Final Words ~ Paradise

During these weeks leading up to Easter we are looking at the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross. We believe these words are important because Jesus went through such extraordinary lengths to share them with us. It would not have been easy for Jesus to speak while hanging on the cross so that he managed to get these 7 words (or statements) out and to speak them loud enough for people to be able to hear them tells us that these were words Jesus wanted us to hear, remember and live out in our lives.


Last week we heard that the first word of Jesus from the cross was really a prayer. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Now it shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus began with a prayer because Jesus entire life was built on prayer. And it should not surprise us that it was a prayer of forgiveness for others because Jesus lived a life that focused on meeting the needs of others before his own and he taught his followers about the power and freedom that comes with forgiveness. What’s amazing is that in the second word from the cross Jesus puts this prayer of forgiveness into action.

The second word of Jesus from the cross was spoken to a man who was crucified with Jesus. He said to him, Today you will be with me in paradise. On the day that Jesus was crucified, he was not the only person executed, there were at least two others. On Jesus’ right and left were two men who had also been sentenced to die. In both Matthew and Mark these men are called “lestes” which means armed robbers or bandits, but in Luke the word used for these two men is “kakopoios” which means those who do evil. What is important about this difference is that Luke is the only gospel that records a conversation that Jesus has with these two men and by purposely using a more generic word to describe them, Luke is helping us find our own place in the story. For Luke, these men represent all of us. The details of their crimes are not important, what is important is that they are simply people who do evil. In other words, they are sinners just like we are. Luke wants us to see ourselves in these two men and find our own place in this story.

So let’s look at the story. There are two men who are crucified at the same time as Jesus, one on his left and one on his right. It’s obvious that they know something about Jesus or at least by listening to the crowds shouting at Jesus they have figured out why he is being executed. They understand that Jesus is being crucified because he claims to the Messiah or the King of the Jews. One of the men joins with the crowd and begins to mock Jesus, look at Luke 23:39. He is not genuinely looking to Jesus for help, he’s mocking him. Like the crowd gathered around the cross he is making of fun of Jesus and adding to Jesus’ pain and humiliation by taunting him. What is sad is that even as he is dying, this man is trying to fit in with the crowd around him. Even now he is trying to find his value and worth in the people who surround him instead of the God who is literally beside him. Sound familiar?

Many times we fail to experience the power of God who is right beside us because we are seeking to find our validation or our salvation in the world around us. We look for meaning and security in the things of this world and when we do we are turning away from the one who offers us real life. Now it’s not just this man on the cross who is going along with the crowd and denying Jesus to find security and life, he is really no different than Peter.

Just a few hours earlier Peter had been hiding in the courtyard as Jesus was being tried by the religious leaders. When the people in the courtyard asked Peter if he was one of Jesus’ followers, Peter said, absolutely not. In that moment, Peter was looking to fit in with the crowd, he was looking for security in the people around him, instead of finding strength in the God who was standing before him. We are all like this at times and Luke wants us to see that. We are all like this man on the cross who looks to the world for life and meaning more than we look to God.

But there is not just one man who is hanging there with Jesus. The other man crucified that day is also described as a man who, like us, does evil. This man also understands who Jesus is and he hears the taunts of the people around him but instead of joining the crowd and putting Jesus down, he confesses his sin and asks Jesus for forgiveness. Look again at Luke 23:40-42.

So the man confesses his sin, he says, we are being punished justly, in other words, we have done evil – we are sinners, but then he seeks forgiveness by turning and asking Jesus to remember him. These words, “remember me,” are really a prayer for forgiveness and salvation. In the Old Testament, when God remembered people he delivered them from evil. In Genesis 8:1 God remembered Noah, which meant that God saved Noah and his family and the animals by bringing them through the flood. In Genesis 30:22-23 God remembered Rachel, the wife of Jacob who had been barren for many years. When God remembered Rachel it meant he delivered her from barrenness and gave her a child, he gave her life. In Exodus 2:24-25 it says that God remembered his promise to Abraham and so God set into motion the plan to rescue or deliver His people who were living as slaves in Egypt.

So when this man asks Jesus to remember him, he is asking Jesus to forgive him and to rescue him or deliver him - not from physical death because that was coming no matter what – but to save him for the life that is to come. In response Jesus says without any hesitation or qualification – absolutely. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the Bible because it shows us exactly what the grace and mercy of God looks like.

This man hanging on a cross has nothing to offer Jesus. He can’t improve his life, he can’t go out and lead a better life, he can’t show Jesus just how serious he is about following him. There is absolutely nothing this man can do to earn his salvation or show how deserving he is of Jesus’ mercy. This man has nothing to give Jesus, absolutely nothing, all he does is ask Jesus for mercy and Jesus gives it to him without any questions. Jesus doesn’t ask the man if he is serious about his sin and turning away from it, he doesn’t ask him what he believes about God or the Bible or any other doctrine of faith, Jesus simply reaches out to him in love and says today you will be with me.

