The Hard Teacher
The Hard Sayings of Jesus • Sermon • Submitted
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· 8 viewsJesus is a hard teacher because he wants to get us to see the greater truth.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Look back on your life. Who has been your hardest teacher?
I’ve had several. One was a flamboyant fourth-grade teacher named Mrs. Hurt. She would come to class draped in a robe with a beret on her head of snowy white hair. She took no guff.
She taught many things, but her pet peeve was handwriting. Circles had to be precise. Words had to come out just right.
While she was hard, the truth is I learned more from Mrs. Hurt than I did college professors with a slew of worthless degrees.
We need hard teachers. They tell us the truth, demand excellence, and push us to where we never thought we could go.
And that is true about the Christian life. Jesus came teaching, as the text says. But, how he came teaching was another thing.
We tend to see Jesus as a patient, easy-going teacher. I want us to see another picture of Jesus, the portrait of the one who broaches no nonsense.
In fact, many of Jesus’ teachings make us cringe so much so that we soften them through interpretation.
His disciples knew how hard it was. They misunderstood and fell short easily. The difference is Jesus kept to the teaching while helping his followers to attain those unreachable heights.
So over the next several weeks, I want us to settle in and revisit verses that can disturb our spiritual peace. But that peace needs a disturbance.
Let’s look at the hard sayings of Jesus.
Let’s start by asking the question, “what did Jesus do as a teacher, and why did he do that?”
Discussion
Discussion
How Jesus Taught
How Jesus Taught
Jesus was a teacher. And good teachers have many arrows in their quivers.
I had a teacher who taught me to write well, who used a paper cup with a beer-soaked cotton ball. It was a lesson that stuck and stuck like dried chewing gum.
Jesus did that. He wanted to drill into the heart, to implant God’s truth to change the person. And he employed many different methods.
Parable
Parable
The one with which we are most familiar is the parable. Parables have been described in many ways. The word is a trainwreck of two words that comes out “to cast alongside.” It places life adjacent to principle to convey the idea. The comparison makes the difficult tangible.
Jesus employed familiar images.
Seeds in the hands of a sower.
Birds nesting in branches.
Workmen lined up at the end of the day to get their pay.
He had a purpose. Sometimes these common elements were lost on people. So, he explained to his disciples:
And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that
“ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ”
Parables both revealed and concealed. It was not the story that made the meaning clear. It was the heart of the hearer.
But there was more to Jesus than, “let me tell you a story.”
Hyperbole
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is an overstatement used to make a serious point.
For instance, if a child wanders away from a parent in the store, the parent frantically
searches to him.
Once he finds them wants to make his point, he might say, “I am so relieved. If you do that again, I am going to kill you.” This is not a statement of homicide but an exaggeration to reinforce the point, “don’t stray again.” Only the dull miss the point.
Jesus loves to overdraw grotesque images.
For instance,
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
Is he really talking about self-mutilation? A case, a bad case, could be made for the literal sense that we ought to pile up eyeballs when we cannot control what we see. But then, one of the requirements to be Christian would be blindness. Doesn’t make sense, does it?
Or take another popular one.
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
As I grew up, I watched preachers do mental and verbal contortions to make this picture "fit.” Yet, Jesus is speaking to the rich’s difficulty to empty themselves enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. The best way to get that point across is to stretch it out of shape. We can get the point with a silent chuckle.
But much of Jesus’ teaching fit into a third category.
Aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is a pithy observation that contains a general truth. For instance, we have them:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Jesus employed them often.
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Or...
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
We have many of these from the mouth of Jesus.
But some of them, Jesus sharpens to a point, one that pokes and prods and creates pain.
The sharpened pencil writes best.
Let's look at a passage this morning from which this series gets its genesis.
The Hard Word
The Hard Word
In John 6, John draws a definite line in the ministry of Jesus. Before this passage this morning, it is all skyrockets. From this passage forward, it is an ever-escalating downhill journey ending at Calvary. Let’s look at this turning point.
This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.
The passage gives us the curtain behind the stage. Jesus has been teaching about his identity. He is the bread of heaven sent by God to nourish their souls. He said, “I’m the new manna.” We will say more about that in a future lesson, but that’s a bold statement. That means that he, and only he, is sent by God to be their bread. If they have no part of him, they starve to death.
And it is by no accident that it occurs in a familiar place for Jesus. It is the Capernaum synagogue, the place he might have worshipped as a boy. However, something was true about the synagogue of the first century. It was familiar and repetitive. Every three years, the same passage was made. It was the ancient equivalent of the country church where the Bible class exchange sounds like this:
“Brother Jones, what do you think Jesus means by that.”
“Well, brother Smith, it looks it means what is say.”
“Brother Jones, what does it say.”
“Brother Smith, it says what it means.”
Thank you, brother Jones, let's go to the next verse.”
The doctrine rehearsed. The soul settled. The synagogue was a place where faith was clarified and codexed. It also meant they grew dull to God’s ways.
It is here that Jesus gets a reaction to his revelation of ident
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
It was a “hard” saying.”
The word means sharp, bitter, hard, and rough. The Greek word was skleros, from which we get arteriosclerosis which is heart disease.
As a boy, older people had “hardening of the arteries.” The doctors used the fancy term. What Jesus said to them was a boulder in the way. The truth is it was not the saying. They had “hardening of the spiritual heart.”
They said, “who can listen?” It doesn’t mean they don’t understand. It is apparent they understand it only too well. Instead, they cannot buy into that concept. They refuse to believe it. Jesus, from that backwater of Nazareth, is not God’s son.
