What is so wrong with washing your hands? Nothing, but that is not what made Jesus so angry. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being so careful to clean the outside of the cup, while the inside was full of wickedness. God made the outside and the inside of the cup. He told them not to try to be holier than God. How can someone desiring to be so right, be so filled with wickedness? The Pharisees’ cup was full of greed. The cup of greed feeds itself with self-centered wickedness. Wanting to add to the law comes from figuring that it can’t be this easy to be righteous. There are man-made traditions that disguise themselves as part of the Light. Jesus is talking about religious deception. Religion hates freedom. The spirit of religion is exclusive, and Jesus called it wicked. God set out to destroy religious hierarchy. He replaced the law with a better covenant, the original covenant with God.

The cup of greed contrasts greatly to the cup of life. God wants to fill our lives. Our senses are a gateway to our inner self or to our cup. Jesus says the eye allows light into body. When you are filling the eye with good, then you are filling your cup with good. In John, Jesus says He is the light. When our vision is clear and good, the vision from the world tries to darken it. What we think on, touch, or see, fills our cup. As we allow little things, small deceptions, to creep into our consciousness and thinking, it can begin to fill us with the wrong stuff. When your principles are good, you are full of light. The problem with allowing non-biblical principles into our lives is that they are easy to justify. As soon as we justify our ungodly behavior, we are filling our cup with the wrong stuff.

In John 17, Jesus is praying to His Father, knowing that He is about to leave. He knows He will no longer be visible to the world. He is leaving Himself in us and sending us into the world in His place. If He didn’t send us, He couldn’t get into the world. As the Father is in Him, He is in us. Jesus did not come for the ones that already knew Him but for the ones that don’t have a clue. In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables. One is about the lost sheep, one is about the lost coin, and one is about the prodigal son. You can be lost in the world like the sheep; you can be lost in the house like the coin; you can leave the House and become entangled in the world liked the prodigal; or you can stay in the House with a religious attitude like the brother. How do we go into the world and not succumb to the world? When we have the choice to judge others, default to love. There is only one qualification for living a life full of God. The only way to distinguish us is by our fruit, and the fruit is love.

Our cup can be full of religious mess. We wall ourselves up with religion to protect ourselves from the world. Religion blinds us to the needs around us, in the same way the men walked by the beaten man in the parable of the Samaritan. The Pharisees could not distinguish between following rules and serving God. Our cups have to be filled with something. If we don’t allow God to fill our vessels, we are choosing to fill them with the world. Allowing other things to fill our vessels will not allow us to lead others to God. The only way to get the life of God into our vessels is to walk with Jesus and do what He says. We want to fill our cup, repent, and put everything else aside. Every other relationship is secondary to our connection to God. God wants to get that old stuff out and fill us with Him.

Verses Used:
Luke 11:33-39
John 17:11
Matthew 7:20
John 14:6

A lot of Christians tend to look inward, toward themselves: what they are and aren’t doing to further God’s kingdom. How they are and aren’t sinning. When Jesus met with Zacchaeus, he was on the road to Jerusalem, where people were awaiting his arrival with palm leaves for the donkey to walk on. He saw Zacchaeus climb the tree and wait to see him in the crowds that followed.

Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in this little town that Jesus passed through. Tax collectors in the Biblical times were people from the local towns chosen by the Roman government to collect money from their towns for the Roman government. These people were highly looked down upon. They were considered thieves, and so unaccepted in their towns. Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in his city, and so he unaccepted even more so.

He was a part of the bottom rung of society, and yet, Jesus saw him waiting patiently up in the tree for him. He was not looking inward; he was looking outward. He saw Zacchaeus in the tree, and felt his eagerness just to see him. He felt his wanting to feel something real, which Zacchaeus knew he would get when he saw Jesus. That is how it needs to be when people see us- they need to know that we care, and that we are real.

Another thing- Jesus knew Zacchaeus’ name. Jesus knows everyone’s names. Oftentimes, it becomes easy to know that he knows our names- the names of those to talk to him daily, or even only every so often. He knows every single name of every single person he has ever created, even the ones who do not believe in him. He knows everything about them, just as he knows us. He knows them just the same, so shouldn’t we? Enjoy the fellowship of the world- they are who he came to save. Of course he came to save us also, but they are the ones who need saving right now. Come out of your safe little world and don’t preach at them. Show them with your love and with your life what a life with God can be. People get touched wherever you go, just as wherever Jesus went, he touched people. They can see the light and life in your world.

