What Do You Need God For?

Summary:

Jonathan uses the story of Aladdin and the genie to set up a discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12. He notes that the typical gospel message can become too focused on individual salvation and eternity, rather than on Jesus' full teachings about the kingdom of God. 

Jonathan argues that being "blessed" in Jesus' teaching is not about getting what we want, but about allegiance and citizenship in God's kingdom. This requires denying ourselves and trusting in Jesus above all else. Jonathan emphasizes that the way of Jesus is costly but leads to "expanding love and unending joy and increasing peace and deepening grace and fulfilling contentment."

The key is to view the world not through our physical senses, but through the lens of God's kingdom. This requires a constant reordering of our perceptions and a reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit. Jonathan concludes by challenging the listeners to reflect on their own need for God.
 

Transcript:

We are in the middle of a sermon series called The Narrow Way. We are primarily looking at the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew Chapters five through seven. That version that Jeremy just read came from what is known as the Sermon on the plane from the Gospel of Luke. You probably saw some similarities there. In order for us to set the table for what we have to talk about today, want to put forth a hypothetical scenario. Imagine you are going home today and somehow by some stroke of luck or good fortune, you stumble across a genie and a lamp. 

What are the three wishes that first come to your mind? Not necessarily what you would offer in public, but what are just the first things that come to your mind or things that if I had a genie in a bottle that I would wish for, I want to suggest for us today that while there is no judgment, this is completely a hypothetical situation. Your three wishes might be all about yourself and there's no judgment because it's not something that's going to happen, and I'm not going to pass judgment on you anyways, but I'm not going to pass judgment on you certainly for something that is not going to happen, but I think it's interesting in thinking about what are the things that first come to our mind or things that we would wish for tells us perhaps a little bit about our motivation in life, things that capture our attention or sound compelling to us or are motivating to us, things that might help us understand what are the narratives in our mind when we talk about the types of lives that we want to live? 

Arguably the greatest genie movie that has ever been made is Aladdin. In the story of Aladdin, we meet the main character whose name is Aladdin, and he is born on the streets. He sings a song at the beginning where he labels himself a street rat or maybe that's what he was labeled, and that's just what he was singing the song about, but he lives on the street and the real short synopsis of the movie, if you haven't seen it, I don't know where you have been because it's been out for a very long time. I think it actually just had a new one recently that came out, but the synopsis of the movie is Aladdin falls in love through a chance encounter with the princess, but being a person that lives on the street, he has no shot at uniting himself with the princess because she has to marry a prince. 

And so as he's going along, he, because of his just positive motivation and good deeds, stumbles upon a genie and the genie comes out and there's this interesting thing that happens because Aladdin identifies with the struggle of the genie, right? The genie comes out and is this great powerful force, but he's also confined and constrained and lives his life at the demand of others, which is what happens when you don't have the ability to provide for yourself and don't have any help like was Aladdin's case. So Aladdin decides that he's going to use the first two wishes on himself and saved the last one to set the genie free, and then of course the story unfolds and things happen and change, and at the end of the movie, Aladdin is faced with a very difficult decision and that decision is does he do what he knows to be right and set the genie free, which will result then in him not getting what he desires most or does he walk back on his word and what he knows to be the right thing and do the thing that will give him what he wants? Spoiler alert here at the end of the movie, it all works out the way that everyone wanted it to, right? He frees the genie, the dad changes the rules, and everybody lives happily ever after. 

But what if there wasn't a fairytale ending? What then would be our perception of Aladdin and his decision to offer this wish to free the genie instead of using it for himself without the fairytale ending? Would Aladdin have been seen as a chump rendered unable to make the hard choices to get ahead in life if it wouldn't have ended up the way that he wanted to? What would that say about Aladdin's story? I want to pause that and then pick up Jesus's beginning of his sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter five, and I'll read through the first 12 verses. Here's how Jesus begins this sermon. Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside and he sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them and he said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God and blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. 

This teaching of Jesus is the seminal paramount, most comprehensive set of teachings that Jesus offered for us to understand what it means to live in the kingdom of God. 

It is very important for us that we understand this and get it correctly because if we don't, then we will miss out on what Jesus told us, taught us left for us to do and we will not find ourselves on what Jesus called the narrow way. At the opening of our series a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how in society we just sort of have this pendulum that just kind of swings from one side to the other, and we all sort of just find ourselves as the pendulum swings back and forth and whatever our ideas about ourselves, about the world, about our country, about whatever it is that the pendulum is swinging back and forth about, we find ourselves going from one extreme to the other, being pulled in all of these different directions. The problem with that is that as the pendulum swings from one side to another, the common ground or what holds our society together becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until we are just left with kind of what we have now in our political realm. 

