I Wonder

I wonder why the gospel message doesn’t “up end” our world like it should. What are we missing? Why doesn’t the radical message of a new and different order, an order that Jesus announced, lived, died for and was resurrected, doesn’t impact us in a deeply personal way?

I wonder if we have so compartmentalized our Christianity that we end up seeing Jesus' teachings through the lenses of our current Christian life and church experience. Instead of challenging that life style we end up reducing the message to something that sees it justification in our current religious activities. Or even worse, we have decided to legalize and ritualize his words to the point that they lose their life and meaning. The light and life become darkness and death, a burden to bear. We then find ourselves having a hard time agreeing with John that God’s commandments are not burdensome. The yoke we bear is a mixture (which is never good) of our current religious life and an attempt to follow the commands. One is holding us back, the other calling us forward into life, real life.

The call to biblical Christianity, to live in and serve the king and his kingdom, will have a hard time finding its fulfillment in our current structures. They are too tight, to constricting. They lack creativity and life. It is like doing the same thing only with a different look. Is it lipstick on a pig? I don’t know. But there is a risk when we decide to communicate and release God’s people to move beyond, to embrace the gospel message of the kingdom of God. If you sow the seeds of life, you have to expect they are going to sprout up in ways that you don’t expect. But, if the Holy Spirit is at work in the Word given, if his breath is breathing on those listening, than we have to expect growth, change, and above all Life. Jesus made it clear to Nicodemus the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit’s work. He said you don’t know where it came from or where it is going, but you will see evidence in the wind blowing through the trees. The evidence of the Holy Spirit at work is seen in the world, God’s creation. How it happened and where it is going from there, only God knows. Is the church willing to lose its life, or will it attempt to save it?

I wonder if when we read the scripture that we find ourselves reading it through the lenses of those who considered themselves “IN”, not “OUT”. By “IN” I mean those who thought they had figured it out, who had in some sense arrived, who considered themselves the protectors and communicators of God’s ways and laws. They could recite the 10 commandments, knew all of the rules, could recite clearly all of the current doctrines and ensure all of those in the synagogue, at least outwardly, conformed to them. They had all of the words and terminology down pat. Their subtle and at times deceptive self-justification rested on the fact that they were the defenders of the faith. The “IN” didn’t like there service disrupted, their conventional wisdom challenged, and the security of their lifestyle, taught and imposed, challenged. Their way of living was clear cut. Very little faith and a lot of conform. Those who were considered “IN” were clearly seen and those who were “OUT” were also clearly seen. A nice arrangement which kept the leaders in control and those both “IN” and “OUT” in their defined roles.

The back drop of much of Jesus teaching is to reach those who were not “IN” but “OUT”. He challenged the “IN” in their way of thinking, to see that their world view was clashing with God’s ways. That in reality they were “OUT”. To those who were “OUT” Luke writes this about Jesus,

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The “OUT” were clearly on Jesus’ mind. His identification with the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed were on His Father’s mind. I am not sure this was on the minds of those who were in the synagogue.
Those who were “OUT” certainly saw this as good news. Those who were “IN” would see this message as disruptive to their world view and they would do whatever was needed to preserve that order. Even to the point of killing Jesus. Think of it: Healings on the Sabbath! Healings in the synagogue! Parties with sinners! Forgiveness and Grace versus condemnation and isolation! Certainly disruptive!

Why am I saying this? I want us to grasp the reality of Jesus message. To see the Gospels in a fresh way. To quit placing Jesus words in the context of a self-justifying religious belief that sanitizes and moralizes the words of Jesus to the point of obscurity. To get us to see that in many ways we are the “IN” that are really “OUT” and that the “OUT” are really the “IN”.

I probably could have said all of this a lot better. I don’t know. Hopefully you will get the heart of it and not just the words. I am challenged to follow the Christ of this kingdom. I don’t want to be “OUT” because the “OUT” is the new “IN”. I want, like Paul, to say, “That I might know Him”. And where ever that leads me well…I wonder!

