Stumbling Block - Week 2

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- And so we’re in our second week of “Stumbling Block” where we are diving into one of the most pressing questions for all churches and Christians in our culture to consider.

- Namely, why aren’t more people interested in Jesus?

- Why aren’t more people excited about church?

- Why aren’t more people open to Christian spirituality?

- Why is Jesus so easy to ignore for so many people?

- And, as we said last week, there are many reasons for this, many things that we can point to.

- Many problems and issues and disagreements people have for why they don’t want to follow Jesus.

- But, out of those many things, how many of them actually have to do with Jesus?

- How many people do we know – how many of our family members, friends, parents, kids, grandkids – want nothing to do with Jesus, but the reason why they want nothing to do with Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus?

- These are our stumbling blocks.

- The things that are in the way that keep people separated from Jesus.

- Maybe, whether knowingly or unknowingly, the things that we put in the way, that keep people separated from Jesus.

- And so last week we began this series, and we just sprinted through the Old Testament.

- We covered a lot (and you’re welcome to go back and listen to it if you missed it), but here’s the one thing you need to know to help summarize what we can take from the message of the Old Testament (the Jewish Scriptures), and this is what’s going to help us connect this to the idea of stumbling blocks.

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- All throughout the Jewish Scriptures, God had a plan and a purpose for the nation of Israel.

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- And, that plan and purpose was never just about them.

- God was always up to something bigger than just one powerful nation.

- It was always bigger than Israel. God’s plans and purposes were always for all the nations and all the people.

- God spoke to Abraham, God set Abraham apart to be the Father of the nation of Israel.

- But God always intended for Israel to become the blessing by which God would reveal Himself to the whole world.

- And, as God journeyed alongside Israel, God used many things to keep moving Israel forward to where He was calling them to be.

- God used plagues, pillars of cloud and fire, judges, kings, stone tablets, commands and laws, prophets, Tabernacles, Temples, exiles, returns, and more.

- It’s a long journey, and it’s a messy journey.

- But God used all of it, to get to this place (and here’s where we left off last week):

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- Galatians 4:4-5

o But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.

- Even during times when Israel was so far removed from where and what God had called them to be, God was always moving the pieces into place, to bring about His ultimate purpose, His ultimate goal.

- In what Paul writes immediately before these words, he writes that the law (the Jewish Scriptures, the Old Testament) was a guardian that would only be in place until Jesus came.

- Because everything that God did as He journeyed alongside Israel, all of the plagues, pillars of cloud and fire, judges, kings, stone tablets, commands and laws, prophets, Tabernacles, Temples, exiles, returns, and more,

- All of it, was a means to an end.

- That doesn’t discount the importance of any part of it, and it certainly doesn’t devalue the importance of the Jewish Scriptures.

- Being a means to an end is actually what we want for our lives, and it’s one of the best things that can be said about someone at a funeral.

- “They used what they had, to make a difference for others.”

- “They gave their time, their money, their resources, their talents, their life, to help someone else.”

- “They were, a means to an end. And that end was not just about them.”

- Being a means to an end is not an insult, it’s maybe one of the best compliments you can give (or receive).

- And the same is true for the Old Testament, the Jewish Scriptures, and the journey God took with Israel that is recorded from Genesis to Malachi.

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- The ways God Guided His people throughout the Old Testament were necessary.

- They were part of God’s story that He was crafting in getting everything in place so that the “right time” could come.

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- They were necessary, but they were temporary.

- And so, when Jesus stepped onto the scene, He came to unleash something brand new in our world, and He came to unleash something brand new for our world.

- He came to make all things new (including us).

- But this is not what many people expected Him to do.

- Not only the religious leaders who hated Him, but even His fans and His followers didn’t truly understand Jesus’ plan and purpose.

- Because, in their minds, if Jesus was a prophet, then that must mean that He was sent by God to lead His people back to the good old days.

- Or, maybe if Jesus was a teacher or rabbi, then His job was to help people understand how to apply the ancient laws of Judaism to their current situations.

- Or perhaps, even if Jesus was the Messiah (the Christ, the Saviour), then they would have believed His job was to take the throne – become the King of Israel, kick out the Romans, and restore Israel’s national independence and power – leading them into a time of national prosperity (not unlike the times of Joshua’s conquest and kings like David and Solomon).

