Dr. Rodney Plunket

For the past several weeks, the majority of our adult Bible classes have been engaged in a study of the Gospels.  That Bible study series devotes three weeks to the Gospel of Mark, three weeks to the Gospel of John, three weeks to the Gospel of Luke, and three weeks to the Gospel of Matthew.  Through these studies, class members were exposed to many of the teachings and actions of Jesus Christ.  That study is coming to an end, so it is appropriate to spend sometime incorporating into worship the central theme conveyed by this series.

That theme was that Jesus is a challenging Lord.  He does not make people comfortable.  In fact, He makes some very influential people so uncomfortable that they plot against Him and have Him executed.

The very first passage employed in this study was Mark (Mk) 2:1-3:6.  In this section Jesus immediately upsets some of His listeners when He says to a paralyzed man, “your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5c).  The Jewish scribes sitting there were not happy to hear this statement from Jesus.  To claim the power to forgive sins was a blasphemous claim, and normally their evaluation would have been correct.  But Jesus is the Son of God.  And when Jesus goes on to heal the man, con­firming that He indeed has the power to forgive sins, they should marvel and suspect that they are in the presence of someone very special.  But that is too much of a challenge for them.  Their opposition increases.

In the next section of Mark 2, Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors.  He is criticized for such behavior and responds with these words in Mk 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

In Mk 2:18-20 Jesus is questioned because He and His disciples do not fast.  Jesus responds by saying,

The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?  As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.  The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

Jesus’ words here reveal that He is special, so special that when He is present people celebrate.  When He departs they will fast.  To celebrate when Jesus is present and to fast when He leaves clearly reveals Jesus’’ exalted status.  It is fairly certain that these words indicating His exalted status would not have sat well with those who opposed Him.

The two final events in this section of Mark relate to Jesus’ view of the sabbath.  His view is very different from the view of the sabbath espoused by the Jewish leaders, and Jesus believes that His view has special authority.  In Mk 2:28 He says, referring to Himself, “the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”  In Mk 3:1-6 He enters a synagogue, and in that synagogue is a man with a withered hand.  Jesus heals him in spite of the fact that many Jews who are watching think that healing on the sabbath day dishonored that day.  Jesus heals the man, and in the very next verse we read, “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

Stop and notice what we have seen in just slightly over one chapter of the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus challenges leading groups of His day to such an extent that they were ready “to destroy him.”  That is one challenging Lord.  May the person who has ears to hear really listen to Him!

I have no real doubt about why these leading Jews are conspiring to destroy Jesus.  I believe they are operating out of a genuine and sincere belief that Jesus is, in fact, undermining foundational biblical truths.  The impact of that realization really hit me when I read one of the discussion questions included in the relevant lesson plan.  That question was, “How do you know when you are holding fast to truth and when you are being closed-minded?”

I have gotten used to reading stories in which Jesus challenges Jews in the first-century.  I have been reading those stories all of my life, but I fear that I have so protected myself that Jesus cannot get through and challenge me.  I suspect that I tend to think that I am more devout than those opponents back there were, more enlightened than they were, and more open-minded than they were.  But am I really?  Am I really anymore focused on the matters that matter most to God than they were?  Am I really in-tune enough with God to know the difference between fluff and substance?  The presentation of Jesus in the Gospels calls upon me to seriously address this question.

Let’s not hide from it.  I encourage us all to spend fervent time in prayer making sure that we truly are open to the will of God in our lives.  Let’s make sure that His challenges get through and are never sidestepped or deflected.  May the person who has ears to hear really listen to our challenging Lord!

The Gospel of Mark also reveals that Jesus was so challenging that even His closest followers had trouble understanding Him and believing in Him.  And Jesus does not make it easy.  He says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:34b-35).  I suspect that anyone who can hear this statement and not feel challenged has neutralized its force.  This statement keeps calling us to get out of ourselves and to give it all to our challenging Lord.  May the person who has ears to hear really listen to this challenging Lord!

In the Gospel of John, Jesus challenges us with His example of washing the disciples’ feet in John (Jn) 13.  After doing that extremely self-effacing act, the act of the lowest slave in a Jewish household, here is what we read:

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (Jn 13:12-15).

There are churches that have regular foot washing rituals to connect directly to this teaching of Jesus.  I have no desire or inclination to criticize that practice.  One thing I do desire, however, it is to give the same kind of humble, sacrificial love that Jesus lives out here.  I’m not there; you know that; but Jesus just keeps challenging me.  As I read the Gospels, I cannot escape the transformation into which He keeps seeking to draw me deeper.

Let’s all respond to that draw.  Let’s become a church that is Ever Becoming a People of Love––a love that is self-forgetful, a love that gets down on its knees in service, a love that shows the world the sacrificial love of our challenging Lord!  May the person who has ears to hear really listen to this challenging Lord!

