Northside Church - Sydney
Cure for the Common Life Week 4: Freedom in Captivity
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, Mark 8 is a fascinating chapter, and you can't help but feel a bit sorry for Peter, you know, one of the leading disciples. In Mark 8, this one chapter, he goes from being a hero to something of a villain in one chapter. He goes to hero status in the verses preceding the reading that we've just read. It's where Jesus and the disciples are up in the region of Caesarea Philippi. We know it today as the Golan Heights. It's one of the highest spots in Israel, overlooks Syria. I've been to this region myself and around on this in this Golan Heights area. There are all these ruins of ancient pagan temples because with the height, the idea was it's so close to heaven and sort of all the pagan temples were developed there because of the proximity to the heavens. And in the day of Jesus, of course, these temples would have been thriving. A multiplicity of gods and as Jesus is walking around with the disciples, the topic of diversity and religion must have come up and Jesus says, "Hey boys, what are people saying about me? What do they say about my identity?" And you know the answers. I say, "Well, some say you've John the Baptist. Come back to life. Some say you're Elijah, you know?" And then Jesus asked the poignant question, "But what about you? Who do you say that I am?" And Peter, of course, makes that incredible declaration. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus has quite wrapped in that response. And Matthew's gospel has Jesus saying, "Good for you, Peter." That's fantastic. Because no person has revealed this to you. That revelation has come directly from my father. So Peter's thinking, "Whoa, got that one right, big tick in the box there." But then just a few verses later, something happens, verses 31 and 32, and he read it for us. Listen to this. Then Jesus began, this is the starting point, of a new theme and he's teaching. Jesus began to teach his disciples, "The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected by the elders." And as he freaks from the teachers of the law, he will be put to death. But three days later, he will rise to life. He made this very clear to them. So Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. I can picture this, you know? Peter says Jesus aside, "Hey, Lord, what's happening? The guys are pretty excited about what's been happening so far." And this negative talk is not doing a much good at all. We love the feeling of the 5,000, that went down well. Walked under water. Loved that. Beautiful. All the miracles. We've got people right there. Look, it says, "Taking off." And you're sort of talking negative, you know, you're death and suffering. Well, where'd that come from? And Jesus, it's an amazing, clearly Jesus hadn't read Ken Blanchard's book, The One Minute Manager, where it says that you praise in public and you criticise privately. Verse 33 says, "Jesus turned around, looked at the disciples, presumably with the aim of getting their attention. And then he rebuked Peter, and he said, "Get away from me, Satan. Your thoughts don't come from God, but from man." Now, that's a long way from good on you, Peter. Those thoughts have come from heaven, and it's now, those thoughts have come directly from, "That's nothing to do with the purpose and the plan of my heavenly Father." It's the exact opposite. So Peter's gone from hero to zero in the space of just a few verses. And then Jesus seizes on the opportunity to expand on this theme of suffering and sacrifice that he's introduced in verse 31, because it says, remember, Jesus began. This is the opening. This is the beginning of the real heart of his message. Look what he says, "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever wants to lose their life for me and the gospel will save it." Now, friends, that's a strong statement, isn't it? Must have had a jarring effect on the group, especially those who may have had the mistaken idea that following Jesus was about fame, notoriety, power, and prestige. These words would have been particularly confronting, for those among the disciples who thought that they were on the winning side, in terms of overflowing the Roman occupation, in terms of establishing the kingdom of God in a visible, tangible form. And there were those. The zealots said others, there were those who thought that's what Jesus would want about. This would have been a big disappointment to them, because in that moment they heard this. Society says winners are greeners, but Jesus says winners are losers. Now, this was radical teaching. This was really radical teaching against the backdrop of the prevailing religious beliefs and understanding which equated health, wealth, prestige, authority, influence, equated those things directly with the providence of God. If you had those things, it was because God was smiling on you. If you didn't have those things, it's because God would dissatisfied with you. So against that backdrop, Jesus makes this radical statement. Now, friends, it's important to realize Jesus is not speaking against human aspirations like initiative, passion, the quest for excellence, vision, and even success. You see, this is not the suppression of our desire to be the best we can be. It's teaching designed to release us, to empower us to become all of these things. And the church has really got that quite wrong in some areas of its teaching over the century. This is not the suppression of aspiring to be the best we can be. It's actually empowering us to do exactly that, more about that as we