmond, one of Lincoln’s generals burst into his office and said, “President Lincoln, I am pleased to tell you we have finally pushed the enemy out of our territory and back into his own.”
Lincoln said to the other generals in the room, “When will my generals learn that the whole country is our territory?”
Jesus is not content to be Lord of us. He died and rose to be Lord of heaven and earth. Confess and we can conquer.
Matthew 14:22-36
22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
34 When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. 35 And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him 36 and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.
Listening guide
2 things to handle fear that lead to courage
“Take courage”
First thing _________________________
“It is I”
Second thing _________________________
Love your neighbor ….. courageously
Discussion questions
Sermons
How did you do loving your neighbors this week? Bold challenges
· Spend to store up eternal treasures. Your heart will never have treasure until you spend.
· Share substance that satisfies. If body of Jesus is broken for you, we’ll break for other.
Couple chances to love neighbors and it was hard
· I messed something up
· The “how is our communication” conversation
· The “what about masks” conversation
· Met a few acquaintances for a drink. We’re trying to become friends. I was genuinely afraid I would say something foolish.
It is hard to know what to do towards other people. That’s part of it. That's why we’ve heard, “spend, share food”. It’s hard to actually do what we even know we should do.
· Are you afraid of getting sick? Just interacting with some people might be dangerous to your health.
· Are you afraid of losing your job? You don’t have to mess things up to lose a job. You can be the wrong age, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong education, or wrong in countless other ways.
· Are you afraid of your kids losing their education? The challenge is greater than ever to raise kids who will be good members of society when education systems are understandably changing fast.
· Are you afraid of losing friends? I don’t even know where people stand anymore. What if I bring up the wrong issue? We might never talk again.
Today
Jesus says here is what you do when we face all sorts of danger. This is Matthew 14. He walks on the water.
The event is pretty straightforward. Jesus fed the 15,000-20,000. They have finished eating. The disciples head home. The disciples work pretty hard to get the boat across the lake. Jesus has stayed to say goodbye to the crowd. It takes him a few hours. He walks out on the water to them. That’s what terrifies the disciples.
The disciples see Jesus. They say, “it’s a ghost”. They’re terrified. They “cry out in fear”. (verse 26) And Jesus wanted them to face it “Take courage” (verse 27)
“take courage”. Good leaders, thoughtful people, have said this forever. Joshua led the Israelite armies. He said, “Be strong and courageous”. Confucius said, “Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.” I’m more of a Disney guy myself. Last year the great line of the new Dumbo, “Find your courage!”
Jesus says two things about courage. They’re both super things. Let’s get this from Matthew 14:22 and following. If you’ve got your Bible look at Matthew 14.
Development
Two things about courage.
The first thing I would say is you can only have courage when you face danger. There has to be fear for there to be courage.
I think you should notice that the disciples don’t fear the waves and water. Did you catch that? “26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.”
For the ancients especially, the sea was the ultimate symbol of uncontrolled power. It was wild. Life was full of many tests and trials. The wild of the ocean was the worst. The sea didn’t frighten the disciples. The spiritual force coming to the boat frightened the disciples.
They thought Jesus was a ghost. They did not fear the water. They feared this supernatural force. What was Jesus up to?
It’s easy to think, these were ancient people. They had a god for everything. It’s easy to think they had to deal with the spiritual forces involved. Someone might use the life of Jonah as an example. There is a story in the Bible of a man named Jonah. He is on a ship in the middle of the storm. The sailors told Jonah to call on his god. Someone reads that and they say, see, they say, everything was spiritual for ancients. Everything was supernatural for the ancients.
That’s just not true. The sailors did tell Jonah to call on his god. Before they did that, they threw everything possible off the ship to make it lighter. Life was not all spiritual. Then Jesus showed up.
Jesus is saying the only way to handle the tests and trials is to address the spiritual stuff. The disciples needed to consider the God of heaven and earth! They needed to pray to the Lord Yahweh who rules over all things. They needed to give attention to the king of the universe and his direction in all things. They had to bend their knees. They had to hang their heads. They had to raise their hands in prayer. They had to address the spiritual.
If the sea is the ultimate symbol that life is uncontrollable, there is no doubt everything else, everything else is our world is outside our control. We are constantly in danger. There are serious supernatural forces at work. We should be a little afraid.
Jonathan Haidt is an atheist psychologist. In 2006, he wrote the book The Happiness Hypothesis. He makes up two people, tells us a little story about them, and says, you pick who you would rather be. First person is Bob.
“Bob is 35 years old, single, white, attractive, and athletic. He earns $100,000 a year and lives in sunny Southern California. He is highly intellectual, and he spends his free time reading and going to museums.” Person number 2 is Mary.
“Mary and her husband live in snowy Buffalo, New York, where they earn a combined income of $40,000. Mary is sixty-five years old, black, overweight, and plain in appearance. She is highly sociable, and she spends her free time mostly in activities related to her church. She is on dialysis for kidney problems.”
Then he says, “If you had to bet on it, you should bet that Mary is happier than Bob.” (Haidt, Happiness Hypothesis, 87)
Do you see what that is? Do you see how big the difference is? You might love California, you might hate California. Don’t say that to my wife. Do you see that though? Life is uncontrollable and you must address the supernatural.
We cannot master success, achieve accomplishments, and solidify relationships to a place of safety. We don’t know our own hearts, the heart of our spouse, or the hearts of our friends. There is a slime, a crud in the deep darkness that will suddenly come up and bite any of us.
You can only have courage if you face the danger. You must deal with the supernatural. That’s the first super.
The second thing about courage. It’s really hard to define courage. Courage is best pictured as the middle between fear or frozen and recklessness. If you never tell anyone that you are a follower of Jesus, that’s fear. If you tell a pastor but not anyone else that you believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, that’s just fear. But if you walk around telling all your coworkers, and your bosses, and your neighbors, hi my name’s Pete and I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Lord, do you? That’s not courage, that’s just recklessness.
It’s amazing because, in just a moment here, Peter is going to get out of the boat and walk on the water to Jesus. What makes him do that?
Jesus says to everyone in the boat, “Take courage. It is I”. When Jesus says, “it is I” what he says literally is, “ego eimi”. “I am” The translators don’t write that because they know if you’re reading along and it says, “Take courage. I am” you would say, well of course he is. Did the disciples survive? That’s what you would say.
But what Jesus is doing here. When Jesus says, “I am” he is claiming the name of God as his name. When God called Abraham to follow him, he said, “I am.” When God called Jacob to go down to Egypt, he said, “I am.” When God came to Moses in the burning bush, he said, “I am who I am”. When God came to Moses and gave the 10 commandments, he said, “I am, I am, the compassionate and gracious God”. What is Jesus doing? He is announcing himself.
But it’s weird. It’s just odd.
If I walk in the house at the end of the day, I might say, “I’m home!” or “Hey gang, I’m here.” Sometimes I’ll say something like, “hey, it’s me.” Or when I walk in the bedroom late at night and someone says, “Whose there” I’ll say, “It’s me”. I never say, “It is I”.
There is something incredibly personal, incredibly beautiful with these words. Because Jesus is saying, I’m not satisfied with calming a storm. I’m not satisfied with stopping your tests and your trials. He is saying, I want you to know me in the middle of your trials.
Let’s talk about those fears for a moment. What are your greatest fears? What are your greatest nightmares? The loss of your health? The loss of your kids? The loss of job? The loss of our intelligence? The loss of friends? Not becoming something? Not getting married? What are the things that keep you up at night?
On the cross, Jesus Christ took the ultimate nightmare. The ultimate nightmare is to be alienated from God. If there is a God and you were made by God, unless Jesus Christ does something about the way you’ve lived your life, you will be lost, and that’s the ultimate nightmare.
The ultimate poverty, the ultimate loneliness, the ultimate death is to be lost, is to be alienated from God spiritually forever, and on the cross, Jesus Christ experienced that cosmic alienation. He took your greatest nightmares on.
He says to you, “It is I.”
Do you know how this becomes your courage? I know some of you probably get tired of me telling stories from Lord of the Rings, but in this case you have to let me because the hobbits are all about courage.
There are two great little heroes in the story, Sam and Frodo. There’s a place where Sam, who is Frodo’s faithful companion, has been defending him. At one point, he gets him out of a tower by saying, “Here I come!” (He sounds almost like Jesus - “It is I”) He fights and he gets Frodo out, but they’re on their way to the end of their quest and he’s scared. One night, we’re told he looks up into the sky.
“Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart … [Then,] like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even [Frodo’s] ceased to trouble him.… he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.”
And my friends, that is real courage. It’s not when fear fades.
When you grasp a real beauty, a real strength, and a real power in the midst of your trials, your fears, and your greatest nightmares, then you can begin to have a new heart.
That's our second super. A super power.
Action
So will you join me in this? Let’s love our neighbors … courageously
This kind of courage makes all the difference. Let me just give us one example.
There is a woman in the Bible named Abigail. Abigail was married to Nabal. Nabal means fool and he did a good job of living up to his name. We don't know how long he embarrassed her with his rudeness and drunkenness, but it probably seemed like forever.
The man who was anointed to be the next king, David, was hiding in the hills nearby. They protected Nabal’s 5,000 or so animals. Protected them from raiders, thieves, animals, and the like.
Then it was time to shear the sheep. Sheep shearing time is a time to be generous and hospitable.
David asked Nabal for some supplies. Nabal accused David of disobedience and insurrection. The chosen future king!
David was ticked. He prepared to battle Nabal. One of the servants ran to Abigail, told her. She packed up food for many men and ran to David. She begged his pardon and forgiveness.
