Getting It Wrong... 7/13/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Mark 6:14-17

¹⁴ King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”
¹⁵ Others said, “He is Elijah.” And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.”
¹⁶ But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!” ¹⁷ For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married.
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Familiarity Bred Contempt…

Last week,In the first verses of this chapter, Jesus had gone to his home town to minister, but the people in his hometown were too familiar with Jesus to have any real faith, they basically disregarded him because they had always known him and his family.

Getting It Wrong…

This week we get an example of someone who Got Jesus wrong.

King Herod was raised as, and was, a practicing Jew.  He was appointed as king over Judea by Rome so while he had his religious faith he was very much a man of the world.  King Herod had heard of Jesus and thought that he was John the Baptist come back to life.

There is a lot here that could be discussed (like how does a practicing Jew believe in reincarnation?) but just one that I want to address at the moment, and that is how wrong King Herod was and how many of us are just like him.

Like King Herod, many of us carry some sort of guilt around in our psyche and we think all sorts of things about Jesus as a result of that guilt.  And while a healthy dose of guilt is necessary to lead us to Jesus in the first place, too many of us allow our guilt to send us in all sorts of weird directions of thinking about him.

I know a woman whose son overdosed a few years ago.  She was an absent mother who had problems of her own and when the son died she formed many spiritual opinions what aren’t even close to reality, non-the-less though she holds on to them because she gets some sort of comfort from them.  Without ever getting to know who Jesus is she has formed opinions about him in order to make herself feel better in her situation.

We all have this tendency in us, it’s a coping mechanism of our brains that allow us to function in this world however the problem is that we are trying to adjust our understanding in order to fit this broken world rather than getting a heavenly perspective to inform us.

Getting Jesus Right…

What King Herod and the woman that I know both don’t know is that Jesus did not come to judge but to seek and save the lost: he did not come to accuse but to forgive.

Somewhere along the way, all of us might have missed this memo and think of Jesus as a task-master and cruel judge, but the reality is that he offers us grace – the grace and redemption of his Cross.

When Jesus was nailed to the cross he looked upon his accusers and those who were insulting him and cried out “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.”  And at the very moment when Jesus gave up the ghost the punishment of Adam’s sin had been destroyed once and for all.  Then after he was buried and being in the grave for three days God resurrected Jesus back to life as the victor over sin and death. 

Today, Jesus is alive and well and through faith in Him, we have relationship with God via the Holy Spirt.  Now, the relationship that was lost with God back in the Garden of Eden has been restored through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our savior.

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Familiarity Breeds Contempt… 7/6/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Mark 6:1-6

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. ² And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? ³ Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. ⁴ And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” ⁵ And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. ⁶ And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching.
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I have a cousin whose dad owned a condo years back in some tourist town on the west side of Michigan.  When he went to sell the condo one of Michigan’s celebrities, Kid Rock, was interested in it and set a meeting with her father to inspect it.  On the day of the meeting my cousin went with her father but when they arrived she apparently got star-struck and nerved out and waited in the car. 

I consider this story a contrast to what happed when Jesus went to preach in his hometown.

The Gospel of Mark is largely concerned with the identity of Jesus.  Some people thought he was John the Baptist come back to life after being beheaded by King Herod, some thought he was Elijah of old, and still others thought that he was one of the prophets, but to the people of Nazareth, he was just Jesus; Mary’s boy.  The people of Nazareth were most familiar with Jesus and they had the least faith of all peoples with the result that he couldn’t do any great miracles there in his home town.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt…

In some ways, most of us are like the people of Nazareth because we are often too familiar with Jesus.  We all have some form of knowledge about Jesus that we believe and are accustomed to, and this accustomed knowledge (whether right or wrong) is what we are familiar with.  It is very common in our American culture to have some sort of familiarity with Jesus and the church. 

From the time of our births we have each been raised by our parents to have a faith or belief system, whether it’s a non-faith or the other extreme of a heavily denominated-faith; each of us knows or believes something about Jesus.  Right or wrong, it is this belief system that causes us to be familiar with the idea of who Jesus is.  And whenever someone suggests something different than what we already think and know, we tend to get combative in the holding of our own opinions and positions.

What We Need…

Disagree with me if you like but if you truly don’t know anything about Jesus and church, please give me a call and I will be happy to share with you what the Scriptures teach about him.

