Heavenly Father,
You are the almighty God. You are the king of kings, and lord of lords. You are the God of unbeatable armies, the God of fire from heaven, the God of lightning and thunder. And you are the God of Jesus Christ, your beloved son, who suffered much, was rejected by his people, and was killed. That alone should tell us how amazingly you love us. We should be living a life of constant fear of a vengeful God who wants to punish those who rebel against him, as we so constantly do. You would be absolutely within your rights to sentence us to death for our rebellion. But we don't have to live in fear, because you are a loving God, so loving that not only do you forgive us for killing your son, but you use your son's death to cleanse us of our sin. That is amazing. It is breathtaking. Please give us a better and better understanding of that as we seek to live our lives for you, in thankfulness or the great and loving God you are.
Lord, there are so many things in our lives that seek to pull our attention away from you. We worry about our lives. While many of us don't have to worry about what we will eat or what we will drink or what we will wear, we make up other things to worry about: we worry about our safety and security in this age of uncertainty and terrorism. We worry about what people think of us. We are attracted to money and wealth, because it makes our lives comfortable and easy. We follow our own desires, and we seek to put ourselves first. Please God, transform our minds, so that we might see that there is nothing more valuable than your son Jesus, and his message that your kingdom has come with power.
There are so many people in this world who see Jesus as something else: a teacher, a role model, a tragic hero, a rebel leader, or a mythical storybook character. Help us to proclaim to others the truth - that Jesus is the messiah, Jesus is your son, and that his coming ushered in the coming of your kingdom. Give us strength and courage so that we won't be ashamed of your good news to all humanity. Help us to carry that message in every part of our lives - when things are good and we are praising you for them, or when things are bad and we throw ourselves at your feet and trust in your sovereignty. And help us to carry that message in how we relate to others. Give us a love for those who are sick, for those who are struggling financially, for those who are stuck in life situations that they can't get out of. Free them from these terrible problems, and make us your hands and feet in helping them. And we pray for those we can't help - those who languish in prisons and detention centres, those who hide their problems, those who suffer for your name on the other side of the world. We ask that you might stretch our your hand and alleviate their problems. Give your people across the world faith that you are in control. In the same way that the disciples could not understand that Jesus must die as part of your plan, we can't begin to understand the complexities of your plan in this age. So let us remember that you are almighty loving God, and that yours is the only plan that is guaranteed to succeed, and that it is absolutely built on your love for us.
We praise you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Sermon: Mark 9 - The Transfiguration
(This sermon took a lot of writing. The transfiguration is a difficult passage to preach on! I have included all of my previous notes to give an idea of the different directions I took throughout. The actual sermon I have put at the top - the notes will all be underneath it.)
Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians are, or what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking who do you pay attention to? Who do you believe when they express an idea or an opinion or a fact? Who do you provide for when they say they need something? Who do you obey when they ask you or tell you to do something? Who you listen to is more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what actions you take.
When your spouse, or your parents, asks you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It reveals that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 35kms. God: 16kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God, but not by doing miracles putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the characteristics of God: he reveals his Glory. God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show, it is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 2 Peter 1 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God. That is why he is worth listening to.
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a representative. Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Listening to Jesus should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God says "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, that is something you need to fix. Not listening to God is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen to Jesus earlier in Mark 2:10 he said, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to being his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. If you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend, then I see four things that we need to do.
Step 1: To listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. So the whole bible is valuable in understanding what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
Memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. It takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I strongly recommend it to you all. If you want to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard to do, all it takes is time. I recommend that you make time to do it. Give other things up to do it. That's what I did. It's better than reading the news.
I started memorising scripture because I was convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. Which brings me to the next thing to do to listen to Jesus: Listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. One thing I don't do takes notes during sermons. I listen to sermons every week, and as sure as I listen to them, I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But I'm going to note down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and if I'm not doing it, figure out one way I can apply it to my life, then actually do it.
Go to a Bible study. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. It turns listening to Jesus from being just a personal act into it a communal activity.
Step 2: We need to talk to Jesus. That means pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different topics each day of the week. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day come to the same conclusion - I need to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's certainly not my experience. But if you go into prayer expecting to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it. Prayer is where the desire comes from to want to listen to Jesus.
One thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I find the more I learn to rely on God in one area of life, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control of that. So one step at a time.
Step 3 is to think. What I mean is, try to think about what you're doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. Trying to evaluate everything you say and do can be tiring. But what I find is the more I want to listen to Jesus through prayer, and the more I actually hear Jesus through the Bible, the more my thoughts come from a godly basis.
And that makes a huge difference. Thoughts that come from an not-godly basis are the ones that you have to firstly identify, and then stop and check, analyse, consider, and think about. They're the thoughts Jesus describes as the thorns that choke the seed in Mark 4:19 "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things". They choke Jesus' word, making it unfruitful.
But thoughts that from a godly basis, you don't need to analyse - because God's ways are the right ways, and they will never be defeated. Instead, they're the thoughts we need courage to act on. Because they're the thoughts and actions that aren't like what everyone else is doing and thinking. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, step 4, of course, is to do those actions. With the courage and the strength God gives, trying to live the life he wants us to live. Not the life that makes us comfortable. Not the life that makes us feel good. Not the life that everyone else thinks we should live. It's trying to live the life God wants. To me, that generally looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about; struggling to work out what Jesus says I should do; not wanting to do it; being too afraid to do it; being too selfish to do it; and then deciding to trust God, and stepping forward to do it anyway. And I praise God when he gives me the courage to do what he says. And I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many times in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take this last step of listening to Jesus.
But listening to Jesus is a package deal - you have to do it all. You can't think about what Jesus says if you don't know what he says. You won't do what he says if you haven't had your mind transformed to think in a godly way. You won't do any of it if you don't pray. If you want to listen to Jesus, then you need to know what he says. You need to talk to God. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way Christ wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says. I want to ask you all to take these words of God seriously: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" Don't just ask yourself if what you're doing is enough to listen to Jesus. Ask yourself first if that's what you actually want to do. Ask yourself honestly, Who do I really listen to?