David praised God for using her to rescue him from sin.
Friends, Jesus is on the other side of every conflict. Sometimes, it won’t work out and you won’t be able to stick with your neighbors.
But very often, I can tell you. The more you hear him say, “it is I” the more courage you’ll see. The more together you and your neighbor will be.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Listening guide
How am I going to treat you?
“Let both grow together”. (verse 30)
“ Let them grow to the harvest” = “forgive them to grow until the harvest.”
_______________, don’t ______________________ your neighbors.
Discussion questions
What’s a humorous story from your neighbors you can share?
Jesus described his own mission in different ways. Read the passages below and discuss Jesus’ mission. Do you have a passage you like that tells Jesus’ mission?
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)
In the Bible Jesus carried out his mission in many places: from Capernaum down to Jerusalem and many places in between (see the maps below). In that way, his life and work were very different from ours. He didn’t have only one “neighborhood” or “community” to work in his own life. Still, Jesus conducted very intimate, personal ministry (see below). What do we learn about Jesus’ ministry from these and similar events?
He was in the home of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31)
He healed a paralytic in his “home” (Mark 2:1-12)
He had dinner with Levi (Mark 2:15)
He was invited into the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42)
He met with Nicodemus at night (John 3)
He drank water with a woman at a well (John 4)
Just as Jesus had a mission, the Bible clearly states his followers will have a mission. From the passages below, how do you summarize the church’s mission? As a follow up to that question, the Bible says very little about how we carry out that mission. Should we tell our neighbor in our front yard or theirs? Should we go to foreign countries? Should we get a YouTube channel? What do you see as your role in the church’s mission?
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16:15-16)
46 He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:46-49)
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
One way that the Bible suggests us thinking of the people we should serve is our neighbor. In fact, he says all of God’s law can be summarized this way: “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.” When he says the word “neighbor”, what do you think that means?
Luke 10:25-37 (the story of the Good Samaritan), specifically verse 29, show us how hard it is to love our actual neighbors. “29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”” What do you think are some of the reasons it so hard to love our actual neighbors?
The Bible shows that wonderful things can happen when we love our actual neighbors. For example, Mark 2:1-12. What wonderful events happen to Jesus’ neighbor?
It’s much easier to love our neighbors when we actually know their names. Below is a tool called a “Block Map”. You can fill in the names of the people on your block. If you don’t have a “block”, you can write out a few networks of people in the next table.
Sermon
During the pandemic and the protests, one of the things I keep asking people – when I get to talk to them, that is – is what are you taking away from this time?
I’ve heard a bunch of different responses. I’ve been surprised by all the people who have said, “People are s-t-u-p-I-d". I don’t want to be crude. That’s just what they say.
First part of me says, yup, sure are. The Bible says we’re sinners. We’re hostile to God and to one another.
The other part of me says, I don’t know what you mean by that. I don’t know if you are for or against masks. I don’t know how you feel about protests. But what do you intend to do with that conclusion?
I asked one of them, so, what are you going to do about that? They didn’t know. And that, that concerns me.
I suppose you could ignore people. Criticize them. Condemn them. Reject them. If you are that person, I might stay away from you or put you down. If the only thing, or even the main thing, you think about people, is they’re s-t-u-p-I-d, I’m not sure you can treat them well.
I know we all find this an incredibly hard time. I’ve got all these thoughts swirling in my head, all these questions and concerns. Then you make a choice. I think, anything but that! How could you be so ….
What should I do with you? How am I going to treat you? Jesus answers part of that question today. For the next few weeks we’ll take a look at different aspects of this theme, “Love our Neighbors”.
Today we have one of the many parables of Jesus. These are really short stories. They try to tell us how God’s world works. They’re always surprising us. You know you’ve got the parable wrong if there is no surprise. And I think this is a pretty good one.
Jesus says, there is a field. We can imagine the field is the world. Wheat and weeds grow together in the field. To understand the story better, I think it helps to know that the weed is zizania, or darnel. It actually looks a lot like wheat. Here comes the first surprise.
Jesus says, “Let both grow together”. (verse 30) I know a lot of you like gardening. If you want to see what weeds and flowers growing together look like, you can come to my house when we’re done. I doubt any of you gardeners leave the weeds in your garden. Jesus leaves them both.
This is not what most religions and ways of thinking to do. Jesus says people are the weeds and the wheat. What most people want to do is, what do most people do? They pull out, they kick out, they separate out, and they remove the “people of the evil one”. Whoever they are.
To get a sense of this, there are lot of examples in history. If you’re a resident of Europe in 1095, the people to separate out are the Muslims living in Jerusalem. If you’re a Spaniard living in the 1470s, the people to kick out are the nonCatholics from the country of Spain. If you’re an Iraqi living in the 2010s, they might be the residents of certain Christian settlements. If you’re a Communist living in China in 1950, they might be wealthy landowners. If you’re a Nazi in Germany in the 1940s, they might be the Jews.
This is nothing new. They saw Jesus as the Messiah. They thought he was this great and awesome king. And maybe you think it is time for me to deal with the Romans, or the Jewish religious leaders, or the Samaritans. He says, I sense you want me to be kind of a Joshua and drive out these other leaders.
This is why there is such a push for tolerance. There is a little oppressor in all of us. Know anyone who has shunned someone from their family? Sure.
Jesus is saying so much more than tolerate.
The reason life has so much misery in it is so much worse than you think it is. You think it’s those people, whoever those people are. Every time, every age, every place, has its those people.
The truth of it is far worse than you realize. Reality itself is broken. At the very roots of reality, there is an evil. At the very roots of the psyche and at the roots of our society and at the roots of reality itself, the roots of the natural and even the supernatural fabric of the universe, there is an evil, a cancer, that’s eating out the guts of the way things are.
The only way to rip it out is to destroy everything. Literally everything. Jesus has to rip out the roots of the natural and supernatural universe to get rid of this evil.
He says, you are not the great revolution of life. I am the great revolution of life. I’m the one who is going to change everything.
It’s not enough for you and I to imagine a new government, new tax code, new non-profits, or new religions. It’s not enough to say, the world would be better if we just got rid of those people. Imagine everything restored. Imagine justice in the courts, mercy on the streets, hope in the homes, and love in the hearts.
That is the judgment Jesus is going to bring at the end of all time. If we hurry to judge now, we’ll just ruin things. We’ll destroy everyone. No one will flourish. There will be no wheat producing a great harvest or crop.
You know what the solution is? It’s not tolerance.
Jesus doesn’t say it specifically, but he hints at it. Let me show you. When he says, “Let them grow to the harvest”, do you know what he actually says? The word “let them” actually means “forgive them”. What Jesus says is, “forgive them to grow until the harvest.” Forgive them. You know what that is? That’s a spiritual revolution.
Jesus is not saying, “tolerate evil”. He isn’t saying “accept evil”. Jesus says as strongly as anyone, if something causes you to sin, cut it out. Get rid of it. If someone sins against you, don’t ignore it. Go and tell them. Call them out. If someone calls himself or herself a believer, yet they refuse to actually follow me, kick them out. Don’t call them a believer. Call them an unbeliever.
But Jesus is the absolute, total, and complete sacrifice for sins. He is dead and risen for each and every sin. The Jews and the Romans oppressed, kicked him out, and pulled him out. Even more, he lost his Father. On the cross, he cried, my God, my God. What does that mean?
Each and every sin is actually paid for, eliminated, and needs to be handled in a way that the person can actually receive forgiveness. I learned about a powerful example from the Holocaust.
“After the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi regime in World War II, Holocaust survivor and Christian Corrie ten Boom returned to Germany to declare the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. One evening, after giving her message, she was approached by a man who identified himself as a former Nazi guard from the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, where she had been held and where her sister, Betsie, had died.
When Corrie saw the man’s face, she recognized him as one of the most cruel and vindictive guards from the camp. He reached out his hand and said to her, “A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea! You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk. I was a guard there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?” About this encounter, Corrie writes:
“I stood there—I whose sins had again and again been forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do . . . I had to do it—I knew that. [The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. . . . ] But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently.
“As she reached out her hand to the former guard, Corrie says that something incredible took place. She continues:
“The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!” . . . I had never known love so intensely, as I did then. But even then, I realized it was not my love . . . It was the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Scott Sauls, A Gentle Answer, Thomas Nelson, 2020, pp.19-20)
Forgive, don’t oppress your neighbors.
So what are you going to do what person you feel is so dumb?
Jesus has given us an incredible resource. Let me see if I can show us. Imagine a situation with a friend, a neighbor or a coworker.
One of the things a Christian can always say is, we don’t know, I don’t know, we could be wrong, and I could be wrong. No matter what the topic is – masks, politics, school openings, There is a man in the Bible called Job. He lost his family, his wealth, and his health. His friends all told him, “You must have done something terribly wrong. Curse God and die.” In the end of the book, God tells the friends they were wrong the whole time. He never tells Job if something was wrong. God is the only one with a true outsider’s perspectives.
At the same time, there are so many good and true and beautiful things that we do know, and we should talk about them. Justice should reign. Truth should ring out. Mercy should flourish.
This is what the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus gives us. It lets us avoid both zealotry and passivity. Zealotry is what happens when we say, this is the only way we can be accepted by God and the other people. That’s not true. Jesus says, “let them grow together”. I’ll figure it out. And yet Jesus says, “let them grow together”. Grow into what is good and true and beautiful. Passivity is not the answer. Just as Jesus is risen from the dead, we grow in a new life.
