Jesus Unfiltered - Believe - Jesus - Launches a Movement, Part 2

Do you ever feel like you just don't measure up with God, and so why talk to Him, or you feel guilty, or you know, He loves a lot of other people, but not you? If that's how you feel at times, don't miss today on Living on the Edge.

You're in for a big surprise. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international teaching and discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Have you ever stopped to wonder why people are so infatuated with heroes? And it goes beyond just the comic book characters of today.

Throughout history and centuries of literature, people have idolized these fearless figures who swoop in and save the day. Well, in just a minute, Chip will pick up in our series, Jesus Unfiltered, by continuing to reveal a side of Jesus we may not have considered that will motivate us to worship and appreciate Him all the more. So let's get to the second half of Chip's message, Jesus Launches a Movement. He begins in John chapter 2, where Jesus attends a wedding. What was God's heart? What was God's attitude before the fall, and all of us got thinking He was mad at us all the time, and the goal of church was to make you feel guilty? God said, of every tree, lavish, generous, good, kind, providing, joyful.

I want the very best for you with this limitation. So here Jesus comes. Lavishly, what happens? The two become one in marriage. That which is a part come together. Why do they come together? Why do you marry someone?

Because you, this isn't a trick question, you love them. And when you love them and you're together, it brings joy. And out of your love and joy, it normally produces a new life, right? Called a baby. And that baby begins a legacy of relationship.

And that relationships produce something called a family. And so He launches His ministry for His disciples to understand that God is good and lavish and gracious, and it's not external and religious and rights and purifications and external, but the living God has come. And what He did to that water, He wants to do inside every human being, and He does it through His word. And there is life and joy and relationship and goodness, and He's restoring. And those disciples' eyes are going click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And the Holy Spirit wrote it so that on this day, at this time, your eyes would go, wow.

Click, click, click, click, click. Jesus was laughing at that party. Jesus was dancing at that party. Jesus was belly laughing, and He knew what was going on. Jesus was having a blast.

Shocking to some groups, but He was actually having fun. How did this position or launch His ministry with the disciples? Their calling was rooted in the goodness of God.

Their calling was rooted in not I ought, I got, I should. This is the Messiah. He has His power, and His power is about life and love and joy and relationships. Jesus unfiltered. Well He goes down to Capernaum according to the text, stays there for a few days with His family. We learn a little bit later through the other gospel writers that a lot of them came from that time. You're going to find He's going to go to Jerusalem, and He's going to lay down the gauntlet and literally declare that He's the Messiah. And then because of all the hostility in Jerusalem, He does most of His ministry in Galilee and other places. In fact, you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and remember the Pharisees, the religious leaders, they're always coming out to ask Him questions or to attack Him. He only goes to Jerusalem during these feasts. Now one of the questions is, is why is this account different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke's?

It's because there were actually two times this occurred, and they're very clear and they're very different. What Jesus did, we're going to see in just a minute, is He goes to the feast, but you can't have the new unless you address the status quo and the old that's been perverted and corrupted. And so the disciples are going to learn at the wedding, this is new life and it's about grace and joy and love.

And then they're going to learn, just like those pots were external religion, so what has happened at the temple is not a right view or heart or connection with the living God. And so He's going to positively say this, and then He's going to lay down the gauntlet, declare, this is my Father's house. I mean, we read that and think, well, of course you're Jesus.

They didn't know who He was. To go there and declare, this temple is my Father's house. He's claiming to be the Messiah. And remember what the question is, by what miraculous sign? You're coming in here with authority to say that this place is yours and you are Messiah related to your Father. We want some proof.

I want to see your ID, buddy. I mean, where do you get off doing this stuff? And He will say something that they don't understand, religious leaders, the disciples don't understand, but it'll all come back to everyone He'll realize because He will always bank everything then and everything now on the proof of this. He rises from the dead. It's the resurrection.

So let's go and ask a few questions of the second section. The question I ask is, why go to the feast in Jerusalem? I mean, second, why is John's account different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke's? Why does Jesus react so passionately and violently at the temple? What are the underlying spiritual implications of this section? They're pretty heavy.

How did this event shape Jesus' relationship with the religious leaders, His disciples, and the multitudes? Now, I'm just going to pause. I'm going to keep going in and out. What does it say? We made some observations, right? What does it mean, interpretation?

What did I do? I asked some basic questions about the passage that required some historical background that's available to you and me, some logical thinking and reasoning about how does this all fit together, because what we're trying to do is I want to know exactly when John wrote this in 90 AD, and if I was sitting in a little house church and someone opened that scroll and read it, I want to know what he meant and what they got, because if I don't get clear about that, I'll go off on some little dilly devotional emotional thing. Well, you know, I was reading, and I think this, and I think it means this, and I think it means that.

