Northside Church - Sydney
The Good Life - Why stand for good in a bad world? - Sam Haddon
Here's another inspiring message from Northside Community Church Sydney. A Jesus style revolution, we're looking at what is the good life, we're trying to answer the question, what is the good life, what is the good life, and we looked at that last week, we said that anyone who lives geographically between basically the upper areas of northern New South Wales and the Gold Coast have found it, so blessed are you who have to live here in Sydney. I also had a congregation contribution and I continue to welcome all of these as you were brainstorming what the good life is. Someone sent me this picture, we got that there Holly, someone sent me this picture and this was someone's representation of the good life, they went to the archer board prize without walking group the other week at the art gallery and listened to the commentary here from the artist, it says this, "In my portrait, I've chosen to depict myself in the future and when I grow up I want to be a rich CEO, I chose to draw myself from below to give myself a sense of authority and to look like a scary boss to my employees, I've dressed my imagined self in an expensive business suit and in my front pocket you can see a hundred million dollar note to show off my wealth." And that's from Oscar, aged eight, from Chatswood West, one of our local communities, so go the lower north shore, hey, it's right there, Oscar's founded, Oscar's found the good life and yet Jesus, when we ask Jesus what He says the good life is, Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, which one is it, happy are those who stand for good and I remember being in the USA, one of my trips to America and I remember hearing a preacher in a message literally say to his congregation, "God doesn't want you to be happy, He wants you to be holy," can you imagine that God doesn't want you to be happy, He wants you to be holy, which I think is how a lot of Christians think from time to time, have you found that? There's a lot of grumpy Christians, there's a lot of Christians that are kind of like if the grumpier you are, the more of a Christian you are, the less happiness there is in your life, then the more that you are serving the Lord, anyone ever seen, Christians like that, oh God, and so we think that happiness and holiness standing for good are mutually exclusive and what we see from Jesus is that you can actually be both and you know what, this whole happy, holy thing, it's probably part of the reason some of you left the church or you left God or you left your version of the faith or you left Christians at least, at least the grumpy version of Christians, because you've got the feeling of like, "I'm either going to be like a good Christian which leads to unhappiness or I'm just going to be happy," and I think isn't that our wrestle is because let's be real with ourselves, we look at Oscar's self-portrait and we kind of go deep down, I think it would be good to be a scary CEO boss with $100 million, look, look, anyone willing to admit that with at least a nod this morning, thank you for the honesty, thank you, I see that nod, I see that nod, thank you. And so we get stuck because we see people who live these lives and we think in the true sense of the Aramaic word that Jesus used for blessed, last week I said the Greek word is macarrios, the Aramaic word that he uses is ashay, which means not so much to have a blessing or to be blessed by God, but ashay is the observation, the external observation of someone's life and you go ashay, that's the good life, yeah they've got the good life, they've got the they're dressed in the suit with $100 million life, they've got the good life and so we're stuck because we're thinking well that kind of is the good life and we have these moments where I don't know if you've experienced this in life but there are times when it almost feels like bad is the better strategy, that the people that do bad seem to get themselves out, the scary bosses, the manipulators, the liars, they seem to get themselves ahead, am I the only one that feels that, surely not the sons have been talking about this for a couple of thousand years, but maybe you've been in business and you're the one that followed the rules of the tender and someone else got in and cheated and under quoted and they got the business and you didn't because you were being honest and they weren't or maybe you were going for that promotion and that co-worker of yours snakes you at the last minute or says something bad about you or does something behind your back and that doesn't happen or maybe you're my eight year old son who always passed the ball in basketball and in his own trials the kid that's been genie him up the school bully pretending to be a rep player played like a little hero and Zach passed the ball to everyone, he had more assists than everyone else in the entire game, never get selected for his own, what is wrong with the world? Sometimes it just feels like bad is a better strategy, wouldn't we agree? Yeah, thank you. Now we're talking and so therefore it begs a question, why stand for good if Jesus says blessed are those who stand for good, why stand for good when good seems to do no good at all? Here's the first reason, doing good may do you no good now but what about later? Notice Jesus doesn't say blessed are those who hunger and thirst after blessedness, it says blessed are those who hunger and thirst after something besides blessedness because we talked about this last week, it's a law of the universe that if you aim to be happy you will not be happy because happiness is an outcome, so don't aim for the outcome aim for the thing that leads to the outcome and so whilst to stand for good may not do you any good in the short term since when have you ever experienced that doing bad in the