The Jesus Nobody Warned You About
Most of us are walking around with a version of Jesus in our heads we can't shift past. Maybe it's the smiling primary-school-teacher Jesus from the children's Bible. Maybe it's Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, the 1742 hymn that still colours how we picture Him. Maybe, if we're honest, it's a Jesus who mostly nods along with everything we already believe.
Matt Edmundson kicks off our new series Jesus the Revolutionary by asking, "What if the Jesus we think we know isn't the Jesus who actually showed up?" What if the real Jesus is bigger, stranger, more disruptive, and far kinder than the one we've been carrying around? This isn't another try harder message. It's an invitation to meet someone we might have been missing our whole lives.
The Problem with Cardboard Jesus
There's a Jesus most people reject, and we don't blame them. The pastel-coloured, lamb-hugging, never-says-anything-difficult Jesus is simply too small for the world we actually live in. A cosmic therapist with a beard and sandals who pats us on the head and says there, there.
Of course Jesus is gentle. Of course He is kind. But somewhere along the way we took those qualities, built an entire Jesus ecosystem out of them, and quietly edited out everything else. We kept the bits that made us comfortable and deleted the rest.
We do the same thing to radical people. Most of us know the I Have a Dream speech, but the same Martin Luther King said the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism, called for radical redistribution of wealth, and was described by the FBI as the most dangerous man in America. Now he's on a postage stamp. We killed the majority of his ideas, celebrated the bits we liked, and used his sanitised words to resist the very changes he was demanding. And we've done exactly the same thing with Jesus.
The problem with cardboard Jesus is that He can't do anything. He can't challenge us, because that's not gentle. He can't disagree with our culture, because that's not meek. He can't say anything that makes us uncomfortable, because that's not mild. We end up with a Jesus who agrees with everything we already believe, which is remarkably convenient.
A Jesus who never disrupts you is a Jesus who can never transform you.
The Day Jesus Announced Himself (and Nearly Got Killed)
Luke chapter 4 gives us a front-row seat to the moment Jesus kicks off His ministry. Nazareth. Four hundred-ish people. Everyone knows everyone. A dry heat where dust hangs in the air and the stone walls hold the cool from the night before. These are the people who've known Jesus His whole life. They've known His mum. They've bought furniture from His dad's workshop. Some of them probably taught Him to read in the very room they're all sat in.
He stands up, is handed the scroll of Isaiah, and reads a prophecy about freedom.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." (Luke 4:18-19, ESV)
Then He rolls the scroll up, sits down (the posture of a teacher about to say something important), and says today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Not one day. Not a nice aspiration. Today. In this room. Through me. That's not a sermon. That's a declaration.
The word freedom in the original language basically means everything's been reset. It echoes the ancient Jubilee tradition where every fifty years all debts were cancelled, all slaves freed, all land returned. Imagine someone walking into Parliament and announcing that every mortgage, every student loan, every credit card, all of it, is cancelled. Today. Right now. That's the scale of disruption Jesus is announcing, except He meant everything, not just money.
Here's the detail we often miss. The Isaiah passage He reads from goes on to speak of God's vengeance, about payback and retribution. Jesus leaves that part out. Whether He made a deliberate choice to stop reading or Luke is highlighting what mattered most, the message is the same. Jesus came leading with grace, not payback. With freedom, not punishment.
Then He does something that provokes a riot. He brings up two old stories where God bypassed Israel entirely and sent help to outsiders. Elijah was sent to a foreign widow. Elisha healed a Syrian general. The room erupts. His neighbours, His friends, the people He grew up with, grab Him, push Him to the edge of a cliff and try to throw Him off. Thirty minutes earlier they were speaking well of Him. Now they want Him dead.
Luke records what happens next in one astonishing line. Jesus walked right through them and went on His way. That's a pretty significant miracle all by itself.
Why were they so angry? Because Jesus just told them that God's revolution wasn't exclusively for them. It was for everyone. Including the Romans. Including their enemies. And a Jesus who is for everyone is deeply threatening to people who thought He was only for theirs.
Fiercely Loving, Not Meek and Mild
The real Jesus isn't meek and mild. He's also not angry Jesus, harsh and wild. He's something far more interesting. He's fiercely loving. Fierce against everything that holds us captive, relentlessly tender toward us. A Jesus who loves us too much to leave us where we are, and loves the world too much to leave it as it is.
The same Jesus who provoked a riot in Nazareth is the one who wept at a friend's grave and welcomed children onto His lap. He's not one or the other. He's both.
If we've experienced a version of Christianity that felt aggressive or controlling, this is not what we're talking about. The fierceness of Jesus is always aimed at what's hurting us, never at us.
And that freedom He announced isn't abstract. It's specific. Free from the guilt we carry. Free from the story that we're not enough. But when He read those verses in that dusty synagogue, He meant all of it. Economic, social, spiritual freedom. We've tended to keep only the spiritual bit because it is vague and doesn't demand much of us. That is exactly the sanitisation He warned about.
He delivered that freedom not through violence but through sacrifice. Violence may change circumstances. Sacrifice changes hearts. Not through a sword, but through a cross. Everything He announced in that dusty synagogue in Nazareth, He delivered on the cross. And when He came back from death, He proved the freedom was real.
The Jesus We Invent
Conversation Street surfaced a useful list of the Jesuses we tend to manufacture when the real one feels too costly.
The therapeutic life-coach Jesus — all the nice sayings, none of the submission
The political Jesus — happily baptised into whichever party we already vote for
The nice Jesus — keep the comforting teachings, lose the hard ones
The convenient saviour — great at forgiving sins, less welcome as king
The prophet-but-not-God Jesus — a good man, nothing more
Whichever version has crept into our thinking, the same pattern repeats. We lean into the parts of Jesus' character that match our own wiring and dismiss the rest. One of our regular community members, Alicia, put it beautifully. She learned to see Jesus as a revolutionary from her dad and a comforter from her mum. Our picture of Jesus is often as much about us as it is about Him.
