James Meehan - True, Through and Through
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— Well hello and welcome to this week's episode of "Switch Uncut" where we are talking about all things faith, following Jesus, and the Bible. What we're gonna do day is a little bit different than some of the episodes we've done, but not super different from other episodes we've done. So one of the things that we're really passionate about is walking through a biblical text together, because what we know is that the more that we can learn and understand the truth of God's word, the more we can faithfully follow Jesus in our everyday lives. And so one of the things do is we often explore the context surrounding a passage of scripture, specifically by asking who's the author, who's the audience, and what was the point of them writing that passage.
— Right.
— Today what we're gonna do though, is we're actually gonna look at the context found throughout the rest of the biblical story. We're gonna start with a passage found in Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus does some really cool stuff because he's Jesus, and then we're gonna look at other passages throughout that same gospel, throughout other gospels, and then we're gonna look at a passage that comes from later in the New Testament. And then as we take all of these different pieces of the puzzle, put them together, we're gonna have a fuller picture of just how amazing Jesus really is. So with that being said, Caitlin, are you ready to read the first scripture?
— I am. Here we go, it's from Matthew seven, at the end of the sermon on the mount. It says, "When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority, quite unlike their teachers of religious law".
— I like to think that I teach with real authority.
— Wow, 'cause you're so Christlike.
— 'Cause I'm so Christlike and humble.
— So humble.
— That one was for you mom. So what I wanna focus in on is the line that says, "Jesus taught with real authority".
— Right.
— "Quite unlike their teachers of religious law". Now what's cool to know about out Jesus is that when he spoke people listened, and it wasn't just because of what he had to say, but it's the fact that he lived what he said. And what's cool is if you actually look at the Greek word that gets translated into authority, it comes from two different Greek words that you put 'em together and it becomes authority. Those words are "ex" which means out of, and then "ousia", which is like your substance, your essence, or your being. So when you put those together, you get this Greek word "exousia" which means literally, out of your being. So when Jesus was speaking, when he is teaching, he is teaching out of his very being, he's not just pulling random ideas out of thin air and saying them because they sound good, he is speaking what truly comes from who he is. And that's literally what it means to have integrity, when your words and your actions are integrated, they're fully aligned. And so what I wanna just pause here and talk about is the fact that yes, Jesus is the son of God who entered the world to die for our sins so that we could be saved. And also every step of the way, Jesus walked and he talked with authority, why? Because he lived with integrity. And so when we look at Jesus, one of the things that I think can be so helpful to be reminded of is that he is completely true through and through.
— Yeah.
— There is no deception, there is no manipulation, there's no falsehood in him. Everything he says is consistent with who he is because he speaks with authority out of the center of his being. And so what I wanna do now is begin to look at some of these other passages of scripture that set up this contrast...
— Sure.
— To show us just how brilliant Jesus is. Because the other thing that happens here is after we read that he taught with real authority, we read that he was "quite unlike their teachers of religious law".
— Right.
— And so what Matthew's doing as Jesus rounds out the sermon on the mount is he's showing that people responded to Jesus in a way that they did not respond to others. That Jesus, because he communicated with integrity, he was able to speak with authority, which was very different than the teachers of law.
— So moving on to scripture two, we're gonna see some of that contrast and where it comes from.
— Absolutely.
— This one is from Matthew 23, one through three. It says, "Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice in obey whatever they tell you, but don't follow their example for they don't practice what they teach". Ouch.
— They don't practice what they teach, do what they say, but not what they do. So what Jesus is doing here is he's making it really clear that this was the problem that existed within the teachers of the religious law in his day. Is that they might have preached really good, but they didn't practice what they preached, and that's where the term hypocrite actually comes from. It's believed by a lot of people that Jesus coined that phrase because before Jesus was accusing the religious leaders of being hypocrites, that was used to describe the mask that an actor would wear in Greek plays. So it's literally, they would put on a mask to present one thing to the world that was very different from what they actually practiced.