- No matter what people thought about Jesus, no one really understood that He had come to do something unexpected, and brand new.

- All of these expectations looked back to the “good old days” and believed that Jesus was here to bring back those “good old days”.

- But, and we said this last week, Jesus didn’t come to restore or update something old.

- He didn’t come to continue on with something temporary.

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- Rather, Jesus introduced something new.

- Now, some of us maybe hear all of that, and we are just so thankful that we’ve done a better job of figuring all of this out now.

- We get to look back, with 20/20 hindsight vision, and say “they may have missed it, but we get it!”

- But, even though we do understand some of it, perhaps some of us do not understand the full extent of the “new” that Jesus came to unleash.

- Because Jesus ushered in a new covenant (a new testament, a new agreement between Him and all people).

- And parts of that “new” aren’t as familiar to us (even us modern and mature Christians).

- And, parts of that “new” aren’t as comfortable.

- Because sometimes “new” pushes us out of our comfort zones, especially when it calls us to let go of the old things.

- “New” becomes more challenging, becomes less appealing, when it forces us to restructure our lives and change the way we’ve always done things.

- Think about it this way:

- This is why, when we buy a new couch, we keep the old one and just put it in our basement.

- This is why our houses are filled with stuff that we know we don’t actually need, but we just can’t bring ourselves to part with it.

- We just stick it on our storage rooms, we cram things up in our attics.

- Because giving up the old is difficult.

- Even when we know that we should, even when we know that we need to.

- Part of us maybe even thinks “I’ll let my kids worry about that when I’m gone, because I just can’t stomach the thought of getting rid of this.”

- And sometimes this is harmless (no need to go home and throw out the old couch that your mother-in-law gave you when you first got married, it’ll only start a big fight).

- But, if we are Christians who are clinging to the old that Jesus came to make brand new, then we have a problem.

- Because those old things that we are holding on to, will keep our hearts distracted, and we will fail to fully appreciate, recognize, or experience the new that Jesus came to put in place.

- And for some of us, who have been following Jesus for a long time, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.

- Maybe it’s ok for us.

- After all, it’s the way we were raised.

- It’s tradition.

- It’s comfortable.

- And we can ride out the rest of our days, with the attics of our spirituality packed full of bits of old mixed with bits of new.

- We can follow Jesus with this messy clutter in our lives.

- We’re not going to lose our faith, we’ve got this whole thing figured out and under control.

- And that’s all well and good, for us.

- But it’s not all well and good for our kids, and our grandkids, who we are leaving behind us and expecting that they’ll be able to clean out the attics and clutter for us.

- But all we’re doing is placing stumbling blocks all over the place, and even if we’re completely fine and comfortable with them, those who are coming behind us (those who are watching us), have absolutely no interest in dealing with the clutter that we’ve left behind.

- They have no interest in cleaning out the clutter that we’ve been living in, demonstrating to them, and raising them in.

- They have no interest in taking the time and the effort to sort through it all in order to find what parts are worth keeping and what parts should have been sent to the dump long ago.

- And you know what is easier to do when you feel that way?

- Just send it all the dump.

- Just get rid of all of it.

- Even if there’s something there that might be worth keeping, it’s not worth the trouble of going through everything in order to find it.

- These are our stumbling blocks.

- And the end result is that filling and cluttering our lives with the old instead of fully grasping onto the new will get in the way between people we care about, and the Jesus who wants them to know Him.

- And it gets in the way, until they just decide it’s easier to throw the whole thing out, rather than sort through it all to find the message of Jesus they might actually be interested in (or at the very least they would find Him and His message impossible to ignore).

- And so again, getting back to how people in the first century reacted to Jesus, for many Jewish religious leaders listening to Jesus’ teaching, they saw Him as being blasphemous.

- He was saying things that you just shouldn’t say.

- It just wasn’t right.

- He said He was greater than the Temple, which as we saw last week was wildly offensive.

- And He just kept at it, He just kept saying outlandish and heretical things that a good Jewish person would never say.

- And so the religious leaders branded Jesus as a dangerous heretic.

- But, even Jesus’ fans and followers assumed that this was all a part of restoring the good old days.

