Category: Band

It would be shocking, overwhelming in fact, to have stood before Jesus and hear him say something like this:

If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

John 14:7

Can you imagine? I think everyone would say that one of the most challenging things about believing in God is that we can’t see him. God is spirit, not a physical man…except when he was here on earth having come into the earth as a physical man.

The disciples had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They believed that he had been sent by God.

Peter even completed his confession back to Jesus in saying that they, the disciples, believed that he was the Son of God.

Jesus, though, now goes on to tell the disciples that if they have seen him, they have seen the Father. As the disciples look at Jesus, they are looking into the face of God. As the disciples hear the words that Jesus is speaking, they are hearing words that are coming directly from God. They aren’t hearing a prophet. They aren’t hearing someone who is speaking for God. They are hearing God, and him directly.

Philip goes on to push the question further though. Neither he nor the rest of the disciples can really even begin to understand what Jesus is telling them, so Jesus answers him as clearly as he possibly can:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

John 14:8-10

Jesus even seems to chide Philip to a certain extent. “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?'”, he responds to Philip. “Don’t you believe?”

I think that Jesus asks us the same question even today:

Don’t you believe?

Belief, though, isn’t just the religious label that we place upon ourselves. It isn’t a group with whom we align ourselves. To say that we believe isn’t like alignment with a political party, signaling to the world our leanings to the left or to the right. No, to believe means that we are hearing what God himself is saying to us and everything changes based on those words.

Today, we can hear God through his word, the Bible, and we can hear God through his Spirit, the Holy Spirit that Christ gives to us as we believe and follow him. He desires to speak, and even moreso, he desires that we listen and do what he has called us to do.

Jesus showed himself physically to his disciples. He was a real person who walked the earth, and yet his primary identity, who he really was, was God the Father who had come in the person of Jesus Christ. God showed himself to the people of that time, but he continues to show himself to us even today. But he will only be known if we will listen. He will only be known if we will change to do what he has called us to do. We can know God. We can see him, if we will look, listen, and believe.

Jesus had one primary, overriding concern: Glorifying God. He stood there with his disciples, looking into the face of death, knowing that he would very soon be going to the cross. Within a few hours, Jesus would be crucified, and rightly so, Jesus’s soul was disturbed.

However, he would not be deterred. Jesus would not be turned to the right or left away from his mission. He would not be dissuaded from the plan that had been planned over an eternity, he would not take a detour. No, there was only one way to complete the work that he came to do, and that way was to the cross.

“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

John 12:27-28

Jesus was primarily interested in glorifying the name of God, so much so that he would be willing to endure beatings, suffering, and even death. He would endure separation from the Father. He would endure the punishment of a criminal.

And he would endure all of the pain and suffering because it would bring glory to God and his name.

But why? Why would God receive glory from Jesus going to the cross? Isn’t that just senseless killing? Useless death, like many of the other killings of the prophets by the Jews, or like many of the other killings of other dissidents by the Romans?

No, this death was much different. Jesus would take the punishment for many others so that they would be ransomed – purchased with his blood – away from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. The sins of people would be paid for by one who did not deserve to be punished. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, the perfect “lamb” that would take away the sins of the world.

And because many would enter the kingdom of God, and because Jesus would open the kingdom to people all throughout the world, it would fulfill God’s mission and plan to have a people for himself, those who would be part of the kingdom of God, those who would live to glorify him, all across the world, amongst every group of people. God’s image would finally be spread all across the face of the earth, and God’s glory would shine everywhere. Everywhere that there was a group of people, everywhere that there was a language, a nation, or a tribe, there would be those who truly represented God’s image as disciples of Christ.

This would truly bring glory to God. This would open the door such that God’s glory would fill the earth, as the waters cover the sea, just as Habakkuk had said.

As as the Father replied, he has glorified his name, and he will do it again. And again. And again. God is jealous for his glory. He will not share his glory with anyone. For any other being to receive God’s glory, or for God to share his glory with another would be idolatry. Instead, God’s name was glorified through Christ and through each believer that would come to know the Father through Christ.

Now we must do the same. As the people that have been saved we must follow Jesus’s example. We must live to glorify God and not for ourselves so that his name will be glorified once again, even through each of us.

