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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] In the name of Jesus. Amen.
[00:00:07] That first verse of the hymn we just sang, lord, keep us steadfast in your word.
[00:00:13] Kind of all my life I've had this passing thought as we sing it, like, well, but nobody can take the kingdom from your son.
[00:00:21] So we say, lord, keep us steadfast in your word.
[00:00:25] Curb those, stop those who by deceit or sword would wrest the kingdom from your son.
[00:00:34] Got some old language in there, you know, but, like, stop anyone who would, whether by deceit, trickery or sword, would take away the kingdom from your son and bring to nothing all that he has done. It's like, well, but who could do that?
[00:00:53] He's got the name that's above every name, and every knee bows to him. He's got all power and authority in heaven and on earth, and nothing's outside of his control. So who could wrest the kingdom from him?
[00:01:07] But we're talking about ourselves.
[00:01:11] We're talking about our place in the kingdom as members of that kingdom, as his subjects.
[00:01:19] We're praying, lord, keep us steadfast in your word. Keep us paying attention to your word and receiving from you. Don't let anyone take me away from you, King Jesus.
[00:01:34] Don't let anyone take me out of your hand, out of your kingdom.
[00:01:40] And that is a serious prayer. I mean, that is the daily prayer to pray. If you're going to pick one, pray that God would keep you in the faith, that he would keep you attentive to his word and ready to hear whatever he has to say.
[00:02:01] Well, this morning we've got really a tough one in a way, right?
[00:02:07] How does it sound to you when Jesus says, do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth?
[00:02:16] It's like, well, yeah, that's the impression I got when the angels came and sang at your birth and said, peace on earth. You know, I was like, well, that's what I was expecting. And overall, Jesus seems like a pretty nice guy. So it's a little surprising when you hear him say, do you think that I've come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
[00:02:44] It's like, oh, you're going to have to help me out with that one, Jesus.
[00:02:52] There's a little bit of a. Well, a difficulty there, an apparent contradiction. Maybe you have it all worked out, but let's just take a moment to stand before the mystery. It's like, Jesus surely came for peace on earth, but now he's telling us he didn't come to bring peace on earth.
[00:03:14] What do we do?
[00:03:16] Pray, don't run away from the passage. Don't run away from scripture when it seems contradictory, when it seems like, well, that can't be right, you know? Then you pray and Jesus says, knock and the door will be answered. Seek and you will find.
[00:03:33] He's talking about spiritual things.
[00:03:37] So we pray, Lord, give us understanding. Help us to understand what's going on here.
[00:03:43] Keep us steadfast in youn Word. Give us, help us to fix our attention on youn Word, even when it seems, well, difficult to hear.
[00:03:54] And give us understanding, transform our hearts.
[00:04:00] You know the words that we say sometimes in the liturgy?
[00:04:05] Well, actually, no, we don't sing them, I don't think.
[00:04:09] Do we?
[00:04:11] Oh yeah, we do.
[00:04:14] You have the words of eternal life.
[00:04:17] Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Alleluia. Lord, to whom shall we go? Right, you have the words of eternal life.
[00:04:28] That's at the end of John 6. Jesus says some difficult things, like, you must eat my flesh and drink my blood, or you have no part in me, those kinds of things. And lots of people say, this is a hard word, like, how can we hear it? And they go away.
[00:04:46] And Jesus says to his disciples, are you going to go too?
[00:04:50] And Peter says, lord, like, who are we going to go to? You have the words of eternal life.
[00:04:57] He says he's maybe thinking, yeah, that was hard, and I don't understand it, but we're going to stick with you anyway, and that's what we need. That's what we need. If you sit in class and you hear something difficult that you don't understand and you give up, well, then you're not going to learn it.
[00:05:19] But if you're willing to endure the difficulty, then you can learn something.
[00:05:25] And I've certainly given you plenty of difficulty so far. And you're still looking at me, listening.
[00:05:31] And so I'm just kidding.
[00:05:37] Alright, here we go.
[00:05:39] So what does this mean?
[00:05:42] Okay, so we're paying attention to your word, Lord.
[00:05:45] And so what does Jesus mean by this?
[00:05:48] It's kind of like we're going to go on a journey into this text and we got to decide how are we going to make an entry. You know, it's like there's a landscape to be explored and we can see the trees right there, but we don't know where the path is going to lie. So we.
[00:06:07] All right, well, let's just make an entry.
[00:06:10] So one thing we can do is look at an image or something in the text to help us out. So let's go with division. It's like he hasn't come to bring peace, but no, rather I tell you, division.
[00:06:25] When has God brought division?
[00:06:28] Does God do that? Does he divide?
[00:06:30] Does he bring division?
[00:06:33] Well, for me, one thing that comes to mind immediately is the tower of Babel. That's literally what that's about. There was unity.
[00:06:42] This is all the way back toward the beginning of Genesis.
