Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
Welcome to Garden Church Podcast. We're in a series called Walk with Jesus. This series is about learning to cultivate a passionate love with God. Joy.
Bill:Good morning. Good morning. It's good to be with you. Can we give a shout out to our ushers? Whoo.
Bill:For getting you getting you into place with a minimum of toes stepped on and butts in your nose. I mean, it's just Anyway, sorry. Just me. Anybody been, feeling the waves and fill the boats about ready to capsize in our current American moment? Yeah.
Bill:How do we how do we keep our heads while everybody else around us is losing theirs? And the short answer given over and over and over again in scripture is that we got our eyes fixed on Jesus. Yes. Yeah. And we don't let ourselves be distracted by the wind and the waves and the weather.
Bill:Including the wind and the waves and the weather that are generated for us by other well meaning people in the boat who are vibrating at high frequency and can't understand why you're not. Just invite them to just calm down and notice the sound of Jesus snoring in the storm. Yeah. He is not anxious. He's not anxious.
Bill:So what does he know that if we knew it and really believed it as much as he did, we wouldn't be anxious either? That's good. And that story in Mark chapter 4 underlines it. He knows who he is. He knows who he is.
Bill:He knows who his father is. He knows where he is in the universe of love and that's why he's not anxious. So let's keep our eyes focused on him, and our hearts turn towards him, And if you need to shut down the voices that are coming at you in the form of wind waves and weather, just shut them down. It's okay. They'll be there tomorrow With about as much help as they are today, which is to say, none.
Bill:I feel compelled today to pray for our president. Yeah. Would you join me? Yes. Lord, we recognize that, our voices are heard in the heavens.
Bill:That you attend to us. This is astonishing. Way beyond my capacity to understand. You've told us to cast our cares on you because you care about us. And so we, as, this part of the body of Christ, we do that, and you have asked us through Paul and others to pray for those in authority over us, for those in positions of power, and I find myself, drawn with compassion to our president and his family as they are contemplating, decisions of moment that have ripple effects, and, undoubtedly, he is being shouted at by all kinds of voices.
Bill:So I pray that in the center of his soul, he would hear yours. He would hear yours. Yes. Pray, oh Lord, that, the church would recognize our place and that we would lift up and support in our prayers. Knowing, oh lord, that, we are in decisions and times of moment, but that our hearts are not set on outcomes, and so we don't find I don't find myself compelled to pray towards an outcome.
Bill:Instead just to say, Lord, your will be done here. Yes. Yes. Which means at the end of the day we are formed towards Christ likeness. That's your will for our lives.
Bill:And win or lose or draw, that's the outcome that we pray towards. And, pray oh Lord for wisdom and for discernment and for next steps, in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Bill:Amen. Amen. As Ramin said, we're landing the plane on this series, learning to walk with Jesus, learning how to live our lives in a way as he would if he were us, that's the nature of discipleship. Last time we talked about, part 1 kind of, learning to love like Jesus, and in the middle of that exploration we discovered that we can't love like Jesus if we're not prepared to die like Jesus. Yeah.
Bill:Because he wants us to love one another as he loved us, and then makes it clear that he loved us by laying his life down for us because we're his friends. And laying his life down for us when we didn't know we were his friends. When we were in fact his enemies, he laid his life down for us. So this is kind of part b. I've made the statement over and over again in the last few couple years that Jesus didn't die so that we wouldn't have to, but so that we would know how to.
Bill:And, I want to kind of conceptualize some of, the what I believe is scripture is saying to us on this. As As I've started to dig into this a lot over the last several weeks, I've discovered that there's no possible way, even if I preach as long as Darren normally does, then I Sorry, sorry. He's not here, so I can do that. We'll not be able to say everything that scripture says about this because the the mindset of dying is front and center throughout the entirety of the ancient near eastern world. Infant mortality rate being what it was, the likelihood of people surviving into adulthood, minimized the people of looking at old age as being the age I am now.
Bill:70 was a was a, an unusual and noteworthy, accomplishment. The average lifespan, 35 to 40. So so death is is everywhere, and and and how we negotiate that, how we how they manage that is fascinating to see, especially because we we are not enculturated to do that very well. In the western world, we have all kinds of ways of of of of of training us to non attention to that single simple matter. We, apart from the coming of Jesus, even so, Lord Jesus, come.