I've been to a lot of Bible studies where it's sort of let us share our pool of ignorance. What do you think it means? What do you think it means? What do you think it means? What do you think it means? I think it means wine is okay. I think it means jars should not be in the house. I think it, literally, you know, I say this reverently, I don't care what you think it means. I want to know exactly what the Holy Spirit meant it to them through John, because until you're clear on what it actually says and what it actually means, you're not ready to apply it to your life. Does that make sense? And by the way, that's how cults and all kind of crazy stuff gets going on.

People grab a portion of a passage. Every author who's written any book has a very clear purpose and authorial intent about what he wants to say. Our job is to discover what that is, then apply it to our life.

So those are the questions of the second half, so let's do a little interpretation. So why does he go to the temple? He goes to the temple because he's required to. He's been there every year since 12 years old, when he went there with his mom and dad.

Why is it different? Because Matthew, Mark, and Luke are describing when he cleared the temple at the end of his life, at the very end of his ministry, where he comes back to town and it's what got him killed. He lays down the gauntlet here early in his ministry. They don't completely get it, but the disciples, now imagine what this is like.

You're a good Jewish boy. You follow John the Baptist. You know God's in this. John says, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and you start following him. And you listen to him, then he quotes these passages and he knows stuff that no one else could know, and then he says, follow me.

And so you follow him, and then you go to a wedding. And it's like, oh my lands, this is crazy. This is amazing.

What do you think? This is great. And then you go to what you've gone to since you've been a little boy, and you go to this festival, and you walk in and it's like it's always been. Here's the cows, and there's the sheep, and there's the table, and there's the money changers. And you say, well, why is all that there? If it was done simply for a convenience, actually there wouldn't be a problem.

Pilgrims came from all over the world. So I don't want to like, I've got a cow, or I've got a sheep, or I've got a goat. I don't want to like take this cow or goat like 50, 60, 80, 100 miles in my pilgrimage to offer it. So I have some money. I'm going to go, and when I get there, I'm going to buy, if I'm really poor, two pigeons or two doves. If I'm a little bit more economically up, I'm able to afford a goat or a sheep or something, and I'm going to buy an animal so that I can then take it and I'm going to sacrifice it because that's what the law says. But here's what was happening.

Here's why Jesus is ticked off. Barclay, who's just a master of the research of the ancient times, a day's wage was to be about four pennies. When you came in, you had to pay, every male once a year had to pay a shekel. It's a tax, an annual tax, and the tax was six pennies.

A day's wage was four pennies. Well, if you had a different kind of money and you had to pay this tax, you would get your money changed. Like if you've traveled overseas, anybody, right? You can, where do you want to get your money changed? Like at the very nice expensive hotel, right? And they say, oh yeah, we'll change your money. And you know, it's 2.8 per dollar when you go to the exchange and at the hotel, they just take 10% of whatever and you go, what? So they were charging for every shekel, one extra penny. It's just robbery. You could buy two pigeons or doves outside the temple area for about four pennies. Historically, there's documents inside the temple area, it might cost you 75 pennies. And if you were really poor and couldn't pay, you might have to give your cloak as collateral.

So okay, here's what I want you to get. I want you to picture this. Jesus comes in and the ministry has started and he sees all these animals and he sees all these poor people and they're getting ripped off.

I mean ripped off by these interest rates and they have different kinds of money so they have to have the temple shekel. And then he's watching these guys with the animals and he's realizing, I mean, they are getting ripped off, ripped off, ripped off, ripped off. And his righteous anger explodes and he literally just finds what he can wrapped, bam.

And I mean, please don't get this milk toasted down. I bet he's, you should leave now, you should leave now. He was a carpenter and he was a physical man and I would guess fairly athletic. And the tables flipped, the coins flew, the chickens flew and people were running. And our God was mad. And he was mad for good reason.

Because what was created to be a place of worship had become nothing more than a prostitution for financial gain. Can anyone remotely think of any parallels in our day? You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and he'll be right back to continue his message.

But let me ask a serious question. Is there someone in your life like your child or grandchild who's walked away from their faith or shows no interest in God? If so, join us after Chip's talk to learn about a new tool we've created to help you reconnect and engage with the young people you care about.

You won't want to miss it. Well with that, here again is Chip. And so the disciples learn, very exciting guy to follow, but as a good Jewish boy we were in good standing with the spiritual leadership. Now Jesus and the spiritual leaders are at odds.

