The Heart of the Matter | The Way of Jesus

Hey everyone, and welcome to the brand new Burnett Church podcast.

My name is Tim, and I'm your host and the pastor of Burnett Church.

Today's podcast is the audio from part one of our series called Reactions Speak Louder, in which we start to unpack how our reactions affect the world around us and also say something about our relationship to ourselves and to Jesus as well.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

Have you ever heard this phrase before?

You can't go home.

You heard that phrase?

You heard somebody say you just you can't go home.

You can't go back.

How many of you would say, I think that's probably true?

You can't go backwards, you can't go home.

Yeah, okay, a few of you.

The rest of you are much more hopeful than society tends to be in general.

Uh so good for you.

Um thanks for being the positivity in the room.

I personally, I I hate that phrase.

I hate that phrase.

Um because I think, in some sense, we all have a draw to go back home.

If you're uh a person here, and maybe you don't know this phrase or believe this phrase because, well, I grew up in Maple Ridge my whole life, or at least fairly nearby.

If you're somebody like myself or or Liam, who's on the other side of the country from where he grew up, you know, we we we grew up someplace else.

I think there's always a draw towards the place that you grew up in.

There's always a pullback.

Uh in fact, uh, interesting story.

When Melissa and I decided that that God was asking us to help start a church from scratch, uh church planting or you know, church entrepreneurship, use whatever term you want to do, we were talking about it and like, oh, hey, where should we go to do that?

How should we go about that?

And uh Melissa's natural inclination was to go back home to Calgary uh to plant a church, and my natural inclination was to go back home to well, Halifax isn't really home if you're from the Maritons, but it's close enough, you know.

So to go back to Halifax, because I didn't want to live anyway, go back to Halifax and plant a church.

So you know what?

We couldn't come to a conclusion, so we picked someplace in the middle and went to Toronto.

That's how we've figured that that problem out.

Compromise, mutual submission, I think it's in the Bible somewhere.

Um anyway, I think it's a pretty human longing for us to want to hold on to things that are familiar to us.

I think that's what draws us back home, right?

And and I don't think it's just about geography.

I I think sometimes when God is calling us to grow in our relationship with Him, sometimes our tendency is to hold on tightly to things that we don't necessarily need to hold on to tightly anymore because they're familiar.

They offer us some comfort.

Sometimes our inclination, and I think this is just part of the process of changing and growing as human beings, is to find what is safe and comfortable and avoid what's new and unknown.

Right?

And maybe it should bring us a little bit of comfort, as it often does, that this is a problem that people's spiritual lives have been wrestling with for a long time.

In the case of uh particular scriptures we're going to look at this morning, at least the last couple of thousand years.

See, see, the early followers of Jesus were having difficulty stepping into the new life that they were calling him, he was calling them to step into and releasing the old way of life that they had known.

The old way of life, mostly articulated in that part of the scriptures uh that we call the Old Testament, right?

You know, uh these days I'm much more inclined to refer to them as the Jewish scriptures, just to make a bit of a uh a transition for us.

Because as we'll see, sometimes our tendency is to hold on to something that Jesus never meant for us to hold on to.

Because following Jesus has never been Judaism 2.0.

It's never been the evolution of, it's not a hybrid of the old system.

And we see the disciples struggle with this.

And I think sometimes that we've inherited a bit of that struggle.

So today we're going to explore the tension between trying to let Jesus redefine life and love for us.

Because in this series that we've been calling the way of Jesus, we've been asking, what does it mean when I say I follow Jesus?

You know, we've said that Jesus came to offer us life.

And that that life stands in contrast to existence.

You know, Jesus didn't come just to, you know, kind of give us nice new cushy feelings.

He came to actually give us a sense of a life that we can't have separate from him.

And that life is found as we trust that the things that he pursues will be good for you and me.

Right?

And as we learn to apply ourselves and put ourselves in the middle of this dream, this picture that Jesus kept painting called the kingdom of God.

Last week we discovered that the essential movement of people in the kingdom of God is for those of us who are participating to move towards giving and not taking.