Zoe summed up something honest that many of us feel. "I've only just started to learn about Jesus recently, and I've been surprised about how fierce He can be. I thought He was just quiet and calm." That's a perception map a lot of us have been drawing on.
When God Gets in Your Face
If Jesus is fiercely loving, then part of that fierce love looks like confrontation. Not harshness. Not condemnation. Just the stubborn refusal to leave us where we are.
Sharon shared a story about coming up to Liverpool years ago to do a discipleship year. Her mind was a mess. Her life was a mess. A leader told her, kindly but firmly, that she needed to repent of some things and forgive some people. Every part of her wanted to push back. It's their fault I'm like this. But she knew it was true. The uncomfortable thing God was doing through another person was actually the loving thing He was doing for her.
Matt told a similar story. A season of frustration with church, a mounting internal rant, a prayer that started God, I am really not happy, and a quiet reply he couldn't duck. Find me chapter and verse in the Bible where church is about you. As they used to say in North Carolina, He got on me like a chicken on a bug.
Both stories land in the same place. God's challenge isn't the opposite of His love. It's the evidence of it. The path of least resistance doesn't usually take us to freedom. The loving Father pushes us toward wholeness, and sometimes that means into a corner first.
What to Do With This
If Jesus is bigger, fiercer, and more loving than the version we've been carrying, here are some honest next steps.
Read Luke 4 this week. Just that one chapter. Slowly. Twice, if we can. Then ask one simple question — does this Jesus match the one I've been carrying around?
Name our version of Jesus. Which of the invented Jesuses above feels closest to the one in our head? Naming it makes it easier to hand back.
Let Him be both. Stop choosing between fierce and gentle. Welcome the Jesus who wept at Lazarus' grave and walked through a lynch mob. Both are in the same person.
Notice where He's already challenging us. Often God's confrontation comes through another person, a repeating thought, or a verse that won't leave us alone. Don't argue it away. Sit with it.
Pray the dangerous prayer. Not my will but Yours be done. Jesus Himself struggled with this one in Gethsemane. It's hard. It's also where freedom lives.
Who Wants a Small God Anyway
If we've given up on Jesus because the version we were offered was too small, we get it. Genuinely. But who wants a small God? Not us.
Over the coming weeks we're going to meet the Jesus who actually showed up. We're going to watch Him do things that don't make sense. Say things that offended the wrong people. Love the people everyone else gave up on. Pick fights with systems everyone else accepted. Die in a way nobody expected. And come back in a way that changed the entire trajectory of human history.
If we've never really met Him, this is a great place to start. If we've met Him but lost the wonder, this is a good place to start again.
The Jesus we think we know might not be the Jesus who actually showed up. And the one who did is far more dangerous to our comfort, and far more devoted to our freedom, than we ever imagined.
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[00:07] Anna: Good evening everyone, and welcome to Crowd Church. I'm really excited to be here tonight. I'm one of your hosts for this evening's livestream. I'm joined by Sharon. Sharon, do you want to say hi?
[00:20] Sharon: Hi everybody, great to be here. Glad you could join us.
[00:23] Anna: And we're also going to be hearing from your lovely husband Matt in a minute, who's going to be sharing with us tonight. Lovely husband.
[00:29] Matt: Yeah, well, he's all right, isn't he?
[00:31] Sharon: It's pretty good.
[00:34] Anna: I mean, yeah. So tonight we're excited to be starting a brand new series. For anyone who's been with us a while, you'll know that we've been looking at Easter stories the last few weeks, but tonight we're kicking off a brand new series and we're going to be talking about Jesus — the life of Jesus — and the theme is Jesus the Revolutionary. So it's all about the Jesus that maybe you've grown up learning about, or maybe you don't know very much about; some of those conceptions, misconceptions that we have. Who's the Jesus that we think we know? Who's the real Jesus that the Bible tells us about? I think it's going to be a good series, and it's going to be rolling for the best part of this year, we think. So stick with us for that. Matt's going to be sharing the introduction tonight, so rather than me guess what he's going to talk about any more, I'll pass over to him and he can tell us a little bit more. Then we'll come back to Conversation Street afterwards, which is just a chance to post your questions while he's talking, and we'll try and answer them and unpick them at the end. So be posting, be thinking while he's talking. Matt, over to you. --- ## Talk — The Jesus Nobody Warned You About
[01:50] Matt: Well, hello, good evening, welcome. It's good to be with you guys. We get to kick off a brand new teaching series tonight, all about Jesus the Revolutionary. I've been looking forward to this, actually. It's fair to say this is going to be epic. So make sure you stick with us as we go through this series. I'm going to start, I think, with a confession, if I may. We're in church. One of regret. You see, when I was at school, I used to walk the perimeter during break — just doing laps around the school. I'd be with friends, and I remember we were chatting and we were coming around the corner and seeing this guy sat there on his own. I didn't really know him, but I did know that he was a Christian. And so I absolutely tore into him. I made fun of everything about him — the way he dressed, the fact he didn't swear, the fact he never seemed to have any fun. I couldn't understand why anyone would choose that. In my thinking, Jesus was a killjoy. He was like the fun police. And maybe you're like me walking around my old school. You have a version of Jesus in your mind that you can't shift past. So what if the Jesus you think you know is not the Jesus who actually showed up? What if Jesus is way, way bigger than our notion of him? There's a hymn — some of you may know it — an old, old hymn called Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild. It was actually written in 1742. I get why the idea of this is appealing, because who doesn't want a gentle God? I definitely don't want a mean and angry God. But it can lead you to the idea of a God who's basically a cosmic therapist with a beard and sandals — someone who pats you on the head and says, "There, there, it's all going to be fine." Of course, Jesus is gentle. He is kind. But somewhere along the way we took those qualities and we built this entire Jesus ecosystem out of them. We edited out everything else. We kept the bits that made us comfortable and quietly deleted the rest. We've been doing a bit of clearing at the house recently and came across an old children's Bible. Beautiful illustrations. You know the kind of thing I mean — the one with white Jesus on the front looking like a friendly primary school teacher in a white tunic with a blue sash, everything in pastel colours. Jesus is smiling, it's calm, and he's