Listening to Jesus

SERMON TITLE: Listening to Jesus

TEXT: Matthew 7:24-29 (ESV)

SPEAKER: Josh Hanson

DATE: 4-18-24

TURN MIC ON / WELCOME

As always it’s a joy to be with all of you. Speaking at Revive is one of the highlights of my year as it’s an encouragement to see love for Christ and his name being worshiped among the generations. Also — this ministry is important to me — because my second oldest will be attending UF next year.

Now — if you happen to attend the church I have the privilege to pastor — you hear me say something all the time. What do I always say? Something that’s true for you if this is your first time here at Revive or if you’re nearing graduation — I want you to know that God loves you and that I love you too.

God loves you — something no one ever hears enough. I love you — another phrase we don’t hear enough. If you forget everything else I say — know that you are loved.

SERIES INTRO

Tonight we’re finishing up a series on the Sermon on the Mount that you all began back in the fall. And there’s two parts of our text. We’ll see how Jesus ends his sermon — he’s going to tell us how to apply all that he’s been teaching — how his sermon is supposed to work itself out in our lives — and — we’ll also see how the crowd responds to what he’s taught them.

JESUS ON RIGHTEOUSNESS

We’re at the conclusion of Jesus’ sermon. And it’s an epic sermon — it’s a teaching full of ideas that disrupts our lives because it defines for us — and — for many of us — redefines what it means to be righteous — to be someone who is relationally intimate with God in a holy way. And — this holy, righteous relationship with God always results in a person being changed.

It’s one thing to hear what Jesus has said and grow in a self-righteous knowledge — where his sermon is nothing more than a way to point out the flaws in others. It’s still another thing to hear what Jesus taught and think that you’ve checked all of the boxes — where — if his sermon was some sort of pass or fail exam — you’ve passed. Neither of these are the results of listening to his sermon that Jesus desires for us.

As one author has said…

It is one thing to glory self-righteously in our knowledge about Christ. It is another to glory humbly in Christ as our only wisdom and righteousness. - Joel Beeke (pg 354)

The response of those who — didn’t just hear Jesus — but listened to him — is one of admission that I have failed.

I mean think of what Jesus has taught us in his sermon.

Matthew 5:5 (NLT)

5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

And…

Matthew 5:7 (NLT)

7 God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Or…

Matthew 5:9 (NLT)

9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.

Then there’s…

Matthew 5:38–42 (ESV)

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

Whether it’s what he taught us about fasting — which many Christians rarely to never do — or his warning about love for money — or to not worry — or not judging others — which we all love that teaching until it’s the people we feel justified in judging, right? Biden supporters. Trump supporters. Christian nationalists. Woke folk. We’re all against being judgmental until we get to play judge.

WISE LISTENING | FOOLISH HEARING

Jesus teaches all of this — and much more — and then wraps up his sermon with — we’re in Matthew chapter seven — beginning in verse twenty-four.

Matthew 7:24–27 (NLT)

24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

So there’s a wise way to listen to Jesus. It’s where you’re listening — to what he has taught — leads to building your life on him and his teaching. I love Luke’s take on Jesus’ words here.

Luke 6:48a (NLT)

48 It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock.

There’s some digging deep that needs to be done. Honest reflection on what we’re really building our lives on. There are all sorts of identities that people have built themselves on — we call these our “brands” these days — we put them in our social media bios. And we see the weakness of these identities in those gossipy headlines of some celeb’s botched plastic surgery, or a politician who’s found corrupt, or the student who takes a semester off because they’re mentally or physically exhausted — but what others may see — is that their exhaustion is due to something much deeper going on — the foundation of their life has crumbled away.

But — as Jesus has been teaching us — spotting this in others is the easy thing to do. Spotting it in ourselves is the challenge. For it takes honesty and vulnerability — and many of us are afraid of what this kind of digging down deep will discover.

In 2010, my wife and I started a church in New Haven, CT. I had worked in a church for a few years, finished up seminary training — that’s graduate school for pastors — and New Haven was a college town of about a hundred and thirty thousand people and — at the time — had five churches that we’re preaching Jesus faithfully. So — there was a need.

We started off renting space on Sunday evenings from another congregation and were growing spiritually and numerically. My young family — our three kids were between the ages of two and seven — moved into an apartment that used to be a local neighborhood pharmacy — so it had a weird layout to it. I bring up the apartment because — the church we were renting space from ended up needing their space back so we moved our worship gathering to our apartment. That awkward pharmacy layout ended up working out pretty well for needing a big space for a group to gather. I’m guessing the place where they had all of the shelves for storage was what became our living room because it was abnormally large.

But now we’re in this two bedroom apartment with a congregation of seventy or so folks constantly in and out of our living space and the church has only been meeting for a couple of months and now winter hits. My wife and I grew up in Florida and we always knew that something happened to her in the winter months but we didn’t know what was up. We later found out it was SAD — season affective disorder. Some call it the winter blues.

