Matthew 14:22-33
The author C.S. Lewis has said that the problem in life isn’t that we want too much, it’s that we settle for too little. Not only is this true in life but it is also true in our faith, the problem isn’t that we want too much from God, it’s that we are willing to settle for too little. Building an authentic faith means that we are able to do & be more than we ever thought or imagined. When we follow Jesus, the possibilities before us our limitless. In Phil. 4:13 the apostle Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. God gives us the strength and the power to do all things & yet how often do we step out in faith to do those things? The abundant life that Jesus came to bring us and the passion for living that Jesus offers aren’t found when we play it safe & settle for the easy & comfortable road in life. An authentic faith is found when we are willing to step out in a radical response to God’s call & embrace all that God has for us. What are the possibilities that God has for you today? What are those things God is calling us to do that seem impossible & how can we make them a possibility? I want us to look at the story of Peter walking on the water & learn from his example how we can stop settling for too little & start embracing all of God’s possibilities.
The first thing we learn from Peter is that he is the one who asks Jesus to allow him to do the impossible. Look at Matthew 14:28 Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Jesus hasn’t said anything about the disciples coming to him on the water, in fact it appears as if Jesus is making his way toward them, & my guess is that the disciples are thinking that once Jesus is in the boat, everything is going to be ok. But Peter doesn’t want to settle for Jesus coming to him, Peter doesn’t want to play it safe - he wants the adventure of walking with Jesus. Peter’s desire is to go where Jesus goes & to do what Jesus is doing, & so he takes the initiative and he asks Jesus to fulfill that desire. Are we willing to ask God to help us fulfill our dreams, our goals and our desires? In Psalm 20:4 it says, May God give you the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed. Last week we talked about passion & our passion in life can become a possibility if we will ask God for his power. Peter asked Jesus to allow him to come to him on the water – his passion was to be with Jesus & to do what Jesus was doing, so he asks for that possibility & Jesus gave him the power. We can do the same thing. We can ask God for his power so that our passions can become a possibility. We don’t have to settle for too little, in fact I believe God is waiting for us to ask him for more – more of his power, more of his love, more of his strength and purpose for plans for our lives.
But most of the time we settle for too little in life & in faith because we will only step out and do those things we know we can do on our own. When we are only drawing upon our own strength & power we are not living life to the fullest & we really aren’t living by faith. The fullness of life & faith only comes when we step out & do those things we know that we can’t do on our own. The fullness of faith comes when we ask God for his help so that we can do the impossible. The same principle is at work in the church. Too often we will only attempt to do those things we know that we can do on our own & yet what we fail to understand is that God is calling us to do and be so much more. Will we as a church make the choice to enter into mission and ministry that we know is impossible without God’s help? That is the first step to an authentic faith.
What keeps us from taking this bold step of faith both personally and as a church is fear. It might be a fear of failure, a fear of looking foolish. We might be afraid that no one will step out with us, or we might be afraid of what people will say around us. Fear can keep us from the possibilities God has for us. It was fear that kept 11 disciples in the boat. The disciples are afraid & they have every right to be, they are clearly in a dangerous situation. Their boat is out in open water where it is being battered by the wind and the waves at night. The last thing they would have expected would be for Jesus to come walking toward them on the water, so when they see a shape approach them they aren’t thinking Jesus –they are thinking ghost. Things have suddenly gone from bad to worse, first they are struggling in the middle of the sea at night in bad weather & now they have to contend with a ghost. So yes they are afraid & they cry out in fear. Even after they know it is Jesus, their fear causes them to settle for the safety of the boat.
Peter, however, is able to rise above his fear. It’s not that he wasn’t afraid, Peter was just as afraid as the rest of them, but instead of allowing his fear to cause him to shrink back & play it safe – he used his fear to help him step up & take a risk. If we are going to be afraid anyway – why not go all the way & step out in faith? Living a life of faith today is scary. It’s not easy to follow Jesus every moment of every day, so the question is what will we do with our fear? Will we allow it to take hold of us & cause us to choose the easy road & seek the safety of a comfortable life or will we take hold of our fear & in the face of it trust God to take us even farther? Gary Haagan, the author of Just Courage and one of the leaders of the International Justice Mission has said, Jesus came not to make us safe & comfortable but brave and courageous. Jesus knows that life can get difficult & even dangerous, he knows the fear we face, which is why he came to give us strength and courage. Are we willing to ask God for this strength? And then are we willing to receive it & use it when God gives?
Peter asked for the opportunity to walk on the water, & when Jesus said come – Peter got out of the boat & went. If we are going to ask God for strength & courage, we better be prepared to use it. One of the biggest problems we face is that when God gives us the go ahead – many times we don’t go. When God invites us to come & walk with him on the water, when he provides us opportunities to do more than we ever thought or imagined we could do, we don’t get out of the boat.
Now I think Peter was willing to get out of the boat and attempt to do the impossible because he was first willing to step out of the boat & walk with Jesus along a beach. This isn’t the first time Jesus has called Peter to come & walk with me. When Jesus first called Peter to follow him it was to leave behind his life as a fisherman, & Peter did. He stepped out of his boat & walked along the shores & the hillsides of Galilee. It was a step of faith. Peter gave up the security he found in his life as a fisherman & followed Jesus in a radically new life and it was that step of faith which gave Peter the courage to take another step of faith & climb out of the boat. Likewise, it was this step of faith & getting out of the boat to do something that was impossible that gave Peter the courage to later reach out and heal the sick.
In Acts 3 Peter & John are going to the temple when a man who had been lame from his birth asked them for money & Peter says, I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk. And then Peter did what I’m sure to him was the impossible, he reached out & took the man by the hand and raised him up & immediately the man’s legs became strong. Now the reason Peter was able to provide this miracle of healing was because he knew that at another point in time when he placed his faith & trust in Jesus he had also been able to do the impossible and walk on water. Embracing all the plans God has for us is a journey that begins with small steps. The more we walk with God, the more we step out in faith, the more opportunities God will give us to do those things that seem impossible. When we start small & are faithful in the little things, God will then lead us to greater things.
What is it that God is calling you to do today? What is the step of faith he is inviting you to make? Maybe it’s to trust him for the first time. Maybe it’s to step up and really learn what God has for your life. Maybe it’s to go deeper & take some real risks in following Jesus. Maybe God is asking for more of your time & he wants you to realign your schedule & make more room for him. Maybe it’s to commit yourself to spiritual growth through a small group Bible Study. Maybe it’s to explore the possibility of getting involved in mission, there’s a group going to South Dakota next year – is God asking you go with them? What are the possibilities God is laying before us? What are those things that seem impossible to us right now but can become a possibility if we take one step of faith today to help get us there?
