Norm: A Way to Live

Jesus said in John 14 verse six, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

jesus was suggesting that there is a way to live, that is true, and it brings life.

I am the way, the truth and the life.

Today, we're looking at this second magnetic point called norm.

Norm, a way to live.

Is there a way to live which is universally true?

Is there a norm, a way to live for which humans will be held to account?

And so, our suggestion today and tonight when we get there will be, yes, there is.

Amen?

There is a way that we are called to live, and we will be accountable for it.

And what I want to suggest today is that that way is uniquely found in jesus.

That jesus has lived that way for us, and that's the good news of the Gospel.

By the way, wasn't that a clear explanation of the Gospel, that Ben said?

That's online, if you want to look it up and point people to a two minute explanation of the Gospel, I reckon that would be a good thing to do.

We began a five week series last week based as a foundation on Dr.

Daniel Strange's book, Making Faith Magnetic, where he talks about JH.

Bavink, a Dutch missionary to Indonesia from the first half of last century, who was a cultural anthropologist and a missionary, and he looked at culture and he came up with five assumptions, five ideas, that every culture seems to have a nagging itch to find totality, a way to connect.

Norm, a way to live.

Deliverance, a way out.

Destiny, a way we control.

Higher power, a way beyond.

Now, you might, like I was when I read this book, be a bit confused, but just think about it.

We do have a longing to belong, to have our individuality, yet also belong somewhere.

And this is the idea of totality.

But when you belong, when you have a sense of oneness, how do you live?

How am I meant to live with individuality and totality and oneness?

And then when things go wrong, is there a way I can get delivered?

Like how do I get out of a bind?

And then what about tomorrow?

So I could have a sense of oneness and a normative way to live, and I could find a way of getting out of a bind.

But what about tomorrow?

Is there a thing called destiny?

Is there some driving force that is shaping how my life will turn out?

And then even when I get to the end of it all, is there a higher power?

Is there something beyond the grave?

So can that, I hope this does to make sense, these five magnetic points.

Are points that humans long for answers about?

So we looked at totality last week in a little bit of summary.

I mentioned a few things just then, but we said that in Christ, we don't find some thing greater than ourselves, we find someone.

And that's what we were celebrating at Communion with the bread.

We are part of someone by faith in Christ.

And we argued that belonging connected to jesus, we see the answer to the calling we have on our lives.

God's eternal power from Romans 1 has been revealed.

We are accountable to this eternal power, and we also have relationship with Him, eternal power and divine nature.

Yet we, Romans 1 says, suppress this truth and substitute it for a lie.

Again, it's a little bit confusing as I go through that, but it will make sense, I think, as we continue on.

God's eternal power and divine nature have been revealed, and yet we suppress and substitute it for other lies as human beings.

So today, that was the magnetic point totality last week.

Today, we're looking at Norm.

Are you a rule keeper or a rule breaker?

Are you a rule keeper or a rule breaker?

What's your reaction when you break the rules or fall short of what is acceptable?

In your scheme of understanding life, is there a place for forgiveness?

When you fail the rule for living, is there a way out?

Is there a norm that is transcendent, that is above and beyond all cultures?

Is that how you understand life?

Rules.

Humans have an interesting relationship with rules, don't they?

What are some of the rules you find hardest?

What was it?

Bureaucracy, in all its forms?

I think you've just answered the last...

You've summed it all up.

because bureaucracy, we need rules.

We need norms.

But we find it challenging to come under them.

I thought of driving rules.

People disagree sometimes.

Not necessarily verbally, but with their actions.

Driving rules, education rules, workplace rules, sports rules.

We have all sorts of differing opinions on rules, but probably none more than what happened with COVID.

COVID brought about challenging rules across the whole globe.

From vaccinations to curfews, to limits on how far you could leave your house, to how many toilet rolls you could buy.

Do you remember that?

Rules.

But then COVID was such a great example of who gets to set the rules.

Do we respect the rule setters?

Where do we find our norms for accepted and unacceptable behaviour?

Norm.

It's a fair question, isn't it?

Where do we find the answer for human flourishing?

Who tells us what is normative behaviour?

Well, these days, one of the most powerful forces in setting the rules is social media, isn't it?