Not just observers, but but actual participants in the work that God is doing.

And today I want to take us right to what I think is the heart of the kingdom.

Something that Jesus said that he meant to be much more shocking than sometimes we allow it to be.

Right at the heart of his kingdom dream, there is this one world-altering statement.

And if we let it, it will change us to our very core.

In fact, it's so disruptive that I think we still have a hard time letting go of the old and embracing the new, this Jesus way that we've been talking about.

See, sometimes, and this is a dangerous statement, and I might get an email or two for this, but sometimes, sometimes I think we're confused by the fact that our Bible is split into those two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament, right?

Like, like the Old Testament, everything in there still applies.

It's still the rule book for life.

But it was the rule book under the Old Law.

Right?

You know, it was for a time for the Hebrews the way that they were supposed to live in order to do what God called them to do.

But Jesus says something radically different about it.

Jesus says, it is finished, that system.

Right?

Right?

The old system was built on something that in the ancient world was very, very common.

You can look this up and do some background research if you want to.

It was a suzerian treaty, okay?

That's the technical term for the life that God and Israel sort of lived under.

God came to them as their as their king and said, Hey, you as my subjects, if you do this, then I will do that for you.

Okay?

Pretty much everything in the Old Testament comes down to that.

If you do this, then I will do that.

Right?

All the rules, all the punishments, all the blessings, by the way, that we like to take for ourselves.

If you do this, then I will do that.

In the Old Covenant, Israel's faithfulness was expressed through obedience to the agreement that they had found themselves under.

In other words, they had a contract with God.

That's laid out for us in the early part of the Jewish scriptures, right?

God came down, sent Moses, here's the Ten Commandments.

By the way, we're gonna add to those over the course of time.

So at the very end, it was 613 things that you should do if you're gonna be in right relationship with God.

And if you're not in right relationship with God, then you've got to come and you've got to get a sacrifice and you gotta, you know, ask for forgiveness and all that kind of stuff, okay?

So if following Jesus meant carrying the whole Mosaic covenant forward and adding Jesus, well, that actually wouldn't be Judaism.

And that wouldn't be Christianity.

It would be a hybrid between the two.

Right?

Right?

This, in that system, Jesus is a helpful add-on that avoids all the bloodshed of the animals.

Right?

But Jesus is so much more than that.

Under the old system, even if we tack Jesus on, that doesn't make Jesus king.

It just makes him convenient.

It's not new wine then.

It's old wine with a little sugar thrown in.

You know?

But Jesus wasn't an add-on to the old system.

He was and is something new, something better.

It is finished.

Not improved, not updated, not combined with the old into a new hybrid system.

F-I-N-I-S-H-E-D.

I hope I spelt that right, finished.

And you can try to go back to the certainty and the familiarity of the rules.

Just do this.

You can try to hold on to the measure of control, which is why that system was set up in the first place, by the way, because the people of Israel refused to simply trust.

Right?

Because the first system God tried to give them was just don't eat that one thing.

Trust me.

It's not good for you.

It'll be like dying.

Right?

But why why would you wanna why would you want to go back to any system based on a rule that demands your consistency?

When Jesus has come and said, it is finished.

It's fundamentally what makes Christianity different from every other world religion I am aware of.

And I'm aware of a number of them.

That your relationship with God is not based on what you do for God.

You cannot earn your salvation.

It has been earned for you and given to you freely.

It's a completely different system.

You're not waiting around to see how mad God is at you for the thing that you screwed up for on the way here when you yelled at your kids or swore at that guy who cut you off on the way here.

Your salvation is not in jeopardy because you messed up this morning or yesterday or last week or whatever.

That's finished.

Christians don't begin their relationship and journey with God by asking, which parts of the old covenant of Israel's contract do I need to keep in order to be in right relationship with God?

We begin a relationship and a journey of faithfulness by asking, what does Jesus require of me?

Full stop.

Jesus was actually really clear about this, even though we mess it up all the time.

Because I think we whiz right by it.

