We can be so familiar with the stories about Jesus in the Gospels that we miss (or skip right over) some of the strangest, most shocking, or surprisingly humorous things that Jesus says. This four-week series explores four of these kinds of statements from Jesus, revealing important truths in strange places and reminding us that Scripture contains wild and wonderful things if we are just willing to look for them.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
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Week 1
- Text: Luke 14:25–27
- Topic(s): Sacrifice, Relationships, Faith
- Big Idea of the Message: Our families are gifts from God, but our ultimate allegiance is to Christ.
- Application Point: Prioritize love for Christ above all else, rather than allowing lower loves and loyalties to take priority.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- We all have different definitions and experiences of family. Karis Lee describes how living in the Middle East changed her and her family’s understanding of that word: “When my family and I moved to the Middle East, ‘family ties’ took on a whole new meaning for me. I could not believe how many students at my school knew how their aunt’s grandfather’s brother was so-and-so’s grandmother’s nephew’s in-law. Every weekend, one of my best friends would have family ‘reunions’ with her extended family—both sides. As an Asian American with most of my relatives living in different parts of America and Korea, I was lucky if we got in a family reunion with at least one side every couple years” (Karis Lee, “Jesus’ Command to Love (and Hate) Our Family,” Christianity Today, July 16, 2014, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/july-web-only/family-ties.html). As we grow up, we learn what is “normal” for different families, that other families look different from ours, and that people feel differently than we do about the people who make up our closest relationships at home.
- What Jesus says about family in this passage should be pretty shocking to us! It is one of the few times Jesus uses words that surprise us with their harshness. It is also one of those weird, confusing, or uncomfortable passages that we can be tempted to explain away. In his book on family, Russell Moore says that when we talk about this verse, we tend to spend more time on what it doesn’t say than on what it does. We’re right to caution against taking it literally (there are plenty of other descriptions in the Old and New Testament about loving, respecting, and caring for your family), but we can spend so much time on that point that we do not explain what the verse does mean. “Family is not the gospel. If you think that family is the source of ultimate meaning in your life, then you will expect your family to make you happy, to live up to your expectations” (Russell Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home [Nashville: B&H, 2018], 295).
- Why does Jesus use such strong language if he does not want us to literally hate our families? In Matthew, Jesus makes his point a little more clearly: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (10:37). We can also look to Genesis 29:30–31, when Jacob’s preferential love for Rachel is described as hating Leah, or in Deuteronomy 21:15-17, where the contrast between loved and unloved is used to describe preference or priority. “A person who commits himself or herself to Christ will develop a greater love for both neighbor and family, although at times loving and following Christ may be seen as renunciation, rejection, or hate if the family does not share the same commitment to Christ” (Robert H. Stein, Luke, The New American Commentary 24 [Nashville: B&H, 1992], 397).
- Is this some kind of strange initiation ritual for Jesus’s followers, that they have to deny their families? For adults, use the illustration of a cult or initiation rite in another culture: we all have images that come easily into our heads when we think of divisive and dangerous groups that require people to cut off contact from their families, perform dangerous or embarrassing rites to prove their loyalty, or deprive themselves of normal human comforts for no good reason. For youth, use the illustration of hazing or fraternity/sorority initiation: Is Jesus asking his followers to do similarly ridiculous or even harmful things to prove their loyalty and commitment? No. These are the forms we have in our minds, but they were not in the minds of the people Luke was writing to. Luke was writing primarily for Christians, instructing them in Jesus’s life, ministry, and death and encouraging them to continue living faithful lives. “Theophilus was to remember that it is not only the beginning of one’s Christian life that is important but above all how one perseveres (8:14–15). A half-hearted discipleship is doomed” (Stein, Luke, 399).
- Just like Jesus’s followers in his earthly ministry, we face a similar choice: to prioritize love for Christ above all else, or to allow lower loves and loyalties to take priority. For adults: we need to ask ourselves if we are living in a community in a church where these priorities are rightly ordered. We need to evaluate whether we really believe what Jesus said in Mark, that the followers assembled around him were his real mother and brothers, even more so than his biological mother and brothers (3:34–35). We can choose to make our community a place
that understands family in this way. For youth: It is easy to go through the motions at church, waiting to be entertained or encouraged, sitting passively and being taught, not taking responsibility for this place or recognizing that you belong to this family. You can choose, even now, to live like you are part of this family, the church, serving and encouraging others in your family. These are ways we learn to prioritize our love of Christ above all else.