What is the step of faith God is asking us as Faith Church to take? I am always challenged by the reality that even as a church we often won’t step up & make the decision to do something that maybe on paper simply looks impossible, but we know in our hearts is God’s purpose & plan for us. Are we willing to lay the desires of our heart before God with the courage to work for them when Jesus says come? Can we overcome our fear, & trust that through Christ all things are possible for Faith Church?
The last thing we all need to remember is that stepping out to do the impossible is really, hear me on this, it is really a no-lose situation because even if we fail, all we have to do is ask God for help & God will save us. Isn’t that what we learn from Peter? He gets out of the boat & starts walking on the water & then after a few steps he get’s distracted, he starts to doubt & then starts to sink, but as soon as he cries out for help – Jesus is there to save him. If we step out in faith & everything falls apart – it’s ok because God will reach down into our lives & lift us up & then God will honor our step of faith. Peter used his experience of walking on the water with Jesus, as feeble as it was, to help him do even greater things. God redeemed his sinking & he gave him a greater victory. God can redeem our failures, what He’s looking for is our faith.
An authentic faith doesn’t settle for what is safe & comfortable & easy, it embraces all the possibilities God has for us & even gives us the strength and the courage to step out and do the impossible. An authentic faith doesn’t just believe that with God all things are possible – it steps out in faith to do those things. So let us step out in faith.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Building an Authentic Faith - Passion
Luke Brinker is a retired UM minister and he and his wife Theda were members of my congregation in Lewisburg. Luke was a big supporter of Sunday School and he would often ask me if he could give a plug for Sunday School during worship and I would always say yes. Luke would then speak powerfully about how important Sunday School was, how good the classes were and how much he and others would love to see people attend. The thing about Luke is that he didn’t just stand up and make the announcement – each and every week Luke would make his way through the people before worship, after worship and during the greeting time and he would personally invite people to stay for Sunday School. Luke would call people during the week to invite them, and I know for a fact that a lot of people ended up in Sunday School because of Luke.
Luke would always apologize to me for being so vocal about Sunday School and I would continually tell him that he didn’t need to apologize because I loved his passion. One day Luke took me aside because he didn’t really understand what I meant when I said I thought he was passionate about Sunday School - so I tried to tell him that for me passion is enthusiasm and energy; it’s excitement. Passion is such a strong feeling about something that you work relentlessly to see it happen. More than any other quality of faith, what I am drawn to the most is passion.
The author Mike Yaconelli defines passion as being fully alive, or living with expectancy, anticipation and enthusiasm, and he says that the mission of Jesus was to introduce us to the passion of living. A genuine faith needs to be a passionate faith; it needs to be a faith that is fully alive. A passionate faith is a relationship with God where we fully anticipate and expect God to move and do great things in us and through us. A passionate faith brings life and joy and power not just to ourselves, but even to those around us, and the best example of what this passionate faith looks like is found in 4 un-named people in the gospel of Mark.
Mark 2:3-5.
Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Notice that what Jesus responds to is not the faith of the paralyzed man, it says that Jesus say their faith, not his faith. What Jesus sees is the faith of the 4 friends who have carried the man to the house, lifted him up to the roof and then dug through the roof so they could lower their friend to Jesus. It’s clear to me that what Jesus sees in these men is passion, the fully expect Jesus to heal him and Jesus is so moved by what they have done that he does heal their friend not just physically but spiritually as well. Jesus is so moved by the passion of these people that he brings a fullness and wholeness to this man’s life. These 4 friends are passionate and they show us what a passion is all about.
First and foremost a passionate faith sees the power and love there is God and a passionate faith believes that God can and does and wants to help us. These 4 men worked so hard to get their friend to Jesus because they believed Jesus not only could do something to help, but that he would. They would not have gone to the lengths that they did if they did not think Jesus was able to help their friend. A passionate faith starts by seeing the power in Jesus. A passionate faith understands that God’s power and love can and does change people’s lives.
A passionate faith not only sees the power in God it also sees the needs in people. These 4 men know that their friend is paralyzed. They don’t think about coming to Jesus for themselves, they aren’t thinking about what Jesus can do for them – they are thinking about what Jesus can do for their friend. Luke Brinker was always thinking about others. Luke could see the spiritual needs in people and he believed to the very core of his being that Sunday School would help bring people closer to God who in turn would help people in life. A passionate faith is always thinking of ways and finding ways to bring people to Jesus even if it means our own needs go unmet.
Virginia Smeltzer was in her 80’s when I was the pastor in Altoona and while I was there we made a lot of changes to one of worship services and we introduced a lot of new music. As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion about this, and one day Virginia stopped me in the hall of the church and she said, I want to share with you my thoughts on the new music. I said OK, and then I braced myself for what was to come. Personally, she said, I don’t like it, but when I look around and see the young people singing and enjoying it, I realized that this is what we need to do and we need to keep singing it. That’s a passionate faith. Virginia could see the needs of the youth and young adults around her and she willing to say, it’s not about me – it’s about bringing others to Jesus, so let’s do what we need to do to get them there.
In so many ways I want to be as passionate as Virginia and I can only hope and pray that when I’m in my 80’s and not liking the new music of the church that I’ll be willing to say, it’s not about me, it’s about bringing people to Jesus. A passionate faith that wants to help and reach out to others can be seen in lots of ways. Maybe it’s an 80 year old woman being willing to sing contemporary music – maybe it’s a motorcycle ride through the hills of central PA to raise money for ministry that will reach our youth, maybe it’s inviting people to Sunday School, maybe it’s being willing to step up and teach Sunday School. While it can be expressed in so many different ways, a passionate faith is always finding ways to bring people to Jesus, even if it calls for sacrifice and even if it calls us to work hard.
That’s something else we see in these 4 friends, they worked hard. Look at all the obstacles they had to overcome to get their friend to Jesus. First he is paralyzed so they have to carry him to the house where Jesus is staying. When the crowds are so large that they can’t get through, they don’t give up they get creative and this is the part I love. You have to wonder how they came up with this idea to lower their friend through the roof. What a crazy idea – what a creative idea – what a great idea, but it meant they had to work hard. I can’t imagine it was easy to carry a paralyzed man up onto the roof and most roofs would have been made of hardened clay and twigs so digging through by hand would have been difficult – even a little dangerous. But they do it and again that’s passion. Passion is creativity, it is risk taking, it is working hard until you get the job done, and it’s not letting anything stand in your way, not even the criticism of the people.
While it’s not recorded in the story here, you have to know that the homeowner could not have been very happy to have his roof destroyed. Maybe he was yelling at them from inside the house to stop but he couldn’t get to them because the crowds were so large, or maybe Jesus just looked at the homeowner with some understanding and reassurance and somehow told him it was going to be ok. And what about the rest of the crowd that was also trying to get to Jesus – you have to believe that not everyone was happy as this scene unfolds – but the 4 friends didn’t care – they were focused on getting their friend to Jesus, so they kept going. They didn’t let negative criticism stop them.
