Pastor Ross Tenneson preaches from 1 Corinthians 5 on church discipline for our Life Together Series.

Ross Tenneson / General

Life Together / Church Discipline / 1 Corinthians 5:1–13

Church discipline is meant to restore a sinner to Jesus

Intro

Have you ever been excluded from a group of people you wanted to belong to? It is painful. It is hurtful. Often times, it is unloving.

The church is the most magnificent and wonderful group to belong to in the world. Really the church? They’re a bunch of messy people. Yes, yet to belong to the church is to belong to the family God has adopted and will get to live with him forever.

Now, would we ever exclude someone from the church? Would that be loving? At first glance, our reaction is probably “no.” Yet, what if I told you that the Bible teaches that it’s sometimes loving to exclude someone from the church? Let me show you. We are going to turn to 1 Cor 5, the longest treatment on Church discipline in the Bible.

Revelation

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife.

Friends, this text starts off very heavy. What’s going on is a man is probably sleeping with his step-mother. A gross, sexual perversion. It would have wrecked his family. It would have brought shame to his church community. Worst of all, it was an offense against a holy God who created sex to be between a husband and a wife.

Although the church should be a place where such catastrophic things don’t happen, they do. It is easy to think of the early church in the Bible as an ideal community. If we could only go back to then, we wouldn’t have any problems. Sadly, this is far from the case. Even the early church had scandals and moral failures. When we see moral failures in church leaders today, we should mourn and grieve like we did for the one who fell just within the last couple weeks.

Yet, we should not panic as if this is a new development. Sin in the church has always been a problem and God has a good plan for dealing with it and for working salvation and life out of the ashes of sin and death.

Paul next says,

2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn?

It’s striking to me how similar the Corinthian church’s response was to our culture today. They were proud about their celebration and their “tolerance” of sexual sin. Apparently, the value in the culture that we should celebrate all kinds of sexual relationships had gotten into the church in Corinth. Yet, notice what Paul’s response was. It was not to rail against the culture around him, it was to focus on the church and how they respond to that sin.

Notice the response he commends: not, do you despise this sinner? Do you slam this sinner? Do you hate this sinner? But, “do you mourn over this sin?” (a verb that describes people mourning for the dead, cite) Friends, our first response when there is sin and scandal in the church should not be hatred, spite, or revenge, but sorrow. Sadness should be our first response to moral failure and sin.

Then, Paul says something that is unexpected and surprising to us modern listeners,

 Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

This sounds unloving; it sounds unforgiving. Really, remove someone from the church? Yet, that’s exactly what the Apostle says. He will explain later why this is in fact the loving, Christ-like thing to do. Paul teaches when someone commits a grievous sin like this man did, the right response is to remove them from the church family. Paul does not even assume this authority for himself as an Apostle, but assigns it to the church.[1]

You might say… wait a moment! This sounds different from what Jesus taught in Matthew 18. In Matthew 18, there are four steps you take before removing someone from the church, yet here it sounds immediate. What’s going one?

Friends, it seems like there are two different processes for different kinds of sin. All sin is serious, yet some is more serious than others. There is some sin, like drinking excessively that, while wrong and against the Lord, it is not inconceivable that a Christian would fall into this sin. This is a serious sin and someone who is committing this must turn from it. Yet, it is different from more scandalous and severe sins, like having multiple affairs and hiding it from your wife. That’s a sin that, like Paul says in verse 1, would shock even our unbelieving neighbors.

In the first example, we grieve, yet can see how a Christian could commit that sin. So, we urge them to turn from it and stop walking in it, lest if they keep committing it, they show that they are not following Jesus.

In the second example, this is a sin that a Christian with the Holy Spirit in them in all likelihood would not commit. It shows that their confession to follow Jesus is not credible. Therefore, the church should remove them from the family first, and then urge them to repent and follow Jesus after.

3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

He says that Christians with the Holy Spirit can make judgments about other Christian’s external actions about whether they are following Jesus or not. He is saying this is a sufficiently clear case for form a judgement about: you can know with reasonable certainty that this person should receive discipline.

In this situation, he is not discerning the person’s heart attitudes apart from outward behavior. He is not acting on a hunch. No, there is a clear, outward, damaging, appalling sin that this person has committed for the church to respond to.

Friends, we should not have attitudes of skepticism towards each other where we distrust one another’s professions of faith. Yet, when the evidence is so clear and substantial that someone’s life is so out sync with their profession to follow Jesus, the church must intervene for the sake of love. 

4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Paul says that the church should assemble and respond to the sin this person committed. This judgement is not based on our own authority or wisdom. Rather, it is “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It is under his authority. The Church disciplines in dependence on Jesus and on the basis of his word.[2] The Apostle Paul says “and my Spirit is present,” showing that he agrees with these judgments. Friends, when we engage in the hard work of church discipline, we are in good company. The Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus know this is good for God’s people.

Notice also then when the church excludes someone from the family, they do it “with the power of our Lord Jesus.” Jesus has given the church the amazing authority of excluding unrepentant sinners from the church as an exercise of his power. Church discipline is a very important, weighty task that we must be diligent to do since Jesus says it is an exercise of his very power.[3]

Paul says, “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

What does it mean to “deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh?” It’s a difficult phrase. The world is the sphere or realm that the devil primarily influences.[4] The Church is the realm that God’s Spirit primarily influences. This man, although he acts like he is apart of the church and the people of God, in fact, he is not. The church should remove from from their midst to show him what is already true of him, that he does not as of yet belong to the Lord.

Notice, friends, the purpose of this judgement: that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord! The judgement of removing someone from the church family temporarily is so that they can belong to God forever.

That’s how I am understanding the contrast of “flesh” and “Spirit” in this verse. Flesh probably refers to an ungodly manner of life (think “works of the flesh”). On the other hand, his Spirit refers to his spiritual new life that comes when he returns to Jesus.

If this is the intention of church discipline, to bring people to be with Jesus forever, how can we not follow through when the Bible tells us to? This process is hard, sad, and tearful, yet it is a means to bring souls into everlasting life and communion with God. Church discipline is a means of grace.

The pain from the church removing someone from the family is meant to alarm them and warn them about what final consequences of their sins so that they turn and return to the Lord. It is never final! Only dying without turning from your sins is final. Hence, we do all that we can to bring life to people, even separating them from the family for a period of time in the cases of severe sin. This is the main point today: that we remove unrepentant sinners from the family so that they would return to Jesus and live. (and the good news is that this is what seems to have happened, cite) Let’s keep going and see how Paul further illuminates our understanding of this process,

Paul then says,

6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Paul is saying that their boasting in their tolerance of sin is not good. It is hurting this sinner and it is hurting the church family. How is it hurting the whole church family?

He says the sin of this person “leavens the whole lump.” This is an analogy to baking bread. When you bake bread, a little bit of leaven (or yeast) spreads through the dough and causes it to rise (so I’ve heard, I haven’t actually done this). In the Old Testament, “leaven” is a metaphor or symbol for sin. Hence, God’s people had to eat unleavened bread at the Passover Feast when Israel celebrates how God rescued them from slavery in Egypt.

Paul is not saying it is wrong to bake leavened bread, don’t worry. He is saying the image of leavening applies to the church. When we don’t address sin in our body and let it go as if everything is alright, we implicitly teach one another than sin is alright. Our words would never say so, but our actions do. And, the sin this person is walking in can sadly spread throughout the church as others feel encouraged to join in.

I was talking to a guy around the fire the other night who struggled with a past of pain and addiction. He said he never had exposure to those things, until he went to a church youth group. When he was there, the other kids introduced him to these substances that head a devastating effect on his life. While it is easier to tolerate the sins of others and hope for the best, often they can produce the worst in the lives of others around them.

The church must be a place that is “safe for sinners but not for sin.” We welcome sinners into our church family, and then we urge them and fight with them for them to be free from sin.

7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Paul is telling the Corinthian church to cleanse out the unclean sinner from the family so that they can be the clean lump, the pure bride, the holy people Jesus died for the church to be! We often hear this phrase in Christianity, “become what you already are.” It means that Jesus has forgiven us and made us holy in his eyes, so we should start to live in accordance with how God already sees us.

Here, Paul takes this line of thought and applies it to the church. Jesus did not just die for individuals: he died for his church; he died for his family. He died to produce a pure people who trust in him and follow him. One day, because of what Jesus did, we will be that in heaven. There will be the church of God’s people with Jesus and everyone will be pure and holy before him.

Church, we should become what God has designed the church to be: a pure bride full of believers. When it becomes transparent that someone in our church is not actually a follower of Jesus yet, we should remove them to preserve the purity of the church.

The next verse further shows us Paul’s logic: “Because Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Because our sacrificial lamb Jesus has been sacrificed to create a pure church, we should remove someone who is not pure and not following Jesus.

8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

All throughout this chapter, Paul is making reference back to the passover in the OT. That is when God sent the angel of death into Egypt and he spared his people who sacrificed a lamb and put the blood on their door posts, and he punished the Egyptians who did not.

After sacrificing the lamb, the church was supposed to have a feast of unleavened bread called the passover feast (or a “festival”). Paul is describing our church life that is a festival that follows the sacrifice of a lamb to atone for our sins.[5]

Friends, I love our church life together! There are some moments that are so sweet and God is so powerfully in them.  Friends, for us to have deep times of worship and intimacy with God and one another, we have to be a community of true followers of Jesus. Our church life will severely suffer if there are people in our church who are still filled with “malice” and “evil” rather than “sincerity” and “truth.” Healthy life together depends in part on a faithful practice of church discipline to have a pure community of Christ-followers.

