The Way Down Is Up

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Mark 3:20-35

In 1982, David Pawson was invited to speak in New Zealand. His had a reputation as a bible teacher, so people the people of Wellington were surprised when he said that he had a prophecy. He carried two burdens that God had given him for our nation. One burden was as follows:

God wants New Zealand back.

He wants New Zealand back as

a nation that will be a model to the nations

of a people who are living under the government of GOD.

God intends New Zealand to be one of those nations

where he demonstrates his Kingdom.

God wants New Zealand back.

He is wanting his people to reign with him.

Don't wait for eternity to begin to reign with him

He is looking for a queen to reign with him now,

because New Zealand has a king an his name is King Jesus.

This country needs a change of government.

New Zealand is a nation that could be brought

under the government of God

and be a light to the nations.

This burden was not understood; his second burden was simple:

God want's to bring revival to New Zealand for the first time.

God will bring revival through economic ruin.

According to this prophecy New Zealand would need to go down in order for it to come up in a Godly way.

In the Christian world everything is different to the other world.

Jesus the greatest man who ever lived is approached by his family and addressed in a very derogatory way 20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family[a] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

The greatest theological teachers on earth at that time reacted this way.

22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

They were wrong – Jesus was correct. Blood is thicker than water but Spirit is thicker than blood and God is greater than academic learning.

As the title of this sermon says down is up and up is down.

It is not the way it seems. It is not what you might expect.

Jesus was not living to the beat of the drum of his family nor the theological lawyers but to the drum of his Father in heaven. This was causing huge crowds to gather around him. I was talking to someone from a church that was struggling the other day and they were saying revealed to me that when the church tried to be like the world it failed foundered on the rocks of compromise.

For us to grow -we have to have a point of difference, and we do, we will touch thousands of lives as Jesus did. You need to remember that Jesus was one person and his life had an incredible impact. But in order to be who God had called him to be he became someone different and outside his family culture. In their eyes he was down but in God’s eyes he was up. Finally his Mother Mary finds herself at the foot of Jesus cross – she is down looking up at Jesus and maybe as Jesus grafts the Apostle John into this family that thought he was mad – maybe there Mary could flash back to this moment and in the horror of it all she could grasp the fact Jesus wasn’t insane – the world was insane. In the same way

James his brother would have been with them he didn’t get it but later he did and he “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him,” he wrote (James 1:5

Jesus was busy – he was popular and he was run off his feet – the lifestyle of Jesus was such that his family thought it was unsustainable and they went to take charge of him. I can remember many years ago that Heather and I were so busy and frenetically busy in our ministry that we were approached by a family member and firmly put in our place.

Our busyness is not always a good thing – People doing the Boundaries course in our church will tell you that we need to establish personal boundaries around ourselves so that we can live a balanced Christian life.

So what was going on in Jesus life?

To think about that lets go to an unexpected story – the story of the New Zealand Gold rushes

\There was a gold rush in Otago, Coromandal and here in Waikaia and elsewhere At the peak of the rush Switzers (the town’s original name) had a population of around 2,000 including a large number of Chinese miners.This area was frenetically busy because this was the miners chance to set themselves up for the rest of their lives. They were drawn not so much to Gold but a secure future.