Good morning Edge Church. My name is Neil Schori, and I’m one of the pastors here at The Edge, and we are so glad to have you join us today. We are at our very last Sunday of our series called The Blueprint: Spiritual Disciplines For a God-Filled Life. We really hope that this series has been encouraging to you in your pursuit of God instead of adding things to your life that you technically should do that ultimately will just weigh you down. Disciplines that aren’t driven by love turn into jobs that really do nothing but add to the busyness of our lives and schedules, and I don’t know about you, but there’s not a whole lot that is very life-giving to me when I just add one more thing to my schedule.
At the start of this year, I decided to do what many Christians do throughout their lives — I selected a Bible reading plan that goes all year long; and I was super motivated in January, and I got even really motivated into February, but, the truth is, by mid-February, I started having a really hard time engaging my heart to the passages, and I had a decision to make. I could force myself to mindlessly read, or I could show myself a little bit of grace, the same grace that God shows me and he shows you and just relax, trusting that God’s love for me actually really is not about my Bible reading schedule, but that he just loves me. So I hope that you’ve been as gracious to yourself as God is to you too.
Today, we’re going to talk about the discipline of celebration, and when you hear that, you might think that this is a great oxymoron. There’s stunning contrast in those two words because when we think of celebration, we think of parties, we think of excitement; and when we think of discipline, we think of ... not those things. At least people of my personality type don’t. But throughout the whole of Scripture, we see the celebrations that are built into the rhythm of life. They were designed to remind all of the people that God is for them and that he is their provider and he is their rescuer. These built-in moments that God has designed for us to commemorate his goodness to us so that every single generation will remember that he is good and that, for generations to come, people will recognize the precedent of God’s goodness, which makes them more likely to choose to follow Jesus on their own.
When God instituted the celebration of Passover in the Old Testament book of Exodus, he reminded his people of the importance of celebrating it annually so that people of every generation would know what he had done, and here’s an account of that. Exodus 12:24–27, it says:
24 “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, ’What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ’It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians’” (NIV).
So, today is Palm Sunday, and for Christians all over the world, we are recognizing the very last week in the earthly life of Jesus — as Jesus was starting to make his way into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, but actually, more importantly, to become the eternal sacrifice for the sins of all people. Here is one account of the start of that sacred day. It’s Luke 19:28–42.
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ’Why are you untying it?’ say, ’The Lord needs it.’”
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the ground.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes (NIV).
I want to ask you this. Have you ever really stopped to think about why you started following Jesus? Maybe you’re watching this today and you aren’t a Christian but you’ve considered being one. What would make Jesus appealing to you today?
It makes me think back to college when a friend of mine showed up at the campus ministry that I had just recently started attending, and that night he made the choice to follow Jesus with his life. And it was amazing because some people, it seems like, take forever to change, but he was one of those people that really just started changing radically, and he seemed to make his whole life about God. He literally would tell anybody that he encountered about this God who had saved him and had done so much in his life. His passion for sharing the Lord was infectious to all of us that he was hanging out with. It was weird though, a year or two later, he started having some serious health issues, but he entered into that struggle with this great confidence that God was going to heal him of his illness. But what happened was different. God actually didn’t do that, and my friend was so disappointed that he walked away from God, and he announced to all of us — really in the same way, like with this huge amount of energy — he said to all of us that he wasn’t just disappointed in God; he actually wasn’t sure if there really was a God. He didn’t even believe that God was real any longer.
That might sound extreme to some of us, but it really does happen, and the question that we may need to ask ourselves is: Why do I celebrate Jesus? The reality is harsh, but we need to face it because the Jesus that some of us want to celebrate might not exist in the form that we want to celebrate him.
2,000 years ago on that Palm Sunday, Jesus cried. Jesus wept over the condition of the people who were just celebrating him. But the people were celebrating a version of Jesus that wasn’t actually true. They imagined that they were welcoming Jesus in as this conquering king. They imagined that he was going to rule as this great military leader and he was going to punish all of the oppressors of the Jews. But Jesus wasn’t like that at all. Jesus came to take on the sins of the world. That means he came to rescue the Jews from their sins, and he came to rescue their oppressors from their sins so that everyone, everyone around would have a chance to come home to God.
We have to ask questions that are tough for us. We have to ask things like, “Is God still good when he lets bad things happen to really great people? Is God still good when he doesn’t will your preferred candidate into office? Is God still good when he doesn’t heal you of your illness?” There are all sorts of questions that we could ask, and you might want to ask yourself questions that are real to you because we need to make sure that we are celebrating the God who spoke the universe into existence rather than celebrating the one that we wish he would be.
