THE GENIUS OF THE GOOD | Erwin McManus - MOSAIC

i am so excited as we continue to dive in together into the genius of jesus and one of the things i want to remind you is that every time we unlock one of these strokes of genius in the life of jesus we begin to get a deep and profound insight to the genius that is waiting to be unlocked inside of us now today i want to talk to you specifically about the genius of the good it must have been somewhere around fourth grade where i was introduced in school to situational ethics and and the the whole dynamic of having to choose between two unimaginable choices usually it wasn't having two good choices that were pitted against each other but really two bad choices two choices that given other options you would never make like for instance this seems to be like one of the classic ones if you and uh a group of your friends were suddenly stranded somewhere like the andes and and you couldn't survive because you didn't have enough food or you didn't have any food and so you had to come to an ethical choice do you choose to eat one of your friends and survive or do you choose to together die of starvation and i remember later as i was growing up there was a lot of controversy around the the conversations around situational ethics and and especially by the way when i became a person of faith i began realizing that that for many people of faith the whole idea of situational ethics seemed untenable it was just wrong to think that ethics would ever be situational because when you're a person of faith when you believe in the the scriptures when you base your life on the bible shouldn't everything be black and white shouldn't everything be clear it's you it's either right or wrong it's good or evil and and i think this is one of the the interesting intersections in the practicality of faith and action of our intellectual acknowledgement of truth and our practical application of truth sometimes they just don't fit well in in the same room because most of life is actually some dynamic of situational ethics you have to choose between sometimes undesirable options and and we really do not live in an ideal world where it's so clear that something is right and something is wrong now now there are some people where everything is absolutely clear to them everything is black and white everything is clearly right and wrong and and there's a part of me that really envies those people because life is so simple for them it's just so clear to them all the time i'm not one of those people the universe really isn't black and white to me it's it's it's an interesting fasting array of shades of grey and of endless combinations where right and wrong are infused together and good and evil are infused in some very very complex way and you're having to make choices that that in many ways reveal your deepest value systems and sometimes they surprise yourself but what i want to really focus on today is is this beautiful stroke of genius that jesus brings to us that he begins to give us a new way of seeing the world rather than than right and wrong he begins to teach us the genius of the good i think most of us if we are followers of jesus and if we have a deep faith in god we we try to do the right thing i mean i think it's just a part of the basic moral compass of of people of faith you try to do the right thing but so many times in life doing the right thing can be so challenging to understand or to figure out and and and that's why i think so many people are even paralyzed about well what's god's will for my life because most of the time you're not struggling about god's will when it comes to to right and wrong you you don't wake up in the morning going you know am i gonna embezzle a million dollars a day or am i going to make a meaningful contribution to society you don't wake up in the morning going am i going to rob a bank or am i going to help the poor most of our choices are not quite that black and white most of our choices are are frankly hopefully choosing between the good and the good or right and the right and having to figure out which right is the right right for you and which good is the is the best good that you should be doing and and yet what you find is that you find there's an interesting delineation between the mind of a person who's religious and a person who actually thinks at a more profound and higher level when they're profoundly spiritual because jesus was having to deal with people who used the right as a weapon against doing the good and that's the real danger that i want us to press into the day and that's where jesus really exercised his genius he was able to to slice between the right and the good and to reveal to expose those who would use doing the right thing as a way of avoiding doing the good thing in matthew chapter 12 beginning in verse 1 jesus ends up having a conversation once again with the religious leaders and of course there's the context for this moment it says at that time jesus went through the grain fields on the sabbath his disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them when the pharisees saw this they said to him look your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the sabbath he answered haven't you read what david did when he and his companions were hungry he entered the house of god and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread which was not lawful for them to do but only for the priests or haven't you read in the law that the priests on the sabbath duty of the temple desecrate the sabbath and yet are innocent i tell you that something greater than the temple is here if you had known what these words mean i desire mercy not sacrifice you would not have condemned the innocent for