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Obvious points:
Major
Jesus is God, the son of God, the fulfilment of God's revelation to people.
Minor
John the Baptist was Elijah.
What does this mean for us?
* God's command to the disciples: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
- It means we must respect the ultimate authority Jesus has over us as God.
* The Law and the Prophets were the primary guides of life for the Jews. It's what makes them a people.
- Jesus is our Law and Prophets.
- He should rule our lives. Our lives should be dominated by the law of Christ.
** Only three of the apostles saw this transfiguration before tasting death. The others had to die first before they saw Jesus glorified. They didn't get to hear about this until after the resurrection.
-- We don't see Jesus glorified till we die, or if we're lucky, when he returns.
-- We shouldn't need to see Jesus for ourselves. We can trust the testimony of the apostles who saw him and who were with him. The disciples, even nine of the 12, did not get to see Jesus transfigured. This should not be a block to our faith.
* Jesus is not just worthy of glory: God is Glory.
glory n. (pl. glories) [mass noun] 1 high renown or honour won by notable achievements: to fight and die for the glory of one's nation. 2 magnificence or great beauty: the train has been restored to all its former glory. - [count noun] (often glories) a thing that is beautiful, impressive, or worthy of praise: the glories of Paris. - the splendour and bliss of heaven: images of Christ in glory. 3 praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to God. 4 [count noun] a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Christ or a saint. ■ v. [no obj.] (glory in) take great pride or pleasure in: they gloried in their independence. - exult in unpleasantly or boastfully: readers tended to defend their paper or even to glory in its bias.
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You don't often hear the word 'glory' used outside a church. We sing songs about God being the King of Glory, and we say that God is worthy of glory, honour and praise. We pray that God will be glorified. But outside of church and talking about God, when do we talk about glory? ('Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]) It's a compound concept that takes in a few ideas. If we see something beautiful, impressive, worthy of praise, we might say, "We looked over the city of Paris in all its glory." It is often used to mean a high renown and honour that is gained through a notable achievement, so we might say that a soldier or a sportsperson who pushes the limits and tries to accomplish more is, "Going for glory." When something was once good, but has since fallen into ruin, and we rebuild it, we say we are, "Returning it to its former glory." So 'glory' really means something that is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, something that is so good that it is worth giving praise and honour and being renowned.
You might think it's little wonder that we talk about God in these terms. After all, God is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, He is so good that he is worth giving honour and praise.
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'Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]. When we talk about glory these days, this is usually what we mean - sporting heroes and their accomplishments, or the beauty and impressiveness of something, like a city, or in that case some wallpaper. We even have a football team called Perth Glory. We might occasionally describe something as "glorious": again usually sporting victories, but once upon a time we might have talked about a glorious military victory. We rarely talk about something being "glorified" outside of churches - when we do, we usually mean it's overstated - so the Archibald Prize, the famous portrait competition, has been disparagingly called a "glorified lucky dip".
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Even going over what Jesus has said in the last eight chapters of Mark would be a series of sermons on its own. And guess what? It has been! We've been preaching through Mark since December. I can guarantee that every sermon given between now and then has looked at what Jesus said, and then applied that to our lives today. So let me ask you this: how have the sermons over the last eight or so weeks impacted your life? What changes have you made because of them?
Gosh, that's a hard question, isn't it? Can you remember what Mark's sermon was about last week? Or Emily's the week before? Nick's the week before that? If I were to ask for a show of hands of how many people were here for Penny's sermon on <date>, I will bet a good number of hands would go up. If I were to ask for people to tell me one thing she said about applying that chapter of Mark to our lives, how many people could give me an answer? Could anyone tell me what chapter of Mark she preached on, or what story it was? But I wonder if we have forgotten the general plot or story of what happened in a regular TV series we watch, or a book we've read back then.
No, I'm not bringing this up to shame you. I'm bringing this up to make a point - every week we have sermons delivered to us here, on a platter. Sermons that people put hours and hours of work into, in order to bring God's word to us and help us apply it to our lives. And we are so used to it that we sit here, lap it up, and then walk out the door and forget it a week later. Maybe the sermons are boring. I'm sure I could do better to grab your attention. And sermons aren't memory tests to see how much you can recall. But my point is that if we're really serious about listening to what Jesus has to say, what steps are we taking to make sure that the point that was made to us on any given week is something we include into our lives? Do you take any active steps at all? Because I don't! I know some people use the sermon outlines to take notes. That's more than I do.
How much do you care about knowing what Jesus said and how to act on it? Do you care enough to go to church, even when you don't feel like it? Do you care enough to listen to sermons? Do you care enough to read the Bible every day, even though you're already pressed for time? Are you prepared to give up other things you do to make that time? Do you care enough to pray every day, not asking God for sunshine or safe travel or a holiday, but for him to reveal to you what he says? I think everyone here would say yes, we all care enough to want to do those things. So why aren't we doing them? What gets in the way? Is it busyness, family, work, life's other distractions? Remember the parable of the sower, Mark 4:18 "Still other people, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Because how can you listen to Jesus if you don't even know what he says? How do we find out what Jesus says? It's in the Bible. We read it.When you read what Jesus says directly in the gospels, you'll see he claims the whole Bible as the word of God, Old and New Testament. What do you need to do to make that happen? Every week someone stands up at this podium and gives a talk about God and the Bible, and how to relate it directly to your life. Listen to them!
Summary of the the sermons up to this point
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What is the most amazing thing you've ever seen? Perhaps it was something natural, like the Grand Canyon. Anyone seen that? Was it amazing? Perhaps the most amazing thing you've ever seen was man made. Has anyone been to the Great Wall of China? Was it amazing? Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was an event, like Cirque du Soleil (which I have on good authority is amazing). Maybe you're a romantic, and the most amazing thing you ever saw was your first child being born, or your spouse at your wedding. Aww. Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was a miracle. Whatever it is, what I'm talking about the most striking, most heartfelt, most impressive thing you have ever seen. It is something that impacts you.