Will we work hard and do whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus? In many ways Faith Church is a passionate church and our passion is seen as we welcome students after football games, and send people out on mission trips, and support those in need within our own community. We have not let obstacles stand in our way of doing what we can to bring people closer to God and we can’t stop now – we have to keep taking risks, and we have to keep thinking creatively, we have to keep moving forward to bring people to Jesus. I’ve been wondering this week what the next creative risk taking step is going to be for us. Somewhere out there (maybe in one of you) is God’s plan for us to do something outrageous so that we can bring others to Jesus. My hope is that when the plan is identified and we know it is of God, that we will not allow any obstacles to stand in our way and that together we will commit ourselves and work hard to make it happen.
And that’s the last thing I want us to think about as we look at these 4 friends – they were in it together. They worked together to help their friend get to Jesus. One man couldn’t have done it alone. A passionate faith is not a lone ranger faith it intentionally seeks to draw others in. Actually I think passion itself just draws people together. We have all been around those people who are so enthusiastic and energized about God’s plan that we can’t help but want to be with them and work alongside of them. Again think of these 4 friends. We’re not sure which one came up with the plan but which ever one it was spoke about it with such passion – such enthusiasm and expectation about what Jesus would do that the other 3 were eager and willing to go along with him. Passion is a like a flame that simply ignites everything around it so that the fire burns brighter.
And I think this is how passion is stirred up within us. I’m not sure we can set out today to just be more passionate, I don’t think we can will it to be within us – passion is caught from others who are fully alive. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with people who are excited and enthusiastic about their faith and who eagerly anticipate God moving within them and around them. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with Jesus who is the author of life and faith and who introduces us to the passion of living.
Luke would always apologize to me for being so vocal about Sunday School and I would continually tell him that he didn’t need to apologize because I loved his passion. One day Luke took me aside because he didn’t really understand what I meant when I said I thought he was passionate about Sunday School - so I tried to tell him that for me passion is enthusiasm and energy; it’s excitement. Passion is such a strong feeling about something that you work relentlessly to see it happen. More than any other quality of faith, what I am drawn to the most is passion.
The author Mike Yaconelli defines passion as being fully alive, or living with expectancy, anticipation and enthusiasm, and he says that the mission of Jesus was to introduce us to the passion of living. A genuine faith needs to be a passionate faith; it needs to be a faith that is fully alive. A passionate faith is a relationship with God where we fully anticipate and expect God to move and do great things in us and through us. A passionate faith brings life and joy and power not just to ourselves, but even to those around us, and the best example of what this passionate faith looks like is found in 4 un-named people in the gospel of Mark.
Mark 2:3-5.
Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Notice that what Jesus responds to is not the faith of the paralyzed man, it says that Jesus say their faith, not his faith. What Jesus sees is the faith of the 4 friends who have carried the man to the house, lifted him up to the roof and then dug through the roof so they could lower their friend to Jesus. It’s clear to me that what Jesus sees in these men is passion, the fully expect Jesus to heal him and Jesus is so moved by what they have done that he does heal their friend not just physically but spiritually as well. Jesus is so moved by the passion of these people that he brings a fullness and wholeness to this man’s life. These 4 friends are passionate and they show us what a passion is all about.
First and foremost a passionate faith sees the power and love there is God and a passionate faith believes that God can and does and wants to help us. These 4 men worked so hard to get their friend to Jesus because they believed Jesus not only could do something to help, but that he would. They would not have gone to the lengths that they did if they did not think Jesus was able to help their friend. A passionate faith starts by seeing the power in Jesus. A passionate faith understands that God’s power and love can and does change people’s lives.
A passionate faith not only sees the power in God it also sees the needs in people. These 4 men know that their friend is paralyzed. They don’t think about coming to Jesus for themselves, they aren’t thinking about what Jesus can do for them – they are thinking about what Jesus can do for their friend. Luke Brinker was always thinking about others. Luke could see the spiritual needs in people and he believed to the very core of his being that Sunday School would help bring people closer to God who in turn would help people in life. A passionate faith is always thinking of ways and finding ways to bring people to Jesus even if it means our own needs go unmet.
Virginia Smeltzer was in her 80’s when I was the pastor in Altoona and while I was there we made a lot of changes to one of worship services and we introduced a lot of new music. As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion about this, and one day Virginia stopped me in the hall of the church and she said, I want to share with you my thoughts on the new music. I said OK, and then I braced myself for what was to come. Personally, she said, I don’t like it, but when I look around and see the young people singing and enjoying it, I realized that this is what we need to do and we need to keep singing it. That’s a passionate faith. Virginia could see the needs of the youth and young adults around her and she willing to say, it’s not about me – it’s about bringing others to Jesus, so let’s do what we need to do to get them there.
In so many ways I want to be as passionate as Virginia and I can only hope and pray that when I’m in my 80’s and not liking the new music of the church that I’ll be willing to say, it’s not about me, it’s about bringing people to Jesus. A passionate faith that wants to help and reach out to others can be seen in lots of ways. Maybe it’s an 80 year old woman being willing to sing contemporary music – maybe it’s a motorcycle ride through the hills of central PA to raise money for ministry that will reach our youth, maybe it’s inviting people to Sunday School, maybe it’s being willing to step up and teach Sunday School. While it can be expressed in so many different ways, a passionate faith is always finding ways to bring people to Jesus, even if it calls for sacrifice and even if it calls us to work hard.
That’s something else we see in these 4 friends, they worked hard. Look at all the obstacles they had to overcome to get their friend to Jesus. First he is paralyzed so they have to carry him to the house where Jesus is staying. When the crowds are so large that they can’t get through, they don’t give up they get creative and this is the part I love. You have to wonder how they came up with this idea to lower their friend through the roof. What a crazy idea – what a creative idea – what a great idea, but it meant they had to work hard. I can’t imagine it was easy to carry a paralyzed man up onto the roof and most roofs would have been made of hardened clay and twigs so digging through by hand would have been difficult – even a little dangerous. But they do it and again that’s passion. Passion is creativity, it is risk taking, it is working hard until you get the job done, and it’s not letting anything stand in your way, not even the criticism of the people.
While it’s not recorded in the story here, you have to know that the homeowner could not have been very happy to have his roof destroyed. Maybe he was yelling at them from inside the house to stop but he couldn’t get to them because the crowds were so large, or maybe Jesus just looked at the homeowner with some understanding and reassurance and somehow told him it was going to be ok. And what about the rest of the crowd that was also trying to get to Jesus – you have to believe that not everyone was happy as this scene unfolds – but the 4 friends didn’t care – they were focused on getting their friend to Jesus, so they kept going. They didn’t let negative criticism stop them.