So life is all out of whack. She’s a stay at home mom. Struggling with SAD, which was slowly morphing into major depression. The church — in many ways — is going great — and — in other ways — it was killing us as a family. And my wife tried hard to make it work. And then she reached her limit. And she told me that she was moving back to Florida with our kids and I could come with them if I wanted.

I can’t express how hard this was for her, for me, even for our kids — as young as they were. It was hard for the people who were part of our church. They had big dreams for our congregation — some of their dreams were bigger than my dreams for us.

But we packed our bags — merged the congregation with another start up church in the area — and moved to Florida. And for six months my wife and I went to counseling together and individually. We thought we were working on our marriage. But now — looking back — what I know is that we were really working on the foundation upon which we were building our lives, our marriage, and our ministry.

Were we going to build our lives on a definition of marriage success or ministry success or parenting success instead of on Jesus? We didn’t think we were doing that — but that’s what we realized we had been doing. And it took a crisis in our lives for us to realize this — that the foundation we had built our lives on was nothing more than unreliable sand that some gray New England winter skies could easily blow away.

Looking back — I also see that this is when we began to listen to Jesus — not just hear him — but listen to him. It was when we started to become a bit more wise about what we were going to build our lives on. Not that we don’t fall back into believing false identities about ourselves — or that something else will give us something that only Jesus can give — but it was one of the moments of learning in life — one of those joyfully painful moments of learning that you can’t go through without coming out on the other side changed.

I wish I could tell you that — in hearing my story — that you’ll now live so wisely that you won’t go through something similar or worse — I pray that you won’t. But please don’t be surprised if you do — the waves crash against both houses in Jesus’ teaching. God has a way of using life to reveal to us what matters, to show us where we’ve deceived ourselves into thinking we’re stronger than we are, to wake us up to the one solid Rock and unmoveable foundation that the we’re to build our lives on.

AMAZED BY JESUS

Which leads us to the crowds’ response to Jesus’ sermon.

Matthew 7:28–29 (NLT)

28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law.

They were amazed at his teaching — but did you notice why? Not because of how culturally relevant his sermon was. Not because of some funny one liners he did for a laugh. What amazed them was that he taught with real authority. That word — authority — also means power — his teaching was powerful, authoritative — there was something about him and his teaching that — to not listen — would be — well — it’d be foolish. Eternally foolish.

Later Jesus will say that it’s like not making sure you have enough fuel for your lamp when you know that most important person is on his way to visit your town to throw the best party ever. And when word spreads that he’s almost near — and the only RSVP he’s looking for is that your lamp is lit — that the fools — because they didn’t listen to his instructions — will be off trying to find more fuel for their lamps when he arrives. And when they discover where the party is taking place — that most important person will say to them, “I don’t know you.” An eerie echo of words Jesus said in his sermon.

Matthew 7:23b (NLT)

23 ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’

CONCLUSION

In his book, Who on Earth is the Holy Spirit?, author Tim Chester writes…

Christ’s commands become lovely to us as he becomes lovely to us. (pg 34)

Jesus’ sermon — and all of it’s impossibly high expectations — becomes lovely to us — and no longer an unbearable burden — the more that Christ becomes love to us. You see, there’s a shift that takes place when Jesus becomes the Rock on which we’re building our lives. Obedience becomes our delight. Why? Because our delight is in the one who was obedient for us.

What Jesus accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection on our behalf — on your behalf — he did so in love for you. Obedience wasn’t easy for Jesus — it was costly. It was sacrificial. He literally shed blood so that — in receiving and responding to his love — you’d be given a new identity built on him — the solid Rock.

All that he’s taught us — in his sermon — commands we disobey, expectations we fail to meet, ideas that we often flat out reject — he perfectly obeyed. He lived up to. He knew we’d reject him and his teaching and he chose to love us anyway. That’s something to build your life on. His love for you won’t get blown around when the wind and waves of life start beating you up.

But the building of our lives upon him and his love for us begins by listening to him. You’ve heard him. How he’s told you to live. What he’s said about our human nature and desire to build our self-worth on fragile identities. You’ve heard what he’s said about himself and you’ve seen how many in the crowd responded.

They were amazed at his teaching because he taught with real authority — with real power. How have you responded to his teaching? How are you responding to what Jesus has been teaching you? How will you respond to Jesus — going forward — and to what he’s told you is the only solid foundation upon which to build your life? Let’s pray.

PRAYER

Father, Son, and Spirit — what an amazing God you are. The God who spoke all things into existence came to earth as man and spoke words of hope, joy, wisdom, peace, and power to a crowd. Words still speaking to us today. Words that awaken us to realities that we often daydream our way through. Realities like who we are, what we’re building our lives on, our purpose, what determines our self-worth, identity, and even bigger realities like your love for us. Father, may your love for us — as revealed in Jesus and confirmed by the Holy Spirit — be the foundation that our lives — now and always — are built upon. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.