I teach English language development classes in my community. In a recent class, the curriculum included a story about a family who immigrated to the US, worked hard, and opened a restaurant, because they wanted their son to experience the American Dream. Around the table in my classroom, each of the people there essentially had the same story.
Then one of them looked at me and asked, “You grew up in the USA, you don’t have an American Dream, do you?” They assumed that the American Dream was only for immigrants. I responded that I grew up with the idea of an American Dream too. I tried to explain to them the idea of a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, but that was didn’t translate well. Instead, I told them about how for generations of Americans, the American Dream is to have a life that is more comfortable than your parents. I grew up with that.
But then I said I don’t agree with that anymore. Because of Jesus. I now try to follow his ways. Following the way of Jesus is decidedly different, and sometimes opposite, from the American Dream. Through our posts this week, we have seen how differently Jesus views the world, in his blesseds and woes. Instead of looking down on the poor, the hungry, the sick, the needy, the prisoner, we see them as blessed, just like he did. With that new viewpoint, we followers of Jesus pursue his way of selfless sacrifice.
We serve, help, give, mentor, love, so the oppressed and suffering might experience Jesus’ love. This is why my church supports CVCCS and SEEDS. This is why there is a giving tree in our church lobby for SEEDS, where people in our church can select an ornament on the tree, and the ornament lists the age, gender, and interests of a child from our community living in a hotel. In our lobby we also have a CVCCS donation table, where our people can drop off items for the clothing and food banks.
This week, the director of CVCCS sent an email to the ministerium informing us about a local family that was going to lose their home, asking if local churches could help. The ministerium decided to give $500 of ministerium funds, to which Faith Church makes a contribution each year. SEEDS gave $500. Then some individual churches gave as well. It was a beautiful act of flourishing-producing togetherness.
How are you viewing life? Do you need to have more of the upside-down view of Jesus? What might it look like for you to live differently as a result of that upside-down view?
I titled this blog series Trust and Obey. When we trust in Jesus, we will see the world the way he sees it, which is often upside-down from the prevailing cultural view in our day. When we trust in Jesus we see the blessed and woes as he did. And when we trust, we then obey, and we love like he did.
In Luke 6, Jesus makes the shocking assertion that the poor are in favorable circumstances, because theirs is the Kingdom of God. The people in the crowd that day listening to his Sermon on the Plain would have been blown away by this. Jesus’ ideas sounded amazing, but in the “too good to be true” kind of way. Many, if not most of them, would have been thinking, “I’m poor, and that is evidence, Jesus, that I am not experiencing the Kingdom of God. You are wrong, Jesus.”
Poverty was seen in that era as a sign of being cursed by God, while wealth was seen as a sign of blessing. If you had wealth, most everyone assumed God was blessing you, that you were in a position of favorable circumstances. That assumption of blessing was not just in the physical sense of enjoying worldly comforts, but also in the spiritual sense that God was the source of the blessing. In other words, if you were enjoying favorable circumstances, it was assumed you were a shoo-in for the Kingdom of God. You must be in God’s favor.
But if you were poor, you were considered to be outside the Kingdom, and likely with very little opportunity to get in. You didn’t have much hope beyond scraping by in life. The prevailing cultural assumption was that your physical circumstances in life showed you what your chances were for entering the kingdom.
Jesus, however, smashes that false idea and says, “You poor, you hungry, you weeping, you’re actually in a better position than the rich! You are the ones who have the hope of the kingdom.”
To show how serious he was about this, he then proclaims some woes. Not “woah,” like a person would say to a horse to slow down. It is W-O-E. A woe is a proclamation of disaster. Or to put it another way, a person who is under a woe is not in a good place. This is the direct opposite position to blessedness. If a blessed person is enjoying favorable circumstances, a person under woe is in disastrous circumstances. To whom does Jesus proclaim, “Woe”? Look at Luke 6, verse 24:
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
Once again Jesus turns things upside-down. He declares the opposite of each of the Beatitudes. Each of the situations we consider to be fortunate, he now declares situations of disaster.
What Jesus points out is the wrong assumption that a person’s physical circumstances revealed what God thinks of them.
Of course Jesus isn’t suggesting that all poor people are automatically good because of their poverty. And he isn’t saying that rich people are automatically bad because of their riches. I’m sure we all know poor and rich people who are miserable, selfish, and difficult. And I’m sure we all know poor and rich people who are loving, caring, and selfless.