Next Paul transitions to a statement to guard against a crucial misunderstanding of his words,

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

Paul refers here to a previous letter he wrote where he apparently said something similar to the effect that the church should not associate with sexually immoral people. Notice what he says next,

“not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.” A wrong interpretation of this text is that you stop spending time with your neighbors, coworkers, family, and friends who are living immoral lifestyles. This text is not addressing those situations at all. This text is specifically about people who are claiming to be Christians and are in the church and are making sinful decisions that are contrary to that profession.

Friends, Jesus has not called us to remove ourselves from the company of our neighbors who do not know him yet, but to pursue company with them! Jesus is the greatest example of this principle: he ate and had table fellowship with all kinds of people. In many situations, we are called to do just that. If we confuse God’s design for the church to be pure with scorning our neighbors rather than loving them like Jesus did, we have become confused.

Notice that in both cases, when we embrace our neighbors who don’t know Jesus yet or exclude a professing Christian who is in unrepentant sin, there is the same design behind both actions: that the other person would live! We want our neighbors to live, so we spend time with them. We want someone who is professing Christ yet plunging himself into deep sin to live, so we remove him from the church until he returns to Christ.

Paul clarifies this point further in verse 11,

11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.

Here is the key, Paul tells the church not to associate with someone who “bears the name of brother” if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. To “bear the name of brother” is to refer to yourself as  a Christian. Paul tells the Corinthian church that someone who calls themselves a “Christian” and yet is giving themselves over sin, the church should change the way they associate with that person.

How should they associate with a brother who is sinful?

Paul says they should not even “to eat with such a one.” What does Paul mean by this phrase? Does he mean a shunning in which the community no longer engages with that person and not longer has a relationship with them?  I don’t think that’s the meaning since their exclusion is mean to bring them back to the Lord and into the church. How would that happen if the community permanently shuns them?

Rather, we see in this letter, that when Paul is talking about eating together. In 10:16 he says,

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

In other words, the way we change our association with someone whose lifestyle denies Jesus and we remove them from the family is not to stop communicating with them or loving them. It is to stop eating the Lord’s Supper with them or treating them as if they were a believer until they repent and follow Jesus as Lord again. The Lord’s Supper is an intimate meal shared by God’s people to bind them together into one with one another and with Jesus. We must reserve this meal for people who actually are one with Jesus and not give them or any others in our family the false impression that they are actually following him. That would be unloving to the church, to the sinner, and to God.

Perhaps you hear that list of sins in this verse and notice that it includes you. Maybe you are living in sexual immorality or greed, maybe you are dishonestly getting money for yourself, or have a love that you are placing higher than Jesus, or are verbally abusive to others, or are giving yourself over to substances, or dishonestly taking money from others. I want to echo a word Paul uses later in this letter, “flee!” Flee from these sins. Don’t let them get a foothold in your heart.

This man who committed this outrageous and horrible sin in this chapter and made shipwreck of his faith probably did not wake up one day and suddenly commit this sin. Instead, he made little compromises with evil, thinking he could control his sin. Yet, instead, his sin ended up controlling him. He got more than he bargained for. He found himself shaming his church, denying his Lord, and jeopardizing his soul. My hope and prayer for this church is we never have to carry out 1 Cor 5 again. So, let’s not nurture sin in our lives at all so we can avoid the tears and pain when we lose a family member to sin. 

12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

Paul here reiterates himself. The church does not have the authority to judge those outside of the church, we have the sober responsibility to judge those within the church. How sad that the church is known for doing the opposite, casting judgement on the world while it is filled with hypocrites. We can avoid that stereotype by applying this passage, eating with our neighbors no matter their lifestyle, and applying the loving process of church discipline to people whose manner of life denies their confession of faith.

In my last sermon, on our identity as exiles, I preached about how we have no authority or power over the world. Yet, we do have the responsibility to keep the church pure and filled with God’s people.

13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

Paul ends with decisive word, he says, “let God judge those outside the church.” You “purge the evil person from among you.” Do you see the quotes around that word? It’s a phrase from the book of Deuteronomy that Deuteronomy repeats seven times. It means that ancient Israel was supposed to impose the death sentence on sinners who had serious offenses. We are supposed also to as fiercely defend the purity of the church. Yet, these words also point to how gracious and loving this process is. When any of us commit a horrible sin, we actually do deserve a final judgement like death. Yet this chapter makes clear that church discipline is only a temporary judgement that is supposed to result in eternal life.

Make no mistake, the Old Covenant was a merciful covenant. Yet, the new covenant shows even more mercy to poor sinners like me. Friends, no matter how far you have fallen or how dark your life has become, there is always a way back. Whether you are under church discipline or you feel like God is disciplining you in some other way for you sin, you can come back to him at any time. He and the church have their arms wide open for repentant sinners! Later in 1 Cor, Paul writes

 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Anyone who is stuck in their sin today, whether you are a follower of Jesus or not, I urge you today to turn from your sin and put your trust in him. Don’t let this opportunity pass. As time passes, sin’s influence on you will become stronger and stronger. Christ would burst you free right now. Please don’t leave without talking to someone else. I will be available to talk to any member or visitor who wants forgiveness and freedom from sin.

[1] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries on the Book of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, trans. Henry Beveridge (BakerBooks, 2009).

[2] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries on the Book of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, trans. Henry Beveridge (BakerBooks, 2009).

[3] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries on the Book of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, trans. Henry Beveridge (BakerBooks, 2009).

[4] Morris, L. (1985). 1 Corinthians: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 7, p. 89). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[5] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries on the Book of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, trans. Henry Beveridge (BakerBooks, 2009).

Sam Choi

Intro: The most socially acceptable sins

One of my favorite authors, Jerry Bridges wrote a devastating book called, “Respectable Sins.”

You can imagine what the book is about.

Essentially, Jerry writes about the often overlooked and the “acceptable” sins that we tend to tolerate in ourselves. We all know that murder and adultery are big, no, no. But what about the more hidden and common ones like pride, anger, and gluttony. All wrong but more socially acceptable and normal.

While Jerry was writing the book, people would ask what his latest book is about. After explaining the theme they would often respond immediately, “oh you mean like Gossip?”

What is sad is that gossip is so common in our culture. There are people who literally make their living off of gossiping through magazines, social media or even their own talk show. Our culture loves it! We eat it up! Wait, they divorced? OR she got lipo? or so and so was in a financial scandal?

The Social Issues Research Centre found that 55 percent of men’s conversation and 67 percent of women’s conversation involve gossip.

Since we are in a series on healthy community, today we are talking about the power of our words.

Our words make or break communities.

We will especially focus on gossip and what are words should do instead.

I’m uniquely qualified to preach on this because I have been gossiped about so many times in my life. But even more, I’ve gossiped a lot in my life!

If you were to ask me before this sermon, “Sam, are you a gossip?” I would say, “no!”

And though I don’t think I gossip so much that it characterizes me to own the title, I am more guilty of this “respectable” sin than I ever imagined. I will share more on my guilt in this later.

Has anyone ever betrayed your trust, shared a secret, or gossiped about you?

Have you ever gossiped and word got to the person that you were the source?

I think most if not all know deeply the pain of gossip and the shame of being caught.

I’m excited to explore what God’s Word has for us in this because I think its a key for us to be a healthy family. Too many families are torn apart because of our words.

›     First let’s see the weight of our words,

The Weight of our Words

2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

What is James simple point here?

Our tongues, which creates words, though seemingly insignificant have the power to destroy just like a small flame is all it takes to take down a mighty forest.

Notice verse 2 says that if you can control your tongue you are perfect and control your whole body.

The tongue is connected to the very core of who you are. It reflects you heart. It’s never separate.

45 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

Jesus is showing us that whatever is on the inside is produced on the outside through our words as well as our works.

Remember the illustration that I shared a few times now.

If I am carrying a bowl of water, and someone bumps into me, water comes out.

But why?

Because water is in the bowl. Grease didn’t come out because there was no grease in the bowl.

If my bowl was full of grease and someone bumped into me, grease would come out.

So whatever is in our hearts will be reflected by our words.

So why did I yell at my Son the other day when he did something  annoying?

Because there’s grease in my heart!  Whatever sin is in there will most certainly come out when incidents press us. If there’s junk in there, it will find a way out here. And incidents that press us, hurt us, and stress us give an opportunity for it to spew out.

Words are not something God ever says, Oh its just words. Sticks and stones.

36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,

Why is God taking this so seriously?

BECAUSE our words are powerful and they reflect our hearts.

Let me take you to one more passage that elevates the gravity of our words.

In Romans 1, Paul speaks about a group of people who have rejected God to the point where God gave them over to have their sin. As a result, they spiraled into all kinds of sins and perversions. Listen to this list and note:

How many on this list relate to our words?

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

•     deceit

•     gossip

•     slander

•     boastful

And many of the sins would often be manifested through words like malice or envy. 

What is the result of this kind of living?

32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

These deserve death and will ultimately lead to both physical and spiritual death.

Our words, since they reflect our heart, can lead to eternal destruction.