Let me tell you about the most amazing natural thing I've ever seen. I was in Townsville as a teenager, and went to the Great Barrier Reef. If you've never been, the reef is very impressive. Worth going to see. It takes a couple of hours in a boat to get there. We went around in glass bottom boats, and saw the pretty coral and fish. It's quite nice. But it's not the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's all underwater, and you can't see it all from a boat, or by swimming around it. Maybe it's more impressive from the air. But while I was there, I did some snorkelling. When you're snorkelling at the reef, you are pretty much looking down, because your air is coming from a tube that points up that way, and there's colourful coral and stuff beneath you, so you don't really look where you're going.
Well, I was swimming along, looking at all the pretty colours, when all of a sudden I swam too far. The coral very, very suddenly disappeared, and below me was nothing. Just emptiness. Water going down into blackness. I looked up in front of me, and it was the same. I had reached the end of the reef, and in front of me there was just deep, endless water. It was floating all around me, for as far as I could see. And it was so big. I could see nothing but water. No coral. No fish. No sharks. No seaweed. But I knew all that stuff was out there, somewhere, in that infinite abyss. I can still picture it now. It still makes a pit in my stomach. It was hypnotising. It was terrifying. It was amazing. Seeing it made me realise how big and vast the ocean is.
Today, we read about Jesus, standing atop a mountain with three of his closest friends, showing them the most amazing thing they would ever see. Mark doesn't go into great detail about what it was like. Peter, who likely gave Mark this report, probably had trouble describing exactly what it was like. He says that Jesus' clothes became a dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. He says Elijah and Moses appeared. And he says they heard God's voice from a cloud.
And that's it. That's all we're told. Just like my amazing experience at the Great Barrier Reef, there are probably only so many ways to describe what the transfiguration was like. There are only so many ways to say, "water, deep, wow".
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Today we are looking at the transfiguration of Jesus.
This transfiguration of Jesus, as we call it, is the turning point of the whole gospel. We might not get a detailed description of what it was like, but its importance is absolutely unquestionable. This is the moment the gospel has been leading up to. Rather than doing something as an object lesson that points to who he is, Jesus shows himself to be God by revealing his glory.
This is different from all the miracles Jesus has performed up to this point. Healing the sick, forgiving sin, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread - those are all impressive, they are great, they are worthy of praise. But the transfiguration is not just Jesus doing something. It is revealing that Jesus is God in the same way that being confronted with the vast ocean reveals the vastness of the ocean - the ocean doesn't need to do anything but be seen in a certain way. That is the transfiguration.
We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but because God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted, 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the point in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
But only three people ever got to see it. And I acknowledge some people struggle with that. After all, this is the unassailable proof that Jesus really is God. This is the evidence people could see with their own eyes... but only three people actually got to see it. It's not there for us to see. Some people don't want to believe that Jesus really is God without seeing it for themselves, or without indisputable proof. They want God to prove himself to them in a specific way that makes it undeniable. They don't trust the testimony of witnesses. They want testable results, obervable phenomena. That's how science works.
But that's not how history works, it's not how law works, it's not how philosophy works, and it's not how God works. The gospels are highly trustworthy sources. You can trust what they say. Yes, what they say will challenge you to rethink what you believe, what other people say about the world. But that shouldn't be a reason to ignore it.
We aren't the only ones who don't get to see Jesus as God for ourselves. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. That is all, but that is enough.
If you think witness testimony is not a strong enough basis to believe in what Jesus said and did, then this is where you disembark the Jesus train. This is your station. Jesus did not share this experience with most of the people closest to him, his most faithful apostles. My advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life.
Because that's what the transfiguration is all about. It's not just about believing some errant fact of history, like Julius Caesar's birthday. We're told that Jesus is God, and the truth of that should impact the very core of how we live our lives. We don't get to see it, but we are told it. God himself told the three on that mountain: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" I counsel everyone who hears me now to accept this as the truth, and to do what God says - listen to Jesus. And if you can't, or you won't, then you should work out exactly why you can't or won't. Are your problems with God only intellectual? Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. I challenge you to approach me or Emily or Nick with your intellectual problems with God - there are answers, they can be worked out!
Are your problems with God personal - maybe you don't want to give up certain parts of your life, or you disagree with God on some things? That's also common. If you accept Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend if we listen to Jesus. Perhaps you have both intellectual and personal problems with God. That's perhaps most common. Then you need to do both - come and talk to someone, and we'll work out the intellectual problems. Then we can sort out the personal issues, and by listening to Jesus, learn to become God's friend.
The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus, because just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Realising the amazing truth that Jesus is God, and that God speaks to us through him, should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For Peter, James and John at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'. For just one small example, in chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God speaks to us through Jesus. We need to take that seriously. We need to do what he says. Think about the voices that currently speak into your lives, and that make you spring into action. When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When people tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to police, we even listen to politicians. And God help us, despite ourselves we listen to advertising, if for no other reason than it is repeated constantly. These voices don't just speak to us, we listen to them, and we do what they ask.
Well God is more important than all of those voices! He's more important than all of them put together! I'm sure you would all agree with me on that. But how much time do you give to listening to God? How much time do you spend praying - that is talking and listening to God? How much time do you spend reading the Bible - that is, what God has to say? How much time do you spend thinking about God, thanking him for what you've got, or doing what he says because he says it?
That's what I want us to all take away from the transfiguration today. I now want us to focus on how we can 'listen to Jesus' in our lives. But there is a big temptation to just give a long list of things you should listen to Jesus about. That could go on forever. The truth is, I don't know what you're already doing to focus on listening to Jesus in your life. So I'm going to tell you what I do. Not to boast - definitely not to do that, trust me. But I want to show that there are things we can be done to help us seriously listen to Jesus, the way the transfiguration demands that we do.
