April 13, 2016

I Came to Bring Division

On Easter Sunday, I started a new series on the Difficult Sayings of Jesus.  The first hard saying that I covered was this: “Do you think that I have come to give peace on Earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Luke 12:51

For every person that has chosen to follow Jesus, you recognize that this verse is true.  Imagine the scrutiny that a teenager in high school faces today as they follow Christ faithfully…Imagine the backlash a man giving his life to Christ receives when his wife is an atheist.  Imagine a Muslim giving his life to Jesus when he knows he could be killed for doing so. 

In all of these situations, what we find is that we must love Christ more than everything else if we are going to be His disciples.  We can not be sold out for Jesus if we love anything else more than Him.  In that way, Christ came to bring division. 

Admittingly, this is hard, so here are two reasons why I believe Jesus is worth giving up your life for:

First of all, consider who He is. 

If you’re thinking, “Man, this is a real burden to follow Jesus,” you have not grasped the significance of the God of the Universe; the God of eternity inviting you into this relationship!

Here’s a good way to think about it:  I married my wife, Leann on Aug. 13, 2005.  I dated other girls before our marriage and there were other girls that I had been interested in, but on our wedding day, I wasn’t thinking about those girls.  I wasn’t at the altar thinking, “I lost you, could’ve had you, etc.”  I was thinking, “I gained you!”

Is there anything greater to gain than God?  He loved you and gave Himself for you and if the God of creation and eternity loves you enough to have a relationship with you, I promise you that you will gain for more than you lose if you go all in with him.  That’s why He says in Matthew 10:39, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

But it’s not only who He is, it is what He has done for you.  In Luke 12, here’s what Jesus says in verses 49-50: “I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning!  I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished.”

Setting the world on fire refers to judgement and Jesus says He wishes it were already on fire because He knew what He was getting ready to face.  He knew the terrible suffering that was ahead of Him and it was a heavy burden to bear. 

You see the cross wasn’t something that just happened to Jesus, it was something that He knew He was going to face.  In the Garden of Gethesemane, He was so overcome with the weight of this burden that his sweat actually became like drops of blood.  It’s a medical term called hematidrosis.  Twice, he prayed that if there was any other way for this to happen, for the Father to remove this burden from Him, but there was no other way.

Then as he was betrayed by Judas, spit upon and punched in the face, they eventually scourged him; 39 lashes from a professional whipper.  The Roman philosopher Cicero said that it wasn’t uncommon to see a rib go flying through the air during these beatings.  He was naked and utterly humiliated before everyone there.

Then they would lead him up the hill to Golgotha where they would nail his hands and his feet to a cross and the only way that he could breathe would be to push up with his legs so that his lungs could inhale.  Eventually, he would wear out and die of suffocation.  The physical torture of the cross was unimagineable.  Isaiah described him as a man that you wouldn’t even recognize anymore.

But the physical punishment wasn’t the worst part.  The worst part was the abandonment by the Father.  One of the cries from the cross was Jesus saying, “My God, My God why have you forsaken Me?”  You may have heard that the sky turned pitch black dark in the middle of the day as the Father turned His back on the Son as sin was laid on Him.   

Tim Keller said, “Jesus did not come to earth the first time to bring justice but rather to bear it.  He came not with a sword in his hand but with nails through His hands.  Christian teaching for centuries has been this: Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment our sins deserve, so that someday he can return to earth to end evil without destroying us all.”

BTW, would you really entertain the idea that there are other ways to God?  I don’t know if there is any greater insult to Jesus than saying you don’t need His sacrifice or that you will do things your own way instead of His!  God has said that He loves us and will save us, but this is His Way and it is the only way.  Twice, Jesus asked if there was another way, and God said NO.

So, here is why Jesus is SO worth any division that following Him may cause in your life.  He was humiliated before everyone else so that you would not have to stand before God in humiliation.

He bore the wrath of God for the sins of the world on the cross so that you would never have to face the wrath of God.

He was separated from the Father so that you will never have to be. 

When you realize all of this, you realize that you will never give up more than what He did for you; you will never go farther for Him than where he went for you and you’ll never suffer more for Him than what He did for you. 

Yes, there may be division among your relationships because of Christ, but eternity with Christ Alone in Heaven is better than eternity in hell with all of my friends and family.  Jesus is worth losing your life for.