But Who Do You Say That I Am, Part 2

Patterns (blue prints) are important. They serve as the basis for building. They also serve as the means through which the owner can communicate his vision or heart for the project or building with the intent of it being replicated and in many cases repeated. From a biblical perspective, God’s patterns are reality. They reflect how he not only sees the world, but how he created it, how he intended it to be, and how it works best. The more closely we live in and build according to that pattern, the more our results will reflect the life he intends for us and his world. Patterns that are alive and active in heaven, God desires to see repeated/built on earth. His prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, is his intent to take the patterns, the reality of heaven and release it, loosen it on earth.

Matthew in writing about this interaction with Peter, Jesus, and Jesus disciples reveals the pattern of the owner. A blue print, that when it is revealed and unpacked allows us to see more clearly God’s intention. Follow the pattern and we will see the world turned upside right. Now back to the main point.It is important to realize that Jesus didn’t give Peter a pat on the back for his revelation. It is also important to see that Jesus didn’t say or do what we have believed to be the result of this type of confession, which is usually something like, “good answer you are on your way to heaven”. Instead Jesus leads the disciples to two important themes which serve as the foundation for the future of those who see Jesus as the “Messiah” the son of the living God.

When reading Matthew’s account of Jesus interaction with Peter which resulted in Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, we don’t see Jesus congratulating him and stating “good answer, you are on your way to heaven”. Yet if you would look today at how Christ is presented in many of our teachings, you would get the strong impression that heaven is the natural/primary outcome of the confession of faith. Hell and all of its negative implications has been avoided, and heaven with all of its positive implications has been obtained. Unfortunately what has been lost in the middle of all of this is our remaining life on earth (Paul called it “the life I now live…). Yet this is the place that Jesus focuses the attention of the disciples to and something which I believe is missed. Jesus uses two words to move us in that direction, church and Kingdom.
Both church and kingdom become the focal point of Jesus remaining comments to His disciples. They are large subjects and I am know expert, but if we can discern a pattern and understand the Father’s heart we can see that what Jesus is wanting to reveal to us is that Peter’s revelation (flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven) leads us toward something. It opens our eyes to seeing something that we would not have seen. And Jesus wants us to see.

Jesus first response based on Peter’s confession is, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Peter’s confession serves as the foundation on which Christ will be build his church. This church doesn’t sound like the church we are used to. First it is a church that Christ is intentionally building, “I will..”. Secondly it is a church owned by Christ, “my church”. Thirdly it is located in places that don’t seem to be desirable or safe, “the gates of hell”. And finally it is a church that “prevails” because the “gates of hell will not prevail against it”.

In another sense Jesus statement of building His church probably ran counter to what the disciples had been taught and understood about the covenantal called out. They saw themselves as members of Moses church. They were his congregation. In a sense they were part of the house that Moses built. Jesus was not only stating I am a church builder, but it is my church not Moses. It took, Paul, to move them and us more completely away from Moses church and all it stood for, and bring us more fully into the new covenant of Christ’s church and all it would mean.

Jesus second response to Peter’s confession is to talk about the kingdom of heaven. He said to Peter, “I will give you the Keys to the kingdom, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever is loosed on earth, will be loosed in heaven”. Jesus was making it clear to Peter that his confession had allowed him to become an important key carrier, a key carrier that opens up the door into the kingdom heaven. To understand this more fully let’s contrast this statement with what Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees (ministers if you will of the church of Moses),

Luke 11:52 "Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering." And Matthew 23:13 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. 

Moses church had become the church that would not and could not let people into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told Peter, I am giving you keys that will unlock doors that will allow those I am calling to not only see the kingdom of heaven, but enter into the kingdom of heaven, read John 3 with Nicodemus.

Jesus wasn’t offering just a kingdom in the distant future. It was something for them right now. Notice the focus of what the loosening and binding. It was earth. “What you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven, what is loosed on earth, will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus is letting Peter know that the more you conform to the pattern I have laid out, the more you will be loosening and binding the way I see it. If you go to the book of Acts you will find that it took some prodding and pushing by the Holy Spirit to loosen Peter (Read Acts 10) to go to Cornelius’s house and unlock the kingdom of heaven for them.

