The Big Chill [Dec 9-11]

Our high school winter retreat is designed to be just that… a retreat. no heavy program, no obligatory games – just a weekend carved out of life and designated for hanging out with Jesus and with friends.

BEWARE.

BEWARE.

Jesus uses that word a handful of times throughout the gospels.  Interested to know what sorts of things Jesus warns his followers about?  Don’t these sound about right:

Christian, BEWARE of angry rock music!

Christian, BEWARE of MTV!

Christian, BEWARE of losing the moral high ground!

That’s what we seem to be most worried about these days.  Those aren’t found int he Bible.  The actual list is very telling of what creeps into our minds when we are following Jesus.  Here’s what Jesus actually warned his disciples with -

BEWARE not to perform righteous acts in front of people (<– Tells of latent hypocrisy)

BEWARE of false prophets (<– Calls them sheep in wolves clothing // definition of hypocrisy)

BEWARE of the yeast of religious leaders (<– that yeast is hypocrisy)

BEWARE of how you treat a brother in sin

BEWARE of teachers of the law(<– because of their showiness)

BEWARE of being overtaken by anxieties of life (<– the product of trying to be something you’re not)

When Jesus tells his disciples to BEWARE in the new testament, He is warning them not to fall into that trap of hypocrisy.  It is an easy, easy trap to fall into.  Jesus seems to be very concerned that our interior matches our exterior; that we don’t just do what Jesus tells us to do, but we are who Jesus has made us to be.

Read through Matt 6:1-18.  Jesus lays it all out there: his disciples seek Heaven’s approval, and hypocrites seek the approval of their peers.

Who’s approval are you after?

BEWARE.

have you lost YOUR childlike wonder?

 

 

DOIN WORK.

At a party. At the airport. At a friend’s house. At the grocery store. You meet new people in so many different places – and in so many different scenarios. Its interesting – no matter the setting of the conversation – that conversation moves in a specific direction almost 100% of the time. Its only a matter of time, when you meet a new person, before this question gets asked: “so, what do you do?”

you can determine so much about a person by what they do. It reveals what someone is passionate about, where their loyalties are, what they value, etc. We ascribe so much of our identity to our professional life. I don’t think a person should be pigeonholed by what they do – but my point is that what someone DOES can reveal a lot who that person IS.

Isn’t it the same with God? Couldn’t it be that if we want to know more about who God IS, we could study what God DOES? From The Red Sea to The Sea of Galilee and from Mt. Siani to the Mount of Olives – if we pay attention to what God does, we can learn so much about who he is: it’s impossible to separate the actions of God from the character of God.

Lets ask God the question, “So, what do you do?”  and see what we can learn from his answer.