Plymothian

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Jesus Tells Disciples to Hate Their Families

This seems particularly poignant on our Gotcha Day for Amelia Lixin.  Does God really want us to hate her?  Isn’t this the same Jesus who told us that the Greatest Commandment was to love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength?  Isn’t Jesus’ second commandment that we should love our neighbor?

A cynic would say that this is just one more obvious contradiction in the Bible.  They don’t want to subject themselves to anyone but themselves so they quickly dismiss scripture whenever they can.  Others might say that this shows religious bigotry and hatred.  Jesus himself wasn’t all that we think he was!  He told people to hate.  Now his disciples hate gays and transvestites, so they are just following the footsteps of their screwed up leader.

A more patient and scholarly approach sees these statements as comparative.  In other words Jesus is saying that the love for neighbor is compared to the love for God as hate is compared to love.  The distance between one’s commitment to Jesus and one’s commitment to anything or anyone else is as vast as anything one can imagine.  If this is the requirement, who wants to live for someone else with the kind of abandon that Jesus requires here?  Who wants to live for Jesus in such a way that they put themselves aside?  Who wants to live for Jesus in such a way that they kill their deep instincts of self-preservation and self-obsession?  This is still radically counter cultural and talks about a step that most Christians have not addressed.  Ironically Jesus says that Christian disciples ought to consider this step before they even get started.  When God demands everything a potential disciple needs to consider if they will give up everything.

A disciple does not lose their salvation if they cease to walk like a disciple, but they become useless.  Their salvation becomes narcissistic or pointless.  We are saved for God and we commit everything to Jesus.  We walk in his way and he leads us on the way of the cross.  Is Jesus that much to you?  If he is not you are not worthy of him.  Period.

Prayer

Jesus you are winsome and kind and patient and you are severe and uncompromising and demanding.  Help me to step up to your challenge knowing that you equip those who follow you to succeed.

Questions

1. Why does Jesus tell his disciples to hate?
2. What does it mean to take up a cross?
3. What happens to an unsalty disciple?
4. How much commitment was required of you at conversion?
5. How committed are you to the cause now?

One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. 2 And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. 3 And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” 4 But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 5 And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son[a] or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they could not reply to these things.

7 Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honour, saying to them, 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honour, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, 9 and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person’, and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at table with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers[b] or your relatives or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” 16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant[c] to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please excuse me.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them. Please excuse me.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you,[d] none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

Why I Love Sunday School at The Chapel

Jesus seems to press into the issue of the Sabbath even further.  I would be inclined to think that he had made his point by healing repeatedly on the Sabbath, but now in the home of a Pharisee he pushes further.  He fights for a cause and ignores the rules of polite society.  Personally, I feel more emboldened to take a similar approach with the cause of Christian education.  I need to be careful, though.  I have come across as a bully and as insensitive.  The phrase that my church uses a lot is that we, as Christians, need to be winsome.  However, it strikes me that Jesus is not winsome here.  He insults his host by implying that those in the privileged positions at the banquet he is attending will be thrown out of the banquet at the end of time.  Actually, more poignant than that is that in the parable he tells, those who are called to the banquet don’t even bother to come.  This is another area that I feel the strength of what Jesus is talking about as it hits our current society.  I have been part of small groups, soccer clubs and churches in North America where people promise they will attend.  However, when push comes to shove they find a million other things that are more important.  In Jesus’ day the priorities were the same. Seemingly devout people who kept a lot of the rules did not long to be with the host of the party – God.  So God throws out the invitation to those who are overlooked and disenfranchised and they long to be there.  What does that mean for my scenario? I long to meet with those who are truly on fire for God.  I meet with such people sometimes and we set each other alight.  One such group would be the class I was in at Trinity.  The desire for God was palpable and we were seeking God in similar ways.  Another group is my Sunday School class at The Chapel.  It consists of people at various stages of Christian growth, but they are hungry.  They are not coming to the church just to get it checked off their list.  That is the attitude of those who will not attend the banquet in Jesus’ parable.  These people are transparent with each other, they ask difficult questions, and they devour scripture.  With a smile we get into each other’s stuff.  Even those who consider me more mature than they are challenge what I am saying if it sounds unbiblical.  They want the truth because God has invited them to his feast and nothing is going to stand in their way.

