Walk with Jesus

Over 700 years before the birth of Jesus there was a man named Isaiah. He was one of God’s great prophets and had many things to say regarding the Jewish people and their relationship with God. He offered many prophecies concerning the birth, life, and death of Jesus.

During this time of Advent, we will be allowing this Old Testament text to give us insights on how to live our lives today with God. We begin today with looking at what it means for us to “Walk with Jesus.” Our scripture comes from Isaiah 2:1-5. The words will be on the screen.

2 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 3 Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. 5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

Please pray with me…

Many times, we can find in scripture sayings that are much easier said than they are to emulate. Jesus many times offers us such sayings since after all he was the only one who walked the earth without sin.

Many of us that are followers of Jesus believe that we should choose to walk with Jesus in the same manner that Isaiah is speaking of walking with God. We have a God that wants to be in relationship with us. A God that wants to walk with us and talk with us.

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Part of the problem with attempting to walk with Jesus is deciphering what that means in scripture. We find God viewed in a number of different ways. Part of following Jesus means figuring out what this actually means for us.

Are we going to view him as the God above looking down at us? Are we going to attempt to live our lives focused on God judging us and deciding if we are doing good enough? Is our focus going to be on the God that is always deciding if our actions are good enough.

Are we going to see him as the God that takes care of us? The God that That was there for the Jewish people during their time in the wilderness and who constantly would free them after they were willing to cry out to him.

Or are we going to view him as the God that interacts with us and wants to work with us in understanding him and serving him? Do we see God as someone we are in contact with and who we have enough belief in that we are going to be willing to serve him.

We at The Church of the Good Shepherd have been using this third understanding of God during my time here. We are desiring to interact with God, to get to know God, to be willing to listen and follow the will of God.

But all of these are available choices. We are the ones that get to decide what kind of relationship we want to have with our God. By the way, this was rare for the gods that were known during Jesus’ time. It was believed that you treated the god how the god wanted to be treated or you would be punished.

When we read through the Old Testament text, we realize that the Jewish people often made the wrong choices. The Jewish people were God’s original chosen people. Therefore, they many times lived their lives with a belief that no matter what they did God would come and rescue them. We don’t have to worship him. We don’t have to follow him. We just need to cry out to him when things get bad enough and we will get rescued.

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Therefore, we see throughout the Old Testament  the Jewish people choosing one of these three ways as ways to view their relationship with God. They tended to change views as it benefitted them based off of the way they were living their lives during that time.

God would attempt to use the prophets like Isaiah to bring the people back into a relationship with him before it would reach the point of them needing to be rescued. A prophet is someone who speaks for God. They were God’s main form of communication with the people before Jesus and later the Holy Spirit.

Prophets were usually not well liked by the people because they often said things that the people didn’t want to hear. They would let the people know how things would end up if they kept walking down this path away from God. They believed that even if the prophet was right that God would rescue them, so it often didn’t cause them to be willing to change their ways.

When we look at our own lives, I think it should be easy for us to admit that we are not much different than the Jewish people. We many times will live our lives as Christians and non-Christians looking for human answers when godly intervention would make for a better life.

We make the same choices as those before us. If we are Christians, we believe that God loves us and if things get bad enough, he will rescue us. We may not have prophets attempting to sway us, but we have the Holy Spirit.

We have the helper left by Jesus to guide and direct our lives. We have God within us attempting to lead us down a path towards God and not away from God. We walk with Jesus when we listen and respond to what the Holy Spirit is guiding us to do.

We are able to live happier lives and to serve God in the way he wants us to serve him when we decide that we are going to listen to the Spirit that God has provided for us. We have a connection to God that the Jewish people before Jesus’ time never had.

God will also have those that can act like prophets speak into our lives. God will give messages to those around us to give to us. He will also give us messages to convey to those that he wants us to help grow in their relationship with him.

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God has provided us a way to be able to walk with Jesus. Verse two tells us that all people will be able to interact with God. The Jewish people they were God’s chosen people. Therefore, they believed that when the Messiah came down to earth it would be only for them.

We know that this was not the case. Jesus came down to allow all people the ability if they chose to accept it to be free from the power of sin. The Jewish people only expected to be free from worldly oppression.

God instead offered each one of us a chance to be free from spiritual oppression. God knew of the bondage that sin has had on the lives of the people since shortly after creation. He wanted to take some of that burden away from us.

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Jesus calls himself the way, the truth and the life. He wanted his disciples and us to know that he is the way. It is through Jesus that we are able to interact with God and eventually will be able to reside with God in heaven.

Jesus came down and lived amongst the people and then suffered and died on a cross so that our sins could be forgiven. It was through dying for us that Jesus became the way to leave the power of sin and death behind.

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Jesus is the truth. It was during his time on earth that he spoke to twelve people most of the time and anyone that would listen all of the time. Jesus spoke to those that would listen to the truth. He changed up the way that God was to be looked at by not only those that were Jewish but by all of humanity.

Jesus not only spoke the truth, but he also lived the truth. Jesus became the example for each of us to follow. He became the way that each one of us should choose to live our lives. We discover what that means by reading the scriptures provided by those early followers who were the first to attempt to walk like Jesus.

