You guys were here last week, we started this new series called Follow. Looking at the commands or the calls, the invitations really that Jesus gave to various people in the scripture to follow after him. One call to follow, if you remember, went to Peter, James, Andrew, and John, and they were the everyday men of their day. They had washed out of kind of the Jewish educational system.
They weren't following a rabbi. They had not made the cut. They were, as I described them last week, and several of you came up and told me you were insulted by this, but they were the state school kids of the day. They didn't make the Ivy League cut.
Most other rabbis, they chose the best of the best of the best. But Jesus invites the common man to follow, and then he does something which is completely unthinkable. He goes, he's got his new disciples in tow who want to be like their rabbi. He goes and invites a professional sinner named Matthew, a tax collector.
He's not the best of the best of the best. In fact, he's the worst of the worst of the worst. And he invites Matthew, much to the chagrin, likely, of Peter, James, Andrew, and John. He invites this professional sinner to follow after him, showing all of us that it is not our sin that stands in the way of following Jesus.
It is not our sin that stands in the way of accepting the invitation. And finally, we look at his invitation to the rich young ruler. He too was invited to follow Jesus. Jesus says to him, follow me, but Jesus also points out while it might not be sin that gets in our way, it oftentimes is our stuff.
Now, if you're going to follow someone, the next logical question is, where are we going? Is the invitation to just a nomadic wandering, or does Jesus have a destination in mind for each of us? Thomas, one of his followers, he asks the question. Jesus is right in the middle of honoring one of the verses that we hear at funerals all the time, right?
Jesus was actually said, it's not just given by pastors with caskets in the background. Jesus said this, he goes, listen, don't let your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe in me. In my father's house, there are many rooms. If that were not so, when I have told you, I'm going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. Then he looks at them, and he goes, you know the way to the place where I'm gone. And as we talked about last week, the role of the disciple was to follow the rabbi, to become like the rabbi, to do what the rabbi does. So it was only natural at some point this would come up.
Jesus, you've got to imagine Thomas making, listen, I left my fishing business, I left my family, I left my hometown. Matthew's gone, I left a pretty lucrative tax collecting career. We don't seem to have a home here. You're pretty nomadic, you're dragging us all over Jerusalem.
So Thomas has the eternal question. Thomas said to him, Lord, we have no idea what you're doing. We don't know what you're doing. And so how can we know the way?
Now, at the time the disciples did not yet understand that Jesus was predicting his own coming death and resurrection, and they didn't understand that this was an analogy about heaven. Now in hindsight, you and I do, we read that knowing how things played out in the life of Jesus. And we understand what he says when he's talking about his father's house, that this is heaven, the sphere of creation where God's presence is most manifest. But then comes the great question, what's the way?
How do you get there? How do you go to heaven? If you think about it, Thomas's question is the universal question. It's one humanity has been asking long before.
This was a question long before this rabbi named Jesus came on the scene. And it's a question that I get asked on a regular occasion, usually by people who are sick, physically ill and scared. How do I go to heaven? Now, if you've ever gotten wrong directions, like where it really just, you know, now you can even trust people on the streets, like when you pull up and say, hey, I'm trying to get to whatever, right?
Like, it's oftentimes like a game now people play with you. Oh, yeah, here's what you do. You go down three blocks and you look in a river, you see them chuckling, right? I was driving home from work one night.
I was in Newark, New Jersey. And the guy pulled up next to me at the light. I was about to get on 78 and he took signals rolled down your window, which is always dangerous in New Jersey. But I did.
And the guy says, hey, I'm looking for Washington. How far away am I? Where am I? Where do I go?
And I said, well, there's a lot of Washington's in New Jersey. There's a couple in Bergen County. I live in Washington, township in Mars County. Which one do you mean?
He goes, DC. I said, dude, you're really lost, like five hours lost. He thought he was like around the corner from the White House at this point. See, the answer, the answer there, at least in that situation, depending on if you were me or them, it's either funny or frustrating, right?