Jesus is teaching the need for his followers to see things in the upside-down way that he sees things. In Jesus’ kingdom, there is hope for anyone in difficult circumstances. In Jesus’ kingdom, there is a real danger that the rich will actually miss the kingdom because they are focused on their earthly riches and not relying on God
So we as Jesus’ followers would do well to hold our earth riches and property and possessions very, very lightly. We as Jesus’ followers need to be exceedingly clear not to put our hope in earthly riches and possessions. No, our hope and reliance is in Jesus.
How do we actively place our hope and reliance on Jesus? What do we actually do? We find out in the next post.
Jesus knew what life was like for the people in the crowds that followed him, crowds such as the ones we read about Luke 6. He knew what their lives were like because he lived that life for 30 years before he started his ministry. Jesus was from a tiny town of Nazareth, in the region of Galilee, in Northern Israel. He was a working man.
Though tradition identifies him a carpenter, that doesn’t fully convey what Jesus did for work. Jesus was what the Greeks called a “tekton.” A tekton worked with their hands. A builder. A stone mason. Yes, a carpenter, too. He could probably create using any of the materials and techniques that were common in that area. As a tekton, he knew what it meant to work hard, long hours, sweat, be exhausted, and likely not get rich as a result.
Was Jesus’ family poor, were they middle class? We can’t say for sure. The general pattern, though, is that there was a wide gap between the rich and everyone else in society. The peasant class was large. The rich class tiny. Jesus was very likely part of the peasantry.
Jesus’ economic situation is similar to what we see happening in our world today. No longer can we say that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. What is more accurate is that the ultra-rich get even more fabulously wealthy, while the middle class shrinks and the number in poverty grows. Consider this: on November 6, 2025, automotive company Tesla voted to give CEO Elon Musk a compensation package of company stock that could make Musk the first ever $1 trillion CEO. That $1 trillion is entirely dependent on Tesla’s stock performance over the next decade. But it illustrates the point.
When we see the rich getting richer, we can sometimes despair. We can feel it doesn’t seem fair. We can wonder if there should be laws making it impossible for people to accumulate that much wealth. Does any one person really need a billion dollars? Let alone a trillion? If Musk does in fact make $1 trillion, he alone, one person, will be making a salary that is larger than the salary of every single American elementary school teacher combined.
Faced with that disparity, we can think, “It is wrong that one person should be so blessed! That much blessing in one person’s life? Not fair. Not right!”
To that idea of blessing, Jesus says something shocking about who is blessed. Before we hear his shocking statement about who is blessed, what does “blessed” mean? One scholar says “blessed” means this: “pertaining to being happy, with the implication of enjoying favorable circumstances.” (Louw & Nida). Jesus is making a clear identification, therefore, of just who it is that is in favorable circumstances.
Think about the possibility of one person making $1 trillion dollars. Sure seems like favorable circumstances, doesn’t it? Sure seems like that person is blessed. Obviously, it is the rich, the healthy, the powerful, the popular, the gifted, who are enjoying favorable circumstances. Right? That conception of who is blessed is our culture’s prevailing assumption. If we do not feel that we are in favorable circumstances, we generally want to be in favorable circumstances. That is totally normal for just about everyone in the world.
But to that totally normal perspective, Jesus says in Luke 6:20-22, “Blessed are you who are poor…Blessed are you who hunger now…Blessed are you who weep now…Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil.”
Jesus turns the prevailing cultural idea on its head. It is not the rich, but the poor who are in favorable circumstances. It is the hungry. It is the sad. It is those are persecuted and insulted. All of those, Jesus says, are favorable circumstances. Jesus looks around at the crowd that day, and he sees thousands of people just like him, peasants who have struggled all their lives with poverty, hunger, sadness, and persecution. He says, “We are the blessed ones. We are in favorable circumstances.”
Shocking, right? How are the poor in a position of blessedness? How are the hungry and the sad and persecuted enjoying favorable circumstances? It seems as though Jesus is wrong here. In fact it seems that he is obviously wrong.
But he is right. How? We find out in the next post.
The picture above shows the text of two of Jesus’ Beatitudes. From memory, can you say any of the others?
As the picture points out, you can find the text of the Beatitudes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew chapters 5–7. The Beatitudes are found in Matthew 5:3–12. Turn there and read them. What do you notice?
They each begin with the same word: “blessed.” This week we are studying the other version of the Beatitudes, found in Luke 6:20–22. What we will find in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, is that they also start with the word “blessed.” However, there is a very interesting difference between Luke’s version and Matthew’s version. Here is Luke’s version. See if you can spot the difference.
