Levi had a nasty job. The decent people shunned him. But Jesus was different. Jesus found a friend in Levi and Levi found a friend in Jesus. In this story we learn something about ourselves and even more about Jesus.
LUKE 5:27-32: JESUS CALLS LEVI
INTRODUCTION
Hardly anyone has a good word to say about the taxman. Through the ages people have over and over expressed dislike for and often rebelled against the people who collected the taxes.
One man said that although he knew his next door neighbor well, he never seemed to be able to find out what the man did for a living. Then somehow he learned why his neighbor didn’t talk about his work. His neighbor worked for the IRS. He feared that if people found out what he did for a living, they wouldn’t like him.
In the early days of our nation, when we were still colonies of England, the protests against taxes sometimes led to tarring and feathering the revenue agents who worked for the English government.
And when the United States became a nation, the people began protesting against the taxes the new government tried to collect.
Levi had a nasty job. He was the tax collector who collected taxes for the Roman occupiers of Galilee.
Read: Luke 5:27-32. (Levi evidently had two names. He is called Matthew in Matthew’s gospel.)
I. Levi was a tax collector.
A. Here is how the Roman’s tax system worked.
A prominent man would bid to collect the taxes in a certain district. He was known as a “tax farmer.”
He would agree to pay the Romans what they required and then collect from the people whatever he could, taking the extra for himself.
But the people who actually did the dirty work of shaking down the people for their taxes were Jews the tax farmer hired to work under him.
These men also had to make a living, so they also would ask for more than was actually owed.
It was like the Mafia collecting the taxes.
Tax collectors such as Levi were considered to be in the same class as prostitutes and robbers and adulterers. They weren’t allowed to attend synagogue worship. They had no part in the community life of the town.
They were especially shunned by the religious people, the Pharisees and scribes.
If you can imagine a Norwegian or a Frenchman working for the Nazis by collecting taxes from his countrymen, you can imagine the hatred that Levi and his fellow tax collectors felt from their fellow Jews.
B. Levi lived in Capernaum. Capernaum had become Jesus’s “hometown” after he left Nazareth to begin his ministry.
This is the city where Peter’s house was. You remember that it was here that Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law.
Capernaum was the city where Jesus was when the paralyzed man came through the roof to meet Jesus.
Capernaum was where Jesus healed the nobleman’s son.
Capernaum lay on the road running along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.
It was near the border between two provinces in the Roman Empire.
One of the ways Romans collected taxes in their empire was to collect import and export duties on goods that were carried across borders.
So Levi’s tax booth was a busy place.
C. Because Jesus was often in Capernaum and did many miracles there, Levi had no doubt heard about Jesus’s miracles and heard some of his teaching.
Jesus had dropped by tax booth and become acquainted with Levi.
Jesus was friendly, even with tax collectors. Levi appreciated that.
Somewhere along the way, Levi came to faith.
Jesus saw in Levi the qualities that would make him a good disciple and apostle.
So when one day Jesus dropped by the tax booth and invited Levi to follow him, Levi was ready to go.
D. We read that Levi “got up and left everything and followed him.”
We’re not to suppose that Levi just left the money in the drawer and walked off his job. Surely he let his supervisor know that he was quitting.
What the gospel writers want us to understand is that Levi didn’t hesitate to give up all his possessions and all his security and all his riches and become a follower of Jesus.
Levi’s decision was more dramatic than that of James or John or Peter or Andrew. They were fishermen, and they could go back to their former occupation any time they wanted to. And sometimes they did go back to fishing, even one time after Jesus’s resurrection.
But Levi had burnt his bridges behind him.
He had nothing to go back to.
We wish we knew more about Levi’s career as an apostle, but apart from this story we know nothing. We do have the tradition that he wrote the gospel of Matthew. Islam has preserved a tradition that Matthew and Andrew carried the gospel to Ethiopia.
II. But the most interesting part of the story is what happened after Levi’s call.
A. Jesus told his fishermen disciples to follow him, and he would make them fishers of people.
Levi lost no time in starting his “fishing for people.”
He gave a party and invited all his low-life buddies: “Then Levi made him a great feast in his house; and there was a large company of tax collectors and others sitting at table with them.”
I can imagine a rowdy crowd of tax collectors and other sinners and their girl friends.
Evidently when Levi liquidated his assets to followJesus, he set aside some of the money for this banquet with which to introduce his friends to Jesus.
B. Jesus loved to be in the company of sinners, outcasts of society, and others who decent people avoided.
But he didn’t love them in their sin. He loved them because he had a better life to offer them.
When Jesus won the friendship of rogues and thieves and loose women and people in trouble, it wasn’t to leave them in their misery.
His mission was to call them to repentance—as we saw in the last verse I read.
Jesus never supposed that a relationship with him was enough. He was always calling sinners to repentance.
In his book, Loving God, Charles Colson tells the story of a Hollywood gangster named Mickey Cohen, who attended a Billy Graham crusade and decided to “accept Christ.”
Later, when one of Graham’s associates told him that as a new Christian he needed to cut his mob ties, Mickey was incredulous.
“You never told me that I had to give up my career. You never told me that I had to give up my friends. There are Christian movie stars, Christian athletes, Christian businessmen. So what is the matter with being a Christian gangster? If I have to give up all that—if that’s Christianity—count me out.”
I don’t know how much Jesus enjoyed the company with the losers of the world.
I worked with convicts in prison and with mental patients and addicts in a mental hospital and with people in poverty. I didn’t find many kindred spirits among them.
They weren’t people I would naturally seek out for my friends. But it was an opportunity to love people who needed love. It was an opportunity to serve them and to express to them the love that Jesus had for them. Some of them became close friends.
That’s what Jesus was doing at Levi’s party.
A childhood friend of mine was a kid named Warren. Warren grew up to become a committed Christian.
One of the things he did was start a mission in San Francisco to minister to the prostitutes and pimps and workers in the strip joints.
Warren didn’t go to those places because he enjoyed the atmosphere there. He went to those places because he loved those people and wanted to win them for Jesus.
He told me that one time he as explaining the way of salvation to the owner of owner of these striptease clubs.
As he was explaining God’s gift of eternal life to the owner of the club, the man he was talking to was—as he listened—working the dials controlling the lights playing on the dancer on the stage.
Jesus called sinners but he didn’t leave them that way. When they responded to his love, their lives were changed.
C. But Levi’s party got Jesus into trouble.
The “good people,” the religious people, the church people—they were called Pharisees in those days—thought it was awful for Jesus to friendly with these sinners.
Their idea of holiness was to quarantine themselves from evil by avoiding having anything to do with sinners.
But Jesus had another idea. His idea was to go to the sinners and become their friend—not so that he could be like them, but so that he could show them the way back to God.
When the righteous people criticized Jesus for keeping company with bad people, Jesus had an answer for them.
He told them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick: I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (vv31-32).
Jesus compared himself to a doctor, and doctors go where the sick people are.
Actually, we all need Jesus because none of us is truly righteous.
Those in his day who thought they were righteous needed Jesus, but they just didn’t know it.
Levi and his buddies knew it. They knew they needed what Jesus had to offer.
They needed forgiveness. They needed salvation.
CONCLUSION
When Jesus says, “I have not come to all the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” he is inviting you and me to examine ourselves and see that we also are ”sick” and need to repent.
This is the lesson for us from the story of Levi’s call.
Sometimes we good people congratulate ourselves because we have responded to Jesus’s call.
We’ve learned about God. We’ve prayed. We’ve read our Bibles. We’ve overcome some bad habits. We’ve become better people. And when we see that we are advancing in holiness, we are in great danger of congratulating ourselves.
Righteous people, discerning people, knowledgeable people, people who love the truth are in trouble when they use their discernment and their wisdom to feel superior and to point to the faults of other people.
No matter how holy we become, we can still be proud, unloving, critical, complaining, and all wrapped up in ourselves. And those are sins. So we always need to repent and come to Jesus for forgiveness.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Stories of Jesus: John 11:17-44: How Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life
One of the most memorable sayings of Jesus is “I am the resurrection and the life.” It is a great saying, and it comes with a story that illustrates its truth. It is the story of a tragedy in the little family of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus and how sorrow turned to joy in the little town of Bethany, near Jerusalem.
JOHN 11:17-44: HOW JESUS IS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
INTRODUCTION
How often we hear someone make a statement of regret that begins “If only…”
“If only she had gone to the doctor sooner…”
“If only he had studied harder…”
“If only I had listened to my mother…”
“If only they had left two minutes earlier—or two minutes later…”
“If only I had known then what I know now…”
“If only I had kept my mouth shut…”
We hear that regretful remark two times over in one of the most famous stories of Jesus.
First of all I will give you the background to the story.
There was a little family in Bethany that was dear to the Lord Jesus.
It was the family of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—2 sisters and their brother.
We read more about Martha and Mary than about Lazarus. I picture Lazarus as the younger brother of the two sisters.
There seems to have been no parent in this household because we read in Luke that it was Martha’s house.
It appears that Jesus was often a guest in that home, even up until a few days before his arrest and death on the cross.
This story takes place not long before that event.
Lazarus had fallen deathly ill, and the sisters sent word to Jesus—“Lord, he whom you love is ill”—hoping that he would come and heal their brother.
But Jesus didn’t come…and he didn’t come…and days went by and Lazarus died and was buried.
More days passed, and then Jesus finally showed up.
Read John 11:17-27
I. The sisters had been grieving for four days.
A. We can only imagine how many times Martha and Mary had said to one another and to their friends: “If only Jesus had been here, our brother wouldn’t have died…”
“If only Jesus had been here, he would have healed him.”
When Martha learned that Jesus was finally on the way, she left her sister and the other mourners and ran to meet him.
And those are the first words out of Martha’s mouth when Jesus arrived:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
And then she added something odd.
She said, “…And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Why did she say that?
We know that she didn’t expect Jesus to raise her brother from the dead because when later he goes to the tomb, she warns him not to take away the stone because there will be a smell.
I think that somehow those words just bubbled up from Martha’s faith-filled heart.
Martha is a lesson to us about prayer.
The psalmist wrote
“Trust in the Lord at all times, O people.
Pour out your heart before him.
God is a refuge for us” (Psalm 62:8).
Martha knew how to pour out her heart before the Lord.
B. Then Jesus said: “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha naturally took those words only as words of comfort.
Most Jews at that time firmly believed that sometime in the future the righteous dead would rise to live with God in Paradise.
Martha believed in the resurrection, just as we believe in the resurrection. We believe with all out hearts—yet we are sad when a loved one dies, and we may be fearful when our time comes to go through that door that leads to another world.
Then Jesus surprised her with one of the strangest sayings in the gospels:
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Martha answers, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”
C. When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life…” he puts the matter into a new perspective.
Martha believed the truth of the resurrection, just as we believe the truth of the resurrection.
But Jesus is urging Martha to think of the resurrection to eternal life, not as a doctrine but as a Person…and that Person is standing right in front of her.
Jesus is leading her into a fuller faith, a faith not in doctrines, but a relationship of faithful trust in himself.
Jesus is urging her—and urging us—to think of Jesus himself as the embodiment of Eternal Life.
Someone said, “Jesus is heaven’s bank. If we have him, we have everything.”
D. Let’s look at the rest of the sentence: “…he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”
Jesus is telling Martha—and us—that to be in relationship with Jesus—to be united to him in love and faith—is to participate in the eternal life that belongs to God alone.
To know Jesus—to cling to Jesus with faith—is to triumph over death.
We will die, in the physical sense, but our true self will never die.
When that time comes to go through that door, my body falls away, but my true self goes right into the arms of Jesus.
And then comes the resurrection into glory.
This is our hope.
This is our confidence.
This is what we have bet our life on.
II. So what happened next? Let’s read vv28-44.
A. Martha doesn’t stand around talking. She runs to her sister Mary, who is at home with their friends grieving.
She tells Mary, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
Mary runs to Jesus and falls at his feet weeping.
Mary is more emotional, less self-possessed than her sister. She collapses in front of Jesus.
But her speech is the same: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
B. On the way to the tomb we read that Jesus is troubled, and he bursts into tears. Here’s the first Bible verse you learned in Sunday school: “Jesus wept.”
Jesus knew what he was going to do, but he wept anyway. Jesus wept because in the presence of death and all those sorrowing people, he is thinking of the endless sorrow caused by death in our world.
He thinks of the sorrow of all those who have grieved in the presence of death from the beginning of time to the end of time—and his heart is broken.
