Why Grow?

Text: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Focus: Principles of Church Growth

Form: Bible Study

Intro: I was learning CISM in Baltimore, working with social workers.

A woman asked why it was important for her friend of several years, who just got saved, to constantly preach at her.

Does God want the Church to grow?

Does God want us to share our faith with unbelievers?

How does the Church grow?

Why does the Church grow?

There are three principles given in close succession in this place of Matthew's gospel.

The Parables of the mustard seed and the yeast, the Parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, and the parable of the dragnet.

I am going to take them in reverse order.

The dragnet. Angels cast a net, collect fish and then they separate the good from the bad.

Like last week, the parable of the dragnet is about God being the gardener, not us. In this case, it is about God's angels separating the good fish from the bad fish.

The emphasis is that God, not us, does the reaping and the separating.

And this is a principle of Church growth.

A church will grow when it lets God be the one who does the separating. (repeat)

Many remember that several of my brother's children attended worship two weeks ago.

After worship and the deacon's meeting, Kathy and I went to their cottage for a visit.

In my twin brother's family, there are 3 full time preachers and 2 other ordained preachers who are serving in other roles. All are from the Church of the Nazarene, except one who is an Orthodox Priest. Most come from a pretty conservative theological background.

We have some lively theological discussions.

They were discussing the reason why so many young people are dropping out of Church.

My niece said: “it is because the Church has taken upon itself to be the judge of all different kinds of lifestyles instead of bringing people to the good news.”

She wasn't speaking about the perception outside the Church, she was speaking about young adults who are leaving the Church.

I mentioned my phrase: “cursing the darkness instead of shining a light?”

And she said: “exactly.”

Let the angels do the separating. When the Church takes it upon itself to parrot a political party, either party, or to condemn or condone certain people for whatever reasons, it loses its focus and misses this principle of Church growth.

The fish swim in the same lake, the weeds grow together with God's plants.

One of them then said this: “It is like the Church wants to be a museum for saints instead of a hospital for sinners.”

Now we are Agape. We stand for Love. We stand for the Love of God.

I tell people, just get them here and Agape will keep on loving them into the Kingdom.

But people perceive Christianity as merely hating this and that. And you know what? Some of the rhetoric I hear on the national airways justifies their belief.

We need to remember that God does the separating, not us.

And that is good news because God is a lot more loving toward our enemies, or people who are different than us than we are. Praise God?

So, the first principle is that the Church will grow when God does the separating, not us.

The second two parables are about treasures.

The Kingdom of God is like a hidden treasure in the field whereby a man sells everything he has and buys the field, or like a pearl of great price that a person is willing to sacrifice everything to obtain.

The Kingdom of God has great value in a person's life.

I used to often think of this in context of Matthew 16:26, or Psalms 49:8. These passages tell us that it is impossible for anyone to ransom or redeem their own soul.

In my earlier understanding, I reckoned it to mean that God sets the price and whatever we have to do to get it is God's prerogative. God, being God can do what God pleases.

And in Matthew 16, Jesus tells us that gaining the whole world and losing one's soul is not worth it. Apparently this is true since eternity is forever.

That was when I perceived the Kingdom of God as something I will achieve after I die.

But then I learned that the Kingdom of God is not only a coming Kingdom, but the Kingdom of God is here and now.

The Kingdom of God is here and now and is already valuable. That is what these parables mean.

Its value is not merely a fire escape from hell.

It has present day value.

I love our statement about the Church of the Brethren: “A different way of living.”

God's Kingdom is here to bring healing to the world. We are here to bring healing to the world.

Mary Hoff, one of the presenters at our VBS turned out to be married to one of my childhood friends.

She gave me one of the best compliments I have ever heard about another Christian. No, she wasn't speaking about me. She was speaking of Rick Flickinger. She said that he was indeed a sincere Christian and she believed in his faith.

Rick, don't get a big head. But Rick demonstrates the value of the Kingdom of God today.

When the Church merely focuses on getting people saved so that they end up in heaven instead of hell, they short change the value of the Kingdom of God.

I don't believe that Mary came to Church the next Sunday because I was here, she came to see what kind of place nurtured Rick Flickinger's Christian witness.

So what value does it have?

The Kingdom of God heals the world.

The Church grew like wildfire across the Roman world in the first three centuries because the Church was the only institution in the world that was caring for the poor.

People saw actions of faith that were consistent with the words of their faith.

That, my friends, is a physical demonstration of the value we place on the Kingdom of God.

Across Fort Wayne, we see the history of the blessing of the Church in the fact that all three hospitals, Parkview, which used to be knows as Parkview Methodist Hospital, Lutheran Hospital and St. Joseph's Hospital are all ministries of the Kingdom of God.

Pastoring in Lancaster Co, PA gave me a sense of pride because of what the Atlantic NE district is doing there. They have an organization that they started called COBYS. Church of the Brethren Youth Services.

They facilitate adoption, foster care, marriage counseling and domestic violence abuse protection. They do so well that the court system in Lancaster Co uses them almost exclusively.

