Scandalous Love

Wes Terry

Advent 2023 • Sermon • Submitted 5 months ago • Presented 5 months ago

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Lead Pastor Wes Terry preaches the Christmas Eve sermon for the 2023 Advent Sermon Series. This message looks at the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth out of Matthew 13:53-58 as well as the reasons why people reject Jesus today. The sermon was preached on December 24th, 2023.

Notes

Transcript

INTRODUCTION:

Each week of Advent we have lit a different candle to remember certain truths about the coming Kingdom of God.

Advent is not about Jesus’ first coming. It’s about the world Jesus will unleash upon his second coming.

A world of hope, peace, joy and love.

As we wait on that world to reveal itself, we also remind ourselves that the treasure of God’s kingdom can be experienced here and now.

According to Jesus, “The Kingdom of God is AT HAND.” You can participate in the Kingdom now.

Over the last four weeks we’ve been hearing from Jesus a variety of parables that explain the nature of that Kingdom.

Advent Hope, Peace & Joy

If I had to summarize the last three weeks I’d do so under the following three headings.

The kingdom of God is universally offered, exists within an unavoidable tension as an unseen treasure.

UNIVERSAL OFFER: The parable of the sower showed that the message of the kingdom is universally offered to everyone but only one type of soil receives it. The distinguishing factor is the condition of your heart.

UNAVOIDABLE TENSION: In the parable of the wheat and the weeds we saw that the kingdom exists within an unavoidable tension. The children of God’s kingdom (wheat) grow alongside the children of the Evil one (weeds.) The king will be patient in letting both grow together until the harvest.

UNSEEN TREASURE: Which makes the treasure of the kingdom an “unseen treasure.” This world pushes other sources of joy for our consideration but those who have eyes to see and receive the kingdom find joy that surpasses any other competitor.

So the kingdom of God is surprising in it’s offer of hope, subversive in it’s approach to peace and surpassing in its gift of joy.

It’s NOW but NOT YET, VALUABLE but NOT OBVIOUS, SMALL but NOT WEAK, HIDDEN but NOT FOREVER.

Advent Love

After Jesus finished telling these parables he leaves where he was to go back to his hometown.

And the responses of people to Jesus in his hometown remind us of something that happened on the very FIRST Christmas.

Namely, Jesus and the kingdom that he was ushering into the world were scandalous to many.

To to finish out our Advent series we will close with a message on scandalous love.

We pick up our text in Matthew 13:53.

Just to give you a bit of context this experience in the life of Jesus happened about 2 years into his public ministry.

He’s about 1 year away from being crucified by the Romans but his reputation has been fairly established by this point.

Matthew 13:53–58 CSB

53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left there. 54 He went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? 55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? 56 And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things?” 57 And they were offended by him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his household.” 58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

Many of the places that Jesus went he received a warm embrace and celebration of his miracles and teaching. But in his hometown he was rejected.

They hear his words. They even see his miraculous works. But they are offended nonetheless.

The same thing happens today. People can hear the amazing teaching and even see the miraculous works but still be offended by Jesus.

Offended By Jesus

From the very beginning of Jesus’ life people were offended by him.

We live in the Bible belt so many people - even if they don’t believe in and follow Jesus - have at least a base level of respect for him.

But that was NOT the experience of most people in the New Testament.

Nobody ever had a “neutral” response to Jesus in the NT.

Herod tried to have him and every other firstborn killed because he was intimidated by the thought of losing his power.

Mary and Joseph had to bear the reproach of her virgin pregnancy as she carried the Messiah in her womb.

When they got to Bethlehem they were denied a room.

Even Simeon, when he sees the long awaited Messiah and makes his famous Nunc Dimittis says. “This child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many is Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed.” (Luke 2:34)

Whatever else Christmas may be - it’s also a reminder that for much of the world there is an offense when it comes to the person and life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Unoffensive Jesus?

And when I say “offended” by Jesus I don’t mean that people overlook him or ignore him. I don’t even mean that people disagree with Jesus.

The word translated “offended” is the Greek word skandalizo. It’s where we get our English word “scandalized.”

To be scandalized is to not just disagree. It’s to be outranged and disgusted with your whole being. That’s what Jesus evoked for the people in his hometown.

There are certainly people who respond to Jesus that way in our culture even today.

People are good with the forgiveness, peace and love messaging of the Gospel.

What they’re not so good with is the narrow definition of what salvation requires and to whom salvation is given.

If we could just get rid of that narrow-minded “nobody comes to the Father except through me” business then we could have a Jesus that EVERYBODY LOVES.

