Christ Methodist Church Memphis
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Christ Methodist Church Memphis
When Good Things Keep Us from God’s Best | Nathan Cook
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As Nathan Cook prepares to conclude his time on staff at Christ Methodist Church, he joins us for one final podcast conversation, leaving us with a challenge from Luke 14 to reconsider what has our attention and fully participate in the Kingdom of God.
In Luke 14, Jesus tells of a banquet prepared and an invitation extended, yet one by one, the invited guests allow the concerns of everyday life to keep them away. In this conversation, listeners are challenged to consider what may be keeping them from fully participating in the Kingdom of God.
You're listening to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Join us for an insightful conversation where faith intersects with real life experiences and discover how God is at work in our world. We're here today with Nathan Cook. This will likely be his last Christ Methodist podcast with us as a staff member. Typically, with a senior staff member leaving, we do a discussion about change and what they're going through, what they're stepping into, or just kind of a more theological look at change. However, when discussing this with Nathan, he presented a different idea in that he wanted to examine and spend some time in Luke 14, specifically with the parable of the great banquet. So Nathan, to start, why don't you read the parable of the great banquet for us and we'll go from there?
SPEAKER_00Okay. So this is in Luke chapter 14, starting with verse 16. And it's Jesus who's speaking. But he said to him, A man once gave a great banquet and invited many, and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, Come for everything is now ready. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, Go out quickly to the streets and to the lanes of the city, and bring in the poor, and the crippled, and the blind, and the lame. And the servant said, Sir, what you have commanded has been done, and still there is room. And the master said to the servant, Go out to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who are invited shall taste my banquet.
SPEAKER_01Before we dive in to the passage and kind of look at it a little bit more, tell me why. What was stirring in your heart about this passage?
SPEAKER_00Well, there are several stories in the Bible that about these stories of calling and Jesus inviting people to come and follow him. And so, you know, there's the calling of the twelve disciples, and so, you know, Peter and James and John, they are fishermen, and Jesus calls them to drop their nets, to leave their work behind, right? And to come and follow him. And they do that. There's another story of Jesus and the rich young ruler, who the rich young ruler is asking, like, what can I do, you know, to follow you? I've I've kept the laws, what else? And Jesus again makes an invitation, and he says, you know, take all of your possessions, sell them, give the money to the poor, and come and follow me. And so here's now like a third invitation, another way of saying the same, and he's saying the same things over and over again, these invitations into discipleship and into his kingdom and into relationship with him. And the three things that he points out in this passage that are standing in the way of people making a commitment to follow Jesus in discipleship are a field which I take to be like securing your future. Like I this is your IRA, your 401k. You know, your what what is going to provide financial security for you? There's the the go and check my oxen. This is this is representative of of work. And then a guy who just gets married. So family. So family work and securing our future. These are all regular, ordinary things that everybody deals with, but it's these regular ordinary things that like people are saying, no, I'm not coming to the banquet, like because I have these other responsibilities that are more important. And that's just what I see in our culture in America right now. Like that's our our approach to church is like we we want church and Jesus to come along and to help me in my life with what I'm doing. And at the same time, Jesus is saying, I want you to completely reorient your life, everything, your relationships with your family, your deepest, most important relationships in your life. I want you to reorient your business so that it serves me. I want you to reorient how you value money so that it to bring it in service to me. And I just I think that that's what we're we're dealing with as a culture right now, and I think that that's what we're dealing with in this particular church. And I think that there is just unbelievable potential in this church to make a huge impact in the kingdom of God if people would be willing to bring their family, their business and their possessions to the to the foot of the cross and and surrender it and say, Jesus, you can have it all. Like you, you arrange my calendar, you arrange my priorities, you you arrange what it looks like to follow you. And I and there are people in this church who are doing that, but there are a lot of people who aren't. And and there's warning at the end is like, I mean, the story is you're gonna miss it. And I don't want people to miss it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, the the thing about I want to kind of not reframe, but like point out the things that are mentioned, a field, auction, marin, these are all normal good things in life. But the thing that can easily be read in that is like, well, I go to church on Sunday, I'm in a small group, I do these things, I'm not rejecting God, and I have these things. But can you talk a little bit about how those good things can quietly crowd out the participation in God's kingdom?