Introducing Jesus: The Gospel of Luke
Introducing Jesus: Week 32
August 30, 2020 • Luke 11:14–27
Audio Transcript: Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the digital connection cart which you can find in the app, or on our website or if you're watching online in the comment section below. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Oh, holy God, I pray that you today open our eyes to the reality that is all around us, a reality of holy war, of spiritual warfare, the reality that there are two kingdoms with two kings both vying for the same throne, the throne of our hearts for now. And I pray today, Lord, that you show us that when we come to you, Jesus, when we ask for you to forgive us of our sins, to liberate us from sin, to liberate us from the shackles of sin that you also call us to submit our wills to yours for you are the great King of Kings. Lord, I pray that you give us discernment to discern truth from lies, to discern your voice from the enemies, to discern your will from that of Satan. And I pray, Lord, that you make us a people who are fearless as lions because we have the Lion of Judah with us. You are with us. And yes, Satan does come like a roaring lion seeking whom to devour, but when you are with us, you give us victory and in you, we are more than conquerors. I pray, give everyone listening now ears to hear and eyes to see this reality. And I pray, Lord, regenerate so many, transfer so many from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Savior and King, and whose name we pray, amen. The title of the sermon today is Holy War. We're finishing our sermon series in Luke for now. We're starting a brand new series for eight weeks, next week through the Psalms, an incredible series, praying for the Lord to bless each one of us. The title of the sermon is Holy War. We are at war with an invisible enemy, an unseen enemy intent on destroying each one of us and destroying the human race. And you will never understand the events going on around you. You will never understand world history. You will never understand the world unless you understand that the world is at war, between God and Satan, good and evil, truth and error, faith and unbelief, life and death itself. It's not a physical war. Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Do you believe in this? How can you not? We can prove that God exists by pointing to his creation, his good creation, his beautiful creation. It's pointing at love in the world and goodness, and kindness, and humanity, pointing to sacrifice and service, pointing to those who are generous in heart. We see goodness. Proof of the creator is visible in the creation. Satan is not a creator, he's a counterfeiter at best and he counterfeits in order to destroy. So, how do we prove the existence of the destroyer? We point to the destruction. It's all around us. It's all around us. We can start with world history. We can start with World War I and World War II and nuclear warfare. We can start with the Holocaust. We can do that. Or we can just look around and see the destruction around us. By the way, the tactics of the enemy of destruction have not changed. You read the Old Testament. Everyone who worshiped Baal, everyone who worshiped the idols, every single one of those societies had a pattern of child sacrifice. Why did God destroyed Jericho completely? Why did he call for the annihilation of Jericho? Because the walls of Jericho were built on the skeletons of babies. Let's point out the destruction around us, destruction of unborn humans, death-inducing destruction. The leading cause of death worldwide in 2019 that killed 42 million human beings was abortion. 8.2 million died from cancer, 13 million from other disease. How many people have died of COVID? We're told around 842,000, let's say a million. 42 million compared to 1 million. The invisible enemy is not COVID, it's Satan. And then if the baby isn't killed in the womb, he tries to destroy children as early as possible, and there's a pandemic of this. Just go to FBI's National Crime Information Center and just research how many children go missing in this country a year. Just this week, the US marshals found 39 missing children in Georgia under Operation Not Forgotten. Most likely, you haven't heard of that. There's a major police operation also this week in Western Australia about 140 underage victims with 11 arrests. Why are children going missing and what's happening to them? Demonic, it's demonic. We can all agree with that. And then if he doesn't destroy children there, he tries to destroy children with lies about food, lies about sexuality, with pornography, lies about marriage, lies about families, lies about sin in general which leads to generational sin and you get the families' destruction of churches, destruction of cities, destruction of society and ultimately, Satan's goal is the destruction of the human race. Study evil. Open your eyes to the evil around us, the evil that is not shown us, but it's there. And if you visited other countries, if you're from another country, you know it's there because it's more visible than it is here. Study evil and you will never be more sure that God exists. So, our only hope is Jesus Christ. 1 John 3:8, "Whoever makes the practice of sinning is of the devil for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil," to destroy the destroyer. That's why Christ came and that's why it's so important to understand in Christ ministry, how he fought with Satan and demons and how that applies to our life today. I want to look at Luke 11:14. We'll begin with 14 through 23. Luke 11:14, "Now he, Jesus, was casting out a demon that was mute. And when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled. But some of them said, 'He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,' while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.'" "But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? And if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.'" This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points, first we look at Jesus versus Satan, then we look at Satan versus people, and then three, hearing keep the word, those are weapons. First of all, Jesus versus Satan, we see in verse 14 that Jesus cast out a demon that was mute. So, this demon was causing physical pain, physical ailment to the person, to this man and the person couldn't speak and the people marveled. So, Jesus is the Son of God. That's clear from the gospels and he was sent to deliver us from Satan. And the battle with the demon exposes another battle, a battle between truth and lies, between the religious authorities and Jesus. The demon submits to Jesus Christ, the religious authorities do not, because they understand if one greater than them has come, if one who has power over the demonic has come, they need to relinquish their authority and submit to him. They do not, so they begin to question him. They don't have teachable open minds. They're closed, they're accusatory. They don't question the fact of the casting out of the exorcism. That's undeniable. They question the source of his power. They just got a sign but they want another sign. They're asking for more evidence and there's never enough evidence for the rebellious heart, not even enough evidence for them that he's reading their minds. Even that's not enough. Verse 17, "But he knowing their thoughts said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.'" That's the famous line that Abraham Lincoln used in a speech before the Civil War. It was from scripture. Verse 18, "'And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges.'" Incredible logic. Jesus cast out demon, and then his enemies, the authorities say, "He's doing it by the power of Satan," that's Beelzebul. And Jesus just says, "If Satan goes to war with Satan, how can his kingdom stand?" And he says, "Your sons, by whose authority do your sons cast out demons?" He's talking about the 72 disciples in chapter 10 where Jesus gives them authority to cast out demons and they come back and they said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name." And Jesus says, "Don't rejoice that the demons obey you, but rejoice instead that your names are written in the book of life." And Jesus sees through the stratagem, he sees through the Pharisees or the religious authorities and he sees Satan's strategy. So Satan, sometimes he goes to war by possessing people. Sometimes Jesus goes to war by possessing ideologies and he sees with the Pharisees, though they're not possessed by Satan, they are being influenced by Satan through a demonic idea and he sees the third temptation of Satan in the desert. Remember in the desert, Jesus goes, he's tempted after fasting for 40 days. And the third temptation was, "Jesus, go to the pinnacle of the temple and jump down." Jump down. Reveal your power for show. And Jesus doesn't. They've already seen a miracle. The question is will they continue to rebel or submit. And the reprobate mind is perpetually stuck in this debate mode. I need a little more evidence. I need to study this a little more. I need to read a few more books. I need to ask a few more questions and you're always stuck in this limbo of debating and you never pick a side. And that's why Jesus, this text, he lands it with verse 23, "Whoever is not with me is against me, whoever does not gather with me scatters." What he's saying is there's only two sides, there's only two kingdoms. It's the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan. Satan is a real spiritual being, not just some impersonal force for evil. He was an angel created by God who rebelled against God and he commands a host of evil spirits. Those are called demons, and here Satan is called Beelzebul. Beelzebul was a derivation that goes back to Baal worship. We see this in 2 Kings 1 where King Ahaziah, he falls. He's hurt and he wants to know what's going to happen with him. Is he going to die? Instead of going and asking the prophets or asking God himself, he sends people to inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, the lord of the flies. Why was Beelzebub called the lord of the flies because this was a Hebrew idiom that was derogatory to show that if you worship this lord of the flies, if you worship this false idol, everything in your life will be turned to destruction where the lord of the flies, what does that mean? What are flies attracted to? They're attracted to dung in the King James version, D-U-N-G. If you worship this person, if you worship this idol, if you worship Satan who is actually behind this idol, he will make everything in your life go to that. That's the name of Beelzebul. Jesus talks about the fact that Satan's agenda is to come to steal, kill and destroy when Jesus' plan for us is to give us life and give us life to the fullest. Then here we see the religious authorities, they're slandering the son of God. Instead of submitting to the evidence and following the evidence, they find self-justifying explanations and they're slandering, blaspheming the son of God. What's Satan's agenda? It's to harm us. Satan hates God. So when he sees human beings created in the image of God, he wants to destroy them as much as he can in order to recreate them in his own image, in his own defiled, degraded, perverted image. Since the fall of the human race into sin, every person's born under Satan's dominion, Jesus called him the ruler of this world. Paul called him the God of this world who has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. In this case, the demon causes the man to be unable to speak, unable to speak to God, unable to worship God, to praise God. He causes him to be mute. He mutes him. Other cases, he blinds people. You can study the legion and the thousand demons and the psychological physical effects that they bring. He harms. He mutes. He blinds. He's sneaky. He doesn't do that in the west as much because he does just enough to keep you asleep. If he does too much, you're going to wake up to it. He doesn't want to jolt you awake to just how awful, just how egregious the evil is. He's sneaky, and how do we wage war? We wage war in the same way that Jesus wage war. How is Jesus waging war here? He speaks to the demons, speaks the word of God. Be gone in the name of Jesus Christ. He speaks to the Pharisees. He's doing spiritual warfare. He's speaking the word of God. The truth of God, the word of God, that is our weapon, trust about us, humanity. Truth about sin, truth about reality, salvation, the gospel. And by speaking truth, that's why it's so important to speak the faith, speak the word of God, speak the gospel to those around us. We're liberating captives. We, the church of Jesus Christ, we are charging the gates of hell with the flaming sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. That's why Satan wants to mute us. That's why Satan wants us to be bashful about our faith, to be embarrassed to say, "This is good, and this is evil. This is diabolical. This is demonic. That's from the pit of hell." Why is it so uncomfortable in here now? Why? Why are we so afraid to speak the word of God? Because we've been muted. The volume is down on us in the church of Jesus Christ, and Satan continues to spew his BS, the lord of the flies. Luke 11:20-22, Jesus says, "But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." If I do this by the power of God, by the finger of God, and this is an allusion to Exodus 8:19, where the Egyptians understood that they had sorcery, they had power. When Moses came, he had the finger of God with him. If I'm doing this by the finger of God, if I'm casting out these demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. If the kingdom of God has come upon you, then the king is here. "And when a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace," he's talking about Satan here, "his goods are safe. But when one stronger than he," if someone is stronger than Satan comes, "it overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil." The kingdom of God is upon us. It's the initial face of the kingdom manifested in the presence of the king who rules in our lives, who rules on the thrones of our hearts and also anticipates the day when Jesus will reign not only in our hearts, but on the throne of King David. Satan will be bound from his powerful influence on earth, and Jesus will put his feet on the necks of his enemy. His enemies will be a footstool for his feet. Satan will be bound because Jesus is stronger, Jesus is fully armed, Jesus attacks, Jesus overcomes and he takes away the armor and takes away the spoil that's been stolen by the enemy. That's Jesus versus Satan. Jesus wins. He wins every time. But we need to decide, are we going to allow the fullness of Jesus Christ to fill our hearts? And that's point two, Satan versus people. And here are the objection that's raised in the west is, I don't hate God. I don't hate the idea of God. I just don't want to be fanatic for God. I don't want to be an extremist. I don't want to be a fundamentalist for God. Do I love God? I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say I don't hate him. Or I don't hate the idea of him in general. Is he my king? No. But Satan isn't my king either. Satan isn't my master either. And that's how we want to just remain neutral. Yeah, a kind of Jesus. Yeah, I don't want to go all the way. And this is how Satan blinds us in the west. I'm not your master. You don't need God to be your master. You are your own master. Do as you please. You define morality as long as you're not hurting anybody publicly. That's how he lulls us to sleep. And how he blinds our minds and our eyes. And then we don't see reality from what it is. We just say everything just exists. Everything around us, it just happened. Morality, yeah, not that big of a deal although it's written in our hearts. Then, we still feel shame, we still feel guilt, we still feel regret even though we've transgressed laws that we don't even believe in and then we go down the cycle of anxiety and depression and shame and destruction, and then we numb ourselves with substances to get rid of that. And then little by little by little by little, the Satan says, "You are your own master," and little by little, he enslaves us. And here, Jesus illustrates what happens when we try to play the neutral card. It never works because you can't control you. You can't master your own desires. You can't master your own heart. How often have you done something and you say, "How in the world could I have gone so far? I don't even recognize myself." He takes our sin and uses it as a foothold to exacerbate it, to create further destruction in our lives. And Jesus illustrates it with a story. Verse 24, "When the unclean spirit," or just cast out of demon and he's speaking to this person. "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest. And finding none it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. And then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first." So perhaps, you have had a demon that you were battling and you overcome it. You overcome this one thing that had been enslaving you. Perhaps you did it with moral reformation, willpower, determination and Satan at that moment, he tells his troops to retreat temporarily to give you reprieve so that you start thinking that you defeated this thing by yourself. You clean your heart for a little bit. You swept your heart. You put your heart, your life in order, perhaps to show you Satan retreats, perhaps to show you, "Hey, I don't exist. Hey, you can overcome this." Perhaps to show you that you can be saved without Jesus and he does this all the time with therapy, with rehab, with Alcoholic Anonymous or other religions. And the end goal ... This is what Jesus is saying. "I've cast out this demon but the end goal is for you to welcome God the fullness of the Holy Spirit into your life. You either have one spirit or you have the Holy Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit fully indwell the presence of Christ in your heart." If not, Satan doesn't rest. He will send more demons. This demon, he's restless. He doesn't like being in the desert. He wants a home. And the spiritual world, like the natural world, abhors a vacuum. So you see that seven more evil. Here, we see that there are different degrees in evil of the demonic. Seven more evil move in, eight demonic roommates in this person's heart. Scripture talks about don't let the sun set on your anger, lest you give Satan a foothold in your heart. Sometimes through our own sin that we have not mortified. We give Satan a foothold. Once he gets his foot in the door, he wants to knock it down. I wonder if there's a foothold in your ... We all have it. We all have these footholds. The question is to what degree. To what degree have you not repented of clear sin? To what degree has this sin been pulling you away from the presence of God, from the holiness of God, from the purposes of God for you? Jesus is saying it's all of Jesus or none of Jesus. You can't just have a little Jesus. It's all or nothing. And this principle, it applies individually but also applies collectively to churches and applies collectively to communities and applies collectively to nations. Jesus was applying this principle here to this one person but also to Israel. The worship of idols had been exorcized from Israel when they were freed from Babylonian captivity. That demon was gone. But now there are new demons, the worship of the letter of the law, legalism, formalism, covetousness, pride, greed. Public religious life was worse than ever, so much worse they were on the brink of crucifying the son of God, and they didn't see it. How could they be so blind? Because they see the evidence of the work of God and they attribute it to Satan. They're literally pawns of the evil one because they have not allowed Jesus Christ to cast out the demons of sin and pride and selfishness and folly and gluttony and the rest of them. So, how do we battle the demonic? How do we battle the influence of Satan in our lives? How do we wage holy warfare? Jesus ends this text with a really curious passage, Luke 11:27-28. "And as he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!' But he said, 'Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!'" Why is this text added right after a text about the demonic and exorcism? Why? And this woman is well-meaning though little misguided, so Jesus just corrects her thinking a little. She said, "Your mother must be so proud for raising a son like you." And of course, this is true. Mary certainly was blessed. We've got The Magnificat and Jesus doesn't deny that Mary is blessed though he does correct the direction of this lady's thoughts. This lady thought just being connected to Jesus physically, relationally, just being connected to him was enough to be saved. She thought, "Oh, you're so ... You're the messiah. And just by virtue of your mom, her connection with you, you're saved." And Jesus says, "That's not what saves." Familiarity with Jesus Christ is not what saves. That's not the way to blessing. The way to blessing is faith in Jesus Christ. And the work on the cross that Jesus Christ took the penalty for our sin, that Jesus Christ on the cross died because of our sin. Jesus Christ on the cross was ... He was putting his heel into the head of Satan, into the head of the serpent, giving him the deathblow. That's what Jesus was doing on the cross as he absorbed our curse for us in order to give us this blessing. And what's the blessing? Once we become a Christian, once we're saved by grace through faith, once we repent of our sins, that's all you need to do. All you need to do to be transferred from the domain of darkness to the domain of light no matter how dark your darkness has been is to say, "God, I repent of my sins. I repent of my evil. I repent of my dark works. And Jesus, thank you for bearing the penalty for my darkness on the cross. You're enshrouded in darkness in order to transfer me into the kingdom of light." That's all you need to do. And once you do, this is the emphasis here. You are in a kingdom where you are to submit to the king and that's why you need to hear the word of God and keep it. When Jesus becomes your savior, he also becomes your king. So, are you hearing the word of God? Not just listening to it but hearing it ... And are you keeping the word of God because we fight the good fight of faith with faithfulness, by worshiping God with our lips. That's why worship is so important. That's why if you're coming to a service, come on time. Come 10 minutes early, 15 minutes, because worship isn't just a warm-up for the sermon. And we have an incredible worship team. But worship is we are proclaiming with our being that God is holy and a savior, and that's what prepares us to hear the word of God. So, no more late people next week, or just watch online. Just watch online so I don't see you walking in late. That's why I stand in the back, by the way. I'm like ... Here's the other thing I'll say. When you're faithful to the Lord and you are public about your faithfulness to the Lord, people will hate you. When you are public about what you believe about God, the true God of Holy Scripture, when you're public about what he teaches, about the most private areas of life, when you proclaim that, you will be opposed today like never before. I've preached this before, and I've kind of like ... I haven't even noticed how the temperature has increased exponentially so fast. The hatred that's coming that's being directed at people who are faithful to the Lord, who stand on this truth. 1 Peter 5:8-11, "Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." How does he do it in this context? "Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering ..." He wants to devour by suffering. "The same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." Are Christians being persecuted for the faith around the world? Yeah, by the millions. "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." So Satan, prowling lion, wants to devour sometimes through temptation, sometimes through lies, sometimes through false theology. In this context, through suffering to get Christians to back down. And they don't stand for the truth because it's painful or it's costly. It's not starting physically yet, but we're beginning to see the financial costs. I'll just give one example from my ... It's kind of a silly example but it happened and kind of blindsided me. So, my brother and a few guys from the church had been working on a startup over the pandemic called ToolBelt home services pros with customers. Customers post a project and home service pros send their price. And I grew up painting with my dad. My dad, Vlad, he started a painting business. If your house looks bad, don't get mad, call Vlad. So, I did that every summer since I was eight. Every summer afternoons, weekends, I am a tremendous painter. Humbly, I will tell you I am probably the best painter you've ever met. The lines, come on. And so my brother and I, it was a Friday, and this gentleman posted "I need my shelves painted." And my brother and I ... I was preaching then on Thursday. So Friday, Saturday, that was my weekend. So, Saturday, I was like, "Yeah, let's go. Let's go paint some shelves." And I was like how much you want to make, how much if we did the thing, okay, 500 bucks. And I submitted the price and the guy said, "Okay, great. When can you come?" I said, "Tomorrow." He said, "You got the tools?" I was like, "I got everything. I got everything. I'll take care of you, Steven." He said, "Okay, great." I submit my bid. Two hours past and I was like, "Yeah, something is weird." And then he messages me. This is what he messaged me. He says, "Hi, Jan, sorry. I can't accept your bid. I found an article you posted through your church in which you labeled being gay as a sin titled 'Lust kills love. Love kills lust.' I will not hire someone who believes that to do work in the home I've built with my husband of 10 years and our two children," period. That did not feel good, and never feels good. So, I prayed. I want to going to come back with a link to that sermon. Did you even listen to it? Where I talk about grace, it begins with grace. We're all sinners. He didn't listen to it, I don't know. I said, "Hi, Steven, no problem. I was just trying to serve you as a Christian and pastor. I'm called to love and serve everyone, trying my best as a sinner myself. By God's grace, I wish you and your husband and your two children all the very best. All love good, sir," heart emoji. Stuff like this happens privately all the time. You don't want to know it because I'm not going to be like, "Oh, Steven, you weren't nice to me." Pray about Steven. We're called to love those who persecute us, but the persecution is only going to increase. And the more you look like Christ, the more your life reflects Christ, the more of this you will get. The more public you are with what you truly believe, the more of this you'll get, especially in this political climate. Matthew 6:10-12, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." So, I missed out on $500 but my spiritual Venmo went cha-ching. The gospel, they demanded a sign. People today demand a sign. The greatest sign that God has ever shown the world of his existence and of his character is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ conquered Satan and sin and death on the cross, came back on the third day. And when we believe in him, we are saved. Colossians 2:13-15, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." He did what no person could. He defeated Satan, and Satan now is a defeated foe, although he's allowed to reign until being finally bound at the second coming of Christ. Satan is on a leash. He's still here. He's still causing havoc, but Jesus alone has enough strength to save our soul from his demonic clutch. We're saved by grace through faith, that faith always leads to obedience. Saving faith leads to obedient faith. If Jesus Christ, if what he taught was false, he's the greatest blasphemer that ever lived. And if what he taught is true, then he is greatest king. So, you can't stay in the middle. There is no middle. Either you fully accept or you fully reject. Either you are in the army of Christ in his kingdom or you're in the army of Satan. You're being used by him. Here's what I found after 11 years in ministry in Boston. The number one things that gets in the way of people accepting this truth no matter how much evidence you give them, the number one thing that gets in the way is pride. Because it's painful to admit that you are have been wrong. As smart as you are, as educated as you are, as connected as you are, as successful as you are, you have been wrong about the most important issue in the universe. And to admit that, it's so, so painful. So, repentance is a form of suffering which does humble us. But if you don't submit to Jesus as king, you are not just in the wrong side. You're not just in the wrong side of history, you're on the wrong side of the greatest war being waged. So, join Christ. Join the army of the Lord. Stop grasping at straws to justify unbelief and sin. Seek the truth. And Jesus said if you seek the truth, you will find the truth and the truth will set you free. I'm going to close with Paul Harvey's ... He wrote a short little essay in 1965, which reading it now seems so prophetic. And I like to read it every single election cycle just so we see the work of the enemy in our culture and how it's progressing. He says this: If I were the devil, if I were the prince of darkness, I'd want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I'd have a third of its real estate, and four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn't be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, thee. So I'd set about however necessary to take over the United States. I'd subvert the churches first. I'd begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, "Do as you please." To the young, I would whisper that the Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what's bad is good, what's good is square. And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, "Our father, which art in Washington ..." And then I'd get organized. I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I'd threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I'd pedal narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I'd tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I'd soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves until each in its turn was consumed. And with promises of higher ratings, I'd have mesmerizing media fanning the flames. And if I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects but neglect to discipline emotions. Just let those run wild until before you knew it, you'd have to have drug-sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door. Within a decade, I'd have prisons overflowing. I'd have judges promoting pornography. Soon I would evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in his own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money. And if I were the devil, I'd make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle. If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who want until I'd kill the incentive of the ambitious. And what do you bet I could get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work in patriotism, in moral conduct. And I would convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun, and that what you see on the TV is the way to be. And thus, I could undress you in public and I could lure you into bed with diseases from which there is no cure. In other words, if I were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what he's doing. There is good and evil, there is God and Satan. Question is, are you with him or are you against him? Those are the only options that Jesus gives us in your life, and your whole eternity depends on it. The choice is clear as day. And then once you submit to Jesus Christ, take up the whole armor of God, especially the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and be praying at all times in the spirit for that is how we stand firm in the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your Holy Scripture. We thank you, Lord, that you are with us, that you are the ferocious lion who is by our side, the Holy Spirit that you are with. Lord, I pray that you fill us like never before. And whatever closets or little crevices in our souls, in our hearts, that we are keeping close from you because we're so enjoying that darkness in the inside, I pray today knock down those doors. Knock down those closets and fill, overwhelm us with your presence. Overwhelm us with your power and make us a people who unabashedly proclaim the whole counsel of God, who never shy away from the truth, no matter what the consequences are. And we thank you for that in advance and we pray all these in Christ's holy name, amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 31
