Power Failure- Matthew 17

After every mountain comes a valley. That is certainly very often true in the Bible. Moses comes off the mountain, and he finds Aaron and the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. Jesus comes off the mountain and He finds His disciples powerless to help a boy beset by demons. As I read that story, I relate to the disciples. Many times I feel like them. I have a desire to help but the problems I face seem too complex, too intractable for me. As a pastor, I see many people with broken lives. They come to me asking for help. And honestly many times I look at the issues and hurts and say they're beyond me. I wonder where the power of God is.

Of course I know the problem is not with God. He is not short of power. The problem must be with me. But what issues prevent me from knowing God's power in ministry? Jesus suggests two. He says that He is weary of an unbelieving, perverse generation. These are the problems that lead to power failure: a lack of faith and a lack of obedience. Perhaps I don't have the power to make a difference because I'm afraid to trust that God will work. What if I act trusting God and nothing happens? And perhaps I am afraid to do it God 's way because I am trusting in my own plans and strategies.

I think we often fail to know the full extent of God's power to mend broken lives because we doubt and we disobey. I'm glad that Jesus is willing to put up with a wicked and perverse generation.

A Religion to Kill For

In Matthew 12, the Pharisees' hatred of Jesus boils over.  The chapter is full of conflict between Jesus and these religious leaders.  In fact the Pharisees' hatred of Jesus becomes so great that Jesus withdraws from the region because He knows that the Pharisees will try to kill Him.  What is the immediate source of all this animosity?  Picking grain.  The Pharisees come to hate Jesus because His disciples pick grain on the Sabbath.

I have to say that at first blush I would be on the Pharisees' side.  I like rules.  And the Ten Commandments are pretty clear.  God said honor the Sabbath.  The disciples seem to be violating that commandment.  Couldn't they have picked on Friday and prepared for their needs?  Why did they need to work on that day to be fed?  I am a rules person and if God has spoken that is how it should be.

Jesus, however, introduces another factor into the debate: mercy.  He reminds that Pharisees of a Scripture that seems to show the rules being bent in service of human need.  Jesus seems to say that there are times that the rules can be temporarily laid aside so that people can be loved and ministered to.  This represents a rather creative reading of Scripture on Jesus' part.  It shows a willingness to let narrative and story speak as loudly as dogma and theology.  It may challenge a hermeneutic that wants to see rules as the center of the Biblical project.

The amazing thing here is that the Pharisees wanted to kill to preserve a religion that would tell the hungry that they needed to stay hungry even when the hungry were righteous men on a mission from God.  Religion became more important than mission.  It became more important to be dogmatic than merciful.  Even God had to be sacrificed in the name of correctness and right thinking for the religion to be saved.  God save us all from religion like that.    

Rest Up

I think many of us are looking for rest these days.  Part of the rest that we need is physical.  We are exhausted from the schedules we keep, having far too much to do and too little time to do it.  Part of the rest that we need is spiritual.  We have a gnawing emptiness in our souls.  We are besieged with doubt, with fear, with anxiety, with guilt, and with a general sense of disquiet.  We want to turn the thoughts off in our brain but we don't know how.  Alcohol, drugs, entertainment- those are the things that we unsuccessfully use to try to keep our hearts, our minds, our souls at rest.

In Matthew 11, Jesus gives us a different path to rest.  He tells us how rest for our weary souls is found:

1. We admit that we are weary and tired.  This is implied in the words "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened."  This invitation calls people to admit their weariness and their inability to handle life before they come.  Our society says the answer to feeding our souls is found in looking for the answers inside ourselves and calling on inner strength.  Jesus says the answer to finding rest for our souls is found in admitting that we don't have the answers.

2. We come to Jesus.  "Come to me."  This coming suggests that we are leaving all other things behind.  We are relying on Jesus plus nothing to find the rest that we need.

3. We obey Jesus.  In Jesus' day, the yoke was a symbol of discipleship.  When Jesus says, "Take my yoke upon you," he means "Follow Me."  "Obey My teaching."  "Live life as I did."  I think many Christians never find rest because they don't take this step.  They come to Jesus.  They confess Him.  But they never undertake the radical obedience of discipleship.  Without obedience, there is no rest.

It may seem odd to say that Jesus' yoke is "easy."  After all, any disciple knows that following Jesus is hard.  Taking up the cross is inherently painful and even humiliating.  When Jesus says His yoke is easy, He doesn't mean that following Him is without difficulty.  Instead, the Greek word translated easy means well suited or well purposed.  The life may be hard.  The body may not always rest easily.  But the soul knows it has found that meaning for which it was intended.  In confessing our shortcomings, in confessing Christ as our only hope, and in obeying Jesus, we find the rest for our souls that we crave.                

Closet Christian

In Matthew 10, Jesus begins to prepare His disciples for the ministry to which He has called them.  The chapter provides an important reminder that following Jesus is never simply for our own good.  Jesus calls us that we might minister to others.  This message has been lost in the Church today.  Especially in the West and even more so in America, we market a Christianity that is all about self-fulfillment and the meeting of perceived needs.  Jesus never intended His disciples to follow simply for their own good. Instead, Jesus intended that His disciples be trained to minister, to do the very work that He did.