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, again, like I think the what's underlying the story is like, how do we view Jesus? Like, do we view him as a helpmate or do we view him as Lord? And so if we view him as Lord, Jesus has the right to reorient all of our priorities. And so I just and to reorient them to his kingdom. And so for me, like it might be helpful. Like, why is the missions guy talking about discipleship here? Okay. So to me, discipleship and missions have always been two sides of the same coin. They're, they're, the, the discipleship is the inward working of what does it mean? The missions is the outward working of like that change and transformation. And so you can't have a missional expression of a church without being a disciple and engaging deeply in discipleship. They go, they go hand in hand. And what Grant is working on now and has been working on is like helping, like like providing some structures to help our church go deeper in discipleship. And that's kicking off, that kicked off yesterday, last night, like with this replicate material that he's been integrating into the Wednesday night curriculum. You don't understand, I don't have time. You don't understand my responsibilities at home. Like we have little children. I just, I don't have time. That's what these guys were saying. And what I'm saying to the church is like, you have to make discipleship of Jesus, following Jesus, the most important thing in your life. And if you do, your family will be stronger. You will then start to incorporate biblical practices into your job so that you're then becoming a public witness. And I'm not just talking about sharing the gospel, but like the last time I got a chance to preach, it's the idea of like having a financial planner that begins to think about not just how do I help you grow your wealth, but how do I help you give it away. That is a radical thing in the practice of financial advising in our world. Like the world does not want that, right? But Jesus wants that. And Jesus wants to use your you, you wants you to use your skills to help other people to grow the kingdom by being generous. And so, like, if if we're not engaged in discipline, if we're focused on, man, I don't have time for discipleship because I need to focus on my business, it's gonna be like this story. Like, your business is never gonna reflect the kingdom of God and God's grace in it. Like, if if discipleship isn't at the core. And so I think that there are a lot of missional opportunities in our city and in the world for for people in this church to step forward in. But like discipleship has to be the first step into it. And that's what Jesus, that's what Jesus does over and over again. Like he doesn't, he doesn't warm up the crowd. Like he just comes over and over again and offers invitation after invitation, and the invitation is always the same. Drop everything and come and follow me. To say kingdom means there's a king, and so Jesus is the king, and Jesus has authority. And so the kingdom of God is appears when people surrender to the authority of Jesus. So that's what we're praying. We're praying the Lord's prayer, thy kingdom come. And then what's the next part? Thy will be done. Your will be done where on earth as it is in heaven. So the idea is that God's will is done as we, his church, surrender our lives to Jesus as king and we obey his commands, right? And so that's the kingdom of God. And it is following Jesus. So in some ways, there are ways that it's going to look similar for us, and other ways it's going to look really different. But the starting point is always the same. It's complete surrender to Jesus. Learn how to listen to him. And that's what we do in discipleship, discipleship classes, right? We learn to hear, how do we hear from God through his scriptures? How do we hear from God through prayer? How do we hear from God? I wish we would do more of this in our church through fasting, right? And through like silencing the world or our own appetites to grow our appetite for God. And that's what's happening, again, all over our culture is like we're satiated. We're not hungry. We're not hungering after God because we're filling everything up with time around whatever good things, family, work, growing up, you know, it's all all the same thing. And so we we have to say no to these things that are just satiating ourselves so that we can begin to hunger after God. And then He'll start to show us the application, the mission. But like it's gotta, it's it starts with discipleship.
SPEAKER_01One of the commentaries I read about this passage as I was preparing was talking about the people that the master calls to the banquet of the end, the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. They could have just as easily pulled out a list of excuses. I don't have clothes, I don't have a means to get there, I can't walk, whatever it may be. But what separated them was their awareness of their need, whereas the others may not have been that way because they were so full in life. Can you talk about the lack of need that we may be aware of there?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, Paul's been preaching on it, right? Like this is the idea of blessed are the poor in spirit. And so, like, again, that's again, in order to come into a relationship with Jesus, we have to be humble and to recognize we have a need. And a lot of times for many of us, like, that need is revealed through brokenness or through a hardship, like where we come kind of come to the end of ourselves, whether and and then was like, all right, I recognize that when I'm control of in control of my life, like the fruit of that is brokenness. And I had somebody after I shared the taught taught on hungering and thirsting after righteousness, I think this is a really appropriate story. Like a dear woman who I love in this church said that that's how she became Christian, is that like she looked at herself and she said, I have a great marriage, I have a great life, I have a great child. Like, I don't, I don't see a need. That's exactly what she said. And she was in a Bible study, discipleship, right? And a woman in her discipleship grad class challenged her to hunger. And it was through just like reorienting her mind around, like, let me hunger after God. And she said, like, that's what changed her heart. And that's when she became a Christian. It was like when she realized even these good things, like, as great as they are, that there's a deeper spiritual hunger in my life that they're not beating and they can't meet, because only Jesus can beat those things. But it took this kind of intentional act of the will to say, I'm gonna focus my mind and my heart after hunger. And in like looking, am I really, is my spirit, is my soul really satisfied by all of these wonderful things in my life, or am I still in my core empty? And I think if people look at that, like God's designed us in such a way that like only really fully satisfied when we're fully satisfied in him. And so I think he'll reveal that to us.
