Judgement as Invitation?

Summary

Jonathan emphasizes that Jesus' judgments are not meant to condemn, but to invite the people of God to examine their own hearts and lives. He stresses that Jesus' words are always true and spoken with the best interests of his followers in mind. He explains that Jesus' judgments are directed at the church, not non-believers, and are meant to lead the people of God back to the kingdom way of loving God and loving their neighbors. He warns against being co-opted into schemes that isolate us from our neighbors, as this goes against the way of Jesus. Instead, Jonathan encourages the church to receive Jesus' judgments as an invitation to be rooted in love and to grasp the depth of Christ's love, so that they may be filled with the fullness of God and empowered by the Spirit to live out the kingdom way.Text...

Transcript

And I want for the church today to hear these words and to hear them as an invitation, but to understand them as a warning for us that if we are co-opted in plans to rewrite, to justify, to make normal abnormal behavior, then we are out of sync with the Kingdom of God judgment. What is the purpose of judgment? That is the question we are going to answer today, and I'll just go ahead and give you my perspective on it from the start. The word that I associate with judgment based on not my preference or my vision of justice, but I think what the Bible portrays about justice and that word is invitation, invitation, judgment, invitation. We read in Isaiah chapter five, it ended with this statement.

God looked for justice but saw bloodshed for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. A question for us today, does that sound familiar? Does that sound current? Does that sound like our present day? I would argue that whatever era you ask that question in there would be a truth to that because since I call it the second oldest story in the book is the story of brokenness. It is a story of people being trapped up in patterns that take instead of give people trapped up in things like greed and selfishness and fear and judgment, and all of these things lead to a broken way through life. And throughout scripture, there are movements from the beginning to the end of God, giving people a message. In the Old Testament, we call them prophets, the New Testament, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. It's primarily Jesus, but also John the Baptist, and then the New Testament writers followed in suit and then on throughout history as well.

But there are moments where God inspires people to speak, not to judge, but to speak a judgment, and that judgment is from God and an invitation for those who follow Jesus. And we're going to talk a little bit about what that invitation is to, but I want to read in a moment from Luke chapter 12. To be honest with you, I said I want to read, I don't want to read it. It's not a fun scripture to read. It's not a fun scripture to preach about. But a couple of convictions that I have, first of all is that I fully, completely wholly trust Jesus. I believe that Jesus has not just my best interest in mind, but the best interest of the world. And I would not say this about another soul on the planet, but I believe that if Jesus said it, it is the most true statement on whatever is the subject.

And in following it, I will find ultimately peace. I believe that to be true. I think that there are a lot of people who claim or seek that power and all of them are unworthy of it, but I believe when it comes to Jesus, we can fully trust him. And so if we are reading scripture and there is a moment where Jesus's words seem harsh or offend us or strike a sensitivity in us, our first reaction can be to distance ourselves from it or argue with it or try to justify ourselves. But instead, what I seek to do, and to be honest with you, I think that if you read the teachings of Jesus and are paying attention to them, no matter how long you have followed Jesus, no matter how closely you follow Jesus, at some point Jesus is going to say something that is challenging and convicting to you in your life, wherever you are at.

And when that happens, my approach and what I would encourage you to do is to understand first of all that Jesus would never say something that is harsh. Jesus would never say something responsive that's impulsive. He would respond but not say something that's impulsive. What Jesus said is, as we have talked about, is always true, but always has your best interest in mind, right? Jesus, the only person I think that we can say this about, Jesus never said anything that was cruel. He never said anything that was demeaning. He never said anything that would put himself above another person. And so as we read through these statements and these teachings, we read through it with a lens of understanding whatever is there. The purpose of it is for our flourishing in the way of Jesus. I want us to keep that in mind as we read it.

Another thing I want us to keep in mind is that in these passages where Jesus is seemingly pronouncing a judgment, we need to understand that the judgment that Jesus is offering is as we said, an invitation. He has our best interests at heart and always Jesus's judgments are to the people of God. I'm going to stop here for a moment because unfortunately what tends to happen in the church today is that we take Jesus's judgments which are pronounced for us and apply them to non-believing people or people who aren't living according to the way of Jesus. And that is not the way that it was meant to be. It first comes to us and we evaluate our selves. And Isaiah, it didn't say God looked at the Babylonians for justice and only saw bloodshed. It doesn't say, looked at the barbarians or the heathens and looked for justice and only saw unrighteousness. It says God looked to his people and what he saw, not to them, but in them was bloodshed. And so we have to receive Jesus's judgment ourselves and evaluate not what others are doing, but what we are doing.

What else is true about Jesus's judgment? It's invitational. It's for our benefit. It is for us as the people of God, but also it is for us to receive, not for us to use. It's for us to receive, not for us to use. And that is important for us. I think it's kind of self-explanatory, but anytime we use the judgment of Jesus to elevate ourselves over somebody, we are doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do. So how we doing? Okay, before I get myself into too much trouble, I'm going to just open up from Luke chapter 12. I want to say one more thing too.

