20180812 – Sunday – Exhort Darren Tappouras, ADELAIDE ecclesia August 2018

20180812 – Sunday – Exhort Darren Tappouras, ADELAIDE ecclesia August 2018
Reading: Isa 42

God, in his genius, has presented to us, in the gospel record, different aspects of Jesus, enabling us to develop a relationship with his son.

It is really about only 35 days in Jesus’ life that we are given in the narrative of the gospel records.

He has presented it to us in this unique paradoxical way through the different authors of the gospel records.

In each of the books, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, he focuses on different aspects of Jesus Christ in each record, Matthew presenting Jesus as the king, as the lion. Mark presents Jesus as the servant, Luke, who we will be focusing on this morning, as the man, more in the idea of a priest, and John, presenting the divine picture of Jesus, as the son of God.

We saw there was a dichotomy in these presentations, and there is a dichotomy in the personality traits, and how these were perfectly balanced in the character of Jesus.

Even in these gospel records, you’ve got a dichotomy. You’ve got Jesus presented as a king on one end of the social scale and also presented as a servant, on the other end of the scale.

You’ve got the humanity of Jesus emphasised in Luke and depicted as a man and you have the divine side of Jesus depicted in the gospel record of John, flesh and spirit.

This morning we are going to focus on how Luke presents the Lord, the human aspect of our Lord.

Isa 42 is going to start our thinking going. Isaiah presents us with certain characteristics and traits of this servant.

In v 2-3 it says He will not cry out, nor raise his voice, nor cause his voice to be raised in the street. Here is the concept of a revolution of a different type. Most revolutions have people taking to the streets, marching the streets, raising their voices against their oppressors. There is tumult and anger as people take to the streets.

The revolution that Jesus brought to the world was different. He was not a rabble-rouser, he was not a street fighter. His revolution was counter-intuitive. It was nothing like what anyone wanted. The Jews wanted a conquering Messiah, the Greeks wanted wisdom and logic. Jesus filled none of those pictures of a revolutionary.

This was a different picture of a conqueror that Jesus initiated.

A bruised reed he would not break, what sort of revolution is this?
Here was not just a reed, but a “bruised” reed, it is a reed that has been damaged.

The next picture is of a “smoking wax,” a candle that has almost gone out. He is talking about people who are at their wits end, in a very vulnerable situation, people at their lowest, and Jesus’ revolution is not about trampling on them.

The great men of history who have fought revolutions have had very little use for the weak and marginalised in society.

The Pharisees had held a counci, they were determined to get rid of this trouble maker and destroy him. Jesus withdraws himself, but he could have taken a stand, he could have taken to the streets, but he chooses to withdraw himself.

But the crowd still pressed on him. Isaiah picks up these words and said “He will not strive, nor will he cry, nor shall his voice be heard in the street.”

This is the revolution that Jesus brings. The servant of the Lord will not strive, he must be gentle. This is the spirit of our leader, he is a revolutionary in a different way. The spirit of the servant is how we must conduct this revolution.

Jesus continued to heal trying to stop the conflict that was being generated at that time. This is the revolution we have signed up for

Isa 50, a messianic Psalm, “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned.” What was the objective of that? It was not to show how knowledgeable he was, but so that he should know how to speak a word in season. The knowledge of Jesus was used to help the weary.

I want to focus on a particular attribute of Jesus this morning. We find quite a number of times that Jesus is “moved with compassion.” Jesus sees the multitude lost, without a shepherd. He sees those whose are sick, a leper, a blind man, ones with mental illness and he is moved with compassion for them.

And we see this feeling in Jesus. The word “compassion,” means, “his bowels yearn,” and so we find there is a physiological reaction within Jesus himself. If we look up the word in Strongs it means “a sponge.” Jesus is extracting the pain of the people and feeling it himself. He reacts internally.

This “sponge” word is only found in Luke. This soaking up of others pain, is only used in the book of Luke. It truly is a “Jesus” word.

When I looked at the passages in which this word is used, each time he feels the compassion, he just doesn’t feel the compassion and move on, there is a response from Jesus. He reacts and does things to help alleviate or remove the pain, the sufferings of others.

I tried to find a modern word that captures this emotion, this feeling in Jesus. The closest word is the word “empathy.” Empathy is being able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and feel what they are going through.

Empathy combines two important capacities, analyse and sympathise. ie being able to identify with their suffering, and sympathise with their suffering.

This is mind and heart coming together. Analysing is assembling the facts, so analysing and sympathising come together to form the twin engines of empathy, both of them are required together. So “rejoice with those who rejoice” and “weep with those who weep, so both are required to empathise.”

Empathy often only comes when you go through something yourself. But Jesus did not have to sin to sympathise with sinners, Jesus did not have to have diseases to sympathise with people’s pain, he was able to do that through the power of empathy. He was a sponge soaking up everyone’s feelings.

It is good to have empathy with someone because we have experienced that same thing, but better if we can have Jesus’ empathy that we not have to go through something in order to understand and empathise with another person’s experience. Instead we sometimes go through the same experience as someone and yet do not have empathy for them.

Another reaction that Jesus exhibits is that he audibly groans.

He expresses deep feeling and emotion.

I once new a deaf man and he use to become frustrated when he did not understand something, and on this occasion Jesus comes across a man who was deaf and dumb, and Jesus spits and puts his fingers in the man’s ears.

Now that is a very intimate thing to do, and Jesus groans. He took this man’s pain and frustration and soaked it up.

