JESUS: His Hard Sayings                                                           8-13-06

Matthew 18:15-17 (Matthew 16:24)

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Next Sunday we will conclude this series on the life and teachings of Jesus.  The series grew out of my reading and re-reading the 4 Gospels last year and noting the things Jesus said and did.  And this week I went back through the notebook I kept last year as I read the Gospels 12 times, each month in a different translation.  I found that there is much more that I have not preached this past year than I did preach.

One heading that I had notes under was “Jesus’ Hard Sayings”.  I have 17 entries under that heading, and we have not even looked at one of them.  So today I want us to look at some of them, and then next week we will conclude with a message about knowledge vs. relationship.

One thing about Jesus is that He is honest.  He did not try to paint an unrealistic picture of what it meant to follow Him.  Some of you have a picture in your mind that is not accurate. Your picture of following Jesus is all blessing and no sacrifice.  Looking at some of these words from Jesus this morning will help you see that what you have imagined is not the reality of being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said in Luke 11:23: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.”  He’s in a conversation with the Jewish religious leaders, and He’s pulling no punches.  As a matter of fact, the last couple verses of this chapter say: When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say. (v.53-54).

According to Jesus, there is no middle ground when it comes to Him; either we are with Him or we are against Him.  Either we are working for Him or we are working against Him.  We cannot be neutral.  We are either on His side, or on the other side.

Some of you are walking the fence.  You don’t want to be too sinful, but you don’t want to be too holy either.  You are looking for some middle ground where you can be a “Christian” who is acceptable to the world.  No fanaticism – that might offend some of your non-Christian friends.

Jesus made it clear what it meant to be one of His followers.  This is a hard saying, but this is what Jesus said:

Matthew 16:24-27: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.  What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.

Your soul is the most important part of you: more important than your good looks, more important than your good grades, or your popularity, or your athletic ability; more important than your marital status, or your bank balance, or your physical health.  Yet we give so much attention to these less important things, and so little attention to the condition of our soul.

To follow Jesus involves sacrifice.  And remember, if you aren’t following Him, you are against Him.  I didn’t say that; He did.  Here’s what it says in Luke 14:25-27:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:  “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Then Jesus talks about counting the cost before beginning to build a tower, counting the cost before going to war, counting the cost before beginning to follow Him.  And He concludes in v.33: In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

Those are hard words.  “Hate:” here it means everything else must be secondary – my family, my possessions, my hopes and dreams and plans.  For any of those things to have first place in my life is idolatry, and God hates idolatry.  To follow Jesus is to have Jesus first.  And sad to say, that’s not the way most Christians live.

Where do we get this idea that we can live our life the way we want to live our life, and still be acceptable to God?  That doesn’t come to us out of the Bible.  It is a lie of the enemy of our soul, from Satan himself.

1 John 2:3-4 says of Jesus: We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.  The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

The Bible says that if you claim to be a Christian and are not living in obedience to God’s commands, you are liar.  Those are hard words, but they are the word of God.  How do we know if we are truly a Christian?  It says: we walk as Jesus did.  Forget the robe and sandals; that’s not what it’s talking about.  It’s talking about living like Jesus and not just talking about Jesus.

God is not so interested that we can talk the Christian talk as He is in that we walk the Christian walk.  It’s our lifestyle that matters to God. 

One day the religious leaders were again harassing Jesus, and they came to Him and asked: “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?”

He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written :”‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”. Mark 7:5-6

Those are hard words.  He wasn’t being very nice to those religious leaders.  But He was being honest.  And if Jesus were to honestly assess your spiritual life today, would he say the same thing to you: “You honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from Me?”

How often do you talk with Him?  How often do you read His Word to you, the Bible?  How much is He in your thoughts?  When you make everyday decisions, do you consider what He might want you to do? Is He a vital part of your everyday life, or is it only when your have a problem that you go to Him?  Your answers to those questions will tell you whether or not your heart is far from Him.