Starting from the basics here: to listen to Jesus, I need to know what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old. But it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. I find I often don't agree what what Oswald Chambers has to say about a verse. But then I pray about it, and on reflection I see that he's usually got a point. Oswald is all about putting faith in God, and it's amazing how often I disagree with him just because he says the Bible demands I put more faith in God than I do.
I also memorise the Bible. I also started memorizing just last year, around September. Since then, I've memorised the whole book of Galatians, and up to chapter 9 of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes of every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am for it. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). I started doing it because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James - he said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. I cannot speak highly enough of memorizing scripture. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). And anyone who says they can't do it, or they don't have time, I want to ask you this:
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians or bands or singers are. I'm not asking you what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking you who do you pay attention to? When they express an idea or an opinion or a fact, who do you believe? When they say they need something, who do you provide for? When they ask you or tell you to do something, who do you obey? Who you listen to is obviously more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what you do with your life.
When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
Now, no doubt you listen to different people about different things. So for example, if your boss tells you how to do your job, you listen. But if your boss tells you child vaccinations cause autism, you don't listen. People are important to different parts of our lives, and the more authority they have on a subject that is important to us, the more we listen to them, and actually act on what they have to say in that area.
In our passage today, God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
God is the creator of all things on earth, including you and me. He is the arbiter of all justice, and decides all right and wrong. He is the giver of all love, all money, all health, and all thought. Without God, there is nothing. He the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life. Friends, family, children, employers, police, politicians, doctors, preachers, environmentalists - you can listen to them all. But if any of them says something that goes against what God says about how you must live your life, then no matter what it is, God wins. God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. And that includes your own voice.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It is revealing that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 95kms. God: 40kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God not by doing miracles and putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the very things that makes God God: he reveals his Glory. We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
I know some people don't think they can believe in God without some sort of absolute proof that he exists. They want to see the transfiguration for themselves. I think we're a spoilt and greedy generation. We have voice recorders, cameras, even video cameras, on our phones that we carry everywhere we go. We are so used to having everything recorded, everything on video, everything photographed, that if we can't see it for ourselves, we choose not to accept it. "Pics or it didn't happen" as the kids say, or at least they used to in 2011.
But the transfiguration shows that this attitude is entirely against how God works. Here Jesus reveals the Glory of God, indisputable evidence that he and God are one - and only three people get to see it. And they're sworn to secrecy until after Jesus dies and is raised from the dead. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. God says that is enough.
If you disagree, then my advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life. The Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. The proof is there in history. God doesn't need to prove it to you at your convenience. God is who he claims to be, and Jesus is God. Which brings us back to my original question: Who do you listen to?
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. Just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
We need to listen to Jesus, and that should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take just one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
I said earlier that we must listen to God. I said he the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life, and that God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said earlier in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. In Mark 3:28 he says, "Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. Do you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend? Let me tell you how I do it now, and how I think I could do it better.
Step 1: to listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
The other thing I do these days is memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). These bits of scripture come to mind when I am stressed, or worried about something, or even just thinking about a particular thing. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I highly recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard, it just takes time.
I'm not telling you to read the Bible, or to memorise the Bible. It's your choice. But if you want to listen to Jesus, these are amazing ways to do it. I will help anyone who needs help doing these things. I haven't asked, but I bet Nick and Emily would also volunteer themselves. It is so valuable, I will make time to help. I suggest you make time to do them too.
I started memorising scripture because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. He said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. And that brings me to the next thing I do to listen to Jesus: I listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. Our preachers spend hours and hours on their sermons, and they are good stuff. One thing I don't do - but after preparing this sermon, I have started doing as of last week - is to become one of those people who takes notes during sermons. Because I listen to sermons every week, yes, and as sure as I listen to them I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But what better way to make sure that I listen to what Jesus says than to write down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and figure out one way I can apply it to my life.
I also go to a Bible study every week. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. I tend to talk too much, and argue too much.
The next thing I do is pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different things each day. I pray about my marriage. I pray about Ministry of Game. I pray about Bible study. I pray about church. I pray for missionaries. I pray for persecuted Christians. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day coming to the same conclusion - I have to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's not my experience anyway. But if you go into prayer expecting to be able to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it.
One thing I don't do, even though I keep a prayer blog, is go back and read through it. People ask me about that all the time, but I've never done it.
Another thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I'm getting better at that. I find the more I learn to rely on God, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control. To listen to him. I also find myself confessing my sins more when I do that too.
The last thing I do is think. What I mean is, I try to think about what I'm doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. Now, I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. It can be tiring, trying to evaluate everything you say and do. But what I have found is the more I want to trust God, the more I want to listen to Jesus, the more I read the Bible not just so that I've read it, but really to get to grips with what it says so that I can act on it, the more my thoughts come from a godly base.
And that makes a huge difference. Because thoughts that come from an ungodly base are the ones that you have to stop, analyse, check, wonder about, consider, debate, and think about. But ones that come out of a godly base, you do't need to analyse - you know they're from God. Instead, you need courage to act on them. Because they're the thoughts and actions that don't look like what everyone else is doing. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, of course, I try my best to do those actions. With the courage God gives me, and the strength, I try to live the life he wants me to live. Not the life that makes me comfortable. Not the life that makes me feel good. Not the life that everyone else wants me to live. I try to live the life God wants. To me, that looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about, and struggling to work out what I should do, not wanting to do it, being too afraid to do it, being too selfish to do it, and then deciding to trust God, and just stepping forward to do it anyway. I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many gaps in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take that step of listening to Jesus. And I thank him when he gives me the courage to do what he says.
You don't have to do any of those things. They are just examples that might be helpful to anyone who wants to do what God says, and listen to Jesus. What you have to do, what is important to do, is to think about that one big question: Who do you listen to? If it's God you want to listen to, then you need to know what Jesus says. You need to pray. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way God wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says.
