8. Jesus, Truth, & Spin [Matthew] - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

Matthew five chapters 33 to 37 again you have heard it was said to those of old you shall not swear falsely but shall perform to the Lord but you have sworn but I say to you do not take an oath at all either by heaven for it is the throne of God or by the earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the Great King and do not take an oath by your own head for you cannot make one hair white or black let what you say be simply yes or no anything more than this comes from evil alright we we're continuing through Matthew and we've been crawling quite literally crawling through this first section that's one of the greatest collections of Jesus's teachings it's one of the first collections of Jesus teachings that you come across in the Gospel of Matthew we in the English church tradition have called it a Sermon on the Mount Matthew when he introduces Jesus giving this message he calls it Jesus teaching and preaching the good news of the kingdom that's what these chapters are about and so Jesus he's been going around you'll remember it's kind of by way of summary he's inaugurating the the kingdom of God the the rule and the reign of God is dawning in the world in a new way in Jesus and then what he's doing and what he's saying and so he sees he's coming as King Jesus to reclaim his world high from what we've done to the place and he's forming a people around himself called disciples or followers and they are people who see Jesus and they recognize him for who he is and they are putting themselves under his rule in his reign and that's what these chapters are about the good news of the kingdom what the good news of what it means to to rediscover our humanity in Jesus's kingdom because he's come to both reclaim it from how we ruined the place and ourselves and each other but also to make all things new and so we're in this section it's kind of a mini section within chapters 5 through 7 where Jesus is filling out a portrait of the renewed heart and mind of the people of the kingdom the people who commit to Jesus and allow him to begin remaking them what does such a person look like and what he says is such a person looks like somebody who fulfills what all of the Old Testament laws and story were pointing to all along and so we're in kind of the 6 part little mini series here where Jesus quotes from an Old Testament law and then he says you've heard that and that is good and then he sets his own teaching right alongside it and his own teaching doesn't contradict it but it is meant to get to the real root issues and so every single week it's been a really intense part of the series because he's he's getting at these deep root issues that distort our relationship highest absolute highest value and the highest ethic of the kingdom we're going to we're going to hear there's so many times right as we go on in the series Jesus is asked what's the most important means God's will for human beings and Jesus summarizes the great command with with to two angles and what's the first one love God or your hearts are - drinks and what's the second ethic of the kingdom loving your neighbor as yourself and so everything in the kingdom is about God remaking his world and remaking humans to be a world of healthy whole loving relationship of us with God and us with each other and and so what Jesus is moving towards in these six parts is exposing among his disciples the the deep root issues in us that distort and that corrode our relationships a highest value is loving relationships and so he goes right to the deep issues that like sabotage our relationships and so he's talked about anger and unforgiveness and sex and all this kind of thing today he's talking about the way that we that we bend and distort reality in order to control how people perceive us and I just want to begin with the image actually it's an image that I came across recently is that for me access it's been very helpful it kind of helping me I don't know about you I feel like I would just get punched in the gut just in preparing these messages I don't know what you feel like receiving them but so this is another week of just like okay here's another grenade in the room just grow that one in so but I came across the image recently that helped me kind of reminded me of what I think Jesus is really really getting at here and how many of you are National Geographic fans or subscribers yeah you see it at the dentist's office and you're like sweet you know that's kind of how it is with me or the doctor's office like oh cool you know I don't whatever and so I remember I don't remember how long ago it was but I was sitting at the dentist and I remember I came across an issue and I had one of these big photo journal essays about iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and it was all these amazing amazing photographs of both just how you know how cool they look and how unique their shapes are but then also of these like underwater photographs of the parts of icebergs that you don't see from the surface you guys know about these photos have you seen them before they're so amazing so one of the photographers I remember from the story is a guy named Paul suitors and he if you go to his website he's continued to explore iceberg photography I thought was a thing I guess but he's amazing at it and so I just here's some images from his website Paul suitors comm you should go look at it is amazing how thick was his webbed wetsuit you know they need to get in the water and to take take these pictures and what's what's so remarkable and striking about these pictures of course is that what you see them you're in a boat you know and you're watching you know you look at a iceberg and it might be flat you know it's just a big flat sheet of ice it might be you know 15 20 feet high with all these you know protrusions or whatever it