The Way of Jesus

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. All right, we're starting a new series today, and it's kind of exciting. It really is. It's nine weeks long. It's a little long in some ways, but there's so much to cover in this area called The Way. I'm starting with a passage in the Old Testament, and each week I think each sermon will build on each other until you get a full picture of what it means that Jesus is the way, or the way that we lead. Because this analogy of the way is not something that Jesus just came up with himself, but it's been going on since the beginning of the Bible. I think it probably even goes beyond the prophets. I was just thinking about this. It's interesting how in the book of Genesis, at the beginning, God, it says, walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, right? So right there you get this picture of an intimate walk on a way, a path, and from that moment on through the entire Bible, it always talks about the ways of God and the ways of this world, and there's two different ways, and this way or that way. I mean, it's just all over the place. And so we're going to try to develop the fullness of that picture. We're starting in Micah chapter 4, and I don't know if you know this, too. This is one of those odd Bible passages. What's odd about it is that it's not just Micah 4, but Isaiah chapter 2 has many of the same exact words. But we're in Micah chapter 4, and you can follow along with the sermon notes in the app or read it on the screen right now. This is Micah 4, 1 through 5. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and people shall flow to it. And many nations will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth along the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide disputes for strong nations far and away. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. And they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. For the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its God, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. The Way. That was the first name actually given to this fledgling movement in the book of Acts. The Way. It occurs already in Acts chapter 9 when Saul was, well, ticked off, let's put it that way. He was ticked off and he was angry that there were people within Judaism, his monotheistic faith, that were following the Way instead of the way of, I guess, the way he was living. Right? And so he called it the Way. In Acts chapter 9, verses 1 and 2, it says, Paul was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. What's fascinating is it occurs about five or six times in the book of Acts, this phrase, the Way, and it's never explained why. Why the Way? Why not call it something else? And I think sometimes, well, I was thinking about this week. They didn't know what else to call him. Because, honestly, these followers of Jesus, they worshiped the same God as Judaism. They had the same script, but there was something about them, a different way than what they were used to. They were the same as everyone else. And so Christians are, in a sense, the same as everybody else, but there is to be a way about you, a way about me that's different. Has anybody ever come to you that way and said, what is it about you? Okay? No? Oh, come on. I know you. I think that. No? No. But I think there is something different, something deeper, something more profound, something that's different about you, that there's a way. And so we're going to be exploring that way, the way we are in this world. Now, people were called Christians after this in Acts, okay, in Acts 9. It actually, I think, occurs in Acts 13. When the disciples had been scattered by a persecution in Jerusalem and gone out, there were some Christians who came to the city of Antioch, which was on the Mediterranean Sea and fairly cosmopolitan, and they started just preaching the gospel, sharing Jesus with anybody, including Gentiles. And all of a sudden there were people in the church that were Greeks and Romans and Cretans. You've got to say that right, from the island of Crete. And Egyptians. And it used to be, in that day and age especially, you could basically pigeonhole someone pretty...