[00:06:46] There was unity. The people said, let's come together and build a tower that reaches the heavens.
[00:06:53] And that way you build a tower and it's going to.
[00:06:56] Going to hold us all together.
[00:06:58] It's like, what's going on here? Well, there's a tower and a city and they're all united.
[00:07:05] And then God says, well, united like this, making a name for themselves, lifting it up to the heavens.
[00:07:14] There's nothing that's going to be outside of their control. And so he says, well, I'm going to divide them.
[00:07:20] He divides them out by dividing their languages. He disperses them across the earth.
[00:07:29] And then in the very next passage, he creates and promises unity from division.
[00:07:37] He calls Abram and he says, I'm going to bless all. Well, I'm going to make you a great nation. He says, right, like, look at the stars, look at the sand.
[00:07:47] You're going to be a great nation and I will make your name great. He says to Abram, so he brings, from division, brings unity.
[00:07:57] A great nation united in Abram, but one that's constituted by God.
[00:08:03] God saying, abram, I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to make you a great nation, as opposed to Babel that said, let's make our name great.
[00:08:14] So you have two kinds of unity there.
[00:08:17] There's a man made unity, sort of, you could say from below, where the people get together and say, let's make our name great.
[00:08:25] And then there's a God given unity from above where he says, I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to make you a nation, an identity. I'm going to bring together people, my people.
[00:08:42] Well, you could kind of think of that like peace. There are two kinds of peace.
[00:08:48] There's a peace that people can cobble together and that I can cobble together.
[00:08:55] And then there's a peace that's given by God, the peace which surpasses all understanding that can guard hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
[00:09:05] There are two kinds of peace.
[00:09:07] We all want peace, but in order to receive God's peace, sometimes our own peace has to get broken up.
[00:09:18] Have you ever felt like things are going really great and then somebody gives you some hard words that you needed to hear, and you realize you were seeing things completely wrong.
[00:09:31] That's happened to me in the last couple weeks, in the last day.
[00:09:39] And, you know, at first it's hard to hear. It's like, oh, I thought things were going really well. And then I realized, oh, no, I wasn't doing this the way I should, or thought I was covering everything that I should be doing. And. But it turns out that I wasn't serving this person, my wife or my kids or somebody.
[00:10:05] Maybe I've neglected somebody in our congregation. Whatever it may be, we can be kind of lulled into a false sense of security, like things are going well, when actually we just need better perspective.
[00:10:22] So here we are. We're attending to God's word, to Jesus Christ.
[00:10:28] And so we're thinking kind of on the level of greatest concern, on the level of things that matter most and that change in perspective is divine perspective.
[00:10:45] What do we need? We need God's perspective.
[00:10:51] In the Old Testament reading, God says that he fills heaven and earth. It's like, I'm right here. Like, literally, I'm filling everything, and yet you're not paying attention to me. You've got, you know, dreams, and you've got this wisdom that you've built up from below apart from my word.
[00:11:14] And it means nothing.
[00:11:16] It's meaningless. You're totally missing my word.
[00:11:22] And so God's word comes in and like fire, like a hammer breaking rocks to pieces, it breaks up. What's been built from below that doesn't belong in order to build up, you know, from above.
[00:11:40] True wisdom, true prophecy, what the people actually need to hear, they've been, Israel has been lulled into a false sense of security back in Jeremiah's day there.
[00:11:55] And they need to hear the truth. Things aren't right.
[00:12:00] Return.
[00:12:01] Return to the Lord.
[00:12:03] So Jesus says, I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled, like, he didn't just come to bring fire, but he wants it lit.
[00:12:13] He wants it kindled right now.
[00:12:17] Because those things that we've built up, that don't belong are so harmful to us and to others.
[00:12:26] We can pray every day, Lord, show me what I don't see.
[00:12:30] Give me your perspective.
[00:12:33] Break down whatever doesn't belong today. I've got things to do. I've got people to serve.
[00:12:40] But if some of it doesn't belong, just burn it up.
[00:12:46] I've got desires and goals and plans, or I've got fears, concerns, worries.
[00:12:53] But Lord, give me your perspective and just Burn away whatever doesn't belong and replace it with. With your divine wisdom and with what you love.
[00:13:02] Make me want what you want.
[00:13:07] Make me walk in your ways.
[00:13:12] He says, I have a baptism to be baptized with.
[00:13:16] And how great is my distress until it is accomplished?
[00:13:20] Now, that's amazing.
[00:13:23] He has a washing.
[00:13:26] Well, he doesn't need to be washed.
[00:13:29] That's what John told him at the Jordan river, like, no, I shouldn't wash you.
[00:13:36] I shouldn't baptize you.
[00:13:38] You should baptize me. And Jesus says, let it be so for now. To fulfill all righteousness, he needed to be baptized. Because we are all baptized in him.