the son of man is the lord of the sabbath going on from that place he went into their synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there looking for a reason to bring charges against jesus they asked him is it lawful to heal on the sabbath and he said to them if any of you had a sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath will you not take hold of it and lift it out how much more valuable is the person than the sheep therefore it is lawful to do good on the sabbath that's the key phrase it is lawful to do good and then he said to the man stretch out your hand so he stretched it out and it was completely restored just a sound as the other but the pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill jesus now if you take verse 14 and take it completely out of context that here the pharisees were so incensed there they were at the end of themselves they just could not take any more of jesus that they they began to plot to kill him you you would think the scenario right before this must have been horrific i mean what did jesus do to to cause others to have such disdain and vitriol toward him what what did jesus say what what what did he force them to face that would cause him to want to kill him and yet what we find is that what what actually incited such violence within their own hearts was that jesus was exposing their commitment to do the right as the condemnation of their unwillingness to do the good see one of the great dangers of religion is that religion is all about doing the right thing and your religion will lay out right and wrong your religion will give you rules and and commands and rituals and routines and your religion will tell you how to be a good moral human being and ironically if you do all the right things you are absolved from ever doing the good thing and that's one of the great dangers that jesus exposes in this moment i mean can you imagine here jesus disciples and they're eating some of the grain and they're accused of violating the sabbath that and and every hebrew understood that that the sabbath was holy that the sabbath was established by god in that and on the sabbath you're supposed to to honor your worship of god and and somehow this respect for the sabbath was actually turned upside down as a way of excusing themselves from ever doing what god would do on the sabbath and so jesus begins pressing them into their own history and saying isn't it interesting that that king david and even the priests they understood that it wasn't really about right and wrong it was that there's a higher principle here and and and remember whenever the bible ties stories together especially here like in matthew 12 what you find is that there's a story about the sabbath and then a story about a man with a shriveled hand now these stories are connected together because matthew wants you to understand that jesus is trying to drive a principle to destroy a false view of what god expects and desires of our lives and so all the teachers in law would tell people what god wants from you on this day is for you to act this way and if you do these things on the sabbath you will be holy and you will honor god's intention and when jesus said you've got it all wrong because god doesn't care about you following all the right steps and keeping all the rules in place what god wants you to do is to have a transformation of your own intention and begin to live your life to do the most good possible so the moment this man with a shriveled hand shows up this is driving this moment of genius that jesus is laying out to the pharisees and he says now let's let's go back is it right to heal this man on the sabbath i mean that's the question they would ask jesus it's crazy if you think about it they're asking god god is it all right is it right is it ethical is it good for you to do good on the day that honors you see the idea that you could ever honor god on any day whether it's the sabbath or not the idea that you could honor god in any day by keeping the rules rather than doing the good is insane i mean it is absolutely incredulous to think that any expression of faith would ever reflect god well when we use our religion as an excuse to be blind to the needs of humanity it seems like such a simple question is it right to heal this man of the sabbath and when jesus heals him his answer is it is always right to do the good and so he changes the the compass that would guide our lives he says stop asking the question about right and wrong this is the lowest level of thinking you need to ask the question about the good and if you can ask the question what's the most good i can do if you can ask yourself the question what is the good that is in front of me that i can actually take a hold of you will actually change the entire dynamic of the compass that guides your life man living your life always trying to do the right thing is exhausting and and it's also unrewarding i remember when i was new in my faith and and i and there were so many things in my life that had to change i mean so many areas of my life that were not reflective of the character that god wanted me to have and and i i can tell you that i i spent almost no time ever thinking about how to get rid of sin in my life in fact i was always so astonished that the christians loved talking about sin so much and you know just even from a psychological perspective you you you tend to do what you focus on and so if you're always focused on sin i can tell you what you're going to do is sin and if you're always focused on a particular sin you're going to always be in that space in that experience and and and people would ask me because very quickly in my in my spiritual journey i just began to change so much and and there