Avoid both zealotry and passivity as you love your neighbor.
Will you join me in loving our neighbors?
Some of you are really great neighbors. You’re living forgiveness with your neighbor whether or not they want it. Thank you. And I hope you get a chance to share your stories.
Most of us frankly aren’t.
Jesus doesn’t say it explicitly in this lesson. What he says explicitly is, “I’m the great farmer and harvester. And someday I’ll get to collect a great harvest.” He hints at the way to get there. It’s letting the weeds and the wheat grow together. It’s forgiving the nonbeliever. It’s growing together with your neighbor.
Will you join me in loving our neighbors? And I bet we’ll see a harvest more awesome than we’ve ever known.
Forgive, don’t oppress your neighbors.
Matthew 27:45-50
Sermon
Good Friday
Matthew 27:45-50
Nathaniel Timmermann
Peace Lutheran Church, Otsego
April 10, 2020
Intro
I was listening to a respected pastor the other day talk about the on the ground situation in New York.
· There are some working class churches in which 80% of the people are out of work
· It’s brought death much closer. He said in Queens, right across the river, people are sitting in their apartments and watching body bags come out of houses.
There is a lot of suffering right now.
You can watch how upset and angry people are.
· People are upset with politicians – shut down or not, force production or not, ticket or don’t, give aid or don’t
· People are upset with their neighbors – you follow the rules, you don’t
· People are upset with churches – you shouldn’t follow the government’s rules, you should follow them,
I'm not really surprised how upset we are. I was talking with one of my Chinese friends. They are far less angry. They aren’t lashing out at each other, the government, their neighbors, or their informal Christian groups.
At least a part of that, there are cultural differences. The Chinese are collectivistic, so they are more willing to set outside their own personal rights for the good of everyone. The bigger thing, … they also have more resources for handling suffering.
I don’t think it is a stretch to say our anger is a reaction to the suffering we’re experiencing that we don’t really have the resources to handle.
Anger is always a secondary emotion – John Gottman
“Most cultures—unlike our own—expect suffering as inevitable and see it as a means of strengthening and enriching us. Our secular culture, on the other hand, is perhaps the worst in history at helping its members face suffering. Every other culture says the meaning of life is something beyond this world and life. He summarizes them with 5 options...
[It may be (a) going to heaven to live with God and your loved ones forever; (b) escaping the cycle of reincarnation in order to enter eternal bliss; (c) escaping the illusion of the world to go into the all-Soul of the universe; (d) living a moral, virtuous, honorable life even in the face of defeat and doom; or (e) living on in your family and descendants. In each case suffering, though painful, can actually help you reach your life goal and complete your life story.]
“But in secular culture the meaning of life is to be free to choose what makes you happy in this life. Suffering destroys that meaning. And so, in the secular view, suffering can have no meaning at all. It can’t be a chapter in your life story—it is just the interruption or even the end of your life story.” (Tim Keller, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/tim-keller-wants-you-to-suffer-well/, accessed 04/10/2020)
Adventure/discovery
What does the cross offer us for suffering?
Part 1
On Passover evening Jesus was arrested. He stood trial with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling body. Then he went to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, for the judgment that he should be crucified. Early on the day we remember as Good Friday he went to the cross. He was crucified about 9am.
During the day, he said 7 sentences or words as we call them from the cross. One of the last was this:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That word, “eli” is Aramaic word for “my God”. It’s the possessive form. Some of the people heard that. They think that he was calling Elijah. You can say the same thing to Elijah. The people, whether they think he is just delirious or they believe some kind of miracle is going to happen, say, let’s see what happens.
The physical pain he is experiencing is intense. It’s not as important as the spiritual pain. We’ll talk about that later. I don’t think you would write about this if you were making it up. Jesus doesn’t seem very impressive. He doesn’t seem important. The people have no idea what he is saying.
They think he is calling Elijah. That’s almost embarrassing to say to you. I want you to believe in this man. I want you to trust him with your life. But people who were there thought his last words were asking Elijah, a prophet who had been dead for over 500 years, to save him!
They do the same thing we do whenever we see someone suffer. I’ve heard from people who are angry or sad through the virus. They’re saying too, why doesn’t someone do something? How could this happen?
What we need to see, we’re only mad and sad and hurt and disappointed and overwhelmed if bad is really wrong.
When we say, why doesn’t someone do something, let’s see about Elijah. We’re assuming tdhere is an order in the universe. The universe isn’t supposed to be this way. Somehow, someway, someone should rescue me from this mess.
People will say, there isn’t any right or wrong. Or if there is, you certainly can’t tell me what to do. I’m the master of my own fate. I get to decide my life. Then some suffering strikes...
And we say, this isn’t right. I shouldn’t have to go through this. That person shouldn’t endure this. Someone rescue them.
That is telling us there is a god. Or at least some higher being. Someone each one of us looks to and asks for help and blames and yells at and all that.
If everyone does that, it’s universal. It’s someone over everyone.
Suffering also tell us there is a God.
You’re upset, your angry, and your hurt... you can't let it turn you away from God. Let me give you an example of this
(JB telling me of this woman, I don’t even remember her name. He pastored her frequently when she was sick and her mom was sick. Lots of visits. Then I think it was the woman’s mom died. He talked with her a few more times. And boom, she wasn’t around. She came maybe once a year to church after that.
He said she came to church one time, I think it was Good Friday. She was just angry.)
Part 2
How do we keep our hearts soft? You have to look even more carefully at what he says, because the infinity of his sufferings will cover over your sufferings.
What does he say?
· He says, “My God, my God”
· He doesn’t say, “my pinky finger, my pinky finger”
· He doesn’t say, “ouch my leg, my leg”
· And he doesn’t say, “my disciples”
· He doesn’t even say, “my people”. He already said that.
· He says, “My God, my God”
When you get hurt, what do you say? I’m guessing that what a lot of you say when you stub your toe would be pretty inappropriate right now. You always scream about what is hurting you.
Look at Jesus. What is shocking is, most of the time, he was quiet. He didn’t say a thing:
· He gets arrested. He says, “why have you come at me with clubs at night? Didn’t I teach publicly?”
· He stands trial before the Sanhedrin. He’s silent.
· He stands trial before Pontius Pilate. He’s silent. Go home, look this up. Can’t make this up.
· And you’ve heard him on the cross. He doesn’t scream about his feet, his hands, his hair, his legs. He says kind things like “Father forgive them.”
· Hardly a word!
Matthew says he “cried out in a loud voice”. A great voice literally. In other words, he shouted, he screamed. The whole time he has been silent. Now he screams his pain.
What’s his pain? His God. You and I do this all the time. If you have a bad day at work, you come home. Toys are all over the floor. The coats have fallen off the racks. What do you do? You scream and holler at someone, probably your spouse who says hello to you first. Is your spouse causing the pain? No, but your spouse is pushing into you and exposing your hurt.
What really hurt Jesus wasn’t you, me, or all of humanity. Something happened with God. He lost him.
How bad was it for you this man who never cried out, who never complained, who never turned against his father to scream at his Father?
Jesus Christ did not feel there was a God anymore, that there was a God who loved him. He didn’t feel that. He couldn’t sense it. He didn’t sense God loved him, that God would ever come back to him, that God was there at all, and he wasn’t. He was gone. Jesus’ heart froze. Jesus was plunged into outer darkness. Jesus Christ went to hell.
Do you remember how you felt the other day when the sun started to shine a little, it was almost 70 degrees, and we all stood longingly in our backyards hoping someone would come by and say hi?
God is like the sun, and God, to some degree, is keeping us soft and he’s keeping us warm. To some degree, he’s keeping our humanity from completely freezing. He’s keeping us from the outer darkness. This is true whether you’re a believer or whether you’re an unbeliever, whether you’re trying to get near God or whether you’re trying to run away from God.
Except for Jesus, there was no God. Where God should have been, there was only darkness and cold.
The Bible over and over again says, “What is the ultimate punishment? It’s to be banished from God and his loving presence. He was gone. He was sent to hell, and he went into eternal torment. Do you know what? The words go beyond that. The words do not just show at that moment Jesus Christ went to hell, that at that moment Jesus Christ took upon him what all of the sins of humanity deserved.
It goes beyond that. It doesn’t just say, “You have forsaken me,” which tells us a lot about the infinity of Christ’s sufferings, but, boy, the words tell us even more, because the person who is being forsaken is saying, “My God, my God.” That had never happened before, and that has never happened since.
One of the things that the Bible has told us that no one goes to hell who hasn’t already chosen it for themselves. For example, when the Judge says, depart from me into hell. The people don’t say back, dear God, we really wanted to be with you, we just made a big mistake. They say, “when did we see you hungry, or thirsty”. What’s the problem? They never even saw Jesus. They never wanted anything to do with him.
So everyone who goes to hell says, “Cruel master! Wicked sovereign! You’re just going to crush me. I would rather be away from you!” And you’ve heard this. People jokingly say things like, “I’d rather be in hell and do ____ than be in heaven.” I’d rather party with the devil in hell... That kind of thing.
Except for Jesus.
I don’t know if I’ve every called Rachel, “my Rachel”. I call her my wife. I call her my love. I don’t know if I ever call her “my Rachel.” I certainly never call her “my Rachel, my Rachel”. That would assume so much intimacy. It doesn’t matter how close we are, I don’t know if I would dare call her “my Rachel”.
And Jesus says, “my God, my God”.
That is a great hell.
Doesn’t that melt your heart?
It’s more than enough. Here is how you know.