“Looking at his disciples, [Jesus] said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.”
What is the difference? How are Luke’s Beatitudes different from the more familiar version in Matthew?
In Luke, Jesus teaches a much more earthy, physical “Blesseds.” Matthew’s version is more spiritual. Here are some examples:
Matthew 5, verse 3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
But in Luke 6, verse 20, “Blessed are the poor.”
Matthew 5, verse 6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
But in Luke 6, verse 21, “Blessed are you who hunger now.”
Matthew 5, verse 4, “Blessed are those who mourn.”
Compare that with Luke 6, verse 21, second line, “Blessed are you who weep now.”
I’ll admit, that Beatitude is nearly the same in Matthew and Luke. But Luke’s is more physical, visceral. Weeping rather than mourning. And Luke adds “now.”
If you keep reading Matthew’s version, you’ll see his Beatitudes include some down-to-earth examples too, such as meekness, mercy, and peacemaking.
It seems to me that Matthew’s final beatitude “Blessed are those who are persecuted…insulted” is nearly identical to Luke chapter 6, verse 22, “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude and insult you, and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.”
Overall, though, while Matthew’s are more spiritual, the Beatitudes in Luke have a physicality about them. Before we continue our study of Jesus’ Beatitudes in Luke, consider what Jesus might be saying by emphasizing the physical, real life stuff people are going through. What difficulties are you going through? Poverty? Pain? Sadness? Insult? Broken relationships?
In this passage, Jesus is speaking directly to you. What he says is shocking. We find out more in the next post.
You may have heard of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. That famous passage is found in Matthew 5–7. But have you ever heard of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain?
His Sermon on the Plain has many similar, or even the same, teachings as those found in the Sermon on the Mount. This Thanksgiving week 2025, we’re going to learn about Jesus’ surprising take on blessings in his Sermon on the Plain.
Feel free to follow along in your Bible, in Luke chapter 6. First, the context. Look at verses 17 through 19 where Luke sets the scene.
“He went down with them and stood on a level place.”
That level place, that’s the plain.
But who is there with Jesus on the plain? Luke tells us.
“A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon.”
Quite a scene, right? Huge crowds. Notice that Luke describes two groups. First a large crowd of his disciples. Second, a great number of other people. That first group, the large crowd of disciples, is a good reminder to us that while Jesus had selected twelve disciples to be a part of his inner circle, he also had a much larger group of disciples, including men and women. Are we talking 20, 30, 100, 500? We don’t know. John 6 tells us that many disciples left Jesus when they found some of his teachings too difficult. After his death, resurrection, and ascension, Luke tells us in Acts 1 that there remain 120 followers of Jesus. Back here in Luke 6 on the plain, it is not unreasonable to suggest, therefore, that Jesus had multiple hundreds of disciples.
In addition to his disciples, Luke reports that out there on the plain, crowds showed up. A great number of people, Luke says. By this point, Jesus is no longer just a nobody from a tiny town in northern Israel. He’s got name recognition. Word has spread as far as to the southern region of Israel, Judea. Thousands of people come to him.
But why was Jesus so popular? We keep reading:
“[The crowds] had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.”
People are hearing about a preacher who has power. Power to heal, power over spirits. It is wild that all they needed to do was touch him, and power would come from him and heal them. Of course people from all over wanted to see him, hear him, touch him. It was a mob scene.
But at some point, Jesus is able to pause the crush of people, and he begins teaching. We learn what he says in the next post.
Around the tables at your Thanksgiving gatherings this coming week, will you take time to share with your family and friends what you are thankful for? One of the worship songs we recently sang at Faith Church is perfect for Thanksgiving, “Count Your Blessings.” There is something powerful about thinking about how we have been blessed. The act of reflecting gratefully shapes us.
The Apostle Paul gets at the transformative nature of gratitude when he writes in Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Notice the word “thanksgiving” in the center of the passage. Paul’s teaching about gratitude, thanksgiving, of counting our blessings amid anxiety, is what is so radical about this passage, in my opinion. Paul is suggesting that there is a uniquely Christian way to view blessing. When we view blessing in that uniquely Christian way, it can help us encounter the peace of God in the middle of difficult circumstances.
Paul’s idea sounds amazing: gratitude that leads to peace. Who doesn’t want peace? Paul’s idea also seems easy. Just be grateful, and you’ll have God’s miraculous peace in your life. But is it that easy? Not so much. Many people find it difficult to count their blessings when struggling.