— Wow.
— And you've experienced this, that when people say good things, but those good things don't at all line up with what they actually do or believe, like we can sniff that out from pretty far away, because we've grown up in a world where we are marketed to 24/7, right? Like everything we watch on our phones, like even within games, there are now advertisements for other things, everybody's trying to market something to us, and that's what these teachers of the religious law were doing. They were trying to market to the people, "Hey, we're super spiritual, so listen to what we have to say. Hey, we're really religious, so you should treat us with respect". And Jesus actually says like, yeah, you should respect them. You should listen to the words that they say, because even though they're saying true things, the way that they're living is actually really false. And that's the difference between Jesus and these other religious teachers is he didn't just say good things, he lived a true life.
— Yeah.
— And so for us in our modern world as followers of him, one of the most important muscles that we can develop is discerning whether or not people are actually being honest.
— That's good.
— Because even within the church, there are gonna be people who say really good things, but their life doesn't line up with the things they say that they believe.
— Right.
— That's why for me, as somebody who's in the church, who is in a position of teaching, I have to be super careful that I don't end up like these teachers of the religious law.
— Right.
— Who say good things, but don't actually live a true life.
— Right.
— And so this is really confronting to me.
— Wow, it sounds like literally the teachers of the law were getting it exactly backwards.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
— It's like Jesus' authority was born out of his integrity.
— Come on.
— But for them, they wanted the authority...
— Right.
— Without confronting their integrity issue.
— Right, and because they didn't have integrity, guess what? They also didn't have authority. Come on Jesus. He's so legit. All right. Yeah, yeah.
— Scripture three.
— Yeah, get us into the next one.
— I'm gonna keep rolling. This one actually comes from the beginning of the sermon on the mountain, so we're like skipping back a little bit. It's Matthew 5:43-48. "You've heard that the law says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, in that way, you will be acting as true children of your father in heaven, for he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how different are you from anyone else, even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect".
— So we started at the end of this sermon where we're told Jesus spoke with authority, that people were amazed, and that was very different than the teachers of the religious law. Then we jumped ahead later in Matthew's gospel, where we see, oh, the reason why Jesus was so different from those teachers of the religious law is because they didn't practice what they preached.
— Right.
— But when Jesus spoke, he spoke out of the center of his being. That he lived with integrity, and that's what led to him being able to speak with authority. Now we're going back to the sermon on the mount, so it's this passage of scripture, these three chapters, Matthew five, six, and seven, that is Jesus teaching, and that's what people responded with by saying, dang, this dude is different. And so we read Jesus laying out this ethic that would've been radically different from anything they'd ever heard before.
— Right.
— Because Jesus, isn't just saying, "Hey, like do to others, as you want them do to you".
— Right.
— Or treat others the way that you have been treated.
— Right.
— He's literally going so far to say that if you have enemies, you need to love them.
— Right.
— That if people persecute you, if they hurt you, if they belittle you, if they pick on you, the best thing that you can do is pray for them. And then he lays out how that's actually the way that God shows his love to all of the world.
— Yep.
— He sends rain on the just, and the unjust. He brings good things to the righteous and the unrighteous. And so what Jesus is saying is, regardless of what other people do, our response is to love. Our response is to show them the radical grace that sometimes they don't even deserve. And so here's the thing, Jesus is saying this, and it sounds really, really good.
— Right.
— But the beauty of Jesus is that he didn't just say these things...
— Right.
— He actually practiced them.
— It's good.
— Because he lived with integrity.
— Yep.
— And so Caitlyn, will you go to the next passage, now this one is in Luke's gospel. And the important thing to note here is we're jumping ahead to show what is the most powerful example of Jesus practicing what he preached, living out these words that he spoke in Matthew's gospel.
