Demonstration: Luke 6. 17-36

Demonstration: Luke 6. 17-36

As a Church we have committed ourselves to “Learning to show the Father’s love”!
That breaks down into four sections:
* Learning – Discipleship.
* Showing – Demonstration
* Father’s – Deeper with God (or, “Spirituality)
* Love – Dialogue with people i.e. (Relationship)

Today I want to look at the “Demonstration” part of our vision.  Learning to show the Father’s love.  In Matthew 5 (the teaching known as the “Sermon on the Mount”) and in its sister passage, here in Luke 6 (sometimes called the “Sermon on the Plain”), Jesus actually talks about showing the Father’s love: "be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked".(verse 35) "...sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust". (Mt 5.45)    "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (verse 36)  "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mt 5.48)

The people
For  a start, Jesus is talking to disciples.   Now there was a large crowd who had gathered around Jesus and were listening and watching.  This is very much like the setting for the sermon on the Mount. On both
occasions, interestingly, Jesus is in among a crowd, yet talks to his disciples.  And I think that when he does so, he is not just talking to the twelve, as though nobody else was there or mattered even if they were there.  His disciples were not just the twelve but those in the crowd who had genuinely opened their lives to God’s kingdom, and begun that lifelong process of learning to live as a son of God.  And I believe that is important.  Sometimes we talk about the “ethical teaching of Jesus” as though it were just a great ideal; but this is a manifesto for the new community, a pattern sheet for what their life together is supposed to look and feel like.  And that community is meant to be real, loving, belonging; it is more than an organisation. It is a family, a body.  Demonstration is done in community. And that community consists of ordinary people, not all  superstars.  You can be part of this demonstration, this showing the father's love. Indeed you are called to be. part of it.

The Place
These disciples, this new community are living in a world where not everyone is sympathetic to the Christian message. "Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man." (v. 22)

That is the world Jesus and his disciples lived in That is the world the early Church lived in.  It is in many ways not that different to our world.  We have the World wide web: they had the world wide Roman Empire. We have a world of urbanisation, oppressive economics, injustice, moral degradation, military dictatorships, nationalism and globalisation. That is just exactly the world of the earliest Church, the world in which the Gospel first thrived. So let us not imagine that the Gospel cannot thrive in our world We just have to make sure we understand the Gospel and apply it correctly to the world we live in, and that means living as the earliest Church lived.


There are going to be “enemies” who will curse and ; there will be the Romans with their right to demand menial service at a whim; there will be the ever present temptation to settle for life as a little, misunderstood, despised holy huddle, to “love those who love you” and ignore or hate everyone else; to only give a cheery greeting to our friends.


The practice of showing Father’s love.
How are the disciples to show the Father’s love.  What will that look like?

Firstly, it involves being among people in the power of the Spirit. That was one of the main planks in Jesus strategy for demonstrating the Father’s live, the reality of the kingdom.  We read about that again in verses 17ff as Jesus is mobbed by crowds – some of whom want to experience God’s healing.  But Jesus described his healing ministry as "Doing what he saw the Father doing." (John 5. 19)   It’s not about going and emptying the hospital to sweep everyone into the kingdom.  But because healing is part of the character of our Heavenly Father, there is no reason why we should not be seeing healings today, alongside other forms of demonstration that are just as vital.

Secondly, it involves having a radical upside down values.  Jesus says blessed are the poor, those who hunger, those who weep… Matthew gives a bit more detail: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers…"  Remember what the complaint was about Paul when he preached at Thessalonica? “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too…” (Acts 17. 6)  It involves being those who themselves have been turned upside down. We can only turn the world upside down if we ourselves are turned upside down by the kingdom of God.  That kind of "upside-down-ness" is an absolutely necessary antidote to the “right-side-up” attitude of a world that lives by “me-first, take what you can get, reject authority and always avoid consequences”

Thirdly, it involves an outrageous generosity (to quote shamelessly from the theme of this year’s Baptist Assembly).   That in turn means
* Open hearts: Forgiveness and forbearance. This is the ability to deal graciously with those who fall. "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also" (v 29);  "love your enemies, do good to them... be merciful…(v. 35-36)  We need to demonstrate the Father's love by being generous in our evaluation of people. In one episode of The Simpsons, Maude Flanders returns from a time away from home and explains that she has been on a Church retreat, "Learning to be more judgemental!"  Ouch. if we are known to be judgemental we are not showing the Father's  love. If we are critical and waspish, we are not showing the Father's  love.
* Proactive giving – not only to support the "Church" as an institution,  but to support the poor. Giving to those who ask (v. 30); lending when we know we are not going to be repaid (v. 34). It may mean that we are prepared – especially in months and maybe years of recession and hardship – to show the love of Jesus by making resources – our resources – available for the relief of people’s emergency situations round about us.

