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What a gift, Lord, in the midst of the zaniness of these days of

preparation as our culture has come to create them: what a gift is this

time to gather together with our brothers and sisters, with our family, and to

be met with beautiful music that takes us into Your presence and reminds us

what’s true. And now, Lord, we come to a time that is really unique in that we are

setting aside the next half hour or so to do nothing but listen for Your voice—to

listen to the things that You would say to us. So we invite You to come and to

 speak and we commit to you now that we will do everything in our power to

attend to You, to listen for Your voice and to respond.

We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

 

Two thousand years ago Jesus left heaven and stepped onto earth’s shores. Why? Why did Jesus come?

 

That’s the question that we’ve been exploring during this Advent Season, this time of preparing for Christmas. And we have been exploring Jesus’ own answers to that question.

 

On the first Sunday of Advent, you’ll remember, we saw that Jesus came to fulfill the requirements of the ethical life. He lived his life perfectly according to God’s standard, and he called us to live a life patterned after his own example.

 

“Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” he said in Matthew 5:17. “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

 

This is certainly part of why Jesus came: to set an example through his life. This is how some people understand what it means actually to be a Christian: to follow his example, to try to live a good life. And that’s certainly important but, according to Jesus, there’s more.

 

Two Sundays ago we discovered that Jesus came to ransom the lost. He gave his life to pay a ransom fee to rescue us from a life of sin and to purchase the lives of those who would follow him through the sacrifice of his own life.

 

“The Son of Man did not come to be served,” he says in Mark 10:45, “but to serve, and to offer his life as a ransom for many.”

 

So this is another crucial part of why Jesus came: to lay down his life for us as a sacrifice. And this is how many other people understand what it means to be a Christian: not only to seek to pattern their lives after Jesus, but to place their faith and their confidence in him as the one who secured their forgiveness and reconciled them to God and extended to them the promise of eternal life. And that is certainly important too. But, according to Jesus, there is still more.

 

Jesus came to be our example. Jesus came to be our savior. But there’s another reason that Jesus came and it is at the heart of the enigmatic passage that we are looking at this morning.

 

* * *

 

We come this morning to what appears to be a huge and troubling contradiction in Jesus’ teaching. As he is preparing his disciples for their first short-term mission trip, he says something to them that stands in direct opposition to everything that has been promised about his life and ministry up to this point.

 

Predicting the coming of Jesus seven hundred years before his birth, the prophet Isaiah says, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.”

 

The prophet Zechariah writing two hundred years later gives a similar picture of the coming Messiah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey…. And he will proclaim peace to the nations.”

 

And on the night of Jesus’ birth itself, armies of angels suddenly populate the skies over the sleepy little hamlet of Bethlehem. Congregating from horizon to horizon, they shout to the universe, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests”

 

But three decades later this same promised Jesus, now inaugurating his ministry, gathers his twelve closest followers together and he says to them something that seems to contradict directly those prophetic announcements.

 

You’ll find this on page 1512 in your pew Bible: Matthew chapter 10 beginning in verse 34. Matthew 10:34.

 

The prophets say, “Peace to the nations.” The angels sing, “Peace on earth.” But Jesus says:

 

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be members of his own household.

 

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

 

I think it’s important that we understand just how radical these words would have been to the ears of those who first heard them.

 

They’re unsettling enough for us to hear them in the United States today in the 21^st century, but they would have been even much more stark and jarring to the ears of a Middle Easterner during Jesus’ day.

 

And here’s why. In the modern Western world, we live in an egalitarian culture—one that is centered on the individual and one that places equal value on every person. And the quality that we prize most as a culture in our children, and which we see as our goal to form in them, is independence: the ability to think and to act for oneself.

 

But even for us, who have so devalued the nuclear family and so championed the ideal of individual autonomy, the thought that a religious leader would turn a son against a father or a daughter against a mother is hard to take.

 

But those who lived in the ancient Middle East during the time of Jesus lived in an authoritarian culture, not an egalitarian one. Their world was centered not on the individual but on the family. It was a culture that placed a high value not on independence from, but submission to, one’s parents—lifelong submission. Children who ventured out on their own, making their own decisions, and living life independently of the family members they left behind, brought shame on the family.

 

And it is into that culture that Jesus comes and says, “I didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword.” And then quoting from Micah chapter 7 which some of the rabbis of the day believed was a prophetic picture describing what would happen when the Messiah came, he says, “I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be members of his own household.”

 

How are we to understand this? Is Jesus advocating the use of violence as some Muslims have argued? Is he dismissing the value of the family as some contemporary critics of the faith have claimed?

