The Root of the Issue - Luke 6:20-49

Thoughts from the message on 3/19/17

The Root of the Issue - 

Jesus consistently describes life in ways that may feel confusing to us. Imagine you've just come to your favorite swimming hole and find it littered with junk and dirty everywhere, so you spend some time cleaning it up. Then the next day you come back to enjoy a day in the water but its dirty again! What happened - this doesn't make sense? I thought I solved that problem! It's this kind of confusion that the people are feeling what Jesus speaks in this passage. What they thought led to blessing doesn't and what they put their hope in is uncovered as empty. 

Jesus is offering a bold rejection of their entire worldview, and the values which drive their life. It's normal to think that the world revolves around me and if I put my head down and work hard I will get money, good food, fun and prestige. I'll love the way I want to and direct my life the way I see fit. But Jesus is addressing where to put our hope and where to direct our love in a way that is totally counter-intuitive. We naturally love ourselves, but the self-giving love of God is the pattern and template where true joy is found. When we love the way the world loves, i.e. through give and take, we'll produce nothing other than what the world produces. We can only love the way God loves when we let Jesus' self-giving love envelope and live through us. And we can only love the way he loves when we choose to worship him and not some other thing that we feel gives us hope. 

As humans, we are naturally worshippers and will always worship something or someone. And what we worship shows us what we put our hope in. When we worship him, we allow him to be all we need, so that we don't have to put our hope in other things, but are free to give away, knowing that our needs will be met. It's when we give of ourselves without expecting payment and when we love without being loved back, that we live in the self-giving love of Jesus. This love isn't something we can produce on our own and we were not born with it. We may say we're following Jesus, but our life may be founded on something that we never actually left (a false way of loving and worshipping). We've worked really hard to keep the swim hole clean and we're in the same spot. Maybe we need to let Jesus take us upstream a little bit and show us the source of the problem, allowing him to refocus our love and worship. 

Questions for Reflection - 

1. Since I am a worshipper, what are the things I naturally want to worship or place my hope in?

2. How does Jesus challenge our pattern of loving people in this passage?

3. What does it mean for me to allow Jesus to be Lord of my life and the one I put my hope in?

Contributed by: Sky Cady