Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] My name is Evan. I'm one of your senior pastors. And we are in the Book of Mark. We've been walking through this gospel written by John Mark, chapter by chapter each week, and we're going to get there in a moment. But I want to read two scriptures before we jump into the narrative in Mark. First one is out of John 14, verse 8. Philip, one of the disciples said, lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied. And Jesus replied, have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don't know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
[00:00:42] And Second Corinthians 4, 6 says, for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ.
[00:01:00] You know, I don't worry a lot. I'm not a big worrier. I sleep pretty good at night.
[00:01:05] But there is something I do worry about when it comes to leading this church alongside Pastor Ben. And we talk about this, things like church growth and making sure we're headed in the right direction. All that matters so much. But that's not what worries me. What worries me when I think about our time together in this season of the church and as we lead and you show up and you're part of this community, is that somehow we would get through these months and years together and at the end of it all, we would walk away from this season of our lives in community together with a distorted view of who God is, that somehow through all the teaching and the interpretation of the Scripture, and we would walk week after week through all these stories and conversations and Bible, and at the end of all that we'd walk away and that we would have a vision of who God is that is not accurate and true, that you would walk away feeling like God is disappointed with you, that he's mad at you, that he's filled with anger and hate, that somehow that you will never measure up, that you'll walk away from your season of life in this church, which hopefully is going to last for at least 3, 40, 60, 80 more years, but that you would walk away maybe with a sense of religious guilt or like you were never quite enough.
[00:02:30] And I think it is maybe the most important thing that we could do with our moments together is to continually lean in to get an accurate picture of who God Is.
[00:02:41] And this is why we've spent the last three.
[00:02:46] This is our third year, at the very start of the year, going through a gospel. We started with Luke, and then we went to Matthew last year, and now we're going through Mark, and we're spending a lot of time in these stories. And why would we devote so much of our year to the story of Jesus as told in the gospel? Here's why is because in Jesus, we get an accurate and perfect picture of the heart of God for hurting humanity. And. And there is no other place. There is no better place. Whatever you heard, that doesn't look like Jesus. And you think, well, that's how God acts. That's how religion has taught me. No, we let all of those fall by the wayside. Because when we look at Jesus, we get the perfect and accurate picture of the love of God poured out for humanity. It's the only place to go.
[00:03:31] And so we spend these times and these moments. I know maybe some of you are from, like a Calvary Church background, and you're like, oh, right, they're going chapter by chapter. We're doing it well, just for a little bit, and then we're back. Okay, don't get too excited, Calvary people.
[00:03:49] But I love this. As we sit in the narrative of the life of Jesus, we're not only learning about a moment in time so long ago in the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem. We are looking to find out who this God is that we worship.
[00:04:05] And in so doing, hopefully dismantling some of these incorrect and distorted views of a God who is demanding and disappointed and distant.
[00:04:15] And instead, we would find a God who has come close.
[00:04:19] I don't want us to get the wrong impression about who God is.
[00:04:24] Story that happened this Friday can't make this stuff up. This really happened. Alyssa and I went to the car wash and we were vacuuming out the car. And at some point during us vacuuming the car, my wallet fell out of my pocket onto the ground. And so we drove home. And I didn't realize until we got home that my wallet had gone missing. And so I was like, ah, I gotta go back to the car wash. So I drive back to the car wash, and by the time I get back there, I see that a woman has pulled up in her car in the same spot that we were at vacuuming. And she's vacuuming her car, sitting kind of half in, half out of her front seat. And so I pull up in a stall a couple spots away from her, and I'm probably 15ft away from her as she's vacuuming. And I didn't want to disrupt her, but I stood there and I said, excuse me.
[00:05:11] And as soon as I said, excuse me, she looks up, startled, and she glances at me. And then she throws her legs over into the seat and slams the door.
[00:05:24] And now we're making eye contact.
[00:05:27] And I am a strong and imposing person. I understand this makes me a little sad that that's a laugh line. But we're making eye contact. And in the moment I remembered I heard once from a public speaker, and he said, a good way to be disarming when you're meeting new people. And this is very subconscious, but it works. He said, show people your hands as a signal. Like, I don't have any weapons. I'm nothing to hide. You're safe. And so I'm like, okay, show your hands and smile. And so I do one of these.
[00:06:08] I'm not making this up. She locked the door right then. Just locked it.
[00:06:14] So I'm yelling at her through her window. She's scared. I said, I lost my wallet. Can I look under your car? And I realize that sounds even weirder.
[00:06:23] So she yells at me through her glass. She's like, I'm just going to leave. And I was like, that's a good idea. And so she pulls out, I see the wallet and I hold it up, and I'm trying to get her attention. Like, see, it's real. I'm not a psychopath. You know, I really lost it.