August 23, 2020 • Luke 10:38—11:13
Audio Transcript: We're back. Hallelujah. Praise you Jesus. I've gotten a lot more charismatic over the past six months. Praising God. Hallelujah. Praise you Jesus. I'm so glad we're back. Welcome if you're new to Mosaic, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through a digital card and either on the website or in the app. We are still in our sermon series in the book of Luke transitioning soon. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word. Heavenly father what a good father you are, you're a father to us corporately and you're a father to us individually. And we thank you for adopting us into your family because of the work of your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus you are our older brother. You are our Lord and savior. You paved the path for us. You made the way for us to follow you and follow you into the presence of God the father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit we pray today, we ask for more of you. Jesus, you promised that when we ask more of the Holy Spirit from the father that you love to give good gifts to your children. The greatest gift you can give us is the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit fill us now. Holy Spirit, I pray that you convict us of sin, whatever sin that has beguiled us. Whatever sin that is controlling us. I pray today remove it. Give us a glimpse of the holiness of God. Show us God how immense your holiness is. How much higher you are than us. I pray today that you deepen our reverence for you, a fear of you, a good healthy fear that keeps us from sin, keeps us from doing anything that would hurt our relationship with you. I pray, Lord, bless our time the Holly Spirit and the holy scriptures by the spirit and Holy Spirit continue to protect us from the evil one, from the demonic we live in a true spiritual war. And I pray remind us of that. Remind us that prayer is actually the way that we fight. Sometimes we think that prayer is a waste of time, that prayer doesn't accomplish anything. It accomplishes everything. So we appeal to you Holy Spirits today come and today remind us that there's nothing more important than sitting at the feet of Jesus, taking your word in, being transformed by your word, and then going out and living in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and continuing to preach the gospel. Share the good news with those who are still captive. And I pray release many in this next season and we pray all this in Christ holy name, amen. The title of the sermon today is rest at his feet. We'll be looking at the story of Martha and Mary. And usually the story is presented in such way that Mary is sat at the feet of Jesus. Martha was too busy. Don't be like Martha, be more like Mary. And I think it's a little deeper than that. There's more layers than that. I share the story about my dad often. I'll share a story by my mom. My mom... So I come from Slavic family, in Slavic families hospitality is all important. And if you have guests over, you have to present all of your food, not just a little food, all the food you have. The store, the table has to be and the rest of the phrase is, it has to be breaking. It has to be almost collapsing under the weight. And my mom is tremendous at this. She's so good at this. She's not good at just creating the food and making the dishes and a lot of salads, a lot of meat, a lot of potatoes, but she's also really good at presenting it beautifully. So with the salads, like she'll cut up the cucumber or the radish or something and she'll make a flower out of it. Just sprinkled parsley, just perfectly. It's always incredible. And one of the things that I noticed even growing up it's you'd would never sit down with us. She would cook and she's running around just to make sure that everyone has enough and they've had seconds and thirds and fourths, and she would never sit down. And then when the guests would leave, she would just crash and then get mad at us. What do we do? She's like, "Oh, you should've helped." I'm like, "We are..." And I didn't really understand that frustration until we had kids. And now we have a family of six. We have four kids, my wife and I. I know what it takes to just feed my kids to the magical restaurant table for six, please. I know how hard that is. And then you got more people. And that's kind of what's going on with Martha. She wants to serve Jesus. She wants to please Jesus. She wants to show Jesus how much he loves her. And food is her love language. Hospitality is the way that she thinks and Jesus stomach's is the way to get his heart. And she kind of misses the point where Jesus is at the end of his life. And he knows that his time on earth is limited and he just wants to spend time with her. He just wants to sit there. So that's what the text is. It shows us, reminds us what's most important. It reprioritizes things in our life. So today we are in Luke 10:38 through Luke 11:13. Would you look at the text with me. Luke 10:38, now, as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her. "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished one of his disciples said to him, "Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." And he said to them, "When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation." And he said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him friend lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him." And he will answer from within, "Do not bother me the door's now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you if his son asks for a fish will instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, listen to God intently. Second, talk to God relationally, and third ask of God audaciously. First of all, listened to God intently. Luke 10:38. Now, as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. So the family is Mary, Martha. We don't know where their parents are. Most likely they passed away that's why they haven't been mentioned. It's Martha's house. Most likely Martha is the oldest. Martha then there's Mary and they have a brother named Lazarus. So that's the family. Jesus was friends with them. He's friends with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And this is really important because in the age old question is can men and women be friends. And I would submit to you that apart from Jesus Christ, there's always going to be some weird tension where it's never like too many... But with Jesus Christ, we're not just friends we're siblings. We're siblings, we're brothers and sisters. So we can have sibling relationships in the faith because Jesus Christ comes and he takes away our sin and gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome our sins. So Jesus did not have a home. He actually said, the son of man doesn't have a place to rest his head. So he would be blessed, receive blessings from gospel, patrons or people who were blessed financially. And they opened up their home to him. So Martha welcomes him and the disciples. How many disciples of did Jesus have? 13 or 12? So with Jesus, 13. 13 grown men just rolled into your house. You are not expecting, did they call? Of course not, text message at least? No, nothing. Mail pigeon? No, nothing, nothing. They roll in and they're hungry. They just ministered all day. Now, I'll tell you this. Has anyone had 13 men over their house to eat? Am kind of afraid when my brother comes to my house. One grown man, like I need to go shopping just for him. Just for that little, we had burgers this week, he down three burgers gone, and then he was looking at the last one. I'm like, "Come on, man. You can't do that. That's my second one." So just do the math. So they come to his house and Mary loves to serve. Mary loves to care. This is her love language. She wanted to create a feast for Jesus. She wants to practice hospitality. It takes time. It's hard. Cooking back then was so much harder than is cooking today. You couldn't just go to the Stop & Shop at Trader Joe's. You don't have a gas stove. It's so much harder. She feels all this pressure. So she's doing that and what's her sister doing? Luke 10:39. And she has a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. And usually at this point in the sermon, you say, okay, don't be like Martha, be like Mary. But I don't think that's what's going on here. Because scripture talks about faith and works. We're saved by grace through faith. When there is sin in our lives and the Lord draws us to himself we repent of our sin, of our righteousness, of our bad works, of our good works, that we try to do in order to gain salvation. We repent of all that by grace through faith, we're saved because of the work of Jesus Christ. Now, we're called the good works. It's faith and works. It's like two paddles of a rowboat. It's like two pedals on a bike. They're together. We are to worship and we are to work, we are to take God's word and translate that into work. So that's not what's going on here. What's going on here is something deeper. It's a re-prioritization. Martha you invited me into your home and you didn't ask me how I am. You didn't even ask me how I'm doing. Perhaps Mary was better at the EQ emotional intelligence. She saw that Jesus was burdened. She saw that Jesus had set his face to Jerusalem. He knew these were his last day. So Jesus started teaching. He started teaching. She sits at his feet. Most likely he's standing. And by the way, this is interesting. Judaism didn't forbid explicitly that wouldn't be instructed in the Torah, but it was unheard of for a rabbi to allow a woman to sit at his feet, because that meant that she is one of his disciples and she's sitting there. She's listening. Later Rabbinic tradition includes quotations such as may the words of the Torah be burned, they should not be handed over to women. So they're saying rather than teach a woman the Torah, we prefer burning it. And Jesus rejected these outright unbiblical attitudes. And you see Mary's posture here. It expresses her desire to learn. She's sitting at his feet intently listening. There's also an aspect of worship, of adoration. She's absorbing the words. Soaking in the information, this focus, this rapt attention. She loves the teacher, therefore she loves the content, therefore she's absorbing it. There's an incredible connection between love and learning. In particular when it comes to God. This has to do with any subject. I'll just give you an example, if you're a musician and you love the song, you don't have to sit there and memorize the lyrics. They just stick to your brain. You know what I'm saying? I can give you lots of examples of songs that I've memorized, but they shouldn't have been memorized. That was a long time ago, I'm redeemed. But you know what I'm saying? And with children, you see this with children, children come into the world with all. And because they have all their minds are open. They absorb information. This week we found out that our youngest daughter Milana... We speak Russian at home. We found out that she knows English. And my second daughter, Elizabeth, she started asking her questions in English, she said, "Touch your nose." She was like. "Touch your ear." "Give me a cookie." They just absorb the information? And I say this because love and learning about God, they're so intertwined. Last week we talked about the great commandment. There are two great commandments. One is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. There's a way to love God with your mind. When you love God, you love what he teaches. You love his word and his word sticks to your mind. I had a conversation recently with a sister who said, I get bored reading the Bible. I have a hard time reading. I fall asleep and I said, "When you're dating someone and you receive a text message or you receive an email or even a voicemail, you listen to that voicemail, no other voicemails." There's something about love and learning. And she's sitting there. She loves the subject because she loves the God who's speaking this word. But Martha verse 40 was distracted with much serving, she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." Fascinating, fascinating. She's distracted. She hears perhaps a little bit of what Jesus is teaching. And this is probably going on for hours. And she's distracted by the serving. She wants to please God. She wants to please Jesus. She wants to show him how much she loves him. And she's distracted scripture says so much so she actually gets irritated. And what does she do? She goes to Jesus. And she says, "Lord, do you not care? Do you not care? I'm slaving away in this kitchen. And my sister sitting there listening to you talk, do you not care?" I wonder if in this season you've asked the Lord that question. Lord, I'm serving you so much in the season. And I'm kind of out of fuel, do you not care. It's kind of accusatory. She's known Jesus. She's known his teaching. She's seen his miracles. She's accusing him and so much so that she says, "Lord, tell her, tell her then to help me, tell her." She's telling God what to do. There's a lot to unpack here. First of all, I'm going to say that Martha is... I think Martha's from New England. She's very blunt, from Boston. I get this from this text in John 11 where Jesus is about to resurrect Lazarus. And then Martha is like, "Hold on Jesus. Don't roll the rockaway yet, he's been there in there four days, I've done the math. It's going be a foul odor" In the King James it says, "I think he stinketh. My brother's stinketh." She's absolutely blunt, this is what's on her heart. And I love this part about, she goes to Jesus with her aggravation, with her anxiety, with her doubt. "Do you not care?" I'm sure you've been in the situation where you're working hard and you see someone who isn't and it's hard for a person who's working to understand the person who's not in particular when it comes to studying scripture and prayer. And you're like, hold on. Because when you're doing work for God, you think that's the most important thing. When you're studying God's word and praying you think that's the most important thing, but the scripture isn't pitting them against each other. It's re-organizing, re-prioritizing, what comes first? Above everything seek first the kingdom of God. The first thing you got to do is pray. The first thing you got to do is listen to God's word. God doesn't want our leftovers, he wants our first fruits. Before our work for him he wants the adoration of our heart. The other thing I will just point out here, Martha took herself too seriously. She thought if I do not be feed Jesus, Jesus will not be fed. If I do not feed Jesus' disciples, Jesus' disciples will not be fed. I am very important. My work is very important. I am actually indispensable to Jesus in his ministry. If I were not here, they would all die. So I'm going to go back to work. And there's a lesson here. The lesson is thinking like that, that I am indispensable, that's prideful. God does not need any of us. It's a miracle he would use any of us. And that should humble us that we get to serve the Lord. She overestimated her importance. And when you do that, then your work becomes burdensome. And this applies to every single aspect of life. Being a spouse can be a burdensome ministry. If it's not done in the power of the spirit. Being a parent could be a burdensome ministry. Being a friend can be a burdensome ministry where you're like, I need to save this person. No, you don't. Jesus can save that person. My job is to point this person to Jesus. There's stuff going on, her heart's not in the right place. And Jesus just needs to reorder a few things. And that's really what salvation is. Salvation is God reordering loves in our life. You might be loving a good thing more than the greatest thing which is Jesus and that pulls you away from him. Luke 10:41 and 42, but the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion of which will not be taken away from her." I love this answer. If you study Hebrew and Aramaic and then Jesus spoke, he was in the world of all three languages, including Greek. Whenever a name is repeated twice, it's for emphasis and it's for affection. You see this as King David talking about his son, "Absalom, Absalom." When his son had betrayed him. And here Jesus say, "Oh, Mary, Mary." I use this to my kids when I want to emphasize my love for them but also they've done something that they shouldn't have. "Sophia, Sophia." That's what I do, "Liza Liza. Katia, Katia. Milana Milana." And they're smart kids. And whenever I mess up or do something stupid, Sophia, her favorite thing is, "Oh Papa, Papa" Same thing. That's what he's doing. There's affection here, but it's like, I want to correct you, speaking truth in love. And he repeats her name and what did he say? He says, you're anxious and troubled about too many things. You've allowed secondary things to push out the primary thing. And that primary thing is actually the thing that gives you energy to do the secondary things. And that's why you're so anxious. And you're so distressed and troubled. So come back to the one thing that's necessary. It's the only thing that's truly necessary. You can just strip everything else away. But the only thing that's truly necessary is God. It's spending time in his word. It's nourishing our souls with his word. It's listening to him and speaking to him. There's nothing more important. That's the highest priority for Christ's servants, that's highest priority for all of us. And we forget this. Sometimes you get to the point... And my wife and I we have this conversation. I'm like, "Baby, I see you're stressed out. When's the last time did you spend time in the scripture state?" "I don't have time to spend time in the scriptures. I've got to feed them breakfast." We have that conversation. And then I say, "Why don't you wake up earlier?" And that never goes well. So I got to feed them breakfast. But there is that time I got way too much to do to read scripture. I got way too much to do is spend time in prayer. I got too many other things and we actually lose the fuels source. We lose the power of the spirit. So dear believers sit at the feet of Jesus. Sit at his feet, this is not less than scripture, we have to read scripture, but it's more than scripture. So the God that wrote his word, we read it, we study it, we meditate, we listen to his cadence and Jesus said, my sheep know my voice. And then when you know his voice from the scriptures, you hear him speaking in life by the power of the spirit. Sometimes he speaks through people. Sometimes he speaks through event, but he's with us, he's always with us. We can sit at his feet and rest in him. The only thing that's truly necessary, it's necessary in sickness, in health, adversity, prosperity, in life and death here and eternity. I wonder if Martha listened to this rebuke. By the way, hearing a rebuke from the Lord, hearing a rebuke from anyone, it does not feel good. You think Martha, after serving, slaving away for hours like to be rebuked. I wonder if she even sat down for the meal. It's like here, you can finish roasting the lamb yourself. But I think she took it to heart. How do I know this? Remember when her brother Lazarus died and Jesus delayed coming on purpose so that he could glorify himself by resurrecting Lazarus. And Martha comes to him with the same blunt straight to the point voice. John 11:21-27. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise is again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die, do you believe this?" And she said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ the son of God who was coming into the world." Why is this important? It's one of only two great confessions of the identity of Jesus Christ in all of the new Testament. The first came through lifts of Peter. He says, "I know who you are. You are Christ the son of the living God." And then on the lifts of Martha, you are the Messiah. You're the son of God. You're the Christ. She got it. Because she realized that the only one thing is necessary. She made that her good portion. God blessed her with this great revelation, the great confession. And then Mary, of course, she kept to the one thing to the end. John 12:1-2, six days before the Passover Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So this is immediately after. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, again, she's serving and what's Lazarus doing? Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Here, I'd be like, "Lazarus why aren’t you helping your sister." But he just died. He just came back from the dead. That takes a lot out of you. So Martha is working, hopefully Mary's helping. Then Mary puts everything down. She walks, she took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And that house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. She realized by this point, not only is this the only thing that's necessary this is also the most precious thing there is. This is the most precious one there is. She knows she's in the presence of treasure and she wants to give her greatest treasure. Something that's probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, a family heirloom. And she wants to pour out her devotion on Christ. Therefore preparing him for burial. And John 12:4-8, how did the disciples react? Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, "Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor?" He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Jesus said, "Leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial for the poor you always have with you but you did not always have me." And you see the juxtaposition in the text that one of the disciples Judas does not see Jesus for who he is, though he heard all of his teaching, saw the miracles and he doesn't realize that this is the greatest treasure in the world. Instead, the treasurer is stealing from the treasure Treasure because adultery, because of money, because of greed. And that's what led him to betray Christ. Instead, you've got these two sisters. One gives the great confession. The other one gives a great, great anointing. And it's all because they kept the main thing the main thing. Second of all, talk to God relationally. So listen to God intently and then talk to God relationally. Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." What's fascinating here is why do they wait until Luke chapter 11 to ask Jesus how to pray? This is the end of Jesus' ministry. This is probably the third year, for two years nobody asked, why. I think partially because they just assumed they knew how to pray. They grew up in Hebrew culture. They grew up going into the temple. They grew up going to synagogues, but they realized that Jesus prayed in a categorically different way than everyone else around them. Everyone else chanted or recited or just had these wrote memorized prayers. Jesus prayed intensely fervently, relationally. And why do they ask? On the one hand, prayer is easy. A child can pray. When you're at your wit's end, when you've got nothing, no other strength you pray. But also prayer's hard, prayer is strenuous. It's taxing of energy, of power, of focus, of emotion physically. And then you leave prayer filled spiritual. There's something there, it's so natural, it doesn't need to be taught or you can spend your whole life studying it. Why do they ask here, because they understand that the spiritual warfare is just dialing up as Jesus is about to go to the cross as this hostility coming at him. And they realized that Jesus prayers are more and more fervent he's spending more and more time in prayer because Jesus knows he's about to enter the most cosmic battle there ever was on the cross with Satan. John Piper said, you don't know what prayer is for until you know that life is war. That's why they got ask. They're like, I don't think I'm doing it right. I don't think I'm really struggling in prayer. So Jesus does pray. He teaches them. And then he talks about how to do audaciously. And he said to them, verse two, when you pray, say father hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. Perhaps you're like this isn't the Lord's prayer that I've had memorized because the one you have memorized is probably from Matthew six, The Sermon on the Mount. The reason why Jesus gives two different ones is to show us it's not about the magic formula of saying these words about the content, it's about the framework. It begins with father. In The Sermon on the Mount Jesus says our father to emphasize the God his father of all Christians here is just father to emphasize that God is father of people individually because by grace through faith, because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we are adopted into the family of God. So we can come to God on our own. You don't need to pray to God through another person. You don't need someone to mediate through. You can pray on you. You can go to God the father on your own. Yes, he's King. Yes, he's great. But he's also father, dear father. Galatians and Romans calls him Father abba, abba father, dearest father. Some people say daddy, I'm like, ah, I'm just going to add a little more reverence to that. Dearest father, you're my dearest father to begin prayer with that it's relational. Though it's relational, though he's a personal father he's still God. He's still God, hallowed be your name. May your name be holy. It is holy, but may your name be holy in my life, on my lips, in my heart. May your name be holy, maybe revered and feared and worshiped in this city, in my family, in my community. I think a lot of Christians are missing this. They're missing the holiness of God. For a lot of people, God is a buddy. God he's just a friend. God is someone who will always forgive your sin. So it doesn't matter how you live. Now, it doesn't matter how you live. God so much hate sin that he... Look at the cross. Look what it takes to get sin forgiven. Takes a son dying on the cross for us. And I think our generation is missing this reverence. This awe that the God who created everything and in him all things hold together. We sin against him on a daily basis. We forget him. We've got a spiritual amnesia. We do things that he told us not to do. We don't do the things that he told us to. I think part of it is in an attempt to share God's love with people we try to hide the true nature of God. We try to hide what he's really taught. What he's really taught about gender. What he's really taught about sexuality. What he's really taught about family. What he's really taught about the most important things in life. I'll just give you an example. This just happened this week, Lifeway, which is usually their great publisher, they publish a lot of great stuff, devotionals, and Bibles. They came up with the Bible Devo, which is a Bible devotional, but it's called a Bible Devo for generation Z. And this is how they translate John 1:1. John, 1:1 goes like this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Okay, that's John 1:1. This is how they translate. Since day uno, there was cap G, big Jay was chilling with cap G and big J was cap G. Someone made an executive decision that that's a good idea. Some read that and like, yeah. Okay, generation D, let's go get them. First of all it was blasphemous. This is just bad theology. I don't know anyone gen Z who calls God cap G, big J. It's all to say that God is still God. And in prayer we need to know, yes hollowed be your name, may your name be holy. Your name is holy. So remind us to pursue holiness. Your kingdom come. Jesus rule in my heart. Jesus I submit everything to you. I yield everything to you. May your kingdom come in my life. May your kingdom come into my relationships, in my decision, in everything. And as you pray that you got to say is Jesus King over this decision, is Jesus King over this relationship, is Jesus King over my desires, over my affection, over my thoughts, over my thoughts, over my entertainment choices. Is Jesus King right now, as he's sitting on his throne over what I am doing is he's reigning over everything. So the prayer begins with God. It's vertical then we begin to ask for what we need. Give us each day our daily bread, everything comes from God. We're fully dependent. Relying, he's talking about physical bread and spiritual bread, and you're not just praying for bread for yourself, but for others. Not just give me my bread, give me our bread. So you're cognizant of other's needs and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Give me bread. Forgive me, give me grace and give me grace to extend grace to others and lead us not into temptation. What an interesting