And honestly, many people in our culture have tried to recast Jesus so that he’s no longer so offensive.

Let’s take all the good parts that fit within our modern western sensibilities and reject all the distasteful parts that keep people from coming to faith in Christ.

The whole premise behind “liberal Christianity” is to “liberate Christ” from the things that cause an offense in our culture today.

Let’s tweak Jesus’ opinion about the trustworthiness of the Bible.

Let’s tweak Jesus’ opinion about God’s design for sex and marriage.

Let’s tweak Jesus’ opinion about the republican / democrat party.

Let’s tweak Jesus so that he agrees with us and disagrees with them.

The problem is, that Jesus isn’t the Jesus of history. That Jesus isn’t a Jesus who changes the world. That Jesus isn’t a Jesus who can change your life.

Historical Problems

First, an unoffensive Jesus simply didn’t exist in history.

It’s common for people who want to recast Jesus to look away from the four Gospels because they reject inspiration/inerrency.

But you don’t even have to be Bible-thumper to see the problem with an unoffensive historical Jesus.

If you took the four Gospels out of the picture and went PURELY based off of non-Christian historical documents you would arrive at a historical Jesus that

made claims to be the Messiah

was crucified by the Romans

had Jewish followers who worshipped him as God

had Jewish establishment try and snuff out rumors of his resurrection.

Just those four facts alone prevent you from crafting an unoffensive version of Jesus of Nazareth.

A gentle, wise sage doesn’t get himself crucified by the Romans.

A humble Jewish rabbi doesn’t persuade his Jewish disciples to worship him as God.

I love how John Stott summarized this point.

“Nobody ever responded to Jesus moderately. Every response to Jesus is extreme. They either ran away from him in fear, murderously turned upon him and tried to kill him, or they fell down and surrendered everything to him.”

That’s the thing about truly great people. They are polarizing.

That’s WHY they change history. Because you either love them or hate them but you never feel NOTHING.

If you have an unoffensive Jesus you don’t have the true historical Jesus.

Cultural Problems

The other problem with an offensive Jesus is that he wouldn’t ever be able to change the world.

What I mean by that is there’s no way to make Jesus unoffensive in OUR CULTURE but some how not make him offensive in a different culture.

When I first took the senior pastorate I had a wise old friend tell me, “You’ll never be able to make everybody happy. So you might as well just embrace the fact that somebody will love you and other people won’t and in some cases there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

And he was right!

In the West we may love the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness and non-retaliation. But when Jesus starts meddling in our sexuality? Not cool.

Or when Jesus defines marriage as between one man and one woman for one lifetime? Or when he says there are zero grounds for divorce except for sexual immorality? Unpopular in our culture.

Yet that SAME set of beliefs will be offensive in a different culture for an entirely different set of reasons!

In the Middle East they’ll be perfectly agreeable with Jesus’ teaching about sex and marriage and homosexuality.

But they will be GREATLY offended by what Jesus says concerning the dignity of women, forgiveness or turning the other cheek.

And in India or China people will be offended by Jesus for an entirely different set of reasons.

It doesn’t matter what culture you find yourself in - Jesus will find a way to offend that culture because Jesus - by nature - is offensive.

If he wasn’t offensive he wouldn’t have changed the world.

Tim Keller points out that Jesus typically finds a way to attack the ruling dominant idea in any culture. (individual freedom/moral laxity in modern culture, moral performance/collectivism in traditional cultures, etc)

Personal Problems

Finally, an unoffensive Jesus is a problem because that kind of Jesus will never change your life.

Creating an unoffensive Jesus is also problematic because you can’t have a relationship with that kind of Jesus.

What makes Christianity unique is that we’re invited into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

If you think of EVERY OTHER relationship in your life they all share one thing in common (human relationships at least).

Every person has the freedom and right to contradict you.

In fact, the BEST RELATIONSHIPS leverage this freedom for your development and your good.

If we only ever followed Jesus because he agreed with us in everything we think - we don’t have a friend. We don’t even have a counselor. We have a mirror.

Mirrors don’t change the world.

The reason Jesus is so offensive is because Jesus is PERSONAL.

And your relationship with Jesus becomes a personal relationship.

Which means there will come a time where you will say red and he will say blue. You will say go and he will say stay. You will say yes and he will say no.

It’s feature not a bug.

If you take away his relational nature you’ll take away the offense of Christmas. But that won’t be the Jesus of the Bible.

UNDERSTANDING THE SCANDAL

The truth is, Jesus is offensive. We shouldn’t add to the reasons people get offended by Jesus but neither should we apologize.

