Engaging Scripture

Why Jesus says the poor are blessed – Luke 6:17-26

We want to be rich. We do not want to be poor. In Luke 6:17-26, however, Jesus takes that normal desire and turns it on its head.

He says the poor are blessed, while he says “Woe” to the rich.

To understand why in the world he would say that, we need to take a look at those two terms: Blessed and Woe.

Blessed is basically the word “Happy”. Some Bibles actually do translate it that way. And why is the person happy? The definition says that it implies that the person is happy because they are enjoying favorable circumstances. So you would normally use this word to describe the emotional state of someone who is going through a good time. They are happy.

But look at the circumstances that Jesus describes. They are poor, they are hungry, they are weeping, people hate them, exclude them, insult them, and call their name evil. Nice, right? Good times!

We look at that list and don’t want any part of it. I am not a fan of any of the items on that list. You? Who really, truly likes being poor, hungry, weeping, and despised? The prevailing opinion in the world back then and still today is that those are bad, bad places to be!

But Jesus says “Hey poor people. And you hungry ones. And you who are crying and despised…you guys be happy! You are the ones who are in favorable circumstances.”

I wonder if any single person in the crowd that day believed him? I can see them perking up though. Especially as he goes on to say, “Woe to you wealthy people”.

What does Woe mean? It describes hardship, distress, even horror. Verse 24 could be translated “how disastrous it will be for you who are rich.”

The rich are not enjoying favorable circumstances, Jesus says! Instead, they are in terrible horror.

Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking? “Jesus, are you serious?” Is he basically saying here that if you’re poor, you’re going to heaven and if you’re rich, you’re going to hell? It could really sound like that, couldn’t it?

In that day and age, the prevailing notion was that poverty meant God was cursing you, and wealth meant God was blessing you. Health and wealth, to that audience, meant that God was blessing them. Many of us feel the same way!

And Jesus comes along and turns that idea totally upside down.

He goes on to say that if you are well fed now, if you are laughing now, if you are popular now, you are getting your reward now. You are loving life now.

But a day will come when things won’t be so fun.

So does this mean we are supposed to live lives of poverty? If so, we American Christians are pretty much done for. If the measure is health and wealth, most American Christians have already received their reward.

So what do we do with Jesus’ words? We read this stuff, and we very, very quickly say “Well, he didn’t mean that.” We like Matthew’s spiritualized version better.

Luke’s version confronts us pretty hard, doesn’t it? Maybe we want to take Luke’s version, throw it in the trash, or spiritualize it, and then, whew, we are off the hook.

Think about it, we make delicious, indulgent meals all the time. We laugh a lot. At lip sync concerts. We are entertainment happy.

Would Jesus say, “Woe!” to us?

As I was studying this I had to ask, “Jesus, why in the world did you say all this stuff?” It is very hard to hear his words from a wealthy American context. If you are a Christian, say, in one of my denomination’s sister EC Churches in Liberia, Africa, where it is super poor, where your country has had nothing but civil war and poverty and Ebola for the last 20 years, you probably hear this passage and jump for joy.

But you and I…what do we with this?

First and foremost, Jesus is not teaching about how to get to heaven. Instead Jesus is speaking very provocatively, which he does often, to get our attention. He was a master of that. Educational theorist Jean Piaget called it disequilibration. What happens to a pond whose waters never move? It gets stagnant. Piaget basically said that happens to our brains. Our brains need to be moved, challenged. To keep a pond from stagnancy, you need to throw rocks in that pond, create wave ripples. Jesus is throwing rocks in the pond of a very stagnant culture.

So remember this rock he once threw into that stagnant pond?: “It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” Remember that? Splash!

Is Jesus saying that being wealthy is inherently bad? No, he is just speaking what is so often true, that we can get very dependent on our wealth, we can become addicted to our technology, and we can become distracted by our comforts and entertainment. We can allow this stuff that we love to turn our hearts and minds away from God! That’s why another time a rich man came to Jesus and said “What must I do to be saved?” And you know what Jesus said? “Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me.” Splash! But the guy couldn’t do it. He was too connected to his wealth. He couldn’t let it go. That guy had no idea that following Jesus was better, way better, by far!

Now here’s the question, is it possible for a wealthy person to depend on Jesus and truly follow him? Yes it is. But Jesus is at least saying that it is very, very hard.

But it is possible. Many times on this blog, I’ve mentioned John Wesley’s, phrase about wealth: “Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.” We’ll talk more about this in the next post. But let me introduce it here. Wesley is saying that we should earn all we can, and for some of you, hard work, using the mind and body God gave you, will result in wealth. That is a good thing! So earn all you can. But also save all you can. By that Wesley meant “don’t spend it on yourself.” Amass wealth, yes. But be careful, it is very, very easy to start spending that wealth on the so-called good life. Wesley says, save it. Don’t spend it. And next week we’ll see why.

So Jesus said these blessings and woes to that crowd that day because he wanted them to understand what is valuable and important in God’s eyes. We are so accustomed to the values of our culture. The crowd that day 2000 years ago in Palestine was likewise accustomed to judging things based on the values of its culture.

In First Century CE Israel, the value was that if you are poor, God was cursing you, and if you are rich, God was blessing you. It was basically a health and wealth Gospel.

Jesus says “No, No, No. The opposite just might be true.” Splash!