might be an actual small mountain you know 100 feet high or whatever but what what photograph show us is that what the relationship between what's above the surface and what's underneath the service you can just never predict by what you see above above water and so some of these things that you know it's just like 20 feet high but a hundred feet deep under the water and just tens of thousands of metric tons of ice and glacier break off and stuff like that they're they're amazing in it and I think why I find these photos inspiring there's lots of different ways they're just cool and geeky if you like nature photography or something but there's something profound because what like really what does that photograph about it's about perception and it's about the fact that if you were to view this thing from above water you would have no clue what's what's under the surface and I saw this image just on it was on some advertisement or something recently and then I wasted half an hour on Paul suiters website you know how those things go when you're when you're trying to do something and then all of a sudden you guys know what I'm talking about anyway so but God blessed Paul suiters because he takes amazing photographs it was a wonderful half hour spent so but you guys can see where I'm going here I think this is a helpful image that to me really helped me grab on to what Jesus is trying to do in this section of the good the good news the teaching about the good news of the kingdom and it's a theme that will come up many times as we go through Matthew in his teachings Jesus views the human beings we have all the surface behavior that we watch each other do and we're going through day to day life and willing working with people and living with people and so on and then sometimes we crash into each other and there's also activities we can observe you know and whether it's the kind of stuff he's highlighting the short temper or the bitterness or sexual misbehavior or broken relationships or distorting the truths and so on and so we get that's the stuff we observe about each other and maybe for some of us it's more under the radar you know we don't notice people don't notice that we're doing that kind of stuff for some of us it's just out there for everybody to see co-hosts just that some people's lot in life and so and so what Jesus isn't our sit-in is not simply behavior modification in the community of these people what he really wants to do is move towards the the root causes that result in those surface behaviors and that's what he's been doing as we go through these six parts and that's what is he's doing this this week what is it that causes us to bend and distort how we talk about ourselves in front of other people we actually are trying to hide from each other by how we talk about ourselves and manage other people's perception of us what the root issue we call it longing and don't lie and you teach your kids don't lie and you write bad moralistic children's books about don't lie that's kind of thing but what's actually going on underneath the surface and it seems to me that's where Jesus is trying trying to go so walk that image you're in your mind and I think it will help us explore what Jesus is talking about here let's look at Jesus's words right here this paragraph in verses 33 through 37 this might be the first week so far in the series where you read the paragraph and you're kind of like - I don't know member the last time I swore an oath so I'm good on this one yes at least there's one area where I think I'm following Jesus pretty well you know because I just don't I mean maybe if you were on a jury something you swore you know this isn't something we do a lot but it was something that was very common and significant in Jesus's day but even the examples that he gives are just surface phenomenon and with that last line he moves to the deeper issue because this is about a truthful honest presentation of ourselves to other people and why don't we do that more often so he he does what is he quote some kind of Old Testament law as he's always done in verse 33 you've heard it said don't break your oath but fulfill to the Lord the oaths that you have vowed here's something that's interesting he's not actually quoting any one law or verse or passage from the Old Testament he's actually using language from a handful of different past in the Old Testament about this practice of swearing ODEs and so on and so I let's kind of paint a scenario like what is Jesus speaking into here what kind of practice is he addressing so let's say you're you're a Jewish farmer right and you live outside of Jerusalem and you have a big grove of olive trees or something like that Jewish farmer and you've got a neighbor who's also a Jewish all olive farmer or whatever and let's say for one reason or another you know your neighbor doesn't like you he hates your guts or whatever your olives are always better you stuff them with pimentos and you make loads of money during Passover on your Ollis or something like that so so he's like jealous of you and it's been a difficult relationship for a long time so your neighbor has donkeys just work with me here right so yeah your neighbor has donkeys and one of the hardest-working donkeys turns up missing and you know he hates you and so you know he thinks for sure you did it to maybe work your olive harvest or whatever so he goes to the local elders and he makes an accusation against you my neighbor he stole my donkey I know he stole my donkey in fact I saw him do it I saw him do it and then maybe he'll hype up the rhetoric even more and he'll say I I'm telling you the truth local elders I saw him steal the donkey I swear to you I swear by the name of Yahweh and everything that's holy in Jerusalem that I saw him steal the donkey okay you guys with me now so what's in this silly little story what's happening right there why does this neighbor feel