Christ is Life Podcast

Alright, well, now we get the privilege of being able to dive into God's Word together as we continue in worship. And today is is the second week of this message series that we started last week that we're calling rhythms of grace. We're taking a fresh look at the spiritual disciplines, and the reason that we're taking a fresh look at them is because, as we mentioned last week, a lot of us have kind of been in the habit of making spiritual disciplines the goal, right? We've made the spiritual disciplines the goal of the Christian life. They're just the things that we're supposed to be doing, and if we're doing them, then we're good Christians, because we're doing what Christians do, but that's not the goal. The goal is to experience abundant life and intimacy that we have in a spiritual union with Jesus. And so spiritual disciplines are a means to an end. They're not the ends themselves. They're there to lead us into experiencing intimacy with Christ. They're there to lead us into a deeper fellowship and experiencing a deeper fellowship with Him, and the relationship that we can have in him. And they are certainly disciplines. I mean, they're things that we get into a habit of doing. But you could also think of them as rhythms, right? They're these rhythms that we get into, these rhythms of grace. We took a quick look at this last week, but it was what Eugene Peterson wrote in his paraphrase of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11. He says, Are you tired, worn out, burned out of religion, come to me. Get away with me. You'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Jesus says, learned the unforced rhythms of grace. I Jesus says, won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freshly or freely. Excuse me and lightly. And so as we walk with Jesus, he'll lead us into these rhythms of grace that allow us to do just that, to live freely and lightly, unburdened by performance, unburdened by the performance that we have with things like checklist, they'll lead us into a relationship with him that's so rich, so satisfying, so intimate, and so fulfilling that we can truly rest. And so throughout this series, we're going to be talking about these rhythms of grace, these spiritual disciplines that the Lord uses to lead us into experiencing his intimacy. And the first one we kind of introduced last week to you, but we're going to be talking about it more fully this week, and it's the spiritual discipline, or the rhythm of awareness, learning to be acutely aware, developing this acute awareness of God's Omnipresence that he is present with you everywhere you go and in all situations of Life, desiring in his presence with you, to enter into that intimate relationship in any of those places and at any of those times. And as we begin to develop that rhythm of being aware of his presence always, then I think one of the things that will begin to surface is this awareness that God Jesus is probably speaking to us if he's with us all the time, and in all situations, in hundreds of ways that we may be missing, especially whenever we tend to focus on Jesus is here, but he's less present out there, which we talked about last week, just is not true, and so when we realize that, we get into that rhythm of being aware, we ask Jesus to help us see those things and open up our eyes to them, then we'll get into this rhythm again of not just knowing he's with us, but actually experiencing him being with us. Now, one of the things I told you last week that will help us with that is to understand and learn more, to be more aware, not just of his presence, but of his personality. Jesus is not just fully God, but he was born into this world fully human, and human beings have personalities. Jesus has a personality. John Ortberg, we referenced this last week in a book he wrote called Beautiful outlaw. Kind of highlights this in this quote, he says, If you do not know Jesus as a person, if you don't know his remarkable personality, playful, cunning, fierce, impatient with all that is. Religious, kind, creative, irreverent, funny, then you have been cheated. If you do not experience Jesus intimately daily, in these very ways, if you do not know the comfort of his actual presence, you do not hear His voice speaking to you personally, you have been robbed. If you do not know the power of His indwelling life in you, shaping your personality, healing your brokenness, enabling you to live as he did. Then you have been plundered. And so as we continue talking about this rhythm of awareness, kind of part two today, we're going to develop it in a way where we're becoming, again, more aware of his personality and his life, being with us, not just his presence. Now I don't have time today, in one single message to talk about all of Jesus's personality traits. That would be a whole nother series, which, who knows, we may do that at some point in time. But today, we're going to highlight just one. And the reason we're highlighting this particular one is because, I think, out of all of Jesus's personality traits and the ways that we can step into experiencing that intimate relationship with Him through His personality, this, for some of us, can be the most difficult one to see. The one that I'm talking about is the playfulness of Jesus. Part of Jesus's personality is that he is playful. Now some of you the moment you saw that on the screen, the moment that you heard that come out of my mouth. You got a little bit uncomfortable. You're still a little bit uncomfortable with thinking about that in this moment. And the reason why is most likely because it feels a little bit irreverent. Can we actually talk about Jesus, the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, being playful. I mean, he's God, He's holy, he's all powerful. He is to be bowed down before and worshiped. We are to be reverent before him, right?