And that sense grew into several reactions.
But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?
They grumbled. That low growl indicating something is not correct. A hungry child sitting in the back seat mutters about no one caring if he wants something to eat.
And it also caused offense. It was technically a stumbling block, something you catch your toe on. This idea stood in their way of following Jesus.
And that led to decisions.
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
It meant that they decided the life they had left to follow Jesus was more appealing. They went back to what they were doing, to their settled world, something that did not challenge them so much.
It comes down to the fact that you have to choose to follow the hard or retreat to the easy.
Jesus wants to test the mettle of his disciples. So he asks the question:
So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,
Modern translations obscure what Jesus really says. He really asks it this way, “You are not going too, are you?
It was Peter who spoke for the group. Jesus had the word of eternal life. The choice was between easy, mundane living or hard but eternal life. And they made their choice, no matter how hard it was.
But I think it is a fair question to ask, “Why does Jesus make it hard?”It meant that they decided the life they had left to follow Jesus was more appealing. They went back to what they were doing, to their settled world, n something that did not challenge them so much.
It comes down to the fact that you have to choose to follow the hard or retreat to the easy.
But I think it a fair question to ask, “why did Jesus make it hard? What purpose did he have?”
The Reason
The Reason
Most of what Jesus says is contrary to modern church growth theory. We want more people, not less. We need to make it easy to come to Christ, remove all the barriers.
But Jesus put barriers the way for a particular reason.
People, including all of us, need our apple cart turned over periodically. Their goal was to reinforce what was already accepted in the synagogue (and some modern churches). We nod in agreement, and no change is required.
Jesus wanted to take them by their spiritual lapels and shake them. Because, as we see every day, many would rather sit in the synagogue than follow Jesus.
Open Eyes
Open Eyes
His teaching was to open the eyes of the sensible who said, “now, don’t take this too seriously. Don’t we do that.”
We will visit many of the passages in this series we have “dumbed down” to interpret them in ways to make them palatable and acceptable. But in doing so, we drain the blood from them that makes the teaching of Jesus alive. Jesus wants us, not just them, to see the stark reality of Christianity.
Enliven Minds
Enliven Minds
Jesus wanted to get people to think. And thinking is the hardest thing to pry out of human beings.
We like what we think already, and new things require energy. The hard sayings of Jesus reached into their minds and jostled them, and rearranged preconceived notions.
I know how hard that is.
Preachers tend to find themselves amid conflict. Usually, it is because of misunderstanding, and because we say a lot, it is easy to be misunderstood.
When I was much young, I did something that got completely under one of our church members’ skin. He took issue with it and me. And, what I have learned over the years is that what they complain about is not really what is bothering them. That means you have to peel an issue like an onion, a layer at a time. After going for about an hour and a half, I asked, “And what else is bothering you?”
He looked at me and said, “I don’t like how you preach.” So I asked the follow-up question, “Exactly what don’t you like?”
“When you preach, you make me think, and I just hate having to think.”
At that point, I could not help myself. I responded, “is there a better place to think than church?”
He and many of his kin do not believe it is.
That’s what Jesus was doing, clearing way mental cobwebs to find a place for truth to live.
Christianity Is Difficult
Christianity Is Difficult
Inevitably, the reason the sayings are hard is that the life is hard. The Christian life demands so much. It demands complete surrender of will to Christ. Then, it requires a higher moral level. Christ refuses to leave us alone to settle into our lives.
In short, the sayings are hard because Christianity is demanding.
And others agree.
Mark Twain said, “I am not troubled by the things in the Bible which I do not understand, but I am troubled by those things which I do understand and which I find very difficult to measure up to.”
G. K. Chesterton, the great writer and thinker of the 19th century, remarked, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
Conclusion
Conclusion
We come to this series to let Jesus stomp on our toes. I have discovered in 45 years of preaching that people want toes stepped on, just not theirs. Jesus stomps on all of our spiritual bunions.
We will feel uncomfortable and be tempted to smooth over the words of Jesus with clever interpretation. But that robs scripture of its power and makes the human interpreter superior to the divine spokesman.
If they rub us the wrong way, they are doing their job. They expose the raw spiritual nerve. We would prefer novocaine. Instead, we must grow into the challenge and allow ourselves to be pushed. Jesus wrings out of our souls the dirty spiritual dishwater.
So, let’s do three things through this series.
Find the meaning
Find the meaning
What did Jesus really mean? Let’s not settle for “what we think Jesus meant.” It will exact some toil from us.
Feel the Pain
Feel the Pain
Many of the sayings we will examine will bother us. The pain, though, is an indicator of a place we want to avoid. For the sake of our growth, we need to feel it.
Follow the Way
Follow the Way
Jesus lays out a path to heaven. It is hard but in the end rewarding. Will we follow what he says.
It is something that will change us if we let it. It did for Augustine.
Augustine was a North African who became wholly Roman. As he grew into adulthood, he became profligate. He had many affairs with many women. He produced several children born out of wedlock, in which he was not interested. He found himself engorged in the lowest of life available.
One day, he was reading books, and one caught his attention. It made a reference to the apostle Paul when he talked about carousing and how it fed the animal instincts that seemed to control Augustine’s life). He heard an inner voice saying, “Take and read.” He followed the voice and was baptized.
And he described his life:
Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.
Perhaps, as we turn over the hard sayings of Jesus, our souls will burn for his peace.