The Lord's Prayer

Series: Sermon on the Mount
July 25, 2021 - Jeff Gokee

Thank you, thank you. I’m actually having a really hard time. That song, you know, Jesus we love you, Jesus we love you. I’m really struggling in a beautiful way. I do love him. I do sense his presence. I don’t even want to transition. I just want to sit in that moment for a second and just feel it. Do you know how much he loves you? Do you know how much he loves us? Do you? He loves you so much. 

I can’t even imagine what so many of you are going through in this time of your life. But just know he loves you. Please know he loves you. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget that. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves me. I sense it. I feel it. For so much of my life just longing to find other loves that only he can give me. And man, that messed me up. I hope it messed you up. I hope the love of Jesus messes you up, because it’s messing me up right now. I’m like, Dude, I’ve got to preach. What am I doing?

Matthew 6:7-13 

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from the evil one.’

Eight years ago my son was diagnosed with leukemia. Thankfully, last week we celebrated six years off of chemotherapy, which was like a huge celebration for our family. He’s healthy and doing great. Seventeen years old. He’ll be eighteen in a couple of months.

For the first three months his protocol was a certain chemo and that chemo set him into anaphylactic shock. It was very painful, very hard, very scary. So they draw us into this back room and they say, “Hey, without this chemo his chances of surviving drop dramatically. But we have another option and that other option is not approved by the FDA. It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg. It’s going to be very, very expensive, but we think it will save his life.”

Basically, the option was, for three times a week for about six months they had to give him leg shots, deep tissue leg shots right in the muscle. Very painful. So we brought him in for that first one and that happened and it’s so painful, so overwhelming. Now we’ve got to do this three times a week for the next six months. How do we do this?

What ended up happening was, I would show up to the hospital with him and he would start freaking out because he’s thinking about the pain.  He’s thinking about the hurt. So I ended up taking laps with him on the inner part of the hospital and just talking to him. “Buddy, you’ve got this. You’ve got this. Come on. Stay focused.”

One of the things Cooper said to us early on in his diagnosis was, “God and I have got this.” Right? So I was like, “You and Jesus. You and God. You’ve got this. Just stay focused in on him. You’ve got to stay loose.” Because if he didn’t stay loose, his muscles would get tight and it would be even more painful. So I’m talking through him, kind of rallying him toward this thing that he has to go through, this difficult thing. Then he’d go in the room and try to calm his heart and get the shots.

I realized something this week as I was thinking about all the study I’ve done around the Lord’s Prayer over the last month or so, and actually diving in deep into the Lord’s prayer is this: I  used to think of the Lord’s Prayer kind of like this very somber, quiet thing. I realized this week it’s a rally cry. It’s like a war cry. It’s this anthem that we are in the kingdom of God right now. We are his children. He is our Father and we are coming up against all that our culture is deeming appropriate. When he’s going, “It’s not. That’s the kingdom of this world. I want to invite you into kingdom mentality, kingdom thinking.”

So it reframed the way I was reading and praying through the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a rally cry. Culture shaping, life shaping, day shaping, mind shaping, spirit shaping prayer that Jesus is inviting us into.

I want to tell you this, it’s going to radically change your life, if you don’t just say these words, but really apply them to the way you live your life. This is the kingdom of God life, the kingdom of God prayer that he’s inviting us into. 

And much like me taking Cooper around the inside of the hospital going, You’ve got this,” Jesus is going, “I’ve got you. Stay focused. My kingdom’s here. I’m your Father. I’m hallowed. I’m going to take care of your needs. I’m going to provide for you. I’ve got you.” 

And it’s a rally cry. So I hope as we go through this together that it is this very personal, somber thing, but it’s also this rally cry that’s coming up against the kingdom of this earth. He is introducing us once again to his kingdom and what exists there. 

The Lord’s Prayer is a framework not just for prayer, but for life. I don’t know if you know this but so often we get caught up into the idea that this is a prayer. This is a framework for life and the way that we are to live this life. 

Over the last couple of months we’ve been trying to learn what it looks like to live in the kingdom of God. Once again Jesus is providing us a framework through prayer that is actually a wholistic, a whole life thing that he’s inviting us into. 

Before we move on, kind of the background of the Lord’s prayer, and we see it all throughout this passage in Matthew 6 — and we talked about it a few weeks ago — what happened is the Gentiles had all these complex prayers to the gods. Basically those complex prayers were filled with uncertainties. So they used all these words more and more, because they’re trying to get the gods to interact with their lives. And of course Jesus says, “Don’t be like that.”

In my mind I had this image of Elijah on top of the mountain, and the prophets of Baal, all day long cutting themselves and saying tons of words. That’s the image that comes to my mind. And Elijah’s kind of mocking them, “What? Is he going to the bathroom? Eh - I guess your god’s asleep.”

This is what Jesus is trying to help his disciples understand. “Don’t be like them. Don’t just continue babbling on and babbling on with this level of uncertainty. I’m here in your presence. I’m Emmanuel, God with You right now. You don’t have to be babbling on. I know what you need. Because I know what you need and I know how I want to love you, I want to present for you a structure in the way that you can live your life and a framework in which you can pray.” 

William Barclay, he is a commentator, he says this, and then we’ll move forward. He says:

We need to bring our whole life to the whole of God and bring the whole fo God to the whole of life.

This is so important as we move forward in understand the Lord’s Prayer and what he’s actually inviting us into. It’s all of him. It’s all of him. But it takes all of us. Are we willing to be obedient to who he’s called us to be because of who he is? 

So he starts off by saying, “Our Father in heaven…” Right there we have these two beautiful things. “Our Father.” This is love. Then “in heaven.” Power. He is loving. He is our Father. But he is above it all. He is both far away and very near. And we live in that tension. Right? He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is the beginning and the end. But he is so near to us right now.

He starts off with our “Our Father in heaven,” and you’ll see this word occur all through this prayer: our. Because I think what happens so often in the Christian life is, it doesn’t say “My Father,” it says, “Our Father.” Jesus is inviting us into the Ecclesia, the Body. This is why Church is so important. Church is not just something you attend on Sunday. It’s who we are because of who he is. And Jesus is trying to help us understand that this myopic way in which we approach him is misguided. 

So he starts off by going, “No, this is a corporate declaration, not just an individual declaration.” It’s a corporate declaration. Why? Because it’s resisting and revolting about what Satan wants to do to you and me. And what he wants to do is have it all be about you. He wants the individualism that our culture loves to seep into your mind. 

I find it so interesting that the pieces of technology we have in our life are literally drawing us away from one another. We have an iPhone. Right? An iPhone. When I grew up, we had our phone. We only had one phone in the house. How many only had one phone in the house? Now y’all got a phone, individually, in your hand. It’s your phone. It has your preferences. You call whoever you want.

What we don’t realize is that we’ve applied that to our understanding of who God is. And it’s false. He’s our Father. All Satan wants to do is pull you away from the flock, pull you away from the body, because there you are most vulnerable. All throughout Scripture it’s talking about a body with many parts: “A three cord strand cannot be easily broken,” “Where two or more are gathered In his name there’s — what? There’s much power.” Because there’s power in the Body, in the Ecclesia. This is what he’s inviting us into.

The power of the Lord’s Prayer is not just in personal petition, but corporate declaration. This is who we are. This is what we’re praying. This is what we believe.

He then says, “Our Father.” Everything starts here. For over two decades my father and I have been kind of on the outs. I love my father. He’s a good man. But there’s been a lot of hurt. There’s been a lot of pain. What I realized was my view of my heavenly Father has been dramatically impacted by my experience with my earthly father. This is where, for a lot of you, it breaks down. 

This is why you struggle with prayer. This is why we continue to struggle to live and be obedient, because we don’t really know him as Father. I know for so many of you, you’ve had really painful experiences with your earthly fathers. They’ve not set a great example of heavenly Father. We know that most of the social problems in our world are as a direct result of fathers who have abandoned families. Fathers who have hurt and abused and all these different things.What we end up doing, whether we know it or not, is start applying that. So this term, “Our Father,” we sort of struggle with. But everything starts there.

 A.W. Tozer, a great theologian, says this:

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

The Lord’s Prayer starts here. It has to start here. Because if we don’t know him as Father, the rest of it’s not going to follow. The rest of it’s not going to make sense. We’re going to continue to battle in this world. So we really do have to get honest with how do I believe? Who do I believe God to be? Do I believe him to be this distant diety who’s sitting on a rocking chair up in heaven? Or is he my — our — Father?

We have to deal with that. Otherwise the rest of the prayer we’re going to continue to struggle with. Otherwise I’m going to continue as a pastor to hear over and over, “I just don’t feel God. I don’t sense God. I don’t see God. I don’t hear God. I don’t feel God.” Because we’re struggling with who he is as Father. 

So the question is do you really believe he is your Father? When we sing, Jesus, we love you, there’s something inside of you that just longs. That’s who he is to us. And it starts here. You have to start here. 

And then you have to transition into this next part, which is “hallowed be your name.” Holy is who God is. It’s who he is. Holy is who God is. Isaiah is having a vision of the throne room of God, where the angels are falling on their faces and they say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.” And as a result of that, Isaiah says, “I am a man of unclean lips. And I live among a people in the same way.” As a result of understanding that God our Father is holy, holy, holy. 

But I think where we’ve moved as a culture is we’ve moved away from that vision, that very sacred vision that Isaiah is inviting us into. We’ve moved to a very sacreligious vision of the holiness of God, where we’ve made him our home boy — like, “Jesus is my home boy,” — where we use the name of God as if it doesn’t have any reverence behind it. As if it isn’t holy. We use it in common phrases. 

I think there’s something about us that needs to back up. We need to back up, back into that sacred space. Not a legalistic place, but a sacred place to go, “God is holy.” Our Father, yes, he’s loving, but he is holy. Jesus wants us to pray in a way that says, “Our Father is hallowed. He’s holy.”

R.C. Sproul, another theologian, says:

If you don’t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead…

And I believe that to be true because I’ve experienced it in my life.

…You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don’t know God. You don’t love God. You’re out of touch with God. You’re asleep to his character. 

Like smelling salts, Jesus is trying to awake our souls, that God is our Father and he is holy, holy, holy. And that should bring a reverence. It should draw our hearts into who he is, his whole character, and that we would desire him deeply in that way; because hallowed, as it’s translated in the Greek, isn’t just about knowing the name of God. Satan knows the name of God. The demons know the name of God. Hallowed is, at least in the Greek, it’s pulling us in. It’s for those who intimately want to know the character and the nature of God and they trust him. This is what it means to live into the holiness, the hallowed ness of God.

Here’s the reality: The holiness of God does not keep us at an arm’s distance. Because who is teaching us to pray this way? Jesus. And where is Jesus? Emmanual, God with Us come to earth. How beautiful! And then Jesus dies and resurrects and who does he send? The Spirit of God who is here right now, near to us. This holy, holy, holy God is not keeping us at an arm’s distance, but drawing us near. But do you want to experience the holiness of God? Because we see, even in Old Testament and New Testament, he’s inviting us into this. But we have to be available to deal with who God is in the invitation that he’s provided for us.

Psalm 9:10 was really helpful for me this week in trying to work through this. It says this:

    Those who know your name trust in you,
for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.

How beautiful. How beautiful for you and me to have this understanding that he is our Father and he is holy, but he loves us and cares for us and Jesus is inviting us in, to the point where now he transitions and he says, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Whose kingdom? His kingdom. Whose will? His will. Not our kingdom, not our will. His kingdom. His will. We want it to be done. As we read through this we find out something really interesting. We find out there’s something very right that’s happening. We find out also that there’s something very wrong. 

I hate that I love McDonald’s. I hate that I love their French fries. Because there’s something so good about it and there’s something that’s so, so very bad about it. Do you know they put sugar in their salt on the fries? Right? To just draw us in. “Come, come, have my magical, delicious brownness in your belly.” But it’s so bad for us. It’s going to clog up our arteries and give us heart attacks. But we’re like, “Arrrh..” Because there’s something very nostalgic about it, at least for me, right?

There’s something very, very wrong that Jesus is exposing, but he’s also talking about what’s right. What’s right is we’ve neglected the kingdom of God. We’ve pushed it away. That’s why we have to invite it in. Our sin nature, our depravity is continuing to push against God’s plan, his kingdom come, his will be done. It’s pushing up against it. 

Jesus is like, “We need to invite it in.” So there’s both a negative and a positive here. It’s a problem for so many of us. We talk like this, but we don’t really want it. It’s a very dangerous thing to invite into your life because it’s going to transform you. It’s going to help you and open your eyes to the holiness of your heavenly Father. This is what it means to pray for this. 

Here’s the other thing. I find this so interesting. And you’re going to have to allow me to rant for just a little second, okay? I find that, especially during the last eighteen months, honestly, for most of my life, any time when stuff gets hard, everybody’s like, “It’s our time to get out of here.” Our ecclesiology gets all crazy, right? Our end times stuff. We go, “He’s coming back! He’s coming back! He’s coming back!”

And that may be the case. But sometimes we’re so busy trying to get out of here instead of inviting him here. He’s here. This is his kingdom come and his will be done on earth — not get out of here — as it is in heaven. And sometimes we’re too busy trying to get out of here when he’s inviting us to be here with him.

All right. Rant’s over. I feel so much better. Thank you.

The other thing I’ll say around this that I think is really important — Peter’s going to draw this out for us. We tend to always think about the negative things that are going to get us out of here, right? Peter goes, “Do you know what hastens the day of Christ? When believers in Jesus Christ choose to be obedient to the call of Christ.” That’s what hastens the day of Christ. That’s a positive thing. We’re always looking at all the negative. I want you to look at the positive. 

As we move forward in this way of thinking, we’re hastening the day of Christ. Instead of going, “Hey, God, get me out of here,” we’re going, “I’m here, baby. I’m going to be obedient to what you’ve called me to do and where you’ve called me to go.” That’s empowering. Do you feel empowered by that this morning? You should be. You should be. 

You matter in the kingdom of God and we should be saying, “Please come. Please come. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth. We want to bring heaven here. Not get out of here. We want heaven here. We want more people to come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior through the way that we obey and follow after him.” So maybe this would shift the way we start thinking about “kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

So the question that arises, Are we living in a way that says kingdom come? Are we living that way? Is it impacting every part of your life? The way I’ll describe it is, do we live in a participatory lifestyle? Which simply means this: I know some of you in here are teachers. You start school tomorrow. Glory be to God. God bless you, okay? You start school tomorrow. What would it look like to invite the kingdom of God into your classroom? Come on! What would it look like for us to realize there’s a bunch of kids in there that desperately need to see Jesus through the way we live this out.

You know all these prayers are a daily thing. He’s going to move on to Matthew 6 and he’s going to talk about, “Don’t worry about tomorrow.” This is how we need to live today. So what does it look like to anticipate the kingdom of God today? This has been so convicting to me this week. I’m always thinking about tomorrow, when he’s like, “I’ve only given you today.”

And what does it look like to invite the kingdom of God into your workplace, into your family, into your finances? Get micro on this. We’re always thinking of it on a macro scale. “Come on. Rain it down.” And he’s like, ‘What about your finances? What about your marriage? What about your parenting? What about your job?” Invite the kingdom of God into that to redeem that as it is in heaven. This is what we’re being invited into. This is a declaration to get earth out of us. To get earth out of us.

Paul says, “I’m crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I but who lives in me? Christ! He lives in me.” 

This is what it is to invite the kingdom of God, his kingdom come, his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is what he’s wanting us to do.

So now we transition into this other part. But these are more little practical things. But actually, they’re very important things, wholistic things. He says, “Give us today our daily bread.” I find something really interesting. Costco is like Disneyland for adults, right? You walk into Costco and you watch a bunch of adults go, “Whoo! I didn’t know I needed four thousand batteries. I didn’t know I needed six toothbrushes.” And there’s a guy in there selling knives. And you go, “I didn’t know I needed Ginsu knives. I didn’t know I needed that. I do need that.” “I need four trillion bagels for my family.”

All of a sudden we get all — I call it the Costco complex. We get in there and we go, “Whoo!” Right? Nothing against Costco but I think it’s actually framing up for us this very consumeristic thing. It’s exposing something in us. “I want all this.” 

How many of you have filled up your Costco cart, paid for it, got in the cart and go, “I over-bought. I overdid that.” How many of you? Be honest before the Lord. All of us have. If you’ve been to Costco, you’ve over-bought. 

He’s revolting against this. Why? Because, remember in alms giving, he’s like, “Don’t be like everybody else.” And he says, “Our daily bread.” Which I find again is very interesting. What does it look like for us to simplify our lives. Because there’s a bunch of people in the world that don’t have. What does it look like to remind ourselves to be mercy-minded. That’s what it means to be an alms giver. To go like, “Do you know what’s been done for us? Now I just want to do that.”

See, something like Costco is going to bring that into conflict because all we can think of is more, more, more, more, more. And who is it that’s providing our daily bread? God is providing our daily bread.

This word daily in the Greek is actually one of the most complicated words in the Bible to translate. It’s one of the most complicated words. The reason is because it’s not found anywhere else in Greek literature. So recently they found a shopping list on a piece of papyrus and the shopping list was basically things to do. This word occurred. 

Here’s what’s really interesting about this word daily. It literally means, help me get the things that are on my shopping list daily. That’s what he’s inviting us into. It’s a daily reminder that he is the one that provides for us. He is the one that cares. 

And it cannot only be preached once or prayed once to yourself. You don’t just pray it once and go, “Hey, once and done.” This is a daily thing.

I went to Kenya three years ago. I go in this dung hut. We walk in and the lady is so excited to see us. So she invites us outside and we walk outside and I was asking about her daily life. “Tell me about your daily life.” She goes, “Well, I get up and I pray every morning, ‘God I need food. I don’t have any food.’ And do you know, some days he does it and some days he doesn’t. And he’s so faithful.” 