Jesus says that we need to use the values of the Kingdom of God to evaluate our lives.

Will we make our financial decisions based on our culture or based on Christ? We will make our decisions for how we spend our time based on the mission of God’s Kingdom? If we simply spend our money and our time on ourselves, Jesus says, we have gotten our reward here. He is saying that we should be a people who desire God’s rewards!

Where do we draw the line? I don’t want to be legalistic. I am purposefully not going to give you examples of how to spend your money or how not to. There will be many, many possibilities for the choices we should make. Rather I want you to do the hard work of taking the key principle we should adhere to and applying it to your life, and that is this: Go to the Lord and say “Lord, I want to honor you with this decision about how I spend my time, my money, my life.”

I will recommend this: accountability. Will you consider submitting your life to an older, wiser Christian who loves the Lord, who is willing to speak blunt truth, and lay everything in your life open before them?

Jesus is saying that it is not correct to view wealth and health as blessings from the Lord. You might be poor and sick, but if you follow him, there is hope, because one day you will get your reward. Make your life about following him and the mission of his Kingdom!

Instead, be people who give your time, your talent, your treasure sacrificially to God and the mission of his Kingdom.

Does God want you to be rich? (and healthy?)

Have you ever heard of the Health and Wealth Gospel? It is a view of faith in Christ that has been around a while that basically says “if you are faithful enough to God, he has to bless you with health and wealth.”

If you believe enough, he will heal you.

If you give enough, he will prosper you.

Basically, if you have enough faith, you’ll have the good life.

You can hear preachers on TV that seem to believe this. But is it true? God definitely wants us to be faithful to him, and to grow in our faithfulness, but does he promise that he will give us riches and health if we reach a certain level of faith?

The clear response across the many books of the Bible is that we live in a fallen world! We are not going to live forever. There are accidents, diseases, and sinful choices that we make, and that others make, that affect us. The result is that sometimes we will face difficulties in this life. We might lose our job, get sick and have pain.

I’ve officiated enough funerals and done enough hospital visits in my short 7 years as pastor to knwo that when someone we love dies, or when something bad happens to us, we are quick to question “Why did you allow this, God?”

I get it that when we’re in a difficult situation, we are desperate for answers, for explanations, for anything to help us make sense of the pain that we’re experiencing. So we quickly turn it on God.

But think about that with me for a minute. Is the pain in this world God’s fault?

My kids love the cartoon Phineas and Ferb, and in that show the bad guy, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, creates a new destructive ray gun every episode. He names each gun uniquely, ending with the phrase “-inator”. So there is the “Destruct-inator,” and the “Space Laser-inator” and the “Freeze-inator” and the “Ugly-inator” and about a hundred other “-Inators”. Do we really believe that God has a “Get sick-inator” or a “Accident-inator” or “Marriage break-up-inator” or an “-inator” for all the bad stuff that can happen, and he zaps us with them?

Is the pain in this world God’s fault? When we’re going through a hard time, should we go to God in prayer and ask “Why are you doing this to me, Lord?”

We do that, don’t we? I wonder if we do it because, while most of us don’t believe in a Health & Wealth Gospel, if we are honest with ourselves, we believe it a little bit.

A pastor friend shared the following quote from Jerry Walls that introduced this idea to me:

“Accepting Jesus and following him faithfully does not guarantee or make it significantly more probable that you will flourish physically or financially, or have your best material life now. But having said that, I wonder how many of us who repudiate health and wealth gospel may accept a more subtle, respectable version. In particular, how many of us believe we have been blessed with good health, good jobs, beautiful homes/cars, beautiful bodies, and so on by virtue of thinking God has acted in particular ways to bless us that he has apparently not acted to bless many other persons, including our fellow Christians? How different is this assumption/belief than the version of health and wealth gospel preached by many televangelists?”

That’s a deep question to think about.

Maybe we actually do look at health and wealth as a blessing from God. Maybe we actually do look at sickness and poverty as a curse.

But is it? Is that how God works?

Jesus has what might be a surprising answer for us in our next section of our study through Luke. If you want a sneak peak check out Luke 6:17-26, and if you’re in the Lancaster area and are not involved in church family, we invite you to Faith Church Sunday morning to be our guest!

When the world throws crazy at you, put on headphones – Luke 6:12-16

Today we welcome Phil Bartelt as guest blogger! Phil is a pastor in the EC Church, who, along with his family, are part of the family of Faith Church. After taking a couple weeks to fast-forward in Luke to the stories of Holy Week, Phil resumed our teaching series through Luke. With this post Phil reflects on the sermon and Jesus’ practice of prayer.

In the recent film The Internship one of my favorite actors plays the role of a computer expert working at Google. He’s a rather quirky character, and the biggest of his quirks is that he always wears headphones. Early in the film when others try to speak to him he doesn’t answer so they assume he can’t hear them. Later when another character encounters a crisis he’s startled when the computer expert hears him voicing his problem out loud and responds. As the film winds to a close we learn that the computer expert isn’t listening to music or anything else in his headphones. He is simply not comfortable around other people and uses the headphones as a barrier between him and others.

