Way Of Jesus #5 - Learning the Teachings of Jesus
We’ve been looking at the Way of Jesus anchors
Today’s is “I am learning the teachings of Jesus”
Meetings in office - best quotes are always from Jesus
Way of Jesus is about how to have a Jesus -shaped life
Jesus living his life through us
The teaching of Jesus show is a lot of things about God:
His love
Mercy
Kindness
Patience
Desire to be known by us, and that He knows us completely.
Today we’re going to look at 3 of Jesus’ best known stories, from Luke 15.
Jesus always listened. And when he spoke he spoke the things they needed to hear in the way they could hear it.
Jesus is attracting attention. To the Pharisees he was attracting the wrong kind of attention.
And so the Pharisees were watering to themselves about Jesus: “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them“.
They were criticizing Jesus based on the company he kept. This was on their minds, so Jesus came up with three stories that directly spoke to their criticism of him, by talking about the kingdom of God. And how God thinks about people.
Lost Sheep Luke 15:3-7
What does this say about Jesus, about God about you and me.
Jesus is called shepherd. Great Shepherd.
He didn’t divide people between sinner and saint. Didn’t start w judging people on the way they lived their lives.
The religious leaders did exactly just that. You’re a sinner, you’re good. You’re a law-breaker. You’re not.
That wasn’t in His thinking.
Jesus wanted to reveal God, so he tells this story about a shepherd and his 100 sheep. 1 goes missing, one falls out of the fold. One makes a wrong turn, a bad choice - but he’s a sheep so he doesn’t know it’s a bad choice. That sheep is just following its heart.
The sheep for the shepherd on one hands represents his wealth; but the sheep isn’t just #100. The shepherd has affection for the sheep.
Any of you have animals? How do you feel about you cat or dog or whatever animal you have?
Their part of the family.
We have 2 cats. On occasion they sneak out the front door. Do we just let em go? No. They don’t know the danger they’re in. They don’t know they can’t protect themselves.They don’t know the dangers of that world outside our house.
What about the shepherd? Does he let the sheep go? I’ve got 99, I can spare to lose 1?
No. He leaves the 99 - theirs some safety in numbers - and he finds it.
Does he scold that sheep? Is he harsh with it?
No. He rejoices and joyfully puts it on his shoulders - no small burden to carry.
And he calls others to rejoice also to rejoice that his sheep has been found.
He is a joy-sharer. He is a lover of his own. He is one who rejoices when his sheep is found.
Jesus wraps this story with this: 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
His point, he shows us, is that God is really, really happy when one of us turns to him, when one of us is found. If we’re not found by God, we’re lost. It’s deadly hard to admit that. Takes way too much humility and honesty for most.
Jesus is that shepherd. He is God who comes to this planet, who reaches out to me and to you, who searches for us until he finds us. And there is joy, joy on earth, joy in heaven, when we are found.
Lost Coin Luke 15:8-10
What does this say about Jesus, about God about you and me?
A coin is wealth. It is tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is the roof over your head that will still be there in a month. It is clothes for your children. It is earned. Sweat and time and energy has earned it.
To lose it is to lose or reduce security for tomorrow. These people lived always on the edge of things and very little stood between them and real hunger. The woman may well have searched with intensity because, if she did not find, the family would not eat.
There may have been a much more romantic reason. The mark of a married woman was a head-dress made of ten silver coins linked together by a silver chain.
For years maybe a girl would scrape and save to amass her ten coins, for the head-dress was almost the equivalent of her wedding ring.
When she had it, it was so inalienably hers that it could not even be taken from her for debt.
It may well be that it was one of these coins that the woman had lost, and so she searched for it as any woman would search if she lost her marriage ring.
Barclay: The joy of God, and of all the angels, when one sinner comes home, is like the joy of a home when a coin which has stood between them and starvation has been lost and is found; it is like the joy of a woman who loses her most precious possession, with a value far beyond money, and then finds it again.
No Pharisee, no religious lead in Jesus’ day had ever dreamed of a God like that.
A great Jewish scholar has admitted that this is the one absolutely new thing which Jesus taught men about God--that he actually searched for people.
Back then someone might have agreed that if a man came crawling home to God in self-abasement and prayed for pity he might find it; but he would never have imagined a God who went out to search for sinners.
We believe in the seeking love of God, because we see that love incarnate in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
Prodigal Son Luke 15:1-24
What does this say about Jesus, about God about you and me. We’re talking about the first part of this story today. There’s a second section we don’t have time for today.
2 sons. One says “Gimme”. You owe me. Sure I’m supposed to wait til you’re dead. But you ain’t dead yet. Still. Gimme my share. You owe me.
The father gives it to him. Doesn’t refuse him, try to control him. He lets the son exercise his will.
The son goes far away where he isn’t known by anyone. No one he’ll be embarrassed to see him sow his oats.