Sunday School meets at McHenry West High School from 8:30 – 9:30.  This week I will be doing a presentation on how to read your Bible.

Prayer

God, I am thankful that you want me to attend your banquet.  help me not to value rules or religious tradition so much that I lose sight of you.  Let nothing stand in the way of my attendance.

Questions

1. Where does Jesus perform the healing in Luke 14?
2. How do the Pharisees seek to break the tension?
3. What is the point of Jesus’ talk about feasts?
4. Who today assumes they are going to feast with God in heaven but will be excluded?
5. How does your commitment to God’s work show you are on your way to God’s feast?

¹⁰ On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, ¹¹ and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” ¹³ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

¹⁴ Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

¹⁵ The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? ¹⁶ Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

¹⁷ When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

What Is a Day of Rest?

This moring at Grace Fellowship, Woodstock, I preached through the Creation narrative in Genesis.  The whole seven days find their pinnacle in the seventh.  On this day God rests from all the work that he has done.  However, there must be a kind of inertia that sets in.  That is an entity continues in a state of rest or uniform motion unless an external force acts upon it.  Having launched himself into days of work, without doing extra work, God remains active.  He holds the universe togather by the essence of who he is.  No extra effort is needed.

Inertia might help us understand what a day of rest entails.  It is not a day of generating new things, pursuing new projects, or frantically completing tasks.  It is a day when we sustain that which is without worrying about that which is not.  The day of rest was made for our replenishment.  Our resources dissipate when we work.  We are somehow less for the process.  We spend ourselves.  We are not eternal and so our resources are depleted.  When we rest in God and focus a day on him, our distracted living is calmed.  The Holy God embraces in his peace and then recharges us for more activity.

If the Sabbath is made for refreshing and reflecting, the healing of a woman on a Sabbath is on target.  Jesus refreshes her.  He rescues her.  He restores her.  However, the Pharisees have made so many rules to insure rest that it is exhausting.  The police the people so thoroughly that it is stifling.  In trying to complete the task of Sabbath and not mess up, they have missed the essence of Sabbath that focuses on the condition of the heart before God.

Are you burdened by Sundays spent serving others?  Are you weary from living up to others’ expectations of how to put your feet up?  Are you dominated by a spouse’s expectations or the tyranny of the urgent?  How would Jesus set you free to rest in him?

Prayer

Our hearts are truly restless until they find their rest in thee.

Questions

1. How is this passage a mirror of one in chapter 4?
2. Why is this repeated here?
3. Why doesn’t Jesus just wait until the next day to heal her?
4. How do you rest?
5. How can you keep moving and still be at rest?

35 “Stay dressed for action[f] and keep your lamps burning, 36 and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants[g] whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he[h] would not have left his house to be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

41 Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” 42 And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? 43 Blessed is that servant[i] whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 44 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 45 But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming’, and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, 46 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. 47 And that servant whoknew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. 48 But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

Be Ready

Jesus has a body of teaching that he comes back to regularly.  In the gospel of Matthew it is arranged neatly into five major sermons (discourses).  In Luke the sermons are more often mini-sermons which are responses to circumstances which arrive.  Jesus’ thinking is consistent, he has a worldview that informs all that he does. He models for us a unified perspective of thinking which communicates consistent truth at every opportunity.  We should seek to think like him.  So when he thinks about the end times in Mathew 24,25 and in Luke 12 we see the same central message.  He wants his followers to live lives which are ready for Jesus’ return.