It just sort of shapes subliminally and subtly, it shapes what is acceptable behaviour, and it has produced over the last, say, ten or more years, this idea that there is no higher virtue than tolerance.

And yet, who's discovered that if you break the rule, the tolerant become very intolerant?

It's sort of a strange situation we find ourselves in.

Have you noticed that norms have downsides?

We want norms, we need norms, but they have downsides.

One of the downsides of norms is pride and hypocrisy.

because you start doing the rule really well.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

And you start to feel a bit judgy.

Like, I'm doing this really well, and I feel really good, puffed up about myself.

And then when I fail, I keep pushing the rule, and then there's a little bit of hypocrisy that sneaks in.

So pride and hypocrisy is a downside of setting norms.

And so is exhaustion.

exhaustion, when you've got to match these rules, these norms that are set up, I think a lot of parts of the world, women are driven to exhaustion from the rules that are imposed on them from the culture they are living in.

And then that produces another unwanted result, anxiety.

Anxiety is part of the downside of norms.

And of course, the worst of all is tyranny.

When rules are enforced in a harsh way, it just can produce tyranny, which is the bad side of totality, a totalitarian state.

Are you with me?

So pride, exhaustion, anxiety, tyranny.

We need norms, we need boundaries, rules for how to live.

But it's really hard to come up with the ones that are universal, that are transcendent.

jesus both subverts and fulfills.

That's like a thesis lying underneath these ideas.

jesus subverts.

He challenges the way humans have decided they should live, and he also fulfills the longing.

He subverts, he challenges, he exposes that which is not true, and he points to the fulfilment.

As we work through these magnetic points, I do want to be fully transparent with you that we are aiming to present jesus Christ as the answer.

So there is an agenda.

It's not just at a local hall presenting ideas about magnetic points.

We have a clear agenda, and there is a way to, that we see in the Bible, about how to engage with the varying understandings we'll find in the communities in which we move and live.

And one of the most incredible examples of an evangelist entering the culture and then ultimately bringing the truth of jesus, is Paul just under the Parthenon on the Mars Hill in Athens, in the middle of Athens, next to the Acropolis.

And he's there, and he's listening to the philosophers, the Epicurean philosophers and the Stoic philosophers.

He's understanding the way they see the world.

And then, let me read, it's a few verses, but it's so important from Acts 17.

Paul stood up in the meeting of the areopagus, and said, people of Athens, I see in every way you are very religious, for as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown god.

So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship, and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you.

The god who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.

And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything.

Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

For in him, we live and move and have our being, as some of your own poets have said.

We are his offspring.

Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill.

In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.

He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.

So we're looking at Acts 17 as an example of apologetics, of doing evangelism to people who think differently to us.

The five magnetic points with different answers than you find in the Bible.

So what do we see him doing?

Paul entered the ideology of the culture, didn't he?

He sat there listening to the Epicureans, the Stoics, all the other philosophers, and he's just listening, soaking it up.

So he's exploring so that you can see these words beginning with E.

It's a fantastic model for apologetics.

Enter with gentleness and respect.

Amen?

Enter and listen and understand and explore the culture, the norms, the origin stories of the people that you're interacting with.

And then he exposed the downfalls of these origin stories and then evangelized them, jesus.

Can you see that model?

Enter the culture, explore the culture, expose and then evangelize.

It's a great model for apologetics.

As I mentioned at the start of this message, jesus said in John 14, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

What jesus was saying in that text is, the standard for living, the standard for living is no longer a rule book.

It's no longer a rule book.

It's a person.

jesus himself is the norm.

He is the standard required by God.

How does that sit with you?

jesus himself is the standard required by God.

He says this in Matthew 5, verse 17.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished.

So it's not as though the law gets thrown out, but jesus is the fulfillment of that law.

The people of Israel had this extensive list of rules, an enormous amount of them, more than just the Ten Commandments.

jesus himself is the standard.

Vera read for us Matthew 22, 37, where jesus summarizes all that is required by God's norm.

jesus replied to this question of, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

Love the Lord your God with everything, jesus says, all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

Again, jesus himself is the standard for living God's perfect life, his norm.