C. So they all go to the tomb, and Jesus tells them to take away the stone.
Martha objects: “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”
Charlotte and I visited a beautiful old cathedral in Burgundy, in France.
It is the Cathedral of St. Lazarus, in Autun.
At the entrance is a statue of St. Lazarus—with a crown on his head—and at his sides his two lovely sisters.
(I think the cathedral should be the Cathedral of St. Martha.)
At a museum nearby there is a life-sized statue of Martha.
She is pictured at this moment in the story.
How do I know that this is a statue of Martha?
She is holding a handkerchief to her nose.
But when they rolled the stone away from the entrance of the cave—there was no smell!
Lazarus’s body hadn’t decayed after all. It was in there waiting to come to life again.
And Jesus called: “Lazarus, come out!” here came Lazarus, walking—or floating—out of the tomb—his hands and feet were bound with bandages.
And Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”
And that is the end of the story.
CONCLUSION
The story is an acted parable of a great truth.
Back in v3 we read that while Jesus was a way across the Jordan the sisters had sent the message: “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.”
In v36, when the visitors see Jesus weeping, they say, “See how he loved him!”
In this story Lazarus stands for you and me, and for everyone who Jesus loves and who loves Jesus.
The resurrection of Lazarus from the dead represents your and my resurrection from the dead—an event we can look forward to with gladness.
Lazarus had to die again—but I don’t think that was a sad time for Lazarus because he knew what was on the other side.
He was glad to get back to Paradise.
Let’s take comfort from Jesus’s words to Martha concerning himself:
“I am the Resurrection and the Life;
those who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live,
And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this?”
And everybody said, “Amen! Yes, Lord, we believe.”
Here is a Quote for the Day: “No matter how old you are, your life has scarcely begun; real life begins soon.”
JOHN 11:17-44: HOW JESUS IS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
INTRODUCTION
How often we hear someone make a statement of regret that begins “If only…”
“If only she had gone to the doctor sooner…”
“If only he had studied harder…”
“If only I had listened to my mother…”
“If only they had left two minutes earlier—or two minutes later…”
“If only I had known then what I know now…”
“If only I had kept my mouth shut…”
We hear that regretful remark two times over in one of the most famous stories of Jesus.
First of all I will give you the background to the story.
There was a little family in Bethany that was dear to the Lord Jesus.
It was the family of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—2 sisters and their brother.
We read more about Martha and Mary than about Lazarus. I picture Lazarus as the younger brother of the two sisters.
There seems to have been no parent in this household because we read in Luke that it was Martha’s house.
It appears that Jesus was often a guest in that home, even up until a few days before his arrest and death on the cross.
This story takes place not long before that event.
Lazarus had fallen deathly ill, and the sisters sent word to Jesus—“Lord, he whom you love is ill”—hoping that he would come and heal their brother.
But Jesus didn’t come…and he didn’t come…and days went by and Lazarus died and was buried.
More days passed, and then Jesus finally showed up.
Read John 11:17-27
I. The sisters had been grieving for four days.
A. We can only imagine how many times Martha and Mary had said to one another and to their friends: “If only Jesus had been here, our brother wouldn’t have died…”
“If only Jesus had been here, he would have healed him.”
When Martha learned that Jesus was finally on the way, she left her sister and the other mourners and ran to meet him.
And those are the first words out of Martha’s mouth when Jesus arrived:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
And then she added something odd.
She said, “…And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Why did she say that?
We know that she didn’t expect Jesus to raise her brother from the dead because when later he goes to the tomb, she warns him not to take away the stone because there will be a smell.
I think that somehow those words just bubbled up from Martha’s faith-filled heart.
Martha is a lesson to us about prayer.
The psalmist wrote
“Trust in the Lord at all times, O people.
Pour out your heart before him.
God is a refuge for us” (Psalm 62:8).
Martha knew how to pour out her heart before the Lord.
B. Then Jesus said: “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha naturally took those words only as words of comfort.
Most Jews at that time firmly believed that sometime in the future the righteous dead would rise to live with God in Paradise.
Martha believed in the resurrection, just as we believe in the resurrection. We believe with all out hearts—yet we are sad when a loved one dies, and we may be fearful when our time comes to go through that door that leads to another world.
Then Jesus surprised her with one of the strangest sayings in the gospels:
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Martha answers, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”
C. When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life…” he puts the matter into a new perspective.
Martha believed the truth of the resurrection, just as we believe the truth of the resurrection.
But Jesus is urging Martha to think of the resurrection to eternal life, not as a doctrine but as a Person…and that Person is standing right in front of her.
Jesus is leading her into a fuller faith, a faith not in doctrines, but a relationship of faithful trust in himself.
Jesus is urging her—and urging us—to think of Jesus himself as the embodiment of Eternal Life.
Someone said, “Jesus is heaven’s bank. If we have him, we have everything.”
D. Let’s look at the rest of the sentence: “…he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”
Jesus is telling Martha—and us—that to be in relationship with Jesus—to be united to him in love and faith—is to participate in the eternal life that belongs to God alone.
To know Jesus—to cling to Jesus with faith—is to triumph over death.
We will die, in the physical sense, but our true self will never die.
When that time comes to go through that door, my body falls away, but my true self goes right into the arms of Jesus.
And then comes the resurrection into glory.
This is our hope.
This is our confidence.
This is what we have bet our life on.
II. So what happened next? Let’s read vv28-44.
A. Martha doesn’t stand around talking. She runs to her sister Mary, who is at home with their friends grieving.
She tells Mary, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
Mary runs to Jesus and falls at his feet weeping.
Mary is more emotional, less self-possessed than her sister. She collapses in front of Jesus.
But her speech is the same: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
B. On the way to the tomb we read that Jesus is troubled, and he bursts into tears. Here’s the first Bible verse you learned in Sunday school: “Jesus wept.”
Jesus knew what he was going to do, but he wept anyway. Jesus wept because in the presence of death and all those sorrowing people, he is thinking of the endless sorrow caused by death in our world.
He thinks of the sorrow of all those who have grieved in the presence of death from the beginning of time to the end of time—and his heart is broken.
C. So they all go to the tomb, and Jesus tells them to take away the stone.
Martha objects: “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”
Charlotte and I visited a beautiful old cathedral in Burgundy, in France.
It is the Cathedral of St. Lazarus, in Autun.
At the entrance is a statue of St. Lazarus—with a crown on his head—and at his sides his two lovely sisters.
(I think the cathedral should be the Cathedral of St. Martha.)
At a museum nearby there is a life-sized statue of Martha.
She is pictured at this moment in the story.
How do I know that this is a statue of Martha?
She is holding a handkerchief to her nose.
But when they rolled the stone away from the entrance of the cave—there was no smell!
Lazarus’s body hadn’t decayed after all. It was in there waiting to come to life again.
And Jesus called: “Lazarus, come out!” here came Lazarus, walking—or floating—out of the tomb—his hands and feet were bound with bandages.
And Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”
And that is the end of the story.
CONCLUSION
The story is an acted parable of a great truth.
Back in v3 we read that while Jesus was a way across the Jordan the sisters had sent the message: “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.”
In v36, when the visitors see Jesus weeping, they say, “See how he loved him!”
In this story Lazarus stands for you and me, and for everyone who Jesus loves and who loves Jesus.
The resurrection of Lazarus from the dead represents your and my resurrection from the dead—an event we can look forward to with gladness.
Lazarus had to die again—but I don’t think that was a sad time for Lazarus because he knew what was on the other side.
He was glad to get back to Paradise.
Let’s take comfort from Jesus’s words to Martha concerning himself:
“I am the Resurrection and the Life;
those who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live,
And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this?”
And everybody said, “Amen! Yes, Lord, we believe.”
Here is a Quote for the Day: “No matter how old you are, your life has scarcely begun; real life begins soon.”
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Stories of Jesus: Luke 8:26-39: The Story of Legion
Some parts of the Bible are really difficult to understand. Some parts we will never understand, at least, not while we are on this earth. But sometimes, if we are patient and diligent, we will find something important for our lives in the most difficult parts.
LUKE 8.26-39: THE STORY OF A MAN CALLED “LEGION”:
OR HOW A MADMAN BECAME A MESSENGER
INTRODUCTION
In his great book, In the Beginning, Chaim Potok tells the story of David, a young Jewish boy in New York who is hungry for knowledge.
He is studying the Hebrew Bible with a wise man named Mr. Bader.
At one point in the story David becomes very troubled by a passage in Genesis that he doesn’t understand. It is something in the story of Noah. David has read the commentaries ad the scholars disagree violently.
David is tells his father of his frustration. His father then shares something he learned long ago. The father says, “It is as important to learn the important questions as it is the important answers. It is especially important to learn the questions to which there may not be good answers. We have to learn to live with questions….I am glad that Mr. Bader is a good teacher, and I am glad that he tells you truthfully that he does not have answers to all our questions.”
The story we are going to talk about today is one that I have always wondered about because there are things in it that I don’t understand at all.
But sometimes the most difficult parts of the Bible are the ones from which we can learn the most if we are just patient and willing to learn even from stories we don’t understand completely.
It is the story of the man Jesus met who said that he had within him a whole mob of demons.
Read: Luke 8:26-39
I. First, let’s think about the sad predicament of the poor mad man who rushed to Jesus, just as he got off the boat.
A. Picture the scene: The man was naked. He was crazy. He was dangerous. He was dirty and disheveled. He lived by himself in a graveyard. According to Mark’s version of the story he was “always howling and bruising himself with stones.”
The man fell down before Jesus and cried out: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.”
“For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.”
The man has named Jesus; now Jesus asks him for his name.
“Legion!” he screams. He believes he is possessed by thousands of demons.
B. A little background…
The man was what we would call a maniac.
He lives among the tombs.
Graves were considered “unclean” by the Jews. They whitewashed their sepulchers so that no one would accidentally touch one because if you did, you would become unclean too
The man is violent. The authorities have arrested him, put him under guard, bound him with chains, but he has always escaped and been driven into the deserted area by his demons.
There he lives, naked, by himself, feared by all.
He is so tormented that he thinks that he has thousands of demons inside him. (A legion is 5-6000 Roman soldiers. His country was occupied and controlled by hated Roman legions. In the eyes of the conquered people they were evil. It’s like he has an army of these monsters inside him making him crazy.)
C. Now my mind is filled with questions:
1. Were there really demons inside this man, or did he have what we call schizophrenia?
2. Why did the man rush at Jesus and fall at his feet? He acts like he wants Jesus to go away and yet he comes to him and falls to the ground before him.
3. Did the demons really go into the pigs? And did the demons really drown themselves?
4. Why did Jesus send the man away after he had begged to follow him? Remember, he told the leper, “Don’t tell anyone.” But he told this man to go home and tell what had happened to him.
II. So how can we understand the story?
A. If we saw this man in Cedar Rapids today we would say he was mentally ill. He had delusions. His mind was unhinged from reality.
Charlotte and I worked in a mental hospital. We saw many patients who in Jesus’s time would have been considered “demon-possessed.”
They were violent. Sometimes they had to be restrained to keep them from hurting themselves or others.
With the proper medications they would become calm, and often the symptoms of the disease would disappear.
Once, on the theory that a patient was demon-possessed, I remember that once some church people came into the hospital to get the demon out by prayer. I don’t think they had any success.
But people who visit other cultures tell convincing stories about possession and cures through prayer.
Let me share with you an account that came in a letter the just two days ago from a mission that works with the Dimasa tribe in North India.
The gospel has only recently come to these people.
New Christians in that tribe are now translating a primer for teaching their people to read.
One of the translators is Gbisni.
Gbisni’s sister was possessed with 12 evil spirits.
The Hindu priests wouldn’t help. They were using her as a medium to communicate with these spirits.
Gbsini’s parents took her to an Imam at a mosque to see if he could help their daughter, but the evil spirits were too powerful: the girl ended up biting the Imam who then freed himself with a cutting tool, injuring her badly.
Finally, Gbisni took his sister to some Christians nearby. He informed the Hindu priests that if the God of the Christians could free his sister, he would convert to Christianity and would take baptism.
He also told the Hindu priests that he would remain a Hindu forever if they could free his sister.
The God of the Christians freed his sister from the evil spirits and Gbisni became a faithful follower of Jesus.
Jesus saw the powers of evil behind all sorts of physical and mental suffering. We are so used to looking for natural causes that we are usually unaware of the role Satan plays in the troubles of the world.
This story is a powerful parable of how Jesus battles back the forces of evil to bring about peace and goodness in a world of suffering and sin.