SPEAKER_01I may be bleeding into the parable right before this one with this next question, but I think it's still applicable. When we consider who would be invited to this great banquet, we our mind like if we're just generically placing names on this, we can say something, people who are immoral, dishonest, cruel, whatever it may be. But the word busy probably wouldn't be lumped into that group when that's exactly who is being addressed here. Can you kind of address that a little bit? Well, why don't you address it?
SPEAKER_00Because it sounds like you put some thought in it. Well, it's more go ahead. So what does that mean to you? Because like that's it, he Jesus invites busy people. Yes. And then and then and then what?
SPEAKER_01Like what's sort of like I mean, I think the follow-up question that I was already thinking through is when we look at something like we have a responsibility to our families, we have a responsibility to our work. What does it look like to kind of balance the both of these things in a way or re-or like as you've said, reorient our lives, like practically speaking, talk more about what that looks like rather than just like a conceptually.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So balance is a great word. Yes. Okay. And so you cannot balance the Christian life. So and that's how we that's how we approach it. That's natural, it's a human way, right? That that I want to give time to my family, time to my workplace, time to church, and let's keep all of those things in in balance. Okay. And so I'm not talking about when I'm when I'm talking about the kingdom of God and the discipleship, I'm not talking about going on a mission trip necessarily or going to a Sunday school class. Like I'm not talking about those time commitments. I'm talking about how do you view your relationship with Jesus? And so, and and how how much weight do you give to Jesus? And so, like, that's that picture of the scales, kind of the scales of justice, this idea of weight. Like it's in the Bible several times. And there's a really interesting way that it's used in the Proverbs when it's talking about wisdom, and it talks about like there's nothing that can balance out the weight of wisdom. The wisdom, like it is, and it's just giving this metaphor of saying like how deep and how valuable that is. Well, that's Jesus, right? Jesus is the incarnation of God's wisdom in the world. And so there's nothing that we can put on the other side of the scale to even out the weight with with Jesus. And so Jesus and our relationship with Jesus ought to be impacting every area of our life. It ought to impact the way in which we raise our children, the way in which we interact with our husband and our wife, the way in which we interact, conduct business. It has to infect everything. But but what I see going on in in pockets in this church, not again, not everywhere, but in pockets is like people are drawn to one another and they want a sense that they look at church as a place to build community and to meet that need that all of us have. And that it and that is a part of what church is. But it's it's deeper than that. It's like in its worship, like at its core, the church are the the people of God that God has cut cut away from the world and has called and brought to himself and said, You are mine. And so there's a there's a relationship, a family relationship there, and our response to that calling is to worship with the the words again, worth, like to to vocalize the worth of God that's in our life. And is that our attitude when we come to church? Is that what's going on in our heart? Like, do is our relationship with Jesus the most important thing? And does he have control over our life? And like every person has to answer that for himself. Nobody can answer that. But but when that happens, like I've I've been around people like where that happens, and like you see the fruit of repentance, you see like the way in which they operate their business and operate their family looks dramatically different because Jesus is at the center of all of it. And I think that other people will begin, I'm encouraging the church to look around and see do you see that? Like, do our lives in this church look the same as relationships that we have with people who aren't in the church? Does it look the same? Or do they look different? And if they look at the same, then I'm telling you that that what's happening is like Jesus isn't at the heart of these things. Because when Jesus is the heart, our lives look different.
SPEAKER_01One thing that's kind of you mentioned going on like mission trips earlier, and so I think something that can get a little conflated in all of this is like when we talk about participating in kingdom particip kingdom participation, is this going to be some enormous act of obedience or is this potentially something that could be more ordinary? The reason I'm asking that question is I think about an illustration that stuck with me that Paul gave in one of his sermons about a gentleman who was very afraid to give his life to Christ because he was afraid that he was going to God was going to say, move to Africa and become a missionary permanently. Paul's response was if that was God's calling for your life, he would put it on your heart so hard and so heavy that you wouldn't be able to function otherwise without that. Can you elaborate, talk about that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00As we give ourselves over to God more and more, it becomes easier to hear his voice in our life. But like this scripture is like talking about human nature in resisting a really good thing. Like this isn't this isn't a call to come and suffer in Africa. This call is like to come and to celebrate this joyful feast, a celebration, right? And come into the joy of your savior, and yet people are too consumed with their own lives to enter into the joy of a shared meal, you know, and so like I I just I think like I mean my own testimony is like when I came to Christ as a 12-year-old boy, it was the first time here at Youth Encounter Weekend. My encounter with God was God saying, Come, like, like there was this altar call. I was like, Come, receive me, receive salvation. And along with that, was this voice in my head that said, You are not your own. Your life belongs to me. And so, like, I I just I don't think that we can ease into the kingdom. Like, it's not this like progressive steps of like there's easy steps that get and then we get dark. It's no, you've got to like at some point you just have to like surrender everything. And it's like, God, if following you means going to the ends of the earth, then you're gonna be with me. Or if it means living just if it means that the day-to-day routine of a mom sacrificing herself for her kids and her husband and making sure that everybody gets where they need to be on time and prepare, like those two things are the same in my mind. Like the the mom who sacrifices herself for her family, or the missionary who suffers on the field, like both of those are sacrificial living, but they have their same point in surrender to God. The missional expression of our lives is gonna look different. Like it's gonna look very different, as different as we have as many different people in in the church. But the thing that all of us have that's exactly the same is that. All of us have to come to a point of surrender.
