Pastors Brad and Stella Reed are the lead Pastors of the New York Dream Center, and are pastors/overseers to Pastors Jacob & Dawn here at Courage. They joined us in Detroit the last week of July (2017) where Pastor Brad did two teachings (Sunday Morning, midweek service for the 4 days mission trip) and Brad and Stella did a private Q&A with us that is all included here.
To some I feel like this one may be the hardest one.
Because nobody wants to be persecuted. But there are a few things we have to know going into this… first of all, lets begin just focusing on verse 10. Notice the reward.
Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, look back in your bibles to Matthew 5:3. The first beatitude says:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Same reward for being persecuted, as for being poor in spirit. Some would say we have reached the end of the line, but others might say that we have come full circle.
and here is why.
The first four beatitudes, as we have said over and over and over, are salvation.
The last four address the way that our lives look like now that we have been transferred from the Kingdom of darkness, to the kingdom of light.
What happens when you are merciful?
You receive mercy.
What happens when you have a pure heart?
You get to see God.
what happens when you are a peace maker?
People begin calling you a son of God… because they see something in you… and maybe they can’t put their finger on it… maybe they don’t know what God is like, but when they see you bringing order out of chaotic situations, what happens? they start calling you son’s of God.
and other people aren’t going to like that.
No matter how much good you are doing. The word righteousness, its Greek meaning is very similar to the Hebrew word SHALOM that we studied last week.
Shalom means “completeness.” -
the Greek word dikaiosynē (pronounced de-kay-osk-sune-ay) is what we translate as righteousness… and as we learned a few weeks ago, it means “the state of him who is as he ought to be.”
So when people do what is right… when they do what they are supposed to do, they work to restore order to a world that is in chaos… and for that they are persecuted, theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
They are right back at the beginning. With the same reward you get for being poor in spirit.
It could be said that, as you have journeyed through this process, making some friends but maybe even more people who would call themselves your enemies…
but after all of that… you have found yourself in the end in the same place that you began. Reminded that in all of the pain that our world may invoke on us, yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.
and that is not the easiest lot in life to accept. That you get this kingdom that Jesus speaks of at the cost of people reviling you in this one.
Matthew chapter 10 is one of those chapters that, if you aren’t careful in the way you apply it to your life, can just be so disheartening. Because Jesus basically tells us that he is throwing us into a den of lions and they are going to tear us apart but to not be afraid because some of us are going to endure them and then in the end we will leave with a bunch of our limbs chewed off but at least some of us will survive.
Okay, that is not exactly what it says.
That is my metaphorical translation. He actually says:
Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
He says that they are going to drag us until courts, and they are going to come into the synagogues and flog us and they are going to chase us town to town persecuting us and we are all going to want to quit every single day but the ones who are able to endure to the end are the ones who will be saved.
and most people read that, and it sounds just as brutal as my lion analogy, and they know that he actually said that… and if there is any sense in them at all they would say
“Why would anybody want that?”
and you don’t. You don’t want that. But whatever it is that the world may try and do to you, and whatever it is that the world may even succeed in doing to you…
it is worth it.
Sometimes you are going to be trying to help a person and the very person you are trying to help is going to persecute you. Sometimes you are going to try and help a community and that community is going to force you out. It is what happened to Jesus, and it is what he said is going to happen to us.
I remember years ago, it was probably almost seven years ago now because Dawn was pregnant with Milly. And we worked for the LA Dream Center and the LA Dream Center had just moved our pastors, Pastor Brad and Stella, to New York City and as part of sending them their, the LA church agreed to at least for a while, send Dawn and I periodically back and forth to help them with the plant. This was a couple of years before we moved to New York full time.
and I remember, the dream of course, for the NY Dream Center was to have a dream center… an actual building dedicated to turning lives around 24/7… and coming from the largest dream center in the world, all we knew was huge buildings that got restored and what followed was a whole bunch of lives getting restored. and I remember this one day, so clearly.
Dawn and I were with Pastor Brad and a couple of others in Harlem, and we were walking around, dreaming, praying, looking block to block at what was out there…
and there was this amazing theater sitting there that looked like it had been empty for a decade… but it was amazing… and right across the street from the theater was an old, abandoned high school that looked like it had been empty for 30 years. There were huge trees growing out of this building. It was nuts. And yet of course, all we all saw was the potential. And we were just out standing in front of this building dreaming together and talking about what we could do with it…
and for a moment, we felt like our dream for New York was really going to come together. A theater, across from a potential Dream Center… empty… we figured we just had to make a few calls and we would be renovating them within the month.
and as we were just out there dreaming together, this angry, angry lady came out screaming at us. She was really mad, like, it was scary.
And she kept saying “Don’t even think about buying that building.” talking about about the school. She said, “That building is going to be used for the community.”
which of course, you would think would have been an open door to a conversation about a dream center… because that was what we were in the business of… doing things for the community.
But she would have nothing of it. She said that she owned the neighborhood and would make 100% sure that we never got that building.
She said “don’t don’t even bother.” She would make it impossible.
Now, our pastor is an incredibly gracious man, and he handled himself as such in that moment. But the incredible hostility that our totally loving dream was met with that day, left him, and all of us, with some really hard to navigate, discouraging feelings. Being told that it didn’t matter what it was we wanted to do, she would fight and would win, to make sure that we never accomplished it on her street. And though they were just words, it felt, truthfully, as if she had the authority to speak them in that moment.
I know in my heart that she didn’t. But it felt like she did.
That was what made it so hard to hear. I don’t know if that was a spiritual thing, or just because we were told so clearly that she has been there from the beginning and had earned the right to run the block… I can’t describe it.
She wanted to make us feel like we were there to exploit her and the people in her neighborhood and that all we wanted to do was gentrify the area.
and it worked.
And suddenly, a handful of us who in our hearts only wanted to do something good walked away from the scene questioning our own motives.
Dawn and I were willing to give up all of our pay to move to New York and help with that plant… we just wanted to see peoples lives changed… but suddenly we felt like we were the selfish ones, to think we could go in there and try to make a change like that.
Questioning if what we wanted to be done could be done, or if it was even the right thing, after all.
and feeling like there was no way our dreams were going to come true here.
Because not only is there the incredible financial hurdle of what property cost in New York City, but there is also a political, racial, religious tension that exists and we were on the wrong side of all three, as far as New York was concerned.
and I know that compared to what is happening to Christians in the middle east, and other parts of the world, thats a pretty mild view of what it means to be persecuted.
You only have to go on kindle and download a free copy of Foxes book of martyrs to see that persecution for some goes far beyond anything that we can even begin to imagine… and I believe that every Christian has to be ready and willing to face that type of persecution if that be the price necessary to speak the name of Jesus.
But to limit persecution only to people who are crucified upside down and burned at the stake would be a grave mistake…
“persecuted” It is the Greek word diōkō (dē-ō’-kō)…
and the word means a whole slew of things, and one of them is “to drive away.”
That was certainly the way that we felt that day in Harlem.
another is: “to pursue in a hostile manner.”
and another is to “prosecute.”
And its important to remember that we will never reach a point in our Christian walk, when suddenly we no longer will get resistance. And if in fact we do reach that point, then we immediately need to check ourselves and figure out why.
Because if everybody loves you all the time and nobody resists you or anything that you say, then you probably aren’t standing for much. One of the hardest things about being a Christian is that you have to make a hard stand on the side of the red letters of Jesus.
Lukes gospel includes this beatitude and a woe to go along with it and the woe says:
“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:26)
So blessed are you when you are persecuted, because the prophets before you were persecuted. The real prophets.
But woe to you when you are never persecuted but instead everyone loves you because all you do is please everyone with your words… because that is what the false prophets did. They tickled ears. They told people what they wanted to hear, and so everyone spoke well of them.
1 Timothy 4:3 puts it this way: “For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”
Jesus says, YOU MUST NOT DO THAT. Don’t be one of those teachers. Don’t be the kind of person who never offends anybody because you have set out to not offend anybody.
and I know that some of you may say, “I am not a teacher…” but you are. We are all ministers of the gospel. We are all carriers of hope. and as long as your hope is attached to Jesus, there will be people who will want to shut you down. It has been like that from the beginning.
When you stand for something, anything, you will get resistance. You will get persecution of some sort. And when you stand for Jesus, then blessed are you when it comes.
But let it come to you.
Don’t go looking for trouble.
the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most offensive message on the planet. if you speak it, they will come!
We are talking about a message that is essentially a declaration that the first will be last. It is a declaration that everything that everyone works their whole lives for on this earth essentially will amount to nothing if they climb the ladder of their own life.
It is a declaration that everything we have always known is getting turned upside down.
It is not the way you get ahead in this life.
Its not.
And that is a big reason why so many reject it.
We are talking about a message that says “blessed are you who you are persecuted… and when you mourn, and when you restrain your strength, and when you are poor and when you don’t chose a side in a battle but instead stand next to Jesus.
Christians should not ever go around looking for trouble… they should try their best to live peaceably with everyone and be a peace maker in all circumstances…
but the reality is that Christians don’t need to go around looking for trouble… it will always find them.
And it is fitting that we are on this beatitude the same week that we are doing retaliation because that is the message we are giving this Sunday… this week is “an eye for an eye” and next week is “love your enemies.”
and those are really hard teachings… and the truth is that when you stand on the side of love… love for your friends and love for your enemies… when you stand in that place… you are going to make enemies.
We know, our battle is not against flesh and blood. A person may persecute us, but it doesn’t mean that they are our enemy.
But we can’t help who sets themselves against us. We can’t help if someone decides that they want to be our enemy or if they view us as their enemy. and when that happens, all we can help, is the way in which we respond to their persecution.
That lady in Harlem was not our enemy. But we can’t change the way that she saw us… everything she spoke to us was built off of a foundation that was built years and years ago and a wall that slowly got put up around her heart. And if we argue, it would just put another brick on that wall. Every word of opposition would just put another brick on that wall.
We can only love her and show her, and show her what is right. We can only go the extra mile for her and turn the other cheek and see if by the grace of God we can slowly find ways to begin to tear down the wall. and unfortunately in that case, we never found that way.
But we never fought. We only loved. We responded to full blasted attacks by merely expressing our desire to love people.
The bible tells us that we must speak the truth to people in love… but truth is not relative, it is concrete.
and the idea that this concrete truth is found in a never changing book written over 2000 years ago tends to repel people these days. Even in America.
But the problem with having a concrete truth at the core of our convictions, is if we are not careful with that, we can find ourselves on the other side of the persecution.
BECAUSE WE KNOW WE ARE RIGHT.
and I want to address this for a couple of minutes. Because one of the worst places you can find yourself is on the wrong side of persecution.
This is an upside down Kingdom. and the wrong side of persecution is the side that is casting it.
Let me first say it like this:
If you persecute someone else for the way that they are, and in turn you get persecuted… that is not what Jesus is talking about when he says “blessed are you when you are persecuted.”
but you see this all of the time with Christians on their soap boxes throwing condemnation around left and right… but the problem with that message is typically it revolves around the sinner rather than the savior.
but the true gospel message says that the man on that box is just as guilty as the man walking down the street.
and when you see it that way, it is a “we” problem, not a “them” problem.
He is not saying “blessed are you when you hound others about the way that they are and then they retaliate and defend themselves, and in turn you feel that your beliefs are being persecuted…”
He is not saying “blessed are you when you post hateful things on Facebook and in turn get 500 comments calling you a bigot and a religious freak.”
He is not saying that!
So even if we aren’t intentionally “persecuting” others, sometimes we at least make people feel as if we are persecuting them. and truthfully, if someone feels like we are persecuting them, whether it is our heart to do so or not, there must be a certain level of truth to their feelings.
Granted, often it can be born out of a misconception.
but misconceptions typically have a level of truth to them.
One of the biggest misconceptions about christianity is that it is a religion that hates those who are different from us, but the problem is that it is a misconception that was brought our ourselves by people who bear the name of Jesus and don’t act like him… and their display of Jesus was hateful.
Often we are accused of prejudice or of "discriminating" against a person or people group.
The word discriminate is one of the worst represented words on the planet. This may surprise you, but The word actually comes from the word discern, and in many cases (well, many, MANY CASES) it has been used for very wrong purposes, singling out people by their race or gender or culture, treating them differently because of a situation or showing partiality for or against someone, but the word does not always represent something bad. and it certainly is not the same as hate though they appear from the outside to go hand in hand.
We must as Christians be able to live lives that are lead by the Holy Spirit and we have this amazing roadmap called the bible, and with these amazing tools we have the ability to discern. To know right from wrong, truth from lies.
But don’t think that just because you discern something to be wrong, that you have every right to obliterate the person either, and then pretend like you are the martyr. You can find yourself on the wrong side of persecution if you begin to believe that you are better than anybody else for any reason.
and that may sound crazy… the reality that the wrong side of persecution is the one who is doing the persecuting… and it will almost certainly bring persecution back upon you and it is not the kind that you will be blessed for.
But I am telling you this for sure… you are much better off being the one who gets persecuted…
but let it be for righteousness.
Let it be for the name of Jesus, and his amazing grace that meets people in the broken places of their hearts and loves them in the middle of their mistakes.
Just love Jesus.
Don’t go looking for trouble.
But know that it will come.
because Jesus says it will come.
You have to have the first seven beatitudes first. If you have those, and the fruit of your life causes people to persecute you because of your righteousness… then don’t fear. Be blessed.
But that is different than you trying to diagnose someone else with a sin problem, just straight up being a jerk, and then having people not like you for it.
Your life should look like Jesus.
but the other thing that we have to be careful of, is developing a martyr complex… and when everything that you think should go one way goes another… or when you do something that probably was stupid you did and then you get in trouble for it, you can’t just say that because you are a Christian that is why you are facing what you are facing or why someone is persecuting you.
There is a guy I know who goes to church here sometimes… I haven’t seen him in a while… but he always tells me these crazy stories of the things that happen to him and he always chalks it up to being persecuted for Jesus. But when I hear what he is saying to people, I just can’t help but think…
you are just being a jerk to them. Of course that is going to happen to you.
of course someone else who doesn’t have Jesus in their life would want to beat you up… part of me wants to beat you up for the way you misrepresent my savior.
You have to have it first.
You have to be poor in spirit and realize that you are just as broken as everyone else. You have to acknowledge that first or else you will find yourself facing a persecution that has no promise or reward.
Remember, it is the same reward as being poor in Spirit. A person who is poor in spirit would never think that they are better than anyone else. So if you are getting persecuted for your ego…
maybe you need to go back to part one.
The first half of this beatitude says that you are blessed WHEN you are persecuted FOR righteousness.
That means that you are persecuted for doing the right thing.
and the second half of it says:
persecuted for MY ACCOUNT. not just for whatever.
Now lastly, I want to focus on the last thing that Jesus says here. Now remember, he is just about to get into the meat of the sermon. He is just about to show us what all of this will look like here on earth as the Kingdom of heaven invades it…
but up until this moment, what has he done?
He has blessed.
He has told people they are blessed, over, and over, and over.
and each time, how does he word it?
Blessed are the.
Blessed are those.
Blessed are the.
Blessed are those…
it is not until after giving eight beatitudes that he even says “blessed are you WHEN YOU” and even when he says that, the “when you” has nothing to do with anything that you yourself do.
Jesus begins the sermon on the mount without a single rule. Without a single law. Without anything more to weigh people down, and instead he tells the people who were already weighed down by the weight of their own sin, and their own guilt, and their own circumstances, of being walked on by Rome and of having everything taken away from them and of being sick and reviled themselves… He tells them… you guys are blessed.
No rules.
No commands.
No demands.
Just blessings.
The first time that Jesus actually tells us TO DO anything, is verse 12. and this is what it says:
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Rejoice is the Greek word: chairō (Kiro)
it means to be “happy” or well off… it means “to thrive.” and it comes from the word “charis” which means grace.
Unmerited favor. A gift that you don’t deserve. But isn’t that the heart of the beatitudes? A gift. A blessing to those who thought they lived on the bottom.
grace.
Then he says: Be Glad.
Be glad is the Greek word:
agalliaō (ä-gäl-lē-ä’-ō) - the King James says “be exceeding glad” and the literal is “to jump for joy.”
So Jesus goes from telling us to be “happy” togo so far as to “jump for joy.” Proclaim your excitement. Put it into action. Let there be a demonstration. Because you get to share in the cross of Jesus Christ and nothing could be a greater reflection of him than loving the world through the pain that it inflicts on you.
No beatitude more closely resembles Jesus.
Jesus was persecuted for righteousness sake. He only did the right thing.
and it cost him everything.
Okay, one last look at verse 12: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
R.T. Kendall pointed out something really interesting in his book about the sermon on the mount… and I am going to expound on it a little.
The observation is this… Jesus ends by saying “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
so He ends by talking about the prophets and how they were persecuted.
Now, we all know that there reward must be very great… they were prophets… Moses lead a million + people out of captivity… Daniel overcame the lions den after standing up for God against the highest of authorities.
These men all had a lot that they had go through, but none of them had a promise like this to get them through it.
Yet they still rejoiced.
Jesus brought us something that the world who followed him before they even knew that they were following him never had…
assurance.
It is almost as if Jesus knew something going into this whole thing that maybe we don’t know. Its like he sees something that maybe we don’t see.
We see a world that is broken. That hurts each other……….
but he sees a world in which his Father is seated on the throne, and he is seated next him…
He see’s a Kingdom that has no end…
He sees the reality, that when the world we know now here on this earth ends… this Kingdom, HIS KINGDOM, will just keep on going. He sees a world where evil has no authority and it has no future… He came with the good news that we should leap for joy no matter how bad things may seem in this dark world that is only fleeting… because ultimately, we are blessed. We favored. and because ultimately,
He wins.
and we will be with him when it happens.
Blessed are you when you are persecuted. For yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.
We have, for the last couple of months here at EQUIP, been going over the beatitudes alongside the series we are doing on Sunday’s on the sermon on the mount. We are now in the tail end of our beatitudes series, and our “Red Letter City” series on the sermon on the mount will continue over the summer. I hope that you guys have been blessed by the series, I have been getting some really really encouraging reports from people of the ways that the various topics have brought reconciliation to past wounds, as we have dug into the issues that Jesus addressed, some of which have not been easy. The last three messages on Sunday’s were: Anger, Lust, and then Divorce. and I am happy to be on the other side of that trilogy now.
It was definitely the longest stretch of really hard things to talk about I have done yet.
Today’s beatitude has a similar complexity to it that some of those topics we have been addressing lately have had, and the concept as a whole has been one that there are definitely two very opposite sides and understandings of. This verse itself has caused in many people, the opposite of what it has called us to…
It says:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matt 5:9)
Which, to Jesus’ hearers must have come as a bit of a surprise because, as we talked about several other times throughout this series, everything in that day had been taken over by Rome. Their ways were being forced on other cultures, and essentially they had taken over the entire known world… which is why the first four beatitudes seemed so upside down…
who inherits the earth? The meek?
Wait a minute, it would have appeared that Rome already inherited the earth by being the opposite of meek. They had taken everything over through force. So to the Jewish audience that Jesus was addressing here, if anything, they would get the earth back by building up a military that could withstand Rome and eventually overthrow it.
Peace was not something on their minds.
If anything, they wanted justice.
and understandably so.
and it is not like we can simply say, “Oh, Jesus came to bring peace.”
Because in Matthew 10 Jesus says that he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword. He said that he would set brother against brother. and he says whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me… and that whoever finds his life will lose but but whoever loses his life for my names sake, will find it.”
and a lot of people use that to say that we shouldn’t work for peace but when I read it, what I get out of it is that working for peace could ultimately cost you, yours.
It cost Jesus’ his.
Jesus in John 16:33 says:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
He is telling them, in me… you have peace.
But what I am doing and what I have come to do is not going to cause there to be peace on earth right now…
you have to have peace in your heart knowing that the work of the cross has already been done in you.
Out there, you will have trouble.
Because the world is screwed up… and its not going to receive well the people who work to restore it because the unfortunate truth is, the whole thing runs on disorder.
The whole world runs on “this side” vs.”this side.” and one overcoming the other… and someone rising above someone else.
But blessed are the ones who throw themselves in the center of it all and help people work together. Help mend brokenness and end wars…
they make peace on a small scale, and they make peace on a large scale.
Blessed are the ones who help people see that at the end of the day we are all human, we all all flawed, and we all need Jesus.
There is a moment in the book of Joshua, it is probably the best example you will find, when this angel of the Lord appears, and Joshua asks him, “are you for us, or are you for our adversaries”
and the angel says… I am on neither side. I am the commander of the Lord’s army.
And then he tells Joshua to take off his shoes for he is standing on Holy Ground.
The angel tells Joshua, in this moment, what matters is where you are standing, not which side you are on.
You are standing in the presence of Jesus.
Sometimes in our wars and in our fights and in our preferences, we miss out of the truth of where it is we are standing.
and in Jesus what does the bible say? We are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. (Galatians 3:28)
Can you put your war on pause for a moment, and acknowledge that Jesus is bigger than all of it!
Not everything is us vs. them.
sometimes there is another way.
actually, always, there is another way. That doesn’t mean that everyone will chose it, but it does exist.
Now, we have been saying that each beatitude builds off of the last… the first four essentially show us what salvation is like… it is how God meets us in our brokenness, and then the last four shift into, in a way, what our lives in this Kingdom should look like…
this is how we should treat people in our city…
these are things in us that show others who God is.
and being a peacemaker and being pure in heart are definitely coupled together.
You have to, in your heart, have an understanding of what God has done for you if you are going to begin to bring his perfect peace into our world.
You have to see God, before you can be called a son of God.
And then, from there, the question becomes, “how do I do this in other situations?”
Because there is a very big difference between being a peace keeper, and peace maker.
There is a very big difference between a person who keeps peace, and a person who makes peace. There is a difference between someone who can keep order in a difficult situation, and someone who can throw themselves in the center of a seemingly unsolvable conflict and figure out a way to solve it.
Dawn will tell you this. She can tell you many stories of times that I have been a peace keeper, when I should have been a peace maker.
Sometimes in my home my objective merely rests on being a peace keeper… if I can just keep everyone happy then their will be peace and quiet and there will be no stress.
But a peace maker doesn’t do that. A peace maker knows that sometimes you have to go through the crucible and then separate the dross from the silver, like we talked about last week.
A.W. Argyle says this of peacemakers, they are“not appeasers, but those who actively overcome evil with good.”
They overcome fear with love. They overcome hate with compassion.
They figure out solutions to problems that are bigger than themselves.
They are willing to do whatever it takes.
Peace makers are very rare.
A peace keeper, they may have the ability to see a problem arise and even be able to diffuse it before it explodes. It can be a good trait to have (not always). But a peace maker can enter a war zone where the bombs have already gone off, and be able to stand in the middle of a war and be able to show both sides that they are wrong… and show both sides that the other is right.
They are both right. and they are both wrong.
Because most of the time, our differences aren’t as off balanced as we think.
there is a quote I want to give to you, I read it in the book by R.T. Kendall but the quote is from a man named Clyde Narramore, and he says this:
“Every person is worth understanding.”
and I think that is really important as we work to even just engage our community in better and more practical ways. They are not all going to be the same as us, they are not going to have the same upbringing necessarily… they may not have the same needs, or the same beliefs.
But what our community here at Courage must be about, is throwing ourselves into other peoples worlds and learning what it is that is going on… why do they do the things that we don’t understand?
Because maybe there is some good in there that we can’t see from the outside, and if we stay away, and distant, and inside this building with the doors closed all the time, only spending time with people who are just like us, and who can remind us of how right we are all the time because they think the same way that we do…
we will never reconcile the people who think differently.
And we will never learn from them either.
The moment you think you know it all is the moment your life begins to end because there is always more to learn, and God has us, in the places that he has us so that we can grow together with the people he has put us in community with.
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Last summer, in “the fruit of the Spirit” series, we did a whole teaching on the word “peace.” I made Emily and the worship team play “White Flag.” They were mad.
Peace is one of the most fascinating words of the fruit of the Spirit, especially in Hebrew.
It is the Hebrew word “Shalom,” and the big idea behind this word is the “completeness.” It means that all things are “whole” or are in their fullest state, what they should be.
So a person who makes peace would be someone who can enter into a situation where things are “not as they should be,” and you can bring some restoration to that situation.
It could be a conflict. It could just be a lack of wholeness. It could be that something has fallen short of what it should be.
Now, in Hebrew, as we have talked about on numerous occasions, the letters are read backwards, and each letter originally was a picture.. it was basically a stick figure type of image, which later became known as “Hebrew word pictures” or “Hebrew picture graphs.” Or if you are looking it up online you could search the “Paleo Hebrew alphabet” I love doing these but always want to acknowledge that word pictures NEVER take the place of the bible.
