What would it take for you to be happier? Would it be more money? Better healthcare? A better job? A different
boss?
Before November 4, many people in our country
believed they needed a certain candidate to win the election, in order for them
to be hopeful for the future, or happy for the future. For those who are still hopeful, will
he bring about the changes that people want, for themselves and for the
country? And for those who are not
hopeful, well, they’ll just have less to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. But we’re all wondering what our new leader
will be like, and everyone wonders if his leadership will bring about the good
the country needs and wants?
That’s exactly what people were wondering when Jesus
showed up. Especially after His first missionary tour through the cities and
towns and villages of Galilee, thousands of people flocked around Jesus
whenever they got the chance. To say
that people were excited was a major understatement. The stories of the miracles of Jesus raced like wildfire in the
imaginations of people. People dreamed
of and hoped for a new government. They
wanted to be free from the hated Romans.
And on this particular occasion, according to Luke’s
gospel, in chapter 6, verse 12 and onward, it tells us that Jesus had just
spent the whole night in prayer, because that was important for what was to
come the next day. And when morning
came, Jesus officially appointed 12 of His closest followers to be the
cabinet-in-training for His new government.
Simon got a new name, Petros or Peter, which meant a stone or a little
rock. And then Jesus laid hands on
Peter’s brother, Andrew. And of course,
James and John were there, whom Jesus affectionately termed the Sons of
Thunder. And Philip and Bartholomew
there as well. Matthew, the converted tax collector, and without a doubt,
Thomas was there. James the son of
Alphaeus, as well. There was the other
Simon, a converted zealot. And the two
Judases, one the son of James and the other, well, you know, Judas Iscariot.
And just like our country has been following the
news to hear who President-elect Obama is going to appoint to his cabinet,
people were anxious to see everything that Jesus was doing. Was Jesus getting ready to appoint the
leaders of His government? Would a new
order be established? And would there
be a better life to come? The air was
so pregnant with expectations that Jesus was the Messiah they longed for.
I invite you to open your Bibles to Matthew, chapter
5, and let’s look at verse 1.
Matthew, chapter 5, and verse 1. ”Seeing the crowds,
He went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him.”
His disciples came to Him because they saw Jesus was
getting ready to say something. It was
a common pose of someone who was a teacher.
They taught when they sat, and all his students would sit with him. And so the disciples must have been very
anxious to hear Jesus’ inaugural address of the new kingdom. And do we have any clue whatsoever as to how
the people in general responded?
Look at Matthew 5, verse 17. Mathew 5, verse 17. Jesus said, “Do not
think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to
abolish them but to fulfill them.”
You see, apparently, at the very beginning of Jesus’ inaugural address,
the people were scratching their heads in confusion. There was a disconnect there between what Jesus was telling them
and what they were taught. Are these
the foundation rules of Jesus’ kingdom?
They seem so different from what the Pharisees teach. They’re different from what we understand
Moses’ teaching. And Jesus had to stop
and assure them that He wasn’t doing away with the Old Testament. But everything He was saying was so
radically different for them.
Let’s take a look, for example, at Jesus’ radical
description of what really gives happiness to the citizens of this new kingdom.
Let’s look at Matthew, chapter 5, verses 3 thru 10.
And starting with verse 3, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The Good News Bible says, “Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.” And how did that come across
to those who were convinced the kingdom was especially composed of those who
were rich and powerful, not poor and weak?
Crazy, that’s how. Just plain nonsense.
Can’t you see the frowns and wrinkles on their foreheads? I mean, what kind of teaching is this,
Jesus? This is a hard saying.
Do you remember what the disciples thought later on
when Jesus told them that it was hard for the rich to enter into the kingdom of
heaven? Do you remember that question
they asked Jesus? “Then Lord, who can be
saved?” Who can be saved? I mean, they believed if you were rich it
was because God blessed you, and if God blessed you, that meant you were pretty
good. So the kingdom of heaven only
belongs to those who are rich and powerful.
And so Jesus wanted to wake them up to the fact that
the subjects of His kingdom don’t think, “God, you really ought to be glad that
I’m on your side.” No. Instead, they listen to the Holy Spirit and
they admit that they don’t have it all together and they need God in order to
get things right.
