It’s all too easy in life to get stuck in a rut. In what we say, in what we do … and actually also in what we think. And when someone challenges those things – often times we defend our actions, our words and our thoughts. But the sort of life we live, depends a lot on our ability to see things from a different perspective.

Hey, it’s easy to find ourselves in a rut – same old, same old, day after day, week after week, month after month. You know what they say, “a rut is just a coffin with the ends kicked out of it”. It’s like a tunnel, a trench, and it seems that we’re constantly locked into … well … just the same. And whilst most of us can easily identify the ruts we’re in – in our circumstances; in our relationships; things that seem to be headed nowhere; the job that sometimes seems to be headed nowhere; the dull routine of life that once used to excite us but now it’s just downright boring – you see we all can identify with this notion of the rut, I wonder how many of us realise how our thoughts and attitudes are also in a rut.

Now all of a sudden a few of us might start getting a bit uncomfortable because the moment someone comes along and challenges our attitudes we become all defensive. We treasure our attitudes dearly. It’s as though we’ve believed that we’re entitled somehow to see the world the way we see it even if our attitudes themselves are like a straight jacket constricting our lives, holding us back from being all we can be, and doing all we can do.

This week again on the program we’re taking a look at ‘How to Lead an Extraordinary Life’ simply by following Jesus around the dusty highways and byways of 1st Century Israel and seeing what He did, how He lived, what He said. And today importantly how He thought.

Have you ever met someone who’s critical and judgemental? Perhaps you’ve worked with someone like that or you’re married to someone like that. It’s simply not a lot of fun being around critical and judgemental people. They don’t bring out the best in us, do they? Most of us respond really to encouragement but criticism not so much. Of course sometimes we need criticism. Sometimes we need a wakeup call.

But you know what I really hate? It’s when someone who you is can see has so many faults of their own is the one who criticises me. There’s a name for that, it’s called hypocrisy. And when that person happens to be in a position of power over us it can make our lives incredibly miserable.

But imagine now that you or I are the critical hypocrites in someone else’s life. Imagine for a moment that we have power over someone else and all that we do is that we criticise them. Let me ask you this then. Is that any way to live an extraordinary life? When the people who are closest to us come to our funeral and they’re asked to speak about the impact that we’ve had on their lives, would they be saying the sorts of things we’d hope that they would say? Have a listen to how Jesus tackled this very issue. He confronts it head on:

Do not judge so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement that you make you will be judged and with the measure that you give will be the measure that you get. Why is it that you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye but you don’t see the log in your own. Or how can you say to your neighbour. ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’, while there’s a log in your own eye. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you’ll be able to see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

Jesus doesn’t mince His words, does He? He calls the spade a spade. And the powerful thing about this piece of wisdom that He shared with His followers and that I guess that what He’s sharing with you and me today is that He’s prepared to take a look at things from a completely different perspective.

Imagine for a moment that you and I have a critical and judgemental approach to other people, and frankly, at some point we all do, some more than others. Now all of a sudden, Jesus has something confronting to say to you and me about our bad attitudes, about our bad thinking, about our bad approach to relationships. Very directly. If you think about one relationship in your life where perhaps you’re being over-critical, over-judgemental, this piece of wisdom starts to bite doesn’t it? It’s starts to make us squirm because it’s challenging our attitude; it’s challenging an entrenched way of thinking and an entrenched way of behaving. And after all, isn’t that what a rut is in your life?

Some people have very few close valuable friendships because of this very thing. Because they’re always criticising, nitpicking. And the fruit of that, the result of that is that it robs them of the tender, intimate friendships and relationships they could be having. No one wants to be close to someone who always criticises them do they? I don’t, you don’t. And if we’re guilty of being the hypocritical, complaining, nitpicking party who’s always criticising other people then looking at that fault of ours is a powerful start to dealing with the problem.

And that’s the thing that I really want to focus on today. When someone comes to you with a different perspective on something are you threatened or are you open to learn. Most people are threatened. Most people get their hackles up and they defend their position as indefensible as it may be. And as a result they spend the rest of their lives living in a rut, in this case, missing out on some wonderful relationships.