This word of Jesus on the cross is an example of what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:8 -9. Jesus offers this man salvation not because he has earned it or done anything to deserve it, and he can’t make up for his sin by going out and living a faithful life, he can’t do anything. This man literally can do nothing but bleed and die on a cross and yet Jesus saves him. Jesus hears the cry of his heart and saves him. This is what the love of God looks like for all of us. This is what mercy and forgiveness looks like for all of us. God doesn’t forgive us because we are worthy of it, God doesn’t forgive us because we have earned it or because God expects us to work it off with a life of service and sacrifice. Salvation is a gift from God and it comes to us when like this man we simply reach out to Jesus and ask for mercy. God forgives us when we simply turn to him and say, remember me.

While there may have been more people crucified with Jesus that day, Luke points out these two men because they not only represent all of us as sinners but they also show us the only two responses we can make to God’s gift of mercy and love. While God is willing to forgive us all, God can only forgive those who are willing to reach out and receive it. God can only save those who are willing to turn to Jesus and say, even though I am a sinner, even though there is nothing good in me, even though there is nothing I can do to repay you, Jesus, please, remember me. Save me.

To that request, Jesus says yes. Jesus says to the man on the cross without hesitation, today you will be with me in paradise. Now the word for paradise here is actually a word that refers to the garden of a king. In ancient Persia the palaces of kings often had within them a walled garden filled with the most beautiful and exotic plants and animals that could be found. You might say it was the King’s own Garden of Eden, a place of incredibly beauty and life and peace. To be invited into the king’s garden was a great honor and privilege reserved only for the most blessed guests, so when Jesus says today you will be with me in paradise, it was an invitation to join Jesus in the garden of the king, the garden of God– the true Garden of Eden which would be heaven.

While the Bible does not talk a lot about what heaven is like, this one word from Jesus helps us understand that in many ways heaven will be a place of incredible beauty and everlasting life. Heaven will be like the Garden of Eden which when God created it was a place of perfection. When Jesus invites this man into the garden he is opening the door or the gate for all of us to enter in. The question is how will we respond? Will we accept this invitation into the garden? Will we place our faith and trust in Jesus and find life – or like the other man, will we reject Jesus and continue to try and find the fullness of life in the things around us? This is the clear contrast we see in this scene. One man looked to the world for life and one looked to Jesus and the one who looked to Jesus, the one who reached out to Jesus was invited into the fullness of life which is found in the presence of and in the garden of God.

Now while the fullness of life will only be found completely in the garden that is to come, or in heaven, we can begin to experience this life here and now. In John 10:10 Jesus said that he came into this world and into our lives so that we might have life and life abundantly. Jesus wasn’t just talking about heaven and eternal life, he was talking about experiencing the peace and power of that life right here and now. Think about this man on the cross. When he knows that Jesus has invited him into paradise, that heaven has been opened up to him, there must have been a peace or assurance that he experienced even in the midst of the pain of his crucifixion. Where moments before this man had no hope at all – now he has hope. This is what Jesus offers us here and now. All our pain and problems don’t go away, but through them we can experience peace, assurance of a future with God, and hope. All of this and so much more can be ours when we just ask Jesus to help us.

So the first word from Jesus was a prayer of forgiveness and the second word was Jesus putting that prayer into action. Jesus offered forgiveness and mercy to an evil man, a sinner, who had been condemned to die. If all of that weren’t powerful enough, think about this. Jesus first words to a person from the cross wasn’t to his beloved disciple John or his mother Mary but to an individual who is described as an evil-doer, to a sinner, an outcast. This should not surprise us, really, because this is how Jesus lived his life – reaching out to offer forgiveness to sinners and love to those people that others wanted to just toss aside. In fact, Jesus was criticized for reaching out to the least likely people around and for associating with sinners, look at Luke 15:1-2.

Jesus was forever getting into trouble because he healed lepers, called evil and despised tax collectors to follow him and allowed well known prostitutes to wash his feet with their hair. Jesus spent his entire life reaching out to sinners and offering them mercy so it should come as no surprise that Jesus is dying the way he lived – sharing his first words to an individual from the cross to a sinner condemned to die, and evil doer.

The question for us is, are we willing to live the way Jesus lived? Are we willing to live the way Jesus died? Jesus said if we want to follow him we have to be willing to take up a cross and part of what that means is living out the words Jesus spoke from the cross, so will we offer God’s love and life to those no one else wants to reach out to? Will we give ourselves to help make sure that those who feel condemned will know they are valued and loved by God?

According to Luke 19:10 part of Jesus mission was to seek out and save the lost and to invite people into the king’s garden – paradise. Is this part of our mission? Are we willing to give our time and energy and even sacrifice ourselves to help those who are searching for and reaching out to Jesus? This might mean reaching out to those who are very different than we are and people who are unloved and uncared for by the world around us. It might mean placing ourselves in situations that are uncomfortable for us and require us to give more than we might want to. Are we willing to do this? Have we made this part of our life’s mission? If we haven’t, we need to because one of the very last things Jesus did was to reach out to the least likely person around and offer him God’s mercy. It was one of Jesus’ final words from the cross, it was how he died which means it needs to be how we live.