Verse 50 “Jesus gave up his spirit”
After all that, he wasn’t out of control. He didn’t collapse. “… he gave up his spirit.” He stayed utterly in control. For him to be saying, “My God, my God,” continuing the intimacy, continuing to reach out, continuing to hold to the covenant, means, “From hell’s heart I obey you.” From hell’s heart I hate you? I curse you? No. “From hell’s heart I obey you. From hell’s heart in hell’s heart …”
How did he do it? He never gave up. He never gave in.
All so you would know, without a shadow of a doubt, that God loves you more than life itself. There is nothing he would rather have in all of creation than you. He will take your sins on himself and carry them into hell itself to have you for all eternity.
I don’t know what the reason is for your particular suffering.
I know what it’s not. It’s not that he doesn’t love you.
And if you see that, you will have a power in every suffering.
“But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.” (6.3.5-6)
If your hope is from you or is something you have generated, it will never last. It can’t power you through great suffering.
As your hope seems to die, the sufferings of Jesus will overwhelm your sufferings and make you last.
Let’s pray
Father, we see the intensity of his sufferings. Help us now to think on this in such a way that helps us to see because he was forsaken we will never be forsaken. Because he went to hell, we do not have to go. Father, we pray you would help us to think about this in such a way that it leads us to the amazing hope and joy that it promises and it indicates. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Matthew 5:1-6
This is one way to think about being a disciple. It’s a privilege life.
Jesus says “blessed” What does he mean by blessed? Is he just naming different physical bad circumstances and saying you’re blessed if you go through them? Yes, but no.
Yes he talks about physical stuff, but not just physical. He is really talking about spiritual. He is talking about spiritual needs with physical concepts.
We know we can’t survive that long without water. But how long do we think we can live without God almighty? Millions are trying to do it. We’re blind to our spiritual needs, so he uses these physical concepts to make it clearer.
He is saying there is a really unique, select group of people who grasp their situation.
In the wider Greek world this word “blessed” was used of the gods, the Christian martyrs, and a few select people who were determined could be happy. It described the kind of satisfaction or privilege only someone who wasn’t really part of this world could achieve or accomplish.
The privileged
Discover/adventure
To achieve this select privilege
Poor in spirit
The first step on the path to this privilege is poverty of spirit. Jesus says “blessed are the poor in spirit”.
The poor are people who have nothing. If this was strictly a description of their financial place in life, they have no savings. They don’t even have clean clothes. Food is scarce. A sense of desperation sits over their life. They are anxious about their next meal.
But these people aren’t poor physically. They are poor in spirit. A person who is entering the kingdom has to realize, “My problems are more than psychological, but they are at least psychological. They’re more than social, though they’re at least social. They’re more than philosophical; they’re spiritual.”
Poverty of spirit doesn’t mean a person lacks smarts. It doesn’t mean a person is missing passion or even that their character has some flaw in it. To be poor in spirit is much deeper, much broader than that.
If you and I were a little short on cash, we might watch a few videos and skim a few websites about picking up gig jobs. If we really wanted to work hard at it, we might take a Dave Ramsay course.
If you and I needed to get our act together, get our life together, we might learn a new productivity system or take a quick life course.
Even if we needed to improve our relationships, we could see a counselor a few times.
We live in this awesome self-help culture. We’ve got free YouTube videos to help out with so many problems and if that isn’t enough, we can spend $12.95 for an expert who says, spend $12 and this is the last book you’ll ever need. You’ll be an expert.
We’ve got this awesome self-help culture. We’ve figured out we have so many shortcomings, failings, and issues. We’ve got tools and tricks to help you with all of them. We can even help you – we think – with your spiritual poverty.
We’re the first people to say thigs like, “Believe in yourself”, “Love yourself”, and “actualize your potential.” 100 plus years ago no one said things like that. They still heard the same restless inner murmur. Thye didn’t silence it.
Jesus is saying, if you really want to reach a place of privilege, you have to start like this. A lot of people approach Christianity likes it’s a self-help thing. People hit bad patch in life and say, “I’ve hit a bad patch now. I better clean up my life a little. I’ll go to church. I’ll stop this or that. If I need to, I’ll talk to pastor or someone else some. And then God’s power will show up in my life!”
You cannot self-help yourself into a relationship with the God of the universe; you have to have poverty of spirit. You can’t say, “I’ll clean my life up”; you have to say, “My problems are beyond me.” You can’t say, “I’m suffering. I’m having a bad patch. I need a little boost”; you have to say, “I’m not coming to you O Lord because I need a boost, I’m coming to you O Lord because I owe you everything and I owe you more than I can pay. I’m poor in spirit. I’m spiritually bankrupt. My problems are beyond me, and they’re spiritual problems.” Are you there? That’s the first step
Mourn
Being poor in spirit is simply becoming aware about the realities of your life. Most people understand how bad things are in the world. Some people don’t. They’re spiritual teenagers. I’m kind of like this when it comes to accomplishing work goals.
I’ll meet with one mentor or another every 6 months or so. And they’ll say, so what projects are working on? What are you trying to accomplish? Since I’m a pastor, my goals are usually something relational.
I’m trying to build 10 new gospel relationships. 5 new discipling relationships. I’m going to reduce the unhealthy conflict behaviors by 25%. And so on.
“Woah”, they say, “that’s a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal!” They’ll always say, “How is that going for you?”
I always end up saying, well, you know this person left work or we had this event come up or
Until I finally say, I can’t do this. I’m not getting this done. I really don’t want to mourn over the situation. I don’t want to go to the place where I say, “This is beyond me. It’s more than I can handle.”
You can’t just know the symptoms, recognize the symptoms, and understand the symptoms. If you’re really going to reach that privileged place, you have to know what’s wrong. You have to take the situation seriously enough to ask someone what is causing the problems and what the disease is.
For a lot of people, the greatest sadness they experience in life is over circumstances. There certainly is plenty of that. Job loss, relational conflict, and even death. We all experience that stuff because of sin in the world.
Most people never ask, hey, what is going on behind all of this? What’s the cause of all these problems?
Poor in spirit means acknowledging your deepest life problems are beyond yourself. You don’t have the resources to handle them. To mourn means to acknowledge that those deepest life problems are actually your spiritual problems. Your sin problems.
In other words, our first instinct is to say..., If I were to ask most of you, what are your biggest problems, Most people say it’s my financial problems, relationships problems, or its my health problems. The real problem …
The real problem is our struggle with sin. When you mourn, the weight of this guilt pushes on you. Just like a job loss, relational struggles, or a death might push on you and make you feel the hopelessness, the cheerlessness, the fear of it all, when you mourn over sin, the hopelessness, the cheerlessness pushes on you. It doesn’t crush you. I'm not saying that. Jesus has more to say about that in a minute.
But there is a certain weight that falls on you. The weight of your own sin might really bring you to tears.
And if you don’t mourn, realize you’ll never be comforted. Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. It’s only those who mourn who are ever comforted.
Meek
When they weight begins to press on you, a lot of people are going to say, woah, this is too hard. This is too difficult. I can’t carry all this weight. It’s going to crush me.
People might say, I see my problems are beyond me. I can’t please God, and that just frustrates me to know. I’m going to feel bad. I’m going to be angry at the world. I’m just going to sit here and give up. A lot of people do that.
The other approach is what Jesus says. He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
You can see what he is saying. He is saying, if you truly humble yourself, you can’t be discouraged. You can’t be filled with despair. You can’t just sit down and give up. Why? Because you inherit the earth.
The humble hold the entire universe in their hands. This is another way to say, whoever loses their life will save it. But first comes the difference between meekness and self-pity.
A lot of people think they have given up their life. A lot of people will say something to me like, “I believe God has forgiven me, but I don’t know if I can forgive myself”. That sounds helpful. That sounds really humble. It’s actually a great test for the difference between real humility and fake humility.
What you might actually be saying is, what many people are saying is, I know God is a God of love. And because of that, he doesn’t hold this thing against me. But me, I need to be a good person. I need to be really good. I have higher standards than God. I intend to hold up these higher standards. I’m too proud, I’m too capable to accept forgiveness from God.
This is a great place to remember what CS Lewis says true humility is. CS Lewis, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” True humility is not self-pity. It’s saying, God, I’m going to listen to you. What you say matters. You are Lord of my life, I’m not. Whatever you say about me, sinner and saint, it’s true, no matter what.
Can you see what a difference this could make? A truly humble person realizes Jesus is all about them. This changes them. They can be all about you. That’s how you recognize a truly humble person. They are really, genuinely all about you. They are never insanely high one day and off the charts low the next day. Why? Because a meek person is always saying, On my own I’m nothing. I’ve done nothing to deserve this. Everything I have is a gift from God. God will never take those gifts away.
Hunger and thirst for righteousness -
By now, what we’ve got is a person who recognizes their deepest problems in life are beyond themselves. They don’t have the resources to handle them. Along with that, they see these problems as genuine spiritual problems. Sin problems. The weight of that bears on them. It diminishes them. They’re losing their own life and in the process the life of Jesus has grown for them.
And we’re getting hungry more.
There is this story told by a woman named Rebecca Pippert. She was a speaker and after one of her talks, a woman came up to her and said, “I need to talk to you.” The woman said, I was married recently. She was a member of a very, very conservative evangelical Lutheran church – probably a WELS church. She and her husband to be were considered leaders and shining lights in the church.
You can see they were passionate for Jesus. They were zealous for his glory. It very much looked like they hungered for righteousness.
What is righteousness? It’s to be right with someone. Men, if you remember what it felt like when your wife to be actually accepted you, despite the fact that you drank weird beer and wore clothes from grade school and stayed up all night playing video games, you experienced righteousness. You lived rightness.
