[notes] in 2015

(This isn’t an entry. This is me taking notes on a sermon for lack of a notebook.)

I miss Waumba Land. I miss singing and getting chills and everyone singing their hearts out.

“We tend to hold on to things that hold us back.” “Most of the things that you resist about church are things that the church should resist about itself.”

Top 3 applications:
“Love God
Love one another
Love your enemy”

“The resistible factor isn’t the new things that added, but the old things that should have been left behind got added back in.”

Temple model:
Sacred places
Sacred texts
Sacred men
Sincere followers

“More about superstition than it is about sincerity.” And if you don’t do what the sacred men (always men) say, God will judge you. The temple model is alive and well all over the world, all over religions. And it is alive and well in the local church. Grants extraordinary power to sacred men (always men!) to interpret the meaning of sacred texts in sacred places.

Isn’t that exactly what this is?

The arrival of Jesus signaled the end of the temple model for everyone in the entire world, for the entire planet, and the beginning of something entirely new.

There would be no more sacred places. Because Jesus would teach that you are sacred. And when you are standing on what you think is sacred ground, everyone around you is standing on the most sacred piece of dirt ever created.

You would no longer need a high priest.
No one would have to tell you how to please God.
Nobody else would have to go before you.

Not temple model 2.0. Complete departure. Jesus predicted a new movement. Church original Greek is eklesia: gathering. In the first English translation, the word ‘church’ does not appear. It’s a “congregation” (William Tell). And he was burned at the stake for making that term. Then the smart people picked a German word, and that’s where we got church.

“No more sacred spaces.” –> veil was ripped.
And Jesus said “I will be with them wherever they go.”

Before new covenant (arrangement), you had to have a high priest. The old approach to God is over. OVER. Regardless of name or deities.

The final sacrifice for sin, not just for us good Jews.

“The crowd went silent. Jesus said, “do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I’ve not come to abolish them; I’ve come to fulfill them.” Jesus said, “The law leads to me, and the law ends with me.”“

Old Testament a cocoon, and from the cocoon, the Savior of the World burst forth.

We have to have behavior guardrails. But far more simple than 600 laws. A brand new ethic. “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, you must love one another.” Not random acts of kindness, or bring you a meal when you’re sick. He had just taken off his outer garment as a rabbi, put a towel around his waist, and washed their stinking feet. And they were so uncomfortable.

Jesus’s hands had touched Lazarus, had touched mud. He was super unclean.

“You will never be greater than your master, and I washed your feet.” He took the entire leadership paradigm and turned it upside down.

When you start thinking that you’re one of those sacred people, you get that towel out and you wash some feet. That’s what the new movement was supposed to look like. “By this, everyone will know that you’re my disciples.”

JESUS GAVE NEW MEANING TO PASSOVER.

When Jesus changed the significance of Passover, they all should have gotten up and left the room.

No more sacred places. No more special people. All of the Old Testament laws reduced to a single verb. And things got off to an amazing start… and the temple model thinking began to sneak back in. They just couldn’t let go of the old way because their consciousnesses had been so fine-tuned to that paradigm.