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians are, or what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking who do you pay attention to? Who do you believe when they express an idea or an opinion or a fact? Who do you provide for when they say they need something? Who do you obey when they ask you or tell you to do something? Who you listen to is more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what actions you take.
When your spouse, or your parents, asks you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It reveals that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 35kms. God: 16kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God, but not by doing miracles putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the characteristics of God: he reveals his Glory. God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show, it is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 2 Peter 1 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God. That is why he is worth listening to.
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a representative. Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Listening to Jesus should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God says "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, that is something you need to fix. Not listening to God is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen to Jesus earlier in Mark 2:10 he said, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to being his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. If you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend, then I see four things that we need to do.
Step 1: To listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. So the whole bible is valuable in understanding what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
Memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. It takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I strongly recommend it to you all. If you want to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard to do, all it takes is time. I recommend that you make time to do it. Give other things up to do it. That's what I did. It's better than reading the news.
I started memorising scripture because I was convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. Which brings me to the next thing to do to listen to Jesus: Listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. One thing I don't do takes notes during sermons. I listen to sermons every week, and as sure as I listen to them, I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But I'm going to note down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and if I'm not doing it, figure out one way I can apply it to my life, then actually do it.
Go to a Bible study. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. It turns listening to Jesus from being just a personal act into it a communal activity.
Step 2: We need to talk to Jesus. That means pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different topics each day of the week. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day come to the same conclusion - I need to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's certainly not my experience. But if you go into prayer expecting to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it. Prayer is where the desire comes from to want to listen to Jesus.
One thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I find the more I learn to rely on God in one area of life, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control of that. So one step at a time.
Step 3 is to think. What I mean is, try to think about what you're doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. Trying to evaluate everything you say and do can be tiring. But what I find is the more I want to listen to Jesus through prayer, and the more I actually hear Jesus through the Bible, the more my thoughts come from a godly basis.
And that makes a huge difference. Thoughts that come from an not-godly basis are the ones that you have to firstly identify, and then stop and check, analyse, consider, and think about. They're the thoughts Jesus describes as the thorns that choke the seed in Mark 4:19 "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things". They choke Jesus' word, making it unfruitful.
But thoughts that from a godly basis, you don't need to analyse - because God's ways are the right ways, and they will never be defeated. Instead, they're the thoughts we need courage to act on. Because they're the thoughts and actions that aren't like what everyone else is doing and thinking. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, step 4, of course, is to do those actions. With the courage and the strength God gives, trying to live the life he wants us to live. Not the life that makes us comfortable. Not the life that makes us feel good. Not the life that everyone else thinks we should live. It's trying to live the life God wants. To me, that generally looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about; struggling to work out what Jesus says I should do; not wanting to do it; being too afraid to do it; being too selfish to do it; and then deciding to trust God, and stepping forward to do it anyway. And I praise God when he gives me the courage to do what he says. And I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many times in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take this last step of listening to Jesus.
But listening to Jesus is a package deal - you have to do it all. You can't think about what Jesus says if you don't know what he says. You won't do what he says if you haven't had your mind transformed to think in a godly way. You won't do any of it if you don't pray. If you want to listen to Jesus, then you need to know what he says. You need to talk to God. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way Christ wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says. I want to ask you all to take these words of God seriously: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" Don't just ask yourself if what you're doing is enough to listen to Jesus. Ask yourself first if that's what you actually want to do. Ask yourself honestly, Who do I really listen to?
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Obvious points:
Major
Jesus is God, the son of God, the fulfilment of God's revelation to people.
Minor
John the Baptist was Elijah.
What does this mean for us?
* God's command to the disciples: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
- It means we must respect the ultimate authority Jesus has over us as God.
* The Law and the Prophets were the primary guides of life for the Jews. It's what makes them a people.
- Jesus is our Law and Prophets.
- He should rule our lives. Our lives should be dominated by the law of Christ.
** Only three of the apostles saw this transfiguration before tasting death. The others had to die first before they saw Jesus glorified. They didn't get to hear about this until after the resurrection.
-- We don't see Jesus glorified till we die, or if we're lucky, when he returns.
-- We shouldn't need to see Jesus for ourselves. We can trust the testimony of the apostles who saw him and who were with him. The disciples, even nine of the 12, did not get to see Jesus transfigured. This should not be a block to our faith.
* Jesus is not just worthy of glory: God is Glory.
glory n. (pl. glories) [mass noun] 1 high renown or honour won by notable achievements: to fight and die for the glory of one's nation. 2 magnificence or great beauty: the train has been restored to all its former glory. - [count noun] (often glories) a thing that is beautiful, impressive, or worthy of praise: the glories of Paris. - the splendour and bliss of heaven: images of Christ in glory. 3 praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to God. 4 [count noun] a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Christ or a saint. ■ v. [no obj.] (glory in) take great pride or pleasure in: they gloried in their independence. - exult in unpleasantly or boastfully: readers tended to defend their paper or even to glory in its bias.
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You don't often hear the word 'glory' used outside a church. We sing songs about God being the King of Glory, and we say that God is worthy of glory, honour and praise. We pray that God will be glorified. But outside of church and talking about God, when do we talk about glory? ('Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]) It's a compound concept that takes in a few ideas. If we see something beautiful, impressive, worthy of praise, we might say, "We looked over the city of Paris in all its glory." It is often used to mean a high renown and honour that is gained through a notable achievement, so we might say that a soldier or a sportsperson who pushes the limits and tries to accomplish more is, "Going for glory." When something was once good, but has since fallen into ruin, and we rebuild it, we say we are, "Returning it to its former glory." So 'glory' really means something that is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, something that is so good that it is worth giving praise and honour and being renowned.
You might think it's little wonder that we talk about God in these terms. After all, God is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, He is so good that he is worth giving honour and praise.
