Jesus Said! (2)

Good morning, CHURCH!

(Church joke of the day)

With time comes change in marriage.

And it’s not always change for the better.

Case in point.

A wife said to her husband of fifty years as they laid in the bed one night, “When we were young, you used to hold my hand every night before we fell off to sleep.”

Slowly and a little irritably, his hand reaches over until it finds hers…

“And when we were young,” she continues, “you used to cuddle up next to me in bed.”

A little more slowly, her husband’s body creaks and turns until it is nestling against hers…

“And when we were young, you used to nibble on my ears.”

Abruptly the covers are thrown back, and the man raises up and gets out of bed…

She thought she had pushed a little too hard.

“Where are you going honey?” she asks a little perplexed.

“I’m going to get my teeth,” he grumbles.

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Let’s go to the book of Jeremiah 17:9 NLT for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

This is one of the tricks of all tricks.

We all think the best of ourselves. Even at our worst.

And that goes right in line with what Jeremiah writes.

Our human heart is deceitful.

We don’t even realize because of the deception how wicked it is.

The good news is:

That when you walk with the Lord for a projected period of time it seems as if our heart gets a lot better.

A little less wicked.

I can take myself as an example.

I used to be really wicked.

(Now at most, I only find my heart’s wickedness really popping up, when I’m at some kind of impasse with my wife or if I bump into racism or if someone insists on seeing a point of view differently than mines or if my pride rises up but other than that, I have a pretty good heart.)

Let’s get into today’s message.

We’re in week 2 of the series:

Jesus said! (2)

We’re talking red letters in this series.

Just as I did a couple of weeks ago, I’ll be pointing out passages of scripture that Jesus was quoted as saying to the people in his day and looking to see what it means for us today.

We also want to know how they might have felt hearing it for the first time way back then.

Point #1

Don’t let the thief destroy you.

John 10:10-11 NLT

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.

There is obviously a contrast between who Jesus is and who he is referring to.

If Jesus says he is the good shepherd, then they must have understood that there is a bad shepherd or bad shepherds.

And the bad shepherds are thief’s according to Jesus.

Let’s look a little closer into this passage.

Jesus called these shepherds the thief – (kleptes) where we get the word kleptomaniac.

So, someone is trying to steal from us.

At this point they are listening to Jesus and trying to put his analogy together.

The thief shepherd acts for his own good, not that of the flock. (Hungry thieves might steal sheep for food); but a shepherd would risk his life to protect his flock from animals and thieves.

Here this triad of steal, kill and destroy sets the context of the powerful nature of the evil opponents of Jesus who threaten the security of the flock.

Who were the evil opponents of Jesus’ ministry.

That is what they would have been putting two and two together to understand.

In their day it was usually the Pharisees, Sadducees or the Jewish leaders. The influencers of their day.

Jesus was the good shepherd who came into the world so that people might have life (eternal life) and have it to the full.

To have eternal life is to know God through Jesus Christ (17:3).

To have it to the full could refer either to enjoying the richness of life in relationship with God in the here and now or to resurrection to eternal life at the end of the age (5:24–29), or both.

We can thus conclude that in the context of what Jesus was saying, unfaithful leaders would have been who he was referring to as the thief.

Leaders who are takers.

Leaders who care more about self than the sheep.

Point #2

Stay thirsty my friends

Jesus was engaged in a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well.

He being a Jew and her being a Samaritan was a strange thing for them to be having a normal conversation.

Jesus was hot and tired from the walk, and it was the hottest time of the day.

This particular Samaritan woman came to the well alone in the heat of the day because none of the other women associated with her.

When Jesus asked her for a drink of water, she was shocked and asked him, “Why he was asking her as a Samaritan for a drink?”

Jesus chose not to respond to the matter raised by the woman, including the apparent impossibility of his obtaining water from her.

Instead, he brought her back to the central issue as far as he was concerned:

John 4:13-14 NLT

Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. 14 But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

The images of water and wells were often used symbolically in antiquity; like many other characters in John, however, she takes Jesus literally when he is speaking figuratively.

The contrast here is fundamental and all to comprehensive.

When Jesus says, “This water” he plainly means “this natural water and all satisfactions of an earthly and perishable nature which reach only the superficial parts of our human nature.”

They are soon depleted and need to be replenished as much as if we had never experienced them at all.

Whereas the “water” that Christ gives—spiritual life—is a fountain springing, gushing, bubbling up and flowing forth within us, ever fresh, ever living.

So, when he says, “Never thirsting again,” he means simply that those souls will be like having their own water supplies at home.

And in that time meant a lot because as we can see, she met him outside the town to get water.

The thirst that we all have is not for natural water, but for God.

For eternal life in the presence of God.

And the deeper thirst is only met by the pouring out of the Spirit.

Finally, when Jesus says, “This water will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” he is clearly referring to the Spirit who alone gives life).

John 6:63 ESV

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Jesus pointed out that the spiritual water of which he spoke is not something for which one strives in difficulty and struggle.

Rather, a person receives it as it bubbles up from within.

People who depend only on physical water will be continuously thirsty.

One of two things will happen.

They’ll either be ignorant of their need for this spiritual water or they’ll be resentful of it.

And either will cause them to look in the wrong places for satisfaction that only can come through a deep intimate relationship with their creator through his son.

Point #3

Give up Take up and Follow up

Mark 8:34-35 NLT

Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.

The reference to “the crowd” stands out.

Its significance seems to be that the teaching is not just for the Twelve but for all who would follow Jesus.

To “come after” and “follow” Jesus is to be his disciple.

To deny oneself is not to do without something or even many things.

-It is to renounce the self as the dominant element in life.

-It is to replace the self with God-in-Christ as the object of affections.

-It is to replace the self-will for His divine will.

Next, He spoke of the cross.

The cross was an instrument of violent and painful execution.

To “take the cross” was to carry the horizontal beam of the cross out to the site of execution, generally past a crowd of rude people mocking and yelling at you.

Jesus describes what all true disciples must be ready for: if they follow him, they must be ready to face anything from literal scorn and shame to actual death.

This is how we follow to the cross.

Life is worth far more than the world itself.

Giving one’s life in this world to gain it in the world to come is the greatest transaction we could ever make.

The one who tries to live this life ‘for self’, who hoards it jealously and selfishly, will eventually lose it.

This is true, not only finally in the death that we all will face, but moment by moment, because such selfish life is no true life, but compares actually to animal existence.

A refusal to accept this ‘death to self’, and to follow him, is in actuality spiritual suicide.

And in contrast, spiritual life is only to be found by dying to self.

If you’re watching online or here in the building, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now?