Yes, right. You are correct. This is who Jesus is. I mean, this is the way that he's described by John in the book of Revelation. Look at this in chapter four, beginning in verse eight. He says he's seeing this vision of being in heaven. He says each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings, day and night, these angelic beings never stopped saying, holy, holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever. The 24 elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, You are worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power. For You created all things, and by your will, they were created and have their being. This is who Jesus is. Make no mistake about it. He is holy, all powerful, and we will fall down and we will worship him. But I do think there's even one thing that kind of begins to point out the playfulness of Jesus, even in the middle of declaring worthy, worthy, holy, holy, holy, and all the things that we're reading here, and it comes from this one part right Here, when John says, You created all things, Jesus is our Creator. He created all things. Now let me give you something to think about here, right? If you are a creator, if you are an artist, would you agree that you can learn a lot about someone who creates things, who is an artist and creates things about who they are, about their personality, whatever they create as an artistic piece of work kind of reveals a little bit about them. You can get to see a little bit of their personality through the things that they create. Well, Jesus is an artist in Ephesians, 210 we're told that we are God's masterpiece, and as one of his masterpieces, as one of his pieces of art, you can get to know a little bit about who God is just because of who we are. Know who you see we are to be, but you really see that all throughout creation. I mean, there's what theologians talk about as far as general revelation, right? You can read in Romans how we can begin to know some things about God, that there is a God, and learn a little bit about who he is when we look at his creation, that it testifies to who he is. But let me give you some other things in creation that will give you a reflection and a taste of Jesus's personality. Here's the first one.
Can you imagine the day that Jesus was creating everything from nothing, and in his mind, he thought, let's make that guy, right? I mean, does that not give you a little bit of a hint that maybe the creator of the universe is a little bit playful. I mean, look at this guy, right? I mean, same kind of thing.
How about him?
That's a dog. In case you couldn't tell, right? That's a dog. What about that guy? Yeah, I don't even know what that is, but he's it. Mean, really, come on Jesus, seriously, I
don't even know if I should be showing that one in church.
I mean, all of these, right? And we see animals being funny and playful, right? I mean, you see puppies playing with each other. I mean, they're not just look funny, but they're playful. These are creations of our Creator. He created them to play and to have fun together. And it wasn't just puppies. He created you to play and you to have fun. He created you to laugh and not just laugh, but I mean belly laugh at times, right? Jesus, the creator, created laughter. He created us in such a way that we smile and we would find certain things funny, and these certain sounds would come out of our mouths that don't come out at any other times, except for when we find something funny. Now this isn't just us. Don't forget that Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, took on an additional nature and was born into this world.
Jesus
was born into this world as a baby,
and babies have personalities, and babies laugh, and at times they belly laugh Jesus, the Son of God,
belly laughed
when he was a baby.
But we don't stop to think about that. We think of holy, holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty, the one who is and was and is to come. And he is that, but
he's also this.
Jesus is playful. This is part of who he is as a human being. Not only did he laugh as a baby, he grew up laughing and smiling and interacting with people the same way that you and I do, which means when Jesus called the disciples and they were all about Jesus's Kingdom work. He was teaching them and discipling them and doing miracles, and all the things that he was doing as he interacted with them. Guess what? Had to be part of their experience, smiling and laughing together. It had to be if they are human beings. As a matter of fact, I even think that we see this in a few places, based on what it is that the disciples who spent the most time with him decided to write about for us to know who Jesus was and what he was all about. One of those places, I think, is in the book of Matthew where he says this, after Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the tax collectors of the two drachma temple tax came to Peter and said, Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax? Yes, he does. He replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. What do you think? Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes from their own children or from others? From others? Peter answered, then the children are exempt. Jesus said to them, to him, but so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch, open its mouth and you will find a four drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours. I mean, what do you make of this story? I mean, if Jesus needed money to give to someone. He couldn't. He have just said, Peter, go ask Judas. Get some money from the stash and hand it into him. If he wanted to do a miracle. Couldn't he have just done one of those things where magicians make things appear in your pockets, and stuff like, hey,
check your pocket. There's a well,
what do you know, right? I
mean, he could have been pretty simple. I know he goes to the elaborate trouble of saying, leave here on the land, go all the way out into a boat in the middle of the lake, start fishing. And when you catch a fish, open its mouth and there's going to be a coin in the mouth. Think about the way Peter reacted the moment that Jesus told him that, sir, yes, sir. No, you serious, Jesus, you messing with me. Right now you really want me to go, come on. Go on. Go on. Can you imagine when he's out there and he's fishing like, Come on, man, this is stupid, right? I'm not even going to catch anything, and then all of a sudden he does. Can you imagine the anticipation when he was opening that fish's mouth? Right? I mean, just going, There's no way, there's no way, there's literally going to be a coin in this mouth. And he opens the fish's mouth, he goes, Oh my God, there's a coin in the fish's mouth. You've had to know that Peter just belly laughed in that particular moment. Jesus could have done this in a number of ways, but the God of the universe, who is playful that we see from creation, who created us to smile and to laugh and was fully a human being as well, was like, let's have some fun in this moment with Peter. Just wanted to be playful and allowing to laugh. I think this is one place that kind of comes out. I think we see it again in in the road to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24 if you go read all the way through it, I'm not going to read it because it's a super long passage, and just to save a little bit of time, many of you may be familiar with this story. Some of you may not, but basically, Jesus goes to these guys after he was resurrection. It was his Resurrection Sunday morning, right? And Jesus has risen from the dead. And these two guys are walking down the road to Emmaus, and he pops up, and he starts walking alongside him, and goes, Hey, what
are you guys up to? What are y'all talking about?