surrounded by lambs. And I think, well, maybe this is the Jesus that people are rejecting. Honestly, I wouldn't blame them, because that Jesus is way too small for the world we actually live in. We do this to radical people, by the way, don't we? Take Martin Luther King. Most of us know the "I Have a Dream" speech. It's on posters, it's on mugs. But the same man said the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism or of racism. He called for radical redistribution of wealth, and in his lifetime the FBI called him the most dangerous man in America. Now he's on a postage stamp. We killed, as a society, the majority of his ideas and celebrated the bits we liked. Then we used his sanitised words to resist the very changes he was actually demanding. And I just wonder if we've done exactly the same thing with Jesus in many ways. The problem with cardboard Jesus is that he can't actually do anything. He can't challenge you, because that's not gentle. He can't disagree with your culture, because that's not meek. He can't say something that makes you deeply uncomfortable, because that's not mild. So you end up with a Jesus who agrees with everything you already believe, which is remarkably convenient, isn't it? Here's the thing: a Jesus who never disrupts you is a Jesus who can never transform you. So if that's the Jesus we've invented, what was the actual Jesus like, and how did he describe himself in his lifetime and in his ministry? That's something we're going to get into in this series. But I want to start at Luke chapter 4, because Luke chapter 4 gives us this front-row seat right at the moment Jesus kicks off his ministry — him announcing to the world what's going to happen. And let me tell you, it does not go well at all. I'm going to take you to the synagogue in Jesus's hometown of Nazareth. Maybe 400-ish people live there. Everyone knows everyone. It's warm. It's that kind of dry heat where the dust hangs in the air and the stone walls hold the cool from the night before. People are shuffling around on these carved benches, the kids are fidgeting, and there's the low hum of neighbours catching up before things start. These people have known Jesus his whole life. They've known his mum. They've bought furniture from his workshop, and some of them probably taught him to read in the very room in which they were sat. It's at this moment Jesus announces himself to the world, and he chose to do it here in this small stone building that is the centre of this really insignificant community. The Bible tells us that he stands up to read, and he's handed the scroll of Isaiah, one of the Old Testament prophets. It's a heavy thing — not like a Bible that we have now; it's made from animal skin and wooden rollers. He unrolls it to a prophecy about freedom and starts to read. So if you've got your Bibles, turn to Luke chapter 4. We're going to read verses 18 and 19, where he says: > "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." Then he rolls up the scroll, gives it back to the chap that handed it to him, and he sits down — which is a bit like this, I suppose, a posture of a teacher about to say something important. Jesus turns to the crowd after he sits down, leans forward, and goes: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." I wonder if you can feel the weight of that. He didn't say, "You know what, chaps, this is a really nice aspiration." He didn't say, "One day someone will do this." He said, "Today. Right now. In this room. Through me." This is not a sermon, this is a declaration. The word freedom in this passage that Jesus refers to in the original language basically means "everything's been reset", which is a great phrase. It has echoes of this ancient Jubilee tradition where every 50 years all the debts were cancelled, all the slaves were freed, and all the land was returned. It was this huge economic and social reset. Imagine someone walking into Parliament today, or the House of Representatives, or wherever you are in the world, and they stand up and announce to the whole world that all debt is cancelled. So for you, your student loans, your mortgages, your credit cards — all of them cancelled today, right now. This is the scale of the disruption I think Jesus is announcing, except he was talking about stuff way more than money. He was talking about everything. Now, this ancient prophecy Jesus reads from goes on to speak of God's vengeance and payback. If you read it in Isaiah, it's got this whole thing about retribution. But Luke records that Jesus talked about the grace but left out all the stuff about vengeance. Whether Jesus made a deliberate choice to stop reading at that point, or whether Luke is just highlighting what maybe mattered most, the message that comes back is the same: Jesus came leading with grace, not with payback; with freedom, not with punishment. I read that and go, "That's amazing." But for the audience at the time in this small stone synagogue, they were deeply troubled by this. They were very, very uncomfortable. They wanted a Messiah who would destroy their enemies, take them out, and at every form of injustice they would have had their retribution and their enemies would have suffered. They wanted a conquering Messiah — a God to intervene, someone to intervene in their fate, take control. I think we still want that today, don't we, from Jesus? And Jesus offers them, and us, a Messiah who would free them. He would free all the oppressed — but Jesus is including, it turns out, the Romans, their enemy, in his decision to free people. He's not going to conquer them, he's going to free them. Then Jesus, when he's talking to these chaps still sat there, does something really extraordinary. He brings up two old stories from the Old Testament, and the commonality in these two stories is that God bypasses Israel entirely and sent help to outsiders, to foreigners, to their enemies. He reminded them of the stories of Elijah, who was sent to a foreign widow, and Elisha, who was sent to heal a Syrian general. The Jesus they thought they knew is definitely the Jesus who is not showing up right now. The room erupts. They surge towards Jesus and grab hold of him. They push him out, and they push him to the edge of the cliff. So the people that were speaking well of him 30 minutes ago — his friends, his neighbours, the people he grew up with — now want to throw him off a cliff. Literally throw him off a cliff. In their minds, he is worthy now of only one thing: being put to death. And then Luke, the way he puts it, is just remarkable. It just says that Jesus walked right through them and went on his way. That's a pretty significant miracle, isn't it? It's just one of those things. I try and picture it in my head — he just walks on through. But why were they so angry? Why would they throw, or try and throw, Jesus off a cliff? Because the bottom line is Jesus is not their perceived version of Messiah. Because Jesus just told them that God's revolution wasn't exclusively for them — his revolution was for everyone. A Jesus who is for everyone is deeply threatening to people who thought he was only for them. That alone, I think, pretty much obliterates and destroys the myth of cardboard Jesus. Now, I'm not saying familiarity with Jesus is the problem. Of course it isn't. The crowd knew Jesus. They knew who he was. But there's a difference between