It's it's the thing that the thing that changes everything is kind of in the middle of another story that like we love and we talk about all the time, but we miss, we miss the most important thing that Jesus said.

So I I want to try to I want to try to convince you this morning that this thing changed everything.

Right?

So you're probably familiar with this passage, and if you're not, if you're not a Bible person, um uh you can look this up later, um, or just listen, uh, you'll you'll kind of get the the gist of where it is.

We're gonna go to Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Uh, if you have a Bible on your phone or with you or whatever, uh, you can look this up.

An expert in the law asked Jesus this question Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

Man, that must have been like fresh, fresh, cold water on a hot day to that man.

You know, because Jesus was essentially going, hey, you know those 613 that you're trying so desperately and failing at keeping all the time?

Look, just it's two.

Everything hangs on two.

Love God and love others.

Churches form their visions around this statement all the time.

And it's a good phrase.

It's a helpful phrase, right?

You know, it isn't wrong.

In fact, it's a beautiful summary of what God wanted for Israel.

Notice the question.

Again, listen to it again.

What is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus is specifically summarizing the law, the old system.

And he summarizes it beautifully and he summarizes it relationally.

Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.

And that would have been so radical for the audience that was overhearing this conversation between Jesus and this man.

The law said, love your neighbor as yourself.

So the standard of love in that system was how much do you love yourself?

How much do you love yourself?

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

There's a problem with that, isn't there?

Do you always love yourself?

But I don't always love myself.

Jesus, as he so often did, takes the standard and goes, you think it's supposed to be here?

Let me reset it for you.

That moment of crystal clarity that I mentioned earlier, it happens in John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

It happens during the Last Supper.

Let me set the scene for you, right?

So so we're in um in the time of the Jewish festival of the Passover.

You know, it's like Christmas.

It's the time when we all get together and we're with our families and we have a meal and we celebrate and we're we're we're we're honed in on our relationships.

Right?

So here's Jesus in a room that he's found in Jerusalem with his 12 best friends.

And they're there, you know, as was their fashion, they're reclining at the table.

Okay?

Um you can imagine they're sitting in their chair, whatever picture works for you.

They're there together.

They're having a good time, they're relating, and all of a sudden, Jesus, in the middle of their conversation, he gets up and he goes over to the corner of the room, near the door.

And he bends down and he picks up the servant's garb, a towel, and he wraps it around his waist.

Because there was a job that somebody was supposed to do that they didn't do when you were hosting.

Right?

The servant of the house was supposed to have met everybody at the door and washed their feet.

Because the streets of ancient Jerusalem were not clean.

And they were wearing open-toed shoes.

So your feet were quite disgusting.

If you took your shoes off, disgusting things got all over your house.

So you're supposed to wash your feet before you come in.

You know, pretty standard behavior.

In this particular instance, I don't know if because they were, you know, using somebody else's house that the servant wasn't there, like whatever the deal was, but nobody thought to wash everybody's feet.

So Jesus wraps a towel around his waist, grabs a bowl of water, grabs a cloth, and begins to do the low man's job.

Washing everybody's feet.

John tells us in this moment that people are realizing that Jesus loves his friends and he's determined to love them to the end.

Why?

Well, because at least two of the people in the room are about to radically betray Jesus.

Did you ever think about it?

When Jesus washes feet, he washed Judas' feet.

Judas was still there.

Right?

He washes Peter's feet, who's about to lose his mind and deny Jesus in front of a 12-year-old girl.

Jesus is about to go through something that we cannot even fathom, and be betrayed beyond anything that we'll ever experience.

And yet, he willingly, gladly sits with those people, serves those people, stays with those people till their very end.

And then, verse 34.

After he's called out Judas and he's left and they're there, after his disciples have watched all this take place, in addition to all the three years of time, a new command I give you.

Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Standard isn't how you feel about yourself.

The standard is the love of Jesus displayed for you.

The law had said, love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus now gives his disciples an entirely new reference point.

As I have loved you.

Serve people when they don't deserve it.

Move towards people who need help even when they don't want it.

Put their interests ahead of yours.