This woman and her husband to me, it seemed like they wanted that. They worked hard at church. They were desperate for approval.
Six months before the wedding, they realized they were pregnant. They realized the scandal. They decided she would have an abortion. As she walked down the aisle on her wedding day, everybody was looking at the beaming bride, and all she was thinking to herself was, “You murderer.”
She kept saying to herself, “You were so worried about showing these people you really were. You were so zealous to look right that you would murder this life. I know what you are, she said, and God knows.
She said to Rebecca, I’ve confessed this a thousand times over, again and again. I’m obsessed with it. It’s running me into the ground. How could God possibly forgive me?
Rebecca said, ““My dear friend, Jesus Christ had to die for all our sins, sins of the religious and the non-religious, sins of the Nazis and the victims, sins of the moral types and the immoral types. We are all responsible for the death of the only innocent man who ever lived. The sin that caused you to destroy this life was pride, and it was pride that destroyed Jesus Christ’s life 2,000 years ago. As Luther said, ‘We all carry about in our pockets his very nails.’ You were already a murderer before this happened, and it was all totally paid for long ago.”
What happened to that woman? Did she suddenly say, “You’re making me feel worse?” No, because she got the point. She turned to Becky, and she said, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You’re right. I always in my head believed I was a sinner and my sins were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, and now I see it. I came to tell you I did the worst thing imaginable, and you told me I’ve done something worse than that. If I’m worse than I’ve imagined, if I killed God’s Son, and that can be forgiven, then anything else can.”
You and I are so hungry for approval, we’ll often swallow the bitter taste of anything else. There isn’t a pill too bitter that we won’t swallow it down.
Jesus wasn’t hungry for approval. You know what Jesus was hungry for? There is passage in John. Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of my Father.” (John 4)
You know what that means? It means Jesus was hungry for you. Jesus said, I’ve hungered and thirsted for you. There is only one feast that could possibly satisfy me. And once I’ve got that food, I finally won’t be hungry for anything else. I’ll be done.
And the more you enjoy the privileges he is giving you, the more privileged a follower of Jesus you’ll become.
Enjoy the privilege of following Jesus.
Matthew 17:1-9
After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.
Listening guide
Basic ways to practice good listening ...
Good listening ______ ____ ______ other people.
Great listening __________ us and them.
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” (Is 53:4)
“Carry each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2)
Love to listen … and be loved.
Discussion questions
Sermon
Here are some basic ways to practice good listening.
“Are we okay?”
I put away my phone, stop the video game, or turn off the TV when people want to talk to me. I give them my attention.
I don’t get defensive or judgmental.
“I thought you said …. Is that what you mean?” Or “I missed something in what you said...let’s try again.” Can I clarify?
“Tell me more” “Do you want to tell me anything else?”
“What I’m hearing you say is” or “What would you like me to remember from this conversation?”
All these and more are part of good listening. What about you? What do you add as good ways to practice listening?
One I left off is attunement. It’s matching your nonverbal body signals to those of the other person.
I'm not even going to ask how you and I are at listening. I don’t want to make us anxious.
Michael E experience – do you want to tell me more
“you changed my life”
Become good (or at least better) listeners
Listening is the first way to show people we care. This is another place where the Bible and good common sense and research all say basically the same thing.
Stephen Covey said, Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. Ernest Hemingway said “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” I always think that scene from the old Robin Hood is pretty funny. The castle is burning down. The snake and Prince John watch it burn. “I knew it. I knew it. I just knew this would happen. I tried to warn you, but no, you wouldn't listen. You just had to...” And then Prince John chases the snake trying to smash his mother’s mirror on him.
Religions value listening too. Solomon summarizes the wisdom “Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.” (Pr 19:20) Theologian David Mathis writes, "Poor listening diminishes another person, while good listening invites them to exist and matter.” The fourth precept of Buddhism says speak rightly of others, and to do that listen well.
What the Bible adds is that listening is also the way to love God. It’s kind of surprising! The oldest summary of the Jewish faith was a sentence called the shema. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” They said, “hear”. Listen. The beginning of a life with God was listening. Jesus made the same point about listening.
“Listen to him.” the Father said. Most of the time when Jesus told a parable, he didn’t say, “Go and do likewise.” He said, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This is different from religion
Religion says, “Do good and maybe God will accept you, love you, and forgive you.” Your whole relationship with god begins with what you do. The Bible and the gospel start with “Listen”. It’s not about what you do. You listen. That’s how it starts. You simply be with God.
That’s what good listening does. It puts us with other people.
Heard a great story of powerful listening this week.
A man spent about 15 years in the police department, especially working in the narcotics division. (https://vimeo.com/387666461, 25:00 ff)
He retires. He actually decides to go and become a pastor.
One day, he picks up the phone. It’s his chief! They haven’t talked in years. That day together in the duck blind was one of the best days of my life.
What makes you different? I’m not. If anything, its because I’ve got church and the Lord’s important to me.
What’s important is that Jesus is our Savior.
You have no idea who I really am. You might be surprised.
“I love you”. “I love you too chief.” He gets home and tells his wife, I think I might do something stupid.
He bought a plane ticket. Got off work and went to the airport. Walked into the hospital.
Looked at me, looked at his wife, “I just talked to you. Is this real?” Why would you do this for me?
Last night, I said “I love you.” That was just shock. No man has ever said that to me. I realized that if I really did love you, I would do everything I could to make sure you knew I loved you, including tell you about Jesus.
Can I please tell you about Jesus? “I think it is a good time for that.”
What’s going on? He entered someone’s world. He left his own world and he traveled to someone else’s world. He is stepping into it. It’s surrounding him. It’s enveloping him. Consuming him. Do you know what is going to happen?
What’s going to happen is. That moment and those words press on him. They push on him. That hospital room, that chief, they shape him and mold him.
That’s what really great listening is. It’s leaving your own world and entering someone else’s world. That is exactly what happens to Peter, Andrew, and James. The cloud envelopes them. They have left their own world and traveled to the world of Jesus. They’re surrounded by him and his glory. It pushes on them. Confronts them. And then those words change you and them. Great listening changes us and them.
I’m going to put to you, I think we need to let this happen. You can try to stay in your own world if you want. People do it all the time. Have you ever told someone, “who are you to tell me what to do?” Or maybe you’re a Bon Jovi fan. I kind of am. We recently got Guitar Hero back up at our house and I’ve rocked out “It’s My Life” a couple of times. What does that song say? It says, why should I listen to you. Why should I enter your world and see life from your perspective.
A couple hundred years ago, people wouldn’t have asked this question. They wouldn’t have talked this way. Why? Because 500 years ago, people lived in a communal or collectivistic society. People made decisions about questions like who am I, what’s my place in the world, and what am I supposed to do with my life through the filter of “us”. People said, my grandpa was a blacksmith, my dad was a blacksmith, my brother is a blacksmith, I must be a blacksmith too. We live in an individualistic society.
That means we answer questions like “who am I?”, “what’s my place in the world?” and “what am I supposed to do with my life” through the filter of “me” not “us”.
I’m not saying that’s all bad. Sometimes people will answer the question in life of “who am I?” with the answer, my dad was a carpenter, now I’m a philanthropist. People are so much more likely to serve people. It’s much easier to answer the question, “How can I help you?” than it is to say, “how can we get together and help all those people?” So I’m not saying this necessarily a bad thing.
Where it is a problem is when we say, “who am I listening to?” “who gets to speak into my life?” Because we’re most likely to answer, just me.
I think we need to listen well, even if it changes our lives, because if ever there was a person who could have said, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” it was Jesus. Or he could have said, “It’s my life.”
Instead what he says
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” (Is 53:4)
You think how do you carry someone’s pain? Jesus did it in a profound way. He listened to their sicknesses, the fears, and their questions.
“Carry each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2)
Because if he has listened to us, how can we not listen to others?
Action
Listen to Jesus so you can listen to us.
C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called, “At the Fringe of Language”. He said if your basic message is how to do something, language isn’t the best way to convey it. He actually said language isn’t very good at describing complex operations. He said, for example, if you’re trying to get across to somebody how to tie a Windsor knot in a man’s tie, don’t write it out in words.
I’m convinced that’s why Youtube is so awesome. Men finally have a place to get directions that actually make sense to them.
With Jesus we don’t have someone who gives us instructions. We get a message that says, I’ve died for you. I’ve risen for you. I forgive you. I accept you because of me. And I invite to
Love to listen … and be loved.
Matthew 5:13-16
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Sermon
Who are the people who have really changed your life? ______________________, ___________________, _________________________
What made them such life changing people?
Some of them probably did something great for you. Maybe you were literally rescued by someone who gave you an organ in your body, or just happened to be there when you wrecked your car, or maybe someone pushed you out of the way of a speeding car. Those people literally changed your life.
The life changing people I really remember shared their lives with me. All of their lives – the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the beautiful and the ugly, the pretty and the awful.
Yet somehow, through them, I still got something that changed my life.
Take our seminary’s president. We’re talking about Romans ch 1. Mom said, “It’s just wicked Paul, just wicked.”
Same man looks me in the eye and says, “I’m glad that you are going to pastor my son. I’m glad that you are going to be there with my son.”
We got to do that in 2019. That’s one thing we’ve got to celebrate today. 2019 was a great year and God used his Word to change people’s hearts and lives.
You can be someone who helps change the world.
Basically the question is this: Who are the people that make a difference? The kind of people the world needs, where those people are
Part 1
“You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.” In Jesus’ day, the Near Eastern times, salt was used as a preservative. They didn’t have freezers, so the only way to keep meat from going bad was to salt it like crazy. Light did basically the same thing.
