Stumbling Block - Week 4

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- And so we have crossed the halfway mark in our series “Stumbling Block”, where we are talking about stumbling blocks that get in the way between people and Jesus.

- Most of us (maybe all of us) know someone who has walked away from Jesus, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. Perhaps some of us are actually in different places in that journey ourselves – considering walking away, or in the process of separating ourselves from Christianity.

- And so we’re considering this idea, that perhaps for most people (perhaps for some of us), we struggle with Christianity, and we struggle with Jesus, unnecessarily.

- Because our struggle may not actually be with Jesus, but rather with some of the things that Christians and churches have added to Jesus.

- And, if it’s possible, we might be able to get rid of those add-ons, and keep Jesus (and keep our faith, keep our relationship with Him).

- And so, so far in this series we have given a run-through of the Old Testament/Jewish Scriptures.

- We’ve talked about God’s calling and setting apart of the nation of Israel, and how that was always done with the rest of the world in mind.

- We’ve talked about kings, tents, tabernacles, and temples.

- We’ve talked about covenants (contracts) that God made with Abraham, and then later with the nation of Israel.

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- And last week we got really specific, and maybe surprised some people, when we talked about some of the ways that the old covenant is not for us.

- It’s not a covenant with us.

- It’s not a covenant for us.

- It’s not a covenant about us.

- The terms and conditions of the old covenant between God and ancient Israel were between God and ancient Israel, and they were temporary.

- Because Jesus came to fulfill those terms and conditions, and to unleash something brand new.

- And so today, we are going to consider, how do we actually, practically, participate in the “new” that Jesus came to bring?

- What difference does all of this make?

- Why is following Jesus’ new, different from mixing and matching the old and new together?

- And so let’s dive in.

- Now, as you may already know, I am a pastor.

- I’ve been a pastor for a number of years now.

- And there’s a question that I have been asked several times, throughout the years.

- Particularly in my days as a youth pastor, because a lot of students really wanted to know the answer to this question, but even nowadays I’ll get asked this question by people of all ages (even people who are outside of the church, not following Jesus, they will ask some version of this question sometimes).

- And the question goes something like this:

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- “Matt, is ______ a sin?”

- “Do you think it’s wrong to do ________?”

- “Does it make God mad if I _______?”

- Now, for those of us with any experience in Christianity, at some point in time we’ve probably been taught about sin before.

- Sin is breaking God’s law.

- Sin is offending God.

- Sin is doing the stuff God doesn’t want us to do.

- Sin is not doing the stuff that God does want us to do.

- And, I hope I don’t lose anyone with this very complicated point here: sin is bad!

- And, since followers of Jesus don’t want to do those bad sins that we know would make God mad, we do our best to avoid them.

- And therein lies the root of this question.

- Because there are lines that are drawn, between the good and the bad, the allowed and the sinful.

- And we need to know where those lines are.

- And, truth be told, most of us want to know where those lines are so that we can get as close to those lines as possible without it being considered a “sin”.

- If you were a Christian teenager who was also interested in dating, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

- But even for others, maybe for someone who wants to know something along the lines of: “How much of my money do I need to give away so that I can spend the rest on myself without it being considered a sin?”

- This impacts our lives in countless ways.

- Because we don’t want to offend God by sinning, but we also don’t want to miss out on something that maybe is permissible and sure seems like it would be enjoyable.

- And so countless questions are born.

- “What does the Bible say about _______?”

- “Is it ok for a Christian to do _______?”

- “Is there anything wrong with _______?”

- The way many Christians understand the purpose of life comes down to “As long as I’m not sinning – as long as I’m not breaking one of God’s rules – then I’m good with God, and He’s good with me!”

- And we even look for loopholes or exceptions to try to wiggle our way out of the things we don’t really want to listen to.

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- The whole thing is a very “vertical” approach to spirituality.

- It’s up and down.

- It’s between me and God, and nobody else.

- The main concern (the only concern) is how my behaviour affects my relationship with God.