the need to say that why couldn't he just say I saw him do it or I think he did it you know let's investigate but he appeals to God right he drags got into it and he uses God's name to do what what's he doing so he's using God's name somehow by association God is good and holy and truthful and so somehow that makes the claim more important more serious you need to take me more seriously and so I'm going to use something like God and bolster my claim that I think he whatever what he's have why does he do that is he just power-hungry easy just a jerk or whatever you don't know he's just your crabby neighbor though and so the elders investigate and it turns out that like you didn't take the donkey his cousin his cousin came and borrowed the donkey for a driveway project or something and he forgot to tell him you know and he thought it was you and it's all just a ruse or whatever okay so so what's happened now in public your neighbor has taken the name of God and has associated it with his own insecurities and crookedness and wax sense of reality and he has he has taken the name of Yahweh in vain and so defiling it by swearing this oath and so there develops or they were given laws to the people of Israel to avoid and then regulate this kind of thing to stop it from happening so some some famous verses from the Bible one of the Ten Commandments in fact in Exodus chapter 20 you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God we're in older English translations you might be familiar with the wording of it which is you shall not take the name of the Lord your God what in vain right what does that what does that mean you you live it against 19 you shall not swear falsely by my name and so defile the name of your God so in our culture now swearing has to do with like foul language and then using God or Jesus's name in foul language or something like that that's not what swearing is in the Bible swearing is doing what the neighbor did its swearing this oath to somehow bolster the importance of a claim that you're making and you and the whole point is to take God's name in vain is to take God's holiness and uniqueness and goodness and associate it with your own you know whatever distortion of the truths and crookedness and so on and so what happens when God's name gets associated with my crookedness it defiles it it's an abuse of God's reputation and so you have these laws given in ancient Israel don't use the name of God in your oath so here's what happened people didn't use God's name in us anymore but what they're developed in jesus's culture was a whole cultural practice and system of using other things that were associated with God but aren't the name of God and so what can you swear by if you're not supposed to use the name of God Jesus names a few things you can swear by heaven you can swear by earth you can swear by Jerusalem you can swear by your head and then that created all these other debates and they exist in Jewish literature from the time of Jesus that we have all these debates among the rabbi's well what counts as a genuine swearing an oath and like what do you really have to be sure you're telling the truth on if you're going to swear by this or something like that and so they're developed all of all of these debates and discussions Jesus alludes to this whole debate later on in the Gospel of Matthew and Matthew chapter 23 and you'll just it'll I think be clear what what he's getting at so he's getting on the Pharisees about legalism and miss price misplaced priorities and he says so you Pharisees you say if someone swears by the temple it means nothing but anyone who swears by the gold in the temple well now they're bound by that oh I swear by the temple he stole my donkey and then it turns out oh he didn't really steal the donkey well at least I didn't swear by the gold in the temple you know thing is whoa you know the gold in the temple meant different think so you blind fools which is greater the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred you also say if anyone swears by the altar it means nothing but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath you blind man which is greater the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred therefore anyone who swears by the altar swears by branch in the way swears by it and everything on it anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and the one who dwells in it anyone who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and the one who sits on it in other words so there's developed this practice where well if I can't use God's name I'll use things that are kind of associated with God and that will still accomplish to the end and goal you know which is to make people impressed and think that I'm for sure telling the truth but in fact by just trying to evade and use these like loophole things you're actually still drawing on God's reputation because who made your head like where'd you get your head from you know where is heaven it's God's space where is earth it's also God's space too it's all God's anything that you could possibly swear by is a part of what God has authored in this wonderful strange world we call creation and so we're always swearing by God's name even if you think that you're not and so what is what Jesus does he he wades into this this labyrinth of debate and discussion about like you know it happened the way I said it happened I swear by the altar and then you're it's you just left out a few facts and you distorted some things you're like well at least I didn't swear by the gift on the altar because that would what kind of person would I be then yeah and he just Wade's into this and he just says enough is just in in the kingdom it's about simple honest truthful recognition and sharing and relationships there's there's something about this multiplication of words and and what Jesus is exposing here is actually something that undermines