A Life That Looks Like Jesus Part 4 The Secret of Living Like Jesus Matthew 11:28-30 Rev. Jeff Chapman ~ January 25, 2009 ~ Faith Presbyterian Church This morning is part four in our series entitled A Life That Looks Like Jesus. For three weeks now, we ve been exploring what it means to live lives that look like Christ. If you re just joining us today, I d really encourage you to go to our website this week and catch up by reading the first three sermons. We began by talking about how Jesus claims that he is the one, the only one, who can quench the deepest thirsts within us, thirsts for security, for belonging, for purpose, for connection with God. He came to bring, as he put it, living water to quench these thirsts. Then we talked about how when we receive this gift from Christ, he comes into our lives and begins to transform us. But he doesn t start with our words and our actions. He starts with our hearts. Because Jesus knows that words and actions flow from the heart. And they can t change until the heart is renovated. Fruit always follows essence. The next logical question, then, and the focus of our time these next few weeks, is how? After we have trusted Christ, how exactly does this renovation happen? How do we actually begin to see, day by day, our lives looking more and more like his life? In answering that question, let s turn to scripture and see what Jesus, himself, had to say about all this. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30, NRSV) About this time last year, a Midwest-based group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) decided to take its message public. Next to a highway in Columbus, Ohio, this self-described group of freethinkers unveiled a 14 x 48- foot stained glass style billboard with this simple request: "Imagine No Religion". So, as you re commuting to work in downtown Columbus, we want you to turn off the talk radio and just dream with us for a minute? Dream about a life, a world, in which religion has no part. That s all we re asking. The goal of these folks is straightforward. They want to let all Americans know that there is a way to live, a better way to live, which is free from the dogma and legalism they see being promoted by organized religion in our culture. In their words, churches are just putting all this baggage on people to keep the flock in line and the offering plates full. 1 Now, the stated purpose of the FFRF is to promote atheism. And I think it s safe to say that s a cause Jesus isn t about to promote. However, that doesn t necessary mean he wouldn t like their billboard. Lots of people attribute those words Imagine No Religion to John Lennon. But wasn t Lennon s song just borrowing an idea that had already been around for 2000 years? Remember, Jesus stepped into a 1 st century Palestine scene in which nobody was imagining a life free from religion. Quite the opposite, actually. Religion dominated every aspect of life. And the Jewish leaders of the day had instituted 1 See article from BBS News at http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20080212012956810
2 laws and practices that regulated everything from how you washed your hands to what kind of people you could talk to at the market. And frankly, the weight of religion in Jesus day was crushing people. The expectation to be holy and righteous, the constant attention to always follow the letter of the law, and the severe consequences of not doing so, we re sapping the life out of people. No doubt there were many people sincerely trying their best to live lives that were pleasing to God, but the failure and the guilt that came from those efforts were crushing them. Jesus himself, at one point, condemned the religious leaders, accusing them of tying up heavy loads and putting them on the shoulders of the people. 2 For his own set of reasons, I think Jesus would have loved a 14 x 48 foot billboard on the interstate leading into Jerusalem: Imagine No Religion. It is into this context, this context where man-made religion was crushing people, that Jesus speaks the words that we just read: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Who does Jesus invite to himself? Basically, he invites those who are having a hard time of it. Those who want to be good, who want to please God, who want to help people, but who so often feel quite selfish, quite un-up to the task, quite inadequate. 3 Jesus invites those who, when it comes to living a life that looks like his, consider themselves failures. If this describes you, as I know it describes me, then know that Jesus invites you to come to him. And when you come, you are apparently invited to come as you are. Don t try to clean yourself up first. Don t try to get your life in order first. Just come. Come with your mess. Come with your sin. Come with your failure. Come with your hard heart. Come with your past, and your secrets, and your addictions, and your doubts. Come with all your weariness and heavy burdens. Come, Jesus says, and I will give you what you need and desire. All you need and desire. Living water. Abundant life. Specifically, Jesus says here that there are two things he will give to those who come. First, he will give them rest. And not just a good night s sleep, but rest for your souls. Jesus wants to give us deep refreshment, a full recovery from the toll that life, and religion, has taken on us. In a word, what I think Jesus is talking about here is grace. He wants to gives us grace. And one way to define grace is that place in life where we find ourselves accepted in the eyes of God. We don t deserve God s favor, but because of what God has done in Christ, God s favor comes our way anyway. That s grace. And there is no greater gift that could ever be given to us than grace. I know that s true for me. My deepest desire and longing in life is to find myself in a place where I am pleasing and acceptable before God. To hear God say to me, Jeff, in spite of all the mess of your life, I love you, and forgive you, and welcome you, and will never leave you to hear that from God, that is all I really need in life. Aren t you the same? In the 10 th chapter of Romans, Paul writes these words to us: If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved Anyone who trusts in [Jesus] will never be put to shame. 4 If you come to Christ in faith, mess and all, this grace is yours. And with that grace comes rest. I mean, just think about it. Think of all the burdens in life that fall away once you know that no matter what, once and for all, you belong to God. That is rest. This rest, then, is the first thing that Jesus promises to those who come to him. But notice that s not all he promises. Because in the same breath that Jesus promises refreshment, he also promises equipment. In his words, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. Jesus gives us rest. He also gives us work. 2 Matthew 23:4. 3 Dale Bruner helped provide some of this language here - Matthew: A Commentary, Volume 1, (Grand Rapids: Eerdman s Publishing, c. 2004), p. 537. 4 Romans 10:9,11.
