Abolishing or Fulfilling the Law

Summary:

The sermon explores the concept of being a "witness" for the kingdom of God. The speaker notes that the word "evangelism" often conjures up unhelpful ideas of handing out tracts or arguing with people on the street. Instead, the speaker suggests that true "witnessing" is about living out the reordered life of the kingdom, where our blessedness is measured by our dependence on God rather than our ability to acquire possessions or do whatever we want.  The church is called to be a "backyard pool party and barbecue" where people experience the refreshing rest and peace of Jesus, rather than feeling pressured to buy material goods.  The sermon emphasizes that when we live with the kingdom of God as the center, we begin to reflect God's love and live responsibly through the power of the Holy Spirit, which becomes an attractive and invitational witness to others. 
 

Transcript:

This time of year can be somewhat confusing. In Texas. The calendar maybe all times of year can be confusing in Texas, but no shot at Texas. I love Texas. The calendar might say fall and when the month turns over to September, we start to think about pumpkin spice lattes and fall sweaters. But this is a time, it's kind of up and down. You never know what you're going to get. It can be wonderful, beautiful, nice outside, and it can be like an oven when you walk outside, you just never know. So being that it warmed up this week after a few nice days, it had me thinking again about pool parties and barbecues. What was on my mind there is little better than in the heat of July, August, September to receive that coveted invite, the backyard swimming pool and barbecue party. Now, if you are fortunate enough to have a pool, then you don't have to receive an invite.

You can just go enjoy that whenever you want to. But for those of us whose idea of a pool is a little plastic container that the kids splash around in their backyard, we love to be invited over in the heat of the summer months to experience the beautiful, refreshing waters and to enjoy whatever food you might prepare for us. When you do get that invite though, at least for me, that can be a dangerous afternoon. Once I have dipped my toe into the water and begun to feel refreshed and rejuvenated, and once the grill has been fired up and begins to cook and fill the air with delicious smells, I can get a little envious. Now, I love our backyard. We are so fortunate to have a little sort of nest of peace and quiet. The people who lived in our house were gardeners and did a great job giving me a template that I can't fully destroy even though we've worked on it as best we could.

So our backyard is wonderful and I love to grill. I have by choice ish. I have a Weber kettle grill that was a $95 special at Lowe's and it cooks wonderfully. But whenever I go to a friend's house that has a pool and a nicer grill than I do, I get a little bit jealous and I start to think maybe we should have a pool. Maybe we should get a better grill. I don't know if you can identify with that experience, but a lot of times we don't know that we need something until we have seen it or we don't know that we want something new until we have seen it. And essentially the middle of the Bible, at least as the Bible is formatted, there is a prayer book called the Psalms, and the Psalms are a collection of poems and songs and written stories that cry out to God in the midst of whatever people are experiencing.

One of the best parts about the collection of Psalms is that wherever you are in life, whatever you are experiencing, there is a psalm for you. From the top of the mountain to the bottom of the valley, there are psalms that sing out to God. And one of the beautiful things that I have found in these collection of prayers, something that offers me solace and peace, is that whether the psalmist, whoever is writing these poems is on the mountaintop or on the bottom of the valley, they beautifully declare their need for God. I want to read one such psalm. It comes from Psalm chapter 70 and I'm just going to read verses four through five. But here is the cry. May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you may those who long for your saving help always say the Lord is great, but for me, I am poor and needy.

Come quickly to me, oh God, you are my help and my deliverer Lord, do not delay. There's something beautiful there in that cry for God's help. Now, we do not necessarily know when the word poor is used, particularly in the Psalms. We don't necessarily know whether the psalmist is speaking of a material poverty, meaning that they find themselves on the low income side of things. They don't have the material possessions, things that they need to survive or is this a spiritual poverty, meaning that whatever material possessions they have or positions or postures that they have in life that they spiritually are broken and in need of God. But the good thing is that we don't necessarily have to know because whether it is a material poverty or it is a spiritual poverty, the need for God is still the most important offering in these cries and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus compels us to measure our blessedness by our need for God.

Jesus compels us to measure our blessedness by our need for God. You and I are constantly being sold something right? It's so normal to us. We don't recognize how often we are being marketed to purchase something, to do something, to make a decision. We are constantly being sold something. If you pay attention to these messages that we've received, whether that be through social media, through billboards, through clothing that are neighbors are wearing, if you pay attention to these messages, they will depict an understanding of whatever it means to live the good life or live a blessed life. What does it mean for you to have the good life? And if you pay attention enough, you will see that the message from our culture seems to be that you can have everything that you want and you can go about life however you please and do all of the things that you want to do whenever you want to do them.