Before we can talk about gossip or anything like that, here are three foundational points to hammer in:

1.   Our words can be incredibly destructive.

2.   Our words reflect our hearts.

3.   God will hold us accountable for our words.

›     Now that we’ve seen the severity of our words and especially gossip and slander, we must know, what it is!

What is Gossip?

Allow me to read an opening paragraph from Matthew Mitchell’s book, Resisting Gossip.

It is not always easy to recognize the moment when our “small talk” becomes sinful talk. In fact, if you’re like me, then you regularly ask yourself during conversations, “Should I be saying this?” or, “Should I be listening to this?” You may even find yourself questioning what makes gossip wrong. Is it when it is said? Who says it? To whom it is told? We often give ourselves small passes.

Gossip is okay if we’re just chatting with our wife or sister, right? Or if we’re just “venting” to our mom or pastor, right? What is gossip, anyway? Is it always a lie? Is it always an unsubstantiated rumor? Is gossip always malicious? The line becomes increasingly fuzzy as confusion sets in about the definition of gossip. Deciding what is or isn’t gossip is certainly a challenge.

Mitchell, Matthew C.. Resisting Gossip: Winning the War of the Wagging Tongue (p. 23).

Matthew Mitchell surveyed all the passages that  pertain with gossip, either explicitly or implicitly and came up with this helpful definition:

These three pieces are essential together for something to be gossip.

Bad News

First of all, gossip involves sharing bad news about someone.

Whatever it is, its going to be something that makes the person look bad.

Some of us have been taught that if something is true, then it’s not gossip. Not so.

Oftentimes this bad news is something that may not even be true or it is exaggerated.

Behind Someone’s Back

Sharing behind someone’s back means that you are sharing it without their knowledge or consent.

Furthermore, a great check to your own heart  is asking yourself this:

• Would I say this in this way if the person was here?

• Would I want someone else to talk this way about me if I were out of the room?

•     Does this person need to know this information?

Gossip is talking with someone who isn't part of the problem or part of the solution.

›     The final piece is connected and this is essential, for it is sometimes necessary to share bad news about someone behind their back.

Out of a bad heart

• Why am I saying this?

 • Why am I listening to this?

• Why am I attracted to this bad news?

One common scene at home is one of our kids will tattle on another. And we try to ask, “Are you trying to get them in trouble or out of trouble?” Have you talked with them first?

Sometimes we have a bad heart but it is disguised as love.

Did you hear so and so is struggling with their marriage? Yeah, I know. It’s crazy, they are going to counseling now! I’m only sharing this with you so you can pray for them. Don’t tell anyone, okay?

A key passage to check our hearts:

29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

1.   Is this talk corrupting the other person?

2.   Is it building them up?

3.   Is this giving grace to hearer?

The beauty of this passage is that you take off corrupting talk and replace it with words that build up!

What about Slander?

One definition I found summed it up helpfully and concisely,

Slander is a direct partner of gossip. Slander includes malicious and hurtful talk about another person. It is “the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame or damage another’s reputation.”

It can be a fine line between gossip and slander but there’s a more intentional desire to harm the other person and share news that is false or misrepresenting the other person.

•     A common way is that we can share all the evidence that supports the narrative we want the hearers to adopt without sharing anything true that could contradict our narrative.

•     Oftentimes a flag of this is when we use absolute language. We say stuff like, “He always ____.” Or “She never ___.”

Why we Gossip and Slander?

Well earlier we established that whatever is  on the inside, eventually shows up on the outside.

But lets go back to James to see more,

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.

One of the core roots to gossip, slander, and conflict in general is the passions at war within us. 

These passions stir up competition between us and others.

As a result, we go to war with our words.

Sadly, there’s a sick sense of delight that we can experience with the downfall of others.

8 The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.

“Choice morsels” are tasty things that we want to devour quickly. They are the best, most attractive, most addictive things to eat. So this is something really sick about us. When we hear gossip over others, it can often be like a tasty treat. OHHH tell me more! That feels so good. This is especially true, if the person being gossiped about is someone we do not particularly favor.

OR

it could be someone we do respect but in bringing them down, it makes us feel better about ourselves. Especially, if this person has something we don’t have. Perhaps, a position or some sort of attribute.

Do you know whose failures you CAN’T focus on when you are sharing or taking in gossip?

Your own.

We can distract from our own inward sin and brokenness when we dwell on the failures of others.

This is especially true if you struggle with self-loathing. You can relish a chance to think of others misfortunes.

3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

As long as we fixate and get others to talk about the specs in other’s eyes, we can deflect from the logs in our own.

›     Now, what to do we do with all this?

The reality is that all of this is quite condemning as most of us struggle with this.

Let’s cover:

1.   What to do with our own gossiping hearts?

2.   What to do when someone is gossiping to you?

3.   What do we do when someone is gossiping about us?

1. So what’s the cure to our own gossiping hearts?

The Cure to our own hearts

•     Understanding the grace we’ve received from God

•     Understanding how God feels about the person

•     Bless instead of gossip

Hopefully, I’ve adequately covered the first, but the next two,

Understanding the mercy and grace we’ve received in Christ

If we fundamentally understand Psalm 130:3.

3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

God has been more patient than we deserve!

When we truly gasp our sin and the holiness of God, we are surprised that God shows us mercy and grace.

We become more concerned with our sin than the sin of others.

We are more horrified by our own than the horror of other’s sin.

When we get this, then our hearts are in a posture of humility not judgment towards others.

This heart posture is not somewhere you attain once and then graduate. But live in and go back to DAILY.

›     The second cure to our gossiping hearts,

Understanding how God feels about them

Would you speak differently about someone if their Father was in the room?

Of course.

Or their spouse?

God loves his children.

And Jesus loves his bride.

God loves them even though he knows them fully. He knows their worst moment and the best.

Do we get how much he loves them? How much grace and mercy he has for them?

When we grow to see others the way God sees them, it changes everything in the way we relate to them.

Bless instead of gossip

Just as God loved us while we are still sinners, we bless others instead of gossip about them.

Even if the person blew it hard, you don’t spread their sin, you cover their sin.

You pray for them.

You still may need to challenge them *We get into this a lot more in a few weeks on the art of correction.

›     What do we do if someone is gossiping or slandering around us?

How do we respond to Gossip or Slander?

You can be just as guilty if you participate as an active listener to gossip.

4 An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue.

First of all, PRAY!

Then consider:

Are they a believer?

I would go about things significantly different if they’re an unbeliever. Due to this series on church life, let’s focus on believers.

Is it bad news?

Is it behind their back?

You may have to ask yourself,

Is it coming from a bad heart?

This is tricky to know. The following  questions can help understand their heart:

•     Why are they telling me this?

•     Is it essential for me to know this?

•     Am I part of the solution?

Too often people are looping us in and we don’t need to be in it. Instead of talking to the person directly, they are now bringing in others who ought not to be part of it.

The more you are familiar with these kinds of questions, the more you will pick up on it intuitively. If you are new to being shaped by the Bible (notice, I said, shaped by the Bible, not new to the Bible. For you can be familiar with the Bible and not be shaped by it), you will be slower to notice and stop.

If you realize the person is gossiping you have to make some hard decisions in that moment.

At minimum you don’t contribute.

Second, don’t believe it 100%. If someone is gossiping, that’s bad on them.

Why should I give them 100% of my trust if they are down to gossip?

17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

I have experienced too many times to count where someone gossips to me about someone else. And as I hear it, it sounds awful. The case is rock solid. Skip the jury, go to the executioner. But if I’m wise and charitable and hear the other’s side, it often can change my assessment drastically.

Amy Carmichael, missionary to India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had this rule for managing conflicts at her mission station:

“Never about, always to.”

Now there are extreme cases of abuse that you may need to report and not directly go to the person at first, but they are rare.

How many hurts and misunderstandings would be avoided if we adopted this as a church?

It’s also important to have the right heart in responding. We don’t respond with a holier than thou mindset but one of mercy. If this person is gossiping, they are in sin. And that should concern us. We don’t act snooty or harsh but with a heart of love and patience.

What else could you do if someone is gossiping around you?

I can’t give you the silver bullet answer. Context is everything.

•     If I have a strong relationship with the person, I may be able to speak up right away.

•     If I don’t, I may have to ask a lot of question.

•     You may need to redirect.

•     You may need to confront.

•     You may need to quietly excuse yourself and then later loop back around with this person. 99% of people receive correction better when they are not in the middle of committing the sin.

On potential is that you may need to get involved,

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

You may find that there is some saltiness between two people. And you need to get involved to bring reconciliation. You may need to encourage that person to go talk to them.

What if someone is gossiping against us?

First of all, remember that the Lord Jesus knows well what this feels like.

It’s not immature to feel hurt. It’s normal.

Pray that God would guard your heart from bitterness.

Pray for the person and bless them!

THEN

Move towards them!

There is something very dark in us that becomes self-righteous when we’re anxious or hurt by someone. It plays out most keenly in the story we tell ourselves about a person with whom we are in conflict. By the time we are done with an anger fantasy, the person is subhuman. We have stripped him or her of nuance and dimension and made the person worse than he or she really is. This dynamic also happens in gossip, triangulation, and judgment.

The solution to de-escalate anxiety happens to line up with the gospel: move toward the person. I wonder if this is partly why Jesus commanded us to love our enemy. Jesus commanded it because we don’t want to do it. We want to stay removed, gossip about the person to others, build a case against her in our minds. But all that leads to more anxiety. Could it be that Jesus commanded us to love our enemy because he knows that proximity is what helps you see more of someone’s humanity and more of her image bearing?