Perhaps you’ve heard me talk about this man before. He’s a man called Heikki Malmberg. He comes originally from Finland. When I was a young army officer I worked under Heikki in the I.T. department of the army’s personnel agency. Now, Heikki has one of the most incredible minds. He’s sharp, brilliant in every way. And because He’s so smart you have to have your arguments sorted out and stacked up if you’re going to get him to change his mind on something. But the moment he realizes that you have an idea that’s better than his, he’ll drop his own idea like a hot potato.

I’m convinced that that’s the very reason that Heikki is one of the smartest people I know because he’s prepared to see things from a different perspective. Yes, he’s discerning, sure he’s not easily led or swayed or deceived but when someone else is right and he’s wrong he’ll grab onto their “right” and drop his “wrong” faster than you can say Heikki Malmberg. Another way of saying it is that he has a teachable heart.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of those people who were listening to Jesus talk about this tendency we all have of being over-critical. You have two choices. One is to open your heart and listen to Jesus and say to yourself, “Yes, you know what, He’s right. I need to do something about this in my life”. The other choice is to be threatened by this confronting teaching, to hang onto your own wrong attitudes and wrong behaviours, to keep criticising people for the rest of your life.

So which one of those two choices leads to the better life? Which one is going to give you the most extraordinary life? Pretty obvious isn’t it? So why is then, when someone like Jesus comes along and gives us two choices – one a better choice, and one a worse choice – that you and I are so prone to take the worse choice, the one that will ruin our lives? Because we’re in a rut in our thoughts and our deeds and we’ll defend that rut to the death.

Not much of a way of living life is it? Certainly no way to live an extraordinary life. So there you have it. One of the characteristics of Jesus that lead Him to lead an extraordinary life was the ability to see things and accept things from a different perspective. So, question: What sort of life will you lead, an ordinary one or an extraordinary one?

Pretty much everyone’s heard of the Golden Rule – you know do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Yeah, okay. That’s nice But what does it really mean, and what impact can it really have on the sort of life we end up living.

I’m really excited to be with you again today, because this week again on the program we’re talking about How to Live an Extraordinary Life’. And what can be more important than that. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing more precious in this world than life itself, the lives of others and in fact our own life.

From the moment you and I took our first breath and cried out our first cry in this world we began an extraordinary journey. A journey of highs and lows to be sure, but as I look back on the lows that have been mixed in with my highs so far in my 50-something years on this earth, I wouldn’t swap any of it. All those experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, together with the strands of DNA that God laid down in each cell of my body are what make me who I am today.

So, if given the choice of living an ordinary life or an extraordinary life, most of us, in theory at least, would choose the latter. But there are a couple of problems with that. The first one is that often we don’t know how to go about it. What constitutes an extraordinary life? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do you actually live it? That’s problem number one.

And problem number two is that whatever ‘extraordinary’ may mean, the one thing for certain is that it’s going to involve sacrifice, because no one does anything does extraordinary without sacrificing something else in their lives.

So today we’re going to do the same thing that we’ve been doing each day for the past few weeks, we’re going to take a look at one thing that Jesus said or did or thought. Because whatever you may think of Jesus or believe about Jesus or not believe about Jesus, He did live an extraordinary life on this earth. That’s for sure. Today I’d like to look at perhaps the single most famous, most well-remembered, most often quoted thing that Jesus said in His 32 or 33 years on planet earth. What is it? Well, it’s called the Golden Rule. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 12:

“In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you for this is the law and the prophets.”

When I was a young lad I had a pretty hard time of it at school. See, I was short and dumpy and I couldn’t run as fast as the other kids. I really couldn’t play sport any where near as well as the other boys did. I came from an immigrant family here in Australia and to some extent the other kids thought of me as a ‘Wog’. That was the name they gave to post-war migrants when I was a lad.

I played the piano and not cricket or football, I sang in the choir at school instead of hanging around with the other kids at lunchtime. I studied hard, I achieved high results, I was almost always at the top of the class in every subject and that, as things turned out, made things even worse. I was just different to the other kids. I wasn’t part of the in crowd. I wasn’t one of the beautiful people. I was your classic ugly duckling. And for me it wasn’t until much later in life that I discovered that I do have some gifts, I do have some abilities that are worthwhile.

But along the way there were a couple of kids who accepted me for who I was. One in my very junior years at Woonona East Primary School was a kid called Greg Sefton. We were only 7 or 8 years old but we were great mates. He lived not far from me and we often played together after school.