- Even Jesus’ fans and followers believed that before it all came to an end, Jesus and the religious leaders would come to an agreement, team up, and kick the Romans out of their land and bring about a renewed (not a new, but a renewed) time of Israel being its own nation once again.

- Right up until they watched Jesus die, even those who were closest to Jesus were convinced that He had come to extend something old, rather than introduce something new.

- Which maybe is why, when Jesus made yet another extremely offensive and controversial statement near the end of His life, it seemed to go right over His followers’ heads.

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- Luke 22:14-20

o When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. Jesus said, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.”

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o Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.”

o He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it.

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o Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

o After supper he took another cup of wine and said,

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o “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.

- We’ve made this comparison before, but let’s think about it again.

- How would you feel, if last month, maybe on our Christmas Eve service, I stood up here and said “Today we are going to do something different.”

- “Today, as a way to properly celebrate this important day, we’re going to take some time to celebrate my birth.”

- “In fact, from now on, whenever you celebrate Christmas, you can forget about all of the other traditions and all of the other pieces, and you can instead just think about me!”

- If I said that, you would leave and never return.

- Unless you’re in leadership, then you’d call each other, call the district, and maybe call a professional to see how much it would cost to get me a psych evaluation.

- But Jesus makes this statement, and nobody leaves (except for Judas, but he had different reasons for leaving the table).

- Because they figured Jesus said a lot of confusing stuff all the time, but they figured He was still going to head down the path that they expected Him to head down – leading to their national victory (leading to a return of the good old days).

- But the truth of the matter is that we don’t mess around with Christmas, and we don’t mess around with Easter.

- And Jesus shouldn’t mess around with Passover… unless something even bigger than Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt was about to happen.

- But what could possibly be bigger than that? I mean, it ended with the death of the firstborn sons – including the death of the Pharaoh’s son, the death of the king’s song.

- But, notice these words:

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- “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people” (verse 20)

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- The newcovenant?

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- “The” new covenant?

- The one promised by Jeremiah and others hundreds of years earlier?

- Jesus is messing with Passover, but in doing so He’s calling back to an old prediction from ancient Jewish prophets, and He is saying that now is the time for that prediction (that prophecy) to come true.

- Because, even during dark times in Israel’s history, at various times in God’s long and messy journey with Israel, God had sent prophets (messengers).

- And God had used several of those prophets to share a promise of hope for the future.

- Here’s one example from the prophet Jeremiah.

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- Jeremiah 31:33-34

o “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

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o And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

- Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, Jeremiah had brought a message from God that said that something new was coming.

- Jeremiah, speaking for God, said that the old covenant between God and Israel would eventually be completed – and it would eventually be replaced.

- But this new covenant would be different.

- It would not be a new covenant between God and an individual (like God and Abraham), and it would not be a new covenant between God and a nation (like God and Israel).

- This would be a new covenant between God and every individual, every nation, every tribe, every language, every people group.

- And not only would it be a new covenant, but it would be the final covenant, the everlasting covenant.

- The new covenant written on new hearts.

- The new covenant that means the end of the power of sin.

- The new covenant that means that God’s old covenant and promises to Abraham and the nation of Israel were fulfilled (they were completed).

- And so, before we continue on in the message today, I want us to pause and do exactly what Jesus told His followers to do on the night when He said the new covenant was beginning.

- Every week we take time to have communion together, where followers of Jesus remember the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.

- This is open for everyone who is following Jesus, regardless of how long or how imperfectly we have been doing it for (and if you’ve been following Jesus perfectly for a long time, then you probably don’t need to worry about this, because you don’t need Jesus’ body and blood to pay the price for your sins if you’re already perfect).

- But, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, on the night where Jesus allowed Himself to be betrayed so that He could usher in something completely brand new, He took bread and He broke it.

- And He said “this is my body, broken for you, do this in remembrance of me.”

- Let’s take the bread together.

- And this cup, this cup that perhaps some of us have taken so many times it’s lost all power and significance in our lives.

- This cup represents something that changed everything.

- This cup represents something that made everything brand new.

- This cup represents the blood of Jesus, and this cup represents the inauguration, the beginning, of THE new covenant.

- The one that generations had been waiting for.

- And the one that generations still need to hear about and experience for themselves.

- Jesus came to introduce something brand new.

- And that brand new began when He allowed His blood to be shed.