And that is what the good life is. However, if you just step back from that, you can begin to see the fallacies in that understanding. I have this conversation with my 8-year-old constantly. They say things like when I become an adult or when I become a dad, I'm going to do whatever I want to do and no one's going to tell me what to do, right? I'm going to boss everybody around. I'm going to be the boss. So that sounds great in theory, but we all know that people who do what they want to do as they want to do it, when they want to do it end up alone and isolated and pretty miserable even though they have done what they want to do because we realize that we have responsibilities. There are processes to the ways that things work, and we have to pay attention to our responsibilities and do things the right way.

Otherwise we will isolate ourselves from one another and from God. So Jesus is challenging us that when we think about the responsibilities that we have in life, when we think about our understanding of what does it mean to live a blessed life, or what does it mean to pursue the good life, that our understanding of those things would be that we would measure those things out in our need for God. So Jesus sets the table for this and then he commissions people to live that blessed life and be salt and light. Now, we touched on this a little bit in the conclusion last week. We're going to read this again and I want you to pay attention to the calling that is here in this passage about being salt and light. So Matthew chapter five, verse 13, Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.

Now remember, if you were here last week or followed up that you, Jesus is not from Texas, right? Otherwise he would've said y'all in that moment, right? Because he's not talking about you as an individual. He's talking about you as a community, you as a people. So this is understanding. This is what Jesus is saying, talking about to the community of faith, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven.

Jesus is calling us here to be a witnessing community, to be a community of people who are witnesses for this blessed kingdom, live in the blessing of the kingdom and be witnesses for the kingdom. So the way in which Jesus calls us to be these witnesses is through the metaphor of salt and light, right? We talked about this last week. Salt has two general responsibilities. That's to flavor and to preserve flavor. We talked about that sometimes in life we need to loosen up a little bit, right? We need to let go of some of the seriousness and the heaviness, and we need to live with a little bit of flavor. I think about this in my own life sometimes, particularly as a pastor, we kind of put these expectations on ourselves that we live life perfectly and as an example for all, and that is something that pastors should strive for at least to live lives that help people encounter God.

But pastors are also real people, and sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we are not proud of the example that we are setting. We might say, Hey, do as I do not in this moment because what I'm doing is yelling at my children or forgetting the things that are most important to me and allowing my anger or bitterness to get the best of me in this moment. And sometimes we want to button that up and act like that doesn't exist. But the reality is that when we point to whatever weaknesses or struggles we might have, that what comes out of that is not depicting that I am a failure. What comes out of that is depicting that God is just and forgives right? When we tell our stories and we include the parts that we aren't so proud of, that adds a little bit of flavor to the situation, but it also invites people to see and understand people who are following Jesus as real people with real struggles, who have a relationship with Jesus that helps them navigate those struggles well.

And we need to sometimes add a little bit of flavor where we might want to cover it up. The next thing that salt does is it preserves salt preserves. We use refrigeration mostly to preserve, but in the ancient world, before electricity, before refrigeration, if you wanted to keep something alive or keep something with its freshness, you would treat it with salt, right? This is how you operated and kept things past a shelf life. We talked last week too about how there are people in my life, I don't know if you can pick out those people in your life, but people who have preserved you and your moments of weaknesses, and those times when you were astray. For me, it was my grandparents who prayed for me, who showed up for me, who were there for me, who preserved my life through their prayers and presence.

Jesus is calling us to add a little bit of flavor to the world and also to preserve the world through our neighbors by showing up and through our prayers. You can never underestimate the importance of prayers. Jesus also alluded that to us that the church should be the light of the world. When we were regularly doing movie on the wall, that would start in dark, so it would end and it would still be dark. So we would pack up all of the movie equipment, the sound equipment, and we would come back here and at that point, it's late at night trying to get some Taco Bell before we go home and to park over here and turn on the light and then drive around or walk around and turn on the light. The light switch to this room is over here in this corner and where we store the movie equipment is in this corner.