Now I haven’t seen Greg for over 40 years but I still remember his face, I still remember his voice as though it was just yesterday. He had a little black and white dog called ‘What’ so when you asked him ‘What’s your dog’s name?’ he’d answer ‘What?’ We’d played that joke over and over again a thousand times.

And then in my High School years there was a guy called Grant Dewar. Grant was and is a great guy. He just had his father who took his own life in our final year at school. Grant found his Dad lying dead on the kitchen floor. I remember his laugh and in fact a couple of years ago he heard this radio program and got in touch with me. We caught up when I visited the city where he lives and it was as though we had never been apart.

So why is Berni rabbiting on and telling you about these seemingly insignificant things about my childhood? Because to me they’re anything but insignificant. To me Greg and Grant are two of the most significant people in my life, looing back on it all. Because of all the hundreds of boys I came into contact in the 13 years of my schooling, these were the ones who accepted me for who I was. I would always be … different.

Most of the other boys I grew up, hey, I can’t even remember their names. I’ve never been good at remembering names but I can tell you story after story of the fun times that I remember having had with these two guys. Of all the hundreds of boys I grew up with, these two Greg Sefton and Grant Dewar are the extraordinary ones. Why? Because they treated me the way I wanted and needed to be treated and I shall treasure those fond memories for the rest of my life.

“In every thing do to others as you would have them do unto you for this is the law and the prophets.”

Do you see the power of that simple Golden Rule, if you and I would live an extraordinary life, that’s about all we really need to know, don’t you think? If there really is a God, and I’m absolutely in no doubt that there is, and He loves us with all that He is, it would be just like Him to send us Jesus to give us a powerful maxim like this one; an extraordinary life in a nutshell; an executive summary to top all executive summaries. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 12:

“In everything do unto others as you would have them do unto you for this is the law and the prophets”.

In other words, you can sum up the rest of the Bible in that one simple statement. What a brilliant measure for how to treat other people. Treat them just the way you would like to be treated in the same circumstances. When no one else takes you seriously, you want to be taken seriously right? When others shun you, you want to be accepted, right? When you are lonely you’d like someone to comfort you, right? When you’re dejected you’d like to be encouraged, right?

When we look at other people around us and we see the troubles that they have in their lives this standard of treating them, the way we’d like to be treated, means we just can’t stay indifferent to them. If I see someone in need and I put myself in their shoes that’s exactly what Jesus is inviting us to do here. And I have to say to myself, well, if I were in that situation this is how I’d like to be treated. And that right there is the thing that goes and motivates us to get off our backsides and to go and do unto them what we would have someone else do unto us should we find ourselves in that same situation.

Can I ask you something? Is any of this rocket science? Is any of this not obvious? It is obvious, so why do we do it? Just take this one simple lesson, this very simple lesson, the Golden Rule as it’s come to be known and let that drive how we treat other people. We’d end up living the most extraordinary lives imaginable. How many wars do you think there would be on this planet if everybody lived by that simple maxim, “In everything do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

So what are you and I going to do with that extraordinary wisdom? Are we going to let it just wash by? That would be a waste. On the other hand we could take a quick look around to see if there is anyone who needs to be treated the way we’d like to be treated at the moment. And should you choose to do that I guarantee you this one thing, you won’t have to look very far.

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Ask someone whether they’d like to live an extraordinary life, and most people will say, “of course I do”. But then all of a sudden, when they realise that that’s going to involve sacrifices, most people back off. Seems there’s a big difference between the theory and the practice.

When I finished High School, almost 40 years ago now, my grades were good enough to mean that I was selected to study medicine at Sydney University. And so I applied for a range of different of courses at different universities. It’s kind of how it worked back then. You applied for several things that interested you and then, depending on your grades, you received one or more offers on the table which you could choose from. Well, mine were law, medicine, computer sciences it was called back then and several others.

My parents really wanted me to become a doctor. That was considered to be the elite profession back then. If you made it into medicine at university then you really were made, if that makes sense. But something inside of me, well … I don’t know, I didn’t want to do medicine.

What do you really know at age 17 about what you’d be good at and what you enjoy and what you really want to spend the rest of your life doing? Nothing really. Fortunately they left it up to me and being a young lad with a sense of adventure, that desire to spread my wings and fly, I chose a career in the military instead.

