The Kingdom Way: Luke 4-6 Breakdown with Pastor Clayton Tyner and Tony Albano

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

Hey, this is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor at MetaCurch in San Antonio, Texas.

Right now we're walking through the gospel of Luke.

We've been in chapters four, five, and six.

We've called it the Kingdom Way.

And we're at a transitional point.

And so we're gonna kind of slow down, talk about where we're at, where we're headed in the weeks to come.

We'd love for you to follow us in this journey through Luke, youtube.com slash metachurch.

I'm here with my good friend, Pastor Tony Albano.

Tony is the leader of one of our venues in Helotus, Texas.

He also leads our central ministry team.

Tony is a little bit younger than me, and he has a way different life experience and faith experience.

And so I wanted to get some of his feedback on where we are at right now in the series, where we might be headed pretty soon.

But first I'm going to paint just a little bit of context.

Jesus starts his ministry in Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

He's baptized by John the Baptist and the Jordan.

He goes out and he fasts for 40 days.

He goes to his hometown and he tries to preach.

It does not go well.

He won't do miracles on command.

And from that moment forward, it's just controversy, controversy, controversy until eventually he is rejected to the point where the religious leaders are plotting to kill him.

And so over the last two weeks, we have really gone at what we've called a spirit of religion, which is trying to control and coerce people and actually ends up pushing people away from God, which is the opposite of the mission of Jesus.

And so, really, what I was curious in is I've shared very openly that I was brought up in the church.

Some of the local churches I grew up in, military brat moving all over the country, uh, were awesome, great people, good cultures.

Some of them were very controlling, and I definitely was influenced by religion.

I was religious myself when I was young, went through a season of rebellion after that.

So that's my story, but not everybody came up in that.

And that's where I think you might have an interesting perspective.

So if you could just share a little bit about your spiritual upbringing, and then when you heard the last two Sundays of Jesus fighting against this spirit of religion, what does that do to you?

What does it make you think?

How does it make sense with your experience?

Yeah, you know, I grew up Catholic.

Um, but you know, a lot of people probably can like relate to this where like Christianity was not talked about other than on Sunday, or we showed up at the thing.

And uh uniquely, like my dad even taught in catechism school.

So, you know, it was that check in the box, and there was always this separation.

Yeah.

And I never really understood what a relationship with Jesus was like.

Um, I knew there was things I had to do, uh, programs I had to show up to, uh, even as a young kid, you know, going through communion and confirmation.

Uh like this is the day after I went through the program, I went over all the hoops to where like now I have the Holy Spirit.

Yeah.

And uh, you know, graduated, did that whole thing, and I still didn't know what the Holy Spirit was.

And you know, some of that's just me being, you know, a young kid, not really interested, kind of not really just you know, focused on women.

That's where I met my wife actually, so was not really interested in all that.

But even uniquely what I remember, and as we talked about these last things last couple weeks, I remember specifically like always feeling like there was a separation uh between like you know, priest, deacon, like no one was actually like discipling me, no one was actually like really bringing me in.

And there was great-hearted people, like even like my dad, like you know, taking time and even some of those volunteers to like teach about this, but it was always in a way where it was like there was this separation, never really focused on the relational aspect of who Jesus was.

And I think what we saw in the last couple weeks was Jesus' compassion.

Uh scripture tells us it's a kindness of God that leads us to change of mind.

And it's like I didn't know what any of that meant.

Uh and then you know, fast forward, me bring like believing this separation between me and God that I couldn't even boldly come before my father, like all the things I know now, as like I studied the scripture for myself, where people came around me and like taught me the scriptures.

Um, it's like I had my own first experience in ministry, and even that, like I had such a bad display, or really like living out where I put so much weight on the people of like the people who are running these organizations, running these churches, uh, that like when they did hurt or not meet my expectation, like I put that all on God.

And um I carried that for a long time.

I didn't understand what it was, and then I learned really we all are broken, we all are sick, and I think we see that displayed, and you see the religious leaders of the time like really creating this separation.

