WCF Vision Month - Year 3

Do what Jesus Did!

Matthew 11:28–30 NIV84

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This is Year 3 of our Vision Statement for WCF - As followers of Jesus we wish to:

Be with Jesus;

Become Like Jesus ;

Do what Jesus did!

From today we are introducing our new series leading up to Christmas on the practicalities of imitating the life of Jesus in doing what Jesus did.

We shall be following today’s sermon with 9 talks in a series entitled: Learning “the unforced rhythms of grace.”

Witness

Sabbath

Generosity

Prayer

Community

Scripture

Solitude

Fasting

Service

Our series takes its title from Eugene Petersen’s translation of Matthew 11:28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I. DO WHAT JESUS DID BY WALKING, WORKING AND IMITATING HIM!

Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

As followers of Jesus, we are invited to walk with and learn from Him, to take His yoke upon us which will not be “heavy or ill-fitting” and by keeping “company with me, you’ll learn to live freely and lightly!”

And this shows the vital connection between all 3 stages of our purpose statement - if we are to do what Jesus did we must first spend time with Him and become like Him!

Dallas Willard sums up these verses by saying: “Jesus…invites us to leave our burdensome ways of heavy labour—especially the “religious” ones—and step into the yoke of training with him. This is a way of gentleness and lowliness, a way of soul rest. It is a way of inner transformation that proves pulling his load and carrying his burden with him to be a life that is easy and light (Matthew 11:28-30).”

Jesus is not inviting us to a life of quietude or solitude; he intends us to get involved and He knows it will require effort on our part but the effort will be much easier to bear if we remember that we are never called to live this life alone. We yoke ourselves to Him so that the burden of the workload we carry is easier.

We do what Jesus did by walking and working in harmony with Him!

Did you notice, Eugene Petersen’s phrase “burned out on religion”? This happens all too frequently!

Jesus issued His invitation to all who labour and are heavy laden. This reminds us of Matthew 23:4, where the scribes and Pharisees are accused of making the people carry ‘heavy loads’ by their legalistic demands. A religion that was meant to honour God, instead was being used to condemn the ordinary Jewish believer to hard labour.

This burden is described as a “yoke” which was used sometimes in the Old Testament a symbol of oppression (Isa. 9:4; 58:6; Jer. 27–28), but was also used in a good sense of the service of God (Lam. 3:27) and in later Jewish writings for obedience to the law—which every Jew should be honoured and proud to carry not out of obligation but out of love for God and love for your neighbour! Yokes were not made to be oppressive because they were created to make the carrying of a burden easier!

Jesus offers “rest” from this, not by releasing us from the obligation of obedience to God; because in Matthew 5:20, He says “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Jesus sets a high bar but because of who he is, “gentle and humble”; - “my yoke is easy” (Grk chrēstos meaning ‘good’ and ‘kind’,) therefore what He is willing and able to do for us in carrying out load, to yoke with Him is to find “rest for your souls”(see Jer 6:16) and be relieved of the burden!

Jesus’ words show us why we need to be so careful about having a religion which is not based on a relationship with Jesus!

Prayer; fasting; Sabbath observance etc can so easily become duties that rob us of joy and burdens that restrict us - things we feel we must do to buy us favour with God and religion can become sour and dour in equal quantities very quickly BUT this is not how it is meant to be.

Jesus said, “I have come to give you life and life more abundantly:.” He said that He came to “set us free!”

So for example, in the Sermon on The Mount in Matthew 6, Jesus’ calls us to go beyond the Scribes and the Pharisees when they prayed, trying to persuade an unwilling God to hear them by attempting to earn His favour or impress Him with fine-sounding words and lengthy prayers, by reminding us that we can be confident that we pray to “Our Father in Heaven” delights to hear us and loves to “give good gifts to His children”(Luke 11:13)! So like the disciples who observed Jesus praying, we are comfortable and confident in the Father’s presence; learning not just His words in prayer but understanding the depth and profundity of what they mean and also having the same faith, by the power and unction of the indwelling Spirit of God, we can say like Jesus did, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me.” (Jn 11:41–42).

Likewise when we give to the needy, we don’t make a show of it or when we give we don’t do it begrudgingly or to be admired by others, we do it in secret, without drawing attention to it and are content with God’s reward for our generosity!

This is what makes our giving; our praying; our fasting go “Beyond the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees”. This is what makes us like Jesus and enables us to do what Jesus did, because we serve God out of a willing heart and as a response to His generous grace.

We love Him, says the Apostle John in such a way that obeying God’s commandments are “not burdensome” (1 John 5:3) as the desire to please God and do what He asks, arises from “love” just as taking care of your loved ones is never burdensome if done out of love!

And this is important to note as we embark on this series, for as important as spiritual disciplines are to enable Christ to be “formed” in us(see Gal 4:19) they are note an end in themselves.

The aim is not simply to pray more; read Scripture more, etc but to be “transformed” by the Spirit of God and become more like Jesus on the inside - our thoughts; feelings and intentions - and then the life of Jesus will come through us on the outside!

By being with Jesus we become like Jesus as we pray; read scripture; fast; give to the needy etc and by becoming like Jesus we begin to do what Jesus did!

Oscar Wilde once said that “by the age of forty everyone has the face they deserve.”

This is a truly profound, and especially in the spiritual realm where the face without reveals the person within, “expressed by the face—to the heart and also the soul”(Dallas Willard).

As we spend time with Jesus and learn from Him we become like Him and then begin to imitate Him in His actions and behaviours.