And she was so happy and we were just so humbled that this connection that she had with her heavenly Father that he was the one that provided for her. She found so much peace in it. I find it so bizarre that, as it relates to our daily needs — and by the way, this is not just about bread. This is about all our needs in our lives — when we bring those before the Lord, this is a submission. This is as humble declaration that, “God, you’re the one who cares for me. You’re the one who loves me. You’re the one who sees me. You’re the one who provides for me.”

We’ve seen God do this all throughout scripture. Manna. A cloud by day. Fire by night. Water. He’s providing for the Israelites to say to us, are we living our lives in a participatory way of going, “You take care of me. You love me. You see me.” 

Here’s the thing. God doesn’t need to be reminded to care for you, but we need to be reminded who’s caring for us. God doesn’t need you to go, “Don’t forget to take care of me!” What we need to do is remind ourselves who’s taking care of us. Isn’t that so important. 

So as you come to this particular place in the Lord’s prayer, remind yourself he’s the one who’s doing it. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. He is doing it.

Transitions into “forgive our debt as we also have forgiven our debtors.” So convicting. We need to practice what we preach. Remember, this is what Jesus is saying all throughout this. “Don’t be like the hypocrites. Don’t be like the hypocrites. Stop acting.” Remember this from last time? “Stop acting.” We’re acting. Many of us are acting, pretending. He’s like, “Stop. stop. Stop.” We need to practice what we preach because we do for others what has been done for us. Jesus is inviting this into our lives, that we would confess this out loud.

In fact, the literal translation of this, according to William Barclay — this was so convicting for me this week — forgive us our sins in proportion as we forgive those who sin against us. In proportion.

And we would say, “Oh, oh, hold on. Hold on.” Because this is what I did this week. “ Wait. Wait. He’s already paid our sins.” Right? He died and our sins are washed away. We’re white as snow. Right? Yes! Except that he also says, “To whom much is given, much is required.” That those of us who have received that redemption have an expectation to live that out in the spaces and places that he’s called us to. “To whom much is given, much is required.”

We should be known for forgiveness. Is the local church, is the ecclesia, known for forgiveness because of what’s been done for us? I don’t believe so. In fact, Keith Green, many of you might know who Keith Green was. Back in the ’70’s he was this kind of prophetic worship leader. He had a song called Asleep in the Light. I grew up listening to Keith Green and he says this in this line in the song, it always gets me.

O Bless me, Lord, bless me, Lord.
That’s all I ever hear.
No one aches. No one hurts.
No one even sheds a tear.
But He cries. He weeps. He bleeds.
And He cares for your needs.
And you just lay back and keep soaking it in.
Can’t you see it’s such sin?

That’s super convicting. Because “to whom much is given, much is required.” So what does it look like to live like people who are forgiven? That the death and resurrection of Jesus has covered a multitude of sins? Therefore, now, we go out. I wonder what this would look like for you this week. What would it look like — because what I know about the last eighteen months is there’s been lots of division, lots of pain — what would it look like to go on social media and say, “I’m so sorry about the divisive comments I’ve made over the last eighteen months. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

And then, what about forgiving people who have an opposing view to what you believe, and forgiving them for the way that they’ve maybe treated you? Can you see how beautiful that would be? That’s redemption! That’s redemptive because we know what’s been done for us. We know that there’s a people out there watching the body of Christ and saying, “Will they actually do and be who he’s called them to be? They speak the Lord’s Prayer but do they really live it out in their lives?” 

So this was really convicting for me. And I hope it’s convicting for you. But it’s also beautiful and liberating and freeing. And that’s what he’s inviting us into.

So he ends with this part, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.” People get hung up on the word tempt. Test is probably a better word, because people are like, “Well, wait. Can God tempt me into sin?” No. But if you remind yourself when Jesus was baptized, he was baptized, Father God said, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” And then it says this in the passage, “And then immediately the Spirit of God took him to the desert to be tempted (or to be tested).”

Really, what this prayer is saying is this. It is a humble declaration of our vulnerability. We see how Jesus was tested, how overwhelming and hard that is. What we’re saying is, “Hey, God, “I’m not Job! Please don’t test me. God, I’m not like Elijah. I’m not like Moses. Please. I need your help! Because that overwhelming testing, I need your help.” 

This isn’t about winning. This is about God sparing us and asking him to spare us from that testing. And ultimately what this passage is about, what this declaration is about is about rescue. “Deliver us from the evil one. Rescue me from Satan.” That would be a cry of your heart. “Rescue me from my depravity. Rescue me from my sin. I’m not the one who can do it. Only you can do it. I can’t do it on my own. I need you.”

What I love about the Lord’s Prayer is that it starts with a focus on a holy Father who is in heaven and it ends with Emmanuel, God with Us, and inviting us to beg him to free us from evil, which by the way, Jesus would say, “I’m going to defeat evil. I’m going to do that. I have the kingdom of God. I have brought the kingdom of God to earth. I am going to die for the sins of the world because my Father is holy. And because he’s holy he needs a perfect sacrifice and I am going to be that perfect sacrifice for all who are not willing and cannot make it on their own, I am going to be the propitiation for your sins. And I do all of this because he is my Father. And I will do the will of my Father.”

This is a prayer of redemption and rescue, but the posture of our heart should be, “Come, Lord, Jesus, come.  I’m a man of unclean lips and I live among a people that are unclean. And we need you. We need you.” This prayer is, “We need you.” It’s inviting us into a right understanding of the kingdom of God and who we are in that kingdom. 

Twelve years ago — I told you a little about this a few weeks ago — I went to India FOR the first time. I told you I talked to a bunch of pastors there. And that was a deeply impactful thing. But the other thing that was really impactful is I met a little girl. That little girl, we were going to sponsor. But what transpired as a result of that is we started an adoption process. Her name is Wasunta. Wasunta is a true orphan, abandoned by her mother and father. And she, as a four-year-old, lived on the streets with her younger brother.

The place where I went actually brought her in. So, again, I was just going to sponsor her, but then what happened was we began a two-year process to adopt her. It was a really crazy process. But every year I would go back to India and I would bring people with me because I wanted to be with the pastors and I also wanted a bunch of other people to see and experience what I had experienced in India. The other reason I would go was to spend time with Wasunta. She’s going to be in our home someday so we want to figure out what this looks like. I want to learn more about her.

That second trip I came back, she’s sitting on my lap and we’re eating chicken. If you know anything about the Indian culture that should not be surprising at all. They eat a lot of chick. So she’s sitting on my lap and we’re eating chicken. We get through eating the chicken and she starts eating the chicken bones. I’m like, “Whoa, whoa! Don’t do that.” And she gets angry at me. She takes the chicken bones. She eats them all and leaves.

I look to the guy she’s living with, because we’re paying for somebody to take care of her. And I’m going, “Hold on. What’s going on here? I’m taking care of this little one. I’m sending you money to take care of her and make sure she goes to school. And she’s eating chicken bones. What’s going on?”

And said this. “My friend, this little girl still thinks she’s an orphan. She’s not come to understand that she’s a daughter.”

That just broke my heart. He said, “She’s stealing mangos. She eats so much she gets sick and throws up, because she’s nervous.”

It just broke my heart because there’s no words I can say, nothing I can do. So I come back the next year and Wasunta’s getting older. And she sits on my lap again. And we start eating chicken. I’m like, “Here we go.” You know? And she eats the chicken, she leaves the bone and she runs away. I’m like, “Huh. What happened?” He goes, “Oh, my friend. Your daughter has finally understood she’s not an orphan, that she’s a daughter, and it’s changed the way she’s lived her life.”

Here’s the interesting thing, I think, that applies for us. So many of us are still living like orphans, when this prayer starts off with saying you’ve got a Father and he’s in heaven and his name is holy. And you can pray that his kingdom is come and his will would be done on earth as in heaven. And guess what? He’s got you. He sees you. He knows you. You can pray for your daily bread. You can pray for your sins to be forgiven, and you can pray that you will not be tempted and that the evil one will leave. Because we have the Spirit of God and he lives into us because he is our Father. You are loved.

My question for us, and I would love to end here with this: Do you know Jesus? Do you know him as your heavenly Father? The King of kings and Lord of lords. Because this prayer will transform your life. It is a framework for life but you have to understand who he is and who you are in order to really allow it to be transformational.

So what I want to do is slow down in this prayer. And I want to say this with you. So we’re going to corporately go through the Lord’s Prayer. So say this with me and we’re going to go slow:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed by your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.

And I’ll end as we have historically ended for so many years, all these years of church history:

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
Forever and ever.

And God’s Church said: Amen.

---

---

---

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Resentment and Revenge

Series: Sermon on the Mount
June 27, 2021 - David Stockton

We’re going to talk about resentment today. Yeah. Resentment is where we’re going. We’re going through the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve talked about anger. We’ve talked about lust. We’ve talked about divorce. We’ve talked about deceit. And really how prevalent those are in our lives, even as believers in Christ, followers of Christ — and how those really are the things that Jesus wanted his guys, his followers to be paying attention to, even more so than other things that society might want to pay attention to.

So today we’re talking about resentment. We’re talking about what to do when you’ve been wronged. Resentment meaning bitter indignation at being treated unfairly. Have you ever had a breath or a sip of resentment? Have you ever had that moment where you feel bitter indignation at being treated unfairly? That’s resentment. And resentment is something that Jesus wanted to talk to his guys about.

Right now, in our current societal moment, cultural moment, it definitely seems like resentment has become the marketers’ tool of choice. It’s a powerful, powerful motivator. It’s a powerful, powerful unifier. If I can find other people that feel the same resentment, there’s an immediate, deep bond that I have with them. And, if that can be used to motivate me, it’s a very, very powerful motivator. It seems like in society, our political left, our political right, they’re using resentment.

Even racial relations in your life. You should probably go listen to two weeks ago, when we talked bout the deception thing. That might be a good little refresher for you. Then come back to this one.

But basically, we’ve just got to measure those kinds of resentment, bitterness, and see what Jesus would say to us in that space.

On a little bit more serious note, you know, this week we received the sentence of Derek Chauvin, the 22-1/2 years that he was sentenced for his part in the killing of Mr. Floyd. That stirs up a lot of different things in people’s hearts and minds. I read the response of his siblings and family. Interesting enough, they were pretty across the spectrum. Some feeling that this was a really great sign of justice, some feelings it was a great injustice. I haven’t heard anything from the Chauvin family and what their take on all of this was. But you can understand, there are real, real situations in society that are very, very, very troubling and hard and difficult. 

I spoke on the phone with a guy last week that I haven’t talked to in literally twenty-two years. And we spoke for an hour and forty-five minutes as he shared to me all of the pain and the resentment and all of that that’s been in his life over the last twenty-two years, because his marriage of twenty-two years just ended. He wasn’t at all trying to say that he wasn’t at fault. He was just unloading years and years and years and years of pain from the marriage that he had had and no longer has. 

And there’s just tons of realities in life. We’re always finding ourselves in situations where resentment has a chance to prosper and grow.

And today we’re going to hear from Jesus, what he prescribes when we find ourselves hurt by evil or by an evil person. Matthew chapter 5. 

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’

Jesus, again, is on the side of a hill in first century Israel, outside of Jerusalem by the Sea of Galilee with a number of people who had been gathered to him. He’s talking to them about the Torah, he’s talking to them about the Levitical law. And sure enough, if you read Leviticus, Deuteronomy, oftentimes you come across this idea of God telling the people that the way that they’re supposed to judge situations is eye for eye and tooth for tooth. It was actually a good law that God had given his people to help govern them.

It didn’t mean that, if somebody comes and like, you know, cuts my leg off, I’m supposed to go cut their leg off. If somebody cuts my leg off, we’re supposed to go to the judge. And the judge, who has the authority, would decide between the two, what was the right recompense, or right judgement in that situation. 

And so this is what Jesus is saying. It was a good thing. It was something God gave to his people to kind of give them a little bit of fear in the way that they would act toward one another. It gave them a little bit of pause before they would do something to hurt someone, knowing that the law of the land was that if they did that to someone, it could be done to them.

But the people, like always, they were manipulating and twisting it in a way that God didn’t intend. So Jesus was trying to get it back on track. And so he said: 

39 But I tell you…

What God was trying to produce and create in society by that law.. was that you would not…

…resist an evil person. 

I hate this verse. I don’t know if you’re allowed to hate Bible verses, but if you are, I hate this verse. And so I dug in to the Greek and commentaries, and all the people who have done ethics writings and all, just, okay, what is this really saying? And their words, those who did it with nuance and clever thinking and spinning, they were able to kind of really make this say something that is much more palatable. 

But then there were a lot of others that were basically like, “No. It just sucks. It’s just a really hard, hard, hard thing that Jesus was teaching his followers. That you are not to resist an evil person. That translation is actually pretty good. It’s pointing us in the right direction. And when you know Jesus, he said audacious things, right? He was a shocker. And it seems very inline with Jesus, that he would say it just like it sounds as I’m reading it. “Do not resist an evil person.” 

And Jesus didn’t say this because he’s foolish or he’s trying to wax eloquent. He was saying this because he really believes this is the best way. This is what will cause the kingdom of heaven to show up in your life and in your society. This is the most powerful thing you can do. This is not passivism, where you’re just supposed to lay down and die. This is some sort of passivism where you are pacifying the evil. You are actually not resisting them, but pacifying them with your righteousness.

And it’s a challenging thing for us, and we’re not first century Jewish people living by the Sea of Galilee, who actually, every single day of their life, experienced completely unfair treatment. They were in absolute bondage, hard, rough, oppressive bondage to the Romans in their own homeland. They were considered less than the Romans, less than human. They were taxed to where they could basically make no real progress in their life. They were hated, they were despised and, even within their Jewish community, they were bottom of the barrel. Fishermen and shepherds. Tax collectors. They were hated and despised because of what they did and where they were raised. And they knew the sting. They knew that bitter indignation at being treated unfairly. That’s all they had ever really known in their life. And now Jesus is saying, “Don’t resist an evil person.” And then he goes on to say…

If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 

Now, this is actually speaking specifically to a Roman law, where the Romans were able to say at any time, “Hey, boy, come carry this for me.” Or, “Hey, I want you to go with me so you can take this thing back for me,” and if you don’t do it, there are actual legal ramifications for you and your household. 

So Jesus is saying, “If they come to you and say, ‘Hey, I want you to carry this thing a mile,’” he’s saying, “I want you to go a little bit farther, at least far enough to where they’ll notice it. And then the last one:

 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Now, again, this is in reference to the evil person. All of this is in reference to the evil person. This isn’t, “Hey, if there’s somebody that’s really cool and you like them a lot and they ask you to borrow something, be like, 'Hey, what’s up man…” He’s saying if that same evil person comes to you and says, “Hey, could I borrow something,” you give it to them.

Now, just like we’ve been talking about with anger, lust, divorce, all these things. Super heavy. Super intense. Super challenging. But Matthew 7:28, which is the verse that just comes after the Sermon on the Mount, it says that all the people who heard the words of Jesus were amazed. And they were amazed because he spoke as one having authority, unlike the Pharisees. 

And what they were meaning by that was, after the heard the words of Jesus, after these heavy, challenging, no way, impossible words of Jesus, they didn’t feel pushed away by Jesus. Instead, the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, whatever it was, he brought this message across to where they though Jesus really could get them to this place. They were basically hearing from Jesus, “Hey, if you take my hand, and if you stick with me long enough, this is what’s going to show up in your life.”And they believed him. 

And sure enough, those disciples that followed him, we get to follow their stories, and that’s where they ended up. And the message for us, as you hear this, it’s not, “Oh, man, this is impossible. No way. I’m out. Forget this. Jesus can never…” It’s if you will stick with Jesus, not strive in your own strength or read a bunch of self-help books on resentment, but if you will literally take Jesus’ hand and walk with him and let his words abide in you and his Spirit abide in you, you will find this being the fruit that ultimately comes out of your life. This will be the heart that beats inside of you, as we follow him.

This is very heavy. It’s very intense. We’re more familiar with revenge, retaliation, recompense, retribution — these are kind of the prescriptions that are being offered in our day. Although those things have a place and all of that, it doesn’t seem to be the thing that Jesus is prescribing. 

We also have this natural thing built in to us, literally, biologically, the fight or flight. So when we’re hit with this trauma, when we’re hit by these hard things, when evil shows up and hurts us, we have these responses. Some are fight and some are flight. Some of you are fight people. It doesn’t matter what happens, you’re just like, “Aww” and you want to tear someone apart. You want to come at them. And you’re kind of going, “Heh.” And the people next to you are going, “Heh, heh.” Because they know it. And it’s intense. And it’s a reaction. And I get it. It’s something that’s there. It’s biological. 

But then, for other people, there’s this flight thing, where, basically, when this stuff happens you just want to run. You want to hide. You want to hide. You want to medicate. You want to substance abuse. You want to do all these things. You just want to stuff, stuff, stuff, and you’re like, “Oh, look, there’s a little part over there. Jam some more down there.” And you just stuff and you just stuff and you just stuff. And, honestly, you’re the most scary people. Because every once in a while you explode.

And Jesus is wanting to teach us another way. That fight or flight that’s there to serve you in those intense situations, but it’s not supposed to be the action that you live off and live on in to. He wants to teach us to forgive. Forgiveness is a huge part of this kingdom. It’s one of the biggest attributes or virtues in the life of a follower of Jesus: 
1) Receiving forgiveness from God and
2) Forgiving others as we have been forgiven. 

So how can we get there? Well, Jesus said it, so we should try and live into it. We should take his hand and allow him to lead us into it. But here’s biblically some other reasons why I think it’s so important for us to learn to walk in this way. 

The first one is that God has promised he will avenge. Now this sounds really weird for Christians. It’s funny — when we talk about the character of God and the nature of God and the name of God in Exodus 34, he’s abounding in love and faithfulness and merciful and kind and slow to anger and he sheds mercy and faithfulness to thousands of generations. But the very last line of that same whole thing is, “Yet, he will not leave the guilty unpunished.” 