It was through walking with Jesus daily that the disciples learned about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. They were given insights into a different way to view what we call the Old Testament. They received a different understanding of how God wanted scripture to be lived out and how he wanted people to be treated.

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Jesus also is the life. It was and is through Jesus that the power that sin would have on each one of us was conquered. It was through Jesus that we became able to have eternal life. It was through Jesus that the people went from being hopeless to have hope in what was and is to come. Jesus continues to bring life to those that are willing to walk with him.

Jesus is not only the way, the truth, and the life but he is also our teacher. It is the teachings of Jesus that have been left for us within scripture that allows for us to grow in our understanding of what it means to walk with Jesus. It helps us discern through the Holy Spirit what we are called to do to assist in God’s mission for us and through us.

There are many people who are not Christians that do recognize Jesus as a great teacher. They see what he did as an attempt to educate those within Jewish society on how to treat those around them.

What they don’t understand is that Jesus was teaching the disciples and through their writings us, God’s plan for society. He was letting all people know that we are not to be divided. We should choose to be united. We should all choose to walk with Jesus.

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We live out the lessons given to us by Jesus here at The Church of the Good Shepherd through our mission statement. We walk with Jesus by connecting to those around us. We need to continue to seek ways that we can connect with our neighbors.

We are called to love all people. This part ofour mission matters because it points out that we accept each person as they are. We see in scripture how Jesus showed love to those he meant no matter what they had done and no matter what life had thrown at them. We areto do the same.

And we are to grow in faith together. We are to be united in seeking out ways to connect and show love to those around us. We are to be connected in prayer together to help us understand what God desires for us to do as a church to serve him.

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Do we “really” want to walk with Jesus? This seems like a question with an easy answer until we look at what that means. This means that we are going to focus on the way Jesus walked and talked and interacted with those around him.

That focus should then turn into action. We should attempt to be as Jesus was to those around him. We should desire to as the saying goes walk the walk and talk the talk. We are going to choose to remove self-gratification and our desires from the equation.

We are saying when we say we “want to walk with Jesus” that our focus will be on what Jesus would do in the situations and circumstances we find ourselves in. We are saying that we are going to have the faith to move forward many times out of our comfort zone.

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In our first scripture reading Mary helps us discover how to walk with Jesus. We need to be ready. We need to listen. And we need to respond. Mary was put into a tough situation but that didn’t stop her from walking with God.

 First, she was ready to hear from God. Life can sometimes get in the way of our communication with God. We can allow ourselves to get so busy that God’s voice is in the background, but we are unable to distinguish it from the other noises around us.

This seems to not be the case for Mary. She is understandably shocked by the angel’s appearance, but she seems to be open to receiving the message. We need to make time in our schedules to give God a chance to let us know what we need to know. Even if it is just five minutes, we need to try to make time so that God can let us know what is on his mind about us and what he would like to do through us.

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The second point is that we need to listen to what we are being told. When God speaks to us, we need to be open to what he is saying to us, even if it is shocking. God speaks to different people in different ways.

When you discover the easiest way for you to receive messages from God you need to focus on what God is trying to say to you. I am sure that Mary could not believe what she was hearing but she still listened to what was told.

Listening might also lead us into questioning God. It is possible that when we receive the message from God that we might need some clarification on the plan or on how in the world is that plan even possible.

There are some that say we should respond to God without question. There are times that is the right choice. But there also may be times that we need to know more before we can go and serve God.

It is understandable why Mary had questions. After all, it is not every day that you are told you are going to have a baby when you have never had relations with a man. Most of the time what God is asking from us will not be as hard to comprehend as this, but if we need some clarification, we need to be willing to ask.

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These steps all lead to the most important. We need to be willing to accept what we have been told and then go and serve the Lord. This can many times be the hardest part. This is where we have to be willing to often step out in faith and believe that God will be there for us.

We do this when we respond like Mary responded to the angel. After being told this unbelievable event that she was going to be a part of. And being willing to ask the question of how can this even be possible. Mary says to the angel “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” She responds that she is willing to believe and follow the will of God.

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God has a plan for us just like he had a plan for Mary. Preparing, listening, and questioning are good but let me be blunt, if we are unwilling to take the last step and respond than we are not fulfilling the will of God. We need to be willing to have the faith to respond to our calling.

Our main scripture ends with these words, “let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Jesus is there for us when we take this step out in faith and are willing to walk with him. This does not mean that we will not face obstacles. There will be roadblocks, things that will slow us down, but we can know that God will be there.

When the roadblocks occur God will help us overcome them. This usually happens in one of three ways. The first is that God will remove the obstacle himself, meaning he will supernaturally remove what is hindering our calling. The second is that he will put people into places to help us around the obstacle.

God will have people in place to help us in our time of need. These may be people praying for us, assisting us on our mission, or just people that have the authority to help us along the way. God can even use people that don’t believe in him to help us overcome obstacles.

The third is that many times God has already given us the gifts to overcome the obstacles in front of us. We have a God that has made each one of us unique to take on the unique tasks that he has prepared for us. We need to have the faith that he has not left us unprepared.

All of these points lead to one thing. We need to be willing to walk in the light. We need to see Jesus as the light of the world that will be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We need to be willing to trust in Jesus and be willing to walk with Jesus each and every day.

Please pray with me…