Now I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked back on that decision in the years since and thank God that I didn’t become a doctor. I hate the sight of blood and being around all those sick people all the time, I just couldn’t imagine it. It’s just not me. I kind of chuckle to myself, and every time we talk about me being a doctor my wife Jacqui ends up shrieking with laughter or rolling her eyes into the back of her head. She knows me better than anyone on the planet and saying that I would make a good doctor would be like you telling me that you could fly to the moon by flapping your arms.

Now, given that I’m a bit of an academic I wouldn’t have had any problem with theory. I’m sure I could cope with all the study and the exams no problem. But my problem would come when you had to stick a needle into someone or cut them open with a knife and poke around inside them, and then put all the pieces back together in the right place and stitch them up again. See my problem with being a doctor isn’t the theory, it’s the practice.

And that’s the way it is for many of us when it comes down to living an extraordinary life. We don’t have any problem whatsoever with the theory. My beautiful daughter, Melissa, in High School decided she was going to be a famous tennis player. The only problem was, whenever she played tennis, well … she just wasn’t one to run after the ball.

There are plenty of us who want to lead an extraordinary life and we dream about it, but you don’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind. People who live extraordinary lives are the ones that realise that the theory isn’t enough. The people who live extraordinary lives are the ones that get out there in the game and give it a crack; the ones who are prepared to sacrifice and fail and get up and dust themselves off and just give it another go. And that’s exactly what Jesus taught us about living an extraordinary life. Have a listen. Matthew Chapter 7 beginning at verse 24:

Anyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who builds his house on a rock. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and they beat on that house but it didn’t fall because it had been founded on rock.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like the foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against the house and it fell and how great was its fall. Now when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowd were astounded at his teaching for He taught them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

Well should they have been amazed. All the religious leaders of their day were teaching waffle and theory that didn’t make people’s lives any better. They were teaching them how to follow all these laws and rules. But when Jesus put all that stuff under the microscope it seemed so irrelevant. Religious teaching of the day wasn’t making things better for the people; in fact it was making their lives worse. Giving them heavy religious rules to carry around, hey who needs that in their lives? But the stuff that Jesus was talking about, sure it was about the very same God as all the other religious leaders were teaching about, but He was teaching stuff that seemed to matter, real life stuff; things that people could take and do and live by that would make their lives better and other people’s lives better.

But Jesus was warning them here. He was saying to them in effect, “You can come along, you can listen, you can be wowed by what you hear, be entertained and be challenged, but if all you do is listen, what good is that going to you? None! Because when push comes to shove, when the going gets tough, it’s all going to come crashing down around your ears. But if you actually do the things I am telling you it will be like building your life on firm foundations. So just don’t sit there and listen to me, do it!” Maybe that’s where Nike got their slogan from.

And here’s the bit that really caps it off for me. When Jesus was done with His teaching, what did He do? Did He go back to His office and get out His text books and get some more theories so He could dish out yet another long, dry, boring sermon; yet another long theory lesson to the masses? Let’s have a listen here to the very next thing that He did straight after this famous Sermon on the Mount. Matthew Chapter 8 beginning at verse 1:

When Jesus came down from that mountain great crowds were following Him. And there was a leper who came to Him and knelt before Him and said, ‘Lord, if you choose you can make me clean.’ He stretched out His hand and said, ‘I do choose, be made clean.’ And immediately the man’s leprosy left him and he was cleansed. So Jesus said to him, ‘See that you don’t say anything to anyone but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them’.

What was the very next thing that Jesus did after this message on doing instead of just listening He went out and touched a leper. Do you know it was against the law for Him to touch the leper, but He was so moved with compassion that He reached out and touched the leper and healed Him.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard this saying but it’s a great one. “A shepherd should never lose the smell of sheep from his clothing”. In other words, we should always be hands on when it comes to living out our faith. We should always be prepared to “do” our faith not just to “believe” our faith. With all my heart I believe in Jesus and it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to be a theoretician; to sit here in a nice safe, clean, cloistered all be it boring little radio studio and just churn out these programs, dish up more theory.