People in ancient times lived in a dangerous world. Besides earthquakes, floods, famines, disease, and war, they had the fear that the world around them was thickly populated with demonic powers. They were convinced that the demons could enter ones body through his ears, nose or mouth. They used amulets, magic, sacrifices, and rituals to appease or escape these spiritual powers.
This story would assure the early Christian believers that Jesus was more powerful than these horrible powers. It was a comfort to know that Jesus Christ had conquered the “principalities and powers.”
B. And why did the man rush up to Jesus, and yet cry out as if he wanted Jesus to go away?
I believe that the man rushed up to Jesus and threw himself down because he wanted deliverance, but at the same time the evil spirit inside him cried out against Jesus.
But notice that his cry came after Jesus had ordered the demons to be gone.
I believe that Jesus was responding to the man’s need and even the shred of faith that the man possessed.
Pigs were, to Jews, unclean, filthy beasts. They help us see the horribleness of the scene: the violent, naked man, living among unclean tombs, tormented by an army or horrible evil spirits, and an enormous herd of filthy pigs. The whole picture is depressing, and as such it is an environment in which Jesus can impressively show his power and goodness.
Some people—trying to read between the lines—say that maybe the man, in his violence hurled himself against the pigs and set them into the stampede. If this is so, it served God’s purpose in assuring the man that his filthy tormentors were indeed gone forever and would never come back.
III. As you can see, we don’t have answers to all my questions, but what is the point of the story? What is in it that is important for you and me?
A. Every one of Jesus’s miracles was a “sign.” Jesus didn’t just do impossible things to amaze people, or even just to prove that he was God.
Jesus opened the eyes of the blind to show that he is the light of the world.
Jesus unstopped the ears of the deaf to show how he opens our ears to hear God’s truth.
Jesus makes the lame to walk to show how he gives us wisdom to walk in the paths of righteousness.
Jesus cleansed the leper to show how he cleanses us from the uncleanness of sin.
Jesus raised the dead to show that he is the Resurrection and the Life.
Jesus stilled storms at sea to show how he calms the storms in our lives.
Jesus fed the multitudes with miraculously-produced bread to illustrate that he is the “Bread of Life.”
So the expelling of the demons afflicting poor Legion shows that Jesus is even more powerful than the evil that infects and afflicts the world.
So each of these miracles was an act of compassion and also a sign of God’s kingdom breaking into the world.
Each miracle was also a parable of how Christ works in your life and mine.
B. It might surprise us to see that the townspeople were afraid, when they came and saw the man they had feared, now clothed and in his right mind. They were probably glad that the poor crazy man was healed, but the didn’t approve of the destruction of all those pigs. So they begged Jesus to please go away.
But Jesus teaches us the relative value of money and lives. Jesus says, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits his soul?”
Someone said, “All down through the ages the world has been refusing Jesus because the world prefers pigs.”
C. But I think the most interesting part of the story, and the most instructive part is the ending.
See the man sitting at the feet of Jesus (v35). He has become a disciple. He is now in the learner’s pose. Sitting there listening and learning.
And he had a lot to learn in a short time because although he begged to go with Jesus, Jesus has something more important for him to do. He’s going to be Jesus’s first missionary to the Gentile world!
“Return to your home,” he says, “and declare how much God has done for you.”
Maybe Legion didn’t know much, but he had a great story. And sometimes the most effective evangelist is not the one who has the most theology but the one who has the best story.
You don’t need to know much theology to “declare how much God has done for you.”
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of our story I told you that I didn’t have all the answers.
And now you know that that’s true.
But, you see, we don’t have to have all the answers to hear God talking to us.
And I hear God telling us in this story that Jesus can heal, and he can deliver us from all those things that torment us.
And I hear God telling us: “Declare how much God has done for you.”
I’ll leave you with these words from 1 Peter 2:9:
“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people,
in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts
of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
LUKE 8.26-39: THE STORY OF A MAN CALLED “LEGION”:
OR HOW A MADMAN BECAME A MESSENGER
INTRODUCTION
In his great book, In the Beginning, Chaim Potok tells the story of David, a young Jewish boy in New York who is hungry for knowledge.
He is studying the Hebrew Bible with a wise man named Mr. Bader.
At one point in the story David becomes very troubled by a passage in Genesis that he doesn’t understand. It is something in the story of Noah. David has read the commentaries ad the scholars disagree violently.
David is tells his father of his frustration. His father then shares something he learned long ago. The father says, “It is as important to learn the important questions as it is the important answers. It is especially important to learn the questions to which there may not be good answers. We have to learn to live with questions….I am glad that Mr. Bader is a good teacher, and I am glad that he tells you truthfully that he does not have answers to all our questions.”
The story we are going to talk about today is one that I have always wondered about because there are things in it that I don’t understand at all.
But sometimes the most difficult parts of the Bible are the ones from which we can learn the most if we are just patient and willing to learn even from stories we don’t understand completely.
It is the story of the man Jesus met who said that he had within him a whole mob of demons.
Read: Luke 8:26-39
I. First, let’s think about the sad predicament of the poor mad man who rushed to Jesus, just as he got off the boat.
A. Picture the scene: The man was naked. He was crazy. He was dangerous. He was dirty and disheveled. He lived by himself in a graveyard. According to Mark’s version of the story he was “always howling and bruising himself with stones.”
The man fell down before Jesus and cried out: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.”
“For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.”
The man has named Jesus; now Jesus asks him for his name.
“Legion!” he screams. He believes he is possessed by thousands of demons.
B. A little background…
The man was what we would call a maniac.
He lives among the tombs.
Graves were considered “unclean” by the Jews. They whitewashed their sepulchers so that no one would accidentally touch one because if you did, you would become unclean too
The man is violent. The authorities have arrested him, put him under guard, bound him with chains, but he has always escaped and been driven into the deserted area by his demons.
There he lives, naked, by himself, feared by all.
He is so tormented that he thinks that he has thousands of demons inside him. (A legion is 5-6000 Roman soldiers. His country was occupied and controlled by hated Roman legions. In the eyes of the conquered people they were evil. It’s like he has an army of these monsters inside him making him crazy.)
C. Now my mind is filled with questions:
1. Were there really demons inside this man, or did he have what we call schizophrenia?
2. Why did the man rush at Jesus and fall at his feet? He acts like he wants Jesus to go away and yet he comes to him and falls to the ground before him.
3. Did the demons really go into the pigs? And did the demons really drown themselves?
4. Why did Jesus send the man away after he had begged to follow him? Remember, he told the leper, “Don’t tell anyone.” But he told this man to go home and tell what had happened to him.
II. So how can we understand the story?
A. If we saw this man in Cedar Rapids today we would say he was mentally ill. He had delusions. His mind was unhinged from reality.
Charlotte and I worked in a mental hospital. We saw many patients who in Jesus’s time would have been considered “demon-possessed.”
They were violent. Sometimes they had to be restrained to keep them from hurting themselves or others.
With the proper medications they would become calm, and often the symptoms of the disease would disappear.
Once, on the theory that a patient was demon-possessed, I remember that once some church people came into the hospital to get the demon out by prayer. I don’t think they had any success.
But people who visit other cultures tell convincing stories about possession and cures through prayer.
Let me share with you an account that came in a letter the just two days ago from a mission that works with the Dimasa tribe in North India.
The gospel has only recently come to these people.
New Christians in that tribe are now translating a primer for teaching their people to read.
One of the translators is Gbisni.
Gbisni’s sister was possessed with 12 evil spirits.
The Hindu priests wouldn’t help. They were using her as a medium to communicate with these spirits.
Gbsini’s parents took her to an Imam at a mosque to see if he could help their daughter, but the evil spirits were too powerful: the girl ended up biting the Imam who then freed himself with a cutting tool, injuring her badly.
Finally, Gbisni took his sister to some Christians nearby. He informed the Hindu priests that if the God of the Christians could free his sister, he would convert to Christianity and would take baptism.
He also told the Hindu priests that he would remain a Hindu forever if they could free his sister.
The God of the Christians freed his sister from the evil spirits and Gbisni became a faithful follower of Jesus.
Jesus saw the powers of evil behind all sorts of physical and mental suffering. We are so used to looking for natural causes that we are usually unaware of the role Satan plays in the troubles of the world.
This story is a powerful parable of how Jesus battles back the forces of evil to bring about peace and goodness in a world of suffering and sin.
People in ancient times lived in a dangerous world. Besides earthquakes, floods, famines, disease, and war, they had the fear that the world around them was thickly populated with demonic powers. They were convinced that the demons could enter ones body through his ears, nose or mouth. They used amulets, magic, sacrifices, and rituals to appease or escape these spiritual powers.
This story would assure the early Christian believers that Jesus was more powerful than these horrible powers. It was a comfort to know that Jesus Christ had conquered the “principalities and powers.”
B. And why did the man rush up to Jesus, and yet cry out as if he wanted Jesus to go away?
I believe that the man rushed up to Jesus and threw himself down because he wanted deliverance, but at the same time the evil spirit inside him cried out against Jesus.
But notice that his cry came after Jesus had ordered the demons to be gone.
I believe that Jesus was responding to the man’s need and even the shred of faith that the man possessed.
Pigs were, to Jews, unclean, filthy beasts. They help us see the horribleness of the scene: the violent, naked man, living among unclean tombs, tormented by an army or horrible evil spirits, and an enormous herd of filthy pigs. The whole picture is depressing, and as such it is an environment in which Jesus can impressively show his power and goodness.
Some people—trying to read between the lines—say that maybe the man, in his violence hurled himself against the pigs and set them into the stampede. If this is so, it served God’s purpose in assuring the man that his filthy tormentors were indeed gone forever and would never come back.
III. As you can see, we don’t have answers to all my questions, but what is the point of the story? What is in it that is important for you and me?
A. Every one of Jesus’s miracles was a “sign.” Jesus didn’t just do impossible things to amaze people, or even just to prove that he was God.
Jesus opened the eyes of the blind to show that he is the light of the world.
Jesus unstopped the ears of the deaf to show how he opens our ears to hear God’s truth.
Jesus makes the lame to walk to show how he gives us wisdom to walk in the paths of righteousness.
Jesus cleansed the leper to show how he cleanses us from the uncleanness of sin.
Jesus raised the dead to show that he is the Resurrection and the Life.
Jesus stilled storms at sea to show how he calms the storms in our lives.
Jesus fed the multitudes with miraculously-produced bread to illustrate that he is the “Bread of Life.”
So the expelling of the demons afflicting poor Legion shows that Jesus is even more powerful than the evil that infects and afflicts the world.
So each of these miracles was an act of compassion and also a sign of God’s kingdom breaking into the world.
Each miracle was also a parable of how Christ works in your life and mine.
B. It might surprise us to see that the townspeople were afraid, when they came and saw the man they had feared, now clothed and in his right mind. They were probably glad that the poor crazy man was healed, but the didn’t approve of the destruction of all those pigs. So they begged Jesus to please go away.
But Jesus teaches us the relative value of money and lives. Jesus says, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits his soul?”
Someone said, “All down through the ages the world has been refusing Jesus because the world prefers pigs.”
C. But I think the most interesting part of the story, and the most instructive part is the ending.
See the man sitting at the feet of Jesus (v35). He has become a disciple. He is now in the learner’s pose. Sitting there listening and learning.
And he had a lot to learn in a short time because although he begged to go with Jesus, Jesus has something more important for him to do. He’s going to be Jesus’s first missionary to the Gentile world!
“Return to your home,” he says, “and declare how much God has done for you.”
Maybe Legion didn’t know much, but he had a great story. And sometimes the most effective evangelist is not the one who has the most theology but the one who has the best story.
You don’t need to know much theology to “declare how much God has done for you.”
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of our story I told you that I didn’t have all the answers.
And now you know that that’s true.
But, you see, we don’t have to have all the answers to hear God talking to us.
And I hear God telling us in this story that Jesus can heal, and he can deliver us from all those things that torment us.
And I hear God telling us: “Declare how much God has done for you.”
I’ll leave you with these words from 1 Peter 2:9:
“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people,
in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts
of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Stories of Jesus: Luke 7:1-10: The Man Who Astonished Jesus
Probably we all have disappointed Jesus, maybe many times. But do you know that it’s also possible to pleasantly surprise Jesus too? In Luke we have the story of a man who astonished Jesus, and that man is an example for all of us.
