“Listen to Him”- Matthew 17:1-9.

The more you live like Jesus delights in you, the more you will increase in patience, and decrease in bitterness and anger. If we live like Jesus is our delight, we should be hungry for Him enough to keep it that way, regardless of how we feel. Have a great day! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I gotta cheat here. Everybody stand up, please. I'm reading from the NIV Matthew seventeen one through nine. After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, and led them to a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them, his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, is it good for us to be here? If you wish, I will put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my son, from whom I love, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. Get up, he said. Don't be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, Don't tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

You may be seated. Now, Lord, may the words of my mouth, meditation of my heart. Thank you, Brian. Be fully acceptable, graceful, and worthy in your sight. For you are and forever shall be our strength and our redeemer. Amen. What makes someone worth listening to? What makes someone, what makes you worth listening to? Today is Father's Day, and it is a day when dads all across the nation are celebrated. Many dads will be celebrated for how they love and provide for their families and their children. Other dads will be celebrated for what they do in the community. Other dads still be celebrated by their wives for how much they sacrifice for others. All of those things are good and worth pursuing. However, I also hope and pray that dads are celebrated today for how much they love Jesus and actions that back that love up. Amen. That is what I hope dads are celebrated for today, also. I hear a lot about dads needing to return to Christian values and doing more of the things that I mentioned above. And while all of that is important, what if we were to ask dads and all of us, those of you watching online, what if we were to ask dads and all of us not just to return to Christian values, but also for society to renew our faith and return to Christ Himself. Not just returning Christianity to the culture, which isn't always good, I might point out. It's not always good to do a mechanic shop and put a cross on it, right, and call it Christian. It's not always good to return Christianity to the culture, but what is good is returning the culture to Christ for dads and all who will listen. Time and again, on Father's Day and all other days, Christ proves himself to be the heart of all that fathers have and all that we have. In my own life. I would not be anywhere or any kind of bad at all without the grace of Jesus at work in my life. So today, that's what I want to talk about. What makes Jesus worth listening to? What makes him worth listening to, and how might we model his example? Number one, Jesus is worth listening to. As I told the kids a minute ago, we listen to Jesus because his father is pleased with him. That's literally what the scripture says. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from a cloud said, This is my son, and whom I love. With him I am well pleased. Listen to him. The Greek word for please can mean delight, pleasure, also consent. In other words, God the Father delights in his Son Jesus and authorizes Jesus to carry out his will. Now the Greek word for listen is not our modern idea of listening to Ford Frank or Metallica or whatever music you like. Okay? That's not what the Bible means when it talks about listening. Biblically, listening means to obey. Listening to Jesus means to obey him. When Peter and John were before the Sanhedrin, they proclaimed that it was better to listen to God rather than man. Acts 4.19. In Matthew 18, 5, Jesus teaches that if a brother offends you, go and tell him so forgiveness can happen and the relationship can be mended. No, the forgiveness doesn't always mean you figure out who's right. You gotta be right, maybe forgiveness situation. Let me introduce you to some folks who their relationship didn't work out, right? Walk in my house sometime. Most of the time, with my wife is yes, dear, whatever you want. Forgiveness is not about who's right. Forgiveness is about God delighting in us. Here's the good news. God invites the disciples to obey Jesus because his father delights in him. That brings up an interesting set of questions. Do you believe that? Do you believe that God delights in you? Do you believe that with all your heart? Does his delight in you make you a delight to be around? Do people get excited when they see you? They can't wait to be around you because you believe so much that God delights in who you are. In your day-to-day life, are you someone who inspires others to be like you? For the audience of Matthew's gospel in the first century, the answer for them was no. They were not a delight to be around. They were not a delight. They did not inspire others. And truthfully, while they confessed faith in Jesus Christ, they didn't really believe that God delighted in them. How do I know that? Remember, the Christian teaching in the Bible always addresses a need. It's not like star test where you lay out a bunch of instructions and say, you've got to believe it so you can pass the test. When the gospels were written, they addressed needs. Why record the Father saying, listen to him, to the disciples, and to a first century audience that already