So what should we celebrate about Jesus? What can we take our stand on? In other words, what is it about God that should inspire our spiritual discipline of celebration? I think that, in order for us to accurately answer that question, we need to see what it is that God himself celebrates and then walk in those steps. How can we apply that to our lives? Let’s never forget that our goal on earth was set for us by heaven. We need to walk in this. 1 John 2:3–6. It says:
3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did (NIV).
So for us, as followers of Jesus or for us as people who are thinking about becoming followers of Jesus, our goal is to become imitators of God even in how he celebrates. We want his heart to come into our heart so we can be directed by the Lord.
I was six years old when my grandpa died, and my grandma told me years later about one of their final conversations that she had with him as he started to slip away in the hospital. She was worried about how he was doing with God because he ultimately was turned off by organized church because of some significant financial improprieties committed by the pastor of their church at that time. And she was worried about how he was, and he smiled at her, and he just said to her, he said, “Honey, God is an old softie.” My grandpa knew that God sent Jesus to redeem him from his sin, and that doesn’t mean that God is soft on sin, but he has a soft heart for all of his kids. I believe particularly the ones that have been hurt.
When Jesus was walking on the earth, he consistently demonstrated his love by his actions and by his words, and just like we never run out of the need to hear that we’re loved by our friends and family, we certainly never run out of our need to hear that we are loved by our Father in heaven. I can’t think of a better picture of the love of God for us then this parable that Jesus shared in Luke 15:1–7. It says:
1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (NIV).
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ’Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent (NIV).
Life is weird today, and it was weird in the time of Jesus as well, because people often today, just like they did in his time, they can look really good when we just look at the externals of their lives, or of our lives. Because we can give a lot to charity or we can give a lot to the church. We can serve tirelessly. We can preach just like I am right now. So we can appear to be doing good and actually be doing good things, but here’s the problem: It’s when we look at those good things and we think that that is the measuring stick for who gets into heaven and who is kept out; that’s where we have an issue. That may be the standard that exists in the world’s economy, but it’s not the measuring stick that God uses for us to determine who makes it into heaven.
Heaven’s economy echoes the apostle Paul’s words to the church at Rome. Romans 3:23. It says:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (NIV).
The question that I want to ask you is: Do you find yourself in the story of the 99 people? Maybe you feel pretty good about yourself — maybe you think that you’re okay where you are — or do you know that you’re lost or you once were lost and then you were found by the grace and the love and the pursuit of this loving God. We see in this story that when even one of God’s children — and that even means you — when even one of us has a humble estimation of our goodness, and we are willing to turn away from our own way and turn to Jesus, that that triggers a celebration in heaven.
I want you to think about this. The maker of heaven and earth celebrates when one person turns to Jesus in repentance. Nothing makes the Father happier than when one of his children turns to him. And they don’t have to grovel. They literally just have to turn, and we get this picture that he runs to meet us when we turn to him so that he can escort us all the way safely home.
One of my lifelong best friends, his name is Eric, he drew an image that reminds him of how Jesus pursued him when he was lost, and then he had that image tattooed on his forearm. The Greek words in that image, it just simply says, “He leaves the 99.” This was Eric’s reminder to himself and to anyone who will listen that Jesus left the people who are safe, or thought they were, and he went for Eric. God is that personal. But this message isn’t just for the one; it’s actually for all of the people. It’s not just for a select few. It’s not for those to know a secret handshake, or they give a certain amount in church, or they’re from the right families, or they were raised on the right side of the tracks. No, this message, this message of Jesus, this message of the gospel is the most inclusive message that’s ever been. Why do I say that? Because there is not one person that God wants to exclude from the kingdom of heaven. Every single person that was born, or is here today, or will be born — God wants all of those people to join him in the kingdom. 2 Peter 3:9. It says:
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (NIV).
Let me say this again. This is for you. It is for you, that person who’s watching this that feels like you have done one too many things that have separated you from the heart of God. God wants you no matter what you’ve done. Here’s how you can make heaven explode in celebration today; you can do that. You have that choice. Acts 2:38–41, the apostle:
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day (NIV).
If you would like to take some next steps or talk about the next steps that you might take on your spiritual journey, just email me — neil@edgeaurora.com — and I would absolutely be honored to walk with you in that.
I want to leave you with some questions to consider today. We love to have you consider these because sermons are only as good as your application of them.
What spoke to you the most from this message?
What have you gotten wrong about God on your journey, and how did you change your thinking over time?
What is it about God that you are celebrating today? I don’t want you to try to give a right religious answer. I just really want you to share from your heart.
Stick with us because, in just a moment, we are going to make heaven celebrate as we baptized three of our very own children — Noel, Phoenix, and Sophia. God bless you.