And that feeling manifested itself in that groan and gives insight into the compassion of our Lord for the blind man’s feelings of helplessness. He soaked up the pain of that man. There was something Jesus gave of himself when he healed that person.

In a totally different circumstance, Jesus healed the 5000. There was miracle after miracle, and yet the Jews still wanted a sign. And Jesus groaned.

Another occurrence too is at the death of Lazarus when “he groaned in spirit.” He knew he was going to raise him from he dead, but he still groans, and he still weeps. The feelings of the others surrounding him he soaked up like a sponge.

We talk about the dichotomies exhibited in the gospel record, of the lion as representative of the king, speaking of those leadership aspects of Jesus, in which we must be loyal to the King. And now we try to balance that again with this compassion of this man who can forgive sins and was able to show mercy.

These two roles were generally kept separate because no human being could balance them out but here was this beautiful balance of these qualities in this man who was perfectly able to be a king and a priest at the same time is something we struggle to comprehend.

This is picked up beautifully in words of Psa 85. It is like meeting a close friend at your shopping centre, “Mercy and truth are met together.” They have different demands, Mercy and Truth. Mercy means not doing to someone what they deserve, and Truth is by its nature very absolute, so there’s a paradox there, but in Jesus Mercy and truth meet each other and embrace each other. In Jesus these qualities come together in the most amazing way.

Think about how he talks to the Syrophonecian woman who wants her daughter healed and he says, “I come to the lost sheep of Isrsael, not to dogs.” Wow if that was the only record we had of Jesus, we would think, “What is going on here.”

Then you have the rich young ruler and he tells him to sell everything and give it to the poor, and the man goes away sorrowful.

Sometimes Jesus makes things hard, he is a leader and he is trying to provoke, he’s trying to generate responses at certain times. Other times he is very approachable. He is dealing with all stratus of society. To them he is very approachable and he perfectly gets it right every time, whereas we struggle with getting the balance right, in our ecclesias, our own families. We struggle with these king/priest qualities, but Jesus gets it right every time perfectly.

That is why he is our Lord, he’s our King and our captain that we look to.

Just to focus on our Lord for this morning, the qualities that Luke depicts of Jesus as a man, the human aspect, leads us to think of Jesus as a Priest.

There is something special about the role of a priest. There are about 3 verses in Hebrews that talk about this aspect of a priest that have to be taken from among men.

God could have sent an angel to officiate, like the angel in Eden with a flaming sword may have been officiating at the sacrifices made by Cain and Abel, I don’t know, but God said “No.” The priest has to be taken from among men.

Every high priest had to be taken from men, so that he could have compassion on the ignorant, because he is a man.

Jesus experienced human life, and we talked about that the other night, Jesus grew up in a village, went to school, raised a family, had a job, and experienced human existence so he can be our High Priest.

He was taken from among men so he can have compassion on the ignorant and those that are out of the way, those who are astray, in other words, compassion even on those who are astray from the truth.

When see how Jesus heals sins in the New Testament, we get insight into how Jesus forgives us our sins, and there is a link between those things.

The compassion for us is chiefly seen in the forgiveness of our sins. Heb. 4v15, “We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” and here the word “sickness,” is linked with our sins, our moral failings. We have a high priest who understands us, because he was touched with these feelings. He had ‘sunpatheo,’ or “sympathy” with us, he had a fellow feeling for us.

In Heb 2 “ Wherefore in all things it beloved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful, or compassionate, faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For that he himself has suffered being tempted, he has been able to help and assist those who are tempted.

This should spill over into how we treat each other, and how we deal with each other, and in 1 Pet 3 we should be “of one mind having compassion” ‘sunpatheo,’ having empathy and compassion with each other.

It says in the record that even babies and little children were drawn to Jesus. Every record of a big crowd that people are drawn to him. He was able to attract people to him.

In a doctrinal level he was able to “draw all men unto me,” and in in a practical level he draws the publican and the sinners, all the marginalised people were drawn to him.

Jesus had no qualms about touching these people, and a leper may never have been touched by a single person in years, and yet the Lord would touch them and has compassion on them.

He is not defiled by them. Instead of him being defiled by them, he cleanses them and reverses the whole sin and death process and pushes it back the other way.

So how can I finish this week end?

We are saved by our allegiance to our king.

I was thinking about America’s oath of allegiance andI thought it would be nice to have an oath of loyalty to our King.

I came across the Apostles Creed, and the oldest one was about 300 AD, and there were references to a form of the Apostle’s Creed which was dated about 104 AD. 140, that’s like about 40 years after the Bible was completed.

This is what the early believers stood for, what we don’t know about the creed is how much it refers to Jesus. In this creed only one paragraph refers to God is only two lines, and then look at the paragraphs that refer to Jesus takes up the whole main body of the creed.

This is my oath of allegiance in a sense, it is primitive Christianity at its basic.

“I believe in God, the father almighty, the creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ who is His son our ruler. Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born of the Virgin Mary. Suffered under Pontius Pilate. Was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the grave and on the 3rd day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the world-wide ecclesia, the fellowship of saints, the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, Amen.”

That’s my pledge of allegiance to my King, and I believe those things, and I am striving to be loyal to him, in my life to the best of my ability.

So brethren and sisters, refocus our minds and recalibrate our thinking as we take the emblems this morning, that we might focus our life on this incredible man, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Taking the emblems together is not just some secret ritual. If we look at the words that are used as we take the emblems, “we proclaim the Lord’s death,” or publicly proclaim, a public declaration. My whole life is committed to him. As we take the emblems together, let’s proclaim the Lord’s death, till he come.

Thank you.

Notes by Fay Berry 2018