Cuss, Steve. Managing Leadership Anxiety (p. 141).

-In the right time, go talk to the person reportedly gossiping about you directly. However, do it with grace. Perhaps people have wrongly reported it to you. Perhaps they did share something but they had a good heart about it. Go with the grace and the benefit of the doubt that you would want.

Conclusion

If you are like me, you need to do some repenting. You may first need to repent to the Lord, for he takes personal offense when we gossip and slander.

Secondly, you may need to go back to people who you gossiped to and apologize for not giving grace to them. You may need to own up to mischaracterizing or lying.

Finally, you may need to go the person you gossiped about and apologize. It will be embarrassing and painful. But you must.

The God who speaks a better Word

We all have gossiped.

But you know who has never gossiped?

Jesus.

And Jesus knows all the juicy details of our lives.

24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See instead of a word of condemnation, Jesus speaks a word of acceptance.

This is for murderers, perverts, the selfish, and yes, gossips and slanderers.

Praise God that instead of condemnation, slander, and gossip, Jesus speaks a better word over us.

If you are a gossip or a sinner in anyway you can come to Jesus for forgiveness.

If you have been gossiped or slandered and you feel the pains of betrayal, you too can come to Jesus.

For remember his last hours. False witnesses slandered him. His disciples left him. Peter, one of his closest friends, denied ever knowing him. You can come to Jesus with your pain. He can empathize deeply.

Church let us go to war with this all to common sin of gossip and slander. It kills relationships. It kills churches.

Let us resolve to be peacemakers.

Let us resolve to always go to and never about.

Let us go to Jesus with our hearts and have him transform them.

Let us go to Jesus with our pains and have him heal us.

Imagine what this family would look like?

Do it, Lord!

Ross Tenneson

Main Point: God's plan for the church in 2020 is that she would multiply followers of Jesus as she awaits God's new creation. 

A Nation within a Nation

Ross Tenneson / General

Life Together / Politics / Jeremiah 29:1–14

God's people are a nation within a nation without a land

Connection (Me)

There is an election in two days and it feels different to me than other elections. I do not mean that “this is the most important election of our lifetimes” (the refrain we hear almost every other election). What feels different is that for the first time in any election in my lifetime, I have wondered, “is this going to end peacefully?” (A USA today article from Wednesday says, “Three of 4 voters express concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day”). To be honest, I think it will end mostly peacefully (outside of some possible demonstrations that get out of hand). Yet, I can’t help but feel the extra chaos, hostility, and desperation that is in the air.

Tension (We)

The fracturing of our society, the lack of clarity about the future, and the anger and emotion grabs at our attention and fixes it onto political outcomes.

In light of this, the question I want to answer this evening is:

How should All Peoples Church understand our role in America as Christians in 2020 and therefore, how should we live in the midst of this election and beyond? In other words, what’s God’s plan for us in this situation?

To get a clear answer to these questions, we will turn in the Scriptures to a letter written over 2500 years ago. It was written by the prophet Jeremiah to Hebrew exiles who were in the land of Babylon. To give you a better idea of when this was, Jeremiah lived 400 years after king David and 600 years before Jesus was born.

In king David’s day, God had brought his people into the Promised Land (a place where he would take care of them if they would obey them). However, in the years following David, the unthinkable happened. Generation after generation of God’s people disobeyed God. As a result God sent judgement after judgment on them, warning them to turn back. When they wouldn’t, he brought a severe judgment for their sin: exile. Exile is the removal of someone from their home to captivity in a foreign place. When Israel disobeyed God repeatedly, he sent the nation of Babylon to come and defeat the Israelites and carry them out of the special place God had given them into captivity in a foreign place.

It is to these people who lost so much that Jeremiah writes this letter of hope and of promise. As we go through this letter together, I am going to try to explain what it means in its historical context of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon. Also, I am going to apply its hope and promises to us today in America in 2020. The reason why we can do that is because when we become connected to Jesus by faith, we get to receive all of the promises and hopes of the Old Covenant God made with the Israelite people. We receive them because through Jesus, God includes us in that people. One sweet benefit of following Jesus is that the hope and promises of the Old Covenant become addressed to us because we are now apart of God’s people. As I explain the letter in it’s Old Testament context, you will probably begin to make connections with our New Testament context on your own. I will circle back though and explain how it connects also.

With that purpose in mind, let’s take a look at the letter Jeremiah wrote,

Revelation (God)

These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Verse 1 clarifies that this letter is to the “exiles” in Babylon. As I mentioned earlier, exile would be an excruciating ordeal. After an army surrounds your city and cuts off food and water for months, they finally make a hole in your city wall and rush in. Chaos ensues and you witness many horrible sins being committed against your neighbors and families. Then, a soldier drags you away and you leave the familiar home you lived in and march hundreds of miles to a new and foreign land. You don’t understand the language or the customs, you are a second class citizen, and you are not allowed to go home. This is your new life. 

2 This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem.

If you remember earlier in the Old Testament, God had promised to Abraham a land, and offspring, and that his offspring would be kings. He had promised to Abraham that he would establish his descendents into a kingdom. God would use that special kingdom to bless all the other nations through them. This beautiful kingdom reached its height under Kings David and Solomon when the other nations began to come to the kingdom of Israel to see this beautiful place.

At this moment: that kingdom is gone!  The king and queen mother, the officials and leaders, the significant people and places of this kingdom are either in exile or destroyed. An enemy kingdom Babylon now possessed them and they lived in their land rather than the Promised Land God had given them. Israel was no longer a nation among nations who were meant to bless those other nations and lead them to God, they had become a nation within a nation. Their purpose within that nation is not yet clear; it will be as we read on.

An Israelite in exile would wonder at this moment, “have the promises of God made to Abraham failed? Will we ever hear God’s voice again or is he done speaking to us through the prophets? Will my children die in exile and God’s people fade from existence on the Earth?”  If you have or are experiencing hopelessness, the exiles in Babylon would be able to connect with you. They would have felt like they lost everything both physically and spiritually. There would have been no reason left for them to live.

Verse 3 says,

3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said:

All of a sudden, this guy named Elasah arrives in Babylon. He has this letter. It’s addressed to the people from God. God wouldn’t remain silent after all. What would this letter communicate?

Verse 4 begins:

4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

The first thing God does is introduce himself as “the Lord of Hosts” (that means the king over the entire spiritual realm) and also… The God of Israel (that means he is still their God— though they ran from him, he has not abandoned them).

Then God clarifies: “I sent you into exile.” This wasn’t any mistake or roll of the dice or even Nebuchadnezzar's idea: it was mine. You sinned against me and this is a punishment from me for your sins. I am sovereign over all that has happened and is happening! But then he goes on to say something completely unexpected,

5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.

God essentially says, “don’t despair, don’t give up, don’t commit suicide, start building a life here. Build a home where you can stay and build a garden where you can eat its food.

God commands his people to keep having children and to keep multiplying just like God had promised they would to Abraham. Essentially God says, “Continue on with life as normal. Live as if you were home even if you are not yet home.”[1] Don’t try to escape from Babylon or topple the Babylonian government; instead, live like you would in the Promised Land even though you are in Babylon.

“Okay God, I can do that, but should I even bother having children? What kind of life is this in this horrible place?”

Verse 6,

6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.

But, you might ask, “what does it actually mean for Israel to live as if they were in the Promised Land?”

You will notice two of the things God commands his people to do are to “plant gardens” and to have children and “multiply.” I feel like I ask this same question and it has the same answer every week I preach: “where in the Bible does God first command someone to “garden” and to “multiply” through childbearing? These are the commands God gives to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2. God’s purpose at the beginning was to expand his garden (that is the place where God rules over his people) and for his people who are made in his image to multiply and fill his creation. To be made in God’s image was for people to resemble him spiritually and morally. God’s original plan was to fill the world with people who who are like him and resemble him in having godly character. Each person then would testify to the greatness of the God they resemble. 

Okay, maybe you might grand that, but certainly the plan changed when God’s people sinned to badly he sent them out of the promised land, right?

Again, the answer is no! He commands the exiles to “multiply and do not decrease!” God is still doing the same thing he always has: he’s filling his creation with people who reflect and resemble him as the Hebrew people were meant to do.

The point I am driving home here is at this moment: the plan hasn’t changed! Not the sin of his people, not the fall of the nation, not the exile into Babylon, not anything has caused God to change his mind or change his plan. As a chaotic world fell apart, God’s orderly plan pressed ahead. His people, no longer a nation among the nations, but now a nation within a nation, were meant to fill Babylon with godly people: they were to multiply and not decrease.

What else does God command his people to do?  

7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

One thing God promised to Abraham was that his descendents would bless “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3). Here is another confirmation that God is keeping his promises to Israel even in their exile. Even though Israel had failed to be a blessing to other nations when they had the Promised Land, after God exiles them to the other nations, he uses them to be a blessing to those nations! (Bible project).

Usually, two nations occupying the same space will fight each other over the land. Yet, Babylon is not Israel’s land. So, they don’t need to fight Babylon over it. In fact, though Babylon victimized them, stole from them, imprisoned them, marginalized them, they need not retaliate or fight against Babylon. We will see soon more why the reason they don’t have to fight against Babylon. For now though, it is sufficient to say that Babylon is not their land, so they do not need to fight them.