There he blows all the money. Prostitutes, booze, crack, heroin. Presidential hotel suite. Lamborghini. Maybe a yacht. Toss in some more prostitutes and drugs and
Voila.
He’s broke. He’s blown it all. He’s got nothing. Less than nothing because he’s also lost his dignity.
At the same time there’s stuff outside his little bubble, outside his small world of indulgence, that goes bad.
There’s a famine. There’s a recession. A depression. And there’s no decent work to find if he could find it.
So he gets a job feeding pigs. For the Jewish people first hearing this story, who believed that pigs were unclean and couldn’t be touched, they would have known that this meant this guy was at the very bottom of the barrel. Passed out with his head in the urinal. He wasn’t even allowed to eat the slop he has feeding the pigs.
So he starts to remember home. Remember that place where his father lives. That place of welcome, that place of plenty, that place of family ties and family love. That place of growing and learning, of embraces and “Goodnight, have a good sleeps!”
He makes a plan.
18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’
That sounds good, he says to himself. “I know I’ve completely blown it. I know I don’t deserve anything. I wanted my father’s money, my part of the inheritance before my dad was dead. Man, that was disrespectful. My dad is worth so much more than all that money that’s in someone else hands now”.
So he heads home. Fearful, scared, starving. Reciting what he’s going to say. Tired, beaten. Humiliated by - himself. Hoping against hope that maybe he’ll be allowed to work like a hired hand. So he at least can eat and be warm at night when it’s cold.
And as he’s straggling home, while he’s still along way away
Too far to be recognized by his face, but not too far to be identified by his gait, the way he walked.
The father does something. Unexpected. He worried about the father being filled with anger, righteous anger over his behavior. He’s insulted the father, disgraced him. But the father is filled with something the son doesn’t expect.
Compassion. Love. Deep and abiding love that suffered in the absence of his son.
Dignified father, not a young guy, runs to his son.
Throws his arms around him. Kisses him. A loving parent’s kiss is a healing, comforting thing.
Then the son talks. And he doesn’t talk crap. He doesn’t lie, make excuses, justify himself. The son speaks the truth: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
The father doesn’t even answer him. Right away he tells the house staff to “Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him”.
The son’s going: Whaaaat?
Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
The son’s going: Whaaaaat?
Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.
The son’s going: ??????
Whaaaaaaaaaaat?
This is not what the son was expecting. Not even close. Remember: a job with the house servants and maybe a meal a day and a cloak was all he thought was coming.
He certainly did not expect his old dad to run to him and embrace him and kiss him.
Why did the father act that way? What was going on in his mind?
He said it himself: 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’
You know how you feel when someone you love dies? Empty, broken, sorrowful. Bright days have clouds in your mind and the best food takes like cardboard. Everything is awful because you love for the one you’ve lost can’t be expressed.
The father says: “My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and now is found’.
This is a picture of God. Not God the judge, pointing the finger.
Not God the distant watchmaker who started life on this planet and then could care less what happens on it.
Not God the impersonal force, the God of ‘the force be with you’.
This is a picture of God who loves us with a love that does not die when we go our own way. When to our own hurt we do destructive things to ourselves and others. When we decide: “I don’t believe in God. That has no impact on God. Our unbelief doesn’t change who God is. How He loves.
This is an understanding of God that Jesus showed us so that would not cower from God. So that we would know that God seeks us out. That when we are lost, even when we don’t know we are lost, God seeks us. He pursues you.
I know a person, someone I love dearly, who said a few years back: I want nothing to do with God! They were shut tight, unwilling to open the door of their heart. But God pursued them and loved them and now they are following Jesus.
God pursued and He came ultimately in Jesus to this planet to rescue you and me from all that separates us from God. Jesus is the one who came to earth to rescue his lost sheep. Jesus is the one who searches for that most valuable and treasured coin worth so much, which, by the way, is you.
Jesus is the one who came to earth to reveal this story, and many other story to teach us who God is, how God loves.
And then to prove it all, Jesus offers up His life on the cross. Dying a terrible, brutal and humiliating death, all to restore us to a relationship with God. To save us from ourselves and our sin.
Jesus wants you to know that God has one posture toward you. One posture, one stance, with 2 meanings.
The first is his wide open arms. God wants you for his own. He wants you and waits for you to come. You don’t even have to come all the way, necessarily. Make the decision to walk toward him, with honest thinking about yourself, and He will run to you. He will leave the 99 on the hill and come to you and rescue you.
First remember this (arms open wide): God’s arms are open wide to receive you when you come to him in repentance and in faith. Repenting for wrong living and wrong thinking, desiring to turn away from those things toward Him.
Then remember this (arms open wide): Jesus said: greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. He said that and then he did that.
All of the teachings of Jesus were backed up by his actions. That’s why we’re still talking about him 2000 years later and why so many give their lives to him daily.
His arms were spread on the cross, in suffering, so that you could come to God who awaits you with arms spread in love.
Let’s pray.