It’s just so funny because we always sing about the nature of God, but that line is never in any of the worship songs I’ve ever heard. “Yeah, Lord, you’re so good and you will not leave the guilty unpunished.” Just one time I want a song that’s got that in there. And I’ll be like, “Yeah, now we are seriously worshiping God in Spirit and in truth.” Because that is a reality to our God. He does not make any bones about that. And, honestly, if you’ve been the one on the wrong side of evil, you really long for God to do something about it. You want someone to fight for you. And this is what God says in Deuteronomy 32:35:

It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
    In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
    and their doom rushes upon them.

In Psalm 94:1

The Lord is a God who avenges.
    O God who avenges, shine forth.
2 Rise up, Judge of the earth;
    pay back to the proud what they deserve.

You can find countless scriptures about this. And just in case you think these are all Old Testament, Hebrews 10:30

“It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 

God will not leave the guilty unpunished, not even for a second, not even for a day, not even for a lifetime. He will always do what is right. He is the only one that can actually execute justice. He’s the only one that knows.

I love what Dallas Willard says:

Anger and condemnation, like vengeance, are safely left to God. We must beware of believing that it is okay for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things. It is not so simple as all that. I can trust Jesus to go into the temple and drive out those who were profiting from religion, beating them with a rope. I cannot trust myself to do so.

Any time we take matters into our own hands we’re basically pushing God aside and saying, “God, you don’t know what to do. You can’t be trusted.” And God wants you to know, consistently throughout the whole of scripture, that he takes these matters very seriously, and he will make things right. He is a God of vengeance, but always in the perfect way. Because he’s the only one that can see perfectly.

So we need to let go. We need to release. We need to trust God with all of these things, because he’s the only one that can truly handle them correctly.

The second reason why we should try and live into this and trust God in this way is you will gain a blessing. We’re Christians. We love the blessing. “Oh bless this. Bless you, child.” We’re just all about the blessing. We’ve got songs called The Blessing. We just sing them over and over and they never end. We just keep singing it and singing it and singing it. Just blessings all over. Bless you and bless them and bless everybody. And it’s awesome. It’s good. Because there is a lot of blessing in following God.

In 1 Peter 3:9 it says: 

9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult…

Ugh. I’d have to just erase my whole junior high years right there. Didn’t do a great job of that. And some of you need to go close your accounts online right now.

…On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

Literally, Peter is writing to encourage the people he loves and cares for who are going through great persecution — loss of life persecution. He says to them, “Repay evil with blessing.” Just like Jesus said, “Because to this you were called as a follower of Christ and you will inherit a blessing.”

So what is the blessing? Psalm 37:5-6

5 Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him and he will do this:
6  He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
    your vindication like the noonday sun.

I forget which prophet it is, but he writes and says, “I will be patient as the Lord punishes me for the wrongs I’ve done against him. Because after that he’ll take my cause and he’ll bring me to light and to justice for all I have suffered.” 

The blessing that God promises is that there will be. Day when everything will be revealed and your righteousness will shine forth if you walk in this way, and your vindication like the noonday sun. You will get to stand in that day and you will be honored and you will receive all that God has for you if you walk in this way. You will gain a blessing. 

And then, the third reason, so God will avenge so you can give it to him and trust him. Then you’ll gain a blessing, because we all want a blessing, and at the last thing, and I think it’s the most important, is that you’ll put God’s glory on display. 

Matthew 5:14-16

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

This is what he says as an intro to set up his teachings on anger, lust, divorce and now vengeance. He’s saying, basically, If you’ll walk in this way, it will be like this light that shines in society. And it’s true that some people hate the light. But it’s also true that there are some people who are getting sick of the darkness, and when they turn and they see the light, they long for it, and they run to it, and they’re saved.

We have a story about that with Paul, right? Paul and Silas were in prison, totally treated unfairly, unjustly, and an earthquake comes and shakes everything up. And all the shackles are off. They’re set free. The doors are open and they’re just hanging out and they just keep singing. And the jailer comes in, the very one who put them in those bondages and whatever else he did to them. And he’s just about to kill himself, and Paul’s like, “Hey, man! We’re all just hanging out. What are you doing? Why you getting so serious over there, all emo?”

And the guy looks over and he’s like, “What’s going on?” And he says, “We’re just praising the Lord and we think he’s with us and he could be with you, too.” And they bless him and the guy ends up saying, “What can I do to be saved?” They pray for him and he and his whole family get saved. He was tired of the darkness and when he saw this light it was like, “This seems very different. What is this?” And as they explained it to him, he was able to receive it and the light came. 

Then John 21:18-19, Jesus is talking to Peter after the resurrection. Peter’s asking him some questions about what’s coming and he says: 

18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

Basically Jesus was saying, “Hey, Peter, it’s going to be tough, man. You’re going to go through a lot of injustice, even to the point of being killed. But Peter, you need to know that, if you can bless and not curse, if you can walk in this way that I’m teaching you, this way that I’m walking and have walked, then your life is going to glorify God.”

Now, we need to understand what that means. For us, when he said, “Hey, your life can glorify God,” I don’t know how that hits you. But the way it’s supposed to hit you is as the most important thing you could ever do with every part of your life. The very fact that you have a beat in your heart or a breath in your lungs, the very fact that you have any resource at all, mentally, physically, everything that you have has one purpose in mind. It has been given to you so you can glorify God. That’s the whole thing. That’s why you exist and move and have your being. 

And Jesus is saying to Peter, “Look, Peter, you will achieve the end to which you have been created if you’ll walk in this way. You’ll continue to release that resentment, that bitterness and continue to bless and not resist the evil person. Your life will glorify God.”

And, sure enough, we’re still talking about Peter all these days later because his life glorified God. And his words have authority because of that. And at the promise that we have is if we will walk in these ways, if we will release these things to God and bless instead of curse, then our lives will glorify God in a significant way. 

We have got to get to a place where we understand that our lives are not about our gratification. That is a lie from the devil that has taken root in America and in the American church. Your gratification is not what God is most interested in. It shouldn’t be what you are most interested in. What God is most interested in is your life bringing his glorification. And that’s where our lives need to get to, where we understand that glorifying God is the ultimate. It is the highest achievement, the greatest gift. It is the blessing.

On this side of eternity, I know it’s hard for us to really grasp and understand — but I know on the other side of death we’re going to get it immediately. Everything we did to glorify God will be all that matters in that economy. So we’ve got to make this shift. If we do this, we will glorify God in heaven. There can be no greater thing at all. 

So those are some reasons why we should do this. I know this is a complicated ethical issue, so I have some rules of thumb. Like how do we decide when we’re supposed to resist or fight, or what are we supposed to do. The great theologian, Mike Phifer, who’s my brother-in-law, we were debating this when we were young and trying to solve all the world’s problems. And yet, what he said has stuck with me. Because we’re looking at Jesus’ life and he never fought, but then there’s got to be some time we’re supposed to fight. So this is just helpful. This is not gospel, it’s not in the Bible. This will just help you. He said, “It’s only right to fight as long as it’s not for yourself.” So as a rule of thumb, a little helpful guide. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he got to a place as an ethicist, as a pacifist originally, someone who had a brilliant mind, he determined the best thing he could do to serve God was to try and assassinate Hitler. 

I read Dallas Willard’s quote, basically “I can trust Jesus to go into the temple and drive out those who were profiting from religion, beating them with a rope. I cannot trust myself to do so.”  We’ve got to let him do it.

Instead of trying to really solve all those problems, and if you do have any kind of challenge or any kind of thing to process together, you can email me at BrittanyStockton@livingstreams.org/ Just kidding, David@livingstreams.org. Because I’m trying to learn and process all this as well. But the best way to get what Jesus intended when he said these words I think is to just look at the example of his life. 

So we’re just going to take a moment now and do that. When Jesus was hit on the cheek, literally, when Pilate ordered him to be beaten in hopes that he might confess some sort of sin that he could punish him for, he sent him off with the soldiers, and in one account of the gospels they just took their fists and started punching him in the face and they actually ripped out his beard. In another account they took sticks and put a bag over his head and started hitting him in the face with these sticks, beating him, saying, “Hey, you’re a prophet. Why don’t you tell us which one hit you?”

And in the face of that, Jesus responded with, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

And then the very next example he gives us, “If someone wants your shirt, give them your cloak.” And there Jesus was, dying on the cross and they had stripped him naked. The only thing we know happening with his clothes at that point is that there were soldiers at the bottom of the cross and they were casting lots to see who could get his cloak. And Jesus looked down on them and said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Then, instead of walking a mile or two miles like the Romans said, he was told to carry his own cross beam. And he didn’t just carry it a little way, he carried it until he literally couldn’t carry it anymore and he collapsed under the weight. And his response to them was, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” 

Then, as he stood there on that cross, and he was weighed down by the sins of all of humanity, the sins of those there who were crucifying him, the sins of those who weren’t there, you and I, our sin was put upon him in that moment. The wrath of God was poured out on him that should have been ours. And we will never know how much it cost. We will never know the full extent of what Jesus went through on that cross. It was way more than the physical pain. And he did that because of us. Yet, we are told by him, “If you come to me and you confess your sins, I will be faithful and just to forgive your sins.”

We who have no right to even come to him and say, “Hey, will you forgive us,” because we were the ones who actually did the injury. Yet, when we come, he says that he forgives us freely and completely and justifies us as if we never sinned before. He sends our sins as far as the east is from the west. And he forgives us not just past but present as well as future. So generous and kind. This is what Jesus did in the face of evil. This is what he’s asking his followers to trust him and to take his hand and to walk into.

Let’s pray. If you want to grab the communion cup, we’ll make this part of our prayer time.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to ask the Father to forgive them for their sins, but also to do that as they are forgiving those who have sinned against them. So somehow in this communion there’s a combination that’s supposed to happen. One is we  receive forgiveness for our sin, but in the same breath, the same moment we then release forgiveness for those who have sinned against us, whatever it might be. To kind of get our minds around that, there’s this guy, Voddie Baucham, Jr. who’s been teaching me some things. In regards to forgiveness, he says:

If we refuse to forgive, we have stepped into dangerous waters. First, refusing to forgive is to put ourselves in the place of God, as though vengeance were our prerogative, not his. Second, unforgiveness says God’s wrath is insufficient. For the unbeliever, we are saying that an eternity in hell is not enough; they need our slap in the face or cold shoulder to “even the scales” of justice. For the believer, we are saying that Christ’s humiliation and death are not enough. In other words, we shake our fists at God and say, “Your standards may have been satisfied, but my standard is higher!” Finally, refusing to forgive is the highest form of arrogance. Here we stand forgiven, and as we bask in the forgiveness of a perfectly holy and righteous God, we turn to our brother and say, “My sins are forgivable, but yours are not.” In other words, we act as though the sins of others are too significant to forgive while simultaneously believing that ours are not significant enough to matter.” 

– Voddie Baucham from Joseph and the Gospel of Many Colors; Reading an Old Story in a New Way

And Jesus, we are so sorry for the way we have treated your forgiveness, that we have accepted it and not extend it. We are so thankful that you came when we were rejecting you. You came when we wanted nothing to do with you. And you gave yourself freely and allowed your body to be broken so we could be made whole. And, Jesus, we receive that right now. Fill us with your forgiveness, Jesus. And Jesus, we thank you for your blood that was shed to wash away all of our sins, past present and future. We pray that, as we receive your forgiveness once again, we would really be able to release forgiveness to those who have hurt us. We can’t do it without you. But with you all things are possible.

---

---

---

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Father's Day

June 20, 2021 - Brittany Stockton

This is weird for me, because usually I teach third through fifth graders and they are neither quiet nor respectful up there. So the fact that you guys listen just freaks me out a little bit. So, to make me more comfortable, if anyone wants to act up and I can throw you out of here,  it would be really good for me. And I don’t have my candy bucket. That’s, like, how I get kids to do anything.

Okay. So I made the mistake long ago of telling my husband that, I mean, he’s asked me multiple times to speak on a Sunday. I hate it. So I’ve always said no. But I made the mistake of telling him the only time I would ever speak is on Father’s Day. He remembered and now I’m regretting my life decisions. 

But there are two reasons for that. The first is, I have kind of lived in two worlds when it comes to a father. For the first I would say nine or ten years of my life I had a really good dad. I idolized him. I feel like kids when they’re little they just think their dads are the greatest thing. So for those ten years I really did idolize my dad. I just thought he was amazing. And he was everything that I needed in a dad. He was really funny. He has a really sarcastic, witty sense of humor that I loved. He was a history teacher, so he knew everything about everything. 

We would take these longs trips across the country and we would stop at every historical monument possible. As a kid, I hated it. Now as an adult I think that’s so cool. I walked around Martin Luther King Jr.’s house. We walked the street where JFK was shot. It was really fun. 

And my dad was also raised Jewish. He was bar mitzvahed and it wasn’t until later in life that he became a Christian. So he developed all these really good arguments for why he was a Christian. For my walk and my faith, that was really important for me. So he was just this perfect dad.

Then, without getting into too much of the minutiae or the details of what happened, by the time I was fourteen my dad was gone. And I mean gone gone. He didn’t fight for custody of us. He was not in my life. And for the last twenty years I have lived without a father. And so I recognize how important dads are, because I’ve had the fullness of that and then I’ve had the complete lack of that. 

So today I want to do a couple f things. First I want to just dispel some of the lies about fatherhood that I feel are propagated by our American culture. And two, I just want to encourage you dads. 

So I want to start by reading from Genesis. You can open if you want, but I’ll just read through it. It’s Genesis 27 and this is a story of Isaac. He had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob was a deceiver, right? He stole his brother’s birthright — well really he didn’t steal it, his brother was kind of dumb about it — but he took his brother’s birthright and he stole his brother’s blessing. 

The birthright was really the inheritance. The first son was given a double portion. So if a father had three sons, they would divvy everything out by four and the first son would get the birthright, which was that double portion of the inheritance. 

The blessing was really a spoken word. It was very prophetic. It had a lot of weight. It provided a scaffolding for the child’s life from that point on. So I’m going to pick up in the story right after Jacob had come in and stolen Isaac’s blessing.

30 After Isaac finished blessing him, and Jacob had scarcely left his father’s presence, his brother Esau came in from hunting. 31 He too prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Then he said to him, “My father, please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing.”

32 His father Isaac asked him, “Who are you?”

“I am your son,” he answered, “your firstborn, Esau.”

33 Isaac trembled violently and said, “Who was it, then, that hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it just before you came and I blessed him—and indeed he will be blessed!”

34 When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me—me too, my father!”

35 But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.”

36 Esau said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob[a]? This is the second time he has taken advantage of me: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” Then he asked, “Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?”

37 Isaac answered Esau, “I have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives his servants, and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you, my son?”

38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!” Then Esau wept aloud.

There’s lots of things that we can unpack from that. This is a pretty heartbreaking story. But I want to focus on the one thing and that is that Esau really understood the power of a father’s words. He understood that there is weight and there is substance to what a father could give him. I feel like a little bit in our society we’ve forgotten how important fathers are. 

So today I want to talk about three lies that I feel like have kind of infiltrated themselves into our society. Then I want to encourage you dads.

The first lie is, dads, that you might hear, is that you’re not important. You can take my word for it or I just found some articles from major publications in the United States and I’ll just read their titles. 

The Atlantic Magazine just had an article that said, “Are Fathers Necessary? A Paternal Contribution May Not be as Essential as We Think”

The New York Times held a discussion panel called “What Are Fathers For?” Where Hannah Rosen, one of their contributors said, “I’m not sure whether a child needs a father.”

The Huff Post just wrote an article simply stated “Fathers Are Not Needed.”

So that is something I think is being told to fathers over and over again. And I’m here to tell you as a daughter of a father who left, it’s a lie. It is a lie. Dads, you are so important. You are so important.

I’m going to read some statistics because I’m kind of nerdy and I love statistics. You guys have probably heard things like this before. I’ve heard them a bunch of times, but every time I hear them, I’m shocked by them. These are just statistics of kids growing up without fathers. And just so you know, the United States just topped the world in our fatherless rate. We are number one.

85% of youth who are currently in prison grew up in a fatherless home. 85%

71% of all high school dropouts come from a fatherless home

Teen girls from fatherless homes are 4 times more likely to become teen moms. 

63% of youth suicides — 63%!  — are kids from fatherless homes

75% of adolescent patients treated in substance abuse centers are from fatherless homes

90% of the youth in the United States who run away or become homeless for any reason originally came from a fatherless home

Children who live in fatherless homes are 279% more likely to deal drugs or carry firearms for offensive purposes

85% of all children who show behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes

So, while our society writes articles stating fathers are not needed, the statistics show otherwise. Dads, we need you. We need you in the home. You are so, so important.

Lie number two is dads, you are not necessary. This sounds like the first, so let me dissect this a little bit. Also, my hope is not to offend anyone in what I’m about to say. Just hear me out. If you are offended, you can leave a comment at david@livingstreams.org and just let me know. 

But dads are not necessary. I feel like this is very rooted in the feminist movement. Now, understand, I’m a woman. I am raising three daughters. I am very, very, very pro woman. But there is something that happened in the third wave of the feminist movement. The first wave I’m all about. I would have been there marching in the streets. The second wave got a little iffy for me. The third wave I feel is very destructive. 

Here’s what it does. It tells women that we can take over the role of any man anywhere, including a father. That we can provide everything that a father would provide. And it tells men, hey, what you bring to the table is not only not necessary, but is actually offensive and oppressive. We tell men that their strength is offensive. We tell them that their masculinity is oppressive. If they open a door for us, that’s offensive. If they don’t open a door, that’s also offensive. Right? We’ve trapped them and we’ve told them, “We don’t need you. We can play that role, too.” But that’s also a lie.

I grew up without a dad. My mom provided everything that she could. She was a great mom. But she couldn’t provide everything. Dads, you are necessary, because what you bring to the table is very different from what a mom brings to the table. And that’s important. That’s why God did it, right?

