God speaks to whomever he wants to speak, about whatever he wants to speak, whenever he wants to speak to them. The message isn't about how to make God speak to us more. What we're talking about here is how to put ourselves in a posture to listen. To hear when he speaks. And I don't know about you, but if I am predisposed to not want to do what God says, and yes sometimes I'm not. Did you hear that, he's a pastor? The pastor doesn't want to do what God asks him to do sometimes, shocking! But when I am predisposed to not want to do what he says, I'm more inclined to avoid him. Like take literal steps to avoid him. To make myself unavailable when his number pops up on my phone. I'm much more likely to let it go to voicemail, and then conveniently forget to check it.
But I've also experienced the opposite. I've also experienced those times and seasons where I've practiced saying yes. Stepping out in faith when I think I hear God asking me to do something, even when it's scary. Even when it feels, at first, like I'm actually losing something. And every time I do, I relearn the lesson, that truly His yoke is easy, His burden is light, He does not lay anything too heavy or unfitting on me. And every step of obedience I've taken, always ends up leading me in the right direction. Sure, God comes and asks these people to do some pretty crazy things in these stories, but man, when they said yes to Him, what a ride! What an adventure! And I believe that those adventures, those experiences, those encounters with God, are available. Available to us, right now, right here, where we are, if only we would listen.
The story that Luke chooses to begin his telling of the coming of Messiah with, is the story of a couple waiting. And sure, like with everybody else, they are waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Like everybody else in the Jewish Community was in those days. But more personally, Zachariah and Elizabeth are waiting for something else. They're waiting for a baby of their own. And as those who have experienced it know, infertility is a special kind of waiting. When you're waiting in infertility, it's not like waiting in a long line at Costco, where you know eventually it will be your turn. Waiting to conceive, it's waiting for something that you really, really, really, really, want but there is no guarantee that you're going to get it. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Oh, I know, there's lots of options for fertility treatments out there. There are tons of things that you can try. But for all our fertility treatments, have only served to further prove the point, getting pregnant isn't something you can control. And so you wait. Of course getting pregnant isn't the only kind of waiting that fits that category, right? There's tons of things that fit the waiting for an uncertain outcome list.
The other thing that Jesus points out here, is that the focus of the Holy Spirit's communication, his speaking, isn't in the direction of the Father, but it's in our direction. In verse 26 Jesus says, “But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” If the Holy Spirit, Advocate role, was on our behalf before the Father, you would think that Jesus would be emphasizing that the Holy Spirit is saying to the Father. Instead, Jesus is emphasizing what the advocate will be reminding us of. How he will be reminding us of the things that Jesus said. And then there's the fact of who exactly the Advocate is testifying for, on behalf of whom, the advocate is testifying for. Jesus says in John 15:26, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send you from the Father -- the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father -- he will testify about me.” Jesus is saying that the advocate testifies about Jesus. Which when you put all of this together sure makes it sound like the Holy Spirit isn't so much our Advocate before the Father, but rather Jesus's Advocate before us, before humanity. That in the definition of "paracletos," that I read earlier, you know this definition of a person of high social standing who speaks on behalf of a defendant in a court of law before a judge. That the defendant in this case is Jesus, and the things that he has taught us about the Kingdom of God. That the courtroom is the court of human will. And that the judge, the judge is us.
The holy spirit is here with us right now, comforting us, guiding us, teaching us, challenging us, and yes even correcting us and telling us when we have missed the mark. You see, the Holy Spirit isn't simply God's afterglow or Jesus's afterglow. We'll talk about people in our lives who aren't with us physically, but we'll say stuff like, “well, you know they’re here in spirit,” which is really a way of saying that they're not here. They're really gone, but we kind of, sort of can remember them, sort of thing. I mean, sometimes we think about the Holy Spirit that way, God's afterglow, the things that we remember about him, kind of a passive presence in the corner. A reminder that at some point Jesus walked the Earth, and yes, at some point in the future we'll see him again, but until then, I guess we have the Holy Spirit to remember Jesus by. That's not who the Holy Spirit is! The Holy Spirit is a fully alive, fully present, fully active, member of the Trinity.
God is always at work rebuilding shalom. He is healing the sick. He is feeding the hungry. He's bringing Comfort to the lonely. He is caring for the Foreigner. He is freeing prisoners. He is soothing the pains and the scars that life in a broken world brings to the people in it. God's mission is not merely a conceptual one. It's not merely theoretical. It's not merely a new philosophy to be discussed and debated in the halls of the learned, and those with the luxury of time and energy that think about and discuss such things. God's mission is a hands-on felt need, tangible dirt under your fingernail’s kind of mission. Where he is addressing not just the spiritual damage that sin has done, but the physical and emotional damage as well. And we have the opportunity to join with him to address those needs as an extension of Jesus's presence here on earth. Jesus himself invites us and reminds us that whatever we do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of his, we are doing it for him as Matthew 25 reminds us. So, we engage in a lot of what we call around here, shalom building opportunities, where we are working to promote this universal flourishing.