 

Let’s explore what Jesus is and is not saying in this passage.

 

Jesus was not misnamed when the prophet Isaiah looked into the future and called him the Prince of Peace. It was Jesus’ mission to bring peace to this world. It’s a theme that runs through his entire ministry.

 

To the one whose sin he forgives and the one whose disease he heals alike, Jesus says, “Go in peace.”

 

At the crux moment of his ministry, as he spends the last night of his life with his disciples, Jesus bestows this parting gift, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”

 

So much did the disciples understand that the core of Jesus’ ministry was peace that Peter refers to the Christian message as “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all”

 

And never does Jesus advocate violence, not in this passage or in any other.

 

That becomes especially clear when you get to the end of Jesus’ ministry when the authorities are coming to arrest him in order to put him to death. If there was ever a time when Jesus might have encouraged his followers to pull out their swords, this was the time: when their leader is being hauled off for sentencing and their movement is being threatened with extinction.

 

But the moment one of his followers pulls out a sword and holds it up against those who’ve arrested Jesus, Jesus stops him, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Then, turning to his captors, he says, “Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?” Jesus never advocates the use of violence to advance the Christian cause. While followers of Christ have lost sight of this at times, to the great detriment of their witness, Christianity is in its very DNA a religion of peace.

 

It always was Jesus’ mission to bring peace to this world. It still is. Then what is going on in this passage?

 

Well, I think two things are important for us to understand.

 

First, we need to be clear about what the Bible means by the word peace. Shalom is not the mere absence of friction. It is a vision of something far greater than simply people getting along.

 

Shalom means that all things are as God intends them to be. It’s obvious when you look around at this world that things have gone wrong. Shalom means things have been made right again. In his amazing book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Cornelius Plantenga says, “In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight.”

 

What would that look like? Well, here’s how he describes it in part:

 

“All nature would be fruitful, benign, and filled with wonder upon wonder; …and all nature and all humans would look to God, walk with God, lean toward God, and delight in God.”

 

This is God’s cause in this world—peace, and it really is the mission of His promised son: to restore this world to the way that things ought to be, to put things back to right.

 

But notice this. Biblical shalom is inescapably centered on God occupying his rightful place in our lives.

 

And it is this last little bit of humans looking to God, walking with God, leaning toward God, delighting in God that is especially important and central to the Bible’s understanding of shalom.

 

Another writer, Nicholas Wolterstorff, captures the heart of the Biblical notion of shalom when he says:

 

“Shalom in the first place incorporates right, harmonious relationships to God and delight in his service. When the prophets speak of shalom, they speak of a day when human beings will no longer flee God down the corridors of time, a day when they will no longer turn in those corridors to defy their divine pursuer. Shalom is perfected when humanity acknowledges that in its service of God is true delight.”

 

And it is to this that Jesus came to call us. Jesus didn’t just come to make life a more peaceful experience for us. If he did, his comments would make no sense. Instead, Jesus came to re-establish God’s rightful place as Lord in our lives. Jesus came to return God to the throne and, in so doing, to make all things right. When God is on the throne, shalom is the inevitable result.

 

That’s why Isaiah says, “And of the increase of his government and his peace there will be no end.” His government is the source of peace.

 

But there is something else that we need to notice. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is ushering in his kingdom in two stages. During the first stage, during this period of time between the first coming of Jesus and his second coming, the kingdom grows person-by-person. During these in-between days, Jesus returns God to the throne of individual lives. As a man or a woman or a child recognizes Jesus as the king that he says he is and opens up his or her heart to him and yields it up to the king, then Jesus comes and establishes his reign in that person.

 

And then when he is Lord, when he is in charge, he begins to put things to right on the inside of us as so many of you have experienced. He begins the work of forming us into the person that God intends that we would be. And for that person in whom Jesus rules, Paul says, “The old has passed away, and the new has come.”

 

But there is another phase to the ushering in of the kingdom. There will be a day when Jesus comes back to the earth. And this time he won’t show up disguised in human form as a baby like he did the first time.

 

When Jesus returns, he will come in the fullness of his divine glory, and he will assert his rule over all creation. As Paul says in the Book of Philippians: at that time, God will exalt Jesus to the highest place, and give him a name that is over every other name, and “every knee—on the earth, above the earth, under the earth—will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

 

All that is counter to the pleasure and will of God at that point will be eradicated from creation: sin, and those who persist in it; death, which is sin’s consequence; and the evil one, who is sin’s author. Creation will be rid of them. The old order of things will pass away. And the one seated on the throne will say (as we’re told in the Book of Revelation), “Behold, I am making everything new!”