Instead, they can pray for Babylon instead of against Babylon. Instead, they can seek the welfare of Babylon instead of warfare with Babylon. God promises: “In its welfare you will find your welfare.” 

In other words, contributing to the welfare of those around you will add to and not detract from your mission to multiply. In Babylon, as the Israelites contributed to the success of the nation around them (and friendships and relationships with their neighbors strengthened), it became easier to raise a God-fearing family in Babylon.

Before we transition to what a the New Testament author Peter wrote, I want to sum this up: God send Israel into Babylon. They were not to become Babylonian, but neither were they to overthrow Babylon. They were to be a nation within a nation without a land. They were to multiply and not decrease. They were to seek the welfare of their neighbor around them and not their harm. 

With those thoughts in mind, I’m going to ask you to flip to 1 Peter 2:11-12,

11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Amazingly, the Apostle Peter calls the church, God’s people in the NT age, “exiles”! Like Israel in Babylon, we are a nation with a nation. We don’t have a land. We are content without one. In this land, we are to multiply and not decrease! We are to do good to our neighbor. As we do good and love our neighbor, it will contribute to our goal to multiply. In other words, we are to be a family of servant missionaries in Minneapolis in 2020. 

I have been referring to the people of God often in this sermon. For the Old Testament passage of Jeremiah 29 and the New Testament passage of 1 Peter 1 to fit together, we have to understand that there has been a change in who God’s people are since Jesus came. Before Jesus came, God’s people was the ethnic nation of Israel. Since Jesus has come, God’s people are a multi-ethnic people from every culture and nation who put their faith in Jesus. There is no land we own like other nations, yet the church is a nation far more amazing that all of the nations in the world.

Andy Naselli and Jonathan Leeman in their new book How can I love Church Members with Different politics ((pp. 28-29) explain this well,

There’s been nothing like the church in the history of the world. Every other nation has been united either by powerful men with swords or by family relations, including ancient Israel. Yet now a new nation exists, held together by neither sword nor family but only by Word and Spirit. Indeed, it’s a nation that doesn’t presently possess a land. It’s like God wanted the world to see what he alone could do. So he took a bunch of natural enemies, saved them by his Son’s blood and his Spirit’s power, and created a united and peace-sharing people. The local church is where enemy tribes start beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. It’s where black and white, rich and poor, young and old, educated and uneducated, American and Chinese, sanitation worker and senator, unite.

As the nations of the world and our own divide and despair over numerous things, we unite over the greatest thing: God’s glory and God’s unchanging plan. Friends, no matter what happens on November 3rd, we have the name plan on November 4th: multiply and don’t decrease. Or, as Jesus said, “make disciples of all nations!”

God’s will for our church is that we do not despair or become distracted by the chaos and pain in America, but that we double down in our mission to multiply followers of Jesus all around us. Which is why we are meeting right here at 6pm the day after the election to do just that.

It’s not fun to be exiles, to not have a land we possess. It means we don’t have or seek political power, it means that we should expect to be outsiders and on the margins of society. It means that we should expect others to mistreat us and to insult us and we don’t retaliate.

How does God strengthen us to live this kind of life in the here and now? 

If you would please turn back to Jeremiah 29, we see the answer in the next few verses.

8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.

Unfortunately, we don’t have time to get into these verses other than to say, if someone is telling you you are not an exile here on the earth, that this is your home, and you should try to live your best life now and triumph here and now, don’t listen to them.

Rather, this is what God says to exiles,

10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

God says to his exile people in Babylon, you can endure your exile, because I will bring you back to the land and give it to you one day. When? In seventy years. That’s an average lifespan for a person.[2] So, live here in Babylon for the rest of your life before this nation receives its land back. God says that he will keep his promises. Israel’s sin and the invasion of the Babylonians did not thwart God’s promises. He would and he will keep them Then God says,

11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

In the midst of his people’s lives falling apart, when they feel like God had abandoned them, when they feel like they had lost everything, God had not abandoned his people! God still had good plans for them and he was in the process of fulfilling them. His good heart toward his people had never changed. He would return them to their nation and take care of them.

And as New Testament believers, we are in a similar position. We are exiles and strangers here on the earth. Yet, God has made promises to us. God has good plans for us. He means to bring us through this life and when we come back to life to give us a Promised Land. We will live with him in the new creation. There won’t be any pain or death or loss there. Only intimacy with God and happiness forever. This promise, this hope is our fuel that enables us to keep making disciples no matter what happens around us. Nothing can touch our hope.

My main burden this evening is that in America in 2020, as things seem to fall apart, All Peoples church would multiply and not decrease by faithfully making disciples. Our sense of hope and courage to keep doing so would come from God’s sovereignty over history and good purpose to give us a home when Jesus comes back.

I want to conclude by mentioning that Jesus is the reason we get to participate in this beautiful plan. In the center of all history he came and lived as a loving and sinless man. Yet, he died as a guilty sinner and suffered a brutal death like so many Israelites did under the Babylonians. He absorbed the penalty of all of our sins and transgressions, so that he could forgive us and make us pure like him. Because of him, we can join the nation of God’s people and become exiles on the Earth. Yes, it’s costly, but it ends up being with him forever in blessing. Remaining a citizen of this earth may last for a while and be fun, but ends in dismay and death. Oh how good and sweet it is that Christ has invited us to follow him and be exiles now, but citizens one day with him forever. We may suffer now, but one day no more.

If you don’t know Jesus yet and want to follow him, please talk to any of our members before leaving.

[1] John Calvin, Jeremiah 20-29, trans. David W. Rev. William Pringle, vol. 1, Calvin’s Commentaries 23 Volume Set (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2009).

[2] Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Je 29:10). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Scott Hubbard

When Your Dream Church Dies

Well hello, church. It’s a privilege for me to open God’s word with you this evening as we take a break from the Gospel of Luke and start a series on our life together as a church. And thank you for praying for me just now. I have been excited to preach this word tonight, but I also feel my need for God’s help. So if you feel inclined to pray for me at any point as we get going, I’d welcome it.

Just about six years ago, I moved to a new city to attend seminary. And there was a church in this city that I had known about for a long time. I had listened to sermons from the pastor of this church and even read books that he had written. So I carried some anticipation with me as I walked into the church building for the first time and as I started to settle in to this new community.

And it did not take me long to realize that this church was exceedingly, incredibly . . . normal. As far as churches go anyway. More than that, I started noticing things about the church that rubbed against my preferences. It was a big church, so I felt sort of invisible at times. I struggled to find deep community. The first time I went to a small group, a man there prayed for me as “Kevin.” And I didn’t realize until some weeks into my time there that I had brought this idea of a dream community with me that was now slowly dying.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve realized that you don’t need to be invested in Christian community long to struggle with Christian community. Some of the struggles are no more than small annoyances, like when someone near you sings loudly out of tune. Other struggles are bigger, like when someone in your small group gives you “counsel” that is totally insensitive. And then some struggles are just huge, like when someone you trust slanders you behind your back.

The passage we’re going to look at today is all about moments like these. It’s about how we handle annoyances, frustrations, friction, conflicts, insults, and disappointments in a church community. It’s about shaping our expectations so that we enter a community with the right dream of what it should be like. We’re going to see that interpersonal struggles both small and large are normal in the church. And we’re going to see that they’re not only normal, but the very contexts where God calls us to make much of Christ together.

We’re going to be in Ephesians 4:1–3. Here’s how we’re going to approach this passage. We’ll first look briefly at the context. Then we’ll consider Paul’s command. And then we’ll spend most of the time focusing on the path we take to obey this command.

So first, the context. If you’re familiar with the book of Ephesians, then you may remember that the letter can be divided pretty neatly between chapters 1–3 and chapters 4–6. In chapters 1–3, Paul takes us on a grand tour of redemption. He tells us how God chose us, forgave us, and sealed us for eternity through the death and resurrection of Jesus. He tells us how God raised us up from spiritual death and seated us with Christ in the heavens. He tells us how God has filled us with his Spirit and made us his very own dwelling place.

Then, in chapters 4–6, Paul tells us how we should live in light of all that. Given who God is for us and all that he has done for us in Christ, how should we respond? What would it look like to love and follow Christ in our churches and friendships and marriages and families and jobs and neighborhoods?

So our passage falls at the very beginning of this second section. It is the hinge passage in the book of Ephesians, where Paul turns from all that God has done to explain how we should respond to him in all of life.

And that brings us to Paul’s command. Look with me at verse 1: “I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Therefore, Paul says, in light of our Father’s love for us, in light of Christ’s death for us, in light of the Spirit’s presence in us, how should we, the church, respond? Here’s his command: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” We don’t talk this way very much. We don’t often encourage or exhort one another to walk in a manner worthy of God. Maybe we even stumble over that word worthy. We love to sing and talk about how Jesus is worthy, not how we are worthy. But here, and in several other places in Scripture, God calls us to walk in a manner worthy of his calling.

So what does that mean? To walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling does not mean we somehow become worthy to receive his calling. It’s not like God is saying, “I’ll call you mine once you show yourself worthy.” No, that’s how people love, but not how God loves. People often say, more or less, “I will love you and call you to myself when you show yourself worthy of my love.” But God says, “I will love you when you are utterly unworthy of my love. And I myself will make you worthy.” To tweak a phrase from the theologian Martin Luther, God’s love doesn’t look for worthiness — God’s love creates worthiness!