Sometimes they can really illuminate a concept, and I wouldn’t show you them if I didn’t think that they helped explain something that otherwise is more difficult to understand… but I find it absolutely fascinating that before we had the word Shalom in Hebrew written out the way we know it to be now…
those same letters were stick figures and stencil type of images:
They don’t look terribly different do they?
from the right the first letter is:
“Sheen” and the picture is of Teeth, which symbolizes to consume or destroy. The second letter is Lamed (la-med), it is a shepherds staff which represents authority. So if you were to look just at the first to letters of the word peace, it says “destroy the authority”
The third letter is the letter “vav” and it is a nail or hook, it connects things... It means To hook to, connect to or to establish, and the last letter is “mem” and the image represents crashing waves of water. In the book of Genesis “mem” is actually translated as the word “chaos.” - Think about a Hurricane, or a Noreaster… and just the unbelievable chaos that large waves can cause to people in the water and on boats.
What the word picture is saying is this, to find shalom… to find peace, you must first “destroy the authority that is establishing chaos.”
Now I am not talking about a war.…
though at the heart of most peace movements is the concept of anarchy, or some sort of revolt against a system that is being abused and does need to be brought down.
But I want us to see this from a bigger perspective.
I am not talking about destroying people. I am talking about diagnosing what it is, first of all, in you, and in your life, that is robbing you of your peace… what is it in your life that is making it so feel like nothing is as it should be.
You have to pinpoint it.
You will always have chaos, until you identify the areas of your life that are causing the chaos. That are keeping you from peace.
But what does that mean for a peacemaker?
One of of the really sad truths about our world is that there are always two sides. We said it earlier.
War would be impossible without sides.
everybody seems to take a side, but what we miss is that somewhere in the middle, between us and our sides that we think are totally different, there is an authority that is establishing chaos between us.
There is. There is a oneness that has been divided. The bible says in Genesis that in the image of God we were all created… But somewhere along the line one person went one way, and another went another way, and one thought that their way was right, and the other thought that their way was right…
and pride became so consuming that it became worth killing over.
So now we have people killing other people made in the same image of God.
There is a story not often told in 1 Samuel 25 about a woman named Abigail and her husband Nabal.
And Nabal is a jerk. The bible says “he was harsh and badly behaved.” (1 Sam. 25:3)…. but his wife was discerning and beautiful.
So Nabal is very wealthy… and David, who at this time is still on the run, because King Saul wants to kill him… he hears that Nabal and his men were out shearing sheep and so David sends ten men to greet Nabal.
They are very friendly in their approach.
and they tell Nabal “Peace be with you…” and then they ask for favor from Nabal and ask that he provide a feast for them.
They asked for his help, and of course, Nabal, whose name by definition means “fool” and who is described as “badly behaved” in the bible… behaves badly.
And he tells the men, “Who is David the son of Jesse?”
“Why would I give you guys who I don’t know, any of my food. Absolutely not.”
So David and his army greeted him kindly, and he responded in harshness. And when the men get back to David and report what had happened, David apparently gets a little bit upset about this, and he says “Every man strap on his sword!” (v. 13)
and so David and 400 men essentially went to take what they wanted by force and to wipe out Nabal and his people.
Now, you don’t have to read all that much about David, to know that you do not want his army coming after you. It makes for a very bad last day of your life.
But the word gets back to Nabal’s wife, Abigail.
and they tell her, “David’s men were so kind… they were respectful, we suffered no harm at their hands and they took nothing of ours.”
“They were kind, but Nabal railed them! and sent them away.”
And basically what the servants told Abigail was, that because of the way her husband acted, it could cause a whole lot of harm for their family and everyone nearby..… something needed to be done.
and a peace keeping wife who just wants to keep the peace in her home would have just went along with what her husband had done, and remained peaceful and not gone around him and rather, let him take care of the entire thing. But she didn’t have peace keeping in mind, she had peace making in mind.
So she goes out and she greets David and his men, and David says some things that make it pretty clear that the army was on its way to wipe out everyone…
And Abigail falls at David’s feet and says “On me alone be the guilt.”
We all know that NONE of the guilt belonged to her.
But not only is she willing to take the fall for the entire thing… but she pleads with David, saying that there is only one in this entire situation who has done evil and there is no reason to take it out on everyone else.
Without saying it, and totally respectfully, she showed David, that both sides were wrong.
There is no sense in destroying other people for one man’s mistake. and that was the path David was currently walking toward.
The same thing happened in the book of Esther, a man named Haman gets mad at a Jewish man named Mordecai for disrespecting him, and then Haman decides that he is going to commit genocide against all of the Jews because of it, and the King naively signs off on it.
But Esther, who was married to the King, found a way to make peace from a central place… She was a Jew, not wanting her people to be killed,
yet she was married to the King who had signed off on the plan for genocide.
If you have never read the book of Esther, read it. It is such a fascinating account of what it means to make peace. and we don’t have time to get into her story any more today…
but Esther was a peace maker.
Abilgail was a peace maker.
Abigail pleaded with David, and even said to him“that had she known what they wanted she would have given it all to them.” And so David turns around.
He is moved by her intervention and he acts favorably toward her.
She was a peace maker.
And in her case, in order to be a peace maker she had to give up being a peace keeper.
Because she jeopardized the peace in her home for the sake of the greater good.
Jesus never kept the peace. That is not what he did. In fact his entire ministry was about turning the world and its religious belief system on its head… because it was about all the wrong things.
but what he did will ultimately make peace and reconcile the broken back to him.
and, as we have said over and over and over, reconciliation is our goal as Christians.
I love this quote in Simon Tugwell’s book on the beatitudes… he says this:
“To be a peacemaker is not, then, to come and patch things up, to arrange a settlement with balanced concessions all round, to try to find a compromise. It is to declare the truth of God and the truth of creation; it is to announce that a fallen world can be remade. It is to proclaim that the oneness of God has taken possession of the fragmented world of sin.”
Blessed are those who live their lives as a reflection of Jesus, who the bible refers to as “The Prince of peace.” but who we all know during his time on earth stirred up just as much as he brought together.
Because in order to destroy the authority that is establishing chaos in our world he had to call it out.
Sometimes to ultimately bring peace you have to stand up to both sides and remind them that there is a third way, a better way, and his name is Jesus.
There is this song by the band “Gungor" that came out a little while ago, and it really powerful. The concept of the song is that God’s judgment is love…
Which so often is the opposite of what the churches judgment tends to be… but it is God’s judgment.
if it wasn’t, then why would he send Jesus? If Jesus didn’t love us, he wouldn’t have let himself be judged for us.
Jesus ultimately said, I will make peace between the two sides by taking the fall for both of them.
and as scary as this can be to live up to, as followers of the way… Jesus’ is our King but he is also our example for the way that we reconcile the world back to God. Sometimes peace will come at the expense of ourselves.
Abigail was willing to take the fall for her husband’s stupidity if it meant the rest of her people would have peace.
and in this song, One of the lines says this, “if it is us or them, it is us for them.”
and the first time I heard that, I just felt something in my spirit… it was just this conviction, of what it actually takes to live like that. To live in such a way that if life comes down to you or someone else, you make the call that it will be you losing it, on behalf of someone else. and most days I don’t know that I could honestly say I would honestly make that call.
But nothing else could possibly look more like Jesus.
What does Jesus say? Anyone who loses his life for me, will gain it. (Matthew 16:25)
It is so so so upside down.
and it made me wonder this when it comes to the beatitudes… and maybe you have had a similar thought before…
Have you ever wondered, who is calling them sons of God?
It is just a little food for thought… I think that the automatic assumption is that it is God who is calling them his sons. And it could be that… I am sure there are plenty of arguments that would say that… and that is fine. But if that is the case, then it is definitely not the only way in which God would call us his child…
Paul says in Romans 8:14 that “For all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God”
John 1:12 says that “all who receive Jesus, and believed his name, he gave the right to become children of God”
Being a peace maker is certainly not the only way to become a son of God.
Merely receiving Jesus… merely having the first beatitude gives you the right to become a child of God…
But remember, the beatitudes are about the Kingdom of heaven just utterly and completely invading this earth. and could it be that when you are a peacemaker, at least from the perspective of everyone standing on the outside, looking in… that this is what makes you look the most like God? Could it be, that from the perspective of man, whom we are supposed to be a reflection of God too, that us being a peacemaker is the clearest way that they will see that God is in us?
Could it maybe be that it is other people who will call us children of God?
Because as far as they can tell, we are doing the work of the Lord even though they have no idea what the work really even is?
They see Margie and David out there cutting down trees and leveling the land across the street so that a soccer field can go there and kids can all come together and share in what they have in common, instead of always standing on opposite sides and fighting over what makes them different.
and then what do they think when they hear that they are Christians, who they don’t even know… but that are doing that for them?
If I had to guess I would guess that they think something like this:
“I don’t know what Jesus looks like… but I bet it is something like that.”
When the team goes out and feeds the homeless, and Justin notices that one of them doesn’t have any shoes on… and he thinks to himself, “how is this man going to have any peace in his life if he is always walking around these streets filled with broken glass everywhere in his bare feet… and Justin shakes his head and says “no no no no no” and he takes off his shoes and gives them to the man right there in that moment…
When he identifies it. Shoes. Lack of shoes. It is causing chaos… “and I can fix it!”
“I don’t know what Jesus looks like… but I bet it is something like that.”
We aren’t going to solve all of the world’s problems. But we can declare Jesus everywhere we go through our words, and our deeds because he is the only one in whom true peace can be found.
and so Jesus arrives on the scene, and stands in front of an enormous crowd of people who were thirsty for vengeance, and who wanted their land back, and who wanted their rights back, and who would do anything it took, if they had the power to fight back against what Rome was doing… and he tells them:
Blessed are the peacemakers.
For the shall be called sons of God.
The beatitudes are one of the most interesting sets of scripture in all of the bible, particularly because so many people have so many takes and takeaways on them.
To some they are an announcement… Jesus shows up and begins giving this amazing sermon to this group of really broken people and be begins to tell them that they are blessed.
To some they are a new set of things that we should become…
Ways that we should change our lives to fit into the picture that Jesus is painting for us here…
I have taught from the beginning, I believe that essentially the first four are one thing, and the second four are another.
The first four show was what it means to be broken. What it means to have that void in your life that you have no clue how you will ever fill it… because it is in that place that Jesus can step in and be your everything, which is what he wants. To me, the first four equate to salvation. Dependency on Jesus rather than trying to make it in your own strength, and the last four begin to show us what our lives will certainly start to look like if Jesus has that kind of hold on us… we becoming merciful. Our hearts are purified, we are peacemakers, and of course, we will be persecuted. And I am really looking forward to talking about the last beatitude, because I think it is absolutely fascinating and truthfully, it is more hopefully than most of us may think, and it is not all depressing.
But I by no means claim to have all the answers about the beatitudes, and in fact, as many of you know, more than anything through this EQUIP series I am seeking to begin conversations. Conversations that last much longer than just our hour block of time on Thursdays… Because to me, if nothing else, each of these 8 “blessed are’s” should make us curious. Because obviously we all want what Jesus is talking about, because the blessing on the other end of each of these things seems way to good to pass up.
Who wouldn’t want to inherit the earth?
Who wouldn’t want to have the Kingdom of heaven be theirs?
Who wouldn’t want mercy?
Who wouldn’t want to be satisfied?
Who wouldn’t want to be comforted?
Who wouldn’t want to be called sons of God?
Who wouldn’t want to see God?
and that is the beatitude that we get to today. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)
The beatitudes truly set up the sermon on the mount so well. and this one particularly… This is an incredible statement… for several reasons…
First of all… like we just said… who wouldn’t want to see God?
But at the same time… who actually is pure in heart?
Paul says in Romans 3:10 that “no one is righteous, not even one…”
Ecclesiastes 7:20 says “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Everyone screws up… everyone has evil in their hearts…
so the question ultimately becomes…
Does anyone see God?
and if so, then who? Who gets to see God?
Because in the old testament seeing God was a bad thing. Nobody wanted to see God. Because they wanted to live.
Gideon thought he was going to die because he saw an angel… God actually told Moses, “you can’t see my face or you will die…” so God showed Moses only his back.
But in the New Testament, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and quite a few people saw God, didn’t they?
So what does Jesus mean when he says “Blessed are the pure in heart?”
Because obviously it is something that we want. Obviously it is something that up until that point, nobody experienced.
Today, we are mostly going to focus on one word, and that word is pure. Again, the idea is that these ideas begin conversations, and they are not the final word on them.
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This is what I think Jesus is getting at.
I think that truthfully, this is where we are introduced to the Spirit of the law. And it becomes much much more evident in the verses to come as to exactly what that really means… when Jesus says things like you have heard that it was said… you shall not murder…
but I say to you…
If murder is in your heart… if hate is even in your heart at all… you are guilty. Because there is something going on in your heart that you are letting harvest… that you are letting burn… and just because you are masking it, doesn’t mean its not there.
Just because you aren’t acting on your lust doesn’t mean that you mind isn’t in all sorts of screwed up places…
Just because you give to the needy doesn’t mean that you care about the poor.
It brings me back to one of my favorite Brennan Manning quotes, and I have given this to you before, but he says in the Ragamuffin Gospel,
“The temptation of the age is to look good, without being good.”
Solomon puts it this way in Proverbs 20:6, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love… but a faithful man, who can find?"
A person who does the right thing, for the right reason, is very hard to find.
A pure heart, is very heard to find.
So what is it?
What makes a heart pure?
What is it that purifies our hearts?
The word pure is the Greek word “katharos” and it means pure… but if you were to look this word up in Vines expository dictionary, first of all it would show you three senses of the word… the Levitical sense of “pure,” as in the law… as in something is clean, or unclean… that is pretty cut and dry.
and then there is the ethical sense, which means to be free from corrupt desire, from sin or guilt. - which is the definition most people give it and move on.
but then there is the physical sense. Which I have found with a lot of words, understanding the physical sense can help us understand how it may work in reality… remember, we are trying to figure out how this looks like for us, in this kingdom.
Because sometimes ethically something can sound good on paper, but not really translate that well.
there are a couple of different definitions of what it takes, in a physical sense, to make something pure.
The first is, when something is “purified by fire.”
and The second sense is “like a vine cleansed by pruning and so fitted to bear fruit.”
Okay… lets look at both of these. First of all, lets look at pure as “purified by fire.”
The first thing you may wonder is, “What does that have to do with the heart?”
Solomon in Proverbs 17:3 says something really interesting… it is one of those verses most of the time we just read right through.
He says “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests the heart.”
A crucible was a pot that held metals so that you could put them under fire… you put silver in the crucible and then you could place the crucible in the fire so you can put the silver under extreme heat.
So, there is something in silver, and in gold, called the dross, and it is a mass of solid impurities that was just kind of mixed in with the silver.
So what would happen was if you put the silver in the crucible, and you put it in the furnace, the silver would come under the heat of the furnace and and when it got hot enough the dross would separate from the silver… and then the silversmith could then come by and he could scrape off the dross and then they would have a totally pure piece of silver.
That is how one would “purify” silver.
My pastor in New York, Brad Reed, gave me a really insightful perspective on this verse… He taught me this… now.. first of all… “do you ever notice thatwhenever you recognize something in your own heart that it is just abundantly clear you need to change, it always seems like after you recognize it and begin working toward changing it, whatever causes you to sin in that area seems like it is put in front of you more and more?
Like anger. “when you are angry, if you ask God to help you with your anger… suddenly you are more angry for the next two weeks?” Like, more so than ever, everything that anybody does just seems to get you going…
What is that?
Why is it when we see things, enough to recognize them, and we really want to get over them so we actually begin working on them, they seem like they come against us stronger?
And this is what he said, and it is so insightful.
“Most of us don’t know what lies in the recesses of our hearts until God turns the heat up.”
Here is the reality. When everything seems like it is going great, and its always going your way, and every time you try something it seems like you just keep winning… it is going to feel really good… you can just sort of breeze by life and not realize what is missing. It is called being “rich in Spirit.” we talked about it the first week of this series. It can become very easy to begin to think that you are the reason that you are ok.
But when you face trials, and things get tough, what happens?
Why does Jesus say blessed are those who mourn?
Why does his brother, James say “count it all joy when you face trials?”
Because trials separate the dross from metal in your heart… Solomon says that the crucible is for silver, and the Lord tests the heart… He is comparing the process that God puts our hearts through, the refining process, to the process of purifying silver.
and he will test your heart in those moments when you are real with him about what is going on in there….
because truthfully, he needs to know… “is this real?”
Is this a real change? Does this person really want to change…
he will turn the heat up… and it may feel real hot for a little while, but then just like that silver smith, he will come in and he will scrape that dross off of you and refine you… and at the end of the day, that refinement is your grace.
Because it will take you some place that you would not have gone on your own.
So one way that the Lord tests our hearts is he turns the heat up on them.
He wants to see how we do. He wants to separate what is nasty and worthless with what is valuable and priceless, so through various trials in our lives he purifies our hearts.
Another way that he tests our hearts is he actually puts us to the test. The religious people, they loved to make it look like they are good… but Jesus always brought it down to the heart… and to the decisions when nobody else sees you… He always has a way of sorting out the silver and the dross.
and we have to ask ourselves: “When the rubber meets the road, and no-one else is watching, do you do the right thing?”
In Luke chapter 10 (v25-37) He gives us the parable of the good Samaritan. And it begins by a man asking a question that Jesus seemed to be asked a lot….
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
and right away we have a problem. What must… I… do? So Jesus asks him, “well how do you read the law?
“What do you think you need to do?”
and so the man gives Jesus the great commandment, he says “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and you should love your neighbor as yourself.”
So Jesus then gave the man an easy way out… because right from the beginning we have a guy here who wants to be a hero… he wants to justify himself… he wants to do something that makes him think that his heart is right. So Jesus gives him a chance here… he says, “thats right. Go do that.”
and then the bible says that the man, in order to justify himself, asked Jesus “who is my neighbor?”
and so Jesus gives us this parable. Of a man who gets attacked on the side of the road and is left for dead. and it is interesting that as this man is laying there waiting to die, it says this “by chance, a priest was going down the road.” By chance… meaning, there weren’t a lot of people on the road… it was probably a miracle that anyone was walking right there… so obviously, nobody else was on that road, and if there were others on the road, it was probably the same people who robbed and beat the man in the first place… The priest knew walking by, nobody would see what good deed he did if he did one, and when he calculated the risk he decided it wasn’t worth it for this man, so instead he passed on the other side of the road.
The Levite did the same.
And of course, we know the story… the Samaritan man responded differently. He gave up what he had for the man. He helped him.
Jesus through this entire story, is leading this lawyer somewhere. He is trying to show him several things, but one of those things is,
“I test hearts.”
I care how you respond when you are not going to get any credit just as much as I do when you may get recognized for what you did.
Something has to purify your heart!
Because most of us go through life thinking that our hearts are good. We go through life thinking, OF COURSE WE WOULD BE LIKE THE SAMARITAN.
Why wouldn’t we help?
But then we get a chance to help, and our hearts get tested.
take me for example.
I have been trying to take Monday’s off, and this week was no different, I took it off but had to run to the church to pick something up quickly, and as I was getting back in my car someone pulled in in their truck, and they said that they were out of gas and asked if I could help.
and right away, I was a bit resistant. In my heart, right away I started thinking, IT IS MY DAY OFF….
I help people when I am at work.
as if that would stop anyone who wasn’t a pastor for a living and gives tons of their time on their “day off..” to the church, and to helping people.
but I hesitated.
I highly considered crossing to the other side of the road, and only because I checked myself did I help the man at all.
I gave him a little gas, and then he told me he had no food at the house, so I gave him a couple of loads of food from the pantry downstairs.
and that is the whole reason that the food pantry exists, and yet I was hesitant about the whole thing, just because it was my day off.
My heart was tested. And if I passed, I got a D on that one.
The bible tells us in Jeremiah that the heart is deceitful above all else, it is desperately sick and NOBODY CAN UNDERSTAND IT. (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
if we truly believe that, then we have to ask ourselves, why are we trusting our hearts so much?
Isn’t that what we do? We follow our hearts…
but Why do we follow our hearts to the ends of the earth??? when we know that it is just going to leave us there.
That is why God says, “let me test your heart…”
“Show yourself approved so that I know that I have something I can work with here…” because if you are always following your heart, you are going to end up finding yourself in the same places.
If your heart is causing you to lust, you follow that, and where does that lead you?
Somewhere you don’t want to go.
So when your heart gets tested, you have to know its a refinery. Jesus knows that the heart is deceitful.
God knows that. What he wants to know is: Are you are going to follow that deceitful heart, or if you are going to follow him? Because as you begin to follow him, your heart will begin to be purified.
The second physical sense for making something pure, is “like a vine cleansed by pruning and so fitted to bear fruit.”
The way that this concept is used in a few places in the New Testament, is actually one of the pictures we get of judgment. It is more pleasant than some of the other pictures that we get, and it is the image of a farmer pruning a fruit tree.
So farmers had these apple trees and there would be all sorts of apples on them. Different apples of different sizes, and the farmers would come during a certain time in the season early on, and he would prune the tree. He would cut off the smaller apples driving more nutrients back into the tree so that in the smaller apples place, a bigger, better, larger apple could grow before the harvest. He is doing away with the bad fruit now, because it is preventing good fruit from coming forth. The bad fruit is getting in the way.
Now, we will get really into this toward the end of our series on the sermon on the mount when we get to Matthew 7 and the section “A tree and its fruit” but I want to show you a little bit of what Jesus says there, in that moment:
Matthew 7:17-19:
every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So, the idea seems to be that the trees that don’t produce good fruit, eventually get cut down and thrown into the fire, so prune them now… water them now… get the bad fruit off of the tree because it is preventing the good fruit from coming forth.
Because one way or another, they are going to get pruned. You can do the pruning now, and cut off the problem areas in your life now….. and then you can live in freedom the rest of your life with a heart that is pure…
or you can let the bad fruit stunt the growth of your life, you can limp through life feeling like a slave because you know your potential is not being met, and then at judgment there will be a pruning. Either way, pruning will happen.
The pure in heart are the ones who prune now.
So both of these ideas, purity by fire and purity by pruning, are both sort of, packed into this verse.
Because here is the truth…
and we have said it probably a dozen times during our sermon on the mount series…
Whatever is in your heart is a window into whatever it is that you are becoming.
There is a verse in Matthew 15:8, and Jesus is talking about the Pharisees but he is quoting Isaiah and he says:
This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
and this is the big problem. It is like what 1:6-10 John says…
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
He gives us three “If we say’s” that show us that we have deceived ourselves and are living our lives in a dishonest way that is trying to deceive others.
We lie. And we do not practice the truth.
He is saying, look at how Holy God is. In him, there is only light. In him, there is no darkness at all. with Jesus, with God… everything revolves around good. That’s the center. When God created man, he said “it is good” Everything God does revolves around that.
It all revolves around what is good.
And if we claim that to be the center of our world… We claim Jesus to be the center… if we say that is our center but really its not… really we walk in darkness, we have a secret life, a hidden part of us nobody sees… we aren’t practicing truth. We aren’t acting like Jesus. There is nothing dark about Jesus at all… He is only light. In him there is no darkness at all.
Then John says:
2. If we say we have no sin... We say we are ok, maybe we used to be a mess before, but not anymore... Now we have it together... then John says that “We deceive ourselves... And there is no truth in us.” Because the reality is that we are all a mess. and acknowledging what we lack is the only way that allows Jesus to make us everything that we are not…
but instead, we convince ourselves in our deceitful hearts, that we are something, on our own. That we have achieved it on our own.
Then lastly, John says:
3. If we say we have not sinned… This is actually saying, I HAVE NEVER SINNED. if we project perfection and maybe even unknowably deny our need for a savior... we make him a liar.. And his word is not in us.
I don’t know very many people who would go with number three. hopefully I don't know anyone.
and I only know a few people who would go with number two.
Most people are not going to say “I am perfect, I always have been.”
and more will say, but still not that many, “that they now have no sin” - though I do see the trap behind this one… the idea that Jesus filled your life, and took away your sin and in him you have been perfected… because we are being made more and more like him every day but we still are prone to errors, and a person who is pure in heart definitely knows that their heart is vulnerable.
The one that I think most of us fall into, if we fall into any, is #1. We say we are walking with him…
we don’t claim perfection, but we claim reconciliation and we claim friendship and yet our hearts are far from him….. because no matter what it is that we may say about God, deep in our hearts we struggle to believe that we actually need him.
Jesus would so much rather you be who you are as long as who you are is sitting at his feet, broken knowing that apart from him you are hopeless and with Him you can do all things, and endure all things.