Like that guy thought he was close and he was four hours away. Getting the answer wrong to the universal question, though, about how do you get to heaven has a lot more significance writing on it, banking on it, a lot more costs than a couple hours worth of driving. The universal question, if you think about it, has garnered a pretty much, a universal answer over time. If I went to the Maristown Green this morning, took a microphone, a little film crew out with me, and I asked people on the streets, how do you get to heaven?
I think that you would get the same general answer from most people on the street, and it's actually the same one that most religions would give. The directions to heaven, the way there is to be good. In fact, if you go out and ask folks, do you believe in heaven? 90% of the people would say yes, and the vast majority of the 90% would say they're going there.
And when you ask them why they're going there, why would they say they're going there, the answer is almost universally because I'm not a perfect person, but I'm a good person. And almost all religions say that same thing. How you live your life on this side of the grave determines what happens to you on the other. Now, if you grew up in a Western thought process, a Western mindset, that is, then that all good people go to heaven.
In other parts of the world, it's that all good people are reincarnated. They come back around and they're even better people, at least with the opportunity to become better people. Now, you can understand where this mindset comes from. It makes sense, right?
Well, I mean, who else would go to heaven? Good people go to heaven. That's where they are. God is good, right?
And so if God is good, he'd want to be surrounded by people that are good. Heaven must be full of good people. And so you get there by being good. But what if despite the fact that this seems to make so much sense and be so fairer, what if the directions are good?
What if the directions are completely wrong? See, it's these directions that inevitably lead people into my office to begin to ask follow-up questions, especially when you get sick and scared. Questions like, well, since I deeply believe, no, here's one I need to tell you. You've been hanging around the church a long time.
You might know the theological answers to these questions. But what I would tell you is even most Christians still get this mixed up in their mind. I've had people come to me, two folks that were dying in the last year or so, and ask me questions like, well, I think I've been good. But how good is good enough?
What's the standard for being good, right? Like, I'm not a bad person. As measured by, I didn't kill anybody. But how good is good enough?
I actually had somebody that was dying of cancer. I said to myself, I'm afraid I haven't done enough. I haven't been good enough. I haven't given enough.
Where's the line? What's the standard? And then when you start going down the road of those questions, they lead to other more difficult questions. Like, have you ever thought of this one?
If being good is the way into heaven, and God is good, then why didn't this good God do a better job of declaring his expectations for us? So that we don't have to live our whole lives wondering where we stand. Right? Like, that's not good.
That's not kind. I've watched people terrified on their deathbed because God did not, if I'm getting to heaven by being good, God didn't lay out what the line was, what the standard is. And now I'm scared to death. That's not good.
That's cruel. If good people go to heaven a good God long ago, and you should update it often, a good God should have communicated. But instead we have religious leaders of all sizes and shapes and persuasions. They claim they know the form of the line, the standard, the way.
The problem is that their formula is their standards. Their directions are all different. What one faith describes as good, like suicide bombers, another describes as evil. So the good people go to heaven because God is good directions.
These directions quickly when you start to think about it hit a snag. I mean think about it. If there's a level of performance that gets us into heaven, and God refuses to tell you what it is, then in one sense, not only are you good, you're better than God because you would never hold somebody accountable. That you cared about to a stand, you refuse to reveal a standard, you refuse to reveal.
Imagine getting a job reviewer work, your boss calls you in, and he gives you a review based on expectations, goals, and a job description that you never got. Would that be fair? Would that be good? Imagine your kids, many of our high school students are going off this week for finals.
They show up in a room and they're given a test on material that's never been presented to them. The high school switchboard would light up with parents, right? This is ridiculous. How can my child be held accountable to a standard that they weren't even aware of?
Is that good? Is that fair? Now if you grew up in the western world with a Judeo-Christian mindset, maybe what I'm saying is confusing because you're going, God did give us directions to follow. They're called the Ten Commandments.
