A Job to Do // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 5

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Living an extraordinary life is about … well, it’s about having a positive impact in this world, in other people’s lives. It’s challenging, but satisfying. So why do some people live extraordinary lives, and others … ordinary lives? Sometimes, it’s about focus; it’s about what we set out to do.

What are we talking about on the program today? The same thing we've been talking about all week, "How to Live an absolutely Extraordinary Life". Now it's easy to get the wrong impression when you hear me say that. I'm not talking about a luxurious life, I'm not talking about a comfortable life, I'm not talking about a safe life, a life without risks, a life without hurts or a life without disappointments. I'm talking about living an absolutely extraordinary life despite all those things, in the midst of all those things.

The Bible says that Jesus was a man of many sorrows and yet He lived and continues to live as the risen Christ a compellingly extraordinary life; a life that's impacted billions of people since the first century until now.

So it makes sense doesn't it that if we're going to look at us living an extraordinary life that we should look at how Jesus lived His extraordinary life. That's what we're going to be doing again on the program today.

So far this week we've seen that Jesus overcame a pretty rocky start to life. He kicked things off in His public ministry by an act of submission to His Father through His baptism. Jesus suffered and then He went and built a team in a way that was totally counter to the culture of the day. Today we're going to take a look at the very next thing He did in getting about His Father's business.

Jesus set His whole life on course to do His Father's will, to do what He came to do, let's take a look.

How do you kick off a career as a preacher? That was the challenge for Jesus. He was a complete unknown, He was poor not rich, He came from rural, not very up-market Nazareth not Jerusalem, He was a carpenter not a highly qualified credential Rabbi. He had all those rumours of an illegitimate birth hanging over Him from childhood and then there was the stigma of Herod killing all those innocent children under two around Bethlehem because of Jesus.

Yeah, you know, He had a lot to contend with. He had three and a half years to tell the world the good news. To build a team that would go on to become the foundation of the Church which would last for several millennia and to die and to rise again for you and for me. Hey it's a pretty tall order in a short time.

So how do you go about being an unknown to becoming a respected teacher? Well oddly enough in my own little way that's something of a journey that I've been on and I can tell you it's not easy. It involves a lot of hard work and a lot, I mean a tonne of help and anointing and provision and empowerment by God.

So let's have a look at how Jesus went about it. Matthew chapter 4 beginning at verse 17:

From that time on Jesus began to proclaim, 'Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near'. Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their Synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness amongst the people.

So His fame spread through all Syria and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics and he cured them all. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from way beyond the Jordan.

How did He do it? Well to put it bluntly He hit the road, He put Himself out there. He started to proclaim, to declare, to preach. What was He preaching? What was He declaring?

Anyone who's a Christian will have heard these words over and over again so they won't be anything new:

Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

But you see to the people He was preaching and proclaiming and heralding and saying and exhorting these things to this was outrageously radical. Here they were in this backwater of the Roman Empire, now this is nowheresville if I can call it that, miles, light years away from the seat of power in Rome.

These people were less than pawns on the emperor’s chess game. Had it suited him he would have had them all wiped out in an instant and turned their precious farm land into car parking and shopping malls. That was their reality, they were nothing in the scheme of things.

They'd been living the same subsistence lifestyle just surviving, boring, insignificant little lives somehow believing that because they were God’s chosen people perhaps one day He'd send another king like David, a messiah to set them free.

Or if not when they died they might go to a better life although the Sadducees who were the religious and social elite, they didn't believe that so who could be certain if you were one of those poor farmers or carpenters living in Galilee.

And along comes this lunatic albeit an articulate lunatic and starts crying out 'repent' just like that John the Baptist guy and look what happened to him, they chopped his head off.

Repent. What does that actually mean? It means change your mind. It means turn around. It means stop living the way you're living. When you think about it that's just what the prophets of old had been telling God’s chosen people. But other than perhaps John the Baptist, God hadn't sent one of them (a prophet) for three or four hundred years. Repent, the kingdom of God has come near.

Hang on a minute, God’s in the temple in Jerusalem, how could He come near? Only the High Priest gets to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year and that’s a big deal on Yom Kippur on the Day of Atonement. How could the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God possibly have come near? That was outrageous, that was impossible.

And yet they listened, He got their attention; He was pulling massive crowds, why? Because not only was He proclaiming this good albeit unsettling and confusing news He was healing every disease so they brought their sick and lame from far and wide.

The thing that got Him noticed was the power of God, God’s anointing on His ministry. Without that there's no way He could have done what He did and certainly not is such a short three and a half years.

So what do we learn about Jesus? Something that made His life extraordinary. He left the confines of His safe little carpenter shop in Nazareth, He hit the track Jack and went and did what God had called Him to do and what God had anointed Him to do. Was it safe? No, it got Him killed. He always knew that that's how it would turn out but He did it anyway.

I saw a great Tweet the other day, it said this:

Many Christians worship on the altar of safety. Before they ask 'Is this the will of God', they ask 'Is this safe'?

You and I aren't called to do precisely what Jesus was called to do in precisely the same way and yet in our own way, according to the gifts and abilities that God’s given us, according to the place He's planted us in, we are called to do exactly that. To get out of our safe little comfort zone, our safe little comfortable carpenters shop, whatever that is and hit the track Jack and go and tell people about Jesus.

Maybe you're a builder, an accountant, a cleaner, a counsellor, a web designer, whatever you are, well using that, you and I are called to get out there into that dangerous place to tell people the good news. Not necessarily as preachers, perhaps as servers or encouragers or as people who pull alongside someone and proclaim Christ not with their mouths but with their hearts and their hands and their lives.

What sort of life would Jesus have lived if He'd stayed silent in the confines of the carpenters shop in Nazareth? Extraordinary? I don't think so.