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- It’s not really a concern how my behaviour affects anyone else around me.

- Therefore, even if I sin against you, as long as I ask God for forgiveness, then I’m good to go (even if I have to avoid eye contact when I see you at Wholesale).

- But my conscience with God is clean, and that’s what matters.

- That’s the vertical approach to spirituality.

- And this vertical approach, on the surface, appears to put God first.

- It appears to value the opinions of God more than the opinions of man (and that must be a good thing, right?)

- But it’s not.

- It’s hypocrisy at its finest.

- Because the vertical approach doesn’t really put God first.

- It puts me first.

- Because I’m not primarily concerned with how my sin might affect God, I’m actually most concerned with how my sin affects me.

- How might my sin come back to haunt me?

- How might my sin keep me from getting the things that I want to get?

- Not to mention that spending time worrying about how close to the line can I get without sinning, is basically the same as wondering “how far away from God can I be while still being able to get what I want from Him?”

- It’s a very hypocritical, selfish, and fundamentally flawed approach to Christianity.

- But it’s very common.

- Then there’s the other side to this vertical spirituality.

- Rather than wondering “how close to the line can I get?”, this side wonders “how righteous and holy can I get?”

- “How can I get closer to God?”

- “How can I know God more intimately?”

- “How can I receive all God has for me?”

- And these are good questions, and these are noble ideas.

- But, for many who fall on this side, it still becomes all about them.

- Which is why, we all know someone, who is so focused on God and their standing with God, that they are just as self-absorbed as the person who is trying to get as close to sin as possible without crossing the line.

- Now, maybe for some of us (or maybe just for me), I’ve dipped my toes in both side of the vertical approach to spirituality.

- I’ve definitely had times, and areas of my life, where I wanted to know just exactly how close to the line I could get without going over it.

- And then, for far too long of a season I realize now, I also was a self-absorbed, self-righteous, know-it-all.

- If you’re here (or watching online) and you are raising teenagers, and maybe you’re getting close to the other side, they’re getting close to entering adulthood and you are just so excited to be able to enter into this new phase in your relationship with them.

- If that’s the case, then I hope you don’t get a young adult like I was.

- Because, and I’ve told people this before, there’s this sense of the teenage years being difficult.

- But I think the young adult Matthew was the most unbearable Matthew.

- The Matthew who had just a little bit of independence, a little bit of college education to think he was smarter than and better than everyone else,

- That’s the Matthew that was the worst.

- Years later, as a youth pastor in Manitoba, God gave me a family – and gave me one young man – who reminded me exactly of myself from years before.

- And it was humbling and embarrassing to realize how prideful and self-righteous I was.

- And, to be fair, many years later that young man actually messaged me and apologized for his attitude as he was facing teenagers and young adults who were making him realize the error of his ways.

- It’s the circle of life, only it’s the circle of pride!

- But whether you can relate to one side or the other (or both), the point we all need to understand is this:

- Both of these ways to approach faith are vertical.

- They keep our eyes focused up, and they keep our eyes focused inward on ourselves.

- And, not only that, but these vertical approaches to Christianity are rooted in old covenant ideas.

- Vertical spirituality is the result of a mixing and matching theology, taking a bit of the old, a bit of the new, and blending them together into one meal that goes down nice and easy (or it claims to at least).

- Because, God’s covenant with Israel was very vertical in nature.

- By design, on purpose and for a purpose.

- God was creating a nation, setting apart a people to make a difference for the rest of the world.

- And God needed their undivided attention.

- This covenant was designed to separate, to set apart Israel, from other nations.

- They weren’t supposed to mix, mingle, or marry people from other nations.

- They were supposed to kick out (or even kill) misbehaving Israelites.

- And Israel’s obedience to the law would result in their political and material success.

- This is the backbone of the old covenant between God and Israel.

- And it’s all very vertical, on purpose.

- But, that was the old covenant.

