Objective of this lesson: to stress that substituting a focus on the physical/material for the focus on God as "the ultimate reality" is hypocrisy.
People can be extremely observant and incredibly blind at the same moment! The manner in which humans can be extremely sensitive to their environment and incredible clueless about eternal realities at the same moment can be frustrating in the extreme. All of us can have acute awareness of matters that [at most] have limited significance while being completely oblivious to matters that are of eternal significance.
All of us are astounded in some set of circumstances when it is blatantly obvious that people do not consider the reality of God or life after death. In such moments, Christians wonder how such blindness can exist.
This quirk in human sensitivity profoundly frustrated Jesus. He said, "You people can predict weather occurrences for the near future by observing the clouds or the wind's direction. You are aware of God's incredible acts in the sky and wind. Yet, God's most profound acts occur this moment all around you. Yet, in these activities of God, you do not have enough curiosity to observe, 'These happenings are profoundly significant!' or ask, 'What is God doing?' What you observe in the sky or the wind only affects a day. What is occurring around you affects physical life now and life after death!"
Jesus left heaven to express God's love for people. He lived in poverty in the physical realm as he trusted God to restore him to his heavenly existence (see John 17:4,5). Honoring God was the primary focus of all he did. To Jesus, God was all important and all consuming. God's will was the only will that controlled his decisions, his actions, and his behavior. To live among a people who thought that they were honoring God and trusting God when they were not was extremely frustrating to Jesus. To live among people who wished to exploit God for their own physical advantage was extremely frustrating to Jesus.
Consider! Through experiences passed from one generation to another, when they saw clouds gathering in the West, they said, "Rain will be here soon," and they were right. If they felt the wind blowing from the South off the dessert, they said, "It will be a hot day!" and they were right. Yet, for centuries God declared He would act in special ways of eternal significance when He sent Israel a Messiah.
They were adept at reading the obvious signs of the day, but they were blind to the obvious signs of God working in their midst at that moment.
Incredible things had happened and were happening! John's ministry stirred Israel's conscience. He stressed that he was not the Messiah, but the Messiah was coming soon. Above all, he stressed Israel's need to repent to prepare for the Messiah's coming.
From John and Jesus' births to that moment in Jesus' ministry, many incredible things happened continuously in Israel. If those people confined their awareness to John's ministry, Jesus' ministry, and the miracles performed in public, it was obvious that God was at work doing something incredibly significant. They had every reason to ask, "What is God doing?"
Jesus' ministry produced incredible happenings! Things considered impossible occurred in public for all to see. These happenings were not a matter of secret rumors occurring in the mystical place of "somewhere," witnessed by only a privileged few. These happenings occurred in public throughout Israel where even the most insignificant people were witnesses. The lame walked. The blind saw. Those with leprosy were healed. The demon possessed were freed from demons. Jesus' message was not "look at me and my power." Jesus' message was, "God's kingdom will soon be reality." Very soon God would keep His promises!
If we are tempted to discount such blindness, or to look on it with disgust, consider experiences in your life. How many times have you witnessed people ignore the obvious? How many times have you listened as people voiced complaints while obviously failing to see blessings? How many times have you watched people ignore significant happenings while they were enthralled by insignificant happenings? How many times have you heard people vent their frustrations on God? Have you ever done any of those things?
Note Jesus' remarks in today's text were addressed to the multitude, not to a religious group. This time Jesus' focused on the hypocrisy of the common Israelite. It was a form of hypocrisy, when understood, that should cause terror in today's Americans.
Note that most American Christians would not classify Jesus' obvious concern as an expression of hypocrisy. Many of us would classify it as a "spiritual weakness," but we are not likely to see it as hypocrisy.
In broad context, people clamored to be close to Jesus to secure physical advantages, not to learn more about God and thus learn more about themselves. It began with a large multitude gathering. Instead of addressing the multitude, Jesus warned his disciples to avoid prevalent "expedient" influences. Someone in the multitude urged Jesus to force his brother to divide the family inheritance. Jesus responded with a parable that illustrated the foolishness of greed. Jesus used the request to instruct his disciples about the deceitfulness of material security.
We Christians are far more susceptible to the power of prevailing social influences than we care to admit. Without thinking, we are likely to act on expedience rather than faith. We are more likely to hear the voice of society than the voice of God.
Do note that Jesus often taught lessons to his disciples as the disciples were surrounded by a listening multitude.
Peter was confused! In his confusion he asked if Jesus was talking about everyone or only to the twelve. Jesus responded by stressing two realities: (1) the foundation of discipleship is faithful service to God, and (2) he [Jesus] would be a source of division, not of peace.