Week 2
- Text: Mark 11:12–26
- Topic(s): Faith, Judgment, Corruption
- Big Idea of the Message: We are saved by faith, not by our broken and easily corrupted institutions or communities.
- Application Point: Live in faith in Christ, not faith in yourself, your church, or any leader.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- Showing is usually better than telling. For adults: A common piece of advice for writers is not to tell your reader that a character is a liar, but to show the character telling a lie (or getting caught in one); don’t tell your reader that a family is falling apart, but instead describe some fights or awkward silences that illustrate their specific points of tension and problems. For youth: This is why the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is so common. Most of us probably remember the details of movies or TV shows better than we remember the details a teacher tells us as a string of sentences. Use a picture from this list (https://fixthephoto.com/pictures–that–tell–a–story.html) to illustrate, for youth or adults. It would take pages of writing to describe the scene in any one of these pictures, but you understand the meaning and emotion of it in just moments by looking at it. In this passage, Jesus does something similar, showing what he means more than telling his disciples.
- The cursing of the fig tree is one of the strangest events in Mark’s Gospel (and maybe the reason Luke doesn’t include it and Matthew tells it in a different way). But it makes more sense when taken in its full context of the table-flipping in the temple and other prophetic actions in the Old Testament. Both of these actions— the cursing and table-flipping—are “prophetic actions that symbolize the same thing, the coming judgment on unfaithful Israel by the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.” In the case of the fig tree, the tree represents Israel (a comparison made in the Old Testament as well: Jeremiah 8:13; Hosea 9:10; Joel 1:6–7; Micah 7:1; Isaiah 34:4; Hosea 2:12). The tree looks like a healthy tree at first glance, but upon closer inspection it is bearing no fruit. The temple may have looked like it was thriving, but its outward appearance only hid the corruption and religious abuse under the surface. We might understand the table-flipping more easily as an act of prophetic judgment, but the cursing of the fig tree is reminiscent of many other prophetic object lessons: Isaiah walked around naked (Isaiah 20:1–6), Jeremiah hid a waistcloth to soil it (Jeremiah 13:1–11) and broke a clay jar (Jeremiah 19:1–3). Jesus does something similar here, using physical objects to make a larger, more spiritual point (James Brooks, Mark, The New American Commentary 23 [Nashville: B&H, 1991], 180–81).
- Many of us are so familiar with the temple incident here that we can miss the real meaning. It looks on the surface like Jesus is angry at the commercialization of a sacred place, and that may indeed be part of what’s going on. But it must be more than that, because buying and selling animals for sacrifice was normal and necessary; people traveling to the temple couldn’t be expected to bring what they needed. Instead, Jesus was attacking the corruption evident in these transactions: the two groups singled out are the money changers (exchanging different currencies for the temple tax) and people selling doves (the animal the poor would purchase for their sacrifice, whereas the wealthy would sacrifice bulls or lambs). The temple authorities approved sacrificial animals, and they coordinated the changing of money that could advantage or disadvantage the people traveling to the temple. This is a condemnation of their abuse of power. It is no wonder, then, that Jesus cited Jeremiah 7:11: “The Temple authorities have re-enacted the role of the generation before the exile, in that they do violence and rob with impunity and retreat, like bandits, to the safe haven of their robbers’ cave, which in this context is the Temple. In so doing, the Temple becomes not a place for worship but a place for violent robbery” (Kim Huat Tan, Mark: A New Covenant Commentary [Wipf and Stock, 2015], 153–56).
- Maybe you know someone (or are someone) with a ridiculous game-day ritual. For adults: maybe your friend needs to wear the same jersey every time their team plays, or they need to cheer in a certain way every time a point is scored. For youth: maybe you or a friend think that if you wear the same socks every day of a big tournament, you’ll have the luck you need to win. We all can adopt silly rituals that we think will magically make things go our way. In some ways that is similar to the temple. The temple was not the fruit of superstition (God instructed its building, and the sacrifices offered in it), but it was often treated by God’s people like a magic safeguard against God’s judgment or an implicit vindication of whatever they did. Earlier in Jeremiah’s temple sermon that Jesus references, Jeremiah faults the people for thinking they can do whatever they want but then claim safety from God’s judgment by repeating “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” (Jeremiah 7:4). God, through Jeremiah, calls these “deceptive words” (v. 4). The same is true in Jesus’s day: the temple does not save the people.