Will we work hard and do whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus? In many ways Faith Church is a passionate church and our passion is seen as we welcome students after football games, and send people out on mission trips, and support those in need within our own community. We have not let obstacles stand in our way of doing what we can to bring people closer to God and we can’t stop now – we have to keep taking risks, and we have to keep thinking creatively, we have to keep moving forward to bring people to Jesus. I’ve been wondering this week what the next creative risk taking step is going to be for us. Somewhere out there (maybe in one of you) is God’s plan for us to do something outrageous so that we can bring others to Jesus. My hope is that when the plan is identified and we know it is of God, that we will not allow any obstacles to stand in our way and that together we will commit ourselves and work hard to make it happen.
And that’s the last thing I want us to think about as we look at these 4 friends – they were in it together. They worked together to help their friend get to Jesus. One man couldn’t have done it alone. A passionate faith is not a lone ranger faith it intentionally seeks to draw others in. Actually I think passion itself just draws people together. We have all been around those people who are so enthusiastic and energized about God’s plan that we can’t help but want to be with them and work alongside of them. Again think of these 4 friends. We’re not sure which one came up with the plan but which ever one it was spoke about it with such passion – such enthusiasm and expectation about what Jesus would do that the other 3 were eager and willing to go along with him. Passion is a like a flame that simply ignites everything around it so that the fire burns brighter.
And I think this is how passion is stirred up within us. I’m not sure we can set out today to just be more passionate, I don’t think we can will it to be within us – passion is caught from others who are fully alive. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with people who are excited and enthusiastic about their faith and who eagerly anticipate God moving within them and around them. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with Jesus who is the author of life and faith and who introduces us to the passion of living.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Building an Authentic Faith - Pardon
John 4:4-26
There’s a part of me that understands this woman at the well. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I went through a difficult time. I was turning away from God and making some poor choices and the last thing I wanted was to be around the friends I had made through Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship. I got up and walked out of a fellowship meeting one week, I stopped going to church and I avoided my friends as often as I could. While I was running in all kinds of directions, what I was really doing was hiding. I was hiding from my sin and from my self and the choices I was making. Some people hide from their sin and their failures by running, some hide in alcohol or drugs, some hide in reckless spending and shopping, some hide in destructive relationships, but the more we try to hide from our sin and from our self, the more we end up in deeper and darker places of despair and isolation.
That’s what we see going on with this woman at the well. She comes to draw water at the 6th hour, or at noon, because she didn’t want to be seen by the other women. Drawing water was a daily chore for women and they wouldn’t do it during the heat of the day - they would do it in the cool of the morning. Every morning women would travel to the well together, draw their water and then return to their homes together, but this Samaritan woman came at noon because she didn’t want to be seen by the others. Maybe she was tired of the stares and comments. She was hiding, hiding in her sin and hiding in her shame.
We come to find out during her encounter with Jesus that this woman has been married 5 times and the man she currently lives with is not her husband. She has made some poor choices in life and to avoid the stares and comments of the other women, she didn’t travel with them in the morning – she waited and then would come alone to get the water she needed at noon. Not only was she hiding from others, she was hiding from herself, after all if she didn’t have to face the other women she didn’t have to face the reality of her own situation. For me, as long as I kept running I not only didn’t have to face others, but on some level I didn’t have to face myself.
While our circumstances might be different, the reality is that we all spend a lot of time hiding, we hide who we really are from others, we hide from ourselves and yes, we even try to hide from God, and we hide because we don’t want to come to face to face with the reality of our sin, but living an authentic faith as a follower of Jesus Christ means we stop hiding from our sin and we confront it by coming face to face with Jesus. Look at what happens when the woman arrives at the well, notice who’s there – it’s Jesus, and while she could have laid low and kept on hiding, she didn’t. When Jesus asks her for a drink and engages her in conversation – she could have run away, but she didn’t. Authentic faith doesn’t hide and it doesn’t run from sin – it is willing to confront it and that’s what Jesus does. He helps this woman confront the reality of her sinful life. Jesus is the one who says to her, Go call your husband and come back. When the woman says I have no husband Jesus is able to help reveal to her the reality of her life – that’s right, he says, you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband. Jesus confronts her with the reality of who she is and he’s not there to judge and condemn her he’s there to simply help her own up to her sin - so that she can be forgiven and move beyond it.
An authentic faith is willing to confront the reality of who we are. As followers of Jesus we can’t ignore our sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist – we have to be willing to name it, confront it and confess it. It’s a painful process, but when we are alone sometime we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our life and we need to ask ourselves “how do I treat God and how I treat others?”. We need to think about our interactions with people, and the choices we make every day. And we need to ask ourselves, "How do we spend my time, my money, my energy?"
What are the things we pursue in life? Where do our hopes and dreams lie? Do our attitudes line up with the will of God? Do our actions reflect the life of Jesus? How do we answer these questions?
I don’t know about you, but there are many ways that my heart and my actions don’t line up with God’s will for my life. Just this week at the United Methodist Women meeting we saw pictures of children from Uganda who have nothing – literally they have nothing. We heard stories of how these children will wander with the cattle through the garbage dumps to see what they can find to eat or wear or use and I once again came face to face with Jesus who said to me, Andy, what you are doing with your resources? There are children who have nothing and you have so much – what are you doing?
It’s not an easy exercise but can we sit down and write out our sin, can we put it down on paper? Greed, lust, pride, self-centeredness. It’s not fun to name them, but can we be honest and own up to our sin? Gossip, anger, bitterness, jealousy. An authentic faith doesn’t hide from sin – it confronts it and names it and owns it and confesses it to God. Now once we are willing to do this - the door is opened for God to forgive. Once we confess our sin, we aren’t left holding on to it, because God pardons –God forgives. You’ll see as we keep going through this sermon series that I use “P” words: the first week was people, last week was profession and so when I wanted to talk about forgiveness I decided to use the word pardon, but one of the things I came to realize about the word pardon is that you only receive a pardon after you have been found guilty. A pardon comes only after the crime has been named, so for us to receive the pardon of God, or the forgiveness of God, we have to be willing to name our sin, but once we name it – God forgives it. Are we willing to receive God’s pardon today? Are we willing to accept and embrace God’s gift of forgiveness?
Look at John 4:10 – Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus goes on and says, 4:14 – whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become a spring welling up to eternal life. This living water which is a gift from God – it’s called grace and forgiveness because it is God’s forgiveness that leads us to eternal life. It’s God’s grace that gushes forth within us to bring life, so will we accept it?
Accepting God’s grace begins with simple words, it begins in faith and trust saying, God I know I am a sinner, please forgive me. But then these words, this prayer and the desire to be forgiven, needs to bring freedom to our lives and many times that freedom doesn’t come until we are willing to forgive ourselves and allow God to take away our guilt and shame. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then like the Samaritan women we will continue to just hide. So how do we fully receive God’s grace and learn to forgive ourselves? How do we begin to experience the freedom that comes with God’s pardon?
