WestGate Church Teaching

What comes into your mind when you think about Hell?  If you’re like most people, your imagination has been deeply influenced by the Middle Ages, and you think about fire and flames.  But in Luke 16, Jesus talks about what hell is like, and His description is vastly different - and far more frightening - that the popular imagination.  As we examine a parable that Jesus tells, we see that hell isn’t God’s torture chamber, but a place where God gives us what we want. And Jesus is asking us a question: would that be a *good* thing?

In Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories in a row to try to illustrate what God is like. He starts with comparing God to a shepherd who has a lost sheep. Then, he pivots, and compares God to a woman who loses a valuable coin. Finally, Jesus settles on a metaphor which has turned into one of the most famous and beloved stories that Jesus ever told. Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal Son, of a son who leaves home, hits rock bottom, and decides to come back home, expecting anger and indignation and humiliation from his Father. How the Father reacts, though, shocks Jesus’ listeners, back then and even today. And if we listen closely, we’ll find a shocking truth about what God is really like.

In Luke 14, we see Jesus go to a dinner party and absolutely pick a fight with some religious leaders. Jesus not only breaks party etiquette, but social and religious etiquette, too. He picks a fight about where the religious leaders sit, what and who they serve, and their whole outlook on everything. But like smelling salts, Jesus’ no-holds-barred interaction is trying to wake them up from their spiritual coma, and if we have ears to hear, perhaps we can avoid some of their (very common!) errors, too.

In the Gospel of Luke, we see a series of stories and accounts that are beyond curious.  They recount miracles of Jesus. Jesus makes blind people see, lame people walk, there’s a dead boy He raises to life, drives out some demons and even calms a fierce storm on a lake.  These stories read like fiction, or myth, to our modern, scientific minds. But Jesus’s life and teachings reveal that maybe there’s far more going on than we might think. And in Luke 13 as we see Jesus heal a woman, we discover that Jesus is more powerful than we’d imagine, and more good than we dared to hope.

In Luke 12, Jesus tells a deeply challenging parable about a man who decides to focus his life’s energies on accumulating stuff. Jesus calls this man a fool, which deeply challenges the modern idea that we all float in (whether we want to or not) that “stuff” is what makes us happy. Jesus wonders why we would waste our lives chasing things like money and ambition and sex when infinite joy is offered to us. As CS Lewis once wrote, “we are like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

In Luke 11, Jesus is asked by His followers how to pray. Is there a secret method? Is there a particular list of words, like a magic spell that works better? Jesus, help. His response is one of the most familiar passages in the entire Bible - something typically called “The Lord’s Prayer.” But behind these familiar words are deep, profound truths about God the Father, about His posture toward humans, and about what our posture ought be before God.

In Luke 9, Jesus continues the training of the 12 apostles, giving them not only a front-row seat to some incredible miracles, but a multitude of instructions about what life with Him looks like. In one of the most memorable sayings of Jesus, He tells his followers to be clear-eyed about the cost of following Him. He says “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” - which has to be the least motivating invitation ever given. But Jesus isn’t joking. And as we peel back the layers of these words, we see that Jesus is inviting us to a difficult death that leads to an unexpected life. Which is something Jesus - we’ll find out - was really good at.

In Luke 7, we find Jesus is at a fancy dinner party where something incredibly socially awkward happens. In the middle of a dinner with lots of religious leaders, a woman sits at his feet and starts crying, putting perfume on his feet. The religious leaders are aghast, mainly because this woman has quite the negative reputation and Jesus is letting her touch him. And that’s not something religious leaders do. Jesus, seeing their hearts, then confronts this way of thinking, telling one of the most famous parables about forgiveness, life with God, and what it means to be a sinner in the hands of God.

In Luke 6, things really get going in the story. Jesus of Nazareth is about to start a three-year stint of highly public teaching, miracles and adventures. But before he does, he chooses a crew of 12 young men to be His first apostles - a motley crew of cast-offs and ne’er-do-wells, ranging from some local fishermen to a Roman tax collector to a political zealot. These “first-round draft picks” of Jesus don’t seem hardly at all like five-star recruits. But even more than that, in Luke 6, Jesus begins to lay out what His Kingdom is all about, and what “success” looks like for Him, and His followers. As Jesus begins to teach, His particular picture of what life with Him and with God takes shape and it’s so counter-cultural and so upside down that it’s still utterly baffling and mesmerizing today.

There’s a moment, right before Jesus begins his public ministry, where Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit, out into the Judean desert to be tested by Satan. Satan lays out three specific temptations to attempt to trap Jesus, offering Him a trade, but in each case, Jesus refuses. If we’re going to be Six40 Disciples, we have to examine how Jesus was tempted, see clearly what Satan offered Jesus, see clearly what Jesus would have had to give up, and then see clearly what choice Jesus made. In staring at this story, we find out a lot about not only ourselves, and evil, but Jesus.