Love even when it costs you deeply.

As I have loved you, includes loving and serving the man who is about to betray unto the Roman.

I've gone my whole life calling do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the golden rule.

So I've decided to call love one another as I have loved you the platinum rule.

You can feel free to steal that if you want to.

I stole it from somebody else.

If you love one another.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

It is.

Is the heart of the matter.

The heart of the kingdom.

The heart of Jesus.

When our standard would fail.

Right?

When we would give ourselves permission because it's okay for me to talk to them that way because of the way they talk to me.

Or I'm just being honest.

Anytime somebody uses the word just, you should see if that's true.

It's my least favorite English word.

My experience is that nothing is just ever.

Right?

Not in that sense.

I'm just being honest.

No, you're not.

There's more to it than that.

I can see your subtext.

They deserve it.

Right?

The standard of Jesus is so much better than my standard.

Because I am broken and fragile.

And petty.

But he is not.

And I get that this can be frustrating.

Right?

I prefer the rules sometimes too.

Even though I'm not a very rulesy person.

Rules are easier.

Because I know when I kept it and when I broke it.

Love.

Love is messy.

Because sometimes love means I don't get the last word.

Do I like the last word?

Ask my wife.

Sometimes love means apologizing when I know that I'm right.

Sometimes love means serving someone I don't particularly care to serve.

Sometimes I'd just rather have the rules.

Wouldn't you?

But Jesus, Jesus gives me a person to set a standard.

It's I have loved you.

And even though it's more difficult, it's better.

And this is why I'm so obsessed with believing in what the church can be.

You know, I tell people all the time I'm a man of very few interests.

Like guitars and the church.

That's about it.

Oh, my family.

You know?

Those are the only things that I really care about.

That's my family.

And the maple leaves are too.

Someday I'll show you that I bleed blue, okay?

Imagine for a minute if people walking through our front doors always were met with the love of Jesus.

They experienced it personally and they saw it in our interactions.

Imagine now that we get so good at loving each other that every interaction on every boring Tuesday that you have outside of here is overflowing with the love of Jesus.

See, I think, I think the church is designed to be irresistible.

And it's only resistible because we keep insisting that rules are more important than love.

The church is supposed to be the most clear and present reflection this world has of the kingdom and its king.

I believe that to be irresistible.

And the fact that it isn't should be a wake-up call to us every single day, constantly calling us back to moments like these.

But we just open the scripture and check our alignment.

Am I following Jesus in the way that he means for me to follow him?

Do I mean the same thing that he meant when he came to those shepherds or those fishermen on that beach and said, Come, follow me.

I'll teach you how to fish for people.

I need to get back to this in a quick second because I got a text message just now, and I want you guys to help me out with something, okay?

It's very relevant.

I think it's almost God ordained.

There's this uh gal from the neighborhood who got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago, and she said, her little four and five-year-old sons really want to set up a lemonade stand and serve lemonade.

And here's what I told her.

She was gonna come at like one o'clock or something on a Sunday.

She was just asking if she could like use our part of our lawn out front.

And I said, that's a great idea.

You're welcome to use our lawn.

Can I give you one better?

Come at 10:30.

I've got 200 thirsty people.

So I would love for some of you to knock the socks off that four and five-year-old lemonade stand that's getting set up out here.

She just told me we're coming now, we're setting up out on your front lawn.

So if you have any pocket change, give it away.

Right?

Bless those.

I have no idea, no clue what they think about us or the church or Jesus or anything.

Um by just this is a broad brush stroke, forgive me.

Uh just by the name, I would guess that that they've emigrated at some point to Canada.

Um, do as your heart.

Uh, actually, do as Jesus' heart.

Because when people think of us, of the church, there should be no doubt that these are the most loving, caring, considerate, kind, generous people I've ever met.

All of us together, and every one of us when we're not together.

Jesus didn't say that they'll recognize us by our theology or our politics.

It's not our worship style, how loud you sing, how moral a person you are, how much Bible you can quote.

Love.

Jesus love.

By this everyone will know.