[00:06:38] Whatever I was trying to communicate with my face, it was not working.
[00:06:45] And I think, how is he going to get to the point? Okay, here's the point.
[00:06:50] So much of our intention can be communicated when we get face to face. And I think this is maybe one of the tragedies of a modern world that has moved away from face to face is that then everything comes up for interpretation because we've taken a step back from what is the exchange of our intention through our countenance, that when we get face to face, we have an opportunity to communicate something about how we feel and how we act and how we intend to be in relationship. And I've wondered, how is it that Jesus attracted so many marginalized and outsiders to him, that he's constantly surrounded by hurting people who have not found themselves a place in religious society in his day. And I just have to think it's because they saw him face to face and he communicated something about the love of God through his countenance, through his mark 5:21. We get into our narrative. Today, Jesus got into the boat again, and he went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. And then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived.
[00:08:03] So he's like, you know, a leader in the community. He's an important person.
[00:08:08] And when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet.
[00:08:11] And this right here tells you how desperate this local leader is that he falls at the feet of a traveling rabbi.
[00:08:19] And he pleaded fervently with him, my little daughter is dying. He said, please come and lay your hands on her. Heal her so she can live. And Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him.
[00:08:33] And a woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years, she had spent everything she had to pay them. But she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.
[00:08:45] And she had heard about Jesus. So she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, if I can just touch his robe, I'll be healed.
[00:08:56] And immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
[00:09:03] And Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him. So he turned around in the crowd and he asked, who touched my robe?
[00:09:11] His disciples said, look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, who touched me? And he's like, well, I'm Jesus. I can ask whatever I want of you guys.
[00:09:22] He kept on looking around. I love this. He kept on looking around. Jesus has a place to be right now.
[00:09:28] This VIP local leader, his daughter is dying.
[00:09:33] And Jesus should really, whatever he's pausing to do, he needs to stop that so he can get to what is the most important thing. And yet he stops and he turns, and he refuses to move on until he can find out what happened.
[00:09:51] He kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling, shaking at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.
[00:10:10] Wow.
[00:10:15] So amazing, the kindness of Jesus, that he had every reason to ignore going on in that crowd to get to the VIP home to perform this miracle.
[00:10:30] And yet, as an expression of what God was all about and what he was unleashing in that corner of the world, the coming of the kingdom of God, as an expression of that Jesus is not too important or too busy to stop in the middle of the busyness to meet the needs of hurting people.
[00:10:56] And I think for this woman who has had this condition, this ailment, this hemorrhaging for 12 years, she would have had to figure out how to survive in a culture that was not kind.
[00:11:09] There were so many religious rules and restrictions and there's these ritual laws. And so someone in her condition with that ailment, she would not have been allowed by religious law to be out among the people.
[00:11:23] And if you'll notice this as we walk through the Book of Mark, again and again, Mark is pointing out these moments where Jesus does not hesitate to be close to people who are religiously unclean.
[00:11:35] Doesn't faze him.
[00:11:38] But after 12 years, certainly time and time again, she has found herself in places where she knows by law she is not allowed to be. And I wonder how many times people have known this and called her out publicly in a way that has humiliated and shamed her.
[00:11:55] Maybe this is why, instead of going to Jesus at a time when she could face to face, explain the situation and ask for something, maybe this is why she thinks, if I could just come up behind him and just touch the corner of his garment, that's enough.
[00:12:11] I won't make any trouble. I won't draw any attention.
[00:12:16] I won't find myself in that humiliating place where everybody knows what I've been walking through.
[00:12:22] And so she comes up behind him to get her miracle. And amazingly, it works.
[00:12:29] It works. And yet Jesus is unsatisfied to let this be purely transactional, where she says, if I can get there and I can do this, I'll get my miracle and we'll move on. No relationship needed, no interaction needed. And Jesus puts a stop to it. And he turns around and he says, I want to see face to face who was desperate enough and who had enough faith to come and do that. I want to see them face to face. And so she comes trembling and shaking, and she falls before Jesus. It was me I know shouldn't have done it. And surely she is expecting this rabbi to scold her and accuse her and reject her and be disgusted by her. And instead, you know what he says? He says, daughter.
[00:13:18] And for a woman who, because of her condition, was outside the community for 12 long years, a word like that from this Jewish rabbi would have turned everything around because in a moment he says, she's with me.
[00:13:34] Daughter, not. Woman, not. How dare you? Not. Who is this? He doesn't turn to the local leaders and Say, what is this going on? No, he turns to her so that she can see his face, his countenance, and he says, you're with me, daughter.