believes them? Why do they leave that in? Why do they include that in the gospel as a reminder to listen to Jesus? They believed in him. All of you, those watching online, you're not in worship or watching, you've had some sort of belief in Christ. They believed him, but here is the problem. They weren't being obedient. There was no posture of delight. It was bitterness in the room with other Christians, being ugly to one another and being argumentative. That's why that was included. See? Yeah, Christians in Matthew's audience, they believed in Christ, but boy, they were button heads of one another. Jesus basically does a secular equivalent of calm down. I am the bigger picture. You're not. Listen to him. Matthew invites us to listen to Jesus once again. The more you live like Jesus delights in you. I just believe it. The more you live it. The more you live like Jesus delights in you, the more you will increase in patience and you will decrease in bitterness and anger. And as a side note, some of you are saying, well, Pastor, I believe God delights in me, but I'm human. I get angry. Sorry, that's not how it works. The more you believe Jesus delights in you, the more you don't have to get angry all the time. Why? Because God will take care of it. You don't have to get angry all the time. You don't have to get bitter. Our Lord's Prayer we recite every week is done in part because Jesus knew our baseline. He knows what we prefer. When it comes down to it and the chips are down, Christians don't prefer forgiveness. They prefer being resentful and bitter. So he taught in the Lord's Prayer. That's why he taught us to pray. Forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. No, don't find out who's right and who's wrong. Forgive them anyway. The Apostle Paul tells the fruit of listening to Jesus in Colossians 4, 5, and 6, be wise in the way you act towards outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be full of grace. Season with salt, so that you might. Wow, is that the Lord? Maybe? Can you hear me now? Damn one of those commercials? Good. Okay. Be in a delight. You like that, did you? Being a delight for Jesus is not winning every argument. I promise you, there are plenty of arguments I have not won as a pastor. I wish I did. Wish I had a chance to defend myself. I didn't. Same thing goes with the Christian life. Being a delight for Jesus is not winning every argument, always being right. But living in such a way that others cannot help but ask, why are you so joyful? You got chaos all around you. I literally remember that when we were evacuating Israel. Literally, missiles are flying. We're going in one direction, missiles are going this way. We're just having a grand old time. Why? That's a part of what it means to be a delight in Jesus. Living in such a way that others can't help but ask why you live the way you do. The Bible illustrates a great principle. Delight is relational. Being a delight, you don't get to hold it in. I mean, I'm sorry, once upon a time, believe it or not, I was pretty shy, but it took a mentor to teach me. Being a delight doesn't mean you hold it all in. You've got to build relationships. There are many ways to keep bitterness at bay and cultivate a spirit of Christ-like delight in your life. Here's one way. Sorry to disappoint some people in modern society. You don't have to raise your hand, but think of someone you know that says, Well, I'm just a straight shooter. There's some chuckles. I'm just a straight shooter. I'm going to just tell it like it is. Friends, that's not always a good thing. Proverbs 13, 3 says, He who keeps his mouth, keeps his life, is a great place to start and be in the delight for others. Is it really important to respond? Or get angry at every single act of controversy you see on social media? Every controversy you see in your family, your community, your loved ones, your churches. Do you really have to respond to it? I long for the days that we could go back to posting and talking about, hey, what'd you eat for breakfast this morning? Whoo, let me show you. Where you been lately? Let me talk about that. What's your favorite scripture? Let me talk about that. And vacation spots. Or if you see something you don't like in your family or your home or your community, or if chaos is in the room, why can't we be like John Bunyan and his classic book, Pilgrim's Progress? Eternal life, eternal life. Give me eternal life. Chaos all around him. And he just shut his ears and he's just screaming for Jesus. I know in my own life, I posted a lot throughout the day. Lately, my motivation has been just post in the morning. You want to make a difference in someone's life? Call them. Text them. Reach out to them. The more you are positively engaged family, your church family, even take risks and meet new people, the more God will delight in you and you will be perceived as someone to be a delight around others. For example, if I were to ask a hundred Christians in Manyola, when you got mad at them, did you pray for them right off the bat? I don't know for sure, but I can guess the answer would be this. The pastor, they made me mad. Okay, great. We have the best resource in the world to deal with anger. Why don't we use it? Pray for them. Anytime chaos is in the room, yes, as a teacher. I know what chaos is like. We got some retired educators in the room. Sometimes the classroom ain't all cracked up to be. Why can't we go to one student, one person, and bring peace to their world with chaos all around them? Same thing goes in