* Inclusive hospitality.      “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. (v. 32-33);   "And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?" (Mat 5:47)   There are people out there - and in here as well - who need to be loved. They need to be shown the Father’s love.  They might eventually trust in Jesus, if over a period of time we can show them the love of a heavenly Father, breaking out of any sense of cliquishness. As Mike Pilavachi says, the world isn’t waiting to see better sound systems or better video presentations, it’s looking to see better people.

© Gilmour Lilly October 2011

Discipleship: I Thessalonians 1.

The Story
When Paul arrived at Thessalonica, he did what he always did: went to the Jewish meeting place, the synagogue, and presented the arguments to prove that Jesus rose from the dead and is the Messiah. (Acts 17. 1-3)  For three weeks he was there, taking every opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus.  There were signs too of God's power as 1 Thess 1. 5 says. Maybe some people got healed. Maybe some people had a deep sense of God's presence and couldn't stand up in his presence (as happened in the revivals under the ministry of George Whitefield and in places like Lewis in the 1950's) or maybe there were prophetic words that made people say "God is really in the midst here" (1 Cor 14. 25) and certainly there was a supernatural sense of authority in Paul's preaching. People believed and accepted Jesus. (Act 17. 4)   Then the trouble had started, and the weren't wanted in the Synagogue. It was not long before some of the local leaders were arrested and the believers decided to smuggle Paul out of the city. (Acts 17. 5-10) And through the struggles (pretty soon there was persecution in Thessalonica) as well as the successes, they saw the realities of Paul's character.  (1 Thess 1.5b: "You saw what sort of guys we were.")

As a result of what they saw and heard, a group of people in Thessalonica had become followers of Jesus. When Paul wrote to them, a little later, he sums up their conversion: see vv 9-10.  Three things marked the Thessalonians' reception of the Gospel: repentance, service, and expectancy.    And they became "imitators of Paul".  They liked what they saw and wanted to be like what they liked. As a result the word was spread what kind of people the Thessalonian Christians were.  They had doctrine: they had hope; they understood why Jesus suffered, and believed that Jesus had risen from the dead; they knew that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah (Acts 17. 3); they were waiting for Jesus to return. They had faith, hope and love, the three things that last (1 Cor 13. 13)  

But James that the only kind of faith that doesn't produce works is a dead one!  (James 2.26) And Paul would agree with.  Hel gives thanks for the Thessalonians' "Work that springs from faith".    And he gives thanks for their sacrificial "labour of love."  Not doing wee jobs with no hope of reward, but a costly and maybe painful effort, that expresses real selfless concern for others.  And he mentions patience in hope.  That is the willingness to put up with unpleasant stuff, because we have a rock-solid certainty of God's Kingdom future lying before us.  .  The Thessalonians had Faith, love, and hope- expressed in good deeds, real effort and longsuffering.

They had an experience of the power of he Spirit.  They had the basics of doctrine. They had faith that worked, love that produced real effort, and hope that meant they were on their feet ready for the Master to come back.  But they didn't have everything.  Paul had to leave town in a hurry, so there were truths this church had yet to grasp. He wasn't frustrated with the godless behaviour as he as when he wrote to Corinth or with seriously wrong doctrine as he was in Galatia.  He just wants to fill in some of the gaps. So he sat down to write what may have been his first ever letter...


So what does this show?   
Paul - who never uses the word "disciple" in his letters - was heavily into making disciples. He was concerned with helping people grow; he was concerned with truth; he was concerned with practical living; and he was able to do that because he was a disciple himself.  You can only make disciples if you are a disciple.

The Jesus model was this:

• I do it; you watch.  
• You do it; I watch.  
• You do it. 

Paul had exactly the same model.  It is about apprenticeship not distance learning. He says, "imitate me" in the same way your journeyman would do when you were an apprentice. Discipleship is practical.  

We are all meant to be disciples; we are all meant to be making disciples.  Discipleship is essential.