The first thing we need to do is stop listening to Satan and start listening to God. You know the word Satan means accuser and I am convinced that Satan, as the accuser, is alive and well, and it’s his voice that constantly tells us that because of all we have done we can never be loved or forgiven by God. There are times that voice is so loud and clear that we can’t hear anything else. It’s time we stop listening to Satan and start listening to God.
Listening to God is the whole point of the 60/60 experiment. I’m excited that there are over 25 people who have told us that they are doing the 60/60 experiment and the whole point of the exercise is to help us hear more consistently the voice of God. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks the 60/60 experiment is our attempt to at least once every hour for 60 days intentionally think about God. I have set my watch alarm to go off once an hour, others have posted notes or are trying to think of God when the phone rings or when they get into their cars – whatever the prompt is, the point is to tune into the truth and the will of God. I might suggest that if you are doing the 60/60 experiment - that this week when you are prompted to think about God, instead of telling yourself that your life matters to God and God loves you – tell yourself that you are forgiven. When the alarm goes off name a sin you struggle with and then tell yourself – I am pardoned, I am forgiven.
Another way we can stop listening to Satan and start listening to God is to turn more consistently to the word of God. Daily Bible reading, weekly Bible studies and Sunday School helps us tune out the lies that surround us and help us refocus our hearts and minds on the truth of God’s grace. You can also get a prayer partner to help remind you that you are forgiven. I had a roommate for a while and we agreed to remind each other every day that we were forgiven by God – it was a powerful time where we each experienced more of the freedom and power that comes with God’s grace.
So an authentic faith confronts sin and it accepts the pardon God offers, but then it must – it absolutely must go one step farther. An authentic faith also pardons others. An authentic faith forgives others. This is what we say we will do each time we pray the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. or Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus drives the same point home pretty clearly in his sermon on the mount.
Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. One of the forces which hold us back in our faith and one of the forces which I think holds back the church from being all God calls us to be is our inability to truly forgive others. We might say the words, I forgive you, but we don’t act on it in any significant way. We say the words but then we hold on to bitterness or continue to work against those we have issues with. Our inability to forgive one another blocks God’s grace from flowing freely into our lives and into our church and this keeps the power of God from being experienced and revealed in our world.
My guess is that most of us right now could think of someone that we are struggling to forgive. It might be a spouse; it might be a parent or child, a brother or sister, a coworker or even a friend who has betrayed us. What I want us to do is picture this person in our mind and ask God to show us how we can forgive them. What will it mean for us to offer forgiveness? What will we do this week to seek reconciliation? We can’t just talk about forgiving others – we need to get specific and then get serious about doing it.
Building an authentic faith doesn’t just accept God’s pardon for our sin – it offers a pardon to those who have sinned against us and when we allow God’s grace to flow freely through our lives not only will our relationships be strengthened, but we will be changed and our faith will grow strong.
There’s a part of me that understands this woman at the well. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I went through a difficult time. I was turning away from God and making some poor choices and the last thing I wanted was to be around the friends I had made through Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship. I got up and walked out of a fellowship meeting one week, I stopped going to church and I avoided my friends as often as I could. While I was running in all kinds of directions, what I was really doing was hiding. I was hiding from my sin and from my self and the choices I was making. Some people hide from their sin and their failures by running, some hide in alcohol or drugs, some hide in reckless spending and shopping, some hide in destructive relationships, but the more we try to hide from our sin and from our self, the more we end up in deeper and darker places of despair and isolation.
That’s what we see going on with this woman at the well. She comes to draw water at the 6th hour, or at noon, because she didn’t want to be seen by the other women. Drawing water was a daily chore for women and they wouldn’t do it during the heat of the day - they would do it in the cool of the morning. Every morning women would travel to the well together, draw their water and then return to their homes together, but this Samaritan woman came at noon because she didn’t want to be seen by the others. Maybe she was tired of the stares and comments. She was hiding, hiding in her sin and hiding in her shame.
We come to find out during her encounter with Jesus that this woman has been married 5 times and the man she currently lives with is not her husband. She has made some poor choices in life and to avoid the stares and comments of the other women, she didn’t travel with them in the morning – she waited and then would come alone to get the water she needed at noon. Not only was she hiding from others, she was hiding from herself, after all if she didn’t have to face the other women she didn’t have to face the reality of her own situation. For me, as long as I kept running I not only didn’t have to face others, but on some level I didn’t have to face myself.
While our circumstances might be different, the reality is that we all spend a lot of time hiding, we hide who we really are from others, we hide from ourselves and yes, we even try to hide from God, and we hide because we don’t want to come to face to face with the reality of our sin, but living an authentic faith as a follower of Jesus Christ means we stop hiding from our sin and we confront it by coming face to face with Jesus. Look at what happens when the woman arrives at the well, notice who’s there – it’s Jesus, and while she could have laid low and kept on hiding, she didn’t. When Jesus asks her for a drink and engages her in conversation – she could have run away, but she didn’t. Authentic faith doesn’t hide and it doesn’t run from sin – it is willing to confront it and that’s what Jesus does. He helps this woman confront the reality of her sinful life. Jesus is the one who says to her, Go call your husband and come back. When the woman says I have no husband Jesus is able to help reveal to her the reality of her life – that’s right, he says, you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband. Jesus confronts her with the reality of who she is and he’s not there to judge and condemn her he’s there to simply help her own up to her sin - so that she can be forgiven and move beyond it.
An authentic faith is willing to confront the reality of who we are. As followers of Jesus we can’t ignore our sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist – we have to be willing to name it, confront it and confess it. It’s a painful process, but when we are alone sometime we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our life and we need to ask ourselves “how do I treat God and how I treat others?”. We need to think about our interactions with people, and the choices we make every day. And we need to ask ourselves, "How do we spend my time, my money, my energy?"
What are the things we pursue in life? Where do our hopes and dreams lie? Do our attitudes line up with the will of God? Do our actions reflect the life of Jesus? How do we answer these questions?
I don’t know about you, but there are many ways that my heart and my actions don’t line up with God’s will for my life. Just this week at the United Methodist Women meeting we saw pictures of children from Uganda who have nothing – literally they have nothing. We heard stories of how these children will wander with the cattle through the garbage dumps to see what they can find to eat or wear or use and I once again came face to face with Jesus who said to me, Andy, what you are doing with your resources? There are children who have nothing and you have so much – what are you doing?
