Transcription of the Video: No Greater Love

Listen to the audio with the transcription: https://otter.ai/s/coznAfZQSjSVQTgtBKci3w

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony, an evidence of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." [Matthew 5:1-10]

"No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes or grapes from briars. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart. And the evil man brings up evil things out of the evil stored in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart, his mouth speaks. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and body more important than clothes?" [Matthew 7:16-18]

"Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns. Yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith? So do not worry, saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things. And your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." [Matthew 6: 25-33]

Welcome, this morning, to the beautiful side of what's known as the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee. I hope the calmness of the sight begins to fill your spirit this morning as you sit here and you hear the birds and the wind and see the beauty of what's in front of you. And I hope that fills your soul and your spirit also.

Let's get to where we are. The Sea of Galilee, obviously, is 12 1/2 miles by 7 1/2 miles. Jesus spent most of his ministry right here, and what you're looking at with your eyes is what he looked at with his. In that area, over there on the hill, is Tiberias - Herod Antipas's place. Jesus avoided it. 

Over there, the hills you see on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee are the area called Decapolis, where the Hellenistic Greeks lived. And to the northeast over here, Gamla, where the zealot movement had started, and the very passionately anti-Roman nationalistic spirit, was up in those particular mountains. 

From about where Mount Arbel starts over there, around in this direction to where we are and on to the east a ways, is the area where Jesus spent most of his ministry. Capernaum, right down at the bottom of the hill here and three miles away or so, Bethsaida, Chorazin a couple of miles up this way. And it that triangle, the Bible says Jesus performed most of his miracles. 

Just to the north of the Mount of Beatitudes, are the ruins of the ancient city of Chorazin, one of the cities where Jesus' ministry was focused. To better understand his teaching and the context where that teaching took place, we went together as a group and sat in the ruins of that ancient city.

Welcome to Chorazin, the northern city of the triangle in which Jesus conducted his ministry. It's typically black basalt city like you've come to expect here in the Galilee. There are several things here of interest and that you might want to take a look at also later.

Number one is the synagogue. You recognize kind of the frieze up there along on the columns. What's especially fascinating about this one is this is the one in which they found the only known example of a Moses seat on which the person who was reading the Torah scroll sat. 

In the upper end of the city, they've got some reconstructed houses. You can see what they did here is they provided something called fenestrations. You'll notice some places where either they have arches in the house or they have something that looks like a whole row of little windows. These basalt stones are very brittle, and they won't go a long distance. If you make them over about five feet long, they just crack. They can't bear their own weight. So they had to divide the rooms up into about five-foot sections in order to have roof beams.

I'm looking at the floor, an authentic, original floor here and thinking about Jesus' parable of the lost coin. You can imagine how, if you dropped a coin on your floor, that it could easily go between one of the cracks in the rock-like that and it was gone. So the woman, of course, swept her house, looking for the coin. She finally found it. That's the kind of floor we're talking about.

Let me give you a brief scriptural lesson that we're going to add onto in a couple of other places. But I wanted to do one part right over here, because this is so authentic, and it dates back to that early period. 

In those days, when you married, you did not build a new home normally or rent an apartment. What you did is you built on to Dad's house. And if you were a girl, you went to your husband's dad's house. So you see an example here of a typical Jewish house complex called an insula. It was built around an open courtyard. And I'm in the open courtyard. This was a place for kids to play. You can cook. You can have an animal or your animals or whatever. It's just an open courtyard. To each side, housing complexes. 

This large room here in the middle, that's the original house. And who knows how many people lived in there? Five, eight, ten, fifteen. I don't know. Houses were very small. You didn't have a lot of room. Now the oldest son gets married and so he adds an addition, let's say. I'm not saying that's actually this house, but he adds an addition and that's his house. Now the next son, he's there and pretty soon, the first grandson, he's in the back. That's his house back there and then another grandson and another grandson. 

And pretty soon, you start building on this side. And you see the same principle here, a whole series of houses connected to each other that eventually become the family complex. 

When it was time for a guy and girl to be married (a girl married at 14, 15 years of age and a guy maybe in his mid-twenties), the two families would get together. They would negotiate the bride price. When they had assigned the bride price, they would exchange a glass of wine, and that would seal the bargain. They're now committed to being married. 

At that point, the young man would say to his bride, "I'm going to go home to my father's house and prepare a place for you. And when I've prepared a place for you, I'll come back and take you to be with me as my wife." In other words, "I've got to go home to Dad's insula."

Now at that point, the girl had no idea when the wedding was going to be. It might be six months. It might be nine months. It might be a year. It might be two years. She just had to be ready at any given moment. And she was called one who had been bought with a price. Paul uses that to describe us. He says, "You are bought at a price. You are a bride-to-be. You have to be faithful to your bridegroom because he's going to come back for you. Where is your bridegroom today? He's preparing a place for you."

That comes right out of the context of this marriage example where the son would say, "I'm going to go to my father's house and prepare a place for you."

It's interesting that we know that the son, of course, was very anxious to come back and get his bride. He wanted to be married. That's what the whole thing was about, so he probably went to his dad and said, "Dad, how about today?"

"Come on, son, this is your wedding. You can't just run out and leave a half-finished-- finish it. Get it right."

Somebody asked Jesus, "When is your second coming? When will you come back for your bride, the church?"

And Jesus says, "No one knows the day or the hour of my return. Not the angels in Heaven, not the Son. Only my Father knows." [Matthew 24:36]

Eventually, of course, it's finished, so the son goes to Dad and says, "Dad, is it ready yet?"

Dad says, "Okay.