He did give us a standard. In fact, if I went back to the green, we went back to the green and I had my mic and my camera and I would ask folks, how do they know if they've been good? I think most would say, well, I've tried to be good. I haven't killed anybody.
I think I've followed most of the commandments. Now that sounds great, but the reality for most of us is this, the USA Today, how to pull out on this. 60% of the folks in America can't name 50% of the Ten Commandments. Can't name five of them.
Let alone where they are in the scripture or what they're related to, but there's this kind of a more facile. They're, well, you know, I've been good. I think I've kept the Ten Commandments. Now, get ready because this is going to blow your mind.
You probably haven't heard this before, but here's the deal. I don't know how familiar you are with the scripture, but the Ten Commandments are given in the second book of the Bible. They're in the Old Testament. It's a book called Exodus.
That's where the story of God calling Moses is from a burning bush. You watch it on Easter with Charlton Heston, right? Moses calls, God calls Moses, he leads his people out of Egypt across the Red Sea into the Promised Land and in chapter 20 of that book, God gives Moses these Ten Commandments. But get this.
There is, you can go home and check this out. There is no connection mentioned to Moses or anywhere else in the story of Exodus about the Ten Commandments and Heaven. None. God doesn't say Moses, come up here.
I want to give you the directions to Heaven. Go back and explain to my people that if they do this, if they get this checklist right now, they're going to give you the directions to Heaven. There is no where, there is not even a mention anywhere in Exodus of Heaven. Let alone a connection to commandments.
And I'll go on. If you read Exodus, the next thing you'll notice is that there's not only ten commandments, there's lots and lots and lots of commandments, which none of us have kept. Exodus 21, the next chapter says, anybody who curses his father and mother must be put to death. And as one writer put it, while this is a bit extreme for my taste, if you're really serious about having eternity in the balance based on your ability to keep the Old Testament commandments, you have to adopt that whole system of Old Testament commandments.
Not just the parts that are convenient. Thou shalt not murder, doesn't threaten my lifestyle too much. But thou shalt not covet my neighbor's house. That hits a little closer to home.
This is the point here. You can't find this concept in the Bible. Don't go to the Old Testament looking for a list of things that you need to do to go to Heaven. The standard is way too high.
Besides, if you're familiar with the story, every time you do break this divine law, you have to go and sacrifice a bull or a cow or a pigeon to get right with every time you did it. Now, you might say, well, the New Testament, that's different. But in many ways, the New Testament's not a lot of help either in trying to help you get to Heaven. In fact, here's the common teaching found throughout the New Testament about trying to get to Heaven by being good.
Paul in Romans says, for all of us have sinned and full short of the glory of God. Then he goes on. There is no one righteous, not even one. He goes on.
For the wages of sin, breaking these divine laws, is death. And then the Bible, this is the best kept secret on Earth. Okay, your friends probably don't know that this is what the Bible says. The Bible comes right out and says it.
You might have not known it was there. You might have thought the laws were all in there. And if you had just found a way to obey them and kept Muslim, you'd be a good person. You haven't murdered anyone, but check this out.
Therefore, no one, wait a minute, who? No one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin. So it turns out that the directions that almost everybody is following are wrong.
You wind up in Newark when you wanted to be in Washington, D.C. Now, these commandments are very effective for keeping children in line. There's no doubt. They're great for setting up a construct on how to live in a society.
In fact, that was one of the reasons God gave the laws. He was setting up Israel as a nation. But nobody, no one. Let me say it one more time, so you really understand what I'm talking about here.
No one that has ever lived is getting to heaven by being good. Now, that might not seem fair. Actually, it isn't fair. Not only because you don't know the standard, but how fair would it be if, like, think about it, if it was about being good, you know, does God, does God, great on a curve?
You know, I was going to get in, but then Mother Teresa got born and the curve got adjusted and now I'm out. Right? What if, you know, I've got this ledger of good and bad, and I'm pretty good, I'm going to keep in track of this, but that guy cut me off and I said something I should have said, and I tipped over to the bad side of the ledger, but I'm going to Guatemala in July. Everything will be great.