John 17 is Jesus’ longest prayer in the New Testament.  In that prayer Jesus refers to His radical oneness with His Father and says that He has been loved by the Father “before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:24).  And in that unity and love context, Jesus prays for all those who will believe on Him.  He prays, “that they may all be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Jn 17:21).  Jesus’ call to that kind of unity continues to challenge us.  It should keep us asking when are we standing strong for genuine truth and when are we being closed-minded to the truth of Christian unity.  May the person who has ears to hear really listen to the words of our challenging Lord!

After studying the Gospel of John, our adult Bible study series dealt with a prominent theme within the Gospel of Luke.  It is the theme of the reversal of fortunes.  One of the statements of that theme is found in Luke (Lk) 6:17-26.  There we read:

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.  They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.  And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

          Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

          “Blessed are you who are poor,

                    for yours is the kingdom of God.

          “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

                    for you will be filled.

          “Blessed are you who weep now,

                    for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

          “But woe to you who are rich,

                    for you have received your consolation.

          “Woe to you who are full now,

                    for you will be hungry.

          “Woe to you who are laughing now,

                    for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

This passage is loaded with challenges.  May we have ears to hear them and truly to be challenged by them!  I believe these verses call us to have a greater heart for the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and the lost.

Lk 12:49-53 was another passage in this Bible study series.  Listen to the challenging words of Jesus found there.

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, 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 her daughter-in-law

                    and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

In the Gospel of John we heard Jesus pray for unity among those who believe, but Jesus is very explicit that one of the costs of believing in Him will be division.  Believers will be divided from those who do not believe.  Again the challenge is clear, but it is so tempting to soften that challenge.

I do not want to be divided from others.  I want everyone to like me.  It is so easy to avoid the division to which Jesus refers by removing all of Christianity’s sharp edges.  When I do that I become like a smooth creek stone which rolls along without scraping or cutting.  But my smooth compromises divide me from the One with whom I should be the most united.  I have divided from the challenging Lord of the Gospels who makes clear that His message does have sharp edges and that people will divide from me when I hold to that message without deviation.

There is probably no lesson more challenging for the Jews of Jesus’ day than the Sermon on the Mount.  Through that great sermon Jesus makes very clear that true righteousness goes beyond the letter of the law and is defined by love, mercy, and grace.

We religious folk often try to turn our relationship with God into a list of religious stuff to do.  But Christianity proclaims a dynamic and vital relationship with the living God, through the Son of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God.  Such a relationship cannot be based on lists of religious stuff.

We just completed a series of six sermons on the Ten Commandments, and this is a good opportunity to make clear again that faithfulness to those command­ments must grow out of love for God, a love inside of us for God.  And faithfulness to those commandments must flow out of love for others, a love placed inside us by the Spirit of God.  Such an inside out Christianity draws us deeper into godly living.  Moral purity, ethical integrity, and holiness transform us because of the divine work going on inside us.  Our challenging Lord calls us to that kind of radical Christian faith when He declares, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  May the persons who have ears to hear really listen to our challenging Lord!

Our Adult Bible study series looks at two more Gospel passages, but the ones we have looked at already this morning are surely enough to make the point.  Jesus challenged.  I do not know of anything He says that does not challenge us.  He calls us constantly to a more radical commitment, to a new way of seeing, and to a new way of living.

Jesus shocks us and rocks us.  Jesus certainly never puts us to sleep or leaves us alone in our complacency.  He calls upon us to hear, to open our hearts, and to be changed.

I love to watch television documentaries on animals.  Many times I have seen documentaries on predators––lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and wolves.  I have watched them with savage efficiency take down and devour prey.  What strikes me as amazing is that those predatory felines are genetically related to the tabby cats that sit in our laps and eat store bought pet food from pretty dishes in our kitchens.  And those predatory wolves are genetically related to the dogs that sit on our couches, ride in our cars with us, and beg to have their ears stroked.  We have domesticated some of the most efficient killers on this planet.

Jesus is a predator.  With tooth and claw He preys on our complacency, our superficial faith, our apathy, and our false confidence in acts of religious observance.

We must not domesticate this Jesus.  To do so is to depart from the real Jesus.  To do so is to sever ourselves from the only Christ who can save us.

Possibly Jesus’ most challenging claim is that we need Him.  We like to believe that we are self-sufficient.  We like to believe that we do not need anyone.  But Jesus in many ways let’s us know that there is no way to real life without Him.  His most explicit statement of that truth is found in John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Let this challenging Lord be your Savior.  There is no other.  Accept Him and you will have a wonderful, merciful Savior who will redeem you and change you from the inside out.  Come to Jesus, the challenging Lord!  Come now as we stand and sing.

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