Rediscovering Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Good morning and welcome to Living Faith Church. I am so excited to be able to worship Jesus Christ with you on this amazing Sunday. If we have never met before, my name is Aaron. My wife Stella and I are honored to be able to serve on the Pastoral team at LFC. Before we go too far today — I want to say Happy Resurrection Sunday to all of you. As we begin today, I want us to reflect on this unique moment in the Gospels following the resurrection of Jesus.
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.
2 So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”
Years ago I got a call from a man I had met in a coffee shop. We didn’t know each other at the time, and his invitation for Stella and I to join he and his wife for dinner came at a time when we really needed some friends. We had recently moved to Portland, and we had very few friends. We were lonely, but now we were so excited to meet some possible new friends. We pulled into McMenamins got our seat and had some great small talk up front. I’m thinking to myself, I think this is going to be fun tonight. But then, the conversation suddenly turned on us. It was like whiplash. Sadness filled my heart, loneliness settled where a brief glimpse of community had sat just moments ago. Honestly, I was even a bit mad! We had been gypped into an Amaway sales pitch.
I wonder if people coming to church today can associate with Mary, and with myself. There is nothing quite like entering a room like myself, with full expectations of meeting a new friend. Or maybe like Mary, ready to mourn the death of your best friend, savior, and mentor, only to find the tombstone rolled away. Can you image the emotional confusion, the psychological whiplash?
Today, I am asking us to rediscover Jesus. Because, this American generation has quietly been discipled into a dangerous belief that life is supposed to feel good all the time. We ask each other questions like “how are you today” — and it’s a rhetorical question, because Americans are trained to act happy, act positive, even if everything in our world has just come crashing down. Sadness is viewed as a negativity, sorrow is a burden, depression a bother. If something is off… if there is pressure, tension, disappointment, or pain… we don’t just feel it—we interpret it. We assume something is wrong. Something is broken. Something needs to be fixed.
This has led to a rise in what I call, positivity Gospel, a happy Gospel. An assumption that if we will pray the sinners prayer and attend church regularly that we will be happier, more successful, we will avoid catastrophe. “God just fixes it right?” This paints the church with a false picture of being a place where “happy people” go.
For many, we simply don’t know how to enter the church broken, and too many people who are broken in church, are putting on the “happy christian” mask, for we fear that being seen broken will give off the impression that we either lack faith, or have somehow sinned and are incurring the wrath of God. Listen to these words clearly:
Christianity is not the magical power that brings happiness anymore than radiation makes a cancer patient feel good. No! Jesus is the cure for a plague called sin.
Sin has infected every human on planet earth since the fall of man over 6000 years ago. But, just like all medical treatment, pain is involved, discomfort is required for healing.
It may surprise some who read Isaiah 53 to note how the author describes Jesus.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Wait Aaron, isn’t today Easter Sunday, a day to “celebrate” Jesus? A day of pastel colors, pretty dresses and big smiles? That’s what we’ve made it. But the Church can either keep producing Easter services that feel like a Christian version of Project Runway…or we can become a place where real people, with real pain can cast their cares upon the Lord. A place where we can weep on each others shoulders, where depression isn’t a sin to be masked, and real sin can be laid at the foot of the cross without shame.
Because the gospel was never about looking put together— it was about being made whole. And this is why Paul gives us a completely different paradigm to knowing this Jesus.
10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
For Paul, knowing Jesus, was not to be in some utopian state, where everything just magically works out — For Paul, life with Jesus was to know Jesus fully. To know Him in his resurrection and his suffering. To experience His power as well as His pain.
Choose Surrender
Choose Surrender
Over the years, my wife and I have been a part of a few different network marketing programs — Amway, Advocare, Herbalife… you name it. We’ve been to the big gatherings, we’ve had the in home sales pitches, and the group telephone coaching calls. There is one thing that is consistent with nearly every network marking buy in pitch. They almost never tell you how much work you are going to have to put into this thing to make it work. They sell you on the idea of work from home, go on vacation anytime you want, be your own boss. They don’t tell you that you need to work 40+ hours a week to make it work — that people will call you day and night, that you have to build a team, and run training programs. If you want to build a successful life of any kind, you have to surrender some comforts to build this new life.