- The suzerain-vassal treaty, that was also national and conditional, was a vertical covenant.

- But Jesus’ new covenant wasn’t vertical in nature.

- Jesus’ royal grant, promissory, unilateral, unconditional covenant, was a horizontal covenant.

- And it changed everything.

- As we talked about last week, in Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount, He made several statements that showed that something new was on its way.

- At several different points, Jesus points people in the opposite direction from the good-old law that the people had followed their entire lives (and it’s what their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents had been taught and raised to believe and always put first).

- And Jesus points in a different direction (or even has the audacity to raise the bar, as if to say that the old law wasn’t good enough).

- And, in that same sermon, Jesus also says this:

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- Matthew 5:23-24

o So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar.

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o Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.

- And, upon hearing this, Jesus’ listeners would have shook their heads in disbelief.

- In our culture today, these words sound pretty good, but we can miss the magnitude of what Jesus is really saying here.

- Because we might read these words, and we might apply them to our lives by thinking that we might need to excuse ourselves from a church service to go and make things right someone else.

- And that’s not too crazy of a thought.

- I mean, most of us have still never even done that, but in terms of missing a church service here or there, we’ve all done that.

- And we know, “it’s not a big deal, I’ll go to the service next weekend, maybe I’ll even watch what I missed on Facebook”.

- But, back during the time when Jesus spoke these words, His audience would have heard something different than just missing a weekly service.

- So, last week we said that some of the people listening to Jesus give all of His “but’s” to the old covenant, they would have thought Jesus was being heretical. He was being blasphemous.

- But now, with this, this just wasn’t practical.

- Because, for most ancient Jews, a visit to the Temple was something that happened rarely. Just a few times a year (maybe it would be helpful to think of it as being something like if we only gathered on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday).

- Jesus was actually from the northern province of Galilee, which was far enough away from the Temple in Jerusalem that it took around 3 days to get there, when you needed to go.

- So, think about this as Jesus’ original audience would have heard it.

- There was absolutely no chance, that after journeying for days to reach the Temple, standing in line, holding onto your animal sacrifice,

- There was absolutely no chance that someone would do all that, and then give up their place in line, travel for days to get back home, just to try to look for someone who was upset with them.

- Then, they’d have to travel back to the Temple, get back in line (at the back of the line once again), and do it all over again.

- It’s not practical, it’s not a good use of time and resources.

- The offended person would just have to wait.

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- Besides, the vertical aspect is more important anyways, right?

- It’s more important to make it to the Temple, make things right with God, and then once you’re home, if you should feel so led, then you can make things right with the other person.

- Doesn’t that make more sense?

- I mean, did Jesus really mean to say that making things right with someone else is more important than making things right with God?

- Did He really believe that the “horizontal” aspect of our lives should be prioritized over the “vertical”?

- That doesn’t sound very Biblical.

- Or, at least, that doesn’t sound very old covenantal.

- But, to be sure, it did sound very, completely, totally, brand new.

- Later on in Jesus’ life, after He’s given this famous Sermon on the Mount, different groups of religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus in His words, and we’re told this:

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- Matthew 22:35-38

o One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

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o Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.

- So Jesus is asked this question (not as a sincere question, but as a test, with the goal of trapping Jesus), and Jesus gives the “right” answer that people had been taught for generations.

- Jesus is quoting from the Mosaic Law, the book of Deuteronomy (the final speech that Moses gave as Israel prepared to enter the promised land).

- These are famous words, and (to the ears of His Jewish audience) these are the right words.

- This is the right answer.

- Everyone agreed, everyone knew it.

- Now, maybe this expert in the law had some follow up questions planned and prepared to trap or trick Jesus.

- Maybe he anticipated this very common, very known, very unsurprising answer, and he was going to ask Jesus “Ok, so how do we love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind?”

- Because, there was a very clear answer to that as well.

- You need to obey the laws.

- You need to obey the commands.

- It’s by doing your duty and obeying what God handed down through Moses, that you show your devotion and love for God.