Bill:Everybody sitting in this room is going to die, physically, at the very least. Right? And and what we do between now and then determines what kind of life comes after this kind of life. And it's wise for us to attend to the day of our dying, not in kind of morbid, or or fatalistic, or hands ringing sense, but in just a cold eyed look at the reality that y'all have a a use by date stamped somewhere on your hide, and, you're gonna expire. And now now now what?
Bill:Now what do we do with that? And and as I've gotten older, I'm starting to, give thanks for the aches and pains Yes. That accompany the journey, that remind me this isn't all there is. That And and and yes, Ibuprofen, and yes, thank God for but but I don't want to waste even the little reminders that we're built for a place other than this. Yes.
Bill:We are built for a paradisiacal reality in which we find ourselves in the very presence of God in a home built custom for the kinds of people we will be. It's really important because if we don't keep that in mind, we will we will be surprised when the inevitable occurs. And so I want to kind of look at this, because and but don't don't get me wrong. Just Jesus is very aware that death is an enemy. He doesn't approach it gleefully.
Bill:He he approaches it feet planted in the posture of a fighter. He he he he he is very aware. You watch him as he stands in the cemetery 10 minutes from raising Lazarus from the dead, and he is just crushed by the reality of death around He's the resurrection and the life. Right. And he is crushed by the way the world has embraced the culture of death.
Bill:He finds himself moved with compassion as a widow from Nain, leads the procession to bury her own son. And in the moment, he intervenes to remind her and us that this is not the final word, but it is a loud word that we need to attend to. And and if we look at how he himself handled it, I think it's important for us to recognize that he takes this very seriously, and and and a couple of things just by way of introduction. First of all, the dying about which we speak physically is not the only kind of dying that happens in our time on earth. In fact, Jesus will make the case if we get good at dying before we're dead.
Bill:Getting dead won't be such a big deal, because let's be clear. Right? Anybody, I'm not worried about being dead, I'm worried about getting dead. Right? And Jesus is saying, practice then.
Bill:Practice. Get good at the daily dyings, at the daily restrictions of movement, at the daily constraints of will, and get your heart set so that when the day comes for your physical dying, you will be well prepared and will be received into the arms of a loving father who has prepared a place for you. Do you see? So first of all, dying is not just about the end. It's not just about the final exit, But second, we we need to be clear that our pride of life, as John calls it, echoing the Genesis 3 temptation, leads us to believe that we are in control, and it is that false belief that sets us in opposition to reality.
Bill:So, Atul Gawande, one of my favorite writers, Harvard medical professor and doctor wrote a book called Being Mortal, which I would highly recommend, and especially if you have elderly folks that you're caring for. Because he says, as a medical professional, we have become experts at prolonging life, but we don't know how to release life. We don't know how to let go. We don't know how and when to quit. So I've sat with many people over the years of my pastoral ministry as they have had to make agonizing decisions at the bedside of a loved one, kept artificially alive by machines and by medications, not ever even close to their true selves, but we don't know how to do that because we have become intoxicated with not actually life, but with the illusion of life that allows us to think we're in control of this.
Bill:And it is that, I think, that Jesus is trying to help us to push back against, because he wants us to die fully to the glory of God, having lived fully to the glory of God. And the more we attend to dying well, the more capacity we have to living well. How many of us find ourselves unable to embrace life because we're afraid of death? Yeah. And the fear constrains us into the actual enjoyment of life.
Bill:What if I die? Well, what if you don't? What if this moment is the moment when you will feel most fully alive, when it will crack open an awareness that there is something beyond. So Jesus teaches about this, often and always, and and it is in this this, spirit of memento mori, this Latin phrase that means consider the day of your death. Psalm, I think it's 91, teach us Lord to number our days.
Bill:We need to we need to get a clue here as as to what it is. So Jesus teaches about this often. The first passage I'd like you to look with me at is Mark chapter 8. He has just heard, Peter and the others affirm him as Messiah. He then goes into the the defining of what it means for him to be a Messiah, specifically that he's going to be betrayed, that he's going to be put on trial, that he's going to be executed, that he's going to rise again.
Bill:They stop listening at the part where he goes off script in terms of their understanding of Messiah. You know the story, and Jesus pushes back pretty vociferously to Peter who and and identifies his resistance to Jesus' dying to be actual opposition to the work and way and will of God. He's the adversary. He's the Satan in that moment. So the resistance to the idea of dying is oppositional to what God is actually seeking to accomplish in the work and ministry of Jesus.
