Posture Shift to the Cross
Notes
Transcript
How are Christians to Engage Culture?
How we live in culture as Christians?
There is not a black and a white awnser, Not a Yes or No, but there is a direction.
but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Jesus is counter cultural in this momment, where he chooses a middle ground between what the world wants and what his mission is.
Jesus’ time had not yet come and it would be quiet some time until he goes to the cross, and so in this momment we see him taking a momment as to not awnser to the crowd a statment that would have acused him their and made him the target.
See he is respected as a teacher but yet as any highschool class would teach you is that sometimes we have a problem with the teacher.
“Oh I bet he is wrong” or “I think we can get him to slip up”
So Jesus takes a momment and writes in the sands, something that we can not understand becuase it is not written down, he pushes around the sand in a way that was not recorded.
He then challenges the crowd in a way that was unexpected.
but what sayest thou—hoping, whatever He might answer, to put Him in the wrong:—if He said, Stone her, that would seem a stepping out of His province; if He forbade it, that would hold Him up as a relaxer of the public morals. But these cunning hypocrites were overmatched.
He challenges the crowd that the one who has not sinned may throw the first stone, and in that paradox then nobody could throw the stone at the women.
Jesus upheld what the crowd believed, but still challenged them on why they practiced it.
See he could have agreed that the woman be stoned as it was the law of moses, but we have to remember that Jesus was not for the culture, he was counter culture. Not to erase what was but to change it to what will be.
Jesus challenges the crowd to the why,
Why throw the stone if you too are a sinner?
Why follow this law if you the judge are the gulity?
When we look at this passage in view of the world today we can see that the same principles of Jesus’ character can still apply to us today.
If we are caught in a momment where we are to respond to culture, we have to be ready to walk the fine line of Jesus’ Counter Cultural momment and What the World will listen to.
To be a Christian in culture today takes a active choice to live in the world but for the Lord.
If Jesus never answered the question what do you think would have happened?
If Jesus took the path of the law of Mose and allowed for the stoning then he would have been preaching this world.
If he disallowed the stoning then the would have never impacted the people of this world becuase they already knew he was going to give them that awnser and the were not looking for it.
Christ calls us towards him first, not to fit into a box
I think this is so relevant today, as the world knows us for our rights and our wrongs. when people look to Christians they see a box of rules
in that box of rules we take what we should take part in and what we should not take part in. That is what defines us and that is what seperates us from the world.
See it comes from the Old Testament idea that there needs to be rigid following of what it is like to follow God.
As we read through Leviticus and Deut and see that God creates this rigid system to follow him and there is where the idea that following Christ needs fit within a box just like they did in the OT.
That the rules create our box in which we fit and only they we would be considered a follow of God. That was true, Israel was defined by how they live becuase of a few reasons.
The first is thatt Israel was called to be a holy nation and if the nation is not living as a holy nation will others see them as significgant and choosen by God? So for them to be selected to be a Holy Nation they have to live up to that standard of holy living,
The other peice is that Israel was on Mission but in a different way then we are on mission today, their mission was to Make God known by being one people group together and to make God known through how they followed. Again it point back to that boxed line of how can we follow God if we are outside of the Box.
However when Christ is born and starts him ministry he brings these new ideas.
Never to dismantle the jewish traditions but rather to rewrite them to their fuller extent, That being what the bible is all about after Genesis 2, that what was broken and disorganized would be reorganized unlike what it was rather into a greater extention of what it should be.
Christ in his mission points towards the idea that it is not about fitting into the rigid lines of following God, rather it is about the direction you move towards God.
Christ’s sermon on the mount speaks to this, that his counter cultural message of loving our enemies and the first being last show the heart posture that we need to take when it comes to following Christ.
The heart posture being shown through his whole mission.
Pick up your mat and walk. (Counter Cultural through a Mat)
When it comes to different people in the gospels, Jesus gives them a different understanding of how to follow then the religious leaders.
One of the great stories is when Jesus meets with a paralyzed man and heals him. Yes we can look at this story and see just a miricale of healing and that it is powerful and in just the healing we can look towards how Christ is really shaking things up.
I want us to look at the end of the narrative with this man and see that the words Jesus says in John 5:8
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
The most powerful way to take your belongings and go from here.
More powerful then a mother telling a child to clean their room.
Since Jesus commands the man to take his mat on a Sabbath! The day that there should be no picking up of mats, a day that should be for rest and that is what it was. The OT Sabbath started as that idea of rest, taking after the 7th day of creation that God would rest and reflect over all that had been done.
However when the Jewish leaders started to take things into their own hands they started to create these rules that made sure that the Sabbath was followed correctly.
So when Jesus says taht famous line he is demolishing the rule that we should not pick up our mat and walk.
The issue was not the sabbath, but rather the rigidness of following the sabbath.
Just like our game of simon says if I said to the kids to pat your head and removed all the left handed kids becuase it was improper to pat their head in the game with their left hand. Well the game has been less of simon says then it is simons law.
It was never the strictness of the rules in following the sabbath, rather that it was followed to honor God.
Same goes in the way that when we follow God it is not in the aspect of the box of rules and the rigidness of in or out, rather that follow God is the priorites of how we move towards him.
Even at the end of the narrative in John 5, Jesus states to the man after meeting him again, John 5:14
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
Stop sinning, not to do some niche pratice to ensure that he would contiune to live a good life, rather he is told to stop sinning.
This is my big idea,
We are not defined by rigid practices, but rather a posture.
a posture that is fixated on Christ.
We are Christ centred, Spirit Empowered, Mission Focused.
To be Christ centred is to consistently work toward the Cross, rather then just mantaining the status-quo in the the defined box of following Jesus Christ.
if we defined a set of the perfect way to be a Christian