March 20, 2008

More Matt Chandler...

I love the way Matt Chandler demonstrates the points that we sometimes miss when reading the bible...
This guy preaches sermons an puts them on the church's website so you can download the sermon notes. Unbelievable!

Matt Chandler got it going on...
Take a listen.

Let's look at one more, and then we'll go ice down our drinks. Let's go to Matthew 19. We'll pick it up in verse 16. “And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which ones?"”
I love this dude. He is all of us. “You want eternal life? Keep the commands.”
“All of them?” I love this guy.
He's like, “Surely there are certain ones that are more varsity and then other ones that I don't really have to follow.”
I love this guy because he is us.

So Jesus plays the game and He says to him, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now, let me talk with you because I want to give you a type of person in here, I want to give you some insight. If you tend to fall into the category of those who struggle with religion, and what I mean by that is if I could type cast it, it's a person who's grown up in church their whole life and for whatever reason, everything in you makes you want to be the “good kid” and you do everything you can to follow all the rules and you do everything you can to appear like you're perfect, if you struggle with that, then you need to pay attention to what happens next, because listen to what the rich young ruler says. “The young man said to him, "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?"”

Did you see what just happened here? All the rules, everything he's supposed to follow, everything externally that he's supposed to look like, he looks like. He's obeyed the commands, he's done what he's supposed to do and he's following Jesus around now going, “Something's still missing. Something's still wrong.”

Could it be that observing religious rituals just might not bring you anywhere close to salvation? It seems so. Let's finish this story out because Jesus is going to do what Jesus does.
Verse 21, “Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."”
He just did it again. Jesus never asked that of anyone else.
He goes to the fishermen and goes. “Hey, follow Me and I'll make you fishers of men.” He never tells the Pharisees, “Quit being Pharisees.”
But this guy? This guy says, “How do I follow you? How do I have eternal life?”
“Alright, sell all you have, give it to the poor and come on.” Now his response is going to be wildly different from everyone else's response that we've read so far. So let's watch him. “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Now, the similarity is the sorrow. Zechariah had sorrow, David had sorrow, Paul has some sorrow in him and the woman at the well definitely had sorrow. So the sorrow isn't the difference. The difference is this man's sorrow led him away from the Lord rather than towards Him.

So in every other moment, this catastrophic thing and men and women humble themselves before God as God presses on that raw nerve, they press into Him and they find Joy, depth and salvation.
This man gets that nerve pressed, and instead of submitting to it, he immediately goes, “I'll find another way,” and he leaves the Messiah and we never hear from him again.

The difference between this man and everyone else we read is that in everyone else we read, there is a rejoicing, a transformation of life, a fullness of life and a conversion that takes place. And in this man's life, we never hear from him again. The last we hear from him is he's
filled with sorrow as he walks away.

So here's the spiritual truth. Maybe when we get busted in our sin, when He disciplines us when we're defiant, when He confronts us in our ignorance or He wounds us in our strength, when business starts to fail, when marriage gets difficult and we don't understand calamity, when disease infects the body and isn't going anywhere, when sorrow enters the life, what if these things aren't happening to us because God's angry with us?
What if they're happening because God loves us too much to save us from them?
What if in them God is displaying His deepest mercy?