How Christianity Would Never Be Missed
The Company We Keep, prt. 3
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 16, 2009
Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
This is our text for tonight and it’s clear to whom Jesus is speaking. He’s speaking to all who are weary, all who carry heavy burdens. I think that probably includes just about everybody. And it doesn’t matter whether you are carrying heavy burdens right at this moment – if you suspect that you might be carrying one in the future – near or distant – this is for you. If you are tired, burned out, or worn out, this is for you. And that includes those of you who feel like you’re getting tired and worn out and burned out on religion. Indeed that same passage translated in a more modern Bible says,
Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG)
28 "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
29 Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly."
I think if I had to go back through the roughly 350 sermons I’ve preached since we started Wildwind to see which Biblical passage I’ve used the most frequently, this might well be it. I keep coming back to it again and again because that call from Jesus is clear and compelling. In both translations Jesus is recorded as saying the words, “Come to me.” In the New Living Translation Jesus says, “Let me teach you.” In The Message translation “Let me teach you” is translated as, “Watch how I do it.” So we have this call from Jesus to come to him – to learn from him how to live life, and to learn that by observing how he lived and then imitating his way of life. Verse 30 in the New Living reads, “My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” In The Message verse 30 reads, “Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” That’s why this series is entitled The Company We Keep. We are called to be with Jesus, keep company with him and learn from him how to live freely and lightly. You’d think people would just read that and go, “Yeah, I’m all about that! Sounds like a great deal.” But that’s not usually what happens is it?
Probably most of us are here tonight because we believe deeply in two things:
1. Our own insufficiency. “I cannot lead my best life on my own.”
2. The complete sufficiency of God. “God is sufficient, and he will be enough for me.”
If you do not believe (deeply) in both of those things, then you simply have not yet come a) to the end of yourself; and b) to the knowledge of the complete sufficiency of God. That’s part of the journey.
Certainly many of us tonight say we believe in those two things. But we often do not live as if we believe in those two things. Why do we rush around trying to control outcomes and force things to happen (in relationships, at work, etc.) if we really believe we’re insufficient anyway, and that God is fully sufficient for us? Why do we get all upset when things don’t go our way? Why are we so easily irritated and discouraged and angered and hurt? Why do we struggle to forgive? Why do we so easily stand in judgment over others? Because we spend most of our lives trying to control outcomes, trying to make sure this world offers us what we believe we deserve. And when it doesn’t, we’re angry or irritated. We feel robbed and ripped off. Church, I know as I stand here right now that if as preachers, Patrick and Jason and I could simply get our congregations to the point where we actually believe what we say we believe – well then – we could move on to other things, couldn’t we? There are probably not many tonight who would deny that Jesus is Lord. There are probably not many who would deny that God’s grace is enough, that it is sufficient, that it is all we need to have the happiest and most joyful lives possible on this fallen planet. There are probably not many who would deny that faith in God is essential – that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
But you know what else there are here tonight? There are many who are carrying heavy burdens. There are people carrying burdens of fear. Burdens of regret. Burdens of bitterness. Burdens of anger. Burdens of insecurity and loneliness and contempt and greed and lust and shame and arrogance. Why? Because we don’t really believe what we say we believe. We don’t really believe in our insufficiency. And because we don’t believe it, we keep trying to make life work, and we keep failing, and our failed attempts at happiness keep us angry, disappointed in ourselves and others, depressed, resentful, guilty, or trying to arrogantly proclaim and prove our competence. It is also our failed attempts at happiness that turn us into cynics, into people who are afraid to care and let others know we care about anything.
I don’t need to prove this to you, do I? I mean, I know there might be a few here who would still say they are sufficient and that the reason life keeps not working out properly is because there’s something wrong with everybody else. There’s nothing I can do to change that, that’s up to the Holy Spirit. But for those of us who SAY we are insufficient and who SAY God is enough and that the only way to fullness of life is by learning to live in God and obey God’s law of universal love – I don’t need to prove to you, do I, how toxic it is for us to keep living as if we don’t believe what we say we believe?