And the guys are like, What do you mean? What are we talking about here? Are you not from around here? I mean, anybody, who's anybody is talking about what happened to Jesus of Nazareth and the things that happened to him? And he's like, Oh, really? What things, seriously? Go read it. That's what he says. I mean, if there's ever anybody who knew what was going on during that particular time, it would have been Jesus, because guess who all those things were happening to Jesus. He's the one who was being tortured and had his nails driven, hands driven with nails into a cross and His feet. He's the one who hung there. He's the one who was buried into the tomb. He knew exactly what was going on. And yet he walks up to them and just is like, Hey, what's
going on? What are you guys talking about?
Yeah, never even heard of such. I mean, like, What? What? What
do we what do we make of that? What is he doing here? The other thing we don't really think about, I think sometimes, is Jesus just rose from the dead. He had just been through literal, almost hell of what it is that he went through when he was being tortured. What do you think his mood was at this particular time after being resurrected? You think he might have been a little bit happy. You think he meant a little bit full of energy and smiling and just a little bit in the mood to be playful after sitting in a tomb for three days.
I think so, right?
I mean, I think you can make the case that what is going on here is Jesus is being playful. He even kind of, again, pretended that he didn't know what was going on. He was almost like Unreal, like he didn't even reveal Himself to them. It's like he was in some kind of disguise or something, they even recognize him, and he just pretended not to know what was going on, which is just really weird behavior. Or Jesus is being playful. And I think whenever we talk about, again, the God of the universe being playful that we see as evidenced in creation, and who had to be born in this world and smile and laugh himself when I'm. Looking at this and how I would explain this. I don't know if I could say it was 100% certainty, but if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on him being playful, from what we see in the text here. And so if this is what we see, right, what does it mean for us? I mean if we see that Jesus is playful, that he's playful through the things that he created. We he was human, and we know he created laughter and smiles that he had to experience those things themselves. And we even see the disciples experiencing these things with him. What? What does that really mean for us? Think it means that this is part of the way that Jesus wants us to experience intimacy with Him through His playfulness. If he interacted this way with other people and during his three year ministry with the disciples, why wouldn't he want to interact that way with us? Today, we read a scripture last week where the disciples were the apostle John at first, John is writing in the opening line saying, like we were literally with him, like in the flesh, the God of the universe was here. And we're writing about these things so that you guys can know Him, and you can fellowship with him the same way that we did. Well, if this is part of the way that they experienced him, then why wouldn't he want to speak to us the same way? And again, we're not discounting in any way, shape or form, when we say this, his deity, His Holiness, and that he will lead us to bow down and worship him as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, because that is who he is. And I'm sure there were, I know there were moments when we see in Scripture that the disciples were the same way. They were in awe of him. They were reverent before him. But there were also times where they were cutting up and laughing with him. I know this is a simple example, and it may not help, and it's certainly on a much bigger scale than this, but I couldn't help but think of like my relationship with my own dad. I mean, my dad, when I was growing up, was in authority over me, and there was no mistaking that he let me know that he was in authority over me at times, and he had to redirect me. And there were times where I had to fall in line and yes sir, and no sir, and all of the above, but that was the same guy that picked me up when I was a kid and threw me up in the air and caught me so that I would laugh and experience joy, and he's the same one that told me jokes, and we would point out funny things together and belly laugh together. Both things were true. I could respect who he was and in the authority that he was in in my relationship with him, and also experience belly laughing with him at times. And I think Jesus is the same way. And so what I want us to get into a rhythm of is being aware of Jesus's personality, to not get stuck in this rut or read Scripture as if Jesus wasn't fully human and that the disciples didn't experience that humanness of Jesus and that you and I and even a spiritual union with Him, can experience those same things. If the goal is intimacy, right? If it's intimacy, then we'll never experience it fully. If we don't know and look