and Carozza our relationships and there's as one commentator a guy named Dallas Willard whose book the divine conspiracy which I absolutely recommend we've recommended Willard's book before once in a series we did in the summer the divine conspiracy at the heart of this book is about a 200-page just beautiful exploration of the Sermon on the Mount the whole thing from beginning to end absolutely profound and his comments on this teaching of Jesus I think he gets it right spot spot-on he says this he says the essence of swearing the jesus targets here it's about invoking something or someone else especially god to make your words seem more significant and weighty so the aim is to impress others with your seriousness or your piety so that you get what you want it's a device of manipulation that's designed to override the judgment or input of others in order to possess them for our purposes it's manipulation or as we say in our culture bin and Jesus says it's evil instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness the intent is to get one's way by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and of the choices of others hey guys dude that's a dense it's a very dense paragraph but do you get what he's saying here this is not this is not just about 1st century Jewish culture and what you can swear by and so on the Ruth issue is that we present our yes and our no we present ourselves to each other in as false presentations we're not we don't live in ways that are truthful with each other instead what we I love this is analogy of generating spin because 21st century America you know what he's talking about don't you spin so coca-cola they give you a commercial of children playing in a field or like cuddling polar bears or something like that it's like what is the letter subset we all know what's going on right there right there using the positive emotions that you have associated with kids playing and wanting to cuddle up with a polar bear whatever and then associate it with their product what they'll never will never show what actually happens with coca-cola which is like you have too much and then if you belch and it dribbles down your cheek or something like that yeah and imagine the close-up of that like that's obviously not with what they're going to do it's spin and so it's not even this like coca-cola is not good something like that it's the point of we're using someone or something else in this verbal smoke screen to somehow present me or myself or what I'm doing here in the best positive of life and it's putting on a show it's putting on a show for each other and Jesus says that absolutely runs against the core ethic of the kingdom because when you're doing that you're not honoring people's ability to actually like maybe want to get to know you you're not you're not being honest and truthful about your own weaknesses or flaws you're constantly clouding that out or whatever it's about this false representation of ourselves to each other and a community of human beings who are moving towards healthy whole loving relationships this might actually be one of the greatest obstacles you could imagine to the community of healthy loving relationships as fast as that we're constantly hiding from each other through words through verbal spin and smokescreen this is not just about first century oath practices in Judaism this is about a habit that we all all of us do in some way so how many of you have been in a conversation before and you begin to notice this pattern of like how this person talks and what they do is they mention the people that they're friends with and those people are maybe like impressive or important or influential people and they just kind of like weave it into their speech and it's just kind of how they operate I was with so-and-so last week or you know I was really thinking about this thing actually know who I was talking about it with of this person you know this kind of thing and you guys know what I'm talking about here and if sometimes it's very subtle and sometimes it's quite awkward maybe so not very self-aware or something what's happening in that moment so what's happening is it's because in that moment it's it might be I mean it just might be odds are it might be 50/50 or something but like they really love and they want you to appreciate that person for who they are but odds are what's happening is that they're name-dropping and they're actually using that person right they're not honoring them as the fully or divine image bearing human being they're using their like reputation and borrowing from it to somehow bolster and and fill in gaps that I perceive and how you think about me and so I want to become come across as more impressive or whatever you guys know what I'm talking about here we do it we do it through embellishment so stories about ourselves or stories you know you move to a new place there's a lot of people around or Foe who are new to town and so it's a you know moving to a new place beginning new relationships it's kind of this it's kind of awesome but also really precarious in a way because you can present a version of yourself that might be totally different than the version of yourself that you just moved away from you know and so and as you get as you present yourselves in these new relationships it's this opportunity to tell your story to tell about who you are and we all have this tendency to do what to smokescreen and to the you know like so you can use grandpa's fish that like when I was five it was a 1 foot long salmon that he caught and then when I was 10 it was somehow 8 feet long or something how did that happen right in the story grandpa's story about the fish but the facili example of things that we all do we airbrush the presentation of ourselves we might use other people to do it and use from their reputation it might just be through verbal smoke screen right and that's what I think that's