LUKE 7:1-10: THE MAN WHO ASTONISHED JESUS
INTRODUCTION
When I was in Korea serving in the artillery during the Korean War, the captain of our battery was a man we called “The Hook.” I don’t remember his real name, but we always called him “The Hook,” because he was so mean. Of course, he never knew we called him that; if we ever had occasion to address him, it was always “Sir” or “Captain.” But we hardly ever had occasion to speak to him because we avoided him whenever possible. If we saw the captain approaching we would walk behind a tent or change our direction to avoid him.
Maybe our captain believed he was obliged to behave in this harsh, abusive way because we were a bunch of draftees who hated the army and all it stood for and only longed to go home and be away from the war and the army.
I should add that not all battery commanders were cruel. We had another one who was considerate, and we appreciated him. But he was unusual.
In the story from the gospel that I am going to read to you the hero is a Roman centurion. A centurion was the commander of 100 troops. He had the same responsibility as our battery commander or a captain in the infantry.
Read Luke 7:1-10
I. Notice how unusual this centurion was.
A. The first thing we notice about the centurion is that he was kind. He loved his slave.
My version says he “had a slave who was dear to him.”
Some translations read he “had a slave who was valuable to him.”
The Greek word can mean “honored” or “respected,” or it can mean “precious” or “valuable.”
We might suppose that this slave had some special skill that made his master prize him. Maybe he was good at keeping accounts or repairing armor.
But I think my translation is the right one. I believe that the centurion loved his slave.
Everything we read about this military man is positive, and the fact that Jesus responded to him so warmly convinces me that he was the kind of master who loved his servants.
And the slave evidently loved his master, and that made him valuable to him.
B. The second thing we notice is that he is God-fearing.
Most Gentiles didn’t like Jews. They considered Jews “different.” I don’t know just why Jews were disliked; maybe it was because they were so different.
They had odd customs. They ate different food. They refused to take part in the pagan festivals. They were clannish. They tried to avoid having anything to do with Gentiles unless it was absolutely necessary.
There were certain foods the Jews were forbidden to eat. The effect of their dietary laws was to keep the Jews separate from the Gentiles. They couldn’t eat with Gentiles because then they would have been obliged them to eat pork or other foods that were forbidden. Jews didn’t even enter the homes of Gentiles.
But some Greeks and Romans were attracted to Jewish ways. They were disgusted with the vice and immorality of their pagan society. They understood the beauty of holy living as taught in the Old Testament.
Without becoming Jews themselves, these Romans or Greeks would go to the synagogues and learn about the God of Israel and try to follow the Jewish way of life that was so much superior to the idolatrous ways of their own people.
They were called “God fearers.” We meet some of these God fearers in the book of Acts. Cornelius was one. Lydia was another. Often the most eager converts to Christianity in those early days were these God fearing Gentiles. They already knew the Old Testament stories and they were ready to believe that Jesus was the Promised Savior.
C. The third thing we notice about this man is that he was loved by the people of the city.
This was unusual for a Roman military man to be loved by Jews in a land the Romans were occupying. Jews generally hated the Roman conquerors. When a Jew came upon a Roman in the street, he might spit on the ground to show his contempt.
Jewish terrorists would murder Roman soldiers if they could get away with it.
But when this centurion’s servant was dying, the Jewish elders of the city went to Jesus to intercede for the centurion.
D. The fourth thing we notice about the centurion is his generosity.
So this Centurion’s generosity combined with his piety to led him to use his own funds to build a meeting house—a synagogue—in the important city where he and his soldiers were stationed, Capernaum.
The elders tell Jesus, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he built us our synagogue.”
Love and generosity always go together. You can’t love without being generous if it is in your power to do something for the one you love.
This centurion reminds me of a story Viktor Frankl tells in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a Jew and was an inmate in a concentration camp during World War 2.
The camp was a cruel place and most of the prisoners died. But Frankl survived.
Frankl tells about the SS commander of the camp he was in just before the liberation.
This man was a Nazi, but unknown to all of the camp inmates except the Jewish doctor, this Nazi had been using his own money to buy medicine for the treatment of sick prisoners.
At the end of the war the prisoners learned of his kindness, and three Hungarian Jews hid the Nazi in the Bavarian woods. Then they went to the American commander, who was very anxious to capture the man. The Hungarian Jews told the American general that they would tell where this Nazi was, but only if he would promise that absolutely no harm would come to the man.
After a while, the general promised the young Jews that the SS commander would be kept safe from harm. And he kept his word.
A surprising story? Not more surprising than the story of a Roman centurion who loved and helped the conquered people his army was there to subdue.
II. Two other things stand out about this Roman that make him unique in the stories of Jesus. And these are the point of the story.
A. First of all, his humility. Military commanders are not noted for their humility. It isn’t a trait that helps they get ahead.
The Jewish elders told Jesus, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue.”
But when Jesus set out to come to him, the centurion sent this message to Jesus: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof…”
Did you know that in the time of Jesus pagans didn’t think of humility as a virtue?
One of the things the pagan philosophers held against Christianity was that it welcomed slaves and poor people and uneducated and uncultured people. They thought that these humble Christians must have no self-respect.
Celsus was a second century pagan who wrote books attacking the Christians. To him the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet was utterly blasphemous. It was one of the things he held against Christians that they were so low minded as to picture God, not only as crucified, but also washing people’s dirty feet.
But the centurion had learned from the Hebrew scriptures that he was unworthy of God’s mercy.
There was another reason why the centurion discouraged Jesus from coming to his house.
The Jews believed that it was offensive to enter a Gentile house, just as it would have been offensive to invite a Gentile into one of their houses.
The centurion knew that if Jesus entered his house, Jesus would have been criticized.
It was his sensitivity and his courtesy to Jesus that led him to send his friends to urge Jesus just to say the word of healing and not come into his house.
B. But what really surprised and amazed and pleased Jesus was the man’s faith.
We read of only one other time that Jesus was amazed. It was when he visited his hometown of Nazareth, and, we read, “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief” (Mark 6:5-6). If anyone should have been able to believe in Jesus, it seems that it would be those who knew him best.
This godly centurion had a deep insight into the ways of God that Jesus’s Jewish listeners lacked.
He said, “Say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ’Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.’”
He had figured out that God was Lord of heaven and earth. And he had figured out that in this man Jesus, God was personally present and active.
So he drew the connection between the delegated authority he exercised in commanding his soldiers and the authority God had given Jesus to do these wonderful works.
And that was the faith that amazed Jesus.
Jesus was used to rewarding the faith of people who had a very low-grade kind of faith. Remember the woman who crept up behind Jesus because she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”
Her faith was a sort of superstitious faith, but Jesus honored it. In that case, Jesus singled her out and made sure that she understood that it was her faith that healed her and not some kind of magic that came from his clothes.
He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34).
But the centurion had the most shining, splendid faith; he invited Jesus to cure his slave at a distance.
And Jesus marveled. He said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
CONCLUSION
This centurion is an example to us.
He was humble. He knew he didn’t deserve anything.
He was loving and generous—beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected of him.
And especially he believed.
Faith is not optimism. Faith is not hoping hard. Faith is believing God.
I can’t tell you how to get faith.
The only thing I know is that the more I pray, and reflect on God’s Word, and the more I try to please God in what I do, the stronger my faith becomes.
My prayer for myself and for you is that God will give us strong faith, faith so strong and real that God is as real to us as the person sitting beside us.
I doubt that we will ever amaze God with our faith, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did?
LUKE 7:1-10: THE MAN WHO ASTONISHED JESUS
INTRODUCTION
When I was in Korea serving in the artillery during the Korean War, the captain of our battery was a man we called “The Hook.” I don’t remember his real name, but we always called him “The Hook,” because he was so mean. Of course, he never knew we called him that; if we ever had occasion to address him, it was always “Sir” or “Captain.” But we hardly ever had occasion to speak to him because we avoided him whenever possible. If we saw the captain approaching we would walk behind a tent or change our direction to avoid him.
Maybe our captain believed he was obliged to behave in this harsh, abusive way because we were a bunch of draftees who hated the army and all it stood for and only longed to go home and be away from the war and the army.
I should add that not all battery commanders were cruel. We had another one who was considerate, and we appreciated him. But he was unusual.
In the story from the gospel that I am going to read to you the hero is a Roman centurion. A centurion was the commander of 100 troops. He had the same responsibility as our battery commander or a captain in the infantry.
Read Luke 7:1-10
I. Notice how unusual this centurion was.
A. The first thing we notice about the centurion is that he was kind. He loved his slave.
My version says he “had a slave who was dear to him.”
Some translations read he “had a slave who was valuable to him.”
The Greek word can mean “honored” or “respected,” or it can mean “precious” or “valuable.”
We might suppose that this slave had some special skill that made his master prize him. Maybe he was good at keeping accounts or repairing armor.
But I think my translation is the right one. I believe that the centurion loved his slave.
Everything we read about this military man is positive, and the fact that Jesus responded to him so warmly convinces me that he was the kind of master who loved his servants.
And the slave evidently loved his master, and that made him valuable to him.
B. The second thing we notice is that he is God-fearing.
Most Gentiles didn’t like Jews. They considered Jews “different.” I don’t know just why Jews were disliked; maybe it was because they were so different.
They had odd customs. They ate different food. They refused to take part in the pagan festivals. They were clannish. They tried to avoid having anything to do with Gentiles unless it was absolutely necessary.
There were certain foods the Jews were forbidden to eat. The effect of their dietary laws was to keep the Jews separate from the Gentiles. They couldn’t eat with Gentiles because then they would have been obliged them to eat pork or other foods that were forbidden. Jews didn’t even enter the homes of Gentiles.
But some Greeks and Romans were attracted to Jewish ways. They were disgusted with the vice and immorality of their pagan society. They understood the beauty of holy living as taught in the Old Testament.
Without becoming Jews themselves, these Romans or Greeks would go to the synagogues and learn about the God of Israel and try to follow the Jewish way of life that was so much superior to the idolatrous ways of their own people.
They were called “God fearers.” We meet some of these God fearers in the book of Acts. Cornelius was one. Lydia was another. Often the most eager converts to Christianity in those early days were these God fearing Gentiles. They already knew the Old Testament stories and they were ready to believe that Jesus was the Promised Savior.
C. The third thing we notice about this man is that he was loved by the people of the city.
This was unusual for a Roman military man to be loved by Jews in a land the Romans were occupying. Jews generally hated the Roman conquerors. When a Jew came upon a Roman in the street, he might spit on the ground to show his contempt.
Jewish terrorists would murder Roman soldiers if they could get away with it.
But when this centurion’s servant was dying, the Jewish elders of the city went to Jesus to intercede for the centurion.
D. The fourth thing we notice about the centurion is his generosity.
So this Centurion’s generosity combined with his piety to led him to use his own funds to build a meeting house—a synagogue—in the important city where he and his soldiers were stationed, Capernaum.
The elders tell Jesus, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he built us our synagogue.”
Love and generosity always go together. You can’t love without being generous if it is in your power to do something for the one you love.
This centurion reminds me of a story Viktor Frankl tells in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a Jew and was an inmate in a concentration camp during World War 2.
The camp was a cruel place and most of the prisoners died. But Frankl survived.
Frankl tells about the SS commander of the camp he was in just before the liberation.
This man was a Nazi, but unknown to all of the camp inmates except the Jewish doctor, this Nazi had been using his own money to buy medicine for the treatment of sick prisoners.
At the end of the war the prisoners learned of his kindness, and three Hungarian Jews hid the Nazi in the Bavarian woods. Then they went to the American commander, who was very anxious to capture the man. The Hungarian Jews told the American general that they would tell where this Nazi was, but only if he would promise that absolutely no harm would come to the man.
After a while, the general promised the young Jews that the SS commander would be kept safe from harm. And he kept his word.
A surprising story? Not more surprising than the story of a Roman centurion who loved and helped the conquered people his army was there to subdue.
II. Two other things stand out about this Roman that make him unique in the stories of Jesus. And these are the point of the story.
A. First of all, his humility. Military commanders are not noted for their humility. It isn’t a trait that helps they get ahead.
The Jewish elders told Jesus, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue.”
But when Jesus set out to come to him, the centurion sent this message to Jesus: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof…”
Did you know that in the time of Jesus pagans didn’t think of humility as a virtue?
One of the things the pagan philosophers held against Christianity was that it welcomed slaves and poor people and uneducated and uncultured people. They thought that these humble Christians must have no self-respect.
Celsus was a second century pagan who wrote books attacking the Christians. To him the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet was utterly blasphemous. It was one of the things he held against Christians that they were so low minded as to picture God, not only as crucified, but also washing people’s dirty feet.
But the centurion had learned from the Hebrew scriptures that he was unworthy of God’s mercy.