They did a study in Boston Children’s hospital. They took these 8-week old babies and they hooked them up to all these wires (because Americans are crazy and we do this kind of stuff to children). But they put it so they could monitor their brain activity and their heart rate, and then they put them in a room. They were monitoring in there and they brought Mom in the room. As they monitored, the heart rate went down. The brain activity went down. The hands and feet stopped moving. The eyes got a little droopy. Because moms have this amazing ability to nurture their child, to calm their child. It’s a beautiful thing. 

Now, they did the same thing, hooked the baby up, monitoring in there. They brought the dad in. The exact opposite happened. The brain activity went up, the heart rate went up, the hands started moving, right? The eyes got really wide. Because dads bring something very different.

When I come home from work, my daughters just crowd around me. I’ll be cooking dinner, they’re talking, sitting not he counter. We’re just like engaging that way.

When my husband comes home from work, he walks through the door and my girls are like, “Dad, let’s go play soccer! Let’s go do this!”

And I remember when they were little I always dressed them in these onesy pajamas because I’m like the world’s laziest mom. They never got out of those. (Actually, my daughter’s wearing pajama’s today. It’s just a thing.) But my husband would walk through the door, and he would grab them by the collar of that thing and he would lift them up into the air and they would be like so excited, flailing around, and then he would just throw them onto a couch, or throw them onto a bed. I was like, “What is happening?” Right?

Or they do this thing, wrestling on the bed. The girls always want to do it. I do not know why, because there are like twenty near-death experiences every time. When they start doing that, I go to Target because I know it’s going to end in crying. I know it. 

But dads have this amazing thing that they bring. It’s just natural. He’s not trying. But when I walk in the room, my first thought isn’t, “I’m going to lift my daughter up by the collar and flail her in the air.” But it’s his first thought. Right? Dads are very different. You guys bring something so different and so necessary. So you are very important. We need you because you can anchor us the way a mom can’t. You bring things that a mom can’t and you are necessary because what you give us, your strength, your protection, your masculinity — those are very important to your children.

All right. Let’s move to the third lie. So I know that when you look at that, when you see how important your presence is and you see how necessary your presence is, it might feel very daunting. It might feel very overwhelming. “How could I possibly fill this role?” Right? It’s so significant in your kid’s life. And I know you might have moments, and I know with my dad, just hearing his story, there were moments like that. He got too scared of how big this role was that he ran away from it. 

But I’m going to let you in on a little secret here today. Kids are not expecting you to do some big, grand thing. When the Bible talks about these fathers giving their blessing, it wasn’t some huge ordeal. And I was reading — Gary Smalley writes a lot of books on marriage and family. I think he did the Love Languages. But he was writing this book on fatherhood and he did tons of interviews before this. And he interviewed all these kids and he just asked them, “When was it, what specifically do you remember, what was the moment that you said, ‘I have received my father’s blessing’?” And I just want to read some of the responses.

One boy said, “My father would let me practice pitching to him for a long time when he got home from work.” That was the moment he realized he had his father’s blessing.

“I wrecked my parents’ car and my father’s first reaction was to hug me and let me cry instead of yelling at me.” I know what his second reaction was, though. But his first reaction was a hug. That was the moment that kid realized they had their father’s blessing, that very substantial thing.

One kid said, “When I was thirteen my dad trusted me to use his favorite hunting rifle.”

And one more, “My father would put his arm around me in church and let me lay his head on his shoulder.”

And here’s the thing. It  may seem daunting, but your kids are just looking for these consistent, small things. You do not know the moment that that blessing is being transferred from you to your child. It could be when you’re throwing them on the bed, right? It could be when you’re holding their hand and you walk across the street. It could be when you teach them to drive. It doesn’t have to be something big and grand. Your kids just want you to show up in little ways. They’re not expecting perfection. They know you’re not perfect. I idolized my dad for ten years. I knew he wasn’t perfect. They just want you to be there in small, little ways. Put your arm them. Hold their hand. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.

I don’t feel like I received my father’s blessing. He left before I really felt like that. But I was trying to remember the moment I felt the most loved by my dad. I was in my room and I had like a thousand stuffed animals. He was in there and he was just piling them on top of me. Then I’d pop out. And then I’d lie back down and then he piled them on top of me again and I’d pop back up. It was like the dumbest game in the world but I felt so loved by my dad. It was such a small thing, but it wasn’t a small thing to me. It was a huge thing. And in all those ten years, that’s the one moment I pull out and say, “That was when I felt loved by my dad.”

So dads, please know, it doesn’t have to be anything huge. It doesn’t have to be anything grand. We just want it to be consistent. That’s it. 

I want to read a couple of things in closing. I’m not really a good closer because, honestly, by the time I’m done teaching up there, the kids are not listening anymore. Right? I never have to close because I feel like sometimes they’ll look up at me and they will be shocked that I’m still teaching. Right? They’ll be doing their thing and they’re like, “What? She’s still up there? What is happening?” So I’ve never been a good closer because I’ve never had to be.

But I want to read through a couple of things just to some groups. Because Father’s Day, while I want to encourage you dads, because I think dads are just so important, I also know Father’s Day can be pretty heavy and pretty hard. So I want to read a few things just directed at a few groups that maybe you find yourself in here on Father’s Day.

The first one is to dads. Oh my gosh. I’m going to cry. I hate this so much. Dads, you are essential workers. I want to say it again. You are important. You are necessary. And we need you to be just consistently show up in small ways. When I was looking for a bible story about a good dad, I honestly struggled to find one. I do believe there is something uniquely hard about fatherhood. And while that’s not an excuse, let it serve as an encouragement for you to get the help you need to do this well, because it’s crucial. Please find a counselor or a good friend or a life group. Get plugged in and stay plugged in because your kids really do need you. That pain of having a father leave, it will never leave me. So please, please stay. Please do what you have to do to stay. 

To single moms. You are our Deborahs. You stepped up when it was necessary. I was raised by a single mother and she did an incredible job. So you can do it. You can do this. That’s my simple encouragement to single moms. You can do it. His grace is so sufficient. And while there is still pain, my mom raised four pretty well-adjusted children, okay? 

To fathers with no father. You are the dam builders. You are a powerful force working to change the flow and it’s no easy task. It would be simple to be swept away by what took your father and maybe fathers in your family line for generations, but I’m begging you not to stop the work. What you’re doing is not only good, it is necessary. It’s the hard work and I am and we are all grateful for you.

To those walking without the blessing of their father. You are not fatherless. I’ve walked in your shoes almost all of my life. Trust me when I say I know the pain. I’ve been there. I know the insecurity that comes with that kind of rejection. I know the heartache of not being able to ask for advice or simply have a shoulder to rest your head on. But I also know how good of a Father I have. I am not fatherless. And neither are you.

To fathers who have withheld the blessing. You’re late. But you’re not too late. I would take my father’s blessing today if that were possible. I don’t quite understand how all of this works, but there is a deep ache that comes with having to live without your father’s approval, without his words of life and without his impact. So, if it’s right, give the blessing. It’s not too late.

And to all the men in the room who are not fathers, maybe not yet, or maybe you’ll never be fathers. You are the pinch hitters. You are the sixth men. The closers. We need you. I had men step into my life in different areas. Coaches, youth leaders, husband. And it changed everything for me. You really can step into that role and love a kid who doesn’t have a father. And while you’re not going to save them from all the pain, you can make a huge, huge difference. 

I’m going to pray really quick and then I think someone’s going to sing a song or something. All right.

God, I just thank you so much that you are a good Father. Ultimately we have you and I’m so grateful for that. But God, today I want to pray for all the fathers in the room. I pray that they would understand how important they are. I pray for everyone who knows a good father in the room. I pray that we would be their cheer leaders, that we would constantly be supporting them; because without fathers, our society really does fail. So God, just encourage them today. Just bless them in this pursuit, this journey of fatherhood. Thank you that they don’t have to be perfect. But help them keep showing up. Amen.

---

---

---

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Divorce

Series: Sermon on the Mount
June 6, 2021 - Beth Coker

This morning it is my joy to be with you and to share from the word of God. 

About a month ago, the media and newspaper headlines blew up with the announcement of one of America’s most influential, affluential, philanthropic, visible couples, that they were divorcing. Now they had always appeared to be the Mazda automobile version of the American couple — not very glamorous but really reliable and very unlikely to break down. 

Photos hit the internet immediately of them standing together on stages, smiling, looking at each other with adoring eyes. This was Hollywood’s attempt to glamorize the brokenness of a marriage and home once again.

When the news about Bill and Melinda Gates getting divorced hit the news, everyone was stunned, like, what happened? They had been married for twenty-seven years. They raised three children together. They built foundations that are impacting millions of lives and they’re now saying that they can no longer grow together. 

We say the same thing when we hear about couples in the church divorcing. What happened?

My heart grieves whenever I hear about a divorce or a family breaking up. It’s difficult to hear about the death of a marriage and the brokenness and the breakup of a family. May we never get desensitized to hearing about the pain of a divorce.

Divorce has reached epidemic proportions in our land. Like a plague, divorce has swept through and brought death to the heart of our society: the home. We must stand and fight the enemy who wants nothing more than to destroy and dismantle the family institution. The view on divorce in our society today is multifaceted. 

Some people view it this way: Why marry at all? Just live together. Avoid divorce. Just don’t get married. 

Other people have this mindset: Well, divorce, but you can never get remarried. It’s unbiblical.

Other feel people this very strongly: You stay married no matter what. Abuse, not safe in the home, doesn’t matter. You stay married. It’s the unpardonable sin to get divorced.

Other people have this mindset: You know what? Stay married only if you’re fulfilled. When it’s no longer fun or meeting your needs, call it quits and get out. They kind of have this escape lever mindset, like in an escape room that, if you just can’t handle it, get out. Or maybe they see it as an exit sign off the freeway “You know, this just isn’t working for me. I think I’m going to take another route.” It’s all about self-fulfillment in those kind of views.

None of these, none of these are God’s view of divorce. He said strongly in Malachi 2:16, “I hate divorce.” It grieves his heart. 

This morning we are studying a passage that some consider the most controversial in all the Sermon on the Mount. Thank you, David, for giving me this assignment. In Matthew 5:31,32, it’s a passage in which Jesus addresses divorce and remarriage. It’s a very sensitive subject because divorce has affected so many people in the church and in our families. Just the mere mention of the word divorce feels like I’m ripping a scab off of an old wound, and it hurts. Emotions bubble up in us when we hear that word divorce. Some emotions of hurt, some of sorrow, some of loss. Emotions of anger, regret, and shame. And for many, this passage brings up painful memories and deep, personal losses.

Some of you sitting in here have walked through a divorce yourself. Some of you are walking through a divorce right now. Some of you heard David mention last week that we would be talking about divorce this morning and you chose not to come and you’re watching online. For that, I’m grateful you’re watching online. I’ve been there. To talk about divorce when you’re divorced or in the midst of one, it’s a painful thing.

Many of you have watched your parents walk through a divorce and it has left deep scars on your life. For others of you, the mere mention of a teaching on divorce elicits a response of fear and apprehension, because it raises questions of a situation you’re in right now. And I want to remind us, before we got to the worlds in Matthew 5:31,32 that Jesus is teaching here on marriage and divorce, and he is our loving, forgiving, redeeming Savior. He teaches the subject with grace and gentleness and truth. 

We serve a God of unlimited grace and he offers hope to those who put their trust in him. He offers hope to those of us who have suffered the personal devastation of divorce, even to those who are guilty of ending their marriages illegitimately, not according to biblical premises, or prematurely. 

I’m hear to tell you that divorce is not the unpardonable sin. It is not the unforgivable sin. I stand before you this morning as a woman who has walked through a divorce. It was one of the most painful times in my life and something I never would have dreamed would happen to me. I certainly never thought it would be an area of ministry I would be a subject matter in. But here I am, forgiven, redeemed, and being used again in the kingdom of God. And today I can say I am more in love with my Jesus than I ever have been in my life, and it’s largely in part due to walking through the crucible of divorce.

So whatever has formed your opinion about divorce this morning — maybe it’s something somebody taught you — maybe you formed your opinion by a book you read on divorce — maybe you formed your opinion about divorce in walking through it in your own family — we must base our opinions solely on the truth of God’s word and what Jesus taught us.

So turn with me, if you would please, to Matthew 5:31, 32, two short verses Jesus addresses in the Sermon on the Mount on divorce and remarriage, but they’re packed with a lot of power. In Matthew 5:31, Jesus starts and he says:

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Now, I want to set the scene a little bit. Matthew 5, chapter 1 opens with Jesus. He’s up on a hillside and he sees the crowd before him. Now, when Jesus sees a crowd, it’s different than the way you or I see a crowd. Jesus can look into the hearts and the minds of the people there. That’s how he sees us this morning. He could look around that crowd and he could see someone and say, “Oh, that one’s had too many affairs.” “This one over here, unforgiveness in their heart.” “Oh, that one, lusting after his secretary.” “This one down in front of me, broken beyond repair. In need of having their head lifted in hope.” “This one over here, hatred in their heart, therefore, committing the act of murder.” “This one just doesn’t like his wife’s cooking Wants to divorce her.”

That’s how Jesus sees the crowd. And as he looks t that crowd, he goes sup farther on the mountain. And he calls his disciples to him, and he begins to teach them the way of righteous living. Not more laws or rules. He’s contrasting the way of the old teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. When Jesus said, “You have heard it said,” he’s referring to what the Scribes and Pharisees had taught. “You have heard it said.” 

But he is saying, “But I say…I bring to you a new teaching of the life in the Spirit. A life of repentance. Living by the Spirit of the law.” The Sermon on the Mount addresses issues of the heart. Tough subject. It addresses murder. It addresses anger. Jesus addresses forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount. Last week you heard him address the issue of lust in the heart. And now, in these scriptures this morning, we’re looking at the issue of the heart surrounding divorce. 

Now, as we read these two verses, so many people get hung up on the exception clause, when Jesus says, “Except on the grounds of sexual immorality.” They think that’s the main point to the passage. But it’s not. Jesus expounds a little bit more on the subject in Matthew 19 and in Mark 10. And we see that what Jesus is saying here in these two verses is so much deeper than the exception clause. He’s teaching us to imitate God’s own example of commitment in a covenant bond of love.

Jesus is teaching in these passages to love and act toward our spouses just as God acts and loves toward us. He is a God of covenant relationship. How do I know that? He tells us in an Old Testament story how committed God is to those he loves. 

In the Old Testament there’s a story of God’s love for his covenant people, Israel, his chosen nation. A love that is faithful and committed, even though his people were not, in the story as recorded in the book of Hosea chapters 1 through 3. Now, Hosea is a prophet. The book in the Old Testament, Hosea, is a minor prophet. Hosea is a man of God. And this book opens, right in verse 2 of chapter 1, “And God commanded Hosea, go out and marry a woman named Gomer.” Now, marrying a woman named Gomer would be hard enough, but God also says — sorry if anyone is named Gomer in here — my bad — but God also tells Hosea she will prove to be a prostitute. So God tells Hosea, “Go take yourself a wife inclined to harlotry. And children of harlotry. For the land commits a flagrant harlotry abandoning the Lord.”

Hosea had to be thinking, “What? Did I hear you right? I’ve never been married and you’re commanding me to go marry this woman named Gomer and she’s going to be a prostitute? That’s what you’re asking me to do, Lord?”

God says, “Uh-huh. Because Gomer is going to prove to be an illustration of the nation of Israel and God’s covenant relationship with her.”

So Hosea marries her. And during the time that Gomer is married to Hosea, she has two sons and one daughter. And God tells Hosea, “Name that first born son God Scatters. Name your daughter No Mercy. And name your second son Not Mine.”

What a heartbreak it must have been. Poor, godly Hosea, who was a prophet in Israel. Can you imagine him introducing someone to his prostitute wife and his children who he wasn’t even sure were his, and saying their names. 

Gomer continues to wander again and again, away into the arms of other men. But Hosea continued to care for her and provide for her. And he brought her back home. But there was a time when she was away for a long, long time. And she eventually became auctioned off as a cheap slave. She was so abused, used and thrown out. Any other husband would have said, “Serves her right. She didn’t love me anyway. Let some other man have her.”

But God commanded Hosea, “Go buy her back. Go buy her back.” And Hosea did. Hosea went and paid the price to redeem her and he brought her back home again. This is our covenant-keeping, committed God. Through this story, God wanted to show his own commitment to his people Israel in spite of her unfaithfulness. He has done the same with us. When we have wandered off, he has sought us out, even in our sinful state. He has redeemed us back to himself and he affirms his unchanging love for us.

Now, in Matthew 5:31,32, God is asking the same of us toward our spouses. Jesus is teaching about faithful love in the bond of marriage. He’s not just teaching about when divorce can happen and when it cannot happen. He’s not just teaching who can marry afterward and who can’t. It’s about a covenant commitment.

You see, in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were focused on the letter of the law. Their righteousness, their puffed up personalities was based on observing the letter of the law alone. They tried to catch Jesus on the letter of the law.

Turn with me over just a couple of chapters to Matthew 19. We’re going to read what the Pharisees tried to catch Jesus in here. 

When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

So the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say to him, “Jesus, is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

Jesus doesn’t even engage in what they’re trying to do. He goes right back to the beginning in Genesis. He says, “God created them and said ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ What God has joined together let not men separate.”

The Pharisees didn’t quit. They just kept coming after Jesus. “Well, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 

The Pharisees, you can just see them standing there quite smug and saying, “Well, Jesus, you’re saying we shouldn’t get divorced, but Moses said we could. Gotcha.”

You see, in that day, there were two different schools of thought taught by the rabbis. The first was the conservative Shammai school. Those rabbis taught that Moses was saying if a man discovered his wife had been caught in adultery, he could divorce her. But remember the cultural setting at that time in the Old Testament. There was much pressure to stay married because of financial complications. You see, if a man wanted to divorce his wife, the dowry had to be given back to the bride. At the marriage ceremony there would have been large sums of money exchanged to the husband and he would have to give all of that back also. So, in that day, men thought twice about divorcing their wives, because they had to give a lot of money back to the people who gave it to them. I think maybe they were onto something in that day.