Next Steps
Final Words from the Cross ~ “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

1. Read Ephesians 2:1-10.
• Take time this week to confess your sin to God.
• Thank God for His saving grace which is free for all.
• Memorize the verse: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8

2. In what ways do you try to repay God for his grace? What words, attitude and actions do you think are required from you before God will “remember” you?
• When you think of these things repeat to yourself the verse you have memorized (Ephesians 2:8).

3. In one of his final acts, Jesus reached out and gave the gift of life to a lost and sinful man who had nothing to offer him in return
• How might God be calling you to reach out to the least in our society and those who are truly lost?
• What gift do you have to offer people in need?
• How can you offer that gift this week? Before Easter?

A prayer for this week:
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. I want to be with you in paradise and I thank you for making that possible. Help me to reach out and love those who are least and last among us and those who are truly lost.  May they see your love and life through me. AMEN

Final Words ~ Father forgive them...

I remember the moment very clearly. My mom and I walked into her room in the morning and we could tell that her breathing had changed during the night. After two weeks of watching my Grandmother slowly slip away after a series of strokes, we felt like this was finally going to be her last day. My Mom stood on one side of her bed and I stood on the other as we watched her breathing slow and then very quietly there were no more breaths. We kept waiting and watching for another one – but nothing came. It was an amazingly peaceful end with no final words. In fact, for my grandmother there had been no words for over a year. For a woman who loved words, who loved to read and do the New York Times crossword puzzles and correct all of our grammar, words had not been part of her life since her first stroke 13 months earlier. If there could have been one word that day, I think it would have been, finally. My grandmother was ready to go. She was a woman of faith and trust and she knew there was more life to come.


My Grandmother was the first person I was with when they died, but she has certainly not been the last. As a pastor I have been present with many people and their families when loved ones took their last breath and like my Grandmother, many times there are no final words but with Jesus there were. As Jesus hung on the cross he spoke and his final words tell us a lot about what was important to him in that moment and what he wanted people to remember. We know these words were important to Jesus because he went through extraordinary lengths to speak them.

Last year as we took an in-depth look at the last 24 hours of Jesus life we talked in detail about his crucifixion. If you read any kind of medical explanation of what a body goes through when they hang on a cross you will learn that a person doesn’t die from the nail wounds in the hand and feet and they don’t die of blood loss, in fact with crucifixion there isn’t a lot of blood loss because the nails go through nerves and bones away from major arteries. A person on the cross usually dies of heart failure brought on by asphyxiation. With your arms extended and the full weight of your body pulling you down, to just breathe meant you had to lift yourself up by the nails in your wrists which would have been excruciating painful because of how the nails hit the nerve endings. So to pull yourself up, or push up on your feet enough to fill your lungs in order to talk is almost unimaginable, but Jesus did. He struggled to speak these final words because they were important to him, which means we need to pay careful attention to them.

The 4 gospels combined give us the 7 words, statements really, that Jesus spoke from the cross. Matthew and Mark only record one word and Luke and John each give us 3 different and unique ones and while some people find these differences troubling, it makes sense to me. Again, last year we learned that Jesus wasn’t crucified on a cross high up on a hill with no around him, he was only a few feet off the ground right along a road, so people would have heard him speak, even if he was talking in a whisper. But with all the confusion and noise and different people coming and going at the foot of the cross, it stands to reason that some people heard one word while others heard another.

The assumption we are making is that the difference in the gospels don’t contradict each other but compliment each other. Different people heard what Jesus said, they remembered it and eventually wrote it down and so through the 4 different gospels we have all of Jesus final words from the cross.

Since no one gospel records all 7 words, we aren’t sure of the exact order but a traditional ordering of the words looks likes this:
• Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
• Today you will be with me in paradise.
• Behold your mother… Behold your son.
• My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
• I thirst.
• It is finished.
• Into your hands I commit my spirit.

So let’s start with the first word, Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. We shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus begins with a prayer because Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer. At the beginning of his ministry Jesus fasted and prayed for 40 days. When he had major life decisions to make Jesus would go off alone to pray. Jesus’ prayer life was so profound that his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Prayer was the foundation of all Jesus did and prayer was a big part of what Jesus taught, so it should not surprise us that Jesus begins his final words with a prayer. It should also not be a surprise that his prayer wasn’t for himself but for others.

In fact, if we look at Jesus’ first 3 words from the cross we see that they aren’t about him but others. Let’s stop and think about that for a moment. Jesus has been betrayed by his friend Judas, denied by his friend Peter and deserted by almost every other friend he has and a few hours earlier he had experienced the most horrifying torture and beating you can imagine. They have just pounded nails into his hands and feet and lifted him into a position where breathing was difficult and painful let alone talking out loud and yet in this moment Jesus isn’t thinking about himself. He isn’t feeling sorry for himself, he isn’t cursing out his friends for failing him and he isn’t even crying out in pain. Jesus isn’t thinking about himself at all, he is thinking about and praying for others. The only way that is possible is if Jesus’ entire life had been spent focusing on and meeting the needs of others. The truth is that is exactly how Jesus did live his life. Jesus denied himself every day which meant that in this moment he was simply continuing to live the way he always had, by denying himself and praying for others.