We say a lot these days that we mean to be an outward-facing church.

This is what we mean: that something that happens inside this Christian community becomes evidence out there of the love of Jesus.

The credibility of our message about Jesus is connected to the quality of your relationships with the people around you.

Jesus makes our treatment of one another, an unmistakable measure of our faithfulness to Him.

Worshiping God well, listen to this, means treating people well.

They are inseparable.

I want you to catch this, okay?

Because it's really important.

You can come to church.

Put your hands in the air, sing more loudly and more beautifully than everyone around you.

Pray more, pray harder.

And still, according to Jesus, have your priorities wrong.

Because Jesus doesn't allow us to separate loving God from loving the people around us.

In the way of Jesus, loving people isn't something we do in addition to worshiping God.

Loving people is most often how you worship God.

Because worship is not an hour on Sunday morning.

Worship is what you said to the barista on Wednesday.

Want to know whether you're growing closer to Jesus?

Don't look at how passionately you sing.

Don't first look at how much Bible you know.

Don't only look at how often you come to church.

Look at your relationships.

Are you becoming more patient?

More forgiving?

More generous?

More attentive, more willing to serve, harder to offend, quicker to reconcile.

We are constantly encouraging each other to actually get involved and connected here at church.

Not because we want something from you, because we want something for you.

Church, church gives us a place to practice all of this with real people who are on the same mission, who understand the assignment, and are committed to walking with you even when you stink at the relationships.

It's supposed to be great practice.

Let me get really practical for a second, and I'm gonna start small.

Okay?

What if that question got asked in all of our lives week by week?

What does love require of me?

If you're a visualizer, you can close your eyes for a second if you want to.

Imagine with me a marriage where both people regularly ask themselves that question.

What does love require of me?

Imagine parenting your kids in an environment where grace and truth are the foundations that you build your family on.

Imagine friendships where being present matters more than being impressive.

Imagine a church where somebody could walk in skeptical of the whole thing and eventually come to say, I'm still not sure I believe what you believe.

But whatever's happening between these people is remarkable.

Your friend hurts you, what does love require of me?

Your coworker disagrees with you?

What does love require of me?

Your spouse leaves his socks on the floor again?

What does love require of me?

Your kids are your kids again?

What does love require of me?

Not what I'm entitled to, not what would make me feel better.

Not how do I win?

Not how do I make sure they know I'm right and they're wrong.

What does love require of me?

And now finally, three weeks in, maybe, maybe we're getting a clearer picture of what Jesus meant when he said he came to give you life.

Because the way of Jesus doesn't just make you better at religion.

It doesn't even primarily make you better at religion.

The way of Jesus should make us better at relationships.

Because the relationships, oh, relationships are the essence of the life God wants for you.

Loving like Jesus doesn't guarantee every relationship works out.

Judas proved that.

But loving like Jesus is the way of Jesus.

And when a whole community commits to living that way, it becomes a different kind of community.

Friends, life is wrapped up in love.

Love.

Love is the heart of the matter.

So today, as we conclude, before we walk out of here and we go about our week asking ourselves, what does love require of me?

Because of where this passage comes and what it's supposed to remind us of, I thought it would be appropriate if we shared communion together this morning.

Because before we walk out of here and ask what love requires of us, we should take some time to remember what love required of him.

As I have loved you, those words are baked into the moments when Jesus said, This is my body.

It's been broken for you.

Take it, eat it.

And when you do, remember me.

This is the cup.

My blood in the what?

Who knows the next two words?

My blood in the new covenant.

He's ushering us into a new, better world.

Better system, no more Caesarean treaty, no more, if you do, then I will do, just I will do for you.

Regardless of how you treat me.

Betray me, walk away from me.

My love for you doesn't change.

The standard of love for those who follow me will never change.

And then on that cross, it is finished.

Communion reminds us that the command to love like Jesus is not simply a command to be nicer.

It's costly.

It's selfless, self-giving love patterned after Jesus Himself.

We remember how he loved us.

And then we leave the table committed to loving one another as he's loved us.