As we think about the circumstances of the world around us, it is very easy for us to point the finger at someone else or something else and suggest that that something else is responsible for the brokenness around us. What I think is the posture of us as followers of Jesus is never finger pointing, but for us to recognize the brokenness within us and to respond to that, how Jesus through the spirit is leading us to respond. And when there are ways, no matter what the ends of those ways are, but when there are ways that lead us to isolate ourselves from our neighbors, when there are ways that lead us to have animosity or fear towards our neighbors, no matter what it is that our neighbors are doing or have done, that is against the way of Jesus. And so when we are faced with the opportunity to choose a way that violates our neighbor or mistreats our neighbor or degrades our neighbor or places ourselves above our neighbor, we have to understand that no matter what it promises in return, it does not belong in the kingdom of God.

And therefore those of us who are followers of the way of Jesus have to decide where is our ultimate allegiance? Where does it lie? And if we are not careful, we can get co-opted into schemes of brokenness and then we are contributors to the brokenness rather than people who are living according to delight. And it is a similar moment that Jesus speaks these words and I want to read them. I'll offer a bit of context and commentary as we work through it, but Luke chapter 12 verse 49, Jesus says, I have come to bring fire on earth and how I wish it were already kindled. Now, fire is a common theme in the Bible from beginning to end. There are two things that fire typically does. It does a lot more than two things. But in the Bible there are really two purposes of fire.

One is to purify, right? We understand that in our lives, whether it be warming up water when you're stuck out in the wilderness so that you can drink it and not get sick or purifying metals for our use, whatever fire plays that role of purification fire also can destroy with forest fires or house fires, those types of things. In this moment, Jesus is speaking about a purifying or a refining fire. And actually most of the time when fire is mentioned in the Bible, fire is not a consequence. It is also an invitation. It is an invitation to purify. Now, that might sound a little bit strange to those of us who have been around the church for a while, but fire in this context is about purification, not about condemnation. So Jesus says, I have come to bring fire, and then he says, but I have a baptism to undergo and what constraint I am under until it is completed.

What is Jesus' baptism? Well, it is his death. So he is waiting for his death for this purifying fire to be unleashed. Then it kind of takes an interesting turn. He says, do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? Like, well, Jesus, I've heard the Christmas Carol, yes, right, peace on earth is what you came to bring. He said, no, I tell you. But division, that's a kind of a strange statement out of the mouth of Jesus. But if we run that through our filters, we know that there is more of a layer here than just meets the eye. From now on, there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. Then he said to the crowd, when you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say it is going to rain and it does. When the south wind blows, you say it's going to be hot and it is hypocrites. You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time?

Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right as you are going with your adversary to the magistrate to try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge and the judge turn you over to the officer and the officer throw you into prison? I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. So there's a lot that is going on here in this passage of scripture. But if you can recall back to what Chris read and Isaiah, when God pronounced his judgment, it was in terms of relationships of people between people of directly, how people respond to the love of God by how they treat their neighbor, then Jesus pronounces this judgment that is going to bring division, and he concludes it also in conversation with how a person treats his neighbor.

Now, this last part where Jesus is talking about taking a neighbor to a judge, this is a very common practice in the ancient world. You have a beef between you and someone else. You take it to a judge. It is within your legal right to do that. But Jesus's challenge here is not to and why? Because a central message of Jesus's teaching is if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. And this is a message that I think our culture needs to step back and truly hear because there is a lot going on where it seems to be that people get power and they say, because I can, I will. And that is a recipe that doesn't exude strength. What it actually brings up is that another person says With power, just because I can, I will, and then my will cancels out your will, and then it's an arms race to whoever has the biggest can and the biggest will.

And then before we know it, we have created a very untenable situation that doesn't often affect those with power. It affects those who are just trying to live their lives on the underside of power. And this is not a new problem. It's not a problem invented by Facebook or social media. It's not a problem invented by technology. It is a problem that has existed since the very beginning of time. And the biggest problem is not the brokenness, but it's the people of God getting co-opted into the brokenness and that is where the greatest danger lies for us. Jesus didn't speak these words in a vacuum. He spoke them in a particular culture with a particular set of happenings going on around him. Jesus was a Jewish man living in a Jewish part of the world that was occupied by the Romans, and within that there were definite struggles for people like Jesus.

Their way of life was threatened by the Roman way of life, and you can kind of put the story together without really knowing all of the details. Whenever somebody tells you you have to do something a certain way, generally speaking, the human response to that is not okay, right? If you don't want to do it, you're going to fight against it. The decision though is how do we fight against it or how do we work against it? And in Jesus's day, just like in our day, there is a myriad of different responses. There are those who want to fight fire with fire, right? Just because we can, we will, and we're going full throttle, steam ahead, whatever it takes. We're wielding our swords. We're going to shoot first and ask questions later. There's that type of mentality. There's the type of mentality that just rolls over and acts like everything is okay, regardless of what's going on and everything in between. And Jesus comes in this moment when he was on earth, and his call is not to perfect the nation of Israel.