If we could read the book of Acts and the rest of the NT through the lens of Jesus response to Peter’s confession we would see Christ building his church through a pattern of loosening and binding, with men and women entering the kingdom and the gates of hell not prevailing, but receding against the church. May God help us to not be known any longer as the church in the wilderness, but the church that has entered into His rest.

Before I go any further I want to say that I believe this interaction (Peter’s confession, Jesus’ response and subsequent teaching) is foundational and should serve as the lens through which we can see much of the NT teaching and life. Not everything in Jesus’s response or teaching is fully unpacked, but if we can begin to grasp the foundational truths and build on them, you will find yourself headed in the right direction. Move away from these foundational truths in your thinking or practice and you will find yourself missing much of what God has intended for us.

But Who Do you Say that I Am?

But Who Do you Say that I Am?

Matthew 16:13-17
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." He *said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

Jesus in his questioning of the disciples starts by asking them “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Why did Jesus ask the disciples this question? What was he trying to get at?

I like the Message translation: It says the Jesus “pressed them further”, Who do you say that I am?” By pressing them he was forcing the point home personally with each disciple.

It wasn’t enough to believe what everyone one else believed, or to follow the herd, or general consensus of the people, religious or otherwise. By pressing the disciples, he was forcing them to think and interact with him, to review in a sense all that they had experienced together but even more than that, to go beyond what they observed to what was being deposited in their hearts.

Notice the narrowing effect of Jesus’s questions: From - What do people say? To - What do you say? Somewhere along in our journey with Christ, we have to come to place where we have to stop believing because others believe a certain way, somewhere along the way in our journey into Christ we have to decide, who he is.

This is important especially for those who have grown up in and around a strong family and church tradition. In that tradition it is easy to begin to accept and believe in your parent’s faith or your church’s faith. There is nothing wrong with this, but somewhere along the way, Jesus will ask you, “Who do you say that I am?” At that point you will be faced with having to come to grips with the reality of this man who has said he is the Son of God. And to be clear, Jesus would have it no other way.

A quick review of the life Isaac and Jacob, you will see that God met each one of them individually, to review the covenant that He had made with their father and grandfather, Abraham. It was not enough for them to have what Abraham had, passed down to them, important as that was, it was just as important that God sealed what was handed down to them by their own personal encounter with the living God.

This was just as important for the disciples as it was for Isaac and Jacob. Each of the disciples had to come to the same place that Peter came to: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Notice that the revelation was not based on some sort of earthly assessment or resource. Jesus told Peter, “My Father in heaven has revealed this to you.” Study is important, reading is important, listening to sermons that point us toward Christ and the cross is important, but once all of that is done, somewhere along the way we need God by his Holy Spirit to combine, the Word with the Spirit and move us beyond just facts to a truth, or better yet the Living Truth, that speaks to our hearts and brings us eternal life.

The Truth, Jesus, has to become to us a living revelation that penetrates our minds and heart; challenges our thinking, bringing us to the place that we see Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one, our savior, the Son of the Living God. If you are going to withstand the tests of our time, the philosophies of this world that creep into our thinking and all of the challenges that you will confront, this must be settled.

When Jesus was reviewing his stewardship of the disciples training with his Father, in John 17 he said,
"I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. "Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.

I have bolded several words that are pivotal in Jesus’ review of his stewardship in these verses. They are:
• Your Name (the Father’s character, his way, his life as seen and lived by His Son)
• Your Word, Jesus the Word speaks to us with words, words that penetrate us and bring revelation.
• Now is the pivotal word, it moves us from Your Name, Your Word, to the last statement,
• “And they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You”. This was the point of Peter’s revelation. You are the Christ, the son of the living God.

The same way Jesus worked with the disciples is the same way he will work with you. He will manifest the Father’s name and the Father’s word. Jesus provides an outline of how you can move from believing and confessing what others believe and confess to having the revelation that did not come by flesh and blood, but by my Father who is in heaven. Are you willing to join Him in this journey?