Before you can save them, you need to seek them. It says that “When Jesus got to that spot; he looked up and said…” Jesus knew that Zacchaeus would be waiting for him in the tree. You need to seek people out, find them where no one else would ever look. Only then can you save them. Always be looking outward to where you are going; do not only focus on what you are doing in the here and now.

Colossians 2:6-10: And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

Pastors, as I probably need not tell you, are susceptible to criticism–they are scrutinized like a celebrity, some say. And since pastors aren’t perfect, each tend to have that thing their critics are most apt to point out. When my critics come calling, this is what they often say: that I should involve “deeper teachings” into my Sunday sermons. That’s fair enoug, but what I’ve come to learn about these deeper teachings is that they tend to be strangely elusive. One can search for them their entire Christian lives, but what I have found in my own walk with Jesus is that the deepest truths tend to be the simplest. This is why our salvation is predicated upon one essential belief–that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and accomplished whast he said he would–and not the adoption of an entire systematic theology. And that is why Jesus himself often used parables–simple, illustrative narratives–in his teaching. At the end of the say, what keeps me walking with the Lord is not the steady assumulation of fanciful revelations. It is, in fact, the simplicity of his grace that keeps me satisfied, that keeps me grounded in God’s love. And I’d take wisdom over knowledge any day.

The Colossians text cited above mentions “empty philosophies,” speaking of the faddish ideologies that never cease to crop up in culture–fads about how to stimulate the economy, lose weight, and save the planet. One’s life can becomes practically paralytic if they continue philosophy hopping. Leaping from paradigm to paradigm, each replacing the one before, they finish out their years allegedly enlightened but wholly ungrounded. But the Bible, God’s Word, stands forever. What’s more, it’s astoundingly simple–God gave us everything, we ruined it, and because He loved us, He sent a Savior to redeem it all. That’s it. That’s the Gospel. That’s the Good News.

But beyond believing, we must find the boldness to act. We do not want to be a people who know out Bibles but mistreat our spouses, who use Scripture to condemn our fellow man, who become proud of their knoweldge. A right understanding of God’s Word, more so than a “deep” one, should be our first goal. And second, we need to pray for the ability to emulate the character of Christ. To act upon what we are learning. After all, the world is not so much looking for theologians as it is authenticity.

But authenticity is the final challenge, especially in the face of opposition. There might not be anything so hard as loving somebody sacrificially–when it costs you something, your time, your patience, or your money. That is why Jesus’ life and death is so moving and so important. He purchased our lives, but not only that, he did it in the face of incredible opposition–before those who followed him to Golgothat just to mock and whip him and spit on him. And dying on the cross, he spent his last bits of strength praying for them. That’s authentic, sacrificial, agape love. And that is the ultimate call of the Christian.

There is a big difference between being a believer and a disciple. Most people probably don’t stop and really think about this. Most people probably picture a bearded man in sandals when the hear the word disciple. What’s more, most people probably tend to think that the end of their faith journey culminates in their belief, in their salvation moment. A lifetime spent away from God pivots upon the events of one morning, wherein a person’s heart becomes inexplicably soft—by a pointed sermon or a moment of worship or even the power withheld in the very name of Jesus himself—they respond to that altar call, confess their sins, give their life to Christ, and then for many, they’re done. Not so for the disciple.

Getting saved by Jesus is the easiest task one could ever hope to perform. One doesn’t have to accomplish anything by their own cleverness or effort. One doesn’t need to do anything period. Except surrender their pride and accept the gift. It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who is doing the saving anyway. It’s his work to his glory; not yours. Consider it this way: if salvation were the goal for humanity, if it alone was the charge of the Great Commission, then Scripture would read, “Go into all the world and save people.” Instead it reads, “make disciples of all nations.” Disciples, unlike Christians, are not born. They are made.

