A New Hearing for Jesus
Part 1 in series Hearing Jesus Again
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 3, 2008
Have you ever wondered how the world would be different if Jesus had been a coconut? I mean, what if the person that he was, instead of being the Son of God, the founder of the world’s largest religion, etc., had just been a coconut hanging from some palm tree somewhere? Is it safe to say that Christianity might be a different religion than it is now, or that there would not be one at all? I’m not aware of anything like coconut worship, but perhaps it exists somewhere.
What if instead of a coconut he had been a pine tree? Would that affect the kind of religion Christianity became?
What if instead of a pine tree Jesus had been a Chihuahua or a Siamese Cat? See, now we’re getting into the realm of animals and we’re much more aware of the worship of animals. But Christianity would not be the Christianity we know, would it?
What if instead of a Chihuahua or a Siamese Cat, Jesus had been a carpenter? Yeah, I know he WAS a carpenter, but I mean a regular carpenter – one without any big ideas or anything. Would there be a Christianity today?
What if instead of a carpenter without any big ideas, Jesus was a carpenter who believed he was God? I don’t mean a carpenter who believed he was God and actually WAS, but somebody who believed he was God but was really just a carpenter. You guys ever met somebody who seriously believed they were God? My background is psychology. I’ve met people who seriously believed they were God. And I can say this without exception about all the ones I’ve met, all the ones I’ve read about, and all the ones I’ve seen on video in my training. Not only were none of them remotely capable of starting a religion that would grow to 1.5 billion people, and giving the world some of its most brilliant moral teaching ever, but none of them ever said even one thing I wanted to remember five minutes later. Without exception, people who believe themselves to be God are too deranged to say much of anything worthwhile. So back to my question. What if Jesus had been a carpenter who believed he was God, but really wasn’t? Would Christianity in anything like its present form exist today?
This is fun, let’s keep going! What if Jesus had been a carpenter who believed he was God and really was God, and he believed his sole purpose was to die for our sins so we could go to heaven? What kind of Christianity would that have produced? I have two answers for that. First, a Christianity that offers hope for life after death, but not a whole lot of hope for life before death. Second, precisely the kind of Christianity that is taught in most churches and consequently practiced by most Christians.
People hear me today. You wonder what makes Wildwind so different? This is it – I’m going to spell it out for you more clearly than you’ve ever heard it before. What makes Wildwind so different is that we believe that Jesus was somebody different than most churches believe and teach. It’s not that we DON’T believe Jesus was God and that he died for our sins, and that he had a plan from the beginning to do that. What’s different about Wildwind is that we embrace the idea that Jesus’ life was not about one thing, but about two things. Yes, his life was about going to the cross and dying for your sin and mine so we could have hope after our own deaths. But we also believe that his life was about showing us a way to live in this world that is qualitatively different than how we could live otherwise, so that we can have hope not only for life after death, but hope that there is REAL life BEFORE death – that this life we are living and these bodies we are living in can rise to something higher than mental and emotional and sexual and visual and auditory pleasure. Because we believe this, we teach that our lives now can and should be lived differently. Now let me be clear. We do not teach that our lives can and should be lived differently SO THAT we will go to heaven when we die. We teach that Jesus came to bring life to THIS life, and that if we learn to live the life in THIS WORLD that he taught us how to live, then life in the next world comes naturally and is simply an extension of an eternal kind of life he taught us to begin living while we are still here.
Now this is the part where, even if you are not an Amen kind of person, I should hear some Amens, or at least you should feel your butt lifting off the bench a little bit. This single fact accounts for the vast majority of the significant differences between Wildwind and other churches you might know of (not that there aren’t other churches doing this, just not many – thankfully more every day though). The difference can be seen in the questions people ask. People who come from churches that teach that Jesus came mostly to die for our sins ask questions like “If I do this, will I go to hell?” But when they ask me that, they are surprised to hear my answer. “When you do that, does it place you in hell right now? Does it bind you up in fear, in anxiety, in self-delusion, in guilt, in despair, in brokenness, in doubt, in lust, in greed, in materialism, in self? If so, then cut it out. The same God who called you to a fearless, truthful, guiltless, peaceful, whole, faithful, sexually pure, contented, spiritual, selfless life in the next world certainly wants you to live that way in this one. Or are those qualities only reserved for heaven? Of course not. They are qualities that reflect a right heart – something we’ll spend a whole sermon on in two weeks.