SPEAKER_01That's powerful. Well, I mean, having spent years here in service and missions, what have you seen happen when somebody finally says yes? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00Like, you know, maybe you should interview Katherine Naffey, because like I I think like Catherine is a member of our congregation. She just went with us to Biddy Biddy, and she's been v extremely faithful here, living out her life as a Christian in Memphis and leading Bible studies, being very involved in the in the leadership of the church. But this trip to Biddy Biddy was the this was her first mission trip that she's been on. And I think you should, I literally think you should ask her that question. Like, what difference did it make?
SPEAKER_01As we were preparing for this, you mentioned that this was going to be kind of your quote unquote final sermon at the church. So where do you think we have the biggest opportunity to say yes to God's invitation in this next season?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think again, like I want to go back to like I think it starts with saying yes to God and to get to a place in your mind and in your heart and with your spouse, maybe praying together and saying, like, we want to go all in. Like, we don't want to scratch the surface, we don't want to just do the routine, like God pray, help us. I mean, it's this hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Help us to get hungry for you, help us to not be satisfied with this life that we already have until we're satisfied in you. And I think that's starts in prayer. And I think for me, I mean, again, it's just the regular spiritual disciplines. It's like prayer and fasting and and reading scripture. Like when we read scripture, like what we should be doing again is like, what is what does this Christian life look like in the Bible? And then what does it look like in the world? And are those two things different? And they should be different. Like because like the Bible's help holding up an ideal of like what the Christian life should look like. And we should be working towards that ideal. It's it's not fully actualized, but we should always be working towards it. And if we're not looking at that standard regularly, then like the world becomes our standard. Like we begin to like compare ourselves to to other people, to friends, and see what they what what do they have and what do we want that they have. And and all these things are not like usually happening, they're they're usually happening in our subconscious more than like us consciously kind of thinking through this. I mean, I think that's what it takes. It takes fasting and prayer and reading scripture, these disciplines, to get us to a place of hunger and surrender. And then when we get to that place of surrender, like God will speak to us in that place and he'll give us the next step.
SPEAKER_01You you basically addressed this next question in that, but I think there's a little bit more practicality we can add on this. Maybe if somebody's listening or somebody has been wrestling with this and they're coming to the point where they recognize I've been making excuses, I've been allowing other things to be more important. What's their next step? What do they do? How do they move forward in this?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I think like again, there's this invitation that's being extended right now for people to enter into discipleship groups with one another and to to search the scriptures together, to pray together, to hold one another accountable, to confess sins to one another. Like that's that's the invitation. And and he just put one condition on that, which was after this year, I want you to start a discipleship group with one or two people and like continue to kind of multiply this out. And so I just again, I think that's the invitation is like come and be a part of a discipleship group or form one, talk to Grant, and he can help you form one in your home. Like where it doesn't have to be at the church, but get together with one, two, three, some number of other people and like search the scriptures together and search about like what does this look like for us to enter more deeply into relationship with Jesus and into his kingdom as we obey his commands. And God will work that out, like he'll work out the details. Again, for me, it's usually through prayer and community and bringing the scriptures to bear. I don't think there's a like another path. Like this is what this is the path that Christians have followed for 2,000 years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, as we wrap up and you begin your new season, and just as a congregation, I want to say we're praying for you. We wish you the best. We will miss you, but we're excited to see what God does to you. But I was gonna say, what is your prayer for Christ Church? But rather than asking, why don't you just say that prayer and in this time in prayer over the congregation about what we've talked about?
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's it.
SPEAKER_00Heavenly Father, I want to thank you first just for my time being here. I thank you for calling me back here to be a part of again of my home church where you helped me to learn to follow you. And Lord, I pray that you would continue to help people here to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to grow in holiness, to grow in relationship with you. I pray that you would help them to be dissatisfied with the things of the world and to be satisfied with you, to find our joy, our peace in relationship with you. Lord, I pray that you would help us to silence just the noise that is just out there all the time, all the things that are appealing to us for our time, our attention. And Lord, help us to pay attention to you and what you're calling us to. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ. To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at Christchurchmemphis.org. We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.