deep familiarity and closed familiarity. Deep familiarity keeps expecting him to surprise you, but closed familiarity thinks you've finished knowing him. One draws you closer, the other builds a wall. And any of us can drift from one to the other, I think, without really noticing, as soon as we think we've got it all figured out. So what does it look like when you encounter this Jesus — the one who turns up with freedom in one hand and disruption in the other? I don't think the real Jesus is meek and mild, but I also don't think he's angry Jesus, harsh and wild. He's something far more interesting. I think he's a Jesus who is lovingly fierce. He is fierce against everything that holds you captive, and he's relentlessly tender towards you as well. It's a really interesting tension. A Jesus who loves you too much to leave you where you are, and loves the world too much to leave it as it is. The same Jesus who provoked a riot in Nazareth is the same Jesus who wept at a friend's grave and welcomed children onto his lap. He's not one or the other, he's both. If you've experienced a version of Christianity that felt aggressive or controlling, that is not what I am talking about. The fierceness of Jesus is always aimed at what's hurting you, never at you. And that freedom he announced, it's not abstract — it is very specific. It's free from the guilt you carry. It's free from the story that you're not enough. But when Jesus read those verses in that dusty old synagogue, he meant all of it — economic, social, spiritual freedom. We've tended, certainly in the modern church, to define it just as the spiritual bit, because it brings spiritual freedom. It does. But it's a bit vague, isn't it? And it doesn't really demand anything from us. I wonder if this is the sanitisation Jesus is warning us about in these verses. Jesus delivers that freedom not through violence but through sacrifice. Christians haven't always followed that idea, have they? But Jesus did. He understood that violence may change circumstance, but sacrifice transforms life. That changes hearts. So it wasn't through a sword, but through a cross. Everything Jesus announces in that dusty synagogue in Nazareth, he delivers on the cross. And when he came back from the dead, he proved that freedom was real. This is something we are definitely going to get into in the coming weeks. So the Jesus you think you know might not be the Jesus who actually showed up all those years ago. It might not be the same Jesus that comes now. The one who actually shows up, I think, is far more dangerous to your comfort but far more devoted to your freedom than you ever imagined. So back to my opening confession, the one of regret. Remember the lad at school, the one I made fun of or ripped into for being a Christian? If you'd asked me at the time, "Was I a Christian?", I probably would have said in some way yes. I was a cultural Christian. I believed in God because I was born in England. Never really thought about it, though. But I did know enough to know that following Jesus meant becoming boring, joyless, a killjoy. Why would I not swear? Why would I not have fun with my girlfriend? Why would I live this straight-laced, boring life? I thought he was the freak. But it turned out I was the one that was the fool. A few years later, I came head to head with this idea that Jesus was a killjoy. I found myself sat in a church listening to a preacher, and I prayed, "Jesus, you can have my life, just don't ask me to give up the fun." I remember praying that prayer in church. Even then, when I was prepared to become a Christian, I still had this belief, this idea, that Jesus was out to stop me having fun. I continued to wrestle with this idea for about a year. In that time, I discovered that I was the one who was not actually having fun. I was the one who was missing out on what abundant life was. Not the kid at school — me. That's my regret, and it's my shame, because the way I dealt with my own ignorance was to be aggressively mean to him. Because I could. Because I was the stronger one. Because I was with my friends and he was sat there alone. I had become the very thing that I personally despised — I had become the bully. But thank God for his mercy on me, because I found out that Jesus was nothing like the killjoy I invented. That challenged everything for me. So the Jesus you think you know might not be the Jesus who actually shows up. Over the coming weeks, we're going to meet the one who did. We're going to watch him do things that do not make any sense. We're going to listen to him say things that offended the wrong people. We're going to see him love the people everyone else gave up on. He picks fights with systems everybody else accepts. And he died in a way that nobody expected, and he comes back in a way that changes the entire trajectory of human history. If you've given up on Jesus because the version you were offered was too small, I get it, genuinely. But who wants a small God? I don't. If you've never actually met this Jesus — not the idea of him, but actually met him — I think this series is a great place to start. And if you've already met him, if you're already a Christ-follower but you've lost the wonder and the awe, I wonder if this is a good place to start again. So my challenge to you this week is to try one thing: simply read Luke chapter 4, the verses we went through. Just read that over and over again — just that one chapter — and ask yourself one simple question: does this Jesus I'm reading about match the one I've been carrying around? It's a really great question. Anyway, that's it from me. Back to you, ladies. --- ## Conversation Street
[22:15] Anna: Brilliant. Thanks, Matt. That was just a great introduction. I really enjoyed it. I think it was personally very challenging. Even though some of us sat around this table have been Christians for a long time, I think that's actually a really interesting question to think about. What do you actually think of when you think of Jesus? Who do you think of? How do you think of him? What do you think about him? And how much does that marry up to scripture, or just kind of your cultural conditioning? What did you think, Sharon?
[22:49] Sharon: Well, earlier this afternoon, I was just looking through and thinking, "Okay, what are the different types of Jesus that we can get into?" So I've made a note of a few. Matt kind of mentioned a little bit as well. There's the therapeutic life-coach Jesus, where we take the nice sayings to enhance our life but leave the rest of it. There's the political or cultural Jesus, where we take the bits where he aligns with our political views and assign him to our political party. There's nice Jesus, where we take away the hard teachings and keep just the nice ones — the ones that make us feel good. There's the convenient saviour, where we like the forgiveness-of-sins bit but we don't actually like the submitting to him as our king. And I was thinking again about how, in different religions, he might be seen as a prophet but not the Son of God, where people might believe that he didn't really die on the cross but it was some sort of illusion. So many different types. But I also relate to the people who had their expectations turned upside down and didn't really get it, because the amount of times where I've been like that, where I've not really got it.