- The end of this passage answers the obvious questions Jesus’s disciples would have asked: “Well, if the temple is corrupt, and it does not guarantee our safety or salvation, what do we do? How do we communicate with God? How do we plead with him on behalf of our own needs and the needs of our neighbors? How do we have our sins forgiven?” Jesus answers in these last verses: we do not need the temple in order to be heard by God (v. 23) or to have our sins forgiven (v. 25). The same lesson is crucial for us today: we are saved by faith in Jesus, not by participating in broken (and often, corrupt) institutions. For youth: you are not “safe” or “saved” by going to church. Is your faith for real if you are hurt by those things? Can your faith withstand the discovery that those things are susceptible to corruption and sin? For adults: live in faith of Christ, not by relying upon leaders or institutions to create faith for you. Interrogate your own life: How have you relied upon other people to shore up your enthusiasm or belief? Lay those things aside and renew your faith in Christ alone.
Week 3
- Text: Matthew 23:23–36
- Topic(s): Judgment, Hypocrisy, Witness
- Big Idea of the Message: Those who misuse God’s Word, abuse their power, and hurt others will be judged by God.
- Application Point: Get the big picture—understand God’s heart for his creation and his people—and make those priorities your priorities.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- We have probably all had some experience with name-calling. For adults: we might remember, even to this day, the names we were called as children. We might also discipline our children when we hear them call other children mean names. For youth: we can probably each remember incredibly vividly the last mean name someone called us. We can also probably easily remember the last time someone called us something kind or uplifting. The names we are called— good or bad—have great effect on us because they are personal, powerful, and identity-shaping. This passage is jarring for us because Jesus not only uses some harsh language against the Pharisees, but he also uses some intense names for them: “blind guides” (v. 24), “hypocrites” (v. 27), sons of murderers (v. 31), “serpents” and “brood of vipers” (v. 33), murderers (v. 35). How should we understand Jesus, who is merciful and kind and compassionate, when he says these things?
- It’s important to note that this passage is not anti-Jewish: it is not condemning Jews or Judaism, or even all Pharisees, since not all of them were guilty of the abuses Jesus is condemning. Some Pharisees even made criticisms similar to the ones Jesus makes here. It is tempting (as it has been historically) for Christians to take passages like this and make sweeping judgments against Judaism, as well as sweeping judgments against the Pharisees, always placing ourselves in the position of the more righteous or faithful people. “What if, instead, we took the texts as an occasion to examine our own religious life and practice to see if the things Jesus speaks so heatedly against are to be found there?” (Anna Case-Winters, Matthew: A Theological Commentary on the Bible [Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2015], 262–63).
- This passage contains some of the seven “woes” against these Pharisees that Jesus gives. They each expound on certain faults or abuses, but they generally describe how these Pharisees and scribes have wrong priorities in both the world and in relation to God’s Word. They have focused on minor issues (like specific amounts of herbs to tithe) and ignored the more important biblical themes of justice and faithfulness. They have focused on their outward appearance (as whitewashed tombs) and ignored the conditions of their hearts (death is hiding inside). In short, they have majored on the minors and minored on the majors. They might be technically correct on some issues, but they missed the real intention and heart behind those issues.
- This is not uncommon for all kinds of people. It’s why we have the expression “missing the forest for the trees.” For adults: we can get so focused on the details of a big project for work that we completely lose focus on the main goal. “For example, imagine for a moment that you’re writing an important document or thesis. Several hours of focused work sees you making great progress. You’re really in the flow. Unfortunately, you interrupt your fluent writing to fix a typo. This then leads to you to choose to rephrase the whole sentence. Which then leads to you changing the whole paragraph. Ultimately, this starts you thinking that you need to change the content of your project in its entirety” (Leon Ho, “Why Details Can’t Go Before the Big Picture,” Lifehack, November 26, 2020, https://www.lifehack.org/667512/why–details–cant–go–before–the–big–picture). For youth: Sometimes we can get so focused on a specific skill that we lose focus on the larger goal. Imagine you want to get better at a specific skill in your sport, or nail a specific part of a piece of music or a skill in practicing your instrument. You get really great at one specific move or note, but you can’t connect that one skill to the larger game or piece of music. That’s what has happened for the Pharisees here: they got bogged down in some specific details but missed the big themes of their Scriptures.
