The Life of Jesus - Week 4

Jesus’ focus was turning lives around because the Kingdom of Heaven had Arrived

Matthew 4:17 NIV

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

If you ask anyone what Jesus fundamentally came to do or teach - it’s this.

So everything Jesus taught, everything he lived towards - it was this goal.

This word "repent” is loaded. It means:

Change Your Mind and Turn Back to God

Step 1 about repentance is ‘changing your mind’.

This word, metanoeo, meant ‘to change one’s mind’ .

If you decide to take one way, but when you get to a fork, change your mind, and do another path - you have metanoeo’d that choice.

On top of that, for the jews at the time, this word took on an extra meaning. They understood it and used it to mean ‘turn back to God’. It meant not simply ‘make a different decision’, but ‘make a conscious choice to direct your life back towards the Lord’.

Here’s what’s important. It doesn’t mean regret.

There are people who regret all the time - but who don’t change.

This word isn’t really related to the idea of ‘I felt bad for what I did’. If that’s all you do - you’re not doing what Jesus told people to do.

STORY - When you catch a kid - or honestly, an adult - doing something wrong, there’s two kinds of sorry. There’s ‘I’m genuinely sorry I did this, and I’ll work on not doing it again’. And there’s ‘I’m sad that I got caught’.

'Sorry’ without repentance is ‘I’m upset because I got called out about this’

2 Corinthians 7:10–11 NIV

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

look at how Paul describes it - repent, leads you to salvation, and leaves no regret.

That’s crazy, if you think about it. Because we can be REALLY good at the regret part.

And what are the qualities of sorrow and repentance here:

Earnestness, eagerness, longing, concern, readiness to do justice

the picture of a ‘repentant’ person is the same sort of picture as a ‘motivated’ person. Someone who is driven to do the right thing.

and jesus isn’t saying, you don’t have to feel bad about anything you do. This doesn’t mean we don’t ever feel regret. It’s that we don’t get lost in it. We repent, we change - and then we move on.

So Jesus came to preach the kingdom. But he understood two things about his preaching.

Firstly -

Jesus wanted his teachings lived out - not merely repeated

STORY - I’m cooking, paranoid about my kids burning their hands on the stove. ‘Watch out, the stove is hot!’ ‘got it *sticks their hand out to touch the stove*’. I’m telling you this for a reason. Because I have a goal.

James puts it REALLY bluntly.

James 1:22 NIV

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

If all we do is hear the word, and don’t practice it - the bible says we’re deceiving ourselves.

Have you ever thought about what that means practically? James says - if we hear what God has to say, and DON’T practice it - we will draw the wrong conclusions.

Not just ‘off slightly’. James doesn’t say, if you don’t practice it, you won’t fully grasp the vastness of it.

He says - if you don’t practice it, you’ll deceive yourselves about what God is saying.

We hear this, and it’s all nice. But we need to ACTUALLY prioritize it.

Because funny thing - if we listen to the word, but don’t practice it - we’ll deceive ourselves.

We need to

Do practical things every day to listen to God

We often call these ‘spiritual disciplines’.

But in many ways, there’s challenges in the bible to practical action. (The fruit of the spirit = do these things more. Challenge on tithing - actually give).

Talking about this idea, Jesus finishes off the sermon on the mount with this advice:

Matthew 7:24–27 NIV

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Story - If you build something sturdy, you can use it. If you build something flimsy, you make a goal of making sure it never gets used.

In our faith, we can tell how weak or strong it is, by how many rules and regulations we need to maintain it that aren’t found in the bible. How many support structures we put around it to make sure it doesn’t get pushed too hard or nudged accidentally.

This is often the actual, real root behind many rules and practices that pop up in churches overtime. They may start in good places - but they move towards ‘we need to do this, because we’re afraid of people who aren’t like this’.

STORY - I have a 3D printer. And to save resin, I’ll hollow out big things. But that works for statues - not for toys. Because when it’s hollow, it’s easily broken.

when your faith gets to the point that it can’t be handled or used or even nudged without breaking - it’s hollow.

James 1:22 NIV

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Secondly -

Jesus saw his teachings and life as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures

Matthew 5:17–18 NIV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

STORY - When you make music, you’re often layering things on top of each other.

Throughout the OT - the prophets and authors were playing parts of God’s grand story. But Jesus takes all of them, puts them all together, and shows us the symphony. All parts are still there and true - but Jesus shows us how they connect, flow, and progress, and lead into this big story that God was telling since day one.

Jesus wasn’t here to contradict or go in the opposite direction of the Old Testament.

