Overcoming Impossible : And They Were Astounded

Feel free to check out the video version of this sermon here.

Welcome back to another week here on Making Waves! We are so glad that you are back again to join us for the final installment on the Overcoming Impossible sermon series. If you haven’t had the chance to catch up, I highly encourage you to watch or read through the past several weeks of this series. For those of you who aren’t interested in that, here’s a quick recap.

We started off this series by taking a look at the Sermon on the Mount. We’d heard before how difficult these commands are in this scripture. How impossible it was to follow the teachings of Jesus in these commandments in particular.

The first week we looked at the Beatitudes, which are those sayings of Jesus that start with “Blessed are those who…” We learned that through these hard sayings Jesus was trying to teach us to be humble in every way. In our spirit, in our lives, in our faith, in our wealth, everything.

The second week we took a look at Jesus’ completion of Moses’ law in the 10 Commandments. We learned that Jesus didn’t come to completely abolish the law of the prophets and of the Old Testament, but instead Jesus just came to finish the sentence. We discovered that while we tell ourselves it is impossible to live up to these standards (and Jesus agrees that we cannot do it), but He completes the sentence and tells us we can’t do it ALONE.

Then last week, we looked at the Lord’s Prayer and discovered Jesus’ call for us to love one another. In each line of the Lord’s Prayer we found the message of love for all of our brothers and sisters. We acknowledged that this is a pretty radical idea and that Jesus is a pretty radical leader. And that’s where we will pick up today, but before we get too much further in this message, let’s turn to the Word.

²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. ²⁵ The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. ²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

²⁸ Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, ²⁹ for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

-Matthew 7:24-29

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in Your presence here today, God. You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Let’s go in reverse today. I’d like to start today with the end of the scripture passage of the day.  If we start at the end of this passage, perhaps we see the first crack in the bedrock of Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we see the very first sign of Jesus’ eventual demise. The people that have been listening to this sermon of Jesus are astounded at the words of this Jesus guy.

Now, let’s not too quickly jump to judge the crowd, because remember that we have taken four weeks to slowly break down some of the teachings in this dense sermon of Jesus. The people who attended this sermon had a single day to listen and process the entirety of the message here. Jesus says a whole lot in this sermon and it really rocks their world. Some of our worlds may have been rocked over the course of only four weeks looking at a few of the main passages.

At the end of August, we ended a sermon series titled “Hipster Jesus,” which focused around this idea that the teachings of Jesus are totally against the cultural norm of his day and age. We discovered during that series that His teachings are still against our natural culture of today. Jesus is not just countercultural… He is counter-human condition. We naturally align ourselves with our sin and the world, but Jesus didn’t live that way.

Just take a look at our past several weeks. Jesus delivers this sermon that encourages people to look past their own lives and love everyone despite himself or herself. He commands us to not only abstain from adultery, but to steer away from even looking at someone with lust. He commands to not only avoid murdering people, but to not even hate or dislike someone. He tells us to be humble and to put others first. He tells us to forgive everyone. Not only does he want us to forgive verbally and spiritually, but physically. He calls us to turn the other cheek, to offer our coat, to lay down our own lives. Jesus calls us to live these impossible lives.

So, much like the crowd of astounded people, Jesus leaves us with this incredible and impossible decision. Once we finally get our jaws off the ground, we are left with the opportunity to answer two questions for our lives. Before we answer them, we have to realize why we are asking them. Jesus’ ultimate message here is that we are called to live life according to His love. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times; we are all called to a life in the ministry. I may currently be the pastor at Pelham United Methodist Church, but that doesn’t mean I am the only one here called to ministry. Jesus tells us in this scripture that we are called to a life of service. Our service happens as naturally as we live. Like the story that Jesus told in our passage from earlier, our service is our process of building our houses. So, that leads us to the questions.

First, we ask ourselves, whom will we serve? Jesus makes it clear in other passages of scriptures that man cannot serve two masters. So, whom will we serve with our lives? Will we build our houses on the solid rock of Christ or on the shifting sands of the world?

There is a Native American story out there of a young man struggling with his violent nature. He goes to his grandfather who offers him a parable. The grandfather tells the son of a dream that he has with a wolf problem. There are two wolves fighting each other in this dream. There is one wolf that is a merciful and loving wolf. The other wolf is evil and violent. They are at a constant war and surely whichever wolf wins will decide the fate of the one dreaming. The young man asks his grandfather, “How will we know who will win the fight?” The grandfather responds by saying, “The one who wins is the one that you feed.”

This story perfectly illustrates the struggle that we fight within our psyche. We are struggling daily with the nature of sin and the calling of God. I always think back to Wil. E. Coyote or Sylvester the Cat and the moments where an angel and a devil appear on their shoulders any time they face a decision. Despite this being a silly cartoon, isn’t this pretty accurate to how some decisions can feel?

So, that’s the first question we have to answer for ourselves. Once we answer that question, depending on how we answer, we are faced with another (perhaps more difficult) question: how will we serve?

Once we understand and accept that God has called us to this life of ministry, how will we serve? Will we serve through a life of judgment and hatred? Like the crusaders, will we murder those who oppose us?

To answer this question, I turn to Matthew 5:16. Many of you are likely familiar with it. “¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” So, here we are called to let our light shine brightly before others. Now, if we stop there, it kind of sounds like a beauty pageant. Almost as if we are called to wear our Holy Spirit like a fancy scarf and flaunt it. Then we move a little further and read that we are shining our light so that other may see our good works. Once again, if we stop there, this sounds like a good deal, right? Not only is this a beauty pageant, but it’s all about me! Thank God Jesus doesn’t stop there. He closes it out by saying that this is so that others can see our good works that are for what? The glory of God.

How will we serve? I believe that we are called to serve how Christ served. Humbly. Willingly. While our service can be public, so that others can see our light, our service should be born out of a humble heart acknowledging that all of this is through, for, and by our awesome God.

If we journey back to our first week in this sermon series, you may recall that we talked about Jesus and who He even is or who He is claiming to be. We noted that Jesus is totally beyond our own understanding. We talked about our own human constraints. We try to keep Jesus in this box of percentiles. We know that Jesus is God in human form, so we say, “Okay, so Jesus is 50% God and 50% human.” We try to capture Jesus in our understand of what is 100% to us humans. But the incredibly nature of Jesus is that He is 100% human and 100% God. In fact, Jesus is the only 100% perfect human being. That’s why He came to us and that’s what He is calling us to strive to become.

So, whom will you serve? How will you serve? Will you build your house on solid ground? Will you build it on shifting sands? Will you feed the wolf that will surely consume you, or the one who is merciful and calm?