Jesus’s words and works caused division amongst the people. Not necessarily a division based on anger against the other person or the other side, but division based on whether a person believed what they were hearing and seeing from Jesus, or not. The division was primarily centered around whether or not the person believed that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God or they did not.

We see a particularly poignant example of this after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. John tells us that there were some who believed and others, particularly those who were the religious rulers over the Jews at that time, who did not.

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

John 11:45-48

Jesus came to fulfill the promises that God had made to the patriarchs, Paul would later write. These promises started in the time of Abraham as God told Abraham that he would bless Abraham so that he would be a blessing to all nations. In other words, through this people, through those that God would choose and call his people, the Israelites, he would accomplish his plan such that they would be the people through whom God would come into the world, make himself known to all people, and die for all people, so that his kingdom would be established and those who would put their faith in him would be ransomed, purchased out of the kingdom of darkness, allowing all that believe to come into the kingdom of God.

Yet the Jewish leaders had power. They were in control, at least in their own minds, over the future of the Jewish people. They were the spiritual leaders of the nation of Israel, even if the Romans were the conquering force of their time. In reality, they had very little power or influence, but the little that they had, they wanted to hold onto and not lose.

Jesus, however, had come to earth as God in the flesh, and he was working to fulfill God’s plan, the plan that God had announced to Abraham centuries before. He was doing a new work, at least a new work from the perspective of the Jewish leaders. From God’s perspective, Jesus was simply completing the plan that God had announced many time centuries before.

The Jewish leaders believed that they themselves were the chosen people, the only chosen people, God’s people, and they were the leaders of this people. So, because they believed that they were the chosen people and because they believed that they were leading, they focused on their own plan instead of God’s plan. What was their plan? To make their own plan. To go their own way. To do their own thing.

They could plainly see, and even said so amongst themselves, that Jesus was performing miracles that only God could do. They saw that he was performing signs and wonders as God demonstrated his power and authority on the earth. Jesus had authority over sin. He had authority over death. And yet, these leaders remained in their unbelief because they had their own plan. They did not understand God’s larger plan and they did not care because they were simply working according to their own plan.

This leads us, of course, to a question that we must ask ourselves: Am I living according to the greater plan of God? Do I understand what he is doing and have I found my place within his plan? Or am I denying his plan and substituting my own in place of what God is doing?

For so many years, I asked God what he wanted me to do with my life. “How can I serve you?”, I asked, but instead of understanding the story that God is telling, I sought answers from my own self, from my own mind and heart. I listened to the voices that said that we can find the answers from within, that we should do those things about which we are passionate. I was lured by the message of living by my own perspective, while at the same time asking God what he wanted me to do.

I learned that those two perspectives are incompatible. God has his plan and I have mine, and they are not the same. One brings glory to God and the other brings glory to me, so I learned that I cannot ask God what he wants me to do and really only listen to myself.

I believe that is what the Jewish leaders were doing, and that is the same perspective that we often take today as we live out our lives.

So we must choose. Will I live my life based on God’s perspective, based on his plan? His mission? Or will I live for my own? Will I seek to understand what God is doing and place myself in the midst of his plan and his will, or will I prefer instead to listen to myself and desire those things that I want? These are critical questions for our lives and lead us to specific actions related to the answers that we give to these questions. In the end, this is the difference, regardless of whether you call yourself a Christian, a believer, or otherwise, between belief and unbelief.

As a team, our goal is to reach four generations of disciples within multiple streams of work that, they themselves will go on to make disciples and churches that will make disciples and start new churches. Our work focuses on several different groups of people whether they be African or Asian immigrants into Europe, by mobilizing native Europeans to do this same work, or by sharing the Gospel and mobilizing others in further locations, back in the countries from where many of the people that we reach here in Europe have come.

The plan to make four generations of disciples isn’t simply based on an arbitrary plan to reach this number. Instead, we see this number of generations as Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter to encourage him to continue in his faith, making disciples of people who will go on to teach others.

Similarly, as believers and followers of Christ, we believe that the role that Christ has left us with until he returns is to live out the life of the new creation that Christ has given to us, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and then going on to teach others to do the same.