There was a second school of rabbinical teaching. It was the liberal Hillel school. And this thought was, “Anything you don’t like about that wife of yours, give her a certificate of divorce. She spoils your food. She burns the toast. Certificate of divorce. She twirls in the street. She talks with a male stranger. She let her hair down in public. Give her a certificate of divorce. She has any physical defect. She has any physical defect and you just fall out of love with her. You’ve found someone more beautiful. Give her a certificate of divorce. It’s okay. That was the mindset the Pharisees wanted to embrace.

And Jesus looks at these men and he says to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” It’s always an issue of the heart. There was a hardness in these men. A hardness seeps in when we seek for a divorce. Our hearts of flesh have been turned to hearts of stone. And Jesus is teaching here in the Sermon on the Mount it is always an issue of the heart.

The Pharisees were trying to test Jesus. They just wanted to trap him. Their objective was to maintain a permissive, liberal divorce policy. Because divorce was relatively easy in those days, as it is today. And the Pharisees intended to keep it that way. But Jesus is telling them, “Marriage his not a consumer relationship or a contract that you can just walk away from. Marriage is a covenant and it was established that way from the beginning of time.”

Divorce should be as radical as amputating an arm or a leg. No doctor would amputate your arm for a hangnail. No doctor would amputate your leg if you had a sprained ankle or ugly freckles or a varicose vein. Amputation should be the last thing you do. And that’s what Jesus is pointing out. You can’t divorce your wife for these silly reasons. Twirling in the street. Burning the toast. You found another woman. No. Divorce was never commanded by God. It was permitted in the case of sexual immorality or adultery. 

The Greek word that Jesus uses here in chapter 19 verse 9, of immorality, adultery, is the Greek word porneia. It’s the word we get our modern word pornography from. It refers to any immoral or adulterous act. 

Adultery kills the covenant of marriage. Hence the exemption clause in Matthew 5:31, 32, “except in the case of adultery.” Divorce was permitted when the covenant was killed through adultery or through abandonment. The Apostle Paul deals with the issues of abandonment in 1 Corinthians 7, when an unbelieving spouse leaves the marriage. 

Jesus permitted divorce on these grounds. He did not command it. God’s heart is always that of restoration. Always. And I know so many marriages that have been restored, even after an adulterous affair. Oh, it takes hard work. The trust has been broken. But it can be done. God’s heart is always to restore.

And so important to the Lord is the marriage bond, that to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Lord directed the Apostle Paul to address divorce even further in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11. Paul writes in that chapter that maybe a time of separation might be wise counsel, purposely and solely for the goal of reconciliation. Paul writes this:

To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

The issues surrounding divorce are so complex, and those who are looking for a divorce will look for any loophole they can to say, “See? I have biblical grounds for divorce.”

But maybe in some situations, a time of separation might be the best course of action if both spouses sincerely want to do a work in their own hearts and in their marriage and they seek godly counsel. 

My mom and dad needed this after forty plus years of marriage. They got to a point in their marriage that was so ugly and so hostile in their home that they could not be in the same house together. And so they decided to separate for a time to seek the Lord, to search their hearts, to seek godly counsel. And the Lord works when we humble ourselves before him. And after that time of separation, they came back together and their marriage was more beautiful than we had ever seen it the last eight to ten years of my dad’s life. God is in the business of restoring marriages. In the business of restoring relationships.

Not only is the marriage covenant killed through adultery, it is killed also through abuse. Because we are precious to God, we are not required to stay in a marriage when we have been betrayed through abuse. To abuse your spouse is to violate the “one flesh” union of marriage that God established from the beginning. 

The Apostle Paul wrote in Titus 2:15, “Do not let anyone despise you.” And the idea there is, “Don’t let anyone abuse you.” If abuse is happening in the home, it’s no longer safe for an abused spouse or the children to stay in that environment. Run. Seek help. Seek shelter. Seek safety. Don’t stay in that unsafe situation. Run from that continual exposure of family members to destroying addictions and perversions that will ruin the lives of innocent children. Get out of that situation.

I’m grieved if you have been taught that you must stay in an abusive or perverted marriage no matter what. Protect yourself and your children from danger. Do not submit to abuse. 

God’s heart must weep as he sees the brokenness of our world, our society, our church. Sin has destroyed so much of the beauty of marriage and the family he created. I don’t know how a teaching on divorce touches your life this morning. But divorce is a part of my story. It’s very personal. 

I was raised in a pastor’s home. Yes, my parents who needed to separate for a while after forty years. My dad was a pastor. The word divorce was never, ever mentioned in our home. Even if your marriage was unhealthy — and my mom and dad’s was for many, many years — you u just toughed it out. You stayed in it no matter what. We were raised to think that divorce is the unthinkable, unforgivable sin. It was the one thing you couldn’t come back from. You were branded with a scarlet D on the front of you that you would carry for the rest of your life.

So, in my own marriage, we were a family very involved in the church. I served in women’s ministry. I taught Bible studies, I taught Sunday school, we were involved in home fellowships, we hosted a home fellowship, I was on worship teams, my husband at that time was in leadership in the church. From all outward appearances, we were seen as a solid family in the church. No one had any idea that things were slowly eroding from the inside. Our marriage was crumbling and our three precious girls were suffering from it. You see, they keep the pain, the hurt, the confusion all bottled up and suppressed inside of them. We just plastered on our Sunday smiles and we kept up this persona of having it all together when we were in public. But the enemy, the enemy was dismantling our home brick by brick, and the walls just came tumbling down.

As I faced the reality of an impending divorce, it was humiliating and deeply hurtful. My extended family didn’t know how to handle it. They just didn’t know what to say to us, didn’t know how to minister to us. My name was slandered and rumors flew around the church and in our small valley. It was a very scary time for myself and for my girls. I had no idea how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death of a divorce. I had to go back into the work force I hadn’t been in for about twenty years. I had to sell our home. I had to change schools for my girls. They were in private, they had to go to public. I had to fill both roles of mom and dad. I had to try to keep my girls’ lives as normal as possible.

Through that time I chose to model the life of Joseph in the Old Testament, that, when he was accused of wrongdoing by Potiphar’s wife, Joseph did not fight back with words. When Potiphar’s wife accused Joseph of attempted sexual assault, he ran from her, but he never fought back with words. He didn’t even defend himself when Potiphar sent him to jail. Joseph let God be his defense lawyer. 

So I wanted to trust God to do that for me, too. I clung to my heavenly Father during that time like I never had before in my life. I let him defend me and he did. He fought for me. He was my keeper. He was my protector. I was in a place of needing his strength to guide me daily, just to be able to get up in the morning and to be strong for my girls and figure out how we were going to walk this road. This was the first time in my life I just couldn’t pull myself up by my boot straps and keep pushing through. I had always been able to do that, but not through a divorce. I needed my God more than ever before.

I pressed into his arms and I let him carry me so many times when I couldn’t walk on my own. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know where to turn. But I drew so close to the Lord during that time that, as I just turned my face to the side, my God was right there. He was with me in the fire. He never let go of me. He was my Father to my girls. He was our Provider. The Head of our household. My Comfort and my Shield. In the days and months that followed the divorce, I experienced the grace and forgiveness from my loving heavenly Father that disproved the legalistic view of being branded as a failure in God’s eyes because of divorce.

In time, I learned that I was not branded with this flaming D and defined as a divorced woman. Rather, I wore a blood-stained F as a woman forgiven. Forgiven. My marriage had failed by I was not a failure in God’s eyes. He wrapped his loving arms around me and he held me safe in his arms. It’s a beautiful thing to feel that depth of love from him.

My three girls needed to see me press into my heavenly Father for strength, guidance as we walked a very painful road. The divorce was damaging for them. It is never without cards. One daughter built walls so high no one could penetrate them. She was not going to get hurt like that again. One daughter longed for a father’s love to teach her to hunt, to fish, to rock climb, how to throw a football. My other daughter looked for approval from men and just longed to be accepted by one. 

Divorce leaves deep emotional scars. And as the years went on, people would watch my life and they’d think, “Beth, your life is like a divorce success story. How did you do it?”

And they’d want to come to me when they were contemplating divorce and ask me, “How did you do it? How did you do this life?”

And I’m just honest with them. And I’ll look at them and I’ll say, “Well, friends will feel bad when they hear that you’re going to get a divorce. But they’ll quickly say, ‘Ah, you’ll be okay. You’ll make it through.’ No. You won’t. Not without pain. Not without deep sadness of heart. Brokenness. Not without anger or hatred or deep wounds. Divorce is a death. It is death of a marriage.”

But those who come to me, who have been divorced and feel broken and like they’re worthless. I can look at them and say, “But God will bring beauty from your ashes.” But my God. 

My life and the lives of my girls are testimony of his power and his grace. How did we do it? It came from being able to forgive and let go of any bitterness that I had in my heart, and to teach my girls to do the same. 

This morning, by asking God to change your heart, you can be whole again. You can feel his love, his forgiveness. You can trust God with your future. You can count on his love forever. You have come to the place for healing this morning. If you’re here this morning and you’re divorced and you still harbor a hardness or a hatred in your heart, may today be the day that you repent and let God give you a new heart, a heart of flesh. As God this morning to change your heart and he will.

“Father, give me a heart of flesh. Take away this heart of stone.” Oh, I hear so many divorced men and women still slandering their ex-spouses. They put the blame on the other person. They’re hard hearted. Bitterness spews from them. They’ve never had the heart surgery it takes to turn their heart back into a heart of flesh. They take that same hardness into their new marriage, their new home, their new circle of friends. 

Don’t look to a new mate to change you or to complete you or turn you around. A different spouse won’t produce a new you. Only God can. If you’re divorced and single here this morning, you’ve never been married, embrace the singleness. Paul exhorts us to remain as he was, as single. You have no idea how God can use you for the kingdom. That’s where my life is a success story, to have stayed single after divorce and let God use me for his kingdom. 

Maybe you’re here this morning and you’re contemplating divorce. Search your heart. Maybe you just can’t stand your spouse anymore and you want out. Oh, humble your heart. Remember the power of the gospel. God can change us. Consider the hard work of reconciliation. Hosea did with Gomer again and again and again. God’s heart is always reconciliation, always restoration.

Consider the hard work of reconciliation before you do that knee-jerk reaction of “I have grounds for divorce and I’m not stopping until I get it.” I hear so many believers in that boat. Filling out those divorce papers will only trade one heartache for an even deeper one. 

Maybe you’re at the point this morning where a time of separation would be what God would speak to you. Ask him. Seek him. 

If you’re sitting here this morning and you’re abusing your spouse in any way, get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you and give you the strength to change. Get counseling. Get an accountability partner. Get help. Abuse breaks the covenant of marriage. 

And if you hear this teaching this morning and you’re thinking, “God can never love me again. I’ve been divorced a few times and I’ve been divorced for unbiblical reasons and I feel guilty.” Repent of that. God forgives. He restores. All he asks us to do is repent and ask forgiveness.

If you’re sitting here this morning and you feel tossed out like a soiled rag, you’ve been replaced by someone else in your marriage, you don’t even seem as if God sees you. Oh, our God sees you. Hagar felt like that when she was dumped in the wilderness. And God said, “Hagar I see you. Open your eyes. There’s a well of refreshing, living water right next to you.” El Roi sees you. 

For all of us this morning, look to Jesus in your marriages. He can bring beauty out of brokenness. Nothing can ever separate you from God’s love. He will bring beauty from the ash heap of destruction of divorce.

Would you bow your heads with me this morning as we have a time of silence? I pray that you would listen right now to what Holy Spirit is saying to you, to each individual heart. May your prayer be, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”

If you’re thinking of divorce, soften your heart. If you need to repent of harboring unforgiveness, do that this morning.

Father in heaven, help us. We’re living in a culture that has forgotten your pattern for marriage. Your word is being ignored. Forgive us. Give us strength to believe in the power of the gospel to change lives, to change marriages this morning. We trust you, God, to heal our marriages, heal our hearts, restore broken relationships. May we be Christ followers who walk alongside those whose marriages are struggling, loving them, speaking the truth of your word over them. Holy Spirit, blow through this sanctuary this morning with a mighty rushing wind. Begin a new work in the lives of your people in our hearts this morning. We surrender marriages to you this morning, Lord, be a miracle wonder-working God in the marriages in this church. Thank you for loving us, for being a God of restoration and brining beauty from ashes.

---

---

---

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

You Don't Have to Stay in That Pit

Series: John

John 21 - David Stockton

John was written by John. I figured that out all by myself. John was a human. John was writing toward the end of his life. So John was a guy who spent time with Jesus in the flesh. He was there three years. He spent time with Jesus in the flesh every day. Then after that, Jesus ascended into heaven. And John spent the next sixty years of his life hanging out with Jesus in the Spirit. To some of you, that might sound crazy or whatever. But we’ll explain more about that. But for those three years in the flesh he got to be with Jesus.

After spending sixty years being with Jesus in the Spirit, he’s about ninety years old or so, and he decides it’s time for him to write about his experiences for those three years with Jesus in the flesh. That’s what he’s doing. 

In the book of John he doesn’t use his name, he just says that he’s the one that Jesus loved. Not saying that he’s the only one that Jesus loved. But that’s what he really felt. He really felt Jesus’ love. He’s the one that leaned against Jesus chest at at the last supper.

John is the only male disciple of Jesus who was there when Jesus was on the cross. At one point we know Jesus had about one hundred and twenty people who called themselves disciples. At one point there were seventy and he sent them out. At one point he said, “Eat my body and drink my blood,” and then he only had twelve. That was kind of an eliminator there. That’s funny, right? 

Then he had twelve. But even those twelve didn’t all pan out quite right. But John was the only one out of all of those who was at the cross. There were some women because they figured things out better than men, but John was the only male disciple at the cross.

John has written all of these, he told us, so that we would believe in Jesus. So if you get to John 21 and you haven’t been encouraged to believe in Jesus, you didn’t believe it right. Maybe I didn’t teach it right.

He wants you to believe in Jesus. And when John says the word believe it’s different than Paul. Paul kind of uses the word belief or faith as kind of a pledge of allegiance. John uses it more as trust over time. He is basically telling us the story how one day he met this guy named Jesus and he began to trust him a little bit. And Jesus proved himself trustworthy so he began to trust him more. Jesus proved himself trustworthy so he began to him more.

At one point he turned water into wine and John said at this point the disciples began to believe in him, they began to trust more in him. Then they saw him heal people from diseases that couldn’t be healed and they trusted him a little more. They saw him walk on water, saw him feed five thousand, all these different things. They heard some of the things he said and they began to trust him a little bit more. 

So John, at the end of Jesus’ life on earth, at the end of his life, he’s just saying he completely trusts in Jesus. And as he writes, what is happening is that we’ll begin to trust more and more in Jesus, so that we’ll begin to sing out songs of faith from the places that used to be so full of despair, fear, pain and doubt. We’ll sing that old song, “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust you. How I’ve proved you over and over.” If you’re going to kind of say what hymn you would attach to what apostle - it’s a weird Christian game that no one’s ever played before. I just made it up. But whatever. I think that would be the song that John would love to sing. “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust you. How I’ve proved you over and over.”

So, in John 21:1. You ready? Man, there is like nobody here today. But there are so many people here. Who’s ready? We’re in church, man. There’s a lot of people here. It should be fun!

1 After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

A lot of events have transpired. A lot of stuff is going on in the disciples lives. And Peter is just like, “Forget it man. I’m going fishing.”

4 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. 8 The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.

9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place… 

Because, you know, grilling with propane is not really grilling. They’re going to keep coming, you know? So you might as well just get used to it. 

…with fish laid out on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Awesome story. Jesus shows up on the shore. His guys are out in the boat. Peter, that’s where he found Peter the first time was on the boat. He said, “Cast your net on the other side.” Peter was like, “Psh. You’re some like rabbi guy. I’m a fisherman. Don’t tell me what to do. All right.  Whatever. I’ll do it.” He catches a bunch of fish.

So Jesus is there once again on the shore. John and Peter and the other disciples are in the boat. They caught nothing. They’re frustrated because they caught nothing. They’re frustrated because they’re totally confused. They’re frustrated because Jesus is not there in the flesh anymore. They’re confused about all the stories they’re hearing. Jesus has shown up to them twice already, mind you. This is the third time. And they see this guy on the shore. He’s made  a fire and he calls out to them, “Cast your net on the other side.” There’s probably something inside them that says, “Maybe.”

They cast the net on the other side and catch all the fish. And they’re like, “Maybe?”  And John was like, ‘Yeah. It’s the Lord.” So Peter jumps in and runs over there. And they have this little time with Jesus around the fire. 

There are a couple of things I want us to draw out of this chapter. The third one is the most important. We’ll spend the most time there.

I want us to understand resurrected life. It’s a very, very important thing. This is one of the tenants of the Christian faith. We believe in the resurrection life. And resurrection life is not kind of like life that you get back. So Lazarus, when he rose from the dead, did not get resurrection life. He resurrected to normal life. He didn’t resurrect to resurrection life. Which means that he died again. It’s not like a cat, you get nine lives. You keep dying, or like re-spawning in a video game or whatever.

Resurrection life is different than that. Jesus is the first fruits of resurrection life. He is the first one to enter into resurrection life. It’s life that is not limited anymore. Not limited by the laws of nature. Not limited by sin and the battle there. Not limited by the curse that sin has brought. Not limited by death. It’s not that, if you die again you rise again. No. It’s that you don’t die anymore.

So we get to see this little glimpse into what that’s like for us. It’s little and it’s small, for sure. But Jesus, when he rose from the dead, his body was not in the tomb. His physical body was somehow part of his glorified state. So much so that these people, when they see him, they see him as human. They’re not like, “Is that an alien on the shore?” They see him and see it’s a person, but they don’t recognize that it’s Jesus until they recognize that it’s Jesus. Do you get how confusing this is?

There’s something so unique about this resurrection state. First of all, freedom from all the limitations, which is so awesome. But then also there’s this uniqueness to it where, you’re still recognizable as you do the things you do or say the things you say, but you’re not really recognizable because you look different.