Furthermore, what if we don’t have the right understanding of blessings? Have you ever considered that? Is it possible that what many people consider blessings are not actually blessings? It is possible. In fact, in this final week of our Trust & Obey series, we’ll take a look at time Jesus turned the idea of blessing upside-down. When he preached this teaching, I bet most everyone in the crowd was squinting their eyes in disbelief at his ideas.
What passage? What did Jesus say about blessing? This week on the blog we find out.
Can you recite the Lord’s Prayer? Our Father who art in heaven…
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus not only teaches his disciples how to pray, but also what to pray for. What he taught us to pray for has everything to do with this week’s blog series. So far this week, we’ve looked at what Jesus says about church. Frankly, he doesn’t say much. Instead, he talks frequently about his kingdom.
He teaches his followers to advance the mission of his Kingdom. Just as he prayed in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom moves from the abstract to the physical.
Jesus is saying that the Kingdom is real, that the Kingdom is his desire for his ways to be as much a reality on earth as his kingdom is the reality of heaven.
What does Jesus mean, “Your kingdom come?” He doesn’t mean “build church buildings, hire professionals, and have live worship events.” Those physical expressions of church are not wrong, but there is so much more that his “Kingdom come” refers to.
Instead of church buildings and worship services, when Jesus talks about the kingdom coming on earth, he envisions just what you would think about a king and a kingdom. A kingdom is a place where a king rules and reigns. So as we help to advance the mission of the Kingdom, we are participating in helping more people and places live the way Jesus wants them to live.
The Kingdom way is a generous way of life, giving sacrificially to help people in need. It is living simply so others can simply live. It is caring for all stages of life, from the womb to the tomb. It is working to tear down the structures of injustice, because in Jesus’ kingdom, injustice is not in charge. It is working to bring reconciliation, because in Jesus’ kingdom there is neither Jew, nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus. Jesus welcomes not just the healthy, but the sick; he welcomes not just men, but women and children. He has authority over evil.
When we passionately pursue the mission of the kingdom, we are not enthralled by church buildings, church worship services, or church professionals. Those human things can be an aid or a detriment to worshiping Jesus, to our lives becoming more like his.
Our mission is to bring his kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. The question we need to ask ourselves, then, is how are we as individuals and together as local church families actively, practically, helping bring Jesus’ kingdom more on earth? Going back to the title of the series, Trust and Obey, what are our actions revealing about our beliefs about church and kingdom?
Have we emphasized church buildings and worship services, while at the same time neglected the actions of Jesus’ Kingdom? Again, church buildings and worship services are not automatically wrong. But when we trust and obey Jesus, our lives, individually and as a church family, will emphasize the kingdom work just like he did.
When you hear the word “church,” what comes to mind is likely a contemporary expression of church in your culture. For me, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA, I think of church buildings. My county has something like 700 church buildings of all shapes and sizes. Some have steeples, some are store fronts, and some space inside movie theaters, hotels, or other churches.
Now think about activities happening in those buildings. Primarily, worship services, right? Those worship gatherings often take place in a large room with rows of chairs or pews, usually a high ceiling, sometimes stained glass windows, sometimes an organ, sometimes a variety of other musical instruments, sometimes in a well-lit room, sometimes a darkened one. Though we like to talk about how differently churches worship from one another, whether evangelical, Catholic, Mennonite, megachurch, or many other kinds, Christian worship gatherings are mostly similar. They all include some songs, bible reading, offerings, sermons, and prayer.
We have a word for those elements of worship services: Liturgy. You might say, “But my church is not a liturgical church.” I suspect, actually, that your church is liturgical. It’s just that your liturgy is different from the liturgy of formal churches. Here’s what I mean. Liturgy is what we do in worship. Liturgy technically means “work of the people.” In ancient Greece it was kind of like civic duty, but in time it became spiritualized to refer to what takes place in worship services. Yet in some (many?) church worship services, liturgy is not the work of the people. In those churches, worship is the work of a few professionals.
Put this all together, Christian churches in contemporary American expression are generally two things.
A property management company. Building, grounds, rentals, cleaning, utilities, repairs.
A worship production company. Live music, lights, camera, video, audio, concert, monologue.
Yet, neither of those two things are what Jesus meant when he said the word “church.” The word he used is ekklesia. A gathering, an assembly, of people. That’s it. A group of his followers, gathering together. But gathering for what purpose?
Never did Jesus say, “I want you to build buildings in which to hold worship services once/week, led by professionals.” Instead, he talked about a very specific purpose, and he talked about it a lot. Not church.
Guess what word Jesus and the Gospel authors use instead of “church”? Kingdom!