- And so maybe the expert in the law would ask Jesus to clarify, expecting Jesus to give the next common and known answer.

- And then the expert would maybe try to prove that Jesus had ignored one of the laws/commands of Moses, and thereby argue that Jesus doesn’t truly love God.

- Because if you show your love for God by obeying laws, and if Jesus hasn’t done a great job of that (again, His Sermon on the Mount adds a lot of “but’s” to the Law), then maybe this trap is going to work.

- Maybe that’s what the expert in the law had planned.

- But we don’t know, because Jesus doesn’t let him get to his follow-up question, instead Jesus keeps going.

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- Matthew 22:39-40

o A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

- So Jesus gives the expected response, but then Jesus keeps going.

- And the expert in the law may have tried to stop Jesus:

- “A second command? I only asked for one!”

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- “What do you mean ‘equally important’?”

- “There’s only one most-important command, and it’s all very vertical.”

- And yet this is what Jesus says.

- And, once again, Jesus isn’t saying anything completely crazy here.

- In the first one He’s quoting from Deuteronomy, and now here He’s quoting from another part of the Mosaic Law in Leviticus.

- Both of these two commands that Jesus gives are present in the old covenant.

- But, the way that Jesus was connecting them with one another was different.

- This was new.

- Jesus is saying here that there isn’t “one” greatest commandment.

- There are two. And they are equal.

- Jesus even says that these two “greatest” commands sum up the entire Jewish Scriptures.

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- The entire law, and all the demands of the prophets.

- The entire Old Testament, it’s all based on these two.

- You see, to a good Jewish person, “loving God” was the most important command.

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- And, when you asked someone “and how do you love God?” the answer was “obey His commands.”

- It’s all vertical.

- But Jesus is changing things.

- He is moving from a vertical focus to a horizontal one.

- Because now the answer to the question “How do you love God?” is “love your neighbour.”

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- It is by loving the people around you, that you demonstrate your love for God.

- If you don’t love the people around you, then Jesus’ conclusion is simple, you don’t love God.

- The path for me to take, if I want to love God, goes through others that are around me.

- We can’t claim to be obedient to command #1 (love God with all your heart, soul, and mind) if we aren’t being obedient to command #2.

- Jesus is laying the groundwork for the new that He had come to bring.

- And the new wasn’t vertical, it’s horizontal.

- Now, let’s dive into an important word for a few minutes.

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- Jesus says that this second command (equal in importance to the first) is to: “Love your neighbouras yourself.”

- Chances are we have different people, that come to mind when we think about our neighbours.

- Maybe it’s a literal definition, the people who live right beside us, or maybe we think of our friends, our classmates, our coworkers, or whoever.

- But, for the Jewish audience listening to Jesus, when they thought of their “neighbours” the definition was clear.

- Their “neighbours” were fellow Jews.

- The Jewish people saw other Jewish people as their neighbours.

- So to love your neighbour as you love yourself, for a first century Jewish person, meant to love your own people.

- You took care of one another.

- You prioritized the people who were like you, who lived like you, believed like you, acted like you (again, rebellious Israelites were to be punished, banished, or killed, so loving your neighbour is only about good Jewish people caring for other good Jewish people).

- But, as He often did, Jesus came to reveal how that old understanding was no longer good enough, because He had come to bring about something entirely new.

- And so, at another point in time, Jesus found Himself again being questioned by someone with less than pure motives:

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- Luke 10:25-27

o One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”

o Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

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o The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

- Notice how this man gives the same “two commandments” that Jesus gave in Matthew 22.

- Now, depending on the order these events happened, it’s possible that this expert in the law had come to the same conclusion, that these two together are the greatest.

- Or, if this happened afterwards, then this man was quoting Jesus back to Jesus.

- He knows about the answer Jesus has already given (some even suggest it could have been the same expert in the law in both of these stories), but He gives Jesus the answer he knows Jesus wants to hear (maybe to butter Him up and throw Jesus off the scent that He is testing Jesus).