It’s not an easy exercise but can we sit down and write out our sin, can we put it down on paper? Greed, lust, pride, self-centeredness. It’s not fun to name them, but can we be honest and own up to our sin? Gossip, anger, bitterness, jealousy. An authentic faith doesn’t hide from sin – it confronts it and names it and owns it and confesses it to God. Now once we are willing to do this - the door is opened for God to forgive. Once we confess our sin, we aren’t left holding on to it, because God pardons –God forgives. You’ll see as we keep going through this sermon series that I use “P” words: the first week was people, last week was profession and so when I wanted to talk about forgiveness I decided to use the word pardon, but one of the things I came to realize about the word pardon is that you only receive a pardon after you have been found guilty. A pardon comes only after the crime has been named, so for us to receive the pardon of God, or the forgiveness of God, we have to be willing to name our sin, but once we name it – God forgives it. Are we willing to receive God’s pardon today? Are we willing to accept and embrace God’s gift of forgiveness?
Look at John 4:10 – Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus goes on and says, 4:14 – whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become a spring welling up to eternal life. This living water which is a gift from God – it’s called grace and forgiveness because it is God’s forgiveness that leads us to eternal life. It’s God’s grace that gushes forth within us to bring life, so will we accept it?
Accepting God’s grace begins with simple words, it begins in faith and trust saying, God I know I am a sinner, please forgive me. But then these words, this prayer and the desire to be forgiven, needs to bring freedom to our lives and many times that freedom doesn’t come until we are willing to forgive ourselves and allow God to take away our guilt and shame. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then like the Samaritan women we will continue to just hide. So how do we fully receive God’s grace and learn to forgive ourselves? How do we begin to experience the freedom that comes with God’s pardon?
The first thing we need to do is stop listening to Satan and start listening to God. You know the word Satan means accuser and I am convinced that Satan, as the accuser, is alive and well, and it’s his voice that constantly tells us that because of all we have done we can never be loved or forgiven by God. There are times that voice is so loud and clear that we can’t hear anything else. It’s time we stop listening to Satan and start listening to God.
Listening to God is the whole point of the 60/60 experiment. I’m excited that there are over 25 people who have told us that they are doing the 60/60 experiment and the whole point of the exercise is to help us hear more consistently the voice of God. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks the 60/60 experiment is our attempt to at least once every hour for 60 days intentionally think about God. I have set my watch alarm to go off once an hour, others have posted notes or are trying to think of God when the phone rings or when they get into their cars – whatever the prompt is, the point is to tune into the truth and the will of God. I might suggest that if you are doing the 60/60 experiment - that this week when you are prompted to think about God, instead of telling yourself that your life matters to God and God loves you – tell yourself that you are forgiven. When the alarm goes off name a sin you struggle with and then tell yourself – I am pardoned, I am forgiven.
Another way we can stop listening to Satan and start listening to God is to turn more consistently to the word of God. Daily Bible reading, weekly Bible studies and Sunday School helps us tune out the lies that surround us and help us refocus our hearts and minds on the truth of God’s grace. You can also get a prayer partner to help remind you that you are forgiven. I had a roommate for a while and we agreed to remind each other every day that we were forgiven by God – it was a powerful time where we each experienced more of the freedom and power that comes with God’s grace.
So an authentic faith confronts sin and it accepts the pardon God offers, but then it must – it absolutely must go one step farther. An authentic faith also pardons others. An authentic faith forgives others. This is what we say we will do each time we pray the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. or Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus drives the same point home pretty clearly in his sermon on the mount.
Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. One of the forces which hold us back in our faith and one of the forces which I think holds back the church from being all God calls us to be is our inability to truly forgive others. We might say the words, I forgive you, but we don’t act on it in any significant way. We say the words but then we hold on to bitterness or continue to work against those we have issues with. Our inability to forgive one another blocks God’s grace from flowing freely into our lives and into our church and this keeps the power of God from being experienced and revealed in our world.
My guess is that most of us right now could think of someone that we are struggling to forgive. It might be a spouse; it might be a parent or child, a brother or sister, a coworker or even a friend who has betrayed us. What I want us to do is picture this person in our mind and ask God to show us how we can forgive them. What will it mean for us to offer forgiveness? What will we do this week to seek reconciliation? We can’t just talk about forgiving others – we need to get specific and then get serious about doing it.
Building an authentic faith doesn’t just accept God’s pardon for our sin – it offers a pardon to those who have sinned against us and when we allow God’s grace to flow freely through our lives not only will our relationships be strengthened, but we will be changed and our faith will grow strong.
Building an Authentic Faith - Profession
Mark 8:27-38
One of the most important questions we must answer in our lives is the one asked by Jesus in this passage from Mark: Who do you say that I am? How we identify Jesus not only gives shape to what we believe, it needs to give direction to how we live. An authentic faith not only knows that God loves us but it understands what it means to profess Jesus as our Savior and Lord. But before we look to answer Jesus’ question, let’s first look at where and when and how he asks the question.
It says Jesus and disciples were travelling into the region of Caesarea Philippi. This was an area several miles north of the Sea of Galilee and it was ruled by Philip who was the brother of the Roman governor Herod. Since it was an area with very strong Greek and Roman influences it was not a place often visited by Jews, and this is the only account we have of Jesus ever travelling in this region. What is important for us to know about Caesarea Philippi is that this was an area linked to visions and epiphanies in Jewish tradition. During the time between the end of the Old Testament and birth of Jesus, what is know at the inter-testamental period, this area was where the Jewish leaders Enoch & Levi experienced visions, and so Caesarea Philippi became known to the Jewish people as a holy place. Even though by the time of Jesus it had come under Greek and Roman dominance, the Jewish people still thought of it as holy ground where people were more closely connected to God and where people received messages from God. I think Jesus wanted his disciples to be in this holy place when they first answer this question because he wanted them to be confident that what they were seeing in Jesus and what they were saying about him wasn’t just their own opinions, who they professed Jesus to be was truth coming from God.
It’s not an accident where Jesus asks this question, he specifically takes them there for this reason, and it’s not an accident when Jesus asks. Jesus asks the disciples to profess who he is only after they have taken part in some significant activities with Jesus. In Mark 6 we see that Jesus included his disciples in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, and again the disciples were included when Jesus fed the 4,000 in Mark 8. What’s significant about these 2 feedings is that the disciples are not just passive observers to the miracle of Jesus, they become active participants. They aren’t just listening to Jesus teach or watching him heal and perform miracles, they are involved in the actual work he is doing. In the feeding stories Jesus instructs the disciples to tell the people to sit down in groups, and then Jesus has the disciples distribute the food, and it’s as they are giving out the food that it is multiplied. The disciples are working alongside Jesus in performing the miracle, they are part of it and so they get to experience for themselves Jesus’ power. It is this kind of experience that helps the disciples understand who Jesus is and it helps them profess with confidence that Jesus is the Christ.