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'Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]. When we talk about glory these days, this is usually what we mean - sporting heroes and their accomplishments, or the beauty and impressiveness of something, like a city, or in that case some wallpaper. We even have a football team called Perth Glory. We might occasionally describe something as "glorious": again usually sporting victories, but once upon a time we might have talked about a glorious military victory. We rarely talk about something being "glorified" outside of churches - when we do, we usually mean it's overstated - so the Archibald Prize, the famous portrait competition, has been disparagingly called a "glorified lucky dip".
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Even going over what Jesus has said in the last eight chapters of Mark would be a series of sermons on its own. And guess what? It has been! We've been preaching through Mark since December. I can guarantee that every sermon given between now and then has looked at what Jesus said, and then applied that to our lives today. So let me ask you this: how have the sermons over the last eight or so weeks impacted your life? What changes have you made because of them?
Gosh, that's a hard question, isn't it? Can you remember what Mark's sermon was about last week? Or Emily's the week before? Nick's the week before that? If I were to ask for a show of hands of how many people were here for Penny's sermon on <date>, I will bet a good number of hands would go up. If I were to ask for people to tell me one thing she said about applying that chapter of Mark to our lives, how many people could give me an answer? Could anyone tell me what chapter of Mark she preached on, or what story it was? But I wonder if we have forgotten the general plot or story of what happened in a regular TV series we watch, or a book we've read back then.
No, I'm not bringing this up to shame you. I'm bringing this up to make a point - every week we have sermons delivered to us here, on a platter. Sermons that people put hours and hours of work into, in order to bring God's word to us and help us apply it to our lives. And we are so used to it that we sit here, lap it up, and then walk out the door and forget it a week later. Maybe the sermons are boring. I'm sure I could do better to grab your attention. And sermons aren't memory tests to see how much you can recall. But my point is that if we're really serious about listening to what Jesus has to say, what steps are we taking to make sure that the point that was made to us on any given week is something we include into our lives? Do you take any active steps at all? Because I don't! I know some people use the sermon outlines to take notes. That's more than I do.
How much do you care about knowing what Jesus said and how to act on it? Do you care enough to go to church, even when you don't feel like it? Do you care enough to listen to sermons? Do you care enough to read the Bible every day, even though you're already pressed for time? Are you prepared to give up other things you do to make that time? Do you care enough to pray every day, not asking God for sunshine or safe travel or a holiday, but for him to reveal to you what he says? I think everyone here would say yes, we all care enough to want to do those things. So why aren't we doing them? What gets in the way? Is it busyness, family, work, life's other distractions? Remember the parable of the sower, Mark 4:18 "Still other people, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Because how can you listen to Jesus if you don't even know what he says? How do we find out what Jesus says? It's in the Bible. We read it.When you read what Jesus says directly in the gospels, you'll see he claims the whole Bible as the word of God, Old and New Testament. What do you need to do to make that happen? Every week someone stands up at this podium and gives a talk about God and the Bible, and how to relate it directly to your life. Listen to them!
Summary of the the sermons up to this point
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What is the most amazing thing you've ever seen? Perhaps it was something natural, like the Grand Canyon. Anyone seen that? Was it amazing? Perhaps the most amazing thing you've ever seen was man made. Has anyone been to the Great Wall of China? Was it amazing? Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was an event, like Cirque du Soleil (which I have on good authority is amazing). Maybe you're a romantic, and the most amazing thing you ever saw was your first child being born, or your spouse at your wedding. Aww. Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was a miracle. Whatever it is, what I'm talking about the most striking, most heartfelt, most impressive thing you have ever seen. It is something that impacts you.
Let me tell you about the most amazing natural thing I've ever seen. I was in Townsville as a teenager, and went to the Great Barrier Reef. If you've never been, the reef is very impressive. Worth going to see. It takes a couple of hours in a boat to get there. We went around in glass bottom boats, and saw the pretty coral and fish. It's quite nice. But it's not the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's all underwater, and you can't see it all from a boat, or by swimming around it. Maybe it's more impressive from the air. But while I was there, I did some snorkelling. When you're snorkelling at the reef, you are pretty much looking down, because your air is coming from a tube that points up that way, and there's colourful coral and stuff beneath you, so you don't really look where you're going.
Well, I was swimming along, looking at all the pretty colours, when all of a sudden I swam too far. The coral very, very suddenly disappeared, and below me was nothing. Just emptiness. Water going down into blackness. I looked up in front of me, and it was the same. I had reached the end of the reef, and in front of me there was just deep, endless water. It was floating all around me, for as far as I could see. And it was so big. I could see nothing but water. No coral. No fish. No sharks. No seaweed. But I knew all that stuff was out there, somewhere, in that infinite abyss. I can still picture it now. It still makes a pit in my stomach. It was hypnotising. It was terrifying. It was amazing. Seeing it made me realise how big and vast the ocean is.
Today, we read about Jesus, standing atop a mountain with three of his closest friends, showing them the most amazing thing they would ever see. Mark doesn't go into great detail about what it was like. Peter, who likely gave Mark this report, probably had trouble describing exactly what it was like. He says that Jesus' clothes became a dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. He says Elijah and Moses appeared. And he says they heard God's voice from a cloud.
And that's it. That's all we're told. Just like my amazing experience at the Great Barrier Reef, there are probably only so many ways to describe what the transfiguration was like. There are only so many ways to say, "water, deep, wow".
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Today we are looking at the transfiguration of Jesus.
This transfiguration of Jesus, as we call it, is the turning point of the whole gospel. We might not get a detailed description of what it was like, but its importance is absolutely unquestionable. This is the moment the gospel has been leading up to. Rather than doing something as an object lesson that points to who he is, Jesus shows himself to be God by revealing his glory.