[24:15] Anna: I loved what Matt had to say about that whole thing of, you can't really put Jesus in a box. He isn't one thing. He's both fierce and loving — he's fiercely loving. And the two things are sort of in tension. You see that time and again when you get to know Jesus: this idea that he's both forgiving, but also he has this strong thing of justice, and he doesn't let evil go unpunished. All through the Bible there are all these tensions about the character of Jesus. He's not one thing, but these tensions make him this incredibly dynamic character that's quite counter-cultural. And yeah, I just think Matt's talk tonight really summed it up well. You see in culture at the moment, don't you, and in the news, you see it played out all the time — this idea that when somebody does make Jesus smaller, or make him fit their own ideology or politics, that that can get you into all kinds of horrible mess. You see it in Christian nationalism and a lot of what's happening in America at the moment. It kind of gets used as a justification to start wars on other nations, and yet Jesus doesn't take sides. He doesn't side with our nation. There's so much we can get into, but it's just so challenging, isn't it, to be like, "Who do I think Jesus is?" I think that's a really good question to sit with this week, and just kind of start picking at — at home as well.
[25:52] Sharon: Yeah. I sometimes find that my brain is so small that I can only really grasp bits of who God is at any one time. Trying to hold the whole thing together can be a bit of a challenge, because God is so big. Like you say, you've got the completely loving, but also the God of justice, and God manages to hold those things in tension. But sometimes it's difficult to keep all of God. The times when I feel like I'm more able to do that is when I have a really powerful experience of his presence, and then it seems easier to hold all of those things in tension. Other times that can be quite tricky.
[26:37] Anna: I liked that whole idea of what he was saying about how we can make this cardboard cut-out Jesus, which is just like a nice guy. He's nice. I'm not saying Jesus wasn't nice, but he was so much more than that, wasn't he? When we have that idea of nice Jesus, he's not that disruptive Jesus who turns systems and things upside down and really challenges your life. That quote that Matt said — a Jesus who never disrupts you can never transform you — I think that is something I will take away and ponder this week. I don't want a God that's so small that he doesn't disrupt or transform or change my life. What's the point of a religion or faith, of anything really, what's the point of doing it if it doesn't make your life different, better, transformed? That's what we're here for: transformation. Not just something that's nice, comfortable.
[27:40] Sharon: I was going to ask both of you whether you've got examples of when God has — not slapped you in the face, that's the wrong phrase —
[27:52] Matt: I've got examples of when he slapped me in the face.
[27:53] Sharon: Maybe it's kind... They were accidents, all of them. But anyway — so, in fact, I've got an eyewitness tonight. I'm going to have to explain this one now, okay, just so you know that I'm not a husband-beater. So there was an example — we're all in the hall: me, Matt, our daughter Zoe. We were going to say goodbye, and I had this heavy bag on my shoulder and it slipped off. So I went to pull my arm back to pull it on. In the process, my arm flipped up and smacked Matt in the face. It really was an accident. But anyway, back to my question —
[28:30] Matt: So hang on — hands up who believes Sharon that this was an accident. Yeah, no-one's putting their hands up in the room. Come on, guys.
[28:40] Sharon: Yeah, anyway. So my question is, have you got examples in your own life of where you've been confronted by God in a way that you weren't really expecting, or maybe didn't even necessarily like?
[28:55] Matt: Yeah, I think many. I remember one time I was really not happy with life in church. Church was really frustrating me at the time, and I was getting more and more heated about this, more and more angry, more and more annoyed. It was going around in my head — that sort of emotion. I think I was probably giving into it quite a bit. I just remember praying one day, going, "God, I am really not happy." I'm a big believer that you can express and vent to God in your emotions. But I think every now and again, most of the time I think it's fine, but there are some times where God just challenges, and I just felt God challenge me at this point and say, "Okay, what is it you are not happy about?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm not happy about this, this, and this." And I just felt God at this point say, "You know what, Matt, I can listen to you all day long, but you go ahead and find me chapter and verse in the Bible where church is about you — and what you get out of it versus what you give to it. I'm all ears." I was like, "Okay." I just remember having this internal argument with God, and I was deeply challenged that I had this really lousy attitude. As they used to say in North Carolina, he got on me like a chicken on a bug. That's what I felt at that point. What about you, Anna?
[30:39] Anna: I think one of the things that has really changed in how I think about Jesus is not thinking he's there to bless me and make my life better. For a long time I thought about Jesus as this person I pray to, and he's there to make my life — like a life-enhancement thing. A little bit like the therapist, really, but more like showering gifts from heaven on me. "Oh Lord, I want this meeting to go well at work. Oh Lord, I want a slightly nicer car." Whatever it was that day. Actually realising that the main point of relationship with Jesus is not just about enhancing or making my life more comfortable — I think that is a trap you can really get into. If you spend any time around certain Christians, it's just really not that healthy. There are a few good comments actually that have come through on the feed that I'll pull out as well. Alicia said: "I learned to see Jesus as a revolutionary from my dad and a comforter from my mum, which I think reflects their personalities and life experiences more than anything else, really." I think that's a really great point, Alicia. The idea that quite often we make Jesus in our own image, or to suit our own personalities. Maybe it's human nature, but we tend to lean into the parts of Jesus's character that resonate with us and who we are and how we're wired a lot, don't we?
[32:08] Sharon: I think that can be both a positive and a negative, in terms of — I think we can see different parts of God's character modelled in different people and the strengths that they've got. Some people do model that fatherliness or the love; other people might model the challenge. Together, as a body, we get more of a whole picture of who God is, because he talks about us being the church, being his body, doesn't he? So I think it can work both ways a little bit.
[32:43] Anna: Yeah, I think you're right. That's why it's so important to be in some kind of relationship and friendship with other believers, because you're not going to get the whole picture on your own, are you? Maybe this is just skewing off on a bit of a tangent — but if you've got other people that lean into other elements of Jesus more, then maybe it brings some of that balance and challenge.