There was another reason why the centurion discouraged Jesus from coming to his house.
The Jews believed that it was offensive to enter a Gentile house, just as it would have been offensive to invite a Gentile into one of their houses.
The centurion knew that if Jesus entered his house, Jesus would have been criticized.
It was his sensitivity and his courtesy to Jesus that led him to send his friends to urge Jesus just to say the word of healing and not come into his house.
B. But what really surprised and amazed and pleased Jesus was the man’s faith.
We read of only one other time that Jesus was amazed. It was when he visited his hometown of Nazareth, and, we read, “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief” (Mark 6:5-6). If anyone should have been able to believe in Jesus, it seems that it would be those who knew him best.
This godly centurion had a deep insight into the ways of God that Jesus’s Jewish listeners lacked.
He said, “Say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ’Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.’”
He had figured out that God was Lord of heaven and earth. And he had figured out that in this man Jesus, God was personally present and active.
So he drew the connection between the delegated authority he exercised in commanding his soldiers and the authority God had given Jesus to do these wonderful works.
And that was the faith that amazed Jesus.
Jesus was used to rewarding the faith of people who had a very low-grade kind of faith. Remember the woman who crept up behind Jesus because she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”
Her faith was a sort of superstitious faith, but Jesus honored it. In that case, Jesus singled her out and made sure that she understood that it was her faith that healed her and not some kind of magic that came from his clothes.
He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34).
But the centurion had the most shining, splendid faith; he invited Jesus to cure his slave at a distance.
And Jesus marveled. He said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
CONCLUSION
This centurion is an example to us.
He was humble. He knew he didn’t deserve anything.
He was loving and generous—beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected of him.
And especially he believed.
Faith is not optimism. Faith is not hoping hard. Faith is believing God.
I can’t tell you how to get faith.
The only thing I know is that the more I pray, and reflect on God’s Word, and the more I try to please God in what I do, the stronger my faith becomes.
My prayer for myself and for you is that God will give us strong faith, faith so strong and real that God is as real to us as the person sitting beside us.
I doubt that we will ever amaze God with our faith, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did?
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Resurrection of Christ: Matthew 28:1-10: The Glory of Resurrection Morning
The day Jesus rose from the dead had to be the most exciting day in the life of the world. Only a few people in an obscure corner of the world knew about the event, but it changed the world.
MATTHEW 28:1-10: THE GLORY OF RESURRECTION MORNING
INTRODUCTION
Thomas Jefferson was a great president, and he had a great respect for the gospel stories. Jefferson liked the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness, and he liked the parts where Jesus scolded the Pharisees. But he didn’t believe in miracles. So Thomas Jefferson made his own personal copy of the gospels. He took two printed New Testaments and with a razor cut out all the parts about healing and stilling storms and angels and demons. He ended up with a little Bible of 17 chapters with 89 pages. His Bible starts with Bethlehem, but there are no angels or shepherds or wise men. There is no Temptation or Transfiguration, and—especially—there is no resurrection.
Jefferson translated his little Bible into French, Latin, and Greek and had it printed up. If you want one, you can still buy a copy. Or you can read it on the Internet.
Jefferson’s Bible ends with these words: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden was a new sepulcher wherein was never man yet laid. There they laid Jesus. And they rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed.”
And that’s the ending of the Jefferson Bible.
Aren’t you glad that that is not the way our gospel story ends? St. Paul says it for us in 1 Corinthians 15: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (vv17-19).
I. Today, I would like to look with you at the story of what happened on Resurrection Sunday according to the Gospel of Matthew 28:1-10.
A. The first thing that strikes you is how dramatic the event was.
The two women go to the tomb and “behold, there was a great earthquake!”
An angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone, and sits upon it.
His appearance is like lightning and his clothes white as snow.
The guards tremble and become like dead men.
Then the angel says to the women—what angels always say in the Bible—“Fear not!”
I can imagine that the two women were as afraid as the guards were—and as you or I would be if we saw an angel shining like lightning in front of us.
And the angel said, “I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come; see the place where he lay.”
Now I want you to notice that it doesn’t say the angel rolled the stone away so that Jesus could escape from the tomb.
No, Jesus has already risen. He has gone. The angel rolled the stone away so the women could see the place where he had been laid. God wanted eyewitnesses to the empty tomb.
And the angel told the women: “Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo I have told you.”
“So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”
“Fear and great joy!” Fear because they had experienced an earthquake and seen an angel: an experience like that would overwhelm all the senses. They were afraid.
But they were overjoyed too. The fear may have been “great,” but the joy was greater.
In just a few minutes they had gone from the deepest sadness of their lives to the greatest joy imaginable.
Can’t you just see those ladies running down the road, their skirts flying, as they carry the great good news they had to share?
B. And then Jesus himself meets them!
Jesus says, according to my Bible, “Hail!” This is the Greek word for “rejoice,” and it was the common word for “Greetings,” or, as we say, “Hello.”
Then the women take hold of Jesus’s feet and worship him.
That word for “worship” means literally to prostrate oneself before someone—like a great king or a god.
Matthew likes to show people worshiping Jesus. The wise men worshiped the baby Jesus.
After Jesus stilled the storm, his disciples worshiped him.
A leper knelt before him and made his request—it’s the same word—and also Jairus, the synagogue ruler, and the Canaanite woman. Again at the end of Matthew in v17 when the disciples see Jesus, they worship him.
That’s what we are supposed to be doing. That’s why we come together—more than any other reason—to worship Jesus with our praise and thanksgiving.
And Jesus says, “Fear not; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
C. Now here is something amazing! Jesus was unusual among the important men of his time, in that he had so much respect for women.
Women are usually in the background in the gospel stories, but they are much more prominent in the gospels than they would have been in the general society of the day.
When the disciples got back from Samaria with the provisions we read that they “marveled that he was talking with a woman.”
When Mary of Bethany sat at Jesus’s feet and he taught her; that would have been unusual.
Other rabbis didn’t think that women had the mental capacity to be taught the things of God.
We know the names of several of Jesus’s female friends: Susanna, Joanna, Martha, Salome, and at least three Marys besides his mother.
And there are several who are unnamed but have important parts in the various stories: the woman who crept up behind Jesus to touch his clothes and be healed; the Caananite woman, of whom he said, “O woman, great is your faith!”; and the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet and washed them with her tears.
But in those days a woman was simply not a credible witness. Her woman’s testimony was useless in a court of law.
That is why it is remarkable that Jesus chose women to be the first witnesses to his resurrection and sent them to be apostles to the apostles.
Jesus could have just as well appeared to any of the male apostles, but he chose to appear first to women.
I think it was because the women loved him best.
That is why the women were there at the tomb that Sunday morning. We know what the men were doing: they were hiding somewhere in the city with the doors locked.
II. Now I want to tell you what struck me most about this story as I was studying it.
A. The story of the crucifixion is a straightforward narrative, told in matter-of-fact language.
Each one includes different details, but they all fit together neatly.
We can see Calvary in our minds. We can imagine we are there.
B. But the stories of Resurrection Morning are so different that we are hard-pressed to try to fit them together into one narrative.
In Matthew—2 women—Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph come to the tomb. Jesus meets them on the road. We don’t read why they came except to see the sepulcher. Matthew is the only one who tells about the earthquake, the guards, and the angel whose appearance was like lightning.
In Mark—3 women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come with spices to anoint the body. The see the open tomb, enter and see a young man sitting arrayed in a white robe who gives them the news about Jesus.
In Luke—even more women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women come with spices. They entered the tomb and find two men in dazzling apparel who give them the news.
In John--only Mary Magdalene. She sees the stone rolled away and runs and brings Peter and John back. Then Peter and John enter the tomb, see that it's empty, and go home, Mary lingers weeping and sees two angels in white sitting inside the tomb. They ask her why she is weeping. Then she turns and sees Jesus.
Historians say that the differences actually prove that these are honest reports. If Jesus’s friends had gotten together to invent a story to publish to the world, they would have made one up, and everything would have fit together.
The fact that there were different versions means that it is like eyewitness accounts of events in real life.
I believe that the reason why the details vary in the different accounts is because of the overwhelming excitement of the event. The experiences were so unexpected and so amazing that the participants had different stories to tell.
As they told their stories, the stories were told and retold and different elements were emphasized.
But there was never any doubt about the main event among the Christian community: the tomb was empty and Jesus was alive!
But all of the gospel accounts of the Resurrection agree on these main things:
Jesus was alive.
The stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.
An angel announced the news of the Resurrection.
It was women who first saw Jesus and carried the good news to the apostles.
It was an overwhelming experience.
It wasn’t visions they were having. What the believers were seeing wasn’t something just in their minds.
I believe that if you had been there with a camera, you could have taken a picture of Jesus.
II. So what difference does it make to us?
A. By raising Jesus from the dead in such a public way, God shows us what the death of Jesus means: victory over sin and death and the devil.
God could have just taken Jesus from the tomb to heaven, but then we would have thought—like poor Thomas Jefferson—that that was the end of the story.
B. By raising Jesus from the dead, God teaches us that all of us who are united with Christ in faith will rise from our deaths to eternal life with our Lord in Glory.
In Galatians 2:20 St. Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
1 Peter 1.1-3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
CONCLUSION
In old Russia a service was held every Easter Sunday afternoon in each village cemetery. After a service in the chapel, the people went to the graves of their loved ones.
Each family stood by the family plot in the cemetery beside the graves of their loved family members.
Then the priest, accompanied by the acolytes and choir led a procession through the cemetery singing the resurrection song: “Christ is Risen.”
The procession would circle the cemetery, stopping at each grave, and the priest would proclaim to the family members there: “Christ is risen!”
And each group joyfully repeated back to the priest: “Truly, he is risen!”
This is the point: Because Jesus rose from the dead, we rise with him.
Because Jesus rose to eternal life, so we rise with him to eternal life.
This is an old Celtic prayer I like to use:
“I rise with you, dear Jesus, and you rise with me.
As the oil of gladness pours upon you, it trickles onto me.
As the fire of love burns within you, it warms my heart.
As the breath of eternal life fills your body, I know that I shall live forever.
As you reach out to bless the world, I feel your embrace drawing me close.
I rise with you, dear Jesus, and you rise with me.”
MATTHEW 28:1-10: THE GLORY OF RESURRECTION MORNING
INTRODUCTION
Thomas Jefferson was a great president, and he had a great respect for the gospel stories. Jefferson liked the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness, and he liked the parts where Jesus scolded the Pharisees. But he didn’t believe in miracles. So Thomas Jefferson made his own personal copy of the gospels. He took two printed New Testaments and with a razor cut out all the parts about healing and stilling storms and angels and demons. He ended up with a little Bible of 17 chapters with 89 pages. His Bible starts with Bethlehem, but there are no angels or shepherds or wise men. There is no Temptation or Transfiguration, and—especially—there is no resurrection.
Jefferson translated his little Bible into French, Latin, and Greek and had it printed up. If you want one, you can still buy a copy. Or you can read it on the Internet.
Jefferson’s Bible ends with these words: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden was a new sepulcher wherein was never man yet laid. There they laid Jesus. And they rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed.”
And that’s the ending of the Jefferson Bible.
Aren’t you glad that that is not the way our gospel story ends? St. Paul says it for us in 1 Corinthians 15: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (vv17-19).
I. Today, I would like to look with you at the story of what happened on Resurrection Sunday according to the Gospel of Matthew 28:1-10.
A. The first thing that strikes you is how dramatic the event was.
The two women go to the tomb and “behold, there was a great earthquake!”
An angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone, and sits upon it.
His appearance is like lightning and his clothes white as snow.
The guards tremble and become like dead men.
Then the angel says to the women—what angels always say in the Bible—“Fear not!”
I can imagine that the two women were as afraid as the guards were—and as you or I would be if we saw an angel shining like lightning in front of us.
And the angel said, “I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come; see the place where he lay.”
Now I want you to notice that it doesn’t say the angel rolled the stone away so that Jesus could escape from the tomb.
No, Jesus has already risen. He has gone. The angel rolled the stone away so the women could see the place where he had been laid. God wanted eyewitnesses to the empty tomb.
And the angel told the women: “Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo I have told you.”
“So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”
“Fear and great joy!” Fear because they had experienced an earthquake and seen an angel: an experience like that would overwhelm all the senses. They were afraid.
But they were overjoyed too. The fear may have been “great,” but the joy was greater.
In just a few minutes they had gone from the deepest sadness of their lives to the greatest joy imaginable.