But if there’s one thing that Jesus teaches us it’s that theory isn’t enough. The theory has to work its way out into practice in our lives. The easiest thing in the world is to nod wisely as we hear Jesus’ words today but it’s much harder to go and do them. So let me leave you with this thought.

Theoreticians aren’t the ones who end up living extraordinary lives; it’s the practitioners who do. Who is the greatest sportsman, the one who teaches the players or the one who picks up the ball and runs? Who is the greatest teacher, the one who stays in the classroom or the one who pulls alongside the student on the journey in life? See friend, at some point, if we want to live an extraordinary life, if we want our lives really to count, if we want our lives to have in impact in other people’s lives we have to stop talking about it we have to start doing it, living it, we have to go. For some of us it’s time to stop listening and it’s time to start doing.

Most times when we run into difficult issues in our lives, we try to overcome them in our own strength – or perhaps with the help of a friend. But what do we do when we run into difficulties, obstacles, problems that are way beyond human strength? Then what?

It’s great to be with you again today, almost the end of the week; getting there, not quite but almost. I don’t know how you feel towards the end of the week but as much as I love doing what I do I really do look forward to a rest over the weekend. I work long and hard during the week and I love to rest at the end of the week. Okay, not everyone’s life follows that cadence and mine hasn’t always either, but at some point we need a rest. Doing life drains us. The thing that energises me during the week isn’t just living life; it isn’t the fact that I really, really enjoy what I’m doing, it’s more the fact that I don’t have to go it alone.

Today on the program we’re looking at what it means to live an extraordinary life. This is message number 19 in a series of 20 on that very subject. I’m not sure where the time’s flown, but it has. It’s flown past rather quickly, and today’s chat is all about power. The power to make things happen, the power to go on, the power to crash through brick walls when we don’t have what it takes to crash through the brick wall, and the power it takes to make sacrifices in our lives.

In your life, let me ask you, where do you get that power, do you have that sort of power? Well me neither. Well, that’s not quite true. In and of myself I don’t have that sort of power, but when from time to time things get beyond me I know where to go and get it. Sound interesting? Let’s take a look.

In this razzamatazz kind of world we live in, we’re supposed to have our own power. We’re supposed to be strong, self-sufficient. We’re supposed to be quick, smart, clever and all that stuff. That’s the theory but I guess in part I agree with that. We should grow, we should mature, we should use the strengths and gifts that we’ve been given. But I don’t care, even if your name is Hercules, there are going to be times when the job before us is going to be way, way, way beyond us. So when you’re in that place where do you get the power – the power to live an absolutely extraordinary life?

Well let’s take a look. The question is, what are you powered by? Here is what Jesus had to say on the subject because in our journey of discovery of how to live an extraordinary life over these past few weeks, we’ve been following Him around through the account of His life in the gospel of Matthew in the New Testament to discover how it is that Jesus lived His extraordinary life. Here’s what Jesus had to say about power and where to get it. Matthew Chapter 8 and beginning at verse 5:

When Jesus entered Capernaum a Centurion came to Him saying, ‘Lord my servant is lying paralysed in terrible distress at home’. And Jesus said to him, ‘I’ll come and cure him’. But the Centurion answered, ‘Lord I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof but just speak the word and my servant will be healed for I also am a man under authority with soldiers under me.

I say to one ‘Go’ and he goes and to another ‘Come’ and he comes and to my slave I say ‘Do this’ and the slave does it.’ When Jesus heard him He was amazed and He said to all those who followed Him, ‘Truly I tell in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

I tell you many will come from the east and the west and they will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven while the heirs of the Kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the Centurion Jesus said, ‘Go, let it be done to you according to your faith’. And the servant was healed in that very hour.

Now, here was the Centurion, not one of God’s chosen people mind you, but a Roman soldier of the Italian Cohort. He was faced with a problem that was way, way, way beyond him. His servant was very sick and obviously this servant meant a lot to him. So what do you do? There were no fancy emergency clinics back in those days; none of the advances in medicine that we take for granted today. Yet he’d heard about this miracle man, Jesus, and in his simple mind he decided that Jesus must have the power, but how to lay hold of that power? Well, I’ll get up I’ll go and see him. With a bit of luck, being a Centurion I’ll get through the crowds and I’ll get to ask Him for help. But how does the Centurion ask? Let’s take another look:

‘Lord I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof but just speak the word and my servant will be healed for I also am a man under authority with soldiers under me. I say to one ‘Go’ and he goes and to another ‘Come’ and he comes and to my slave I say ‘Do this’ and the slave does it’.