He was there to remind people as to what God had intended in the first place. Because the leaders were really good at running with a small part, and twisting it into this grotesque picture that betrayed the meaning that God had behind it

God created the sabbath for rest - the religious leaders turned it into a legalistic nightmare that was a burden rather than a blessing

And honestly, we can be bad at that too.

We may not do it by making golden idols or bowing to foreign Gods - but we create so many rules and expectations on people that we can make the process of approaching and establishing a relationship with God a burden

The solution is pretty simple - but not necessarily easy

Constantly be in the word of God - Cover to Cover

2 Timothy 3:14–17 NIV

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The thing is - if Jesus saw himself as fulfilling the things God drove towards in the Old Testament - then we should understand what those are, right?

The fact is, Jesus knew the old Testament scriptures. And what he taught people was - ‘I’m here to do that. To fulfill all that’.

And if we live by following in the footsteps of Jesus and practicing the things that he taught - we should know them, right?

We can’t just hand-wave at ‘you need to obey jesus’ and then skip the ‘what do we actually need to do to obey jesus’ part.

By reading the whole bible, we gain this bigger and bigger picture of who God is, what he’s been trying to do since creation. Why he created us. How he works with us.

In the wisdom literature, we find amazing teachings on how to live wisely and ethically

In the psalms, we find many verses from people pouring out their hurt and their questions and their doubts to God, teaching us what it means to have an open and honest relationship with God

in the historical stories, we find many warnings as to the deep and eternal consequences our actions can hold, and we see evidence time and time again of God’s patience and love with us.

But this takes time - even reading through the whole bible cover to cover in a year means 3-4 chapters a day.

I’ll often tell people, it’s better to read a verse than not at all.

But that’s about getting started. The truth is - real depth takes time. It takes careful study, practice, commitment.

Ask anybody who gardens. If you don’t want the work, buy fake plants. If you want real plants - and beautiful ones - you gotta dig, water, fertilize, prune, check regularly.

God intended our faith to be something that’s meaningful and changes and challenges us on a regular basis. He made it for us to work on, grow with, expand, wrestle with, practice.

And the more of the word you know - the better off you’ll be.

God is challenging us to a deeper relationship with him. Will we hear it and acknowledge - and then put on our boots and get to work?

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Beginning the Sermon on the Mount

The context of the SotM is ‘the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven’

The sermon on the mount is the first basic set of instructions for those who have committed to following Jesus -but also an invite to follow Jesus

It is “primarily instruction for disciples about how life is to be lived on this earth in the light of the radical truth that the kingdom of heaven has arrived. But secondarily it holds out an invitation (not entrance requirements) to the crowds to enter the kingdom (e.g., 5:20)”

This is not a set of entrance requirements - it is a set of results that come from a life dedicated to following Jesus

They are however foundational - this wasn’t a pie in the sky hope for the far future of every believer’s life. These were the grass-roots, basic set of lifestyle changes that Jesus expected from every disciple

In the great commission, Jesus says - teach everyone to obey what i’ve commanded. This is one of those times.

The standards Jesus taught in the SotM CAN be attained

Even verses like Matthew 5:20 “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” isn’t a call to ‘you have to demonstrate certain righteousness acts to get in’ - for Jesus knows that our righteousness is a gift from God via obedience

Jesus taught people a radically different way of living that prioritized our relationship with God, and maintaining that

These things Jesus teaches aren’t expected on people before they try and enter - they are the path we follow in order to follow in Jesus’ footsteps while we’re walking towards the kingdom

In fact, many are impossible to follow without the Spirit actively directing us

Jesus believed that his teachings didn’t set aside or abolish the OT - he believed that they fulfilled what the OT was driving towards. And Jesus specifically highlighted - God still looks to OUR righteousness. But that righteousness is a credit given by faith, rather than a standard attained by action.

And as such - we need a better understanding of the OT and the rest of the NT to be able to fully appreciate His words

For example - Jesus says to not worry about food and clothes, but only the kingdom. But he clearly doesn’t mean ‘don’t work or try to do anything’. In other instances he blasts people for being lazy. And the OT / rest of NT praises the value of honest and hard work.

It’s sort of like, if my kid asked, can I go play at the park, and i said, ‘ya, but you need to take a radio and come back at this time and you can’t hang out with these specific people’, and they said ‘ok, i’m only going to care about the ‘ya’.’ They aren’t obeying me, and they certainly aren’t doing what I said they could do.

Matthew 5:17–20 ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

On the topic of righteousness, Jesus teaches that God expects even a higher standard than what can possibly be attained by physical action

Every part of the SotM is meant to correct faulty interpretations by the religious elite - not to redirect OT scripture