Let's not make Israel great again. That's not what Jesus is doing here. What Jesus is doing is calling the people of God to the kingdom of God, to live rooted in the kingdom of God right here and right now, where the spirit nourishes their lives to grow and to flourish in the ways of the kingdom of heaven and to be a light, not because it has power and authority and rules over people, but because it is sourced in the way of God and serves the world around it with an open hand. Jesus said in Mark 10 45, even the son of man, him speaking about himself, I did not come to serve, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many that is of the kingdom of heaven. It's the posture of Jesus, and that's the posture that Jesus calls us to. So it's in this in which he speaks this radical call to a totally new way, not a new way, the old way, returning to the old way of life, life in the garden, life in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus's message on earth did not succeed.

He died by the sword, even though he didn't live by the sword, he died by the sword. And of course, we are here today because the sword has no actual power over Jesus. Jesus rose from the grave and we live in that resurrected reality. But Jesus gave himself over to the power of death. But yet so many times we find ourselves as people who are willing and desire to pick up that sword, even though we know that all it will lead to is death. That's where Jesus's judgment, where God's judgment comes in. Remember, it's an invitation for us. It is never too late in the kingdom of God. It is never too late. And so as we've looked at and this teaching of Jesus in Luke 12, over the past few weeks, Jesus called out self-indulgence. He told us to be watchful and aware, and now he's turning towards negligence towards our neighbor.

And I want for the church today to hear these words and to hear them as an invitation, but to understand them as a warning for us, that if we are co-opted in plans to rewrite, to justify, to make normal abnormal behavior, and we are out of sync with the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is rooted in honesty and integrity and in loving our neighbor and following the way of Jesus, we cannot compromise these no matter what we are promised in return. It is not worthwhile when we get co-opted into schemes which we live. Oftentimes we think we're smart. I'll just talk about myself. I think I'm not falling for any schemes, right? I see a spam number on my phone. I know I'm not even going to fall for that, right? We think that we have the ability, we're not going to get caught up in the scheme, but as you look back over history and what we read from scripture is that the enemy, the devil, the Satan, the power of death, it is cunning and creative. It is wise as a serpent. We are no match for this scheme apart from the spirit of Jesus alive in us. And so if we get caught up in patterns that take instead of give, if we get caught up in patterns that isolate us from our neighbor and scapegoat our neighbor and treat our neighbor poorly, whatever we get in return for that will not be worthwhile. Manipulation and confusion do not belong in the kingdom of God.

And so what we need to know today in response to this scripture, Colby, if you'll skip through to pass that scripture to the Yeah, right there. Perfect. God's judgment comes to the people of God. First God's judgment is an invitation, not a threat. We might be tempted today to take this judgment and to defer it, to pass it along, to point our fingers at somebody else, to find somebody to say, yeah, you know what? You really need to listen to this, but these words are for the church and therefore us to, as the church take seriously today in order that we might be who Jesus called us to be.

Jesus points out two things here. He talks about division, and in that he's talking about how your family cannot save you, your associations in life, your allegiances in life, they cannot save you. What it boils down to is loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Those are the things that allow you to live and flourish in the kingdom of heaven. And then he makes this assertion that you look towards the sky and you see the clouds rolling in and you know that it's about to rain, right? I amazed my son the other day. I have a pretty uncanny ability to tell what time it is based on the sun. I can usually get within about 30 minutes, and I don't know if it's luck or if it's skill, I don't know. But the other day, I impressed my son by two times telling him the time based off the sun.

And then he asked me to teach him how to do it. And I was like, well, I don't know. It's just kind of something you got to be able to do. I don't know if I can teach it, but we can look around us and see the things that are going on. And we know here when the wind blows out of the south, it's about to get hot or it's about to storm just like Jesus is referencing here. But Jesus says, you are a hypocrite because I have spoken plainly, the Bible speaks plainly. There are two things that are your primary responsibility, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And you can see the storms rolling in, but you can't see that you are being co-opted into ways that look on your neighbor with disdain that treat your neighbor as a scapegoat that cause you to isolate yourself from your neighbor.

Always, always, always. These two things are connected. Love God, love your neighbor. And so we have to understand the signs around us that are leading us into a position where we are treating our neighbors with something other than love. Now, this may sound to you, you might be sitting there today saying, amen. You might be feeling a bit of frustration. You might be feeling some sort of sense of conviction wherever you are today. I want us to take that and to hear these words proclaimed by Paul in Ephesians, and this is how we're going to wrap things up today. Ephesians chapter three, verse 14. For this reason, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through the spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to power that is at work with us, to him be the glory in the church, in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Would you pray with me?

God, we thank you that you see fit to lead us in your way. God, in a world that is broken and frustrated, sentenced to decay, we see a hope in you and you alone, and we're grateful for that vision. And so, Lord, I pray that today we would receive your judgment as an invitation to examine our hearts and our lives so that by the power of your spirit, we might follow your ways. Love you, love our neighbor as ourselves, and Lord, we pray that in a world that seems pressed on every side from every angle that you would give us here today, a your voice, your words to speak, your hope and your peace in our conversations, in our circles and in our actions, Lord, we ask these things today in your precious name, and by the power of your Holy Spirit, amen.