The Centurion sets out the simple soldier’s logic of his faith in Jesus. He explains his reason for putting his trust in Jesus and Jesus is totally blown away by this guy’s faith. The moment this faith is expressed it releases the power of God. The Centurion, in and of himself didn’t have the power to heal the servant but he knew where to go and get the power by placing his trust, his faith in Jesus.

Is that it? Is that the end of the story? Not really. Of course the Centurion received what he asked for my faith, but interestingly Jesus also received what He asked for by faith. See, it seems that Jesus actually practiced what He preached which is quite a nice change when you think about it. Matthew Chapter 8 verse 23:

When Jesus got into the boat His disciples followed Him but a wind storm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but He was asleep. But when they woke Him up saying, ‘Save us, we’re perishing!’ and He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith!’ And He got up, He rebuked the winds and the sea and there was dead calm. They were amazed saying, ‘What sort of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him?’

Well, I’ll tell you what sort of man He was. He was a man of faith. He rebuked the Disciples for their lack of faith and then in faith He stilled the storm. Remember, Jesus had laid all His power aside to become a man. Yes, Jesus was and is the Son of God but He was also the Son of Man. He had, in and of Himself exactly the same amount of power that you and I do. What He relied on to do the extraordinary things He did was God’s power by faith. And as a result He was able to still the storm; He was able to feed the 5000, to heal the sick, to raise the dead – by faith.

Now I try my hardest in life, I marshal all my abilities and strengths whenever I’m facing something. I figure I should be able to do things that I’m capable of doing but there are plenty of times that I’m called to do things that are beyond me. I sat preparing this message at the airport to Dubai on my way from Delhi to Nairobi. I’d just been to India to grow the reach and the impact of these messages on radio there and now I was heading off to Africa to do the same. I can’t tell you how often on these trips I look around and think to myself, ‘who do I think am? What am I doing here, for crying out loud? I can’t make a difference in all these foreign places.’

And then I remember the Centurion and his simple logic. To him it was patently obvious that Jesus could do what he asked. Then I remember Jesus who by faith stilled the storm through the power of God Himself. It wasn’t complicated for either of them, not for the Centurion, not for Christ. Faith is faith – simple sweet and pure. And it’s that child-like faith that lays hold of the awesome power of God to do the extraordinary things in this world, the things that are way beyond our power, way beyond the natural, and the supernatural.

Looking for power to lead an extraordinary life? Well, I can tell you where to find it.

The choices that we make along the way have a lot to do with the sort of life we end up living. Good choices inevitably have good outcomes and bad choices …. Well, you know. But there’s one choice a certain type of choice that comes along every now and then that’s really important. It’s going to have a big impact on our lives. And when it does come, we need to know how to handle it.

They say that time flies when you’re having fun. I think that’s true. And here we are on Friday at the end of the fourth week in this series of messages on ‘How to Live an Extraordinary Life’. We’ve been trying to figure how to do that by following Jesus around through Matthew’s Gospel account of His life. Just trying to see how Jesus lived His extraordinary life.

And as of yesterday’s program we only managed to get to Matthew Chapter 8 out of 28 chapters and that’s with skipping some things, I mean leaving out some things that we could have talked about in those first 8 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. So maybe in a few months we might come back and look at some more for there’s a lot more to see about living an extraordinary life by following Jesus around.

But today’s the last day in this series so we’re going cheat somewhat by jumping forward, way forward towards the end of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life and times to see in part how it ended. Well, not quite the end but an important part close to the end. You see, a lot of what a lot of what our lives end up being worth has to do with the decisions we make.

We all make decisions every day, dozens of decisions day after day. I know my life, sometimes I’ve made really lousy decisions and sometimes I’ve made some really good decisions. Invariably the good decisions bear good fruit and, yes you guessed it, pretty much every bad decision I’ve ever made has sooner or later has sooner or later delivered bad fruit – rotten fruit in fact.