turn of phrase. Have you ever meditated on that? Why should we ask God not to lead us into temptation? Why would we have to ask God not lead us into temptation? Does God tempt us? No, of course not. James 1:13-14. Let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire. So God doesn't tempt us and God doesn't lead us to temptation to leave us in temptation. But there is a sense in which God allows temptation to happen. And he actually leads us through that temptation. Because God is with us we're sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit. God is in us. Sometimes God does to test us, lead us to temptation and through temptation. And the way that he leads us through temptation is for us to cling to him, to hold onto him, to recognize that he will never give us temptation without giving us an exit strategy. That's first Corinthians 10:13, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Now, I've always understood that like, okay, you're in temptation, God has allowed this temptation in your life and he will give you an exit. And you have to take that exit by yourself. That's not what's going on because a Christian has the power of the Holy Spirit in him. So God is always with us. So when he's giving us the exit strategy, he's leading us to it and through it, this is really important. This is how I think of it. I think of it temptation comes. I'm tied to a chair in a warehouse building and the Lord comes like a navy seal. Repels onto the roof from a helicopter, comes down and he's rescuing me. I don't know if for some reason the image that comes as Jack Ryan. I like it so much because the transformation from Jim Jack Ryan will happen with that. So he's leading me out, but he's saying stay close, stay close, stay close. I know where the exit is, stay close. Now, that metaphor doesn't work. Like most metaphors don't work. So got to broaden it. It's not bullets there. They don't look like bullets. They don't look like bullets. Temptation never comes in the form of a bullet. It comes in the form of something tasty, something attractive. There's a seductive siren song of voices around us pulling us away from the one who says, I know where the exit is. Follow me, stay close to me. Don't stay here. Don't give into that temptation because you're going to come out stronger. And when you come out stronger, you'll be able to lead others out of that temptation. Just like what happened when Jesus started his ministry, he got baptized and what happened? The Holy Spirit. It says, ekballō in the Greek, cast him out, throws him into the desert in order for the enemy to tempt him. Why did Jesus Christ fast for 40 days? Why he tempted by the evil one? Why did God allow that for Jesus to conquer that so then to show us how we can be more than conquerors. The other thing I want to point out from first Corinthians 10:3, it doesn't say, God won't give you more than you can handle. He often does give us more than we can handle so that we run to him. But it says that you won't give us more temptation than we can bare. So when you feel tempted by the evil one, when you feel tempted by sin, by the flesh, run to Christ, run to Christ and he will show you the exit strategy to get out by the power of the spirit. Look what happens, I'll just mention this and then point 3. We sin and then we pray. Pray before you sin. Pray when you're tempted. In that moment of temptation, pray. Call someone, text someone, "Hey, I'm being tempted right now, please, please pray for me, please." And the other thing I'll say is if you have time for temptation, you have too much time on your hands. Go serve someone, go babysit someone's kids. I know lots of families who actually struggled over Covid. Go babysit. Number three, ask of God audaciously, ask of God. And this is shocking. And I read it before. But the story is in Luke 11:5-8 Jesus telling a story. He's like that prayer happened. Now, I'm going to show you the war aspect of prayer, the struggle aspect, the battle aspect, where you wrestle with God. And he tells a story of a guy who has a friend come to his house at midnight. He doesn't have any food. And the rule of hospitality in middle Eastern culture was that you had to provide shelter and food. So this guy doesn't have anything. So he goes to his friend's house and he starts knocking. And it says his friend doesn't give him the loaves of bread because they're friends. Because if you wake me up at midnight and you wake up my kids, we are no longer friends. That's what's going on, but he'll give it to him because of his impudence that's what the text says. His persistent, audacity, tenacity, his shamelessness, he's almost reckless, persisting in the face of all that seems reasonable. And Jesus says, that's how to pray. That's how to pray. You wrestle with God. You beg God. You keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Verse nine and I will tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be open, it's the holy boldness. You're knocking, you're insistently asking, you're searching and you refuse to stop, it's battle, it's a holy struggle, that's what's going on. A story goes of Alexander the Great had a general, his daughter was getting married and Alexander the Great tells that general, "Hey, I'll pay for that wedding, just tell me how much." And then the general writes this letter with the amount. The treasurer reads letter and tells Alexander, "Hey, you're probably going to behead him because this is just absurd." And Alexander the Great asked for the number. And he says, "Give it to him." By such an outlandish request he shows that he believes that I am both rich and generous. And he was flattered by it. In some sense, God says, I want you to know how great of a God I am. John Newman wrote that we're coming to a King, large petitions with the bring for his grace and power are such none can ever ask too much. So there is a sense in Martin Lloyd Jones, the great British preacher he wrote about this. He said, I commend to you the reading of biographies of men who have been used by God in the church throughout the centuries especially in revival. And you will find the same holy boldness, this argumentation, this reasoning, this putting the case to God, pleading his own promises. All of that, that is the whole secret of prayer. I sometimes think Thomas Goodwin uses a wonderful term. He says, sue him for it, sue him for it. Do not leave him alone. Pester him as it were with his own promises, quote the scriptures to him and you know God delights to hear us doing it. As a father likes to see this element in his own child who has obviously been listening to what his father has been saying. It's true, it's true, about kids pestering their parents. You were listening and you know that I do not lie. I shall give you that ice cream cone, just don't tell your mom, happens all the time. Do you wrestle with God? As Jacob wrestles with God says, "I'm not going to let you go until you bless me." As Abraham haggles with God. I love that story. Abraham haggles with God, God comes to him and says, "I got to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, they're so sinful." And he says, "What if there are 50 righteous people in the town." God said, "Okay, I'll relent if there's 50." And then Abraham's like, "How about 45?" And then at that point, he's like, "How about 40?" And God's like, "Okay." And then he comes back to him and he's like, "How about 30?" Now, he's going down by tens. "How about 20?" "Fine." "How about 10?" And he should have kept going because they weren't even 10. But he does say a lot. There's this wrestling. There's this proximity to God, verse 11-13. What father among you if a son asks for a fish will instead of a fish give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil you at your best, feeding your children, giving your kids good gifts, even at your best you're still evil. You still need Jesus. Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. So like ask, seek, knock on the door, you shall get. When we think of that, we think of physical things. The story of Alexander the Great. Yeah, okay is God going to give us bank? Maybe, maybe not. The greatest gift that God can give us, what's the punchline. How does Jesus land this text, will not the heavenly father give more of the Holy Spirit, give more of himself, give more of his presence, give more of your holiness. If that's what you're asking for God, I want you to be hallowed. I want you to be holy in my life. God forgive me for my sins. Do not lead me into temptation. I pray that you provide for me both materially and then also grace for forgiveness of sins and to continue to forgive others. How do we deepen a passion for the Lord like this? Revelation chapter two, he talks about you've lost your first love. He's talking to a church. How do we get it back? We go back to the foot of the cross. We go back to the feet of Jesus, in all of Jesus' prayers he always called God father. He called him abba. The only time he does not call him abba is when he cries out in Matthew 27:46, about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lima sabachthani?" That is, "My God, my God." Twice, with all of his heart, the one that he loves has turned his face from him. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God, doesn't answer that prayer, why? Just like he didn't answer the prayer in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from me." Why? Because this is what it took. It took Jesus' prayer, not being answered so that we can be adopted into the family of God so that we could have our prayers answered. What's fascinating is Jesus reverts back to abba. After he absorbs the wrath of God on the cross he reverts back to abba and his final words, Luke 23:46, Jesus calling out the loud voice, said, "Father into your hands, abba into your hands I commit my spirit." And having said this, he breathed his last. He breathed his last so that we could receive the breath of life. Receive it. Why wouldn't you receive the breadth of life, receive the Holy Spirit, receive forgiveness of sins. Come to his feet, his nail pierced feet, receive, listen, talk, ask, and continue to live the life he's called us to live. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for your word. What a tremendous word it is, a blessed word. Lord, we thank you for giving us access to yourself. We thank you for reminding us that the most important thing, the one thing that's necessary in this world is our relationship with you. And we deepen it by listening to you attentively, by talking to you relationally, by asking audaciously, in particular for things that you've already promised. You've promised to build your church. You've told us you don't want to see the death of a sinner. You want people to be converted. You promised us that when we are close to you will bring us flourishing and the flourishing not just of ourselves and our families, but our communities, our city, our state, our nation. So we pray Lord that you continue to pour out your spirit and give us victory over Satan, sin, and death. And we thank you in advance and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 30
August 16, 2020 • Luke 10:25–37
Audio Transcript: Good morning Mosaic, most of you, some of you. It's a foretaste of next Sunday. So glad to see every single one of your eyes, and glad you're here. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank You for this blessing it is. What a blessing it is to gather as your people. It's so good to come together in the House of the Lord. Jesus, You are here amongst us. We feel Your presence and we pray by the power of the Holy Spirit, minister to us today. Speak a powerful word to us and show us how desperately we need the only good Samaritan, the only truly ultimately good Samaritan. Jesus, You offer us mercy. And some of us are too self-righteous and blinded by our self-righteousness to accept the grace and mercy, the compassion that you so long to pour out into our lives. Then once we receive that mercy, make us a people who extend mercy to others. It's hard, it's costly, it's emotionally taxing, but you're always there to refill our resources in a supernatural way, and I pray do that with us today. Lord, continue to bless this church, continue to bless this body of believers, continue adding to it, and we pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. The title of the sermon today is, The Only Good Samaritan. We are in Luke 10:25-37. There's a lot of important questions going through our minds rapidly now. What is the most important question on the top of your mind, even this week? Is it a question of finances? Is it question of how's the economy going to go? Is it question of, are my kids going to school? Is it a question of housing? Is it a question of, am I going to get married? Is it a question of, am I going to stay married? Hopefully yes, you should. Is it a question of how are we going to get through this season? How should I provide for my family? All important questions. The most important question that each one of us needs to find an answer to is a question that a gentleman asked Jesus in our text today. And what he'd asked is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life? Is my eternity secure? When I die, that's for sure, am I going to a place of paradise, a place called Heaven, a place of God's presence or not?” And then once we get an answer to that question, the second most important question that we need to find an answer to, and then orient our lives around is, how can I help others? How can I extend the greatest amount of compassion to another person, which isn't just to meet their physical needs, it's to meet their spiritual and eternal needs? That's what the text is about today, Luke 10:25-37. That is the fastest introduction in the Pastor Jan's sermon in the history of Pastor Jan's sermons. Luke 10:25, “And behold, the lawyers stood up to put him to the test saying ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You've answered correctly. Do this and you will live.’. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him, whatever you spend. I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You go and do likewise.’”. This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together, the impossibility of self-salvation, the impossibility of selfless love, and the only good Samaritan. First of all, the impossibility of self-salvation. Many of us are used to this parable. We've heard this parable, probably not dozens of times, but probably hundreds of times. We already know what it means. It's one of these you know, in staff meeting, we go through the text prior to it being preached as a devotional, as a Bible study. When we got to the very end after reading it, and we're like, “What are your thoughts?” And everyone's like, “You know, we kind of kind of get it. We've heard it. Okay, show mercy to people.” Because we're so familiar with it, we kind of lose sight of the point. We kind of lose sight of the outrage, how provocative this story is, especially set in the context that it's set in. Yes, we know it's a nice ideal to help people. And many of us have devoted, oriented our lives around helping as many people as possible. And perhaps you read this and there's an element of cynicism because of ministry fatigue, where you've been ministering to people in this season over and over and over and over. And you're like, “How many more people will need help on my path?” And you get to this place where you feel a callus, you feel a numbing, desensitization words where it's like, “Yeah, I kind of understand that priest and the Levite. I kind of understand going to the other side and just walking by. That's on the one hand. And on the other hand, there's just so many people to help, and I can't help everyone like this.” So you get to a point where you start asking, “Why should I help anyone like this?”. And what Jesus is ... And this is the radical point and I'm going to bring in the gospel at the very beginning. Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I don't have to show mercy to get mercy. I don't have to show mercy to get mercy. I get to show mercy because I got mercy. It changes everything. I got mercy from God. This morning, I woke up and I repented of my sin, why? Because I'm a sinner. And every single one of us, we need to repent of sin. And God extends grace. When he extends grace, it changes everything. And now, it melts that numbness, that desensitization, and then we can continue to serve. We don't show mercy to earn mercy. We've been given mercy therefore, we show mercy. So the context is in Luke 10:25, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This isn't just a lawyer like real estate lawyer, this is a lawyer of God's law. This is a lawyer that knows the Old Testament law. Not just the 10 laws, but all the ceremonial laws and all the institutional laws. He knew the law. He devoted himself to this noble tradition and he comes to Jesus and he asks a good question, but he asks it with a very questioning posture of heart. Right question, wrong heart. Here's the thing, whenever anyone comes to you and says, “How shall I inherit eternal life?” What's your answer. I know my answer is, trust in Jesus, repent of your sin, and submit to God. Receive God's grace and you get saved. Jesus doesn't go there. And then you got to ask the question, why doesn't he go there? Well, he doesn't go there because this guy thinks that he's already got it. This guy thinks he's done enough. This guy thinks that he has kept the law. He's never missed a Jewish feast or sacrifice. He's devoted himself to the study of law and traditions. He's got all the bases covered. Kept the Sabbath, tithed from his spice rack. He thinks he's got it. He thinks he's in. And what he wants to do is he wants to undermine Jesus' ministry of telling people, you need to repent and turn in faith back to God. He's not a pagan. He's not a Samaritan, people you look down on, and he's testing Jesus in front of a crowd. And what does Jesus do? Jesus responds to his question with a question, verse 26, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”. This guy knows the law and he knows what's at the heart of the law. And the heart of the law is summarized with love God and love people. That's verses 27, 28. The first commandment, love God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all of your mind, with every fiber of your being. Love God completely, 100%, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, as much as you care for your own needs, as much as you work to provide for your own needs. As much as you think of yourself, think of your neighbor, be a good neighbor. And those who dislike your neighbor, love your neighbor. That's the law. And we see that he did say the right thing. Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” The story should end there. Why doesn't the story end there? It doesn't end there because this gentleman felt uncomfortable. In the same way when you read passages like the Good Samaritan and you feel a little discomfort because you feel like you're falling short, that you're not living a life full of compassion, he feels it. And instead of going to the Lord and saying, “Lord, something's wrong in my heart. Love my neighbor as myself? I despise my neighbors. My neighbors are awful.” Not my neighbors in particular, some of them. Most of my neighbors are great. So that's why he does what he does in verse 29. And look at the text. This is really important. “He, desiring to justify himself said, ‘Who is my neighbor?’” Why does he justify himself? Because he feels something. What is he feeling at that moment? What is he trying to cover? He feels that he hasn't done enough. He feels that he's fallen short. He feels a tinge of shame or guilt or regret. The context of this parable is a question of salvation, the context isn't what should I do to be a good Christian? How should I live my life? The context is, how do I become a Christian? And Jesus answers, you can save yourself theoretically. You just have to look love God with everything you got and your neighbor as yourself. And then Jesus tells him the story, which exposes that not only does he not love his neighbor, he actually despises his neighbor. Who does Jesus put at the very center of the story? It's called the Parable of the Good, what? Samaritan. The history between the Jews and Samaritans. You can just look into it. They hated each other. The Jews thought that the Samaritans were half-breed. They wouldn't even dine together. So Jesus is saying, “You think you're saved?” I'm not only going to answer your question of salvation. I'm also going to expose how much hate is in your heart. Like think of the person that you hate the most, and there is that person. Every Michael Scott has a Toby. Imagine this parable. This is Michael Scott coming to Jesus and saying, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus is like, “Let me tell you a story about this man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he got mugged. And Jim walked by and Pam walked by, but Toby stopped.” That's a humorous way to think about it. Now, it's about to get real. Let me tell you a story of the good, whatever the opposite political party that you're voting for. Let me tell you a story of the good Trump supporter with a MAGA hat and a Trump bumper sticker on his donkey. Let me tell you that story. That just got uncomfortable. Let me tell you a story of the Biden supporter who got down and showed compassion. Now, that got really uncomfortable. That's what's going on in this guy's heart. I'm professing that I love my neighbor. What if my neighbor's different than me? What if deep in my heart, I despise my neighbor? I don't say it out loud, but that's exactly what's going on in the text. Why is he trying to justify himself? Because he's trying to cover that shape, that regret, that hate. He doesn't like what he sees in his own heart. There's a cognitive dissonance. It's not lining up with what he said. His heart isn't lining up with what he professes with his mouth. Jesus said, “They profess to love me with their mouth, but their hearts are far from me.”. It's the same thing that happened with Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve sinned, the very first thing that they did before going into hiding from God, what's the very first thing they did? They realized that they were naked and ashamed. So they covered themselves. They justified themselves with fig leaves. That's exactly what this guy is trying to do. Gregory of Nazianzus said, “Why? What changed? What changed? Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed and then all of a sudden they sin and they have to cover themselves, what changed?” He says, “Well, before the sin, before the fall, they were ensconced, clothed in the love and acceptance of God so their nakedness didn't bother them. And through sin, they strip themselves of God's love and acceptance and we're left with a sense of exposure, fear, shame, and guilt.”. The Jews looked down on these people. The Jews claim this lawyer claimed to love people in theory, but people in reality are difficult to love. And that's why we need to exercise and grow in compassion. Luke 10:33, “A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.” There's a Greek word splagchnizomai. It's to feel pity in the inner most being. It's the deepest form of empathy. It's actually the most common descriptive, emotive word of Jesus Christ's heart or what was happening in Jesus' heart. He felt compassion. That's why he came to die for our sins. In the story of a prodigal son, the father, when he sees his son running to him, he said he had pity, he had compassion on him and ran toward his son. Luke 10:34 and 35 shows us that it's costly to show this compassion. Not just feel it, but to actually act on it. “He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper saying, ‘Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back’” It's costly. He shows compassion. This is holistic care. He's showing that it was unexpected, but he's willing to take his own resources, his own funds in order to help this person. And then at the end, Luke 10:36-37, “Jesus says, ‘Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’” The lawyer still doesn't get it. And he can't even say, the Samaritan. He can't bring himself to say, the Samaritan. He can't bring himself to say that my enemy is actually better than me in a hypothetical story. He says, “The third one.” The one who showed him mercy, Jesus said, “You go and do likewise.” So what's the standard to inherit eternal life? Love God with everything you got and be a good neighbor and love your neighbor as much as yourself. Basically what he's saying is, help anyone and everyone that God brings into your path. This is why I said the impossibility of self-salvation. Because in our culture, when you say, “Every single one, we need to repent of sin because not one of us is good enough.” And then everyone in our culture pushes back with the self-righteousness, “I am a good person. I've never hurt anybody.” That's not the standard. The standard is help everybody. Not just don't hurt anybody, help everybody. That's the standard. You want to earn your way to heaven, that's the standard. And what's Jesus trying to do? He's trying to get him to this place where he says, “That's impossible. Jesus, how can you expect that?” And Jesus is like, “That's the whole point. That's why I'm here.”. And so that brings me to point two is the impossibility of selfless love. So it's impossible to save yourself and this selfless love is impossible. It's to get us to a place where we know the world will be a better place if this were true, but it's impossible to do. But what's fascinating is we do long for it. We long for utopia where people are loving, where people are good and generous and kind and serve one another and extend compassion and mercy. Here's a really interesting thing. Apart from a worldview that God is, that God exists, that God is love, altruism and selfless love does not make any sense. John Lehrer writing about altruism he says, “It's always been a sticky subject for evolutionary biology. And altruism is the act of helping someone else at a steep, personal cost.” Charles Darwin wrote about this and he said that altruism was a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. And in the descent of man, he writes, “He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.” It's been a paradox for many. In the 1950s, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane, someone asked him, “How far would you go to save the life of another person?” He said this, he said, “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, not one.” He said, “I would save eight cousins, but not seven.” So I'm willing to sacrifice my life for another, as long as it's on my terms of multiple people, et cetera. This moral arithmetic that he used. The famous example of this is Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese in New York city. She was stabbed to death in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of the borough New York City, March 13th, 1964. And that led to the Genovese syndrome, especially diffusion of responsibility. Why didn't anybody help her? They thought, “Why should I?” People saw this happen, they'd say “Why should I help, risk myself? Someone else should do it.” And everybody was morally outraged by that. Why are we morally outraged by that? Why are we morally outraged that you had a chance to help this person and you didn't? Why are we morally outraged by that? Because we know it's written on our hearts. You can't find an explanation of why that moral outrage exists, why we know that we should help when we have an opportunity to help. It only makes sense if there is a true God, a living God, the teaching of Jesus, this is what makes it so awesome. The world would be a better place. Not just for you, it would be a better place for absolutely everybody. Nietzsche wrote in The Will to Power, he says, “Another Christian concept no less crazy, the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, what does he write? “All men are created equal. This is a self-evident truth.” Is this self-evident? That everybody is created equal. Equal in what sense? If you just look at the facts and the face of it, it's almost absurd to claim that everybody is equal. Equal in what? We're not equal in height. We're not equal in weight. We're not equal in strength, intelligence, stamina, truthfulness. There's inequality all around us. How can we say we are all created equal? In what sense? In the most valuable sense, that every human soul, every human life is valuable to God. That you'd remove that foundation and now you're building a house of morality on sin. And the preciousness and equal worth of every human life is a Christian idea. You just see that Christian idea when it's actually put into practice. And that's what did change the Roman empire. Christians have always believed that God places infinite value on each human life. The pagan emperor, Julian wrote this, “The Impious Galileans ... ” That's how he call Christians, “ ... they relieve both their own poor and ours. It is shameful that ours should be so destitute of our assistance.” Look at world history, Christians when faithful to the gospel, when faithful to the scriptures, they've been a huge blessing to the world. Prior to Christianity, the Greeks and the Romans had little to no interest in the poor. For example, the first ecumenical council was in the Nicaea, 325. That's when bishops were directed to build hospices next to cathedrals. There was never such a thing as hospices. The elderly and the sick were left to fend for themselves. The first hospital was built by St. Basil in Caesarea in 369. By the middle age, hospitals covered all of Europe and even beyond. In fact, Christian hospitals were the world's first voluntary charitable institutions. Care for mentally ill, that was a Christian idea. Florence Nightingale formed the Red Cross in order to love his enemies in times of war and genocide. The vast majority of hospitals were started by Christians, by Catholics, Presbyterians, Protestants, and even their names reflect this. We know that loving people selflessly is good. It's written on our hearts. We're outraged when it's not done. And we ourselves aren't consistent with what we know we should do. So what do we do with this gap? We know we should love selflessly. If we don't, we're outraged when other people don't, we're not outraged when we don't. So what do we need? What solves this? This is what I said in the beginning. I can't guilt you into loving people. I try with my daughters, if one of them isn't loving another one like, “You need to love your sister. If you don't, there's like this punishment, like no iPad for you. You got to love your sister.” You can't force someone into loving another person. You can try to guilt them into it, you can try to shame them into it. It's always temporary` and it's always on the surface. What's the only way to get people to love other people? It's only in the gospel. It's only the good news. And this is point three, the only good Samaritan. It's awesome to think about this utopia, where everyone loves each other, but it's impossible. And this is what Jesus is doing. He's trying to get the lawyer to a point of desperation where he says, “If that's the standard for eternal life, then definitely I haven't gotten it. Before Jesus saves that guy, he's trying to get that guy lost. Before he gets him saved, he wants to get him lost. He's presenting God's standards. And he wants this guy to see how far he's fallen short, that his heart is actually full of hate. God requires this love, a love that can't be required. But he doesn't just command love, he compels love by showing us how much he loved us. That Jesus Christ is the only true good Samaritan. In the story of The Good Samaritan, we are not the good Samaritan, we're the guy on the ground. He's trying to get the lawyer to see himself, “I'm on the ground and I'm being offered help by a Samaritan. I'm on the ground and I'm being offered help by my enemy. Will I accept that help?” That's what's going on. And Jesus is saying, you actually, like you say you've fulfilled the first commandment, you haven't even come close because the second commandment is easier and your terrible. So you need to accept the grace from this Samaritan, the Samaritan who at his own cost comes to help you. This Samaritan, who doesn't pour out oil and wine, but he pours out his blood and his body is broken in order to extend us mercy, in order to give us compassion, in order to say, “Look, I'm dying on a cross for your law breaking, and I'm going to give you the blessing of my law keeping. And on the cross. I'm going to take your penalty of law breaking in order to do that through the double amputation.” This is how we experienced the grace of God. And when you see that Jesus did that for you, for me, despite our wickedness, despite all our sin. Everything that he knows, we know, we know what's deep inside and we try to hide it. He knows. So don't justify it. Don't don't let yourself righteousness keep you from accepting the grace of God. And when you know that you're saved by grace, when you know that God extends mercy to you, compassion to you, that then begins to melt your he art in order to extend compassion to others. So here's a word for us, for Bostonians, especially for ... We need to repent not just of our sins, our bad works, we also need to repent of our good works. We need to repent of thinking that our good works are what's going to get us into Heaven. We need to repent of our self-righteousness. And by the way, every one of us struggles with this. I struggle with this all the time. The longer I'm in the ministry, the more sacrifices that I make for the Lord. I'm like, “I've given years to you, God, where's my blessing?” I don't know if anyone else has ever done that. The more sacrifices you make, the more you're like I should be getting more. And God's like, self-righteousness, you deserve nothing, you deserve hell. And you're lucky that you're even alive. That's what grace does, it, like, “You deserve nothing. You're lucky your heart is beating today. Now, keep doing what I called you to do.” And everything else is icing on the cake. So we are to repent of our sins and self-righteousness. Galatians 3:11-14, “Now, it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not a faith rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.”