Episode 1. Better Look Like Jesus
These days, everybody wants to stand out from the crowd. But you look at some of these celebrities – and it makes you wonder. How can we stand out for the right reasons? Join Berni Dymet, on …
Authenticity is about being the same on the inside as we are on the outside; it’s a genuineness; it’s a goodness in our hearts; it’s a clean cup on the inside.
People Who Stand Out
It seems some days that we are living in a world where everybody wants to stand out from the crowd. Ask just about any teenager and they want to be famous; a famous something; a tennis player or a singer or an actor or whatever so long as they’re famous. And you know, it‘s not just the young folk – it seems that we are only really significant if we are noticed.
You know, millions of people have their own blogs on the internet. So many people want recognition for what they do at work and at home and everybody seems to be clambering for attention. And you know the more TV channels and web sites and movies and the more of that stuff there is, the less the average person like you and me gets noticed.
There seems to be this growing gap between our desire to stand out from the crowd and the reality that we are just one of the masses. You don’t believe me? I don’t know if you caught up with it – a few months ago celebrity billionaire in the U.S. Paris Hilton, of the Hilton Hotels Empire, was locked up for, I think it was drink driving. It was only a few weeks she was in jail but there was this massive media frenzy.
There was a whole genre of media, of press and celebrity magazines that still put Princess Diana on their cover. Magazines that exist to feed the insatiable hunger that people have for the sordid details of the lives of these so called celebrities. I mean, the way they play game shows on television and our hunger after famous sporting men and sporting women.
We have a hunger somehow to stand out from the crowd; to be recognised. But you look at the lives of some of these people and, I don’t know about you, but I think to myself, ‘If that’s what it means, I don’t think I want to stand out from the crowd.’ And at the same time the whole world is becoming so much more and more transaction oriented.
You think about when you go to the supermarket checkout – do we ever really engage with the person at the checkout? Or in a lot of local neighbourhoods, kids don’t go and kick the football around in the afternoon much anymore. Neighbours barely know each other; we spend more and more time working and being entertained and less time living.
Interactions have become short and transactional yet we all still want to be recognised. We all want to stand out and succeed and make it; however you want to put it. And of course, there’s nothing new in any of that – it’s actually an age old issue. We want significance, we want to be noticed. The question is, is it for the right reason?
Jesus had exactly this same problem with His twelve disciples. Have a listen to this story; it comes, if you have a Bible, go and grab it, open it up at Mark, chapter 9 – I’m starting at verse 33. “They came to Capernaum. When He was in the house, He asked them, “What is it that you were arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had been arguing about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve and He said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last and be the servant of all.”
He took a little child and had the child stand among them. Taking him in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever welcomes on of these little children in My name, welcomes Me and whoever welcomes Me doesn’t just welcome Me but the One who sent Me.” “Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in Your name and we told him to stop it because he wasn’t one of us.” “Don’t stop him,” said Jesus, “no one who does a miracle in My name can in the next moment say a bad thing about me. For whoever is not against us is for us. For I tell you the truth, any one who gives you a cup of water in My name because you belong to Christ, will certainly not lose his reward.”
Do you see the extreme opposites – the disciples think it’s a competition. They’ve been arguing on the road, whose going to be the greatest? And then they see someone else doing miracles in Jesus’ name and they want to stop them because he’s not one of the ‘in’ crowd. I mean, they’re just like us in so many ways – lets face it, we’re all like that sometimes.
But Jesus is saying, ‘Hang on, I want you to stand out for a different reason – for the right reason. I want you to be the first by being the very last and the servant of all. I want you to be noticed by welcoming just this little child. I want you to be noticed for giving someone a cup of water in My name.’
Just a few pages over it happens again. Flick over, if you have a Bible, to Mark, chapter 10, verse 35. “Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him and said, “Teacher,” they said, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.” “What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asks. They replied, “Let one of us sit at Your right hand and the other at Your left hand in Your glory.” “You don’t know what you are asking for,” Jesus said, “Can you drink the cup that I’m going to drink or be baptised with the baptism that I’m going to be baptised with?” “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with, but to sit at My right hand or left is not for Me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
When the other ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John and Jesus called them all together and He said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles, lord it over them and they’re high officials exercise authority over them. It’s not so with you, instead whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all, for even the Son of Man didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
Are these guys thick or slow or something? I mean, why is it that they have to go through this teaching with Jesus over and over again? It’s an age old problem – we want to stand out from the crowd. We want to win; we want to be successful; we want to be first and above and recognised and leaders and noticed.