long run is the best strategy? I mean isn't it true that some of your greatest regrets are those moments in that moment of decision when you knew what was good and what was right and what was wrong that you just chose wrong and I'm sure that there's no one in this room that would go back to a time in their life and say I wish I had have done more bad back then it would have sowed such a happy life now, you know I just wish I could go back to the first year of uni and you know what I should have party harder and I shouldn't have studied as much, you know I wish I just could have gone back into my marriage and just been more selfish at the beginning rather than less selfish and none of us would do that because we understand the outcome that happiness is sowing and reaping, it's sowing something now that doesn't feel good now for the sake of a blessedness, as she the good life later, so do good now even when it doesn't feel good, for happier those who hunger hunger and thirst for righteousness for ultimately they will be another way to put it satisfied, now this sounds very Christian-y's and I want you to listen up if you're watching in and I love the fact that in any given week we've got norsiders who are inviting their friends in here, I chatted to a guy last week and it was his first time in a contemporary church ever, alright so this could be you this morning, you're not alone if you're listening into this, so listen up this is not a Christian thing, this is a thing thing, we all hunger and thirst for righteousness, just not the right righteousness, this is not just a Christian, this is not like the Christians do hunger after the good holy things that the Christians do, now we all hunger and thirst for righteousness, here's why because the word righteousness actually means to be accepted, when we hear righteousness we think that righteousness means to hunger and thirst for all that is good and right and yes that's what it means in that sense but the Greek word dikaiasune is far more nuanced than that and it actually at the deepest level means acceptance, I did this when I was, I think I was about 12 and I love jazz as some of you may know, I know jazz, I play the jazz piano and I've told any of you that, I play jazz piano, I love jazz and so my favorite jazz band was at the basement down there in Sydney, the only challenge was that as a 12 year old the basement was an over 18 venue and so I meticulously all afternoon got my step mum's mascara and proceeded to draw a beard onto my face in the hope that if that could just take me down there that maybe the bouncer may not see in the dark, that my five o'clock shadow was not the real deal, didn't go well, didn't quite happen the way that I wanted to turn it out, I just wondered what went through the bouncer's head, like he didn't even ask for ID, I was that offended, when I rock up and there's this kid with painted beard all on his face, now you might laugh at that but you are painting mascara beards on your face all the time including yourself ladies, we do that when we head out and we head to a conversation and someone says what do you do, like in the old days where I used to say instead of saying I'm an accountant I used to say I'm in finance because finance sounds better, doesn't it, than an accountant, sorry to your accountants, we do it when we head out and people say where do you live, while I live on the lower north shore, we're painting beards, we're trying to create a perception with someone that ultimately brings the sense of acceptance, you do this by the way when you get a wedding invitation and it comes through and the wedding dress code says cocktail, you know you know that conversation you have with someone, a friend or your spouse or your partner and you're like what the hell does cocktail mean, what is cocktail, I don't know what cocktail is, it's like the coattails or is it slacks, is it got a pleat in the front, what is cocktail, what are you doing, you're seeking decayosune, you're saying what must I do in order to be right and acceptable, is it making sense, do this when you go to a dinner party, do I bring a bottle of wine or do I bring the Cadbury favourites, right remember that you know that dilemma that we go through, see we all seek righteousness, it's just not the right righteousness and the unright righteousness is a sense of acceptance beyond ourselves, a sense of acceptance that we receive from God, ultimately where God says I think that you are good enough and we've preached whole sermon series on this, that until you get that into your heart of hearts you will constantly be chasing the wrong righteousness, and so what happens is when we chase this wrong righteousness outside of the righteousness of God, Paul said he who had no sin became sin so that we might be the righteousness, we might be fully accepted by God, when outside of that type of acceptance all of life becomes an audition, every date that you go to and if you singles know what that's like, a nervousness of the date that you go to because you're constantly wondering if I will have decoyosune, will they accept me, all of life becomes an audition, the interview, the boss, even the spouse, all of life becomes an audition and so it always means there's only one or two people in life and they're both anxious, they're just the overtly anxious and the covertly anxious people, the obvious anxious and the hidden anxious but we're all anxious when we seek the wrong righteousness and so along comes Jesus and he says, Ashae, blessed that's the good life, can you imagine this, imagine a life where you are so sure of your love and acceptance before the only voice that matters in the universe that you don't care what anyone else thinks, blessed is that life, amen? Yes, by the way, is the unfolding of what Ashae means, Ashae is actually a persuasive word, don't you reckon it would