You can see that in the structure of this command: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Notice the past tense. We’ve already been called by God. So worthiness is not a condition for being called by God, but a result of being called by God. And what is the calling to which we have been called? It’s everything Paul has been talking about in chapters 1–3. Look especially at chapter 1, verse 18: Paul is praying for the Ephesians, and he says, “[I pray that] the eyes of your heart [may be] enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”

So the calling already happened. And when did it happen? Not when you were worthy of him, but when you were dead. When you were lost. When you were without hope and without God in the world. Then, at that time, he looked at you and said, “Mine.” He called you into life, he called you into Christ, he called you into a hope that will last for all eternity.

So what does it mean to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we’ve been called? It doesn’t mean, “Live in a way to earn being called,” but instead, “Live in a way that fits with the glory of God’s calling.” Live so that others might look at you and think, “That person has clearly been shown great mercy.” Live in a way that makes sense in light of the grace that you have received from Christ and that you keep on receiving from Christ.

So that’s the command. In the next three chapters of Ephesians, Paul gets specific about how we walk in a manner worthy of our calling. And the first place he turns is not to personal holiness, not to life at home or at work, but to relationships within the church. So let’s consider now the path Paul calls us to walk on in order to obey this command.

Look with me at verses 2–3: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

We’re going to look at each of these five qualities here in a moment, but first let me offer an observation to set the stage. Here it is: the only way we can walk worthily of Christ is to walk in messy community. Because Paul, right after commanding us to walk worthily, talks here about community. And not community at its best, but community that requires humility and gentleness and patience and bearing with and striving to maintain unity — all of which assumes that this community has struggles.

Do you ever feel sometimes that you could be so much holier if you didn’t have to be around other people? I feel that. Oh how holy I could be if I were just by myself all day long! But that’s actually not true holiness. You can only be patient if someone is provoking you to impatience. You can only bear with others if others feel like burdens. So if we want to walk worthily of our calling, we have to walk in messy community.

With that in mind, let’s consider these five qualities, all of which describe our life together in community. In order to understand them, we’re going to rely on some other times Paul uses these words. We’ll also move through them somewhat quickly so that we can think about them all together at the end.

1. Humility

First, we walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling by walking “with all humility.” Humility is a familiar word for most of us, but what does it really mean? The word carries the idea of lowliness. Humble people don’t think highly of themselves. Or maybe even more accurately, humble people are too busy thinking about others to spend much time thinking about themselves. One biblical dictionary I looked at described humility this way: humility means “to live without strutting” or “to walk without wanting to be noticed.”

Here’s what Paul says about humility in Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” In other words, humble people gladly go low in order to lift others up.

When humble people walk into a room, they are on the lookout for people to love and ways to serve. When the humble get into a conflict, they are more interested in hearing the other person out than in defending themselves. When the humble are offended, they are slow to assume motives and quick to cover the offense over with love. Humble people can serve without being noticed, they can give up their rights without complaining, and they are more prone to encouragement than criticism. They gladly go low to lift others up.

And because Christ has humbled himself for our sake, he can teach us how to be humble.

2. Gentleness

Second, we walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling by walking “with . . . gentleness.” Gentleness and humility are similar. Both of them mean that we are unimpressed with ourselves. But gentleness in particular relates to how we use our strength or power.

Some people hear the word gentle and think weak. But gentleness is not weakness; instead, it is the godly and loving exercise of strength. For example, listen to how Paul uses the word in Galatians 6:1: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” If you catch another person in sin, you are in a position of power. It’s like you’re standing over someone who has fallen. And in that moment, you can use your power in one of two ways: you can kick them while they’re down, or you can give them your hand. Gentle people give a hand.

Gentle people are approachable people. That’s what Jesus says: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle” (Matthew 11:28–29). If you feel weary, heavy laden, weak, guilty, you don’t want to go to a hard person. You want to go to a gentle person. So humility goes low to lift others up, and gentleness uses strength to bind others up.

And because Christ is gentle toward us, we too can be gentle toward each other.

3. Patience

Third, we walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling when we walk “with patience.” Biblical patience is more than the ability to sit calmly in traffic or to wait in line at the grocery store without looking at your phone (which is hard enough). Patience has to do with how you respond to offenses, snubs, insensitivity, and insults.

The word patient more literally means “long-tempered.” It’s the same word that God uses, for example, when he tells us his name: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). And Paul tells us that Jesus has “perfect patience” toward sinners (1 Timothy 1:16). In the face of our sins against him, God doesn’t blow up on us or give up on us. He doesn’t say, “Agh! Again?” Instead, he is slow to anger. He meets our sins with patience.

And that’s what patient people are like. Patient people can take an offense right in the face, and then look right over it. Patient people are slow to speak, even when they feel misunderstood and slighted. They can feel hurt by someone without finding subtle ways to vent about it to a friend. And not only that: they can move toward the people who hurt them with love.

And because Christ is patient with us, we can grow in being patient with each other.

4. Forbearance

Fourth, we walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling when we “[bear] with one another in love.” Just like humility and gentleness are similar to each other, so too are patience and forbearance. When we bear with someone, we endure or put up with something difficult, something burdensome.

Bearing with one another is not the same thing as forgiving one another. We can see that in a similar passage in Colossians, where Paul writes, “[Bear] with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, [forgive] each other” (Colossians 3:13). There’s bearing with, and there’s forgiving. In any community, we will need to bear with all sorts of hard things that are not sins. We practice forbearance when someone has a personality that we just find hard, or when someone communicates in a way that frustrates us, or when we disagree with someone about politics or racial issues or ministry philosophy. There are some things in a community that you can’t forgive (because they aren’t sins) and you can’t change (for one reason or another), but that you just need to endure.

And Paul says we’re to bear with one another “in love.” Don’t just tolerate your brother or sister. Don’t just smile nicely while you inwardly roll your eyes. Instead, love them like you would love a biological brother or sister who is totally different from you. Many of us have biological family who could not be more different from us. And yet, because they’re family, we’ve learned to bear with those things we find strange — and even to appreciate those things we find strange. Paul says we’re to do the same thing in the church. Love one another like that.

And because Christ bears with us, we can turn to bear with one another.

5. Unity

Finally, we walk in a manner worthy of God’s calling when we are “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Our job, church, is not to create unity with each other. Unity has already been created. Jesus has purchased our unity by joining us to one another in himself and by filling each one of us with his Spirit. So our job is not to create unity. Instead, our job is maintain unity by the Spirit’s power.

When I was reading this verse some time ago, I was struck by that word eager: “[be] eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Here’s why it struck me. In the past, when I thought about the kind of person who destroys the unity of a church, I mainly thought about divisive people: people who agitate and complain, people who are always finding fault with how things are done, people who win others over to their side and start a civil war in the church.

But then I realized that you don’t have to be divisive to undermine the unity in a church. You just have to not be eager to maintain unity. This hit home to me. Because when someone offends me or hurts me, whether intentionally or not, I don’t feel tempted to blow up at them or cut the relationship off or gossip about it (usually). Instead, I feel tempted to just stop trying so hard with that person. I feel tempted to back away from them and become content with a cold, formal relationship instead of a warm, familial one.

If the church is a body, then the first kind of destroyer is like a hand that starts punching other parts of the body. And the second kind of destroyer is like a hand that just refuses to move. Either way, we are not being eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

Consider other translations of this word eager: “do your best,” “strive,” “make every effort,” “be diligent.” When we are eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit, we are not content when tensions are unresolved. We ask for forgiveness first, even when the other person offended most. We patiently work through conflict that feels complex, trusting that God can bring the breakthrough.

And because Christ has united us to himself by the Spirit, we can strive to maintain unity with each other.

Now that we’ve considered those qualities, let’s apply this passage to ourselves a little more by asking this question: Why is this what it looks like to walk worthily of our calling? You might think that God would glorify himself in our community by removing all conflict, all friction, all offenses, all sin. But that’s not the way he has chosen to do it — not yet at least. So why this way? Here’s one reason why: because community struggles display more of Christ to us and to the world.

Consider how community struggles invite us to become more like Christ. Church, we worship a Christ who humbled himself to the point of death. Who walked among us gentle and lowly. Who has perfect patience toward sinners. Who bears with us every day. Who won our unity with him at the cost of his own blood.

Oh how this could change how we receive offenses from one another! When you ask God to make you more Christlike, have you ever considered that he might answer your prayer by sending you an offense? How can we be humble like him unless someone opposes our preferences? How can we be patient like him unless something provokes us? How can we love unity like him unless something threatens to destroy it? All of a sudden, what was once only a disappointment becomes an opportunity to be more like Christ, and we begin to expect that this will be part of our life together.

Community struggles also invite us to glorify Christ. The day is coming when we will glorify Christ by never getting on each other’s nerves, by never offending each other, by never having conflict with each other. But for now, conflict among us does not mean our community is a failure. Nor do disappointments and offenses and annoyances and frustrations. No, all of these are opportunities to show that Christ and Christ alone is sufficient to keep us together.

The glory of Christian community is not that there is no trouble, but that we handle trouble with humility and grace. It’s not that others no longer annoy us, but that we bear with annoyances out of love for Christ (as others bear with us!). It’s not that others no longer provoke us, but that we see provocation as an opportunity to glorify our Lord before a watching world. Let’s make this our dream of a Christian community.