Just one side are arguing against the other. And the reason why we brought that up is because I believe, and I think what Jesus is teaching and what the church has sought to instruct for much longer than our political structure has been around anyway, is that Christians followers of Jesus are not to be swayed by one pendulum swing or the other, but instead to live from a center. Now, don't be confused with the center. I'm not necessarily calling us to all be moderates when we think about this in a political landscape, but from a center meaning to be shaped by the teachings of Jesus and to be responsive to the Holy Spirit that is to be the center of our lives as followers of Jesus. And that's why we are working so slowly through this sermon that Jesus taught, because this is where we get our marching orders, so to speak, to live from a center is to trust Jesus above all other prevailing wisdom, above all other truth, above all other ways of life. It's to filter what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears through the lens of what Jesus taught us. That doesn't mean that we don't find value in other things. That doesn't mean that we don't know and pursue other things. That just simply means that the baseline for how we know how to operate in the world, how we know how to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, that the baseline for that is through the teachings of Jesus. 

This is why, as I said, we're working through this sermon series so that we can have a practical understanding of what does it mean to live in the kingdom of heaven, not in some far off disembodied future, but right here, right now in this world. And here's the deal. This is why this is of great importance to us as we think about what it is that Jesus calls us to, 

What the definition of the gospel that we subscribe to or how we understand Jesus's teaching will determine our mission and the way in which we live. Now, if you're not overly familiar with the term gospel, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The gospel is just simply an interpretation of a word that means good news. So when we're talking about the gospel of Jesus, we're talking about the good news of Jesus and what is that good news? It's sort of the summation of how God is making the world right through Jesus. If you were to ask a lot of Christians to tell you what is the gospel, most likely you're going to get a response. The gospel is that Jesus died for my sins and I get to live forever in heaven in eternity. Now, please bear with me for a minute and allow me to complete this thought because while that is a significant portion of the gospel, that is not the whole story. It would be like sitting down at a beautiful five course meal and only eating the vegetables. 

Now I'm sure at a five course meal, the vegetables are delightful and maybe for some of us veggies really get us going, but when you bypass all of the other beautiful and delicious elements of a meal just to get to the veggies, you're missing out and that is how we should approach the gospel. When we understand what Jesus came to do and who Jesus is and how that affects our lives, we have to understand that the gospel is much more than Jesus's death and our eternity. It also includes Jesus's life. It includes his teachings, it includes whatever authority he has over our lives that we give him and what authority he has over the world, and it includes the resurrection of Jesus, which is what we live into today. Simply put, the best definition of the gospel that I know of is this Jesus Christ is Lord. And that changes the way, not just the way that we die and what happens after that, but that changes the way that we live. If our understanding of the gospel is narrowly focused on Jesus's death and our eternity, just for a second, think about how that might shape the way in which we live. 

If we are too narrowly focused on that, it might tempt us to put our place at the center of Jesus's story. Just listen to how this is said. Jesus died for my sins and I'm going to heaven. And while that's true, who is the focus of that sentence? It's me. 

If I am the focus, then I might be concerned with what Jesus said and I might put a good effort into doing what Jesus has told me to do, but I'm certainly not going to be inconvenienced by it. I might trust Jesus in ways that reinforce my thinking or my lifestyle, but if it's too difficult or if it makes me comfortable, I'm just going to settle for that. Oh, well, no one's perfect, right? And move on. And from there, there's a whole host of unwinding and undoing that happens that actually leads us closer in alignment to the patterns of brokenness than the narrow ways of Jesus. However, if our understanding of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is Lord, yes, Jesus died for our sins. Yes, we will live with him for eternity, but also the truth of Jesus will set us free here now today on this earth and resurrection tells us that whatever Jesus's way might cost us, it is worthwhile. 

So back to Aladdin finds himself with this decision, what am going to do? Am I going to do the thing that I know that I need to do or am I going to do the thing that is good for me? I think for most of us, we are very comfortable with the version of Jesus that gives us a happy ending, whatever that might look like. But the question that the sermon on the Mount compels us to ask is what about when this narrow way costs something? You cannot read the Sermon on the Mount and think that the narrow road won't cost you something, and Jesus was very clear on that. There are narratives out there that tell us that if we admit our need for God and confess our sins and trust and believe in God, then God will give us whatever we want or that God will be there in times when we need God to show up. 