Now let’s look at how Jesus asks the question. Notice that he starts by asking a rather general question, Who do people say that I am? What are other people saying about me? What Jesus does with this question is give the disciples an opportunity to just talk about who he is, after all Jesus already knows what the people are saying about him. He doesn’t ask this question because he needs to know the answer, Jesus knows the answer, he knows what people are saying, he asks the question to give his disciples an opportunity to talk and to begin to wrestle with their own questions, and you have to believe they had questions. They have seen Jesus feed the multitudes twice, walk on water, calm a storm, heal the sick, and he just restored sight to a blind man and as he does all these amazing things, you know they have to be asking themselves “who is he?” In fact, in Luke’s account of Jesus calming the storm the disciples do ask themselves, who is this that even the wind & the seas obey him? They have lots of questions and now they have been given the opportunity to talk about it all with Jesus.
So they tell Jesus that the people are saying he is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other great prophets. While it’s all an interesting conversation, Jesus ultimately isn’t interested in an interesting conversation about what others are saying, he does all of this to provide an opportunity for his disciples to profess their faith, so Jesus then turns the question back to his disciples and this time makes it personal. What about you? Who do you say I am?
And that’s the question we all have to ask ourselves. Who do we profess Jesus to be? While it is interesting to talk about Jesus and what he has done, and while it is fascinating to have theological debates about what we know of Jesus from the Bible and other historical materials, the real question we need to come to terms with is who do we say Jesus is? Forget about what someone else says, forget about what we read in commentaries or hear in Sunday School, what is it we profess? Who do we say Jesus is? The answer to this question makes all the difference.
While the Bible is full of titles given to Jesus, and we saw again this morning the great video about who Jesus is, what I want us to do is look at just 2 titles, for me the most important 2: Savior and Lord. In many ways these 2 titles help us define Peter’s profession of Jesus as the Christ because the Christ means the Anointed One. The Christ, or Messiah, was a leader who one who was coming from God to save the people of Israel & set them free from oppression. So in many ways the Christ was coming to be a Savior & Lord. What do we mean when we call Jesus our Savior and Lord?
Let’s start with Savior – Jesus is our Savior because he is the one who saves us from sin. Sin separates us from God. God has called us to live in relationship with Him and we fail in that relationship every day. Paul says in Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and then he says, the wages of our sin, or the consequence of our sin, is death. The death we are talking about is not a physical death - it is a spiritual one, our sin cuts us off from the source of all life which is God and there is nothing we can do to restore that relationship on our own. Through Jesus, however, we can be brought back into a relationship with God. The message of the cross and then the empty tomb is that through Jesus we are forgiven and we are raised with Christ to a new & eternal life.
That’s the message of John 3:16 we heard last week, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sin and when we believe in him, when we trust in the work of Jesus on the cross, we will not die in our sin but experience forgiveness and eternal life. When we accept the work of Jesus for ourselves, when we place our faith and trust in the cross – we are professing Jesus to be our savior. Making Jesus our Savior really is as simply as saying, God I trust in the work of Jesus on the cross to forgive me of my sin &I trust Jesus to restore me into a right relationship with you. If you have never asked God for this forgiveness – you can do it today and profess Jesus as your Savior.
Jesus has come to be our Savior, but he also comes to be our Lord & this is where what we profess needs to give shape to what we do and how we live - because we can’t call Jesus Lord and then keep on living our lives as we did before. Professing Jesus as Lord means being willing to allow Jesus to give direction to our lives. A lord is someone who has authority over other people and when a lord gives direction – people follow. So calling Jesus Lord means we need to give him authority in our lives to guide us & direct us & then be willing to follow wherever he leads, but let’s be honest, this is not easy. Look back at Peter. He called Jesus the Christ, but then he wasn’t willing to follow Jesus when he explained what it meant for him to be the Christ. For Jesus, being the Christ was going to mean suffering & death, to which Peter says, no way, this will never happen to you. Peter didn’t want to go where Jesus was going, he didn’t want to do what Jesus was going to have to do.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t just rebuke Peter, he shows him, and he shows all of us that if we are going to call Jesus our Lord then we must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. Calling Jesus Lord means being willing to sacrifice what we may want in order to do what God wants, and this refocusing of our lives on the will and the way of God needs to penetrate every aspect of our life. From our relationships with family and friends, to our need to forgive, to the service we offer to those in need, to the use of our resources and money, our time and talents – everything we do needs to be shaped by what it means for us to call Jesus our Lord. Calling Jesus Lord means going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does.
If you still have doubts about who Jesus is, or if you are struggling to be able to call him Savior or Lord, then think about putting yourself into a position where you can make that call. Remember, the disciples weren’t able to profess Jesus as the Christ until after they had worked with Jesus. It was because they had spent time with Jesus and had even been part of his miracles and experienced his power that they were able to make the profession they did. If you are still struggling with what to call Jesus, don’t turn away from him, turn towards him & walk along side him and do the things that Jesus is doing. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurture the children, care of the sick, join a Bible Study, commit yourself to the 60/60 experiment where you reorient yourself on the will and the way of God, like the disciples, step out in faith in some way and allow yourself to experience the power of God. Knowing Jesus as our Savior and Lord doesn’t come by being a passive observer and no amount of knowledge will give us the assurance we need. Authentic faith that proclaims with confidence that Jesus is Savior and Lord comes by being an active participant with Jesus.
Who do you say that I am? An authentic faith says Jesus is Savior not because we read it in a book or heard it in a sermon; we profess it because we have experienced the saving power of Jesus for ourselves – we know we are forgiven. An authentic faith professes Jesus is Lord and then works hard to go where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does – even when it means that we deny ourselves and take up a cross.
One of the most important questions we must answer in our lives is the one asked by Jesus in this passage from Mark: Who do you say that I am? How we identify Jesus not only gives shape to what we believe, it needs to give direction to how we live. An authentic faith not only knows that God loves us but it understands what it means to profess Jesus as our Savior and Lord. But before we look to answer Jesus’ question, let’s first look at where and when and how he asks the question.
It says Jesus and disciples were travelling into the region of Caesarea Philippi. This was an area several miles north of the Sea of Galilee and it was ruled by Philip who was the brother of the Roman governor Herod. Since it was an area with very strong Greek and Roman influences it was not a place often visited by Jews, and this is the only account we have of Jesus ever travelling in this region. What is important for us to know about Caesarea Philippi is that this was an area linked to visions and epiphanies in Jewish tradition. During the time between the end of the Old Testament and birth of Jesus, what is know at the inter-testamental period, this area was where the Jewish leaders Enoch & Levi experienced visions, and so Caesarea Philippi became known to the Jewish people as a holy place. Even though by the time of Jesus it had come under Greek and Roman dominance, the Jewish people still thought of it as holy ground where people were more closely connected to God and where people received messages from God. I think Jesus wanted his disciples to be in this holy place when they first answer this question because he wanted them to be confident that what they were seeing in Jesus and what they were saying about him wasn’t just their own opinions, who they professed Jesus to be was truth coming from God.