Jesus wasn’t talking about electric lights. He is talking about a candle or a wick in a cup of oil. If you have ever been in complete and utter darkness, not just a little dark, but utter darkness, you get a sense of vertigo and disorientation and my dad had a word when I was a kid – discombobulated. Any of you say that?
The first thing that matters to change the world is that the world needs preserving.
What Jesus is saying when he says the world needs salt and light is that the world, human existence, needs something to preserve it, order it, and locate it. He means human existence left to itself inevitably goes to greater and greater disorder, dislocation, and disintegration. To put it simply, things fall apart. Everything falls apart. Think about it physically. The human body falls apart.
What’s the natural tendency of everything? Everything falls apart. Eventually we die and fall apart. As terrible as that it, everything is the same way. Petals fall of flowers. Their stems crumble. Rocks are crushed, they become pebbles, then sand, and finally nothing.
Think of this relationally and socially. All relationships tend to go bad. Marriages have to be renewed every 7 years or so. Pastor and people relationships have about the same – 7 to 10 years. At that point they need a new vision, a new life cycle. The vast majority of our friendships grow quickly then fade. If you want to have a meaningful relationship with someone, you have to constantly work, constantly pray, constantly talk, and communicate to make sure you keep on connecting.
The minute you stop working like that, things fall apart. There are social systems and classes and races. What’s the tendency? It’s toward disintegration. Disorder. Discombobulation.
Think about energy, the universe. The first law of energy might say that things in motion stay in motion. The second law says that energy itself is running out. Eventually the earth is going to dry up or blow up or something.
I think we feel this more than ever right now. This disintegration, disorder, discombobulation isn’t just physical, or relational, or social anymore, it’s even emotional or maybe even more correctly its spiritual. Just look at the cynicism we all have. There is deep cynicism about doctors and the medical system. We literally mock and scorn our doctors – oh, they’re just out for our money. Look at Americans trust in the government. Only about 1 in every 5 of us trusts the government to do the right thing most of the time.
There is a song I grew up with that perfectly summarizes the American spirit today for many. “It’s called American Idiot. It’s based on the music of a trio, Green Day. One review says. “It’s the depiction of a new American generation … bored, disaffected, cynical about their own cynicism. The chorus of one song is, ‘I don’t care if you don’t care.’ … That’s their default attitude to life in twenty first-century America.”
Some of you are probably saying, well, yeah, pastor you aren’t saying anything that surprising. This is what I’ve always thought. Isn’t this what the Bible teaches? That everything is just going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, sort of. But this is radical.
See for Jesus the world was cyclical. History was cyclical. Take the Egyptians. There are no biographies of Egyptian pharoahs as best we can tell. They did that because they believed there was nothing unique or interesting about each one. They were each different manifestations of the Egyptian gods. The Egyptians are known to have an incredibly traditional culture to make sure everything returned to cosmic harmony and order each year. It was all about the seasons and the farming.
That lasted until about the 1700s. We are born and bred and raised in a world infused with what sociologists call “the myth of progress”. That means, since we are kindergarten we are told, hey things are pretty good in the world and they’re getting better and you can be part of it. We’re getting bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, kinder, more moral. One of our former leaders used the line “the arc of the moral universe”, implying that the universe inevitably moves in a certain direction. Toward a certain point.
The one thing nobody believes?! That things are good but they slowly fall apart.
That’s the one thing nobody says. Who wants to say that? Who wants to say everything falls apart? No one. That sounds like the epitome of hopelessness and despair.
The people the world needs are people who know the reality of it. You can’t help if you add your voice too all the people who believe in the myth of progress. I'm all for progress. For sure. I use a lot of the developments of life all the time.
There is no point going back to be a person who says, “All of history, all of life is cyclical.” Yes, that person adds some insight to life. You’ll teach us things.
The person the world needs looks at life and says, “A lot of things are good, but they slowly fall apart.”
Take an example. What kind of person does my family need?
I leave my kids home and I say, okay, finish eating dinner, then clean everything up. Pick up the house a little bit. Put your pajamas on. And get into bed. I’ll be home about 8. I’ve got some meetings. Am I surprised and sad and angry when I walk in the house at 8 and the table is covered in food and the oven is still on and the living room floor is literally covered in legos. And as I turn to head up the stairs I hear audio books blaring from one room and the other room has VBS music. That’s not surprising. That’s just the way it is.
You don’t walk into a house that was messed up by a bunch of kids and say, bad house, bad kids. You say, where is the positive influence? You don’t walk into a dark room and say, “bad darkness”. You walk into a dark room and say, “where is the light?”
Where is the light?
If the world needs preserving, who or what is the best thing for it? Or if the world needs ordering and
Or rather it is God the Holy Spirit at work in you and through you by the Word.
See, we radically underestimate the challenge of simply renewing things. Of bringing new life to something old. It is much easier to make new. And I’m all for progress and new things, but we just said that ultimately what the world needs is preserving, ordering. It needs renewal, not new. And we radically underestimate how hard that is.
Take Coca Cola bottles. When I was a child, the icon of soda was dieing. The glass Coca Cola bottle. It was just fading out. I always liked going up north to my grandparents because their small town always had a few places that still had the old bottles. Everywhere else gave up on them. Too expensive. No on wants to return them. Too hard to refill. So much easier to fill a metal can onece and move on.
A much better example is Sears. By my count ex CEO Eddie Lampert has spent closing in on 10 billion dollars on Sears trying to revive. It hasn’t worked one bit.
Now realize what we got to see at Peace this last year.
You and I, we got to see, not one, but multiple people do something amazing. They grew up hearing God’s Word. They heard the gospel and they believed it was true. Then who knows how many years went by and they gave it up. Did all kinds of other things.
10, 20, 30, 40 years later they are back saying, not only do I believe in Jesus. I have this renewal and strong sense that I should connect with other people here at Peace under God’s Word. I’m going to put up with other sins so I can forgive and be forgiven. I’m going to repent so I can call others to repent.
Do you realize how amazing this is?
God has said there is a very limited, a very specific kind of person who is really going to do the most good in life. It’s the person who can bring out the best in something else. It’s the person who can
Think about the best steak you’ve had. You can always tell how much I care about you based on how good the meat is when you come over.
If I’ve made the time, I’ll put a rub on the meat and rub it in hours in advance, maybe days if I really have the time. And you’ll taste it. That steak, that roast will be so tender, so juicy.
If I’m in a hurry, I’ll throw some salt on the top and quick beat it. Throw it on the grill. Call it good. It’s just not the same. You’ve got to let the influence deep down.
Psalm 66:9-10
9 he has preserved our lives
and kept our feet from slipping.
10 For you, God, tested us;
you refined us like silver.
For
You don’t become salt and light by just waking up one morning and saying, I think I’ll be salt and light. You are salt and light.
Whatever deep work comes after that, whatever testing, whatever trial, whatever hardship, that is always something to come back to and say, the gospel that God loves me in Jesus not because of what I do but because of Christ.
Only he was the salt that was considered trash.
Only he was the light that was snuffed out.
Realize that? On the cross, darkness covered the whole world. Why is that? It’s because the light of the world gave up his light to fill your world with light.
I don’t think I realized, when I professed faith in Jesus, just how long it was going to take to work the gospel all the way into my life.
The chief influencer makes us great influences.
Funny story drove this point home for me.
What’s good parenting? Good parents face their own failures to do what is hard in the moment to have long term beautiful effects on a kid. If you just give your kid what they want, they’ll be a disaster.
Momentary pain in yourself and someone else for long term gain. Momentary pain long term gain.
Imagine a six year old daughter. She has those 2 teeth, right here, just dangling. Just hanging by a vein. All you want to do whenever you see her, you just want to flick em out. “No daddy, no, she screams. They’ll fall out.”
It’s so bad, when you’re at dinner time, I snuggle up next to her and put my arm around her and poke at the teeth.
That was real for us. Here is the part I didn’t do, but another dad told me about this.
One night, he is reading. His wife yells from another room, “Steve”. He runs in. She is wrestling with the kid. His job is to pin the kid’s arms down while his wife grabs the tooth. You know this isn’t my story because my wife would never do that. She is too kind. The girl is writhing on the ground and she is just crazy.
All before that she says, “I hate you I hate you I hate you. I’m never going to support you when you get old. You can’t live with me.
As soon as the tooth is out, I love you, I love you I love you. Ooo, it feels so funny, so weird.
This is the job of parenting.
This is the job of Christianing.
"Love without truth is sentimentality. … Truth without love is harshness. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent.” (Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage)
Let God deep in your life so he can help the world.
Matthew 4:12-23
12 When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. 13 Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— 14 to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:
15 “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
16 the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.”[a]
17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Jesus Calls His First Disciples
18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.
21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Jesus Heals the Sick
23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
Listening guide
Who we are to others is based on _____________ __________ __________
Only ____________________ can start to see.
Follow the thread
Come to clarity
Discussion questions
Matthew 3:13-17
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Listening guide
Relationships – hard?
“I’m trying to connect with you”
“I’m just trying to love people”
“Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?”
Half of Americans view themselves as lonely.
Confidants = 0
Jesus connects with people
Peter’s mother
The first disciples
Sick family members, poor people, mourning individuals
Today’s question: why be with people?
“This is my son” (verse 17)
“With him I am well-pleased" (verse 17)
The Triune God shows the _____________ of ____________.