— Yep. So in Luke 23, 32 through 37, we read, "Two others, both criminals were led out to be executed with him. When they came to a place called The Skull, they nailed him to a cross. And the criminals were also crucified, one on his right, and one on his left. Jesus said, father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice. The crowd watched and the leaders scoffed, he saved others they said, let him save himself if he really is God's Messiah, the chosen one. The soldiers mocked him too, by offering him a drink of sour wine. They called out to him, if you were the king of the Jews, save yourself".
— So here's Jesus literally being executed on a cross, being crucified as if he were a criminal, even though he has committed no crime.
— Right.
— And there are these people calling out, they're saying like, "Hey, if you really are the chosen one of God, then save yourself". And what's crazy is they were thinking in that moment, the way that Jesus would demonstrate him being the chosen one of God is by saving himself.
— Right.
— And yet the way that Jesus demonstrates his union with God, the fact that he is the Messiah, our savior, is by praying for the very people that are killing him.
— Yep.
— Just like he talked about in the sermon on the mount.
— Yep.
— Right he says, "you've heard it said to love your neighbor, hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". And so in this passage, in Luke's gospel, what we are seeing is Jesus literally praying for the people that are killing him.
— Yep.
— Asking God to forgive them, because according to Jesus, they don't even know what they're doing. The level of empathy, and grace, and mercy that Jesus is demonstrating here is so radical.
— Yeah.
— And it's because he spoke outta the center of his being. Later on in some of John's writings, one of Jesus' disciples, he talks about this idea that God is love. Love isn't just something that Jesus does, it's actually the essence of who he is. And we see this being demonstrated as he's dying on a cross. And so what we've done is we started at the end of Jesus's teachings on the sermon on the mount, and we ask the question, what is it that set Jesus apart from the religious leaders? He spoke with authority.
— Yep.
— Where did that come from? It came from him living with integrity. Then we looked ahead at the hypocrisy of the religious leaders because they did not practice what they preached. Then we moved back to the end of the sermon on the mount where Jesus says, "Hey, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". Now here we are in Luke's gospel, and we see Jesus doing exactly what he said we were supposed to do.
— Yep.
— And so we're continuing to see how these different passages of scripture, pulled from different places in the gospel are all fleshing out this picture of just how special Jesus is. So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump ahead later in the New Testament to some of Paul's writings where the apostle Paul says some words that I think demonstrate all of this really, really beautifully.
— Okay. Romans five, six through 11, "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now most people would be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who's especially good, but God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we've been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For since friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God".
— So while we were still sinners.
— Yeah.
— While we were enemies of God.
— Yep.
— Jesus came and he died for us.
— Yep.
— He died in our place. He did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. And so now as we are reading this passage from the fifth chapter of Romans, what we are seeing is this theme continually being built on that when Jesus said things that sounded totally radical and extreme, like, hey, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. He wasn't just saying good ideas that were really just empty words. What he was doing is he was telling everybody what he came here to do. He was showing everybody the kind of love that God has for us, and this is what I think is so powerful is that we can read one passage of scripture and see something that's really powerful, it's really beautiful, it's really cool. But then as we learn to read that passage in context with the rest of the Bible, we can see those ideas be fleshed out and built on, and expanded in ways that just continue to illustrate how good God is.
— Yeah.
— And how different Jesus is from the teachers of the religious law. The teachers of our modern world. The people that maybe we really like following on social media, there's something radically different about Jesus and that's he spoke out of the center of his being, he communicated with authority that was born from his integrity.
— Yeah.
— And so what we've done is we've looked at a handful of different passage of scripture to help us connect these different dots, to paint a picture of just how special Jesus is. Now what we like to do.
— Yep.
— Is we like to explore these passage of scripture, walking through little by little so that we can understand together how most wisely we can read God's word. But then what we wanna do is talk about how do we then apply these truths to our lives?
— Right.
— Because it's not enough to just read these truths, we actually have to learn how to live these truths.
— Right.
— Almost like what Jesus did.
— Come on somebody.