Praying for others first and ourselves second is part of what it means for us to deny ourselves. Jesus said that if anyone wanted to follow him that we must deny ourselves and take up a cross and this is part of what that means. Self denial doesn’t mean we physically pick up or die on a cross, but it does mean we live a life where we think about others, pray for others and place the needs of others before our own. It means we stop thinking about ourselves first and what is good for us and start thinking about how to meet the needs of those around us. In our me-first world, this way of life is radical, but it is the example given to us by Jesus in this first word from the cross.

So Jesus prays, “Father forgive them.” Now who is the “them” that Jesus is talking about? Well, let’s place ourselves in Jesus’ position. The first people he would have seen would have been the Roman Soldiers who have just pounded the nails into his hands and feet. They were the ones at the foot of the cross tossing dice to see who would get Jesus clothes. As Jesus looked at them, he asked God to forgive them because they didn’t really understand who he was so they couldn’t really understand what they were doing.

But beyond the soldiers Jesus would have seen other people gathered there. Most likely there were religious leaders who had been the ones who condemned Jesus to death the night before. They were gathered there to make sure Jesus really died, but they are also there to mock him and curse him. As Jesus looked at them, he prayed, Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. Jesus is doing in this moment what he taught his disciples to do in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:44 Jesus says, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. These were not just words for Jesus, it was how he lived and died. He loved his enemies enough to pray for them even while they are persecuting him.

As Jesus looked out at the crowd I wonder if he was also searching for his disciples. Where was Peter, Andrew or James? Where was Thomas or Nathaniel or Matthew? Why weren’t they there? Why had they all deserted him when they had promised to stay with him until the end? As Jesus was looking for them and thinking about them I believe he was also praying for them. Father, forgive them because they don’t understand what they are doing. They didn’t understand what they were doing. They were afraid and unsure and all their hopes and dreams were broken. Everything they had believed in seemed to be falling apart around them. The one they trusted in seemed in this moment to have failed and they were overwhelmed with sorrow and grief and so they ran away. Instead of cursing his friends for not being there, and instead of condemning them for being weak and sinful, Jesus prayed, Father forgive them.

But then beyond the soldiers who were crucifying him, and his enemies who were persecuting him and his own disciples who had failed him, I think Jesus looked out from the cross and he saw me and you. Now here’s the thing, Jesus doesn’t see us when we are at our best, he sees us at our worst. He sees us when we were saying those things we know we shouldn’t say and doing things we know we shouldn’t do and it is in those moments, those moments of our own sin and failure that Jesus prays for us and what he asks is for God to forgive us, because we don’t know the full extent of what we are doing.

The truth is that this prayer of Jesus’ from the cross wasn’t just for those who were there that day, it is a prayer for all of us because we are all sinners. We don’t like to talk about sin much and we don’t like to be reminded of it, but the truth is that we are all sinners. The word sin means to miss the mark or to stray from the path and the truth is that God has laid out a path for us to follow. He has taught us and through Jesus he has shown us how to live our lives and yet we are forever going in our own direction. The apostle Paul says it best in his letter to the Romans when he says in Romans 7 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do (7:15),and For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (7:18-19)

So we are all sinners. We are never going to be able to live the perfect life that God wants for us and the Bible points this out not to make us feel guilty and unworthy but to remind us of the abundant grace of God. While Jesus was very honest about the reality and consequences of sin, the heart of his message was forgiveness and grace. It’s funny that many people know John 3:16 by hear, For god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. But we don’t know the next verse very well and it is this verse that sums up the heart of Jesus message. John 3:17 says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. This is the heart of the gospel, that God sent Jesus not to condemn us of sin, but to point it out so that we might now the power of God’s forgiveness.

If we keep reading Paul’s letters to the Romans we see same thing. Look at Romans 7:24-25. Notice that like Jesus, Paul’s message doesn’t end with condemnation but God’s grace. The whole point of talking about his own sin wasn’t to condemn himself and beat himself up but to give thanks and praise to God who forgives him and offers him grace and peace. God wants the same thing for us. God wants us to get serious about our sin not to make us feel guilty and unworthy but to remind us of his amazing grace and love, a love that was willing to die for us and a love that was willing to endure the pain of speaking from the cross so that we could hear this message of forgiveness.

So the first of the final words is a prayer because Jesus built his life on prayer, it was a prayer for others and not himself because Jesus lived of life of self denial and sacrifice where he placed the needs of others before his own and it was a prayer of forgiveness for everyone because we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy and love. While it is important to understand all of this and accept the forgiveness that God offers us through the cross, it’s not enough for us to just hear these final words, we have to be willing to make them the foundation on which we build our faith and our lives. In other words, we have to live them out and apply them to our lives because application is… everything.