And today I’d like to look at perhaps the single most important decision that’s ever been taken in the history of humanity, the decision that Jesus took alone late at night in a dark and lonely place. The hardest decisions are the dark ones, the lonely ones and this one was one of the hardest decisions that anyone will ever make, and also the most important one. Matthew Chapter 26 beginning at verse 36:

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and He said to His Disciples, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. And He said to them, ‘I’m so deeply grieved even unto death. Stay here, stay awake with Me.’

And going a little further He threw Himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it’s possible let this cup pass from Me, but not what I want but Your will be done’. And He came to the Disciples and He found them sleeping! He said to Peter, ‘So you couldn’t stay awake with Me for an hour. Stay awake, pray that you may not come into a time of trial because the Spirit is willing but the flesh is week.’

Again He went away for the second time, ‘Father if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done’. Again He came and found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again He went away and prayed for a third time saying the same words. Then He came to the Disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Look the hour’s at hand. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up! Let’s get going. Look, My betrayer is at hand’.

Now this of course was the decision of laying His life down for you and me. I could spend some time at this point talking about the theology and the implications and the suffering and all that stuff. And of course there’s a time and a place for all of that, but that’s not what we’re focusing on today. I want to focus just on the decision, just on the process.

Put yourself in Jesus shoes and imagine for a minute being there, deciding whether or not you were going to die for someone else. And not just die but suffer. Not some quick, painless injection, as awful as that would be; not even the electric chair, and certainly there’s some pain there but it’s over quickly, that would be awful too. But Jesus knew He was going to have to suffer for the best part of a day.

Seventeen hours, trial after trial (five in all), beating after beating, thorns driven into His skull, nails driven into His hands and feet, hanging there by those nails in excruciating pain for hours until finally He didn’t have the strength to breath. That’s how you died when you were crucified. You actually lost the strength to breathe hanging there by those nails and so you died of suffocation while all the time those nails tore at your wrist and yours Achilles tendon. Your whole body weighty taken at those four excruciating points.

And so here is Jesus hoping that His friends would support Him but they fall asleep. Can you believe that? They actually fall asleep. He’s sweating blood at His most crucial hour and He prays. He prays, “Dad, (that’s what Jesus called His Father in heave – Abba, Dad) if only you could take this whole thing away from me”. I’m sure there were a lot of other things that passed between God the Father and God the Son that dark, lonely, fearful place on that night. He was grieved, deeply grieved, greatly agitated. Why wouldn’t He have been with what lay ahead of Him.

Now elsewhere in John’s Gospel Jesus tells us that He’s not being forced into this but that He has the power to lay down His life and take it up again and if He decided not to go through with it, no force anywhere in the universe could take His life from Him, so this is a freewill offering. He was dying to pay for my sin and dying to pay for your sin so that we could be forgiven. And He threw Himself on the ground and prayed, “Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from Me, yet not what I want but what You want”.

And that’s the key to the most important decision in all of History. No, He didn’t want to die, but even in this dark place He said to His Father in heaven, “Yet not what I want but what You want.” Right there in that three letter word “yet” is where the ordinary becomes absolutely extraordinary. Jesus made a decision submit His life, literally give His life, to the will of God His Father. And that changed the course of history.

There are going to be times in both our lives, in yours, in mine, when we’re going to have to take one of those Gethsemane decisions and they’re never easy. They’re always huge. I look back to a few in my life and I never, ever want to have to go through them again. But how we decide that point has everything to do with the sort of life we will end up living, if we’re prepared to lose it all for God then that’s extraordinary.

So many people want to hang on to their lives and when we hang on to our lives that makes our lives ordinary. When we’re prepared to lay it all on the line, when we’re prepared to go with the outcome that God has for us even when it deeply grieves and agitates us, that’s where greatness lies.

Most of us will never be called physically to lay down our lives for God, some will but most won’t. And yet Jesus called His followers to take up their cross every day to follow Him because there are much smaller Gethsemane decisions to be made every day in submitting our lives to God so that we might live.

If any man would save his life he’ll lose it, but the one who loses it for my sake will find it.

Weird that last bit, but what He’s saying is that when we try and hang on to everything for ourselves, that’s what makes an ordinary life and eventually an ordinary life comes to an end. But the one who lays their life down for Jesus, the one who goes into their Gethsemane and says, ‘Father, not my will let Your will be done’, that one will live an extraordinary life. And it’s an extraordinary life that goes on for ever and ever.