God's Word: It confonts the Status Quo

Text: Matthew 11:1-19

Focus: Doing God's Word.

Function: To get people thinking about what Jesus actually said.

Form: GOK

Intro:

Jesus clears up some confusion in this passage.

At this point, Jesus' cousin, John, has already baptized Him. John, the one Jesus is speaking about has seen the Holy Spirit fall on Jesus, and he saw it as a dove falling on Jesus. At the same time, He heard this great sound from Heaven, God the Father telling John, and the crowd around Jesus to listen to Jesus. Before that, when John laid his eyes on Jesus, he told his disciples that Jesus was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Apparently, as a prophet, God showed him this. And before that, both his mother and his Aunt, Mary the mother of Jesus, have told him about Jesus' miraculous birth.

And here it is, a year or two later and John sends the people who follow him to ask Jesus if Jesus is really the Messiah. Why?

Now John has seen this miracle, heard from heaven, and apparently he already knew who Jesus was. So why is he asking Jesus if Jesus is the Messiah?

Because Jesus didn't fit the bill. People didn't really want to listen to Jesus.

Wouldn't it be easier if God just did what WE wanted? If God just listened to us? If God just agreed with everything we say, or do?

What if God was just a sort of magic “yes man” who always took our cause over everyone else's?

Of course, how could God do that?

If two teams had preachers who prayed for their victory before a sporting event, which team's prayer does God answer?

How can God choose between two people, two thousand people, two million people and the list goes on?

But God isn't one of us. God has plans and purposes that are much higher than ours.

John shouldn't have questioned. In this passage, Jesus says that until now, John is the best man ever. Ever. And even this man, John, still had human expectations out of Jesus.

But, in this passage, John isn't the worse. There are others who are completely ignoring both Jesus and John.

Jesus is chiding John for not getting His message yet, but He is very critical of those who rejected both Jesus and John.

He makes His point by saying that people listen with selective hearing. People make up excuses to not listen to God's Word as it is taught.

He illustrates it with the difference between Him and John.

This John, by the way, is John the Baptist. John the Baptist lived a very Spartan lifestyle. He was a vegetarian, he lived in a cave in the desert, he dressed in clothes made from animal skins, and he never drank anything alcoholic.

Jesus points out that they ridiculed him for his simple lifestyle, even accused him of being crazy or demon possessed.

And then Jesus comes along, with a different lifestyle, a “friend of sinners,” a man who ate and drank with them and they accuse Jesus of being a drunkard and a glutton.

They didn't want to listen to either, so Jesus calls them out.

So, we have two things here. The prophet, the good man, the godly man, the man that we want to be considered like, the believer, but he still doesn't get Jesus' radical message.

That is one end, on the other are those who refuse to listen to the Word of God no matter how it is presented. If it comes from someone who acts completely religious, John the Baptist, or someone who is more laid back about those rules of eating and drinking, Jesus.

There are two verses that get to heart of this story. Verse 6: “Blessed are those who take no offense in me”

And verse 15: Whoever has ears, let him hear.

The verse “don't be offended at me” is directed to the faithful, the people who want to obey God, the people who are humble and willing to be changed, people who believe.

The verse: Whoever has ears, let them hear is directed at both the faithful and the people who claim to hear, but find ways to refuse the lesson.

The NT talks about those kinds of people in a little more depth in 2 Timothy. These are instructions to people, the likes of me, preachers who have the responsibility to proclaim God's truth to their congregations. Listen to these words, 2 Timothy 4:1-4: ¹I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: ²preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. ³For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

Ear ticklers. I don't know what is worse. The people who hire ear ticklers, or the preachers who are willing to compromise God's word for what is convenient, preaching only what people want to hear, not what God is telling them for the day and time.

Jesus refers to this idea in this story about John. People claim to listen, but they don't really hear. They do not want to hear.

How many have heard this passage talked about in the last 20 years? I have heard many takes on this concept. “There are too many ear ticklers out there...” Ear ticklers are preachers who condone sin, who say “anything goes.” They don't have the courage to stand up to a man when he is sinning and tell them he is wrong.

I had a preacher who prided himself in how strict he was in all the rules. He made sure we knew that if we were members of his Church, we were the ones who were the most willing to be faithful to God's word -because he preached what he called “a hard word.”

The Church was almost a cult. He preached against everything, divorce, homosexuality, Democrats, abortion, women wearing makeup, believers wearing jewelry, watching television, rock and roll music, Country music, long hair, women wearing pants, birth control and even Walt Disney because there were monsters and monsters must be from the Devil.

I am not making this up. We loved Jesus and had a good time studying the Bible, singing in nursing homes and praising the Lord. We felt good belonging there. But then one day, one of the men in the Church came up to me upset pointing out that God was going to be angry with us because he found a cookie monster book in the nursery and if we permitted it to be there, we were not taking a strong enough stand against sin, and God was going to be angry with us and etc.

And remember, John the Baptist abstained from almost everything that was called secular. So, this man thought he was doing good.