Let’s be clear, Jesus didn’t say this prayer out loud so that he could hear the sound of his own voice, it was because he wanted us to hear this message. Jesus wanted us to know that no matter what we have done and who we are we are forgiven. After all if Jesus can forgive those who have just condemned him to die and nailed him to a cross – he can forgive us. But he also wants us to hear this message so that we will forgive others. Again, this final word is nothing new for Jesus, he spent a lot of time teaching us to forgive. Jesus not only told us to forgive our enemies but he said we need to forgive those who have sinned against not 7 times, or 70 times or even 70 times 70 times (or 4,900 times) but all the time. By making this one of his last words to us, Jesus wants to be clear that we need to be willing to forgive others, it really is that important.

But it’s important to remember that forgiving others doesn’t mean that we rush back into a relationship where we allow ourselves to get hurt and take advantage of over and over again. God would not want that. Forgiveness does mean, however, that we let go of the grudge and don’t hold people’s faults and failures and sins against them. It’s not easy to forgive those who have hurt us deeply. It’s not easy to let go of the pain and frustration and disappointment and bitterness that we feel – it’s not easy, but neither is speaking from the cross. Jesus endured the pain to forgive us and sometimes we have to endure the pain of forgiveness because it is the right thing to do. It is also the only path that leads to healing and new life.

If we are going to hold on to the pain and bitterness of those who have wronged us then we will never heal and experience freedom and life, we will simply live in pain and bitterness. God’s forgiveness of us and our willingness to forgive others is what allows us to let go of the pain so we can begin to experience true healing and a better life. If there is someone you need to forgive today – I want to invite you to forgive them. Pray for them this week. Put their name into the prayer of Jesus and make it your prayer this week.

Father forgive ________________, and Father, forgive me.


Next Steps
Final Words ~ Father, forgive them…

1. Read the different accounts of Jesus crucifixion from each of the four gospels and note the differences and similarities.
• Matthew 27:32-57
• Mark 15:21-41
• Luke 23:26-49
• John19:16-30

2. Jesus’ first word from the cross was a prayer because prayer was the foundation of all Jesus did. Add 5 minutes of prayer into each day this week.

3. Jesus forgives several groups of people from the cross: Roman soldiers, religious leaders, his disciples and the crowd
• What does his forgiveness of these people tell us about his forgiveness of us?
If Jesus offered forgiveness for those who crucified him, he is willing to forgive everything.
• What is the one sin in your life that you think God can’t or won’t forgive? Pray, Father forgive me.

4. This final word is also a call for us to forgive others. Who in your life are you struggling to forgive? Would you be willing to pray for them this week?

Father, forgive ________. You know their heart and my pain.  I pray for all those who hurt me. Forgive them and heal me.  AMEN

Listen

The Lenten season has traditionally been a time for Christians to focus on spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting and reading God’s word and the goal is make our faith stronger. One of the reasons the church chose to make this season 40 days was because Jesus himself spent 40 days fasting and praying to make his own faith and life stronger. Right after Jesus was baptized it says he was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness where he fasted and prayed for 40 days. It was right after this time that Satan showed up to tempt Jesus and what we learn by looking at these 3 temptations is that while Jesus was in the wilderness, he spent a lot of that time listening.


We know this is because every time Satan tempted Jesus to do something, Jesus responded not with his words but with God’s words. It’s as if Jesus had just been listening to the word of God and reflecting on how to use that word in his own life. But Jesus wasn’t just listening to God’s word, we can see by some of his responses that he was also listening to the desires of his own heart and thinking and praying about who he wanted to be as the Son of God. But it wasn’t just God and his own heart that Jesus was listening to; he also listened to the cries of the people, not the cries he might have heard as he walked through a village, but the cries of our collective heart and soul. Jesus listened to our needs during his time in the wilderness and he made choices that helped us.

So this temptation story of Jesus shows us that for 40 days Jesus spent time listening to God, listening to his own heart and life and listening to the cries and the needs of the people around him and this year I want to invite us to do the very same thing. This year during the 40 days of Lent I want us to both listen to Jesus and listen like Jesus. Like Jesus I want us to listen to God and I want us to listen to our own hearts and lives and clarify what it means for us to follow Jesus all the way to the cross and I want us to listen to the cries and the needs of the people around us and the people around the world. I really hope that this Lent will be a season of listening.

Now specifically the words I want us to listen to clearly are the final words of Jesus as he hung on the cross. In the 4 gospels we find 7 final words or statements that Jesus made while he was dying and each week are going to listen to one of these words and hear what God is saying. How do these final words shape our understanding of God? How do they shape our faith, and how do they shape our relationships. But first we have to understand what does it mean to really listen?

Think about what it would have been like to listen to Jesus as he spoke from the cross. We learned last year from the 24 hours that changed the world study that the cross of Jesus was not on a hill far away, but right along the side of the road with Jesus only a few feet off the ground, which means that no matter how difficult it was for Jesus to speak, people actually did hear him and people remembered what he said and eventually wrote those words down. But because crucifixion made it so difficult for people to speak, Jesus wasn’t yelling these words out at the top of his lungs, they weren’t even spoken in a loud and clear voice for the crowds to hear, the reality of crucifixion meant that Jesus most likely whispered or cried out these words in pain which meant that if you were going to hear what he was saying you were going to have to get close to him – very close. So if we are going to listen to God during this season of Lent then we need to get close to God, we need to get very close.