But look at the contrast between our perspective and His. “All these other rulers lord it over the people but it’s not like that with you. Instead, if you want to become great become the servant, if you want to be first, be the slave. I didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give My life as a ransom for the many.” Jesus was prepared to lay down His life for you and me. Prepared to lose in the world’s eyes but He became and still is the most significant person who ever walked planet earth.
We all have a desire for significance; to make a difference; to impact lives; to improve; to change.But Jesus did that at His cost and that’s what Jesus is talking about. Nobody has impacted as many lives for all eternity as Jesus has. And this is so different from the desire to win; to be recognised; to be on top of the heap; to be praised; to be successful.
Let me ask you a question. In life are you looking for significance or success, recognition or respect? People who stand out from the crowd ….. Well, let me ask you, the people who stand out from the crowd in your life, which one were they into – significance or success?
Clean the Cup on the Inside
Imagine for a minute, you go into a coffee shop. You know, you just feel like a good cup of coffee, and you sit down and order the coffee, grab a magazine and eventually it comes out and you think ‘it looks good and it smells good, I’m really going to enjoy this coffee’.And just as you are about to take you first sip, you watch a waiter pick up an empty cup from the next table and without washing it he takes it over to the coffee machine fills it with a cappuccino and serves it to a customer at another table.
Now just think about it! What does that say about the coffee they just put down in front of you? I mean, you look around the coffee shop and everything looks good and the waiters are friendly and it all appears to be fine but they don’t wash the inside of the cups. So let me ask you, are you going to drink this cup of coffee they just served you?
Today on the programme we are talking about standing out from the crowd. We all need a sense of significance; a sense of ‘well, we are having an impact on the world; we’re making a difference.’ But somehow that has become so twisted in today’s world. Maybe it’s the mass media thing or the entertainment culture – I’m not sure, but people somehow warp that ‘significance’ thing into success and they are two entirely different things -.significance and success.
And you know, we are so focused on outward appearances and what other people think of us and how we look. There’s a TV show, don’t know if you have ever heard of it – comes out of the U.K. It’s called “What Not to Wear” and it’s about, mostly women, who want to change their look and dress more nicely and do their hair better. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, that’s great, but what you notice is with so many of them, their deepest hurts and their deepest emotions are tied up with how they look on the outside. They somehow think that if they can look better on the outside that that will heal all their problems on the inside. Outward appearances are the most important thing if what we are after is success, rather that significance.
People want to win – they want everyone else to think the most of them. We want to put our best foot forward and dress for success and for that to happen you have to look good. It’s all about what’s happening on the outside. You look good and you speak well and you have lots of money and you’re successful so you’re going to stand out from the crowd – you’re going to get noticed; you’re going to make it.
You see it everywhere; in business, in social or sporting clubs, in families and in churches too. In fact, there’s a great record of Jesus tearing into the religious leaders of His day for exactly this issue. The issue was the gap between what they presented to be on the outside and who they were on the inside. We’re going to read this – it comes from Matthew, chapter 23, because so many people can think of Jesus as some religious icon but it’s awesome to see what He thinks of this hypocrisy of being different on the outside than we are on the inside.
Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees (that’s the religious leaders), sit in Moses’ seat so you must obey them and do everything they tell you but don’t do what they do because they don’t practice what they preach. They put heavy loads on your shoulders and they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for others to see. They make their phylacteries wide and their tassels on their garments long and they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues.
They love to be greeted in the marketplace and have men call them ‘Rabbi’ but you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’ for you only have one Master and you are all brothers. And you are not to call anyone on earth ‘Father’ for you only have one Father and He is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant for whoever exalts himself will be humbled but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert and when he becomes one you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices – the mint, the dill, the cumin, but you have neglected the more import matters of the law – justice and mercy and faithfulness – you should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.
You blind guides. You strain out the gnat that swallowed a camel. Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and then the outside will also be clean. You snakes; you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell?”
Jesus is not mincing words here and you and I both know He is right. He is pointing to hypocrisy – He’s pointing to people who focus on who they are on the outside instead of cleaning the cup on the inside. They want people to think well of them and give them seats of honour at functions but what‘s going on in their hearts is rotten – the things they’re thinking about; the things they’re brooding over; what they are plotting and scheming.
The gap between the inside and outside is called ‘hypocrisy.’ And we all hate hypocrites, yet so often that’s us and we don’t even realise it. Let me ask you something. If you were going to be stranded on a desert island with someone would you want it to be a person who looks good on the outside or someone who is good on the inside? So why are we slaves to outward appearances? Why do we think it’s what we say and do and how we dress on the outside that makes us stand out from the crowd?