While Jesus uses the word “church” two times, guess how many times the word “kingdom”?
Matthew: about 50 times, featuring “kingdom of heaven”
Mark: about 15 times, featuring “kingdom of God”
Luke: about 38 times, featuring “kingdom of God”
John: 4 times
Total times Jesus and the Gospel authors refer to the Kingdom of God. About 107 times. Church two times. Kingdom 107 times.
Yet, when we think of the visible expression of God in the world, we think of church, I suspect, much more than we think of Kingdom. But clearly, for Jesus, Kingdom is everything. It could be because the church is very physical (people, buildings, worship services), easy to grasp, while the Kingdom can seem abstract. The Kingdom is not, however, abstract, as we will see in the next few posts. But I must admit that when compared to the physicality of church, at first glance the Kingdom can seem that abstract.
Let me be clear, when groups of Christians in a community buy property, pay to build buildings, pay professional staff, and hold weekly worship productions, they are not doing anything wrong. Yet none of those things are required by Jesus.
And that begs the question: What is required by Jesus? Check back to the next post as I attempt to answer that.
As a pastor of twenty-three years, I’ve had some surprising experiences during worship services. For example, one time a wasp landed right on my Bible as I was preaching! People seated close to the front saw it all. I swatted at it, and it fell to the ground, where I stepped on it. The congregation clapped and cheered!
But perhaps my most surprising worship service experience occurred when I was not a pastor. Instead it happened when I was visiting a church. After the service was over, the pastor asked everyone to stay for a special announcement. The pastor asked one of the church leaders to come up front with him. There the leaders confessed publicly that he had committed adultery in his marriage, and he apologized and asked for forgiveness. What do you think about that? Does Jesus want churches to have public confession of sin during worship services?
In the previous post, we saw how Jesus taught that everything we do as a church family should be based on the foundation of Jesus. There are plenty of other foundations that we could try to build on if we wanted to. The foundation of worldly success, for example. How do you build on the foundation of worldly success? Easy, you do whatever it takes to be successful based on what the world defines as success. Bigger is better. Bigger budgets, buildings, and bodies in seats. More, more, more. That is how the world defines a good choice. Smaller is failure. Bigger is success.
But if we build on the foundation of Jesus, we have a very different measure of success. Jesus points this out when he said crazy stuff like “small is the gate, and narrow is the way” to following him, and get this, he said “few will find it.” Or how about this winner of a statement: “if you want to be my disciples, take up your cross, die to yourselves, and follow me.” These are not generally considered to be motivational or exciting statements.
In fact, there were times, when Jesus seemed to say that kind of crazy stuff to purposefully get fewer people to follow him. At the height of his popularity when he was doing all sorts of healing miracles and making bread and fish multiply to feed people, he had tens of thousands in the crowds following him. That is worldly success. Jesus was leading what amounted to a mega-mega church.
You capitalize on that worldly success, and you try to reach as many as possible, right? You want a huge following. What did Jesus do? He said to them, in John 6, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” I’m dead serious. He said that. It’s gross and disgusting, and it seems the people in the crowd that day also thought it was disgusting, because they were good humans who did not eat human flesh.
We know they were grossed out and repulsed because of what we read in John 6:60-66, right after he said the “eat my flesh and drink my blood” thing. Some disciples, not the Twelve, grumbled, saying, “This is a hard teaching…and from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” If I heard some bible scholar or professor or preacher say what Jesus said, I would say, “Nope. I’m out. That guy is out of his mind.”
But Jesus did say that, and it is no surprise that the huge crowds started thinning out. Getting large numbers was not his main goal. He was willing to speak hard, difficult, but truthful things, even if meant people would turn away. Because of what he said, the crowds just kept getting smaller and smaller.
After Jesus dies, rises again, and ascends back to heaven, we know exactly how many disciples and followers were left. Not thousands. Acts 1 tells us there were 120 of them. That’s it. But when you build the church on the foundation of Jesus, size doesn’t matter. Success is not about numbers and buildings and bodies. Success is following the way of Jesus, individually and together as a group.
And that brings us to the second time Jesus mentions church is in Matt 18:17. This one we can mention very quickly. In this Matthew 18, Jesus is talking about what to do when someone sins against you. But remember he is teaching this before there is any such thing as a church. Maybe he is preparing them for future situations after they start the church.