There is no qualitative difference between how we live now in this world and how we will live later in the next. If in this world I am a stingy, lying, backstabbing jerk, I do not graduate into the next world a generous, honest, above-board gentleman. My spirit is a part of me that is eternal and the only part of me that will survive death. Do I really think that the same spirit which currently shapes my mind and heart and body around evil things will shed the body one day and suddenly be oriented toward God and good things? Of course not.
We believe and teach that Jesus understood not only the reality of heaven and hell, the realities of the next life, but all the realities of this life as well –that he is the master of all life. Because of how deeply I believe this, I do not spend my time persuading you of things. Instead I constantly say to you, “Look into your own heart – level with yourself and see whether the things I say are true.” Because Jesus was the master of all life in this world and the next, he can be trusted with what he says. So I invite any skeptics here today – anyone who dismisses what Jesus had to say about life in this world – to take seriously what he said and live it for 90 days. See if in that time your life does not get better – see if you do not experience fewer negative consequences, greater peace – even BEFORE you accept Christ as your Savior. There certainly are great reasons to do that, but the life Jesus said to live will show itself to be the only way of living that is not circular, that does not eventually require you to violate the values you have set up for yourself and expect others to live by.
The question, “Will I go to hell if I do this,” shows, right from the beginning, a wrong way of thinking about what Jesus was trying to accomplish in our lives. Jesus was not concerned with providing us an escape hatch out of hell. Jesus was concerned with showing us a path of living in this world that simply doesn’t lead in that direction. Follow that path and you’ll end up a million miles away. In other words, “you can’t get there from here.”
The question, “Will I go to hell if I do this” comes from one of two places. The first possibility is a desire to know how much I can sin and still slip in the back door of heaven. It shows a heart that does not love God or care about God, just one that just fears him enough to not want to upset him too much. The second possibility is that this question was asked by a person who sincerely desires to do what is right, but has been led to believe that since being a Christian is all about avoiding hell, therefore I must devote my life to making a list of behaviors that lead to hell and then staying away from those behaviors. The problem is there’s never any way of knowing all the answers. Because you can do the right things for the wrong reasons. How do you know if you’ve identified ALL the things that might wind you up in hell? And somehow people are living this way and thinking they’ll find the peace and rest Jesus promised us? Actually this way of thinking leads to a lack of peace, and nearly to a fear that is its own hell on earth.
Also from this “stay out of hell” perspective comes the idea that I must go out and shove God down the throats of people – because there is a hell and it’s my job to keep people from going there. Jesus talked often about hell, but he actually taught that we are NOT to shove God down people’s throats, and there are specific reasons for that, based on the way Jesus understood that people function spiritually. You’re going to learn about that in sermon 11 in this series, called Judging Others and God-Pushing. And of course THAT teaching from Jesus is directly related to how Wildwind approaches ministry, evangelism, assimilation, and everything else we do.
I cannot state enough how important it is that you understand this truth. If you believe Jesus came to earth only to deal with your sin, then your life will be spent managing sin. If you believe Jesus came to teach us how to live the good life, then you will spend your life pursuing, and living, that good life.
John 10:10 (NIV)
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Some read this verse and believe Jesus is talking about eternal life after we die. But if Jesus came only to grant us eternal life after we die, why did he spend 3 ½ years travelling and teaching? Instead of being baptized at age 30 and going around preaching, how come he didn’t get baptized and then walk right up the hill to the cross? If all he had to do was die for our sins, then nearly all of what is recorded about him in the gospels is unnecessary. His miracles didn’t matter, his sinlessness didn’t matter (he had to BE sinless, but we didn’t need to read about how he lived that way), his calling of and relationships with the disciples didn’t matter, and actually there’s not one single thing he said in the Sermon on the Mount that mattered, if it was just about the cross. All of that has to do with how he lived, how he related to other people in this world, and how he taught us to live as well.
But the majority of the gospels ARE about the life of Christ and not the death of Christ. Again, not that his death is irrelevant – it is SUPREMELY relevant to life on this planet. But it is not relevant because it holds the key to life after we die. It’s relevant because it holds the key to life forever (eternal life) – which includes now. Let me show you.
Matthew 3:2 (NASB)
2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Early in the gospel of Matthew, we see John the Baptist preaching this message, which was also the principle message preached by Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let us understand clearly what Jesus meant when he said that.