So the proverbial bus runs me over. Now what? You missed it by a day. Now, Jesus is Jewish rabbi as we talked about.
He had this yoke away, that rabbi's had a yoke, was the way a rabbi interpreted all of these laws. And Jesus' yoke, his teaching presented another problem, and now you're going to start understanding why Jesus winds up crucified. Jesus' teaching, this concept, the good people go to heaven, it contradicts everything that Jesus taught. Are you staying with me on this?
Not many people are going to explain this to you. Jesus never taught good people go to heaven. Now people will say, well, I believe in Jesus, I've been a good person. You missed it.
You missed his whole teaching. In fact, if good people go to heaven, Jesus completely mess led all of his audiences, and on one occasion he won't leave comforted a dying man. The truth is, Jesus taught the very opposite of what most people in the world believe. Jesus taught, this is crazy, gets a guy crucified.
Jesus taught that good people don't go to heaven. Furthermore, he taught that God was intent on not giving people what they deserved. Jesus claimed that God desires to give men and women exactly what they don't deserve. Not only was this a major departure from the religious teachings of his day and our day, it was a departure from anything that's ever been taught anywhere, anytime by anyone.
Nobody else is teaching this. The whole idea, in fact, was so unsettling to a religious culture and so unsettling to a nation trying to keep its people in mind that the Jewish religious leaders had him arrested and killed. This yoke of Jesus, his interpretation of the laws, he actually raises the bar on being good. A lot of people come along, oh, you know, Jesus, those Pharisees, they were rough.
They set the bar too high. But Jesus actually sets the bar higher. Jesus almost makes it, in fact, he does make it impossible for anybody, even the Pharisees, to keep the law. He almost immediately, in his ministry, does away with the concept that good people go to heaven.
Here's what he said. He goes, look, don't think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you, until heaven or earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished.
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, remember the Pharisees, they're the professional law keepers. This is what they did for a living. Unless your righteousness surpasses theirs, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. I need to say it again.
Jesus teaches that good people don't go to heaven. Then he goes on and does the unthinkable. He makes the law unable to be kept. For example, during one of his most famous sermons, he says this, you've heard that it was said to people long ago, you shall not murder.
That's why the guy on the green is going to heaven, because he's good, he hasn't killed anybody. And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. That's a big one, right? For us, that's how we're getting to heaven.
Most of us, we haven't killed anybody, and then he goes and says this, but I'm telling you, anybody who's angry with a brother or a sister is subject to judgment. Well, now that's going to be a problem. He goes on, you've heard it said, that you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Now, that's just not fair. That is not reasonable. Is Jesus aware of the coming invention of the bikini? Is that on his mindset at this moment?
Does he understand that this is going to be a problem? And then he gets really crazy. Remember the story of Jesus when he's hanging on the cross? The cross which is reserved for the worst of the worst kind of criminals in society, a deathable, tremendous pain and suffering and shame and stigma.
You might remember Jesus is one of three people being crucified. He's got a criminal, the worst kind of criminals on each side of him, and one of them is hurling insults at him. Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us.
But the other criminal yells back at Jesus. Don't you fear God? Now listen to what this criminal says. He says, we're being punished justly.
We are getting what our deeds deserve. That's the way we think, right? But this man has not anything wrong. The criminal brings up the old directions to heaven.
You get what you deserve. He's getting what he deserved. But then he says to Jesus, Jesus, I would like to ask you a favor. Would you remember me when you come into your kingdom?
Now, you've heard the story a lot and maybe it's grown cold to you, but you need to remember this is a criminal, a self-professed bad person getting what he knows he admits he deserves. Under our normal way of thinking, what would you tell him? One writer asked this question. What?
Enter the story. Enter the story. What? If he had raped your sister or murdered your brother?