 We could define Discipleship in these ways:

• Discipleship is the unfinished process of learning to live the Christian life.
• Discipleship is the unfinished process of learning how to be like Jesus.
• Discipleship is learning how to be a son to the Father.  
• Discipleship is unfinished process of learning to show the Father's love. 

Whichever you choose, it is by definition: lifelong; practical, spiritual and relational.

The Problem: 
Some of us struggle with any learning at all.  We find it difficult to handle facts and ideas. Others love theory but are not good at learning skills. But we use the word "learn" in two ways: "learning about..." and "learning how to..."   Discipleship has to be about "learning how to..." It is never enough to accumulate knowledge.  Learning involves the development of three things: Knowledge, skills, character...  leading to confidence, competence, credibility and influence.

In order to learn we need:

• The Holy Spirit at work in our lives.  His task is to reveal Jesus and to make us realise we are God's sons. He gives gifts that help us towards that. And he uses
• The Word of God, written, or spoken or sung; preached, shared among us
• Doing the stuff. We learn through "reflection on practise."  Not just through practise. You can do something wrong dozens of times and never learn from it. You just keep repeating the same mistake. You can do something right and not know how you managed it (or maybe not even not realise you did it right!)  
• Fellowship. The fact that learning involves reflection on practise, suggests one reason why we need fellowship; we need to be accompanied on a learning journey.

And it is interesting that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians as friends. The letter begins with the "normal" sort of introduction, which suggests it's a real letter, which in turn suggests a relationship-based approach, an expression of friendship.  And Paul models the importance of teamwork by writing as a member of a team - indeed there is no reason to suppose that Silas and Timothy did not have some genuine input into the letter.

The Difference
I believe that Discipleship is a key to effective mission. If we can get the Discipleship thing sorted out, if we can really do the "Learning" in "learning to show the father's love" then the rest will follow; we will show the Father's love and people will be drawn to him.

When Paul came to Thessalonica, being a disciple and making disciples, those who didn't like the message of Jesus described Paul and his team as, "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also... saying that there is another king, Jesus." (Acts 17. 6f) It is living the kingdom as well as proclaiming the King that is at the essence of Discipleship that turns the world upside down.

© Gilmour Lilly October 2011

"Learning to show the Father's love" Matthew 4. 17-25 and 28, 18-20

What kind of world did God make?  
A good, perfect world!

"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!" It must have been exciting when the travelling preacher, Jesus arrived in town with an exciting, challenging message. "Repent" that means to turn around, change the direction of your life.  And what made that turn-around necessary? The arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven! The Kingdom of Heaven is Matthew's way of talking about the Kingdom of God (but Matthew writing for Jewish readers preferred not to mention the name of God) The Kingdom of God means the rule of God, made visible in the created world to restore the world to the "good" that God originally intended.  And as if that wasn't exciting enough, Jesus called Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John to be directly involved in this great enterprise that Jesus called the "Kingdom of Heaven."  Isn't that exciting?

When Jesus called Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John -they became part of a group known as the twelve what?  Disciples.

And what is a disciple?  A learner.

"Payallar fishing" by "ozgurmulazimoglu"
used under GNU license

From the moment Jesus called them, they were "Learning to show the Father's love" as they walked with Jesus, were kind of apprenticed to him, saw the things he was doing in the world, and even joined in.   Jesus was talking about a transformation.  They were going to become something that went beyond their previous experience.  Shaped, formed, made. "I will make you fishers of men."  Discipleship - learning with Jesus is always going to be more than going to school.  It's always about growing, becoming, being formed into what God wants you to be.

Jesus' teaching was amazing!  This idea of the Kingdom of God, the reign of God actually happening, the good that God wanted being restored in his world.  The idea that the Kingdom was "at hand" ... just around the corner, within reach.  Isn't that amazing and exciting?  Jesus was the best teacher. He knew how to communicate truth. But he was never content to impart truth as a concept.   It's a practical kind of learning. So as Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John followed Jesus, they were learning to show the father's love. How to demonstrate that love.  Jesus was healing the sick and the weak; he was healing those who were ill, bound by various sicknesses and tortures, with demons, moonstruck (mentally ill or epileptic) and paralysed. The kingdom was more than a concept. It was demonstrated.

