Don't Make It To Hard

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Focus: Focusing on Jesus' mission

Function: To help people enjoy their faith.

Form: Bible Study

Intro: I love Christmas Carols. It is too bad that we only sing them during advent, and maybe the week after Christmas before the new year.

But I like my carols to be upbeat. One year, the choir decided to do “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The problem was the arrangement. You can sing it fast or you can sing it slow. When you sing it slow, it sounds like a funeral dirge.

I think I can fall asleep before the song finishes!

It certainly didn't bring in the idea of Joy to the World, which, BTW, is not listed in the Christmas Carol section of our hymnal.

Now, I titled the sermon, “Don't make it to hard!” But if I didn't love Jim so much, I would have titled it: “Is the Kingdom of God a dance, or a dirge?”

Then he would have had to figure out how to get that on the sign!

Is God's kingdom a dance or a dirge?

How do we approach it?

How do we explain it?

For some reason, our text omits verses 20-24 where Jesus pronounces judgment on places that rejected Him.

In the condemnation, Jesus speaks of the miracles and wonders done in those towns and compares them to ancient cites in the OT where people changed and others where people were judged.

He chides them because they did not repent.

They didn't repent.

Repent.

That is a Biblical term that gets misused a lot of times.

Repent, metanousa in the Greek, means to change one's thinking. And they needed to change their thinking about Him.

Almost every time it is mentioned in the OT, it is about the Jewish people changing their minds about idolatry.

And almost every time repentance is mentioned in the NT it refers to the Jewish people changing their minds about Jesus and trusting in Him.

In the New Testament, almost every time repent is stated, the audience is Jewish people and it refers to them changing their minds about who Jesus is.

It wasn't in the Jewish mindset to consider Jesus as God.

For example. In two places the 10 commandments are mentioned in the OT, Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20.

A whole Chapter later, in the book of Deuteronomy (6:4) do we read the phrase: “The Lord God is One...”

I have a conservative Jewish friend. And one day he asked me why we did not include “the Lord God is One” in the 10 commandments.

He didn't realize that it was from the next chapter and was added to the 10 commandments after Christianity took off because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus tells them to repent their thinking and embrace Him as their Messiah.

And Jesus' proof is all the miracles that were happening.

Of course, we have been raised in the Church; we have been raised in a Christian nation. We have not served idols or foreign gods. And we haven't had the history of oppression by Christians that the Jewish people have experienced.

So, it might appear that He is not including us in the group of people who need to change their mind about who Jesus is.

But then, Tony Compolo points out that the history of religion is to worship what we either value or fear.

And it might be true that we because of our natural instincts, we have idealized Jesus into something different that what the gospels tell us about Him.

Even though the lectionary gives us 3-4 passages to preach from each week, I almost always preach the gospel passage because we can never go wrong when we focus on Jesus

I do that because it might be true that we worship an idealized version of Jesus instead of the one given to us in Scripture.

(shrug shoulders) It might be true. It might not. Most probably, as in all of us, it is true to some extent because none of us are perfect.

Funny, but those verses are skipped over in our text. And that is most probably because we are not born with the Jewish mindset.

Instead, what introduces the theme is Jesus' lament at their unwillingness to be either happy or sad.

Like a poker player, they kept their cards close. (hold hands to paps) They were not willing to show their emotions. They refused to get excited.

In other words, they decided not to buy into the joy that Jesus was bringing.

And Jesus points out the hypocrisy of it.

When John the Baptist came, he was an ascetic. He was a person who rejected worldly pleasures.

And their condemnation of John was that he was so weird, he was demon possessed.

John belonged to a Jewish group called the Essenes. They were, for practical purposes, the equivalent of Jewish Amish. They lived a simple lifestyle for the glory of God.

They did not fit in with Jewish culture and John was criticized for it. They said he was demon possessed.

Jesus, on the other hand, went to their celebrations and had fun with them. For lack of a better phrase, Jesus partied with them.