On Sunday we looked at several passages in Luke that demonstrated to us that Jesus lived a life of prayer. The challenge for us as disciples is to figure out how we can follow his example and incorporate prayer into our daily rhythms. We talked about creating or finding a place for prayer, what it looks like to make space (time) for prayer, and how in doing so we are giving a gift to ourselves. We also looked at some different ways to approach prayer like art, journaling, or nature. In the end we saw that the most important thing was for us to find a rhythm of prayer that helped us hone in on God’s perspective as we live in a world that often throws tons of crazy at us.

Shortly after I watched the film, I read an article that stated people were very unlikely to bother you if you were wearing a pair of headphones. So maybe in our era of busy, putting in some ear buds or wearing a pair of headphones might be all it takes for us to carve out a few minutes of separate time with God. Over the next week give that or one of the other options we talked about a try. Or take some time to discuss different prayer options with a friend. No matter what you choose, you can be sure that finding a place and space for prayer in your life will certainly bear fruit.

Open your mind to new life – Luke 24

Last week I asked “Is there only bad news in a broken world?”

This past Sunday I had some help from the elementary age kids (and some of you older “kids”!) in trying to answer that question. Becka, our worship leader, drew large a large picture of planet earth, and as I mentioned the bad news out there in the world today, I ripped up the globe into pieces. It can feel like ours is a shredded world. I talked about how the disciples following Jesus just had their world ripped to pieces. Their leader had been arrested, beaten, falsely tried, and killed. They could easily be next! So I handed out the ripped pieces of the world, and asked the kids to color them brightly, and I continued with the story.

On the third day those same distraught disciples started hearing very strange news. Good news. But so good it was unbelievable. They heard their Lord was alive! As the days wears on, their excitement builds as he shows up to meet with a few of them. Finally, he appears at the place where they were all together. After getting over their initial shock, he gets down to the business of sorting this all out for them.

You can read about it in Luke 24:44-49. You can see their lights going on, or as Luke says in verse 45, “he opened their minds,” so they could understand that the Scriptures they had heard all their lives going to worship at synagogue now found fulfillment in him. He was the promised Savior, the Messiah. But he was a very different Savior than what they expected. The prevailing idea of the day was of a military Messiah who would remove the Romans from their land.

Jesus wasn’t a king with a sword on a warhorse. Instead, he was the one who would save the world from the penalty of sin. Forgiveness is possible. Repentance is possible. New life is possible. Just as he rose from the dead to new life, so they and you and I can have new life. As he taught them many times, it was not just a promise of eternal life in heaven with him after death. Life after death is good news! It was certainly that. But it was not just that. He also offers to us the possibility of abundant life now.

We Christians often sit back and shake our fingers, saying “What is wrong with the world today?”

The great writer G. K. Chesterton was reading the paper once and came to the editorial section. The editors of the paper asked readers to answer that very question. “What is wrong with the world today?” He knew he needed to respond. So he wrote a letter to the editor. Probably the shortest letter in the history of letters to the editor: “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton’s response was two words: “I am.”

As long as we just sit back and talk, we are what is wrong with the world. New life means we are changed, and we share that victory with the world. We are to be the good news in the world. New life in Christ starts by changing our hearts, and then we share that new life in as many ways possible.

As we were talking about this passage a few weeks ago at our sermon roundtable Bible study, one person told the story about a woman who was driving behind him way too close in a big old car. And he got angry. He thought, if she stops, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind. And then he thought “I don’t want to live like that…so angry.” He said that he needs that hope, that awareness of what Jesus has done for me. When we remember that our sins are forgiven, we can and should repent of our sins and take on the new life of Christ. Abundant life is a life that turns away from sin.

One of the first followers of Jesus who would come along a bit later, a guy named Paul, said in the letter he wrote to the church in the city of Ephesus that we are not alone in this abundant life. Instead God wants to help us change. Take a look:

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Did you hear that? The same power that rose Jesus from the dead to new life is available to us! That is Good News. Jesus’ new life means there is hope for our lives to be made new!

He wants to make the world new. At that point in the sermon, the kids brought their newly colored ripped pieces of the world put the picture of the world back together.

In the same way, when you follow Jesus, know that he wants to make you new, to put your life back together.

Many of you know I really enjoy the band U2. Their lead singer, Bono, was recently asked about Jesus and new life, and I like what he had to say:

Do you need some good news? The message of Easter is that new life is possible in Jesus. Your sins can be forgiven. Repent of your sin, believe in him, and ask God to give you his resurrection power to make your life new. That is good news. That is news worth searching for. God gave to give us an abundant life – not an easy life, not a cut and dry life – but an abundant life. Life to the fullest. Life lived in community with one another and with an all-loving, gracious, giving God. We have access to a New Life.

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.
—Watchman Nee

Is there only bad news and a broken world?

Hearing the bad news coming out of Kenya these past few days has been a sobering reality about our world. I know that there is tragedy and evil like that pretty much every day of every week, but this one hit home because we have close friends who are missionaries in Kenya, and my son and I are preparing to join a team of 15 from Faith Church going to Kenya this summer.

I’ll admit, probably because of our unprecedented access to every part of the globe, I can get jaded about the bad news. How many times can you get totally upset over a mass shooting before you start to get numb? We call it growing a thick skin.

Some people, rightly though, say that we shouldn’t be surprised by the evil and tragedy out there in the world today. They say that it is a fallen world, and that bad news is part and parcel of a fallen world. I tend to agree, but, man, can that come across callous.