3 Recently I read this passage with my two oldest kids. And as soon as I read it I could tell something wasn t registering. But it took me a couple minutes to realize that my kids had no idea what a yoke was. The only kind of yoke they knew about was a yolk, an egg yolk. And the image of coming to Jesus and having him crack eggs over your head didn t seem to jive with everything else they d read about in the gospels. By the way, it wasn t necessarily an offensive idea particularly to my eight-year-old son, Noel, who would probably love to get in a food fight with Jesus, or anybody else for that matter. So I explained to them what you likely already understand. In Jesus day a yoke was a piece of farm equipment, an instrument of work, usually a piece of crafted wood that would connect two animals, often oxen, so that they could work together and plow a field, or pull a heavy load. Understand then, Jesus doesn t say, I will give you a vacation. Or, I will give you a mattress. Or, I will give you a cup of chamomile tea to help you sleep. He says instead, I will give you a yoke. So apparently, this rest he has for us doesn t equate to leisure. He s got work for us to do. Now, you ve heard me say before that Jesus loves us so much he accepts us as we are, but loves us too much to leave us that way. Well, when we come to Christ with our mess, he welcomes us and freely gives us rest, and grace. No question. But then in the same breath he says to us, Okay, I accept you as you are, mess and all, but now it s time for you and me to work together to start cleaning this mess up. Once again, Jesus really does expect his followers to live lives that, more and more, look like his life. Not to earn God s favor, but because of it. But this renovation of our hearts and, in turn, our lives, is something we are to do together. After all, God you must get this never asks us to something that he does not also give us the strength and the means to do. 5 One writer helps us imagine Jesus invitation this way and think of the image of the two yoked oxen as you hear these words: Become my yoke mate and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it. You carry what you can, Jesus says, and I ll carry the rest. We are going to work together here to move your life to where it s supposed to be. 6 Don t miss this. The Christian life, living the way God wants us to live, is not something God expects us to do on our own. But it is something that is going to require from us work. A tremendous amount of work, actually. And that, from what we already know of life, shouldn t come as a surprise because there is a basic principle of nature at work here that we all should recognize. Any kind of growth in the human life, spiritual as well as physical, always requires significant effort and hard work. Sometimes people say it this way.no pain, no gain. This may be hard for some of you to believe, based on appearances, but I actually do have a weight set in my garage at home. And though, truth be told, it s used more often as a bike rack than as a piece of exercise equipment, it does get some use. I know you can t tell this morning, but under this robe I m a chiseled human specimen! Anyway, imagine that somebody challenged me to jump on that weight set and bench press 300 pounds. How many of you think I could do that today? Thanks for the overwhelming vote of confidence! But honestly, most of you are right. If I went home this afternoon and tried to lift that much weight, I would probably tear my arms off. And it wouldn t matter how hard I tried. Right? It 5 I think I first heard this statement, or something quite like it, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship. 6 Dale Bruner.