Our Christianity has become ingrown, however.  We lack the missionary vision that Jesus had.  Part of this is because we do live in a selfish culture, one that cares far more about our own comforts and hopes and aspirations than about the needs of others.  But another part of our ingrown Christianity is quite honestly our embarrassment with Jesus.  Miracles aren't received well by scientific skeptics.  Hell doesn't merge well with postmodern notions of tolerance.  Jesus' call to be sacrificial doesn't sit well with our self centered, therapeutic culture.  Many of us have lost our willingness to speak for Jesus because Jesus doesn't always fit well with our culture.  The price of speaking might be high.


Jesus gives a stern warning about this in verses 32-33.  He says there: "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.  But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven."  There is a high price to shame about Jesus.  There is a high price to not being willing to identify with Jesus in front of others.  Jesus' words call us out of our closet Christianity.  They move to us be ministering and to have a Christianity that is about serving Jesus and others not ourselves.             

NT Wright's Translation of the Beatitudes

As we have been reading through Matthew, I have been reading from NT Wright's Matthew for Everyone as a type of devotional commentary.  So far, I highly recommend the book.  Wright provides his own translation of the passage at hand and then writes about it.  I wish I had this book when preaching through Matthew as it really is a treasure trove of illustrations and sermon starters.

I loved Wright's translation the Beatitudes so I will paste it here for you (at least the first 10 verses):

Wonderful news for the poor in spirit!  The kingdom of heaven is yours!
Wonderful news for the mourners!  You're going to be comforted!
Wonderful news for the meek!  You're going to inherit the earth!
Wonderful news for the people who hunger and thirst for God's justice!  You're going to be satisfied.
Wonderful news for the merciful!  You'll receive God's mercy yourselves.
Wonderful news for the pure in heart! You will see God.
Wonderful news for the peacemakers! You will be called God's children.
Wonderful news for the people who are persecuted because of God's way!  The kingdom of heaven belongs to you.

I love that Wright renders the word that is usually translated "blessed" as "wonderful news."  I think that, that really communicates the meaning and the emotional intent of this passage.  Great stuff.  Here is a link if you are interested in finding out more about the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Everyone-Chapters-Tom-Wright/dp/0664227864/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325792666&sr=8-1

What Would Jesus Say?

A few years ago the letters WWJD were all the rage in evangelical circles.  Those letters of course stood for What Would Jesus Do?  The implication was simple: whatever Jesus did we should do the same.  The problem was that determining what Jesus would do sometimes seemed tricky.  What one person thought Jesus might do seemed to be the very opposite of what someone else thought He might do.  WWJD proved not to be an easy thing to figure out at all.


Perhaps a better question would be WWJS: What Did Jesus Say?  Perhaps the words that Jesus spoke give us a better insight into what Jesus did and what we should do as well.  In Matthew 4:17, Matthew summarizes the preaching of Jesus in a single sentence.  He says the whole of three years of preaching comes down to this one relatively simple expression.  Matthew writes: "From that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.'


The phrase kingdom of heaven is rendered the kingdom of God in other Gospels.  Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience with deep cultural concerns about taking God's name in vain, was probably trying to avoid unnecessary use of God's name and thus substituted the word heaven.  This might confuse us into thinking that Jesus was speaking about some future time and future place.  But Jesus was not.  He was not preaching repent so that some day you might be ready for an eternal kingdom.  Jesus' preaching was more than that.  He was preaching that God now is breaking into history and all need to be ready.  All need to turn from disobedient and selfish actions to be ready to be a citizen of and participant in God's kingdom.  


The kingdom of God is here now.  God is spreading His rule and His reign in this world.  And we participate in that reign and rule only as we have faith in Jesus and only as we turn from our sin and obey His Word and command.             

Religious Not Welcome

Who would think it?  The religious not welcome at a revival! That is the very thing we find in Matthew 3.  When the Pharisees and Sadducees make their first appearance in Matthew's Gospel, we see the sneers on their faces.  We hear the boos from the crowds gathered there to see John.  We know the Gospels and we know how the story ends.  We know that these religious leaders are not the good guys.  But those who witnessed these religious leaders come to John did not know the end of the story. They most certainly did not see the religious leaders as bad men.  Sure the Sadducee's were the party of power and privilege.  They associated with the upper classes and had a liberal religion that didn't often win the favor of the crowds.  But to say they were bad men might be strong.  And the Pharisees, they were beloved.  Men who were the very ideal of holiness to their generation.  Yet, John tells them to repent and calls them a brood of vipers.  How can this be?  The answer was simple.  They relied on their genealogical status to make them right with God.  They thought biological descent was the key to their salvation.  But John tells them to look at their deeds.  He says produce fruit if you want to know you are God's children.  And maybe the religious need the same lesson today.  Maybe we need to know our assurance is not about having a branch on the evangelical family tree.  Maybe we need to know that our assurance is about the fruit of our faith, the obedience that shows in our lives.