Finally, struggle invites us to commune more closely with Christ. Look back with me to the very beginning of our passage: “I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you . . .” The word therefore reminds us, as always, that our passage relies on what came before it. Therefore links Ephesians 4 with Ephesians 1–3, which, as we saw before, describes the calling to which we have been called.

In other words, therefore reminds us that we cannot live out Ephesians 4 unless we live in Ephesians 1–3 — unless our hearts are utterly bathed in the grace that has come to us in Christ. While we were dead, Christ called us, saved us, raised us, and made us his very own. If we grow cold to that, then humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and unity will become impossible. They will just feel too hard. Maybe these things feel too hard right now for you. Are you finding it increasingly difficult to walk humbly, to deal gently, to bear with others patiently? Do you feel more prone to harbor bitterness and to replay offenses? If so, could it be that you have grown cold to the grace of Christ?

If so, the remedy is not to strong arm yourself into these qualities. The remedy is to draw near to the Lord who is here with us right now, the one of whom Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” If that glory—and others—is bigger and brighter in our hearts than anything that anyone can do to us, then (and only then) will this path feel like home.

So, church, return with me to the beginning. What do you do when it feels like your dream church dies? What do you do when the relationships are harder than you expected, the community isn’t as deep as you hoped, or when someone wounds you? Do you slowly pull away? Do you begin to justify a growing coldness to your brothers and sisters? Do you allow criticism to dominate your thoughts? Or do you see it as an opportunity to shaped into the image of Jesus and to know him more closely than ever?

If our dream community becomes more important to us than Christ, then our community will fail. But if our greatest desire in community is to have more of Christ, then we will walk worthily of him, and everything about our community will give us more of him, even the parts that disappoint us.

Daniel Simmons

Pastor Daniel preaches from Luke 9:37-51. 

Main Point of the Sermon: The path to glory, greatness, and power in God’s Kingdom is the path of the cross.

Today’s sermon will be the last in Luke for a while as we take a break to jump into our “Life Together” series. We will pick back up in Luke early next year. We’ve chosen a stopping point very intentionally, because it seems that Luke’s Gospel transitions starting in verse 51 where we’re told that Jesus “set his face like flint towards Jerusalem.” There’s a turning point in Jesus’s ministry. His face was set like a stone towards Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? It was there he would die for the sins of the world. He was on a willful mission to the cross because it was the only way to open the gates of his kingdom to all who would believe in him. Ultimately, he was trailblazing the path of the Kingdom of God. He was showing us the way. 

Today’s text is a good one for me and I hope for you because it is very much a recalibration text, reminding me why this path of the cross is right. You see, as much as I’ve rehearsed the story of Christianity and his Kingdom – that Jesus came to die before he would rise – I often find myself trying to blaze a different path. Over and over again I find my Christian life looking no different than any non-believing person: self-sufficient, comfort seeking, working hard to make a name for myself. Sometimes I show up to minister to others on my game so that I don’t look bad to anyone, but also barely having whispered a prayer and hoping that it doesn’t take too much time away from the evening I have planned. 

Why is it so easy for us to go here? We want God’s Kingdom to come in our lives. We pray for it, but we so easily misunderstand God and his purposes and slip into a powerless lifestyle of comfort? I think in part because we are often more immersed in the world’s ideas than in God’s ideas. We try to make Christ fit into the American dream, into Daniel Simmons’ dream. 

But God’s Kingdom is not the American kingdom or Daniel Simmons’ kingdom. His kingdom is an upside down kingdom, where those who enter it live to die and die in order to live. The title of this sermon is “The easily misunderstood path of the Kingdom.”

Most recently in Luke, Jesus and his disciples reached a sort of climax in their time together on the mount of transfiguration. This came just after the confession of Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. Both Jesus’s identity and his glory in these instances were fully exposed. But as we’ve been exploring in the latest sermons, this moment of glory was carefully guarded by Jesus because of the disciples severe misunderstanding of him. 

We’re going to look at three different chunks of text today and unpack three misunderstandings of the disciples and we’ll see how Jesus offers correction. 

Misunderstanding #1 v. 37-43 They had self-sufficient ministries 

Misunderstanding #2 v. 43-45 They sought the crown without the cross

Misunderstanding #3 v. 46-50 They wanted to be served rather than to serve

Let’s look at Misunderstanding #1. 

37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”

As Jesus was coming down the mountain, he met another crowd of desperate people. In this case, he is first met by a man crying out for help for his demonized only child. 

The contrast set up by Luke in these two scenes is stark. From his glory on the mountain, Jesus reenters the mess of humanity, where the unclean are clinging for some semblance of hope. The great painter Raphael of the 16th century captured this in one of his most famous paintings, “The Transfiguration” (Driscoll). I wanted to show it to you. 

This condescension of Jesus illustrates yet again from where Jesus had come and the purpose for his coming. Rather than remain on the mountain in his glory as Peter had hoped, Jesus stepped into the mess of humanity again like he had done in his incarnation, into the mess brought on by our own sinfulness, in order to deliver us from the kingdom of darkness. 

“only child” The man coming to Jesus had experienced suffering throughout his life. For one, he only had one child, and this is not a small detail. Children in the first century weren’t seen as an expensive burden like so many in our culture view them, but as the legacy, the retirement, the hope of the family name. Without children you were often helpless in your old age. 

“a spirit seizes him” We’re told that this boy was oppressed by a demon who wanted to destroy his life. Mark’s gospel adds some details to this account, recording that the spirit would make the boy mute and “often throw the boy into fire or into water to kill him” (Mk 9:22). Furthermore, this tormenting had been happening since he was a little boy, suggesting he was a little older, perhaps in the 8-12 age range. This boy likely had scars from being burned by the fire, and his father would have doubtless been severely anxious over his son’s life. This is horrible. I’ve felt this a little more deeply since the birth of my son. I cannot imagine the pain this man must have felt over his child. So, he comes to Jesus in desperation.

When we look at scenes like this in our day and age, it’s easy to think of this as fantastical. Our culture conditions us to believe that way, thinking it silly to talk about the existence of angels and demons. But friends, in thinking this way we’ve already fallen to one of Satan’s greatest lies. Satan and his workers want to destroy you and all that God has made, and what better tactic than to make you think that he doesn’t exist. You need to know that this is not a fairy tail and that there is no scientific or medical explanation for this situation. I have personally seen and been a part of the deliverance of both teenagers and young adults from demonic presence. This is not a joke. There is a spiritual war between God’s kingdom and the Kingdom of Satan raging now as we speak over you and the rest of the world. 

There was no denying the spiritual realm for this man or for the disciples at that matter. He was desperate for his child and came begging the disciples to cast the demon out. But verse 40 records these sad words, (slowly) “but [the disciples] could not.”

How many times have you been in a situation like this, where despite all your efforts to help you come up short. You just can’t seem to fix it. Even though just weeks prior, the disciples had been sent out to the town to preach, heal, and cast out demons, they’ve again found themselves powerless, unable to perform.

Why? I believe it’s because the disciples had a misunderstanding of who Jesus was and what he came to do. So God saw best not to heal through them in this moment. It seems that they had slipped (so quickly) into a faithless and self-sufficient ministry pattern. Look at Jesus’s response in verse 41 to see where I’m getting this. 41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”

“O faithless and twisted generation” Who is Jesus referring to? It seems that his scope is bigger than the disciples, expanding to the boy’s father, and the crowds present, ultimately representing humanity’s sinfulness. They were faithless and twisted in their understanding of God, and thus, powerless against the demonic. I believe this is more applicable for our generation more than anyone would like to admit. Jesus is clearly dissatisfied and broken over what he sees, that even his covenant people are wrought with demonic oppression and his people have no power over it because of their lack of faith. 

Mark’s gospel again adds some helpful details. When the disciples later ask Jesus why they were unable to heal the boy, Jesus replied, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mk 9:29).  

While it’s possible that this suggests that the disciples didn’t pray at all, more likely it is describing the quality of their prayer. In other words, it’s unlikely that the disciples thought they could exorcise the demon in their own strength without calling on the divine help, but it is more likely that Jesus was highlighting the disciples’ lack of dependence on God in Christ. Something was missing in the disciples understanding. Perhaps they had grown too confident in their own power to cast out demons. One way or another, it seems that they were ignorant of 1) the power of the demonic 2) of their utter dependency on Jesus for power to minister effectively to others 3) of power that truly belonged to them through faith in Christ. 

In this spiritual world, Christian, we are powerless over sin and Satan, powerless to make any lasting kingdom impact without faith-filled prayer. But with faith-filled prayer, anything is possible. It is easy to forget, easy for our prayers to become empty and faithless in this lulling culture of America. But moments like these remind us that prayer isn’t a ritual or a mantra to be chanted, but our lifeline, our connection to the one who has true power. In Jesus, and in Jesus alone do you have strength to overcome. Are you living a life utterly dependent on Jesus, or have you fallen into a life and ministry of subtle self-sufficiency? If so, pray this simple prayer. Lord, I believe. But help my unbelief. 

Despite the faithlessness of the people, Jesus invited them to bring the boy to him. We’re told that while they were coming “the demon threw [the boy] to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.” 