I am paying closer attention to the news in Kenya, and I’m feeling it more emotionally because it is personal. Thankfully my friends in Kenya live in a different part of the country and are safe. But so many in Kenya are struggling today, so many are experiencing profound loss with this very bad news.

And that feels completely contradictory to the task I have in this blog post. My aim is to introduce an Easter sermon.

I would much rather be introducing an Easter sermon after hearing wonderful news about how Christians in the world did something incredible because of the hope they have in Jesus. Instead today we are hearing about Christians who were killed for being Christians.

I suspect that my consternation over this introduction is at least in part stemming from my vantage point of Christianity as the largest of the world religions. But the original Easter story happened to a group of people that were the furthest thing a world religion.

Let me explain with a new word I learned this week: Triduum. Ever heard that before? It refers to the three days leading up to a feast, in this case Easter. The Holy Triduum, or the three days leading up to Easter are Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. As I was preparing for worship this week, it struck me how awful those three days must have been for those first followers of Jesus, and of course for Jesus too.

On Palm Sunday they are marching triumphantly into the city. The crowds declare him King. These are bold moves. You don’t walk through the current king’s front door proclaiming that you are the new king, and you certainly don’t do it without a massive army. Jesus came not riding on a warhorse, but on a peaceful donkey.

Who knows? Maybe the Romans were laughing their heads off at that scene. They probably didn’t feel threatened at all. If they wanted to, they could have stopped the events of Palm Sunday immediately and ruthlessly. Physically speaking they had no reason to be threatened by this supposed Jewish King.

Turns out it wasn’t the Romans, but the Jewish leaders who felt threatened. They had been dogging Jesus for months and now things came to a head. The joy and victory of Palm Sunday turned to a betrayal and arrest on the first day of the Triduum, Maundy Thursday. Jesus’ disciple Peter whips out a sword to fight, thinking this is the moment. You gotta love Peter’s passion, making the first strike, cutting off a dude’s ear. But when Jesus heals the guy, putting the ear back, you have to think that Peter was shell-shocked.

Hours later he denies Jesus three times. All of Jesus’ 11 remaining inner circle run away, except John. If Jesus was arrested, they were probably thinking, there could easily be a bounty on their heads too.

Jesus passes the night in a dungeon, and now we’re at day two of the Triduum, Good Friday. He has been and still is being beaten repeatedly. He is brought to trial on trumped up charges, and the politicians get involved. They really don’t know what to do with him as he hasn’t actually done anything wrong, but the pesky Jewish leaders are calling for his death. So the Roman leader Pilate gives Jesus another beating and sends him to be killed.

And they crucify him.

John alone, of all the disciples, and some of the women, are the only ones at the foot of the cross. And Jesus dies. Imagine that. Three years of ministry. In the toilet. One of the Jewish establishment guys who is a secret follower of Jesus takes his body and buries it in a tomb. He is given an honorable burial, but it sure seems like waste. Could this one who was supposedly king material just be another in long line of failed upstart Jewish freedom fighters?

That takes us to the final day of the Triduum, Holy Saturday. A day of waiting, confusion. He had told them he would rise after three days. I wonder what those disciples were thinking. Did they have any idea what “rise after three days meant?” I also wonder if they were ticked off at Peter. I wonder if they even knew he had denied Jesus. Did Peter tell them? He wasn’t one to keep quiet. I can hear them arguing, debating wondering what in the world they should do next. Clearly they decided to stay in the city, maybe just because it was Passover and that’s what you did. Maybe they actually weren’t decided on what they should do. Maybe they were too torn apart to know how to think.

Their world was broken. The events of those three days had ripped it to shreds. Our world can feel very broken like that. Events of the past days leave us confused and frustrated, just like the disciples.

What do we do?

Is there no good news?

The Triduum will eventually finish. And there will be a new day. If you’re not part of church, we’d love for you to be our guest at Faith Church on that new day, this Sunday, Easter, as we search for some good news.

How quickly we forget – Luke 19:28-44 – Palm Sunday

As I mentioned last week, for me Palm Sunday feels very strange.

On one hand, there is rejoicing that the King has come. And that is true. The one and only King is there! They were right to party that day, and so should we!

But on the other hand, right in the middle of the party, that king is weeping. And then to make matters even more weird he starts saying some very dark things. Look at Luke 19:43-44. It’s like Stephen King wrote this stuff. Straight out of some horror nightmare. Really, Jesus, you couldn’t wait to bring that part up about children being dashed upon rocks? But guess what? Maybe no surprise here…Jesus’ oracle of destruction is right on the money.

He is right on the money a few days later when the adoring crowds became murderous. Even his own disciples were fickle. Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, and all but John ran away.

Also, in the not too distant future, about 40 years later in 70 AD, this oracle would be fulfilled when Rome decimated Jerusalem and the temple.

So we have this very bizarre thing going on that day. In the hype of it all, the people are all about proclaiming him king. But all it took was a few days, some confrontation from the establishment, and the people so quickly change their tune.

As much as I feel angry about the night and day change from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, if I am honest with myself, it strikes me as so down to earth, so real. A true picture of how fickle we all can be.

Excited about Jesus and his mission one moment, wimping out the next.

So while we are right to praise the Lord on Palm Sunday because he is the King, we need to hear Jesus’ words with humility. We the faithful can quickly become the fainthearted.