If it is, God wants you to make some changes.  His desire is to be first place in your life.  He won’t force Himself onto the throne of your life, but that’s where He wants to be.  He waits to be invited.  He waits for you to make the decision to no longer let self or the things of this world sit on the throne of your life, and to ask Him to take that place of preeminence.  But when you do, He will take first place, and your life will be the better for it.

There’s another area where Jesus says some hard things, and it has to do with other people’s attitude toward us when we follow Him. 

Every week I receive an email from an organization called “The Voice of the Martyrs”.  They send prayer requests from people living in places where persecution is prevalent.  And as I read those, I am again reminded of the freedoms that we currently enjoy here in America, but which may some day be taken away from us.

This week there were requests from Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, and Iran.  Many Christians today are being persecuted for their faith, suffering physically and emotionally and economically.  Could it happen here?  To some extent it already is, and it will only get worse for us as the years go on.  But listen to what Jesus said:

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.  John 15:18-21

It’s because of the Name of Jesus, we will suffer persecution.  Not because we are religious, not because we believe in God, but because we talk about Jesus.  I saw a sign on a church reader board recently that said: “Share the good news; use words only when necessary.”

I’m sorry, but you can’t share the good news without words.  The good news is not love.  The good news is not smiling a lot.  The good news is that Jesus died on the cross, taking the punishment for your sin so that you could be forgiven.  The good news is that as you place your faith in Jesus as your only Savior, you are born into the Family of God and will live forever with Him. 

We are to spread the good news, and we cannot do that without talking about Jesus.  And there is where persecution comes in.

Listen to what Jesus said:

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Luke 12:51-53

“There is a price to pay if you follow Me”, Jesus said.  “You will suffer misunderstanding, even from your own family.  They may even reject you, and you will be tempted to compromise.”  In Matthew’s account Jesus next says: “Anyone who loves his family members more than Me is not worthy of Me.”

It’s not all that hard to follow Jesus when everyone else is following Him.  But when you’re the only one, when everyone else is making fun of those who follow Him, when to open your mouth would bring ridicule and maybe even rejection, then it’s much harder to follow Him.  But followers of Jesus must be prepared for persecution when it comes, because if you follow Him openly, there will be persecution.

The passage that really got me started looking at these hard sayings of Jesus is found in Matthew 18 (turn).  What Jesus says we are to do here goes contrary to our sinful nature.  There are other ways we would rather handle situations than the way Jesus gives us here, commands us here.  And the situation He describes is one in which all of us find ourselves at times.  Let’s read it here in Matthew 18:15-17.

Some commentators believe Jesus did not say the words in these verses, but rather they are a later addition by well-meaning Christians.  One of the arguments is that when Jesus said them, there was no such thing as the church.  It didn’t begin until the Day of Pentecost following Jesus’ death and resurrection.  So why would Jesus tell His Disciples to tell it to the Church if the other steps did not resolve the issue?

This is one of only 2 places that Jesus talked about the Church.  The other is in Matthew 16 where Jesus said: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.”  He is referring to a future time since He uses the future tense; it was still in the future when He said it, but we are living in that future when He is building His Church.

Did Jesus really say these words?  If you throw out this section, then you have to throw out the next section about how many times we need to forgive, and the story of the unforgiving servant.  Peter asks…

Peter asks his question in response to what Jesus says here about how to deal with it when someone sins against us.

If we start throwing out sections of the Bible because we don’t understand how they fit with the other sections, I think we are going to be in real trouble.  Let’s just accept this as it is, just as the Church has done down through the centuries.

“If your brother sins against you.”  Ever had that happen?  I don’t know anyone who hasn’t.  We have all had people sin against us.  Some of the early manuscripts leave out the words “against you” and simply read “If your brother sins”.   But the instructions seem to have more to do with a personal wound rather than one that does not involve us personally.

“If your brother sins against you…”  This is how we are to deal with things within the Church.  This is not about when your unsaved neighbor sins against you.  It is specifically about how Christians are to deal with conflicts between them.  And if we would put this instruction into practice, it would change the life of this church more than almost anything else we could suggest.

