In Romans 8:1-17, Paul talks about how living according to the flesh is rooted in the mind.  When we live according to the flesh, our minds are set on worldly desires.  Of course, living by the Spirit means the opposite is true – that our minds are set on the desires of the Spirit.  We often focus all of our attention on what our hands do or even what is in our hearts, but what about what is in our minds? What do we think about? What do we dwell on? What consumes our thoughts and forms our desires? It’s important because as Paul says here, a mind set on the world and its desires is hostile to God and those in that realm cannot please God. 

“For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”  It’s all in your head.  The decisions you make, the path you follow, the actions you partake in are birthed out of what is in your mind.  So what have you filled your mind with? What is your mind focused on?

Jesus gives his disciples some pretty harsh instructions in chapter ten of Matthew as he sends then out on their own for the first time.  But this quote always jumps off the page at me when I read it.  To just read those words that you can’t love your family more than him sounds cruel and almost selfish on Jesus part.  And yet there is truth to it.  If we love something or someone more than Jesus, that is what we live for.  We might immediately ask the question if there is supposed to be something wrong with loving our family more than anything, but we live for what we love the most.  We can’t live for our families, at least we shouldn’t.  Disciples of Jesus Christ live for Him.  You can’t take up your cross if you are carrying something else.  If you cling to anything – ANYTHING – in this life, you lose everything.  It’s only when we let go and embrace God’s life that we find everything.  Jesus isn’t saying this in a cruel way or a selfish way.  Imagine for a second if our troops were allowed to take their families to Iraq or Afghanistan with them.  Would they be able to serve even remotely the same way? How could they concentrate on their task at hand with their wives and children right there with them? How do you think it would go if a young man sat in the Army recruiters office and demanded that if he enlist, his family gets to go with him into the battlefield? He wouldn’t be in the Army, would he? Do you hear that and think it is cruel or selfish of the Army? You can’t accomplish what God is calling you to accomplish by making the burdens of your family or anything else more important than your burden for Him.  You can’t cling to the things in your life in this world and find Gods life.  You have to let go of them into His hands to fully embrace what He has for you.

Acts 15 in my opinion is the most important passage for the history of the church.  While the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection and Saul’s conversion are more important historical events for Christianity, the decision that the whole body of Christ had to make in Acts 15 shaped the church more than any other decision.  Once and for all, they had to decide if Gentiles had to become Jews to accept Christ.  To this point, the church was still largely Jewish though some Gentiles were beginning to convert.  But now the issue is was it more important for them to respond to the Good News and receive the Holy Spirit or for them to be circumcised and follow the laws of Moses as a Jew.  We could talk at length about their historic decision and why they choose to write what they write to the Gentile believers, but the statement of James the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem is significant for us today.

It is significant because of what their objective was: to make it easier for people to find Jesus.  They didn’t want to encumber the Gentiles with a burden that the Jews themselves had never been able to properly bear.   Why should they make it more difficult than it has to be? Christians today are so guilty of this.  I’ve seen people be accused of preaching the “Gospel Light” which is too soft and makes it too easy or when talking about people struggling with particular sins always hear the quote “But how do you get around Scripture? Aren’t you saying their choices are ok if they can become Christians while making those choices?” We put obstacles in the road for these people.  We make it more difficult.  We are the Judaizers standing in the meeting shouting, ” But they need to be circumcised and follow the law!” Some of the standards we place on people outside the church are like circumcision – marks of a time that no longer apply to today.  Those Gentiles didn’t need circumcision, they needed the Holy Spirit.  Some are like the laws – rules that may apply or may have been for a time past but rules that none of us have ever been able to perfectly keep ourselves.  Was James saying, “Forget the law -let them be murderers and rapists and thieves and cheats and adulterers and what ever else they want”? Of course he wasn’t.  But he was saying that they didn’t have to be perfect to be in the church or to become a part of the kingdom of God.  I’ve been told many times over the past year that some people should have to change before they are allowed to come into the church.  I wish James was with me when I heard that.  I wish we all the had the strength of Peter and Paul to go against the standard of the day to approach people with grace and help them embrace the truth.  I wish we all had enough faith in the power of God to understand and accept that it is by coming to Jesus Christ and becoming a part of His people that we are changed and not by being changed that we are able to become a part of his people.  Stop making the path more difficult for people to come and find the saving, life changing grace of Jesus Christ.

These were Joseph’s words to his brothers after they asked him for forgiveness after their father died.  It is a pretty amazing statement on his part.  No one would think poorly of Joseph if he were bitter or angry.  They threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery and went to prison wrongfully; not many people let those kinds of offenses go very easily.  But Joseph saw a bigger picture.  He saw how God took the cruelty of his brothers and weaved it to accomplish good through Joseph.  Perhaps you are going through some Joseph moments in your life, some moments where people have hurt you or abused you or broken your trust, or you’ve just been dealt some unfair blows.  Don’t let those moments or tragedies define who you are or how you live.  Allow God to define who you are and how you live.  Let him use the ups and downs of life to shape you into His image instead of letting the ups of downs shape your image.  Let whatever happens be used for His purpose instead of letting what happens define your purpose.  Joseph saved lives and helped entire nations because he let God shape His path rather than letting the circumstances of life shape his path.  Make that same choice in your life today.