. Jesus did it all and there's no better reason to love than love. Jesus loved this for no reason, whatever in ourselves. He love us not because we're lovely, but because he's loving. And unconditional love frees us to love. And this parable isn't about getting us to be people who act once in a while with mercy, it's to get us to a point where we live a life of compassion, a life of mercy. Why does Jesus start with the law? He starts with the law to get this gentleman lost. He gets into a point where he sees, I haven't even come close. Then Jesus pays for our sin. Now what happens with the law? Does the law disappear? No, we're still called to love God with all of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves and to grow in both of those. The law is always a mirror of how you're doing. There's some mirrors that just make you look better. I don't know what it is, it must be the lighting or something. My brother, Vlad], in his apartment, that mirror makes me look so good. Every time I'm like, “Vlad, I just need to go to the bathroom real quick. Oh yeah, that looks great.” And that's why people take selfies in restaurant bathrooms, I don't know what it is, restaurant bathroom, maybe dimly lit or something. Nobody ever takes selfies at the doctor's office or the dental. Nobody does that. Because the light's different. It exposes more of your imperfections. God starts with the law to expose our imperfections, to show us, this is what you got to work on. And the Apostle James said, when you read the holy scriptures it's like a mirror. The Look gaze deep into, where do I need to change? And then God extends grace and fuels us with the Holy Spirit in order to change. Who is my neighbor? The answer isn't who is my neighbor, but am I a good neighbor? That's what Jesus tells him at the end. Am I a good neighbor? Am I a good neighbor to whom? Literally any human being with a legitimate need, literally any human being with a legitimate need. And obviously, we can't help everybody, but I like Andy Stanley's comment where he says, “Do for one, what you would like to do for all.”. 1 John 3:17-18, “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.” And the other thing I just want to point out here at the end. When we talk about mercy and when we talk of compassion, usually we think of those things as just doing things for people, helping people with food and helping people with rent and helping people with their car, helping them with whatever physical needs that they have. But one of the interesting things that Jesus Christ here is doing, he's actually in a story using a story about a good Samaritan, he is extending compassion to this gentlemen by telling the gentleman the truth. Jesus is being a good Samaritan for this gentleman and Jesus is trying to meet his greatest need. And his greatest need is to see that he's blinded by his self-righteousness. It doesn't feel like help to the gentlemen at that moment. Sometimes compassion doesn't feel like compassion. Sometimes compassion feels like you just got roasted by Jesus and you walk away in front of a crowd. But sometimes that's what we need. We need that truth to break the hardness of our hearts. Jesus is doing, he's embodying the compassion and telling this man the truth. So love is discerning. You need to discern, how can I extend compassion? What is this person's greatest need at this moment. Sometimes it's an act of love and sometimes it's a word of truth. And in this text, Jesus twice points out, go and do it. Oh, you know the law? Go and do it. And at the very end, he shows him, you didn't know the law and you need Jesus, the gospel. And then he says, “Go and do it again.” Meaning that works always follow salvation, mercy follows mercy. What the law demands, the gospel produces. So we're saved by grace through faith for works that God has predestined before the foundation of the world. And I'll close with Romans 8:1-4, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.”. Everything that God calls us to do, he's already done in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Receive that grace, then he gives us the Holy Spirit to live out and do what he's called us to do. Can you imagine a world without grace? Can you imagine a world without Christ? Can you imagine a world without love? It's almost impossible to. Now, can you imagine a world with true selfless love? Where people aren't just talking about racial divides and financial divides and political divides. People are just talking about how they're serving one another, how they're caring for one another, how they're extending grace to one another. That's what Jesus Christ does and it starts with us. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for not just giving us the law, but fulfilling the law. And we thank you that you often speak a hard truth into our hearts in order to soften our hearts and we need that. We need that on a daily basis. Lord, we do repent of sin and we do receive your mercy. And we thank you for your compassion. We praise you for the gracious and loving God that you are and we thank you for being that God, and we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 29
August 9, 2020 • Andy Hoot • Luke 10:1–24
Audio Transcript: Good morning. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane and it is good to be here today in the full glory of my quarantine hair with all of you after being behind the screen, facilitating the Facebook activity during our services the past few months. Today I just want to jump right into the text. First of all, I'll remind you, if you're new to Mosaic we want you to fill out the connection card. Even when we're online, we are going to hammer this home. We want to get to know you. We want to try to build true community here we gather, still online via Zoom via Google Meet and Word of God moves through those platforms. So if you'd like to get more connected to our church, ask questions, submit prayers, please fill that out. We'd like to get to know you. Today, I just want to jump right into the Scripture. We're continuing our series in Luke. The last passage says, ends with anyone who wants to do the work, continue the work and the heaven, the kingdom of heaven, if you put your hand to the plow, you must not look back. These are words to some of Christ's earliest disciples and our passage begins today with Jesus sending out some common disciples. I just want to advise you there are about 30 words or phrases that I circled or highlighted when I first read this. I'm going to try to focus in on what the Lord has for us today. We can't cover every little detail, but I'll do my best. Hear the Word of God. After this, the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of Him, two by two into every town in place where He Himself was about to go. He said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way. Behold, I'm sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house and if a son of peace is there your peace will rest upon him, but if not, it will return to you and remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you here. Heal the sick in it and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you, but whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tire and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tire and Sidon then for you, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears Me and the one who rejects you rejects Me and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me. The 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. In that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You had hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to be by My father and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then turning to the disciples He said privately, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desire to see what you see and did not see it and hear what you hear and did not hear it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're people who tend to lean on our own strength. We forget Your heart when You call us to do things. We become reluctant servants, Lord, we come syncretistic. We mix Your word with the word of the world and Lord, I pray right now meet us. Show us the power of Your word. Help me to exhibit reliance on the power of Your word and Lord, let us go out from here today, emboldened, yet humbled by grace. I pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. So for many of you, this is your first time seeing me if you're new to Mosaic. Again, I've been behind the screen. I am the discipleship pastor here. So I provide oversight over our community groups and do a lot of the counseling here in our community. I don't get many opportunities to come up here and preach and this is a little bit, this intro is a little bit of a state of the church from Pastor Andy. I want to lead with saying, I have grown in love for Mosaic tremendously by this period. Our text today it is Jesus sending out 72 regular disciples, these aren't the highly trained guys. This is a ragtag group. He gives to the disciples prior to this text, there's a transfiguration. He shows them His glory. The disciples still argue about being greatest before Him. The disciples don't get it essentially, in the preceding chapters of where we are here in Luke, and these calming dudes that Jesus sends out, they go out, they heed His word, and they get it. I really think that that is Mosaic, Pastor Jan, Pastor Shane and I just watching this community through this just season of multiple traumatic seasons. You guys have stepped up, you guys get it, the majority of you. In some ways we had our COVID forms at the beginning of the COVID season, just dozens and dozens of people signed up to serve, offer their resources, offer their time. Dozens and dozens of people continued, basically all of you continue to give to the church to cover our regular budget and then gave additionally to cover our COVID budget and that's just beautiful, beautiful. A lot of you have just been relentless in offering prayer. A lot of you have been relentless in just reaching out. Many of you who have been served by our church members, have in response come and ask to be served and to ask how you can serve. Just personally, I want to thank all of you. My daughter, Clara Joy, was born about five and a half weeks ago. She is a delight. My wife is a trooper. I'm so amazed by her ability just to love her and our four year old son Drew in this season and I just want to thank you for the prayer. We felt the prayers, every detail every aspect of her birth, Joyce's recovery has gone smoothly. I just really want to give you guys a word of encouragement. Continue this care. We helped a brother, I'll call him Eddie. He was a close friend of a member of the church and we helped Eddie. Eddie was working in the restaurant business. He's an immigrant, and he was behind several months on rent before he finally asked for help from a Christian sister who's a member here and with the funds, with your sacrifice, we got to help Eddie tremendously. If you're new to Mosaic, I want you to hear this and this is the heart of the church. Mosaic is not just built on preaching. Mosaic is built on the people, the servants of Christ, the disciples of Christ, who just sacrifice. They're here on mission. If you're a Christian in Boston, you are a missionary. We got 4% evangelical Christians here. That's tiny. So just hear this. Join along if you're inspired. Eddie says, this is in thanks after we gave him a couple months of very cheap rent, very humble living. My beloved and dear brothers in CHRIST JESUS. It is with my heart overflowing with gratitude that I write this message. First of all, thanking our good and merciful God, who by His grace and power has established angels on earth in the form of people to bless the needy, spiritually as well as materially. Praise be to God for the life of my sister, a member of our church, and her family. Her pastor, men, women, youth and children, members and visitors of this congregation that has cooperated with the maintenance of the house of the Lord and thus helped afflicted and needy souls. I praise God because just as He broke the hearts of kings to bless and exalt His people in the past, so He used your hearts to give me the help that only God could provide in a moment of uncertainty that many are going through. So my prayer, it's hard not to read this and tear up. So my prayer is that God will continue to open the windows of heaven, pouring out on your lives and ministry and on this whole congregation, blessings without measure that your lives overflow with the best of God and that the olive oil, this was translated from another language, does not cease in your vessels. May God and Christ bless you abundantly, protect you and prosper in all areas of your life. Receive a strong hug, so strong with the love that unites us in JESUS CHRIST. God bless you. Thank you, my brothers. That's to all of you. I just say, keep it up. Keep just living out, acting out God's love in our church, in our community, keep looking for opportunities. It's hard. It's hard to find ways to serve. It's hard to find ways to share the gospel, but keep it up and I sit back and as pastors, we just get to observe this happening, and we get a taste of why God chooses to use the church to do His work, and it's a beautiful thing. Keep at it. Now, that's the good news, but here's the bad news. If there's anything that, just observing the church, if there's anything Negative that has come up time and time again the past five months since I've seen you, as the tensions have risen and traumas hit our society, loneliness, temptation are just constant. A lot of people in the body of Christ, they're just shrinking back. They're claiming to be ill equipped to handle this season. They're powerless to be of use. The word is not sufficient for this time. Generally, there's even a sense of shame about the Word of God right now. A lot of us feel apologetic about being Christian and that might be by our own doing, or just being recipients of the virtue signaling coming from all parts of the spectrum, but it's felt, and today I want to call you back. I see this, the shame. I see this on social media. I know this because people have sent me and the pastors resources from their work, HR departments with instructions for the church for how to care to people. I know this because people have often called us and said, pastors, I have a word for you that I got from my job or from this website. I know this because people send me YouTubes of people preaching about how to save the world right now. They look like they're made in 1992 by some dude in his mom's living room. They're talking about solutions to this season and I know this personally. I've had many days where I just wake up and I feel powerless. I feel helpless. Where do we start? Where's the hope in all this? I've posted witty comments on Facebook and then immediately deleted them. I've been tempted to make the video to just share it and get my influencer following. I feel it myself, but I just want to say today, I'm going to just pound the power of the word. People of God, we were born for situations like this. Harvard shouldn't be telling us how to care for people right now. We should be telling Harvard how to care for people right now. In the Word of God, we have a greater arsenal of weapons than USA and Russia combined. At the core of Christianity is a belief that the root of all evil, it's in one thing. It's in sin. Our pride, covetousness, perversion, racism, abuse of power or sinful acts of vengeance. They stem from sin inspired by Satan and here's the thing. We have the full solution for it. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and it changes people. That's our hope. So today, I want to press against this sort of shamefulness, the shrinking back. I want to try to embolden you to take the word out. I'm a shy, quiet guy. Evangelism is hard, sharing the word is hard, even though I've got years of theological training at this point, but I want to just remind you of the weapons that we have in store. So we're going to talk about the power of God's Word and the heart of God's Word. The power of God's Word. So I'm just going to tap in the Luke 10:17 and 18, and this is at this point, Jesus has sent the 72 out and He tells them to preach the gospel, heal in the name of Jesus. Tell them of the kingdom, that the kingdom of God is near. The Messiah, the man who the Scriptures say is coming in to save man from his sin is here. Repent. He sends them out in territories. He says, I'm sending you out in lands, there's going to be wolves amongst the sheep. So the disciples are sent out and Luke 17, the 72 returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like heaven, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. So they're preaching God's word, and they have success. They're not limping back. They're not wounded. All 72 return. Nobody was stoned or arrested, and they experienced supernatural power. The demons are subject to us in Your name, but something even greater is happening. Verse 18, verse 18, is better translated as Jesus saying, I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I was watching. The picture here is of Jesus rejoicing as He observed Satan's kingdom being destroyed, one rescued soul at a time through the 70. I was seeing the master, while you were expelling the subordinates of Satan, I was seeing the master fall like heaven over and over. Notice again, I just want to emphasize the power is not in these men. These are 72 dudes. Think of the silliest guys in your middle school classes. These are the highly trained 12. These guys were probably fishermen, shepherds, laborers, mostly uneducated. In verse 21, Jesus calls them children. So they're either really young in age or faith or both and just the power is not in them. God uses ordinary men and women to do the work of His kingdom. One of the things that many of you at Mosaic might experience is probably disappointment when you actually get to spend extended time with me and Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. You find out that we are ordinary dudes. Pastor Jan's just, he's a Russian immigrant. Oldest child, paving his way forward at all times, just learning along the way. Pastor Shane, a gentle soul from the Midwest, like literally the nicest guy. Me, I'm an Italian-German-English American from Philly who had a Rocky poster on his wall in high school and college. Yes, we've gotten the chance to get some degrees at this point. Yes, we've had years to kind of develop our skills, those spiritual gifts but we're ordinary dudes, and all that we do and all that we say for the kingdom in our positions, the power is not in us, but it's in the word itself, the God from whom it comes. We see pastor Jan say this on the Facebook chat every week while watching his own preaching. He praises God for the work that he is doing, for the power He's given him when you guys are praising him online, and the power of God's word is all over scripture. I just want to take you through, I'm going to hammer this because you need to remember this. We have an election coming up in a few months. We're still recovering as a church from 2016. By God's grace, this is a diverse church community. Half of you are going to be really disappointed in November. What are you going to lean on? Where's your hope going to be in this life, for this world, in eternity? It's in the power of God's Word. Second Timothy 3:16 and 17 says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. This language, all scripture is God breathed. This is reminiscent of the creation story. Genesis 1:1-3, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and the darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Spirit, Ruach, spirit, wind, breath. We get a sense of the Holy Spirit's there in this moment. God said, let there be light and there was light. Then the creation story continues and when God speaks, there's this pairing of His heart, His essence going out and the spirit making it alive, allowing it to come alive. He created the world with His breath. He speaks creation into existence and at the pinnacle of creation as the story goes, He creates man. What does He do to impart some of His attributes to man that He doesn't do to the animals? Genesis 2:7, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. I had a seminary professor who said, maybe this is why kissing just actually is so special in this life. It takes us back to that moment that God breathed life into us. That's hypothesis. When God says, all scripture is breathed out by God, it says, the same power that God used to breathe the world into existence, the same power that He used to bring life to man, to give him some parts, communicate parts of His being to him, that same power is what breathed out the word of God, the 66 Bibles of the Scripture that we have today. That power is in the actual word of the Bible. So when we read it, when we meditate on it, when we memorize it, when we just add it to our daily language, there's a power going out. Do you believe this? When you think about all the voices going around, there's not power coming from them unless it's grounded in the Word of God and this is a great relief. This is why I can confidently stand here as a pastor today in front of you. I struggled with speech all through elementary school. They wanted to hold me back the first few grades, because I just didn't talk and when I talked, I always had a bit of a stutter. I'm still battling it today, but I'm not up here by my own power. This power, it's emphasized over and over again in Scripture and the power works in multiple ways. Just listen to these verses. Hebrews 11;3, this one really emphasizes the point that I just made. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. Romans 1:16-17. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God has revealed from faith, for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Martin Luther, John Wesley, the guys who sparked the Protestant Reformation and Great Awakening, these guys studied Romans one and they realized that there is a power preaching the Word of God. The Catholic Church was trying to attract people with the beauty of their churches, saying it's faith plus works. No, these guys brought it back. The word is in the power. When the word goes out, the Holy Spirit uses it to bring heart and hearts to come alive, and that's what changes people, movements that have influenced millions. Jeremiah 23:29, is not My word like fire? Declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? God's word does not return void, empty. It's always going to convert and then there's another and I don't have time to go into today, it's going to condemn. There's two responses to God's word is what Jesus talks about in the passage. It depends how do you receive Jesus Christ. That determines your outcome and eternity. Hebrews 4;12, for the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Essentially it's saying, you have Excalibur. The sword from the king, your God. He gives it to you, it's at your disposal. Use it, search your own heart, let it penetrate the hearts of others. First Peter 1:23, since you have been born again not have perishable seed, but have imperishable, but through the living and abiding Word of God. We're born again by the word of God, therefore, our salvation cannot be taken away. Because the source is eternal. It's God Himself. John 15:3, already you are clean because of the word that I've spoken to you and this is just saying, you read the Bible. It literally cleanses you. A lot of Christians know this. You just have a bad week. You have a fight with your spouse, you yell at your kids and you just need to be washed. You open the word, you feel the peace of God, you're convicted of your sin, God's grace for you, and you get peace. A lot of non Christians, they know this as well. This is why they don't read the Bible. A lot of drifting Christians, they know this is going to happen. This is why they don't want to open the Bible. This is why society calls the Bible a weapon. They know this power is there. John 15:7, if you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By abiding in the word, meditating on it, just imbibing it, drinking it in. It's not just in isolation as a monk, it's throughout your day just meditating on it. You have five seconds of thought, recalling the Word of God. Your affections grow more and more in line with the things of God, with the person of God. When we begin to desire and ask for such things and grow that love for God, God makes things happen for us. This isn't prosperity gospel, this is just the word and I've seen it happen in my own life. Acts 6:7, and the Word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. So, the church grows by the power of the word and this is a story of Mosaic, Boston. Everything we do, has the word in the middle. Love Jesus, simple Jesus, the Word of God. He's in the middle of all that we do. Every aspect of the service, the music, the preaching, the prayer, the way we govern the church. It comes from the word. It doesn't make us popular in the community, but it pleases our God. We try to convict people of sin through the word, convict them of God's love for them through the word. We live and die by the word as does the Church of Jesus Christ globally. I just want to say, look at the church. It was nine years ago this week, August 14, 2011, I walked into Mosaic church for the first time in my life, at the Huntington Avenue YMCA. Communitas was the topic, kind of talking about how God's community is different from the world. I remember that because I never felt the power of the word in my life, despite being in the church for 23 years. On that day, there were about 15 people in attendance. By God's grace, I say this humbly. We were getting 500 plus people in person at our services on Sundays before quarantine took off. God is building His church. I think most notably in this season, I just did a quick glance at our members. We have 200 or so covenant members. We have people from 33 different countries amongst the 200. That's just a quick glance, I didn't really dig into it. A few thousand people have been in and out of the doors of Mosaic in the past nine years, 10 years. Only the powerful word of God can accomplish this In a place like Boston, Massachusetts. I look at Pastor Jan sometimes, I love him. I think I was converted here. He is so different than me. The more and more time we spend there, he's so different and I praise God for that. Only by the word of God, can I look at him and say, I love you. I forgive you. I'm so thankful you're different than me. Because that adds more perspective, more power to our witness here. Just at the heart of Mosaic, it's not just the preach word that we rely on. It's back to the, tying it to the 72 of this passage. It's we rely on the people of God to be sharing the word more than us as pastors. It's kind of backwards. A lot of churches do the complete opposite. Ephesians 4:11-12. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, that's us pastors, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ. It's the job of the saints to take the word and share it, contextualize it, bring it to your families, community groups, bring it to co workers, to the influential institutions of our city. You discuss it at home, at the bar, at the office, at the park, over text and I regretfully say over Zoom and Google Meet, but that doesn't take the power away from it. The Holy Spirit uses the efforts of the people of God when they stand firm on His word. Our text tells us just to say, this wasn't just for that time. What does Jesus say in Luke 10:19? Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you. That was after they came back. Jesus said, this is a future of power that My servants are going to have. Furthermore, John 14:12 builds a little bit on this idea of the works that are yet to come in the life of God's people. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the work that I do, and greater works than these will He do, because I am going to the Father. Do you want to be used by God? Do you want to have His power move in and through you, or are you apologetic about sharing gospel? Martin Lloyd Jones is called by some as the best preacher of the 20th century, at least in the English language that I know. He served in Wales and London for about 50 years. He once said to his church, surely the Christian has a right to laugh. It is our lasting shame as Christians that we allow the world in these days to laugh at us. We do so merely because we do not realize we should upon the power of God. We look at the people of the world, with their motorcars their luxury and their various pleasures, and we even seem to envy them. We who have all the riches and all the resources of the Godhead in our grasp, we for whom God spared not His only begotten Son, we for whom God has prepared such things as the eye of mortal man has not seen, nor ear heard nor heart ever felt. We who, to use the words of Jesus Christ, on this occasion to the woman of Samaria. Have the well of water springing up into everlasting life within us. How can we be envious of those who depend upon the polluted wells of the world for their pleasure and happiness? What if we here in San Fields, that's this church, but realized how great our treasures are, and realized it to such an extent that we made all the people in this neighborhood and town feel that we were laughing at them and sorry for them in their dependence upon the fleeting things of time. Why, the life of this town would be completely changed in a very short time. What if we imagine that here in Brookline, here in Boston, like have compassion on the souls around us, leaning on just broken vessels for their peace, for their foundation. That's what's happening all over the web. That's what's happening. People are desperate. They're clinging, you see these YouTube videos that are made in someone's mom's house, and they get 90 million views. Surely some of your good friends, some of your family members, if you said to them, hey, I see you grasping at something that I think is going to disappoint you. I want to tell you what I have in Jesus Christ. Do you think they'd listen to you? A lot of people cling to the argument, preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words. Sounds so good. That's often ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi. Maybe there's a day in the church to use it, but this does not align with our passage today, nor all the quoted scriptures that I've provided. When we share the gospel, we can't be afraid to use scripture blatantly. We want to let our speech be seasoned by it, have our prayer for others and prayer for healing saturated by it. Without it, all of our efforts are void of the power that comes with it. It took me years to get to this point, to just be, man, I'm going to share it. Yes, we want to be strategic and timely with our delivery, but we can't be shameful. When you know the love of God, the peace of God, the joy of the Lord, you can't help but want to speak about it. My wife and Drew were listening to songs on Laurie Berkner radio. She's a famous children's musician. The song went, I've got a song in my bones and it wants to come out. I've got a song in my bones. I've got a song in my bones and it wants to come out, and when it does, I'm going to sing and shout. I don't know if she's Christian, but that's how we should feel about the gospel welling inside of us. So I want to move on, I think you should feel some way right now, even though I'm calling you to a task that you don't really want to do all the time. I want to talk about the heart of God's Word. Luke 10:17 and 20. The 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name and Jesus later on, He says in response to this, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. The 72 come back, they get a taste of serving God, the very thing they were created to do. It's like electric coursing through their veins. It's the best adrenaline rush in their life. They experience some flow, and they're ready for some more. What Christ says to them, it's a little confusing. He says, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this. The spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Half of commentators they think that this is primarily a stern caution to the disciples to not get overconfident and proud for all the power and authority that they have. It's been given to them. They should be reminded that they have any of this power. They have the love of God, by God's grace and I think there's something to that. The other half see it more as a slight correction. I think these guys are right. The main reason being that the 72 they come back, they ascribe praise where praise is due. They give Christ credit, and say that the demons were driven out in Your name. Christ isn't admonishing them here. He's redirecting them. He's placing their current joy and perspective to a greater joy. He's saying, you have reason to rejoice, but you can know a greater joy. Actually, you will definitely know it one day heaven. What is that? What's the greatest benefit? What is the greatest joy in heaven? It's God Himself. It's saying, train yourselves to love God. That is going to be the greatest joy you can have. That is what is going to drive you to continue to do ministry for Me and this is hard for me to understand. I love tasks. I love people telling me what to do. I love people giving me clear instructions, letting others make decisions. My favorite teachers growing up were typically the teachers that everybody else hated, because they actually made you do work. I love them, I thrived under them and all you had to do was do what they said. There's a lot of joy, a lot of self assurance, you just do what you need to do and that you can pat yourself on the back. I know a lot of you are like this because you came from other states, other parts of the world to come to Boston, Massachusetts, perhaps the largest collection of task oriented people per capita in the world. A lot of you put me to shame on this, but what God wants, what Christ wants is not devotion to Him simply for the thrill of it. Not simply because following Him gives us great purpose, not because it gives us access to great power, nor because it makes us feel joyful temporarily. He wants a heart devotion. He wants us to crave His presence, the ultimate benefit of heaven. Our ultimate reward isn't a purpose. It's a person and you have to really chew on this. A lot of people that come to church, a lot of people get in the ministry because they've felt that electric feeling of serving God. It gives them a sense of meaning and gives them a sense of great purpose. A lot of people come to Mosaic and they feel the buzz. They see something happening here. They show up, they serve, but they don't really develop that love for God and when they go, you see them drift. People burn out and service the Lord when the love of God Himself isn't a part of their spiritual life. The gospel teaches us that while we were yet in sin, Christ died for us. Essentially says, God has no reason to love us. Like we are completely sinful, completely fallen yet He did, He does And he went to great lengths to show it in sending Jesus Christ to bear the burden for our sin on the cross. Why? Why did He do this? Because He loves us, because He loves us, because He loves us. There's no reason within us for Him to love us in His holy, righteous state. He wants us to turn to Him in love because we love Him, because we love Him, because we love Him and we desire to be in no other place than in His presence, living in His will, under His command. He wants us to look at Him, read His word, find out who He really is, and love Him, worship Him, serve Him out of love. The only real way to grasp the kind of love that God wants us to have for Him is the perspective of a parent. Children are the most costly investment a parent can make. I'm thinking about this a lot as number two came along. They cost a lot of money, they cost a lot of time, they cost a lot of energy. They smell often. Most of the time, the child presumes upon their parent's generosity and grace, but a good parent, despite the cost, just loves the child. What does a good parent want most from a child? The child to occasionally walk over them, give them a hug and sincerely say, I love you. My son Drew, he just turned four. He is a horrible hugger, horrible snuggler the first three years of his life. He's always focused. He's always on, he just started to randomly put toys down, put books down, walk over to us, hug us, look us in the eye and say, "I love you." Like that's what God wants from us while we're serving Him. That's where the power to continue serving Him till the end of our day is comes from and furthermore, a parent doesn't just want a child to listen them because they're promised a treat for listening. They want the child to listen to them because the child knows their parent loves them. We're still working on this one with Drew. You have to give him a lot of toys to get stuff done. That's what God wants from us, a pure love. In this text, Jesus Christ models that true love for God, the person of God the Father in verses 21 and 22. This is coming from, He's just watching the 72. They returned. He sees God's plan going forward through His ministry. He realized He's in the company of the elect, who He came to save and He sees the Father's heart in everything that is happening. He can't help himself from rejoicing in prayer. Luke 10:21-22, in that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. He's praising God for His titles, for who He is, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. He's praising God for His election. Yes, Father, such was Your gracious will. He's praising Him for Grace, praising Him for His will, over what's happening in the world. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. He's praising Him for the authority that He has bestowed upon Jesus Christ. This, this is true love for God, the person of God and where did this take Jesus? What lens did He go to follow the father out of true love for Him? He went to the cross for you and me. Do you praise God for His attributes, His Holiness, sovereignty, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, justice, wrath, love, grace, mercy and joy? Or do you pick and choose what you like about Him, His word? God doesn't want that love and if you never really develop a love for those things, you might just limp into heaven or not even get there. Some might think that God has conceded or vain to wanting this kind of love from us, but if He is who He says He is, the sovereign King, Lord and Lord, King of kings, the Creator, the very best thing He can do for us is give us Himself. The very best thing He could have done in all His majesty was create other beings to enjoy him. In Heaven, we get access to the Father to enjoy Him. If you don't worship God for who He is, if you don't love Him, because you love Him, because you love Him. If you don't love Him, because you don't like the hard doctrines of the Bible, the biblical orthodox faith that's been maintained throughout history, Scripture gives you a test. This is verses 23 and 24. Can you look at the person of Jesus Christ and still not love God? So verse 23, then turning to the disciples, He said privately, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desire to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Because the disciples over these little guys, like a T ball team huddle he says, hey, guys, that King you preached about, that's Me. I'm the one that all the prophets preach about. I am the Messiah. I am God in hard copy. Look at Me, enjoy Me. When things get harder on the road, you're going to want to think about Me. Why is looking at Jesus Christ the test to see if you really love God for all that He is? There is no fuller expression of God's Word and God's heart than in the person of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 1:20, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. Hebrews 1:3, He, Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of His power. Jesus didn't just preach God's word, He was the word of God. He is the word of God still, seated at the right hand of the Father. The kingdoms and nations are in the palm of His hand. Like sovereignty, He's controlling things right now. Jesus is literally God's mic drop. There are no scriptures, no books of the Bible after the New Testament, after the writings of the apostles who learned directly from Jesus, because nothing more needs to be said from God's perspective. He has spoken entirely. When we read the New Testament about the person of Christ, we read about the person of God. It's as if Jesus Christ, in His full power is there with us in person. John Piper talks about how in Christ we see a peculiar glory. I just love how he sums up who Jesus is. Particularly Jesus' primary speaking point to us was on the cross. The person of Christ brings together infinite highness and infinite condescension, infinite justice and infinite grace, infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence towards God and equality with God. Infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience under suffering evil, exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven and earth, absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation, self sufficiency and entire trust and reliance upon God. That's Jesus Christ. If you love Jesus, the Word of God, the heart of God's word, embodied, you really see who God is. You really love God. You're going to consider it not a task, but a blessing to go out to the ends of the world to serve Him. You're going to consider it a blessing to take from the money that He's given you, the authority that He's given you to use it for His glory. Now, you're not just going to crave momentary success, victory's purpose, the thrill of sharing God's word, but God Himself. You're going to love heaven. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Go. Let's pray. Lord, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. You have overcome this world, this life. We will not bow to sin or to shame. We are defined in Your name. Lord, let that be our attitude as we go from here today. Let us wield Your sword with grace, with humility, knowing that You have created a spot in Your house in heaven for us, despite our sin. We praise You for sending Jesus Christ to take the wrath of our sin, but more importantly, we praise you for sending Jesus Christ to show us who You are, to show us Your heart. Lord, I pray just use this word as we go forth this week. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 28
August 2, 2020 • Shane Sikkema • Luke 9:46–62
Audio Transcript: Hello. Welcome again to our livestream service. So glad to have you watching along with us. If you're new, I especially want to welcome you. My name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic. As Pastor Andy mentioned earlier, we would love to connect through our digital connection card. You can find that link in the description of this video, or it should be popping up in the chat if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube. If you fill that out, can you give us some information about yourself? We would love to follow up with you this week and just send a small gift to your email to thank you for being with us. Then you can also check off on there to receive some more information from us about ways to get connected here at Mosaic. The last couple of months have been pretty crazy for our family. Beyond just COVID crazy, we made the decision back around May, that it was time for us to begin looking for an apartment and to move. We began that process. Part of the reason is... My name is... coming in and out in the livestream, or is that just happening here? Anyways, my wife and I... We've been married for 15 years. We've got two kids. Our son, Owen, is eight. He's going to be turning nine this fall. Our daughter is five. They've just been getting way too big. They've been sharing a bedroom. Our whole family's been sharing a bathroom. It just hasn't been working out. Something needed to change. Now rewind with me. We began to look. Things were going well. We found a great place. We're getting ready to sign the lease and set the move-in date. Then the owner of the apartment called, said, "Hey. We saw on your application that you have a child under the age of six. Therefore, we need to have the place inspected for lead." Of course, they found lead because it's Boston, and everything here is made 100 years ago. He's like, "Well, before we can let you guys move in, we're going to have to delead the apartment." If you know what that's like, it's a whole long process. It's got to get inspected. Then the work needs to be done. Then it needs to be inspected again. Long story short, our move date moved. We went from looking to move in mid June to July 1st. Then it moved again from July 1st to July 15. Then it moved a third time to August 1st. We actually, finally moved into our apartment yesterday. Praise God. Extremely worn out and tired. Huge special thanks to Wade and Jessica for watching our kids for us, literally, all day long. They're probably more tired than we are. I bring that up because if we rewind all the way back to the spring, making that decision to move, that is a big life-changing decision, right? That's a decision that comes with a lot of risks and a lot of questions. It's something that you have to put a lot of thought to. I don't know. How do you make decisions like that? Some of you might be the, shoot first, ask questions later, type. I am the, ask all the questions and then maybe I'll reluctantly pull the trigger, type. I'm the kind of guy that I need to sit down. I need to look at all the possible options. I need to write out all the pros and cons and very carefully come to a decision. That's what we did. My wife and I... We sat down. The first thing we did was we updated our budget. Then we set kind of our target price range. Then we kind of went shopping to see what our options were. Then we did a full-out cost/benefit analysis of every single option before us until we finally arrived at the one that we believed would be best for our family, that would be best for our budget, would be best for our ministry, and for our goals, for our short-term, for our long-term goals. I bring all of this up because it's relevant to our text today. Jesus never really pressured people into making an impulsive or an uninformed decision when it came to following Him. In fact, what we often see is that when people want to follow Him, He challenges them to count the cost before doing so, to consider what they're really committing themselves to. We're going to see this in our text today, that three people come to Jesus. Some of them seem very enthusiastic about following Him. All Jesus needs to do in this moment is, right, smash that Like button and His followers go up, but He doesn't do that. You should do that if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube. Jesus doesn't do that. Instead, He tells them to consider what it's going to cost them to be His disciples. In doing so, He gives them an open door to walk away if that cost seems too high. This seems so strange to us. Doesn't Jesus want more followers? Yes, of course, He does, but He wants followers. He wants followers in the truest sense of the word, legitimate followers. He wants lives, not just likes. He wants men and women who are prepared to give their lives to follow Him wherever He goes, wherever He takes them, whatever it costs them. What we're going to see is that Jesus is going somewhere. A place our text tells us that He's going is He's going to Jerusalem. Jesus is on a path to the cross. Our text today is Luke 9. We're going to be looking at verse 46 through 62. As we do, I want us to do a cost/benefit analysis of following Jesus. We're going to see five aspects of life where following Jesus is going to cost us something in the short term. We're also going to see that the decision to not follow Jesus is going to cost us something in the long term. The five categories that we're going to be looking at is, first of all, we're going to be talking about how following Jesus is going to cost us our pride. Second, our purpose, third, our possessions, four, our people, and then fifth, our priorities. If you look at the text with me, I'm going to be reading from Luke, chapter 9, beginning in verse 46. It says, "Now an argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest, but Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side. He said to them, 'Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.'" "John answered, 'Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us.' Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.' When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparation for him, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' He turned and rebuked them. They went on to another village." "As they were going along the road, someone said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' To another he said, 'Follow me,' but he said, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' Jesus said to him, 'Leave the dead to bury their own dead. As for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.' Yet another said, 'I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.' Jesus said to him, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.'" God, we thank you for this word. We thank you for your word, your word that is an authority in our lives that is true, that is inerrant, that has power. We thank you for giving us this word recorded here in Scripture for us. Lord, we pray that you would take these truths and that you would apply them to our heads, to our hearts, to our hands to conform us more into the image of your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray, amen. Wow. It's an intense text. In the context of Luke's gospel, it's a little bit of a turning point. Much of Luke's gospel, up to this point, has really been focusing on this issue of Jesus's identity. Who is this man who performs miracles, and casts out demons, and heals the sick? This really comes to a head in verse 20, when Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Christ of God." Then right after this, we see the story of the transfiguration where Peter, James, and John are brought up to the mountaintop. They are given the privilege of getting a glimpse of Jesus's true power, and splendor, and glory. Luke 9... It answers that question of Jesus's identity definitively, that this is God in the flesh, that He is the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, the divine Savior of the world. Now that that has been made clear, Luke begins to shift a little bit and ask another important question. That's this: If this is who Jesus is, then what does it look like to be His disciple? What does it mean to follow this Jesus? The big idea is that if you have seen Jesus for who He really is, you never want to leave Him. This is what we saw last week. Peter sees Jesus for who He really is. What does he do? He's like, "This is great. Let's build some tents. Let's camp out here forever. I never want to leave you, Jesus. Let's just stay here." What Peter needed to learn and what we need to learn is that Jesus doesn't just camp out. Jesus is not going to be stagnant or complacent in His mission. Jesus is on the move. He has a purpose to fulfill. He has a mission to complete. If we want to be with Him, we have to move with Him. We have to follow Him. Following Him won't always be safe. It'll almost never be comfortable because our passage today tells us where He's going. Verse 51 says that, "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." This is so important, right? Jesus... Up to this point, He's been healing. He's been traveling around. He's been teaching. Now, all of a sudden, He sets His face to Jerusalem because now the time had come where He needed to complete His mission. He needed to fulfill His purpose here on Earth. What was that purpose? He told them a few verses earlier. Verse 22, he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and on the third day, be raised.” This was His purpose. This was His mission. He's born to die, to give His life as a ransom for many. If this is where Jesus is going, then what does it mean to follow Him? Well, Jesus tells them in the very next verse. Verse 23, "He said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?'" The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Before reaching the glories of heaven, it needs to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. It's short-term pain for long-term gain. For us, short-term, following Jesus is potentially going to cost us everything. Short-term, it may seem reckless, insensible, foolish. Long-term, it's the only rational option before us. Look at these five categories. The first thing that we see in our text is that following Jesus is going to cost us our pride. It says in verse 46 through 48. It says that, "An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and He said to them, 'Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.'" Notice that Jesus doesn't rebuke them for wanting to be great. Instead, it says that he knew the reasoning of their heart. The reasoning was flawed. He corrects their reasoning. He gives them a proper definition of what greatness is. You want to be great? That is great. You should strive for greatness, to be the best that you can be, but first, allow Jesus to give you a proper definition of what greatness is and what makes a person truly great. He pulls this child over, and He says, "Look." How do you relate to those of humble stature? He checks their pride. What we see here is Jesus is... He's trying to get his disciples to displace where... Instead of desiring a childish greatness, that they begin to desire a child-like greatness. This is the difference. Childish greatness... It's puffed up. It's pride-filled. It's argumentative. It's conceited. It's filled with selfish ambition in its desires to rule over and subjugate others, but child-like greatness is humble. It's gentle. It's meek. It's not weak, but it's strength that's under control. It's ambitious, but it's ambitious to serve others. It reaches for the top, but it does so in order to pull others up along with it. What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus? Here, the cost is, we must lay down our childish pride. The benefit is, we receive the freedom of child-like humility. The childish pride... It comes from thinking of God as a taskmaster, as this grumpy boss who's always tracking everyone's performance, comparing you to everyone else. Child-like humility... It comes from knowing who God really is. He's a loving father that you have been accepted by grace through faith, not anything that you've done to earn it. Therefore, there's nothing you can do to lose it. Therefore, you've got nothing to lose and no one to impress. You're just secure in the Father's love. A childish desire for greatness is insecure. It grasps at power to build itself up at the expense of others, but a child-like desire for greatness is both confident and humble at the same time. It's secure in the Father's love. Therefore, it's free. It's free to steward the power that God gives it as a gift from a good Father in order to use to serve and to build up others. The second thing we see is that following Jesus is going to cost us our purpose. This is verse 49 through 55. John answered Jesus. He said, “Hey, master. We saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us." "Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.' When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' He turned and rebuked them. They went on to another village." When I say that following Jesus is going to cost us our purpose, this is what I mean. James and John... They had a dream. They had a vision of what it would be like when the Messiah came and established his kingdom, of what their purpose would be in that Messianic kingdom. Their problem was their presuppositions about that purpose and that kingdom weren't in line with Jesus. Jesus has to rebuke them here. See, Jesus's mission was not about handing out special ranks or privileges. It was not about destroying His enemies. He's actually getting prepared to die for His enemies. He said that, "I've not come to condemn the world, but to save the world." Now this doesn't mean that there is no judgment. The time for judgment would come. Actually, in the very next chapter, in the very next passage, Jesus talks about that as He sends His disciples out on a mission. He says, "Listen. You're going to be rejected by people. You're going to be rejected by villages. Listen. Those villages or those people are going to fall under judgment on Judgment Day," but that day is not here. That day is coming right now. They're on a mission to proclaim good news. They're on a mission to proclaim and to announce the gospel that the king has come, and he's offering peace. He's offering amnesty to all who would repent and believe, that people can come to be forgiven and to be made right with God. The question for us here, the application is, is Jesus the Lord of your dreams? Can Jesus tell you what to do? Can Jesus tell you no? Are you willing to submit your dreams, your plans, your deepest desires and purpose to Him as your king? When I was about 14 years old, a dream was born in my heart. That dream was to stand on a stage in front of a crowd of people, playing music with a band, and hearing them sing songs that I had written. Now I knew at age 14... At the time, my all-time hero was Kurt Cobain. I was just fascinated with him, with his story, with his talent. Even at 14 years old, I knew that this dream was not from God, and it was not what God wanted for me. I knew that Kurt Cobain was a