When Kairos comes to the prison, the Kingdom of God here and now comes there. Each weekend, which costs over $7,000 is paid for by the team of 40 people serving. We meet 9 times for 3 hours in order to prepare. And we get nothing in return. We do it because the Kingdom of God has great value, not just for the future but for today.

I have a friend who lives in South St. Louis. She tells me Joyce Meyer ministries has over 16 homes for desperate women. She said: “I heard that they are feeding half of the poor in St. Louis!”

When people want to criticize Christianity as a bunch of haters, I want to shout out what good the Kingdom of God is doing in the world.

And the Church will grow when it is known for the good that it does.

All of these actions take place at the sacrifice of time and money by individual people as Christians and the corporate actions of people.

A man named Steve was in two weeks ago and he asked me to thank the entire congregation.

In January, we gave him a voucher for 100 pounds of food. He didn't have the gas to get to the South side of FW. But before he left, he spent 45 minutes with me asking about job interview skills. He brought it up. We prayed together.

We gave him a voucher a second time. He found a job! He was just getting paid and needed help. And then he was in two weeks ago collecting his final gift from us. I gave him a gift card for gas. He said: “tell the congregation that I love them. Jesus loves them. And tell them that I don't need any more help. This will purchase the gas to help me get to LaPorte for my final training. I got a good job and I have you all to thank for it.”

Because of our actions, the sacrifice of our actions, we show the value of the Kingdom of God, here and now.

The Church will grow in proportion to how well we value the Present day Kingdom of God.

And finally, the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast.

Both parables tell the same story from a different perspective.

The mustard seed is very small. And yet, the bush that grows from it is as large as a tree. It is so big that birds nest in its branches.

The point being that God does great things with small beginnings.

God owns the plant, not us. Remember, God is the gardener. Sometimes God weeds the garden and prunes the tree and it is painful.

But the plant grows from small things.

We cannot despise, or lose hope at a small beginning.

And the parable of the yeast. This is my favorite.

We cannot see yeast do its work with the naked eye.

I imagine that to a 1^st century hearer of this parable, yeast almost seemed magical.

But here is the thing. It spreads from molecule to molecule.

One molecule is changed and that changes another and that creates the chain reaction.

The Kingdom of God grows through the individual cell.

We cannot actually see it work, but it does.

Jesus wanted the disciples to understand the mystery of the Holy Spirit as God warms heart to Jesus' love and the Kingdom of God spreads.

If the bread does not come into contact with the yeast, it will not rise.

When we come into contact with others, the Kingdom of God comes into contact with others.

I had a pagan boss once. He knew I was a Christian. And the business had trouble. So the bosses wife, an elderly and devout Catholic Christian woman, would ask me to pray for the company.

She knew that the Kingdom of God means a blessing to the people we come into contact with it.

We are Agape.

Our name means Love.

We are the visible demonstration of God's love for this world, in this part of the world.

Let us remember that God will cause growth in a divine any mysterious way.

God wants us to value what it means for us to be part God's Kingdom.

And God wants us to share grace instead of judgment.

Cultivating Christianity

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Focus: Although evil exists, God is the judge.

Function: To help people see that God is the Judge

Form: Topical

Intro:

Sometimes, in a sermon, one has to go right for the jugular. Sometimes, the faithful preacher has to start right where we find the worse, or most uncomfortable part of a passage.

Let me reread verses 41-42: ⁴¹The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. ⁴²They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Judgment.

Judgment from God.

Judgment day.

Those are, or at least they should be, chilling words.

When I think of judgment, when I think of God's judgment, when I think of Judgment day, I get this sort of knot in my stomach.

My daddy never really preached about hell. But, in my childhood, I heard a lot about it.

I had this picture in my mind of an exacting God who really didn't tolerate much deviation. He was and is the standard of perfection and it was/is up to us to live up to that standard. That is, if we really loved Him.

And right here we see it. Verse 42: “...thrown into the blazing furnace... ...weeping, gnashing of teeth....”

Hell fire. Again scary stuff.

And to make it worse, part of my theological formation in preaching and ministerial training was “being the preacher with enough guts to never water down these passages... ...if not, God would place me in the darkest, or hottest, places of hell, for eternity.”

So. Let me tell you the truth without fear of retribution or reprisal. I promise to use scripture instead of per-conceived notions to preach on it. OK?

I spoke of heaven in one sermon about 20 years ago. A few years later, at the age of about 19, a youth came forward to be baptized.

It was a wealthy Church. I remember we were in a capital campaign to raise money for a new building and I told them: “Good news, we already have enough money to build. The problem is, it is still in your bank accounts....”

So, I was preaching about laying up for ourselves eternal, instead of earthly rewards, and since there were savvy investors, I was explaining how eternal treasure is a much better investment than earthly pleasure or reward. I was preaching Matthew 6:19-21, “where our treasure is, our heart will be also.” The passage is an admonition to place our heart where God wants it to be: with Him.

I described eternity like this: “Suppose an eagle would take 1,000 years to fly from earth to the other side of the sun. And on every trip, he would bring just one beak full of earth to the other side of our orbit. By the time the eagle completely moved earth to the other side, eternity would still be just beginning. If you lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, you will have them for eternity. Doesn't that make more sense? Why waste it on the passing pleasures of this life? Or do you really believe?”