[33:06] Sharon: And I think that challenge from God can come through other people. One of the times that I first remember that — "Oh, I'm not sure about this" — was when I first came up to Liverpool to do the Year Team, discipleship Year Team, and I was a real mess. My mind was a mess. Everything was a mess. And somebody —
[33:28] Matt: I hasten to add, she'd not met me at this point. I just want to point that out.
[33:31] Sharon: We hadn't met, but you know.
[33:33] Matt: Well, from a distance.
[33:35] Anna: You're just saying it wasn't to do with the eCommerce Podcast. I just want to be really clear.
[33:39] Sharon: Nothing to do.
[33:40] Matt: Not your fault. It's obviously important for my ego that I'm not associated with your life being a mess.
[33:46] Sharon: So anyway — I was struggling. One of the leaders of the team really challenged me that actually I needed to repent of stuff, and I needed to forgive people. It doesn't sound like much now, but at the time I was just like, "What? How can you tell me that I need to deal with this? It's their fault that I'm like this." I had this real reaction to it. I was angry, because I didn't want to be confronted about my own sin, or about the people that I needed to forgive. I didn't want to forgive because I'm like, "If I do that, I'm going to take responsibility for the way I am." I didn't want to do that. So it just felt like God in my face. It came through another person, but I think I recognised that what they were saying was true. I didn't like it. I think God does do that with us. Years before that, when I would try and get close to God, I'd feel like my mind was going completely crazy, and I'd get angry with God and say, "Why are you making this hard for me?" But actually, it was God revealing the stuff in my life that needed to change. I didn't want that. I just wanted the nice cuddly Jesus who would soothe me and make everything better. But actually it was like, "No, there's stuff that you need to do within your life."
[35:06] Anna: And that sort of goes back to that point that Matt was making about Jesus being both fierce as well as loving and kind. It's his loving kindness that makes him fiercely pursue you. And push you into a corner sometimes, to know you need to deal with this stuff in your life that's holding you back. You need freedom, you need healing. The path of least resistance doesn't always take you to that point, does it?
[35:33] Sharon: We do like our comfort, don't we? I just want to give that as an encouragement to anyone out there watching: if you are trying to get close to God, and actually life is becoming more difficult, lean into it. Find out what God is revealing in your life that needs to change. It might be that life gets more uncomfortable for a while, while God's dealing with that, while you're having to process that stuff with him. But keep leaning in.
[36:03] Anna: There are some really nice comments here on the feed coming through. Zoe said, "I've only just started to learn about Jesus recently, and I've been surprised about how fierce he can be. I thought he was just quiet and calm." That's interesting, because that is that perception map that you were talking about. Alicia said, "I love that the Lord can embody all these contrasts, because it helps me embrace coming to him on very different levels." I think that's a really good point as well. Jesus is such a multifaceted individual. There's been no-one else like him. There are so many different elements of his character. You can't just say he's one thing. That's why we're going to be unpacking this for most of the year, isn't it?
[36:51] Matt: Yeah, there's a lot to unpack. I think in some respects that's the beauty of it, because you've got Jesus, who is God, who's created the universe, who is this awesome being who existed pre-time and exists outside of time, and is awesome and cosmic and all-powerful and omnipresent and omniscient and all these big fancy words we use. At the same time, he's the same God who knows about the sparrows and the lilies in the field. You're like, "This is a massive contrast." When you need comfort, he's the comforter. When you need picking up, he picks you up. When you need challenge, he challenges you. When you need that sense of security, that's what he brings. He's incredible. He brings you what you need, not always what you want — but certainly what you need. I think this is a really cool juxtaposition of faith, isn't it? The danger with that — and we are going to be unpacking some of these things, like we've mentioned — is you just get connected to the one bit you like. Jesus is a healer, and I've seen Jesus do miraculous healings with people — cancers and all kinds of stuff — and it's brilliant and it's awesome. So I just wanted to latch onto that for a long time. But it's not a complete story, and so you kind of have to understand the breadth and width of Jesus in so many ways. It's remarkable.
[38:28] Anna: That comes with time, doesn't it? I feel like you go through different seasons of life, and there are maybe different aspects of Jesus's character that you get to know. I guess it's a little bit like any relationship. There are seasons of life where you lean more into one thing — like healing — or, "I'm really learning a lot about how Jesus is the healer at the moment." Then you might go through a season of life where you really don't see any of Jesus's healing in your life, or in anyone else's that you pray for, and then maybe he's highlighting something else a little bit more. It's a bit like any relationship, isn't it? When you and Sharon first met, you were getting to know deeper and deeper layers of who each other were. You're probably still, decades into marriage, learning — there are new layers and new aspects of each other, or parts of each other, that are untapped that you don't fully know yet. I think that's the beauty of a relationship, rather than it just being a faith or a religion. It's a relationship, so you're always learning more.
[39:37] Matt: Yeah, no, that's totally right. The other thing I've noticed a lot — and I mentioned it in the talk slightly, and it'll be interesting to see where this goes over the next few weeks — is that the phrase "God is love" is in the Bible, right? We know that Jesus is the very definition of love. But in our heads, that's love how we understand it. Which is why I like the word fierce, because I think love is fierce. It's very, very fierce. You try taking a baby off a mother and you'll see how fierce that love can be. Using phrases like "God is love" is obviously biblical, but I think if you stop there, you fall into this trap that I mentioned right at the start: that Jesus, because he loves me, agrees with everything that I feel, that I want to do, that I want to believe. He can't disrupt that, he can't challenge that, because then it stops being loving, it starts being controlling. I've seen Christians the other way as well, who are all law — you know, you hold the pickets up outside abortion clinics and all that sort of stuff, and it's all condemnation. You're just like, neither is correct on its own. The thing I really wanted to bring out today that we really need to challenge is this Jesus, meek and mild, who just accepts everything about my life, who accepts everything about my lifestyle, how I view culture, how I speak, how I behave, how I feel, how I live. That is not the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is fiercely loving towards you, but at the same time fiercely challenging over things which he perceives to be not the best for you — where you're not living in a way that is going to bring the fruit of the Holy Spirit into your life. The Apostle Paul puts it this way — excuse me — he talks about how our desire is to walk lives pleasing to him, walking worthy of the call of God on our lives. So there's this really interesting — we've talked about it before — the challenge between grace and truth, between mercy and justice, and these tensions that God seems to be able to walk and unpack. But I think there is a danger in Western Christianity, which is: Jesus loves me, therefore Jesus accepts me, therefore Jesus agrees with me — which I think is probably slightly dangerous theology.