[00:13:53] Your faith has made you well.
[00:13:56] I just love this.
[00:13:58] Sometimes Ben and I, we really have to, like, work the text to have it preached. And I love this passage because it just preaches itself. I'll be up for another 50, 60 minutes. It's so good.
[00:14:11] I won't, I promise.
[00:14:13] Jesus stops everything, and he's so kind.
[00:14:20] And what pleases Jesus and what generates this response of kindness and the approval, but not just the approval. Not just, it's okay now. Not just you get your healing, but this idea that Jesus was pleased by her faith, the thing that does that is simple. And I think we complicate it so much that we have all these lists and rules, and this is how you make God happy with you. And. And your performance matters in these ways. And we qualify the love and the acceptance of God. And in the end, this woman with no other qualifications comes to Jesus and just believes a little bit that maybe this is the one, that he is the one who has the power to do something about what has crippled and crushed her spirit. Just that little bit of faith is what Jesus responds to and is so pleased by.
[00:15:13] And it turns everything around.
[00:15:18] And I know this. And it's rare that a week goes by where we don't have a conversation with someone who is wrestling with feelings of religious guilt or shame or feeling like they don't measure up, that somehow God is at his baseline is disapproval and annoyance.
[00:15:39] And I think we can run the risk of accepting God's forgiveness through Jesus, but assuming that he's still annoyed, right, okay. I'm a son and a daughter of God, we say, but certainly if Jesus was here, he would not want to hang out with me.
[00:15:59] And what I find again and again and again in the stories of the gospel is every time someone who has been cast down and cast out and put in the margins and thrown to the side, it's those that he says, you don't just get healing. Let's go find lunch.
[00:16:20] You don't just get a yes from me. You get relationship with me. You don't just get to grab your miracle from behind me and move on in some kind of religious transaction. No, we're going to be face to face. I'm going to say, you belong to me.
[00:16:39] This is a radically new way for everyone around Jesus to understand who God is.
[00:16:46] In the Old Testament, there is this metaphor that is consistently used when God is angry or displeased with somebody, whether it be the whole nation of Israel or individual people or different prophets who or kings that do the wrong thing. And the metaphor is this, that God turns his face away from them.
[00:17:09] And this is baked into everyone's religious upbringing at this time, that if God has turned his face away from you, he's angry and displeased.
[00:17:20] And so especially if you go back to the story of Moses, Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and he gets the ten Commandments and meanwhile all the people down below are doing all the wrong things and they're worshiping idols.
[00:17:35] And there's this metaphor that comes up about how God is going to turn his face away from them.
[00:17:42] And then Moses is like, please don't abandon us here, God, I know they're screw ups, but please, for my sake, don't abandon us here. And he begs God, like, God, would you show me what you're all about. We're up here on this mountain and I just want to know who you really, really are. And God responds to him. I think it's Exodus 33.
[00:18:04] And he says, I'm going to let my goodness pass before you, Moses.
[00:18:09] The stuff that makes me who I am, the stuff that makes God. God is not my anger and my judgment and my rage or my raw power or my authority to crush those that upset me. No, the very essence of who I am is God, goodness.
[00:18:26] And then he says, but Moses, if you saw my goodness face to face, it's gonna kill you.
[00:18:32] That's how God talks.
[00:18:35] So here's what I'm gonna do. And this is a very strange, I mean, it's out there. Okay, just, I get it. He's like, Moses, I'm gonna put you up here on the side of this cliff and I'm gonna, my goodness is gonna pass by you and I'm gonna let you look, but you can't see my face, so you're going to look at my back. That's all you get.
[00:18:56] And like, it's such a strange story.
[00:19:00] But understand that this sets us up for these moments when in the Gospels, God becomes man.
[00:19:08] And it says that all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him.
[00:19:13] And now we have a God who is full of goodness and full of kindness and overflowing with, with this expression of love, who now when people come up to his back and say, that's all I can handle, I can't face him face to face. I don't know what that's gonna be. I don't Want the shame that's involved in that? He says, no. And he turns around and says, now we see face to face. Now you get the full dose of my goodness and my mercy and my love, because I am coming to introduce a new way for God to interact and engage with hurting humanity.
[00:19:48] And the God who is distant and disconnected and far from us becomes the God who comes close and who we see in his countenance and his face just how much he is pleased with us.
[00:20:07] Three things that Jesus does and is when we come to him in faith.
[00:20:12] Number one, Jesus doesn't compare your troubles to anyone else's. Have you ever felt like you don't want to bother, like your troubles are not important enough?