You need to know that any time Satan is about to lose ground, he rages a little harder. Perhaps, right now, you’re trying to lay down an addiction or some other habitual sin. Know that the enemy will put up a fight, especially before a breakthrough comes.  

But notice that Satan and demons are no match for Jesus. It’s not even close. God and demons are not on the same plain. With one rebuke, Jesus drove out the demon and healed the boy of his muteness and gave him back to the Father. 

Jesus is able, yesterday today and forever, and can restore your broken life, deliver you from Satan’s power, and make all things new. Cling to him today with faith-filled prayer. 

Verse 43 says that “all were astonished at the majesty of God.” 

Truly, what a majestic God we serve. 

But even as the people marveled Jesus highlights another misunderstanding of the disciples and the people. The misunderstanding that was leading them down this path of faithless self-reliance rather than God-reliance was that they sought the crown without the cross. This is the second misunderstanding. 

Look at verse 43: But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

Jesus now, a second time, foretells his death, but this time he urges them to pay careful attention – to hear him carefully – and he also doesn’t mention the resurrection as he had done at first. Jesus is making the point crystal clear that whatever wishful thinking they had about his ministry and glory needed to be corrected with this reality: the cross always comes before the crown. 

“The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” Jesus use of this title alludes to the Messianic figure of Daniel 7, where in Daniel’s prophetic vision, we see the “Son of Man”, a representative of the holy people of God, receiving a kingdom that rules over all the kingdoms of the earth. But if you read the entire chapter, you’ll see that the kingdom would be given to him and his people in the midst of great suffering and tribulation at the hands of evil men. 

“delivered into the hands of men” Strikingly, in both Daniel’s account (7:25) and here in our text, this suffering comes not by accident, but as a result of being quote “delivered into” evil people’s hands. What’s that about? Who is delivering Jesus over? 

What the disciples do not, and cannot possibly comprehend, and are even afraid to ask about, is that Jesus’s coming death was not happenstance, or something to be stopped, but something that was in fact being accomplished by God the Father. Jesus was not warning the disciples so they could fight for him, but explaining rather the divine necessity for his death. God, in fact, was the one about to deliver Jesus up to be killed. And Jesus was going willingly. 

What was concealed and misunderstood by the disciples was that the Kingdom of God could not be received apart from the cross. We are powerless without the cross. 

The disciples erroneously thought from the first time they heard of Jesus’s identity as the Messiah was that he was about to overtake the enemies of Israel, that the glory of Israel’s kingdom would be restored and expanded, and that they would be on the front lines for it. That’s why they would have likely been so excited about these miracles. But what they did not understand was that the Kingdom of Satan and all those in alignment with it could not be toppled without first dealing with sin, even their own sin! This is what the cross is about! This is why Jesus had to die, in order to deal with these ultimate problems. 

Friends, sin is our ultimate problem. Not your money problems, your dating problems, not a political problem or any other thing. Satan has power over humans and peoples because we have willfully wandered into his deceptive and twisted paths. We have denied the Lord’s purposes for our own way, and have thus, plunged ourselves headlong into death, where even Satan and his workers are also headed and seeking to bring as many as possible with them. 

We misunderstand God and his kingdom when our attention and energy are on fixing all of our problems and the world’s problems while neglecting the sin problem. We can and should talk about police reform, about politics, about economics, about our own suffering, but not at the expense of overlooking the core issue of humanity. That is our SIN.

What problem are you trying to overcome without the cross? Even our sins. Sometimes we imagine that we can overcome our sin in our own strength if we just work hard enough, cut out enough stuff. No, the only solution was God’s solution, which was set forth before time began, that Jesus would take on human flesh, to live the life we were called to live, and die the death we deserved for our sin so that we might receive his righteousness, his reward of everlasting life. 

Jesus wanted this to sink into the disciples ears because this reality would be at the very core of his kingdom. The only way to victory was first through the cross. 

But the disciples continued to miss it. Verses 46-50 proves this further. Let’s look at the third and final misunderstanding of the disciples. 

46 An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. 47 But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.” 

49 John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” 50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.” 

Here the disciples prove their misunderstanding of the kingdom as they argue over who is the greatest. Greatest how? If Jesus is the king and he is going to the rule the nations, who is his right hand man? Who is most important in the kingdom? Typically the greatest have the most power and are thus served the most. 

Likewise, they got tripped up over this chain of command idea in assuming that those who weren’t with them in their order were enemies. They opposed them because they seemed to be out of rank. Their understanding of the kingdom was like that of every other earthly kingdom. I don’t have time to unpack this last section as thoroughly as I’d like but I’ll just point out that a lot of our division with others is due to our misunderstanding of God. I believe the church and the world would look very different if we first sought the Lord before condemning those who don’t fit into our box. I wish I could say more, but I won’t.

Notice that Jesus sees his disciples and knows their hearts, and not only with them, but still today, God knows your heart and patiently challenges us so that we will be calibrated to truth. If you are in sin or some bad thought, don’t be ashamed of God and run in pride, but see that God is patiently offering you correction like any good Father would. 

And what was the correction? Jesus took a child and put him on his lap, saying “anyone who receives this child in my name receives me.” In other words, if you want me as your king and all the benefits of God’s kingdom, you must serve the least, like this little child. There is an intimate connection between your life and behavior and the quality of your reception of Jesus. When you step into others’ pain, into others’ brokenness, getting out of your comfort and into others’ suffering, then you are walking in the path of the kingdom like Jesus has done. Receiving Jesus looks like following him on the path of the cross. 

In the same way, he adds, the way to prove that you love God and are his child is by receiving Jesus in his less than glorious path of the cross. Jesus is showing us what his followers lives will look like. Ultimately, they embrace the life of service like Jesus. It’s not always easy to swallow this message. 

Like the disciples, we often seek the glory without the suffering of the cross. But truly receiving God, means receiving Christ in his shameful death for us. You prove your love for God by receiving Jesus. You prove your love for God by receiving the least.

Our Muslim friends stumble over this. They say they love Jesus, that they receive him as God’s prophet, but they stumble, saying God’s prophet would never be allowed to suffer in that way. They misunderstand greatness. They misunderstand the kingdom. Thus, their philosophy of growth and advance for millennia is opposite of Christs. Oh that God would open their eyes to their need for the cross of Christ. 

Jesus adds at the end of verse 48 “For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.” 

Again, Jesus is here drawing the road map for his followers. He is paving the way that everyone who comes after him must follow. 

Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve. Anyone can cling their way to a powerful position. But Jesus shows that true power is displayed in how you serve others, especially those who give you the least amount of glory, the most undesirable. True greatness in God’s kingdom is to be the servant of all like the Lord Jesus displayed. 

We misunderstand the kingdom of God when we begin to envy others positions, when we reject the tough person, the annoying person, when we see ourselves as too great for particular tasks or conversations. 

But Jesus teaches us today that the path to glory, greatness, and power in God’s Kingdom is the path of the cross. Repeat. 

What does this mean for you today? 

First, it shows us that Jesus cross is the only means of salvation. You cannot do enough to earn your way to heaven. You cannot work hard enough to transform this world and overcome the problem of evil and death. But Christ has already accomplished this at the cross. Anyone who believes in him, we are told, has had their sins nailed to the cross, taking away Satan’s power against you, appeasing God’s holy wrath towards you. Thus, as Christ rose from death three days later proving that he was speaking the truth, we who suffer with him will also be raised with him. 

Second, it shows us that we ought to repent of thinking and actions that look more like the kingdom of this world and Satan rather than the kingdom of God. 

If Jesus’s path of victory was the path of the cross, what makes you think that you can get there any other way? What if the powerlessness you feel in fighting your sin, powerlessness in ministry and in life is a fruit of trying to walk a self-sufficient path, a comfort-driven path?

Power will come through faith-filled prayer. A life of prayer is truly walking the path of the cross. It ultimately leaves you humbled and at your end before God, who alone can rescue you. When you pray you die to yourself and your self-sufficiency, believing that in so doing God will breath resurrection life into you and others through your prayers. 

What would our nation look like if everyone prayed for our political leaders before speaking harsh words and opinions about them? 

Greatness and glory will come through serving the least. Who are you serving? Do you welcome the weak child, the Somali stranger, your annoying neighbor, or the challenging person at work or church? When you give sacrificially in these ways you die to yourself believing that in so doing God will breath resurrection life into your labors. 

Do you want to know if you are pleasing God with your life and are on the true path of the kingdom, check yourself with this question: am I serving the least around me? Who am I serving?  

Jesus life and ministry trailblazed the way for us. His life, death, and resurrection is our map. All of Jesus’s followers must study it carefully because the way of the world is wide and the way of Christ is narrow. There are challenging days ahead for the church and our nation. To be faithful we must look to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hb 12:2). 

The path to glory, greatness, and power in God’s Kingdom is the path of the cross. We will truly rise and live eternally with the Lord who has gone before us if we prove our faith by setting our face like flint towards the cross. 

In this episode, we weigh how much abortion should influence our vote as Christians reletive to other issues. Then, we talk about how this issue should affect how we vote in this particular election. 

We reference the following articles and statistics in this episode: 

https://www.christianpost.com/voice/fri-2nd-embargo-for-noon-we-are-pro-life-evangelicals-for-biden.html?fbclid=IwAR38Rb3hDAWTTBhblY69u2bklHZXO9NLZ779wov2ExEOQPo1EI9CisqY1Co

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/vote-like-no-one-else-will

https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/