 

The first stage is gradual, personal, individual-by-individual. The second stage is sudden, universal, cataclysmic, sweeping across and including the whole of creation.

 

Think about what that means for us now. In this in-between time, in this time between the miracle of God doing a work of new creation in me and the miracle of God doing a work of new creation around me, there will be some who are open, who are willing, who say yes to the final authority of God in their lives. They will open their hearts to the authority of Christ and their interiors will be upended and God will make them altogether new giving them a new God-defined set of values, and priorities, and principles by which to live.

 

But others will be closed; they will remain unwilling; they will say no to the authority of God in their lives. They will continue to live by the old self-defined set of values and priorities and principles by which to live.

 

And do you know what that means? As the things that are on the heart of God begin to collide with the things that shape the hearts of the people around us? The sword: meaning division, friction, frustration, misunderstanding, hurt feelings, conflict, anger.

 

When Jesus says he came not to bring peace but to bring the sword, Jesus isn’t saying his mission is to put people at odds with one another. That is not his purpose for coming. He is saying that because of who he, that is the inevitable result of his coming.

 

With these words, Jesus acknowledges that not all will recognize or bow to his authority—at least, not yet—and that will mean troubles. In this season between his first and his second coming, some will acknowledge his Lordship, others won’t.

 

Consistent with the larger context of this passage, where Jesus discusses the hostility that they will face as they go out into the world, Jesus is forewarning his followers here that this will mean potentially painful divisions between those who recognize his final authority and those who don’t. And that is part of what it means for us to be followers of Christ in these in-between days.

 

Let me give you an example. After a service someone once pulled me aside and told me that he and his girlfriend were moving to a new city and that he and his parents disagreed about whether or not they should live together, and he wondered if I could write his mom a letter. “Here we go again,” I thought. Even though this guy had a really solid relationship with the Lord, I had seen enough times when believers caved in to the culture’s idea of right and wrong on this issue and made a decision to live together and sleep together based purely on expediency. But what he said next surprised and thrilled me.

 

I had wrongly assumed that he and his girlfriend were wanting to live together and that his parents were trying to talk him out of it. But it was just the opposite! Because of their Christian convictions about the need to stay pure in their relationship, he and his girlfriend felt strongly that they should live apart, but his parents were trying to talk them into living in the same house to save on living expenses.

 

In my letter to his mom, [It’s one of the things I love about being a pastor] after offering a couple of biblical reasons why I believed it best that they not live together, I concluded by saying this:

 

“Sometimes the choices we’re called to make as Christians may seem foolish, but it makes sense that that would be the case because the things that God values and the things this world values are not always in line.

 

“I want to tell you how much I love that your son is eager for you to be of one mind about this. It’s obvious that he loves you and respects your opinion and wants to do what pleases you. I also love that your son appears to be willing—reluctant, but willing—to go against your counsel in this area should you continue to think it best for the two of them to move in together. It says a lot about his love for the Lord and his willingness to place that ahead of your opinion of him which is something Jesus tells us in Matthew 10 is something that we may have to do. And I respect that deeply.”

 

Some will accept his Lordship, others will not. “We shouldn’t be surprised by that,” Jesus says, “In fact, we’d best be prepared for it.”

 

I remember that this is the thing that struck me more than anything else when I took a New Testament survey course in seminary and I read through all four of the gospels in a matter of just a couple of weeks: Jesus does not have a unifying effect at all. Everywhere Jesus goes, he divides: families, communities, nations, people groups. And that’s because everywhere he goes, Jesus steps into the scene and he insists that we meet him on his terms and not on ours. He is unwilling to have a side seat in our lives. He asks us not only to trust him, but to entrust ourselves to him; not merely to believe in him, but to follow him; not only to look to him as savior, but to bow before him as our Lord.

 

That’s tough to swallow. In fact, it’s ridiculous: asking me to turn control of my life over to another human being just because he says he’s the Lord of all creation and God in human form. That is ridiculous—unless it is true, in which case, turning over the control of my life to Jesus Christ is the most sane and rational thing I can do in my whole life. And some of us have come to believe that that is the case.

 

And that gets at the heart of what is going on in this passage. With these words, Jesus asserts his unrivaled authority. Do you remember what Wolsterstorff said? “Shalom is perfected when humanity acknowledges that in its service of God is true delight.” It is to this that Jesus calls us: to finding our true delight in loving and serving Him, who is God with us. This is a clear claim to deity. Every Jew knew that the only person who could demand allegiance ahead of the family was God himself. And that is the very thing that Jesus is doing here.