Here are Jesus instructions in a nutshell:

The one sinned against is to take the initiative.  We often sit back and wait for the other one to come to us and apologize.  That’s not what we are to do according to Jesus.  When someone sins against me, it is my responsibility to take the initiative to resolve the situation.

That’s why I have included this in the “hard sayings” of Jesus.  When I have been wounded, I usually don’t want to go to that one.  I want to brood, I want to be angry at that person, I want to tell others about what they have done.  Gossip, tale bearing, slander, criticism – they so often have as their source our disobedience to what Jesus says here.  “Take the initiative and go to that one who has sinned against you.”

It does not say you are to write them a letter (or an email).  Letters can be misunderstood and there is no dialogue; you don’t have a chance to immediately explain what you mean by what you say if the other person doesn’t understand.  If we take Jesus literally, this is to be a face to face meeting.

The initial meeting is to be private.

It may be that you have misunderstood.  It may be that their intentions were not what you have imagined them to be.  In Joshua 22, some of the Israelites who lived on the East side of the Jordan River built an altar that was a replica of the one in the Tabernacle in Jerusalem, and the rest of the Jews were about to go to war with them over it.  But first they sent some leaders to talk with them about it.

What they found was that the altar was not for offering sacrifices, but rather as a reminder to the people on that side of the Jordan of Who their true God was. They named the altar “A Witness Between Us that the LORD is God.”  And because they talked before going to war, thousands of lives were spared.

Go and talk to that person in private and see if you can resolve the issue between you.  If so, Jesus said, you have won back your brother.

If step one fails to resolve it, then take 1 or 2 others with you and try again.  It may be that the wisdom of the others can help. It may be that having those others there helps the one who has sinned against you see how serious the matter is.  It may be that the others can help the two who are conflict hear each other accurately and be mediators.  But remember, we take this step only if step one has failed.

People sometimes ask me to get involved in situations where someone has sinned against them.  They want me to go to that one and confront them, and they have not yet gone to them personally.  But that’s not Biblical.  You have to do step one before step two.  And even then, the others are going as witnesses.  They have not been personally involved in the situation.

The third step is one that I rarely see happen: if steps one and two are not successful, then it says “Tell it to the church”.  It doesn’t say “Tell it to the pastor”, or “tell it to the chief gossips so they can do their thing.”  This is somehow bringing the whole congregation into the process for one reason only: to help resolve the situation between the original two people.

The assumption here is that the facts of the situation have been established.  There really has been sin on the part of the one accused.  And they are refusing to repent of their sin and be reconciled to the brother or sister against whom they have sinned. 

The final step Jesus gives is Treat him as a tax collector or sinner.  Jesus love for tax collectors and sinners is well documented.  He is not saying “stop loving them”.  That would be the exact opposite of what He did.  He loved them and did all that He could to bring them to faith in Himself. 

The unrepentant sinner is to now be considered an outsider, still to be loved and cared about, but an outsider.

Some of you are here today and someone in this congregation has sinned against you.  God does not simply want you to forgive them, as we talked about last Sunday; He wants you to bring that thing out in the open and deal with it.  He wants you to go to them in private and start this process, a process not aimed at excommunicating them, but of reconciling with them.

In this last hard saying of Jesus, the person is more important than the issue.  When Jesus walked this earth, that’s always the way it was with Him.  Whether it was the woman at the well who had been divorced 5 times and was now just living with a man, or Zacchaeus who had cheated people in collecting their taxes, or the woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus wanted to restore them rather than punish them.

In all of these things that Jesus said, they are hard because they go against what our carnal, or sinful, nature wants to do.  We don’t want to deny ourselves; we don’t want to make sacrifices; we don’t want to put Jesus above everything else in our lives; we don’t want to endure persecution; we don’t want to make the effort to be reconciled to those who sin against us. 

But the mark of being a healthy follower of Jesus is that we do those things our carnal nature doesn’t want to do.  And we do them because that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Let me close by again reading those words from 1 John 2:3-4: We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.  The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

PRAY