for his personality in our relationship, you'll experience it to a degree. You just won't experience it to the fullest that it could ever be. Now, again I mentioned earlier, playfulness isn't Jesus's only personality trait. We see all kinds of other ones. I mean, Jesus was fiercely intentional about his mission work and kingdom work. And there were times that that guy was on such an intentional mission that he pushed and brushed things aside and was so focused on those things, he wasn't playing around and he meant business. And there's gonna be times he interacts that same way with you. There are times when we see Jesus being extravagantly generous, right? And there's going to be times in your relationship with him when he's extravagantly generous with you, and he's going to lead you to be extravagantly generous with other people. Did you know that we see in the in the gospels, that Jesus was also disruptively honest? I mean, not just honest, like, disruptively honest with people like, can you really say that Jesus to the point of those things? I mean, it was cutting right, so much so that you couldn't believe he said those things. And sometimes he's going to say those things to you, he's going to say those things to me, and every now and then, he's going to lead you to say those things to other people in in Love Of course. And so there's all kinds of these things, and again, we don't have time to develop those things. But I wanted you to see this one, because I just feel like we focus so much on these other areas of who Jesus is and what he's leading us to do, and we just miss the playfulness. Maybe he just wants us to laugh. With him and enjoy, truly enjoy being with him the way he designed us to be. So what does this look like in a regular setting? Well, let me give you one example. I've mentioned a number of times this book that John Eldridge wrote, and he gives this really great example of just how it's played out in his own life. It's short. I just want to read it directly to you. He says, Guys, I was going to call this book Jesus of 1000 hearts because of the way he continually breaks into my life. He speaks to me through hearts. I'll find stones in the shape of hearts and rivers where I'm fishing, I've seen them almost step by step, up a mountainside, went on a grueling climb, praying in the morning, I'll look out the window, and passing by will be a heart shaped cloud, dinner rolls, seashells, stains on my jeans. I've won the lottery when it comes to hearts from Jesus. But I'm ashamed to admit that last summer, I grew a little impatient with them. I was going through a trying time and seeking God for the answer to many questions. Often he would simply give me a heart in reply. I'd be walking down the sidewalk, and there in the cement, I'd see a heart shaped hole made by a bubble. When they poured the sidewalk, I actually grew a little dismissive of them. I didn't want hearts. I wanted answers. So Jesus stopped giving me these treasures of our friendship last fall, when walking through an Alpine meadow bowhunting, I was asking him, how come you don't give me hearts anymore? I asked it in kind of a pouting way. At the moment, something gray caught my eye. I looked down mid stride, and there, in the grass, about as big as a dinner plate, was a dried piece of cow manure
in the perfect shape of a heart,
if I didn't know Jesus adores me, if I didn't know that he is playful, and if our relationship didn't allow me to receive a playful tease, I might have misinterpreted the icon, but I loved it. It was both, oh, so now you want a heart, and also, I adore you still
a cow pie heart.
That is so Jesus. Wish I'd taken a photo of it. We could have put it on the cover of this book.
John Eldred says, If I didn't know, if
I didn't know, to be aware that Jesus is playful, and if our relationship didn't allow me to receive a playful tease, I might have missed him speaking to me in that moment.
In what ways
have you missed the playfulness of Jesus, him teasing with you? Were you aware that Jesus does that now that you are will you be looking for him to interact with you in that way? That's my hope in my prayer, that as we become more and more aware, not just of Jesus's presence, but his personality, and then he wants an intimate relationship through his personality and the personality that he's given you, to interact back with him in that we would be looking for it, acutely aware of it, and be open to him, speaking to us in hundreds of ways that we may miss all the time. I think this right here, this rhythm, the spiritual discipline that we're talking about is kind of the one that everything else hinges on, until you get into a rhythm of understanding that Jesus is with you at all times, in all places and in all situations, and that he's whispering to you and speaking to You even in all of those places and situations through his personality, you're going to miss so much of an intimate relationship with him that he left the glory and riches of heaven, had died on a cross and was resurrected so that you could enjoy don't get to Heaven One day and then discover it. Enjoy it now it's yours. Now it's mine. Now it's ours.