[42:23] Sharon: Yeah, I do think within culture generally, but also within the church, there is less acceptance of people challenging you on anything. What you've just said about, "You can't challenge me because that's not loving" — whereas the Bible defines what love is, and talks about that if you see your brother in sin, the loving thing to do is to go and confront them about that, but speaking the truth in love. Again, it's having those two things together. Not just truth, but not just wishy-washy love. But together, just to go, "Hang on, the way you're walking now is leading to death. You need to turn back. Come on, turn back." I do see a lot more resistance to that.
[43:10] Anna: It's interesting. There's another good point coming through here on the feed, and it says, "It's a fascinating point, the idea that Jesus transforms through challenge. Maybe it attracts resistance because so many of us have come to attach negatives towards challenge." That's a really great point. That's the key, isn't it? Why does Jesus challenge us? Why are some of his teachings challenging? And what is the fruit of that? If you know that at core, God is love, and he's for you, and he wants the very best for your life, then you understand that his challenge, his discipline, his correction of some things in your life is actually only to bring you greater wholeness, freedom, healing, good things. So it's about trusting God's character, isn't it, in order to be open to that challenge. Challenge isn't a bad thing when it's not challenge from a mean, evil parent. It's challenge from a loving Father who wants the best for you and wants you to live the fullest possible life. So again, it's having that right understanding of God — that's key to being open to it, really.
[44:24] Sharon: Yeah. And I think that does really challenge the culture we have here in the West at the minute, which is very much "you make your own truth, you decide what's right". If anyone challenges you, they're not just challenging what you believe, they're challenging you as a person. Whereas I don't think the Bible sees it like that. I think it would separate those out. So it's just very much a culture clash on that.
[44:49] Matt: It is. And again, it's something we're going to get into a lot more, I think. But fundamentally, I think we have to be open to the idea that Jesus will challenge us, because if he can't challenge us, if he can't disrupt us, like I said, he can't transform us. I think about the guys in the synagogue that tried to throw him off a cliff. That's not going well. You might not stay on YouTube much longer, but you're not going to come here, hopefully, and try and throw me off a cliff if you don't like what I've said. But it's one of those where they had this expectation, this perception of Jesus, to act and do and be a certain way. When Jesus didn't fit that mould, they tried to throw him off a cliff. It's that idea that we're going to have certain ideas and certain notions about Christ — and we have to be willing to go, "God, if you need to challenge that in me, go for it. I'm happy to be challenged, not just because these guys from a studio in England have said it, but because your word says it, because I've understood something about you." I think that's going to be a really critical thing coming up over the weeks. Are you looking at the comments?
[46:09] Sharon: I'm looking at a few comments. We've got Ellis, who's put, "Yes, I've seen multiple people misunderstand and mischaracterise what love is. I'm sure I do it too." I think it's like having the humility, isn't it, to go, "This is what my current understanding is — but God, teach me." He's also put, "Even when I pray and pray for things, I know — 'not my will but your will be done'. Because at the end of the day, nowhere does the Bible say 'I'll give you exactly what you want'. But sometimes it can be hard to accept." Absolutely — I'm with you on that one.
[46:44] Matt: Yeah, it'd be a lot easier maybe if it — yeah, that's for sure. Maybe. What else have we got going on in the comments?
[46:57] Sharon: Sonia has — I think this is a reply to Ellis — "That's true, Ellis. I try to view it as, we don't have the full picture that God has for us, but it doesn't always make it easier to accept." Yeah, I can totally relate to these comments.
[47:16] Anna: That whole thing of "not my will but your will" is just a really hard pill to swallow sometimes, isn't it?
[47:23] Matt: It has this presupposition, doesn't it, that my will and your will aren't always going to be the same thing. Which comes back to our point, right: that for Jesus to transform you, sometimes he has to disrupt you. Submission and obedience — the things that we don't really like to talk about in Christianity — that is saying, "This is not about me, this is about you", which means there has to be a difference in those two things. Everything you read, that God's ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts — that's okay. That's the joy of it. I think it's when you get into this place of, "Yeah, I've nailed this. God totally accepts everything I'm doing. Me and God", I just think that's dangerous thinking in many ways. Saying that — we were talking on Alpha the other night. By the way, love Alpha. We're going to start a new Alpha in a couple of weeks. If you're interested about the Christian faith and want to come join us in Alpha, go to crowd.church — the website, www.crowd.church. Just fill out the little registration form for Alpha on the website, and we'll get you on the course in a couple of weeks. We were talking on Alpha — obviously there are some people who are very new to the Christian faith, some people aren't Christians yet, and they have some really interesting ideas about Jesus. They don't necessarily always marry up to the ideas and thoughts that I have, but it's not my job on Alpha to convince them to think the way that I think, or to see Jesus the way that I see it, because I've been walking with Christ for 30 years. This is something that has happened over a period of time, and I've been transformed, I think, by my walk with him. So it's not like you need to get there tomorrow. This is back to your point about relationships — you get to know people. But I think it's a daily challenge to say, "Not my will, but your will be done." Thirty years later, it's still a challenge.