Bill:Right. So he says to us in verse 34, he calls the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me, for the gospel will save it. Besides, what good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their own soul? What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Bill:So notice, he's saying, this isn't about me, guys. This isn't just about me. I I I need you to learn from me how to do this because you're invited into the same trajectory of self denial that would result in my becoming crucified. Your journey will look different in some instances than mine will look, but you need to get good at saying no to the false life that you think you have so you can say yes to the life that I bring in the first place. The thing that you have invested your soul in, the grabbing, the acquiring, the maintaining, the holding, all of that stuff, all of that, what are you going to gain if at the end of the age, all you have your hands full of is that which has to be left behind?
Bill:And you've lost the essential part that lives forever. What does a person gain if he if he has the whole world, but loses his own soul? So so he he is he is with us this and and and and and realizes that that this denial of death is actually oppositional to real life. This institutionalized and culturated, especially in the west, denial of the reality that Jesus invites us to face fully and freely, and this is really important for us because faith does not mean the denial of reality. Yeah.
Bill:Whether it's sickness or praying for miraculous kinds of things, faith doesn't It's not magic. Faith is about relationship, not results. Faith is is standing in the reality of who God is and who is God, namely not me. So this is why I think while we pray for healing, and we should, right, as as little sparklers, fireworks of reminder of the kingdom. Let's remember, everybody who was healed by Jesus got sick and died.
Bill:Everybody who was raised from the dead. I Don't you just feel it for poor Lazarus? It's like, dude, we gotta do this again? Why is that so? But do do you see we we have baptized to the point that we will actually call no unanswered prayer when it comes to healing.
Bill:Really? What if your healing undermines your wholeness? What if your healing is actually clinging to a life that is not life? So Jesus invites us into a a journey with him, this recognizing the relentless clinging to life disables capacity to receive life as gift. For him, the cross will be real.
Bill:For most of us, it will not be, but he says regardless of whether it's 2 pieces of wood upon which you will be hung or the denial of your privilege in place on the daily, get good at it. Get good at the daily dying. Take it up. This this this and, of course, we need to know that the audience to whom he's speaking, they will experience this literally in terms of persecution. So we need to be, invited to Jesus saying to us, let learn to let this go.
Bill:Learn to let this clinging go. And why? Why? He tells us as he's facing his own death in John chapter 12, he gives us this frame. It's fascinating.
Bill:Up until now in the gospel of John, as you know, we've talked about this over the years at Garden. He says, my time has not yet come. My time has not yet come. And then one moment, a couple of guys come from the Grecian language world, and says, we want to see Jesus. And when when Ender and Philip bring that news to Jesus, it's as if a clock starts to tick in his head.
Bill:Okay, well the time has come. He views their arrival as the final domino push, right? And and and and then he says this, verse 23, the hour has come, John chapter 12, for the son of man to be glorified. Truly I tell you, unless a kernel, a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds, much life. So anyone who loves their life will lose it, Yes Lord.
Bill:While anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me because where I am my servant will be and my father will honor the one who serves me. Unless We count on this being true. Anybody have cereal this morning for breakfast? I have fallen into a deep pit of Xers.
Bill:What did you have? Eggs? Oatmeal is cereal. What's wrong with you people? Now let's see.
Bill:I gotta rework my whole illustration. That just didn't work. What Jesus is doing here is leveraging the observation that we make every year so majestic in scale that we don't even notice it. This is happening all the time. We don't live in an agrarian culture, so we are are often miss the regularity with which seeds fall into the ground and die, but we sure love it when the back half of that comes true.
Bill:Right. And they produce the wonder of life out of that moment. Yeah? So he he invites us to say, look, it's going to happen, so don't cling to it in the hopes that you can stop it from happening. Follow me into it.
Bill:Let's jump off the cliff and see what wonder might emerge in following the way of life that certainly because we know for sure if it doesn't fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. Little brown seed of a life. And please notice, Paul picks this up when he's talking in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 and says, the life to come is, by comparison to that seed, the plant that flourishes from that seed. Here you have tiny shriveled brown, and there you have rich, verdant, vibrant life. Choose.
Bill:What are you gonna treasure? What are you gonna hang on to? And why in the world would you prevent the sowing of this seed knowing that this is the outcome that emerges from it? And the invitation then is he he's teaching us how to die. It's the only way to enter into the kind of life for which we are built.