- And here’s how Jesus responds.

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- Luke 10:28

o “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

- But, the story doesn’t end there. Because then we’re told this.

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- Luke 10:29

o The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

- And, in asking this question, this man shows where he falls on the vertical spirituality spectrum.

- Because what he’s really asking is “Jesus, just how much ‘neighbour-loving’ do I need to do to achieve eternal life?”

- “Jesus, what’s the minimum I can get away with and still gain everlasting life?”

- “I know I need to love my fellow Jewish people, but how many of them? How much love do I need to show them? How much time, energy, and money is this going to cost me according to this new ‘two greatest commandments’ ethic that you are claiming here?”

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- This man wants to “justify his actions”.

- This man wants to justify himself.

- He isn’t asking this question because he’s concerned about God. He’s definitely not asking this question because he’s concerned about his neighbour.

- He’s asking this because he’s primarily concerned about himself (it’s all vertical).

- And Jesus responds with a famous story we’ve all probably heard some version of before.

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- Luke 10:30-32

o Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.

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o “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

- So these two good, law-abiding Jewish people walk on past.

- And, based on what Jesus has already taught, we know what this says about them.

- They have not loved their neighbour (their fellow Jew), and so therefore they have not loved God.

- They can go to the Temple and offer sacrifices all they want, but they are not in right standing with God.

- But then, Jesus does the unthinkable.

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- Luke 10:33

o Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.

- Jesus mentions a “Samaritan”.

- Jesus probably had to pause and let all the murmuring die down.

- We talked about this quite a bit before Christmas, but Samaritans were the result of the exiled remaining northern Israelites mixing with the foreigners that Assyria exiled into their land.

- They were viewed as not true Jews, as a mixed race of second-class citizens.

- In between the provinces of Judea and Galilee was Samaria, and good Jewish people would walk days out of their way so that they wouldn’t even go through their province.

- When a Galilean needed to go to Jerusalem, to go offer their Temple sacrifices, they took the scenic route, so that they wouldn’t have to go through Samaria.

- And Jesus makes a Samaritan the hero of His story.

- And, not only that, but Jesus goes over the top, exaggerating all of the things that this Samaritan did to help the man.

- He just piles it on again and again and again.

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- Luke 10:34-35

o Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.

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o The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’

- And then, with people absolutely stunned by this ridiculous story, Jesus forever redefines what it means to call someone a “neighbour”.

- In a culture who viewed “neighbour” as people who looked like them, thought like them, believed like them, acted like them, lived like them, raised their kids like them, voted like them, and were just like them…

- To that culture (to our culture), Jesus introduces something completely brand new.

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- Luke 10:36-37

o “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

o The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

o Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

- The answer to Jesus’ question was obvious, even the expert in the law knew the answer (even though he couldn’t bring himself to say the word “Samaritan”).

- Jesus was asking “which of the three men in the story loved the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind, and with all their strength?”

- Was it the priest?

- Was it the Temple assistant (Levite)?

- No.

- It was the Samaritan.

- Going back to the man’s original question, the question that brought us to this answer, it was the Samaritan who had done what he needed to do, in order to inherit eternal life.

- And Jesus simply says “now go and do the same”.

- “Be the Good Samaritan” (although perhaps Jesus wouldn’t call him the “good Samaritan” because that gives away the ending and somewhat ruins the point He was making in His original context. Maybe He would have said “Be the despised Samaritan.”)

- And now, everything had changed.

- Because in order to love God you had to love your neighbour.

- And, in order to love your neighbour, you had to lay aside your national barriers, cultural barriers, religious barriers, and any other barriers that separate you from anyone else.

- Jesus says that His followers will show mercy and compassion to anyone they possibly can, regardless of who they are, where they’re from, what they believe in, or how they are different from them.

- That is how we love our neighbour.