was this radical transformation in my life and and then when people come to me say how did you stop doing that or how did you break free from that particular uh habit or addiction or stronghold in your life and i would look back and realize oh i just ran out of time i said i i just got so busy doing the good that i ran out of time to do the destructive i ran out of time to do the wrong to the best way to stop doing things that are destroying your life and destroying the lives of everyone around you is to fill your time with doing all the good you can and and it is exactly right you end up hitting whatever you focus on you end up hitting whatever you target and you know it's always funny to me how when we're we're teaching our children how to ride a bike and they're near a tree or a post our instinct is watch out for that tree and that's almost i guarantee they're going to hit that tree because they probably didn't even see the tree because they were trying so hard just to kind of just to manage the the steering wheel and the moment we say look out for that tree they look at the tree and they go right at it and most of us spend our lives looking at the target we do not want to hit and what jesus is telling us is you're aiming at the wrong target if you keep looking at the target of right and wrong you're always going to be living at the lowest level of thinking you need to be looking at the target of how to do the most good because we begin to reflect god best not when we're doing the right thing because so oftentimes that's incredibly self-indulgent that's why it's called self-righteousness because even there when we're doing the right thing it's about us being right but when you start focusing on doing the good thing you're no longer focused on your own personal morality or your own personal uh standards your own personal development you're now focused on the good that you're doing in the world the good you're doing for others and let me tell you when you begin to give your life for the good it's amazing how the good changes you it's the way the story began by the way it's it's all of genesis chapter one and when god creates after every movement that we call the day god said and it was good and it was good and it was good and it was good see i i think if if legalists wrote it if if religionists wrote genesis chapter 1 they would have said and it was right and it was right and it was right and it was right see god wasn't shooting for being right god was shooting for creating the god and everything was good when he created us he didn't say oh and it was so right he said it was very very good and and i think a part of the dilemma even in our modern languages is that we've confused good as something that's secondary to great jim collins wrote an amazing book from good to great and he talked really about sustained excellence in in companies and and because of that book though it's seen almost as if god is at one level and great is at a different level but you see being great is really about achievement but being good is about essence because genesis chapter 1 if it was about achievement it should have said and it was great i mean god just said it was spectacular i mean it was incredible it was awesome i just can't even believe what i've created meaning the superlatives would have just been endless to describe what god had done and it's so understated and it was good and in fact if we put it in the context of our modern use of language it's really not much of a compliment and it was good but see what we need to realize is that god was not measuring the level of his achievement he was defining the essence of his creation and it was good and what god wants to do in us is to restore in us the good and one of the beautiful ways that that good is restored in us is not through passivity we don't simply just sit around go okay i'm gonna be good because good is not a passive value good only exists in the context of action of creation the action reveals the essence and if god's desire for us is for us to be good to be an expression of the good then that expression is fulfilled when we begin to live our lives by doing the highest good i i thought about that that sort of iconic story in first kings 13 around solomon who the bible describes as the wisest man who ever lived and he has this moral dilemma that comes from when two women well even more specifically two prostitutes come to him and it tells us in first kings chapter three beginning in verse 16 it says now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him one of them said pardon me my lord this woman and i live in the same house and i had a baby while she was there with me the third day after my child was born this woman also had a baby we were alone there was no one in the house but the two of us during the night this woman's son died because she laid on him so she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side well i your servant was asleep she put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast the next morning i got up to nurse my son and he was dead but when i looked at him closely in the morning light i saw that it wasn't the sun i had born the other woman said no the living one is my son the dead one is yours but the first one insisted no the dead one is yours the living one is mine and so they argued before the king and solomon said this one says my son is alive and your son is dead well that one says no your son is dead and mine is alive then the king said bring me a sword so they brought a sword for the king and then he gave an order cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other the woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king please my lord give her the living baby don't