The Jesus Lens: How to Read the Bible Toward Healing | Better Ways to Read the Bible | Chad Belew

a life-changing moment, changes the way that we understand peace, justice, even faith.

So today, we're going to talk about the next lens in the chapter or in this book, Better

Ways to Read the Bible that Zach Lambert wrote.

We're actually moving into the lenses that are, Zach calls them the lenses that heal,

ways that we read and go to Scripture that are healing.

The last four that we went through were some of the lenses that we've been given that bring

harm.

And so we're getting ready to step into, if you know the phrase, or if you've been through

this, a lot of us have, like the deconstruction phase, we went through deconstruction a little

bit and the last four lenses, and we're about to get into the reconstruction phase, putting

things back together, hopefully giving us a way that we can go to Scripture that is,

like I said, healing.

It's a space for truth and that points to really just what this is all about.

So today, the first lens that we're going to talk about is the Jesus lens.

It's a lens that, honestly for me, as I've gone through my deconstruction, reconstruction,

how I approach faith in my life, this lens, seeing the person of Jesus, seeing how Jesus

operated, who he spent time with, how he loved, how he was kind, compassionate, who he called

out, I read everything through the person of Jesus.

There's lots of reasons that, and I honestly was sitting in the back taking out pieces

of my sermon because I had a lot, but I mean even the beginning of John, this is one of

those parts I took out, it's not my notes, but I'm going to tell you anyway, in the beginning

of John, John says that the word was with God and the word was God, says he calls the

word he was there with God.

Sometimes we think of word of God, most of us have grown up, word of God is this written

thing that we carry around called the Bible, this collection of 66 books, if you're Protestant,

72, I think of your Catholic, is that right, 72?

My Catholics, it's like 80 something if you're Greek Orthodox, but the Bible, this written

thing that we carry, we call it the word of God, but the Bible actually calls the word

of God a person as Jesus.

So when I go to the word of God, I go to the person of Jesus, because Brian Zahn said

that the character or that Jesus is what God had to say to us, Jesus is what God had to

say to us, not these written words, but this person, his character, the way that he loved,

the way that he cared, the way that he did life, and so when I go to Scripture, Jesus is

my lens.

So what does that mean?

Sometimes I'll read something in Scripture and I'm like that, would Jesus say that?

So I have to take a step back, now I've got to read some, we'll get into this with some

context, some understanding what's happening, did someone write something down, they got

wrong.

Like, what is this?

So the Jesus lens for me is the lens I love to go to Scripture with.

It helps us to see life, like what we've survived, who people are, how do we interpret Scripture

and life and all of it.

And when I joined the army, I joined from here in San Antonio, I remember I did not think

I was going to join the army, that was not in the plans.

I was at Bible College, I'd come home actually for Thanksgiving, I was at my mom's house,

my mom still had the home phone number that we had when I was in high school.

Some of you Gen Z's don't even know what a home phone is, it's like on the wall.

Phone Ring, I had been home for a day, I've been living by Dallas, I was out of the city,

I was home for a day, the phone rang, probably because they're like, "Hey, these guys are

probably back for Thanksgiving break."

Pick it up, it's an army recruiter, somehow the dude sold me on something, I was like,

"You know what, I'll come down and talk to you."

Now really what happened was, I was about to have to leave school, financially we weren't

going to be able to pay some stuff, there was supposed to be some all kinds of stuff.

I wasn't going to be able to afford it and he was like, "We'll pay for college."

He was like, "Well, all right, he says college is going to be free, I'm in."

It's that lesson that nothing is free.

So I went in, met with this recruiter, we went and took a test, the Azvab, everybody has to

take it, once you finish it, they're like, "All right.

Here's the, depending on where you rank or score on it, here's the things that you can

do in the military."

I mean, I did really well on it, so they're like, "You can do whatever you want."

I was like, "Cool, I want to fly helicopters."

And then my mom was like, "No.

You can't.

What happens if you get shot down?"

I was like, "Yeah, maybe that's a good idea."