But there is an additional important lesson that we learn from Paul as we read his letter to Timothy. We shouldn’t only teach others to do the same, but instead Paul says that Timothy must teach others to teach others.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.

2 Timothy 2:2

So how can we describe the chain of disciples that we see in this case? We can understand it in this way:

Paul has already taught Timothy in the presence of many people.

Timothy should now go on to teach others, the “reliable” people.

And those reliable people will be taught to such an extent that they can go on to teach others.

So in all, we see four generations of disciples in this example:

1. Paul
2. Timothy and witnesses
3. Reliable people
4. Others

This generational disciple-making is really no different than what we see in other places in Jesus’s teachings as well. For example, as Jesus was praying for his disciples just before going to the cross, he said:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message

John 17:20

Jesus is referring to his disciples, but he says he isn’t just praying for them. He is also praying for those who will come after them, those who will believe through their message. It was important that Jesus demonstrated through his teaching how the disciples should also teach others, and teach others to teach others!

Or we could even also look at the Great Commission:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus tells his disciples to go and make disciples, but then he says that they are to teach those disciples everything he has commanded his disciples to do.

And what had he just commanded his disciples to do? To make disciples! So the disciples are not only to make a disciple, but they are to make disciples who are to make disciples. They must not only be disciple makers and make disciples, but they are to make makers of disciple-makers.

Why this emphasis?

We should ask ourselves… why do we see such an emphasis on this pattern of making disciples who will make disciples? Why do both Jesus and Paul make a point of doing this and teaching this as they perform their ministries?

I believe that there are three main reasons:

First, our desire is that the movement toward Christ and the growth of the kingdom of God will continue to spread even if persecution comes and someone, even the primary leader, is killed or somehow taken out of action in the work of the kingdom. By making disciples who can make disciples, it becomes impossible to stop the work because it is decentralized. There is no primary person, no primary focus except for the worship of Jesus himself.

This is why the work of the kingdom continued after Jesus returned to heaven to be with the Father. The kingdom didn’t stop growing. No, in fact, it was only at that point that it had begun.

In a similar way, as Paul is put in chains, the work of the early church continued to expand. We see that other people continued in sharing the Gospel, making disciples and starting new churches even when Paul was not there. They had learned what to do and now they carried on the work even when Paul was no longer in their midst.

Second, as a corollary to the first reason is that having a primary person around whom you are building an organization or a movement will likely create division. Despite being Christians and redeemed in Christ, there are still many situations where competition enters the picture, whether because someone desires to take the place of another as the leader of a movement, or those who are following begin to name their preferred leader. This selection of a leader creates division where there should be no division, but instead unity.

This is the type of situation that we saw in Corinth where some people in the church said that they followed Paul, some said that they followed Apollos, others Peter, and still others, Jesus himself.

Jesus taught his disciples that they should not vie for authority or power, seeking position over one another. Instead, he taught them that there should be love and submission to one another, all under the authority and headship of just one who is the creator, savior, and lord of all: Jesus, and him alone.

Third, as we think about the expansion of the Gospel, Jesus and Paul both taught the relatively slow, yet deep and thorough process of making a disciple. The multiplication effect of making disciples who can make disciples provides the possibility that more people, more quickly, can hear the Gospel and can follow Christ. The kingdom of God also becomes geographically unbound and unleashed as the Gospel runs along relational lines instead of being connected to a geographical location as we see in many of our churches today. In short, while making disciples in a particular moment can appear to be a very slow process, and in reality it is a slow process, the multiplicative effect of making disciples who can make disciples can move faster and go farther than any megachurch across the face of the earth when viewed over a period of time.

How does this happen?

Making several generations of disciples is the pattern that we see both in Jesus’s teachings as well as that of Paul, so we should ask ourselves: How does that happen?

This only happens by making disciples in a way that is Biblical and reproducible.

We must follow the teaching of the Bible. The examples that we see in the Bible are both what we must teach as well as a pattern that we should follow. We should seek out both the message as well as the method of teaching. At the very least, we should take principles from the method so that we can do the same. We not only should seek the theology from the scriptures but also understand the practice.

As a good friend of mine says, should I believe that the theology that I can learn in the Bible is inspired by God, but not believe that the practice is also inspired by God?