So the son gets all his friends and he goes to the girl's house and they blow the trumpet - the shofar - to announce the wedding. And every girl in town thought, "My wedding."

Of course, it was only one girl. But every girl had to suddenly rush around, get her bridesmaids dresses ready, get her wedding dress ready, get all of her stuff together that she had prepared. 

And you'll remember Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, some of whom are ready, some of whom weren't. They would gather in this courtyard. The groom and his wife would go into the house. The best man would stand here by the door and wait while they consummated the wedding. And the guests all stood and waited. When it was consummated, the best man would come into the courtyard and get everybody's attention. "Can I have your attention? They're married." Everybody would cheer, and then the reception would begin. It would be a seven-day wedding reception. 

John the Baptist says, "The friend stands at the door, listening for the bridegroom's voice." And he says, "That privilege is mine. I've heard his voice." He doesn't say he's married yet because Jesus was only here for the engagement the first time. He said, "I heard his voice. He's here."

Jesus comes, engages himself to you, and he says, "I love you. I'll pay the bride price," - his own life. 

Then he said to you, "In my Father's house are many rooms," - big insula. "For if it were not so, I would have told you. I'm going to go to my Father's house and prepare a place for you. And I will come again and take you to be with me forever." [John 14: 2-13] 

By putting the idea of "in my Father's house are many rooms," which the NIV does, you get much closer to the original concept, not that it's just an ordinary room, but that it's part of a whole complex. And I think what that brings out to me about Heaven is that I don't have a nice mansion up there on top of the hill and Glen has one over on that hill. We're in one big insula. We're all going to gather around one courtyard, and I like to think of our Father, God, or our husband, Jesus, will come and sit in the courtyard and we'll all be together. I think that's such a powerful image of what Heaven is like. 

One of the things about Jewish life in the New Testament time was how incredibly family-oriented it was. They lived together, they ate together, they worked together. The kids knew their grandpas and grandmas and uncles and aunts, and there was a sharing of life and of values and of meaning. Heaven, in the Bible, is described by wonderful, down-to-earth things like a wedding reception with all your friends, all your loved ones, with your bridegroom - an awesome thing. 

We returned from the insula to the Mount of Beatitudes, the traditional place where Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount. We had a new appreciation for the importance of Jesus' teachings of love and community and support that he gave to his followers. For only by living in that way, could we truly be the community Jesus found.

Jesus came to this area because God had seen, in his wisdom, to prepare this place that Jesus could interact with all kinds of people - the definitely pagan, those who were looking for an earthly kingdom, those who represented the power structures of the religious movement and people of the day of the Jewish community, and those people like us who were simply trying to exist here and honor and worship God in the way that they knew best. And so that's the setting into which Jesus came.

Listen to what Matthew says about Jesus' ministry. "When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali, to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah, 'Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, the way of the sea,'" - the Via Maris - "'along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people living in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of the Shadow of Death. A light has dawned.'"[Matthew 4:12-17]

From that time, on, Jesus began to preach, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." And that was the heart of his message - a very simple message. 

So here he is, right here in the Galilee, on the main road notice. And I like to think part of the reason God picked the Galilee for his preparation ministry for his son, Jesus is because whatever happens in the Galilee is going to reach the rest of the world. Because here's where the road is. So even his ministry, in a somewhat isolated setting maybe, still is on the main crossroads of the world just like we've talked about from the Old Testament.

Now at the beginning of that ministry, Jesus delivers what Matthew calls the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew was Jewish. And Matthew understood somehow that God had a plan for the nation of Israel that involved a turn or a move in the direction that Jesus Christ would take. And in that sense, that new movement - all Jewish of course (Jesus was Jewish, the disciples were all Jewish) - that new movement was the nation of Israel. And the nation of Israel had gotten its identity the first time, in five books called the Books of Moses, delivered on a mountaintop to the great lawgiver and founder of the Jewish faith, Moses. 

And I think Matthew, the Jew, wanted to say, "This is going to be the change in focus or the change in direction in the Jewish nation, in the people of God," and so he too institutes the focus of that new direction by delivering a sermon on a mountain which contains the heart of what this new Kingdom is all about. 

Jesus came here to give us our Torah, our new covenant, our five books of Moses that we Gentiles seek to follow if we're to be the people of God today. And this is where our distinctiveness is delivered by Jesus.

The Sermon on the Mount delivers, to me, the method of how Jesus wants this new Kingdom to happen. So if we're in a confrontation, if he's in confrontation with the power of evil, the Sermon on the Mount tells us his battle plan. If you want to change your world, confront the power of the devil, affect other people's lives, then the Sermon on the Mount will tell you how.

His preaching was, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is near." And then he begins to say, "Here's how it's going to happen. Blessed are the poor in spirit." Poor in spirit means you don't think more of yourself than you should. "Blessed are the meek." Meek means care about somebody else before yourself.

That's the battle plan. Now imagine what would happen if 33 of us all went back into our communities and could begin to carry those things out, what kind of an impact and outreach we could have if we were truly children of the Kingdom. My thought, as I sit here and had a moment or two here where I had a real struggle, this was my mother's favorite place, and I remember what she said. She referred to that fact that down there, there was a mother who was so incredibly proud because her two sons had been picked to be Jesus' disciples. And how proud my mother was that her four sons followed the Lord. 

And I just thought that my mother understood what it was like to live out the Kingdom. She really was a Kingdom person, and she sits in Heaven today celebrating her reward. But what she left behind was four sons and hopefully grandsons and granddaughters who have followed the same God. And I just want to leave a challenge particularly with the parents here. Probably the greatest way that you could put this battle plan into action and change the world is to leave behind a legacy of children who love the Lord like you do.