Five New Year’s Revolutions
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The practice of many people around this time of year is to preach a New Year’s sermon when we talk about New Year’s resolutions. I have found it hard when I preach through things, and a series of things like I have been doing in John, to match those kinds of traditions up when you come to a part of the year, but, guess what? This time it goes together. I was looking at the scripture and I said, “Wow! I have some New Year’s resolutions for you.” I am actually calling them ‘revolutions’, not because they are anything new. Actually there are some things in here that you will have heard before, or we have heard before many times; rather they are things that if we would practice them and think about them, they would revolutionize our lives. They would make them better. We would be happier. We would be closer to the Lord. So as we look at this passage, it is from John 7, as we continue our series through John, remember we left off before Christmas in John 6 and things we not going very well. Jesus was being honest about who he is, who he was at the time and a lot of people didn’t like it; even some of his disciples began to go away from him. So it is a dangerous time, too. The leaders were getting ready to think about killing him, or doing away with him. If you read John, let me remind you again, when you read Jews, it is not just simply Israelites. John specifically uses that term for Jewish leaders, normally; sometimes not, but most of the time that is what he is doing.
So let’s read this, and listen to God’s word. He has a run-in with his brothers. Jesus had half brothers and sisters and they didn’t believe in him either. (John 7:1-13)
1After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. 2But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, 3Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. 4No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
6Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. 7The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. 8You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” 9Having said this, he stayed in Galilee.
10However, after his brothers had left for the Feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 11Now at the Feast the Jews were watching for him and asking, “Where is that man?”
12Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”
Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” 13But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the Jews.
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, may we learn from this passage, things you would have us know each as individuals and as a church for your word speaks to us. Help us to listen, all of us. Be with the one who preaches Lord, for his sins are many. Forgive them. Be with us Lord, may we hear what you have to say in our hearts and minds; in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well there are lots of principles we could get from the scriptures, but in this particular passage I came up with five. And, the first one is that we should make sure that our ladder of success is on the right wall. Jesus’ brothers come to him and give him some sound advice, according to the world. Many years ago as I was getting my career started in the Army, a friend of mine said, “Chris, if you want to be promoted in the Army, you have to do some things. You have to make friends. You have to go to the conferences. You have to become known. You have to, for a lack of a better word, schmooze with other people. You’ve got to have them know you. Then you will get promoted.” You know what? He was right, to some degree. Because, that is the way the world works, isn’t it? Not just the Army, but the world. If you want to succeed, you have to make connections. To some degree, there is not anything wrong with that. So when his bothers come to him, on one level, it is sound advice according to the world. But of course, Jesus had another agenda.
What does that mean for you and me? Well, I really believe it means we have to be careful. You know, we are called to be in the world but not of it. So achieving success according to worldly standards is not always wrong, but it has severe limitations. It has severe limitations. Our ladder may be on the wrong wall. I remember many years ago one of the gifts of God to me was that I learned how to paint. House paint not…I couldn’t paint the good way to save my life but I can paint houses. I was a “newbie” so they gave me all the good jobs. One of the good jobs was getting up on a thirty to forty foot ladder and doing all the eaves of houses, all summer long. I was up on ladders all the time. Well occasionally you would put the ladder up and find out you were in the wrong spot. Because you would put it up and get up there and go “Oh, I’ve already done this” or it hadn’t been prepped, or something is wrong, and you have to move the ladder down the way. Of course, sometimes you wanted to cheat and try to do this kind of thing. With a forty foot ladder, it is not a good thing. I’ve ridden a couple of them down…but that is another story. When you are young you can do that kind of thing.
Your ladder might be on the wrong wall. You may be in the wrong place. You see, worldly success is not always wrong but it almost never leads to happiness. We see example after example of that. The latest one, of course, is Tiger Woods. You know it’s like The Natural., “I want to be the best this game has ever seen.” He’s it in golf right now. He has, as Forrest Gump would say, “a gazillion dollars.” And is he happy? I don’t think so. Not only that, we may find that we are not following what God wants us to do. You see, again, success is not always wrong and what we are doing is not always wrong, we may just be doing it in the wrong way. I will admit I used this example a few years ago, about having your ladder on the wrong wall; and a friend of mine, or a guy I knew, came and said, “After I heard that I went and quit my job the next day because I realized I was in the wrong spot.” You know, he was, actually. There are examples of that but you are not necessarily in the wrong spot, but what are you doing in terms of what you are doing for God? Is it what you are doing for God or is it just to make your life comfortable? or to build up your own ego? …because, you know what? We are saved by grace. There are actually, for Christians, two judgments. One is to salvation, and when you are in Christ that has already taken place for you. Judgment happened to Christ on the cross. But we will all stand before God and God will ask us what we did with our lives, the gifts he has given us. I call it sort of like a Cosmic Awards Banquet. But some will get awards and some will not, because we will stand before God and God will ask us, “What did you live for? What did you do? Did you just exist? Did you work for me?” There is a certain fear to that and we should have it, because standing before the omnipotent God of the Universe will not be fun. Now he will say, “You are my child,” but you know I mentioned to the kids, we haven’t seen God. When we see God, it is going to be the ultimate, “Oh, my!” moment. “Oh, my!..” We read in the scripture what happens to people that do that. They fall straight down on the ground, going, “Woe is me.” Then Jesus will pick us up, but still… Is your ladder on the right wall?