 

Now, there are two parts of his insistence upon his place of rule in their lives. First, in verse 37, he is telling his disciples not to let their allegiance to others—even those closest to them—come ahead of their allegiance to him. “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” he says.

 

Now the NIV’s translation of the expression “worthy of me” is, I think, perhaps a bit misleading. I think a better way to translate this is to say, “Anyone who loves his father or mother, his son or daughter more than me is not living in a way that corresponds with who I am.” It doesn’t fit with the facts.

 

We try to give Jesus a minor role in our lives, but that does not make sense. It doesn’t fit. Jesus says, “I am not some stranger passing through. I’m not an actor with a bit part on your stage. I am the director of your life! I am the Lord! Your allegiance to me comes first, ahead of anyone else.”

 

And then, second—in verses 38 and 39, he is telling them not to let their allegiance to themselves come ahead of him: “Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not living in a way that corresponds to who I am. Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

 

As Craig Keener says, “The moment we become followers of Christ, our own lives and wills become forfeit.” Everybody who heard these words, everybody in that place and time knew what this image of taking up the cross meant. It doesn’t mean “suffer for me.” It means “go to your death.” The only people who carried crosses were those who were on the way to their own executions. Die to your picture of what your life should look like and how it should be run. Die to your self-rule and turn your life over to me. Whoever finds his life—that is, whoever seeks to preserve his life on his own terms under his own rule—will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, whoever relinquishes his life to me will finally find it. Only when you let go of the control of your life and entrust it to me will you find the life that you long for, the life that you were made for.

 

So with these words, Jesus is calling his followers to bow to his ultimate authority regardless of the response of others.

 

Jesus came to be our example. Jesus came to be our savior. But Jesus also came to be our Lord—to establish his authority as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over the whole of our lives and to call us to recognize and to submit to his authority, to relinquish our lives to his control, and to yield to him as Lord.

 

All of us are looking for something, for someone big enough, grand and glorious enough to warrant our worship and our service because God placed that desire in us when He made us. We are not nearly large enough to occupy the center of our lives, let alone the center of the universe. God alone can occupy that place.

 

One of the most unsettling characters in all of J. R. R. Tolkein’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings—unsettling because we recognize so much of ourselves in him—is Lord Denethor, the Steward of the City of Gondor. For years he has ruled over the city of Gondor in the stead of the King who has long been absent.

 

Perhaps early on in his administration, his desire was truly to honor the absentee ruler. But over time he drifts and begins to think of himself not merely as chief servant to the king, but as something of the king himself. He begins to refer to himself as “the Lord of the Realm” and encourages others to do so as well. He still speaks of the king’s return, but it’s only lip service. He has usurped the king; he has taken the king’s place. But when the king finally comes, the chief steward refuses to recognize him. He sees him instead as the competitor for the throne on which he now firmly sits rather than as the one to whom the throne and, indeed, the whole of his realm and he himself belong.

 

Rather than yield his kingdom into the rightful hands of the king, Denethor resists to the end. “I will not step down to be a dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claims proved to me…, I will not bow to such a one…. I would have things as they were in all the days of my life…. If this is denied me, I will have [nothing], neither life diminished, nor life halved….” And then he takes his life.

 

“Whoever seeks to preserve his life under his own rule will lose it; whoever relinquishes the rule of his life to me will find it.”

 

When God created us, He didn’t create us to be autonomous. He made us to be subjects, not to be kings. He made us to be subject to Him.

 

The day I came to Christ I needed a master. I still do. I need a king who will tame my heart, direct my passions, curb my ambitions, filter my motives, shape my days. And I’ve discovered that Jesus is such a master. Jesus is a master mighty enough to warrant our total allegiance, commanding enough to win our total devotion regardless of how others around us may respond to him.

 

In the end, this passage is about Jesus’ place in our lives. Jesus lovingly insists that he be given his rightful place on the throne of our lives. What occupies the throne in your life? And in your life what part does Jesus play? Is he on the throne, or is he occupying a place in the wings playing a bit part under your able direction?

 

Jesus wants to be your example. Jesus wants to be your savior, but he has also come to lay claim to you, to assert his ultimate authority over your life, and to establish God’s rightful place in it. He wants to be your example. Follow his pattern. He wants to be your savior. Believe in his work on the cross. But according to Jesus, there’s more. Jesus intends to be your Lord and your King. That is why he came.

 

It turns out those three magi got it right when they finally found that baby Jesus. They didn’t just ooh and aah as they might before a celebrity. They bowed. And they offered up to him the most precious things they had as they would before God Himself.

 

For so he was and so should we.