It’s not an accident where Jesus asks this question, he specifically takes them there for this reason, and it’s not an accident when Jesus asks. Jesus asks the disciples to profess who he is only after they have taken part in some significant activities with Jesus. In Mark 6 we see that Jesus included his disciples in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, and again the disciples were included when Jesus fed the 4,000 in Mark 8. What’s significant about these 2 feedings is that the disciples are not just passive observers to the miracle of Jesus, they become active participants. They aren’t just listening to Jesus teach or watching him heal and perform miracles, they are involved in the actual work he is doing. In the feeding stories Jesus instructs the disciples to tell the people to sit down in groups, and then Jesus has the disciples distribute the food, and it’s as they are giving out the food that it is multiplied. The disciples are working alongside Jesus in performing the miracle, they are part of it and so they get to experience for themselves Jesus’ power. It is this kind of experience that helps the disciples understand who Jesus is and it helps them profess with confidence that Jesus is the Christ.
Now let’s look at how Jesus asks the question. Notice that he starts by asking a rather general question, Who do people say that I am? What are other people saying about me? What Jesus does with this question is give the disciples an opportunity to just talk about who he is, after all Jesus already knows what the people are saying about him. He doesn’t ask this question because he needs to know the answer, Jesus knows the answer, he knows what people are saying, he asks the question to give his disciples an opportunity to talk and to begin to wrestle with their own questions, and you have to believe they had questions. They have seen Jesus feed the multitudes twice, walk on water, calm a storm, heal the sick, and he just restored sight to a blind man and as he does all these amazing things, you know they have to be asking themselves “who is he?” In fact, in Luke’s account of Jesus calming the storm the disciples do ask themselves, who is this that even the wind & the seas obey him? They have lots of questions and now they have been given the opportunity to talk about it all with Jesus.
So they tell Jesus that the people are saying he is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other great prophets. While it’s all an interesting conversation, Jesus ultimately isn’t interested in an interesting conversation about what others are saying, he does all of this to provide an opportunity for his disciples to profess their faith, so Jesus then turns the question back to his disciples and this time makes it personal. What about you? Who do you say I am?
And that’s the question we all have to ask ourselves. Who do we profess Jesus to be? While it is interesting to talk about Jesus and what he has done, and while it is fascinating to have theological debates about what we know of Jesus from the Bible and other historical materials, the real question we need to come to terms with is who do we say Jesus is? Forget about what someone else says, forget about what we read in commentaries or hear in Sunday School, what is it we profess? Who do we say Jesus is? The answer to this question makes all the difference.
While the Bible is full of titles given to Jesus, and we saw again this morning the great video about who Jesus is, what I want us to do is look at just 2 titles, for me the most important 2: Savior and Lord. In many ways these 2 titles help us define Peter’s profession of Jesus as the Christ because the Christ means the Anointed One. The Christ, or Messiah, was a leader who one who was coming from God to save the people of Israel & set them free from oppression. So in many ways the Christ was coming to be a Savior & Lord. What do we mean when we call Jesus our Savior and Lord?
Let’s start with Savior – Jesus is our Savior because he is the one who saves us from sin. Sin separates us from God. God has called us to live in relationship with Him and we fail in that relationship every day. Paul says in Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and then he says, the wages of our sin, or the consequence of our sin, is death. The death we are talking about is not a physical death - it is a spiritual one, our sin cuts us off from the source of all life which is God and there is nothing we can do to restore that relationship on our own. Through Jesus, however, we can be brought back into a relationship with God. The message of the cross and then the empty tomb is that through Jesus we are forgiven and we are raised with Christ to a new & eternal life.
That’s the message of John 3:16 we heard last week, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sin and when we believe in him, when we trust in the work of Jesus on the cross, we will not die in our sin but experience forgiveness and eternal life. When we accept the work of Jesus for ourselves, when we place our faith and trust in the cross – we are professing Jesus to be our savior. Making Jesus our Savior really is as simply as saying, God I trust in the work of Jesus on the cross to forgive me of my sin &I trust Jesus to restore me into a right relationship with you. If you have never asked God for this forgiveness – you can do it today and profess Jesus as your Savior.
Jesus has come to be our Savior, but he also comes to be our Lord & this is where what we profess needs to give shape to what we do and how we live - because we can’t call Jesus Lord and then keep on living our lives as we did before. Professing Jesus as Lord means being willing to allow Jesus to give direction to our lives. A lord is someone who has authority over other people and when a lord gives direction – people follow. So calling Jesus Lord means we need to give him authority in our lives to guide us & direct us & then be willing to follow wherever he leads, but let’s be honest, this is not easy. Look back at Peter. He called Jesus the Christ, but then he wasn’t willing to follow Jesus when he explained what it meant for him to be the Christ. For Jesus, being the Christ was going to mean suffering & death, to which Peter says, no way, this will never happen to you. Peter didn’t want to go where Jesus was going, he didn’t want to do what Jesus was going to have to do.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t just rebuke Peter, he shows him, and he shows all of us that if we are going to call Jesus our Lord then we must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. Calling Jesus Lord means being willing to sacrifice what we may want in order to do what God wants, and this refocusing of our lives on the will and the way of God needs to penetrate every aspect of our life. From our relationships with family and friends, to our need to forgive, to the service we offer to those in need, to the use of our resources and money, our time and talents – everything we do needs to be shaped by what it means for us to call Jesus our Lord. Calling Jesus Lord means going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does.
If you still have doubts about who Jesus is, or if you are struggling to be able to call him Savior or Lord, then think about putting yourself into a position where you can make that call. Remember, the disciples weren’t able to profess Jesus as the Christ until after they had worked with Jesus. It was because they had spent time with Jesus and had even been part of his miracles and experienced his power that they were able to make the profession they did. If you are still struggling with what to call Jesus, don’t turn away from him, turn towards him & walk along side him and do the things that Jesus is doing. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurture the children, care of the sick, join a Bible Study, commit yourself to the 60/60 experiment where you reorient yourself on the will and the way of God, like the disciples, step out in faith in some way and allow yourself to experience the power of God. Knowing Jesus as our Savior and Lord doesn’t come by being a passive observer and no amount of knowledge will give us the assurance we need. Authentic faith that proclaims with confidence that Jesus is Savior and Lord comes by being an active participant with Jesus.
Who do you say that I am? An authentic faith says Jesus is Savior not because we read it in a book or heard it in a sermon; we profess it because we have experienced the saving power of Jesus for ourselves – we know we are forgiven. An authentic faith professes Jesus is Lord and then works hard to go where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does – even when it means that we deny ourselves and take up a cross.
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