When that guy was so offended against this, I began to think to myself if this is what God intended the church to be about. Did God want us pointing out all the faults of others as if we were somehow better, more faithful people?

You remember when the Twin Towers fell, too many preachers said it was God's judgement on America because we allowed the Homosexual agenda, or abortion, or welfare or undocumented aliens to come into the US.

But, did God judge us because we were having our ears tickled?

There are a lot of people who say: by not taking a stand against sin, we are allowing it and if we allow sin in any form, we are on a slippery slope to destruction.

They point to the fact that Churches are in decline. There are a lot of reasons for that. Many people say that they are in decline because the are too soft on sin and God isn't blessing them.

They take this passage about ear ticklers and use it to prove that we are in decline and it is certainly the end times.

Don't say amen too quickly. Many people will say: “it is hard to fault that logic.” “The ear ticklers are ruining the Church and this nation.”

And others may be saying: “That doesn't sound like the Pastor Phil that I know. He isn't soft on sin, he has proven that by his actions. But his trial sermon was about shining a light to the gospel, not merely proving ourselves by taking a stand against something. Pastor always preaches: Take a stand FOR the good news, not take a stand AGAINST sinners.”

Let me read for you James 1:27. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

People who say that we are guilty of ear tickling look at the end of that verse and say: “Too many preachers don't preach enough about the sin of being stained by the world.”

Again, they say things like: “The Homosexual agenda or the liberal agenda is destroying us.”

But look again at the verse: “pure religion...” is two fold “...moral purity...” mentioned second and “taking care of others...” mentioned first.

This week, or own denomination is facing the possibility of a split over how we apply moral purity.

I was talking about that this week with a couple of friends of mine. One of them, a very smart fellow who is watching the Churches in the way they practice love, said this: “We tend to substitute moral outrage for social justice since the latter is hard and the former all too easy.” (REPEAT)

You see, keeping oneself “pure” is a lot easier doing justice.

For example, last week, Kathy and I were in the middle of a painting project in our home. We have a neighbor who has fallen on times much harder than ours. He loves God, but his wife has been struggling to get into her career field as a teacher. The man is a hard worker, but with this rough economy, they can barely keep above water.

Right in the middle of our painting project, he called me up because one of their cars is not running at all, and the second car had a major problem with it, could I help?

I wanted to tell him how much difficulty I was in myself. It wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and help him out.

But, moral outrage is easier than caring for others.

I was reminded that serving God isn't about service in our convenience. So, while he was working, his wife brought the car over and in the middle of the painting project, Kathy and mom got blessed by getting to know a whole new person, a sister in the Lord.

But again, it is easier to substitute moral outrage than do justice. We have been lead to believe that Moral outrage makes us look like we are truly Christian. But if at the end of the day, if we have not given ourselves on behalf of others in the service of Christ, it really makes no difference.

Listen, I am not promoting sinful lifestyle here.

But I gotta tell you. I have been wondering if this problem of ear tickling hasn't crept in the other way. If it hasn't crept in through the back door.

Listen. Moral purity is no good if our faith does not lead us into service of the poor. He first mentions taking care of widows and orphans in their distress.

Here is the problem, in our national debates: Christians have been taking a stand for righteousness, and ignoring justice.

Ear ticklers can say to people “as long as you pray the sinners prayer, you are getting to heaven and Matthew 25, where Jesus condemns people to hell because they refused to clothe the naked, feed the poor, visit the prisoners and etc. doesn't count anymore” are doing a great disservice to Christianity.

Listen, they cannot be separated!

It is another form of ear tickling to say “as long as you take up moral outrage against impure actions, you are a Christian.”

Jesus said, at the end of the age the angels will send people who do not do these deeds straight to hell.

There is no religious creed, prayer of faith that will deliver people if they have not lived a life that cares for others.

How many times have you heard people say something about a preacher: “well, he doesn't seem to take a strong stand against sin. He speaks to much about caring for the poor. He seems to be telling people just what they want to hear.”

Listen, it is easier to get people into moral outrage about the sins of others than it is to get people caring as much for the least of these.

And remember, from our passage, even John the Baptist was confused when Jesus message confronted the Status Quo. Even though he saw the Holy Spirit fill Jesus, he heard the voice from heaven, he heard the story of how Jesus was born, this message of Jesus was not what he was expecting.

Let us take our cues from the actual teachings of Jesus, as hard as they may be.

Jesus said: Take up your cross and follow me.

I was trying to influence some of my fellow colleagues this way last week when one of them implied that he someone had labeled him as a gay basher. He consoled himself in the way he said he was being persecuted for expressing his moral outrage.

And I wonder, what cross is harder to bear? People would rather hear “the problem with the world, the church, this family, this city, this nation, or whatever is all those sinners out there flaunting God's laws.”

They would rather hear that over “we are the solution to the world's problems. If we take up the cause of Christ. If we get our hands dirty with plight of others. If we take the time to be inconvenienced by the suffering around us, then God we will be shining a light instead of cursing the darkness.”

Listen, God has invited us into His family. He has invited us through Christ Jesus. It may not be easy, but it is wonderful. I invite you to come as well.