- And Jesus said that every time you drink this, do this in remembrance of me.

- So let’s take the cup together.

- ***Take communion

- And so Jesus used His final Passover meal to announce the end of the Passover meal as they’ve known it and celebrated it their entire lives.

- And Jesus used the Passover to signify the beginning of the new covenant.

- Now, what does this have to do with our topic and our series?

- How does everything that we’ve talked about (both last week and today) go together to actually address our stumbling blocks and the reasons people can so easily ignore Jesus (and ignore His followers).

- Well, as you probably know, this new covenant that Jesus introduced explains why many Christians don’t have a problem eating bacon.

- This new covenant explains why many Christians don’t have a problem with someone working on a Saturday (Saturday being the Jewish Sabbath).

- This new covenant explains why many Christians don’t feel the need to kill an animal every time they make a mistake.

- Do a quick skim through the Jewish law document known as Leviticus, and you’ll find a whole bunch of things that Christians believe they are no longer required to do.

- But, and here’s where our stumbling block issues arise.

- Because even though there are a lot of things we could probably agree with, in terms of what Old Testament laws we don’t need to follow anymore, there are also ones we would disagree on.

- Because Christians and churches have an unfortunate habit of taking bits and pieces of Jewish law, and rebranding it into the Christian movement.

- “Ok, ok, ok. We’re allowed to eat bacon, and you don’t have to kill animals anymore… But I think this one over here, and that one over there still apply, and so you’d better listen to it.”

- Christians have a bad habit of taking parts and chunks of the old covenant between God and Israel that has been fulfilled, and trying to smuggle it into the new covenant between God and the world.

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- Many Christians mix-and-match the old covenant with the new covenant.

- Let’s think of an example that likely all of us would agree on (at least hopefully agree that it wasn’t the best looking back on it).

- The crusades.

- The Pope calls for Christians to take up arms and forcefully recapture the Holy Land from Muslim control.

- Eventually the crusades just become aimed at combatting and coming against any and all groups seen as enemies to the Christian faith.

- It’s seen by many as an immoral, bloody, savage time in history, which resulted in the ruthless and widespread massacre of Muslims, Jews, and other non-Christian peoples.

- But it’s also seen as a time when the Roman Catholic Church experienced an increase in wealth, an increase in power, and an increase in the authority of the Pope.

- But, don’t miss this, during the crusades, Christians were motivated to go and fight, by a church that promised them a new covenant blessing (heaven and forgiveness of sins), if they would obey their interpretation of an old covenant text for ancient Israel (conquering and claiming the Holy Land).

- “If you want this new covenant promise, then first you have to submit to this old covenant law.”

- And their understanding of the text, and their application of the text was horrifying, but that’s exactly what happens when we take bits and pieces of an old covenant that was made to somebody else (and was fulfilled) and try to smash it together with a new covenant that was actually made for us.

- It is this kind of dangerous combination of old covenant texts with new covenant application that create stumbling blocks.

- And this kind of example might seem extreme, and we might say “of course the Crusades were wrong, and of course they mixed old and new covenant theology together in a harmful way, but what does that have to do with me?”

- But it would be a mistake to assume that our brand of Christianity is free from all old covenant mixing-and-matching.

- It’s not.

- Our modern church culture is suffering because of our own ways that we take Jesus’ new, and mix in a little bit of the old.

- People stumble, people walk away, people refuse to engage with Jesus entirely, because of the ways that Christians reach back into old covenant teachings, in order to support their own teachings.

- To help show you what I mean, let me ask you some questions.

- And, I’m going to warn you right up front, that some of these questions might upset you.

- And, even more upsetting, I’m not actually going to answer any of these today, but this is going to kind of leave us with a cliffhanger of an ending for this week, before we dive full steam ahead into this next week.

- So, if any of these questions gets you thinking (one way or the other), then please consider that your invitation to come back next week (and, even if these questions don’t get you thinking, you’re still invited to come back next week)!

- So here we go.

- Why are Christians often the most vocal supporters of posting things like the 10 Commandments outside courthouses, schools, or public spaces?

- Why aren’t we asking for a big display with text from the Sermon on the Mount? Why the 10 Commandments?