(hold hands in a cautionary manner) I did not say that Jesus had a party spirit like some frat boy. No.

But He celebrated with them. He laughed with them. He cried with them. He attended their feasts, weddings and celebrations.

He did not go around with a sour look on His face.

I saw a Seminary student working with me in a prison who had a T-Shirt of Jesus laughing. It offended someone. I heard of another person who was offended by the idea that Jesus danced. I am not talking about the grinding and sexual overtones of some modern dance, but the dances of celebration.

And because He celebrated with them, they accused Him of being a drunk and a glutton.

Last week someone told me that they were at a restaurant and they all held hands and prayed before their meal. And then, several ordered a glass of wine to accompany their meal.

While they were there, a couple came up to them and told them how much they appreciated their Christian testimony by the way they prayed, but then proceeded to tell them that they blew it by drinking wine.

The person reminded the complainer: “funny, they said the same thing about Jesus.”

I am not saying this to provoke anybody. Please do not take offense.

I want to get to the real Jesus. And the real Jesus was authentic with people. He loved and laughed with them as well as crying and mourning with them.

We are studying the miracles of Jesus in one of the SS classes. The water into wine is Jesus first miracle. And my favorite commentary on the passage points out how Moses' first miracle is turning water into blood and Jesus' first miracle is turning water into wine.

This is an important concept. The OT law was about judgment. The NT law, which is much simpler: Love God and love your neighbor is about celebrating grace.

But we make it to hard. We complicate it. We want to add to it with our own rules, define it better, make it narrower, or wider to suit our purposes.

And in so doing we might miss it.

We might need to change our thinking. We have not arrived yet. Otherwise, we would not listen to any sermons. Our values should be constantly refined by the Holy Spirit and greater knowledge of scripture, especially the gospels.

It is important that we do not get confused by what it means to serve Jesus in the Kingdom of God.

Because Jesus was there, it was holy. The food was holy. The wine was holy. The laughter was holy. The jokes were holy and clean. Their Christianity was not some sort of act that looked pious or spiritual all the time. It was genuine, authentic and sincere. It was enjoyable.

So why did they miss it?

Why do we sometimes miss it?

It comes in the rest of our text this morning.

And it can be boiled down to the simple statement that they were to self-righteous, to wise in their own minds, to sober, to mature and to proud to let anybody change their minds.

This is the problem with legalism. Legalism adds a bunch of rules that appear to be godly, but really have no value in making us spiritual. (Colossians 2:20-23)

Proud people need to add to their faith to make them more important than others in their own mind. Faith is not a competition. And by so doing, they make it to hard. Don't make it to hard. Listen: Read verse 25: ²⁵At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children...

So Jesus rejoices, right in front of them, in a prayer and cries out how it is the simple people, the simpler people, the humble people, the people who still allow themselves to feel and experience childlike innocence who found a loving relationship with Him.

Pride keeps us from truth. Pride keeps us from seeing what is obvious. But the fact is, we are always growing in the Lord.

Read verse 26: ²⁶Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

God was pleased to rebuke the self-righteous and the proud.

And then Jesus describes the essence of the good news.

Read verse 27: ²⁷“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Does this verse mean that some are chosen, while others are not and that God will unfairly condemn some people by God's own whim?

No. Verses 20-24 tells us that the people refused to believe what was obvious to them. It also indicates that God's judgment is fair based on what light or knowledge the people have.

Whatever God's judgment is, it will be fair and loving. I promise you that.

So what do we take away, then?

Well, here is a favorite verse alert: Read verses 28-30: ²⁸“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The gospel is about healing. The gospel is about restoration. The gospel is good news about comfort, love and acceptance.

When I compare the idea of the funeral dirge or the dance, I will choose dance as often as I can.

Because Jesus is right here, with us, healing and redeeming us.

Legalism just takes the good news of Christianity and turns it into a dirge.