26. Are You Really Following Jesus? | John Ortberg

For audit or for credit? 🤔

HERE'S HOW:
Today, spend some time reflecting on your level of commitment to Jesus. Look for an opportunity to engage with Jesus's teachings in a small moment today, not just as an observer but as a disciple. 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey, we're in class together. We're studying greatest curriculum of all time. Sermon of the amount, most impactful talk ever given. And I want to ask you a question today that really Jesus and Matthew posed for us. Are you auditing the class? Or are you taking it for credit? It is the greatest talk ever given. What is insurmountable, Jesus says in this world, not your or my problems, challenges, difficulties, sins. It's the presence of God, it's his kingdom, so we can make this a golden rule day. And we're getting ready to go into the sixth chapter of Matthew, it's the second chapter of the Sermon of the Mount. Look a lot at freedom from reputation, worried about money. But before we do that, I want to visit what's my posture as it relates to Jesus being my teacher. And this goes back to the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. We're told that Jesus had been um healing and teaching large crowds. We had Matthew 5, 1, and says, Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. So there's a deliberate bit of ambiguity here. There's Jesus and there's the crowds and there's disciples. This is the first time the word disciples occurs in the Gospel of Matthew. He uses that word 65 times, a real important word. And those are people who have made a commitment to Jesus. They have entered into a relationship with him, they have chosen to follow him. And then another group are the crowds. And Matthew uses the word for crowds 49 times in his gospel. And that's a different group. They listen to Jesus, they sometimes ask questions about him, they're often amazed at his teaching. They will often bring their sick and diseased friends to Jesus. But in the end, Matthew chapter 27, verse 22, it is the crowds who shout out, Crucify Him. Every once in a while, somebody leaves the crowd and becomes a disciple. So that's the question as we get ready to move on just for today. What's my posture with Jesus? I was thinking about this in our educational system with this kind of distinction. You can audit a class or you can take a class for credit. When you audit a class, you're just present as a hearer. It's audible to you. You're just listening. You don't have to worry about homework, you don't have to mess with assignments, you're not going to be graded on this stuff. You don't have to take tests. You maximize freedom and minimum minimize vulnerability. But if you take it for credit, then you promise to make a credible effort to seek to learn. You trust the credibility of the instructor. You make the commitment to say, whatever it takes, these assignments, this homework, these tests, I will be vulnerable to it. Now, why would anybody ever take something for credit when you could just audit it? We live in a world where we like to audit spirituality. But of course, we all know deep down inside it's only when you place yourself on the line, when you become vulnerable, when you make that deep commitment, when you say, I will do whatever it takes, that you know the thrill, the wonder, the discovery of true growth and learning. So the question is today, are you auditing Jesus or are you taking him for credit? Now, to become a disciple, um, to choose to follow him is not something that's glamorous. Mostly it's pretty hard plotting work from one day to the next. When I was in grad school, eight of us took a class from my advisor, Richard Gorsuch, on factor analysis and pretty complicated statistical methodology. He was literally writing the second edition of his textbook on that. And we would take the class, two hours a shot, two days a week. He would teach all two hours, no illustrations, no breaks, just rapid fire. You had to have several cups of coffee just to try to stay up there. And then we'd get together afterwards to try to figure out what in the world he was talking about, because he was my advisor. They eventually said to me, Go tell him, none of us know what he's saying. And so I did, and his response was this, oh, of course. His pedagogical method was just mass confusion for the entire semester, and then he said, It'll all come together in the last week. And I think with Jesus, his pedagogical method with the disciples really involved quite a lot of strategic confusion. First to be last, you gotta die if you really want to live. Children will be our little models here of um how we're supposed to embrace God and pursue life. Um go party with tax collectors, get a pedicure from a sinful woman. I'm not headed for a crown, headed for a cross. Why do they keep coming back? Well, some of them didn't. In um John chapter 6, verse 66, we're told Jesus was teaching some difficult things. From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. And this is quite pointed. You do not want to leave me too, do you? Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Now, this is not a ringing endorsement, you know. But thinking about it, Jesus, the alternatives are just not promising. But then this wonderful statement, you have the words of eternal life. And he does, and in my own journey, and I know very likely for you to, in times of desperation, deep loss, deep trouble, deep confusion, where else would you go? To who am I? If you find somebody else, it's better. Let me know. Jesus would be the first person to say, if you find a better way, go ahead and follow. But of course we don't. And this would not be the first time that people would leave Jesus. We're told in Matthew 13. People who had known him from when he was growing up said, you know, in this the carpenter's son, and they took offense at him. In Luke 4, he's giving his first sermon. At the end of the first part, spirits, Lord upon me, here to announce the year of the Lord's favor. All were amazed and all spoke well of him. And six verses later, after he makes some Gentiles the hero of his sermon, he says, and all were furious at him, and they took him off to throw him over a cliff. And I've been there and seen that cliff, and that would have been the end of him. Now, in Jesus' life, whom did he not disappoint? The crowds, Herod, Pilate, his own family thought they were his own disciples, deserted him. He disappointed everybody in his life except for his father on the cross. And part of what we're going to look at as we go through Matthew chapter six is how do we get free from the need for people to be impressed by and approve of us? Because I can't love people in those conditions. And the calling for Jesus, what he ultimately gets to in Matthew chapter 7, here in the Sermon on the Mount, is um, will you be just hearers of these words or will you do them? Gonna build your house on sand or build it on rock? You're gonna audit or you're gonna put it on the line. And what this comes down to really is will I obey him? Will I do what this man said? But I was talking about this with Nancy yesterday. Obedience is another word that's become difficult. So we have to distinguish here. Remember the pivot passage in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 17 through 20, is where Jesus says, unless your goodness, righteousness, inner character exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you can't live in the kingdom. And that's true when it comes to obedience. So we can we could distinguish obedience A and obedience B. Obedience A is the obedience of the scribes and the Pharisees, robotic, mindless, conforming, rule following. You tell me what to do, and I'll go ahead and do it. And there is no life in that. That's not what we're called to. That can actually be quite dangerous. Obedience B is creative, responsible, initiative, take, thoughtful, discerning, energized, wholehearted agency. Dallas Wood would often say, you know, God's goal for your life is so for him to be able to set you free in the world to do whatever you want to do. And people always think, no, no, no, no, it's to do whatever he wants me to do. No, no, no, no, no. When you have a child, your goal isn't for that child only to do good, serve, be generous. And so if you tell them what to do, you want them to want to do those things on their own. And that's what God wants for you. God wants, God's goal for your life is for you to become the kind of person he can set free to say, do whatever you want, because you will want to do what is loving. Obedience begins with love. Love my neighbor as myself, love my enemy, and then to be courageous, and then to be honest and truthful, and then to be generous, and then to be joyful. I will do what this man says, because it will take all the creativity and initiative and risk taking courage that I have, and it's the best way to live. It's about who I become, not about the rules that I follow. So, are you auditing or are you taking it for credit? This is from Stanley Howard Howard's uh words on the summer of the mountain. Throughout the gospel, Matthew is unsparing in his description of the incomprehensive of the disciples. They're not you know heroes, they get it wrong over and over and over, but they do follow Jesus. In that respect, Matthew contrasts the disciples with the crowds that are attracted to Jesus. They're often in awe of him, they often express amazement at his teaching, but at the end of the day they will shout, let him be crucified. We're beginning to see what is required if we are to be followers rather than admirers of Jesus. So that's the question. Follower or admired, taking it for credit or auditing? And then he ends with uh story about Clarence Jordan. Clarence had started an interracial ministry community in the 1950s in the South when that was very controversial. Asked his brother, who would later be a state senator and a justice on the Supreme Court to recog to represent Cornelia Farm legally. And his brother said, Clarence, I can't do that. You know my political aspirations. If I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I got. We might lose everything too, Bob. It's different for you. Why is it different? I remember it seems to me you and I joined the church the same Sunday as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me the same question he did you. Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? And I said yes. What did you say? I follow Jesus Clarence up to a point. Could that point by any chance be the cross? That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified. Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to that church you belong to and tell him you're an admirer, but not a disciple. Well, now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we? The question, Clarence said, is do you have a church? So just as honest as you can be today. Auditing or putting it all online? Admirer or follower? Just tell God the truth about that. And as you're able to, as a gift of grace, say, I will do what this man says. Make it a golden rule day.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

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