So again, you might ask the question, is that even possible that jesus himself could be the perfect norm even more than the Bible, even more than the Old Testament?

jesus is the norm.

Well, it is what 2 Corinthians 5 tells us, God made him who had no sin to be sinned for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Did you hear that?

He, jesus, had no sin.

He never missed the mark.

He is the standard.

He is God's norm, never messed up, never sinned.

He fulfilled all the rules of the Old Testament.

He fulfilled the summary of it all in Matthew 22.

Always loved the Father in everything he did.

Always loved his neighbour as himself.

He is the standard, hallelujah.

jesus is the standard.

And of course, as Ben just said in the video, there is also bad news.

What would that be?

I'm not trying to be cheeky, I'm just trying to engage you.

The bad news is we have all failed to meet that standard.

There is a norm for humans, and we've failed it.

Romans 3 and 6 say the wages of sin is death.

All have fallen short of the glory of God.

The norm required of humanity is so high, we have failed it.

The requirement is perfection.

None of us meet God's perfect norm.

Now, again, a lot of us know this stuff, but some online and sitting here do not know this.

We have failed.

There is no norm that you can find, even outside the Bible, that you can match.

We fail our own norms, don't we?

This is the bad news.

Is there a transcendent norm required of human beings for how they should live?

That we don't make up?

And the Bible is very clear, yes, and we have failed that norm, and that's the bad news.

But 2 Corinthians 5 has really good news as well.

God made him who had no sin, because he lived the perfect norm, to be sinned for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Wait on, this is like an amazing story that's starting to emerge here, that's worthy of being told amongst the norms of human culture.

Amen?

This has got some good news to it.

We celebrated at Communion.

One without sin traded places for all who have sinned, that's us, when he died on the cross.

The Bible makes it really clear that this represents, and that represents, a divine exchange.

A perfect human life, jesus, who fulfilled every norm given him by God, the Father, the Creator.

He gave his perfect life and exchanged it for our consequence that we deserved.

He took our sin upon himself when he died on the cross.

He suffered in our place, amen, so that by faith we could take what he deserved.

Complete righteousness, complete right standing with God, the Father.

That's the gospel, that's the good news, it's a divine exchange.

We put our faith in jesus, he pays our sin at the cross, and we get his full righteousness and right standing with God.

And as Ben said in the video, this is good news.

This is good news.

And I want to put it to you, maybe you don't know this, it's unique news.

Amen?

Go out and enter the cultures of the world, and explore them, and you will find this is refreshingly fresh and new.

This is unique.

This is beautiful.

This is wonderful.

This is the story of Christianity that makes sense of the human condition.

We are broken.

You know what?

I would put it to you, any way of understanding the world, any way of putting together these five human longings, that doesn't take seriously sin, doesn't take seriously the human condition.

We all know what it's like to be sinned against and to sin ourselves, to treat people the way they should not be treated.

And in the human condition, there is a place for recompense.

There is a place for justice.

Christianity doesn't sugarcoat failure.

Sometimes we can find a way of understanding the need for truth in this world, and it doesn't really take sin seriously.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, because sin matters.

So that in him, in jesus, we might become the righteousness of God.

When we turn from our sin and we put our faith in Christ, we become, we are clothed in his righteousness, the divine exchange.

There is a norm required of us.

And in Christ, we meet this norm.

Hallelujah.

It's a gift.

Do you know that?

The norm required of your life before God is available to you and I as a gift.

So let's go back to the problems of norm.

So what happens from the Christian understanding of grace and the gift of righteousness found in jesus and in the gospel and in the cross and resurrection?

What happens with pride and hypocrisy?

because that's the problem with the norm.

What happens to pride and hypocrisy?

There is no room for pride for a Christian, amen?

because you didn't do it.

I didn't do it.

I received it as a gift.

And if I can just keep holding on to that reality that it is Christ who paid for my sin, he lived the standard, and I was given his standard as a gift, then it's a lot easier to avoid hypocrisy.

Are you with me?

What about exhaustion?

What did jesus say about exhaustion?

Come to me, all who are weary and laid, and I'll give you rest.

Stop flogging yourself to try to meet God's norm.

You can't do it.