For Jesus, getting close to God meant going off to be alone in the wilderness. For 40 days Jesus physically removed himself from the distractions and the noise of the world around him. He left his family, friends and all of his regular routines in order to be able to silence his heart, mind and life enough to be able to hear the word of God. While we may want God to shout above all the noise of this world to make his word and will known to us, most of the time god isn’t going to work that way. God doesn’t shout and raise his voice to get our attention, in fact the Bible says that God is heard in a still small voice or as some Bibles say, he is heard in the sheer silence. So if want to listen to God during this season of lent then we need to find a time and a place to get away from the noise around us and get close to God. This doesn’t mean we leave our families, jobs and communities for 40 days, but can we find 40 minutes each day or 40 minutes each week to get close to god and listen for his voice? Can we leave the world around us behind enough to really be able to hear God as we read his word and listen to him in times of prayer?

For people to listen to Jesus’ final words from the cross they didn’t just need to get close to Jesus, they also had to take some risks. To be with Jesus at the foot of the cross meant you were willing to associate with him and at that moment it could be costly. In fact, most of the disciples weren’t there when Jesus died. They weren’t willing to be at the foot of the cross to hear Jesus final words because they were afraid of being arrested and crucified with Jesus. In fear they stayed away, far away. It was only the disciple John and the 2 women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus, who were willing to risk it all to stay close to Jesus.

If we are going to get close to God and listen to his voice it will call for us to take some risks. We have to risk looking foolish to those around us as we set aside time to listen to God in worship, study and prayer, and then we have to risk looking foolish to people around us as we actually live out the words we hear. You see, listening to God can’t just be an exercise of the ears; it has to be an exercise of the heart. To listen to these final words of Jesus and do nothing with them doesn’t take any courage, but to listen and then apply them to our lives takes risk and courage. For example, the first word we will hear this Sunday is Father forgive them. It is risky to forgive people. It takes courage to forgive people, so to really hear these words from the cross means we are willing to live them out and that takes risk and courage and commitment.

But Lent isn’t just a time to listen to God, it is also needs to be a time to listen to our own hearts. When Jesus was in the wilderness, he spent time listening to the desires of his own heart and he made some decisions about the kind of leader and teacher and Messiah he was wanted to be. Jesus decided that he wasn’t going to focus on things that were spectacular like throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple so that angels would catch him, and he wasn’t going to just focus on just the basic human physical needs that people have, like the need we all have for bread and water. Those would be important to Jesus, but that was not going to be the foundation of his life and work, instead Jesus was going to focus on being a Messiah who through his words and actions would bring forth the kingdom of God.

My hope is that during the next 6 weeks as we won’t just listen to God but that we will take some to reflect on who we want to be as children of God. What kind of disciple do we want to be? What kind of leader do we want to be? This first step in this kind of self reflection and self examination is to confess our sin to God. Unconfessed sin does 2 things, it blinds us to who we really are and it keeps us from being able to hear God’s voice. Unconfessed sin keeps us from being able to listen. Think about the story of King David when he was caught up in the sin of adultery and then conspiracy to murder. David wasn’t confessing his sin to God, he didn’t even confess it to himself, he simply wanted to cover it all up. As long as David wasn’t honest about himself – he couldn’t hear God’s voice clearly, but once he confessed his sin he was able to hear God and God as able to work in his life. Humility and confession of sin are important if we are to become the people God desires us to be and if we going to become the people most of us want to be.


Tonight is a night to do this. Tonight is a night to humble ourselves and confess our sin. On Ash Wednesday, the traditional words spoken as the ashes are placed on a person’s forehead are these, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. These words are to remind us that we are weak and sinful and that all of us are in need of God’s forgiveness and grace. Without God’s mercy we are simply dust and without the work of God’s love in our lives, we would return to dust and so what makes all the difference in our lives is God.
When we humble ourselves and admit this, when we confess our pride and the desire we have to do things our way we begin to hear more fully God’s voice and see more clearly who God wants us to be and who we want to be.

Like Jesus, I also hope we will take some time during the next 4 days to listen to the voice of those in need around us. I am convinced that while Jesus was being tempted by Satan one of the things that kept him faithful was that he heard our cry for help. Jesus heard us cry out for salvation and so he remained strong and faithful in order to meet that need. I am also convinced that from the cross Jesus could hear the cries of his family and friends and all those who are lost in the world and so he hung there and died in order to meet our spiritual needs. He knew we couldn’t overcome sin and death on our own, he knew that we needed his help, so he listened that then he helped us. He heard our cry and came to our rescue. I hope that during this season of lent we will hear the cries of those in need around us and then go to their rescue.

Can we take some time during these next 6 weeks to reach out to someone in need and offer them love, support or even physical care and resources to meet their needs? Can we not only hear the cries of those in need around us but those in need around the world as well? Can we take this season of Lent to learn about one of the missionaries we support or about a nation in need, or maybe commit to going on the mission trip to help those ravaged by tornadoes just a year ago. There are so many needs and so many people crying in the world today and part of listening to God means listening to them and reaching out to help them.