The same goes true in the Christian life. In our ever growing effort to build a happy life, a powerful life, a successful life, we have inadvertently forgotten a very important message taught us by the great teacher. As Jesus was coaching His disciples in the region of Cesarea Philippi — a region associated with the false god pan — a god whose message was “Follow your impulses. Indulge your desires. Live untamed. Chase your sexual desires wherever they go” — Jesus asked one important question:
26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Jesus is directly confronting a culture that says “Live for yourself” with a Kingdom that says “Die to yourself”. He’s not packaging the Kingdom of God in a “feel good” sales pitch. He’s not preaching, come to church and watch all your troubles disappear. Jesus is teaching His disciples that this Jesus life is one of surrender. But you are building a life in the Kingdom of God, you are storing up treasures in heaven, Matthew 6:20 says. But to gain the Heaven, you must loose your life. One verse earlier, Jesus tells these disciples:
25 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
It’s the divine exchange —
Before this message is over, I am going to give you an opportunity to know Jesus, to surrender your life to Him — but this is not a network marketing sales pitch, I’m telling you upfront, this is not the easiest life you can choose on earth, but it is a life that will last forever in eternity and it as life that is righteous and holy in the sight of the God of the universe. It is a life that stands justified in the eyes of God who will one day judge every thought, motive, and action you have ever had.
Look at how Paul reaffirmed this truth in Acts 14
22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Choose Vulnerability
Choose Vulnerability
So, how do we access this comforting God? Maybe you came today in need of comfort, in need of peace. Today, I want to show you how to access the beautiful comfort God promises. The words of Jesus in Matthew 16 are vital to understanding how this Christian life works. He tells His disciples:
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
It is interesting that Jesus defined obedience in Matthew 16:24 as “take up your cross” Trent Butler, in his New Testament Commentary says:
Part of that punishment was having to carry the cross through the public roadways to the crucifixion site, enduring the ultimate in humiliation. — Trent C. Butler, Luke, vol. 3, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 159.
Jesus did not suffer in isolation as much of His church is prone to doing. Jesus suffered publically, in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the Roman Praetorium, in the streets.
He was publically abandoned by His disciples in the garden
He was publically betrayed by Peter
He was publically raised up on that cross, not in isolation, but with two criminals.
Listen to this carefully, When Jesus said:
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
He is not speaking of private suffering, private pain, or closet depression. He is not speaking of processing loss by staying home from church community and privately taking your grief to the Lord.
The power of Christ is made evident when we live like Christ! We admire strength, but we relate to weakness and imperfection. Listen to the vulnerability of Christ in the garden just before He was betrayed.
38 Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”
How different could your life be if instead of concealing your weakness, your pains, your grief and loss, you had a community around you where you could say, “keep watch with me…” One of the primary means of Christs comfort is the church community. Yet, so many believer isolate their pain. So many of the failure moments in our life are simply a result of isolation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book “Life Together”.
“Sin demands to have a man by himself… it withdraws him from the community.”
When comparing the death and resurrection of Christ, I think that the observation of Robbie Castleman in His book The Last Word is worth noting.
The triumph, the overcoming victory, the conquest of death was confined to the eyes of faith. Today however, the church tends to imitate the world in publicising its victories and hiding its brokenness. — Robbie Castleman, “The Last Word,” Themelios 28, no. 2 (2003): 65.
Paul told the church of Corinth, that his hope for their success as believers was rooted in the fact that they chose to share in his suffering, resulting in their comfort.
7 and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.
Choose Jesus
Choose Jesus
But that comfort comes from God alone.
4 who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
Today, we are rediscovering Jesus! The real Jesus is not one of four-leaf clovers and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The life of following Him includes hardship, loss, pain, and suffering. But hear this clearly—it is also a life of deep, unshakable comfort. Not the kind of comfort the world offers—ease, convenience, or a trouble-free life—but the presence of God in the middle of it. Paul writes:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
4 who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
Jesus Himself promised that we would not walk this life alone.
16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
The Holy Spirit is not distant; He is present, near, and active in the pressure, not removed from it. This is the great difference: the world defines comfort as the absence of problems, but the Kingdom defines comfort as the presence of God. David didn’t say God would keep him out of the valley—he said:
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
Today — if you don’t know Jesus I want to introduce you to Him, the God of all comfort. The Bible tells us how to be saved:
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Today, if you are willing to confess your sins completely to Jesus, and do what this verse says, I want to pray with you. Simply raise your hand right now:
* KEEP YOUR HANDS RAISED HIGH - I HAVE A PRAYER PARTNER COMING TO PRAY WITH YOU
“Heavenly Father, I trust You to save me through Your Son, Jesus. Forgive me for all of my sins. Make me brand new. Because You died for me, I want to live for You. Fill me with Your Spirit, so I could follow You. Jesus, You’re now my Lord and the Savior of my life. Take my life. It is Yours. In Jesus’ name, I pray.”