So I started talking to the guy, he offered me a job, it's called a cryptologic linguist,

I started reading the description, it's somebody who sits in a room without walls, with headphones

on and listens to stuff, and I was like, "Not me."

I can't do anything, you got anything that talks to people, and they were like, "Hey,

actually, there's this human intelligence collector, one that, yeah, it talks to people, that's

exactly what it is."

I said, "Okay, now we're talking."

And then my recruiter said this line, he was like, "Oh, you know what?

This is a cool job."

This is like FBI, but in the military, and a cool part about it is, you'll never get deployed.

You'll always be stateside.

Sign me up.

So I read the description, okay, sounds good, signed.

I went to training, and my training was long because I had to go to language school, so

don't go to language school.

I don't speak Persian.

No, I don't speak Persian.

Farsi, I have an associate's degree in Persian, Farsi, because the army gave it to me, but

I don't really speak it.

But I did, it's been 20 years or so, like it's been a long time, maybe not 20.

I got, I did my training, training from that, my job training, it was almost two years.

I get to my first unit, first official unit, I'm not in training anymore, I am.

I am a trained soldier.

I get to my first unit, and within 27 days I am boots down in the sandbox in Iraq.

I was like, but my recruiter told me, turns out, either he read the job description wrong,

or he lied to me.

And I don't know which one, I'd like to think the best of people, but I've also heard other

stories of recruiters.

Either way, what he told me and what it actually meant were very different things.

And that moment kind of sticks out to me, because it was a lesson that I learned early.

How you read things matters, how you interpret it shapes the life you live afterward.

We all experienced this maybe one way or another.

Maybe someone read a text message wrong and got offended, or maybe someone read the Bible

wrong and built a theology around it, and it hurt people, so interpretation matters.

And this is what brings us to the moment in this series, this shift from lenses that harm

to lenses that heal, because how we read scripture changes how we treat people, and how we treat

people reveals how we really see God.

And this is why we really need the Jesus lens.

Because when we learn to see like Jesus, everything starts to heal.

Our view of God, our view of others, our view of ourselves, there's this healing that starts

to take place.

And when we go to scripture and we see how Jesus quotes an interpret scripture, we start

to see a pattern, this this rhythm.

He doesn't throw the old story away, he actually does a healing in it.

He reclaims it from hands of fear and control, and he brings it back to what I think Jesus

would say, the original meaning was love and freedom.

So when Jesus quotes scripture, he does three things over and over and over again.

He centers mercy over ritual, he prioritizes people over systems, and he interprets everything

through love.

We're going to look at a few moments where he does this.

When he centers mercy over ritual.

In Matthew 9, there's a moment, one of my favorite stories where Jesus is confronted

by some religious elites, the Pharisees, and his response really sets a foundation of

his ministry, really gives us what Jesus believes about all of this.

Matthew 9 verse 10 says later, Jesus went to Matthew's home to share a meal with him.

Matthew 9:10

Many other tax collectors and outcasts of society were invited to eat with Jesus in his disciples.

When those known as the Pharisees saw what was happening, they were indignant.

They kept asking Jesus' disciples, "Why would your master dine with such low lives?"

When Jesus overheard this, he spoke up and said, "Healthy people don't need to see a

doctor, but the sick will go for treatment."

Then he added, "Now you should go and study the meaning of the verse.

I want you to show mercy, not just offer me a sacrifice, for I have come to invite the

outcast of society and sinners, not those who think they are already on the right path."

Jesus, hey, you need to go back and you need to reread and figure out what this verse means.

I love, he's quoting Hosea, and when he quotes Hosea, I love how Eugene Peterson translated

this in the message.

Hosea is 6'5" and 6", is this?

This is Jesus.

He's quoting this verse.

He says, "Go back and figure this out.

I'm after love that lasts, not more religion.

I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings."

I'm like, "All right, all right, Eugene."

Jesus is like, "You missed it.

Go back and reread what this means.

Go reread it."

The story of Hosea is created, that'll set up what Jesus is even referring to, but this

is what anchors his entire way of life in reading.