I've done it for you, and I'm gonna teach you how to live the flourishing human life.

You have to start from a right relationship with God.

That's a gift of grace.

I've done everything you need to receive that and be in that relationship.

Anxiety.

The Bible says, cast your cares and your anxieties upon the Lord who cares for you.

When we live in grace and hand over abandoned outcomes to God, we find that we are living in peace, not anxiety.

And tyranny.

There's no room for tyranny in the Christian world view.

because we come under one Lord.

We don't, we don't rise up and tell people how they should be.

We point them to jesus.

When jesus says, he is the way, the truth and the life.

That's where we started out, isn't it?

I am the way, the truth and the life.

What he's saying is, there is a way that if you walk it with me, you'll find it's true.

And it gives you life, the way of the master.

But you know, he's more than the standard, isn't he?

That's what we're saying.

What else is he?

He's the saviour.

He's the standard.

He's the norm.

But he's also the saviour.

So does this mean that we can live anyway we want?

This is the natural progression of the reception of grace in the Bible.

When you realise how much of a gift grace is, the natural, the only answer that you can say is, so can I do whatever I want?

So can I?

This is what Paul said.

So I've explained to you how much of a gift it is, how much you don't deserve it.

And then the natural result is, Galatians talks about it, Romans talks about it.

So can I live any way I want?

And what is the answer to that?

No, you learn how to live jesus' norm, not to earn God's favour, but because you have God's favour.

Hallelujah.

Not to be accepted, but because you are accepted.

It's a gift.

This is the Christian good news.

Are you with me?

Can you see how the five points are real and this idea of norm?

It's so normal.

It's so human.

How do I live?

Where do I find out how to live?

We say the Bible, but it's not just the Bible as a burdensome thing whipping us.

It's jesus who fulfilled the Bible and says, there's a way that you need to live.

There are norms.

You need to get into your life.

Come with me.

I'll teach you how to do it.

I'm not going to stand at a distance whipping you, telling you what to do.

I'll show you the way.

I'll walk with you every step of the way.

I would put it to you today that the Bible and the Gospel is completely unique.

The devil comes in in the garden, and he comes in today, and he comes in tomorrow and he says, you know that stuff about accepting the grace of jesus and living in his righteousness, you can't trust God.

You can't trust God.

I'll show you how to find flourishing life.

Do it your own way.

And we want to respond to that and say, no, that's what Romans 2, Romans 1 says, I don't want by your grace, I don't want to suppress the truth and substitute it with an idol.

Amen?

I don't want to suppress it.

I want to come under what's being revealed to me every day, God's eternal power.

He's the creator eternally, and I'm part of His creation.

And He has a divine nature calling me into relationship.

I am dependent and I am accountable.

That's what nature and creation is telling me all the time.

By God's grace, may we not suppress and substitute this truth for another truth.

jesus said it so beautifully, and we started and we're going to end with it.

He said, I'm the way.

Come with me on the way, the way of the Master.

I promise you, you'll find it's true.

And as you walk the way and enjoy the truth, you will suddenly go, wow, this is life.

This is real life.

I am the way, jesus said.

The truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.

Lord jesus, we thank you that you are our standard.

You have lived our standard.

We thank you that you've offered that perfection as a gift to us in the gospel.

And we thank you, Lord Holy Spirit, that you're the gift of the Father and you've come into us by faith and you've promised to teach us how to walk according to your statutes from the inside out.

Lord, I pray for some of us who still struggle with pride and hypocrisy.

Lord, would you help us enter into the grace of the gospel?

Lord, for those of us who are exhausted and we're constantly living our life in the struggle of Romans 7 and just constantly feeling like I do what I don't want to do, I do what I don't want to do.

Lord, I pray that you would just guide us lovingly into Romans 8.

We would know the mind control by the flesh is death, but the mind control by the spirit is life and peace, and we want to be those people.

Lord, help us live lives that are free from the anxiety that comes from striving.

The last thing we want to be is some group that become the perpetrators of tyranny to others about the rules, the norms.

Lord, help us be a church who hold with the greatest reverence the whole Word of God, and hold with the greatest reverence the fact that jesus wraps it all up in his own life.

For his glory, we pray.

Amen.

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