Because Jesus could be coming back at any moment, we should have an attitude of service.  The service we perform is for those around us, but it is ultimately with thought of our Master Jesus and His Father.  The kind of services we perform are modeled by Jesus and he lives out that service upon his return.  Notice the details are few because this is a mind set rather than a list.  Many people whose primary objective is to make sure that they are alright on the day of judgment want a list which they can read through and execute.  In so doing they show that they do not have the mind of Christ.  The Christian looks for opportunity to serve because they have cultivated an attitude of service.  They are ready every hour of every day because they are mindful of the Master and desire to serve him rather than focus on saving themselves.

Servants who wield power in the church and build petty kingdoms will be judged.  In fact there are those who will use the church for power without actually being a servant of Jesus.  These false servants will be sliced to pieces.  This literal dismemberment promised by Jesus seems odd to contemporary views of Jesus.  However, the God of grace brings relief to the righteous but also brings just punishment to the wicked.  In our permissive society we have lost sight of our lack of holiness, so dismemberment for any crime seems abhorrent.  However, in front of the purity and the holiness of God crimes are punished with a measure we can’t imagine.  They are also gradated in accordance with the seriousness of the offence.

The question for us is, are we living a life of service in light of the Second Coming?  Will we be found going about God’s work when Jesus comes back?  Will we be ready?  This does not mean that everyone needs to drop their day job and take up life in the church.  It means that we are mindful of God and service to him in our daily lives.  If we sell cars, do we sell cars in such a way that serves others to the glory of God?  If we sell houses, are we mindful of God’s love for both the buyer and the seller?  If we run a home, do our children know that our service of them is primarily stewardship for God?

Prayer

May I be found ready on the day of your return.  May I not need fear or guilt as a motive.  May I just cultivate a mind that is focused on you and lives out love and service.

Questions

1. How should Jesus’ followers be dressed?
2. How does this passage relate to Matthew 24 and 25?
3. How should a disciple live in light of Jesus’ return?
4. Why do you serve others?
5. What will happen to the unsaved who are ruining people in some churches?

37 While Jesus[e] was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. 38 The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 39 And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the market-places. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”

45 One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” 46 And he said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. 47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. 48 So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute’, 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. 52 Woe to you lawyers!For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

53 As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.

Woe

Jesus pronounces woe upon the Pharisees and lawyers.  Doesn’t this seem like an over-reaction to people who just had a bit of a dig about the way Jesus washed his hands.  However, the way that Jesus was criticized for washing his hands the wrong way was just a symptom of an ‘over-helpful’ spirit.  Tiger McLuen came to our class and talked to us when I was in class at Trinity.  He said that one of his workers warned him that he was about to fail in leadership and all his workers, including his friend, would walk out on him.  Why?  Because he was improving his organisation by continuously pointing out all the little things they did wrong.

In his book, Lifetime Guarantee, Bill Gillham, talks about how he was creating a living hell for his wife by correcting her on every little fault.  He would find something that still needed addressing in the way she dressed, the way she cooked, or any other area of deficiency.  Meanwhile, he did not put himself under the same scrutiny.  Fortunately, God got a hold of him before his wife had a breakdown.

Jesus had ways for people to improve, but he unconditionally accepted people in order to give them the foundation for change.  In our society, we say we unconditionally love people whilst leaving them how we find them.  After all, they are born that way, so we shouldn’t seek any kind of reform.  The other extreme is that we do not unconditionally love people until they perform in ways that we dictate.  This, of course, is a mockery of unconditional love.

Jesus tells the truth to people, but he then provides himself.  Pharisees reject the truth about themselves whilst identifying every little detail in the lives of others.  They reject people on the basis of petty rules and they approve of others who do so.  However, you walk a very fine line and one small violation of the law means you are condemned with very little chance of redemption.

Prayer

Father, I can be a hypocrite.  I have been accused of it in the past.  I know I can be a Pharisee, too.  Let me speak the truth in love so that others will grow.

Questions

1. What rule did Jesus break?
2. Why wasn’t breaking the rule a sin?
3. Why did Jesus react with ‘woes’ to the Pharisees and teachers of the law?
4. Do you accept yourself unconditionally as God accepts his children?
5. Having accepted yourself and others unconditionally, do you then work with them for change?