[49:30] Sharon: And that prayer was originally prayed by Jesus, wasn't it, in the garden just before he was going to get crucified? He knew he was going to be crucified, and he was saying, "God, this is not what I want, but if this is what you want, then I will do it."
[49:45] Anna: Isn't it reassuring though, to know that even Jesus, who was God in human form, also struggled with some of this stuff? As a human being, I find it really reassuring. Of course we're going to struggle with this. Even Jesus found it hard to submit to God's will when it was painful in his life, but he chose to do it anyway because he knew there was a greater good that followed out of it.
[50:09] Sharon: But yeah, it's not easy. So following God's way is not always the easiest, most comfortable way, is it? I wanted to contrast that with something you said, because at the beginning of the talk you were talking about how your view of Christianity was that it wasn't fun. God wasn't fun.
[50:31] Matt: Jesus, the fun police. Yeah.
[50:32] Sharon: Obviously you've changed your mind now. So what's your view on that?
[50:35] Matt: Oh, it's radical fun. I mean, I wouldn't do this if it wasn't fun. I don't know if that's true — but I positively enjoy everything about my — I positively enjoy most things about my walk with God. I must clarify. What I perceived as Jesus robbing my fun, a lot of people think about, right? It's like, basically, you're not allowed to sin as a Christian. Well, you're not allowed to sin as any person, but anyway. You're not allowed to sin as a Christian, so you have to give up all the sins. And all the sins are the things that you want to do — they're all the things that are bad for you, but they're all the things that you enjoy. I had this conception that because I wasn't allowed to do those things as a Christian, therefore there would be no fun, because these were the things that I enjoyed doing. The reality of life is, whilst there is an element of truth to that — I'm not going to deny that. It's not like God said, "Oh, you can keep doing all of that, man." No, no, no, no, no. There were some things I definitely couldn't keep doing. But in place of that, what you get is so much bigger than what you give up. There is a choice where you say, "Not my will but your will be done. I will lay these things at your feet." But what he gives you is infinitely more. I might not always feel that, I might not always experience that, I might not even always think that's true, but the reality of it is, it is. What lies before us is greater than what lies behind us — all those sort of sentences. So what we give is nothing in terms of what we get. Jesus says in John 10:10, "I have come that you may have life, and have life in all its abundance." That Greek word there is zoe. It means this divine life — life as God has it. "I have come that you may have this life to the full" — life as God has it, this divine life, this abundant life. That doesn't mean everything you ever wanted in life. It doesn't mean an abundant bank account. It doesn't mean driving around in Ferraris. I mean, maybe for you it does, but for most people, it doesn't. It means life to the — life as God has. That is a goal worth chasing, right? "Do I have this life, this abundant life, that is full of" — and the Bible uses these words over and over again — "joy and peace and contentment and godliness and faith and hope and love and all of those things?" Are they growing in me? If they are, that's a remarkable thing, isn't it? So whatever you give up is nothing in relation to what you get.
[53:36] Sharon: I think sometimes we chase after those things because they do look attractive, but it's to fill that hole in us that actually only God can fill. So the things that we chase can be a bit more superficial. But when you reorientate to God's way, actually he fulfils those deepest desires that we have. Not necessarily always instantly. It's definitely been a process for me — and some harder times, working through stuff, and digging up, you know, getting rid of all the dirt out of my life. But worth it, though.
[54:12] Matt: Definitely. Absolutely worth it.
[54:14] Anna: I think you're absolutely right that a lot of the time, what we do — the behaviours that we sometimes cling to that aren't good for us, the sin patterns in our lives — it is just about trying to find those places that God gives us freely. Those things like joy and peace and security and a sense of worth and identity and "who am I?" and all of those things. It looks like just finding them in superficial, human, man-made ways that are so much more inferior than what God can give. People go try to find that in sex and relationships and money, or power, or alcohol or drugs — whatever you're doing that is quite short-term. But actually God's got the real thing, the real deal. It's like, yeah, sort of inferior. So when we cling to that — our sin — it strikes me that it's just like the inferior version of what God gives us perfectly. The trade-off, actually, once you've tried it, is not that difficult. Such a good point to let go of, because the real deal is so much better than the human inferior version.
[55:31] Matt: Yeah. Very good point. Very well said. I'm aware of time.
[55:39] Anna: Yeah, what's ticking off? Totally not.
[55:41] Sharon: Oh yeah, it's getting late, isn't it?
[55:43] Matt: So we just go to Live Land, doesn't it? Just cracking on. We should probably say — I'm sorry, you crack on, I'm not hosting tonight.
[55:51] Anna: I mean, I'm hosting tonight, but I'm not entirely sure what's happening next week. We've got the next episode next week, haven't we, of this series?
[56:03] Sharon: Tell us who's on. We've got Dave Connolly speaking to us next week, carrying on in the series. And in theory, we have Will and Mike hosting. In theory. Because sometimes it changes, doesn't it?
[56:15] Matt: It does. It can change. But I think they'll be okay. I'm just pulling up the rota for next week so I can tell you what Dave's going to talk about.
[56:25] Sharon: And while he's looking for that — we're going to finish the livestream any moment, but we're going to carry on in — is it Google Meet? Yes, it is. And hopefully the link will appear in the comments. So come and join us.
[56:40] Matt: If Dan's doing his job, the comments — is it in there? Well done. Is he doing his job?
[56:45] Sharon: So yeah, just come and join us. We're very informal. Just chat, say hi, see how you are.
[56:54] Matt: Yeah, it'd be good to see you. Next week, Dave is talking about the woman at the well — John chapter 4, the story of the woman at the well, one of the very famous stories in the Gospels. So do come join us for that. It's going to be epic.
[57:09] Anna: Awesome. That's it from us tonight. Come and join us in the Meet afterwards. If you don't, get in touch with us in the week, have a look at the Alpha course, drop us a line if you've got any prayer or any questions, any requests. Find all our details on the website. Keep in touch, and have a great week.
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