You’ve probably heard of the old TV show Let’s Make a Deal and the new, Howie Mandel and banker driven Deal or No Deal. You may have even heard the often overused expression in sports, “the real deal.” But I want us to think for a minute about the Jesus Deal.
I find it heartbreaking that Jesus — who was beloved by non-religious folks and often in trouble with the religious ones – gets buried underneath all our religious stuff. I guess I was convicted recently in listening to a friend speak. I didn’t exactly agree with a tiny part of what he was saying, but the heart and the passion underneath it all really convicted me — even the part he said about church that made me a little uncomfortable. One statement, however, really tore open the rusty-hinged door to my own heart’s passion: “If we are not sharing the gospel in our preaching or our teaching here, come get in our face about it.”
Yeah, that’s the Jesus deal. We’ve got to be all about sharing the message of God’s good headlines about the Jesus and the lifestyle of people whose hearts are captivated by Him.
Folks can be pretty turned off about the word “church” or us referring to church. I know, because I live in a place that is supposed to be this great religious mecca, but in fact, it is full of people who are quite turned off by the church deal. This is not so much because church is a bad idea, but because we’ve kinda forgotten what church is and buried Jesus under our religious stuff that’s covered up what it is supposed to be.
In the Bible the word “church” simply means a gathering of folks — it’s not even a particularly religious word. But when the folks getting together were people who followed Jesus, it was real church: a gathering of people whose hearts were captivated by Jesus. Yet I find so much of what we talk about, teach about, preach about, is never filtered through the Jesus deal.
I’m not so sure we check out what Jesus said or what He did or how He treated people to see if the stuff we are saying in church fits with the Jesus deal. We just see if … 1) we agree … 2) if it agrees with what we’ve heard before … 3) and if it fits our bend and color on the Christian rainbow. I wonder how much would change if we simply would ask the question: “Okay, based on how Jesus treated people and what He said, does what we are saying really fit?”
When Paul gave his famous memory verse on the Scripture being “inspired” and all, he pretty much tells us that Scripture helps us find deliverance from all our crud (”salvation”) if we run it through the Jesus deal — “the sacred writings that are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15-17). John starts his message about Jesus by saying Jesus is God’s Message (John 1:1-18) — not part of it, but the whole of it. The unknown author of Hebrews, led the Spirit, said that Jesus is God’s complete message for these last times (Hebrews 1:1-3). So why don’t we listen to Jesus, just like God told Peter, James, and John to do on the mountain? (See Matthew 17:1-5!)
As I visited the other day with a friend who has struggled with what the Bible teaches on a certain subject — and trying to come to a clear decision about the subject because her life was once blown apart by her own sinful choices — I challenged her to call her spiritual problems by the name of a different sin and then go read the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and decide what Jesus would say to her. She had gotten so hung up in the two thousand years of debate about her issue, that she had forgotten to look at the real issue: what Jesus taught and demonstrated about God’s grace, forgiveness, and cleansing. All I was asking her to do was quit focusing on the legalistic technicalities of an issue that religious leaders have fought about since before Jesus was born. Instead, I urged her to listen to the Jesus deal. Her answer became a whole lot clearer!
So with the help of the Holy Spirit, I’m going to do my best to make sure when I speak, the Gospel is there. I want my teaching to pass through the Jesus filter and folks to know that when I speak, they’re hearing the Jesus deal and not just some dry, academic dissection of a religious argument. That doesn’t mean I don’t study, or get sloppy, or resort to slogans. But it does mean I’ve got to go back to original, deepest convictions about my ministry: I’ve put here to call people back to knowing Jesus. He’s the real deal or there is no deal … at least not a deal worth taking.