be good to have that sort of life, that's what Jesus means in these beatitudes, don't you reckon that would be a great life, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the right kind of righteousness? I think I was walking through an airport and I thought, Jesus, Jesus has actually been reading a book on this and I saw it in the airport back in January when we were traveling overseas, looks like this, the subtle art of not really giving any concern to what other people think of you, this goes on the podcast, so they can't see this, it's in the stores, so you're all grown ups, you can deal with it and I know I can see the way how Kristen feels so nervous about this now, so I've achieved what we want to do, the subtle art of not caring what anyone else thinks, it's the blessed life and Jesus must have been reading that book because Mason argues in his book that individuals should seek to find meaning through what they find to be important and only engage in values they cannot control, values such as popularity that are not under a person's control according to the book are bad values and furthermore individuals should strive to replace these uncontrollable values with things they have the capability to change such as punctuality, honesty or kindness, this is revolutionary, why did we read this before, in fact you know the crazy thing, the crazy thing is I look at this and I go, I probably pay 30 bucks for that book, that kind of is a cool title and all of this is for free in the beatitudes because the whole premise of this book is everything that Jesus says to it, blessed are those who find an inner dynamic within themselves where they don't care what the rest of the world thinks about them, aren't you going to have an interesting conversation at work this week, what do you learn at church, the subtle art of not caring about what anyone else thinks, that's exactly what Jesus says, blessed are those and when you take this hunger and thirst for righteousness and approval of God so that you don't care what anyone else thinks then this is the fulcrum of the beatitudes by the way, then it turns you into the sort of person who now does what he says to do next and this is crucial, don't try and do what we're going to talk about next, if you haven't first done all that we've been talking about, a sense of repentance from your self-sufficiency, a mourning over your sin that we talked about last week, a loneliness that comes from removing the self-interest out of your repentance into the sense of seeking a righteousness that comes from God and not from yourself and then only when you've been through those steps can you now become the sort of people that he is describing in the beatitudes and here they are, he says then, happy then, happy then, the relation or relationally generous, happy are those who are merciful for they will be shown mercy and mercy there is to have a compassion to another person to the extent that it costs you, happy are those who bless other people who give to other people, who give people exactly what they don't deserve, who aren't seeking revenge, who forgive, who put away bitterness, who are not wanting to be paid back, blessed are this, blessed are you who do that because you know this, how many of you know a happy bit of person, how many people of you know happy people that have been harbouring and holding grudges all their life, it is wonderful to be around aren't they, so Jesus says when you become the sort of person who is not relying on other people's sense of approval for your approval then you're able to give to people in a costly fashion, these are men and women who decide to extend to their father exactly what their father didn't deserve, it's that men and women who decide to extend to their boss what their boss doesn't deserve, men and women who decide to extend to their ex-husband or their ex-wife what they don't deserve because they are coming from this wellspring of life that allows them to be radically relationally generous, ashay, that's a good life, or alternatively you could have bitterness and just hold a grudge, I'm not trying to put this on you today, you can choose which one you want to do, then Jesus the next one sets us up and I like it because he kind of baits us into this a little bit more, he says hey would you like to see God, would you really like to see God so clearly that when it comes to the big decisions in life, when it comes to the tough decisions where you need some wisdom, where you need some clarity, when you've got a decision to make and you're not sure what you should do, would you like to see that really, really clearly and I think all of us will go yes and he says okay if you want that then he says blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God, now here's a statement that's not going to be culturally popular but purity brings clarity which brings happiness, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God and I see this time and time again where I see people that I'm coming to my office and have a conversation with me and they say how did I get to this, why didn't I see this coming? And the simple answer was well at the time you were not thinking and dwelling on the things of God, it's not rocket science and so blessed are those who move into a level of purity and constantly have their eyes on the things of God and not on the things of the world because when your eyes are on the things of God then of course you're going to see things from God's perspective and I know it's real for some of you at the moment because some of you are living in what we the younger generation call FOMO which means hang on let me look that up fear of missing out and in all seriousness some of you are living in FOMO because you're not thinking on the things of God, you're seeing through these wonderful devices, these wonderful good life devices, this