The words that come from Hosea 6, Jesus quotes these actually more than once to the Pharisees.

It becomes one of Jesus' favorite lines in all of scripture.

He quotes it in this passage in Matthew 9 when the Pharisees attack him for eating with

sinners.

He quotes it again in Matthew 12 when they accuse his disciples of breaking Sabbath law

by picking grain.

They're walking through a field of grain, they pick some grain to eat it, and the Pharisees

are like, "You can't pick grain on the Sabbath."

And Jesus, once again, is like, "Yeah, I got it wrong.

Go back and read that verse again.

Go reread it.

You've missed it."

It's like Jesus is saying like, "Go back, reread the verse, because you're missing

the entire point.

You've turned worship into performance and holiness into hierarchy.

You think God wants your sacrifice, God wants your heart."

And honestly, that's the story of so much of Jesus' ministry.

He keeps telling people, "You've read it wrong.

You've heard it said, 'But I say to you.'

You've heard it said, 'But let me fix what you've heard said in these scriptures.'

You've memorized the rule, but you've missed the reason."

That's the Jesus' lens, not a new theology, but a return to the original heart of God.

A God who is after love that lasts.

A God who is more interested in mercy than in mechanics.

A God who's still rewriting how we see the story.

When he quotes Hosea, Jesus is re-centering everything.

He's reminding us that the purpose of faith isn't purity, it's presence.

And maybe there's a question that we have to keep asking in our faith journey.

Are we practicing mercy, or are we practicing religion?

Because mercy doesn't need to win.

Mercy doesn't need to be right.

Mercy doesn't need to prove a point.

Mercy just needs to see, be present.

Be relational.

Number two, he prioritizes people over systems.

And Jesus very first, sermon.

He basically lays out this mission statement by omit omission.

He's in Nazareth, his hometown.

He stands up in the synagogue to read from Isaiah.

He's handed a scroll.

He was recorded in Luke 4, says he went to Nazareth where he had been brought up and

on the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue as was his custom.

He stood up to read.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, unrolling it.

He found the place where it is written, "The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has

anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.

To set the oppressed free.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And then it says he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and he sat

down.

The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.

He began by saying to them, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

The spirit of the Lord is on me because he is anointed me to proclaim good news.

To the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.

To set the oppressed free.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

But there's something really interesting about this passage that Jesus is reading.

As he's reading this passage, he stops mid-verse, rolls up the scroll and gives it back.

Or mid-thought, because maybe they didn't have the verses the way we have them.

It's mid-thought and hands the scroll back.

He leaves out the next line after to proclaim the year of Lord's favor.

The passage in Isaiah 61 goes like this, "The spirit of the Lord is on me because he is

anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.

To set the oppressed free.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Max, can you go to Isaiah 61 and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, go to the next

one.

And the day of vengeance of our God.

Jesus stops reading.

He doesn't read the next line.

It's a pause.

It's omission, but the omission changes everything.

Jesus refuses to make the story about vengeance.

He takes a passage long used to justify retribution and he turns it into liberation.

He's saying that this is what God has always been about, setting people free.

Not through fear, not through anger, not to get some form of vengeance, but to set people

free.

If you want to know how Jesus reads scripture, look for who it sets free.

Because the Jesus lens always reads toward liberation, never control.

This omission of the day of vengeance, I don't believe was a mistake.

I think it was a manifesto.

I think he was saying the good news doesn't need an enemy.

The gospel isn't about payback, it's about restoration.

It's about setting creation right, not settling a score.

Again, a question I think for us is we're reading scriptures.

Do our interpretations of scripture free people from shame or do they keep people in chains?

Because if your theology requires an enemy, I don't believe it's the gospel.

Because the gospel is good news for all people.

We see this in, again, another story where Jesus is talking to people and then he gets

asked, "How do we do this?"

He's quoting a scripture and he says, "You've heard it said, 'To love your neighbors yourself.'"

And you guys have heard this.

I said this in one of the recent sermons, "Love your neighbors yourself."