Our disciple-making practice must also be reproducible. The teaching that I give must be able to be done, and done simply, by the person that I am teaching. They must be able to do what I have done in a way that the next person can reproduce that same practice with yet another person, teaching them to do the same.

In these ways, ways that are Biblical and reproducible, we can see disciples of Jesus that are made from one person to the next, from generation to generation for the expansion of the kingdom of God, for his glory alone.

The Pharisees hadn’t really even considered any other possibilities. They were stuck – and in fact, the Jews, even today, remain stuck – on the idea that the Messiah had to be a political king, just like David. This king would come and lead the people of Israel to freedom, throwing off their conquerors and oppressors and renew their status as an independent political nation and as God’s chosen people.

Jesus, meanwhile, had been showing the Jews, through miracles and through the authority of his teaching, that he had been sent to them by God, the Lord of heaven and earth, and there were several who were now looking to him as their Messiah. Yes, many, if not most of those that believed in him, still believed that he would be the political king that they wanted him to be, even if Jesus continued to show them a different way, a different path. Jesus had no intention to become the political king, the ruler that they expected. He was God himself, on a mission to destroy the power of evil in our world by taking the consequences of sin upon himself, reestablishing his rule and reign in the kingdom of God. He would receive the justice that the rest of us deserved, allowing us all to go free for the sin and rebellion that we have committed, purchasing us instead from the kingdom of darkness to come into the kingdom of light.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had been coming to Jesus to ask him what they believed were difficult questions. Jesus easily handled the questions, amazing the crowds who were listening. But then Jesus decided to ask a question of his own, just to silence these religious “leaders”:

How is it that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls the Messiah Lord?

Jesus is saying that, if the Messiah is the son of David, he wouldn’t call the Messiah Lord. No, the Messiah, in that case, would call David Lord. In that case, David would be the Lord and the Messiah would be his son.

Or said another way, if the Messiah was just a human being, a political leader who would come to lead a human-based, earthly, political kingdom, why in the world would David call him Lord? Yet that is exactly what David did when he wrote Psalm 110, which Jesus quotes back to the Jews:

The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.

Psalm 110:1

It wasn’t as if the Jews hadn’t understood this verse as being prophetic, speaking of the coming Messiah. They knew that it was a Psalm that David wrote. They knew that this psalm was speaking of the Messiah, except, like many of the other prophecies, it didn’t fit their preconceived notions of who the Messiah would be. They had developed their own framework, their own idea, of who the Messiah would be, and then they tried to fit the scriptures inside of their structure, their idea of how God’s plan would be worked out. In short, they predetermined who the Messiah would be and then bent the scriptures to fit their own ideas.

Unfortunately, I believe the same thing happens very often to us today. Very often, instead of simply reading what Jesus has to say or trying to understand what he is attempting to explain to us, taking his words at face value, we prefer to put him and his teaching inside of our box. We have a structure for whom we believe the Messiah to be, we have our own idea for whom we believe Jesus to be, and then when we find something that he says that doesn’t conform to that idea, instead of listening to him and conforming our idea to what he has said, we twist and bend what he has said to fit our idea.

Because we do this, we end up far off of the tracks. We end up thinking that Jesus came to serve us. We end up thinking that God’s story is really all about me, and so, just like the Pharisees and Sadducees, we focus instead on the life that we have in this world instead of the eternity that is the true reality for which we should be living.

Yet if we would just live for Jesus, listening to what he has to say and conforming our lives to his word and his teachings, then we would, like the Pharisees and Sadducees would have found if they had just listened to Jesus in their time, find that there is so much more that he offers us. So much more than we could ever begin to imagine because his ways are different from ours. His plans are so much greater than ours. Listening to him, we will align our lives to his plan. Not our ideas nor our own plans, nor the plans of the world. Not the ideas and plans of him who is leading and guiding the system of the world, the evil one, but truly the one that we can call Lord, Jesus himself.

The man that we now refer to as the “rich young ruler” thought that he was a pretty good guy. He was rich, so surely he was blessed by God, or so he may have thought. He had been obeying the commandments as he had been taught to do since he was a young boy, so surely God looked upon him with favor, he assumed.

But yet, he knew that something was off. Something was still missing, and so he came to Jesus to ask him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. He wanted to know how he could go to heaven.