What if you were maimed for life because of his reckless behavior? Yet Jesus says to him, he has no ability to make up for his bad behavior by being good. There's no time for him to say, you know, Jesus, if you just get me out of this mess, I swear I'll turn my life around. Jesus says to him, I'll tell you the truth.
Today you're going to be with me in paradise. Now get this. Okay, now that I'm really going to offend you probably. I can feel the emails coming again.
But get this. Not only does this seem to mean that good people don't go to heaven, bad people do. Don't throw anything at me yet. But I didn't write this book.
Not only does it not, does Jesus say good people don't go to heaven, but bad people can. Now, enter the story. Imagine if you had come out to see this man die because what he had done to your sister or your family or your home, how would you have felt at that moment? You are there watching him get his just due and this self-professed Messiah, this rabbi, this teacher leans over to him and promises him in a moment, you will be with me in paradise.
How would you feel? I mean does Jesus know nothing of justice? And if good people don't go to heaven, then who does? What is the way?
What are the directions? And the answer to the justice question and the who goes to heaven question is summed up this way. There is another way. It's forgiven people who go to heaven.
And justice and forgiveness is made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You see the way to heaven finds its roots in two overarching attributes of God. How do you define God? If you ask that definition, you ask the allogents.
Most theologians will tell you, trying to define God is like a finite, trying to define the infinite merely by putting words to him you begin to limit him. So most of the time people try to describe God by his attributes. And God has two actually three overarching attributes. He is holy, he's completely different from us.
He has no sin at all, no sinful nature at all. But he has two other overarching attributes. Love and justice, righteousness. Because he's just.
Remember, because he's just. Remember the whole law and sacrificial system I talked about earlier? For more than a thousand years, Jews have been sacrificing animals so that they might, that God might overlook their sins. The law was clear.
Breaking divine laws, something the Bible called sin, this breaking of divine laws resulted in death. You saw it and we did our origin series, right? We decided we're going to be like God and God says, well you can be, but you've disconnected yourself from the source of life and now you're going to die. And what do they immediately do, Adam?
When they try to go their own way, when they break the divine law down, it was only one law at that time. Just don't need that tree. What do they immediately do? They try to cover their sins.
They're shame. And they make some covering out of leaves, but God comes on the scene and he says, listen, you can't cover your sins. And what he does is he goes out and he gets some animal skins and he covers their sin through the first animal sacrifice ever. And God sets up this system, this sacrificial system.
He provides for animal sacrifices to temporarily substitute for the death of a sinner. And it went on in Israel for centuries. It had to be done annually over and over because it provided no permanent erasing or guilt. It was just a way to cover your sin until Jesus comes on the scene.
No one Thomas asks me, look, we don't know where you're going. Okay, so Jesus says I'm going to heaven. And he goes, I don't know the way to go there. Here's what Jesus said.
He said, I'm the way. I'm the way and the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except for me. How can he claim to be the way because Jesus is the Lamb of God?
The justice of God that demanded justice for sin, mind, yours, ours. Sin had to be paid for. He paid. Now we know this concept, right?
I mean, this is not a God only concept. Our prisons are full of men and women paying for their sins. We demand that all the time as a civil society, right? Our sins are not a society, but it's to God.
And in raising the bar on our sin issue, which results in our debt owed issue going up, what Jesus is doing with actual purpose of the laws, including the Ten Commandments, was to show us our guilt. The law does not save us. The law convicts us. The purpose of the law was to save you.
It was to convict you. You and I, according to Jesus, are not good people. We actually are worse than we thought. See, we thought we were keeping the law and Jesus comes, I don't know.
You don't understand. You're much worse, Shaping. You think we're all lawbreakers. It turns out that the story of the Bible is not that we need to do better.
It's not to keep the law better. The story of the Bible is not that you need to do this. The story of the Bible is you need a Savior. It turns out Christianity is anything but fair.