kill him but the other said neither i nor you shall have him cut him in two then the king gave his ruling give the living baby to the first woman do not kill him she is his mother when all of israel heard the verdict the king had given they held the king in awe because they saw that he had wisdom from god to administer justice solomon had this nuanced ability to cut between the right and the good i mean what's the right thing to do in that situation i mean it tells us that both women are prostitutes so this child is not going to grow up in in the best of circumstances they're both living together so they probably needed each other economically we're somewhat dependent on each other and and when solomon says all right we're going to figure this out let's just cut the baby in two one woman says no please don't kill the baby let the other woman have her is that the right thing to do to give up your child to give up your baby is it is it the right thing to do well it could be or it could be the wrong thing in someone's perspective because people weigh different factors for between right and wrong the other woman of course was pretty clear she said just cut the baby in two if i can't have him you can't have him no one will have him and it says that the woman who was willing to give up her child did it because she loved him see i think that's the difference is that being right is oftentimes motivated by our own sense of righteousness but doing the good is always motivated by love and what solomon was able to do is to create a scenario where he could discover who would do the good because frankly even if that woman had not been the baby's biological mother she would have been the better mother for the baby because the person who lives in relationship to you out of love is the person who's going to always be committed to doing the most good for you and by the way that's exactly who god is and how god works in relationship to us i am so glad that god doesn't always quote do the right thing i know that sounds a little controversial and i'm not saying spike lee is wrong i'm just i'm just saying that that if you're looking for for justice if you're looking for someone who's always doing the just right thing in terms of what we deserve i'm telling you doing the right thing toward me would not have been a great experience see the scriptures tell us that all of us have actually sinned and have have fallen short of god's glory god's intention for us that all of us fall beneath god's standard of of what he created humanity to become you know you know what the just thing to do in fact the scripture was adjusting would be for god to to just give up on all of us and to never bring us into relationship with himself that that in that sense that would be like the right thing to do just to wipe out humanity and start over again i mean have you looked at us have you looked at human history look across this planet the poverty the suffering the the injustice the the violence the wars the rage that that defines us i mean if if you are god would you say the right thing is just to end this history and start over again but you know god in the most extraordinary of ways goes beyond doing the right thing to doing the good thing god is always motivated by the good and so instead of judging me and condemning me which would be right because i deserved i deserved to be judged and frankly i don't know how you see yourself but i deserve to be condemned see i'm clear i'm clear on that i'm just so grateful that god didn't choose that sense to do in relationship to me the right thing but to do the good and i know that that this is why jesus came and seeing that and what the scriptures tell us is that god stepped into human history and the person of jesus took on flesh and blood walked among us that his name was jesus and that he died on a cross that he was actually given as a sacrifice so that that all of my sin could actually be rightly forgiven because of the sacrifice of jesus but by the way that goes way beyond doing the right thing i mean is it really right for someone else to pay the price for my wrongdoings is that really the right thing isn't the right thing for jesus to never suffer because he was never wrong isn't the right thing for jesus to never be crucified because he was beautiful and perfect and holy and is it the right thing for jesus to have only been worshiped and celebrated it cannot be in any imaginable reality that it was the right thing for jesus to carry the weight of our sin and and carry the weight of our punishment it was just the most good see because that was what only jesus could do because only he could die for the sins of the world only he could become the sacrifice that would set us all free so if you want to understand what it looks like when you choose to go beyond the right to the good and look at jesus and look at his sacrifice look at his death and then through the resurrection we see the power of the good because the good is motivated by love and one of the amazing things about doing the good is that you don't measure other people based on what they deserve you don't evaluate whether that person deserves your love your compassion your kindness your grace you don't measure whether that person deserves the good you can do you do the good because the good is the right thing to do so even if you're listening right now yeah but then what do i do with my life what what are the the first steps if i want to live a life doing the god because see this is a stroke of genius it's a stroke of genius that we would be set free from worrying about right and wrong to be elevated to live in the good and so look around you and look within you find the good you can do right now and do it and and by the