This is ultimately the problem. Instead of pruning, we pretend like the fruit is good. We even convince ourselves that the fruit is good. We eat the bad fruit so much, that it begins to taste normal to us!
The heart is deceitful. and yet we trust it.
but as long as we trust our heart, we will follow it,
and as long as we follow it,
God will never be able to purify it…..
God says, “trust me.”
Because I know the things are weighing you down and I know exactly how to lift that burden. But you have to put it in my hands.
The heart is deceitful. Don’t trust it. But work on it.
Because it can be pure if Jesus is living inside of it. You still may make mistakes, but whatever is on the inside should be reflected by your life rather than masked by life.
and as that takes form more and more and as people begin to see the real you, the real you begins to get more and more pure, and before you know it, you don’t care what anyone else thinks anymore because Jesus has refined your heart and you get to see God.
Seeing God…
This is something that I have found to be true. When your heart is pure, you start seeing God.
And you may say to me, what do you mean? How do you know? Are you saying you have a pure heart? Are you saying that you have seen God?
No. Not really… but this is what I am saying.
The Pharisees were actors. That is why Jesus called them hypocrites over and over and over…
God was right in front of them, but they missed him because they were focusing all of their attention on the show that they were putting on.
They didn’t like Jesus, because he distracted people from THEM.
When people were looking to Jesus, they weren’t looking at the Pharisees anymore.
They weren’t sizing themselves up to how much they prayed or how many days they fasted or to how much they gave in the offering plate in the temple each time they went.
Because their eyes were on something different. Something better.
One of the seven woes of the Pharisees that Jesus gave in Matthew 23, when he is calling out these people who acted…. who preached but did not practice… was he says this in Matthew 23:16 -
“Woe to you, blind guides.”
and he goes off on them… and he says a bunch of things to them here, one of them being: “For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?”
Because the Pharisees were all about the gifts they were bringing. But they brought the gift and they missed the person who it should have been for.
But in this particular woe, three times he makes this judgment against them… they are blind!
They don’t see what they are supposed to see.
Because as you all know, the Pharisees are literally the opposite of pure in heart.
We talked about these two contrasting types of people two weeks again when we talked about those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… two men who come to the temple to pray… and the first is the Pharisee and all he can say is “thank God I am not like the tax collector who is waiting in the back for his turn to repent because he definitely has a ton to repent of…”
right? that is basically what he says… He says, “I am good. He is bad. Thanks for that, God.”
it is the opposite of a pure heart.
and then, in contrast, the tax collector just simply says “Have mercy on me Lord, a sinner.” and that was the man who went away justified… because he saw something.
He saw a God who meets people in the broken places… and so God met him there.
All throughout his ministry, who sees God?
Who see’s Jesus, accepts him as God, and receives from that? the sinners. The tax collectors… the ones who knew they were sick.
All throughout Jesus’ ministry, who missed God?
The ones who were wearing masks, and pretending. They miss him, and it is a shame.
Because whatever is not pruned now, is going to be pruned later… remember what Paul says, God judges the secrets of men.
Stop pretending. And you will see God.
Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 12:14-
“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
and that thought is always an overwhelming one… because we all know that we aren’t holy.
But Paul in Ephesians writes and says that Christ loved you and I so much that he gave himself up, that HE might sanctify us. and only after HE sanctifies us, will he then present us in splendor, as a Holy, spotless bride.
Jesus died to make your deceitful heart pure. and he wants to do it. But you have to take off the mask… you have to break down the wall, and let him have access to what is really in there.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
One thing that I love about taking a few moments at the end of each teaching for any possible questions is that it shows me the gaps in what we are going over… it shows me the things were communicated clearly and the things that were not necessarily made clear or sensible.
Sometimes when we fly through this much content it can be easy for something to get missed entirely… because there is a lot of depth to these Thursday night teachings, but if we had to throw out everything we have ever learned about the sermon on the mount and about the beatitudes, we would still be okay as long as we understand this one principle:
You can’t make it on your own.
That is the reason for the cross. That is the reason for Jesus. You are a mess. I am a mess. Without the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we are literally the walking dead… and the breath of life that is breathed into Christians is given to them on account of nothing that they have done, but merely on the realization that apart from Jesus they are broken. They are lost. Salvation comes hand in hand with dependency.
When you realize, I am a dependent of Jesus Christ.
So Jesus came preaching this message, REPENT. Change your mind because you can not save yourself… Repent. For the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
This is what Jesus is offering us. He is offering us salvation that only comes through grace by the acknowledgment that you are broken and you can not save yourself… Salvation… Eternal life. A new destiny. This has almost nothing to do with you.
and with that salvation… that eternal life that is to come, along with that he also invites us to be citizens of a new Kingdom here on earth. And though your eternal price was paid for on the cross of Jesus Christ, and eternity belongs to you if you remain in Christ,
your level of success in this Kingdom… both personal success and success for how effective you are for Jesus, does have to do with you.
How Kingdom life looks like here and now, does have to do with you!
We have said several times that the Beatitudes truly are a proclamation to a very broken group of people that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them.
and the word he constantly uses, over and over again is the word “blessed.” It is the Greek word “makarios” (ma-kaa-ri-ase) and it could most simply be translated as “happy.”
another meaning could also mean “approved by God.”
and it is very important to understand that the big picture of what Jesus is saying is that he comes into the lives of the ones who know that they are sick, and then he becomes life to them.
Our eternity does not lie in anything other than the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
But that doesn’t null and void our duty as a Christian to live a Christian life. To walk in the gifts of the spirit, to live in a such way that the fruit of the spirit is evident in our lives….
In Hebrew… so in the old testament, we have two different words that come up as “blessed” and both of those words have very different meanings. The first word is the word:
baruk - a blessing from God to you or from you to God.
This is what we tend to think of when we think of the reality that we are poor in Spirit. It is just a gift… it is from God to us and we know that nothing about it, we deserve. It is generally the word that I default too because I constantly find myself so dependent on Jesus… but the truth is, there is a second word in Hebrew for “blessed” and in fact it is the word that David uses a lot in the Psalms, including many of the “blessed’s” that we have quoted… that word in Hebrew is the word:
Asre- (az-ree) - and that means “happiness, as a result of right decisions.”
———————-
I don’t ever want you to think that the way you live on this earth doesn’t matter. It matters immensely.
And sometimes it can be difficult to understand, when is Jesus talking about life, now, and when is he talking about eternal life, then… after?
And the beatitudes are especially difficult in these terms because so many of them are promises of things, that Jesus in other places says will never come on this side of eternity.
There will never be peace. But blessed are the peacemakers… the ones who work for peace… the ones who bring peace to their world even though we know that it will never fully be realized in our current world. Blessed are people who hunger and thirst for things to be the way that they ought to be… for order to be restored, and for justice to come. Blessed are you when you have that void in your own life… because then Jesus can fill it in your life, and you carry that hope into our broken world.
Giving your life to loving people in that capacity will greatly change your life now. and it will greatly impact the kingdom, now… and it will greatly impact all the lives that you come in contact with, now, as long as your life is a testimony for Jesus.
But until Jesus returns in all of his glory, total restoration will not come. Nor will justice.
But happy is the one, here, and now… who makes the types of decisions that help usher people into the Kingdom of God.
Last week, Chris’s example of the overlapping circles was the perfect example. But it can be frustrating when it feels like the work we are doing is not making a difference.
But it is.
It is easy to think, it doesn't make much difference. Its easy to think that me thinking that things aren’t as they should be, doesn't change much. Take a story we told last week. It is screwed up, when I think about how Noodles got murdered two years ago a couple hundred feet from where I am teaching Milly to ride her bike today… that just doesn’t seem right. Because its not right. It is not as it ought to be. We live in a neighborhood full of families who at one point in history were afraid to even let their kids come outside and play. Who still have bars on their front doors and sometimes even their windows… but that culture is beginning to shift because families like ours, and others who came before us, ARE teaching their kids to ride bikes in those streets, and ARE doing what we can to reclaim our neighborhoods for families.
The realization of brokenness has launched us into restoration.
And that restoration is a now blessing. The world that we are helping to create, we hopefully will have an opportunity to enjoy. There is an obvious void there, something is not as it ought to be… and truthfully, we mourn for what it once was as we work to create what it will be. And that is what life in the Kingdom looks like, now.
What will it take for me to spend eternity with Jesus? Its in the beatitudes.
What will it take for my neighbors to see Jesus through my life so that they can spend eternity with Jesus too? its in the beatitudes.
The first four beatitudes, the ones we studied up until today, those tell you, really, what it takes to become a Christian.
It describes what it looks like to be completely dependent on Jesus.
Because you are not saved by works. You are saved by grace, but Jesus came for those who know that they are sick, not the ones who think that they are healthy and they have it all together. The first four beatitudes, if nothing else, show us, we really, on our own, do not have it together.
Salvation comes by realizing, “oh my gosh, I can’t do this myself. I need someone else to carry me.”
and that is what the first four beatitudes are referencing.
Then Jesus moves on, into what your new life in the Kingdom of heaven looks like. When Jesus has a hold of your life:
You are merciful. You are pure in heart. You are a peace maker… and… the one that I find to be the hardest to wrap my brain around…
you are persecuted.
So lets explore the second half of the beatitudes. Todays beatitude is found in Matthew 5:7 and it says “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
This is the first and ONLY beatitude that GIVES YOU WHAT YOU GIVE.
Asre- (az-ree) - “happiness, as a result of right decisions.”
You get what you give.
This is as close as you are going to find to karma in the bible. You show mercy. Then you are shown mercy. You made the right decision, and that same decision is going to yield you the same reward as the sacrifice that you offered.
So what is mercy?
Mercy is the Greek word eleēmōn (e-lay-ā’-mōan) and its literal definition is to be “actively compassionate.”
It goes beyond what we addressed last week… last week we focused on this hunger… this thirst… almost as if you are trapped inside a box or locked inside a room so desperate to do something but knowing that there is little or in some cases nothing you can do…
But eleēmōn (e-lay-ā’-mōan) says, there is ALWAYS SOMETHING you can do to actively make a difference. Maybe you don’t solve the entire problem, but you do what you can. I heard mercy described this way, the teacher (Ed Dobson) was quoting William Barclay and the way that Barclay explains mercy is essentially that you get into someone’s skin. Not under their skin… but into it. You put yourself in their world so that you can see what they see and feel what they feel.
You put yourself in the center of the need… even if it is not your need and you train yourself to take the action steps to meet those needs not in the way that you think that they should be met, but through the eyes of the person whose needs you are actually meeting.
Here is an example… and this is not actually a need but like, have you everbeen given a gift, and you are so grateful that someone thought of you enough to give you that gift, but when you find out how much that gift cost, knowing how you have other much more tangible and real needs that are going unmet in your family... and so even though its generous, its not really that practical?
And this is not necessarily a good way to think, but you almost start to think, “man, for that much money we could have done ________” and if you aren’t careful you can even start to think, “did they do this for me? or did the do this for them? Because this is so impractical for where we are right now…”
But a person who is merciful will actually see the need through the eyes of the needy… they will actually evaluate, what is it? What will show compassion, and what will actually, actively, meet the need?”
That is the way Jesus operated all the time, and ultimately mercy is one of the things he achieved on the cross. He met our ultimate needs by facing the world through our lens.
Look at Hebrews 2:17-18. This is talking about the ultimate act of mercy, the most perfect image we have of what it means to be merciful:
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
He had to be made like us in every respect. In every way, so that he could truly show us mercy. He had to know what the world looked like through the lens of a person living in it every day. He had to face what we face so that he could give us what we needed. And Jesus will always be our greatest example for everything that we should become.
But mercy is about more than compassion. It is also about justice.
It is about us, desiring justice for the world and yet not implementing justice against those who have done us wrong.
and I put “implementing” justice on the slide… but really, even seeking justice… even desiring Justice for something done to you is an active sign of a lack of mercy. The bible actually says that we should seek justice but not when it pertains to ourselves. When it comes to our own lives, mercy triumphs over justice.
We have said, Grace is getting what you don’t deserve… and mercy is not getting what you do deserve.
Jesus gave us both, as our example.
So if you are merciful toward others, you would not give them what they deserve.
I love what R.T. Kendall says about mercy in his book about the sermon on the mount, and I gave you this quote on the first Sunday when we did the overview of the Beatitudes, but he says: “True graciousness-showing mercy-is letting people off the hook. It is doing what you can do to see they never get caught for what they did to you…. True graciousness is not reminding people of their faults, their failures or their past. It is not even letting on as if you know what they have done.”
Jesus says this at one point, he says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
Jesus doesn’t care about what you give up. I know that is a sacred cow, and everyone loves giving up stuff… but it is completely true. Salvation is not about what you let go of.
He cares about what are becoming. He cares about what you give because what you give, and what you are able to let go of on account of your love for him and for others, is a clear as day window into what you are becoming and have become.
It is not about our sacrifice.
But we go through our entire Christian life priding ourselves on the things that we have given up. Our “sacrifices.” and all the while Jesus is over here thinking, “I gave my entire life away so that you could stop drinking beer?” Or “so you could stop swearing?” Or even “so you could stop sinning”
no.
If you gave up those things for my names sake, that is great, and sometimes necessary for you in your relationship with Jesus but don’t make your Christian existence about those things… put them behind you and move along because Christianity is not about sacrifice it is about Kingdom living… and mercy is Kingdom living.
Don't you see? If your salvation can be watered down to "what you have given up... Or let go of for the sake of the gospel..." Then you haven't really let it go at all. The centrality of your hope is still pointing back to something other than Jesus.
Abandon your sin. Yes. But abandon it and never look back, because living in the kingdom is about what Jesus is doing in you, not about what you gave up doing yourself.
A kingdom person views the world through the lens of “what is the way, in this this moment, that I can live the love of Jesus out for someone else?”
That is Mercy. Through the eyes of those who need it.
And how could we not show mercy to others when Jesus, knowing exactly what we needed, gave that to us at the greatest cost to himself.
You simply can not say that you follow Jesus if your life looks nothing like him.
You can believe that you are under his grace, and I am very careful about how and when I tell someone that they are NOT under the grace of God… because I truly believe that Jesus meets people in their brokenness and if your life never moves from being poor in Spirit to being merciful, that is still between you and God… but there is no way that you can claim to be his disciple if you are not climbing the staircase of the beatitudes. If you have not accepted the grace, been changed by the grace, and then begin learning to live that grace out to others.
But this is one of the few things… mercy toward other people… that when I see it lacking in a person who claims to be a Christian I get very very very concerned for the well being even of their very soul. I believe that Jesus was pretty clear about this.
Turn with me to Matthew 18:21-35. And I know that we have been reading some longer passages this series, but this is EQUIP… it is a bible study… and this one is way shorter than the one that we read last week. So here we go.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
(Note) - The accurate translation here is actually 70x7, and all on the same day for the same sin. So Jesus, before he gives us this parable, he says thatyou should be willing to forgive your brother 490 times in one day for the same sin. But even in our English translations, it should be abundantly clear that what Jesus is getting at here is that there is no limit to how often you forgive. He in no way was saying that when you get to the 69th time, you say to yourself “if it happens once more, I AM DONE!” That would make no sense at all.
23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. (NOTE: I read this in the footnotes of bible gateway this week when I was studying this… and I have heard various explanations for talents but I will share this one with you just to give you a bit of an idea of what was forgiven… bible gateway says that a talent is worth the equivalent of 20 straight years of your day’s wage. So whatever the average day’s wage was, one talent was 20 years of that. I mean, remember in the parable of the talents, one was given 1, another 2 and another 5. And giving someone 5 talents was a HUGE deal… and this guy in this parablejust got forgiven 10,000 of these. That was the first time that I had heard that exact explanation of it, but every explanation I have ever heard has been similar… this is a TON of money) 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
This is one of the most obvious parables that Jesus tells. There is not a ton of room for debating what Jesus is getting at here, at least not much that I have found. Jesus makes it even more clear with his use of 10,000 talents… so much more money than anyone would ever have been able to pay back ever. The point of this parable is this… you have been cleared a debt that you literally had no chance of every paying back. There was no way. It would be impossible. That is what he did on the cross. He cleared you. Pastor Dave always used to tell us that every time we sinned there was like a little calculator adding them up, 1 at a time… pastor Dave said he had somewhere in the millions of sins, but when he accepted Jesus… when he realized that he was poor in Spirit and could not save himself, then Jesus hit the clear button on the calculator. He cleared the debt.
But if you in your heart can not forgive someone else who has done something to you… after every single time that you broke God’s heart, and he still forgave you… then you are telling God, “I learned nothing from this. I am utterly selfish. And not in a “poor in spirit, I realize that my world is only about me and that is wrong” kind of way.
You are selfish. And you are in trouble.
and I think its easy for us to wonder, “Why?”
Why does it matter if I forgive someone else?
I came across this verse in John 20. It is John 20:23. It is after Jesus died, and rose from the dead, and begins appearing to the disciples, and its an incredibly empowering moment in the bible because Jesus comes to these disciples and he says “peace be with you… just as the Father sent me, I am now sending you. (John 20:21)”
He tells them, in the same way I was sent, you are about to be sent.
Then Jesus breaths on the disciples…
and this is what he says:
“Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus literally breaths the spirit into the disciples in that moment… it is similar to what Jesus says when he says that he has given us the keys to the kingdom, which we will one day do a study on that… hopefully soon… but he empowers them with the Holy Spirit… giving them more power than any person had ever had before that moment… and then he says this:
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:23)
Jesus hands us the reigns on this. He tells us that we hold peoples future in our hands to do with it what we will. And as ambassadors of Christ in a Kingdom that so desperately needs him, that seems like a lot of power to give to someone who is as broken as I am.
But that is why being poor in Spirit comes before mercy. Because until you can realize just how much mercy you have already received, you will constantly struggle to offer it to anyone.
———-
and for many of us, it is easy to think, of course I will forgive…
———
until you REALLY get hurt. Until you really have something that happens to you that in your heart you wonder… “maybe it is worth it to not forgive.”
And I know some of us have come to that point already… where you would say “but you don’t know what they did to me!”
your parents abandoned you, your wife cheated on you, your kids won’t talk to you… your best friend betrayed you… This person took advantage of you, this person hurt someone in your family.
We can keep going… and we can find things, one that is worse than the last, and not as bad as the next. Because there are people in our broken world who do really really bad things. And it seems like every time we turn on the news somebody figured out a way to do something even worse. Even more extreme. Even more radical.
It seems like more and more the stories people are telling me of things that they have gone through are getting darker and darker. I am getting less and less surprised by destruction. Less and less surprised by people being used, and hurt, and beaten, and left for dead.
I don’t know what it is for you, and the last thing I want to be, is insensitive to the wounds of your past because those things are very real… but the truth is that they are SO REAL that they can define your future. They have that kind of power if you let them… and if tomorrow is defined by today’s unforgiveness then the days are only going to get darker.
because it is poison.
and in reality, I don’t know what all you have been through, and even if I knew it all, I may still not understand… but I know that most people would think that I have a great life, and I truly believe that I do too, and nothing so incredibly crazy has happened to me… and yet at times I find myself bitter about the dumbest things… not wanting to let go of the dumbest things… and if I have let even the small things poison my life then I can’t even imagine what would have happened had I been through something more dramatic.
Something that I don’t understand.
Something that is so obviously not right.
I know how it easy it is. But it is poison.
I have said this before and I will probably say it for the rest of my life… I am not judge… but from everything I read in the red letters it seems clear to me that “if there is one thing that will keep you separated from the God you think you are serving, it is an unforgiving, unmerciful heart toward someone else.”
The reason I say it this way... "The God you think that you are serving" is because many of us, and often I have to put myself in this category... But we often claim to follow Jesus and believe we are following him and serving Him when in reality our lives look nothing like him. But you have to remember, the first four beatitudes are salvation. It's how you enter, it is how you inherit. And they have almost nothing to do with you being anything and everything to do with Jesus being your source. But the second half of the beatitudes directly address what your life in the kingdom should look like if you are truly a disciple of Jesus. And there is no room for grudges, unforgiveness, or bitterness in the Kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. "But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”
But if you show mercy, then you will be shown mercy.
I read this week that the first debt in the parable of the unforgiving servant was around 600,000 TIMES the value of the second debt.
Jesus has already forgiven us of the greatest debt.
But he is asking us to do the same to our brother, to our neighbor, to our spouses, to our parents, to the stranger who hurt us without even knowing us.
Nothing anybody has done to us can amount to the pain that we caused God. It can't amount to what we put Jesus through. I know that there are some really dark stories, of really bad things. But Jesus died on the cross and declared that your debt has been paid.
Don’t make him lock us up until we can pay every penny… because we all know that there is simply no way that we could ever pay.
There is a blessing waiting for those who walk on the road of forgiveness.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”
John 4:7-39.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
There is this part of all of us, that just long for things to be different. That is what I think of when I think of what it would practically mean to hunger or to thirst, when you aren’t actually talking about food and water.
I think of a void that needs to be filled in our lives, and we look in all sorts of places to find whatever it is that we think will fill us…
Strong’s concordance says of thirst, that it is often used figuratively… for those who are said to thirst who painfully feel their want of, and eagerly long for, those things by which the soul is refreshed, supported, strengthened.
But Jesus is saying that you are blessed, not when you fill that void, which we always try so hard and do…
but you are blessed when you have that void.
When you know that something is not there when it should be.
Have you ever encountered a situation, a problem that is so big and all you can think is that “someone has to do something about that!” and you know that in those moments, that person, in fact, is you… but when you look at your life, and your means, and your abilities, and your capacity, in comparison to this massive injustice right in front of your eyes, you come to the hard reality that “there is not really all that much I can do about this.”
Like when your neighbor is losing their home over a tax bill that is small enough that you should be able to do something, but truthfully you don’t have it yourself. But it just seems so absurd to you that someone who has lived in a house for over a decade and paid tens of thousands of dollars in payments and taxes for the last 15 years is about to lose it over a couple of thousand dollars because for whatever reason, this year, the money ran out.
I want to do something about that! But I just genuinely don’t have the money.
But you know that if someone has invested and invested and given their life to something, it just doesn’t seem right that in a moment they could lose it over only a fraction of what they have already given to it.
and it hits even closer to home when it is a friend. Or a parent.
At the end of our block is Vernor, hwy… a stripe of shops in Southwest Detroit and every year on Cinco De Mayo there is a parade.
Two years ago at the parade, a guy they called “Noodles” was shot and killed at the parade, right there on our street… Of course, today is Cinco De Mayo. and as I was walking to the church tonight, I saw that Noodles friends had made him a memorial on the corner. They spray painted on the abandoned theater on the corner “Noodles Ave.” and they set up a memorial with teddy bears and balloons.
We live on that street. That shooting happened a half a block from where our house is.
It just doesn’t feel like it should be that way.
It doesn’t feel like people should be murdered on the same streets that our children ride their bikes, and so for all of us, we long for a day when things truly are just different because it is painfully obvious that things are not as they should be.
Well the beatitude we are studying today is the 4th beatitude, and it says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)
The Greek word here for righteousness is “dikaiosynē” (pronounced (de-kay-osk-sune-ay) and it means “in a broad sense: the state of him who is as he ought to be”
It is this idea, and its a very big idea, that things are supposed to be a certain way. and because they are not, we hunger and we thirst for them too be. We are not as we should be… and because we are not, we hunger and thirst because we truly do want to be.
When I look at my life, I long for more. I long for a better relationship with my wife and kids, I long for a better relationship with Jesus.
I am hungry for those things. I am thirsty for them.
But what is so beautiful in this moment that we read with the Samaritan woman is that she finds herself thirsty… and about to be filled. She finds herself coming out of her fifth failed marriage, and now is in this relationship with another man. And it is pretty clear where the relationship with the sixth man is going….
The same place as the first five.
and when I say that, I am not saying that her sixth relationship was necessarily going to fail… but I am saying that yet again she was gaging the success of her life on the outcome of the relationship with this man.
Because it was in these relationships that she fed her needs. It was in these relationships that she tried to quench what it was that she was thirsting for, and we have all been there.
But Jesus looks at this broken woman who knew she had a void, and she knew that the first five husbands didn’t fulfill that ultimate longing… and Jesus says to her:
There is a water that truly satisfies.
and its me.
And everything you have longed for will remain a longing until you realize that you are not longing for a man or a woman. You are not longing for relationship with a person. You are not longing for a paycheck. Or financial security.
You are longing for righteousness.
You are longing for peace in the world where it feels like there is no peace. You are longing for things to be the way that they are supposed to be.
And you are longing for your life to be as it is supposed to be because when you look in the mirror you know that its not.