Bill:And again, this is an active response. This is a daily active response. This is a choosing to align our wills on a regular basis to the will of the father, to the will often of the father expressed in relationship with other people. Because the muscle memory of submission is not just vertical. That's right.
Bill:In fact, it's largely horizontal. In fact, our submission to God is worked out in our submission to and walking with other people. This is why, the the pattern for marriage is so clear. Submit yourselves to one another, having submitted yourself to Christ. So who submits to who in a marriage?
Bill:Husbands to wives, wives to husbands, both having submitted to God. Why is that so important? Because marriage isn't about happy, it's about holy. It's about forming you to the likeness of Christ. You better get good at saying no to you so you can say yes to him in the form of yes to her or him.
Bill:So this invitation, this daily moment of dying is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. If it were, everybody would do it, but Jesus is suggesting y'all need to get really good at this. Yeah. Now, if we think that it was a snap of the fingers for Jesus, pay attention on a Thursday night in a garden. Here's what it says, verse 32.
Bill:They went to the place called Gethsemane. Jesus said to his best friends, stay here while I pray. He took Peter, James, John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, to the point of death. Stay here.
Bill:Keep watch. Going a little further, he fell to the ground and prayed that if it might be possible for the hour to pass by him, it would. Abba, father, he said, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me, but not what I will, but what you will. You don't get to Thursday night without a lifetime of saying that last line.
Bill:You don't get there. Without days days days of saying, father not my will, but your will be done. In this most horrific of moments, I think we just need Yes. There's all kinds of theological waiting to this to this tension. He is going to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.
Bill:Is there any other way? No. The only way to defeat the condition of the world which we brought to reality in Genesis chapter 3 is to take death and enter into it fully and defeat it from the inside out. That's the only way. Thank you, lord.
Bill:You will never be able to defeat death from the outside in. Only from the inside out. And so he chooses, he chooses, let's be very clear on this, Jesus is the only being in the universe who has to obey in order to die. Dying doesn't come natural to Jesus. It comes natural to us.
Bill:We're actually good at it, denying, though we do. He had to obey. He had to say yes to die. I I Oh, This this is a take your shoes off moment for me. I don't think the battle for my soul was won on Friday on the cross.
Bill:I think it was won on Thursday night in the garden. Wow. Wow. Why a garden? Because it was in the garden that it was lost in the first place.
Bill:And here that reversal, not my will, but yours be done Oh. Reframes obedience. Submission is a daily discipline undermining the power of death from the inside out. He didn't seek death, but he didn't avoid it either. He surrendered his life to the will and the way of God and continued that journey into the valley, not just of the shadow, but the reality of death.
Bill:Not just the threat, but the actualization of death. And when he did, he discovered that despite his feeling in the moment of forsakenness, he was not alone. He discovered that Psalm 23 comes right after Psalm 22. Yeah. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Bill:Is answered by, the Lord is my shepherd. Even though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid because you are with me right there. Yes. And in that moment, not worried about saving or preserving his life, he is prepared and able to live it fully for the glory of God in his dying to glorify God. And again, I think for Jesus, the being dead part was of less concern than the getting dead part.
Bill:And that's by the way the way it was for Paul too, remember? In Timothy? He he's concerned not about being dead, to be absent from the body, present with the Lord, bring it on, I'm ready for this. But he's concerned at the end of his life that he's an embarrassment to the cause of Christ. He wants to die so well that what was said of Jesus is said of him.
Bill:Do you remember what was said of Jesus? Here we are. Mark chapter, 15 verse 39. Jesus has expired. He has died on the cross.
Bill:Here was an expert in crucifixion death. The centurion, verse 39, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, and concluded this surely was the son of God. Man, talk about life goals. Talk about death goals. I want to die so that my dying reminds people that I too am a child of God.
Bill:I too am a child of God. 1 of my my primary mentor, Dallas Willard, in the months before his life visited in the hospital by a series of friends whose names you would probably recognize because they write books about Dallas. John Ortberg, on the day, a few days before Dallas's death said, Dallas, are you okay? You worried? You anxious about anything?
Bill:And Dallas looked at him with a twinkle in his eye and said, John, I actually believe what I've been teaching. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Bill:I actually believe what I have been teaching. You don't get to the cross that glorifies God without daily dying to the cross. That glorifies God. This this this embrace of dying for the sake of preparation is an invitation. A little bit later, he's talking to his friend Peter, the guy who fell asleep in the garden.