So you have the disciples sitting there with Jesus around the fire. They just caught the fish. They know it’s him. John says it’s him. And they’re all sitting there going, “Somebody needs to ask. Is it him? Is it really him?”

I don’t know if that’s more that they’re so challenged with the reality that Jesus died and how he can be sitting here with fish? It’s just so hard for their mind to get around that. Or if Jesus just actually looked different enough that they’re like, “I think it’s him. But I don’t know it’s him.”

So they’re just sitting there like the disciples always did, thinking among themselves, It’s got to be him. Is it him? No, we shouldn’t ask. We should ask. Is it okay to ask? I don’t know if it’s okay. That’s what they’re doing because that’s the state. 

But one of the things that is also important about resurrected life—and this is one of my favorite things about it—is that every time you see Jesus, he’s eating. Right? That’s good news. So the eating game will continue past this. You can eat fish. You can still catch fish. I like fishing, so those are big deals for me. It’s usually fish and bread, so I’m hoping that that’s just all they had. That’s not all we will have. But whatever. I’m sure it will taste good at that point.

The next thing. So that’s resurrected life, glorified life, something to look forward to. It’s a hope that we have. It’s beautiful. It’s awesome. I love songs that sing about it as well.

So the other thing we have is a transitioning between the covenants. So here, for the Bible students in the room, if you love this type of stuff, basically we have the old covenant, Old Testament. We have the new covenant, New Testament. They are all the same covenant. It’s all God wanting to bring salvation to people through justification by faith. So the Old Testament, basically what they were supposed to do was believe that God would provide a sacrifice for sin, that God himself would provide a sacrifice for sin. It’s actually words that Abraham spoke to his own son. So they believed that God would. Now, the new covenant, we just believe the same thing. We just believe that God has, if that makes sense. It’s the same. 

I actually wrote an essay in seminary, in bible college. I called it the Covenant Mountain. It’s all the same substance. It’s all the same mountain - justification by faith. Same God, same people, same problems, all of that. And the same solution is Jesus. It’s always Jesus. It always will be Jesus. He’s the solution.

Now here’s the trick. When does the covenant reach its pinnacle of the old and begin the new? That’s not such an easy question. You think the cross, right? Jesus purchased the new covenant. He purchased with his blood the new covenant, he said. So you think the cross is where that happens, we’re beginning a new covenant. But without the resurrection, the cross really is meaningless. It’s just another guy dying. So then he resurrection becomes super significant, so maybe it’s the resurrection. But without the resurrection, Jesus said there was something else so important, when the Spirit would come.

So in Acts 2, the Spirit comes. And when the Spirit comes, that’s the guarantee of the new covenant. Now we have proof that the new covenant has come. Some of you are like, “What is he talking about?” That’s fine. Don’t worry. This is extra credit stuff. It won’t be on the test.

But basically what we’re experiencing in John 20 and 21 all the way through to Acts 2, we’re experiencing these 40 days of plateau on top of the mountain. I didn’t say this in my paper because I didn’t know this yet, but if I was going to rewrite the paper I’d write it this way. I don’t remember what I said, I was trying to fill up space so I could get enough words or something like that. But anyway, the top of this mountain is like this forty day plateau from when Jesus died on the cross to when he ascended and the Spirit came. It’s basically this transition between the covenants. It’s the time between the times. 

And Jesus is showing up not in the flesh, he’s showing up in the resurrected state in between the time where he was in the flesh and the Spirit comes. So it’s just interesting, fascinating thing. Not a lot to draw out there, just want you to be ahead of that. Basically the Father gave the Son, and the Son gives the Spirit, and then the Spirit gives us the love that we need and the power that we need to love God and people the way we’re supposed to.

So the last thing I want to emphasize is the redemption of Peter, the restoration of Peter, the reinstating of Peter. We get this in this next chunk, starting with verse 15:

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” 

Another good question for bible students is what is the word these? What’s he referring to? Is he talking about the other disciples? Is he talking about the fish? Is he talking about, “Do you love me more than these other disciples love me?”

He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” 

Because Peter, real fresh in his mind is that in John 19, Peter denied Jesus three times at Jesus’ real moment of truth.

and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”

The very first words that he said to Peter. “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.” It’s a really important moment that John makes sure. The other gospel writers didn’t include this. John is saying, ‘Hey you’ve got to know about this story.” The story where Jesus showed up to Peter. 

What he gave us in chapter 20—I loved what Ryan shared last week on chapter 20. But basically Jesus shows up to Mary and Mary was locked up in this frustration and anger at injustice. Mary basically was so upset she was distraught. Because they had taken the body of Jesus and she was yelling at the gardener and yelling, “Who took him? Where have you taken him?”

She was once again stung with that pain of powerful men and what they have taken from her. We don’t know all the details of her story, but we know that she ended up being a prostitute. And how you get to that point, and Ryan talked a little bit about that. How powerful men had stolen from her enough to where now she found herself as a prostitute and even demon-possessed. And then the most powerful man comes along, Jesus, and he calls out to her and saves her. And healing has begun. And yet, now powerful men have killed Jesus and not only that, but they have taken his body. And she’s so distraught because it once again reopens all of that wound.

Yet there, in that moment, she sees the gardener, not knowing, not recognizing that it’s Jesus, and she says, “Where have you taken him?” And the garden, Jesus, says, “Mary!” And she hears that same voice. That same name spoken in his tone and, all of a sudden, she’s undone once again. The healing gets a little deeper into her soul.

Then the very next thing John tells us is don’t forget about when he showed up the first time to the disciples. It literally says they were shut up in fear. They were locked up in a room. They were locked up in fear. And Jesus meets them in that space and says, “Do not fear.” And he actually breathes on them. He does something so personal, so tangible. And that would be weird if I breathed on you. I won’t do that. Don’t worry about that. But if Jesus does it it’s super cool. He breathed on them and they received some peace.

Then shortly after that he shows up again to the disciples, because Thomas wasn’t in that group. And Thomas was saying, “Yeah, that’s great. I’m glad you guys all had this experience. But I’ve always thought you guys were a little weird. So I’m not taking your word for it. I need to see his wounds. I need to touch him. I need to put my hand into his side if I’m going to believe.” 

So Jesus shows up a second time to the disciples and Thomas is in the room. He looks around and he says, “Hey, Thomas.” Thomas is like, “Me?” And he’s like, “Yeah, Thomas, you. Come here.” So Thomas comes up and he says, “Go ahead. Go ahead, Thomas.”

And Jesus is giving them something so supernatural, but so natural. He’s meeting them right where they are, locked up in these things. Thomas is locked up in doubt and confusion and Jesus comes in and he gives him something tangible, something practical, something in the natural to help him get released and unlocked.

Now we have this story where Jesus is doing the same thing. But now he’s calling out Peter. And John doesn’t want us to miss it.  So Jesus calls out to him and says, “Peter, do you love me?”

In the Greek there’s a little trick in here. Basically it’s, “Peter do you agape me?” It’s, “Do you sacrificially love me? Do you unconditionally love me?” And Peter, knowing what he had just done, still feeling the shame now of sitting with Jesus after he denied him and heard that rooster crow, he says, “I phileo you.” He doesn’t say, “I agape you.” He says, “I love you like a friend, like a brother, and it’s very conditional and I’m sorry.” 

Then he says, “But Peter, that’s good enough for me. Will you feed my sheep?” Then Jesus says to him, “Do you agape me?” And Peter says, “You know that I love you. You know that I phileo you.” And Jesus says, “Then feed my sheep.” Then the last time, a third time, Jesus says to Peter, “Peter do you phileo me?”

 And Peter is hurt. All that shame of what he had just done, of how often he had failed in all of his life is weighing so heavy upon him as Jesus asks him a third time, “Peter do you love me?” Peter says, “Lord, you know everything. You know I phileo you.” And Jesus says, “That’s good enough for me, Peter. Feed my sheep.” Then he begins to tell Peter all of the hard, hard things he’s going to go through. Basically, “Peter, if you thought that was hard, it’s now your turn to go to the cross. And all I’m asking is that you k eep following me because I’m the one who’s going to make you a fisher of men. Will you follow me?”

And Peter’s response is so beautiful.

20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 

Jesus is having this moment. He’s drawing Peter in. He’s saying, “Peter, we can do this. Take my hand. Follow me. Feed my sheep. I’ve got a massive calling for you. And if you let shame take it away from you right now you’re going to miss everything. But I’m here Peter and I’m praying for you. The devil desires to sift you like wheat. But I’m praying for you. And Peter, I’m here giving you fish!” Saying, “I want you to do something for me, Peter. I want you to represent me, Peter. I’m going to give all the people, on you I’m going to build the church. All of the little lambs are going to need you, Peter. I want you to fight for them. I want you to care for them. I want you to tend them.”

Peter’s like, “Well, what about John? What about John?”

Then John kind of inserts a little bit of his own thing:

22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” 23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

24 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

So John is here just kind of putting his seal, his signature on the end of this thing, saying that this is what it said. And John is now maybe wondering that, Did Jesus mean that I would be alive, that I wouldn’t die? But now he’s ninety years old and he’s going, “Nah. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. Pretty sure I’m going to die and that’s okay, because that’s not really what Jesus said,”

But in this moment I want us to really pay attention to what Jesus is doing here. And what John is wanting us to see. That Jesus was meeting with all of these people individually, in a very practical way. He was giving them something to hold on to. He was reinstating them. He was reconnecting with them. He was doing it in a very supernaturally natural way—not in a supernatural wild way. But in a supernatural way that made perfect sense to them personally.

Honestly, that’s what I think the Lord wants to do right now for each of us. We had a really. Neat time first service. We had a lot of people come forward for prayer and get to hear a rhema word—a word from heaven about their earthly situation.

What I sensed as I was preparing this message was that this message was just a setup. It wasn’t really something to stand alone. It was just to set up what we’re going to do right now. We’re going to have a time of waiting on the Lord to see if he would meet us who are locked up in despair, anger at all of the injustice and disappointments. He wants to meet us who are locked up in fear after a year of constant uncertainty, where we can feel our feet begin to slip, and our relationship with the Lord begin to waver. To free those who are locked up in doubt and confusion, who just can’t seem to get their mind around why God would allow certain things to happen. What they really need to do is to touch his scars and feel his heart.

We’re going to spend some time praying for those who might have become so identified with all of their weakness and shame that they don’t even know what God is calling them to. Or maybe they’ve forgotten what God has called them to. Or maybe they’ve stopped really believing that God could be calling them to anything, and they’ve disqualified themselves like Peter. 

Those things are not supposed to go with you from this room. Those chains, those things that are binding you up. 

As Jesus is talking to Peter it reminds me of this song that a guy named Jon Foreman wrote. This song hit me the first time I was listening to it because I was in Dangriga, Belize, because I was working with a bunch of kids with my wife. And these kids all came from real broken homes, real troubled situations. 

I remember we were trying to do church one night, and a fight broke out, which was not that uncommon.  It was an interesting church time we were having. And these two kids, they were probably twelve years old and they were going at each other. I didn’t know what was going to happen. My default move in that regard was to go, “Oh, look how much they love each other!” Then it usually is enough of a little embarrassment that they go, “I don’t love him!” And they stop fighting. So that’s kind of my trick. 

So it worked and I was like, “Oh and he loves me, too!” And I just kind of hugged one of them, which was again, just trying to get them out of the situation and kind of deflect some of the anger of the moment. I was hugging this kid and he was hugging me and I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I started to release. And when I started to release, he grabbed me so much tighter. And then I looked down and he was just weeping. He was totally weeping and I was thinking about these words and how this kid doesn’t want to be like this. 

The more I got to know this kid, he was sweet and he was kind. But he had been taught that this was the way he had to go, this is the way he had to live, this was the only thing he could do when he was in those situation. These words so powerful at that time. It says this:

We learn to wear these masks so young
Like a prison that keeps joy from gettin’ through
And an angry silence grips our tongues
These weapons and our walls become our tombs
Yes, we’re the kids who’ve seen the darkness
Always looking for the light
You fall in love and then the rains come down
And only part of you survives
Come surrender your hidden scars
Leave your weapons where they are
You’ve been hiding
But I know your wounded heart
And you don’t know how beautiful you are

–by Jon Foreman, from “You Don’t Know How Beautiful You Are” (Switchfoot)

And then this guy, Galway Kinnell was writing about St. Francis of Assisi and what he was able to do with the people around him. 

Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely
until it flowers again from within

–by Galway Kinnell, from “Saint Francis and the Sow

And this is what Jesus is trying to do. And I don’t know your stories, I don’t know your situation. I don’t. And I don’t really care that much because I know what God is telling me, what your Father in heaven is telling me he wants to do for you right now. If we’re faithful to do our part—just surrender and show up—he’ll be faithful to do his part.

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

---

---

Mephibosheth Around the Table

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

Living Streams! I was just in Belize for a week and had a great time down there. I’m pretty much fully recovered. We had about six fifteen-hours days in a row, which was long. But it was good. And we also had a basketball tournament one night, where we had to represent America against the Belizeans. And the basketball tournament started about midnight. We won every game, but my ankle lost one game real bad at the end. But other than, doing good.

It’s good to be with you guys. We have a lot of good things going on around here, I keep reading all of these articles and getting all these emails and hearing all these stories about how the church is in decline, and how millennials aren’t coming to church anymore, and whatever the after-millennials call themselves (not quite sure yet), and I just go, “Oh? Interesting.” I’m not saying it’s not true, but it’s just not what we’re experiencing here. We’re experiencing people being added to the church like every week and more every year for sure, getting discipled and plugged in. Were seeing a lot of millennials and those after-millennial people joining up all the time. It’s a really neat season. I’m thankful for what’s going on. 

We have a lot of things that, if you are still on the periphery a little bit, I would encourage you to jump in. We have this Explore Express class. If you’re newer to Living Streams, it’s a great place to get to know people, and get to know what’s “behind the curtain” at Living Streams; and we also have Life Groups going on, Polemeo. The Life Group thing, we keep hearing great reports about people getting together, sharing a meal together, sharing some time together outside of this context, getting to know each other. We’ve got that raw authenticity, relentless encouragement. We need relentless encouragement. It’s tough sledding in this life. We’ve got biblical counsel and genuine friendship happening in a lot of ways.

If you’re not plugged into one of those, there are a few slots available even now. But in January, we’ll get some more going. I’m excited because the end goal for Life Groups is not just to get everybody in our church into a group, but everyone in the world into a group. I really mean that because right now we’re trying to establish these communities where the love of God is manifest, it’s just there, it’s easy, it flows. And then those Life Groups would hopefully eventually start inviting people who don’t know the love of Christ, or don’t have a table to go to where they feel the love of Christ, and they can come into our homes and our tables and it’s already there, it’s already present. So next year we’re going to really be trying to make sure that’s a part of Life Groups as well. You guys are doing well. Thank you so much. I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard following Jesus in this world. But you’re here! You made it. 

2 Samuel Chapter 9 is where we’re going to be today. We’re finishing up our Church Around the Table series. That’s the concept where we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the table that Jesus set up for his disciples, the Last Supper, and really what he was trying to impart. I’ve been teaching the Bible for—how old am I now?—for twenty-five years. Literally, Sundays and Wednesdays, I’ve been teaching the Bible for twenty-five years. I’ve been going to church for a long time, been following Jesus for a long time, and I have felt like God has taught me so much in this last little series. I feel like it’s reshaping my heart. I feel like my heart is being reshaped in a brand new way after all these years, and I’m so thankful.

If you haven’t been tracking with us, everything we have is online. You can go to livingstreams.org. You can watch services live. You can watch them not live. We also have some supplemental material as well that can further your study and hopefully deepen your walk with Jesus.

That said, we’re going to do Church Around the Table today. We’re going to look at another table, an Old Testament table, a table of King David. Let’s read in Chapter 9, Verse 1:

David [who was king of Israel] asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Now I know most of you are Old Testament scholars and all of this brings so much context to you, just this one verse and these names. But just in case you’re not sure, we’ll go ahead and recap a little bit of this.

David is a very famous figure in the Bible, in the Old Testment, he’s very famous in the New Testament, as well. He is an Israelite. He was king at this point. He was the guy who killed Goliath when he was young. Right after he killed Goliath, he began to be a part of Saul’s household in a way. Saul was the first king of Israel.

Now God had chosen this people, Israel, to demonstrate how he feels about everybody by having this one example. He took these people out of slavery in Egypt and he led them across the Red Sea. Moses, prince of Egypt, we’re all there. And he’s going across the wilderness, and he’s forming them into a nation. He’s giving them laws. He’s giving them judges for those laws. He’s giving them the way that he wants to go. He’s delivering them from the oppression of those around them. And then he leads them into the Promised Land to establish them as a nation with land.

So they’re in this place, and God has done so much for them. And they say, “God, it’s a little weird for us, having you be our king. Can you give us a man to be king? We want to be like all the other nations around us that have a man as king.”

And God said, “If I give you a man to be king, he’ll steal everything good from you.”

And they demanded it. They said, “God, we want a king.”

So he did. He gave them a king. And his name was Saul, the first king of Israel. And there it is, Saul’s family. Saul became a king and it seemed like everything was going good at first. He did seem to follow in God’s way and lead in God’s way. But as power came to him, he started to change a little bit. Ever seen that in human history before? Power began to corrupt. Power began to change the way he viewed things. He now was so afraid of losing power that he started to do things that were very unlike what God would want him to do. He became someone that, for the people of Israel, was rejected. He even at one point became demon- possessed, that we know of. He was visiting witches to try to figure out what was supposed to happen instead of listening to the prophets of God. He became a very wicked king in a lot of ways. Very confusing. Very harmful for the people of Israel. And he really became someone that, when we look back, we think Saul represents shame, represents the flesh, represents sinfulness, represents defeat. The people began to see Saul that way toward the end of his kingship.