Many of us when we think of heaven think of something “up in the sky” or “out in space.” And because we think of heaven as being “up there” and far away, and we think of God as being in heaven, we therefore think of God as being far away from us – up there beyond the clouds. This is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. When Jesus and John the Baptist taught, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” what they meant is that God, and God’s world, are in the very same world you live in right now. God’s kingdom is as close as the air around you. And you now have access to that kingdom, Jesus said, because that is the place I come from and I have come to tell you how it operates, what it looks like, and how to live in it (even as you are living in this world now). Furthermore, I will show you what kind of people live in that kingdom, and how to become one of those people – the kind of people who find this kingdom a comfortable place to be.
And that is what we find in the Sermon on the Mount. A description of how God’s kingdom operates, how it is different from the world we live in physically, and how we can live in such a way as to be perfectly comfortable and at home in that world. Do you understand how significant that statement is? Listen again. In the Sermon on the Mount, we find a description of how God’s kingdom operates, how it is different from the world we live in physically, and how we can live in such a way as to be perfectly comfortable and at home in that world.
What I have just said reveals the reason behind why so many who call themselves Christians nevertheless fail to find peace and rest. When you see Jesus as having come mostly to die for your sin, then you imagine that the things he says that relate to our lives in this world now were only said as a way of making sure we don’t do something wrong and end up going to hell. It does not occur to you that the way of life Jesus talked about was the only way of life that will ever make us comfortable in God’s kingdom, whether in this world or in the next. The life Jesus taught you about is the life that will make you fit for the world God lives in. And if you want to experience God’s joy and peace and blessings, you must live in the world he lives in. And it is not hard to do this.
John 14:3-6 (MSG)
3 And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live.
4 And you already know the road I’m taking."
5 Thomas said, "Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?"
6 Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.
Thomas couldn’t understand why Jesus said Thomas knew the road Jesus was taking to get to God. When Thomas said, “How should I know the road?” Jesus replied, “I’m the road, and you already know me.” In other words, we are simply to learn to live the way Jesus lived and we will, in due time, find ourselves with God!
This is not a life of trying to identify which behaviors lead to hell and then avoiding those behaviors. It is a life of embracing who Christ is and how he lived, and learning to live that way.
Now in order to accept the way of Christ you must put him in the category of smart people. Jesus to you must seem like not only a holy person but a smart person. You must believe that, as God, he knows how best to live life in this world and that when he says to do this and avoid that, he is always telling you to do only what is best, and to avoid only what is not best. You must not believe in any way that Jesus is interested in keeping you from having fun, for that assumes that God is not good and that he does not want good things for us. And you cannot have any faith in God if you do not believe he is good. So in order to find yourself able to live a life of obedience to God, you must believe first and foremost that God is supremely interested in your happiness and that in every direction he gives he is moving you toward what will assure your maximum peace, joy, and satisfaction in this world. If you believe this, then you will immediately see what Jesus tried to tell us – that many things in this world will stand as a barrier between you and this life Jesus told us about. There will be many shortcuts to happiness and none of them will lead to happiness.
Remember I said earlier that the way of Jesus can be tested? All ways can be tested. Can you think of times in your life when you did something you knew to be wrong simply because you believed it would bring you at least temporary happiness? See, at that time you were willing, frankly, to settle for shortcuts and counterfeits. We’ll always settle for counterfeits when the real thing is nowhere to be found. But Jesus said he is the real thing – that he is the way, the truth, and the life. This can be tested and proved to be true.
The purpose of today’s message was to show you how Jesus’ message is commonly misunderstood and to give you a framework for hearing it properly in the coming weeks. Begin by putting all of your faith in Jesus – that if he says something, you can believe it and depend on it and it will show itself to be true.
Over the next twelve weeks I will walk you through Jesus’ longest continuous sermon – the Sermon on the Mount. If you keep in mind what you have heard today and place all your faith in him, that you can completely trust and fully implement in your life whatever he said, expecting your life to be better in tangible ways as a result, you will hear and understand the sermon in new ways. If you scrap the idea that the Sermon ever at any point is a simple list of ways to avoid hell, you will be able to hear what Jesus is really trying to teach us, which is how to live a kind of life that orients you fully, completely, comfortably, safely, and happily in the Kingdom where God’s will is done. Will you pray with me….
God, open the eyes of our hearts, that we will see you for who you are. Jesus, help us understand what you said and how you meant for it to change our lives and make them more like your own incredible life. Amen.