way when sometimes when we're paralyzed i don't know what should i do this good or this good or this good well here's a basic formula look at what you're good at and then evaluate how you can do the most good in the world and when you understand what you're good at and then you begin to understand how you can do the most good in the world you can have a compass that will always lead you on the right path because doing the good is always right even though sometimes doing what looks right can be a way of avoiding the good see jesus never hesitated it was never confusing for him he always knew it was right to heal on the sabbath god would never create a day that would abdicate us from doing the good because every day every day every day is a day we are alive to do good and if you're still breathing if you still can hear the sound of my voice it doesn't matter where you are what you've been through how broken you are how much you've messed up how many times you've failed what other people say about you what i know about you is this you are created by god to do the good and when you begin to live your life for the good you start looking like a genius because you move out of the lowest level of thinking is this the right or the wrong thing you ask the question how can i do the most good and when you do the good you reflect the god who is good the israelites would declare the shema who said hear o israel lord our god the lord is one and one of the core declarations of the hebrew people is the lord is god that god is good this is his essence that everything god does is an act of the good that everything god creates is infused with the good and when you are connected to jesus when you enter into relationship with him the god who is good dwells within you and all of that goodness now dwells in you so stir up the good and move in the good and begin to live in the good that god created you to do when you begin to live for the good you just begin to change the entire essence of your world when you begin to live doing the good it changes everything in your life it changes your marriage it changes your children it changes the way you work with your employees and your employer when you begin to live your life doing the most good you start creating a better world so if you find yourself in a challenging situation you find yourself in in a complex scenario where you're not sure what to do and just realize in life we're going to make a lot of mistakes we're going to do some things that we'll look back oh yeah that was the right thing or some other things to go yeah that that wasn't the right thing maybe that was the wrong thing and so don't look back in your life going well was that decision right and was that decision wrong was that decision right it was that decision wrong look back on your life and ask yourself was that decision good and i'm telling you when you know you've lived your life to create the good you will live without regret because when you do the good you reflect god now maybe you're listening right now and and you know you've got a lot of things wrong you you know that uh that you're in a place where you just desperately need god to help you see i think sometimes we're afraid to turn to god because we're not we're not sure if god's gonna we'll quote do the right thing because the right thing would be well to condemn us to judge us to not be for us but god always does the good thing see god is for you he loves you he cares about you he wants you to be in relationship with him and and and god who is holy and god who is perfect and god who always does the right thing always does the right thing because he always does the good thing and 2 000 years ago god stepped into human history in the person of jesus to do the god that we desperately needed and right now you may be listening and what you need is you need to receive the good that jesus has done for you maybe it finally makes sense that jesus died on the cross so that you could be forgiven and you could be free maybe it finally makes sense that what your soul's been longing for is a relationship with the god who created you maybe it finally makes sense that that that god is what we call god when we're searching for him but jesus is what we call god when we realize he's been searching for us and right now i want you to know that jesus is exactly where you are and he's inviting you into a relationship with him and i want to invite you right now just to cross the line of faith and open up your life to him and to choose this moment for the god who is good to take your life and bring his goodness to you so that you can live a life where you're always doing the good as an expression of who he is if you're in this moment and you're ready to trust jesus with your life i might just invite you just to pray this simple prayer right now jesus i give you my life right now just wherever you are just just pause and whisper to him jesus i give you my life because when you invite jesus into your life he comes to live within you and he will never leave you or forsake you so the moment you say jesus i give you my life what happens is that jesus comes and gives you his life now there's a genius that only jesus brings and i just i love unwrapping the genius of jesus because every time we can step into the genius of jesus we begin to discover the genius that makes us most fully our best version of ourselves can you imagine beginning to live your life now living your life always moving toward the god man if you choose the good imagine how good life will be you

Channel: Mosaic

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Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: b-iX5_lS84Y

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 16 2021