your church. In your family. Yes, there's chaos. Yes, there's things happening. Why can't you go speak life to them? That doesn't erase chaos and make you a delight in spite of it. Don't get me wrong. Being a Christ-like delight takes work. And we, I fail more often than I should. What we are saying is this Jesus is worth listening to because his Father delights in him, and his delight is what I want for your life and mine. Number two, Christ is also worth listening to because of what he's done. You see, at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might dare to die. But God demonstrated his love for us while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. Again, Jesus' teachings carry a lot of merit. Sermon on the Mount, greatest sermon of all time. His teachings carry a lot of merit, and they have a lot of value in living an ethical life. And anyone that follows Jesus' teachings, you will be well rewarded. Yet the New Testament bless America. I'm sorry, and we're going to try it one more time. You good? If we count places where the cross, crucifixion, or Jesus being crucified is directly named, there are 50 to 60 references to that in the New Testament. If you expand it to passages that explain the purpose or theology of the cross, such as sacrifice, reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, the number rises to over a hundred. Friends, it's pretty clear. What Jesus has done, he hasn't just taught, he died. That's why he's worth listening to. And rose from the dead. For the late Nabil Kharishi, the cross of Christ, made him worth listening to, and it changed his life. In 2012, five years before he passed away from a rare form of stomach cancer, he documents in his best-selling autobiography, seeking Allah and finding Jesus, his life changed in a way he never saw coming. In a quiet room, after years of debate, prayer, and conflict, he admitted something he had resisted with all of his strength. The cross mattered more than what he wanted to. He was raised in a Muslim family, in a devout Muslim home in the United States. Nabil was taught from childhood that Jesus was a prophet, but he wasn't crucified. Certainly not God himself. The idea that salvation could come through a crucified man in his world and really in the Muslim world is treated as offensive and illogical. Why would Allah become flesh and die for man? But here's the thing. While studying medicine, Nabil formed close friendships with committed Christians, doctors, who challenged him, not with pressure, but with patience. He didn't try to twist his arm and make him a Christian. But they would ask him questions, they encouraged him. They said, Nabil, examine the evidence. Look for early sources in scripture about why Jesus was worth listening to. Nabeel, he started to do it, and he felt like the Christian faith would collapse, and he'd go back to his doctor friends and say, See, look what I found. Well, that's not what happened. One fact refused to go away. The crucifixion of Jesus was one of the most historically attested events in the world. Even non-Christians, they didn't believe in Jesus, but they said the cross happened. Nabil had a problem. In his investigation, it wasn't just history, it was the meaning. As he read the gospels, he saw the cross was not an accident or a tragedy that Jesus tried to step around and avoid. What made Jesus worth listening to for Nabil is that Jesus walked towards the cross. He didn't try to avoid it. He walked to it and it floored him. It floored him. He framed it as love, sacrifice, and purpose. The cross confronted Nabil with a God who did not remain distant or untouched by suffering, but entered into it. A turning point came. When Nabil realized that the cross answered a question he had carried silently for years. How can a holy God understand pain? How can a holy God understand the pain in my life? The cross showed a God who did not merely demand obedience, but absorbed justice, betrayal, and violence into himself. Jesus did not conquer sin by force. He loved sinners. And his love for sinners cost Jesus his life. Nabil eventually left the Muslim faith and placed his faith in Jesus. It was not because the cross made sense. Far from it. His faith in Christ was because the love of Jesus was too profound to dismiss. He couldn't shake it. Jesus is worth listening to because of what he walked towards. He didn't back away from the cross. He embraced it because he loved all of you and loved him. That is what made Jesus worth listening to. So here are two invitations this week. Number one, I invite you, dads and ladies. All of you. Reflect on how much God delights in you. Don't just say, yeah, I believe it. Live it. Live it in such a way that that doesn't remove chaos, but it gives you so much freedom and empowerment to live because He delights in you. That will in turn make you delightful not only to be around, but others will want to be with you. Because you believe God delights in you so much it shows in your life and how you do things. I also invite you to reflect on what Christ has done for you. Be thinking now how you will reflect on his death this week. His death not just for the world, even though the scripture says that, but his death for you. You and you and you all of you. And you watch it online. Reflect on it. Think about how you will reflect on what he has done for you. Christ is worth listening to. May we listen again. For his sake, for others' gain, and all for the sake of his glory. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.