That means we have to choose between cultural, political correct standing or standing with Jesus because you can't have it both ways. The multitudes, after it he does these miracles. They don't tell us how many, but he does multiple miracles. And the people believe, but it's a belief, they believe he's a miracle worker. And it says Jesus doesn't entrust, he knows their hearts. They're believing to yes, this is amazing, we get the declaration, but they're believing on the basis of what can you do for me? And what John is going to do is walk us through a process of intellectually believing and then believing deeper, more on what you see and then moving to the point where you're entrusting and genuinely following where he's your savior and he's your lord. Does it make sense?

That's what it meant then and that's what it means now. Now flip the page and let's ask ourselves, what does John chapter two mean to you and to me? What does it mean to you and to me? Number one, Jesus wants to do good to me.

He wants to do good to me. That's verses one through five, that's what you see. He could have started the ministry anywhere and it was at a wedding. Probably the second, well, I don't want to get in trouble with all my other kids, got to be careful here. The greatest day in my life apart from coming to Christ was the day I married Teresa. The second greatest day experientially was probably my daughter's wedding. Because you know when it's your, when your boys get married the other family kind of, you know, they're in charge of what happens and you get to do the rehearsal dinner and when your daughter gets married you get two great things.

You get to pay for it, number one, but you get to say what's going to happen. And I'm going to tell you I just remember dancing with Annie and laughing and friends and food and it was and walking her down the aisle and seeing her friends and our friends and it was just like, ah, this is awesome. And I had a blast. Just had a blast. It was like, oh God, this is so precious.

I don't know where you're struggling in trusting Him for the future or about a decision or about a relationship or about your money or about your job or about your kids, but let me tell you one thing. Jesus came to do good for you. He's for you. He's a son and a shield. He gives grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

You get that from here to here. It'll change everything about how you relate to Jesus. You'll actually want to talk to Him. You'll want to hang out. You want to do stuff with Him and for Him. Second, Jesus came to transform my life from the inside out by a supernatural miracle, not by external religious rituals.

We got that from verses 6 through 10, right? Coming to church, giving the United Way, trying to be a good little goody two-shoes person. Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do this.

Don't do that. That's not the gospel. He came to transform you from the inside out. I grew up in a church that was like the six jars of external performance and religious activities that were devoid of a relationship with God and by God's grace, some people who understood life and goodness explained to me the gospel of Jesus Christ and I trusted Him and He changed me from the inside out.

And I didn't try to stop cussing. All I can tell you is I read the Bible every morning and every night I hit it because my parents think I was flipping out, you know? But as I was reading it, something happened and my tongue changed and I kept reading it and my attitudes changed and I kept reading it and I got around other people and joy filled my heart and that's normal. That's what God wants.

It's not about ought, should, got to. It's a transformation from the inside out. Third is I must follow Him and believe in Him to see His glory and continue His movement. He started a movement. The old things pass away, everything becomes new. That's the transformation in 2 Corinthians 5.17.

But then my responsibility is not to, oh, I made a decision or I prayed a prayer. I follow and believe. I follow and believe He manifests His glory. In other words, you see what He's really like.

He does things in your life. It's powerful. It's amazing.

It's great. And you know what? It's scary and it never ends.

You know, how mature you are. You start with baby steps and, oh, I'm gonna tell someone out loud that I'm a follower of Jesus and you do and, oh, wow, that wasn't so bad and then you begin to, you reach out and you help someone and something happens through you and then pretty soon you say I'm gonna believe Him for my finances and then I'm gonna believe Him for my time and then for my future and each step, follow, believe, follow, believe, mess up, right? Because you're human. Follow, believe, follow, believe, mess up. And then when you mess up, it's not like you dirty, rotten, little, terrible follower, what's wrong with you, how, you know, I knew you. I don't know where we got that. That's just not the God of the Bible.

Who's Jesus? When you really, really mess up and you run back, His arms are open, put on the best robe, put sandals on His feet, put a ring on His or her finger, we're all gonna mess up. We're all gonna make mistakes. Does He take it lightly?

Of course not. If we stay there long enough, there's consequences that are painful. But the pain of the consequences is so you come. Every step of the way, every step of the way, you follow and believe. When you stop following, and the reason you stop following is what you're saying to God is I don't trust you. I don't trust you in this relationship. I don't trust you in this business deal. I don't trust you for my future. So you stop believing.

You stop growing. Stop experiencing Him. And then He'll bring circumstance, circumstance, circumstance, circumstance, people, message, boom, boom, all because He loves you. He loves you, loves you, loves you. And, you know, and the moment you break through, bam, this is a Christian life.