tragic hero who lived a tragic life and died a tragic death. I knew that, but I convinced myself that I was going to be different, that somehow, if I could just get a small taste of the success and the fame that failed to satisfy him, that surely, it would be enough to satisfy me. I worked toward that goal. When I got into college, I pursued that with everything I had. It really didn't take long before that dream started to come to fruition. I met some guys. I joined a band. We started writing music. We started playing shows. We started going to studios and recording. The next thing you know, we're doing radio interviews, and we're signing autographs. We're getting to play shows with some of our all-time favorite bands. It was amazing, but that feeling... It didn't last very long. In fact, it wasn't long before that glory really began to fade, and I felt myself getting jaded. I felt myself getting dissatisfied, disillusioned even. I remember the night that my dream from 14 really, for all practical purposes, became a reality. We were playing this show with one of our favorite bands that had just recently risen to massive success. We're playing this show. The room is packed. As we're playing, I can hear the crowd singing the songs that we wrote. After the show, the rest of the band... They went and they hung out with the other bands. I went home. All I could really feel, all I could really think was, "That's it? That's what I've been waiting for?" That didn't satisfy me. That didn't feel the way that I thought that it should feel. I knew what was going on. I'd known it in the back of my mind for some time. I was chasing the wind. I was never going to reach that moment of satisfaction. Anytime you get closer, it just moves farther away. I knew that as I was chasing the wind, I was also running away from Jesus Christ and from His purpose for my life. That was a hard realization. I began to see that the songs we wrote would never be good enough, that the shows would never be big enough, and that it was never going to fully satisfy me. God had to take me to the end of that dream to show me how vain it was and to show me that when Jesus says no, I should listen, but also to show me that when Jesus says no, it's not because He's trying to withhold something good. It's because He has something better, and you need to trust Him. I needed to repent. I needed to let go. Really, the problem wasn't that my dream was too big. The problem was my dream was way too small. It was all about me. I needed to make it all about Him. I needed to put that down in order to take up my cross and find something that was really, truly worth living my life for, which was following Jesus Christ. We might not directly relate to that or to James and John. The application for us all is that you're going to know that Jesus is truly your Lord by how you react when He tells you no. If Jesus can't tell you no, then He's not your Lord. If He's not your Lord, then He's not your Savior. Don't waste your life trying to tack Jesus onto your dreams, trying to get Jesus to serve your purposes. Instead, invest your life in His eternal purposes and His mission. The question is, what area of life are you trying to keep Jesus off the throne? It could be anything, right? Is it sex? Is it money? Is it relationships? Is it the way that you treat other people? Is it work? Is it leisure? Is it the way you parent? Is it your health or your stewardship of your body, of your resources? Now whatever it is, if Jesus tells you no, right... He's not trying to withhold something good. He wants to give you something better. What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? The cost is, we must be ready to lay down our desires, our dreams, our purposes and submit our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The benefit is, we receive the joy of being used by God for His eternal purposes in His plan, in His mission. Third, we see that following Jesus is going to cost us our possessions. This is verse 57, 58: "They were going along the road, and someone said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes. Birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'" As Christians, this is hard, but we need to be really careful about becoming overly attached to the things of this world. Jesus wants this man to understand that the urgency of his mission is so great that he can't afford to put down roots. He can't afford to get too tied down by the comforts of this world. For Jesus, that meant He didn't even have a home. Now, does that mean in order to follow Jesus that we all need to be homeless? I hope not. That's a hard question because, apparently, it did for this guy at least. Now I don't think that applies to everyone. The question for us is, are we ready? Are we willing? Are we prepared to do so if Jesus commands? If Jesus is the Lord of your life, then He's the Lord of your stuff, and He can tell you how to use it. He's the Lord of your money, of your home, of your possessions, of your time, of your treasure, of your talent. They're all His. We are called to steward them well. Everything we have has been entrusted to us by God for His good purposes. We're going to give an account for how we use them. Now, if that worries us, again, we need to remember who God is. God is a loving and generous Father. His purposes are good. His resources are limitless. Therefore, if He's asking us to be disciplined with how we use our possessions, if He's asking us to be generous, He's asking us to be good stewards, it's because, again, He knows what is best for us. He knows what's best for our fellow man. 2 Corinthians 9:6 says that, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." This makes sense. Pretty much, common sense farming illustration. Then he compares it to how we use our finances and possessions. He says this, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, 'He has distributed freely.'" He's giving to the poor. "His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God." What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? It costs us our entitlement to use our possessions as we desire. The benefit is, we get to steward the provisions of a gracious Heavenly Father whose resources are limitless. Fourth, we see that following Jesus is going to cost us our people. This is verse 59 and 60: "To another he said, 'Follow me.' He said, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' Jesus said to him, 'Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.'" Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like if Jesus was a pastor today and try to figure out, how long would it take him before he got fired for saying stuff like this? James and John... They got the classic Jesus juke. These next three guys are getting the Jesus nuke. This is like, let the dead bury their own dead. Wow. What's going on here? Well, culturally, there might be some stuff going on here. It's likely that this guy's father wasn't actually dead yet. Perhaps what he was saying was something more like, "Jesus, I want to follow you, but I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait until my father dies because I don't want to lose out on my inheritance or my place in the family." Whatever the case, Jesus is trying to make it clear that the call to follow Him is... On the one hand, it's urgent. On the other hand, it's a call that's going to supersede all other commitments, loyalties, allegiances that we may have, even to our own biological families. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't love and honor our families. 1 Timothy 5:8 says that, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Now what this does mean, however, is that our allegiance to Jesus and our loyalty to the family of God... It overrides our allegiance to our biological families if those things come into conflict. There's going to be times when they do. Some of you know this very well. I've talked to people. I've met with people who've come to Mosaic and said things like, "Listen. I live in a country where it is against the law for me to become a Christian. If I get baptized and make that decision to follow Jesus, my family is going to disown me. They could even have me killed." For them, the cost of discipleship was immediately a reality in their life. It cost them something, and it alienated them from their families. Some of you have experienced this to a lesser degree. All of us at times in our lives... We're going to have these times where the wishes, the desires of our biological families, and our allegiance to them is going to come into conflict with our allegiance to Jesus and His desires and purposes for our lives. My wife and I... We know this a little bit. This month is going to mark seven years that we have been here in Boston and seven years that we have been away from our family. Now, their wish and our wish is that we would be closer together. All right? We miss them terribly, but Jesus has called us here. We need to remind ourselves, "If this is where Jesus has called us to, we need to trust Him that this is for our good and obey." Jesus is passing out a lot of hard pills to swallow in this passage, but we take them as medicine for our souls. We take them with an eternal perspective. By God's grace, Kelly and I... We have assurance that we will spend eternity with our biological families in heaven because of their faith in Jesus Christ. That's a great comfort to us, even if right now, we don't get to see them as often as we would like. Even if that were not the case, when we come to Christ, we are given in Christ a whole new definition of family, that our true family is not biological, but it's supernatural, right? It's the family of God. It's our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is what we see in the previous chapter in Luke 8. In verse 19, we're told that, "Then Jesus... His mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. He was told, 'Hey, your mother and your brothers... They're standing outside, desiring to see you.' He answered them, 'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.'" Mark 10:29, "Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. Many who are first will be last, and the last, first.'" How can leaving our families for the sake of the gospel result in receiving a hundredfold back? Well, He's talking about the church. He's talking about our brothers and sisters in Christ. If you've ever relocated around the country, and had to leave a church, and move to a new area, and find a new church, you know exactly what this is about. J. C. Ryle wrote that, "The true Christian regards all Christ's friends as his friends, members of the same body, children of the same family, soldiers in the same army, travelers to the same home. When he meets them, he feels as if he had long known them. He is more at home with them in a few minutes than he is with many worldly people after an acquaintance of several years. What is the secret of all this? It is simply affection for the same Savior and love to the same Lord." What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? Well, it's going to cost us our earthly commitments and allegiances, but the benefit is, we receive a heavenly citizenship, adoption into the household of God. Jesus is preparing for us an eternal place with an eternal people. The last thing we see is that following Jesus is going to cost us our priorities. This is verse 61, 62: "Yet another said, 'I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.' Jesus said to him, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.'" What do you treasure? What do you hold most dear? What are you afraid to let go of, or what can you not imagine living your life without? What is it that's going to tempt you to take your hand off the plow and look back? Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, and He didn't turn back. There were a lot of good things that He could have done, but He sets that all aside because there was only one thing that He needed to do. Nothing was going to stop Him from fulfilling that task, from going to the cross. His priorities were set in stone. Many of you have read the book, From Good to Great. Jim Collins famously observed that good is the enemy of great. It sounds very profound, but it's just kind of common sense, right, that there are so many good things that we could commit our lives to, but those good things become bad things if they keep us from doing the ultimate things and the greatest things. The greatest purpose and priority that anyone can have in this life is to know Christ and to proclaim the kingdom of God. This all started with Jesus's disciples arguing about, who is the greatest? The true greatness comes when we follow in the footsteps of the greatest man who ever lived, and that is Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, that only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon Him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure, receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. For those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy and the burden is light. Following Jesus and giving your life to His kingdom as your top priority... This is going to be the hardest thing that you could ever attempt to do, but it's worth it. The reason that it's worth it is because as you do, Christ is right there with you, yoked together. It might be hard, but you keep pushing forward. You keep in step with him. As you do, you begin to realize that He is the one carrying the weight. He's the one shouldering the burden, and you get the privilege of going along with Him in this great mission. As we close, I want to just ask one simple question. Why count the cost of discipleship? Perhaps you came to Christ, and nobody ever challenged you to do this, to count the cost. What's the harm in that? If somebody is ready to come to Christ, why stop them? Why caution them and encourage them to count that cost? Why not just let them dive in with all of their enthusiasm? I think part of reason that Jesus wants us to count the cost of discipleship is because once you've done so, there is absolutely nothing that's going to be able to make you turn back. Once you've counted the cost and once you have determined that the privilege of following Jesus and of knowing Christ is worthy of giving up everything you have, then nothing is going to take away down. Nothing will stop you. Nothing will deter you. Nothing will distract you. There will never come a day where you throw in the towel, and quit, and say, "Hey, I didn't sign up for this," because, of course, you signed up for this. We all signed up for this. We did it because He's worthy, because He's worth it. This doesn't mean that you're going to live a perfect, flawless Christian life, but it does mean that you're going to get up every day, you're going to take up your cross, you're going to preach the gospel to yourself, remind yourself of Christ's worth, and you're not going to turn back. Listen. Until you see Jesus for who He really is, this cost of discipleship is always going to seem too high. The lordship of Jesus is always going to seem burdensome. When you see Jesus for His true worth, when you see Jesus for who He truly is, you begin to see reality for what it truly is. That truth sets you free. It sets you free to see that the cost of discipleship is not a price that you have to pay. It's actually an investment that you get to make. Jesus says this in Matthew 13, verse 44, that, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who, on finding one pearl of great value, went, and sold all that he had, and bought it." "The kingdom of God is like a field," Jesus says. Now, the world sees that field. It sees toil. It sees work. It doesn't see any value in investing there. What the world doesn't know is that that field is not a field to be worked. A field is a field to be mined for treasure, that in that field is a treasure. The greatest treasure of all is Christ Himself. The greatest treasure you find is Christ because He's the one who first treasured us. He's the one who found us and gave His all for us. He did so joyfully. Before calling us to count the cost, Jesus Himself counted the cost. He counted the cost of our salvation. This is Hebrews 12:1. It says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him... " You picture that guy who finds the treasure in his field and then in his joy, he goes and sells everything he has. It says that of Jesus, that, "For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God." What was the joy set before Jesus? What did Jesus have by going to the cross that He did not have without going to the cross? It was us. It was God's people. We can joyfully give all we have for Christ and for His kingdom because God joyfully gave all He had for us. No matter how hard we may try, we will never outgive God. Romans 8:31 tells us, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son... " Think about this. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" Where are you today? Counting the cost of discipleship... It's important. It takes thought. It takes honest reflection, but it doesn't really take a lot of time. The man who found the treasure in the field... He immediately, joyfully went and sold all that he had to get it. He bought it right away. Now, in contrast, we see that Jesus is not at all impressed with the men that he meets in this passage. He's not impressed with their excuses. He's not impressed with their reasons for procrastinating, for waiting to make that call. He wanted them to count the cost, but He also wanted them to act urgently. Maybe you're a Christian who came to Christ, and you've never counted that cost. You should do that now. You should do that daily because, really, what you're doing is you're counting the value of Jesus Christ as you do. Perhaps you're not a Christian. Perhaps you're watching, and right now, you're afraid. You're afraid of what it might cost you to follow Jesus. I'm not going to stand up here and give you a bait-and-switch about all the amazing things that are going to happen to you if you make that choice. I want you to count the cost because it will cost you. Beyond just the five things that we've already talked about from this passage, first and foremost, it's going to cost you your sin. You know in your heart what I'm talking about. You can't come to Jesus without repentance. Where are the places in your life that you don't want Jesus to be Lord because you don't want Him to change things, because you don't want Him to tell you what to do? If there are places like that, this is what I would encourage you to do. Take a hard look at Jesus, and then take a hard look at your sin. What has sin done for you, right? Has it made you happy? Does it satisfy you? Does it give you peace? Does it give you joy? Does it give you hope? Does it give you purpose? If not, then why keep living for it? Scripture actually says that apart from Christ, that we are slaves to sin. We live for sin, and we are slaves to sin, but that Jesus came to set us free from not just the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin to give us victory over sin. We can live in that freedom. Jesus died for you so that you could be set free, so that you could repent, put your faith in Him, and find that His commandments for you are not burdensome. His commandments are life, and joy, and peace. Listen. Making that decision... It's going to be the hardest thing that you would ever do, but nothing could be more worth it. On the other hand, not making that decision is a decision too. That decision comes with a cost as well. I pray that you would consider that. As you do, look and see that sin will take everything from you and never fulfill on its promises. Jesus is the only who came and gave everything for you. That is why He is worthy of our lives. Now, would you please join in prayer before we continue in worship? Father God, you gave your greatest treasure, your one and only Son, Jesus Christ, so that we could be saved, so that we could be adopted into your family and be called sons and daughters as well. We thank you, and we praise you for that. Jesus, you gave your all, your very life, for us. We thank you for your sacrifice. We pray we would live lives worthy of your gospel. We pray that you would help us to just more deeply comprehend your great love for us and that by the power of the Spirit, we would count the cost and see your greatness, see your worth, and live lives of greatness ourselves following in the footsteps of you, our Lord, our Savior, denying ourselves, taking up our crosses daily, and following you. Jesus, it's in your name that we pray, amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 27
July 26, 2020 • Luke 9:28–45
Audio Transcript: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Mosaic. If you're new, or if you're visiting, please fill out a Connection Card online. If you're tuning in online, I just need to share how rapturous that experience was. I feel like today is my birthday, it's Christmas, it's Easter, it's my anniversary and it's pay day all in one. Just singing in person, seeing my brothers and sisters in person, what a gift this is. Hopefully, we'll reopen soon. August 26th is the date, tentative date. While we prepare for that, we are doing living streaming as you see. As Pastor James said, "Please excuse the technical difficulties." With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Holy God, what a gift your presence is. What a gift the presence and the fellowship of our brothers and sisters is. Lord, thank you for giving us the gift of your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you came in the flesh, God incarnate. That you tabernacled with us. That you pitched your tent to be with us, to welcome us in to your presence. Lord, we repent of all our sin, which is clogging up our vision of you. We want to see you more clearly than ever. We pray that you do increase our faith. We pray that you do give us mountaintop experiences in your presence. I pray that you do prepare us for the spiritual warfare when you tell us to go down into the valley of the shadow of death and to wage spiritual warfare against the demonic in your name, through prayer, by your word with the gospel. We pray over the city, Lord. We pray, Holy Spirit, continue to build up your church in this city. Bless every single gospel proclaiming church. Bless every single church that's faithful to your holy scriptures. I pray draw many to yourself. You have many in this city, that's why you called us to be here for such a time as this. We pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures and we thank you for them. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen. First of all, I want to say I will be sweating a lot during this sermon. By the way, I miss that. I missed sweating for Jesus, that's number one. Number two, this ... there's 24 people in the room, 25% of which are my family. That takes me right back to when we started the church. It's a great time to restart. Today, we are in Luke chapter nine. The title of the sermon is, A Glimpse of Glory. That's the official title. The unofficial title is, In a Tent with Jesus, that's the unofficial title, A Glimpse of Glory. I'll start with a quote, Os Guinness, he's a British writer, but spent a lot of time in the United States and a great cultural critic of the United States, he said this about the US, he said, "We have too much to live with and too little to live for. Everything is permitted and nothing is important." What do you live for? What is most important in your life? What gets you up early in the morning without an alarm clock? What gives you energy to keep striving, to keep working? And the Christian life is work, and to keep fighting the Christian life is a fight. The text right before this, Tyler did an incredible job last week. The text before this is about denying yourself. Jesus calls every Christian on a daily basis to deny yourself. What gives you the power to do it, to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus, why? "Follow me," Jesus said. "Fight the good fight of faith. Repent of and mortify sin." Why? Why? Because you get more God. You get more of God's glory in your life. You become more transformed in order to look more like Jesus, in order to show Jesus more clearly to others. The Chapter 9 of Luke begins with a question. "Who is Jesus?" Luke 9:9, Herod said, "John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?" And he sought to see Him. And then Luke 9:18-20, now what happened, "That as he was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He asked them, 'Who do the crowds say that I am?' And they answered, John, the Baptist, but others say, Elijah, and others that you're one of the prophets of old has risen.' Then he said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered, 'Christ of God.'" So that's what people say. That's what Peter says. Today, we hear clearly, this is what God, the Father says about Jesus Christ, and we get the transfiguration. The transfiguration is right in the middle of Jesus's ministry. That's why it's right in the middle of Matthew and Mark and Luke. It's to show us that this moment to show Christ's glory, this moment is in the top three most important moments in Jesus's ministry. One was His incarnation, the birth, ultimately his passion of the Christ, and in the middle you get the transfiguration. Right after the transfiguration Luke 9:51, "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Isaiah says he set his face like flint. He showed Peter and James and John, this is who I am, was reminded himself now, I'm going to reveal that glory through the suffering, death, and resurrection. Today we are in Luke 9:20-45. I'll read Luke 9:28-36 to begin our time in the holy scriptures. Would you look at the text with me? Luke 9:28, "Now about eight days after these things, he took with him Peter, and John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. "Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory, and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah,' not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, 'This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him.' And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. Talk about a glimpse of heaven, a glimpse of hell, and a gospel microcosm. First of all, a glimpse of heaven, Luke 9:28, "About eight days after these things, he took them, Peter, John, and James, and went up in the mountain to pray." Before every single major event in Jesus life and ministry, he spent significant portion of time in prayer. Jesus was always praying, but Luke points out that he's praying intentionally to show us that something really important is about to happen, to draw our attention to this importance. Luke 9:29, "As he was praying, the appearance of this face was altered and his clothing became dazzling like white." Jesus Christ said, "I am the light of the world." Not I reflect the light of the world. Jesus is not like the moon reflecting the glory of the sun. Jesus is the son of God and he's like the sun in that, the light comes from within, the glory comes from within. It's inherent to him, it's luminous, it's emanating, it's glistening intensely white. My parallel passage says, "It's so white, such as no earthly bleacher is able to whiten the pre-incarnation glory is revealed just a focus, just a glimpse and Jesus Christ is the focus of the story, just like he's the focus of every story." He is man, but the man is God. By the way, if you study any of other religious literature, Jewish literature, any other world religion, there is never anything even close to an event like this. Why? Because you can't fake it. You can't manufacture this. Jesus, yes, he was a man. We talked about this in Philippians chapter two, we talked about the glory of his incarnation and the miracle that he did take on flesh. I'm not going to do much here, but I will just say, he was as human as we are. He did not have a sinful flesh, but all the human things that we do, he did. He ate. He drank. He worked. He slept. Jesus got haircuts. Imagine be Jesus' barber. Jesus got haircuts. He had his beard trimmed. He walked. He talked. He grew weary. He even got sick once in a while. He knew some things, he didn't know others. He had to learn by studying and observation. The God of the universe had to learn to walk, meditate on that, as a baby, as a child, made himself that helpless. He laughed. He wept. He experienced pain and the exasperation and melancholy, and he did bleed. Peter, James, and John, they saw that and they knew he was different. Peter knew, theoretically that you are the Christ, now Jesus like, "Let me show you what that means." In Isaiah 6, by the way, in Isaiah 6, gospel of John tells us that Isaiah saw Jesus. Isaiah 6, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high, lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. "Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two, he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.'" Who's Isaiah talking about? John tells us that Isaiah was talking about Jesus. John 12:41, "Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him." That's Jesus. That's the holiness of God shown us in Christ. Luke 9:30, the story continues, "And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah." Why Moses and Elijah? This is fascinating, Moses and Elijah were the two men in the holy scriptures who both had previously met God on mountaintops. They experienced the presence, the glory of God. Moses died, he was buried by God. Elijah is one of two people in scripture who actually didn't taste death. It was Elijah and chicken wing right now, say it out loud, or in the comments, who was the other one? I can't hear you. Who? I will by faith believe that you said Enoch. Yes. That's the one, chicken wing. Chicken wing will send ... Next time I'm bringing a bucket of chicken wings, just toss it at you. Just kidding. What is the importance of these two men showing up on the mountain with the transfiguration of Christ? Well they're the most important people in the old testament. Moses, he brought the law. Elijah symbolizes the greatest of the prophets. We have the law giver and we have the greatest prophet. We have the law and the prophets. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." By the way, both Moses and Elijah had experience God before. They knew that they were pointing to Jesus and Jesus here is having a conversation with them about how he is going to fulfill that. By the way, God's glory, where Jesus shows God's glory, he shows the glory of God, that in the old testament is a euphemism for God. God and his glory are used interchangeably. That's why Exodus 33:18-23, Moses is asking to see God, but what's the language he uses? He says in verse 18, Moses said, "Please show me your glory." He said, "I will make," God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face. For man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed. And then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.'" Here on the mount of transfiguration, Moses ... God said, "You're not going to see my face. I'm going to show you a little bit. I'm only going to give you a glimpse." Here on the mountain, Moses sees the glory of God where? In his face, in the promised land. God said, "No, no, no, because you sinned, you can't go to the promised land." Now God brings him into the promised land. So what atoned? How? How can God show Moses his face, and Moses doesn't die? What happened to Moses sin that Moses can now see God's face and experience his glory and be welcomed into the promise, what happened? What happened was the cross of Jesus Christ, and we'll get there. Here they're having a conversation. Jesus isn't asking them questions, Jesus isn't interested in how Moses and Elijah are doing. Jesus is the one speaking. Jesus is at the center of the story. It's clear that who the greatest is. In Luke 9:32, "Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him." Now, some of the crucial points in Jesus' ministry, you see the disciples falling asleep. You got that in the Garden of Gethsemane, et cetera, why is this point ... I think partially, it's because physically they were exhausted. The mountain that they climbed was the one next to Phillip Caesarea, you're probably talking about 5000 feet, 6000 to climb to the top. Mount Washington, I think it's around 5000 feet to the very top, has anyone climbed Mount Washington? How long does it take? I think if you're booking it it's like five, six hours to get to the top, right? Maybe if you're really in shape, maybe less. So hours climbing the mountain, they're physically exhausted, so they fall asleep, and they're about to miss the most glorious moment in their life to date. A question you could ask is, why isn't Jesus asleep? One of the things that I read, one of the commentators say, and I think this is actually very interesting, that Jesus, yes he was human, but he was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descended upon Jesus at the start of his ministry when he got baptized, remember in the form of the dove, we saw that. Now everything Jesus did in his ministry was by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has a supernatural energy that the disciples don't yet, because the disciples don't yet have the Spirit of God within them. I just want to point that out. Jesus is praying. The disciples are asleep. When they wake up, it says, "When they became fully awake, they saw his glory." I think this is very symbolic language that one of the reasons why we don't see the glory of God as he wants to reveal it to us, and experience the presence of God as he wants to gift it to us is because of spiritual sleep. Luke 9:33, "And as the men were parting from him, Peter said that, 'Jesus master, it's good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah,' not knowing what he said." Peter is perpetually sticking his foot in his mouth. That's another situation where the ... he doesn't know what to say, but he's going to say something ... thinking out loud. I read a lot about what is going on here. My theory, my sanctified imagination says that, I think Peter so enjoyed that moment, he so enjoyed the glory of God, it was so rapturous, he's like, 'I don't want anything else. I've never experienced anything more glorious. Let's stay here, three tents, I'll build them. We'll go glamping. I'll build the tents myself.' By the way, Paul was a tent maker, that's interesting. The incarnation was, the word for incarnation is tabernacled in John 1, Jesus pitched a tent with us, he came to live with us. I think what's happening here is, Peter, he wanted to build the three tents and say, "Okay, John, you're the grace guy, we're going to bunk you up with Moses to balance each other out. And then Elijah, you're kind of a nut, but so is James, you guys can have a tent. And, who's left? Yeah, I guess I get a tent with Jesus." I think that was his thought process. I can totally relate. The beauty here is, that he wanted to be with Jesus in the fullness of it. John 9:34, "As he was saying these things, God interrupts him and a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud." What's fascinating is in the old testament when God is bringing the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, there was the pillar of cloud, and the pillar of fire. Those were both symbols of the presence of God. Then Jude tells us that it was actually Jesus that led the people of God out of Egypt. The fire and the cloud, they symbolize the presence of Jesus Christ. In the second coming, Daniel tells that Jesus will come on the clouds, and his appearance will be glorious, like fire. You have this combination of Jesus right here, in the clouds, the clouds are overshadowing, and his face is showing a fire. In Second Chronicles when Solomon finishes the temple, it says that the fire comes down from heaven, consuming the sacrifice, showing that sin must be atoned for. Then what we see in the history of the old testament is Ezekiel 10 and Ezekiel 11 outlines this in First Samuel 4 is that because of their idolatry, the people of God, the glory of God left the temple. God's glory was withdrawn. Glory departed for 600 years. Then when we see the story, the incarnation, remember when the angels come to the shepherds, what do they say? It says, "That the glory of God shown in the sky." It says in Luke 2:14, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those whom he is pleased." God brings the glory back to the people of God. In Luke 9:35, "And a voice came out of the cloud saying, 'This is my son, my chosen one, listen to him.'" Herod said, "Who is he?" I'm not sure, the disciples said the other people, they say that you're a prophet. Peter said, "You are the Christ." And God the Father says, "This is my son, my chosen one." I was actually meditating on that phrase this week. I was thinking about my pops, my pops has two sons. He loves saying that phrase, "Yeah, this is my son, yeah, that's my son." I was meditating on it, because I've never said that. I've said something even better, that's my daughter. I love to see how proud God the Father is of his son here. In all the Christ glory, the humility of this, look how glorious he is and he's humbling himself. He's shrouding himself with flesh in order to atone for our sins. The point here is he's the one that's worth dying for and living for. He is the most important one. He's the one for whom we deny ourselves, to get more of him, for whom we sacrifice to get more of him, for whom we mortify sin to get more of him. By the way, this is so practical, and yes I'm still on point one, it's so good, but point two is going to be a lot shorter. It's so practical in that we always make decision based on what we find important. We make decisions based on what we find important. For whom am I willing to sacrifice my life, for my family? I will lay my life down for my family. I think everyone would say that. I work every waking minute, other than when I sabbath for my family, for the kingdom of God. If you find comfort to be important, you'll do everything you can do be comfortable. You will work until you don't have to work. If you find being in shape important, you will do everything you can to sacrifice what you can, endure as much pain as you need to get that. If you find wealth important, you will pursue that and sacrifice whatever to get that. If you find security important, relationship important, et cetera, et cetera. By the way, when we look at all of the negative outfall in our life, most of the time it's ... these components are a result of valuing something ultimately that shouldn't be valued ultimately. That's why Jesus comes. In the bookend between deny yourself and follow me, take up your cross daily and I'm going to set my face like flint and go the cross, there, he shows us this is why it's worth it, to sacrifice absolutely everything. In Luke 9:36, "And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen." From there, and this is almost anti-climatic, they descend from the mountain, they just had a glorious rapturous mountaintop experience, and we go from Jesus in glory to little boy in misery. We go from the mountaintop to the valley of the shadow of death. We just got a glimpse of heaven, now we're going to get a glimpse of hell, and this is point two. The reason why this text is here right after the transfiguration where God doesn't do anything arbitrarily, he's orchestrated this, it's to show us that we are at war. A lot of people ask, "Why is there so much bad in the world? If God is good, why is there so much bad in the world?" Actually part of that answer is, because there's a spiritual war, we're in a war. We live in a war. The universe is at war. God is good. Satan is evil. The two kingdoms are clashing. There's angles and there's demons at war. Luke 9:37-40, "And the next day when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him and behold a man from the crowd cried out, 'Teacher, I beg you to look at my son for he is my only child. And behold a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out, it convulses him so that foams at the mouth and shatters him and will hardly leave him, and I beg your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.'" The parallel passages in Mark 9 and Matthew 17 say that the demon actually threw the boy in fire and water. Why? Because Satan is a murderer, and occasionally it rendered the child mute, so as the child's in water drowning he can't cry out for help, in fire, he can't cry out for help, that's how evil Satan is. This has been the case since infancy. The word here is for a boy who is not yet had his Bar Mitzvah, so he's I don't know, nine, 10. Sometimes our problems in life are physical, sometimes they are emotional, sometimes they're chemical, sometimes hormonal, but we can't forget that there is a category of the demonic. Sometimes our ailments are demonic. Sometimes the problems that we experience are from the demonic realm, so what do we do? Jesus, what's your reaction to this gentlemen who's been in pain for years? The child has been in pain for years. Jesus' reaction is surprising, because he ... his reaction is irritability. He's irritated. Jesus answered, "Oh faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." Who's he talking to? He's talking to the disciples, twisted, faithless generation, including the father, that's interesting. Why? Verse 42, "While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in convulsion, but Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the boy and gave him back to his father, and all were astonished at the majesty of Jesus." Jesus is irritated with the disciples and the father. Why? Because of their lack of faith. You're faithless. What annoys Jesus is our lack of faith. Why does Jesus rebuke the disciples and the father? They're lack of faith, they're lack of repentance, they're lack of obedience, and they're lack of prayer. In Mark 9:22-29, the parallel passage. "It was often," that's the father talking, "It does often cast him into fire, into water to destroy him, but you ... if you can do anything," this is the father talking, "have compassion on us and help us." And Jesus said to him, "If you can," exclamation mark, maybe a question mark, "all things are possible for one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe. Help my unbelief. "When Jesus saw that the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, 'You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.' After crying out and convulsing him terribly came out and the boy was like a corpse so that most of him said he is dead, but Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could we not cast it out?' And he said to them, 'This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.'" I believe, help my unbelief, I kind of believe, make my faith stronger. Jesus rebuked the father and the disciples because they forgot one thing, they forgot to pray. They tried to cast out a demon without praying. The father, for years, this has been happening to his child, and this is why Jesus rebukes the father. Why didn't you ask sooner? Why didn't you come to God sooner? Why did it take this for you to come to God in prayer? That's a word from the Lord for some of us today. Some of us aren't relying on the Lord, aren't dependent on the Lord, because we think we got this. What are the things in your life that you just don't even pray about? Jesus says, "Pray for all things." What are the things in your life? Perhaps it's your work. Do you pray for your work? Perhaps it's food. As you're cooking your food, you're like, "I got this. I don't need you for this food." Jesus says you can't do anything without me, driving, and by the way, I love this ... my wife taught me this, every time we get in the car we pray, we're going to pray, every single time. Jesus said pray for everything. Whatever we do, we have mic issues today, three minutes before the service started, what was I doing like a crazy man? I was walking around praying, casting out demons from the sound system, hallelujah, praise Jesus. We need to pray for everything. Prayer is the beginning of the Christian life and it's every single step in the Christian life. Prayer and faith, they're intertwined. This is how we become Christians, and this is how we grow. It's the beginning, it's the middle, it's the end, it's everything. Faith isn't just knowing the things about God, it's taking that knowledge and acting upon it. In the business world, and the startup world, they say ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas don't really matter. What matters is execution. Well, we have the greatest ideas in the world, that's the kingdom of God, and it's the gospel, is that Jesus is holy. It's that God hates sin. It's that God wants the best thing for us. Now, are you acting on those ideas? The reason why Jesus brings Peter from the mountaintop, "No, we're not staying in a tent up there. Peter we're going to come down, because I haven't called you to be monks, I've called you to be missionaries waging war against the demonic." What are our weapons? It's prayer and scripture. This is what we're here for, this is what we're doing. Do you believe like that. Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer, he was asked on his deathbed, "Hey do you ... you're about to die, how sure are you of everything that you have written about?" He said, "I believe them, the promises of God enough to venture in eternity on them." Scripture says, "Look to Jesus. Grab onto Jesus. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Grab his hand." We were at the beach yesterday in Jamestown, Rhode Island, and my daughter, Milana, she wanted to jump over waves, but she realized she can't do it herself. She came up to me and grabbed my hand and said, "Dad, we're going to jump together." I was just pulling her up and she felt like she was jumping. That gall, that audacity of, "I'm going to grab your hand, and I'm not letting go." That's what prayer is, that's what faith is. The other thing that I'll mention about faith, because glory, seeing God's glory, faith is vision. That's why Jesus said, "Hey, sin is actually something in your eye. Like take out the speck in your eye, take out the 2x4 in your eye before you judge ... help anybody with their sin." This is absolutely correct. I see God more clearly, I see God's plan more clearly the closer I am to him. The more I repent of sin and fight it, that's clearing of vision, the clearer I see God and his will. That's a spiritual life. It's a battle. Peter comes down the mountain, James came ... John, they just had this glorious experience with God, a few chapters later, you know what Jesus says to Peter after Peter tried to keep Jesus from going to the cross, what did he say? "Get behind me," what? "Get behind me Satan." You're like, "How does that happen?" It's spiritual amnesia. That's why every day we need to go pursue God in prayer on the mountaintops. Second Corinthians, 4:16-18, "So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction's preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. Look to the things that are unseen, that's faith. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." How do we look to the things that are unseen through prayer and through faith? C.S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the son has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else." When you see God the Son in his glory, everything else makes sense. We got a glimpse of heaven and a glimpse of hell, and finally a gospel microcosm. Verse 43, "But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 'Let these words sink into your ears. The son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men,' but they did not understand the saying, and it was concealed from the so they that might not perceive it, and they were afraid to ask him about the saying." What did he just say? He said, "I'm going to die on the cross." What did Jesus talk about with Elijah and Moses? Well, that's one verse that I missed as I was going verse by verse. Luke 9:31, "Who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem," most likely you have a footnote in your Bible next to the word departure, and at the very bottom, it says, "GK, Greek," and then what does it say? Exodus. The word for departure here is the word exodus. We often talk about actually when someone passes, they're not longer with us, dearly departed, we use that language, but Jesus isn't just talking about his death, he's talking about his exodus. Who's he talking to about the exodus? He's talking to Moses who knows about an exodus like nobody else knows about an exodus. Moses doesn't want to talk about that exodus, he wants to talk about Jesus' exodus, where Jesus, as the new Moses leads a people out of captivity, out of bondage in liberation. By the way, he says the word accomplish, spoke of his departure, which he was about accomplish at this death in Jerusalem. People don't really accomplish much with death. Death isn't something that we do, it's something that's done to us, we die. But not in the case of Jesus. Jesus said, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." Jesus Christ had to die for our sins in order to liberate us from captivity, in order to expunge the sin from us, in order to get us into the promised land, in order to show us his glory. In the same what that Moses needed the gospel, he needed Jesus to lead him out of sin and into the promised land. We do the same. We need Jesus Christ. The other thing I will mention here is in terms of the gospel, how this text practically changes our life, there's a battle for glories in your heart. There's a battle for glories. The glory of temporal, earthly, physical pleasure, and the glory of eternity, the glory of God, the glory of Christ. This Hebrews 11:23-26, "By faith, Moses, when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king's edict, but by faith, Moses, when he was grown up refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God, then to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." It's a battle of glories. You need to sacrifice things in this world to get more of the glory of God. I wonder if Peter has ever written about this experience. They didn't say anything about it in the gospel. They came down and didn't say anything. I wonder if Peter's written anything about the transfiguration. Oh, he has. I'm going to read this because it shows us how we can experience more of the glory of God in our life. This is Second Peter 1:16-21, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were witnesses of his majesty for when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, 'This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.' We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain." Now what he says next is so important, if you've zoned out, come back, this is so important and then we'll lay in the plain, "And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy is ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the spirit." You know what he just said? Seeing Jesus, man, that was cool, you know what's even cooler than that? Holy scripture. Do you want to see God's glory on a daily basis? Study his scripture. What did God the father say? Listen to him. Listen to him. Listen to him from the scriptures. That's what changes in Second Corinthians 3:17-18, "Now the Lord is a spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit." The more time we spend with the Lord, the more we become like him. The more we saturate our mind and our hearts with the holy scriptures, the more we are transformed. The greatest thing about heaven is the glory of God, it's God. Will there be night in heaven? No. It will always be bright. I wonder if there's naps in heaven. I don't know, I haven't given that much thought, probably won't be sleeping, but I think Sunday afternoon naps. Jesus Christ will be the source of light in heaven. I'll close with this story, true story, at the end of World War II, Murdo MacDonald, he was a British soldier, a soldier for the UK, they snuck up to a German concentration camp that had American soldiers in it, and he whispered the good news to an American soldier through the fence that the war was over. The German soldiers in that particular concentration camp, they didn't know yet. They wouldn't find out yet for another three days, until the soldiers of the UK, until they came and liberated the American soldiers. So for three days, the American prisoners of war, for three days, they still had to go through the same hardships. They had to eat the same terrible food. They had to endure the same trials et cetera, et cetera, but do you think their mindset was different? Yeah. They had to endure the same pain, but they had something that fueled them to get through that. What was that? It was hope. It was faith. This is fact. Now that fact changes the way that I live. That's why Jesus showed them the transfiguration. Yes, deny yourself, yes, take up your cross daily, and yes I'm about to take up my cross, but it's all worth it because I've brought the gospel of hope. With that said, would you please pray with me before we transition to worship? Jesus we thank you for your transfiguration. We thank you for this glimpse of glory. We thank you, Lord, that you are not a victim, but a victor, and Jesus that you reign. Your truth will triumph over evil. I pray that you give us, not just a glimpse of your glory, but a vision of your glory that enables us to follow you on the daily basis, no matter how hard it is, no matter how great the sacrifice, because it's all worth it. We pray all this in Christs' holy name, Amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 26
July 19, 2020 • Tyler Burns • Luke 9:18–27
Audio Transcript: Good morning church. That is if you are watching it live on premiere. But if you're not, then good afternoon or good evening or good whatever time you are watching this. I'm so glad to be here speaking God's word to all of us, including myself, as Pastor Jan pointed out two weeks ago. I'm preaching to myself today and it's an encouragement to be with you all and speaking with you. Today we're actually going back to a series that we had started a while ago, going through the book of Luke and we're picking up right where we left off, Luke chapter 9. And we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 27. And what we're going to be talking about today is this idea that I call outliers of faith. Now, many of you have heard this term outliers before, many of you may be haven't. And it's something that when I looked up the definition actually had somewhere around 10 different definitions. So it could mean a lot of different things. So I want to be clear about what I'm talking about. And I'm going with more of a mathematical statistical definition of outliers, which is something that is seemingly distant or distracted from the main body of work. And so for an example, going back to high school mathematic, bringing you back to those good old day, if you are plotting a graph and you're expecting it to have a linear correlation, a line, and this is where you expect your data, and there's a point way over here, you're going to be wondering why is that there, that doesn't fit with the data I expected? And that is what we call an outlier. But outliers aren't just in mathematics or science or statistics, outliers are actually in almost everything that we do. And I think the clearest example is relationships and not just romantic, in also friendships, working relationships, family, or yes indeed romantic relationships as well. We go into those relationships with a preconceived understanding of what they are, what we have been taught to expect in these relationships. And that is sort of our line. And then in relationships, sometimes things pop up that we think, "Whoa. Where did that come from? That doesn't fit in the data of what I expected this relationship to be like." And quick side note, don't ever talk about relationships as data points. It does not work. It will not go well. I'm only doing this because I have asked my wife for permission to do so. And she said it's okay. So don't talk about relationships as data points. But I was thinking back to when we were dating, my now wife Alison, when we were dating we lived pretty far apart. I lived in the North Shore and she lived in Charlestown. And so we spent a lot of time driving back and forth to each other. And with that, I would drive to class, have my clothes for that, then drive to work, have my work uniform and then drive to her house to pick her up for a date and go out on a date and then come back home late at night and I'd be tired. And so naturally over time, completely out of my control, my car got a little bit messy. There were clothes piled in the back seat, there were bags of Dunkin' Donuts and cups in the cup-holder from the times I was eating on the road and it just got a little bit disorganized, I'd say. And very lovingly, my wife Alison pointed out she really would appreciate a cleaner car when I was driving her and taking her on a date. Now, when I was going into a dating relationship, I expected things like driving to visit her. I wanted to spend time with her, you had to drive. But I expected love commitment, compassion. These are the things I was told about dating. Not once did anyone ever tell me I needed to clean my car and that that was a factor or data point in dating. Now, when you come across these outliers, you have options of what you can do. You can do one of two things. And this is the same exact thing they do in mathematics and science as well. The first option is human error. In mathematics, it's taking the measurements wrong or not being precise enough. And in this situation, if I wanted to count this data point of cleaning my car as human error, that would look like me saying, she just has a different calibration of cleanliness for cars. It's just not measuring up to the same. So that's that. Or this is her feeling on this, but that doesn't affect my understanding of cleanliness of cars or of dating, and so I can discount it as human error. Now, if any of you at home are thinking that it was possibly human error, just ask her about the time that I had a Christmas tree in the back of my car for five months. So clearly it was not human error. Clearly it is the second option that we have to look at this data point, this point that seemingly is disorganized or disjuncted from the rest of the main body and say, "How does this fit in with my understanding of the rest of the data? How does this point fit in with my understanding of dating?" And it fits in in that part of dating is serving, part of dating is welcoming and loving the other person in ways that they feel loved. So rather than discounting her point, it is my job to clean my car as part of dating and now of marriage. And it is something I am still working on. But this is what we're going to be looking at with faith. A lot of us have this focus on faith, a really simple, clear definition of faith, which is good and true. A lot of us when we think of faith, we think of things like faith is believing without seeing or a faith is belief and trust in God. And those things are true and those things are good. And that's what we expect the rest of the discussion of faith to revolve around. But throughout scripture, there's a lot of different factors and components and you could say data points that show us what faith is actually like. And we can foolishly reject those as errors or we can lovingly and welcomingly accept them and say, "Maybe I need to rethink how I think about faith. Maybe I need to adjust my understanding of what faith is." And so that's what we're looking at today in our text of Luke chapter 9. But before we get into that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you and we praise you and we thank you that you give us faith. We ask that you strengthen our faith, that you grow our faith, that we can grow in trusting you more and loving you more and that we can have a faith that overcomes this world. That nothing in this world can hinder our faith and love and trust of you. I ask that in this time you speak through me, use your Spirit to speak through the text and challenge each and every one of us to grow in faith to strengthen our faith in you. Through Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So Luke chapter 9 verses 18 through 27. If you have your Bibles at home with you, feel free to bring them out. If not, you can follow along, the text will be on the screen with us. And it says in Luke chapter 9 verse 18. "Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, 'Who do the crowd say that I am?' And they answered, 'John the Baptist. But others say Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old has risen.' Then he said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' And Peter answered 'The Christ of God.' And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, 'The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.' And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.'" Amen. So this text, we're going to be looking at five different what I call outliers of faith. The five of them are first that faith is unpopular. And then faith is from the Father, faith is patient, faith is daily and faith is unashamed. And so we're going to be looking at how these outliers of faith, these different data points of faith, focus and point us back to the root of faith. And so the first one is faith is unpopular. And this comes from the very first verses where Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they're like "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say other prophets." And then Jesus asks, "Who do you say that I am?" And this part right here, this verse where Jesus asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am," this is the core of faith. This is what faith is based in. It's saying that Jesus is the Christ of God. We say today that Jesus is the Messiah. He is our savior. He is the son of God. These are all saying the same thing. This is the root and core of faith, is in who Jesus is. Now. We're going to be faced with times where people disagree with us, and actually our belief that Jesus Christ is our savior is unpopular. I remember back in the day when I was in high school, I was taking a biology class and the teacher was very smart, very well-educated, had all of the degrees and he made an offhand joke about how science disproved God, or that you could not use science to support the existence of God. And as a Christian that upset me. I love science, and so after class I spoke with him and I shared with him about my beliefs about God and that I believe science is something created by God and it's good and all these things. And it seemed good to me. I felt good about what I said. And his response to me was, "Don't you think that's a little naïve?" That really hurt me then. Because I like to argue, I like to give support and reasoning for things, and to hear that someone thought my beliefs were naive really hurt. But what it was really coming down to was that he did not like my beliefs and my beliefs about who God is, were unpopular and were against what he thought. And this is just one of many examples that I'm sure you guys have experienced and know of where our belief and faith in Jesus is unpopular. But what I find really interesting is that in this text, they give three examples of who people say Jesus is. And it actually reveals a lot to us about some of these more popular statements about who Jesus is. What we find is that a lot of popular statements about Jesus are either missing some information, are either philosophically trying to be intellectuals and come up with some new thoughtful idea or are passive and say "It doesn't really matter." And that's what we see in these examples. The first is John the Baptist. Well, this is missing some critical information because there are hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus with John the Baptist. And so if you saw them at the same time, you would know that Jesus is not John the Baptist. And so it's missing some critical information. And then with Elijah, this is the philosophical, this is the intellectual answer. I know of a verse somewhere in scripture that talks about Elijah coming back or one that'll be like Elijah coming back so clearly this is him. But the difference is that Jesus said and claimed that he is the Father, the Father and him are one, that he is God, I should say. And that he is the Lord. And so, Elijah never claimed that, it was clear Elijah was not God, and so we meet sort of a distinction here that this can't be right either. And then a really popular belief is, "It's one of the old prophets. I don't really know. Someone else will tell me what to believe." And we see this today, right? We miss information. We say this historical Jesus maybe wasn't who the Bible describes, or maybe that historical Jesus doesn't really even exist, but he definitely did not claim to be God or did not do the things that he said he did. Well, that's missing some critical information because if you study history outside of the Bible even, even though the Bible is good historical accurate information, if you read the works of like Flavius Josephus, he was an author for the Roman empire taking historical accounts of the things that were happening in the providence of Israel at that time. He accounts the works of Jesus that come perfectly in line with the works of scripture, that show what Jesus said, the things that he did and that people believed he was the Messiah, the Christ of God at the time, historically. So to say that historical Jesus is different from the Jesus in the Bible is missing some critical information. We like to be philosophical and say, "Jesus was a great teacher. He was a good man who said good things, and that we should follow after him because he was good." But again, Jesus claimed to be God. Good men don't claim to be God. And also good men don't die on the cross. So we can't just philosophically talk about Jesus or try to intellectualize and make Jesus who we want him to be. But we also can't be passive. We can't just say, "I don't know. Whoever people say Jesus is that's who he is. He was probably someone from sometime that's important maybe. Who knows?" We can't do that. Having faith in Jesus means at the root declaring that he is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is our savior. And that belief is often unpopular. But then this leads us perfectly into this next idea that faith is from the Father. And maybe you're thinking, "Yeah. That makes sense. That doesn't seem like an outlier." But where it really becomes an outlier is where we live this out practically. And this is actually coming from the parallel text in Matthew chapter 16. So if you don't know, there are four gospels, and a lot of times each of the gospels talk about the same events and each one adds some to the story. And in Matthew 16, we get a little bit more information about Jesus's response to Peter when Peter declares that Jesus is God, is the Christ. And in verse 16, it tells us "Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." So Jesus says to Peter, "Blessed are you." Why? Because he didn't believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah because of his own intellectual thinking, but it was because it was a gift from the Father. Now this is really important. And this is really critical because one thing that this does is it clarifies that there's no room for spiritual arrogance or superiority. No room for spiritual superiority. Because what it says is that our faith is a gift from the Father. And so Christians, do we have an air of spiritual superiority? Do we look at others and say, "Oh. My faith is stronger than them," and so we puff ourselves up. Well, what that says is "No. Your faith isn't from you. You can't boast yourself up with your faith because it is a gift from the Father." When you think about the faith that you have turn to God and praise him, because he has blessed you with it. Or even worse do we look at non-Christians and say, "Oh. They don't understand because they don't have the faith that I do." Remember faith is a gift from the Father. Praise him for the gift that he has given to us if we have faith. Now, maybe you're watching this and you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I'm looking at these things, I don't believe this, I don't have faith in this." But maybe you want to, but maybe you're learning and you're saying, "This is interesting. I want to know more." Well, this is actually a huge encouragement to you because what it shows us is that the Father is the one who gives it. So run to him, pray to God, ask him for faith, ask him to reveal himself to you. God loves to reveal himself to those who seek him. He loves to. So run to God. Ask him to reveal himself to you, to give you faith. And Christians, ask God for more faith. Right? He blesses us with faith. It is a blessing. And so when we are feeling down, when we maybe feel like our faith isn't strong enough, or it needs to be better, that's okay. Turn to God, seek him, ask him for more faith. And the Father loves to give faith to us. And this relates back to the unpopularity of faith as well, because it shows us that it's not something we can master up only on our own. We can't just look at facts and be like, "This is the fact, this is the fact, therefore I have faith." That's what society wants us to do, is just reason ourselves into things. And there is logic. There is reasoning in believing in God, absolutely. But faith is a gift from the Father. Trust in him, seek him, desire faith from him. The next point is that faith is patient. And faith is patient in two ways. It's patient in timing and it's patient in method. And we often talk about love is patient. And I love this idea that love is patient, that is true. But faith is also patient. And we see this in our text and also in the Matthew text. But in our text in verse 21, it tells us, "And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, 'The son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.'" Jesus, your disciple just said that you are the Christ. He gets it. He understands. Why are you telling him not to go and tell people about it? This is what we do all the time at church. We talk about proclaiming the truth of who Jesus is, sharing the gospel with our friends and family. This is something we talk about a lot. Jesus, why in the world are you commanding them to not tell anyone? It's because he wants us to be patient with his timing. He says that these things still need to happen. I still need to be rejected. I need to suffer and die on the cross and three days later, be raised from the grave. These things still need to happen. So I'm asking you to be patient in my timing. But also, he asks us to be patient with his methods. Because a lot of times God's methods for bringing about his will are different than ours. We see this in Matthew 16 in verse 22, it says, "And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, 'Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me Satan, you are a hindrance to me for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.'" Now, this is immediately after Jesus says that he needs to suffer and die. And Peter, the one who just said you are the Christ says, "No Jesus. Not this way. I believe you are the Christ, I believe you are my savior and you are God, but not this way. It's not going to happen that way. I have a different plan than yours." And we have to be patient with God's methods because when we aren't, what Jesus's response to Peter is "Get behind me Satan." But not just that, he says, "You are a hindrance to me." And this one hit me really hard. This word "hindrance" was like... Am I a help to God and to his will and to his plan or am I a hindrance to him? Patience is something we talk about with faith that we have to have faith that God will bring about his will, his way. We talk about that a lot. But, we often grow impatient still. Think about a time where you have asked God for something and it hasn't happened in your timing, or it hasn't happened in the way you thought, have we grown impatient? Has that hurt our faith in God because we said, "You know what, God didn't answer in the time I wanted, in the way I wanted, and so now I'm struggling with my faith." Now this is why it's so important that faith is patient in timing and method, because this is how God works his will. We know that God's will is good. In this story, it's what was necessary for Jesus to live and to go and to die on the cross, to save us from our sins so that we can have an eternity with God. This is what we put our faith in, is these events. But it had to happen in his time, in his way. If Peter tried to force his will, then he would have blocked the salvation for all of us, but because God is so powerful, he did not let that happen. He could not have let that happen. And that brings us back to the word hindrance, right? We're not stopping God. We can't prevent God from bringing about his will and doing what he wants. We're not powerful enough. But are we going to be a hindrance, are we going to be fighting against him, are we going to be pushing back or are we joyfully going to be running along with him, fighting for his will, bringing about his will, submitting to his will in his way. We also see this idea of Jesus commanding people to be silent and not to speak a lot throughout scripture. This was something that I was really focusing on in the book of Mark. Eight different times, Jesus says that... It says that Jesus commanded them to be silent and to speak nothing of what had happened. There's only one time in Mark chapter 5, where Jesus says, "Go and tell. Go and tell." And what's the difference there? It tells us in Mark chapter 5, verse 18, it says, "As he was getting into the boat," Jesus, "The man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him, but said to him, 'Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled." This is the story of a man who had a legion of demons cast out of him, and afterwards he runs to Jesus and says, "Jesus, I'm going with you wherever you go. Let me follow you." And Jesus says, "No. Instead, go and tell people what had happened." What is the difference? Why does Jesus tell him the only one go and tell? Well, he's the only one that wasn't in Israel at the time. He was a Gentile. So what does this mean? This shows us again, that God's methods are different than our own. Jesus knew that if in Israel word of who he was came about, he might be killed prematurely. He might be stopped prematurely. And he wanted to bring about God's will in his way, so he patiently told others to hold off and not speak now. But to this Gentile man, he says, "Go and tell." And what a lot of the Jewish people who were told, "Don't say anything. Be quiet," might've been thinking was, "Well, why does he get to go and tell? Jesus, why did you give things to him that I was asking for, that I wanted to do?" And I think another really important thing about faith and patience in faith is not comparing ourselves to others. Not being like, "God, why did you do this for them, when I asked you the same thing. God, I asked you for a husband or a wife and I haven't gotten that yet. Why did you bless them with it? Or I asked you for this job or this promotion why didn't you bless me with that when you have blessed them with that or..." Whatever it might be we ask God for something, it doesn't happen in the timing and way we want and then we see it happen for someone else and we get jealous. And that can hurt our faith as well. It breeds doubt, it breeds insecurity in our faith. And what we need to do is to overcome that by saying, "No. My faith isn't in my circumstances, my faith isn't in the things going on around me, my faith is in the person of Jesus Christ. I trust in him no matter what is going on in my life, in the world around me, with other people, I am trusting and I have faith that God is going to work his will his way." And sometimes that's really hard. I'm not saying that's easy. I'm not saying that when we ask God for things that we should just be like, "All right. That's it. Done?" It is hard, but that's why we need to continually go to Christ. That's why we need to be like that man in the book of Mark and run to him and say, "Jesus, I'm following you." Because it's when we go to Jesus, that he gives us clearer instructions as for how to go. And sometimes it's just have faith, have patience, trust. Number four, faith is daily. And this one I was thinking about because I was thinking about the way I talk about faith in the most common times I use the word faith. And that most common time is when I say, "We put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be saved." True. Amen. Hallelujah. However, it doesn't stop there. Faith is not something we do once that puts our faith and trust in Jesus and we are saved and then, "Great. I'm done with that part of faith. That part of faith is over. I've completed. Check." No. It's daily. And this is in verse 23 of our text where it says, and he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it." The word, "Daily," take up your cross. This is the one of the four gospels that uses that word "Daily." But it's really important. It's really important here that daily we need to pick up our cross. What does it mean to pick up our cross? We have romanticized this idea of the cross in our culture, right? Because it is the thing that Jesus died on to bring us salvation. That is good. And so we wear necklaces with crosses, we have crosses on top of steeples and in paintings and pictures. And those things are all good and fine and there's no issues with that. But then we start to think about the cross solely in the positive, in like, "This is good." But when Jesus is speaking to his disciples and says, "Take up your cross daily" what Jesus is saying is saying, "Be prepared to die every day and look back at your day and say, 'Was that day worth it? Did I live my life today to glorify God? Did I not seek to save my own life? Did I not do everything selfishly, self-preservingly or did I do things for the kingdom of God?'" This is also really hard to do. But when I was in college, I was part of a Christian group, and one of the leaders at the Christian group was giving a lesson on overcoming temptation and overcoming sin. And one of the things that he said that has really stuck with me, he said that every single day he wakes up and he commits that day to God. He says, "Today God, I'm going to be obedient to you." And this has a really stuck with me because I don't know about you, but for me, longterm goals can be something that is hard to complete daily. It's something that you say, "It's longterm, so if I mess up today, it's okay because longterm it'll come true." But daily goals are the harder ones. Daily goals are the ones that you have to do it every single day. And so to wake up each morning and say, "Today, I'm committing today to you Jesus, I'm following you now," that puts it in the immediate presence, and we're not able to say, "Well, if I mess up today, it'll work out longterm," because, no, you're committing today. And this is what Jesus is getting at when he says, "Take up your cross daily." Is he's saying, "Follow me daily, have faith in me daily, trust in me daily, all of the time." And again, we have seasons of doubt, we have seasons where life is hard. But again, this is why we have to remember that faith is from the Father because it's when times are hard, when it's hard to follow him daily, when it's hard to pick up our cross daily, we can go to him who is powerful enough to carry it for us, to strengthen us, to give us encouragement, to lift up our spirits so that way we can have faith even in difficult times. And lastly, point number five is that faith is unashamed. And this is actually bringing it partly back. This is closing the loop with unpopular. And he says in verse 25, "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." Are we ashamed of Jesus? Or are we ashamed of his words? It's telling that Jesus makes a distinction. A lot of people might say, "I like Jesus. Jesus seems like a nice guy to me." But then when we read his words and say, "Do you agree?" say, "I don't know. Maybe. I have to think about it." Or, "I don't really like that part of it, I would change it slightly to this." No Jesus says, "If you're ashamed of me or of my words, I will be ashamed of you when I return." And this word ashamed is really challenging. Maybe we don't feel it as piercingly as we should because this word ashamed is the same exact word that is used to describe the feeling of Adam and Eve in the garden when they sinned and they realized they were naked and they felt ashamed. It was stunning, it was piercing, it was heartbreaking this feeling. Do we feel ashamed of Jesus and of his words? Do we cower back? Do we like Adam and Eve go and hide ourselves from his presence when things get tough, when things get challenging, when popular opinions about who Jesus is pushed against the true view of who God is? Do we hide? True faith is unashamed of Jesus and his words. And I looked at three different times in the New Testament where Paul used this word, the same word for unashamed. And I think it's really telling and really encouraging to us about what it means to be unashamed. The first is in Romans chapter 1, verse 16. He says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith." Unashamed of the gospel. This is the story, this is the life, this is the work of Jesus Christ that he died on the cross to save us from our sins. He rose from the grave, defeating sin and death, bringing us into a perfect relationship with the Father. Paul says, "I'm unashamed of that. I'm unashamed of it because this is how we are saved." It is unpopular to believe that Jesus is the only way to be saved today. Are we ashamed of that? When people ask us what we believe about God or what we believe about salvation, is Christianity the only way, are we ashamed to say, "Yes. Jesus is the only way to salvation?" That is the only way. Nothing else works. We can't be ashamed. We are unashamed of the gospel because it is what saves us. The next time Paul talks about being unashamed is in 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 12, he says, "But I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what he has entrusted in me." Are we ashamed of how we are saved? Are we ashamed of who Jesus is? And the second part, are we ashamed of his power to be the thing that sustains us, to keep us with what he has entrusted us? Do we say, "I don't know if I'm willing to trust him fully that he is providing me with the strength. I'd rather rely on my own strength to follow him. I'd rather rely on myself and my own intellect to follow him." Paul says, "I'm not ashamed because I know who he is and I know that he will keep and protect me and keep what he has entrusted me to do." The work that we do for God is only because of the power of God in us. And the last time, this is actually a Hebrews chapter 11, verse 15, and the author of Hebrews says, "If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city." And so what does it mean for Jesus to be ashamed of us? It says that God is ashamed of us when we look back at the world and say, "I want that," rather than looking forward to the kingdom of God and saying, "I want him." You see, God is ashamed of those who look back at this world and say, "I cannot. This is where the good stuff is. I'm holding onto these things. My joy, my goals in life are all focused on my job, my career, my life, here are the things that I have, that's where my ambitions lie. That's where my focus is." Jesus says, "Be careful because there's another country, a better country, and it's specifically a heavenly one and it's coming. It's the kingdom of God, and it will be here." And this is actually the very last verse of this passage, where it's Jesus says, "But I tell you some who are here today will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." What that means is the kingdom of God is here. It is present. What does he mean when he says this? The very next section of text in this book is the Mount of transfiguration where they get a glimpse of Jesus in his glory. But we're also told that his kingdom is here now. That the church is his kingdom, is spreading his kingdom in this world. The kingdom is here. And so are we more focused on the things of this world or are we heavenly focused, focused on his kingdom, trusting in him and seeking his will. And with all of these things, are we unashamed of it? And there's actually a poem/song that is becoming very popular right now that fits this idea perfectly. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because I can see it is already being used for the gains of political countries, of the country here. And that's fine. Whatever you think about that, I'm not commenting on that. But what I want to point out is that this poem is one meant to be discussing the kingdom of God. This is a poem written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, and then his brother five years later made it a song to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday and specifically the freedom of slaves in America. And James Johnson was actually a trusted advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, and he was the representative of America to Venezuela and Nicaragua. And he wrote this poem looking at American slavery, and those who have come out of slavery and said, "This is what I see in it." And here's how the poem ends. He says, "God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far on the way, though who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee, shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land." This song actually really embodies everything that we're talking about today. Faith is unpopular. That the American slaves were enduring slavery, silently crying, they were alone crying, but still having their faith in God, even when it was unpopular for them to do so. Faith is from the Father. It says, "Thou who has by thy might led us into thy light." God you're working through your power to bring us to salvation. God you have saved us, you have given us faith. This is from you. Faith is patient. It says, "God of our weary years," not minutes, days, years of enduring slavery. God you are still God through all of that. I still have faith in you in spite of the circumstances. Faith is daily. It says, "Lest our feet stray from the places where we met thee, and may we stand here forever." Let's just stay with you God, I don't want to wander a single footstep away from you. I don't want to be enticed by the world, says "Be drunk by the wine of the world." I don't want that God. I want to follow you daily. And God I'm unashamed to say that I'm standing beneath your hand under your power and that you are the true God, and that I'm remaining faithful to our... what they say, our native land. What is that? It's specifically talking about the kingdom of God. If you don't believe me, that's why it says standing under your hand, where are they standing? Where's their native land? It's under the hand and power of God. It's the kingdom of God. And this is the kind of faith that I want. I don't know about you, but I want the kind of faith that no matter the life circumstances, no matter how hard it gets to the point of having to endure slavery, nothing can waiver my faith in the one, true God. Nothing. And it's only when we look at all of the aspects of these faith and we try to incorporate them into our lives, these outliers of the faith, that we can really have a lasting faith that endures all things and overcomes the world. So I challenge you today, have this faith in God. Have faith that is unpopular, that believes who God really is. Faith that is from the Father, trusting in him, praising him for the faith that you have. Faith that is patient and it is enduring in time and method of the will of God. Faith that is daily. That you pick up your cross daily and say, "Today Jesus, I'm having faith in you." And lastly, faith that is unashamed to boldly proclaim who God is, to boldly live for him, to boldly trust in him and submit our lives to him no matter what. That's the faith I want. I hope you do too. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and we thank you that you are the God that gives us faith. Lord, we ask that you give us more faith to live out your faith, to strengthen us in faith, that we will be bold to follow you, bold to live for you, that you will give us and grant us with a faith that overcomes all trials that overcomes the world. Lord we thank you. We thank you that you give us this kind of faith. Through Jesus' name your son we pray. Amen.
Introducing Jesus: Week 25
March 17, 2019 • Luke 9:1–17
In Luke 9:1-17, the disciples plea for Jesus send the 10,000+ crowd of people home because they were hungry. In response, Jesus commands "You give them something to eat." Then Jesus proceeds to fulfill His own commandment, through the disciples' feeble, fraught, and faithless obedience. Apart from God's grace, applied to our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are helpless to do what God commands us to do.
Introducing Jesus: Week 24
March 10, 2019 • Luke 8:40–56
Western cultures tend to be "monochronic" in that they view time as linear, with a definitive beginning and end. Time is viewed as limited, so we structure our lives by milestones, deadlines, and hard schedules. Polychronic cultures like Southern Europe, Latin American countries and the Middle East view time as cyclical and endless. Doing things right and maintaining harmony is more important than getting things done “on time.” If there are such stark contrasts in understanding time between cultures, how much more so between people and God? God is never late.
Introducing Jesus: Week 23
March 3, 2019 • Shane Sikkema • Luke 8:26–39
Healthy habits are important. But moral habits are as well. Gossip, lust, greed, lying, envy, fits of anger, passivity, vanity, drunkenness, etc. There are things we do, that we wish we didn’t do, and have maybe even promised countless times to never do again. But they keep coming back to haunt us. It might leave us wondering if change is even possible. It’s no wonder Scripture often talks about sin as self-inflicted slavery.
Introducing Jesus: Week 22
February 24, 2019 • Luke 8:22–25
It’s been said that there are 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible — one “Fear not” for every day of the year! In Luke 8:22-25, Jesus leads the disciples into the middle of the most terrifying storm of their lives, takes a nap while they panic, then calms the storm and their raging fear. Then, as He typically does, leaves them with the mystifying question: "Where is your faith?"
Introducing Jesus: Week 21
February 17, 2019 • Luke 8:16–21
From day one, God invades the darkness. Let there be light. Boom. There was light. When God sent his Son into the world, He sent His light to enlighten and illuminate our hearts. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Join us tomorrow as we continue our series in Luke, by studying Luke 8:16-21.
Introducing Jesus: Week 20
February 10, 2019 • Luke 8:1–15
To listen well, we need to muster significant energy. Listening takes work. Passively hearing is easy. Actively listening is exhausting. Skip the speech, just give me the soundbites. However, soundbites are superficial. The Lord wants His Word to shoot deep roots in the humble, tender, soil of hearts, to produce a miraculous harvest of 30, 60, even a hundredfold.
Introducing Jesus: Week 19
August 26, 2018 • Shane Sikkema • Luke 7:36–50
In Luke 7:36-50, Jesus is invited to a dinner party at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. Through the story, we see a shocking picture of what true love, worship, and discipleship look like in Jesus' Kingdom–when a notorious prostitute crashes a Pharisee’s party.
Introducing Jesus: Week 18
August 19, 2018 • Tyler Burns • Luke 7:18–35
It’s often easier to admit misconceptions we had as kids, but as we get older it’s often more difficult to see where we have them now. Even once we recognize an error in our understanding, it can still be hard to admit it. In Luke 7:18-35 to see John the Baptist’s misunderstanding about Jesus, and how Jesus redeems even our misconceptions today.