Saul had a son named Jonathan. Jonathan was awesome. He’s probably my favorite Old Testament character. I really think that Jonathan was the person that gave David the courage to fight Goliath, because Jonathan had done something just as cool a few chapters before. Jonathan was King Saul’s son, so Jonathan lived with this not being king, his family being not known at all, then his dad becomes king and, all of a sudden, they’re thrust to the front of Israel’s vision. And now they are the royal family and treated as such, and known as such. Yet, Jonathan maybe experienced all this and thought “This is great.” Jonathan had some great exploits. People knew Jonathan and loved Jonathan. But then Jonathan also got to watch as the whole tide of the nation began to shift from loving and honoring them to really being embarrassed and ashamed of the family of Saul, of the kingship of Saul. You see this difference that’s taking place? That’s what Jonathan grew up with.

But along the way, as David killed Goliath and Saul brought him in, hoping that the fame of David would kind of rekindle the love for Saul, Jonathan and David became best friends. Like serious best friends. And they loved each other. And one day David said to Jonathan, “I think your dad has turned on me. I feel like your dad hates me. In fact, I think your dad is trying to kill me.”

And Jonathan was like, “Well, how do you know he’s trying to kill you? You’re crazy.”

“Well, he was throwing spears at me the other day.”

And still, they weren’t sure. “Well, I don’t know.” And they came up with this plan to find out, Is Saul really trying to kill David? Has Saul’s jealousy and shame so gripped him that he would try and kill David, Jonathan’s best friend?

So they came up with a plan. Jonathan found out that Saul was trying to kill him and they had to part. They had to break up their friendship, and David basically went and lived as an outcast, outside the nation of Israel, living in caves, trying to just stay alive as Saul hunted to try to kill him.

This is what’s taking place in the context of this one verse. And now David has become king because Saul and Jonathan went to war and they died on the same day. Then for the next six years or so there was this battle over who would be the next king. A couple of Saul’s sons stood forward and said, “I’ll be king.” And there was some battling between them. All of the people’s hearts went with David, and they wanted David to be king. But instead of making David king of all of Israel, David became king of a place called Gibea on the outskirts of Israel. 

He was king there for six years while all of this fighting and turmoil was going on. Then, finally, after all that time, David was thirty-seven years old and he becomes king of all of Israel, unites all twelve tribes under his leadership. And he followed God as one who seeks God’s own heart, loves God’s heart, wants to do what’s in God’s heart. He became a great king in Israel.

One of the things he did after he was established after all this craziness, he sat one day and he said, “Is there no one left of the house of Saul that I can bless for Jonathan’s sake?” 

This is what was in his heart. This is what stirred in his heart as king. It says:

2 Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”

“At your service,” he replied.

3 The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”

4 “Where is he?” the king asked.

Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

So Lo Debar is an important name, as well. Lo Debar basically means “without pasture; desolate.” Lo Debar is also a place outside of Israel, across the Jordan river, on the wrong side. A place that we find out was where all of Saul’s family that was alive after all of that in-fighting, they fled for their lives in fear of the other sons of Saul coming to kill them because they weren’t part of that lineage—fear of David coming to kill them, because that was common that a conquering king would come and destroy everybody that was a threat to the throne. 

And in 2 Samuel Chapter 4, we actually find out what happened to this son of Jonathan. As the people were fleeing, one of the servants of Saul picked up this young boy named Mephibosheth, who was five years old, and as he was fleeing, he was dropped and it broke his legs and he became crippled for the rest of his life. Not only was this boy crippled, but he was taken to go live in a desolate place, hiding for fear, totally overshadowed by the shame of Saul’s name, in a place that was desolate and without pasture. 

So David says to Ziba, who tells him where he is:

5 So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.

6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.

David said, “Mephibosheth!”

“At your service,” he replied.

7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan”

And the reason David says this, all of this is so pertinent and powerful. The fact that he says, “Mephibosheth” and they put an exclamation point there, and there’s a reason. And the fact that he says, “Don’t be afraid,” it’s important because, for all Mephibosheth knows, David could have summoned him to Jerusalem to kill him, to get rid of him. Because the power could have now corrupted David like it corrupted Saul and he wants to eliminate any threat at all. 

But when Mephibosheth comes in the room and bows himself down to David, David cries out, “Mephibosheth!” And there’s so much meaning behind that name. Mephibosheth means, “the end of shame.” 

Track with me here. The end of shame is what his name means. That name first came to him from Jonathan and his wife. And Jonathan and his wife had Mephibosheth toward the latter years of their life and Saul’s kingship. So here, Jonathan has watched the tide of favor, the tide of grace and glory and strength, completely shift to one of total shame, as his father has done these horrible things as king. So what was once an honor to be the son of Saul has now become a total shame. The people have rejected them. 

And Jonathan, when he has a son, with his heart broken at what his dad has done to the nation, heart broken at what his dad has done to his best friend, David—he and his wife agree to name their son Mephibosheth, the end of shame. 

I don’t know if God spoke to them and inspired them. We don’t get all of that. But we know that it meant something for these two people to name their son Mephibosheth; because they were wrestling with the shame. They felt it every day. And their hope in this child was that he might be born and grow up and, they might have thought, become a great king that will turn the nation of Israel back toward God and end and remove the shame of the name of Saul. 

But right after he was born, just a few years in, Jonathan is killed. Saul is killed. And in the hurry and stress of all of that, Mephibosheth, the one who will end all shame, is broken as he’s fleeing for his life. The one who was to be king and end all shame is now crippled in both feet and can’t walk. And shame remains and another layer is piled on.

Then he’s taken as a young boy to a place where there is no pasture. And there he is living basically disabled, unable to do much, unable to be fruitful, unable to produce anything of value, and every day people say, “Hey, Mephibosheth.” “Come here, Mephibosheth.” And the irony just tortures him. As he is called to be the one who ends all shame, and all he’s ever known is layer upon layer of shame. 

Then one day he gets called to go to be with King David, and he walks in and he bows himself to the ground. David, the king that maybe took his place, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but the king is looking at him and what does he say to him? “The One Who Will End All Shame, welcome! Do not be afraid.” And then he goes on to say this:

… I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

Now, please. We know people all the time who fake humility to try to procure more favor. They say things like, “Oh I could never do that.” And they know they’re better than everybody. And you’re just like, “Blah, blah, blah.” In your mind. You don’t say it out loud. But that’s not what’s taking place here. Mephibosheth is really shocked and confused. He can’t even see the potential goodness because the shame is so thick on the lenses of his life. 

When he says to David, “Why are you taking notice of me, a dead dog?”—in a lot of ways he’s saying, “David, please don’t call me Mephibosheth anymore. I’ve changed my name to Dead Dog.”

Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And shame had won the day. The one who was named To End All Shame has become one who is just gripped by shame. He sees no good thing in him at all. And yet David restores to him all of the land that Saul had owned. That might be even more land than David had. And not only was it land, but Saul who had been king did just like God said. He took all of the best of the land. So now, the one who had only known no pasture, Lo Debar, now has the most fruitful parts of Israel as his. And one more thing. David said, “And you will sit and eat at my table.”

Let’s go on:

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

That plays into something later.

11 Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.

12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mika, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet.

So there’s this recounting in the library of Scripture, of this guy Mephibosheth. Sure enough, just like most of his life he thought was just wasting away, shame had won the day, now in this moment’s notice, he’s called by the king to come into his presence. There, in his presence, he is restored. All of his inheritance and destiny is restored in a moment. He now has the ability to do exactly what his name and calling is for him to do. He has all of Saul’s resources and he can use them differently than Saul did. He’s given all of Saul’s resources and it’s the most fruitful land.

The guy who grew up in Lo Debar, no pasture, is now having to have servants care for all of the produce that his lands produce. And then it says that he is invited to David’s table. Mephibosheth Around the Table. And when he comes up to that table, so many things take place, you guys. The crippled “Dead Dog” comes to the table. I’m sure on the first day it felt really weird for him. But as he’s sitting there at the table, the only thing people see is who he really is. They don’t see his crippled feet.

 I talked to my daughter about that last night. I was like, “You like sitting at the table?” (She’s in a wheelchair.)

She said, “I love it because we’re all the same here.”

She knows what it feels like. 

And here, Mephibosheth, however he gets to the table, he’s sitting there. And he really is just like one of the king’s sons. And there, at that first day, I’m sure he felt very unsure and like, “Uh, this is weird. Everybody knows I don’t belong.”

But think about as the years go by, year after year after year, he becomes so familiar there, maybe even tells some great jokes from time to time. Maybe even gives a little counsel. Maybe welcomes another one of David’s sons to the table because he’s been there a lot longer. All of a sudden he’s just there. And the shame, his past, they don’t know him like that. All they know is this person who sits at the king’s table, this person who has fruitful fields. 

And day after day, as he comes to that table, year after year, as he comes to that table, his shame dissipates. His shame fades. His shame no longer has authority in his life, no longer grips his heart, no longer is the most powerful voice in his life. But now he’s known as Mephibosheth, the one who ends the shame for himself and for his family.

And this is the call of God to you and me. We are called to be like David. This whole Church Around the Table is trying to inspire us to be more like David. So sit before our kingdoms, whatever they might be; whatever resource you have, whether it’s a car or a house or a table or a good park bench; whatever you have to assess the vastness of your kingdom and say, “What can I do today to show kindness, to show the love of God to someone who might not know it?” And invite them in. That’s what this whole thing is about. We’re trying to inspire that and be that. 

And some of you guys are doing a great job of that. You’re having people come across the threshold of your house that you never would have before. People that are so shameful you were afraid of them before. And now you’re inviting them all the way to sit at your table. And you’re not even afraid of their shame getting on you because you know Jesus’ love is too powerful. You’re having people come sit at your table that have done shameful things. And they’re feeling so free at your table to even confess some of those things so that they can be washed and cleansed. And there is so much more to come.

But the really important thing that we’ve got to notice here is that we’re aspiring to be David, but the truth is that David is a picture of Jesus and we’re a picture of Mephibosheth—people who have a destiny to end shame, to remove shame, to set ourselves and our family and others free of the shame of this sinful world, and our sinful mistakes. 

Yet, we find ourselves crippled in Lo Debar most days. But can you hear Jesus calling? Can you hear the King summoning you to come? All Jesus wants you to do is to come and sit at his table. He doesn’t care what you bring. That’ll take care of itself. He’s saying, “Come. Come to my table. I have died on a cross. I had my body broken, my blood spilled to provide for this.”

And if you will come to his table every day, year after year, you will find yourself being someone who can’t really remember how shameful you used to feel. You will come to his table, and all of a sudden you will find your destiny, your true name. And it might feel so weird at first. Some of you are here for the first time at church and you’re like, “Whaaaa. This is so weird!” 

But as you continue to come into the presence of Jesus, what happens is your shame gets washed away. And it sometimes happens in big, heaping, cleansing waves. Sometimes it’s just a little scrub. Sometimes it takes a few scrubs because that shame is sticky. But if we will keep coming to the table, if we will keep coming into his house, coming into his presence, pretty soon we won’t be known for all of our crippled-ness, all of our past. We’ll be known by our true name. 

When we went to Belize, I got to spend some time fasting the day before. All the guys that went, we fasted on the day we were headed to Belize. We knew we were going to go there and we want to tune in. “Okay, God. I don’t want to think about anything worldly. I want to think about spiritually what you’re doing.”

So I was journaling on the plane from Houston to Belize. I was just writing my prayers down and then, I’ve learned over time that praying should be more listening than talking. It’s really hard to remember that. But I was remembering and I was like, “Okay, Lord. Speak to me. What do you want to tell me? What am I looking for? What do you want to do in this time?”

So I started to write some things down. I ended up writing down about four different scenarios that I felt God was speaking to me about. It was interesting because, then it was like I was kind of on a treasure hunt. 

One of the scenarios I wrote was that there was a guy that I would meet down in Belize. We were going to do men’s ministry. There was a guy that I was going to meet. And he was a guy that really felt like his soul was dark, that the things he had done in life had broken his soul or had brought so much shame to his soul that it could never be lifted. And he just walked around with this heavy darkness in his soul. And that darkness came because he had really hurt a lot of people, actually physically hurt people. And I was like, “I don’t know if I want to meet this guy.” Then I felt the Lord told me that this was someone that has even murdered someone. Now it got real. And I thought, “Okay. That sounds too specific.” And how do you do that in a conversation? “Hey, have you killed someone?” “Okay, cool. Sorry.”

I didn’t know how this worked. But the very first night we were there, we created these moments of church around hot dogs and taekwondo. And we had all these guys there. And there were a couple of guys I didn’t know. Toward the end of the night I walked over to them and I said, “Hey, you guys. I’m looking for a couple of people. Can you help me out?”

And they were like, “Yeah. For sure.” 

So I read the first scenario. I said, “Do you guys know anybody like this?”

And one of the guys said, “I think that’s me.”

I didn’t read the part about killing anybody. I was too scared to do that. And he was like, “That sounds like me.”

And I said, “What does that mean? Do you feel that darkness?”

He said, “All the time.”

And I said, “Have you had a rough past where you’ve hurt people?”

He said, “I used to be in gangs, so I hurt people all the time.”

Then I was like, “Well, I also wrote down here that this person had murdered somebody.” I said, “Is that true?”

He said, “Well, I had a lot of past in gangs. And there is one thing that is really heavy on my soul right now. That’s me and my girlfriend just kind of broke up sort of. It’s complicated.”

I said, “Yeah, it always is.”

He said, “But she was pregnant with our son and she just had him aborted. And it’s been killing me. It’s been torturing me.”

This is where I had a little turmoil in my own heart as I was thinking, can I just say, “Hey, you’re forgiven.” That seems like, “No, you need to say these prayers. You need to show up at church a hundred times.” There’s got to be something to it. But then I remembered that when Jesus walked around here he would walk up to people and say, “Hey, I don’t condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”

He said to a guy that got dropped through the ceiling, “Your sins are forgiven.” He didn’t know this guy. 

And then, in Hebrews 12, we talked about it two weeks ago, that the blood of Jesus Christ, one word and one word only, and that word is forgiveness.  And I thought, “I don’t know how else to process this moment; but instead to say to you, ‘I think Jesus has sent me here to pronounce you can be forgiven, and because of the confession you’ve made right now, you are forgiven. You are washed. You are clean. Jesus is going to put brightness and light in your soul. And he’s going to take those sinful desires and he’s going to give you new desires.’” 

I was like, “Can we pray for you?”

And the guy was like, “Yeah. For sure.”

And we all gathered around him and we had this holy moment. 

This was just a week ago, so I can’t tell you, “And now he’s the president…” I’m going to follow up on him as best I can. But I can tell you it was a really big deal because, that was a Tuesday night, and then we were gone the rest of the time and then we came back Sunday. I was really hoping he would show up. He came to church on Sunday morning in Belize City for the first time as an adult. I think he really believed that maybe, just maybe, there was a spot for him at the table. And he came and we had another time together and prayed. I hope he showed again today because, Jesus does a work the first time. But it takes a lot of showing up at the table before shame can not be the loudest voice in your life. But that’s what the table of Jesus is all about. For you to go and get your shame removed, but also for you to invite others who are full of shame to come and hear about the forgiveness and cleansing that Jesus can bring.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so much for your table that you invite us to; that we can come and sit at your table and we can be sons and daughters of God, full inheritance, free from shame both now and forevermore. And, Lord, it’s a marvel, it’s wild, it’s scandalous, but our hearts resonate with the truth of it. And, Lord, I just want to pray for those right now that are full of shame, that know their soul is dark and their feet are crippled, that they would just be so stirred by your Spirit and that they would come to your table, come into your presence, even right now in this moment. They would say to you, “Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I’m here, wanting to be with you.”

Let’s just take a moment in silence and allow the Spirit of the Lord to speak. If you need to confess, just whisper it. If you need to just rejoice and praise him for his grace, whisper it. 

Thank you, Lord.

---

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

The Practice of Hospitality

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

We’ve been trying to unpack this concept of Church Around the Table. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Jesus, which is a good thing. We talked about Jesus’ Last Supper and what was really going on in that moment. We are trying to get into us as Jesus’ followers 2,000 years later what Jesus was trying to get into his disciples in that last culmination meal with them, those last few hours he had with them.

We’ve been taking it really seriously and diving in. And we are going to continue doing that a little bit today. But today will be a little different. I’m trying to just make sure we don’t get all this stuff in our heads, but we’re going to have some pauses in our time together. I’m hoping that stuff will get distilled down into our hearts a little more today. So this might be a little bit slower. If you fall asleep, that’s okay, we’ll just go straight to your heart. We don’t need your brain anyway.

We’ve shared some concepts in this regard. We’ve shared some inspiring stories. But what I’ve been praying is that God will help you understand how this applies to you in your daily routine. There’s this phrase: What would Jesus do? It’s a good phrase; but one of my friends says it’s totally insufficient and actually a really heavy burden if we just leave the question like that. He says the true questions is: What would Jesus do if he were me, and he lived in the context that I live in today? It’s a little longer thought process, but it’s more valid. Because you are you and you are facing the things you face. You have the job you have and the calendar you have. 

I want us to figure out what it could mean for you. At the end of this thing, I’m going to pray that Jesus would just show us what the next step is, because we are following him. He is leading us from being one thing to something much greater. It’s just one step at a time. So we’re going to try to do a little bit of that in our message today.

Luke 4 is where Jesus comes on the scene and he sits in the synagogue with all the other believers at that time. At one point he is called to the front and he’s given a passage from Isaiah and he reads it:

18 
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then he sits down and says, 

21 …“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He’s basically saying, “From now on you can judge everything in my life based on this criteria. This is what the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do. Proclaim good news to the poor. Set the oppressed free, to heal people, to help people, and to let them know how much God loves them, that his favor rests on them.”

That’s what he said. And then, a little later on, John the Baptist—who was Jesus’ cousin—was trying to figure out, “Jesus, are you really the whole thing? Or are you just part of it?” 

And Jesus said to him, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who doesn’t stumble on account of me.”

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to heal people.” And then, later on, John the Baptist was saying, “Jesus, is it really you?”