Yeah.

And then Jesus shows up and he's trying to show the mercy and love and like actually out attributes of like who God is.

Yeah, and um, you know, that's messing with them.

That's like, oh, what do you mean we that they can be brought into this?

Like, how are we all equal under God?

Like, no, we're the righteous ones.

So, really, I just been wrestling with that and like really looking through these past couple weeks of like, you know, I don't have the experience of where like I felt like I was rejected, I more feel the experience of like, I just didn't really know what's going on.

Yeah, I just knew like those guys had it together, they were the righteous ones, and I guess I gotta show up to this thing to figure out what it is or to you know earn my salvation.

Yeah, uh, but yeah, really it's just a lack of understanding.

I think there's a lot of people who show up um every single week to a service, and they're probably great churches, great priests, all that people who are giving their life to God, um, but they never get the level of depth or relationship that Jesus actually offers, and like that's what he came to the earth to like display in this actual mission of like, hey, I'm coming for you.

And that was the plan since the very beginning.

We know that that that was literally the point was to get in relationship with us.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I try to tell people all the time, and I do think it's maybe the most unique thing about MetaCurch is we are constantly aware that the church is not the building, it's not the program, it's not the staff or the pastors, that it is the called-out people of God.

It's it's all of us.

If there's a thousand people who show up on a weekend, then I am one one thousandth of the church, right?

And so there was an interesting moment this Sunday where everyone's on board, everyone is yes and amen against spirit of religion, for relationship with God.

But then we go a step further, and it's like, okay, so metachurch's job is to pick up our assignment from Jesus Christ as his ambassadors to go fight against the spirit of religion and open up relationship to God to as many people as possible.

So you you then have to stop, and I did, and I went, let me just make sure you know what that means.

When I say metachurch does this, it doesn't mean Pastor Clayton or the Metachurch staff is responsible for this.

It's all of us.

If there's a thousand folks here, that means a thousand of us have an assignment to go out into the world, fight those spirits of the enemy, and go and get the people that God is after, you know?

And uh I do think it takes that level of clarity if we want to see all of us, regardless of our unique and different backgrounds, engaging in this in real and meaningful ways.

Here's the uh the other thing I wanted to ask you about.

Now I know you've been reading Luke, and I encourage everyone to read ahead, right?

So that we're kind of tracking together and they have time to meditate upon the word before they get under the sermon.

I have been hyping it up that in the next couple of weeks, everything changes.

Jesus' ministry is going to fundamentally change.

We're gonna see that this Sunday in what is really a simple passage when you just read it, if it's just words, if you disassociate it from the rest of the context of scripture.

Uh, but we know that something very significant is happening.

What are the key differences between like Sermon and Mount and like the plane on the field, audience differences, and like why is that important to us going into this stuff?

The big piece of context that I think really matters is that many scholars believe, and I am also convinced, that the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, uh, which interestingly, it's like Luke 6 is a part of what we'd call the Sermon on the Mount.

And then there are some other stories and parables.

And then Jesus teaches again, and we get another piece of what is put together in the Sermon on the Mount.

Well, what many scholars believe is that this is just Jesus' sermon, that he is on a very specific mission.

And so as an itinerant preacher, someone who traveled and everywhere he went, he would set up and he would preach, this was just his message.

You know, we think of preaching in terms of the local church, where if you showed up four weeks in a row and I preached, you know, almost word for word the same sermon, you go, what's going on here?

You know, uh, Clayton's broken, you know.

We're doing something different in this context.

There are itinerant preachers today who God gives them a message, and in a season, everywhere they travel, they will preach that message.

However, they will also take into account their audience.

And so, like in Luke, what we have mentioned explicitly, we'll see this week, is there were not just Jewish men and women there, that there were Gentiles there as well.

So he's taking into account the context, he's taking into account the congregation, but he has a mission, and that is to establish the kingdom people who will live out and build the kingdom of God.