Can’t you just see those ladies running down the road, their skirts flying, as they carry the great good news they had to share?
B. And then Jesus himself meets them!
Jesus says, according to my Bible, “Hail!” This is the Greek word for “rejoice,” and it was the common word for “Greetings,” or, as we say, “Hello.”
Then the women take hold of Jesus’s feet and worship him.
That word for “worship” means literally to prostrate oneself before someone—like a great king or a god.
Matthew likes to show people worshiping Jesus. The wise men worshiped the baby Jesus.
After Jesus stilled the storm, his disciples worshiped him.
A leper knelt before him and made his request—it’s the same word—and also Jairus, the synagogue ruler, and the Canaanite woman. Again at the end of Matthew in v17 when the disciples see Jesus, they worship him.
That’s what we are supposed to be doing. That’s why we come together—more than any other reason—to worship Jesus with our praise and thanksgiving.
And Jesus says, “Fear not; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
C. Now here is something amazing! Jesus was unusual among the important men of his time, in that he had so much respect for women.
Women are usually in the background in the gospel stories, but they are much more prominent in the gospels than they would have been in the general society of the day.
When the disciples got back from Samaria with the provisions we read that they “marveled that he was talking with a woman.”
When Mary of Bethany sat at Jesus’s feet and he taught her; that would have been unusual.
Other rabbis didn’t think that women had the mental capacity to be taught the things of God.
We know the names of several of Jesus’s female friends: Susanna, Joanna, Martha, Salome, and at least three Marys besides his mother.
And there are several who are unnamed but have important parts in the various stories: the woman who crept up behind Jesus to touch his clothes and be healed; the Caananite woman, of whom he said, “O woman, great is your faith!”; and the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet and washed them with her tears.
But in those days a woman was simply not a credible witness. Her woman’s testimony was useless in a court of law.
That is why it is remarkable that Jesus chose women to be the first witnesses to his resurrection and sent them to be apostles to the apostles.
Jesus could have just as well appeared to any of the male apostles, but he chose to appear first to women.
I think it was because the women loved him best.
That is why the women were there at the tomb that Sunday morning. We know what the men were doing: they were hiding somewhere in the city with the doors locked.
II. Now I want to tell you what struck me most about this story as I was studying it.
A. The story of the crucifixion is a straightforward narrative, told in matter-of-fact language.
Each one includes different details, but they all fit together neatly.
We can see Calvary in our minds. We can imagine we are there.
B. But the stories of Resurrection Morning are so different that we are hard-pressed to try to fit them together into one narrative.
In Matthew—2 women—Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph come to the tomb. Jesus meets them on the road. We don’t read why they came except to see the sepulcher. Matthew is the only one who tells about the earthquake, the guards, and the angel whose appearance was like lightning.
In Mark—3 women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come with spices to anoint the body. The see the open tomb, enter and see a young man sitting arrayed in a white robe who gives them the news about Jesus.
In Luke—even more women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women come with spices. They entered the tomb and find two men in dazzling apparel who give them the news.
In John--only Mary Magdalene. She sees the stone rolled away and runs and brings Peter and John back. Then Peter and John enter the tomb, see that it's empty, and go home, Mary lingers weeping and sees two angels in white sitting inside the tomb. They ask her why she is weeping. Then she turns and sees Jesus.
Historians say that the differences actually prove that these are honest reports. If Jesus’s friends had gotten together to invent a story to publish to the world, they would have made one up, and everything would have fit together.
The fact that there were different versions means that it is like eyewitness accounts of events in real life.
I believe that the reason why the details vary in the different accounts is because of the overwhelming excitement of the event. The experiences were so unexpected and so amazing that the participants had different stories to tell.
As they told their stories, the stories were told and retold and different elements were emphasized.
But there was never any doubt about the main event among the Christian community: the tomb was empty and Jesus was alive!
But all of the gospel accounts of the Resurrection agree on these main things:
Jesus was alive.
The stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.
An angel announced the news of the Resurrection.
It was women who first saw Jesus and carried the good news to the apostles.
It was an overwhelming experience.
It wasn’t visions they were having. What the believers were seeing wasn’t something just in their minds.
I believe that if you had been there with a camera, you could have taken a picture of Jesus.
II. So what difference does it make to us?
A. By raising Jesus from the dead in such a public way, God shows us what the death of Jesus means: victory over sin and death and the devil.
God could have just taken Jesus from the tomb to heaven, but then we would have thought—like poor Thomas Jefferson—that that was the end of the story.
B. By raising Jesus from the dead, God teaches us that all of us who are united with Christ in faith will rise from our deaths to eternal life with our Lord in Glory.
In Galatians 2:20 St. Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
1 Peter 1.1-3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
CONCLUSION
In old Russia a service was held every Easter Sunday afternoon in each village cemetery. After a service in the chapel, the people went to the graves of their loved ones.
Each family stood by the family plot in the cemetery beside the graves of their loved family members.
Then the priest, accompanied by the acolytes and choir led a procession through the cemetery singing the resurrection song: “Christ is Risen.”
The procession would circle the cemetery, stopping at each grave, and the priest would proclaim to the family members there: “Christ is risen!”
And each group joyfully repeated back to the priest: “Truly, he is risen!”
This is the point: Because Jesus rose from the dead, we rise with him.
Because Jesus rose to eternal life, so we rise with him to eternal life.
This is an old Celtic prayer I like to use:
“I rise with you, dear Jesus, and you rise with me.
As the oil of gladness pours upon you, it trickles onto me.
As the fire of love burns within you, it warms my heart.
As the breath of eternal life fills your body, I know that I shall live forever.
As you reach out to bless the world, I feel your embrace drawing me close.
I rise with you, dear Jesus, and you rise with me.”
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Cross of Christ: John 1:29, 35-37: “Behold the Lamb of God…”
Does it seem odd that in the Bible and in hymns Jesus is so often called a “Lamb”? Wouldn’t “Lion” be more appropriate? Today we’re going to consider why “the Lamb” is such an appropriate name for Jesus.
JOHN 1:29, 35-37: “BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD…”
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever noticed how many hymns refer to Jesus as “The Lamb” or “The Lamb of God”?
We sang a hymn that began:
“My faith looks up to thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Savior divine…”
We all remember the great invitation hymn,
“Just as I am, without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou biddst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
In Matthew and Luke we first meet Jesus as a little baby.
In Mark we first meet Jesus when he begins his ministry. He comes to John the Baptist for baptism, and we hear the voice from heaven.
But the first time we see Jesus in John’s gospel is when John sees Jesus coming from his Temptation.
We read that John was standing with some of his disciples when he saw Jesus.
I can see him pointing to that lonely figure in the distance.
And John says to his disciples: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Then John explains what had happened when he had baptized him in the Jordan River and seen the Holy Spirit descending upon him from heaven.
Isn’t it odd that John the Baptist introduces Jesus in John’s gospel as the “Lamb of God”?
He’s not a lion, the king of beasts, or an eagle, that flies into the heavens, but as a lamb?
Thirty-two times in the New Testament Jesus is called a “Lamb.”
Here is one of them from 1 Peter: “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot….Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-19, 21).
I. Lambs were very important to the worship of the ancient Hebrews.
A. Do you remember the story about when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt?
The night of the Passover, the day when God would deliver his people from the Egyptians, he sent an angel of death to the Egyptians to compel them to let his people go.
Each household was told to take a lamb, without blemish, one year old, and kill it on a certain day.
They would take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and lintel of their houses.
They would roast the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, eat it all that evening, and prepare for their escape from Egypt the next day.
This was the origin of the Passover Feast that the Israelites would celebrate every year until the Temple was destroyed about 40 years after the time of Jesus.
Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover—probably every year.
This feast was a very important act of worship and loyalty to God.
Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples the night before he died.
That last Passover dinner that Jesus ate with his disciples was joined to the Lord’s Supper, that we celebrate in our churches still.
Some call it Communion, or the Eucharist, or the Mass.
The Lord’s Supper is the way Jesus gave us to remember his death for our sins.
“The Lord Jesus, on the same night he was betrayed took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this is remembrance of me.
In the same way also the cup,after supper,
saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
In many churches the minister or priest uses these words: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Grant us thy peace.” This is called the Agnus Dei.
For Christians, the Communion Service corresponds to the Passover for the Jews.
On that first Passover the Hebrews were set free from slavery in Egypt.
On a Passover, many years later, Jesus died, as our Passover Lamb, and set us free from the bondage to sin.
B. But the lamb wasn’t only for Passover. Every morning and every evening two lambs was offered in the Temple of God in Jerusalem: one lamb was offered in the morning and one in the evening.
To offer an animal in the worship of God seems to us very odd—even repulsive.
But all of the ancient people I have read about worshiped their gods by offering animals.
Some primitive peoples still do.
I don’t know what these sacrifices represented in other nations, but in Israel the offerings were the way that God gave his people to recognize his Lordship over them and to atone for their sins.
The Israelites offered other kinds of animals—not just lambs. They also offered rams and goats and bulls and heifers, and sometimes doves or pigeons.
The Bible is very clear that the sacrifice of the animals didn’t by itself cleanse away their sins, but the offering of the animals was the way God gave them to remind them of the seriousness of sin.
The offerings of animals were a way for worshipers to express their faith in their God.
The daily offering of the lambs at the temple symbolized Israel’s willingness to belong to God and to obey him.
The New Testament looks back to the lambs were offered daily at the Temple as a symbol of the One who would someday come and offer himself to bring us to God.
The lambs were offered daily at the Temple, but our Lamb was offered only once—an eternal sacrifice—sufficient for all people, until the end of the world.
C. I have spoken of the Lamb of the Passover and the Lambs of the daily offering at the Temple. But there is another reference to the Lamb—which is Jesus—in the Old Testament.
In Isaiah 53, the prophet writes of the Suffering Servant who would make himself an offering for our sins” (v10). We read:
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.”
When John pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” these are the things that were in his mind:
the lamb of the Passover,
the lambs that were offered daily at the Temple,
and the lamb that was the Suffering Servant—foretold by the prophet—who “was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” and on whom the Lord laid the iniquity of us all.
So Jesus, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world—your sins, my sins, and all the sin that has made our world such a broken and sorrowful place.
II. Then we read: “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples; and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:35-37).
When John said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” he didn’t just mean “take a look over there.”
He didn’t mean just to glance at Jesus. He means a steady, serious kind of looking.
He means to look at Jesus with faith and understanding.
To look to Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
The two disciples understood that, and that is why, when they heard John say this, they left John and followed Jesus.
Let’s follow the example of the two disciples in the story. Let’s behold and then follow.
CONCLUSION
The story is told of a popular monk in the Middle Ages who announced at the morning service that in that evening he would preach a sermon on the love of God. The people gathered and stood in silence, waiting for the service while the sunlight streamed through the beautiful windows.
When the last bit of color had faded from the windows, the old monk went up to the candelabrum, took a lighted candle and walking to the life-sized statue of Christ on the cross, he held the light beneath the wounds on Christ’s feet, then at Christ’s hand, then at his side. Then, still without a word, the monk let the light shine on the thorn-crowned brow. That was the sermon.
The people stood in silence and wept, everyone knowing that they were at the center of a mystery beyond their knowing, that they were indeed looking at the supreme expression of the love of God—a love so deep, so wide, so eternal, that no wonder could express it, and no mind could measure it. This is the GREAT ACT of Christianity—that God’s love gave to the world what was most precious to him: his only Son.
The reason I spoke to you today about Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, is to encourage us all to look at him with the eyes of faith.
In one of our hymns we sing these words,
“Upon the cross of Jesus, mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of one who suffered there for me,
And from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess—
The wonder of his glorious love and my unworthiness.”
In some churches they use the symbol of the cross with the dying Jesus on it.
Let us—in our mind’s eye—see our Savior, the Lamb of God, on that cross dying for us.
Jesus said before he died, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Let us keep our eyes on our Lord Jesus. And let us love him and make him our Savior and our companion and follow him in his death and resurrection and into Eternal Life.
JOHN 1:29, 35-37: “BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD…”
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever noticed how many hymns refer to Jesus as “The Lamb” or “The Lamb of God”?
We sang a hymn that began:
“My faith looks up to thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Savior divine…”
We all remember the great invitation hymn,
“Just as I am, without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou biddst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
In Matthew and Luke we first meet Jesus as a little baby.
In Mark we first meet Jesus when he begins his ministry. He comes to John the Baptist for baptism, and we hear the voice from heaven.
But the first time we see Jesus in John’s gospel is when John sees Jesus coming from his Temptation.