- Furthermore, why do we see any refusal to put up a big public display of our religious beliefs as “religious persecution”, but then we go and protest and picket the freedom for someone of another religion or belief to be able to do something that displays their faith, and we say “You can’t force your beliefs on us!”

- Another question to consider: why do some Christian churches call their pastors “priests”?

- Why do some Christians see their pastors as being “God’s anointed one”? (why do some pastors see themselves in this way?)

- Why do some Christians continually speak of God’s impending judgment on a nation (whether their own nation or another nation that contains “those people”)?

- Where would we even get the idea that God judges other nations (especially “other nations” who don’t align with the views and beliefs of our nation), where do we even get that idea in the first place?

- Why would Christian parents kick their children out of the home for being pregnant or LGBTQ+?

- Why do Christians judge non-Christians for not behaving like Christians?

- Why do we take marriage and dating advice from a king with 700 wives?

- Why do pastors preach (and Christians talk) by regularly using the words “The Bible says…” and therefore giving equal authority to everything contained in the pages of the Bible – from cover to cover (the old and temporary is placed right on the same level as the new and everlasting)?

- And why would I risk some of you thinking I’ve gone off the deep end and not coming back next week, by even asking questions like these?

- We could keep going, and each of us have our own questions (and if you did your homework last week and asked someone why they walked away from Jesus then maybe you heard a different question that fits along these lines).

- But here’s the point for us to wrap up today on.

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- Taking the “new” of Jesus, and mixing it with the old, creates confusion.

- It creates confusion, even for those inside of the church.

- Imagine the confusion for those outside the church looking on.

- Imagine the stumbling blocks that seem impossible to get over.

- But, we can do better.

- We can get this right.

- For the sake of ourselves – or at least for the sake of our friends, families, neighbours, coworkers, classmates, kids, and grandkids who are walking away from Jesus because of reasons that have nothing to do with Jesus,

- For their sake, we can do better (we must do better).

- We clean clear out the attics of our faith, keep the essentials, get rid of the junk, and make what we leave behind something that future generations will actually want to go through, want to look at, want to keep.

- We can make it, impossible to ignore.

- The good news is that the answer to all of these questions – and more – will become a little clearer, as we better understand the “new” that Jesus came to bring.

- A “new” that removes (not only removes, but destroys) stumbling blocks.

- And that’s what we’ll be talking more about, next week.

- Close in prayer

- (*) Now What

- Benediction: “We’ve had a church service. Now go, and be the Church.”

Scripture:

- Galatians 4:1-31

- Luke 22:7-37

- Jeremiah 31:31-34

- Hebrews 8:1-13

Pray:

- Pray that God would give you a greater appreciation for His global purposes. Pray that God would do something in you, that would flow through you, and touch others around you. Pray that God would reveal His plans for you that aren’t just about you. Pray that God would use you as a means to an end (His end plan and purpose for you).

- Pray that God would help you “clean out the attic of your faith” and remove any unnecessary stumbling blocks that are keeping the people around you from seeing Jesus fully shine through you.

Discussion/Reflection:

- When you think of something being a “means to an end”, do you think that is a positive or negative thing? Why?

- What do you think about the fact that the ways that God guided ancient Israel (as recorded and preserved in the Old Testament) were necessary, but also temporary? How would you explain the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant?

- Do you find it difficult or at all challenging to think of the Old Testament in terms of “temporary”, “fulfilled”, “completed”, etc? Do you think that many people in church culture today correctly understand the difference between God’s old covenant agreement with Israel, and His new covenant agreement that is available to all?

- Can you think of any modern examples of Christians mixing-and-matching old covenant promises with new covenant promises? Do you think these present any danger (or stumbling blocks)? How have you seen people misuse and misinterpret the old covenant in ways that you haven’t found to be helpful?

Now What Next Step:

- This week, find time to take communion.

- If possible, don’t do it alone. Do it with your family or a close friend or two. Do it during a meal, or set a specific time apart for it.

- Read the passage above from Luke before you take communion, pray together, and have bread and juice (or whatever options you have available) as a way to remember the body and blood of Jesus.

- Also take some time to remember the new covenant that Jesus ushered in on the night when He forever transformed the Passover into being all about Him.

- Take some time to appreciate the fact that Jesus made Passover new, He made you new, and He is making all things new.