wouldn t matter how sincere I was in my efforts. I could push all day with all my might, but that 300 pounds is not budging. 4 But listen closely. That does not mean that I could not lift 300 pounds. It just means that trying alone isn t going to get it done. But training, that s a whole different story. If I had six months, and the right motivation, how many of you think I could train to the point where I could lift that much weight? I m almost positive it could happen. 7 You see, sometimes we get this all backwards. We think that the hard way to lift 300 pounds is to train 30 minutes every day for six months. But that s not the hard way. That s actually the easy way! The hard way is to just try without training. And that s not only the hard way, that s the impossible way. Are you with me? Well, stay with me because this same principle of trying versus training applies to the Christian life. Because if we just try to live like Jesus, just try to do and say the things that Jesus would do and say if he were in our place, how successful are we going to be? Not very. And most of you know this from experience. Religion, at least the kind of religion that is being attacked these days in billboards around our country, doesn t work because it sets people up to, on their own effort, try to please God with their lives. And it never, ever works. In fact, it leaves people weary in their failure and loaded up with heavy burdens of guilt. Let me use an example. Take patience. We all know that Jesus was a patient man. We also know that God wants us to be patient people. The scriptures tell us that we are to love and that love is always patient. 8 Well, if you are by nature an impatient person, have you ever just tried by sheer effort alone to be patient? Give it a go this week. Try your best to remain completely patient for the next seven days. And then let me know how it goes for you. I ll tell you how it will go. Not well. If you are naturally an impatient person, you ll have about as much success simply trying to be patient all week as I will of going home today and trying to bench pressing 300 pounds. On its own, trying, even trying with sincere motivation, doesn t get it done. Again, Jesus does want us to be patient. And not just patient, but like him in every other way as well. To love our enemies, to be generous with our things, to tell others about Christ, to be content in all situations, to love God with all of ourselves. These are incredible things God expects from us. But trying alone won t get it done. That s why God has given us equipment. He s given us a yoke. His yoke. He s given us means of training with him for the sort of life he wants from us. He says to us, Come to me, take my yoke upon you, and I will gently work with you to help you train to be the sort of person who really does say and do the sorts of things I would say and do in your place. It won t happen overnight. It certainly won t happen if you try to do this alone. But I have provided a way for us together to make it happen. We see this message all through scripture. In I Timothy 4:7, Paul tells his young protégé Timothy to train yourself to be godly. In Ephesians 4:13, Paul encourages us all to work to become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. In his first letter, Peter says we are to grow in grace. 9 Now, if I want to get my body in excellent physical condition, there are certain things I must do. I must exercise, and eat right, and get plenty of sleep. I probably need a trainer to help me maximize my physical potential. There is no great athlete in the world that reaches his or her peak physical condition without this kind of intense training. In the same way, the scripture teaches us that there are certain spiritual training practices that we can do, that we must do, alongside Christ, if we are to become like him in our hearts and then, in turn, in our words and actions. 7 This section of the message was heavily influenced by John Ortberg, The Life You ve Always Wanted, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, c. 1997), chapter 3 entitled Trying verses Training. 8 See I Corinthians 13:4. 9 I Peter 3:18. Also see other great examples of this in I Corinthians 9:24-27, Galatians 4:19, Romans 8:29, Ephesians 4:15, Colossians 1:27, Philippians 2:12.
5 Sometimes, these practices are called spiritual disciplines that s the traditional name for them. I really like the way that writer Dallas Willard has redefined that term for us in our day. According to him, spiritual disciplines are those activities we can do by direct effort which enable us to do what we, otherwise, could not do by direct effort. In other words, I cannot bench press 300 pounds just by direct effort. I can, however, begin to lift weights, more and more each day, so that some day I will be able to bench press 300 pounds. In the same way, I can t, own my own and by direct effort, live a life that looks like Jesus. I can, however, come alongside Christ and pray, and worship, and give, and study scripture, and find times of silence and solitude. And as I work with Christ in these and other time-tested disciplines of the Christian faith, bit by bit, and with God s help, I will see myself being transformed from the inside out to live the sort life God has called me live. Again, the best part about this spiritual training is that, unlike my physical training, I am not asked to do this simply on my own power. As one who has trusted Christ, one who has come to him and given my life to him, he has not only given me his rest but also his yoke. He is there with me in this training. His Spirit, as scripture promises, has come to live within me. And within me, the Spirit of Christ works to shape me and transform me along the way. This is not and this can t be overstated about trying to first change our words and behaviors. We ve already covered that ground and understood that those things can t be changed until the heart is changed first. So the spiritual training we are most interested in is training of the heart. In fact, all spiritual formation work is heart work. The heart is the wellspring of all human action. 