Side note: Didn’t Jesus go to synagogue and temple? Yes. Isn’t that similar to going to church worship services? Yes. So couldn’t we say that there was a church. Yes, and no. Jesus was a good Jew, so he would have gone regular gone to religious gatherings at synagogue and temple. But what would become the church has differences from synagogue and temple gatherings, and that would only become apparent in the months, years, and decades after his Ascension. Furthermore, when Jesus is referring to church, as we will see in a post later this week, he does not envision the kinds of institutions we think of when we think of churches in our era. Instead, Jesus is using a word that refers to an assembly of people. It was not a specifically religious word. In other words, in Matthew 16 Jesus could be understood as saying, “on this rock, I will build the movement of people who are my followers,” and that brings us to Matthew 18.
Here is what he says. “If a person sins against you, go to them one on one, and try to make it right. If that doesn’t work, take one or two people with you to try to work it out. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Jesus could be interpreted as envisioning a time when the church has local groups of Christians, local churches, which is exactly what did happen in the months and years after his ascension. They were all house churches. No buildings for hundreds of years. Jesus could also be envisioning the assembly of Jewish elders who would handle relational disputes in each local town.
In Matthew 18, what we read is Jesus giving instructions for how to work at bringing reconciliation when there is a broken relationship. If a person refuses to reconcile with you, after you’ve reached out one on one, and even after trying with the help of one or two others, Jesus says, get the church/assembly/elders involved.
He doesn’t say precisely how to get the church involved in bringing reconciliation. Some churches have interpreted this as Jesus saying that local church families need to air out their dirty laundry in front of the whole church family, such as when I was surprised at the church I visited. At Faith Church we don’t use that very public method. Instead we have handled those kinds of situations inside the anonymity of the leadership Team. Thankfully, they have been very rare. But they have happened.
And there you have it. Jesus make two references to church/assemblies. One about him as foundation of the church (see previous post). One about dealing with broken relationships.
Think about what doesn’t mention. More on that in the next post.
Guess how many total times the word “church” appears in all four Gospels combined? Don’t google it. I’m going to give you the answer in a moment. Just off the top of your head, how many times do you think the word “church” appears in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, combined?
Two. That’s it.
And both times it is Jesus who speaks the word “church.” Both are in the Gospel of Matthew.
As we continue this blog series I’m calling Trust and Obey, about the teachings of Jesus we misinterpret or neglect, this week I’m writing about church. The premise of the sermon series, Trust and Obey, is that the actions of our lives reveal what we believe. As Jesus himself taught, we show we love and trust him by obeying his teachings. So what did he teach about church?
Turn to Matthew 16, verse 13. This story likely occurs during the latter part of Jesus’ three ministry years. Jesus and his disciples are near Caesarea Philippi, which is 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. There, in what seems to be a private conversation with his disciples, Jesus asks them what rumors they have been hearing people say about him. His disciples respond that they have heard people speculate if Jesus is John the Baptist, or one of the prophets of old, like Elijah or Jeremiah.
Then Jesus asks what his disciples think, and Peter makes a bold declaration, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” That’s a very good answer. And yet, while that answer is correct on the surface, I’m doubting Peter fully understood it.
How could Peter say it, if he didn’t understand it? Here’s how. We sometimes say truthful things we don’t fully understand. Let me see if I can illustrate. What is the equation for Einstein’s theory of relativity?
E=mc2
But what does it means? Can you explain the theory of relativity?
How different it is to know the formula versus knowing what it means! Same for Peter. He could say the formula correctly: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” But I think it is entirely possible that Peter and the rest of the disciples had at least some misconceptions about what it meant that Jesus was Messiah, Son of God. Certainly, a more developed understanding would come in time.
For now, what Peter said is true, and Jesus is excited. Jesus is not John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah reincarnated. Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God. And Jesus is so excited that Peter has declared this truth that Jesus erupts with joy saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven,” and then comes the first of two instances in which Jesus says the word “church.”
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
As I mentioned in the previous post, there has been a lot of debate about what Jesus meant by this statement of building his church on the rock. While some have taken a literal view, that Jesus was talking about Peter himself being the leader, others, especially Protestants, have a different view on the rock upon which Jesus will build his church. They say that the rock is the testimony of Peter, the content of what Peter had just said, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. It is on that truthful, powerful, statement that the church of Jesus will be built. In other words, Jesus is declaring that the church, whatever it will be, he will be its foundation.
So the first thing we learn about church from Jesus is that the church has a foundation, and Jesus himself is the foundation. That might sound obvious. Jesus is the foundation of the church. But it is of utmost importance. In the next post we learn how churches can be built on other foundations.
Engaging Scripture 