Our wealth isn't just the money that we have, right? Our influence, our connections, our voice, our position in society, yes even our vote, all these contribute to the worldly wealth that we have. And it's interesting to me that Jesus refers to this concept in terms of the mammon of unrighteousness, unrighteous Mammon. It makes me think of this phrase, that we have dirty money. You guys heard of that phrase? Like money or wealth that is acquired in unjust or unrighteous ways. Some of you, other people I've talked to over the years, maybe because the industry that you're in or the cutthroat win-lose nature of the business that you're in, like when you're working for the man, right? Sometimes it feels like what we earn is dirty money, unrighteous mammon. Or even when we take an honest look at our nation's history. An honest look at what we've done over the centuries to become the wealthiest nation in the world. How we've subdued the competition, unjust nature of a society, white privilege, you know stuff like that. It can feel sometimes like the wealth that we have, unrighteous mammon. What do I do with that knowledge? Well, it would appear that Jesus has an idea. Jesus says, make friends with your unrighteous mammons so that when it is gone, when it fails, when it burns out, when it ceases to exist, they, meaning the friends that you made with your unrighteous mammon may welcome you into heavenly dwellings.
Now, in the midst of Hebrews describing Jesus as the ultimate high priest. The author pauses, and says this, we're going to start from Hebrews chapter 5:11. The author says this, We have much to say about this, regarding Jesus as our high priest. But it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk being still an infant. Is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from Evil. Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God instruction about cleansing rights, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and the Eternal judgment. And God permitting we will do so.”
Now I don't know if you caught it, but there's a tone of frustration in the author's voice here in this letter to the Hebrews. Like, he would really like to dive deeper into the significance of Jesus as our high priest, which is a very significant image for folks, that coming out of the Jewish tradition. And it would really, really help them in their life with God to understand how Jesus fills this role as the high priest. And how the role of the high priest had always been to pointing towards Jesus and the author was really, really excited to talk about this. But he feels like he can’t because he's stuck. He's stuck going over what he calls basic things. He feels like his readers are still hung up on stuff that the author feels like they had explained over and over and over and over again. Again you teachers in the room might be able to relate with some of this frustration. And one of the basic things that he is trying to get past is talking about repentance from acts that lead to death. Now this little phrase is actually key to help us understand what he's referring to later in verses 4-6, so here comes the tactical part.
Do I believe my life depends on hearing from God? Wow! Like we all believe that we need food for our body to survive, right? This is why a regular part of our daily life is, run around scrounging for food. We plan our day around it. We get up early to make sure we have time for breakfast. Our school or our job will actually let us stop working so that we can go and eat. We gather with friends and family for dinner, so that we can make an experience out of filling this very basic need for food. We follow a diet plan to make sure that we’re getting all the right kinds of food. We plan menus for the week ahead and on and on and on we could go talking about all the ways that our belief, our conviction, that our body needs food to keep functioning, affect how we plan and go about our days.
Do I do the same for my spirit? What can we do to put ourselves in a position to regularly hear from God? And while of course there are many different habits or spiritual disciplines that we could develop, and help us in that area, and we talk about a lot. There is one that throughout the history of the people of God has really served as the anchor, as the foundation to hearing from God.
So even though we're just talking about confidence, what's at stake here, what you have to lose, is actually very very real. Paul is not exaggerating this passage when he says, “that he had lost all things for Christ's sake”. It's the very real cost that the Young Rich Man encountered in the story that Mark tells in his gospel in chapter 10. When this rich young person comes to ask Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, essentially, “what must I do to be righteous?” And Jesus says, “you could just go do what all the religious people are telling you to do”. The young man responds, “I've been doing all that you see”. Even though he'd been doing, he'd been on the performance plan and he'd been killing it on the performance plan. This young man still feels that I still don't have this thing that I'm looking for. He knew he was standing on Shaky Ground and Jesus diagnoses his issue immediately and says, “go sell everything that you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me." Now wait, is Jesus suggesting that righteousness can be achieved by selling everything that we have and giving it to the poor? Of course not. Selling everything and giving to the poor, that's just another achievement. That's just another performance plan. But this man's issue was his confidence in his wealth. And that misplaced confidence was keeping him from the one thing that would bring him the Eternal kind of life. That would bring him righteousness, and that is following Jesus, which is where of course Paul has landed. Everything else on his resume he considers garbage like quoting your GPA from kindergarten.
Paul's only interested in one thing, verse 10, I want to know Christ. Yes, to know the power of his resurrection, participation in his suffering, to become like him in his death, and so somehow attain to the resurrection from the dead. To know Christ, not just about Christ, not just his teachings, not just the historical facts about his life. Not just the various interpretations and applications of his words to today's issues. No, knowing how to live well. Being in right standing with God and man. Living rightly in the world comes from knowing Christ. The power of the resurrected Christ. To follow Christ into suffering. To allow Christ's death to become our death, so that his life becomes our life. And there is nothing on our resume good or bad. Nothing that we've accomplished. Nothing that we failed to accomplish that compares to knowing Christ. That's where righteousness comes from.
More than just referring about their behavior as individuals in the world, Paul is actually pointing to the way that they live out their heavenly citizenship with one another, their collective polity. See, Paul recognizes that as a local church, they have a common life with each other. That is, set in the context of their citizenship in the Roman empire. So Paul is calling out the Philippians to live out their common life together in the secular context, not by simply adopting the customs and the culture of the world around them, but rather to live out their collective life together in a manner that fits with the Good News of life in the reality of the Kingdom of God.
And the reason I think that's what he's referring to, is that the litmus test is unity. Paul will know that the Philippians are conducting themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, because they are in unity with one another.
According to Paul, the main outcome of a local church conducting themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel—is that they end up standing firm, in one spirit, striving together, as one, for the faith of the gospel.