The second point in this passage is that God’s time is always the right time. Jesus really rebukes his brothers. He says, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right.” Now in the bible, there are two words for time in Greek. One is chronos, which comes “chronological.” And that simply means the time we experience day in and day out, every minute following the next, every day following the next, you know, “Sunrise, sunset….” You know, that is what chronos time is. Then there is kairos, kairos time. That is not chronos time, as in one thing following the other; that is the right time. That is in the fullness of God. God sent forth his Son at the right time in history. There are times in our lives that we might call kairos moments, when things are right. This is the word that Jesus is using here – kairos. Krairos time. He is saying to his brothers, basically, “You have no clue about this kind of time. You don’t know about God’s time. I do. And it is not right for me. Anytime is right for you because you do not know God,” essentially is what he is saying. Now again, there is nothing wrong with chronos time. We all experience that. That is what life is about in many ways, but it’s bigger than that. I like to call it the eternal perspective, that our lives are much bigger than the years we get them; but we need to broaden them to think about eternity and we have a piece of that story God is telling. Within our lives and within our own story, there are times of the right moment that God will have us do. You know, many years ago I was preaching a sermon at a church and I have to admit every now and then I get long winded, I admit it. Even here, occasionally, maybe more than occasionally, but anyway, it was approaching twelve and right at twelve o’clock no fewer than five watches went off, literally. No kidding. “Huh.” Those folks were more concerned about chronos time than what God might be saying to them in that moment. Now, one should prepare oneself to finish on time. I’m not against that. We need to be thinking the bigger way. That was what Jesus saying to his brothers. “God’s time is the right time.” We need to become aware of that. You know, the Hebrews thought more in terms of kairos that they did chronos. Americans tend to think more of chronos than kairos.
Another principle: You are only good because God says you are good. You are only good because God says you are good. Jesus says to his brothers, ”The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.” Jesus was not all hearts and flowers. He told us the way it was. You know it is popular in our day among preachers, particularly in churches, to emphasize the positive; and I am not against that. I think we should be encouraging and positive, but in the process, sometimes, the concept of sin is lost.
I have grown to respect over the years, Robert Schuller, who is famous for “The Power of Positive Thinking,” along with Normal Vincent Peale. I have been to several things Schuller has done; but Schuller, there are some things that he does that I don’t care for, but I remember watching him preach one day and he gave this example. He paused and said, “You know, one day I mentioned sin in one of my sermons and then, you know who called me afterwards?” He said, “Doris day called me.” He was obviously proud of this. “And she said, ‘Robert, you shouldn’t mention sin in your sermons because that just drives people away.’” He said, “I realized she was right.” He stuck with that philosophy. My understanding is that when his son took over, he began to be more biblical in his preaching and mentioning things like repentance and sin and now he is not preaching anymore at Crystal Cathedral. It is too bad. It is too bad.
You know the message of the gospel is wonderfully positive, but it is not positive in the sense that we are all wonderful people. It is positive because God says, “I am going to forgive you. I am going to redeem you. I am going to heal your brokenness.” You know it is good to be positive but we need to also deal with this fact of brokenness, because we are broken. We know that, don’t we? You don’t have to shake your head or anything. I know you know. All you have to do is look at your life and go, “Yeah. I’m broken.” How do we deal with brokenness unless we talk about it? How do we deal with it? God deals with it. He has the answer to it. The gospel message is that “I declare you good in Christ. Not because you are good in yourself, because Jesus is good and I’m imputing (a wonderful word), I’m giving you his goodness, not in that you become good but when I see him, I see you.” That’s the gospel. That’s cool, because I know I’m bad but God loves me anyway. That is the gospel. Not that I am a wonderful person. If in the process of our life we become good people, better people, that’s great. I am hoping for that. But I look forward to the day when I don’t have to worry about this thing inside, this brokenness, when I will be healed, and you will be healed. That’s the gospel. That’s the positive thing and it is wonderful. That is what we should say. So when you turn to God, when you turn to God, we don’t do so in any kind of pride, but humility. We know that we come as broken people, healed because of what he has done.