As God’s Spirit works in us and His fruit grows in us so we become increasingly by His grace “blameless and harmless, children of God, faultless in the midst of a twisted and misguided generation, from within which they shine as lights in the world, lifting up a word of life” (Philippians 2:15-16).

So let us, as Paul puts it: “work out your salvation with fear and trembling fpr it is God at work in you both to will and to act, according to His good pleasure.”(Philippians 2:12).

“We are 100 percent responsible for the pursuit of holiness, but at the same time we are 100 percent dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us in that pursuit. The pursuit of holiness is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the Christian life.”(Jerry Bridges).

II. DO WHAT JESUS DID BY RELYING ON HIS PRESENCE & BELIEVING IN HIS PROMISES!

So how do we do this? How do we become like Jesus and do the things that He did? -

There is nothing mysterious or magical about this process of inner transformation to outward behaviour.

Jesus has made it abundantly clear how we are to move from behaviour to action - it is through effort. It is as we pray; read scripture; spend time in communion with Him; fast; serve.

Jesus modelled godliness for us by doing these things and He did it to show what we must also copy if we are to be like Him.

We cannot have the life of Jesus without adopting the lifestyle of Jesus!

We become like Jesus by doing what Jesus did. We are to “seek God and His righteousness” and we are to do this daily and continuously!

Easy to say, mighty difficult to do! Yet we are not left without instruction on how to to this:

Take for example Jesus final instruction to His disciples in Matthew 28

Jesus says to His disciples that everyone who follows Him must be taught to “do all things that I have commanded you.” but don’t miss what He said just before that! “All authority in heaven and earth is given to me” and this is the key to our being able to “do all things” that he commands! Jesus has the divine right and the power to enable us to do what He did while on earth and this is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit Jesus did on earth is given to us - see John 16:5-16

John 16:5–16 (NIV84)

“Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

“In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”

This explains the explosive power of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles.

Jesus had ascended into Heaven but was still powerfully at work through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit which He promised them and God poured out on them, enabling the disciples to preach and to heal and to deliver men and women from the power of Satan into the Kingdom of God

They discovered, as He told them in Matthew 28, that He had in fact not left them! They discovered the reality of His promise - “Lo, I am with you always” - every minute of every day so that they and we can live this life and do His work in the way He intended us to live and do it! (see Matthew 28:18,20).

As followers of Jesus, we are called then to not only follow Him by listening and learning from His teaching and example, obeying His commandment d and believing and applying His promises as we continue his work on earth!

This means preaching the gospel; making disciples; baptising them; healing the sick, praying for the lost, bringing the life of Christ into the darkness of this world!

And we do this at the same time as maintaining our life with God by deepening our knowledge of His teaching and taking every day steps to grow closer to God in our spiritual practices.

Think for a moment of how Jesus’ discipled did this! Lets look for a moment at Matthew 9:35-10:8

Matthew 9:35–10:8 (NIV84)

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

This is so interesting.

These followers of Jesus had been with him for months now and watching Him do the very things that He is now calling them to do, and now He is sending them out - as messed up as they are! - Matthew a newly called tax-collector; inconsistent Peter; even Judas whose heart was not true - and he says to them in effect go and do what I’ve been doing because ‘freely you have received, freely give!”

Imagine how they felt at this moment when they were called to DO WHAT JESUS DID!- What? Are you serious Jesus. We are not you! We don’t know God like you do! We have never been able to perform miracles like you have! You can’t be serious!

We can imagine when they first set off, two by two that they were filled with questions and doubts and fears and yet not long after they were to return in sheer amazement saying, “even the demons submit to us in your name!”(Luke 10:17). They realised they could, by His promise and power, transition from being with Jesus to doing what He did!

And we can to! Peter says in 2 Peter 1:3-4

2 Peter 1:3–4 (NIV84)

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

“Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes--all the time! It must be that way, for God's glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of the Spirit within us, God gets the glory. He wants to reveal Himself to a watching world.” ― Henry Blackaby, Experiencing the Spirit: The Power of Pentecost Every Day

So, try to get your head around John 14:12

John 14:12 NIV84

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

Interpreters have tried hard to make sense of what Jesus means here, especially because qualitatively Jesus performed miracles that no disciple has ever performed to the same extent - calming the storm; feeding 5000 with 5 loaves and two fish - but quantitively it is the case that His disciples have done “even greater things than” He did whilst on earth because “Jesus’ earthly ministry was limited in time and space. He served the Father for three and one-half years and never outside the boundaries of Palestine. The disciples, on the other hand, as Acts clearly attests, carried out ministry that was greater geographically, in terms of numbers of people reached and long-lasting effect.”(Gangel, K. O. (2000). John (Vol. 4, pp. 266–267).

And yet in an important sense we need to remember that, “In the final analysis, the one who works in the church is its Head and Lord, and hence the powers of the kingdom are available only through believing prayer in Jesus’ name… The outcome then will be the glory of the Father through the Son.” (Milne, B. The message of John: here is your king! p. 215).

And who know what “greater things” He still has in store for us to do here in Whitby?

And so as we seek to do what Jesus did, let’s take to heart John 14:13-14

John 14:13–14 NIV84

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

The world desperately needs the Church to reach out in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring the life of Jesus out into the Community!

“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who…are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.”(Dallas Willard).

And let us be mindful of the words of Thomas A Kempis in his Imitation of Christ, said: “On the day of judgment, it will be demanded of us not what we have read, but what we have done.”

Lord I not only want to BE WITH JESUS and BECOME LIKE JESUS, I want to DO WHAT JESUS DID!