what so seems to us so silly we look at this practice and it's like what the golden on the altar in the temple he's still a primitive ancient people you know don't they know how to be human beings and it's out of such arrogance and ignorance on our part this is a human thing there's something deep within us that we actually use our word Jesus is talking about how we use words we use our words to hide from each other and to deceive each other and it might even be so deeply rooted like the iceberg is go so deep we don't actually even know that we do it anymore but you might catch yourself there's a moment in which there's something you Bale there's something you drop the ball you did something where you blew it and then someone asks you about it if they catch you on it and in that moment you have a chance do you truthful yeah I did that I forgot that was lame I shouldn't you know or do you like been a paragraph that the person's doesn't actually even know what you just said but you think you know you know what I'm talking about oh man I didn't say this at the nine but I'll say I'll say it right now one of my earliest experiences I was mostly way through my PhD at the University of Madison in Wisconsin and I had a friend who was the director of the Association of funeral directors for the state of Wisconsin and so he asked me to come give this talk on like Jewish views of burial and life after death and so on and so I'm in a room full of 300 funeral directors imagine how that meeting goes and I remember this one guy asked a question about some archaeology saying of ancient Jewish tombs or whatever and I didn't know the answer I just straight up didn't didn't know I knew a bunch of other stuff that I brought to share but I didn't know the answer to that thing and what I did was not the right thing to do what I did is just start blabbering and and I got about a minute into it and I was realizing like I don't know the answer to what he's talking about I don't even know what's coming out of my mouth right now but they're all and I began to realize like I think they're I think they know that I don't know what I'm talking about right now 300 300 directors and so I just had to stop myself and just be elected you know what yeah I don't know I don't know I'm just talking I just you know there's some things I thought might be helpful but I just I don't know and it was one of those moments were like public speaking nightmare you know I'm sure I blushed and my body temperature raised 40 degrees or whatever but it was for me personally that's and I remember that experience so vividly because of the strong emotions of shame that I felt because I was trying to hide instead of just know I don't know I felt the need because here I am need to be perceived and I need to manage how these people think about me and so I'm going to come up with something to present myself as something other than what I actually am somebody who doesn't know that much about seventh-century burial tombs in ancient Israel II know like why do I need to be that guy who knows that but apparently I thought I did for about six seconds yeah right and so that's my geek version or whatever but you guys know what you guys know what I'm talking about here you know what I'm talking about and so what what's wrong with us and these are just non-religious examples Jesus is giving ways that we use God language of doing this because this is all about using God's name and using our own you know religious vocabulary to do this very to do this very same how many of you have been in a conversation with someone and they're Christian and they're talking to you about like a decision that they've made you know or something that they've chosen to do and they'll use language like I really I feel good praying about this and I feel like God's called me to it or they might even sake you know I have a real piece about this you know you have the peace one I like that one to have a peace because you would never say that about I have a peace about eating this hamburger you would never say you never say that but when I have a peace about moving here doing this anyway so so what's happening right there it could be that that person is really like honest searching they have been praying for a long time and they've been talking to other people who are wise and getting their input and check my motives and you know reflect on the scriptures and so they've here I'm gonna do this thing but they you know if you had been in this conversation you know that there are other times where it's like if they were really honest it's like yeah I kind of like I don't know I prayed once in the last week about this thing and and the to say I've been praying about this God's called me to it for some people it's actually a way of like putting up a wall and shutting down the conversation because they don't want your opinion right or input and then it's sort of like the God called me trump card you know who's going to say no to that God called me to do this you know oh the Trump you know the God called them I what can I say you know and it's very smirking I understand but what's what's it the root issue there for some of us we use religious language we use Jesus and what we're actually we're not honoring and loving Jesus we're just using him as a way to somehow make my own agenda or decisions seem more whole or sanctified and because it's important that I come across that way in my church community we do we do we do it all the time and I think the most the most tragic use of God language to do this is when a church community of people can do this or the leadership of a church community can somehow convince itself or whatever it has good plans or whatever but there's something that happens even on leadership teams within churches where we began to use Jesus and Jesus language to just put like the wood the stamp it's holy right and good on like our five-year plan