This is different from all the miracles Jesus has performed up to this point. Healing the sick, forgiving sin, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread - those are all impressive, they are great, they are worthy of praise. But the transfiguration is not just Jesus doing something. It is revealing that Jesus is God in the same way that being confronted with the vast ocean reveals the vastness of the ocean - the ocean doesn't need to do anything but be seen in a certain way. That is the transfiguration.
We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but because God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted, 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the point in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
But only three people ever got to see it. And I acknowledge some people struggle with that. After all, this is the unassailable proof that Jesus really is God. This is the evidence people could see with their own eyes... but only three people actually got to see it. It's not there for us to see. Some people don't want to believe that Jesus really is God without seeing it for themselves, or without indisputable proof. They want God to prove himself to them in a specific way that makes it undeniable. They don't trust the testimony of witnesses. They want testable results, obervable phenomena. That's how science works.
But that's not how history works, it's not how law works, it's not how philosophy works, and it's not how God works. The gospels are highly trustworthy sources. You can trust what they say. Yes, what they say will challenge you to rethink what you believe, what other people say about the world. But that shouldn't be a reason to ignore it.
We aren't the only ones who don't get to see Jesus as God for ourselves. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. That is all, but that is enough.
If you think witness testimony is not a strong enough basis to believe in what Jesus said and did, then this is where you disembark the Jesus train. This is your station. Jesus did not share this experience with most of the people closest to him, his most faithful apostles. My advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life.
Because that's what the transfiguration is all about. It's not just about believing some errant fact of history, like Julius Caesar's birthday. We're told that Jesus is God, and the truth of that should impact the very core of how we live our lives. We don't get to see it, but we are told it. God himself told the three on that mountain: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" I counsel everyone who hears me now to accept this as the truth, and to do what God says - listen to Jesus. And if you can't, or you won't, then you should work out exactly why you can't or won't. Are your problems with God only intellectual? Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. I challenge you to approach me or Emily or Nick with your intellectual problems with God - there are answers, they can be worked out!
Are your problems with God personal - maybe you don't want to give up certain parts of your life, or you disagree with God on some things? That's also common. If you accept Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend if we listen to Jesus. Perhaps you have both intellectual and personal problems with God. That's perhaps most common. Then you need to do both - come and talk to someone, and we'll work out the intellectual problems. Then we can sort out the personal issues, and by listening to Jesus, learn to become God's friend.
The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus, because just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Realising the amazing truth that Jesus is God, and that God speaks to us through him, should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For Peter, James and John at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'. For just one small example, in chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God speaks to us through Jesus. We need to take that seriously. We need to do what he says. Think about the voices that currently speak into your lives, and that make you spring into action. When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When people tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to police, we even listen to politicians. And God help us, despite ourselves we listen to advertising, if for no other reason than it is repeated constantly. These voices don't just speak to us, we listen to them, and we do what they ask.
Well God is more important than all of those voices! He's more important than all of them put together! I'm sure you would all agree with me on that. But how much time do you give to listening to God? How much time do you spend praying - that is talking and listening to God? How much time do you spend reading the Bible - that is, what God has to say? How much time do you spend thinking about God, thanking him for what you've got, or doing what he says because he says it?
That's what I want us to all take away from the transfiguration today. I now want us to focus on how we can 'listen to Jesus' in our lives. But there is a big temptation to just give a long list of things you should listen to Jesus about. That could go on forever. The truth is, I don't know what you're already doing to focus on listening to Jesus in your life. So I'm going to tell you what I do. Not to boast - definitely not to do that, trust me. But I want to show that there are things we can be done to help us seriously listen to Jesus, the way the transfiguration demands that we do.
Starting from the basics here: to listen to Jesus, I need to know what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old. But it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. I find I often don't agree what what Oswald Chambers has to say about a verse. But then I pray about it, and on reflection I see that he's usually got a point. Oswald is all about putting faith in God, and it's amazing how often I disagree with him just because he says the Bible demands I put more faith in God than I do.
I also memorise the Bible. I also started memorizing just last year, around September. Since then, I've memorised the whole book of Galatians, and up to chapter 9 of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes of every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am for it. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). I started doing it because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James - he said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. I cannot speak highly enough of memorizing scripture. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). And anyone who says they can't do it, or they don't have time, I want to ask you this:
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians or bands or singers are. I'm not asking you what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking you who do you pay attention to? When they express an idea or an opinion or a fact, who do you believe? When they say they need something, who do you provide for? When they ask you or tell you to do something, who do you obey? Who you listen to is obviously more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what you do with your life.
When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
Now, no doubt you listen to different people about different things. So for example, if your boss tells you how to do your job, you listen. But if your boss tells you child vaccinations cause autism, you don't listen. People are important to different parts of our lives, and the more authority they have on a subject that is important to us, the more we listen to them, and actually act on what they have to say in that area.
In our passage today, God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
God is the creator of all things on earth, including you and me. He is the arbiter of all justice, and decides all right and wrong. He is the giver of all love, all money, all health, and all thought. Without God, there is nothing. He the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life. Friends, family, children, employers, police, politicians, doctors, preachers, environmentalists - you can listen to them all. But if any of them says something that goes against what God says about how you must live your life, then no matter what it is, God wins. God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. And that includes your own voice.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It is revealing that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 95kms. God: 40kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God not by doing miracles and putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the very things that makes God God: he reveals his Glory. We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
I know some people don't think they can believe in God without some sort of absolute proof that he exists. They want to see the transfiguration for themselves. I think we're a spoilt and greedy generation. We have voice recorders, cameras, even video cameras, on our phones that we carry everywhere we go. We are so used to having everything recorded, everything on video, everything photographed, that if we can't see it for ourselves, we choose not to accept it. "Pics or it didn't happen" as the kids say, or at least they used to in 2011.
But the transfiguration shows that this attitude is entirely against how God works. Here Jesus reveals the Glory of God, indisputable evidence that he and God are one - and only three people get to see it. And they're sworn to secrecy until after Jesus dies and is raised from the dead. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. God says that is enough.