Then he continues and says, "And love your enemy," which is not in the original passage.

The love your enemy is not even part of the law.

But Jesus is like, "You've drawn lines and you've created an enemy.

So let me just wrap this up for you love your neighbors yourself and your enemy so that you

cannot draw a line and decide who's in and who's out."

Because when you begin to love someone who you think is an enemy, one love takes proximity

and presence.

So when you begin to get close to someone who you've been told is an enemy or that you

believe is an enemy, it's really hard to keep them as an enemy.

Maybe what they do you don't like.

But when you begin to hear a story about who they are and where they came from and what

drives them and how they've been hurt, you begin to not be mad or angry or an enemy.

You begin to feel compassion and kindness and care.

And I don't like what you did, but I don't like what's been done to you.

And I see how this is played out in your life.

And Jesus says, "You can't have an enemy in the gospel."

It just doesn't work because we are called to love people regardless.

Because Jesus, number three, is He interprets everything through love.

Matthew 22 says, "A religious scholar tries to trap Jesus."

I think this is, I think this is part of it, I may have skipped ahead.

By asking which commandment matters most, Jesus answers with two, but ties them together

as one.

Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and it tells you while your heart

reminds your body.

This is the most important, the first of any list, but there's a second to set alongside

it.

Love others as well as you love yourself.

These two commands are pegs.

Everything in God's law and prophets hangs from them.

Jesus fuses these two different Old Testament texts, Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 1918,

into one inseparable idea.

He's saying, "You can't love God without loving people.

They hang together."

If you are not loving people, God's like, "Oh, you're missing it.

You're not loving me."

If you're a jerk to my kids, you're not loving me well.

Even if they're jerks.

In this moment, He ties these two together, I don't believe He's giving a new command.

I think what He's doing is He's giving us a new way to read every command.

Love is the filter.

If it doesn't sound like love, then it's not from God and not your definition of love

or how you think love should be, then people get to decide if you're caring for them and

loving them.

If you want more, I didn't have this in the first part, but number four, I'm almost done.

He redefines righteousness as a relationship.

And Micah 6-8, it says, "But He's already made it plain how to live, what to do, what

God is looking for in men and women."

It's quite simple.

Do what is fair and just to your neighbor.

Be compassionate and loyal in your love.

And don't take yourself too seriously.

Take God seriously.

Jesus echoes the same thing in Matthew 23 when He tells the Pharisees, "You've kept meticulous

rules about tithing, but you've neglected the weight of your things, justice, mercy,

and faithfulness."

Yeah, you're real good at your rules.

Bring your 10 percent.

But when it comes to justice, mercy, and faithfulness to the hurting, the oppressed, and the pushed

out, we can make up some different rules.

Micah said it.

Jesus repeats it.

Faith was never supposed to be about getting it all right.

It was about living in right relationship with God, with others, with yourself.

Righteousness isn't moral superiority.

It is relational wholeness.

It's when Jesus quotes Scripture, I don't believe He's rewriting the story that He's

revealing what has always been true and what we may have missed.

That the heart of God has always been about mercy, love, and liberation.

When we read Scripture like Jesus, the same healing, I believe, starts to happen in us.

It literally heals the way our body and our mind and our spirit relate to this world.

Let's be honest, a lot of us grew up with a version of Christianity that didn't feel

like healing.

It felt like pressure.

Faith was about getting it right, not getting free.

It kind of religion, it literally wires our nervous system for fear, not for love.

You guys know what I love when the science and psychology comes together and it's like,

"Oh, God actually made us this way."

Neuroscience confirms what Jesus already knew, that fear and love can't coexist, that they

are opposites in the human brain.

When faith is driven by fear of judgment, the amygdala, the part of your brain responsible

for threat detection stays on high alert.

It's like living with an internal siren, always going off.

Even if you say God is love, your body doesn't believe it.

But when faith becomes rooted in safety and compassion and belonging, the kind that Jesus

taught, the brain begins to rewire, the prefrontal cortex, it's the part that's the reasoning,

the relational part of your brain, it becomes more active while stress response calms.