It's completely unfair. We should all get what we deserve. I mean, if you take at all what the Bible says seriously, the last thing you really want is for God to be fair. Instead, what we see is the love of God in mercy and grace.
I read a great story about this this week. God was talking about it. He had bought an infinity. He used infinity.
It was the nicest car he had ever owned. He kept it just spotless and had a bunch of kids. One day he went out to his car and he was going to take it for a drive and he got out in the driveway. And there was a big A carved on the hood.
So he called his kids out and he said, who did this? And out came his three-year-old little girl, her name, was Ali. And he said, Ali, did you do this? And Ali just kind of looked up at her dad and said, yeah, I did it, dad.
I'm sorry. Here's what he said. He goes, what was I going to do? There was no way in the world for me to explain to Ali the significance of what she had done and what it was going to cost me in dollars and time and hassle to get this fixed.
There was no point in telling her that now I was going to have to take the car to the shop, rent a car, pay for the rental car as well as repair. She had no context for understanding any of that. Would it have been fair for me to demand Ali pay the bill? Sure.
Be completely unrealistic. What does $1000 mean to a three-year-old? The numbers don't register. Where is she going to get the money anyway?
Should I sever the relationship with my daughter? Demand it with payment? Rant and rave? Of course not.
I did the only thing I could do for someone I loved as much as I loved her. I knelt down and I said, Ali, please don't do that anymore. And she said, yes, daddy, and hugged me and went back inside. And I continued to love her as much as ever.
And I paid for the damage she caused. That's how God sees our issue. We have a debt. We cannot pay back to think that being good, right?
To think that being good somehow squares you up with God would be like Ali promising to clean her room after being confronted with the damage she done. Cleaning up her room doesn't pay me back. It's a nice gesture, but it doesn't fix my car. God opted for forgiveness rather than fairness.
Here's how Paul described it. He said, remember, we talked about this. We're all of sinned and full-shored the glory of God and get what they're due and get their punishment. And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. A lot of folks have asked me over the years, you know, I understand a lot of Jesus teaching, but why did he have to die? Is that a person this week saying, I don't get it. Why would God permit it or allow it?
Here's what Paul said. He answered the questions. He said, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. Here's why he did it.
He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, one of his overarching attributes. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forebearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did this to demonstrate that he is just. He believes in justice.
But then watch this. But, but, God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Fair?
No. It's not fair at all. Where do, how do you combine justice and love? Where do they meet?
Where is justice served? Where do debts get paid? Where are sentences served? Where is love and mercy and grace poured out?
Where do righteousness and love meet? Is there an eternal intersection? Love and justice. Meet at the cross of Jesus Christ.
Good people don't go to heaven. Now maybe we're given some bad directions. Those were the ones that I was given most of my life. There's another way.
It is through him. By faith, you are invited to follow, to believe. Peter, remember Peter, the state school kid took the invitation to follow. You know, a story he didn't do perfectly denied Jesus.
He ran he hid. But when he met the resurrected Christ, he took on his yoke and became a fisher of men. He gave a pretty famous talk. Kind of had a lot of the elements that this one had in it.
And here's how he concluded. He said, therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. And when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and Peter said the apostles, excuse me, the people said to Peter and the other apostles.
What shall we do? And Peter replied, here's the invitation. Repent, change what you think, and be baptized. Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
This morning, we're going to celebrate communion. We moved it to the end. This morning, because I thought it would take on a little bit more significance as you look at the mercy of God and the righteousness of God. So as you come to the table this morning to remember these truths, I want to invite you and encourage you to follow and take step one on the journey.
Repent, change your mind, change your ways, go in a different direction, and then join me in the waters of baptism in two weeks. Go public. Kind of out of hiding. What are you waiting for?
You know, I thought about the cross. Really, is the cross nothing more than Jesus in some sense identifying with us publicly, imperacingly so. And in baptism, you're invited to identify with him, with his life, with his death, and his resurrection. Go public.
The invitation is for you. Good people don't go to heaven. Forgivin' people go to heaven.