“it is proper to do this to fulfill all righteousness”. (verse 15)
The prince of England, the first astronauts, and the dean - “The answer is here, wherever it is that faith resides”.
Jesus fulfills every _________________.
Mark 12:30-31 “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.
People bring great pleasure
Discussion questions
Sermon
This week I had one of those hard relationship conversations. We were working through an issue. One of us said, “hey, I’m trying to connect with you here.” I.e. cut me a little slack, I'm working on this, we can do this. There was this awkward moment of silence that basically said, “yeah, and how is that going for us?” Sometimes building relationships can be hard.
I remember telling someone one time, “I’m just trying to love people.” Even as I said it, I knew the only reason was because we hadn’t really loved people well.
Pete Scazzero, who is something of an expert on relationships, because in his own words he was so bad at them for so long, he tells this story. He says one time a friend came to him and said, “Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?” He said, “Why is it that so many are judgmental, defensive, and touchy?”
I’m not saying this is only our problem. Americans are bad at relationships. The results of a major study from Cigna were reported in 2018. “Half of Americans view themselves as lonely.” (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden). And the percentage is higher among younger people than older people. Think about that. Glance around this room. Of the people under 45, it is likely that 2 out of 3 feel lonely.
Do you know what the most common response to how many confidants do you have in your life is? 0. I have no one in my life that I can really be close to, that I can really be transparent and open with.
We struggle with relationships.
One thing I love to see in Jesus is how good he is with relationships. During Epiphany – these 6 weeks or so between Christmas and Lent – we see how is really good at everything. He can fix what is wrong with the world. He can teach God’s Word with authority. He knows how to impress, wow, and overwhelm people. And he is really good connecting with them.
He talks to Peter’s mother at her house and she loves him. He invites men to follow him and they get up and go. People come to him in all sorts of desperate situations – sick family members, poverty, and even death, and in every case he figures out how to show them what’s really wrong but still get them to appreciate him. It’s just remarkable. I think there is something for us here.
You can and should use Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Or if you haven’t considered Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, you’re missing out. They show us many reasons we stink with people.
But there is a power available to us. When you combine emotional health and good relational practices with God’s power and God's spirituality, it is truly life changing. You will be transformed.
That’s what the Triune God wants to do for us over the next few weeks. He starts with a simple thing: why be with people. What could people do for us. In coming weeks he has some other things: here is how to make your expectations clear in a God pleasing way, be sure to deal with the underlying issues that get in the way, and then are you really present for people. Today it’s an easy start: why be with people. It’s two things: who God is and what he does.
Part 1
We’ve got an event in Matthew 3 we call the baptism of Jesus. It shows us amazing and remarkable individuals.
We start with Jesus. He comes to John at the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. After he is baptized, a voice announces from heaven, “This is my Son.” (baptism of Jesus picture) So we know Jesus is a Son. No big surprise there. Every male human being is a son of someone. I guess the surprise would be if you expected Mary or Joseph there. Instead it’s a voice from heaven.
If the voice says, “This is my Son”, that means the speaker must be the Father. And in between the Spirit descends as a dove. This is what we call the Trinity.
Tri-une. Trinity. I suppose if you don’t like the word, you can talk around it. You can avoid it. It’s not used in anywhere in the Bible. It simply means “three - one”. It’s not really smart. Geniuses who came up with this name. Three – one. If you can say, supercalifra …. Trinity shouldn’t be a problem.
These three persons closely relate to each other. They don’t just do and say things that impact each other. There is more. The Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a dove and lands on Jesus. He connects to the Son. The Father says something personal and individual to the Son. He connects with the Son. They all connect with each other. And there is something remarkable about it all. Verse 17 “with him I am well-pleased".
How much do you like other people? If you are in the early stages of a dating relationship or first year of marriage or you just had a baby, you’re like “Me, me, me, me” (make kissy action). The rest of us are kind of like, uh yeah, people. We’ve said the line from Charles Schulz “I love humanity – it's people I can’t stand.” Relationships are so hard. Sometimes personal connection feels pointless. But that’s not the Triune God.
I’m going to come down to you (the Holy Spirit) and with you I am well pleased. The persons of the Trinity actually want to connect to each other. They’re family, but not really. This is not grandpa and grandma gushing over the grandkids.
The Triune God is totally content. The three of them. They have a great relationship. The relationship is so awesome that we’ve got a way to describe God’s existence: aseity. It means God’s self-existence or self-sufficiency. He is not in any way dependent on other beings. Let me just draw your attention two awesome aspects of God’s self-existence.
On the one side, the relationship that the Son and the Father have is so intimate, so close that Jesus can say, “I and the Father are one.” You begin to taste this when you’re married and you have a kid. You find yourself saying, “Oh my gosh that kid is me, that kid is my wife. That kid is us, all in one.” But you can be married for 10 years, 50 years and you will still find out something new about your spouse. You will never fully see through the other person. You can’t know them fully. Jesus can say, “I and the Father are one.” That is the one side of their relationship. So intimate.
The other side, Jesus and the Father are firmly independent of one another, and the kind of emotional entanglement and relational entanglement that characterizes our relationships isn’t a problem for them. Let me give us a quick example. You know you have an unhealthy relationship with your father when you can’t do anything without his approval. Or when you are anxious if he isn’t around. Or if you feel unnecessarily guilty or ashamed about things. That’s a sign of a codependent relationship. That’s not Jesus.
After Jesus rises from the dead, he tells Mary, don’t cling to me. “I’ve got to go to my God”. Jesus is going to return to his Father so there is a closeness still. But there is a separation. He calls him “my God”. It’s like calling your dad “my manager”. One of the clearest examples is on the cross. He calls out and says, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.” You notice he doesn’t say, “My father my father why have you forsaken me.” He says, “My God my God.” That’s the other side of their relationship. Firmly independent. They’ve got a genuinely interdependent relationship. It’s no wonder the Father says, “with you I’m well pleased.”
They actually like each other. They’ve got a great relationship.
The Triune God shows the pleasure of people
Take this to heart. I think a lot of us hear, “family relationships bring pleasure”. This is more. Connection, real relationship brings pleasure. If you go back to Genesis 2, and we’ll do that sometime, you see you and I were built in the image of the Triune God where there is an usness, a community
We need to take a look at this reality and process it. This is the end of isolation, putting up walls, blocking other people out. This is the end of loneliness. Other people can bring pleasure. The persons of the Trinity brought each other pleasure.
Part 2
Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that marvelous? When I see that, I just marvel at it. There is incredible power at work here.
Why? What does God do to make this relationship?
Jesus has this great line to explain why he is getting baptized. He shows up to John. John is his rough and tumble cousin. Immediately recognizes him. John is repulsed by the idea that he should baptize Jesus. Jesus says “it is proper to do this to fulfill all righteousness”.
This is straight up, straight forward gospel. Jesus has this amazing relationship with his father. Everything is good. Still he will satisfy all the expectations and requirements.
Every other religion says to us “You live a righteous life and give it to God. You offer yourself and if you are good enough, maybe you can please God and he will accept you. Christianity says, “Jesus has lived a righteous life and he gives it to you.”
Jesus wants to be your substitute. He wants to live in your place. He will do all the expectations and requirements.
Let me give us an example. I don’t even know if they meant to but they did such a good job. Some of you might have seen this story from “The Crown”. This is the story of Prince Philip and the first astronauts to reach the moon.
What happens is that you’ve got the prince of England, Prince Philip. He goes through some a crisis. It starts one day at church. He can’t stand the dean and his preaching. He leaves.
They get a new dean. About the same time, the first astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin – don't you all want to say Buzz Lightyear every time you have to say his name?- and Michael Collins go to the moon. The way the story goes, not sure if its accurate, is that Philip was absolutely enamored by this. For weeks, even months it was all he talked about.
The dean invites him to join something of a spiritual retreat. There are about 8 men discussing religion and their place in the world. They’ve lost their way they feel. They have no sense of significance, value, and meaning. The prince listens patiently. Then finally he explodes. He mocks the men for doing nothing. These astronauts, they are real men. They have actually done something meaningful with their lives.
The prince gets to meet the astronauts. He asks them how it felt. What did the sense as they looked down on the earth or as they stepped onto the moon? The way the story goes, they’ve got nothing. They were so busy with the tasks that the never reflected. They were so shallow that it never dawned on them to consider the smallness of their lives, the majesty of God’s creation, their own meaning and significance. They want to ask him about the palace, the driver, and his wife as queen – all these shallow and insignificant things, in his mind.
He returns to the circle of men to discuss greater spiritual matters. “[I’ve experienced] an almost jealous fascination with the achievements of these astronauts. An inability to find calm, satisfaction, or fulfillment. … My mother died recently. She saw that something was missing in her only child. Faith. How is your faith, she asked me. I admit I’ve lost it. The loneliness and the emptiness and the anticlimax to go all the way to the moon and to find nothing but haunting desolation, ghostly silence, gloom.... I’m trying to say that the solution to our problems is not the science or technology or bravery. The answer is here, wherever it is that faith resides.” The vicar sits in silence.
There is nothing he can say. Only one person can handle all the weight of our hopes, our dreams, our expectations, and our requirements.
Only Jesus said, “I am doi He made the meaning of his life to fulfill what was required of you and me.”
If you put your demands and your expectations on someone else in this life, do you know what we call that? That’s a savior. That’s an idol.
Only one person has fulfilled all our dreams, our hopes, our longings, and ex A lot of us need to take this to heart in our families, our friendships, our workplaces, and our communities. We all have relational expectations. The more we make someone else carry those expectations, the more we are likely to get crushed and crush someone else.