[00:20:23] And so you spend your time praying for those that have bigger stuff?
[00:20:28] Here's the cool thing is that Jesus is never concerned about how your trouble, your issue, your problem is outweighed by somebody else's.
[00:20:40] And I think it is the generosity of God where he says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden. And that can look like a little bit of a burden, or it can look like life ending kind of burden. And either way you're going to receive rest when you come to me.
[00:20:56] He doesn't compare our struggles and our troubles to anyone else's. Number two, Jesus, first word to you is one of belonging.
[00:21:06] This is something that when I'll have conversations with people who have had a bad experience in church and they felt the shame of not measuring up.
[00:21:19] And when those conversations happen and someone has come, I had a conversation just a little while ago and this woman told me, she's like, I don't know if I can do this Jesus thing. And she reiterated to me how someone who claimed to be, you know, a seasoned religious person had explained to her that because of her lifestyle and how she was living, that really she wasn't welcome in a Christian community. And so she sat with me and she's saying, I don't know if I can do this.
[00:21:54] And I'll tell you what, there's nothing that makes me more upset than, than when people misrepresent the kindness of Jesus as condemnation and accusation.
[00:22:04] And I'll tell you what, if you ever see me on KTVZ and my mugshot is up there, it's because somebody misrepresented Jesus.
[00:22:13] You'll be really disappointed if it's just like shoplifting or something. I thought he was really.
[00:22:24] And I love our community. I love how we have all kinds of different views and opinions and ideologies and politics and all that. And what a wonderful thing that we all come together under the name of Jesus here.
[00:22:41] And people come and say, well, I think this politically, or I think that politically. And I'm like, that's great. We can actually come together. It's amazing.
[00:22:51] But what I won't ever tolerate in this place is when we make Jesus out to be the one who condemns rather than the one who expresses the kindness of God.
[00:23:07] Jesus, first word to you is one of belonging. And number three, Jesus is so pleased with you.
[00:23:15] I wrote those words early this morning. I added those to this message, and immediately I was like, oh, I should qualify that, because I don't want people thinking it's, like, free.
[00:23:30] And the voices of all the religious leaders around Jesus came to mind, who were constantly trying to qualify the acceptance of God.
[00:23:40] They're making their lists, and they were so happy to put up barriers between people and God.
[00:23:48] And if you could just do these three things. Actually, let's make it 10. No, let's make it 600 things to get on God's good side. And Jesus shows up and he says, I'm not gonna condition this kind of love.
[00:24:04] And so a woman comes, and she's been breaking the law by participating in society. The nerve.
[00:24:13] I'm not going to condition.
[00:24:17] I'm not going to make you jump through hoops. You are right now. Look at my face. You are right now loved and accepted and healed, and your suffering is over, and you belong to me. Wow.
[00:24:32] So I'm not going to condition it. I want to condition it. I want to tell you all the. The ways that your behavior still matters.
[00:24:41] But here's the thing. If you need to know that God is so pleased with you, that's for you. And for those in the room, they're like, pastor Evan, if I can even call you pastor, the way you're talking, I can give you seven verses that explain why that is not theologically sound. Listen, that phrase is not for you today.
[00:25:02] That is not for you. But for the one who assumes that God is so mad and will never be pleased with them, the Word is for you. God is so pleased with you.
[00:25:15] You've shown up in faith.
[00:25:17] And he is so glad you're here. He is so pleased.
[00:25:23] How you've come in. Number six, way back in the Old Testament, back in Moses day, there's this prayer.
[00:25:35] And to this day, it's prayed by Jewish communities and Catholic communities and Anglicans and Lutherans and the odd Protestant evangelicals like us out of number six, you probably recognize it.
[00:25:50] And it speaks to this idea what for centuries and generations the people of God were hoping for and crying out in prayer for number six. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine on you and be gracious to you.
[00:26:12] The Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.
[00:26:16] And I will tell you what, through the ups and downs of human history and for all the centuries where if you read your Old Testament, you'll find God just seems really angry a lot at how much of a screw up the people are. When we get to Jesus, we find the fulfillment of that prayer, that in Jesus he has blessed us and he has kept us, that he's made his face to shine upon us with his pleasure and his approval, that he's been gracious to us. He's turned his face towards us again and he's given us peace.
[00:26:52] Last week we talked about how Jesus comes to us in the storm and brings peace when life is at its worst and worst. And I love the way that we find peace in the storms of life. But I have to say today that in this story I find Jesus giving a much more eternal kind of peace. And that's peace between us and God where we feel like he's certainly mad. Jesus comes and he stands in between and he gets face to face and he says, I'm so pleased with.