It is often difficult to apply Jesus' teachings to ourselves personally.
In this context Jesus declared the multitude was guilty of hypocrisy. What hypocrisy? The hypocrisy of believing lasting security was achieved by satisfying material expectations. Or, the deceit of believing life's highest purpose is to achieve material desires/expectations.
Jesus' concept of security frequently puts us in crisis. Too often it is a crisis created by our purposes and expectations. We are more likely to look at Jesus' concern as a "faith issue" instead of a "hypocrisy issue."
We American Christians face an extreme challenge in grasping this type of hypocrisy. Jesus said to live life as if life is primarily about "right now" in a physical world is hypocrisy. Why? Jesus taught, "Life is about something much greater and more important than the physical! The physical is temporary! Life is about the permanent!"
Any suggestion that life has a more significant purpose than the material makes us uncomfortable. We can tolerate some form or combination of a "material and spiritual" purpose, but the concept of God's purposes becoming our primary purposes makes us nervous. That certainly is not a concept that "preaches well" in a materialistic culture.
In America even the poor are benefited by incredible blessings and opportunities. Poverty is always undesirable! Yet, in America poverty does not exclude opportunity! Americans have little or no experience existing where there is no opportunity. Why do so many people who are not Americans crave to live in America? Opportunity! Why do so many immigrants succeed in conditions that we would not touch? They see opportunity in circumstances we consider failure.
This is not intended to trivialize or disregard the plight of the poor in America. Yet, Americans need to realize that often the poor in this culture/society have opportunities not even dreamed about among the poor in many other cultures/societies. To most of the world, life in America symbolizes material opportunity.
For the American, too frequently life is about "me." For the immigrant, life frequently is about family. For Jesus' disciple, life is about God. Selfishness is destructive. Family is limiting. God is eternal. There is something more important than "me." There is something more significant than family [that will actually bless family]. God is the origin of human life, and human life will return to God.
Christianity is definitely "anti-selfishness." The principles of Christianity strengthen family bonds, but in Christianity the focus of life is more than family. Christianity began with this basic understanding: the purpose of life is founded on glorifying God Who is life's origin.
In modern terms, Jesus said, "You talk about the advantages of various kinds of education. You read stock market trends. You distinguish between wise and unwise business opportunities. You discuss the impact of global events on the economy. You stay aware of the best way to invest. You aspire to great wisdom in using the physical. However, your concept of reality deceives you. You ignore death as if ignoring it eliminates it. You use life primarily for the physical. To you God exists to serve you instead of your existing to serve God. You are the victim of hypocrisy because you "see" the temporary and do not "see" the permanent.
We can be quite skilled in focusing on the temporary. We can be very wise in considering the temporary, and very unwise in considering the permanent.
Thought and Discussion questions.
The visible part of our existence is physical. For example, consider a corpse in a casket in a funeral home. Consider the common remarks made. "She looks so good." "He looks just like himself." Etc. It is as though the person himself or herself is in the casket. The physical form in the casket in no way is the person. The person is gone. That is only "the house or tent" the personal lived in. (See 2 Corinthians 5:1-4.). As physical beings living in a physical world surrounded by physical experiences, we easily can conclude that physical reality is the ultimate reality, physical need is the ultimate need, and physical pleasure is the ultimate form of pleasure.
We cannot physically "see, touch, taste, or hear" the spiritual. While there are a number of realities we understand to be real that are not verified by sight, touch, taste, or hearing, as physical beings we prefer physical verification. We find it difficult to acknowledge a reality as the most significant reality when we cannot use physical verification for evidence.
The temptation to regard only the physical as real gains its deception and its strength from our preference to trust that which we can physically experience or verify. That temptation increases as we witness people exploit or abuse spiritual reality for personal gain or accomplishments.
Because God is spiritual, we struggle to trust Him as being real. Often our concepts of God are so flawed that we unjustly blame God for evil's consequences or we are frustrated with God because our expectations do not happen.
Jesus devoted his life, his behavior, and all his actions to placing primary dependence on God. God's purposes were the core of Jesus' existence. For people in Israel to claim to place dependence on God when they did not depend on God was extremely frustrating to him. Had they known God and correctly understood God's nature, they would have recognized Jesus' teachings as being from God.
They seek security in things that cannot provide security. They even claim to find security in that which is uncertain and temporary. They can determine the meaning of "temporary" matters while being blind to eternal matters.
At some point in this discussion, there needs to be emphasis on the folly of looking at the temporary as though it was permanent.
American Christians can make God the ultimate reality by demonstrating dependence on God in everyday attitudes and behavior. A believer demonstrates his/her faith in God in the way he/she treats other people.
Link to Student Guide
Lesson 12