Think about what happens in Luke chapter 18:9-14
“9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Here we have two very opposite types of people. And we see this contrast throughout the entire bible. The first person is religious. He doesn’t thirst for righteousness because everything about his life makes him think that he already has it. He doesn’t thirst for anything!!! So the Pharisee prays and starts thanking God… but he doesn’t thank God for how good God is… The Pharisee thanks God for how good the Pharisee is. He basically says “Thank you that I am not like this loser. I tithe. I give. I fast. I am the man. Thank you that I am the man!”
and then this other person, who is described as a tax collector… he stands back.
He honors the weight of the glory of God so much that he doesn’t even feel worthy to be near it. So he stands in the back and he beats his breast and begs for mercy because he is a sinner.
The man knows that collecting taxes has not filled his void. He is thirsty for something that he can’t achieve on his own.
Think about it. If righteousness is essentially “the way things ought to be” then the person who hungers and thirsts for it has to be the person who knows they aren’t as they ought to be.
It is salvation.
and it takes a person who is poor in spirit to get there. First you have to know you don’t have it on your own, before you can hunger and thirst for what it actually is… If Being poor in spirit is knowing that you aren’t what you should be… then hungering and thirsting for righteousness is the innate and deep desire for God to solve the “poor in spirit” problem in your life. Remember, these are not things we can necessarily attain. They are all forms of brokenness.
Unlike the beatitude we studied last week, “Blessed are the meek,” this particular beatitude is also addressed in Luke’s gospel, again, in a more practical way, and again, it is delivered alongside a woe.
Luke 6:21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
Luke 6:25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.
Simon Tugwell in his book “The beatitudes” makes this immediate observation of the way that Luke puts this particular one… he says this:
“The immediate sense of this is so embarrassingly obvious that it excludes even the possibility of commentary. It is part of the radical upturning of everything announced by our Lord, and summed up in the devastating principle that ‘the last shall be first and the first shall be last.’” (Matt.20:16)
Most of us, myself included, grew up with these beatitudes and we tried to make sense of them. We tried to figure out how this lines up with the life that we wanted to have and we just sort of assume that Jesus came to give us that life. But then we get to things like “blessed are those who mourn” and you start to wonder, “Do I actually want what Jesus is offering?”
Do I want to be hungry now? Or do I want to be full?
It is a counter intuitive Kingdom. And if you are having trouble with it now, on the first four beatitudes, then what will happen when you get to number 8? When “blessed are those who are persecuted for my names sake…”?
The rewards aren’t always imminent. The language is pretty clear:
The first and the last say “Theirs is.” and one of those has to be persecuted to get it.
But the middle six say “They shall.”
Life in the Kingdom of heaven is blessed. But its not blessed because everything goes our way all the time, its blessed because Jesus has something bigger for you… and you have something bigger for our world. You have A way to pick up the broken pieces of our fragmented society because you know what it means to be fragmented yourself. You know what it means to long for what should be, knowing that times are only going to get more and more vile until the day Jesus returns.
But it is your longing that will draw people to Jesus. and if you can’t understand your life in the context of the Kingdom of heaven for any other reason than please understand this… what Jesus did for you, he wants to do for everybody. And your life is supposed to be a testimony for what Jesus is capable of.
He could give you what you want, and sometimes he does. But he died to give you what you need. and that is enough to fill the void.
The Samaritan woman could have left with a thirst that was quenched but she would be thirsty again in no time. But did you notice when we read it the first time, she left thirsty?
She left satisfied with a water that will never run dry… but the bible says that she left her water jar there, at the well.
Jesus promised her something different.
In fact, Jesus gave her something entirely different than what she came for. He didn’t give her what she wanted, plus what we all know that ultimately she needed.
He only gave her living water.
and Jesus treated himself the same way.
He himself lived by it.
When the disciples asked Jesus to eat… they told him he needs to eat something… what does he say?
“I have food that you do not know about.”
and they are like, What the heck? Did Jesus go to a BBQ before this? Did he stop somewhere along the way?
“then he went on to say: ““My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Jesus knew that the longings of man are temporal. They can be quenched, and they can be filled, but they will leave you void again when a little time passes and you have not fulfilled those longings again because the way we fill ourselves only lasts for a moment.. But when he does the work of the Father, and he is reconciling people, and he is loving people, and he is on this pathway to the most gracious act in human history… that was food to Jesus.
And then he begins to talk about a field. and about how everybody sows and reaps… and there is a lot in the bible about this. Jesus has a lot to say about sowing and reaping but what he says here, in regards to eternal life, is so so significant. He has sent you to reap that for which you did not labor.
He wants us to be thirsty. He wants us to be hungry. So that he can fill us.
He came for the Samaritan woman who was about to be on her 6th marriage, and everything about her life didn’t line up with the straight and narrow path that everybody seemed to think was required to receive the grace of God but it was in her thirst that he was able to meet her.
and the bible says that many Samaritans came to Jesus that day. and they believed.
Because a woman who came to a well broken, left it whole. and it spoke volumes to her community because she had never been whole before.
Not only did Jesus know everything about her, but he gave her something new without punishing what he knew that she was.
Because ultimately, she was thirsty.
and she left without water, but she was satisfied.
and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Two weeks ago we talked about “blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” - and we mentioned in our overview message, that the beatitudes kind of build off of each other… so you have to be poor in Spirit to fully understanding why we would mourn, and you certainly would have to be poor in Spirit before you could ever be considered meek which is our topic of discussion tonight.
First… There are a couple of general thoughts on the beatitudes that I want to cover before I get into the specific one today.
We are going to read a scripture in a few minutes that refers to Jesus as the “root of David.” - and you may wonder, what is that all about?
Well Jesus, through Joseph and debatably even through Mary, is a descendant of King David… and a Prophet named Nathan once prophesied to David that someone would come from his seed, a King, that was going to reign forever. and of course we know, that is Jesus. He was referred at times as “The Son of David.”
- what does that have to do with the beatitudes?
Well, first of all, the beatitude that we are going to look at today, which is “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” is a quote of King David… which we will get into in a moment, but King David is the first one to tell us that the meek inherit the earth.
Now, there are all sorts of ministry type of things that people do, it doesn’t have to be teaching or writing… the stories of King David and his leadership are incredible from start to finish... From the time he defeated Goliath to his reign as King.
But it is interesting to note, that David began his written ministry, with these words:
“blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.”
David begins everything, by talking about a type of character that would consider you blessed.
And of course, the second David… the son of David, begins his first sermon by saying “blessed are the poor in Spirit.”
Jesus was a student of the scriptures. He loved the scriptures, he knew them all… he often quoted the strangest passages that you would never understand why he would choose that passage in that moment… but yet it always ties together beautifully.
And when he says “the meek shall inherit the earth” he is quoting the first David.
So lets look at meek.
Now, let me say this before we get much further. This is a very difficult word to understand. The Greek word here is the word “prause” (pra-ouse) - we find another form of that word in Galatians 5 when Paul gives us “The fruit of the Spirit” he uses the word “praotēs” (pra-o-tace), and William Barclay, in his commentary, wrote on this passage in the Fruit of the Spirit, saying that praotēs (pra-o-tace) is the most untranslatable words of all of the fruits of the spirit. A lot of translations translate it as “meekness,” and others go with the more known, “gentleness.”
we went really deep into this word in that message, we talked a lot about Moses who the bible says was “the meekest person who ever lived” and of course we talked about Jesus. And I am not going to talk about Moses today… I am going to start with Jesus, and then we will work our way to you and me.
Some of this may be familiar if you studied the Fruit of the Spirit with us, but the focus today will be more so the context of Jesus words here, in the beatitudes, and what all of it really means for our lives.
If you brought your bibles, you can turn them to Revelation 5:1-10.
“Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”
Okay, so the first thought here may be, we are talking about the beatitudes. We are talking about how Jesus came to this group of diverse people, and he is telling them that if you want to be first you have to be last…
he is telling them that the poor ones and the ones whose hearts are broken are the ones that are blessed… what does this passage in Revelation, about the end of the world, have anything whatsoever to do with the beatitudes?
So there is this scroll. Its like a sealed book and nobody can get it open.
Why?
Because nobody is worthy.
Romans 3:10 says there is non righteous, not even one. It is written in the Psalms (Psalm 13:1-3) that there is none who does good… not even one.
and the sooner you understand this principle the better off you will be.
You.
are.
not.
going.
to.
open.
the scroll.
Nobody in heaven or on earth can open that scroll. There is only one who can open it.
So we have this image in Revelation… John is writing it about this view that he has into heaven… into the future, and he is weeping because he realized, “nobody is good.” nobody has what it takes to open this scroll.
So he weeps.
Just like we talked about last week… I hope you are seeing how this all goes together.
he weeps on behalf of our fallen world that was not able to produce one righteous person. One person worthy of this task…
But then an elder says to him…
weep.
no.
more.
Behold, there is one who can open the scroll.
He is the LION of the tribe of Judah, and he is standing right over there.
Notice the imagery. Notice the wording. Notice the way that this story is being told.
Its brilliant.
So John, he looks over to see this lion. But what does he see?
He doesn’t see a lion… does he?
He sees a lamb.
and we are not talking about a lamb that still has all its functions, that is healthy and thriving and cute looking.
This is not "Mary had a little lamb" - which by the way, last night as I was studying this I realized how funny these lyrics are:
Mary had a little lamb.
His fleece was white was snow.
I felt like I had been kept out of Christianity's best kept secret in this nursery rhyme.
I got on google and and researched its origins because it obviously is a reference to Jesus and his mother... and apparently the theological connections that I made are merely coincidence.... And it really is just about a girl who wanted to take her lamb to school.
But lots of pastors have done sermons on it. It was entertaining to read. Now you can add this sermon to that list and add me to the list of pastors who Christianize everything.
End side note.
So John, expecting to see a lion, instead sees a lamb.
this lamb is standing there as if it had been slain.
This lamb had just had a very bad day.
and IT IS this slaughtered lamb....
that everyone began bowing to, saying “worthy are you who opened the scroll.”
They are singing to the lamb! and they begin explaining why he is worthy.
Because he was slain.
Because his blood was ransomed.
and by this lamb a Kingdom has come.
But it didn’t come because the lion did what lions normally do, and dominate everything.
It came because the lion, fully capable of dominating any situation in every way, instead, made himself a lamb.
Something that was vulnerable.
Something that would not defend itself if it were attacked.
Something gentle.
and that, I believe, is the greatest imagery we get in the bible for “the meekness of Jesus.”
There are all sorts of human interactions that Jesus found himself in, in which he took that same low road… in which he acted meekly. But if I had to explain meekness solely by using the life and death of Jesus and in only a couple of words, it would be those words:
The Lion & The Lamb.
...
The word in the Greek, “praotēs (pra-o-tace), which we translate as gentleness or meekness, comes from the concept of a wild animal that has tamed. Like a horse. When we did our study on the fruit of the Spirit I showed you a picture of my then three year old daughter riding a horse that is probably 50 times her size and weight… a horse that could easily have crushed her if it wanted but it had been trained to restrict its power. So instead it gracefully walked in circles with her on its back. and she rode around totally enthralled not concerned with the power that this creature possesses...
as if SHE had control.
But the thing that is so fascinating about animals like that, when they are tamed, is this… and you have to understand this if you are going to understand this concept. When an animal has been tamed like that, it is not like it is a psychotic rat in a cage dying to get out but is restrained... And so because of its restraints, it doesn't.
No, its instincts are nurturing. Its instincts are loving. Maybe it didn't start that way, but it is now programmed in such a way where it restricts its power and cares for its rider... Or whatever the circumstance may be.
Because just like the other beatitudes, if we go into this thinking, “I am meek if I can just restrain my strength. I can control my power and I can choose to be a certain way…” then you are still living your life in such a way where you are doing something to earn your blessing.
And again, that would put us right back where we started… right back at the law.
There is a much bigger picture than just that… remember this is the most untranslatable of words. Anybody who tells you they understand this perfect is full of it. There is so much to it.
however, in understanding the context of the Greek word that is used here in Matthew, that is where the word comes from.
It is not a weak person.
It is a person who doesn’t use what they do have, be it strength, or ability, or creativity… they don’t leverage their assets in situations where it will get them more at the expense of someone else getting less…
they don’t use those things to get ahead or use those things against people...
....and in fact they often are the ones who end up on the outs… because an evil empire like the Roman government comes in… and entities like that have no problem using their strength to get what they want.
See something was going on in that day that you have to understand if you are going to get the significance of what Jesus is saying here.
Rome had essentially taken over the world. Everything in Eastern civilization, anything that we would now call Europe and Asia, all the land across the pond, they had taken over basically all of it. The Roman armies would go into a place and they would declare that Caesar is Lord, and then they would make everyone in the towns they were taking over make the same confession… that Caesar is Lord. and then they would take their land… they would tax them at incredibly high tax rates, and essentially everybody to one degree or another became a slave to Rome.
So…
take for instance the Jews who were hearing this sermon.
They, for generation after generation had their own laws in place to make sure that they kept their land… because the land in a family was their greatest asset!!!
everybody was given a portion when Israel came into the promised land… it was divided amongst them all.
and so when families began losing their land to one family members bad stewardship or a poor business move, suddenly the next generation in that family had children who were being born into poverty… and instantly we had children starting their lives off in unjust ways… starting off with the deck stacked against them.
so they had something called the year of jubilee every 49 years which was a time that all land was returned to its original owners. This would sound insane to someone today... It probably was just as crazy to them all those years ago. But on Yom Kippur of the 49th year... Or, in more spiritual words: on Yom Kippur in the seventh sabbath year... A trumpet would sound and they would declare Liberty. Everything that had fallen off balance over the last 50 years was leveled.
Because the Jewish culture had all sorts of systems for fighting injustice.
It was incredibly radical and it would take longer than we have to explain it all… but it is incredible.
I believe it is one of the most powerful messages of justice in the entire bible.
It is So incredible that a lot of people wonder if anybody really ever followed through with it. But everyone in that culture AT LEAST understood the principle behind it.
But now we have Rome, coming in from the outside, and basically taking whatever they want.
Doing whatever they want.
Because for every generation until recently, for the Jewish people that Jesus was talking to here, there were systems in place that ensured the earth was divided up appropriately among them.
And suddenly, one of the biggest concerns for them became the very one that Jesus addresses here.
Who inherits the earth?
Because from their perspective, it was looking like Rome would inherit the earth. It looks like the ones who come in with weapons, and who take things by violence, they are the ones who it seems like is getting the earth. The year of jubilee would have meant nothing to a Roman. Hundreds of years in the same family meant nothing to Rome.
A Jewish child being born into injustice meant nothing to a Roman.
What is yours is now theirs, and there is nothing you can do about it.
So to this conquered group of people, many of whom had nothing left, hearing this would have been huge for them. Who inherits the earth?
The meek inherit the earth.
Now, when Jesus says this, he was hitting on one of those hot buttons in that culture… but he did not just pull the concept out of nowhere.
He is quoting Psalm 37:11. And we are going to read that now, and everything leading up to verse 11. This is a Psalm of David:
1 Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
be not envious of wrongdoers!
2 For they will soon fade like the grass
and wither like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your justice as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!
8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
10 In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;
though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
11 But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.
Now, by now you have heard me say this like a thousand times so you know, the New Testament was written in Greek. The old testament was written in Hebrew. We already covered the Greek... and in Hebrew, the word “meek” has a different meaning, but with a similar connotation.
Nothing about a tamed animal in Hebrew.." To my knowledge.
The word meek is the Hebrew word “`anav” and it is a form of the word anawin (ann-a-weem) and the thing that is particularly fascinating about the word anawin (ann-a-weem) is:
The anawin (ann-a-weem) were actually a group of people. It was a word used to describe a group of people who were oppressed in a very strange and unjust way. They lacked social status, they lacked money. They absolutely lacked power… they quite frankly, were people who had no voice.
Because one way or another it was taken from them.
So here at the mountain we have this group of people, many of whom, because of the Roman empire, they and their families had become like the anawin.
No voice. No way to get what was rightfully theirs, back.
Owning nothing.
These are People who knew something about the way the world had been divided up in the past...
people who knew the way things were going now… but also, like we talked about on Sunday, these were also people who knew the scriptures.
So for Jesus to quote from the last part of the section we just read..., the listeners would have immediately gone the words of David. and as we just read a moment ago, before David gives us this quotable verse that Jesus uses in the beatitudes, he first takes ten verses to describe the very things that the people in that day were going through.
David starts by saying “fret not!”
Do not be afraid. Don’t worry about this.
There are people in this world who are going to abuse you. They are going to take advantage of you. They are going to use their power to overpower you.
There are so many injustices that happen in society and correct me if I am wrong… but I can’t think of any injustices that are about anything other than a misuse of power to some degree.
Perhaps you can point some out to me if you think of any... But most things in the nature of injustice rise and fall on either someone doing something to get ahead, or someone ignoring something to keep themselves ahead.
But what David is saying here is so significant.
He is saying, that yes, the world is totally broken...
But this world is also dying. The world itself as it is right now, will one day be over and God will establish a new Kingdom that is still to come, right in place of the old one. Right here on this earth.
and there are things in life that are eternal, and there are things that are fading... There are things that will not survive when Jesus comes back in all of his glory and establishes a new earth.
Wickedness will not endure forever. It will be cut off.
Evildoers will be cut off… the wicked will be no more.
They are not going to survive what is coming.
But you will.
…
verse 7 is very telling:
7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!
Don’t get all worked up when people prosper by looking out for themselves. Because they have figured out a system that works in this world… and maybe you haven’t… but maybe you are better for it.
Because they have a system figured out, that gives them what they want. They have the worlds goods… but you can’t take anything when you go.
and none of those things are going to survive.
Injustice won’t survive.
Selfishness won’t survive.
Their armies and their weapons and their violence will not survive.
The people who are building armies and taking over the earth and walking over all sorts of “entire groups of people” so that they can feel more powerful…….. will… not… survive.
Because in the scope of eternity that is all that the Romans were, and that is all those types of people are now.
Blips. Vapors. Here today. Gone tomorrow.
Rome doesn’t control everything anymore. and the ones who were a part of those armies have been dead for 2,000 years.
They are forgotten.
All that they achieved was a momentary feeling of power and whether they held it or not during their time on our earth, it has been taken from them now and they will never see it again.
But the meek will inherit the earth.
The ones who could have fought back, but they didn’t.
There are things that will last forever and there are things that will die.
Injustice will one day seise to be.
While righteousness will shine forever.
We have said this many times throughout the series already, but the sermon on the mount is all about a Kingdom. Really, it is all about two kingdoms.
The Red Letter City now.
and the Red Letter City that is to come.
The Kingdom of heaven that has invaded earth, here and now, that we are all a part of here, and now… that we are the salt and light of, here and now… the message bearers of the hope of the world, here and now…
and then there is another message in there, about a Kingdom that is to come.
And we don’t want to get to get so caught up on the Kingdom that is coming in the end, when there is a new heaven and a new earth, that we miss the moments that are right in front of us here on earth.
Its very easy to work your whole life for a result and miss the entire journey. Miss things like mourning. and mercy. and being poor in Spirit.
But we mustn't ignore the future either, because it is still our blessed hope.
Guys, living the beatitudes means living Kingdom minded lives knowing that some of the blessings are yours, now. and others are still to come.
This particular promise is a big one. But it is a promise of something that is to come.
Inherit is to come. You don’t have it yet.
It is future tense.
To inherit something, someone has to die.
A person can do nothing to get an inheritance. Nothing about what they receive is up to them. Thus even more grounds for our need to be poor in Spirit.
Do you know that the word poor used in the beatitudes, when Jesus says “poor in Spirit” in the first beatitude - it is not just poor, as if you have no money, or things are really tight.
It is actually poor as in a beggar.
As in someone who everything in their life is provided to them by the generosity of others. As in someone who literally can not survive without intervention.
Now think about this third beatitude. The meek shall inherit.
A person who gets an inheritance does nothing for it.
After they receive it, they must now become a steward of it, or else they will end up right where they started… but an inheritance is one of the very very very few financial occurrences that could literally change your entire life in the blink of an eye.
You could go from having nothing, to having everything, in one moment.
but the person dying has to deem you worthy of their estate.
The person dying has to deem you qualified to take care of what is being left.
The entire decision is on the person who is leaving this earth and is leaving what is theirs in it, to you.
…
And Jesus, the slain lamb… the only one who can open the scroll, God himself... has said that the ones who get the earth are the meek.
The ones who are okay living on the bottom even though some of them probably could be on the top if they wanted.
and really What it all comes down to is pride and humility.
Humility... or humbleness means that you recognize WHERE your strength comes from. You realize that you have all the power in the world because you have the God of the universe on your side and fighting your battles for you…
but you also understand that the along with that power comes the responsibility to both live and act like Jesus does.
Let me give you an example of not doing this.
In Luke 9:51-56, Jesus and his disciples went into a Samaritan village and when they got there, nobody received him. He sent messengers ahead to let them know he was coming so that they could prepare, and nobody in this little village cared… so then James and John asked Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”
and the bible says that he turned and rebuked them.
Because they had the power… but they didn’t look like their Rabbi in that moment. Jesus would never have done anything like that.
He took the rejection from that town and he moved on. And as he was moving on, he had to step back into that rejection when the disciples didn’t want to let it go quietly.
He rebuked them and moved on.
Its not about being weak, its about being LAST.
Its not about being passive. You have to hear this…
......
Its about standing up at the right time while remaining seated.
and I know you are wondering, how do you do that?
and I wish it were simple… but its not.
R.T. Kendall says of the beatitudes… that meekness is the crown jewel of them all,
but there is a complicated issue to that and its this: If you have achieved this… if you have achieved being meek, you made it.
You are there.
But if you think you made it, then you haven’t achieved it yet.
The reason I am wording things in sort of weird, paradox like ways today is because this is a paradox. It is absent of all sound reasoning to our human, Greek oriented minds, and yet it produces something in you that actually works.
Really, all of the beatitudes, are probably the biggest paradox in the whole bible.
what if we put it this way?
A meek person has the ability to fight an injustice without starting a war.
Again, in our broken world, that seems like a paradox.
But The idea is that You do not reject the notion that something must be done to right the wrongs in our world."... but a “meek” person can solve a problem without creating another one for someone else.
Kingdom people are not passive people, they are broken people... who are not at war with this world but are here to bring the love and peace of Jesus to it.
you are not looking for a fight and you are certainly not looking out for your best interest.
Jesus tells us in another place in the sermon on the mount... A little beatitudes application: “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” (Matt:5:39-40)
and people criticize the literal reading of this passage saying this is pacifism but I don’t call it pacifism I call it brokenness.
By now, you know your own brokenness. You know what your sin cost. You know what it means to be poor in Spirit. And when you think about what your sin cost, and the brokenness in your life, and someone else does something evil to you… at some point you need to just realize that it is still just brokenness.
Its their brokenness. And it looks just like yours.
And when you look someone else in the eye who has done something wrong to you, you should know, that if you somehow got a glimpse into the darkest places of their heart, it would be shattered into a million pieces just like yours is.
Our war is not with people, our war is for people.
and we stand for people. But we don’t stand against them.
and the meek understand that.
And to most of the world they probably look like pansies… but to me, they look like followers of Jesus.
They look like the lion, who made himself a lamb and told the broken world that was sick of being walked on…
to stay the way you are,
Which is an obvious venture from "change everything now. No, to these people, in this situation, he tells them that everything bad that has happened is for your benefit.
because in the end, its all going to be yours:
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
We are back on the beatitudes tonight. I really enjoyed last week, and the conversations that it started and the conversations that continued throughout the week about it. For those of you who weren’t here last week, we are trying something new. What we are doing is I am giving a message on one beatitude each week, and then we are taking some time as a church community to sort of just dive into it together… ask questions, see where the conversation goes.
So this week, we are looking at the second beatitude. And this is what it says:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
Now I mentioned this when we did our overview message, and I just want to recap this before we get into anything much deeper, but James epistle begins by saying:
“consider it a joy when various trials come your way…” because it produces something in you… something that you simply can not produce on your own.
But like we said, that can be very hard pill to swallow when you are living in a moment of disbelief.
When something happens that has no explanation.
I remember I did a funeral here a few months ago for a 33 year old woman who died the night before Thanksgiving. Life was just taken away far far far to soon. and I had never done anything like that before, and didn’t know much going in, but the one thing that I knew going into that moment was this:
“There are no words.”
Do I believe that the family going through this tragedy will have something produced in them through it, yes. Absolutely.
Did I say that to them that day? No. Of course not.