Jesus responded, telling the man that he already knew what to do… he needed to keep the commandments.

“But… which commandments?”, the man asked.

Jesus baited the man a little further into the conversation by listing off a few of the commandments related to how we are to treat other people:

Do not murder.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.

“Yes, I’ve done all of these!” the man responded, seemingly excited that he was on the right track. “What am I missing?”

I can almost hear the man feeling pretty good about himself. He was nearly certain that Jesus, this great teacher, was just about to declare that he was ready to enter into heaven, to inherit eternal life.

But he didn’t realize that Jesus had brought him to a true point of decision. Up to now, the man had affirmed that he had been living rightly from a human point of view, but all of these things, the commandments that Jesus had listed off up to this point, are each possible to do living a good “moral” life. You can do all of them without recognizing God as your king, as the sovereign ruler over your life. You can keep all of these commandments that Jesus had initially listed without even believing in God. You could be an atheist and do all of the things that Jesus had said up to that point.

Now, Jesus changes the nature of the conversation, helping the man to truly understand what he needs to do to inherit eternal life:

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Matthew 19:21

Jesus calls the rich man, he gives the man a challenge, to truly recognize Jesus’s authority. Previously, as Jesus listed the commandments, he said nothing about the commandments regarding how we should treat God. For example, Jesus never mentioned any of these first three commandments of the ten:

Have no other gods before me.

Do not make an idol, nor bow down and worship it.

Do not misuse the name of God.

Beyond these, while Jesus had previously noted that we must treat our neighbors as ourselves, he says nothing about loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He had never even talked about the first and most important command!

Jesus changes the conversation by telling the man that he is right, he is missing something, just as he suspected. In fact, he is missing something, or someone, very important. He is missing God.

It is as if Jesus said to the man:

Do you want to inherit eternal life?

Do you want to live forever?

Do you want to have eternal significance?

Well, the only way that you can do that is to give yourself to God. How can you do that? You have to put off yourself, put off the things that you want and the things that you consider to be important, and give yourself wholly to him, wholly to God.

You have thought that your money, your riches, could save you, but these things are only temporary. If you want something that is not temporary, but is instead truly eternal, as you are asking me, you must come to God.

How can you do that? Get rid of your money and come to me.

Why get rid of your money? Because you love it more than you love me.

Why come to me? Why come follow me? Because I am God. I am eternal, and in me you can find eternal life.

Your good morality isn’t enough. Your ability to follow the commandments and be a good person isn’t enough. No, your ability to inherit eternal life goes much deeper than that. God isn’t impressed with your ability to follow the law, to follow a set of rules. He isn’t impressed that you are a good, moral person. He is only impressed with your belief in him, your faith that is lived out by truly showing the state of your heart, that you truly believe what he has told you. God must be your God. In fact, I am God and I am standing right here in front of you, telling you how you can inherit eternal life.

Do you want to live forever? Go sell all of your possessions. Give them to other people. This will be the demonstration that you truly believe in me, that you truly trust me, and this will show that you truly believe that I am God.

Then you will inherit eternal life.

The man’s money, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem. Jesus didn’t give the man a universal command that all rich people must sell all of their possessions and give them to the poor. The question, instead, is the state of our heart. What are those things that stand in our way to truly know Jesus, recognize him truly as God, and do all that he has told us to do? Those are the things that must be removed so that we can give ourselves fully to Christ.

This is why Jesus told the man to get rid of all of his possessions. They stood in his way of truly knowing Christ and thus inheriting eternal life, and that is why the man went away sad. He was not willing to give up his possessions to follow Jesus. He wanted his money and his possessions more than he wanted Jesus, more than he wanted a relationship with God, and so eternal life would not be his.

We have a choice, and it is a choice that stands before us every day. What are those things that stand in our way to fully acknowledging Jesus as not only our Savior, but also our Lord? What are those things that prevent us from truly knowing him? Those are the things that we must remove from our lives, acknowledging Jesus instead as the Lord and king over our life, living for him and for his will.

When John the Baptist was baptizing out at the Jordan River, there had been a group of priests and Levites who had gone out to him, sent out by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, to learn about who John claimed to be. They asked him a series of questions, to which John responded in the negative each time. John told them that he wasn’t the Messiah, so they asked:

Are you Elijah?