And while there is of course some truth in those ideas, it doesn't capture the full story. It's not congruent with what Jesus taught. Being blessed is the word that Jesus used, at least in our translation of it, and that I don't know about you or what your experiences with the church, but that word can have loaded meanings to it, right? It can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. Being blessed can mean that you're on top of the world for some being blessed can mean anything underneath that, and it can just simply mean being aware of God's presence. So because of that, we need to sort of clarify what Jesus is talking about when we are using that word or when we are responding to him using that word. Being blessed is not getting what you want. It is allegiance to and citizenship in the kingdom of God. 

It's knowing that yes, God will provide for us, but God will provide the things that we need in order for us to live in the kingdom of God, not necessarily in the kingdom of the world or by the patterns of brokenness, the narrow way. What we have been defining, what Jesus called the narrow way and how we have been defining it is not narrow in the slightest. It's not narrow thinking. It's not thinking that you have everything figured out and no one else does. It's actually the exact opposite of that. It results in a life of expanding love and unending joy and increasing peace and deepening grace and fulfilling contentment. But those things don't come as a result of being too blessed to be stressed. 

It's the result of dying to ourselves or denying ourselves, which is a significant cost, as best as I could count Jesus almost 26 times. And Matthew, mark, Luke, and John mentions this idea of denying yourself or dying to self, and that's a hard concept for us to understand. The only way that I can even begin to make sense of it in my experiences in life is to understand what happens when a parent has a child, a parent. When you have a child, you devote your whole life to that kid from the moment that they are born. Whose idea is it that this thing comes out and in the beginning they're usually not pretty and it's going to for the next, however long that you're with that thing, it's going to take your time, your resources, your energy. You're not going to be able to sleep. You're not going to be able to have anything of your own, right? I mean, whose idea was that? 

But we do it willingly. Why? Because on the other side of your devotion to that person is a beautiful unending joy that previously went unknown in your life, and you don't have to just have a child in order to understand that. You can understand that through your relationship with your family, with your best friends in life. To give ourselves to another in a relationship is one of the most beautiful ways to live our lives. And so while maybe dying to self or denying yourself doesn't necessarily jive with our 21st century concepts of live Your truth, and it has a significance for all of us that is an invitation to a deeper journey with Jesus and a deeper invitation and grace and peace and love of if Jesus Christ is Lord, then us doing us or you doing you doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. 

And actually it goes in direct opposition of the Kingdom of God. The tricky part though is that all of us, no matter how involved we are in the modern philosophies and psychologies of our day, we are all tempted by the movements of our culture in one way or another, in ways that lead to experiencing life to the fullest in ways in which we are damaged by it as well. And so we have to figure out how do we navigate these things, filtering them through the way of Jesus, through the teaching of Jesus. This is why for us, a lost art in the church is the art of confession. And that's why we're trying to bring it back here at Journey because the danger for all of us is that we would think that we and people similar to us hold all of the right opinions, think all of the right thoughts and do all of the right things. 

And the reason why that is dangerous is because we began to approach life as if we are the arbiters of all things good. And anybody who disagrees with us or doesn't think like us or act like us, they're just standing in the way. And confession says, it's not me that gets it right. Confession says, I don't have the ability to put all of this together or to hold it all together or to keep it all going in the right direction. It says, that belongs to Jesus and to Jesus alone in my life. And if we believe that we are on a path that we can do no wrong, then we are not on the narrow path that Jesus calls us to trust in Jesus is to seek a constant reordering of what we perceive to be true in our physical senses and what we trust to be true in the kingdom of God. This is why you see in several places in the Bible the prayer for eyes to see and ears to hear. It's not that the people praying those prayers have a limitation in their sight or a limitation in their hearing. It's because they want to see and hear not with their physical eyes, but the reality of the kingdom of God that is around us. 

To illustrate that, I want to read a quote from a German theologian named Jurgen Moltmann, and here's what he says. This is a quote that I don't even really know how to fully accept this. Here's what he says, okay. Jesus's healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly natural things in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded. I don't know how that sits with you for me, I have probably read that quote over and over again, no less than a hundred times, and I'm not even really a hundred percent sure that I'm totally with what our good friend Mr. Moltmann is saying because this is a total reordering of everything that we have ever been taught. This is a reordering that invites us to see the world in which we live, not through our physical life, but through the eyes of the kingdom that shape us in a whole different way, not to see reality through a broken lens, not the best of all the bad options, not the lesser of evils. 