Your body finally believes what your heart has always hoped that you're safe.

It turns theology into not just like this poetic thing, but a physiological idea that

it matches up.

Your body, wait, what's, who wrote it?

Your body keeps the score.

Hillary.

Cool.

Hillary McBride?

Cole Arthur?

I don't know, anyway, your body does, it does that.

It's a good book.

Try to see how much I need to skip here.

Well, this Dr. Lisa Miller in her book, The Awaken Brain, found that people with a healthy

loving view of God show 75% less of depression and significantly higher resilience to trauma.

It's not belief itself that heals, it's the quality of the belief.

A loving God heals, a punishing God harms.

Dr. Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion shows that when we approach our failures with

understanding instead of judgment, we grow faster and we recover better.

It's literally what graced us.

Grace allows us to see our failures through understanding, not through judgment.

And my favorite social psychologist right now, Dr. Dacher Keltner, who spent years studying

compassion and awe, he finds it feelings of awe, stepping back and seeing just how connected

things are, how we are small in this big, vast world, how we are small in this community.

We are one of a community, we are one of humanity and understanding the vastness, but in a way

that connects us in a healing way.

He finds it feeling of awe increases generosity, empathy and connection.

In other words, the more wonder we experience, the more loving we become.

It's almost like we were built this way.

Tell me it doesn't sound like Jesus.

Every encounter he had left people more alive, more open and more loving.

It's the psychological fruit of a healed faith.

It's what Jesus does with scripture, reframing it through mercy, people in love.

It's what psychologists would call integration.

He takes what religion has fragmented and he brings it back together.

He integrates head and heart, he integrates heaven and earth, he integrates theology and

humanity, Jesus doesn't ask people to pick between truth and love.

He shows us they were never meant to be separated, that love is truth and that's what makes

his lens so healing.

Because integration is the opposite of trauma.

Because trauma divides where love reconnects.

Wherever you belong, every you're forgiven, every you're seeing, it all reclaims something

that fear fractured.

It begins to heal a trauma in us that when we were told we weren't good enough.

Something in us was broken, that we didn't belong, that we were not loved fully.

Now when you see Jesus and he said, "You belong, you're forgiven, you're loved, there's nothing

you have to do to earn that love."

It's hard for us to believe it because we've been lied to for a long time.

But it begins to heal, things that this fear has fractured.

So I leave you at the last question, the question for this week is not how did Jesus read scripture?

Maybe it's how does Jesus read me?

Some of us have been lied to about how Jesus reads you.

I think we've got to go to Jesus to see how he reads this, not other people's interpretations

of something.

But Jesus himself, when Jesus looks at you, he doesn't see a project of fix or center

to shame.

He sees someone who is worth healing.

Someone who bears God's image even in their brokenness.

Someone who, when they experience love, can be the healthiest, kindest, most compassionate

person they were ever made to be because that's where we find ourselves.

It's in the love, the compassion, the forgiveness, the kindness.

It's in that place that we find who we really are.

And when we start seeing like that, we see people through that lens, the world starts

to look less like a battlefield and more like a garden again, more like something we're

pretending to, to see the beauty of.

The Jesus lens helps us slow down long enough to see that love isn't naive, that it's necessary.

It's the only thing strong enough to heal what fear has broken.

We look through it, we stop asking who's right, we start asking who needs to be loved.

There's mercy over ritual, people over systems and love over everything.

That's the lens of Jesus.

So maybe we become people who see like Jesus, who read with love, who live with compassion,

who let mercy be our theology and love be our logic.

And may that way of seeing heal everything it touches because that's what we're called

to.

We are called to be healers in this world and I'm not talking about like, you know, I'm

talking about healing people's internal understanding of who they are, who they believe God is.

I love does this.

That's who we're called to be, so let's do that.

It's why we say go love well, it's who you're made to be.

That is the only way that healing comes to this world.

So let's go do that right through this lens and go love this world well, it's who every

one of you is made to be.

Love you guys.

[applause]