Are you the Prophet?

Why these questions? Elijah had already come and returned to heaven, and there had been many prophets, nearly all of whom the Jews had killed or persecuted and treated badly. Well, they asked these questions because of prophecies that they had read that had been written by Malachi and Moses.

First, Malachi had said that Elijah would come in advance of the coming day of the Lord. These were literally the very last written words of the prophets, approximately 400 years prior to John’s arrival on the scene:

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.

Malachi 4:5-6

Jesus later confirmed – in fact, immediately after the Transfiguration – that John the Baptist was the Elijah that was to come and he had prepared the way of the Lord in calling the people to repentance for their sins. However, Jesus also noted in that same statement about Elijah that he would also come in advance of the second coming of Christ.

Clearly, then, Elijah is an important figure in the ministry of Jesus and as he stood there on top of the mountain with Jesus at the Transfiguration, Elijah represented the importance of the prophets, those whom God sent to call his people back to himself in repentance and who told the people of the coming Messiah, fulfilled in the life of Christ.

In addition, though, we see that Moses is also there on the mountain top with Jesus and Elijah. Moses represents the Law, that which was given by God, through Moses, to the people of Israel as God made his covenant with them that if they would obey the commandments that he had given them, God would be their God and they would be his people.

Together in the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, whom Jesus had brought with him, were able to witness the representation of the Law and the Prophets and the fulfillment of all that both had said in the Messiah, in Jesus. Then, though, as Peter is blabbering on about building shelters for everyone so that they can spend the night, God interrupts him from above:

This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!

Matthew 17:5

So now, we not only have the Law, the Prophets, and the Messiah himself, we also have God speaking, affirming to the disciples that Jesus is his Son. He is the one with whom the Father is pleased and God tells the disciples, and all of creation through all time, to listen to him, to listen to Christ. His voice is the voice that counts. His voice is the voice of truth, the voice that gives life. He is from heaven, just as he said, so God calls us to listen to him. The Law? Yes, read it. Obey it. Do as it says. The Prophets? Absolutely. But Jesus’s voice is the one voice that is authoritative over all. Over the Law. Over the Prophets. Over all. Listen to him.

In case there was any doubt about the level at which Jesus wanted his disciples to value him, to live for him, Jesus made it completely clear. In the same discussion, Peter had first called Jesus the Messiah and the son of God. Then, he turned around and rebuked Jesus for telling them that he was going to be killed.

But Jesus explained to both Peter and all of the disciples that losing their lives was part of the job description of being one of his disciples:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Matthew 16:24-26

Jesus himself was headed to the cross. He knew that his time was coming and he had explained that reality to his disciples. Yet when Peter tried to stop him from saying it and suggesting such things to him and the rest of the disciples, Jesus called him Satan! Jesus was completely serious and explained to his disciples that the news was even worse than what they first thought: they must also do as he was about to do. It wouldn’t just be him going to the cross. It would be them also.

Now, there are several ways in which that happens. There are several ways in which the disciples, and even us, must take up our crosses. It isn’t simply a metaphor. Yes, for the disciples it was a physical reality. Many of them would, in fact, be crucified on the cross, just as Jesus was. But that wasn’t all to which Jesus was referring. He was also talking about the decisions of our lives. He was talking about how we live, and furthermore, for whom it is that we are living. Are we living for Jesus? Or are we living for ourselves? Do I live to please him? Or do I live to please myself? Which is it?

Jesus calls each of us to lay down our own desires, our own will, and instead die to ourselves. When we pick up our cross, we instead follow our king. We follow the one that we love, the one who made us, so that we can instead live for him. We do that which pleases him, that which glorifies him. We choose those things in life that glorify him more. Not simply those things that I want, but those things that he desires.

Jesus says that if we will do that, if we will put him first, we will actually find our lives. We will have the full and abundant life that he has promised each of us. We will have all that he wants to give us, and it will be more than we could have ever imagined.

If he were here today, I feel reasonably sure that Jesus would be called a radical, a zealot, an extremist, if you will. He never hurt anyone, but he certainly didn’t “pull his punches” or “mince” his words.