We read that John was standing with some of his disciples when he saw Jesus.
I can see him pointing to that lonely figure in the distance.
And John says to his disciples: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Then John explains what had happened when he had baptized him in the Jordan River and seen the Holy Spirit descending upon him from heaven.
Isn’t it odd that John the Baptist introduces Jesus in John’s gospel as the “Lamb of God”?
He’s not a lion, the king of beasts, or an eagle, that flies into the heavens, but as a lamb?
Thirty-two times in the New Testament Jesus is called a “Lamb.”
Here is one of them from 1 Peter: “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot….Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-19, 21).
I. Lambs were very important to the worship of the ancient Hebrews.
A. Do you remember the story about when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt?
The night of the Passover, the day when God would deliver his people from the Egyptians, he sent an angel of death to the Egyptians to compel them to let his people go.
Each household was told to take a lamb, without blemish, one year old, and kill it on a certain day.
They would take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and lintel of their houses.
They would roast the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, eat it all that evening, and prepare for their escape from Egypt the next day.
This was the origin of the Passover Feast that the Israelites would celebrate every year until the Temple was destroyed about 40 years after the time of Jesus.
Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover—probably every year.
This feast was a very important act of worship and loyalty to God.
Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples the night before he died.
That last Passover dinner that Jesus ate with his disciples was joined to the Lord’s Supper, that we celebrate in our churches still.
Some call it Communion, or the Eucharist, or the Mass.
The Lord’s Supper is the way Jesus gave us to remember his death for our sins.
“The Lord Jesus, on the same night he was betrayed took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this is remembrance of me.
In the same way also the cup,after supper,
saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
In many churches the minister or priest uses these words: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Grant us thy peace.” This is called the Agnus Dei.
For Christians, the Communion Service corresponds to the Passover for the Jews.
On that first Passover the Hebrews were set free from slavery in Egypt.
On a Passover, many years later, Jesus died, as our Passover Lamb, and set us free from the bondage to sin.
B. But the lamb wasn’t only for Passover. Every morning and every evening two lambs was offered in the Temple of God in Jerusalem: one lamb was offered in the morning and one in the evening.
To offer an animal in the worship of God seems to us very odd—even repulsive.
But all of the ancient people I have read about worshiped their gods by offering animals.
Some primitive peoples still do.
I don’t know what these sacrifices represented in other nations, but in Israel the offerings were the way that God gave his people to recognize his Lordship over them and to atone for their sins.
The Israelites offered other kinds of animals—not just lambs. They also offered rams and goats and bulls and heifers, and sometimes doves or pigeons.
The Bible is very clear that the sacrifice of the animals didn’t by itself cleanse away their sins, but the offering of the animals was the way God gave them to remind them of the seriousness of sin.
The offerings of animals were a way for worshipers to express their faith in their God.
The daily offering of the lambs at the temple symbolized Israel’s willingness to belong to God and to obey him.
The New Testament looks back to the lambs were offered daily at the Temple as a symbol of the One who would someday come and offer himself to bring us to God.
The lambs were offered daily at the Temple, but our Lamb was offered only once—an eternal sacrifice—sufficient for all people, until the end of the world.
C. I have spoken of the Lamb of the Passover and the Lambs of the daily offering at the Temple. But there is another reference to the Lamb—which is Jesus—in the Old Testament.
In Isaiah 53, the prophet writes of the Suffering Servant who would make himself an offering for our sins” (v10). We read:
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.”
When John pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” these are the things that were in his mind:
the lamb of the Passover,
the lambs that were offered daily at the Temple,
and the lamb that was the Suffering Servant—foretold by the prophet—who “was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” and on whom the Lord laid the iniquity of us all.
So Jesus, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world—your sins, my sins, and all the sin that has made our world such a broken and sorrowful place.
II. Then we read: “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples; and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:35-37).
When John said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” he didn’t just mean “take a look over there.”
He didn’t mean just to glance at Jesus. He means a steady, serious kind of looking.
He means to look at Jesus with faith and understanding.
To look to Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
The two disciples understood that, and that is why, when they heard John say this, they left John and followed Jesus.
Let’s follow the example of the two disciples in the story. Let’s behold and then follow.
CONCLUSION
The story is told of a popular monk in the Middle Ages who announced at the morning service that in that evening he would preach a sermon on the love of God. The people gathered and stood in silence, waiting for the service while the sunlight streamed through the beautiful windows.
When the last bit of color had faded from the windows, the old monk went up to the candelabrum, took a lighted candle and walking to the life-sized statue of Christ on the cross, he held the light beneath the wounds on Christ’s feet, then at Christ’s hand, then at his side. Then, still without a word, the monk let the light shine on the thorn-crowned brow. That was the sermon.
The people stood in silence and wept, everyone knowing that they were at the center of a mystery beyond their knowing, that they were indeed looking at the supreme expression of the love of God—a love so deep, so wide, so eternal, that no wonder could express it, and no mind could measure it. This is the GREAT ACT of Christianity—that God’s love gave to the world what was most precious to him: his only Son.
The reason I spoke to you today about Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, is to encourage us all to look at him with the eyes of faith.
In one of our hymns we sing these words,
“Upon the cross of Jesus, mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of one who suffered there for me,
And from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess—
The wonder of his glorious love and my unworthiness.”
In some churches they use the symbol of the cross with the dying Jesus on it.
Let us—in our mind’s eye—see our Savior, the Lamb of God, on that cross dying for us.
Jesus said before he died, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Let us keep our eyes on our Lord Jesus. And let us love him and make him our Savior and our companion and follow him in his death and resurrection and into Eternal Life.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Experiencing God’s Love: Luke 15:11-32: The Two Sons and the Waiting Father
Everyone knows what a loser is. A loser can’t seem to accomplish anything worthwhile. Whatever he does is a disaster. No one respects a loser, and he can’t respect himself. He’s constantly in trouble and can’t change his life no matter how much he wishes he could.
Jesus came into the world for the “losers.” Would it surprise you to know that he also came into the world for the “winners”?
LUKE 15:11-32: THE TWO SONS AND THE WAITING FATHER
INTRODUCTION:
A number of years ago when we lived in Mt. Pleasant I conducted a Bible study in the state prison there.
The most enthusiastic member of our study was in inmate named Jim.
Jim had been a career criminal. That was the 9th time he had been locked up. He had a rap sheet with 45 crimes listed on it. But that was just a fraction of the thefts and burglaries and other wicked things he had done without getting caught.
Jim had enjoyed his life of crime. With it came the admiration of his criminal buddies and the excitement of an eventful life.
But finally Jim hit bottom.
Because he was drunk so much of the time, he kept getting caught. He screwed up his first marriage, then his second. He had let down his three children. He had broken his mother’s heart.
He decided to quit drinking and to quit thieving. But try as he might, he couldn’t. He was trapped by his evil habits.
He thought of all the pain people were going through because of him, and he realized that the whole world would be better off if he had never been born.
Jim was a loser and he knew it. He became despondent.
He tried to kill himself and couldn’t. He tried again and failed again.
He tried to hang himself in his cell and passed out.
When he came to, he was in the psychiatric ward of a Davenport hospital. An elderly lady in a nurse’s uniform was sitting in the room knitting. He was on suicide watch.
Jim thought to himself: To try to kill yourself is weak. To try to kill yourself and fail is worse than weak.
In his desperation, Jim looked up at the ceiling and said, “God, if you are real, do something with me. I quit. If something doesn’t change inside my head, inside my heart, then I’m just going back to the joint and kill myself.”
Jim says that there was no lightning flash, no angels. But it just seemed like a load had lifted off him.
Jim says, “I just gave it up. It didn’t belong to me any more. I was not responsible. I wasn’t going to try. I wasn’t going to do anything. I just mellowed out.”
And that was the beginning of Jim’s new life as a believer.
He said to himself, kind of sarcastically, “If I’m going to be a man of God, I need to find out about it.” He started praying—just talking to God. God began talking to him—not in an audible voice he could hear in his ears, but something he knew in his heart.
He told God about all the different people coming into the prison claiming to represent God and said, “How am I to know who’s real and who isn’t? How can I tell the fakes from the real?”
And God said, “Just read the Bible.” Jim began reading, and in three days he had read the New Testament—Matthew through Revelation. It was a thrill. It made sense.
He was so thrilled about his newfound faith that he used to wake his friends up to tell them about his discoveries in the Word. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t as excited as he was. Then the Lord told him, “Hey, this is for you, not them.”
Jim didn’t want to go to the prison chapel because most of the inmates that hung around the chapel were child molesters, murderers, square Johns, and snitches, people with no friends anywhere else.
But God told him to go. He started going to Bible study. That’s when I met Jim, in Bible study, about three months after he had met Jesus.
We had a great time studying the word together. Jim was hungry to know God. He was upfront about his faith. His fellow inmates called him a “Jesus freak,” but he didn’t care.
Some of them listened to him and believed.
Jim has been out of prison now for many years. He has worked steadily, he is active in his union, he has been active in his neighborhood association, he is a good husband and a good father. He is busy serving in his church. For many years he visited the jail in Minneapolis every Wednesday to conduct Bible studies, one with the men and another with the women. He and his wife, Ginny, have welcomed several homeless ex-offenders into their home for extended stays. Ginny told me that one of the women they had kept and is now living on her own, told her a few days ago: “When I stayed with you and Jim, that was the first time I ever experienced unconditional love.”
I told you the story of my friend Jim because it’s the story of a loser who found Jesus.
Jesus told a story like that. It’s in Luke 15, and I’m sure you’ve heard it.
Read: Luke 15:15-32.
I. First, I want to talk about the younger son, in the story, the one people call the “prodigal son.”
A. It was a shameful thing this boy did. He disgraced his father and his family. We don’t read anything about his mother, but she must have been weeping in the background.
It’s like he said, “Dad, I can’t wait until you die to get my hands on my inheritance. Just give it to me now and I’m outta here. I want to get away from you and Mom and do some livin’.”
Now the incredible thing is that the father said, “Okay,” and gave him the money he would have inherited.
That doesn’t seem reasonable to me, but it’s a story, and Jesus told the story this way to make a point.
B. The foolish young man headed into the far country to have a good time, far away from his father and any responsibilities.
And you know how that worked out. He had his good time—until the money ran out.
He sampled every pleasure he craved—no doubt wine, women, and song.
And he had lots of friends—until the money ran out.
And after that, famine came to that land. There was nothing to eat and no decent work to do.
And then the foolish young man hit bottom—the absolute bottom.
He finally found a job feeding hogs.
For a Jew, this was really the limit. Pigs were unclean animals. The Jews didn’t eat pigs. They didn’t have anything to do with pigs.
It was such a lousy job that he didn’t even get enough wages to buy food for himself. He wanted to eat the pods the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.
C. By this time the old home place didn’t look so bad any more. In fact, it looked mighty good.
He said to himself, Far better to be a hired servant at my father’s farm than to starve like this.
So he swallowed his pride and set out for home.
He had his speech all ready: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”
That would be as much as he could hope for. But it would be like heaven compared to starving with the pigs.
D. Now comes the amazing part of the story, the part everyone likes.
In spite of the shabby way he’s been treated, the father never stopped loving his wayward son.
He sees the boy a long way off, trudging up the road.
Forgetting his dignity—and forgetting how the boy has hurt him—the father runs down the road embraces him and kisses him.
The son begins his speech, but never finishes it. The boy never gets to say, “Make me as one of your hired servants.”
He is interrupted by the father who says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
I don’t understand the father. It seems to me that the father should at least wait for an apology, for some expression of remorse, for his son to promise to straighten up and fly right.
But the father just welcomes him—no strings attached.
Jesus tells the story this way to illustrate the overwhelming grace of God.
Some people say that it isn’t the story about the prodigal son; it’s the story of the prodigal father.
“Prodigal” means lavish, wasteful, extravagant expenditure. That’s what we see in the father in the parable. The prodigality of the father in the parable represents the extravagant grace of God to us poor sinners—sinners like Jim, and like you and me.
II. But the story doesn’t end there. The most important part comes after the party for the younger son gets under way.
A. The older son, we read, was in the field, and as he drew near the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and learned that his brother had returned from the far country and that his father had killed the fatted calf and thrown this homecoming party for him.
And the older son was angry. And I, for one, can understand his anger.
This younger brother had insulted his father, disgraced the family, and wasted part of the father’s wealth. And the father just welcomes him back with open arms! It’s not fair, is it?
When his father came out, he expressed his anger and refused to go in.