It’s risky and humbling to listen to the cries of those in need because they will shape our hearts and actions – but we need to listen and we need those cries to guide us because they did for Jesus. Jesus uttered final words from the cross because he heard our cries of need and was willing to go to the cross and die our death so that we wouldn’t just be dust and ashes. He listened not just to God and the desires of his own and life but he listened to our cries for help – and we need to listen to others. .

More than anything, I want this season of Lent to be a season of listening. May we listen carefully to the final words of Jesus and hear God’s message for our lives. May we listen to our own hearts and lives as we seek to live out that message and may we always be listening to the cries of those in need around us, those in need of love and grace and salvation, and may their cries move us like they did Jesus, to a place of sacrifice and service, to a place where we are willing to take up our own cross and live for God.

Repentance

One of my favorite classes in Seminary was a course in feminist ethics. Now you have to understand that this was an incredibly liberal class. It was liberal in its theology and understanding of God and it pushed our traditional views of God to the limit. It was liberal in its politics and world view and it was very liberal in its social agenda. Now if you know me, you might be surprised that this was a favorite class of mine because I’m probably more conservative in my views than those on the far left and believe me this class was filled with people on the extreme far left. By the end of the first week the professor had discovered that I was the only person in the class who held a different view. So during class discussions there would always come that moment when the professor would say, “Andy, I know what every person in this class thinking, but you, so why don’t you tell us your views on…”


Now here’s the thing, she really wanted to know. She valued my point of view and was interested in what I had to say. She was open to new ideas and wanted to find common ground from which we could build conversation and community. That semester we actually began to discover that classic evangelical Christianity and many of the ideas in far left feminist movement were actually very similar. There were many, MANY things that were different, but there was also common ground which made conversations and discussions about how to be the church really interesting.

We don’t have much of this kind of communication in our society today. We live in a very polarized nation. The left doesn’t want to work with the right, conservatives don’t want to talk with liberals, the young don’t see things the same way as those who are older, the rich and the poor seem to demonize each other. Muslims and Christians can’t live together, and neither can the Jews and the Arabs. Whatever the issue is: gun-control, birth-control, government-control, we set ourselves against each other which means that no problems ever get solved. Forget solving problems, many times we aren’t even willing to listen to those who hold different views than we do.

Now for those of us who are followers of Jesus, this kind of thinking is dangerous because it closes us off to what God might want to say to us or even do among us. When we think our view is the right view and our way is the only way, we close ourselves off to God and the ability to hear God say, wait a minute, I want you to see MY way. That is what had happened to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth.

While Nazareth was the hometown of Jesus, it was not where he chose to begin his ministry. Jesus began his ministry along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and then he made his home in the city of Capernaum. Now what is important to know about Capernaum is that it had a very large Gentile population. While several of the disciples came from Capernaum and there was a Jewish synagogue there, it was a city known for its diverse population which meant that many Jewish people looked down on those who lived there. Good religious people from Jesus’ hometown didn’t understand why Jesus would chose to live with “those” people and why he had chosen “that” community to share God’s love and power.

When Jesus finally returned to Nazareth, the people were excited. They had heard about his preaching and his miracles and they were excited to experience all of God’s power for themselves, but even more importantly I think they were just glad that Jesus has come back to a more respectable city. Nazareth was primarily, if not exclusively, a Jewish community so many of the people there would have seen it as more appropriate for Jesus to teach and preach and perform miracles there than in Capernaum, after all, Jesus was on their side. He was one of them.

In many ways the people who gathered in the synagogue to hear Jesus that day were a lot like people today. They held strong views. They believed that they were right and the other side was wrong, and they didn’t want to associate with anyone from the “other” side. They didn’t even see the other side as worthy of their time, energy, interest or love. They wanted nothing to do with them.

When I think about that crowd, I fear that is where we are headed today and I don’t just mean among the Raven’s and 49ers! We are so divided and work to demonize the other side instead of listening to them openly. We have gotten to a place where we don’t even want to talk to or associate with anyone who disagrees with us, but as the people in the synagogue show us, that attitude can cut us off from the presence of God. That attitude can keep us from seeing what God wants to do in our world today.

Jesus stood up in the synagogue that day and read a section from the prophet Isaiah. Luke 4:18-19. In so many ways this passage sums up everything Jesus had been doing. He had been preaching to the poor and healing those who had been held captive by sickness, sin and Satan. Jesus had been opening the eyes of both Jews and Gentiles to the amazing grace and love of God and he was teaching them all that the kingdom of God, this year of jubilee, was coming for all of them. In many ways what Jesus read that day was a summary of what He had already been doing, but then he added this, Luke 4:21.

When Jesus said “today” this scripture is fulfilled the first thing he was saying was that the people in the crowd listening to him were the ones who were poor, captives, blind and oppressed. In other words Jesus was saying that it was the people in the synagogue, those good religious people of Nazareth, who were sinners in need of God’s mercy and this was not something the people wanted to hear. They saw themselves as being righteous and others as being sinners.