Instead of apologizing for the offense that Jesus causes we should come to understand why we get so triggered.

What we see in this text is a reminder of WHY Jesus is so offensive.

The reasons that are given for Jesus’ offense actually tie back in to the original offense of Christmas.

And so I want to close our time today with the original Christmas scandal.

It’s actually contained in what the people say about Jesus when he begins to teach in his hometown synagogue. Matthew 13:55-56

Matthew 13:55–56 CSB

55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? 56 And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things?”

What these questions reveal is that scandal of Jesus according to the people of his hometown was his ordinariness.

What business does an ordinary guy like Jesus have with this kind of influence and social impact?

For them, Jesus was too mundane and too commonplace. He was unimpressive.

Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? (nobody special…no rabbi or special trade)

Isn’t this Mary’s son? (an uncommon designation. A veiled reference to Mary’s out of wedlock pregnancy)

Isn’t this the sibling of James, Joseph, Simon & Judas? Isn’t Tom dating one of his sisters? Are you kidding me with this guy?

I imagine there was some lady in that town who said “I used to babysit Jesus when he was a kid. I wiped snotty nose. NO WAY he’s the Messiah!” He’s too ordinary. He’s one of US.

An Unimpressive Savior

Some people are offended by Christmas because Jesus is an unimpressive Savior.

I know for many Muslims this is an offense. Jesus can be a human prophet but there’s no way he’s God in the flesh.

Allah doesn’t wipe himself after going to the bathroom. Allah doesn’t condescend to take on human flesh.

But that’s the whole point of Christmas. What is not assumed cannot be redeemed. Jesus had to take on flesh so that he could heal our flesh.

But it’s actually more profound than that. Not only did Jesus take on human flesh. He did so in the most lowliest of ways.

The most ordinary. The most unimpressive.

He was born in a manger, not a civic center of a global trade hub.

His birth announcement was to shepherds (low class/blue collar)

He was born to a teenage virgin and had a carpenter for a Father.

The world is trained to look for greatness in a certain kind of package and Jesus was not wrapped in that kind of paper.

That’s why Jesus offends so many people.

He’s a stumbling block to the Jews and utter foolishness to the Gentiles, but for those of us who are being saved Jesus is the wisdom and the power of God.

Offended By the Ordinary

It may be offensive, but God loves to work through the ordinary. In fact, it’s his FAVORITE way to work.

Ordinary churches

Ordinary families

Ordinary individuals

Ordinary experiences

Jesus choose 12 men to create a movement that changed the world. But he selected some of the most unlikely individuals.

Fishermen, tax collector, zealot, jobless poor teenagers?

The God-man, Jesus - in his humanity was unimpressive. But so also are the followers of his God-man.

Which leads to the second layer of the original offense of Christmas.

UNWORTHY SINNERS

Some people are offended by Christmas because Jesus, in his humanity, is an unimpressive savior.

Others are offended by Jesus because his message of salvation is reserved for unworthy sinners.

As we’ve seen in these parables, the Kingdom is universally offered to anyone who has ears to hear. But the kingdom is only received by people whose heart is in the right condition.

But that’s what makes the Gospel message so universally offensive.

We don’t become candidates for salvation by reaching a certain standard of righteousness or talent or individual capacity.

It’s actually the opposite.

It is only the “poor in Spirit” who inherit the Kingdom.

It’s reserved for people who know themselves to be sinful. Unimpressive to God and unworthy

The Gospel offends the pride of EVERY person because it says that no matter how impressive you may be - morally, intellectually, socially, or any other way - you’re not impressive enough to be saved.

There is no good that is GOOD ENOUGH for God.

That’s why Jesus came and lived the life you should’ve lived and died the death you deserved to die.

The offense of Christmas isn’t just the humility of the savior, it’s the humility required for those being saved.

It doesn’t depend on your moral performance or historical record. You become rightly related to God based on the moral record of somebody else.

Offended by Grace

There is no parallel to this message in any other religion in the world. Every other religion sees salvation as something that you achieve.

It’s an arduous process of seeking enlightenment and proving yourself worthy.

The idea that salvation could be received in a single stroke by an act that even a 5 year old could do is scandalous. It’s offensive. And people are offended by it.

People say, “that’s too easy. What do you mean? That’s it? That’s all I have to do?”

They’d rather have an eight fold path. Five pillars. Three daily prayers. Something I can control. Something I can manage myself.

It offends our human pride but God’s grace cannot be earned!

And what we do not earn for ourselves cannot rightly be withheld from others.