whole platform that shows you the good life it's called Instagram, Kristen showed it to me the other week, it's fascinating but if you're going Instagram is just a never-ending scroll of the world's good life and I guarantee that there are some of you this morning who have spent three kilometers worth of a scroll if you roll that thing out there of situation after situation after situation of what the world's good life is and then you come around and turn around and go what am I missing out on here it's because purity brings clarity, purity to set your heart on the things of God takes you outside of that world and eventually leads you into the path of the kingdom that says you know what even if I don't have I'm going to be okay. Purity brings clarity says Jesus and if you want happy want happy later not now want happy from me not from stuff and then finally he says if you do all of these things then happy other peacemakers blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God ashay is the life ashay is the life where you just have peace with God and with other people amen the gift that we have when we have this righteousness from God this approval from God when we take that to heart it means we're good with God life is easy life life with God is easy in the sense that there is a peace with God and let me turn the question around the other way is like how happy do you see people that are just trouble makers anyone got a trouble maker and their workplace or their friendship group or their family I wouldn't say trouble makers are happy in fact I think it's the fundamental dynamic of a trouble maker is what trouble makers do trouble makers just want to make everyone else unhappy because the trouble maker hasn't found the happiness that Jesus is talking about and so blessed is the life where you have a peace with God blessed is the life where you don't make trouble but you make peace with people because you ultimately live in harmony not only with God but with those around you and if you have an acceptance from the from beyond yourself then why do you need to stir up strife why do you need to put other people down why do you need to talk worse of other people in order to make yourself the steam feel better blessed are those who hunger and thirst for an approval beyond themselves because they don't have to go stir up trouble and so look all of this feels too hard at times I'm thinking look at all the steps look at all the narrow turnstiles that I've got to get through now I've got a hunger and thirst for righteousness and now I've got to be a peacemaker I've got to be relationally generous and I've got to be pure in heart Jesus says all of these things and this is what he was getting at all of these things are not something that you try and do the point of the sermon this morning is not go out and try all three at once what he's saying is let's start first with this fundamental principle hunger and thirst for what is good and right and here's why standing for good may eventually do you know good now and later it's yet standing for bad may do you know good now and it certainly won't do you good later but you can't be happy on both sides of this equation so fight the good fight stand for what is good now even when it doesn't feel like it because when you stand for good in this moment you when you decide to embrace relational generosity when you decide to embrace purity and thought and heart when you decide to embrace being a peacemaker from that point on you begin to sow the type of life that leads to happiness so decide now so the things that don't feel good at the time for the sake of the blessed life later you know I was wondering wouldn't it wouldn't have been fascinating if Jesus got to submit an archer board self portrait and I think that is fundamentally the contrast that I want you to think about this morning as we come to this time of communion what is what is the good life and if he submitted it up there the poor in spirit pure and heart hungry and thirst for righteousness none of that would make sense next to Oscars formidable CEO but that's simply the contrast that he invites you into this morning and it's a step of faith right a step of faith to say it doesn't feel like it's going to do me any good now but it's an act of faith to go it may well surely do me good later the decision is yours as to what you're going to sow let's think about it and pray about it now father God I pray that you would help each and every one of us wherever we might be coming from this morning into this passage there may be people here this morning who realize that they are constantly caught up in the approval of other people in their obsession with other what other people think and father God I pray over their life this morning that they might receive your love and your acceptance in its purest form this morning father God father there might be some of us here who are struggling with regrets father I thank you for your truth over our lives that as far as the east is from the west I'll remember this in no more father there's some of us that feel like we're missing out like bad's doing better it's the better strategy and that everyone else is getting ahead father for those I pray that you would by your Holy Spirit take us into thought that is beyond the realities of this world lift our eyes father God into your ways and may we each individually but as a community trust that all that you have said in these remarkable statements Lord Jesus works surely as we look back throughout history and the people who have lived unassuming anti-world lives they've been remembered throughout history is the ones who are significant and blessed may we have that life if we choose to follow you into that this morning well thanks for tuning in if you'd like to find out more about northside visit northsidechurch.org.au you [BLANK_AUDIO]