And why do we so often not really believe it? Because we are not experiencing it! Remember, in sermon one of this series I said that to experience something is to know it. You know what you have experienced. But it’s not unusual for people to be Christians for decades and not actually EXPERIENCE God. They’re busy believing in him, or being convicted about him, or having feelings about him, or professing stuff about him. So busy that they don’t do what is necessary to learn from Jesus how to live and experience God in the ordinary moments of life. How else do you think it can be the case that people who identify as Christians and claim to follow the prince of peace can live tortured lives that have no peace? How can people who claim to serve the God of love harbor hatred in their hearts for gays, for people on a different side of the political aisle, for people of other races, for Muslims, for atheists, for anybody? The only way this is even possible is that a person claims to follow Jesus but settles for belief, for conviction, for emotion, and for profession, but fails to have the experience of living daily with God – and it is experience that leads to knowledge!! Whoever does not experience God simply does not know him.
1 John 4:7-8 (NKJV)
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Clearly the only way to know God is to learn to love. The way we learn to love God is by learning to love others. Some people think that there’s a difference between loving God and loving other people, but love is love. Love is love. Love wills the good of the one loved. Now a lot of us love our children deeply but don’t love other people nearly as much. Know why? Because we love imperfectly. Our love is limited and conditional. It is reserved for those we are related to, for those who will love us in return, for those that biology helps us to love, for those we deem worthy, for those we’re sexually attracted to, for those who will get us somewhere if we love them. That’s imperfect love. That, my friends, is the reason we are commanded to learn to love “the least of these.”
Matthew 25:37-40 (NLT)
37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink?
38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing?
39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
We are perfected in love for God as we learn how to increasingly love our brothers and sisters, and the harder people are to love, the more our ability to love will be perfected as we learn to love them.
Before I move on I want to quickly summarize where we’ve been so far. I’m taking you on a bit of a journey tonight and I don’t want to get too far ahead of you. We started with our text where Jesus says, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened – tired, worn out, burned out, on religion or whatever else.” So we began with hearing the call of Jesus to each of us.
Then we looked at what the call of Jesus is – come to him why? So we can learn to live freely and lightly. We talked about how it seems like everybody would want to learn to live like that, but that’s not the case. Even many (perhaps most) of us who claim to be Christ-followers do not live in ongoing companionship with Jesus. Most of us who identify as Christians are not learning how to live from Jesus – rather we are continuing to depend on ourselves. And then we are experiencing the logical consequences. Failure, frustration, guilt, regret, fear, addictions, burnout, and all the rest. Then I explained why so many are living this way – because even though we profess Christianity – we say we believe it – we sing songs like Creed that are statements or professions of faith – in spite of that, many of us are not experiencing God. We are not learning to live and walk in ongoing companionship with Jesus and learning his way. And his way was the way of what? The way of love! God is love and if we don’t learn the way of love we will not know God.
So that’s where I took us to. What I wanted to show you as we started out here is that we’re stuck. See, Christianity cannot save you. Christianity cannot deliver you into the life you’ve always wanted. Christianity cannot bring you peace and joy. Christianity is a religion and it is as dead as any other religion, apart from a vital, living, breathing, walking-around-every-day-keeping-company-with-Jesus-eternal-kind of life. Christianity is a system of rules. Far more people claim to be Christians than the number of people who are growing daily in grace, in peace, in joy, and in the Jesus way of love. There are so-called Christians out there right now who are hating people, who are holding grudges, who are living irritably toward their spouses and children, who are lazy and shirking their responsibilities at work, who live with heavy burdens of care and fear, who live in moral chaos and relativity, and who justify all of it by saying, “That’s just the way I am,” or “That’s how I roll,” and who have not even remotely reached a place of genuine repentance and surrender to the Lordship of Jesus. And I know that not all of those Christians I just talked about are “out there.” Some of them are in here. Please hear me tonight. Being a Christian will not save you. Jesus said no one comes to the Father but by me. That means it’s not being a Christian that saves you, it’s Jesus. Jesus didn’t start any churches. Jesus didn’t build any buildings. He injected his life into the lives of those around him and called that building the Kingdom of God. He grabbed a small band of interested people and asked them to respond to the exact same call he’s given to you and me – to follow him, walk with him, watch him, and learn from him how to live life, and structure life so that it’s possible over time to love like God loves. Jesus isn’t even a Christian. Why would he be? Christian literally means, “little Christ.” Why would the real Christ need to be a “little Christ?” Christianity is a system that has built up around Jesus over centuries, which is largely man-made, and which has probably done as much harm in this world as it has done good. The system of religion called Christianity cannot save you. But Jesus can. And he wants to! He stands ready to guide you out of the systems that are bogging you down and burning you out and sapping you of life and strength and joy, and preventing you from learning how to live in love. Christianity can do that every bit as much as any other religious system. Everything in every religious system that has served over the years to keep people from God, is not of God but of the world. And just like everything else that is in the world, it is on its way out. There will be no religions in heaven. For the Jews, the temple was the dwelling place of God – the central location for their religious system.