The devil is busy saying to us and through us, You need this in order to be pleasing.” Jesus says, “That will not make you pleasing. It’s only the Word of God that will make you pleasing. Bread will not satisfy you. It’s God saying, ‘You are my beloved child.’ ”
What makes God’s relationship so wonderful, so full of pleasure?
Jesus fulfills every expectation.
Action
The heart of healthy relationships is Jesus’ summary of the law. Mark 12:30-31 “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.
Realize that you can’t love God without loving others and you can’t love others without loving God. The two are inextricably linked.
It’s only as we begin to see the awesome relationship that God has in himself that we are going to experience true love in our relationships.
People bring great pleasure when you let Jesus fulfill all the expectations, all the righteousness.
Matthew 1:18-25
18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[b] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[c] because he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[d] (which means “God with us”).
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Matthew 1:18-25
Listening guide
Don’t just _____ _____________. ________ __________________.
Discussion questions
Notes
Depending on the number of people discussing, it may be easier to split into same gender groups.
You will not have time to discuss all the questions. Discuss those that interest you.
Getting talking
What is a challenge you are facing lately? Any way we can help?
In Matthew 1:18-25, Joseph sees an angel. What are some other Bible stories that have an angel visiting a person?
Have you ever seen an angel? Has someone you’ve known seen an angel? Tell us about the time.
Getting into Matthew 1:18-25
After reading this story, any comments or questions?
This section teaches the incarnation. Incarnation means God becoming flesh. Other religions have an incarnation. What are some interesting aspects of this incarnation?
What were the steps of obedience Joseph was asked to take? What do you think would have been the hardest part of the angel’s instructions to Joseph?
It can be pretty hard or uncomfortable for us to trust God. Is there anything that you are finding hard right now in your own life?
In verse 21 and 23, we hear names for Jesus and work he is going to do. What is that work? How would you describe being “saved” to someone who has no idea what it means?
John Gerhard, a great Lutheran pastor, offers the following list of Jesus’ work. Pick a line and tell us why you like it.
The Son of God came down from heaven, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal. 4:5).
God became man, that man might become a partaker of divine grace and of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4).
Christ chose to be born into the world in the evening of the world’s life, to signify that the benefits of His incarnation pertain not to this present life, but to eternal life.
He chose to be born in the time of the peaceful Augustus, because He was the blessed peacemaker between man and God.
He chose to be born in the time of Israel’s servitude, because He is the true liberator and defender of His people.
He chose to be born under the reign of a foreign prince, seeing that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).
He is born of a virgin to signify that He is born in the hearts of spiritual virgins only (2 Cor. 11:2), that is, in those who are not joined to the world or to the devil, but to God by one Spirit.
He is born pure and holy, that He might sanctify our impure and defiled birth.
He is born of a virgin espoused to a man, that He might set forth the honor of marriage as a divine institution.
He was born in the darkness of the night, who came as the true light to illumine the darkness of the world.
He is born among the beasts of the stall, that He might restore to their former dignity and honor sinful men, who through their sins had made themselves little better than the beasts.
He is born in Bethlehem, the house of bread, who brought with Himself from heaven the bread of life for our souls.
He is the first and only-begotten of His mother here on earth, who according to His divine nature is the first and only-begotten of His Father in heaven.
He is born poor and needy (2 Cor. 8:9), that He might prepare the riches of heaven for us.
He is born in a mean stable, that He might lead us back to the royal palace of His Father in heaven.
Wrap up
How have you seen God at work in your life lately?
What has God been teaching you in his Word?
What’s an area of your life where you need to repent or grow? How can we encourage you?
What kind of conversations are you having with non-Christians? How can we encourage and help you?
What good can we do around here?
How can we pray for you and others?
Sermon
Almost every year you have to watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas at least once. Lucy asks Schroeder to play Jingle Bells. First Schroeder plays this beautiful setting of Jingle Bells, probably a Mozart arrangement or something. It’s beautiful. She says, no, no no, I mean Jingle Bells. He plays this more powerful organ setting. She says, no, no, no I mean Jingle Bells. So he plays this two fingered Jingle Bells (pounds it out). It’s miserable. Then
Charlie brings the Christmas tree back and people start saying,
“-What kind of a tree is that?
-You were supposed to get a good tree.
Can't you even tell a good tree from a poor tree?
Boy, are you stupid [dumb], Charlie Brown.
I told you he'd goof it up.
He's not the kind you can depend on to do anything right.
-You're hopeless, Charlie Brown.
-Completely hopeless.
You've been dumb before, Charlie Brown, but this time you really did it.” (https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=a-charlie-brown-christmas)
You watch that scene and say, that stinks for Charlie Brown. I feel like that all the time!
Don’t ever send me to the grocery store without an exact list of everything you need, down to the exact brand you want, the size you want and the quantity you want. Otherwise I’m going to get home and you’re going to say, what’s all this? You got all this junk we don’t want and hardly any of the stuff we do want. You’re hopeless, Nathaniel.
Marc’s annual review, territory expanded, extra sales, but still not good enough for a raise
Can anyone ever do good? Just do a good job?
Then we have Joseph, who God gives to us as this silent superhero.
Huntsman ““There are few examples in ancient text,” he said, “of someone who knowingly raised someone else’s child.”
“Fathers in that culture were the dominant figures in a family, not inclined to bend to a woman’s needs.
“Joseph presents a different model, Huntsman said. “Instead of ruling or presiding, he is serving, caring and nurturing, putting aside his own needs for those of his wife and baby.” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joseph-father-jesus_n_4498409)
Discover that with God, you can not only do good, you can even be good.
Joseph was a good guy. Absolutely was. In the section of the Bible just before these words, we hear about his ancestors. His ancestors included the great king David, a whole bunch of other good and bad kings of Israel, the governor who broke the exiles from Babylon, and perhaps the man who started the Sadduccees. He was a craftsman or a builder of some sort, so likely a hardworking guy. He took his family into political asylum when it was necessary. When verse 19 in this text says he was “faithful to the law”, it really meant it.
Some of you are here today saying, hey don't say too much about God. I don’t want to have an encounter with God. My life is pretty good. I'm mostly doing good stuff. I'm just here to do something good for Grandma Jean or Grandpa Jo or whatever. I’m dressed up. I just want to sing a few nice songs. Don’t make this into a whole big thing.
You're thinking you can get through life like Captain America. Did you ever notice the one guy who survives the entire Avengers saga? Who is it? The guy who survives is the one guy who basically always does the right thing. The guy who survives is not the guy partying and celebrating, he is the guy sitting with the support group and cheering everyone up. And like Captain America,
You're saying, I’m mostly doing good stuff with my life. Just leave me alone.
You can't. God is doing crazy stuff. He won’t leave you alone.
Look at me.
You look at me and you could easily think, there’s a pretty good guy. He has got it all together.
I’m the good who was ten years ago saying, I’m not sure if there is god. I don’t think there is a god.
“I’m not sure if you’ll be a good pastor”. And a lot of the time I’m not that good, but..
God is working in people’s lives
I’ve got people coming and saying, “I want to be baptized.”
I’ve got people coming and saying, “I want to profess faith that Jesus is my Savior and Lord.”
I’ve got people saying, “Why are you all so generous?
I’ve got people saying, “I want to be part of this. I want to use my time and energy and gifts to change other people’s lives.”
How many of you ten or even five years ago would have said I never would have been here?
Here you are.
Are you starting to see what is going on?
Joseph thought he had to do good. He found out that his wife to be was pregnant. He said, wow this stinks. This is sad. I’m going to do the good thing and let her go marry the other guy. We’ll keep it quiet. God says to Joseph, don’t just do good. Don’t just do good. ________ __________________. What if you could make it all be good? God says it this way, “Don’t be afraid to take Mary home as your wife...he will save his people from their sins.”
What God said to Joseph is, there is a whole ton of shame and isolation and guilt and blame to go around here. Don’t push it away. Blame this kid who I put into your life and one day you will be more accepted than you ever imagined. Let him be isolated and one day you will be more integrated than you ever imagined. Make him guilty and you will finally be forgiven and free.
You can try to do good and push all that sin as far away as possible. You can try to push the guilt and the shame and the isolation away.
Or you can let this baby take it and finally all will be good. You know what I’m saying?
I bet a lot of you saw the new Lion King this year. It opens with this scene where all the animals are running to meet this new baby. That scene should strike you, because you’re watching this and all the lions and leopards are running right next to the elephants and the rhinos who are right next to all the giraffes and zebras. These are all animals that normally don’t get along. They normally eat each other. They fight. They’re like a bunch of kids when you put pizza out (devour pizza). But at that moment they don’t care. They’re just stampeding to see this new baby. The only one who still has guilt and fear and isolation is Scar.
Scar lurks on the edge. He hates that baby. He wants nothing to do with it. Murder grows in his heart. Eventually his fear drives away that new life.
Then death swallows the land. Blackness and anger and desolation and fear descend on the country. Nobody gets along. Everyone is killing everybody. Until that baby returns.
He endures the shame. He takes the blame. He even hangs ….. of the edge of that rock. It’s only then, when that baby returns, that life comes to the land again.
“He will save his people from their sins.” It strikes me in that moment. That’s why he came. He took the blame and the guilt and the shame and the alienation and the wrath of God and he didn’t push it away. He let himself hang. He took it all away.
Listen. It can all be good. You’re a mess. I’m a mess. He loves you. He died to take it all away and rose to bring you life. He came for you. He died for you. He rose for you. Because that’s what kings do. They put themselves in the place of the people they love dearly. The true king makes it all good.