Bill:In self defense, I think. I think Peter and James and John couldn't handle the anguish of this moment and fell asleep in self defense. Within a couple of hours, Peter will even deny having known him. So that fateful walk on the beach, 40 or so days later, is one that Peter has been dreading and longing for. Right.
Bill:And you know the story. Peter do you love me? Feed my sheep, shepherd my flock, care for my lambs. And Peter's eruption of emotion at the end of that third descent into the question is met with this language. Truly, when you were younger, and Jesus is speaking to Peter, you dressed yourself, you went where you wanted, but when you're old, you'll stretch out your hands and somebody else will dress you and somebody else will lead you where you don't want to go.
Bill:Jesus said this to indicate by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. And then he said, Follow me. That had a whole different field than the first time Peter heard it, on this link. He said it to signify by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. What kind of death does Peter glorify God with?
Bill:It's the death of daily constraining His will to the will of those external to Him. We traditionally, we view this as as kind of a prophetic word where Jesus is looking into the future and seeing how Peter will die physically. By the time Peter died physically, he had died daily, so that he could do that one right. Yeah. Daily.
Bill:That self directed submission in service to God and others, embracing that dying and to hear again, and I love the smile on Jesus' face as he looks at his friend who feels his failure has disqualified him only to discover that he needed to fail in order to be qualified. As Jesus said, follow me, which again means, I think you have what it takes to be like me. Did you hear him speak it to you today? I think you guys can pull this off, and I really need you to. The world does not need more examples of confident, arrogant, proud self assertion.
Bill:It needs people who have learned how to say yes to the voice from the heavens, who know themselves deeply, truly and well, who can then pour themselves out in the service of the world. Yes. This is what Paul is about. Verse 10 of chapter 3, Philippians. I wanna know Christ.
Bill:I wanna know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings. Becoming like him in his dying so that somehow I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. You can't have one without the other, can you? So we are invited into this this deep reality. We are are are are are aware that as we identify with Christ, as we learn the way of the Father through Him, as we as we align ourselves with Him in worship and prayer and and and and devotion to the church and all of the other things about which we've been speaking in this series, sooner or later, sooner or later, we know that our hope is not in any of the structures and systems of our life.
Bill:I get anxious about my retirement account. I told my doctor I'll be just fine as long as I'm out of here by 85. He said to me, you know, you have an elevated risk of of heart attack. What is it? 10% in the next 10 years.
Bill:That's not bad. Actually, that's pretty good. I'm I'm that that may be my ticket I don't wanna be here any longer than I'm supposed to be here. Y'all know what I'm talking about. And that frees me up.
Bill:Doesn't it you? That frees us up to be able to live with with with joy and a celebration of every sunrise with an awareness of hope that is not in my health, or my home, or the system of government, or my retirement account or or anything else. My hope is in Jesus who has made a way, who has made a way and then says follow me in the way. I'm hopeful that I die quietly and peacefully with people I love surrounding me. I put in my request.
Bill:I have not heard anything back yet. I'm sure that it's gotten lost in the email train. Final word. Because the truth is for many of us that may be our story, may not. But if we live in Christ, dying in Christ isn't such a bad deal.
Bill:Again, Dallas, sorry. Just on my mind this week. Interview 3 months before his death, Westmount University. He says, Westmount College, he said, I think there are some folks who are so much in Christ now. They are already living eternal life now.
Bill:That for some of them, it'll be a while before they know they're dead. Yes, indeed. Yeah. I wanna live in Christ. Don't you?
Bill:Yeah. So we need to get good at saying yes to dying now. Yes. Lord Jesus, we humble ourselves before you. This is not an easy thing to think about, talk about, even in the bright light of this day, but we want to know, Lord, the deep truth that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which is what we want.
Bill:Yes. We know that eternal life is to know the father, so that we can, from even this vantage point, say, oh, death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory? And we wanna get good, oh Lord, at the daily dying that you invite us to, at whatever way we need to get good at dying, so that when the moment comes for our physical dying, we will have the muscle memory of surrender in place. I just pray for my friends here at Garden.
Bill:So many, so far from that finish line perhaps, but we don't know, we don't know. But Lord, the journey to that moment begins today. Yes. And so as we sit for just a moment, we just wanna say yes to you, Lord. We wanna surrender first to you and then orient ourselves to a life of surrender and with that seed following to the ground and dying preparation dot church.
Intro/Outro:Thanks for listening. For more information, please visit garden dot church.