Revelation 21:22-26 (NIV)
22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
The world needs fewer Christians and more disciples of Jesus. The world needs fewer people who are just professing faith in Christ, just believing the right beliefs, just having strong convictions or feelings, and more people who know Jesus because they are walking with him and learning from him how to live in love and therefore experiencing life with God. In a world full of Christ-followers, full of people living this way, Christianity would never be missed if it were to disappear completely. That’s why I can’t stand all this talk about America being a “Christian nation.” We don’t need Christianity, we need Jesus. Heck, Christians don’t even need Christianity, why on earth would the government need it? The church has called itself Christian for two thousand years and that hasn’t stopped the church from doing horrific things, from producing evil human beings, even from being a scourge on the earth at times. It will be no less so with government, so politically let’s forget about whether we call America a Christian nation and individually let’s forget about what is the good Christian thing to do and about that whole system called Christianity, and let’s get to know Jesus – let’s learn to walk with him and hear his voice and experience him and live in the light of the knowledge of God. When enough people who call themselves Christians are actually doing that, America will see the change it needs, “Christian nation” or not.
Two weeks ago I spoke to you about experiencing God and how you experience God through obedience to him. Last week I suggested that your deepest need is to live in the love of God. What I’m saying this week is that the system we are stuck in – Christianity as it is known and practiced in most of the West – is a decaying system that is quickly becoming irrelevant in our culture, and is itself in many cases keeping us from living in the love of God. It is on the way out. And there’s no reason to mourn that because we do not serve God -- CEO of Global Christianity, Inc. God isn’t pacing around in some heavenly office right now in front of a pie chart and saying, “Gabe, Mike, whatdaya think? Our shares are down – how can we revive the brand?” Forget that! We don’t serve Jesus the CEO. We serve Jesus the Risen Lord of Life, who is above all powers, above all kings, above all nature and all created things. Above all wisdom and all the ways of man, including all the religious ways. The one who was there before it all began. The God who is mighty to save, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He does not call us to enlist in a religion, he calls us into a relationship with him, to keep company with him, and then we will come to KNOW that he is.
Psalms 46:10 (KJV)
10 Be still, and know that I am God…
But knowing God doesn’t come from joining a religion -- not Hindu, not Buddhism, not Judaism, not Islam, not Wicca, not Shinto, and not Christianity. Knowing God does not come from following the rules. Knowing God comes from keeping company with Jesus, and learning how to live in ways that will show God to be real. You don’t even have to come to Jesus certain that Christianity is what you believe. It doesn’t matter. It is enough to venture on the Kingdom of God!
Now I lied to you last week because I think I told you I was going to actually start showing you what it means to do this and how to do it. I changed my mind, because before I can ask you to do that, I have to show you the futility of what we’re all involved in so deeply – this religious business. Read the gospels to see how much use Jesus had for religion, compared to simply inviting people to know him and be with him and learn from him how to live in the love of God.
Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Are you finding that the life of love and peace and joy and hope Jesus promised just continually seems to elude you? Life with God in the Kingdom of the Heavens is available to you now – it is the easy way, the peaceful and hopeful way, if we will join up with Jesus and learn to increasingly abandon ourselves to the love and care of God.