For the rest of us, what we all need is a Holy Spirit awakening in our souls and minds.  We need God to shake us up and the Holy Spirit to open our spiritual eyes as to who Jesus the Messiah actually is.  Without such a revelation we will always be familiar with our own ideas and denominational dogmas.  For each of us, my prayer is that the Glory of the resurrected Jesus might be fully revealed to us so that we shudder in understanding who it is that we are in the presence of.

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Acts 9:1-6

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. ³ Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. ⁴ And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” ⁵ And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶ But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

 

His Unfailing Love – 4/15/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Psalm 13

¹ How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

³ Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

As I get older I feel like the time is flying by (there just aren’t enough hours in the month!) however there have been times when the seconds seem like they take forever to tick by.  As a kid on Christmas Eve night waiting for the morning to come is one such time or when waiting for dad to get home from work when your mother has promised you his wrath is another.  I also remember sitting in detention at school watching the second hand of the clock roll around and feeling like the hour would never end.

In Psalm 13 David knew this feeling well as he was waiting on God to show-up in the midst of his life.  David was agonizing and wrestling in his soul and desperately wanting God to make an appearance and to get him through his inner turmoil.  

Do you too know the feeling of agonizing while the time seems to sit still and praying that God will come to the rescue?  I think everyone does.  Notice then what David writes in verse 5, “But I trust in your unfailing love…”  His unfailing love: most of us non-jews are ignorant to the depth and richness of God’s unfailing love.

In His unfailing love God rescued Abraham’s children from their slavery in Egypt and to them a land that wasn’t their own, in His unfailing love God taught the Israelite’s how to live and be a blessing to the nations, and in His unfailing love, when they messed it all up and repeatedly turned toward other gods He provided to them the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, to die on the Cross for them and redeem the children of Abraham anyway.

Today, we too can trust in God’s unfailing love for us as we too hold onto the promise of Abraham that we might be a blessing to the world.

Romans 9:8

⁸ … it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

The Empty Tomb – 4/01/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

No Joke, the tomb is empty!  (See what I did there?  Witty right?)

While every Easter sermon this year will begin the same exact way as I began above, I am going to veer here from my contemporaries by proclaiming "yes" that the tomb was indeed empty, but that did not lessen the confusion of the disciples.  (See my Good Friday post about the confusion of the disciples)

When the realization that Jesus was not dead, but alive, worked its way through the community of his disciples, they were confused and doubtful.  The men would not even believe the women who came from the tomb and announced that the angels told them that Jesus was in deed alive.  And don’t be too cross with the men, for believing that a man that you knew to be dead but now alive was not something that is easily believed by anyone.  The turning point came for them when Jesus appeared to them.  When they saw him alive they accepted the reality, but still they were confused; none of it made any sense.

But there was a time when Jesus made it clear to them.  Do you remember when that was? 

John 20:19-23

¹⁹ On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.  ²¹ Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” ²² And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Do you see it?  Look at verse 22. 

At this point all the Pentecostals in the room are shouting amens at their computer screens; as well we all should.  But we shouldn’t accept this passage without also reading its fellow verse.

Luke 24:45

⁴⁵ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.

Now all the Sessationsits are shouting amens.  (I had a friend once who told me that the Pentecostals often forget that there is a Bible and the Sessationists forget that there is a Holy Spirit.  That’s a discussion for another day though.)

Anyhow, the point is that Jesus appeared to the disciples and breathed on them the Holy Spirit so that they could understand the Scriptures about what had just happened.  The Jewish disciples knew the Jewish Scriptures but like pieces of a puzzle, their knowledge of those scriptures were all jumbled and still in the box.  When Jesus gave them the Spirit and opened their minds to the Scriptures, they could see for the first time the whole picture and what those puzzle pieces actually formed. 

So yes, the tomb is empty but the blessing was in the breath of Jesus and the Spirit’s opening of the mind to the Scriptures that explained God’s Messiah.  In other words, the blessing was in knowing and understanding Jesus as God’s fulfillment of his own promise to Israel. An empty tomb is great but the confusion about the Messiah is cast out with the Holy Spirit miracle of having our minds opened by God’s Spirit; today just as it was then.

Who says that God’s miraculous Holy Spirit doesn’t intercede supernaturally today?

I don’t have time to detail the story of God through the promise of Abram from the scripture to the day of Messiah’s resurrection in this post, but if you want to know why they called it Gospel good news then you will need to understand what Jesus revealed to the disciples about their scriptures.  Until that happens, the tomb is indeed empty and that is a sign that you need to listen-up and seek to have him breath on you the Spirit while you begin reading those Scriptures as well.