I mourned with them. Because that is what Paul says to do. (Romans 12:15)
A friend of mine had a younger sister who got mixed up in some pretty messed up things… she used a lot of drugs, and somehow she got on the bad side of one of the dealers… I don’t know if it was over a payment, or another issue, but what they believe happened was this drug deal gave my friends sister some sort of a bad dose of the drug that she was taking…
and it killed her.
Basically, she was murdered.
and I remember going up to my friend at the funeral, and just saying to her “I don’t know what to say to you right now.”
and she said to me, “that is because there are no words.”
she knew going into that day, that nobody was going to say anything that would actually make the situation any better. No words would help.
But no words were necessary. All she needed were people who would mourn with her.
So, we mourned with her.
But at the same time, I believe with all of my heart a couple of things… in fact I have discovered them first hand.
The more that comes against your life, that you endure… not only the greater the testimony you will have… but also, I truly believe… the greater the anointing you will have.
If God knows that you still trust him even when everything is broken then he will know that he can trust you even when things are good.
But on the flip side of that… the more God has entrusted to me, I have found, the more has come against my life. The more trials that have come against my family, against my marriage, against my health.
Because we have a real enemy in this world. And he is crafty. And he does all sorts of things that leave people devastated.
and not only that but we live in a broken world. A world where strength is the goal, and happiness is the goal, and success is the goal.
and when things like tragedy get in the way of those goals… you begin to evaluate real quick just how much value it all actually has.
We will say this a few times today, but really, “blessed are those who mourn” is a continuation of “blessed are those who are poor in Spirit…” it is like a staircase that you climb.
and you may think, “well, based on your description of poor in Spirit… I don’t see how mourning… which is something so physical… so present in our lives… How that could be like being poor in Spirit?”
Here is how:
Mourning instinctively forces you to take off your mask.
It forces truth.
Let me explain.
So much of our lives are an act. We all know that. The literally definition of a hypocrite is a stage actor… someone who wears a mask. We talked about this before and will go pretty deep into it a few Sunday’s from now…
but a hypocrite is not necessarily someone who says one thing and does another (though that sometimes is the case), a hypocrite is someone who acts. Its someone that you never really see the “real them.”
but in life, so often, We put on a show for our public, but when a true tragedy actually hits home… the lights go out. The curtain falls, and the show is over.
Anyone around you in those moments has a backstage pass to your life.
and you need those people in those moments. Of course.
but When you find out that you lost a loved one, or you find out someone you care about is really sick, or was in an accident… or you find out that you are really sick…
You don’t care about what everyone else thinks. It literally does not matter anymore.
Something happens in you. Something similar to what happens when we are poor in Spirit. When we finally realize that we are broken on our own and only Jesus can fix us, that reality changes us.
and when you are met with a situation that reminds you just how broken our world is… suddenly there is no value in trying to impress it anymore.
What does an impression gain you anyway?
Nothing.
Its not natural to be accepted without truly being known… and so even a person who has used the crutch of a mask likely will return to reality in moments of brokenness.
The natural posture of a broken person is to mourn.
and “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
Luke’s gospel records it this way,
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” (Luke 6:21)
and again, in Luke, Jesus gives us a set of woes to go right along with the set of blessed’s… and this is VERY interesting. He says in Luke 6:25 “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”
and this is when something incredibly practical suddenly gets incredibly spiritual.
It is strange, at least for me, when I look at the first beatitude, I feel like Matthew spiritualizes it.. poor in Spirit… while Luke brings it back to earth by saying “blessed are those who are poor, NOW.” But in some ways it switches on this beatitude.
Even though Luke says “mourn now” and “laugh now” something about this just has a spiritual tone to it that can’t be ignored.
this may sound a bit strange when we first read it… like it is bad to have laughter now, when obviously that can’t be the case…
Laughter is important. I had a friend named Drew, he was without a doubt the closest friend that I had who is no longer living. He died when he was, I believe 27 or 28… but one of the strongest memories I have of him is laughter.
He was one of those people who would laugh at his own laughter. He would begin to laugh at something, and then would find himself laughing so hard that it would cause him to laugh more.
and of course, everyone around him would laugh at how much he was laughing at himself.
Laughter is a symbol of joy. and one with a lot of history.
The story or Abraham and Sarah and the promise God gave to them to have a child culminated at laughter. Sarah was barren. She couldn’t have children and that was the desire of her heart. It was all she ever wanted. and instead for years she watched as all her friends had kids and she had none, eventually her own husband had a son with their maidservant, because that is what humans do… they get a promise from God, and they think that God needs our help to see that promise through.
So Sarah lived a very dark and depressing life. She grew bitter at Hagar, bitter at Abraham, bitter at God. The literal translation for what happened to Sarah’s heart after it was broken again and again by disappointment was this, “she lost her wonder.”
But when God finally showed up and finally fulfilled his promise, Sarah bore Abraham a son, and she named him Isaac, which meant “laughter.” Saying, “God has brought me laughter. Another way of putting it was,
God has restored my wonder.”
Laughter is a good thing.
It is hope in the midst of a hopeless situation.
It is a child in the barren womb.
The whole message of the sermon on the mount is a hopeful one… it is about how this new kingdom functions right in the midst of the current Kingdom we live in… the whole thing, for us, is about what our lives should look like here, in Detroit, while being citizens of the Kingdom of heaven. And if we are going to be the salt and the light of the world as we talked about last week, obviously we must be carriers of the joy that comes with the message of Hope.
Jesus is not saying that we should always be sad in this earth and if we are sad now, then we will be comforted later.
No. We are the light of the world.
Lights are bright. They illuminate things… They illuminate life.
So what is this saying?
James sheds a little light onto it. If you were here when we did our introduction to the beatitudes a couple of Sundays ago, you may remember me telling you guys that a lot of people believe that the book of James, written by Jesus’ little brother James, is really an interpretation, or in some ways an exposition, of the sermon on the mount. Well James says in 4:6-10 -
“But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
I think that the most revealing words in this whole passage is when James tells us to “Cleanse your hands, you sinners.”
If you resist the devil, he will flee from you. But when we live as if our sin costs nothing then we are distancing ourselves from the gospel. Because though grace is a free gift it did not come cheap.
Look at the beginning, yes, God gives more grace, but who does he give it to? The humble. He opposes the proud. He opposes the ones who exalt themselves on account of their own actions or their achievements. It is to the person who has created a life that they have justified by their deeds that James is saying “you need to mourn.”
It is time to acknowledge, this world is broken, and so are you.
Humble yourselves… Make yourself meek. and let him exalt you.
This is an upside down kingdom! The first are last. The last are first. The ones who laugh when they should be mourning have received their reward… but those who mourn will be comforted!
Will be.
Remember last week when we talked about how some old testament prophecies Jesus kind of quietly fulfilled, but some he made very clear that he was the fulfillment of? And of course Isaiah 61 was one of those because in Luke 4 he gets up, he opens the scroll to Isaiah 61, and he begins to read. and he reads: (Luke 4:18-20)
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
But what is so significant here is where he rolls up the scroll. And I think I showed you this the first sermon I ever preached as pastor here… but this brings light to the way that Luke’s gospel presents this beatitude.
Because Jesus in this moment read only half of that scripture.
In fact, the way that we break up scriptures into chapters and verses… Jesus literally cut it off mid verse!
This is what Isaiah says in 61:1-2
“61 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
Now… it is incredibly important to notice that Jesus stopped reading BEFORE the day of vengeance of our God… Where Isaiah put a comma, Jesus put a period.
Right after Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.
and then he sat down, and said, like we talked about last week…
“I fulfilled this.”
Because Jesus, in fulfilling this amazing prophecy, he has ushered in a new era… the age of grace.
The year of the Lord’s favor.
Because it is not the day of vengeance of our God.
Is that day coming? Absolutely! but it is not here now.
You see, everything in the entire bible is about Jesus Christ. Every prophecy is about him, really, every story is about him.
And some of the prophecies he already fulfilled, and some of the prophecies he is yet to fulfill. And the second half of Isaiah 61:2, as he made it abundantly clear when he rolled up that scroll… he has not fulfilled yet.
and everybody in that crowd, their eyes were fixed on him because every single one of them knew that verse… they knew it. They knew he didn’t finish it.
First of all, they couldn’t believe that he was claiming to be the fulfillment of it,
but what had to have been an even bigger shock to them was the realization that the fulfillment was going to come in stages.
So Jesus has ushered in the year of favor… the age of grace… the definition of grace is “unmerited favor”
and that is what Jesus has come with. But what hasn’t happened yet is the day of vengeance, but on the flip side of that, what also hasn’t happened on the grand scale yet, is comfort to all who mourn.
I believe with all of my heart, that because this particular beatitude speaks of an ULTIMATE comfort that is still to come… and comfort is so crucial to healing… that is the reason that so much was written for how we comfort each other. How we mourn with those who mourn. How to the weak are are supposed to become weak… how when two of us stand together God answers our prayers.
It is also one of the many functions of the Holy Spirit. He is known as “the great comforter” and will bring to your mind the life giving words of Jesus when everything else seems to be falling apart.
I also believe that is the reason why the bible does speak so highly of suffering in this life… because of what it produces in this life. Because there is a reward for perseverance, and it gives people a reason to continue when everything in them wants to quite.
Now… this beatitude, the second beatitude…
this is in a lot of ways an extension of Matthew 5:3, blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”
Mourning is a part of being poor in Spirit.
Acknowledging and mourning over the broken person you are and the broken world we live in is certainly an attribute of being poor in spirit… of submitting to the reality that nothing is even fixable apart from Jesus Christ.
So mourning is spiritual.
But it also is incredibly real. Which makes the whole thing extremely extremely complicated because there is this constant flow between what is practical and how you care for a person, and right alongside of it there is a spiritual side to this, because everything is spiritual. And everything broken in our world has a cause and we can’t ignore that.
Because not everything that happens to you is on account of your sin. Not everything broken that happens is done in a reaction to something that you did yourself.
But… everything broken that happens is on ACCOUNT OF SIN.
Of the sin of man. Of the fall of man that goes all the way back to the garden.
and the fact that God can take something broken, that in reality, is broken because in a general way man turned its back on God… and he can use that broken thing to produce something healthy in you, like what James 1:2 says, something that at the end of the trial and time of growth leaves you perfect and complete and lacking nothing as it says.
That in and of itself is grace.
Let me read to you one of the verses that I have in my life at times taken great comfort in… yet at the same time guys, I find it to be totally disturbing that it is in the bible at all. And in one of the next couple of series we do on Sundays, we will study this more. But look at what the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 5:10 -
“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.”
How great to know that Christ has a plan to personally restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us, but it begs an important question:
The word Peter uses here that is translated as establish is the word themelioō, which means to lay the foundation or to make stable. It's the same word that the writer of Hebrews (1:10) uses when saying "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning"
So for reasons beyond any humans capacity to understand, in the same way that God laid the foundation of the earth, our foundation is built on the moments that we wish were never a part of our lives in the first place. Why would it be this way? Why is it that before Jesus can lay a foundation and make us stable, we first have to suffer for a little while? Why build a foundation on suffering?
ponder that for a moment. we will get back to it.
but I really believe, one of the reasons mourning now can be a blessing, now, is it means that you feel things. You can’t lose the significance of a moment that you have felt deep in your soul.
James tells us (James 4:14) that our lives are like a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Hebrews says this and it is so powerful, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
There are things in our lives that harden us. That we can grow numb to. and we don't have a lot of time on this earth but when we are here we need to make sure that we understand that every moment matters… the hard times matter. Mourning definitely matters. Mourning grounds us. It causes us to not whisk through life but it causes us to constantly re-evaluate it.
When people fail to mourn, it is normally because they are trying to ignore the fact that life is temporary, that mortality is a reality… and if we acknowledge it then it makes it real.
So sometimes people avoid a mourning posture but in doing so we miss out on a very real part of being human. and typically there comes a moment in a persons life who has lived like that, when eventually it all comes out.
and it should.
Feeling things matters. It shapes us. Mourning matters. It shapes our foundation as Peter says, because the reality is that everything we believe and live for is built off of a foundation of suffering.
Jesus Christ suffered. He chose to suffer, so that we could boldly approach the throne of grace in our suffering (Hebrews 4:16).
So that we could be healed by his stripes (Isaiah 53:5).
I want to share with you a moment that I think often is lost in the story of Jesus’ Crucifixion. Because it is one of other times besides the beatitudes when Jesus sheds a little light on mourning.
and you have to understand the context of this moment… the significance of what is happening here when he says what he says.
See Jesus is walking toward his death. Simon of Cyrene was just seized and was carrying the cross of Christ and as Jesus is heading toward his death… it is only moments away now… the crowd had already yelled “take him away.”
They had already yelled “crucify him.”
He was betrayed by one of his best friends and then an entire group of people who he had for years just loved, now turned their back on him. His heart had of have been hurting so bad, and that is when we pick up in Luke 23:26-31 -
The Crucifixion
26 And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. 27 And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. 28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ (side note - I used to know a girl like this… I worked at a restaurant with a girl who always said she would never have children. She loves children, but she refuses to bring children into this world because of how screwed up it all is… and she is not even a Christian. There are a lot of people like that.) 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
First of all, this is amazing because Jesus here quotes a verse from Hosea, he quotes Hosea 10:8. And this passage of Hosea is about “the day ofvengeance of our God” this is talking about judgment day.
but Jesus tells them to not weep for him.
He is on a mission. He already wrapped his mind around this thing, and he knew it had to happen. But he also knew what it would accomplish.
The problem is, people are weeping for him not realizing that they put him there. Not realizing that it is their sin that he was dying for.
Because of this one act, the sins of the world that had put him there, could be forgiven.
Because of this one act, pain and suffering would be met with comfort. So he tells these women:
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
Weep for the state of our world… because it is getting so bad when you will envy the ones who never had children. Because who wants to bring children into a world that is going to kill them?
And then he says “For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Most commentators agree on what he is saying, though it is obviously very abstract and certainly should cause some curiosity.
See when you are starting a fire, you want to use dry wood. Not green wood. Dry wood catches fire much easier. The green wood obviously is referencing Jesus, and most believe the dry wood to mean the world. The people who are so broken apart from Jesus. And Jesus is saying that if this is the fate of the only man who was ever innocent, what is going to become of all the guilty?
Theophylact was one of those early commentators, who lived in the early 1100s and he said this as a summary of this verse.
“If they do these things in me, fruitful, always green, undying through the Divinity, what will they do to you, fruitless, and deprived of all life-giving righteousness?”
The world is falling apart. And judgment is coming.
Luckily for Christians… for followers of the way… for people who are poor in spirit…
Jesus was judged for us.
But when we look at the state of ourselves… and we look at the state of our world… how could we do anything but weep?
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
Weep for the state of our world…
Because we live in a society where some women can’t get pregnant and whose bodies can’t carry a child when it is the only thing in the world that they desire… while others don’t want the children that they do have.
Weep. Because many children in our city are raising themselves.
We went to the school across the street on Wednesday and spent some time in a classroom with these amazing kids… and they were so ecstatic to have visitors. You could literally see the look on some of their faces, as we listened to them… the incredible joy that someone actually cares about what they have to say enough to show up at their school in the middle of the day. It was so obvious that for so many, that was not normal.
Weep. because our society makes it easier to have an abortion than it does to adopt a baby into a loving home.
Weep. Because the love of Jesus cost him his life. But don’t weep for him. Weep for us who put him there.
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
and for the world we are raising them in that ignores the needs. And selfishly takes from whomever it desires to achieve its means. Weep, for a lopsided system that will never get better until Jesus returns. Weep for the 663 million people who live every day without clean drinking water, including some in our own backyard, weep for orphans, and the widows, and the countless innocent lives taken in religious wars with no end.
Because if you can’t mourn for the injustice that has a face, then you will never mourn for your own sin which can masquerade itself as all sorts of justifiable things.
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
Because they are being raised in a place where we call evil good, and good evil.
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
Because the decisions that you’ve made are haunting you. They are keeping you awake at night. The things that happened years ago are still fresh in your mind. But Jesus can free you of that if you can just approach the throne of grace poor in Spirit.
Because even in the midst of this dark and evil Kingdom, there is a new Kingdom that Jesus has invited us all to be a part of. No matter how dark your past, no matter how deep your wounds.
and weeping… true weeping, is a sign of being poor in spirit. of dependency on the only one who can make you whole.
Weep. Because Jesus wants to comfort you.
but you can’t be comforted if you don’t feel. Weeping is an absolute sign that there is life in your heart. That their is blood in your veins and that there is hope for your future… because we haven’t grown calloused to wrong. We haven’t grown numb to sin. We haven’t gotten used to disappointment.
And we know enough to know when something is just not right.
We know that the world is supposed to be a very different way than the way than it is.
Weep for yourself. Weep for your children.
Weep for the future.
Weep, because Jesus meets us in the broken places of our hearts,
and he tells us:
“Blessed are those who mourn, (another way to put it is approved by God are those who mourn… and even crazier way to say would be HAPPY are those who mourn…)
for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
We started a new series on Sunday called “Red Letter City” and the first thing that I wanted to explain to you guys was that when I say “Red Letter City” I am not referencing our city. I am not referring to Detroit, per-say. Even though I love Detroit and I am praying for it to become a City that lives and functions according to the red letters… which are the words of Jesus in the bible. Most bibles separate the words of Jesus from the rest of the bible by making the letters red. And we are studying a section of the bible that is basically red the entire time, which is the sermon on the mount.
And this sermon is all about the message of the Kingdom of Heaven, which as we said on Sunday, is what we mean when we say “Red Letter City.”
Jesus really began his ministry, after John baptized him, by coming and preaching a message saying “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” it is here, now. and when we say “Red Letter City” we are referring to the Kingdom of heaven, which has come to us right in the midst of the broken city we live in.
We said that it is “a city in a city.”
Well, if the Red Letter City is a city in a city, then this section we are diving into for the next eight weeks here at Equip about the beatitudes would be “a series in a series.”
Each week we are going to dive into one of the beatitudes at a time.
So, typically, when I teach a sermon, I will, at the start, read a passage from the bible, and then basically the message will be me, relating that passage to you, in real life terms. I will try and give you context… I will try and explain where it came from or what was going on in that time, and then we try and always make it applicable to our real lives.
That is essentially what Jesus does with the sermon on the mount. The beatitudes are his text. His begins with all of these radical thoughts that when you first read them, you are blown away by them. and then he takes the rest of this sermon to show us what this looks like in real life… what this looks like in our lives. And we are going to really explore that basically all the way through the summer in our series on the Sermon on the mount… but here, we are going to dive into specifically what he is saying on each of these eight beatitudes, the type of people he is describing… why it matters who he was talking to, and why these things matter in our lives.
On Tuesday at our monthly dinner that we have been hosting at our house, I asked Alyssa if her and Jace were going to make it tonight for this series and she said, “I will BE having a good ATTITUDE at work while I miss it.”
and I laughed… but there is something significant about realizing that these are things that we are all supposed to be. Its not just something that we put on a wall and read sometimes as we think about how other people are blessed. But the thing that is so complicated about the beatitudes is they are things we should be… but once you are actually trying to “Be” them… it is a pretty good sign that you are not.
We have to be them without working to be. We are not trying to attain poor in spirit. We are not trying to attain meekness.
Today we are focusing on the first beatitude. Matthew’s gospel (5:3) records it like this, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”
Luke’s gospel (6:20) says it a little differently. He says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
Luke leaves out the in spirit part, and there is significance to that.
He also couples the “blessed’s” with a series of woes… and he says (Luke 6:24) “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
We kind of ended the sermon on Sunday on this point… that if you read back just a little ways in Matthew you realize that Jesus is with a giant crowd, and then he goes on the mountain with his disciples and he preaches the sermon, and the disciples have a front row seat but the masses are all within earshot of Jesus… and all of the people who had been following him were the types of people that Jesus was describing. They were the poor, they were the broken, they were the ones who mourned.
So Jesus tells us in Luke “blessed are the poor”
and he tells us in Matthew “blessed are the poor in Spirit.”
and I believe there is significance to that.
Because before you can really understand what it means to be poor in spirit, first you have to understand what it means to be poor.
What does it mean to be poor?
It means that the things the world holds dear, you do not possess.
You don’t have it. You don’t have anything of value.
The things that people in Detroit value… you don’t have those things. Or you have very little of those things. It goes so far beyond just having money in the bank.
But the bible speaks of being poor as an injustice.
A problem that needs to be solved, by God’s people, because it sheds some light onto the injustice that is poverty.
Look at what Solomon says.
Proverbs 19:6-8 says “Many seek the favor of a generous man,
and everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts.
7 All a poor man’s brothers hate him;
how much more do his friends go far from him!
He pursues them with words, but does not have them.
Solomon in all of his wisdom is pointing out to us a never ending cycle of injustice.
another way to translate poor in the old testament is the word “oppressed.”
Because he is poor, people don't want to be around him…
because he has nothing that is of benefit to them they distance themselves from him, and because they distance themselves from him he can never offer them anything. He can never contribute to society in a positive way.
Again, in his brilliant wisdom Solomon says in Proverbs 13:23: “The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.”
Because he is poor, what little he does have is taken from him.
Not because it is fair. and not because that is what Jesus wants…
but because The broken systems of our world have set this person up to fail, and we marginalize him even more because of his failure.
If you are poor… poor in the way the bible describes… maybe you have a little, but even what little you do have will be taken from you. At any moment the “powers that be” could strip you of all you have and there is nothing that you can do about it.
Poor in our society is an injustice whether we believe it or not.
I am not saying that if one person refuses to work and has nothing because of it… that is not justice… that makes no sense. The bible has plenty to say about being lazy. It has plenty to say about getting off of your butt and working for a your wage and for taking care of your family.
But has even more to say about about the people who have, not taking care of the poor.
and its not just saying the rich should do it. Its not just a Robin Hood message. Jesus says to all of us, “to give to those who ask.”
Deuteronomy tells us that there will never cease to be poor people in the land… and that we should constantly be giving to them open handedly until their needs are met.
Its one thing to do something… to give a little and contribute to being a part of a solution, and it is a different thing entirely to straight up just be the solution.
Taking care of the poor… It is something that we have to do. It is not really listed as an option. Its something that we have to do. and I wonder if maybe it has something to do with that fact that as we become compassionate toward other peoples brokenness, we begin to realize that their brokenness is not really all that different from our brokenness.
Maybe to them it looks like dollars and cents, and maybe it doesn’t look like that to you… but when you put yourself in someone else's world and you begin to live your life in a compassionate way, its easy to see that the stories you are helping to make better are not all that much different from your own story.
So the bible commands us… it commands us, all the way back to the very beginning, with the Torah, to be the solution to this problem. But of course, that task is so much bigger than our brokenness…
so the prophets started coming along and they start prophesying of a Messiah who was coming. Isaiah calls him “the suffering servant.” and he tells us over and over and over again how this suffering servant is going to bring the justice that we have failed to bring in our world.
And in one of the most known prophecies in all of the bible, Isaiah declares that this suffering servant is coming and will bring good news to the poor. (Isaiah 61)
and of course we know Jesus came, and unlike some of the prophecies that he kind of, “quietly fulfilled” - he made it obvious that he was the fulfilling of the suffering servant prophecy in Isaiah 61 because in Luke 4 he reads it. He reads the portion of the prophecy that he had fulfilled, he rolled the scroll back up, and he sat down.
and then he said “Today, I fulfilled this.”
(JSV)
Jesus has come, and with Him has come an upside down Kingdom. there is good news for the poor… and what is the good news he brings to the poor?
they are blessed.
In fact, they are so blessed, that the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
The least expectant people on the planet to ever be called blessed because everything that the world considered to be valuable they possessed non of.
and the crowds he was drawing, they grew and they grew… because this guy was bringing hope to people who honestly and genuinely believed that they had none.
Guys, the reason that the gospel tends to be received so well by the poor as opposed to the rich is because the poor doesn’t have the merit.
They know enough to know that whatever they do have, it was a gift.
The bible tells us it is harder for the wealthy to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, in fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a person who is rich to enter into the Kingdom of heaven… but why?
It all comes down to grace and works.
Religious people love works because they think they have earned something. But if we live our lives thinking we can earn heaven, or earn the favor of God in our lives, then we will adopt a mindset that God owes us those things, or he owes us something else. because of how we performed.
But because in all reality the bible tells us that apart from Jesus there is none righteous, not even one… SO we have to rely on grace.
And because we are only saved by grace, it is flipped.
God owes us nothing, but we owe him everything.
And no, we are not saved by our performance or even necessarily by our obedience to giving God what we owe him… but because salvation is a gift of grace, it is us we owe God.
and God wants our lives. He wants people who will serve him, who will love him. Who will be his vessels. Who will seek the gifts of the Spirit and make his name evident in our world through them… who will live their lives with an outflow of the fruit of the spirit….