Every time somebody says something like that to me, I just want to drop down on my knees and pray. There's got to be something more than the best of the bad options. Is that really what our human existence is choosing the best of the best options? Are we really in that scenario? Well, for those of us who are living according to the ways of the kingdom of heaven, no, we don't have to settle for that. There is something much greater, much more, and it's to perceive reality through the way and the teaching and the life of Jesus, which sets us free from the worst or the best of the worst options. But we have to know in this that we don't just pray a prayer and all of a sudden live according to this way. It is a daily denial of ourselves. It is a hard road, but it is a road that there is so much blessing on that nothing else can compare. It's also why Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to give us power to move in our lives so that we are able to live according to this way. And the Sermon on the Mount, 

Jesus begins with this reordering. That was my introduction to my sermon, by the way. No, the Sermon on the Mount begins with this series of statements of what does it mean to be blessed? And it's probably not what we would imagine if we had not read it before. 

Now, the word blessed comes from the Greek word makarios, and it means mostly these three things. Blessed, happy, fortunate. As we said the word blessed can be a loaded word, happy, at least for me. I tend to think about circumstances. The word fortunate though I feel like is a great understanding to capture what Jesus is saying here. And so if we think about that, we think about the statements that Jesus made, and Jesus is saying, these are the people who are fortunate. If we were to come up with a list of people who are fortunate in our society, it would not be these that Jesus listed. It would be something totally different. But Jesus is using these blessed statements as an intro to the Sermon on the Mount because serves as an indicator that one of the striking differences between the kingdom of God and the patterns of brokenness is that in the kingdom of God, we don't work for blessing. We work and live and exist from blessing. We don't work for it. We work from it. You don't earn your keep in the kingdom of God. Jesus grants you your stay. Now, for some of us, this can be a hard hurdle to overcome. We are so confident in our abilities to get things right and we have skins on the wall to show for it. 

But no matter how hard we work, no matter how diligent we and faithful we are, we cannot earn something that is free and available to all. So that's why Jesus begins at the bottom. He puts those that are on bottom on top because to be blessed isn't to earn accolades, it's to receive what is freely given pastor and writer. Rich Otus writes it like this. To be blessed is to be accepted and approved by God. Whether or not circumstances seem to confirm or deny it, blessedness produces unassailable happiness and joy regardless of circumstances. In our best cultural imaginations, we settle for the good life are our versions of what does it mean to be happy or blessed. We settle for the ideas of being in good health or having lots of money or eternal optimism or to be acclaimed and admired or to have minimal challenges in life. But those things are always going to be temporary. Jesus compels us to measure blessedness by our need for God. God rejects our cultural versions of success and flips it upside down. That doesn't mean that God is against having nice things and people who are comfortable, but what God knows is that 

Blessedness is on the other side of a disruption, a spiritual disruption in our lives. And the only way that we are going to be able to get ourselves out of the center, not living from a center, but getting ourselves out of the center of our lives, is to trust Jesus's teaching and follow him as we learn what it means to deny ourselves. 

Let we wrap up today a question for us to sort of wrestle with all of this idea. I feel like anyways, this is a bit of a kind of head spinning. Like if this is the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, what in the world is Jesus about to say? Right? Because a lot of things that we have to wrestle with before we even get to that point, which is why I wanted to move slowly and spend some time with it. But ultimately, the question for us to wrestle with this week is, what is your need for God? What is your need for God? All of us will respond to that differently. I would encourage you to take some time this week, maybe find some different Psalm passages and read through them. And what you'll find if you read through, probably if you read through one every day from now until next Sunday, you'll find a whole range of emotions, of circumstances of what people are wrestling with and how they're trusting God. And one of the things that comes to us in the Psalms is this idea that at the end of the day and times of feast and in times of famine, what I need more than anything is God. If I'm in a time of feast, I need God to help me stay there. If I'm in a time of famine, I need God to be with me in those moments. 

And those are beautiful prayers that we are invited to help us as we navigate through our own lives. And what does it mean to follow after the kingdom of God? So what is your need for God and how does that play out in your every day? Would you pray with me? God, I know that for myself as I was planning this message, there was a lot of excitement, but also maybe a lot of timidity. I don't want to presume or put my feelings on anyone else, but my assumption is that as we read through your words that we find in the Sermon on the Mount, be that today or anytime over the next several weeks, there will be moments where our response is just simply, I hear you, but I'm not sure. So God, as we prepare to embark down this road, I pray that you would expand our trust in you, that those moments of not being sure would dissipate and the moments of trusting you would expand. We ask these things today, Jesus, in your name and for your sake, amen.