[00:13:55] He was washed so that we all in him would be washed. He took on our human nature. He became one of us so that united to him, he could cleanse us in himself, return us to our nature. Burn away whatever doesn't belong. Wash away whatever doesn't belong. Drown the old Adam, the old humanity with its sinful desires, and recreate us in Himself, the pure, clean human being, Jesus Christ.
[00:14:32] He's in distress until it's accomplished.
[00:14:38] He wants it that badly.
[00:14:41] Do you think that I've come to give peace on earth?
[00:14:45] He hasn't come to make us feel good about ourselves or about how things are going.
[00:14:50] He hasn't come to put a rubber stamp on your success as a husband or wife or a father or mother or a friend or a, you know, grandparent or a fill it in with a relationship or. Or a responsibility.
[00:15:11] He hasn't come to put a rubber stamp on it to make you feel good about it, to build you up so that you feel great.
[00:15:21] He's come to burn away what doesn't belong, to wash away what doesn't belong and to replace it with Himself.
[00:15:30] With Himself. He's come to live in you.
[00:15:35] So that you can say, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. That's what Paul is saying.
[00:15:41] Like everything else that doesn't belong in human nature has been washed away by Jesus. And continually, every day is washed away through faith in Jesus.
[00:15:53] So that united to him, he remains.
[00:16:00] If the fire sounds scary, well, it is.
[00:16:06] How do you come through the fire? Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who go in the furnace, and they're fine.
[00:16:15] How do you escape fire? How do you come through unscathed? Well, certain things are going to burn away, but those didn't belong. And what remains is.
[00:16:29] Is Christ and His gifts he gives to us Himself. And what does that look like? Well, we could think the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Or Paul in Ephesians says that we've been given every blessing, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
[00:16:57] Those things don't burn up, those things remain the fruits of the spirit. Those don't burn away, those remain.
[00:17:08] So as God works in you through Jesus Christ and brings you to repentance, brings me to repentance. Daily as we experience the.
[00:17:19] Well, the.
[00:17:21] The purification of God's fiery word, he's also transforming us into the image of his son. He's also giving us his gifts.
[00:17:39] Thank God.
[00:17:41] All right, let's look at the last part of the gospel reading here.
[00:17:45] He also said to the crowds, when you see a cloud rising in the west, you say it once, a shower is coming, and so it happens. Well, that sounds nice. You know, like, some days my lawn is looking.
[00:17:58] Looking brown, certain. I got a couple patches I'm working on, and it's like I gotta remember to water them. And it's tough. It's tough to. They really need water a couple times a day. Just those spots, right? And. But then a shower comes and it's like, oh, you know, I thought I had forgotten, but actually, it's wet, right? The showers come and they bring refreshing and they bring life.
[00:18:22] All right, so when you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, a shower's coming.
[00:18:27] And so it happens.
[00:18:29] And when you see the south wind blowing, you say there will be scorching heat. And it happens. Now, sometimes, actually, I want scorching heat, actually, in the same yard. I want it for different reasons.
[00:18:40] I've got this patch where I'm going to put cement, and, well, I waited too long and now weeds have grown up.
[00:18:47] I just want them all to die.
[00:18:49] And scorching heat could do that. But we've had a lot of rain, and so those weeds just won't die. They just keep growing. It's like, those don't belong.
[00:18:58] I'd like that patch to be purified of the weeds. But the rain's not helping you hypocrites. You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky. But why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
[00:19:21] Well, sometimes it just feels like I. I mean, I just want showers from God. Like, just give me. Just give me refreshing rain. Just peace. Let it be. Don't expose all my weaknesses. Make me confident in all that I'm doing. Make me feel good about it.
[00:19:37] But then here comes the scorching heat. It's like, oh, yeah, well, there I've got some things that need to die.
[00:19:46] God's word does that.
[00:19:49] He kills and he makes alive.
[00:19:52] Sometimes we need the scorching heat, sometimes we need the rain, the time of refreshing.
[00:20:02] So I think that's what Jesus is getting at here.
[00:20:05] That.
[00:20:07] Well, I think we tend generally not to want any scorching heat, but God's going to bring it for our benefit.
[00:20:15] And, well, the goal would be to remain steadfast in God's Word and to hear it even or especially when it's hard, and to hear it when it builds us up and brings us Christ himself.
[00:20:37] You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? That's the struggle to interpret the present time, to.
[00:20:49] To interpret in myself what belongs and what doesn't.
[00:20:57] And that's something that only God can reveal to us. But he does knock and the door will be opened. Seek and you will find. And so we pray, heavenly Father, expose our sin and destroy it.
[00:21:13] Through your Word, bring us to repentance.
[00:21:17] Through your Word, show us where we're wrong and make us receptive to that word, knowing that even though we die to sin, we'll be raised to life in Jesus. Amen.