So it was always a bit of a trepidatious moment when you would park over here and open the door, and then you would have to navigate, try and remember where's the couch, where's the table? Where are the chairs in order to get over to that side of the room where the light switch is? And even though I know this room pretty well, I would still bump into things. I would still hit things or kick things or knock something over. But when you turn on the light, then you can see all of the things that are in your way. You can understand what is in front of you and learn how to navigate those things well. So should be the church in the world. They should be the light that illuminates the path way forward. And when we individually and connected collectively live connected to Jesus and we are set free in the depths of our soul, we become a witnessing community that declares the need for God and invites others to see their need for God as well. And that witness points to the reordering of the world where what was once lost is now found, where what was despised is valued, where what was overlooked is now magnified, and what was broken is put together again.

That'd be a great amen spot right there. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I'm not sure what comes to your mind. First of all, what idea comes to your mind when you hear that word witness? For me, as I was thinking about that this week, the first word that pops into my mind when I hear the word witness is another word, and that's the word evangelism. One of the struggles that we have in the church is that some of the specific church words that we use have so many different meanings and so many different contexts that you don't really understand exactly what you're talking about when you say this word. So it's this word that is impactful is beautiful, but it loses its meaning because it has so many definitions and so many ways to understand it. For me, evangelism is one of those words when I hear that word, I think primarily of two acts.

One would be handing out tracks to people. I dunno if you have seen these, but they're cards or pamphlets that have some sort of clever saying on the front, and the hope is that somebody would receive that and then see their need for Jesus fall on their knees and confess him as savior. That's a big responsibility for a small piece of paper. The other idea that comes into my mind is sort of the person on the street, people arguing against whomever trying to use their words in order to convince people to follow Jesus. So those are the things that pop into my mind, and as a bit of a trial here this past week, I just Googled evangelism. I googled it, and then I pulled up YouTube and I typed it into the search bar in YouTube. When I googled it, what popped up were different techniques that you can use to convince people to follow Jesus, right?
Sort of like A plus B equals C. Now you're following Jesus, those kind of tactics. When I searched it on YouTube, the thing that popped up was people with microphones on the street corners, essentially yelling at people, trying to convince them to follow Jesus. Now, I don't want to devalue anyone, and I certainly don't want to devalue someone's ministry, but my opinion is that either of those two ways of going about sharing the gospel are probably not the most effective form, and it certainly is not what I believe Jesus had in mind when he was calling us to be witnesses to the kingdom of heaven. Being a witness to the kingdom of heaven isn't arguing with or proving wrong atheists. It's not handing out a track with a convincing message, being a witness, and even more so being a witnessing community as the church is so much more than these things being a witnessing community, as Jesus described it as being salt and light is living with the reordered sensibility that the blessed life is measured by the dependence on God. In our earlier example, the church should be the backyard pool party and barbecue that people get invited to where the once lost, but now found people who are living their reordered lives that exemplify the refreshing rest found when you lay down your burdens that you've been carrying as you try to hold it all together, and instead of people wanting to buy grills and install pools in their backyard when they interact with this community, it is the peace and love of Jesus that they want. Even if they never previously were aware of that.

This is a time for us to be honest together, right? You are welcome here. This is a safe space. How many of you fall prey to single use kitchen gadgets? Anybody? Yeah. Right? Our drawers are probably full of them, right? Look at this one up here on the screen. This thing right here takes a task, which is pretty simple. You just take a knife, cut the kernels off and you're done, right? But this little donut shaped thing with a spout on it is going to revolutionize the way that you take corn off of a cup. These little gadgets are everywhere, and the idea behind them is that they take a task that is menial, but that requires some extra attention and care, and they make it convenient and easy for you. The problem though is that for the most part, these things are often difficult to use.

They barely work, they're impossible to clean, and usually they're very cheaply made, and so even if they do work, they fall apart. I enjoy cooking. There are some menial tasks when I cook that I don't necessarily, like for instance, pulling the leaves off of the stem of cilantro, right? That is a very tedious task that I don't like to do. Another one of them, when I'm making chili, I use ground Turkey and sausage, and then you brown it up and then you got to grind it all up. You got to chop it all up into small pieces. For whatever reason, I don't like doing that. One day the heavens aligned. I was at my mom's house and she pulled out this gadget out of her drawer and began grinding up the meat. I think that it's called the Pampered Chef mix and chop. This thing is brilliant.