progress. This is a deep spiritual principle, which is aimed at giving us more of life, not less of life. It is a paradox, that's for sure, and a parent contradiction to think that we can gain something by forfeiting it. That's a real paradox. The paradox so of losing to gain and sacrificing to be satisfied is a central theme to the gospel, throughout the Bible. It's one story after another of people surrendering their personal agendas in order to be part of God's bigger agenda to achieve an eternal purpose. There's people dying to self in order to live for a much greater cause in God. Listen to what Jesus says in John chapter 12, verse 24, it brings this principle to life. And this way it says, "I'm telling you the truth, a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies." If it does die, then it produces many grains. This is an underlying emphasis in Jesus' teaching right the way through. You know friends, quite apart from the spiritual and the theological principles involved here, I think there's a life principle as well. I think there's a basic life principle. I mean, there's something inherent within us, which means we're at our best when we're giving. We're at our finest when we're losing ourselves in pursuit of a goal or a cause. I mean, this is more of a design principle. This is how God has made us. This is how we're created to be. You see this whenever there's a disaster of some kind, am I right? People will go to extraordinary lengths and give themselves in amazing ways. They'll make great personal sacrifices. They'll take huge risks to bring rescue, to bring relief, to bring hope and healing. We saw it in 9/11. We've seen it with every natural disaster we've had in this country, people losing themselves in voluntary service, in financial support for the great humanitarian causes of our world. People putting their personal claim to wealth and prestige and position to one side so they can make a difference. We sit all the time and they're regarded as heroes. We're at our best, we're at our finest when we're giving, when we're losing us. It's a design principle. We sit every day in the life of this church. We sit every day in the life of this church, people giving themselves for the cause of Jesus Christ. But of course, when Jesus talks about losing our life for him and for the cause of the gospel, he's talking something about far greater than volunteerism. He's talking about something far more important than benevolence, something far more impressive than challenging, impressive rather, and challenging than just courageous acts of heroism. He's talking about a life under new management. He's talking about a life of the transformed paradigm of how we're meant to live. He's talking about an invitation to cure the common life, to step out of the ordinary, the mundane, the predictable, the start living life abundantly, freely and purposefully. See, the call to discipleship is a call to forfeit our grip on who we are, what we have, what we hope to be. And whilst at first glance, that looks a little bit restrictive and a little bit uninviting. Countless millions of people have found and are finding today, it's actually the key, the center piece, it's actually the very essence of living life at that maximum level of freedom and fulfillment. That's it, right there. And natural inclination, of course, is to live life. And natural inclination is to live life from a very self-centered perspective. My needs, my wants, my preferences, my way of doing things. We see this in a very early age, haven't we, with the little children? You get the little children playing in the sand pit? And we see these natural inclinations of humanity coming through. It's my toys and my thing, and you know, parents trying to control it all, and trying to teach lessons of giving and sharing and generosity all there in the sand pit. It's me and my needs, brain supreme there. And although with maturity and with sophistication, we try to mask and conceal some of these base tendencies as we get older, it's still the normal default position for all of us in our natural state. The friends embracing the life Jesus Christ offers changes all that, changes all that. It changes our beliefs about who we are. We realize we're not our own, we've been bought with a price, even the precious blood of Jesus Christ. We are children of our heavenly Father. We have a new allegiance, we're sons and daughters of a living God, followers of Jesus. This doesn't make us perfect, far from it. But it does mean our awareness of the needs of others is heightened. That's part of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life and mine. It does mean we take seriously the words of our Lord when He said, "He who would be great must be the servant of all." What shall a prophet or someone, if they gain the whole world but lose their own soul, that their priority is wrong. This new paradigm, this new perspective involves releasing our grip on what we have, 0.2 there. Our gifts, our money, our resources, our talents, and so that 10% of income, which we know the church is kind of looking for and which we may be rather begrudgingly trying to give, that suddenly becomes a celebration of the 90% we get to keep. It's a different perspective altogether. It's just a changes thing, just throws things on their head. God's 10% is not seen as a hardship at all. It's seen as an investment in the work of the kingdom. It's seen as part of losing one's life for the sake of the gospel. As we give up, we receive. As we die, we live. As we lose, we find. As we give, we gain. Spiritual principles, you won't find it in any popular business