If you disagree, then my advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life. The Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. The proof is there in history. God doesn't need to prove it to you at your convenience. God is who he claims to be, and Jesus is God. Which brings us back to my original question: Who do you listen to?
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. Just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
We need to listen to Jesus, and that should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take just one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
I said earlier that we must listen to God. I said he the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life, and that God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said earlier in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. In Mark 3:28 he says, "Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. Do you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend? Let me tell you how I do it now, and how I think I could do it better.
Step 1: to listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
The other thing I do these days is memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). These bits of scripture come to mind when I am stressed, or worried about something, or even just thinking about a particular thing. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I highly recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard, it just takes time.
I'm not telling you to read the Bible, or to memorise the Bible. It's your choice. But if you want to listen to Jesus, these are amazing ways to do it. I will help anyone who needs help doing these things. I haven't asked, but I bet Nick and Emily would also volunteer themselves. It is so valuable, I will make time to help. I suggest you make time to do them too.
I started memorising scripture because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. He said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. And that brings me to the next thing I do to listen to Jesus: I listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. Our preachers spend hours and hours on their sermons, and they are good stuff. One thing I don't do - but after preparing this sermon, I have started doing as of last week - is to become one of those people who takes notes during sermons. Because I listen to sermons every week, yes, and as sure as I listen to them I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But what better way to make sure that I listen to what Jesus says than to write down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and figure out one way I can apply it to my life.
I also go to a Bible study every week. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. I tend to talk too much, and argue too much.
The next thing I do is pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different things each day. I pray about my marriage. I pray about Ministry of Game. I pray about Bible study. I pray about church. I pray for missionaries. I pray for persecuted Christians. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day coming to the same conclusion - I have to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's not my experience anyway. But if you go into prayer expecting to be able to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it.
One thing I don't do, even though I keep a prayer blog, is go back and read through it. People ask me about that all the time, but I've never done it.
Another thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I'm getting better at that. I find the more I learn to rely on God, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control. To listen to him. I also find myself confessing my sins more when I do that too.
The last thing I do is think. What I mean is, I try to think about what I'm doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. Now, I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. It can be tiring, trying to evaluate everything you say and do. But what I have found is the more I want to trust God, the more I want to listen to Jesus, the more I read the Bible not just so that I've read it, but really to get to grips with what it says so that I can act on it, the more my thoughts come from a godly base.
And that makes a huge difference. Because thoughts that come from an ungodly base are the ones that you have to stop, analyse, check, wonder about, consider, debate, and think about. But ones that come out of a godly base, you do't need to analyse - you know they're from God. Instead, you need courage to act on them. Because they're the thoughts and actions that don't look like what everyone else is doing. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, of course, I try my best to do those actions. With the courage God gives me, and the strength, I try to live the life he wants me to live. Not the life that makes me comfortable. Not the life that makes me feel good. Not the life that everyone else wants me to live. I try to live the life God wants. To me, that looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about, and struggling to work out what I should do, not wanting to do it, being too afraid to do it, being too selfish to do it, and then deciding to trust God, and just stepping forward to do it anyway. I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many gaps in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take that step of listening to Jesus. And I thank him when he gives me the courage to do what he says.
You don't have to do any of those things. They are just examples that might be helpful to anyone who wants to do what God says, and listen to Jesus. What you have to do, what is important to do, is to think about that one big question: Who do you listen to? If it's God you want to listen to, then you need to know what Jesus says. You need to pray. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way God wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says.
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Sunday, February 08, 2015
8/2/15 Prayer, 'Who is the King?' Mark 6:30-56
Heavenly Father,
No matter where we look in this world, we see your power and glory. You are behind the beauty of the sky at sunrise and sunset. You are responsible for the food and water that all life depends on. You are the model for all relationships in life - in families, in churches, and with friends. You provide work to be done, and you give food and shelter and wages as its reward. You give health, you give freedom, and you give love. You are God Who Provides, and all good things come from you, so that in everything we cannot help but see your greatness and bring you glory for it.
And yet sometimes there are tragedies in this world. Planes crash. Sickness and financial hardship plague our world, and threaten the security of our own lives. Relationships break down. There are wars and massacres that threaten people's freedom, and the lives of our brothers and sisters and of your church. There is worry and anxiety and stress, born of overwork, greed and misplaced desire. We are your family, and yet sometimes we don't even trust you to provide for us, and we don't treat you with the honour you deserve and demand.
But you have revealed yourself to us through your son Jesus Christ, our Messiah. You show us through his life that this is not how the world should be. Jesus healed the sick, and taught us that sickness is not part of your perfect kingdom. Jesus had compassion on people, and showed his love by teaching the people who came to him. And you continue to teach us through your word as it is contained in the bible, as we study it alone in quiet times and together in Bible study, and as we are exhorted to follow it by our preachers. Be with Emily as she seeks to encourage us to respond to your word today. Jesus fed people who had come out to the wilderness to hear him, and did it in an amazing way, showing us your glory. Help us to rely on you, and not on ourselves, and to be thankful for what you provide for us, and to be thankful in knowing that we will never be hungry or thirsty in your perfect kingdom.
You are our shepherd, our leader, and we thank you that we can trust you to always have our best interests at heart. Give us faith to rely on you, even when we don't have answers for why life isn't treating us the way we'd like it to. Regardless of our situations, bring us closer to you, and help us to find peace in that closeness.
You are truly amazing, God, and we pray that many people will come from all over to hear more about you. But you also send us out to preach your word. Help us to speak clearly the good news that Jesus has come, and people need to repent. Let people see the work that you are doing in us, the change you write across our lives, and let us tell them boldly and lovingly about you. Remind us that you also desire to bring us rest, and even as we seek to do our work for you, help us to remember it is your work, not ours, and that you ultimately call us all to rest in you.
We ask all these things, trusting that you give to us all that we need, and will continue to transform us and renew us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, AMEN.
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