The older son said, “Lo, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came—he doesn’t say ‘my brother’—who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!”
His father remonstrates with him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”
B. In a way, this older son was just as estranged from his father as the younger son had been when he was in the far country.
He had worked like a slave, but he had never enjoyed his father’s companionship.
It appears that he had never asked his father for anything, not even a little goat to make a party for his friends.
The father had loved this son as much as he did the naughty one, but this older son had never learned to love his father.
If he had loved his father, he would have rejoiced with his father when his brother returned.
C. Jesus doesn’t say what happened next. But I know what I hope happened. I hope the older son accepted the rebuke from his father, said he was sorry, and went to join the party.
I hope the older son learned to love his father and his brother.
If that happened, the father would have received two sons back from the dead that day.
APPLICATION:
I said that the older son was, for us, the most important part of the story. For Jesus’s listeners that day, the older brother was the point of the story because the people Jesus told the story to were religious people. They were the Pharisees and scribes, the “good” people, the respectable people, the admired people.
These scribes and Pharisees had been criticizing Jesus because, they said, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
They resented the welcome Jesus gave to the sinners, the disreputable people of his day—the losers like my friend Jim.
When Jesus told this story he was inviting his critics to see themselves in the older brother.
He left the ending open, so that they could respond to the Father’s love and come to the feast, if they would.
Whenever I read about the scribes and Pharisees in the gospels I think, I myself am a lot like those people.
I was raised in a believing home.
I have gone to church at least once a week for 80 years.
I read my Bible. I pray. I try to help people. I give money.
And I’ll admit, I sometimes feel superior to people who don’t do these things.
I have to keep reminding myself that I am a sinner too. I need Jesus just as much as anyone does.
We can do a lot of good things and be blind to our sins of self-satisfaction and self-righteousness and feelings of superiority.
I had a friend who told me she didn’t believe in forgiveness. She didn’t believe that she was a “sinner.”
She said, “I’ve always done the best I could. If that’s not good enough, that’s just too bad.”
She spoke the truth. She was, by ordinary standards, a good person.
But Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
And until we take our place with the sinners, Jesus can’t be our Savior.
Because, whether our sins are big, prominent ones like my friend Jim’s, or little, inconspicuous ones that only God can see, they are still sins.
And God doesn’t look at sin like we do. What we call little sins, are the most serious in God’s eyes.
People who do big sins like lying, cheating, and stealing are aware of their sins.
People who are proud and judgmental, or bitter and complaining may not be aware of their sins.
Anything that draws us away from God, anything that keeps us from loving others as we ought to love them is sin.
The first lesson from the story of the two sons is that no matter how far we stray from our Heavenly Father, he is always waiting, ready to welcome us home.
And the second lesson from the story is to make sure that I am loving God and enjoying the love of my Heavenly Father and the companionship of my Savior and to make sure that whatever I do is for love of Jesus and not because it makes me feel that I am better than other people.
The thought I want to leave you with today is that, winners or losers, we are all sinners, and we all meet Jesus at the foot of the cross.
Jesus came into the world for the “losers.” Would it surprise you to know that he also came into the world for the “winners”?
LUKE 15:11-32: THE TWO SONS AND THE WAITING FATHER
INTRODUCTION:
A number of years ago when we lived in Mt. Pleasant I conducted a Bible study in the state prison there.
The most enthusiastic member of our study was in inmate named Jim.
Jim had been a career criminal. That was the 9th time he had been locked up. He had a rap sheet with 45 crimes listed on it. But that was just a fraction of the thefts and burglaries and other wicked things he had done without getting caught.
Jim had enjoyed his life of crime. With it came the admiration of his criminal buddies and the excitement of an eventful life.
But finally Jim hit bottom.
Because he was drunk so much of the time, he kept getting caught. He screwed up his first marriage, then his second. He had let down his three children. He had broken his mother’s heart.
He decided to quit drinking and to quit thieving. But try as he might, he couldn’t. He was trapped by his evil habits.
He thought of all the pain people were going through because of him, and he realized that the whole world would be better off if he had never been born.
Jim was a loser and he knew it. He became despondent.
He tried to kill himself and couldn’t. He tried again and failed again.
He tried to hang himself in his cell and passed out.
When he came to, he was in the psychiatric ward of a Davenport hospital. An elderly lady in a nurse’s uniform was sitting in the room knitting. He was on suicide watch.
Jim thought to himself: To try to kill yourself is weak. To try to kill yourself and fail is worse than weak.
In his desperation, Jim looked up at the ceiling and said, “God, if you are real, do something with me. I quit. If something doesn’t change inside my head, inside my heart, then I’m just going back to the joint and kill myself.”
Jim says that there was no lightning flash, no angels. But it just seemed like a load had lifted off him.
Jim says, “I just gave it up. It didn’t belong to me any more. I was not responsible. I wasn’t going to try. I wasn’t going to do anything. I just mellowed out.”
And that was the beginning of Jim’s new life as a believer.
He said to himself, kind of sarcastically, “If I’m going to be a man of God, I need to find out about it.” He started praying—just talking to God. God began talking to him—not in an audible voice he could hear in his ears, but something he knew in his heart.
He told God about all the different people coming into the prison claiming to represent God and said, “How am I to know who’s real and who isn’t? How can I tell the fakes from the real?”
And God said, “Just read the Bible.” Jim began reading, and in three days he had read the New Testament—Matthew through Revelation. It was a thrill. It made sense.
He was so thrilled about his newfound faith that he used to wake his friends up to tell them about his discoveries in the Word. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t as excited as he was. Then the Lord told him, “Hey, this is for you, not them.”
Jim didn’t want to go to the prison chapel because most of the inmates that hung around the chapel were child molesters, murderers, square Johns, and snitches, people with no friends anywhere else.
But God told him to go. He started going to Bible study. That’s when I met Jim, in Bible study, about three months after he had met Jesus.
We had a great time studying the word together. Jim was hungry to know God. He was upfront about his faith. His fellow inmates called him a “Jesus freak,” but he didn’t care.
Some of them listened to him and believed.
Jim has been out of prison now for many years. He has worked steadily, he is active in his union, he has been active in his neighborhood association, he is a good husband and a good father. He is busy serving in his church. For many years he visited the jail in Minneapolis every Wednesday to conduct Bible studies, one with the men and another with the women. He and his wife, Ginny, have welcomed several homeless ex-offenders into their home for extended stays. Ginny told me that one of the women they had kept and is now living on her own, told her a few days ago: “When I stayed with you and Jim, that was the first time I ever experienced unconditional love.”
I told you the story of my friend Jim because it’s the story of a loser who found Jesus.
Jesus told a story like that. It’s in Luke 15, and I’m sure you’ve heard it.
Read: Luke 15:15-32.
I. First, I want to talk about the younger son, in the story, the one people call the “prodigal son.”
A. It was a shameful thing this boy did. He disgraced his father and his family. We don’t read anything about his mother, but she must have been weeping in the background.
It’s like he said, “Dad, I can’t wait until you die to get my hands on my inheritance. Just give it to me now and I’m outta here. I want to get away from you and Mom and do some livin’.”
Now the incredible thing is that the father said, “Okay,” and gave him the money he would have inherited.
That doesn’t seem reasonable to me, but it’s a story, and Jesus told the story this way to make a point.
B. The foolish young man headed into the far country to have a good time, far away from his father and any responsibilities.
And you know how that worked out. He had his good time—until the money ran out.
He sampled every pleasure he craved—no doubt wine, women, and song.
And he had lots of friends—until the money ran out.
And after that, famine came to that land. There was nothing to eat and no decent work to do.
And then the foolish young man hit bottom—the absolute bottom.
He finally found a job feeding hogs.
For a Jew, this was really the limit. Pigs were unclean animals. The Jews didn’t eat pigs. They didn’t have anything to do with pigs.
It was such a lousy job that he didn’t even get enough wages to buy food for himself. He wanted to eat the pods the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.
C. By this time the old home place didn’t look so bad any more. In fact, it looked mighty good.
He said to himself, Far better to be a hired servant at my father’s farm than to starve like this.
So he swallowed his pride and set out for home.
He had his speech all ready: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”
That would be as much as he could hope for. But it would be like heaven compared to starving with the pigs.
D. Now comes the amazing part of the story, the part everyone likes.
In spite of the shabby way he’s been treated, the father never stopped loving his wayward son.
He sees the boy a long way off, trudging up the road.
Forgetting his dignity—and forgetting how the boy has hurt him—the father runs down the road embraces him and kisses him.
The son begins his speech, but never finishes it. The boy never gets to say, “Make me as one of your hired servants.”
He is interrupted by the father who says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
I don’t understand the father. It seems to me that the father should at least wait for an apology, for some expression of remorse, for his son to promise to straighten up and fly right.
But the father just welcomes him—no strings attached.
Jesus tells the story this way to illustrate the overwhelming grace of God.
Some people say that it isn’t the story about the prodigal son; it’s the story of the prodigal father.
“Prodigal” means lavish, wasteful, extravagant expenditure. That’s what we see in the father in the parable. The prodigality of the father in the parable represents the extravagant grace of God to us poor sinners—sinners like Jim, and like you and me.
II. But the story doesn’t end there. The most important part comes after the party for the younger son gets under way.
A. The older son, we read, was in the field, and as he drew near the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and learned that his brother had returned from the far country and that his father had killed the fatted calf and thrown this homecoming party for him.
And the older son was angry. And I, for one, can understand his anger.
This younger brother had insulted his father, disgraced the family, and wasted part of the father’s wealth. And the father just welcomes him back with open arms! It’s not fair, is it?
When his father came out, he expressed his anger and refused to go in.
The older son said, “Lo, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came—he doesn’t say ‘my brother’—who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!”
His father remonstrates with him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”
B. In a way, this older son was just as estranged from his father as the younger son had been when he was in the far country.
He had worked like a slave, but he had never enjoyed his father’s companionship.
It appears that he had never asked his father for anything, not even a little goat to make a party for his friends.
The father had loved this son as much as he did the naughty one, but this older son had never learned to love his father.
If he had loved his father, he would have rejoiced with his father when his brother returned.
C. Jesus doesn’t say what happened next. But I know what I hope happened. I hope the older son accepted the rebuke from his father, said he was sorry, and went to join the party.
I hope the older son learned to love his father and his brother.
If that happened, the father would have received two sons back from the dead that day.
APPLICATION:
I said that the older son was, for us, the most important part of the story. For Jesus’s listeners that day, the older brother was the point of the story because the people Jesus told the story to were religious people. They were the Pharisees and scribes, the “good” people, the respectable people, the admired people.
These scribes and Pharisees had been criticizing Jesus because, they said, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
They resented the welcome Jesus gave to the sinners, the disreputable people of his day—the losers like my friend Jim.
When Jesus told this story he was inviting his critics to see themselves in the older brother.
He left the ending open, so that they could respond to the Father’s love and come to the feast, if they would.
Whenever I read about the scribes and Pharisees in the gospels I think, I myself am a lot like those people.
I was raised in a believing home.
I have gone to church at least once a week for 80 years.
I read my Bible. I pray. I try to help people. I give money.
And I’ll admit, I sometimes feel superior to people who don’t do these things.
I have to keep reminding myself that I am a sinner too. I need Jesus just as much as anyone does.
We can do a lot of good things and be blind to our sins of self-satisfaction and self-righteousness and feelings of superiority.
I had a friend who told me she didn’t believe in forgiveness. She didn’t believe that she was a “sinner.”
She said, “I’ve always done the best I could. If that’s not good enough, that’s just too bad.”
She spoke the truth. She was, by ordinary standards, a good person.
But Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
And until we take our place with the sinners, Jesus can’t be our Savior.
Because, whether our sins are big, prominent ones like my friend Jim’s, or little, inconspicuous ones that only God can see, they are still sins.
And God doesn’t look at sin like we do. What we call little sins, are the most serious in God’s eyes.
People who do big sins like lying, cheating, and stealing are aware of their sins.
People who are proud and judgmental, or bitter and complaining may not be aware of their sins.
Anything that draws us away from God, anything that keeps us from loving others as we ought to love them is sin.
The first lesson from the story of the two sons is that no matter how far we stray from our Heavenly Father, he is always waiting, ready to welcome us home.
And the second lesson from the story is to make sure that I am loving God and enjoying the love of my Heavenly Father and the companionship of my Savior and to make sure that whatever I do is for love of Jesus and not because it makes me feel that I am better than other people.
The thought I want to leave you with today is that, winners or losers, we are all sinners, and we all meet Jesus at the foot of the cross.
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