But we don’t want to be fickle! In all of us there is an ongoing battle of motivations where the selfless and the selfish are at war. You know the feeling. We desire to be faithful to Jesus, but we know that we can be weak, fickle and sometimes faithless.

Is there anything this passage can teach us to help us remain faithful? There most certainly is. In fact, there is something right in the middle of the celebration that is so awesome. Look at verse 37: “…the disciples rejoiced in loud voices because of the miracles they had seen…” They looked back at the past three years and they remembered the overwhelming evidence that Jesus was the King.

What can we learn from their example?

Step 1 – Be people that remember.

Like the disciples, we must be a people who remember what God has done in our lives. When we remember his faithfulness, we are strengthened to make that emotional turn in our lives where we are able to weather the difficulties. We need to open up space and time in our lives where we actually remember.

But how do we actually do this?

Step 2 – Make a habit of remembering. A daily text, email, list on your mirror. A practice where people remember together the good works of the Lord, for the purpose of maintaining that attitude of trust, allegiance and praise.

Start the day remembering! Before you turn on the phone, the TV, the computer, make it a practice to remember.

Do you need to remember even more frequently than that?

For example, you know your day. You know the areas in life, the times, the groups of people where you are tempted to turn away from the Lord. Could be in the break room at the office when your co-workers start gossiping? Could be in the cafeteria at school when your friends start talking? Maybe a family member that you really struggle with. Maybe a person at church who really struggle with.

Do you need to start a preemptive practice of remembering that Jesus is King of your life?

Let Jesus’ oracle be a caution for us: there is a danger in not remembering. This is the difference between the two crowds. The Palm Sunday crowd is praising God, we are told, in verse 37 because of all the miracles they had seen. The Good Friday crowd must have gotten amnesia or something. They are loud too, but they are condemning. When faced with a difficult situation they forgot not only what happened a few days before when they were ready to crown Jesus king, they also forgot all that he had done in the previous three years.

On Palm Sunday they are not afraid of the powerful religious establishment. On Good Friday, they go right along with the lies and murderous threats of that same establishment.

On Palm Sunday the crowd is more than willing to proclaim a new king in the face of the Roman rulers who did not take kindly to that kind of uprising. On Good Friday, they cower before the Roman rulers.

When faced with the junk and pressures of life, when pain and stress is right in our face, we can forget that we were praising God just yesterday. We can forget the miracles he has done in our lives.

One author, commenting on Jesus’ oracle in verses 43-44 says this: “The reason for the destruction is simple—’you did not know the time of your visitation.’ Messiah has come and Israel has said no. Opportunity for peace has come, but the nation has opted for destruction—a destruction that will not be permanent, as later scripture…makes clear. Still, this soon-to-come destruction will be devastating. …Israel’s house will be desolate. A first-century Auschwitz awaits it. Unlike the twentieth-century version, where repulsive ethnic hatred brought death, the Jewish nation of the first century brought catastrophe on itself. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus blamed the nationalists, the Zealots, for the nation’s demise, but Jesus has a different answer. By rejecting him, Israel has chosen the way of judgment. It has missed the day and the moment.”

The author concludes with a warning we all would do well to heed: “What was true of the Jewish nation can also be true of individuals. To miss Jesus is to miss the time of visitation and face accountability before God.”^{^[1]}

So let’s remember God’s mighty acts today! Do you believe that Jesus is alive and active and at work in your life? When we don’t see that right in front of our eyes, let us not lose heart. Let us be a people who actively remember. He is actively involved in our lives and in our world.

Let us write them down and talk about them and praise the Lord for them. Let those mighty acts motivate us to praise him as King, because he alone is the one true King.

But let us be humble and teachable, admitting to one another and to the Lord how quickly we forget, lest we, the Palm Sunday crowd, become the Good Friday crowd.

What will you do to make a habit of remembering God’s faithfulness in your life?

I would encourage you to remember the miracles he did in your life in days long past as well as in more recent days.

A charm bracelet of remembrance?

A shelf in your house of remembrance?

Artistic magnets of remembrance on your fridge?

How will you remember?

^{^[1]} Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Lk 19:28.

Palm Sunday and the Happy Ever After?

I worked at Lancaster County’s Barnes Hall Juvenile Detention Center for three years after graduating from college. There were many interesting moments in those years. One I will never forget is when I brought in the movie Ever After for the kids to view. It is a retelling of the Cinderella story with Drew Barrymore as Cinderella. Of course the kids thought this was a ridiculous idea. Cinderella, are you serious? Isn’t that a little kids movie?

But we forced them to watch it, and something amazing happened. The restless, grumpy kids slowly got into the story. They started to become Cinderella’s fans. She had a tough upbringing, something many of them could identify with. The emotion in the room grew until that ultimate moment when Cinderella shows up at the ball, depicted above. She is decked out in a stunning gown, and as she climbed the steps to the courtyard, those juvenile delinquents were cheering. Clapping. Getting up out of their seats high-fiving.

I thought they might like the movie, but I didn’t expect this. It was an awesome moment.

The prince sees Cinderella, and the crowd parts as they walk to one another and have a huge embrace. This is the Happily Ever After moment!

Just then the wicked stepmother bursts her way through the crowd, rips off one of Cinderella’s decorative wings, and reveals Cinderella’s true identity to the prince. The prince is flabbergasted. He turns and storms out of the ball. Cinderella is embarrassed and devastated.