10 Next week I intend to be very specific about some of these spiritual disciplines. I want to talk with you about how they work, about how God intends them to be used. For some of you this will be new material. For others, these things have been a part of your life for years. Either way, we must understand this. If and when we come to Jesus, he gives us two things. First, he gives us refreshment and rest. He gives us grace. He forgives us, and saves us, and welcomes us into God s family forever. But he also gives us a yoke. He gives us equipment. He gives us work to do. Again, not to earn God s favor. That s already done! But because of God s favor, Christ gives us a pathway, a training regimen, to do alongside him that will, in time, and by the power of the Spirit within us, transform our lives to look like his life. And this pathway, this regimen, is not easy. The Christian life, make no mistake, is never easy. If it is easy, it s not the Christian life. 11 Several years ago a newspaper in Los Angeles quoted a physical trainer and body builder, one of those guys who looks like our governor used to look in his prime. He said this: The guys you see on TV and in magazines that have that look, [that chiseled body builder look], that look is what they do for a living. The maintenance of that look is what their entire lives are based on it s a lifestyle. It s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. [But], we re such a now society. Guys come into the gym thinking that in three months, or by swimsuit season they can be looking all ripped and hard. And that s, um, pretty unrealistic. 12 There is no secret to how you get a body that is in great shape. And in the same way, there is no secret when it comes to living the sort of life that looks like Jesus. Jesus spelled it out plainly for us. That life begins in grace, begins in refreshment. But it also involves tremendous effort. It involves our full and lifelong devotion and commitment. Yes, it s done in partnership with Christ; it s his yoke. He, in fact, does the bulk of the heavy lifting. But we also give ourselves fully to it, following the pathway he has laid out. And as we do, the results are guaranteed. By the grace of Christ, we can see ourselves, day by day, and from the inside out, becoming the sorts of people whose lives really do look like Jesus. Amen. 10 Quoted from Richard Foster in Spiritual Formation Agenda, Christianity Today, January, 2009. 11 Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly stated than by Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount when he describes the Christian life as a narrow and difficult road that only a few find and follow. See Matthew 7:13-14. 12 Quoted from Ortberg, p. 56-57.
6 The Next Step A resource for Life Groups and/or personal application ~ Can you describe a time when you failed to train and discovered that no matter how hard you tried, you could not accomplish your goal. What did you learn from this experience? ~ Read again Jesus words in Matthew 11:28-30 (both versions on the front). What is the best news that you hear in his words here? Anything here that is confusing or difficult to understand? ~ Have you received rest for your soul from Jesus? If so, how so? If not, how do you still need rest for your soul? ~ If a life of following Christ is hard, why does Jesus say that my yoke is easy and my burden is light? ~ If we make personal spiritual advancement (i.e. getting a life that looks like Jesus) a legalistic program, how can this lead to guilt and sadness rather than joy and peace? ~ In your own words, what do you think it means to take Jesus yoke upon yourself? Is that something you have done in your life? What has that looked like? ~ Transformation Question: Nobody just drifts into a life of training, whether it s physical training or spiritual training. Serious training that leads to significant life-change always requires a great deal of intention and commitment. When it comes to the sort of training required to live the Christian life, is this something you truly desire? So much so that you will give yourself fully to it? ~Bonus Life Group Scripture: Read these amazing verses from Paul in Philippians 3:12-4:1. What does this passage add to our understanding of this message? How is the Christian life like a long distance marathon? How is it unlike a long distance marathon? Further Scripture Readings for the Week: Monday: Matthew 7:13-14 Tuesday: Ezekiel 34:15-16 Wednesday: Ephesians 4:11-16 Thursday: Philippians 2:12-13 Friday: I John 5:1-5 Saturday: In preparation for tomorrow s worship, you might read I Timothy 4:1-16. Resources for Further Growth Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ, by Dallas Willard (Colorado Springs: NavPress, c. 2002) - A marvelous book which gets to the heart of the issue when it comes to having a life that looks like Jesus. Perhaps no contemporary church leader addresses these issues more faithfully than Willard. Best read in small doses and digested. Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice, by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, c. 2006). - This is a book of 61 short experiments which help put into practice the principles from Renovation of the Heart. This is a wonderfully practical resource for those who really want to apply these things. The Life You ve Always Wanted, by John Ortberg (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, c. 1997). - Ortberg is a local pastor (actually Presbyterian) and student of Dallas Willard. His book, by his own claim, is Dallas for Dummies. It s a great companion to what Willard has to teach.