So the first thing Jesus says to the crowd is that they were sinners in need of God’s grace, but then he goes on and says, “just to be clear – this grace is available to everyone”. Jesus makes sure that the crowd understands that the grace and love of God is being extended to everyone. To emphasis this point Jesus reminds the people of two stories from their own history. The first is the story about the prophet Elijah. A drought had settled over the entire region and God had been providing water for Elijah through a brook, but then the brook dried up. Now God had once provided water for his people from a rock, so God could have just given Elijah water from the dry ground, but he chose not to do that. God could have used one of the faithful people in Israel to provide water for Elijah, but God chose not to do that either. Instead God sent Elijah to a Gentile woman in the city of Sidon and used her to provide Elijah with both water and food.

Now think about this, God chose a woman to help Elijah who was not one of God’s chosen people and who lived in the city of Sidon which was both the hometown of Jezebel the sworn enemy of God’s people and the center of Baal worship and then we find out she also had a sinful past. This was the most unlikely person in all the world that God could have used. She had four strikes against her. She was a gentile, a woman, from Sidon and a sinner! She was absolutely the least likely person that God would use, and yet God not only used her, but God saved her and her child. The message God was sending to Elijah and now to the people in the synagogue of Nazareth is that God’s grace and salvation is for everyone.

Jesus then reminds the people about the story of Elisha. Elisha was the prophet who followed Elijah and he healed a leper named Naaman, but Naaman was also not one of God’s chosen people, he was, in fact, the top official in the army that fought against the people of Israel. Naaman even turned away from Elisha when Elisha told him how to be healed of his leprosy. Again, this man had everything going against him. He was a gentile, he was an officer in the army that was attacking God’s people and he thought God’s way of healing was crazy. And yet, when Naaman agreed to go and wash himself in the river 6 times, God healed him. The message God was sending to Elisha and now the people in the synagogue of Nazareth is that God’s grace and salvation is for all.

So the good religious people went to the synagogue that day hoping that Jesus had come to his senses and was now going to spend all of his time and energy with them, but instead he had come home and basically told them that like everyone else in the world they were sinners far from God and they were the poor, blind and oppressed people who were in need of God’s salvation. None of this went over well. The people didn’t want to listen to Jesus. They weren’t open to this new idea of God’s grace being for everyone and they didn’t want to humble themselves and see how they needed to be forgiven. They just got mad and forced Jesus out of the city where they intended to throw him off a cliff. What caused such a strong reaction? Why did they reject Jesus so completely when others were willing to embrace him so completely? What was the difference?

There is one clear answer – repentance. As we heard through the out-of-control sermon series, the word” repent” simply means to turn. It means we stop going in one direction and we stop thinking, speaking and living one way so we can turn and go in a new direction and live God’s way. Many people in Capernaum and throughout Galilee were willing to repent. They were willing to not only see their need for God’s grace but they were ok thinking that God’s grace was for everyone. They were willing to embrace new ideas and consider a different way of life. They were willing to open themselves up to the word and will of God seen in Jesus.

While they were willing to repent, many people in Nazareth were not. The people in the synagogue that day didn’t want to consider that God’s grace could be for anyone but them and they didn’t want to admit that they were sinners who needed God’s mercy. Because they didn’t see any need for change, they weren’t open to Jesus working in them or through them. Because they weren’t willing to repent, they weren’t able to see the presence of God in Jesus or accept God’s gift of grace and life that Jesus offered them.

So the key to salvation is repentance. The key to being able to see God is understanding that we are the ones in need of God’s grace and that we are the ones who need to go in a new direction. And this means that we need to be open to all the ways God might want to work among us. As long as we think we have all the answers and that our ways are the right ways – we will be like the people in the synagogue of Nazareth who missed out on the grace of God and the new life offered to them through Jesus. But when we humble ourselves and begin to see that God has come for all those who are poor, held captive by pride, blind to our own sin and failures and oppressed by our own self-righteousness – then we begin to experience the freedom and life Jesus offered to us.

Humility and a willingness to repent, a willingness to turn and live life a different way, were what the people in the Nazareth synagogue refused to do that day and it is this same attitude which is in short supply today as we set ourselves against those disagree with us. May today be the day that we open ourselves up to all that God is saying to us and may today be the day we hear the message of Jesus which says, “repent. May today be the day we stop, turn and begin to live life God’s way, for the kingdom of God is here.



Next Steps ~ Repentance

1. In what areas do you struggle to listen to opposing views:
Economics?
Politics?
Religion?
Entertainment?
Sports?
How can you still hold strong convictions in these areas, not compromise fundamental principles, and yet still be open to the opinions of others? Pray for an open spirit to listen.

2. Humility in one area of life can lead to humility in every area of life. How can you be more humble in your day to day activities:
At Home
At Work
At Church
Among Friend:
With Civic Groups:

3. In humility, confess your sin to God:
Most merciful God, I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what I have done and by what I have left undone. I have not loved You with my whole hear and I have not loved my neighbor as myself. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent. Have mercy on me, a sinner, and forgive me so that I may experience Your grace and mercy, walk in Your way and experience Your life. For it’s in Jesus name I pray. AMEN