— So with that being said, Caitlyn, talk to us about how as you are walking through these different passages, looking at the integrity of Jesus, the radical love of God, what does that make you think about and how do you begin to make your life consistent with those words?
— That's so good. I think the thing that is like confronting my heart the hardest at this moment, as we've just read through all of those passages is like, in every moment throughout Jesus' life, when authority is called into question, he doesn't respond with defensiveness like I would be so tempted to do.
— Yeah, yeah.
— He's not like up there defending himself and his honor telling who he is and why he has all the authority in the world.
— Yeah.
— He is instead acting out the words that he has already said and letting his actions speak for themselves, He continues to heal people, he continues to show grace, he continues to love his enemies, and at the absolutely like most intense moment of all that we just read as he's hanging on a cross, when they're confronting him, "if you really are the son of God, get down off the cross". But in his utter and complete integrity, he's like, no you don't get it. Like the best way for me to show you who I am is to stay right here.
— Come on. My goodness. It's kind of like the number one rule of storytelling, it's show don't tell.
— Yeah.
— And that's what's so beautiful about Jesus, is he always showed the truth of who he really was. As you were saying that I was thinking about recently my wife watched this video from a YouTuber she enjoys watching that was like the weakest apology video ever.
— Oh no.
— It's the kind of apology video that's not actually an apology video, it's let me make a bunch of excuses and tell you why you're the bad guy.
— Right. Love those.
— And so what we don't get from Jesus is a crappy apology video while he's on the cross.
— Nope.
— What we get is this radical demonstration of the truth of who he is down to the very core.
— So good.
— Now for me, when I read these words, I honestly get confronted by the part where it says, "Jesus was quite unlike the religious leaders of his day because he spoke with integrity". And then when we jumped to the passage about those religious leaders, where they did not practice what they preach, for me, that caused me to look inward and ask the question, What areas of my life am I not living with integrity? What areas of me need to change so I can become more like Jesus? And you know, some of the things that I oftentimes think about are where I'll get on stage and I'll talk about a message and how we can better follow Jesus in this different area of our life. And there will be times where I realize crud, you know what, I'm not doing very well at this.
— Yeah.
— And it's like in that moment where when I become aware of it, now I really wanna make sure I take action on it. Because with that awareness, I think it's actually a gift, it's the holy spirit showing us, Hey, there's something in you that isn't the way that it needs to be.
— That's good.
— So I'm inviting you to change. And so really specifically for me as I'm reading through this, I think about how it can be really easy for me to love people when I'm like, in my role as a pastor, because like, it's my job to love people.
— Sure.
— So I'm gonna love people. But then when I like go and spend time with family, it's like, no, when I'm in the role of big brother, you know what I wanna do? I wanna pick on my little brother. Right, like I wanna let him know who's boss. And so recently we were celebrating his 19th birthday, congrats to him. I told him on his birthday, I said, "Hey, happy birthday, you're really jacked for a 12 year old". And I thought that was really funny. And thankfully, like he clapped back really well. But what I realized is so much of my relationship with him is built around one V oneing each other in "Halo" and "Super Smash Brothers", and then ragging on each other, but I don't actually do a really good job of showing him how much I care about him. And that's something that I wanna do better. I want him to know that I really do love him, not just because we can play video games together, but because he's my brother, because he's a human being made in the image of God.
— Yep, so good. Well, as we have walked through these passages, what are some of the things are sticking out to you guys? What are some of the ways that the holy spirit is confronting your heart, and the questions he's inviting you to ask? Comment those below, we would love to wrestle through them with you and just hear what God's saying to your heart.
— Yeah, with that being said, thank you so much for joining us for this week of "Switch Uncut". Make sure to like the video, subscribe if you haven't already, and like Caitlin said, comment down below what it is the that God's showing you through this and continue on this journey of becoming more like Jesus for the sake of others.
— Yep.
— Because it's really special.
— Yep.
— See, y'all
— See you.