But why? Why does Paul go back to those places? His reasons are stupid or foolish at all.  they aren’t necessarily even courageous or brave (though to go to those places had to take courage).  Luke writes that they went back there to strengthen the believers.  They went back to show them that theywer going to endure hardships and suffer because of the Kingdom of God.  They went back to appoint leaders and strengthen those churches.  If those people were following Paul and Barnabas, they surely would persecute the local Christians as well.  Paul wanted to show them not to give up in the face of persecution but to remain strong in faith. He couldn’t do that in a letter.  they needed to see the scars that certainly still remained from the stonig, the hear that he was brought to within an inch of his life, and to see that he was still going to preach the Good News of the kingdom in spite of all of that.  No one was going to keep him from fulfilling the purpose and calling he had been given by Christ Jesus.

It takes great strength to be that foolish.  It takes embracing a higher purpose to willing risk your life to strengthen others.  It takes letting go of life in this world to live as if you are embracing life in another world.  Are you willing to be as “foolish” as Paul, to do things that make no sense in this earthly realm to live the life you are called to be the Kingdom of God?

“There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving.  Although at first sight giving seems harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able to fully receive it.  Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it.  Why is receiving forgiveness so difficult?  It is very hard to say, ‘Without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us.  Only you can set me free.’ That requires not only a confession that we have hurt somebody but also the humility to acknowledge our dependency on others.  Only when we can receive forgiveness can we give it.”

Many people don’t realize this statement gets made as Jesus dines with Matthew the tax collector – the disciple who later writes these words.  Matthew is “scum” and does not deserve to be acknowledged let alone to have dinner with (sharing a meal was seen as one of the most intimate forms of fellowship in those days).  But Jesus didn’t come to make the holy holier and the righteous more righteous.  He came to heal the sick, free the enslaved, and bind up the brokenhearted. 

I’ve often said that God intended the church to be a hospital for the sick and not a museum for saints.   So it amazes me every time a Christian questions why I would minister to sinners – why I would dine with “scum”.  It shouldn’t surprise me.  We’ve always missed Jesus’ message and aimed to be more like Pharisees then like the Messiah.  But when you read this passage today I hope some light cut through that darkness.  The challenge for you should be to discover your tax collectors.  Who are the groups of people you think should have no part of the kingdom? Who do you think should have to change before being a part of your church? Jesus didn’t tell Matthew to stop being a tax collector and then follow him.  It was following Jesus that led Matthew to stop being a tax collector. 

Jesus calls the sick to his church.  The church should have the same reputation as Jesus – it dines with tax collectors, prostitutes, and drunks.  Think of who those groups are today – people who are rejected by religion, forgotten by society, rejected by the self-righteous.  And then invite them to church next Sunday because that’s precisely who Jesus came to call to His kingdom.  Let the righteous build their own church while we go about the business of building Christ’s kingdom in our church.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Lord, help us to listen to your Word today and allow it to shine your bright light on the hypocrisy of our lives. 

May we see those things we’ve left shrouded in darkness. 

May we be awakening to things we’ve ignored. 

May we dig up those things we have buried. 

Expose us today so that we might become your people and not remain our own.

Imagine that you meet someone who says they are married to me.  She’s got a wedding ring on and a story about the first time we met and how memorable it was for her.  You’ve seen her driver’s license and she has my last name.  There’s a picture of me on her desk at work.  She talks about me and the things we do together on her days off.  Why wouldn’t you believe that she is married to me? But then you see us in the same place and she grabs my hand to hold it and I push it away.  She asks why I’m being this way and I say that I don’t know who she is.  She laughs and tells me she loves me and begins to tell me her stories about us, but I say that I’ve never met her and have no idea what she is talking about and that she needs to get away from me before I have her arrested.  If you are watching this play out, you have only one assumption to make: one of us has a mental problem.  Either I have amnesia or she is off her rocker. 

It’s the same scenario Jesus talks about.  These people lay out all the things they have done, all the evidence that they are in a relationship with Jesus.  But it is circumstantial evidence in the same way a wedding ring, photos, and unconfirmed stories are.  Don’t draw inferences about people based on what you see.  Don’t assume your relationship with God is right because you’ve done a few good things.  I guarantee you that there will be pastors and Sunday School teacher and elders and “good Christian people” who Jesus will utter those words to: “I never knew you”.  Why? Because a relationship is not defined by a title or by some unconnected action or by one or two good things.  Relationships are built on something solid, something meaningful, something life changing, and then are continually built up from there.  Relationships are built on love and trust.  The man crying “Lord, Lord” built his house on the sand – there is no foundation to his relationship with God.  When the storms come, when temptation sets in, when tragedy occurs, the house will fall. 

Don’t make that same mistake.  Don’t think just you sit in a church or read your Bible or have done some good things that you have a relationship with Jesus Christ.  That’s just like saying you are marrieds to someone because you are wearing a wedding ring and have their picture on your desk.  Have you trusted God with your heart, put everything you are into His hands, given up everything that isn’t of His kingdom, sacrificed deeply for his people the way He sacrificed everything for you? Have you loved Him with everything – all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, with every ounce of energy you have and every possession you own and every moment you are given? Do you love His people, His church, his children in the same way? Those are the kinds of questions that define your relationship.  Don’t wait until that last day to find out that you’ve never really met Jesus, never really known what it meant to follow Him, never really experienced His love and grace, and have never really been known by Him.  Because it will be too late then.  Your house of cards will have come crashing down and their will be no more disguises, no more masks, no more faking it, no more half hearted commitments.  You’ll just have an eternity to have those words “I don’t know you” to echo in your heart.