My sense is that Jesus was focused on one thing: Reestablishing his kingdom so that he could glorify God. Jesus spoke some difficult words, he said some difficult things to anyone that stood against that goal.

For example… One day, as Jesus was traveling from village to village, his mother and brothers came to find him, presumably to take him away from what he was doing and to take him home. John tells us that his brothers didn’t believe in him in the early part of his ministry, so my sense is that they wanted to intervene, to bring his work to an end, to take him home so as to end the focus and embarrassment that had come on their family because of the crowds that were following Jesus’s ministry work.

But his mother and his brothers remained outside. They stood outside the house where Jesus was teaching. They didn’t go in, so as Jesus was told that they had arrived, Jesus responded directly to the person who came to tell him that they were there:

“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Matthew 12:48-49

Can you imagine? Even in a culture that doesn’t practice the closeness of familial ties, this would be an incredible rebuke, a slap in the faces of his family we might even say. What would the person go back out to tell his mother and brothers? “Sorry, Jesus says that his family are those that are inside listening to him… Not sure what that means for all of you…”

But this IS a culture that practiced those familial ties. In their culture, the family stayed together. The family worked together. The family even lived together even in the same house or houses, and here is Jesus saying, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”.

He isn’t disowning them. No, they have denied him. They have denied his identity and their hope is to take him home and return back to the way it was before. They thought that he was out of mind. They thought that it was time to end this madness, this delusion that Jesus was living within. No, everyone was supposed to be at home. Everyone should be quiet. Everyone should be doing what they were supposed to be doing, contributing to the family and living in the way that they were supposed to be living, according to the way a good Jewish boy should be living.

However, Jesus didn’t see it this way. He responded to the person who had told him that his family had arrived by looking at his disciples and those with him there in the house and essentially saying, “This is my family.” Those that are doing the will of God, those that are listening to me, these are my family members.

How often do we get swept up into our cultural norms, into thinking in the way that our culture thinks instead of thinking with a focus on the kingdom of God? All of the time! I can say that it required me moving outside of my own culture to be able to see it with more clarity. In fact, I had many places where I was blind to see my own self in the light of the kingdom of God because the culture in which I had grown up was my dominant perspective. In many ways, it probably still is, and probably still prevents me from seeing how the kingdom of God is working all around me.

This is our challenge. We need to continue to remain in Christ, abiding in him and walking with him to such an extent that we can see with greater clarity the priorities of the kingdom of God over the priorities of the world around us. From there, once I understand those priorities and see them with that level of clarity, I must then reorient my actions so as to organize my life based on what Jesus wants and is doing over those things that I want, or those things that the culture tells me that I should want. This is the question that I should ask myself on a daily basis: How can I do all of that?

Jesus spoke directly, and at times with difficult and challenging words, so as to help people see clearly and wake them from their sleep that had come on related to the culture that would lie to them about the priorities of life. May we also be a people that sees clearly the priorities of Christ and that of his kingdom.

After having been questioned about his identity, even by his own cousin and the prophet who was called to prepare the way for his coming, John the Baptist, Jesus began to reflect on the desperation of the spiritual situation that he had walked into as he entered the world:

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:

‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.

Matthew 11:16-19

This generation of people, Jesus says, can’t seem to make up its mind. If a song that is intended for dancing is played, they won’t dance. If a song that is intended for mourning is played, they won’t mourn. No, instead, they will only doubt and will never believe. They prefer to call out that which they perceive, or they themselves consider to be the faults in the others and go on to ignore the message that they were receiving.

In many ways, we can say that this is still the same today. In a very similar way to how the Jews would not dance nor mourn in the days of Jesus, neither will we listen to the “music” that is being played today. The kingdom of darkness that rules our world tells us lies continually and we routinely listen to those lies, preventing us from reacting to the music that is being played. Instead, we remain distracted, continuing on with our regular routine, continuing on with our normal business, our daily life, never actually hearing the music and neither dancing nor mourning.

My prayer is that we would awaken, that God would shake us from the blindness and deafness that are the distractions that Satan has placed in the world all around us. Instead, I pray that we would hear the music that Christ has been playing and that we would dance, or we would mourn, moving to the rhythm that he has been sounding out, no longer distracted and unable to hear his call.