I know people who struggle with the idea of Christianity because they could try and live a morally impressive life for 50+ years and be denied entrance into heaven because their moral record didn’t measure up to God’s standard.

Whereas a convicted and well known serial killer could spend 50+ years victimizing people and their families and on his death bed make a genuine confession that repented of his sins and trusted in Jesus for salvation and be granted entrance into heaven in spite of his horrendous moral record.

That’s offensive. But that’s grace.

Salvation can only be received by people who admit they have a problem they cannot solve themselves.

It’s not for people who say “I can.” It’s for people who say, “I can’t.” It’s for people who have a history full of making bad decisions instead of good ones.

The glory of Christmas is that we can be DEEPLY FLAWED and simultaneously DEEPLY LOVED. All because of what Christ has done.

As Tim Keller Summarized it:

Other religions say, “The good are in, and the bad are out. The disciplined are in, and the undisciplined are out.” The glory of the gospel is because of the grace of Jesus Christ, the humbled are in, and the proud are out.

The Miracle of Christmas

So the original offense of Christmas is that an unimpressive savior offers salvation but only to unworthy sinners.

Christmas is offensive because of an ordinary Christ and an overly simple Gospel.

And for that reason, many people will reject it.

But for those who don’t reject it, there is a miracle that awaits.

Our passage ends on a tragic note. Matthew 13:58

Matthew 13:58 CSB

58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

The reason I want to draw your attention to that verse is because it reminds us that even though Christmas may be offensively ordinary.

The true POWER of Christmas is anything but.

Beyond the Christmas scandal lays a Christmas miracle.

If you can look past the offense and by faith receive both the messenger and his message, then you too can experience the miracle of Christmas.

Here’s how John expressed it in his Gospel.

John 1:10–13 CSB

10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

The offense of Christmas is that Jesus may not look like what we expect him to look like. And he may not tell us what we expected to hear on how to be made right with God.

But if we will look beyond the Christmas scandal we can receive a Christmas miracle.

We will be given the right to be children of God.

Regenerating Repentance & Faith

How does that happen? There are two things according to this text.

The first is a response that we have to make.

The second is a miracle that God has to perform.

Our response is one of believing and receiving.

God’s response is one of enablement and rebirth.

Believe + Receive

First, let’s look at our response. We must believe + receive.

What does it mean to “believe on Jesus’ name.”

It means more than intellectual ascent to the fact that Jesus existed and claimed to be God and performed miracles and things like that.

The Bible says even the demons believe that truth about Jesus and shudder. That’s not the kind of faith that saves a person.

Saving faith is an act of the mind and of the will. It’s belief that results in behavior.

It means coming to understand that Jesus has given up everything in order for you to be reconciled to God so in response you surrender everything in order to receive him into your life.

In other words it’s believing (mind) but it’s also receiving (soul).

That’s why every act of faith is preceded by an act of repentance.

Repentance is agreeing with God about the fact of your situation. Namely, your sins have separated you from your creator and there’s nothing you can do to remedy that alienation between you and God.

Having agreed with God about the bad news you also come to agree with God about the good news - namely, that in his great love for you he sent Jesus to live a sinless life of love in your place and die a sinners death on your behalf.

Enable + Rebirth

When you exercise that kind of faith then God does something in your heart that is nothing short of supernatural.

The text describes this at two levels.

God gives you the right… (enablement)

God gives you new life… (rebirth)

Through Faith, God gives you the right to become his child.

The word translated “right” is the Greek word exosuia. It means authority or power to do a certain thing.

When the Bible talks about salvation it describes in terms of a gift because every element of our salvation is enabled and performed by God.

We have a responsibility to respond but even our faith is a gracious enablement by the Holy Spirit. You can call it what you want. (prevenient grace, enabling grace, etc)

It’s not that God saves you so that you can then exercise faith. Rather, God graciously opens your eyes to your need to be saved.

He opens your eyes to understand that your drowning so that you can then reach out and grab the life vest.

When you reach out and grab that gift then God performs an additional grace.

John describes it as a spiritual “rebirth.” You are reborn. Except this birth is not like a physical birth in that it’s achieved through the will of man. This birth is a supernatural birth in that it’s performed by the will of God.

When you believe then your Father in heaven will regenerate your heart so that you become born again.

A new life. A living hope. A new future. A certain glory.

Conclusion

Have you made that decision? Are you able this Christmas Eve to look past the offensive nature of Christmas and receive this miracle into your heart?

If you haven’t I’m going to invite you to pray a prayer that will give you an opportunity to do just that.

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