They were learning to show the Father's love.  The miracles were demonstrations of the Kingdom. Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, which is about the character of a heavenly father, who makes the sun shine on good and bad together (Matthew 5. 45).  That learning and showing beckoned them to a Deeper walk with Father. To spirituality.    That meant that like Father, like Jesus, they were not just concerned for the miracle but for the encounter with God.  And it meant that like Father, like Jesus, they were not just concerned for the crowd but for the individual. Over and again they would hear Jesus have a Dialogue, aconversation with someone who needed healing: "How long has it been like this?  I want to heal you. Who touched me? Give the lassie something to eat."  Like Father, like Jesus, they were to go beyond loyalty to the group, love their enemies (Matthew 5. 44) and make belonging a possibility for all.  To show the Father's love.

So they followed.  They watched; they learned, they showed the father's love.  And as they did, they got to know Jesus better; they go to know the Father better. And they hoped that together with Jesus they would see a whole new age on earth, get rid of the Romans, and have a share in God's perfect kingdom.  But, eventually, Jesus was arrested, tried, sentenced to death, and crucified.   All pretty horrendous. No wonder the disciples were gutted, after that.  They had lost their best friend. But more: they had lost hope. It seemed like all this "Learning to show the Father's love"  was for nothing.

Then three days later, they began to see Jesus, alive.  So they were thinking "Maybe now is the time for the Kingdom to be set up?" In fact they actually asked Jesus that (Acts 1. 6).  "Now that you've conquered death, Jesus, surely you can set up the Kingdom". That's not the way it was to be. For forty days, Jesus appeared, taught, challenged, but he was prodding, pushing, making them look outwards. He made it obvious he was alive, but also that he was not around for keeps. It was not going to be the way it had been before. They'd been Learning to show the Father's love for some other purpose. His last words to them, before the clouds took him out of sight and touch, were "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you... oh, and I'm always with you."

"Dandelion seed dispersal"
by Alex Valavanis

They have been Learning to show the Father's love, not so as to set up the Kingdom, but so as to continue making disciples... learners, people who are Learning to show the Father's love.  Until God's Kingdom is finally set up, there is to be a community of disciples - people who have heard the call to "repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." There is to be a community who are Learning to show the Father's love. Who are seeking the kingdom.  So Jesus says, "Go and make disciples. Teach them..."  Where there are teachers there are learners. And that learning is still practical.  "Teach them to observe all I commanded you."  It's about doing, not just knowing, the truth.  It's about doing it. Demonstrating it. Living in some of the realities of the Kingdom of God until Jesus finally sets up the kingdom.  It's about Father's heart - new disciples are to be baptised in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.  What Jesus wants as the next stage, is a worldwide community of people - from all nations -  who are Learning to show the Father's love.  

What do you call that community?
It's the Church!!!

That is the church, people. After the death of Jesus, his followers might have wanted to establish a living memorial of this great and wonderful founder Jesus. People often see the role of the Church as maintaining that memorial. But the church is about more than that. It is about Learning to show the Father's love. It is a community where that baton is passed on from one generation to the next.   Discipleship , Demonstration, going Deeper with father (spirituality), and Dialogue (relationships).  Learning to show the Father's love. 

I am excited about the facft that at our AGM, the Church adopted as our Mission Statement "Learning to show the Father's love."  That is what we are about.  It's nice and simple. And it's totally biblical. In fact, it's basic. It sums up what the Church is about. It sums up what Rosyth Baptist Church is about.  Nothing else matters. Nothing else is important.  It's what being a Christian is all about. Learning to show the Father's love. 

When I went to study in London in the seventies, I had my first encounter with a well-known fast food chain. Now I'm not fond of mustard, or relish, or mayonnaise, or gherkins.  So I'd ask for my burger plain, with the result that I often had to wait, and usually by the time I got my burger, all my friends had finished theirs. Imagine you go in to the fast food restaurant and say, "I'll have a cheeseburger with no cheese, please."  You'd have to wait even longer than I did!  If you want to follow Jesus without discipleship, if you want to follow Jesus without mission, if you want to follow Jesus without power, Healing the sick, showing compassion, caring for the needy. if you want to follow Jesus without loving, if you want to be a Christian without Learning to show the Father's love, you're looking for a cheeseburger without cheese.

You should be able to tell me what our mission is.  And as we walk together, my task is to teach you to show the father's love... to as you learn, as we all learn together, we welcome and love a rainbow of people from all nations, who are Learning to show the Father's love...

© Gilmour Lilly October 2011