magazine, but it's the way of the kingdom. And of course, in the immortal words of Saint Francis of Assisi, it is in giving we receive. It is in dying to self we are born to eternal life. If you want to save your life, said Jesus, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you'll find it, you'll discover it as never before. Friends, there are many examples I could bring to bear on this, from biblical times, from down through church history. I could pull certain people up from the congregation right now and illustrate this point. I've chosen a story from the '50s, from the 1950s, because it tells of an heroic person, but it also, this person leaves us with a quote which is very powerful and which will serve as a great climax, I think, to this message. I'm talking about Jim Elliot, known to many of you from your reading, and he was a promising young theological graduate in the 1950s in the United States, and he had a calling on his life to go to Ecuador, and he was offered ministries in America because he was quite a talented young man, but he had this burning desire to go to Ecuador, particularly to the primitive group, known as the Alca Indians, one of the most primitive tribes people on earth. He had a burning desire to share with him the good news of Jesus Christ, believing that that message could dramatically change their predicament. So when the time came over a period of weeks, the story, they flew over the area, one of the main areas of the Alca Indians there in deepest, darkest, Ecuador, they actually dropped gifts down onto the beach as a sign of goodwill, a sign of, you know, we're here, we come in peace, we come to sort of make a difference, please receive us warmly. Well they landed a plane on January 8th, 1956, and Jim Elliot and four missionary companions its belief were, were spared to death within a matter of moments of landing their plane, and the news flashed around the world, and it was just a shocking tragedy and what appeared to be a shocking loss of life, and it was. But Jim Elliot's family and the families of some of the other missionaries, they stayed with the task of trying to get the gospel into that remote part of Ecuador, and over the years, the years that would have followed, they made that, and they got the gospel in them, they transformed village life, and something that I find amazing. Some of the elders of that village have since baptized the grandchildren of Jim Elliot, and some of those men who were spared on the January 8th, 1956, a radical transformation of a very primitive community. What seemed to have no reason, and some things are like that, just no reason at all. Five young lives, just snuffed out like that, Jim Elliot's family gave that tragedy a reason. They turned it into something by losing their life for the sake of the gospel, by finding their life, by doing something extraordinarily generous and fate inspiring, and of course the quote that Jim Elliot is attributed with, which has inspired people down through the years. Here it is. The fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. Friends, I think the story of Jim Elliot reminds us that this verse about losing our life for the sake of the gospel. I mean, it does highlight the differences in the Christian community. For some of us that may cost us money-wise, for some of us that might cost us time-wise, I've looked into the face of a man in India, as some of you have other parts of the world, where he told me it cost him his family to lose himself for Jesus Christ. So there are different degrees of what it means. Somebody in the West may say, "Since I come to Jesus, my business is really flourishing. Since I invested myself into him, I'm just going through the roof. A businessman in a part of Asia may say, "Since I came to Jesus, I lost my business. I've lost my family." So we're going to work it out as to what it means to lose ourselves for the sake of the gospel. But I know this, that it is the only way to truly find who we are as human beings, who we are as children of God, the person who saves their life. We see it all the time. People become wrapped up in their own lives and their own goods and their own materialism and their own aspirations and where does it leave them? We saw it recently in the tragic death of one of the great singers of our time. And we said all the time, "You know, it's just a sad loss." Jesus said, "If you want to find yourself, lose yourself in me. What's that going to mean for you today, this week? What's it going to mean for me?" I find that it's the ongoing question of Christian discipleship and it's a daily commitment. Good morning, Lord. What are you up to today? I want to be a part of it, that kind of prayer, that's bad and prayer now, shall we? Well, Heavenly Father, we thank You that the words of Jesus, although confronting, are preserved for us in Holy Scripture, those who would save their life will lose it. Those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Lord, most of us are still on a journey of discovering what that means. We're inspired by the story of men like Jim Elliot and his companions. We're inspired by the stories coming out of Asia and parts of the Middle East today, right now, where people are prepared to sacrifice families and livelihoods for the sake of the gospel. We stand in awe of that. We struggle to get a grip on what that means. But may the inspirational stories of people lift us to see what it means for us living in comfortable Sydney, comfortable Australia, what it means for us to lose ourselves for the sake of the gospel through Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray, Amen.