Concerning the passage from Matthew above, before the charge to his disciples to go make more disciples, Jesus commands the remaining eleven to go to “the mountain” in Galilee. Scholars have debated to which Galilean mountain he directed them. Some have argued that it was perhaps Mt. Carmel, where Elijah slew the false prophets of Baal. Others have suggested Mt. Table. I personally believe that it was Mt. Hermon, a coastal mountain overlooking Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus had once taken his disciples and proclaimed “I will build my church” (Matthew 16: 13-20). It is this same mountain that Peter, James, John, and Jesus ascend in Matthew 17, where the Lord appears transfigured and meets with Moses and Elijah. Mt. Hermon is, in short, a significant site to the disciples, and thus likely the one mentioned in this week’s passage.

So here Jesus takes all eleven disciples and, overlooking the pagan colony of Caesarea Philippi and all the sinners within, he commands, “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” What, then, is the difference between the saved and the disciples? For one thing, discipleship is necessarily beyond salvation. It’s the next, big step in one’s faith walk. Again, being saved is easy; becoming a disciple, on the other hand, takes work. It takes, according to this passage, first being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, this naturally constitutes an actual physical water baptism by which one publicly and symbolically demonstrates their physical death and rebirth in Christ, but it also suggests that we are to be baptized in the name, or, in other words, immersed in the spirit of God. God has a hand in our salvation, to be sure, but He also guides us toward discipleship after He finally gets His hands on our lives.

We must get out of His way so that He may do so, however. One must never underestimate the power of his own will. As C.S. Lewis once suggested, the spirit of God “cannot ravish. He can only woo.” So if the God of Heaven, who merely spoke the cosmos into existence, can approach the door of your spirit but cannot (or rather, will not) force His way through, then we can conclude that a man’s will is a strangely powerful thing. So to become a disciple, finally, we must allow God to take our hand and lead us deeper into Himself. Once this happens, we’ll begin to feel convicted about our sin. We’ll begin to actually want to spend time in prayer, in worship, and in the Word. Getting saved, you see, cleanses our spirit but doesn’t change our bad habits or attitudes. Going deeper into God’s teachings and truths is what ultimately transforms our lives from believers to disciples. We begin to talk differently, act differently. We begin, in short, to live our faith as well as believe it.

A challenge facing Christianity today is that we have a great many Christians and too few disciples. We need more disciples in the kingdom, more Christians walking out, not just believing in, their faith. If the original eleven disciples multiplied and, in time, transformed the the Roman Empire from a land of unrestrained paganism to the site of the early Church, how much more of an impact will a kingdom of disciples have today? Certainly have we more than eleven disciples at the present moment. Our focus, then, as a Church should be to foster a community of discipleship, and not belief only.

Here is one of my revelations on family – one of my life keys. Oftentimes we come into our family or church with the revelation of family before we met God. When we enter God’s family, we are grafted in or adopted in. We become part of the bloodline of God through Jesus. God’s whole revelation of connecting with His creation is one of family. But oftentimes, we bring baggage or skewed understandings of what the family is based on our experiences with our natural family. In God, all that shifts and changes. Even if you think you had a great family life growing up, you still need to be aware that we all bring baggage and mindsets into marriage and our family. We bring in perceptions of how things should be done based on what we experienced. We need to be aware of these mindsets so that we aren’t trying to fit our new relationships into the patterns we are used to. Your marriage and parenting will be different from your parents’ marriage and family time. You have to find out what works for your family. Does it work for your family, or is it something that you just want that is straining the relationship?

When we look at adolescence: our culture has created adolescence as a thing that we stresses about how to treat, raise and deal with adolescence, but there isn’t a lot of Biblical support for this. There actually isn’t a lot in the Bible about adolescence. 1 Corinthians 13:11 – When I was a child, I acted as a child. When I grew up, I put childish things away. The cry of an adolescent’s heart is treat me like an adult, but at the same time we keep trying to fit them into the mold we have created of what an adolescent is. There is a period when young people grow up and they decide that it is time to get married and be an adult. The Bible talks about adolescence as a time when the young become strong in God.