And Jesus said—same test—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to help and heal people. And if you’re seeing these happen you know the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Then, as we get to that Last Supper, Jesus is basically saying to his disciples—in John 13; he washes their feet, John 14, 15, 16, is the discussion they had in that time, recorded for us. Jesus is saying, “The same Spirit that is on me is going to be on you. Therefore, the same measurements are going to be applied to you.” 

The Spirit that is upon Jesus caused Jesus to walk in the way that he did. And the same Spirit now rests on us, thanks to the resurrection. And so the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me to do what? To proclaim good news to the poor, and to help and heal people. That’s the transfer that was taking place in that moment. We’ve talked about that, leading up to this.

As we’ve gone through, we’ve talked a lot about the life of Jesus showing up. We’ve talked about a lot of giving body and blood and washing people. But this one phrase is constantly jumping out at me, saying, “Don’t forget me.” And I go on to the next one and, “Don’t forget me.” Because when we talk about Jesus, we have to remember that, one of the main things that he was about was proclaiming good news to the poor. Proclaiming good news to the poor. So, if you want to follow Jesus, then one of the things that should show up in your life, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis—however you measure your life: proclaiming good news to the poor. That’s what it means to have Church Around a Table. To proclaim good news to the poor.

So we’re going to unpack that a little bit; because, obviously, good news is kind of a funny word, and poor can be defined in a lot of different ways. First of all, let’s define the word poor. Matthew 25:31-40 in the Message translation (MSG):

31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

37-40 “Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King… 

The Lord, as Allan Meyer talked about last week. The Lord of all.

…will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’”

So, in this definition, the poor would be those who are overlooked and ignored. I married a lady fifteen years ago, in Brittany, she’s my wife. I live with her still today after fifteen years, which I guess is progress, something to celebrate in our world. But I live with her and I link my life with her. Prior to marrying her, I was not married to her for twenty-seven years. Seventeen of those years, I really, really loved myself. I thought a lot about myself and I considered myself more highly than I ought. I was just absorbed with myself. I really was. I thought I was great and if everything was going my way then everyone should be happy. And if they weren’t, I didn’t even know, because I didn’t think about them at all. It’s true. Just very arrogant, prideful, selfish, self-absorbed. 

Then, at seventeen, Jesus started messing with my life. He started to say that he wanted to do a work in my life. I thought, Cool. You want to care about me? Well, I care about me, you care about me, this is going to be great. I’ve got God now thinking about me, and what I want, and how important it is. 

But it didn’t happen that way. He actually saved me. When I talk about the salvation that Jesus brought into my life, yes, it’s true, he saved me forevermore. Yes, it’s true, he saved me from living a life not knowing my Maker, knowing my Father. He saved me from so many things that I didn’t know about; but, in that moment, he saved me from my selfishness and pride. And he started to all of a sudden make me care about other people. It was a radical thing for me. I really did, I started to care more about other people and the stuff they were going through than even the stuff I was going through. 

I don’t get it right all of the time. But that was really important because then I got married. And I married someone who also cared about herself and not me. We kind of had this tug-o-war, where all of a sudden I had to care about her all of the time. She had feelings about everything all of the time. I didn’t have much space in my life for all of her feelings about what she was going through; because I had all my feelings about what I was going through. 

So that was a big trip, and in some ways I would say she saved me again. God was saying, “Okay, David, it’s not working just me and you. I’m going to bring Brittany.”  And Brittany is strong and powerful and she won’t put up with crap. I remember her just sticking up to it, and me having to adjust. It’s been an awesome thing.

All of that is to say that Brittany is someone who cares for the overlooked and ignored. She has taught me this in such amazing ways. And it’s funny because, sometimes it comes out where she doesn’t really care that much for people who aren’t overlooked and ignored. If you’re someone who’s not overlooked and ignored, sometimes you’ll be like, “I don’t know how she feels about me.” Just keep it there. Who knows? She doesn’t hate you or anything. Her life is just so driven towards the overlooked and ignored. She loves them and cares for them. I always describe my wife as, she’s like the real Peter Pan. She’s just looking for lost boys so she can teach them how to fly. It is absolutely true. I’ve seen it over and over and over again. 

I feel like God has been constantly trying to teach me these lessons. What I’m sharing with you today is just from the deepest parts of me. I’m wrestling with this all of the time because I’m so prone against it, but I’m so in love with what Jesus is trying to teach me. And Jesus has been teaching me for years. He’s a great teacher, and I’m going to try to jam it all in and I’m not that great. So just bear with me on this. I’m going to try to give us some pictures, trying to distill this for how this can be expressed in your life.

I married Brittany, and we ended up building this house together. We moved in about 30 months ago, so we were building it before then. I remember her praying that this house would not just be used for us, but that it would also be used for others. I didn’t really know what she was talking about and didn’t care that much about it at that time. I just thought, “Whatever, as long as we get to live there it will be better than living in this master bedroom with all five of us.” 

Just last week I woke up to lots of barking dogs, because we have a lot of them. And I was thinking about our situation. I remembered her prayer. Because, right now we live in this house with our three daughters, which is a lot of her fault, some of my fault but a lot of her fault. So there’s all of us living in the house now. We also live with two foster boys, which was a dream and a prayer of hers all of her life (and it became one for me, too). We also live with her mom. Her mom’s cool, so there’s no problem there. And then we also live with her sister, and she has a husband and they have five kids. Okay. You know? They have two dogs, the mom has two dogs, and we have two dogs. That’s not that abnormal, but that’s six dogs when you bring them all together.

And this guy, he’s working with the kids upstairs. I could understand if you don’t feel comfortable with this, but this kid is nineteen years old. He lived in California. And for some reason, he wanted to move in with us. He’s been with us a few months now. I’m trying to find something wrong with his brain. But he wanted to move in with us. So he lives in this little garage side room thing at the kibbutz that we call home. He’s loving it.

We have a chicken. We used to have eight, but we have coyotes that come around, so we’re down to one. It’s not funny. We also had a goat at one point. And to describe my wife even more—somewhere in Phoenix there was a goat that was born to a mama goat and the mama goat rejected the baby goat. Which is sad, right? And the person who was there to witness that, for some reason in her mind thought, “I should call Brittany.” I still have no idea how that happened; but all I know is this goat was overlooked and ignored, literally, and this person said, “I’m going to call Brittany.” 

And I came home one time and there’s a little baby pigmy goat. For the next two weeks, every two hours, the goat needed to be fed. So all throughout the night, “Here you go, baby goat.” So God is just laughing at how self-centered, self-absorbed and prideful I am, and here I am, years later, at 3:00 a.m, feeding a baby goat a bottle inside my house. And loving every minute of it. Not true. Loving when I’m in the right mind, ever minute of it.

I’m not saying that this is what the Lord’s calling us to. Please. Do you hear me? Do not do this! Do not do this. But God has led me step by step on a journey to where now I can check off some these. Somehow I’m learning and I have to rely on the grace of the Lord. We have to take breaks from time to time.

We were sitting with our daughters last Sunday night and they’re saying, “Hey, you know. Whenever this works out this way, can we just take a break for a little bit?” I was telling them, in thirty months of living in this house, twenty-six months we’ve had someone living with us. That’s only four months of building this house and getting to enjoy it just ourselves. And then I told my wife to stop praying. No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that. Thought it. But didn’t say it. 

Caring for the overlooked and ignored, even baby goats sometimes. 

Isaiah 58 (MSG) is the Old Testament perspective, but it’s kind of saying the same thing:

6-9 
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:

So the people were fasting with no food and thinking that God was so pleased with them because they weren’t eating. And God was saying, “Look, if you want to know what really is important to me, it’s not that you don’t eat food, it’s this:

    …to break the chains of injustice,
    get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
    free the oppressed,
    cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
    sharing your food with the hungry,
    inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
   putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
    being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
    and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
    The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
    You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

So in this passage, “care for the poor,” is care for the exploited, the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the cold, the in-debt, and also those maybe in your household that are overlooked or ignored or neglected, whether you’re willing to admit it or not. 

So what we’re going to do right now is to be quiet for about forty seconds. And I just want to see if God might be able to bring to mind someone in your life that could be described as overlooked, neglected, or any of these other things; and for you to take a mental note of what God might be speaking to you. Maybe someone’s already come to mind. That’s fine. Just begin to pray for the person and begin to ask God, “What can I do?”

I pray Lord, that we really would hear from you. Amen.

So now that we’ve described who the poor might be, I want to talk about how do we present good news to those people? Is there some way we can learn what might be a first step or a simple step—or start the creative process between the Spirit of God and you, and maybe your wife, or your roommates, or whatever, how we can begin to walk this out. 

Hebrews 12:18-24 (TPT) is going to be the beginning of diving into this. We’re going to take some more distilling moments as we go through this, as well. This is good stuff right here. You should read this every day, or at least every time you’re sad. 

18 For we are not coming, as Moses did, to a physical mountain with its burning fire, thick clouds of darkness and gloom, and with a raging whirlwind. 19 We are not those who are being warned by the jarring blast of a trumpet and the thundering voice; the fearful voice that they begged to be silenced… 

This is the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament harkening back to the library of Scripture where we learn that Moses was out at this mountain called Sinai one time, and God came near to the people of Israel. He came as this big fiery cloud that sat on the mountain, and he spoke in this powerful, thunderous voice out of the cloud and spoke to the people. And all the people were like, “Ahhhh! This is freaky!” 

And God was saying, “Come up to me. Come up here.” And the people were like, “No! Moses, why don’t you go up there, because it’s scary up there.” And then Moses went up there, and we learn in Exodus 33 and 34 that Moses had this deep, intimate, powerful moment with God. For forty days he was with God experiencing the love, compassion and kindness of God, in the midst of all the power and wonder that was taking place.

So he’s saying “We’re not this, where we need to be afraid. What we have come to is this:

22 …we have already come near to God in a totally different realm, the Zion-realm, for we have entered the city of the Living God, which is the New Jerusalem in heaven! We have joined the festal gathering of myriads of angels in their joyous celebration!

This is what heaven is like. God is not super concerned about the election cycle that is happening. Heaven is not going, “Oh, yi yi yi.” I know we are. But right now, in heaven, the holiness of God is being celebrated because nothing on earth could never change that.

23 And as members of the church of the Firstborn [Jesus] all our names have been legally registered as citizens of heaven! And we have come before God who judges all, and who lives among the spirits of the righteous who have been made perfect in his eyes!

We are being made perfect in his eyes. Yes! And then this:

24 And we have come to Jesus… 

Not to that scary mountain. We’ve come to Jesus.

…who established a new covenant with his blood sprinkled upon the mercy seat; blood that continues to speak from heaven, “forgiveness,” a better message than Abel’s blood that cries from the earth, “justice.”

So how do we preach good news to the poor? We’re able to come to them and speak out a message of forgiveness. Forgiveness instead of justice. Contrasting that Mount Sinai mountain with all that power, we have the babe of Bethlehem, that was born into this world soft and kind. And then he walked among us, not with heaviness. Full power though, but the power was not to condemn. The power was not to provoke. The power was not to hurt or punish. The power was to heal and to forgive. 

In Isaiah, it speaks of Jesus. It says “as a smoldering wick he would never put out and a bruised reed he would never break. He came with a softness and lightness and a kindness to the poor—whether they were poor in their relationship with God, poor financially, poor physically, poor in their righteousness. Whatever they were poor in, he would come around them with kindness and a message of forgiveness. It wasn’t a forgiveness that forsook justice. It was a forgiveness that was born out of him laying down his life to produce justice.

In that moment when he took on all the sins of all humanity—the most disgusting, horrific, murderous, raping sins—he took them on his body. Out of that came a message of “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Preaching good news to the poor is coming around the poor. They already know that they’ve failed. They are already wallowing in their own shame and guilt. They don’t need us to point it out. They need us to come and show them a path of forgiveness. 

There are these two books that have taught me a lot along these lines. One is called Tattoos on the Heart. It’s a Jesuit priest. If you want to check it out later, the story is amazing, the writing is beautiful. In it, he says, 

“Here is what we seek: A compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”

I would add just one little phrase:

And then we should lend our own shoulder to carry the burden for a while.

Because, as we go to approach the poor, which we know Jesus wants us to do, the Spirit of God is upon us to that end. We shouldn’t look at the poor and see them in their sinfulness, see them in their poverty, see the bad decisions they made, the way that they’re carrying themselves, the way that they are speaking out. We have to come to them and not judge them. God’s the judge.

We come to them and we provide forgiveness. We come to them and we stand with them in their poverty. Instead of saying, “Wow. Look at all that heaviness all over you. You’re not carrying it right, you should carry it like this;” we just say, “Hey. Do you want me to carry a little of that on my shoulder for a while? Let’s walk together.” This is what it means to preach good news to the poor.

There’s this phrase I’ve been chewing on: “Empathy must be stronger than condescension.” 

I’m a master at condescension. I am. I’m awesome at it. Always have been. I have to fight it all the time. I’m so good at it. I can just see it coming. It’s something the Lord is constantly having to work on in my life. It’s something that I basically have a limp that I’ve had to learn to limp with, and make sure I don’t live into it. The opposite of condescension is empathy. Empathy is foreign to me. Empathy in the sense of being able to put yourself in another person’s shoes to feel what they feel from their point of view. 

Just last night one of my kids was having a real pathetic moment. And I was just like, “I don’t want to feel what you’re feeling, because you’re crying and moaning and groaning and whining. I want you to feel what I’m feeling.” But that wasn’t true because I was actually starting to get stressed because I was like, “I’ve got to preach tomorrow and I’ve got to get my message together and you’re over here moaning and groaning.”

And I just felt like the Lord was saying, “Go there!” I was like, “Argh!” And I did a horrible job of it. But I tried. I just sat on the bed and said, “All right. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You don’t care.”

Already? I haven’t even started! “I want to hear what’s going on.” It’s crazy. 

Here’s a few more things to finish. This comes from a different book called The Gospel Comes With a House Key. That’s pretty good. In this book, this former lesbian, now follower of Christ, Rosaria Butterfield, is describing some of her experiences with something she calls radically ordinary hospitality. This is good stuff. These are meaty, so you’ve got to buck up. Everybody sit up straighter a little bit—if you need to stretch a little bit. We’ve got some long phrases here, but it’s the distilling process.

“Living out radically ordinary Christian hospitality means knowing that your relationship with others must be as strong as your words. The balance cannot tip here. Having strong words and a weak relationship with your neighbor is violent. It captures the violent carelessness of our social media-infused age. That is not how neighbors talk with each other. That is not how image bearers of the same God relate to one another. Radically ordinary hospitality values the time it takes to invest in relationships, build bridges, repent of sins of the past, to reconcile. Bridge building and remaking friendships cannot be rushed.”

“Just get better.” “Stop feeling what you’re feeling.” No! But taking the time. Here’s another one:

She’s describing the first moment she encountered what she called radically ordinary Christian hospitality: 

“I breathed hard and hoisted myself out of my truck, nursing a tender hamstring from my morning run. I waded through the unusually thick July humidity to the front door of these Christians and I knocked. The threshold to their life was like none other. The threshold to their life brought me to the foot of the cross.”

Hallelujah, right?

“Nothing about that night unfolded according to my confident script. Nothing happened in the way I expected. Not that night or the years after, or the hundreds of meals we had together, or the long nights of Psalm singing and prayer, as other believers from he church and university walked through the doors of this house as if there was no door. Nothing prepared me for this openness and truth. Nothing prepared me for the unstoppable gospel and for the love of Jesus made manifest by the daily practices of hospitality undertaken in this one simple Christian home. Long before I ever walked to the doors of the church, the Smith home was the place where I wrestled with the Bible, with the reality that Jesus is who he says he is and eventually came face-to-face with him on the glittering knife’s edge of my choice sexual sin.”

Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! And the last one:

Radically ordinary hospitality describes those who see strangers as family and neighbors as the family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth. They know that they are like meth addicts and sex trade workers, they take their own sins seriously, especially the sins of selfishness and pride.

They take God’s holiness and goodness seriously. They use the Bible as a lifeline with no exceptions. They practice radically ordinary hospitality. Those who practice radically ordinary hospitality do not see their homes as their own, but as God’s gift for the furtherance of God’s kingdom. They open doors. They seek out the underpriveleged. They know that the Gospel comes with a house key.

And one last thing from Acts 28 (MSG) as we close:

30-31 Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.

Again, I’m not telling you to do something specific here. I’m just saying that we’ve got to begin to understand what this means to live out radically ordinary hospitality. To live out the love of Christ in this world. To proclaim good news to the poor.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, I do pray in this moment that you would continue to distill some of this. Not only would you bring to mind the people that you have given to us, that you are putting on our radar, that you are assigning to us, just like you assign people to Jesus. But Lord, I pray that you would also stir in us some creativity of how we could begin to be hospitable, be empathetic, be compassionate—not just concerned, but compassionate. And you’d help us know that it’s going to take time. There’s no quick, easy way to do this. 

I wrote this during the music time during first service. I just want to share it, in case it applies to some of you. Not only are we called to do this, but the beauty is that Jesus has done this for us. He left glory to come and enter into our pathetic state, and to feel our pain.

“The blood of Abel and all the others cut off by the knife of sin or burned by the fires of injustice cries out because the guilty are left unpunished and wrongs are not made right. But in Christ crucified, forgiveness and justice happen. All the wrongs are made right by the forgiveness and healing released by Jesus’ sacrificial love. You might think today that no one cares about you or loves you or whatever sacrifice for you, but the scars in Jesus’ hands and feet speak a different word. 

There will come a day when you and I will see those scars. The Bible teaches we will see Jesus as a Lamb who has been slain. But you can feel his love today and forgiveness and healing can start right now.”

Jesus, please come close to those who don’t know you. Lord, please, for those who are willing to admit that they are poor in their relationship with you, they are poor in righteousness, they are poor in so many ways, I pray that right now they would cry out to you and you would answer with the full weight of your love and salvation would come. And they would become new creations, robed in your righteousness, and they would really know what forgiveness is. I pray this in your name. Amen.

---

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Scripture marked TPT is taken from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC. Used by permission. All rights reserved. thePassionTranslation.com