Jesus continued. Look at verse 4.
“Blessed are those who mourn.” The people of My kingdom are not afraid to mourn when others are
full of shallowness and silliness and partying and drunkeness. Can you guess what the reaction to that was? Jesus, you can’t be serious! But He kept right on talking.
And then in verse 5, “Blessed
are the meek.” Whereas the world
tends to settle matters by force and by arbitrary authority, My people are to
be different from that. They win by
speaking the truth in love. The people
of My Kingdom are gentle and humble, not harsh and arrogant. Can’t you see the heads shaking? Not nodding, but shaking in disagreement.
Well, Jesus kept right on talking.
Verse 6. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” And how did that fall on the people’s
ears? To them, being righteous was
being obedient to a lot of strict, rigid rules and traditions that just didn’t
have any more meaning. No sense to
them. And most of their obedience was
driven by the threat of punishment. But Jesus is talking about a totally new
motivation. And ultimately, it has
nothing to do with reward or punishment.
The citizens of My kingdom, Jesus said, hunger and thirst for what’s
right because it is right, in and of itself.
And that’s so different from the world.
They have an appetite for right-doing because it’s inherently good. Right-doing has its own rewards. But perhaps that just went right over many
people’s heads.
Verse 7. “Blessed are the merciful.”
Those who are part of My Kingdom will show compassion, even to
those who hurt and betray them. Yes,
that’s right. Even to those. I can imagine Jesus saying, “Since My Father
and I are forgiveness personified, I want My people to act like Me. To think like Me. To behave like Me.” But
wait a minute, some of those people might have thought. Didn’t David himself say, “Oh that you would
slay the wicked, O God!”? Salvation
doesn’t belong to the heathen or the Romans, and surely not to those who offend
us. And Peter might have interjected as
well, “Should I forgive my brother up to 3 times? Okay, just to be generous, up to 7 times, and after that I should
bonk him on the head if he keeps offending me?
Jesus, you’re killing me with this stuff.” Can’t you hear the grumbling among
some of, maybe, Jesus’ disciples?
Verse 8. “Blessed are the pure in heart.” My people value inner beauty and purity of
motives. Wait a minute, as long as I
act right, isn’t that enough? Does God really care about what’s going on in
here? About what I’m thinking? Yes, He does, said Jesus. My citizens want
to be right with God, not simply by compliance to all the outward rules that
they’ve memorized, but they want to be right with God on the level of their
inner thoughts and attitudes.
Verse 9. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Oh, wait a minute, Jesus. We’re used to the Roman version of peace,
forced upon us to pay their taxes and comply with their government. The Pax Romana. So what about these Romans?
Aren’t we just supposed to kill them and wipe them off the face of the
earth? No, My citizens are peacemakers,
not aggressive destroyers. Those who
work for peace are my true family.
Verse 10. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of
righteousness.” My citizens,
Jesus was telling them, will suffer persecution but I will give them a
happiness they couldn’t even imagine.
“In fact,” Jesus might have said, “all these prescriptions for happiness
are exactly the opposite from what you’ve learned.” The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who realize their need for
God, not to the proud or the self-sufficient.
God blesses with comfort those who mourn, not those
who rejoice in abusing their powers.
The humble and teachable will inherit the earth, not the arrogant or the
mighty or those who think they know it all.
And those who are hungry and thirsty for right will be filled, not those
who are greedy or self-centered. It’s
the merciful who will be shown mercy.
The pure in heart who will see God, and those who work for peace will be
called children of God, and those persecuted because they live for God, they’re
going to receive My kingdom.
My guess is that Jesus must have totally blown them
out of the water with these declarations in His inaugural address. They were so different. It was different than the kinds of things
they expected their Messiah to say. And
going even further, it must have been a huge eye-opener that not only what He
was saying was different, but that He Himself was different. In fact, I believe Jesus was telling the
future citizens of His kingdom that the only way that they were to be a part of
His kingdom was to first realize that He was different from the God they were
expecting.