Number four: Always practice the presence of God. It does take practice, practicing the presence of God. Jesus said to his brothers, “You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” This idea, this time again; but what Jesus is saying is that “I am aware that God has his hand on me and he is with me and I am sensitive to what he wants me to do; and I am going to do it at the right time, not at just any old time. I’m going to do it at the right time.” You know, for us that is what we need to do, learn to get a sense of what God is doing, that God is right here. You know, it starts with believing it. Sometimes, I don’t think that we do. We just go along in our lives and then we finally go, “Oh yeah, God you’re here.” I heard a wonderful story about some miners who were trapped in their mine. People spent a whole week trying to rescue them. There were nine miners down in this hole and as they were down there, the stronger people encouraged the weaker people and they all joined hands and arms so they could hold each other up. For seven days, there were nine guys down there; and when they got up and had a service to celebrate it, they had ten lamps. People asked, “What is that tenth one?” They said, “That is a symbol of the presence of God which we felt, because we knew that even in the midst of that, He was with us.” So we have to believe it.
The second thing we have to have to practice God’s presence is that old thing called repentance. You know, Steve Brown, I quote him a whole lot, he says you know it is tough to hug a stiff child. Have you ever tried that? Your kid gets mad at you and you try to hug him? Or occasionally they’ll literally turn their back on you? You know people will do that. I have found that when somebody is mad at you they may not turn their back on you but they will turn to the side so they don’t have to look at you. We do the same thing to God. If you are living your life your own way, or if you have done some things you shouldn’t do and you haven’t talked to God about it, you have your back turned and you won’t feel his presence. You have to repent, and then just the same old things: worship and prayer, and worship and prayer, and bible reading. That is how you practice the presence of God.
Last but not least, it is always, always, always, always, always about Jesus. As Jesus does go to the feast he decides to go in secret because he knows if he just shows up and walks in they are going to grab him. He goes down in secret because he wants to teach and by the time he is teaching everybody is enthralled and the leaders can’t do anything about it. So he goes in secret instead and teaches and talks to people. Then everybody is running around going, “Who is this guy?” That is the question of two thousand centuries. “Who is Jesus? What is he about?” It is the question of the age. It is still the question of the age. “What do we do with this guy named Jesus?” Some people were going around saying, “He is a good man.” But you know what? That’s the only thing that you can say about Jesus that is false. Now let me explain. Just to say he is a good man, a lot of people do that, “Oh Jesus is a good teacher.” “Jesus is just a good man.” It doesn’t really work, because if you read the gospels we find a man who says the most remarkable things about himself. He says, “I am the Lord of the Sabbath.” He says, “I am the Good Shepherd” “I am the Resurrection and the life.” “No one comes to the Father except by me.” In other words when you read what Jesus says about himself, it is all about him. If I were to get up and say that to you, I hope you would fire me the next day. At least, put me in the loony bin because I would be crazy. I would be completely an egomaniac if I said, “I am the light” to you. I am the truth.” If you were to worship me and not go “Don’t do that” as Jesus did—you know when Paul and Silas were worshiped they said, “Stop!” Jesus said, “That’s good, that’s what you should do.” So, either Jesus was an egomaniac, he was insane, or he was God. There is really no other choice. Now some say “Well, it was just his disciples who were saying that about him;” but it really doesn’t wash.
Who is this guy? And that is what we need to remember for our own lives. We need to be Christ-centered in our church and in our individual lives because, I often say when I am trying to say something is really great, I will say, “It is really great, but it is not the be-all end-all.” But, when we talk about Jesus, he is the be-all end-all. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the A to Z. He is the Beginning and the End. He says those about himself. The temptation for us is to get off track, always, and that’s the track: It is always about Jesus. It is not about success. It is not about Mohammed. It is not about you. It is about Jesus. It is always about Jesus.
Take these five things, I hope, and use them in your life. They are good things to remember for all of us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, thank you for Jesus our Savior. Thank you for him being our righteousness and through him we are forgiven and made whole and made right. Help us to follow him. Help us to keep him at the center of our hearts and minds, always, whatever we go through. In his name, we pray. Amen.