And so that is his sermon he's hitting, whether he's on the side of a mountain or down by a lake or on a big open field.

I do think that um those actual people groups are important to like understand.

Like these were not the righteous, these were not the leaders, these were not the people who had influence or money, like these were the people who were hurting, who saw the compassion of Jesus, even the ones who were bold enough to come into these areas who, like, man, like, oh, who's this guy?

Yeah, what are you guys talking about?

Uh like, and he's saying things that the kingdom of the skies is here, and like, what in the world does that mean?

And like, heaven's available to us now, and like you know, I think the Beatitudes is amazing, and like how even Jesus starts it, like, blessed are the poor in spirit, like that is the humble approach to have any kind of access to like really understand the heart of the Father.

Yeah, and he's speaking to a bunch of people, and it's like, here's the start of this, here's how it works, and it's like, what are we gonna do, bro?

Yeah, like who are who's us?

And like that really speaks to I think many people.

Yeah, um, I think it's encouraging to a lot of people.

Like, we talk to people all the time, and it's like, you know, like what do I have?

What skill do I have?

And Jesus directly speaking to those, and there's no excuse, and he's bringing in the kingdom.

So I'm very excited for the next couple weeks.

Yeah, good.

Yeah, you know, I'll just leave uh us with kind of one thought.

Um, you are absolutely right.

We're gonna get into Jesus making explicit the way we are made to operate in his kingdom, and some of it feels very heavy.

And we have to remember that Jesus also makes an offer in the gospels come to me, all you who are weary and laid down with heavy burdens, I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you, because my way is easy and my burden is light.

And so, how do those things uh coexist?

The heaviness of some of the teachings of loving your enemies and doing good to those who persecute you, and and blessed are the poor, and woe to those who are rich, and all these things that seem so counterintuitive to us.

Uh, I'll use an analogy.

Some of us might have grown up in homes where um all we ate were empty calories, where there was nobody modeling proper nutrition, there was nobody taking care of their health, there was nobody ever exercising in any degree.

By the time you are 20 years old or 30 years old or 50 years old, and that's all you've known and the only way you've lived, um, you will be under immense burden in your health.

And yet, if someone came to you and showed you the way of proper health, the idea of completely transforming the way you think about food, the idea of going and sweating and being sore and lifting weights and jogging on a truck, like it would feel like the highest standard to clear.

And yet, if you are someone who has lived a healthy lifestyle, what you would want to tell that person is yes, I know it seems heavy, but if you will do it on this side of it, life is light.

And so Jesus is looking not just at our physical health, he's looking at everything.

He's looking at our money, he's looking at our relationships, he's looking at our emotions, he's looking at our minds, he's looking at our careers, and he's going, the way you're doing things, I know the way you're doing things, I know you've always done it that way, but man, you are under an immense burden living in opposition to God's kingdom.

And he starts with the Beatitudes because he's like, I'm gonna take your scoreboard and I'm going to turn it upside down.

And if you can trust me enough to walk in this kingdom way, even if it seems like heavy teaching, if you'll trust me enough to do it, man, my way is easy and my burden is light.

And if we can trust him enough, you know, over time we will figure that out.

So listen, if if you've tuned into this, if you're a part of MetaCurch, I hope you're excited about where we're going.

And if you're not, I hope you'll follow along.

You could start back at the beginning, Luke chapter one, verse one, or you could jump in this week where we're at in Luke chapter six.

You can also follow us online, or if you're in San Antonio, you can come to one of our physical locations, find out more on our website, metachurch.tv.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

If you want to help get the word out about this podcast, the first thing you can do is subscribe.

You can also rate and review this on whatever platform you like to listen on, and you can share it with your friends.

If you want to know more about MetaCurch, you can go to our website, metachurch.tv, where you can find out about all things MetaCurch.

And if you feel led, you can contribute to help push this movement forward.

We hope that you'll join us next week on the MetaCurch podcast.