Palm Sunday is a lot like that. We will sing Hosanna like the crowd entering Jerusalem that day. We will praise the Lord with palm branches. (Our kids even have a surprise waiting for us!) And we will re-enact the joyful crowd proclaiming that Jesus is the King!

There’s a sense in which, like Cinderella’s ball, Jesus is being announced as king for the first time to whole world.

He truly IS the King, and we are right to proclaim him so. But we also know there will be another crowd, just a few days later, that will turn its back on him. And so Palm Sunday is a bittersweet event. Palm Sunday is not Happy Ever After. In fact, the King was downright gloomy that day. You can see what I mean by reading Luke 19:28-44 to prepare for Sunday.

You’re more than welcome to join us at Faith Church to hear the rest of the story!

Is Sunday the new Sabbath? – Luke 6:1-11

Last week I introduced the next sermon in our series on Luke saying that Jesus told the Bible scholars they didn’t know the Bible. In Luke 6:1-11 he really gets in their face. At one point the Pharisees confronted Jesus’ disciples for rubbing grain in their hands on the Sabbath, saying the disciples were harvesting on the Sabbath. It was more than likely just a little snack. Harvesting? Not even close. So in response, Jesus says:

“Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?”

Wow! That’s bold, because you know they did read it, and were quite familiar with the story. What is he really saying to them, then? Basically, he is saying that they are wrong in their view of the Sabbath and they should have known better because it was right in front of them all along in an old Sunday School story. That story shows clearly that exceptions to the Law are needed and good when it comes to caring for people. The very next episode, when Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, tells the same principle.

Jesus shows the Pharisees, and he shows us, that we cannot let our religious system become more important than God’s intent!

One of the big questions about Sabbath is how Christians should apply it. What was God’s intent?

There are Sabbath principles that we need to adhere to. Remember that God’s OT Law was for Israel, not for us. That Law can be helpful to us, but only insomuch as we understand the heart intent of the law. We can apply the heart of the law to the church, to Jesus’ disciples. But we should not apply the law itself to the church.

When the first Christians tried to apply OT Law to the Christian Church, things got messy and the early church had to have a major meeting to discuss what to do. You can read about it in Acts 15. Some Christian Jews wanted the non-Jews who were coming to Christ to start following the OT Law, particularly in the area of getting circumcised. The Apostle Paul says “No Way!” And James, the brother of Jesus, who was the leader of the church at that point said, “Paul is right, we’re not going to bind people to that.”

But Christians through the centuries have still tried to take OT Law, which was only meant for Israel, and apply it to the church many times. One of the recurring mistakes has been when Christians and churches have taken Sabbath law and moved it to Sunday. Many Christians grew up in a day and age in which it was common practice to understand Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, so what I am saying here might be hard to fathom.

Consider this: Not only is the OT Law not applicable to the church as Law, but practicing a Sabbath day is not mentioned at all in the NT in connection with the Christian Church. It is the only one of the 10 commandments that is not somehow repeated in the Apostles’ teaching in the NT. The early Christians chose to gather on Sundays not because they wanted a new Sabbath day, but because that was the day Jesus rose from the dead! They simply wanted to meet to celebrate his resurrection every week. We should do the same. We do not gather for worship on Sunday because we are trying to obey Sabbath Law. We gather together to worship, to fellowship, to refocus on the mission of God’s Kingdom, to practice rest.

So while we don’t apply the Law, we can and should apply Sabbath principles to our lives. The principles of rest from labor and gathering for worship should be very evident in our lives. It doesn’t have to be a 24 hour period. It doesn’t have to be Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. It doesn’t have to be Saturday. We Christians do not need to follow Sabbath law. But we should show that we are following the principle, that we are resting from our labor, that we are trusting in our God to supply our needs.

God required the Israelites to rest so that they would learn to trust in him. By not working that one day per week they were showing great faith in him, that he would provide for them. They could have increased their incomes by 1/7^th if they would work that extra day. Imagine how much money you would earn if you increased your wages by 1/7^th? That’s a lot of money!

This is why I have great respect for companies that close their doors out of a desire to live out Sabbath principles. They are showing trust in the Lord. Think about their earning potential if they would open their doors a 7^th day! You ask any company how they would feel about an opportunity that has a strong potential to increase their income by 14%? They wouldn’t bat an eye. It would be an automatic “Yes! Let’s do it.” But those companies are closed, if they are doing so with the right heart motivation, to say “No Lord, we’re going to trust in you. That potential 14% is yours.”

That’s pretty awesome.

But does that mean Christian companies or owners that keep their businesses open 24/7 are sinning? Nope, not one bit. There is no Sabbath law for Christians. If a Christian wants to make a voluntary sacrifice to the Lord, such as closing their business on Sunday, that is certainly their prerogative, but it is not required. And we should not judge either way. Leave the judging up to the Pharisees.

Instead we should individually ask ourselves “How am I practicing the principle of Sabbath?”

I really struggle with this. When do I intentionally put rest in my life? My Pastoral Relations Committee last year required me to rest on Wednesday afternoons and once a month take a Friday for spiritual refreshment. I will be honest, and Michelle can vouch for this, I have done pretty bad at that. I want to do it. But it is hard.