Looking Like Jesus
Today’s programme is the first in the series that I’ve called “Standing Out from the Crowd.” And I guess the ‘sub-plot’ to that is ‘standing out for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons.’ One of the words in the lexicon of Christian jargon is ‘holy’ or ‘holiness’ and it’s a word that is most commonly is used to apply to God but it’s meant to apply to you and me as well. Peter, the Apostle, writes this – he says, “Be holy because the Lord your God is holy.”
Over the next few weeks we are going to unpack what that means. What is this ‘holiness’, what does it mean for you and me to wake up in the morning and life a holy life? What exactly does that mean? I’m going to kind of scratch the surface of that today by suggesting simply that it means walking and talking and looking and being like Jesus.
How do I make that leap? Well, it’s simple. If you go to Hebrews – a book in the New Testament – chapter 1, verse 3, it says this, “Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Now the Greek word that is used there for ‘exact imprint’ means this – it means when you created a coin in those days, what you had was a die, and you then put the die and you banged it onto the metal and what it caused was a perfect imprint on the metal of what was on the die.
So Jesus is the exact imprint of God and if God is holy, therefore, Jesus is holy because He is the exact imprint of God Himself. Holy means to be clean and pure and set apart for God’s purposes and my hunch is if we want to be clean and pure and set apart for God’s purposes, we are going to need to look like Jesus. Paul writes that we are ambassadors of Christ.
You may have heard me say this before but if you met the Indian Ambassador to your country, would you believe that he was the Indian Ambassador if he looked like a Swede or sounded like an Italian? No! You’d expect him to walk and talk and look and be Indian.
Well, if you and I are ambassadors of Christ shouldn‘t we be like Jesus? I mean, look at Jesus – He had this incredible authenticity in Him. What we just saw before the break was He hated hypocrisy – I love that – especially, He hated religious hypocrisy. He hated the fact that these people were presenting to be good and holy and wonderful and respectable on the outside but on the inside they were greedy and rotten.
Authenticity is about being the same on the inside as we are on the outside – it’s a genuineness; it’s a goodness in our hearts; it’s a clean cup on the inside. We looked at that cup of coffee thing a little bit earlier in the programme. I mean, it’s horrifying to think that we could walk into a coffee shopand buy a cup of coffee and discover that they never wash the inside of the cups. I mean, who would drink a cup of coffee under those circumstances?
And it’s kind of the same with us. We can run around and say ‘well, I believe in Jesus’ but people look at us and go, ‘well, they claim to be one thing but they do something else. That person claims to be a Christian and goes to church on Sunday morning but look at how they live their lives.’
You know what I love about God? He made us all to be individuals – we are all wired so differently. If you are married, husband and wife will know that their spouse is just so different from who they are – we have different personality types; we have different abilities; we have different strengths and weaknesses; we have different likes and dislikes; we love different colours; we like different decors. I love that – God is a God of variety. What I’ve noticed with people who have this deep relationship with Jesus on the inside is that His light; His holiness; His goodness; His love; His mercy, shines out through their uniqueness.
Paul wrote that we have this treasure; the glory and the love and the wonder and the power of God. He said we have this treasure in jars of clay – each jar is different. My jar isn’t that perfect and you’re probably isn’t either but when someone who loves Jesus on the inside does something, the love and the glory and the holiness of Jesus shines out through them. Someone who’s gifted to care for people, when they have Jesus on the inside, their caring is so special; their touch is so precious. Someone who’s gifted to preach and teach, when they have Jesus on the inside, their words, well, it’s like Jesus Himself is speaking. When someone who’s gifted to lead, when they have Jesus on the inside, their leadership is so powerful and so anointed and so wise and yet so gentle; so Christlike.
The mistake that we make is we think we can change the things that we say and do and how we dress and look on the outside without changing what’s happening on the inside. But you and I know, the outside is a reflection of who we are on the inside; it’s out of the overflow of our heart that we speak. Murder and adultery – they begin in the heart.
We know we are supposed to look like Jesus. Paul writes in Romans, chapter 8 and verse 29, “Those whom God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son.” Let me say that again. “Those whom God foreknew,” that is those whom God had chosen, “He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son.”
What Paul’s saying there is it’s not just about being believing in Jesus and being saved, it’s about God changing us; we are predestined to look like Jesus. And that only starts, it only starts when we start having a deep and intimate and profound relationship with Him on the inside.
I encourage you today, if you want to make some changes to the outside, to start with that relationship with Jesus Christ on the inside, because we are destined to go out there in the world and with all our unique gifts and skills and abilities, to be Jesus to a hurting and lost world.
That’s what it means to stand out from the crowd.
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