As parents, we get hung up on adolescence, and we want to keep them as little kids because we do not know what our identity is beyond being parents. As they want responsibility, we need to give them responsibility. We need to look to God and learn our purpose beyond just being parents. God has a plan and purpose and vision for us beyond just raising our kids. We need to keep leading our kids even after they leave home by continuing to follow God, being fruitful in the Kingdom and growing the house of God.

We have to raise our kids. The church can’t raise your kids. Teachers can’t raise your kids. A lot of people come into the church after crazy twenties living and starting a family. Sometimes they come after their kids already start having trouble and they want the church to save their kids. Oftentimes it is too late by then. The better idea is to never leave the church. Raise your children in the stability and worship and spiritual presence of the house of God. The Word of God is so powerful because, when we submit to God and His Word, the Scripture conforms us into the Godly standards. So it is also important to not only raise our children in the house, but to instill and maintain Godly principles and teachings in our homes as well. We are ordered to raise up our children in the way we should go. We model life for them. We are the primary influences in their lives. We have to teach our children to apply the Bible to their lives.

One of the main keys to success in our lives is understanding the importance of honor. The Bible instructs us to honor our mother and father. Children need to learn to honor their parents and their authorities, and respect that they know more and have the child’s best interest in more. It is more than just lip service. It is not harboring ill feelings against your authorities, but actually trusting them. If we can’t trust our authorities, then we can’t really trust God and His authority. Honor also applies to situations that we don’t understand. God says to honor our authorities as a reflection of our honor for Him. Honor our parents, honor in our marriages, honor in the church and in the workplace. The Bible says as we honor our parents we have a long and healthy life. As we keep our hearts free of bitterness and full of honor, we have a great life.

Honor for others is an amazing thing. We can either have our lives ruled by jealousy or complaint, or we can make the choice to honor those around us. Kids make decisions to put away childish things and honor their parents. It is a sign of growth. As Christians, we give honor even if we aren’t receiving honor in return. In the Kingdom, you give before you get. Even if there has been strife in a marriage or in the home, spouses and kids still need to make the choice to honor. Kingdom principles work for you when you put them into practice, regardless of whether your honor is deserved. The mission of the Kingdom is to honor and love those who don’t love us, turn the other cheek, love and go the extra mile. When we do this in our lives, it puts us into God’s favor.

You have to lead your children, and not them lead you. In society today, kids pretty much rule. The media and political correctness reinforce this idea. Until they grow up and leave childish things, they need to stay under the authority of their parents. If you don’t put authority over your kids, they will never understand authority. If they don’t understand authority, or structure, appropriateness, hierarchy or manners, they will never be successful. We have to be leaders in the parental realm. Also, it is important that when we come home from work, we take off our “work hats” and switch back into a nurturing, leadership, parental role. There is an onus on the father as the head of the household that they understand honor. We don’t teach our children to honor authorities when we always side with them. It is also incredibly important in a marriage that you side with your spouse. A child’s security lies in the knowledge that the bond of your marriage is strong and won’t be broken. You have to demonstrate it by supporting each other.

As a parent, you are always on show. You can’t turn it off. You have to decide what set of values you want to instill into your kids and live by them. We can’t be afraid to conform to and live out the principles of Christ. Children are so perceptive, and they sense anger, strife and disagreement. Always present a unified front, and never argue in front of your kids. It is also important that you create an environment in which your kids have to make decisions and feel comfortable enough to discuss what they see each day and the things that they don’t fully understand. As parents, we are modeling God. It is a massive responsibility. That is why the support of the house of God is so important, to reinforce and support the morals and values we work each day to instill in our kids.

We love family in this church. For a lot of people who are unconnected, the church becomes family. The spirit of family is resident in God. God is all about family, structure, discipline and honor. The power of functioning families is a beacon of light in some of the darkest times in our society. The family is being violently attacked at every level in this society. But when family breaks down, society breaks down. They are linked. That is why both blood and church family are so important. We are adhering to a principle that comes from the heart of God and keeps society in line with the heart of God. You can take this principle and apply it to every relationship. We have a choice whether or not just to know these things or to apply them to our lives. We have a choice whether to act from our natural man or spirit man. Acting from our spirit is a vital key for raising our kids and maintaining strong relationships. We have to make the decision to stay strong and keep living by Godly principles.