It is really, really hard to unplug, to disconnect.

We got new cell phones this past week, and I have yet to add my email account on my phone. I am doing that intentionally. But I will tell you that I’m iffy about it. I argue with myself. What would it hurt? What if I get an important email I need to answer right away? Don’t get me wrong, I think answering emails and replying to texts promptly is important. I have my computer open 8-4 everyday (and often in the evening and on Saturday…and on Sunday…). But an email that comes in at 7pm can probably wait til 8 the next morning, right?

I really struggle with the connected society we live in. Email, Facebook, texting, cell phones, etc, etc.

I get a sense that many of us need to apply Sabbath principles in the area of social connectedness. I get a sense that we need to disconnect. This is why I love that Twin Pines has a rule for summer camp about no electronics. We need more of that.

I often take my cell phone to the toilet so I can “redeem the time” and work on my cell phone in the bathroom. When do I ever just stop and think?

After the big snow storm a couple weeks ago, there was a full moon. At around 10pm, I was in our backyard dumping our woodstove ashes into our fire pit. The moon reflecting off the snow was so bright everything had distinct shadows. It was quiet. The sky was clear and you could see constellations.

I wanted to just stand there and look and think. I had that urge within that I need more Sabbath in my life. It was too cold, though, and I dressed only for a quick trip to the fire pit. I had to go inside.

But I could feel it. A need, a yearning for Sabbath. I really enjoy our technological and connected world. Technology amazes me. But in the backyard under that beautiful moonlit night, I remembered Sabbath. Frankly, I can forget about Sabbath. I can become accustomed to incessant work. Social media constantly with me on my phone. The TV seemingly always on. Emails flowing to my computer without end. When I open my computer I rarely have less than 20 emails needing attention each morning. And they do need attention, and I do need to reply. But after dinner time (when I am home) the emails can wait til the next morning. I can rest from that several hours a day.

How about you? Do you get like that about work? When do you rest? I don’t mean sleep. I mean rest from your labor to seek the Lord. Yeah, I do believe we can and should do this on Sundays. Not because that is the new Sabbath day. It’s not. There is no new Sabbath day. We meet on Sunday because that is day Jesus rose from the dead and we gather to celebrate him, to renew our focus on the mission of God’s Kingdom. And Sabbath principle, not Law, but principle, says that we should be passionately committed to opening up our schedules to actively participate in regular worship.

Sabbath is not a law that requires you to be in church every Sunday. But Sabbath principle says that we should be passionately committed to being there because we want to be there, we want to see our church family, we want to sing in worship, we want to give, we want to serve, we want to hear the word of the Lord, discuss it, and we want to refocus on his Kingdom. Sabbath principle is a heart that wants to worship because we love the Lord so much we want to participate in the gathered worship of his church.

I’ve heard it said that nowadays regular participation is once or twice a month attendance in worship. That concerns me greatly. In fact it could be argued that is an ignoring of Sabbath principle.

Do you need to gather for worship more? Do you need to rest and take a break to reflect on Him more? Do you need to show your trust in your loving God in this area?

What happens when Jesus tells the Bible scholars they don’t know the Bible?

The religious establishment is on him. They’ve been following him ever since he splashed onto the scene months earlier, healing people and preaching and gaining a following of large crowds. These Bible teachers, these Pharisees, are the religion police of their day, and they have dispatched some agents to check Jesus out. Now they’re following him everywhere. In this passage, they are walking through a grain field. And they confront his disciples for picking some of the grain…a major no-no? So Jesus responds with with a story. He even starts it off by saying “Have you never read…?” And you know they read it many, many times. But there he is taking the Bible scholars back to Sunday School.

Basically he is saying to them “You guys who are supposed to know this Bible inside and out, you missed something.” I wonder how he said this. I would love to know the tone in his voice. Was there any sarcasm? A twinkle in his eye? Frustration?

I think the Pharisees are quite surprised by Jesus. Take a look at Luke 6:1-11, and see what you think. Does he surprise you?

He tells them a story from the life of Israel’s most famous king, David. When you read it, my guess is that it would rank, for most people, in the category of little-known stories. The bible scholars of his day would have been, or should have been, really familiar with it. It’s a story when David was in a tough predicament and he did something unheard of. Scandalous even. And actually a priest let him do it! A priest let David break the Law. Shocking? Not really, when you find out the details. But why not? We’ll learn more on Sunday.

And we’ll see why Jesus brings this story up on a Sabbath day in the middle of a grain field to confront the religious establishment guys who are ticked off.

Why are the Pharisees so upset? Why does Jesus confront their Bible knowledge? As we study this passage, perhaps we need to go back to Sunday School too. It is possible that we might have a little learning from Jesus to do too.

If you’re not part of a church family, we’d love to have you join us at Faith Church!

Why Jesus would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints – Luke 5:27-39

Last week I introduced this past Sunday’s sermon with a game of Don’t Forget the Lyrics – Billy Joel Edition. We had a lot of fun playing the game live in worship on Sunday.

I wanted to play Don’t Forget the Lyrics – Billy Joel Edition because of some lines from his song “Only The Good Die Young”: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners, than cry with the saints.” In our next passage studying the Gospel of Luke, we discovered Jesus doing just that! Take a look at Luke 5:27-39 and you’ll see what I mean.