There is an expectation that God can put on your life because of grace.
Its a free gift. He didn’t owe us, we owe him!
Don’t cheapen the grace of God in your life simply because you paid nothing for it.
Being poor in Spirit means that we have nothing. And we owe God everything.
We have nothing that is valuable… we have to rely on his riches, and his glory, and most importantly his grace.
Being poor in Spirit is not just realizing how much you need God… if the whole deal was humility, then you would work to be more humble. And it can become the same type of snare. the closest way to describe what it is in one sentence would be something like that… something like
“You are completely dependent on Jesus. You know how much you need him.”
but even that sentence if you are not careful, you can fall into this trap of being the kind of person who knows how much they depend on God for everything. and even that can become “works.”
Jesus wants our lives.
If a person is poor… monetarily poor… they are 3rd generation homeless… whatever the extreme circumstance may be… where whatever cycle they are a part of did not start with them but was dealt to them and they are having a really hard time getting out of it… because people just keep taking from them… taking their home.
taking their money.
taking their opportunities.
that person knows they are poor. They know that most likely they will die without beating the cycle that they so desperately want to change. But if someone else comes and does something radical that completely pulls that person would of that cycle and puts them in a world where they can take care of their family, and they can eat healthy food…
would that person not be so thankful for what they were given that they would be willing to do anything for the person who did it for them?
As Americans we are blessed and we have it all… but I think about for my family, and the student loans that we have that it feels like they will just hang over our head for our entire lives… if someone made that go away, I would owe them.
Maybe they would be the kind of person who wouldn’t make me do a thing for them, but I would be willing to do just about anything. Because of my gratitude because they brought me out of a mess that I can’t see a way out of on my own.
When a person gives in to alcohol in such a way that it begins to control their entire lives, and it begins to ruin their families, their marriage, their relationships their kids… it gets them fired…
usually, not always, but usually, it takes a kind of, “I’ve hit the bottom” circumstance to really address it.
But when someone signs up for Alcoholics Anonymous… the first step that they are given on the path to recovery is this confession:
STEP ONE: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Its the first thing. The first thing they do… when they come to the end of themselves they make this confession, that the problem in their life is one that they can not solve on their own.
Their first step is also Jesus’ first step.
Its the first step in the beatitudes.
It is an end of yourself. A realization that you are powerless over your flesh, over your circumstances, over your world. You are poor. Without Jesus you have nothing. Nothing of value. Nothing worth anything at all.
and it is when you come to Jesus like that, that he gives you the whole Kingdom of Heaven.
I want to read you one more story from the gospel of Luke that really emphasizes this. and its found in Luke chapter 14, verse 12-24.
First we will read until verse 14. Then we will go on.
12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
The red letters here in Luke say, don’t invite the ones who can pay you back or the ones who have your back… invite the ones who will never repay you. Invite the poor, the lame and the blind.
and you will be blessed. We always hear this. We see it as an “outreach text”
and then something happens that I think we kind of overlook. Because the context doesn’t happen in red.
Verse 15:
15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
This follower of Jesus… this person who was with Jesus all that time says this… he is saying, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN! He tries to play the role of Jesus and tries to make up his own beatitude and he basically says “blessed are the people who are religious.. who do the things that they are supposed to do… who play by the book and who read the book.
but then Jesus replies to the follower and he corrects him… and says this: (verse 16)
But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ”
Not everyone that was invited showed up. In fact, it says NONE of those men who were invited got to taste the banquet.
Its so fascinating because Jesus is saying that everyone that you would expect to see at the banquet, they didn’t show up. They didn’t get in.
But its not because they weren't invited!
Jesus has prepared a way for everyone. He prepared it for all of those in the story… it was their excuses that kept them from the banquet. It was their activities. It was their busyness.
It was the things that they did to fulfill themselves in this life.
It was the things that made them rich.
But its the poor who enter the Kingdom.
You can’t make up your own beatitudes.
Because nothing about our minds and nothing about our earthly Kingdom makes sense according to the way that Jesus does things.
So Jesus responds to this follower by telling a story with the same conclusion that he has been giving the whole time… blessed are the poor in Spirit… for theirs is the Kingdom on heaven.
This is the gospel. It is the message. The kingdom of heaven is here and its for everyone who stops trying to get it on their own and instead just loves Jesus.
The sermon on the mount is recorded in Matthew, and a similar sermon is recorded in Luke, but they are different. One sermon Jesus is standing on a mountain, another he is standing on a plain.
But the messages are so similar.
And woven through every parable in the bible… the same message. The radical gospel of a world on its head. Its the most constant message Jesus preached.
Blessed are the poor.
So then the question is HOW?
How do I actually know that I am poor in Spirit?
Because its not really something that you strive for… its something that you should just be becoming. and like meekness, I think in a lot of ways, if a person thinks that they are poor in spirit, its probably a good clue that they aren’t.
How can you be humble and know you are humble?
as if you have “attained” humbleness. Or you have reached it. How do you reach “poorness” - NO! its just something that you are.
So in that way, I guess you never really know you are there.
But maybe that is okay.
Because to say “I am this.” that means that someone else is that.
Because that would put you here… while others are here (someplace different.)
When really, you just are. You are poor. But its when you stop doing what you do for what it will get you… thats a good place to be.
and you have to stop thinking that anything about your life sets you apart.
Comparison must die if you want to enter the Kingdom of heaven.
That is the how.
Guys, we know what the bible says. We know… I know, without a doubt, there is one way to heaven and one way alone and that is Jesus Christ. It is the grace and the power that is only found in Christ… but the moment that I start comparing where I am going to where other people are, that is when it should be obvious… I am not poor in Spirit.
Let God handle that stuff. As for you, you are broken. You are a broken person living in a broken world with problems that are much bigger than yourself… a person who God has every right to cast you away… to send you wherever he wants to send you because you are just that broken.
That is poor in Spirit.
Its the realization, like we said Sunday… that we are all sick.
You are not better than anyone else.
That would make you rich in Spirit. To be better than someone else. To have something that is valuable. Comparison is an attribute of the rich in spirit. If you think that you are in and someone else is out then warning warning warning.
and honestly, that may have been true, BEFORE YOU STARTED THINKING IT… but if that is the way you think, you are not poor in Spirit.
What makes the gospel so upside down is all the people who thought they were in are out.. until they can come to the realization that they are out… then suddenly, Jesus has something to work with.
Its a broken world with broken people.
And so Jesus shows up in the middle of all of that brokenness and he makes his incredible announcement of hope to a group of people who had no idea what hope even looked like before this moment… he says:
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It is pretty exciting that we are almost done with our fast. Only a couple of days left…
I hope that you guys have really pushed through… I hope that you have created space for Jesus to speak to your heart and to your mind and I hope that you have been able to carve out some time to diligently seek Jesus in prayers.
Often times, one habit that I fall into is I will fast… but I will only take on the martyr-side of fasting. I will let myself suffer and convince myself that I am doing it for the Lord… but I won’t really press into him much during that time. Instead, I kind of just pout my way through the misery, committed to finish for sake of my pride but in the end it feels like I never actually met with God.
and when that happens, it kind of defeats the whole purpose.
Because remember, you don't fast to get God to act.
You don't fast to get heaven to move… its already moving. Its moving whether you move or not, it is moving whether you fast or not. Fasting creates space… it clears room in your life so that WHEN you pray, there is a margin in your life and in your mind… an empty room for God to set up shop in your heart and give you the wisdom that it will take to do his will.
But what good is fasting, and clearing our minds, and opening our hearts, if we do not let those areas be filled with what God wants to do in our lives?
Paul prays an incredible prayer in the beginning of his letter to the Colossians (1:9-10):
“we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
Today we are praying this prayer… that we would be filled with knowledge OF his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
King David had this dream… to build the temple of the Lord. He was really disturbed by the fact that he lived in a castle, and that God lived in a tent. The tabernacle at that time was a tent. There was never a permanent home for it.
So David said “lets change that.”
but God spoke to him and He told David that he was not going to be the one who would see that dream through, but rather, that dream,
that huge, God sized dream, would be fulfilled through his son, Solomon.
Near the time of his death, King David prays this prayer in front of the whole assembly and (1 Chronicles 29:19) in it he asks God to give Solomon “a perfect heart.” Obviously, the man who was going to carry on David’s dream had to have a heart like his.
and When King David was on his death bed, at the end of his life, one of the final things that he teaches to his son in that final moment is this:
1 Kings 2:6:
“Act with wisdom.”
Rewind even further… When a young David is anointed by Samuel… Samuel is looking over the options of who this future king could possibly be, and David of course seems the least likely to be King, but God tells Samuel:
“Man looks on the exterior. But God searches the heart of man.”
From the time he was very young, God recognized something in David.
King David is the only person in the bible who is called “A man after God’s own heart” which means that when God searched the heart of King David, despite the exterior baggage that we all know was there, God saw something beautiful.
And so now King David, in trying to impart something to his son, he gives him this nugget…
Act with wisdom. and in fact King David, in essentially the very last line recorded that he spoke to Solomon, he tells him:
“You are a wise man.”
King David sees this in his son, and he begins to speak it into his life… You are wise. You are wise. You are wise.
“And son, there is great value in that!”
So now Solomon is King. And he feels totally in over his head.
andthe Lord appears to him at Gibeon him in the very next chapter (1 Kings 3:1-15) and says to him:
“Ask what I shall give you”
What do you want, Solomon? Ask anything.
Solomon asks for wisdom. He basically tells God, “I am just a kid, I have no idea what I am doing. I don’t know how to navigate this incredibly important job that you have given me.
He basically acknowledges from the beginning the same thing that we all need to acknowledge in our own lives with whatever mission God has placed before us…
“I am not adequate. I don’t know how on earth I am going to do this…”
“God, show me how to do this.”
He asks for an understanding mind to govern God’s people, and ability to discern right from wrong.
And God tells him, “because you asked for this, I will give you everything! I will give you everything you have asked, and everything that you didn't ask for.
You didn't ask for money, I will give you money.
You didn't ask for long life, I will give you long life.
And what you did ask for, I will give you more than I have ever given anyone. In fact, I will give you EVERYTHING, more than I have ever given to anyone.
That, my friends, is the best way to get your prayers answered.
That, is exceedingly abundantly more than we could hope or even imagine.
No prayer has ever been answered in a more extravagant way.
And then the very next passage tells us a bit about the wisdom that King Solomon now had.
As two prostitutes come to him with a baby…
and one of them says to him that the other stole her baby. The explanation that she gave was that they both were pregnant, and they both gave birth basically at the same time, in the same house, and nobody else was there.
And one of the babies died in the night, when the mother lay on him… so she stole the other baby and put the dead baby with the other Mother while she was sleeping..
So they are arguing back and forth about who the baby belongs too and so Solomon calls for someone to bring him a sword, and he says “we will cut the baby in half, and the two of you can split him.... Since you can't agree on who the mother is."
and right away one screams out “NO! Give the child to her.”
Don't kill the child on account of this student argument.
but the other woman said “He shall be neither mine or yours; divide him”
What an evil lady.
and of course, Solomon saw at that moment a very clear picture of who the mother was, and so he gave the child to the woman who was willing to give the child to the other mother in order to save his life.
and the bible says (1 Kings 3:28) “All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.”
Wisdom is not information. But wisdom does know that you must seek information:
Proverbs 18:15 says “the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
so if you have wisdom, you know enough to know that you have to keep learning. You have to keep growing.
But learning is not wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to perceive. It is the ability to take information and piece it together with discernment.
to separate what is of God from what is of man… to know in your heart, “This is going to be good… or this is going to be chaos!”
It is the ability to look past what is visible and into the heart of the matter. Into the heart of what is really going on.
Wisdom lets what is in your mind get to your heart.
Great leaders are not people who have a doctorate degree in information, a great leader has the innate ability to maneuver difficult circumstances. To find solutions that you cannot look up on google.
And there is no better prayer to pray during a time of fasting, when your life is open and ready to receive, than the prayer for wisdom.
Than the prayer that your heart understand.
Wisdom is not merely mental, it is spiritual and it is in your heart.
1 Kings 4:29says “Now all of the earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God put in his heart.”
Everybody is seeking out this guy because he doesn’t respond the way they expected him too…
he doesn’t handle situations the way that they taught him in college he was supposed to respond to things. He doesn’t act based on circumstances and his decisions are not based in common sense…
He sees in his heart, what nobody else sees because none of them even know what it means to open their hearts like that.
Psalm 90:12 - “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Wisdom is not just in your head. The bible references it over and over again as being something that is in your heart.
Proverbs 2:10 says that “Wisdom will enter your heart.”
and I don’t find it a co-incidence, that King David made it such a point in his final moments of his life to affirm this...
the man after God’s own heart affirmed Solomon’s wisdom and told him to keep seeking it…
and then when God asks Solomon what he wants… basically God asks Solomon, “What is important to you…”
Solomon essentially answers: my heart.
My heart is important to me.
Everything that Solomon writes about wisdom in Proverbs and elsewhere, just about every time, he draws the connection that it rests in his heart.
"What is important to me is my heart."
God will you please fill it with everything that is needed to do your will? To do this job that I am totally inadequate and way too young for…
Can we pray that prayer over our own lives?
God give me the heart.
The heart that can look at a situation, and know what you would do.
That can look at a situation and know how to meet the need. Know how to “do justice” as the people said about Solomon.
Know how to do the right thing.
Solomon prayed this prayer of wisdom, and suddenly the pieces just started making sense. His dads dream of a physical temple came to pass because the bible says that Solomon had the wisdom that it took to know who the right people were to build it. The bible says that God sent wisdom, understanding, AND THE SKILL to see it get done.
His wisdom drew other wise men who wanted to be involved in the process (1 Kings 7:14)…
He says this in Proverbs 24:3, “By wisdom a house is built”
and by wisdom he built the house of the Lord.
Wisdom attracts. It draws people.
Nobody could reason the way that Solomon did. He knew how to handle circumstances, and he knew how to handle people. All types of people.
Do you want that?
the bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The reverence for Jesus… that humble adoration that quickly acknowledges we are but a vapor… dust from the ground who will return to the ground,
and he is the only. wise. God…
who knows everything. Who knows our sicknesses before we feel them in our body. Who knows our weaknesses and our strengths.
Solomon knew the secret to answered prayers.
Psalm 25:4 - The secret of the Lord is with those who fear him, and he will show them His covenant.
The secret to answered prayers is to pray for what God has.
God can do anything, but God has wisdom. And he has a covenant that he wants to make with those who fear him. And 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that God’s wisdom is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. And it tells us that we have not received the spirit of the world, with all the wisdom that the world thinks that it has…
We have received the Spirit of the living God. The only spirit that knows what is in the heart of God.
1 Corinthians 2 even tells us that a person who has the spirit can make judgments about all things.
What is stopping us from living our lives in line with the Spirit? What is stopping us from relying on the spirit for the wisdom we so desperately need?
The bible says “ask and it shall be given to you”
and I believe that God wants us to ask for wisdom.
There is no prayer in the bible that he answered in a more radical, over the top way than he did this prayer by Solomon.
I believe that He wants us to ask that the Holy Spirit fill us with all of the wisdom that is in heaven so that we can know how to move with it, here on earth, in this Kingdom.
When Paul writes the Colossian church he tells them that they are praying that the church would know what it means to walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord. He prays that they will increase their knowledge, that they will keep learning…
but the key here is that he prays that they be FILLED with the knowledge of HIS WILL in SPIRITUAL wisdom and understanding.
Wisdom will always stand the test of time. It is how a house is built, and it is how the temple was built. It is how you will know right from wrong… Wisdom will tell you when to be generous, and where to plant seeds.
And it will tell you when to walk away.
Wisdom told one man to build his house on the rock when his neighbor was building it on the sand.
Wisdom told Isaac to sow in a time of terrible famine… and in the same year he saw a 100 fold return (Gen 26:12) THE SAME YEAR!
Wisdom told him to invest in the land when everybody was saying to sell… it told him to dig wells when the Philistines were coming behind him plugging them.
Wisdom saw something that others don't see.
If you are here in this place and you are wondering… “God, where am I going?”
What is even happening?
What should I do differently?
Do I buy this house? Do I move into this neighborhood? Do I start this ministry? Do I do this program?
Do I go to college? Do I go into ministry?
Seek wisdom. Ask the Holy Spirit to give this too you. It will launch you to new levels in your life. You will learn how to treat people, and how to manage people, and how to handle people.
It will help us...
to know if we should buy the intern house the first year or rent it… it will help us to know what buildings will get us in over our heads too soon and what projects we can manage. It will help us see what others don't see.
It will show us where our faith can take us and it help us discern what a closed door truly looks like.
Spiritual understanding will help you discern peoples motives.
It will help you discern peoples hearts and it will help you cultivate yours in such a way that you can best and most effectively serve the people that Jesus has given you to serve.
Lastly,
James 3:17 describes what Godly wisdom actually looks like, and its amazing. “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”
All matters of the heart.
if that doesn’t sound like a heart shift, then I don’t know what is.
Wisdom is what we are missing when we don't treat people right, when we fly off the cuff… wisdom is what we are missing when we wage war or show favoritism.
It is impossible to say someone has true wisdom if they don’t have these attributes:
Pure.
Peaceable.
Gentle.
Open to reason.
Full of mercy.
Full of good fruits.
Impartial.
And sincerity.
We must earnestly seek these things.
and with our minds already more clear from fasting… and with our hearts hopefully more focused than ever, lets pray this prayer over our lives and over our families and over our church today.
“Give us wisdom to discern right from wrong, and an understanding mind as we move into what you have for us for 2016.”
There is the moment in the scriptures, in the gospel of Luke (chapter 11) when the disciples of Jesus see him praying in a “certain place” and so they ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.”
“John the baptist taught his disciples to pray, will you teach us?”
Which is telling in and of itself,
to the truth that prayer is not necessarily EASY for people…is not necessarily something that comes naturally to people.
Even Jesus’ own disciples, who spent every waking moment with Jesus, walking with him, talking with him, watching him, gleaning off of him.
I mean, They must have heard him pray a thousand times.
How many moments were there before this in which they had watched him pray and had the opportunity to ask and learn from him… But when it came time for them to do it, they still felt inadequate,
so they ask Jesus a very human question.
A timeless question that is still just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.
“How do you pray?”
and so Jesus gives us what we know now as “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Its the same prayer that we read about in the sermon on the mount, when he first directs us that when we pray, it should be in secret.
It should be in a quiet place where nobody else can hear you - Jesus says “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to stand in the synagogues and pray loud prayers on street corners so that the public can see them…
and pat them on the back.
Jesus says that when you pray, you should go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your Father.
The Lord’s prayer, unlike the prayer of faith that we learned about last week, is a private prayer.
But not only is it a private prayer. It is a very specific prayer.
It is not a long prayer.
It is not a prayer filled with empty phrases that don’t mean anything to God. It is a prayer of a very few words, and those words are:
Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed by thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
First of all,
this prayer seems like a distant prayer to distant God who is off in some far away place…
And for many who hear the term “Father,” all you want to do is run as far away as you can.
Because if this Father is anything like your Father, then you want nothing to do with him…
Some of us have had great dads, and if that is you there is probably nobody you would rather be your personal image of the face of God than your father.
but a lot of peoples image of a Father is, at best,
a distant one.
A person who was never around, or who didn’t take care of them.
But Fathers like that are Fathers who did not do their job. A Father’s job is take care of his children. The word Father means supplier. It means the one who will provide everything that you have need of.
And I always loved how the language was plural. Our Father.
This is a private prayer but it is a petition on behalf of a community as much as it is on behalf of yourself.
“God. TAKE CARE OF US. God TAKE CARE OF ME. I know that it is in your nature because that is the nature of a Father.”
and in those days even moreso than today, the Father’s job is to provide for the whole family.
Jesus is making a very clear distinction here… His Father will provide.
and when it comes to his Father… you can go him with anything.
and then it says who art in heaven…
and we have talked about this a couple of times on Sunday’s. But at first glance —- “our Father who art in heaven” sounds, at best, like a deadbeat dad who lives in a trailer park in the South somewhere, hardly ever visits, and sends a child support check once in a while when he gets his SSI.
He is there.
We are here.
We get some of him, sometimes.
But are always left wishing for more.
But the word for heaven is actually the Greek word ouranos (uw ron ase) and it can actually be translated as “air.”
The most valuable commodity in all of the world… the one thing that we all rely on every single day… the one thing that has never not come through for planet earth.
The thing that is in every room with you, every moment you are alive.
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.”
Hallowed by thy name.
Hallowed is the Greek word “hagiazō” (hag-e-ots-o) and means to render or acknowledge something.
Philippians 2:9 says that “He is the name above all names” and when you hallow his name you acknowledge his power.
You acknowledge, “God, there is no other name above yours. and you are all that I need.”
Now, the Greek word for name is “onoma” (on-a-ma) and this word is powerful. Pastor Brad in New York taught me this. Essentially, the word means “power of attorney.”
It means that everything God is, you have access too.
Which becomes the most powerful statement in the world when you realize that God literally holds the entire world in his hands.
Are there needs in this place? Are any of you sick? Are any of you going through something emotionally right now that you can’t seem to manage?
Are any of you uncertain of the future? Of what is next?
Certainty is in the name.
No, we do not know what tomorrow holds but we do know that God holds it.
and that is powerful.
There is healing in the name.
Acts 3:16 tells us that healing comes in the name of Jesus, and faith in that name.
You have “the power of attorney” - and it is in God’s name.
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.
We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name.”
Your Kingdom come your will be done.
This line speaks of something, of infinite importance.
Something that we will do a series on one day, and that is the Kingdom of God.
A lot of people minimize salvation down to a “get out of jail free” card… a one time decision that flips the switch from darkness to light and that changes the course of your eternity forever…
and it does. If you give your heart to Jesus, he will do those things for you.
He wants to share eternity with you.
But if you minimize your salvation to an experience then you will miss the bigger picture of all of your life and of God’s mission for the church.
And of your roll in that mission.
Everything about what Jesus came to do was for the purpose of establishing a Kingdom.
A Kingdom right here and now, that is different from the one that we are experiencing when we aren’t walking with him.
This prayer re-centers us on our purpose by taking our minds off of the cares of this earthly kingdom, like our relationship problems and our financial problems and the things that we can’t solve in our own strength or with our physical paycheck.
It reminds us that we truly are citizens of a different kingdom, with a different currency.
“Bring that Kingdom to earth through me today, God.”
And then he says:
“On earth as it is in heaven.”
and this is powerful.
You see, there is already a Kingdom established, and its beautiful. And it functions at the highest capacity imaginable and it is good.
What we are saying when we saying “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN” is we are saying:
“God, let our lives be the image of the invisible here on earth.”
Let our daily lives be a reflection of what your Kingdom looks like already.
Its an amazing concept of self-evaluation.
You look at your life, and your schedule, and your routines and your habits and you ask yourself “Which of these things are as they should be?”
“What areas of my life truly reflect the God that I claim to serve?”
Or am I living in my own kingdom, and abiding by my own rules, and hoping to glean the benefits of the Kingdom of God?
If you want the benefits, then you have to accept the citizenship… and if you accept the citizenship, then you have to follow the constitution.
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.
We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom.”
“Give us this day our daily bread…”
Now remember, everyone in that culture knew the Torah.
They knew all about daily bread, because Moses wrote about it.
When the Israelites were wandering for 40 years, each and every day God gave them daily bread, and it was exactly what they needed for that day.
but every time they tried to store up more, it went bad…
Because God was trying to teach them something.
“I will take care of you.”
and the moment that they tried to take care of themselves and take matters into their own hands, the process became cursed, the bread went bad, and they wasted all that time and effort trying to do something in their own strength that God promised to do in his.
You can’t depend on God and depend on yourself all at the same time, and if you constantly are trying to get to a higher and higher place then you are showing God all of the reasons that you don’t need him, and making yourself impossible to work through.
Its like what Proverbs 30:8 says:
“Give me neither poverty nor riches; lest I be full and deny you and say “Who is the Lord?”
Give us this day our daily bread is literally saying,
“God, we trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.
We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Grace matters when you are praying.
There is a moment in Hebrews (4:16) when the writer tells us that “with confidence we should boldly approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy.”
We should be able to go the God in prayer confidently expecting the grace that we do not deserve, because of two things.
Grace is the apex of the Christian faith.
Without it we are nothing and because of it, nothing in our lives should ever be the same again.
Including our character.
If we truly are becoming more and more like Jesus every single day, then we should be becoming more gracious.
and I can’t speak for everybody, but I would have a really hard time boldly approaching the throne of grace if I didn’t work my hardest to live graciously toward others… offering grace at every opportunity… erring on the side of grace in all circumstances.