Not like the God the Pharisees taught. Vindictive, harsh, arbitrary, stern and
unforgiving. Not like the God of
Satan’s lies, in other words. I’m a
radically different God, He was telling them, and if you really want to get to
know Me and trust Me enough to listen to Me, you’ll know that I love
truthfulness, I love doing right because it is right, and I love caring for
people. As Jeremiah 9, verse 24 says, I
practice “steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in
the earth. For in these things I
delight.” I delight.
And those who are a part of My kingdom, those who
admire and appreciate Me for who I am, will freely desire to be like Me. That’s how they’ll be different from the
world around them. And that means that
it’s not enough to say that we’re Christians.
It’s not enough to be a member of the church. But where is the real action?
Where’s the heart of the matter?
It’s simply this. Do we love and
admire our God so much that we want to listen to Him, and be like Him? Do we?
Later on, Jesus said something else very radical to
His disciples, as we read in our scripture reading, John 15, verse 15. “No longer do I call
you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his master is doing; but I have
called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known
to you.” What word is Jesus
using to describe the relationship that He wants to have with us?
Friendship. That’s radical. For the God of the universe to say, “I want
you to understand me. I want us to be
friends. Friends understand each other,
and beat with the same heartbeat, and have the same values and love with the
same love.” And if we want to be more
than just servants who don’t know what our Master is telling us, we’ll acquaint
ourselves with everything that Jesus has shared with us. We’ll read His word and become familiar with
the evidence that God would have us to know and understand, and we’ll become
friends.
And when we read God’s word, we won’t just read it
for the rules and the commandments and the traditions and the customary things
that we do. That’s a servant, who does
all of those things without meaning and without thought as to the reason
why. Instead, we’ll ask ourselves, what
does this tell me, in God’s word, about the God of the universe Himself? What does He value, and what do I admire
about God? Do I follow what He’s saying
merely because of a desire for reward or a fear of punishment? That’s what servants want. Or do I like to do what He tells me because
it’s right, and I agree with it?
As I’ve shared before, I grew up with a grandfather
who used force and fear to back up his words.
One time I remember looking forward to a special day. I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I think I was about 9 years old, and we
lived near the Santa Cruz bay. Not far
from it, and my grandfather loved boats, and he had a boat that was rigged for
deep sea fishing. So on this day, he
was going to take all of us boys, 4 of us, out on the Pacific ocean with him.
I remember feeling very excited about it. I was even celebrating by playing some of my
music records on a phonograph that played only one speed, the old 45 rpm
type. Now, I admit, and I’m pretty sure
that it wasn’t the kind of music that my grandfather liked. But I was in my room with the door
closed. However, to add insult to
injury, the phonograph had only one volume.
It didn’t even have a volume control on it. It came that way. One
volume, according to my Grandpa, loud.
And he very quickly got tired of it.
On this day, he lost his patience and he laid down the law that I could
not go with them on the boat trip, because I was playing my music too
loud. My grandma, the sort of the
intercessor in the family, said, “But, it has no volume control on it.” Didn’t matter. No understanding. No
patience.
Several years later, when I became a Christian, I
went to a Christian college and I learned some very wonderful things about God,
that He was so different from all of the authority figures of my life. And the more I learned that God is not the
kind of person His enemies have made Him out to be, arbitrary, unforgiving and
severe, the more I learned those things, the more I desired to trust Him and to
listen to Him. And I read Jesus words,
“If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” And I realized that God is just as loving and trustworthy as His
Son. Just as willing to forgive and
heal as Jesus. I read about a God who
is not only infinite in majesty and power, but also equally gracious and
respectful. In Jesus, I discovered a
God who treats us with dignity.
And the more I learned, the more I desired to love
and trust Him and admire Him for who He is.
And I learned that really, the greatest blessing when we are different
from the world is not that we’re different from the world so much that we have
a different God. A different God. The more I learned, the more I wanted to
tell others about Him, and that’s what I want, don’t you? To tell others about Him? And most of all, I want to be like
Jesus. Wouldn’t you like to be more
like Jesus?
Let’s sing our closing song, “I Would Be Like
Jesus”.
Hymn of Praise: #557, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come Scripture: John 15:14,15 Hymn of Response: #311, I Would Be Like Jesus
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McDonald Road Sermon transcribed by Steve Foster 11/25/08