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners…” Did you see Jesus laughing it up with the sinners! Levi (Matthew) the tax collector throws a party in Jesus’ honor, and it is filled with people who the religious establishment, and pretty much everyone else, considers sinners! And Jesus is right there in the middle of it.

“…than cry with the saints.” The Pharisees and teachers of the law are outside watching him. These so-called saints are there crying their eyes out as they look inside. But note that they don’t confront Jesus! Instead they ask his disciples: “Why are you eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?”

And when the Pharisees question the disciples, I can see those disciples getting sick in the stomach, armpits start sweating and they clam up. These are religious big-wigs! They might pull out their wooden rulers and slap the disciples on the wrist.

The Disciples don’t answer. But Jesus does. I love that! I don’t know for certain that the Pharisees and disciples were on the outside of the house, on the veranda, or inside. But what Luke does confirm is that Jesus answers.

He uses a medical metaphor that a doctor is not for healthy people, but for sick! He explains what he means: he came not for the righteous, but sinners to repent. Though he is more than willing to laugh with sinners, he also calls them to repent. God has a heart for sinners! God loves even the despised tax collector, the prostitute, the homosexual, and you and me. But in love, he calls them to repent. To repent is to lead a lifestyle of repentance. To repent is to change.

When we follow Jesus as disciples, our lives should be changing. You should be able to look at your life and see how you have changed. Praise God that he loves us sinners and that all of us have the opportunity to be his disciples, but that doesn’t mean we can take his love for granted, or disrespect it. He loves us and wants us to follow him so that we can change! So that we can stop sinning and begin to live the wonderful life, the far better life, as one of his followers!

So for Jesus to focus on sinners to repent is a radical move. Where the Pharisees saw sinners as people who could infect them, Jesus saw the sinners as people who could have a renewal of heart, who could change. He goes to the sinners. He goes their party. But in the middle of that, he calls them to change.

In verse 33 the Pharisees question Jesus about this, “There are other people or groups that have disciples, like ours, and those disciples practice fasting and prayer. What’s the deal with you and your disciples partying with sinners?” Basically they’re saying, “Our disciples are more spiritual than your disciples!” And they have a point, one that we would probably use. We look to prayer and fasting as deeply important to the life of disciples. Spiritual disciplines are important! Shouldn’t Jesus respond by saying “Aw man, you got me. I’ve been really screwing up in leading my disciples. I’m sorry Pharisees. Come on boys, let’s scram. We shouldn’t have been partying it up with the sinners. My bad. I promise, Pharisees, we’ll never do that again. Serious. I swear by the name of me.”?

Nope. He didn’t say that. Instead, it’s another surprise. In verses 34-35 he now uses a wedding metaphor. When the bridegroom is there, it’s party time! We know this in our culture too. When the bride and groom leave the reception, pretty much the party’s over, right? We all go home, sometimes quite sad that it is over. I remember some friends’ wedding where I did not want that party to stop! They eventually wanted it to, but I didn’t.

So basically Jesus is saying to these leaders, “Chill out guys. God loves sinners, and he is calling sinners to repent, and you know what? Look at what God is doing in Matthew’s life! We should throw a party about that! A sinner, a tax collector has said that he is leaving behind his tax collecting to follow me!”

There was good reason to celebrate! Jesus doesn’t avoid sinners. He mixes it up with them. But in the midst of the party, he calls them to repentance. Matthew would go on to be changed.

In our day, we have to be very very careful that we are not like the Pharisees. We need to call sinners to repent, but it might look very different than what we’re used to. In fact, it should look different. I believe we are coming through a period where much of the methodology of the church resembles the method of the Pharisees rather than that of Jesus. The church for too long wanted to people to clean up their act, and then come to church. Jesus, however, says I am coming to you, to where you are, right in the middle of your mess, and I am going to party with you, and I am going to call you to repent of your sin.

Seriously, that’s a bit mind-blowing isn’t it?

If there is sin in your life, Jesus says that you need to call it sin and repent; you need to change. The tax collector had to leave his life of cheating and stealing. Levi did just that. And guess what? He went on to write one of the books of the Bible! Amazing!

What if Jesus would have passed Levi by, saying “Disgusting…I hate those tax collectors…they’re sinners, I’m not going near them because they sicken me with their cheating. And I don’t want them to pollute me.”

Imagine Levi running after Jesus and saying “I’ve been listening to your sermons, Jesus, and I’ve seen your miraculous healings, and I want to change my life…I’m so excited about what God is doing in my life, I want to throw a party for you!” After hearing that, what if Jesus responds and says “A party? Are you serious? I don’t party. Who do you think I am? A sinner like you and your friends? You’ve got the wrong idea about following me, buddy. If you want to follow me, get down on your knees right now and start praying and fasting.”

But praise the Lord, Jesus is NOT like that. Praise the Lord, Jesus meets us where we are and calls us to become new people.

This affects us. Jesus meets us where we are. But he doesn’t say that we can stay where we are. We change to be like him. What sin do you need to call sin and repent of and change?
This affects others. Just as Jesus met us where we are, we should follow his example and meet people where they are. Who are the sinners in your life that need Jesus that you need to go to and love and party with?

Which Jesus will we be like? The one who laughs with the sinners or the one who cries with the saints?

[1] Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Lk 19:28.

^{^[1]} Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Lk 19:28.