for our church and what we're going to use know that I'm talking about here and I say that for the position that I'm in right now is a as I say that and exactly that issue the sharing personally it's that issue that for me gives me an extremely conflicted relationship with what I'm doing this very second right because part of it is growing up skateboarder in Portland I just still have this thing in me stick it to the man you know what I mean that kind of thing and so I recognize in some ways ironically I have a job where I kind of like represent the man or something like that you know and in the form of a church or whatever I don't know but and I don't I'll just it's a team of us who do it but but I'm so scared of that and all the elders are and Josh is too it's this this ways that you can convince yourself of that your own deal is so important that you begin to use Jesus to airbrush your deal and then you actually don't want the input of other people and you're just trying to present it as good as you possibly can to the P because you can get people to do what you want it's much easier to control people than to love them and to honor them and their dignity and their in their input and and so I don't actually think this is one of those Sundays where you like I'm doing good on this one you know cuz like I haven't sworn an oath recently you know this is obviously much much much deeper it's way deeper so why why do we do this like what is actually what kind of inner transformation does it take to get to a place where my presentation of myself and my purposes is just simple and honest I don't feel the need to create the smoke screen how do I get there how did anyone get there and it seems to me that that's what Jesus is trying to get us to reflect on with this last line here what what kind of person does it take or what kind of person do I need to become so that I can not feel the need to hide from you with my words so that my yes is a true of my words or truly correspond to who I really am and I don't feel the need to cover that and actually I think it's that verbal cover-up that Jesus exposes here that I think really gets to to the issue is that somehow with words with just blabbing or talking or using Jesus language or name-dropping or other people what we're doing is we're hiding from each other we're hiding the truth about who we are and what is that truth and I think it's the same truth that some of you learned about the playground bully you know in grade school and it is a jerk that's such a jerk and oppressive you know they steal your milk money or something like that that'll just people don't have milk money anymore maybe they do I don't know you know what I'm talking about anyway so you have the school you have like the playground bully and like they're a jerk and you you don't like them but some of us somewhere along the way you know they stayed in school alongside you in high school and you learn you learn their story and what you learn was that their life at home was just a wreck absolute wreck and like overbearing jerk dad who never affirms them if he's around at all and like tense anxious mom and so on and so what what your playground bully is actually doing is he's compensating he's compensating for a deep fear and insecurity that they have and so how do they compensate they compensate by either bullying you controlling manipulating you or presenting some version of themselves that isn't actually because dude if anyone actually knew about what like my life is like and the kind of person I really am no one would want to be my friend it's fear this fear what is a smokescreen designed to do is it hides and so it's the tragic irony of human communities is that we want more than anything to know and to be known by each other but we're perpetually hiding from each other but how we spin generate spin around ourselves and for you it may not be swearing oath it may not be polar bears and children playing in a field but we all do it we all know what Jesus is highlighting and exposing right here and so how do you get around that right how do you address your fear of just being totally insignificant and unimportant that's a deep iceberg all right how do you address your fear of people actually knowing the real you and the flaws in your character and the parts of your story that you're not proud of like how do you do that and there's a theme woven throughout the New Testament there's one passage in particular that I think is is like the answer or the corresponding passage to what Jesus raises right here and it's in first John chapter 4 but just what it highlights is I just want us to think about who's Jesus and what's he doing how does Jesus think he's addressing this issue and remember what is he doing he's going around inaugurating and announcing the kingdom he's he's throwing these dinner parties and inviting all of the wrong people people who have been written off by the religious community and he just invites them to these banquets where he just celebrates God's grace and forgiveness he's Jesus making the first move and just moving right into people's worlds and lies and just announcing forgiveness and grace and an invitation to come into the family of Jesus's people and as the the Apostles and the disciples later reflected on what Jesus was doing there is one word woven throughout the entire New Testament that the disciples came to describe what Jesus was doing and this passage puts it puts it beautifully John says this is how God showed his love among us he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him see this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins so as the disciples looked back and reflected on their encounters with Jesus as he inaugurated the kingdom the words they used to describe everything about Jesus and what he did was love Jesus was God's love among us Jesus was God's love that went and found people who were hiding