LifeWay Bible Studies for Life Series for September 9: High expectations

Playing golf with a friend one day, my partner and I found ourselves stuck behind some slower players. At each hole, we had more time than we wanted just to visit. What we wanted to do was keep playing golf. It turned out the down time was a blessing.

My friend began to talk about some personal concerns. “At 51,” he said, “I’m still living paycheck to paycheck. I feel like a financial failure.” We talked about our mutual concerns and how much we had in common. He is a great husband and father to his children. Just because he doesn’t have a lot of money in the bank shouldn’t make him feel like a loser.  

It occurred to us that, among others, one of our challenges is we live in a very wealthy community. Mansions cover hillsides all around. I suggested to my friend he may feel like a failure because he spends too much time comparing himself to others. Failure always is relative. Both he and I might need to rethink the standard by which we measure ourselves.  

One of the greatest challenges believers face is the willingness to rethink their faith from time to time. In the text we have for today, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you,” six different times as he referenced the new standard by which he was calling his followers to live. Those six times covered a variety of topics including murder, adultery, divorce, dishonesty, revenge and how to deal with enemies. That’s a broad spectrum and, in many ways, restates the fundamental spirit of the original Ten Commandments.

“You have heard that it was said.” What have we heard? Our culture communicates many things to us every single hour of every single day. From billboards on the commute to and from work, to radio, to television, the movies and social media via the Internet, the list is endless. Those don’t even count the messages we are sent by what we simply observe in the lives of others. The way people dress, the cars they drive and the homes they buy whether they can afford them or not all send messages. Every day, we hear from all those sources that, in order to be someone who matters in this world, we have to obtain and maintain those standards and, worse, for our children.

The challenge, as followers of Jesus, is to filter every message we receive through the “But I say to you,” words of Jesus. This is not an easy task and brings to light the fact that being a disciple involves serious intellectual discipline. If we fail to do this filtering, we find ourselves simply falling in line with those messages that lead to true spiritual death even while we still are alive. This discipline will many times involve rethinking teachings we received from people we love and respect dearly, even our parents or our religious communities. Every saying Jesus challenged originated in the religious tradition of those listening to him that day.

When I was in high school, I remember telling my older sister I didn’t drink. She asked me why. I told her I didn’t drink because my parents told me it wasn’t good enough. My older and wiser sister said to me: “That’s not good enough anymore. If you aren’t going to drink, then you have to make that decision for yourself. Just because Mom and Dad said so isn’t good enough for you anymore.” What she was trying to do was get me to own my own values and accept responsibility for my ways of thinking.  

Earlier generations taught us packing the church house on Sunday mornings at 11 was the ultimate standard by which we should measure a church’s vitality and fulfillment of the Great Commission. Many churches are discovering that, in this culture, rethinking that standard is essential. We heard it said that full auditoriums were the standard of church success. Jesus is calling this generation to new ways of getting beyond the four walls of the church in order to take the church to the people who never will darken its doors.

Jesus clearly is stating that God is as concerned with the inner character of a person as God is concerned with that person’s outward behavior. We are the ones who see the world and people in one dimension. God sees the world and the people in it in three dimensions, at least. God is as aware of the thoughts of our minds as God is aware of the actions of our bodies.  

That’s why the Apostle Paul wrote: “Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind …” (Romans 12:1-2). Everything we do with our bodies and everything we think with our minds is to be surrendered to God because, in the way we were created, physical and spiritual are melded together as one and the same spiritual event.  

Very few of us ever would take another human life in an act of capital murder. God is just as concerned with unresolved anger that lurks in our hearts. Every murder begins with murder. Yet, even anger that doesn’t lead to murder has its own sinister way of destroying our souls from the inside out and, sometimes, those who get too close. It could be argued that many churches are destroyed by the unresolved anger in the hearts of its membership—anger at others or at ministers or whatever—that is never confessed and purged by the Holy Spirit.

So it is with adultery. God certainly doesn’t want married people sleeping with others to whom they are not married. Those who are married are responsible equally for guarding their thought life. Every act of adultery begins in the heart. Yet, many marriages are ruined by spouses who, though they never sleep with another, give free reign to their lustful imaginations and thereby abandon the true emotional and spiritual intimacy essential to building a strong marriage.

To be a follower of Jesus means to see ourselves as God sees us—as people whose hearts, whose most private beings, are servants of God even as we use our physical bodies to honor God. This way of life demands constantly filtering what we have been told by others through the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.