It is sturdy, it works. It is wonderful for shredding chicken, for grinding up meat. If you don't have one, you need to get one because it will change your life. When we are thinking about our witness in a lot of ways, I feel like the got you questions and the arguing with people are like the cheap kitchen gadgets that fill our drawers. They might look okay from a distance, but they don't really work all that well. The most effective way to witness to the love of God is to live as the beloved of God and for the kingdom of God to be the center on which your life is sustained. And the truth is that when you and I individually and collectively seek to pattern our lives in the way of Jesus, we see the kingdom growing roots and blossoming in our lives that is attractive and beautiful and invitational to people to follow Jesus because there are a lot of things that happen, but two of them that I want to point out this morning are this. When we live with the kingdom of God as the center of our lives, we began first of all to reflect God's love.

In two Corinthians five, Paul talks about how when you become a follower of Jesus, the old person goes away and the new person begins to develop. As we learn God's love, the ways in which we rushed to judgment and anger and were filled with fear, consumed with fear, controlled by fear and bitterness, those ways began to decrease and the ways of the kingdom that of love and peace and joy and goodness and patience began to fill our lives, allowing us to relax into the flow of grace and peace and that formation. When it happens in our lives, it is visible, it is palpable, and when it is sourced by the spirit, it becomes contagious.

So when we live with the kingdom of God as the center, we begin to reflect God's love, meaning that what people see when they see us is this compelling love of God. The other thing that it does for us is that it enables us to live responsibly. The Holy Spirit lives in our lives, and when the center of our lives is the kingdom of God, we don't have to strategize, we don't have to manipulate, we don't have to have all of the i's dotted and T's crossed. The spirit then leads us and makes us aware of the things not only that we should do personally, but the things that we should do for others, and when the spirit is moving and we are living responsive, when the Holy Spirit captures our attention, we are led to the places that are in need of God's light to shine, and when the light of God shines into the places of need, people see that light and respond.

Parker Palmer, who is a Quaker theologian and minister, wrote a bunch of good works, but this is something that he wrote about leadership. I want to change the word leader for this purpose is to witness because I think it says something beautiful for us. Here's what it says. A witness is someone with the power to project shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there. A witness shapes the ethos in which others must live an ethos that an ethos as light filled as heaven or as shadowy as hell, the witnessing community of God is one that dispels shadows and fills the world with light. Shadows are dispelled in our lives and in our community as God heals that which is broken and frees us from the weight of the wounds that we carry with us. So when Jesus is calling us to be witnesses, he is inviting us to first of all be healed, but then also to proclaim with our lives as salt and light that everyone who we engage with is treasured and everyone who we witness to can be free. Think back to the story that Jesse read for us, a woman is brought before Jesus for the purpose of him condemning her, judging her. This woman to these people has little value.

She was rendered worthless and tainted. She was the gratification of someone else's pleasure. That's what she had been reduced to, and she was thrown at the feet of Jesus. But Jesus first of all saw her. He dismissed her accusers, and then he set her free. What I want for us to remember today is that you and I are descendants of her legacy being lost and found not descendants of the religious leaders being judgmental and harsh. Jesus wrote in Matthew 11 verse 28, and this comes from the translation of the message, are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me. This is Jesus speaking. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the forced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. That's what the narrow path is all about, learning to live freely and lightly.

I have two hopes for us this morning. First of all, is that if you find yourself today in a situation where you are weighed down by life, maybe it's something that you have done or left undone, maybe it's the weight that you are carrying on your shoulders as you are trying to keep it all together and keep all the plates spinning and doing it with a smile on your face. Maybe it's a wound that has never been healed. If you find yourself in that position, I want you to just ask yourself, is this something today that I can lay down at the feet of Jesus? My other hope for us would be that we would recognize today that this restful and relaxed way of Jesus is an invitation for us to pause, to allow the weight, the seriousness, the stress, the anxiety that life gives to us to allow that to dissipate, that we might find real and true rest.

David's going to come for us today and Rachel, and we're going to spend a few moments in prayer and singing together. As we prepare for communion. I want you to just relax into this moment and make the most of it. Invite Jesus through either a prayer of your own or through the words of the song to capture your attention and reveal to you whatever it is that God is calling you to. You are welcome to stand and sing if that suits you. If you want to carve out a time to pray, you can either pray at your seat or back here in our prayer corner, whatever you need to do in order to connect with the Holy Spirit in this moment. Do it, inviting Jesus to reveal to you what he desires for you today. Holy Spirit, come in this moment and capture our attention as we sing today.