and distorted and screwed up human beings like we all are and just made this ridiculous offer that that Jesus is life lived as a human being full of integrity and truth is being offered to us just as a free gift which is what he means when he says that we might live through him somehow in John's conception as we go around hiding through smoke screens from each other we're actually what we're just we're living dead people because we don't want to be known we're scared of being known we don't ever let people in we don't actually have relationships where we let anybody in and John calls that a form of living death is you living but you're not really living for what God thank you for and so and so Jesus comes this human who actually is that kind of human and he begins an association of people who he's beginning to remake and heal that part of them and so we lived through him and not only that is that not that we loved God first but that in his death and that's his life and then his death he actually covers over all of the huge messes that we make and that we contribute to this world precisely through all of our lining to end deception of each other I mean the world is what it is because of all these broken things about us and so God's God's purpose is not to like just let us go to hell in a handbasket his whole point is to come among us and actual do something that addresses the core issues inside of us and this love is just pre-emptive unconditional like God didn't ask us if he wanted Jesus to come that he just came among us in Jesus and did this for us and here's the result because later on in the paragraph and this is couple lines here I command them to you from many cups of tea and lots of time reflecting on is John says this and conclusion he says there is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear see fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not yet reached perfection in love so one of the results in the disciple of Jesus and when they truly reckon with who Jesus is and see what Jesus is doing is God's love for them is is it diminishes fear what is it that causes us to hide from each other fear of being known insecurity about my Worth and my value and so on and there's something John says about God's love which isn't like a mysterious vaporous cloud out in the universe God's love is a concrete real person Jesus of Nazareth who did and said these things on our behalf if you're willing to accept that and and in that act of love it's God's permanent commitment to us despite our deepest flaws and sins and failures that he's committed to us and that he sees value and worth in us as divine image bearing humans and that were full of all this remarkable capacity and potential that we're just totally have distorted and so he's here to to redeem that literally and to begin to believe that about yourself it mean just I know like theology or whatever sort of stop do you actually believe that about yourself right there are things you've never let anybody know about like secrets or stupid things that you've done or things that you're ashamed of or things that you're embarrassed stuff about yourself do you actually do you really believe that those things do not determine your value or work do you really believe that that your creator the most important being that exists have already demonstrated his pre-emptive initiating love and grace for you and John says if you can get that truth deep deep in your bones and in your mind and in your heart it eliminates fear fear because fear has to do with God's actually like out to get me now Jesus has proved that wrong fear has to do with people are constantly valuing and what about us what they think about me you know and then I'm not significant if those people don't think a certain thing about me and it seems to me what John's getting adds like what if you really reckon with who Jesus is who who cares what people think about you who actually cares what people think about you not the bad way but in a healthy way because your identity is not determined by what other people think about you it's determined by this act of Jesus right here and so it seems to me that the only way to address the deep huge scope of what's underneath the surface of this iceberg lying is just the tip and this verbal smokescreen is just the tip of the iceberg this is the issue and it seems to me this is how Jesus moves towards us yeah in it and so this is the point at the surface where I typically say I don't know what this means for you it means it means 350 different things right now I think right because we're all at different places you know what I'm talking about and and I don't know how to move towards it except to begin to continue in the habit of reminding ourselves as what is what is true and so the way that we do that and our Sunday gatherings is every week we come together we worship Jesus for who he is and what he's done and we take the bread and the cup which is this tactile word picture that Jesus gave us to remind us of his commitment to us and of his life for us and of his death for us and so some of us I mean this might be so deep but he's a service life we don't really even know how big of an issue the is for us some of us you might be really well aware and so I just encourage you as we take the bread in the cup today to just turn this time of worship into a prayer the Jesus would begin to remake you and make you into somebody who can just be simply honest with people and not feel the need to create verbals spin in how we present ourselves to each other and it's one step forward that we become a community of Jesus's people who truly represent him and represent this renewed humanity that he wants to make in in our midst amen amen let me close in a word of Prayer you

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Id: JM3hNJi8lg4

Length: 45min 18sec (2718 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017