- And it is by doing that, that we demonstrate that our love for God is real and authentic (which, consequently means that without doing that, our love for God is fictional and inauthentic).

- And, if we don’t love our neighbour with this new understanding of what it even means to call someone a neighbour, then we shouldn’t even bother with going to the Temple and going through the motions of making ourselves right with God, because our lack of love for our neighbour proves that we aren’t right with God.

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- Jesus is changing things from the vertical to the horizontal.

- The path to God – the path to knowing God, the path to loving God, the path to following God – goes through others.

- And it is hard – maybe impossible – to wiggle our way out of that.

- It is hard – maybe impossible – to find a loophole to get around that and still claim the higher spiritual ground.

- So, who is your neighbour?

- Who is my neighbour?

- Who are we tempted to walk right on past, because we’re busy, and they’re just different from us (besides, they probably wouldn’t even want our help anyways)?

- Maybe it’s a classmate or co-worker.

- Maybe it’s someone who lives a few blocks away and we try to avoid going down that street in case we might bump into them.

- Maybe it’s a member of our family that we haven’t spoken to in a while.

- Whoever it is, we need to take Jesus seriously here.

- Because, according to Jesus, our love for that person (our love for “those people”) demonstrates our love (or lack thereof) for God.

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- Because in Jesus’ new covenant, He does not call us to love God AND love our neighbours.

- That’s not it, because that implies that they are two separate things.

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- In Jesus’ new covenant, He calls us to love God BY loving our neighbours.

- We show that we love God, we show that we have experienced God’s love, as His love flows through us and touches the lives of others (especially those who are difficult to love).

- And so Jesus invites us, Jesus calls us, to abandon a vertical approach to spirituality in favour of His horizontal approach.

- Because a vertical approach to spirituality will leave you confused and misguided.

- It’ll leave you guessing at answers to questions that the Bible doesn’t directly answer (“is this a sin? Is that a sin?”).

- And mixing and matching the old with the new, mixing and matching a vertical spirituality with a horizontal one, creates stumbling blocks.

- It makes it possible for us to prioritize opinions over people.

- Theological interpretations over real relationships.

- And it’s not what Jesus wants for us, not at all.

- And so Jesus is hinting at what He has come to introduce, and it all seems so very, new.

- But, before Jesus was arrested and crucified, He would stop “hinting” at it, and He would just state it plainly.

- And that’s what we’re going to be looking at next week, as we continue to wrestle with the stumbling blocks (with our stumbling blocks) and how they get in the way of what Jesus really wants for us (and for those around us).

- Close in prayer

- (*) Now What

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

Scripture:

- Matthew 5:17-26

- Matthew 22:34-40

- Deuteronomy 6:4-9

- Leviticus 19:16-18

- Luke 10:25-37

Pray:

- Pray for God to open your eyes to the “neighbours” all around you. Pray for God to help you see those who could use some mercy and compassion, and then pray for the courage to follow Him obediently into those situations that He brings you to.

- Pray for your love for God to increase as your love for others grows simultaneously. Pray that your love for God would be evident to everyone around you, because of how well His love flows through you and touches the lives of the people around you. Pray that you would have the faith to love God BY loving those around you.

Discussion/Reflection:

- With the vertical approach to spirituality, some people want to get as close to “the line” as possible, without sinning. Others want to get as “holy and righteous” as possible. Have you ever had one (or both) of these approaches to your relationship with God?

- What do you think are some of the strengths to a vertical approach to faith? What are the drawbacks? How do “stumbling blocks” arise when we approach God in a vertical way?

- How do people (in the church and outside of the church) often determine whether someone is a follower of Jesus? Is it based around church attendance or love for others? Is it based around something else?

- What does it practically look like for someone to approach God in a horizontal way that goes through others?

Now What Next Step:

- This week, look for a “neighbour” who you can serve.

- Maybe a classmate, co-worker, family member, or literally someone who lives near you.

- Who is someone who could use a little kindness and compassion this week?

- How can you serve them?

- Do it!