- Jesus uses such harsh language here because of how deep these Pharisees’ misunderstanding was. He has to shock them out of complacency. He also knows that they have great power to lead others astray. When our communities misunderstand God’s revelation and action in the world, we will make grave mistakes. By the end of the passage, we see the end result of this misunderstanding for these Pharisees: “Of all the inconsistencies of these Jewish leaders, the one most serious and relevant to the immediate context of Passion Week is their rejection and martyrdom of God’s true spokespersons and, above all, of Jesus. Such hostility proves all the more horrific since ‘this generation’ disavows the sins of their forefathers and tries retrospectively to honor them through building and decorating cemetery memorials (vv. 29–30). But they admit they are linked by ancestry to the most wicked in Israel’s history, and they exhibit by their current rejection of Jesus their actual spiritual kinship to the rebellious Israelites of old (v. 31)” (Craig Blomberg, Matthew, The New American Commentary 22 [Nashville: B&H, 1992], 348).
- We need to make sure we are understanding the big picture. Jesus has harsh words for these Pharisees, but we are also prone to misunderstand what God emphasizes so strongly for us. For adults: Are we majoring on the majors? We need to evaluate our own hearts, families, and church to see if we are focusing on the things God focuses on or instead choosing our own emphases that make us feel better, more self-righteous, or more important. Jesus’s words about hypocrisy and misuse of God’s words are just as real and alive for us today. For youth: Do we understand what the big picture is? We need to spend time reading Scripture, discussing it, and asking questions so that we can even know what the big picture is
Week 4
- Text: Matthew 18:7–9
- Topic(s): Sin, Leadership, Community
- Big Idea of the Message: Sin will be judged, and we need to take it seriously. Application Point: Do whatever it takes to remove temptations from your life.
- Application Point: Do whatever it takes to remove temptations from your life.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- We’ve all seen someone overreact. For adults: one of your kids might throw a fit over not getting their way in some small thing, or the child you’re babysitting or caring for might bawl after barely hurting themselves. (For some examples, see this list of funny reasons kids were crying). For youth: maybe you’ve seen a friend lose a game or get a bad grade on a test and totally overreact. You figure there must be something else going on because this reaction is too much. You would be forgiven for thinking that of Jesus’s words here: Is cutting off your foot or plucking out your eye really necessary?
- Jesus is using extreme imagery to make a point, much like his words about families. Like many other confusing or seemingly contradictory passages, we can look to clearer passages in Scripture to help us understand more confusing ones. Jesus is not denigrating the body. Elsewhere, the Bible tells us that God formed us from our conception (Psalm 139:14), that we are God’s “masterpiece” (Ephesians 2:10), and that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Instead, Jesus is describing an intense approach to sin. He wants his disciples to “radically reject” anything that might lead others (the “little ones” in verse 6) or themselves into sin. He wants to emphasize that sin is not some minor problem or annoyance, but that they should take great care and vigilance to avoid things that might lead them into evil (Craig Blomberg, Matthew, The New American Commentary 22 [Nashville: B&H, 1992], 275).
- This passage is part of a whole, and its focus is not on our individual sin; it’s on how leaders treat the more vulnerable in their congregations. The earlier verses are about not causing “little ones” to sin (v. 6), and with Jesus’s words about children (vv. 1–4) earlier, it’s likely that he doesn’t only mean that anyone who causes children to sin is in trouble. “The disciples as church leaders must take care not to put any obstacle in their path. Furthermore, these leaders should not be so sure that they themselves cannot get tripped up. They must remove whatever causes them to stumble” (Anna Case-Winters, Matthew: A Theological Commentary on the Bible [Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2015], 222). These are convicting words for leaders of all kinds—we all have more spiritual influence over others than we might realize—but it also reminds all of us that we do not do this alone. We are connected in community, and our response to sin should also take others into account.
- Sometimes we need harsh words or scary pictures to really understand a point. It’s why tobacco companies are required to put explicit language and sometimes even images on their advertisements or products. It’s why the signs warning about a cliff show someone falling off it. It’s why a parent who sees their young child wandering into the street will yell at them. When we are wandering into great danger, we sometimes need to be shocked out of our complacency and reminded of the real threat in front of us.
- We all need to respond to sin with the kind of resolution and seriousness that these verses describe. For adults: we have to evaluate which temptations are too much for us to handle and need to be completely taken away from our lives; we need to find accountability in our relationships; and we need to take care in our example for younger people. For youth: one example of this kind of response to sin might include making some seemingly overreacting choices with our technology. Kenneth Berding uses this passage to talk about making intense technology choices to deal with pornography problems, but the same kind of advice (“cut it off!”) could apply to other sins we find ourselves tempted to in our technology use (jealousy, gossip, hate) (Kenneth Berding, “If Your Phone Causes You to Sin, Cut It Off,” The Good Book Blog, September 11, 2019, https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2019/if-your-phone-causes-you-tosin-cut-it-off).
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