It is like when Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 (21-35)
His disciples ask him, how many times should we forgive our brother who has sinned against me? Up to seven times?
and Jesus tells them, “not seven times, but seventy times seven, and all on the same day.”
and then he compares the Kingdom of heaven, that same kingdom that we are told to pray daily that it will come to earth… he compares the Kingdom of heaven to a king who wished to settle all of his accounts…
and one of the ones that he wanted to settle up with pleaded with him because there was no way that he could ever pay the amount that he was owed so instead the King graciously forgave him of that debt after the man fell on his knees and begged.
But then that servant went out and found one of his servants who owed him far less, and he had the man thrown in prison because he could not pay.
of course, when the King found out about what had happened, he was furious, and he too had the first man thrown into prison until he could pay back every penny.
but what is chilling about this is that Jesus ends this parable by saying this:
“So also will my heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
We should have a heart that can approach the throne of grace boldly knowing that we have modeled the same grace that we are expecting.
Jesus doesn’t ask us to be perfect, but he absolutely demands that we be gracious toward one another.
Being gracious toward each other, and bolding approaching the throne of grace, are the only two things standing between us and God.
Forgive each other.
In fact when Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 (5-13), he ends it by saying “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
It all rides on this one.
Forgive each other.
Every single time.
Don’t harbor it or hold it in your heart.
Bitterness truly is one thing that could cost you eternity and I know that sounds harsh but its completely biblical.
it is worst than most things.
and it will certainly hinder your prayers here on earth.
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.
We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us.”
“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
You are simply saying - “Guide my steps Jesus.”
“God you know everything. Every right turn and every wrong turn. Give me the wisdom to know right from wrong, help me to steer clear of the problem areas of my life…
“and deliver me from my sinful nature.”
What this is saying is “Lord, give me “self control,” that my flesh would not have dominion over me.”
We all know what our struggles are… and this part of the prayer is asking God to help us overcome the problem areas in our lives… the areas we struggle in… deliver us from those areas.
“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.
We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us. Guide my steps, that I may walk in the light, and deliver me from my sinful nature and my sinful desires.”
That is the Jacob translation.
pieced together from things that I have been taught and have read over the years by people who are far smarter than I am.
Now…
The thing that is so incredible about this prayer, is it teaches us a lot about what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.
And its so simple.
We rely on God, trusting that he is totally dependable, that there is more power in his name than any power on in this broken world…
We live our lives outwardly,
looking out for others and trusting that God will take care of us.
We don’t seek to climb ladders and rankings and gain power, instead, we trust that we have all the power that we need in Jesus name…
and we trust he gives us what is right for us.
We don’t desire wealth, nor do we desire poverty. Instead, we desire God’s best for us so that we can move the gospel forward without getting distracted by our stuff.
Wealth can be an asset until it becomes an obsession.
“God, give me only as much as will further your mission without distracting me from it.”
But its important, even with money, to trust, “God gave me all of this. Its all his. I didn’t do anything.”
And then grace.
We show it.
We get it.
and it is the currency of the Kingdom of God.
It is what keeps us from evil, and from falling into bitterness, and other very dark places in life.
This prayer truly does show us the best way to live,
by showing us to ask God to give us a simple, kingdom minded life.
We are in a time of prayer and fasting. 21 days of creating space for God to speak to us. 21 days of clarity in hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. 21 days that I believe will equip us for the rest of this year. If you haven’t begun to fast, I encourage you all to pray about it and to really do it. I promise you that when you come out of it, you will be better than you are when you started.
We also want to remind you guys to be keeping your dream journals. As you are praying, write down the things you are praying for, write down the what God is speaking to you. This is not about naming it and claiming it or anything weird like that. This is about convincing yourself of the truth that these things are within your grasp. I am praying for a building of some sort that we can initially house a group of interns going through a discipleship process with us for… knowing that something like that would be the first piece of a much bigger picture. And so I visualize that in my journal, not because pasting a house into a notebook means that I am going to get that house, but because it shows me that this is actually tangible. And if God is big enough to give whoever owned the house before us the house, then he is big enough to give it to us now so we can use it for his kingdom.
Margie has this absolutely incredible dream for a community soccer field and community garden right around the corner from here. Its such a beautiful dream and she has been not only taking pictures and praying about it, but she is crunching numbers, she is figuring out what it is going to take to do this… That is what dream journaling does for me. It motivates me. I see the things that I am praying for, and it reminds me that as impossible and far away as these things seem, they are not to big for God and they are things that other people have done, so why on earth could I not do it?
I just felt like I needed to clarify that as we are all working together towards a better Detroit, where the gospel is more evident than it ever has been. The bible says to write the vision down and to make it known.. so that he who reads it may run! if it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. (Hab. 2:2)
But I don’t know what is harder. Fasting, or prayer? Fasting obviously takes a much larger toll on your body and takes an incredible amount of self-discipline… but truthfully, for me, I think prayer takes even more self discipline. I can deprive myself of anything. I can go several days without eating… even if I am not fasting, if I am driven enough in a moment for something, I get irritated if I have to stop to eat. I do love food, but I also like to focus. But its very hard for me to focus on prayer. Probably because I prefer to be doing things, tangible things, that I can see the immediate result of.
But I have seen the long term effects of my prayers, and I have seen the long term effects of my “lack of” praying.
One is beautiful, and the other is very dark.
I think that for a lot of us, even though we come to Equip, and we pray for an hour in this reverent place, there is something in the back of our minds that wonders, “Does this actually work?”
I know I am guilty of that. There is a couple in Lansing that when Dawn and I first got married, they really reached out to us and in several ways mentored us and helped us learn about production and tech and all of the things that we really did for the last 8 years almost full time. I remember before we moved to California, they bought us a new laptop to take with us. I remember the day they gave it to us, the smiles on their faces to be doing something so kind for a couple of just married kids who had absolutely nothing.
Their names are Jeremy and Val. And Val had her entire life battled cystic fibrosis. Her brother and her both had it, and her brother ended up passing away in 2011 when he was 25 years old… and we said so many prayers for this kid, and for their family.
And for the last ten years Dawn and I have joined with their family praying for Val, for a miracle. We have attended prayer meetings essentially called around healing for Val. I remember time after time, with everyone gathered around her, putting their hands on her, praying and praying for this miracle that only Jesus can provide. I remember conversations we had with them about how they wanted kids, but the doctors said there was no way she could handle it. But they were so optimistic that they would one day have kids. I think Dawn at one point even told me, “I would be willing to carry a baby for them if it meant they could have one.” That was just how much they meant to us.
A few years ago, her lungs basically completely gave out, and so everyone prayed and rallied, and she got put on a list for a lung transplant but it was very uncertain if she would get it. But by the grace of God she did. I remember that day well. Hearing that they were on their way to the hospital, and praying for the transplant because her body was so frail from the disease that it was very risky but everything went amazing. And they added an unknown amount of years to her life because of it. It was one of the biggest answers to prayer I have ever seen.
Over Christmas, their family went down South for a vacation and when they were in Georgia they got into a car accident. All of them walked away from the accident shook up, but Val had to go to the hospital because her body was already more frail so the damages were much greater to her body. Right away, the word got out, and people began to pray for her like all the other times that she was in the hospital. It had kind of been her second home her whole life, every couple of months she was in the hospital for a month or so, so I didn’t think too much of it.
But on Tuesday, while we were roasting coffee, I got a text that Val had died. From complications of a mix of her cystic fibrosis coupled with the car accident that their family had been in.
Man that news just crushed me. I told Zach and Chris, “I don't know how I am going to tell Dawn this” - it was just a big blow.
You pray for someone for years and years and years and years and years and then suddenly something like this happens and you start to wonder “God were you hearing any of this?” “Does any of this actually do anything?”
and you forget about how your prayers guided Val to live more than 20 years past the life expectancy of someone with her condition. And you forget about how your prayers saw her through hospital visit after hospital visit… you forget how your prayers saw her through a lung transplant that added even more years to her life.
And it is easy to not see the way that God is working through our prayers because he is not working the way that we think that he should be. As if there is a formula for the way that God has to respond to our every wish in exactly our timing and in exactly the way that we think it should be.
So… For each of these three weeks, we are going to look at prayers in the bible. Today we are going to look at “The Prayer of Faith” found in James 5:13-16.
“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
First of all, notice what it says at the beginning. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”
Prayer is so much more than requests. Its first and foremost an acknowledge of the glory of God. It praises right off the bat… “You are God, and I am not.” So many of us get into this routine where prayer becomes our battlecry and praise gets left out of the equation entirely. We go to God when we need something. When we need more money or we need healing or we need a circumstance to get better. But more than any of those things it is the utmost sign that you are in relationship with Jesus. You go to him when you are hurting, and you delight in him when you are happy.
There is a time for everything, and Jesus wants to go with you through all of those times.
Next, this passage couples prayer with repentance. Because they go hand in hand. It says that if you are sick, confess your sins, and you will be healed.
Here is another thing that I love about this prayer. It is about praying for each other. Its a community effort, its about coming together and the power of people coming together… coming to the church and letting the elders pray for that person. The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Pray for one another.
Prayer matters.
Timothy Keller wrote this amazing book on prayer, and I love what it says right on the back of the book. Its powerful. It says:
“Prayer is the only entry way into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change - the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.
We must learn to pray. We have to.”
My favorite line in this quote just emphasis’s what I just said… “the way we finally treat God as God.” If you pray for something and it happens, you aren’t going to think “I did that!”
No! You know that God did that. You asked for it and it happened. But what about when it doesn’t happen?
Because James calls this prayer that he gives us, a “prayer of faith” -
Faith is a very tricky word, one that we have been dealing with in the series we have been doing on Sundays.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”
But a lot of people teach this, and its very hard to fathom. This flawed idea is that if you pray for someone, then there is no room for doubt. And that even the slightest shadow of doubt cast in your conscience of your prayer, will hinder it.
And if you pray for something, and it doesn’t happen, then it must be because you don’t have faith.
But that myth is completely shattered by what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:11-13:
“The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.”
Catch this. If we deny him, he deny’s us. Because that is the justice side of God. He can’t accept someone who has denied him until they accept him. But if we don’t have faith, he still does… because that is the mercy side of God. He can’t not be faithful.
This is an example in Mark 9, when Jesus heals the boy with an unclean spirit. This kid is foaming at the mouth and convulsing on the floor, and when Jesus asks the boy’s Father “how long has this been going on?” The man tells him that it has happened since the boy was very young. This kid would throw himself in bodies of water, he would throw himself in fires, it was a very destructive demon! And so the Father says to Jesus, (v22) “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus responds by saying “IF? Don’t you know that anything is possible for the one who believes?” He is asking this Father, “Do you have faith? Do you believe?” and its so interesting how the man responds. He says “I believe! Help me with my unbelief!” (v24)
Basically the man was saying, I do believe, but sometimes I doubt. We have been living in these dire circumstances for so long, my kid has almost killed himself time after time after time. sometimes I wonder! I want to believe that it will be different, but sometimes I doubt. Help me with that doubt!
That was enough for Jesus. This man who believed and unbelieved all at the same time was enough to get Jesus to move on his behalf. He healed the boy and then told his disciples that the type of demon they were dealing with can not be driven out by anything but prayer.
Prayer matters. It can do anything. It is more powerful than your doubts. It is more powerful than anything we try and get control of.
But it is not a get out of jail free card for anyone who asks for anything. Its not. At one point James even says, “you don’t get what you ask for because you ask selfishly.”
The idea is, “we don’t really know how to ask.” That is why we do things like fast… so that we can have a clarity that we have lacked for so long because of the toxins in our bodies that cloud our minds, or the toxic garbage we put in our heads with our media when we let that junk tell us who we are instead of what the bible and the Holy Spirit tells us.
That is why we are fasting so intensely for 21 days to start off the year. Because we want to have to best year we have ever had. A year filled with faith goals and God sized dreams. Don’t miss this next point: We don’t want to be grounded in reality when it comes to our prayer lives, but we do want to be grounded in truth. And the truth is, God hears our petitions, and he partners with our dreams, but he does it in his way, and he does it in his timing. Thats what Hab. 2:2 tells us.. make the dream known, but then have patience… because God’s timing is perfect. He sees the things that we don’t see, and he knows the things that we don’t know.
I love how “The Prayer of Faith” ends, by saying:
“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
A righteous person understands the heart of God, and understands just like James 4:14 says, “we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”
Guys our lives are vapor. They are here today, and gone tomorrow. And there is literally no better way to live the fullest life than to pray to God with a clear conscience and a clear mind, and to hear from him so that you know the best way to spend those days.”
I want to give you another Tim Keller quote as I begin to wrap this up… this one is from one of his sermons, he inspired a lot of these thoughts and its helped me a lot this week. He says this: “God will either give you what you ask, or he will give you what would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.”
And though we will never be God and we will never fully know all that he knows, like we said Sunday, heaven is ALWAYS moving… and when we fast, we get clarity and space in our spirit where we are genuinely ready to hear from God about how he is moving… its almost like as we fast and pray, we begin to learn how we should pray, because we will understand the heart of God more and more. He knows what is best for Detroit. He knows what is best for Southwest Detroit, and our neighborhood, and for the field around the corner, and for the discipleship program we want to start. He knows what house we need, or what apartment we need… He knows what is best for Courage Church, and Mount Hope Church, and my family and your family and for the family that maybe feels like they have lost a lifelong spiritual battle as their final prayer seemed to go unanswered and they have to now bury a child for the second time. But like James 4:6 says, “God gives more grace.”
I want to show you this post that Val’s mom posted on her Facebook timeline the day she died, because it is beautiful:
“The news is bittersweet. Val Masterson Leonard is dancing and rejoicing with Daniel Bat Masterson. I’m so going to miss her… But she is perfectly healed now. She is in my heart forever, and in my future. Eternity in heaven is a wonderful promise. We made it through this storm clothed in God’s peace. He is forever faithful.”
And until you can position your life with the understanding that God is always faithful, you won’t understand everything that happens. You won’t understand why some things work out, and some things don’t. Why some prayers get answered so clearly, and others seem to be ignored.
Prayer is about establishing a secure relationship with Jesus. It is what will now cover and comfort this family in its darkest hour. It is a shield of hope when your whole world feels lost, and its breathe into your dreams when it feels like they are dying. We need it in our world more than ever, and we need it in our church more than ever.
And here is the last thought. We made the point earlier that this prayer is what is called “The Prayer of Faith,” and that one thing that makes it different from some of the others prayers in the bible, like “The Lord’s prayer” which we will study next week, is it is also specific for how we are supposed to pray for each other. For some, this comes naturally, for others, it comes a little harder. I resonated with what Tim Keller said at the very start of his book.
He starts his book on prayer that I told you about in the first message, by telling a very revealing story and unfortunately it resonates with me greatly now. In fact, I have heard numerous stories from other pastors who struggle with the exact same thing that he talks about, and after first speaking this message had more pastors come up to me and share that they struggle with the exact same issue. He tells a story about how in 1999, which was TEN YEARS after they had founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City… so he was already lead pastor for ten years when this happened… His wife came to him and said to him, “We are not going to make it, if we don’t start praying together.”
He records her saying this: “Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine - a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? NO - it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all that we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t just let it slip our minds.”
He had been a pastor for ten years and he didn’t pray regularly with his wife. He prayed for others, but they didn’t develop that time together until 1999.
That is me… even now. Its easier to admit it when its a testimony, its harder to say when you are walking through it.
Its very hard for me to pray with my wife.
I pray for her in my quiet time, I pray for her throughout the day often… but we don’t really sit down and pray together. She asked me today, “Do you even pray for me? Because you don’t ever pray with me.” and I told her that praying with her is one of the hardest things in the whole world for me. I said that I feel like she would just “see right through me” because she knows all the reasons why I probably am not qualified to do anything like pray for her. She knows how much of a jerk I can be and she lives with my bad side more than anyone who sees me on a Sunday or who I pray with on a Sunday or at Equip.
And I think that is a common problem with people. A lot of people struggle praying with people who they live so much life with, for various reasons but I think that the biggest reason is that the people who see who you are when the door is closed, when you are under the most stress and pressure, and in your best and worst environments, know that you are just as screwed up as they are. And most people want people praying for them who aren’t as screwed up as they are.
Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am just as screwed up as any of you… But do you think that when life hits someone, like the way that the Leonard and the Masterson family got hit this week…
that they are not going to accept your comfort and your love and your prayers of compassion because of what you did on Saturday night?
No. People in those moments need your prayers.
Prayer is about connecting to God’s heart, and God’s heart is for people. And that makes the “Prayer of Faith” in James so special.
Because it tells us how we are supposed to do this, with each other. We are supposed to anoint one another. We are supposed to pray OVER each other… we are supposed to confess our sins to each other.
So today, as you write in your dream journals and you pray, take some time to find someone else and pray together. Remember, the prayer of faith will save someone who is sick… We need each others prayers. And we need to be praying for each other. So we are going to take the rest of the time, and pray for our dreams, our families, our lives, and our church… but make sure you pray with someone else.
Pray for someone else dreams, and family, and life. Do it all.
My friend Landon is in town. Landon is one of my closest friends. I played in a band called “Hyperbole” with him for many many years traveling the country. We worked together at the Los Angeles Dream Center, and he was a part of what we were doing in New York City.
The first sermon I ever gave was a tag-team message with him. We were a couple of 17 year old punk kids (he was much more punk than I) teaching a message at a youth group Battle of the Bands, about how the hypocrisy of the church doesn’t lessen the perfection of Christ. I suppose in many ways, I am still saying the same thing today.
I will always be against four walls Christianity. I don’t mind gathering, I think gathering is important, but it has to go beyond that. I loved yesterday, we were able to go across the street to Neinas and give kids starting school a backpack full of school supplies. Some of them were really nice, Frozen, Despicable Me, Hello Kitty themes, it was awesome… and those were just left over backpacks from the huge giveaway we did this summer in Clark Park when hundreds of kids got backpacks and a few of them got bikes. I love that stuff. That was what lead Christopher and his son Gabriel to come to our church.
I told you a while back, during the Intentions series, that the word hypocrite was a word used in Jesus’ day to describe a theater actor. Someone who puts on a show. Its a stage actor. It is where we get the phrase “wearing a mask” from because that was theater back then…. they would have to wear different masks to put themselves in different characters. So when people say “you are a hypocrite!” if they know what they are talking about, they are not necessarily saying “you say one thing, and do another.” as much as they are saying “you are being theater.”
or, “You are pretending.”
Whether you are pretending in here, or you are pretending out there, that is hypocrisy.
It is not when you “Don’t do what the bible says” or when you “sin.”
The church should be filled with broken people who screw things up. That is what its all about, it should be a hospital. A gathering of saints around the message of grace serving people out of our own brokenness because Jesus has done such a mighty work in our jacked up lives.
Because nobody gets it perfect. We are all learning and growing and our hearts are wrapping around the gospel in new and radical ways each time we approach it from a different angle. Because that is what the living word does to people. So our attempts at consistency in our believes, in my opinion, sometimes can get in the way of growth.
It is when we try so hard to stay consistent to what we have thought that it said, that maybe we will miss what it really says.
So we read words like hypocrite and we feel convicted because we don’t keep the bible perfectly so we think we can’t tell anybody else about it. But if you are doing that, you are letting the entire message of grace separate itself from your life.
If you live your live out there, and then come in here once a week and try clean the slate, worship Jesus, fall on your face before Him, and repent, just to go out there and get it dirty again out there, I think you are missing it.
and that cycle stems from a misunderstanding of what it actually means to worship Jesus.
But what I think people tend to do, is they separate this life, from that life.
You come to church, and to equip, and that is spiritual. and it saves you from the mess you made of your life all week.
You come in here to worship.
But then you go to work, and that is practical. You pay your bills. You have your friends. You have your world.
Maybe when you go to the marketplace, or you go to your homes, or you are working on school or on a project, that is practical.
That is who you are, when you aren’t here.
But when you come here, you put on your “spiritual self.”
And that makes sense, for a stage actor.
Except it doesn’t work.
You see, In Hebrew, the word for work is the word Avad.
and in Hebrew, the word for worship is the word Avad.
Work and worship are the exact same word. In Exodus 8:1 when Moses tells Pharaoh “Let my people go, so that they can worship me!” He said, “let my people go, so they can avad.
Some translations say: So they can worship.
Some translations say: So they can serve.
But they both mean the same thing.
When it refers to the Israelites as slaves, it is a similar word. They need to stop working for Pharaoh, so they can worship God.
Colossians 3:23-24 puts it this way:
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Some people find it hard to find bible significance to their role in society throughout the week, when they should be approaching every day as worship to Jesus.
But what if you realized that the easiest and most sensible way to live a consistent life is to consistently make your life about worship. You are worshipping when you work. You are worshipping something. You don’t have to work at the church full time to make a full time impact for the gospel.
When we played in the band, we played in churches, and we played in clubs and bars. We played at festivals and we played at rally’s. Sometimes we shared the gospel, sometimes we just put on a concert and didn’t say a word about Jesus but man do all of us love him. And I think that showed in what we did. It was always about Jesus, even when it wasn’t.
What I mean by that, is He is why we did what we did, even if a specific song had nothing to do with Jesus necessarily, and what I know for a fact is that we had an impact on peoples lives whether or not we told them about Jesus personally.
I know that, because I know that the Jesus I worship with every facet of my life, holds the world in his hands. I know that, because Jesus has shown me, time and time again, that that He holds the world in his hands.
One day I was sitting in my pastors house in New York City. It was the first day with the new class of interns we had that year, and we were doing a meet and greet so the staff could meet all of the interns. We had I think it was 8 new students that year, and one of them came up to me said “Are you Jacob Bender?” and I said yes, I am.
Assuming that Jeremy, our intern director at the time, had told him to connect with me to work on creative stuff, videos, graphics, music, something like that.
But that was not why he was approaching me.
He shook my hand, and said to me, “My name is Greg. And I gave my life to Jesus at a Hyperbole concert in Flint, MI several years ago.”
I remembered that show. There was no altar call. There was no prayer. There was just a bunch of kids having a ton of fun dancing to pop punk music.
And the God that we were worshipping that day through fun music that didn’t really feel much like worship, Jesus, the God who holds the world in his hands, was orchestrating such an incredible moment where a teenager was coming to Jesus. A teenager that I did not know, but who would later come and do ministry along side me in New York City.
Because everything is spiritual.
Everything is worship.
That is just one story. I could tell you ten more. And I know in my heart their are hundreds more from our time together traveling that I will never hear. I never would have heard about Greg if he hadn’t come to New York. That one just came full circle in my life. Not every story will come full circle, but every moment matters. Because everything you do, is Avad.
God has placed you in specific places of influence that I will never be able to reach. God has specifically tailored all of our lives in unique ways to make an impact on the people who he knows need us.
That is what the Kingdom of God is all about. Its not about these walls. Its about the people we pass when we leave. Its about the people we bump into walking down the street. Its about the person who sits in the cubicle next to us every day in the office, and the people we have two minute conversations each morning as we begin our workday.
If we define ourselves by who we are because of what Jesus has done, not by what we do, then there will be a NATURAL consistency that goes from our hearts and minds and into our lives…
from our jobs
to our families
to our church community.
and they will see avad. They will see something different. They may not know what it is, but we do. It is worship.
And when we come to this place (the church), it should be a corporate continuation of our daily lives of worship. We should be walking with Jesus in everything we do.
When I was living in New York City, last winter I gave a message there around Christmas time, and I will likely give a rendition of it sometime here… but one story I told to them was of my family having just moved to Brooklyn, and me asking Milly if she loved our new town. I told her, “its amazing here! There is a great school for you to go to… Its so close to the city… There are so many coffee shops for mommy and daddy… there are
so many toy stores and even more parks to play in!” and she responded, “yeah, and so many tiny rooms!”
Because she and her sisters together shared a bedroom the size of a walk in closet… really it was a closet off of Dawn and I’s room. The space in New York, it is just so limited. For Dawn and I especially, it was challenging… it was very hard to find separation from the kids… even most coffee shops were not really set up to study in. Our commutes were on packed subway cars… so we kind of had to “master” this art of creating through the chaos of our lives. I say master it, but we got no-where near mastering it. I would say, “we somewhat achieved the art of creating through the chaos that was our lives.” When I found myself on the train without kids (which was rare) I would right away, sitting or standing, get out my iPad and either start reading or writing. I would use evernote and I would write for my entire commute when I could, trying to drown out the noise. When I would get home, it would be the same thing… constant noise. Constant needs, and all in this semi-claustrophobic environment.
It made me start to question… I am living in New York, the creative epicenter of the universe… in fact I live in Brooklyn which is like, most writers top choice of anywhere in the world that they would prefer to write from… and I kept finding myself in the same, asking the same question:
Where is the space?