John's gonna show us what it looks like to follow this Jesus in real time. Fourth, my body is His temple. And today He demands authentic worship from me 24-7. Jesus said about this temple, this is my Father's house.

Where does God dwell now? Romans 12, one and two. Off your body is a living sacrifice. 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that your body is the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? Your body, your hands, where your eyes go, where your feet go, what captivates your heart. Your body is God's temple.

Jesus today would walk in and say, what are you doing with my Father's body? Why are you looking at that stuff? What are you doing putting that stuff in my body? What are you doing working yourself to not get enough rest?

Why aren't you enjoying me more? And He would clear the temple. Why? Because He's radical.

Because it's a revolutionary. He started a movement that He's entrusted to us. What do you say?

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. God, the expectation for your work and your home and your neighborhood, God's expectation is the only hope is you. Angels aren't showing up at your house going this, well we're going to take care of all this. He lives in you if you're a follower. And so the response is to surrender and to follow and say, Lord help me.

And He will. I can trust Him in His word because He rose from the dead. When He starts the ministry, hey where do you get the authority to do all this stuff? Who do you think you are? Knock down this temple and I'll raise it in three days.

They thought it was a physical temple, He meant His body. And for you and me and every believer in Jesus Christ with every step where you're afraid, I'll keep my promise because you can trust that I am the only one who died and I paid for sin and I conquered sin and I rose from the dead. And you can bank on that. I'll be faithful to you.

I will never ever ever leave you or forsake you or let you down. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and the message you just heard, Jesus Launches a Movement, is from the first volume of Chip's series, Jesus Unfiltered, titled Believe. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute.

A.W. Tozer once said, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. In this series, Chip's going to help us get a clear, accurate picture of Jesus by studying John chapters 1-5. Discover what this passage reveals about Christ as our Savior, Messiah, and the truth. If you've missed any part of this series or want to learn more about our resources, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org.

Thanks Dave. I'll be right back with some application from today's message, but as we think about this particular season, I just want you to know that one of the most difficult things that is happening across America today is your kids who have walked away from the Lord, or you realize they don't want to go to church anymore, or you're just completely on different pages, and you just feel like there's this wall between you and your kids and your grandkids, and you don't know how to get through. What I want you to know is that there's hope, but we can't go about it the same way we've gone about it.

Some of the models that we've used in the past, no matter how well intended, simply aren't working. Here's the message. Your kids and your grandkids are not beyond reach, but there's a new way.

It's biblical, but it's different than the old way. In the book Not Beyond Reach, we partnered with Aaron Pierce and the Steiger ministry, who are reaching people who are farthest from God in the global youth movement, and we want to make this book available to you where you can start a conversation and then begin to build a bridge and really reconnect with your child or a grandchild or someone you know that just seems far from God that you really care about. Dave, there's some real specifics about how they can use this and what we're offering. Could you fill people in as they think about how to reach that person that they so deeply care about? Thanks, Chip.

Be glad to. Go to Special Offers on the Chip Ingram app or LivingOnTheEdge.org to learn how to order Aaron's book. In fact, we really want to see you engage the young people in your life, so we're offering two copies of Not Beyond Reach together at a discounted price. And if you want to gift these books to someone for Christmas, place your order by December 13th to receive them in time. To take advantage of our on-mission bundle, visit SpecialOffers at LivingOnTheEdge.org or the Chip Ingram app.

Well, here again is Chip with his application. At the end of the message today, I said that Jesus would never let you down. We learn from this passage that Jesus will accept us, love us, restore us, and heal us.

If we're willing to make that very first most important move, be honest with ourselves and honest with Him. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit.

He hears our cry the moment we're really willing to be honest. Now, people are going to let you down. Churches are going to let you down. Pastors will let you down. I mean, no one will be faithful and care for you all the time except the Lord Jesus Himself. But this doesn't mean you're on a solo journey.

The way He does that is through people, ordinary people like you and me. We've talked about the priority and the importance of being in a small group. And so let me encourage you, if you're not in one, will you please find one or two people and do life with them? Begin reading the Bible on a regular basis. Get into a small group. Create a small group.

Right now, maybe it's just with your husband or wife or just with your kids or one other woman or one other man that you can trust. Let's start the journey together. Thanks for that encouragement, Chip. And we here at Living on the Edge want to help you cultivate meaningful community.

So if you're thinking of starting a small group or you and your friends are looking for the next subject to study, check out our resources today. Our small group tools are easy to use and will deepen your relationships with God and others. To learn more, go to the store at livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Or visit the store at livingontheedge.org. Well, thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Druey and I hope you'll join us again next time.