And at first I just figured, oh, “its in Detroit.”
And then I got here and rode the momentum for the first couple of months only to find myself still feeling a bit trapped at times. Still feeling so limited in what I can do even though I know what God wants to do in my life.
I realized that the same limitations that were put on my life in previous cities I have lived in have not been lifted merely because I moved into a place where physical space is cheaper and more attainable. There are real, genuine, super natural things that come against us, that try and eat away our time, eat away our lives.
Our flesh is naturally distracted and easily discouraged. Staying the course is difficult.
1 Timothy 4:14 tells us, “DON’T NEGLECT THE GIFTS THAT ARE INSIDE OF YOU! It says, rather (2 Tim 1:6), to stir them up, or to fan into flame the gift that God gave you.”
But how do you fan into flames your gifts and passions and the God given areas of your life when you have to get up every morning and be at work by 8am? You have to be in class all day, and work a night shift to pay the rent, get home in time to do your homework and get a half a nights sleep before doing it all over again?
How do you fan into flame your gifts when you life itself distracts you from life in Jesus Christ?
We are going to read a fascinating account in Genesis, of Isaac. Isaac is the son of Abraham, he is the one who Abraham at one point almost sacrificed… he put him on an altar before the Lord but then the Lord stopped him. Well, this account is much after all of that. And Abraham, his father, had gone before him and had dug all of these wells… but the Philistines were were jealous and wanted to destroy them, so they went around and they plugged up all of the wells so there would be no access to water.
Suddenly, people would be dying of thirst… of dehydration, because they couldn’t get to the water that was right beneath their feet only a few feet down.
How much of our lives are like that? Everything we need, it is right there. It is right in front of us, or right below us, and yet we don’t do what it takes to actually get it? All it takes is digging. The water is there.
And that is where we will pick up first, in Genesis 26:12-20:
“And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. 14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. 15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) 16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. 19 But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, 20 the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him.
He named the well “Esek” because they contended with him… The word Esek literally means contention. They saw that there was something good… something that Isaacs men had worked for, and when they saw that it was good they fought for it.
As soon as a little success came, he felt pushback. He felt opposition. Isaac has to be thinking here, “man God, I am trying to do what you say. And as soon as it seems like there is a little fruit, I get attacked.” Here they are, taking away from me that which we have worked for.
Its never easy!
Genesis 26:21
“21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah.
The word “Sitnah” means enmity.
It means it will not connect. Everything he is trying to do is failing.
Everything that they were trying to do was not working.
Evelyn Underhill is quoted as saying:
“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, not having and not doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.”
Perpetual Unrest as a result of us wanting, having, and doing.
You are a child of God. Who has an amazing and beautiful plan already written for you to walk in. And as you try and walk in that, you have to let God create the space for you that it will take to live that calling out. It all comes back to trust.
God has an amazing plan for our church. I believe he has an amazing plan for my family, and for your family, and for our relationships to grow and for our impact to be expanded in our city, but if we constantly try and grab onto the things that are within our reach, God will never make room for the things that are out of our reach.
Genesis 26:22 “And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
He kept pushing. He kept moving on. he kept digging more wells! and at the first sign of a little success, came opposition… It looked like success, then it looked like failure. You think you are out of it, then you are right back in it.
He kept going, and digging more wells, and even after overcoming the the opposition, now there was this feeling of enmity… this feeling of rocks beating against each other but no progress being made… this feeling of, “everything I am doing is not working. There is no progress, there is no forward motion.”
But he keeps going. And then look what happens. They name the third well Rehoboth saying “NOW! The Lord has made room for us!”
The word Rehoboth means SPACE. That well represented God creating space in his world for his people, and them setting up shop right in the middle of it.
Genesis 26:23-25
23 From there he went up to Beersheba (well of the oath – founded by Abraham)… 24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.
This is pretty amazing.
Look at what Isaac did differently the last time, as you look over the progression.
There was opposition.
There was enmity.
Then suddenly, there was space.
and when he got up to Beersheba, the well of the oath from his Father… he did something different before digging a well.
This time, first, he built an altar. Then he dug a well.
The water was under him the whole time. The water was there everywhere they went, but at the well of the oath, he built an altar. He called upon the name of the Lord, and THAT IS WHERE he pitched his tent, and then built the well.
We are in a series on the fruit of the spirit, and we just finished “peace.” We talked about the word “shalom” – how it means wholeness, and about what we can learn from the Hebrew word picture because its just so incredibly fascinating. The letters are sheen, lamed, vav and mem and the picture you get for sheen is teeth, to consume or destroy the shepherds staff, lamed, symbolizing authority… vav is the hook that connects something to something or establishes something and mem is the crashing water and it represents chaos. In order to find wholeness, you have to destroy the authority that is establishing chaos in your life… The spiritual authority, we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood and we need to make that clear.
You will never, ever experience the shalom of God if you don’t make room for Jesus to fill you. You will never be complete if you are empty.
And if you are having trouble in your life making space or Jesus, or making space for your gifts and your calling and the things that you believe you were created in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:10) to accomplish, look what does Isaac finally does… He builds an altar.
And at an altar, there is a payment, being made on behalf of something else. Something has to be killed in order for something else to find life.
What is taking up the space in your mind? In your heart? In your life?
What is filling the space?
What needs to be laid on the altar to create space in your life for what Jesus wants to do? What has you bound and maybe you don’t even know it?
What is taking your time?
Psalm 31:10 says “my times are in your hand;”
We need to be like David, and place our times into the hands of Jesus. Time is a most valuable asset, and we will waste it if we remain distracted and never create space for the spirit to move in our lives.
There is water below you. What you need, its right here. The space you need in your life, its here. God knows what he is doing. He knows what is best, he gave us the amount of time we need to accomplish the work that he has created us for, and he is in the business of creating space… making room for the people who seek him.
Nine years ago, when I was interning in the youth department at //spyn where pastor Chilly is now the youth pastor… It’s kind of crazy, I was an intern there right as pastor Chilly and some of you guys really were just beginning this church in Detroit, and now he leads //spyn and Dawn and I are here. I worked alongside Johnny K, under the leadership of Pastor Ricardo.
Every morning at 8am we would come in, and for an hour, we would have what we called “No Agenda.” We just prayed. We came in with no tasks to talk about or specifics to pray about, we just prayed. And it was one of the most fruitful, creative seasons of my life. Every morning, before we dove into anything practical, we created space for it. And Jesus moved big time.
So that is what we are going to do tonight. We are going to create space, right now, for Jesus to work in our lives.
Luke 5:17-26
“17 On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, 19 but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. 20 And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” 21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 22 When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” 25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. 26 And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
We ended our series on Intentions, talking about Community. Talking about how much we need each other… about how no man is an island, and the reality is that there will come times in your life when you will need someone to lean on… you will need someone who is willing to carry your burdens… who will weep with you, who will mourn with you… Thats what (Romans 12:15) says… we rejoice with those who rejoice, but we also weep with those who weep… we mourn with those who mourn. We allow hard times to build us into a stronger community, one that can withstand the attacks of the enemy… one that can withstand the times that we feel numb… or we feel lost… or we feel like there is nothing that we can do.
This passage in Luke is one of my favorite passages in the whole bible. Its a beautiful moment in which Jesus heals a man who was paralyzed. Who had no where to turn. Who was numb. He couldn’t even move… but his friends, they could still move. And what did they do? They came alongside this man, and they fought! They knew, he needs Jesus, certainly Jesus can heal him… But the crowd was to large… to many people, and there was no way to get them in… so they went gangster.
They somehow get this man onto the top of the roof of this house… We all love the fact that they cut a whole in someones roof and lowered the man down to Jesus… but how did they raise him onto the roof? The whole thing would have taken an enormous amount of work. But just like James says (James 2:14-17) Faith without works is dead. We can have faith all day for the reconciliation of our City… for the reconciliation of Detroit back to Jesus, but if we aren’t working for it, its dead. It won’t happen. At least not on account of us.
These men, they could have had all the faith in the world that Jesus could heal their friend, but if they didn’t take action then that man would have died still paralyzed… never walking again. But no, they worked. They raised him up onto that roof, the cut a hole in the roof of the house large enough to lower the man through, and then lowered him.
But look at what it says…
When Jesus saw THEIR faith to said to THE MAN… “Man, your sins are forgiven.”
It doesn’t say that he saw the faith of the man who needed the healing… Jesus healed this man because of the faith of his friends.
Because he saw THEIR FAITH… he said to the paralyzed man… your sins are forgiven, and then he healed him.
This is why we put such an emphasis on community in our church. Because there are going to be moments when you won’t be able to carry yourself… but there are plenty of others who will be able to.
When I spoke two Sundays ago, I told the story of how there was a series of events that happened all one after another in the course of 24 hours…
The first one was Zach went to the hospital.
Then I found out about my friend David, that he was killed in New York.
Then the next morning I found out that my pastors father passed away.
and then that evening I got call from my mom, and I didn’t share the details of this during service because she wanted to wait until a few tests came back… but she called to tell me that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Again. 12 years ago she had cancer, and she fought it and she won. She had been clean of it for 12 years… but when she called to tell me that it was back, especially after having the day I had had so far… I just went numb. I literally said to her “Don’t tell me that. Not today.” I couldn’t even begin to tell you what I was feeling, I couldn’t even get to a point that day where I could process any of it. Dawn and I went to dinner, and I didn’t say a word. I just sat there, and acted all dumpy.
Its easy to believe in the power of healing, when its all just a theory.
Its easy to believe in the sovereignty of God, when its all just a theory.
But when the day comes when your faith is really tested, it is hard to do what James says… its hard to count it all joy. Yet we know, because we have read it and been taught it over and over and over and over…
(James 1:2-4)
When your faith is tested… it will produce steadfastness
And when steadfastness has reached its full effect… you will be perfect.
Complete.
Lacking nothing.
Isn’t that what we all want? To be complete. To know that we are all that we are supposed to be… to know that we did all we can do, and that God used us in exactly the way that he wanted to?
When I heard my mom tell me those words… I didn’t feel complete. I actually felt really alone. My kids were all in the house running around, yelling… I was telling them to be quiet so I could listen to the words that my mom was sharing with me… I was surrounded by children, on the phone with my mother, about to go and meet up with my wife, and I felt alone.
Because my faith was being tested, and i was shutting down to it. But when I began to talk about it, to work it out a little bit in the context of community, to open up to my family a little, to share my heart with other people in the church, even if they were nothing more than a listening ear I felt like they were carrying my burdens with me.
When I finally opened up to my wife about it, it just felt like suddenly she was carrying it with me. She was lightening my load… I realized, “man, if I need this, then other people need it too…” I text my sister who lives in Georgia, and i asked her “Are you okay?” – How can I help carry her load? She just responded to me “No. Not really. I hate that I am down here… I hate that we live here right now.” – and strangely, that inspired me… the next day I told Dawn, “after church Sunday we need to go to Lansing. For 8 years we didn’t live close to family, now we do… we can be there. And we went… and honestly, I didn’t really even think about making that trip until I got that text from my sister… about her saying “I can’t be with them right now, and its killing me.” So we went and just spent some time with my mom. Let her spend some time with her grandkids.
I was in New York this week and I was talking with my Pastor there. He was asking me “How nice is it that your parents are able to go to your church?” and I told him… “Man, I don’t even feel right telling you this with everything you have gone through in the last couple of weeks… but we aren’t sure how much longer they are going to be able to come… my moms cancer came back, and they may need to move down south for treatment, we aren’t sure yet.”
And I literally could feel him taking on that burden, right there with me. Maybe for him it just hit so close to home, he had just went through something horrible, and I could see him break a little for me… for my family. It was community. It was someone weeping with me while I weep.
Community and healing, they go hand in hand. Jesus healed this man because of the faith of his friends…
faith that was not dead and without works… but the faith of his friends that took action and did the most unconventional thing possible to get that man close to Jesus.
Maybe you are here and you say “I don’t need anything right now” – but maybe someone else needs your faith, for their miracle. Maybe I need your faith, for my Mom’s miracle.
Come alongside each other.
We need your faith.
I need your faith.
Courage Church needs your faith.
Detroit needs your faith.
carry each other burdens.
There is a moment in Pauls letter to the Romans, in chapter 15.. He is excited about visiting Rome… he just can’t wait, he had wanted to go to Rome and be with the church there for so long, and an opportunity was coming for him to do just that. But before he went to Rome, he would first go to Jerusalem.
We read about this in Acts 20, when Paul is talking to the elders in Ephesus, and he says this… “I am compelled by the Spirit… the Greek word he uses is “deo ho pneuma” which means to be wrapped up in the Spirit, to go to Jerusalem… things were going great in the church in Ephesus… there was fruit… people were changing, they were growing… but the Holy Spirit clear as day told him, go to Jerusalem.
But Jerusalem was not the most friendly place for a christian to go.
It is in this conversation with the elders, recorded in Acts that Paul says these words: “I am constrained by the Spirit, NOT KNOWING what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that IMPRISONMENT and AFFLICTION wait for me.”
then he says this:
“BUT… I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It is the verse Pastor Chilly usedwhen he announced to the whole church that he would be transitioning out of the role of Pastor of Courage church.
So that is where his mind is, at the time of writing this letter to the Romans. He wants to visit them, he is planning to visit them, but first, he has been wrapped up by the Spirit and compelled to go to Jerusalem where he believes imprisonment and affliction await him… so he sends these words to the Romans… He says in Romans 15:30:
“I urge you, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.”
He knew that the people in Rome were not going to necessarily join him in Jerusalem. But he needed them. He needed to know they had his back, and so he says this… Join me in my struggle, by praying.
We join people in their struggle when we pray for them. We are locking arm in arm with the hurting, the broken, the lonely, the lost… we are locking arm in arm with the person waiting to hear back about that test result, or waiting to hear back about if they got the job they applied for.
We are locking arm in arm with the other pastors and churches in our city… with the missionaries we are sending to other cities and other nations.
We are coming beside people, where they are, and fighting on their behalf.
The people of our city need people who will fight along side them. They need people who will lock, arm in arm with them and let them know, “you are not alone.”
I love what the new American commentary says about this moment. It says:
“The Roman Christians were one with Paul in their love for Christ. This provided the essential motive for their entering into the problem he faced. An additional motive was the love inspired by the Spirit. Awareness of a fellow believer’s difficult situation will move the authentic Christian to join that person in prayer.”
Are we one? Are we all members of one body, joined together by our love for Christ? Fighting for each other. Sharing in each others burdens and lightening each others loads?
Are we struggling with each other in prayer?
For me, its always about the tangible. About the practical. About how we meet the physical needs… if someone is hungry, you feed them. If they are thirsty, you give them something to drink. If they are in a fight, you stand next to them, or even in front of them. But the bible says so many times and in so many ways that even though there will be times to tangibly take action, this is how we fight for people. We do it by prayer.
Ole Hallesby says in his book, prayer: “As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only for the helpless…. Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is truly helpless can truly pray.”
Prayer is a sign of utter and complete dependency on God. It should be an outflow of that. Of how lost we are on our own. Of how weak we are on our own.
Romans 12:15 says “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Prayer is just that. It’s crying “Abba Father.” It’s a desperation for our Father. It’s complete dependency on Jesus for the things that we can never ever maneuver in our own selves. It’s the young child who is so dependent on his parents for everything… Who is completely lost without them. Jesus says that unless you turn and become like a child (Matthew 18:1-3), then you can’t even enter the kingdom of God. Children are dependent on God. And God says if you want to be strong… You have to be weak.
You have to know that without him you are nothing. But he can do anything. And he gave us the church because as a body, together, we can do so much more… He is saying, are you not strong enough?
I am.
Are you not strong enough? Maybe by yourself you aren’t, but together you are. Together you are the church. My redemptive plan to save humanity.
Together you are a body. Together you are my bride.
I know for me… If someone has a problem that is bigger than themself… and they come to me to help solve it… if it is bigger than them odds are it is bigger than me too. yet Jesus says (Matthew 18:19) that when any two agree on earth and ask anything, it will be done for them.
And he starts by saying “Again I say to you…”
Again.
Jesus is saying this over and over and over. Because he works in settings like these. When people come together in his name.
But they have to ask.
That’s why we come together. To ask. To take our petitions before God as a body.
I got a text message this morning from Zack. He had some swelling on his face so he went into an urgent care… If you know Zack, it must have been alarming him if he actually took himself in… But they sent him to the Emergency room and he is there now… He is always the most faithful guy, he’s always here, he’s always helping. He is our friend. So want to make sure we are praying for him tonight. I want us to struggle on his behalf.
And like I said, I am all about the tangible. It’s been killing me all that I haven’t been able to get to Royal Oak yet to see him… And he has only been there a few hours.
Paul knew that the petitions of the Romans would only help him. They didn’t need to be in the same room or even in the same country… they just needed to agree on earth together.
John 2:13-20
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 So the Jews said to him, “ What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
—
Here we are right…right now, in this place. As I write this I am sitting in our sanctuary. A few hours from now, I will be joined by a handful of people who come together to pray.
Every time I walk into this sanctuary, I feel different. I feel the spirit moving. It’s like he is always here. I know that he is with us every day, in all our lives… But here… This place…. There is something different. I feel the weights of everything out there lifted off of me when I come into is place.
A lot of people struggle with this set of scriptures that I just read. Jesus throughout most instances in the gospel has been so peaceful… Almost to the point of a pacifist… Yet here he is making whips and driving people out of the temple… Something must have struck a nerve with him to suddenly make such a shift.
Here is what was happening in the temple.
The temple is the place that a person goes to be forgiven. The sin offering was usually a perfect goat or a lamb. And some people would travel long distances to get to the temple.
So imagine you have sinned… You need forgiveness.
But the temple is in Toronto.
A far away place.
Also a place with a different form of currency from here.
And you don’t have a car…
You are like Dawn and I and you ride your bike everywhere… But how do you carry a lamb on your bike?
In a car that’s about a four hour drive… According to Google maps, walking, it would take approximately 3 days (and 2 hours) via the Bentpath line.
That’s without dragging a lamb with you.
It would be much more convenient to take your money with you and buy the sacrifice in Toronto, than it would be to take the lamb all the way from Detroit with you… That would slow you down terribly.
So people were doing that, they were traveling long distances, from other countries even, and taking money rather than sacrifice. And that’s ok, because at the temple, you could buy the sacrifice.
The only problem was, you couldn’t use your foreign currency.
Say you are from Rome, and you want to use a Roman Denarii… Well this coin was unacceptable in the temple because it had pagan symbols and images of emperors…
But you could exchange your money, for money that was acceptable to buy the sacrifice… At the temple.
So not only had the church become a store…
It had also become a bank.
There is speculation as to whether or not the rates were fair, or if the priests were ripping people off… And it is also questionable as to if the church should be offering these sacrifices in the first place… Essentially monetizing the forgiveness of sins when it was really only intended to be an altar for it.,, But Jesus came in and said… Nope. This can’t happen. This is my fathers house. It’s not a store. It’s not a bank. Stop now.
The 95 theses
Perhaps some of you have studied or are familiar with church history. But essentially, the Protestant reformation and the split from the Roman Catholic Church essentially happened over a very similar issue.
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed what is now known as the 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Guttenburg. This famous list was a slap in the face to the Catholic Church, and really a declaration of war against them… He went after the sacred cows…. He called them out on all the things they were doing that were not like Jesus… Possibly the most significant being the selling of indulgences.
People would come to the church to confess a sin, and then the church would place a price… An actually monetary amount, that it would cost for that sin to be “forgiven.”
They were monetizing forgiveness.
And everyone either accepted this, or turned a blind eye to it…. Until Martin Luther came along.
He said “this is wrong.”
You guys are robbing people. What does the bible say? If you confess your sins I am faithful to forgive you… Not if you pay for your sins with dollars and cents…
Jesus already paid for your sins.
But the Catholic Church had veered from that. They had gotten off track. It had become about something other than grace….
It had become about money.
And Martin Luther said no!
He almost sounds like Jesus.
When it says he made a whip of cords (v15)… A more accurate translation is “a rush”
A rush is a Reed… It’s completely harmless. It’s s plant. He made a whip out of a plant. He wasn’t hurting anybody. He was not intending to hurt anybody. Which actually makes for a fascinating point…. One that these people in the temple make clear in verse 18.
They ask him “what sign do you show us for doing these things?” But in verse 15 it says they were driven out by him. What were they asking him? Essentially, they were saying… What happened back there? Why did we feel like you had the authority to do what you did?
Because they couldn’t possibly have been afraid of being hurt by Jesus… No..
Yet they still left. They rushed out. And they didn’t know why.
They were convicted. So they asked for a sign… They ask him, where did you get this authority…
We felt it…
But it doesn’t make sense to us. Why do you think you can take control of the temple… You aren’t the priest…
And that’s what makes Jesus response so fascinating.
He answers them….
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”
What’s he saying? He’s saying i am the temple.
Why do I make the rules in the temple?
Because I am the temple. You’ll see, when you’ve thought you destroyed me.
Malachi 3:2-3
“who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.”
Who can stand in his presence, and not be refined by it?
Here is where it hits home.
Was Jesus upset because people had turned the church into a kind of market?
Yes. But that’s more just annoying than anything. We are talking about the savior of the world…
He knew he was going to die for all this junk… All this greed. For All these people who were only looking out for themselves….
And that… is… the point.
He was going to die. The sacrifices that were being made were mere symbols of what was to come…
What was to come ON HIM.
When he says “you have made it a house of trade” the Greek word he uses is the the enporion…. It literally means market or emporium.
But think about it. Think about you when you are your worst. When you did the things that you would give anything to distance yourself from that sin… It was that moment that Christ died for… “He made him who knew NO sin” to be YOUR SIN….
He knew this was coming… He knew this was a big deal… And these people did too.
But they were cheapening it.
When the Israelites in the Old Testament would take a lamb to the altar… It was a real moment for them… It was a real exchange. There was reflection… There was thanksgiving.
Because it should be them on that altar. The wages of sin is death… And it’s their sin that cost the lamb it’s life.
And suddenly, in the temple of all places, it became a nonchalant thing.
Everything had a price tag. And that’s what they are thinking about. When you make a sacrifice like that… It should do something to you… Because it should be you on that altar. It should fill you with praise and adoration and thanksgiving toward God… Because nothing about this exchange is fair but God accepts it anyway..
But by monetizing the process… You have created a new system for forgiveness.
when you go into a market place, somewhere like the mall… You expect an even exchange… If you spend fifty dollars on a pair of shoes, you expect to get fifty dollars worth of life out of those shoes.
But that’s not the gospel.
Maybe you look for a sale… And you are hoping to get a one hundred dollar pair of shoes for fifty dollars….
Still not the gospel. The gospel is not a sale price or a great deal… And it’s certainly not an even exchange.
The gospel is more like you looking at a shoe that there is no way you will ever be able to afford, and someone else coming and buying the entire store now.
Now you own the store.
There was no sale price… In fact it cost him everything that he had..he had to empty all his accounts and liquidate his assets to get them for you… He held nothing back.
Wouldn’t you be thankful?
I am not trying to cheapen the gospel to shoes… It’s so much more than that.. But the point is that what takes place in a market is even exchange. But what the gospel gave us is “the great exchange.”
These people making these sacrifices should be reflecting… They should have reflected their whole journey to the temple.
This place is special.
This place is Holy.
That’s why It says “Zeal for your house will consume me…”
Jesus loves the temple. There is something about that place.
In Matthews gospel, he records Jesus saying this in the temple: (21:13)
“My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Throughout the bible, we get plenty of clear direction for the church.. For what it is supposed to be as a body…
A living organism.
An engine of change in our community.
A group of people who loves God with all our heart and soul and mind and loves our neighbors like ourselves…
Who makes discipled…. Who equips the saints for the work of the ministry…
But we don’t read much in there about the purpose of the church building.
But we read this: My house shall be called a house of prayer.
Prayer is about connecting to God.
And it’s a place we should come reverently too. And that’s why.
This Sunday, we are starting a new series, about intentions. About our motives. About what are we actually bringing to these altars. I may even tell this bit that I just gave you on one of the weeks, I am not sure yet…
But what I know for sure is that this Sunday we are going to call people to repentance. That’s out of my zone a little, I am a grace guy.
And we will do it gracefully. But one thing we are going to show is the difference in what 1 John 1:9 says, and what James 5:16 says.
See John says that if you confess you sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you… If you bring it before God, you will be forgiveness…
And he will forgive you! Psalms says he washes your transgressions as far as the east is from the west…
But James 5:16 says that we confess to each other… For healing.
And I just believe that God wants to heal our city, and it starts with us.