I wouldn't use that kind of manipulation anymore.

And so, the young man, who came forward to be baptized testified this at his baptism: “If I die and go to hell, it is for eternity, and if a giant eagle would take a speck of earth....”

I was shocked!

Conversions that are merely a “fire escape from hell” are based on a god of fear, instead of the Biblical truth “God is love.” 1 John 4:8

I realized that I had misused God's Word to raise money for the Church. The passage is about the real treasure that being in God's family is. It isn't there to raise money for the Church.

God forgive me. I suppose I deserved that twisting of the illustration I used.

But hell is here in this passage: "Everything that causes people to sin...”, like, for example, the love of money, and “all the people who do evil...” are destroyed in the end.

I have had to look at what the Bible actually says about hell throughout out my career as a preacher.

This passage says nothing about a prayer of salvation, like I prayed at age 4. No, it indicates that evil people, and sinful vices, will be destroyed, by God.

And, this passage does not say evil people will suffer eternal torture. And someone can say, “it doesn't say they won't, either. Pastor.”

True.

And this isn't a sermon about hell. It is a sermon about judgment and more specifically, it is about who does the judging.

And the answer, btw, is God, not us.

“Leave the weeds alone...,” the Master says. “If you uproot them, you can destroy the tender plants.”

Let God do the cultivating. Pulling the weeds is God's job, not ours.

How many tender plants were destroyed because we, at times, have taken it upon ourselves to be the gardeners weeding the garden instead of God and His angels?

Too many.

God loves the tender plants more than He worries about the awful way sin destroys and evil people conduct themselves. It isn't our place to judge. It is God's place.

I served my chaplain residency at the community hospital downtown Indianapolis. I served the emphysema ward. I tell you, a powerful way to get someone to think about their nicotine habit is to tour that ward and see how awful a way it is to die -drowning in your own phlegm.

An elderly man was there dying and he had something to say to me, the young upstart preacher. He said: “at age 12, a couple of boys sneaked a pack of cigarettes and went behind the shed at Church to smoke them. The preacher caught us, drug us before the congregation and railed on us about how evil we were. I made my mind up that day to do two things: 1), never go to church again, and 2) never to stop smoking.

The destruction of that tender plant is exactly what Jesus meant when He commanded us through this story to let God alone be the judge.

God is the judge, and God is a fair judge.

So what about hell?

I tell people that hell is “the just response of a loving God on behalf of all the victims.”

You know the theory. If I, as a father, permit one child to bully another child, I have not loved either Child. Love must include a sense of justice for the victim.

And God is just.

As a matter of fact, in this passage, the word translated as “righteous” is diakonos.

Diakonos is translated almost exclusive as Just in every other language than English.

We read the text about Joseph, when he forgave Mary, it says, “Joseph because was a good man decided to keep Mary.” Matthew 1:19

The righteous are better known as “the Just.”

In English translations, because of the history of King James who authorized his own translation, we see the word translated as righteous, as if they are the saved.

Biblical scholars, true to the Word and its original intent, question the intent of this translation in the King James because it appears to have been used to justify Colonization.

The idea being that if we are “the righteous” then, God prefers us to others and what we do to them, how we treat them, is less important to God since we are “the saved.”

During this time of colonization, the doctrine of hell gained emphasis for Imperialistic reasons because if God has assigned to them such a terrible future, then how badly we treat them is less significant.

But almost every other language translation correctly translates diakonos as Just, or good. This translation is largely unique to the English language.

And this passage does not contrast believers with unbelievers. It contrasts evil people with good people.

And it states that: The good people are God's people.

Evol people are condemned because they are evil.

God is good. God is just and God is love.

God will punish evil, because God is just. And, God will punish evil according to God's goodness.

One thing that is important to understand from this passage is that Evil exists. And, in the parable, evil is personal. The weeds are planted by the Evil one.

The weeds are both things that cause us to sin and evil people. The weeds are both personal and impersonal. And that is the nature of Evil.

From the parable, it is established that Evil is real.

At times, my wife accuses me of being to naïve. I would always rather err on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt than questioning the intent of others.

It is my personality that does this.

So, I have to remind myself that evil exists.

And in this world, there is evil. It exists inside of people and it is a force to be reckoned with.

One of my favorite hymns is “This Is My Father's World.” There is a line in there that says: “and though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

We are not called to decry the evil of the weeds.

We are not called to uproot the weeds. That is God's job.

Falsely, we have been given the task of “taking a stand against sin” as if somehow that will accomplish God's purpose.

But Jesus is clear. God is the judge. We are not called to curse the darkness. We are called to shine the light.

So what about Hell?

It is God's prerogative.

In this passage, the evil is thrown into the fire where it ceases to exist. There is no mention of eternal torture.

Eternal torture is inconsistent with the concept of a loving God.

In Genesis 18:16-33, Abraham bargains with God in an attempt to save Sodom and Gomorrah. He convinces God to save the cities if God can find at least 10 good people living there.

As it turns out, there are only 3 and they are kept safe while the rest die.

But Abraham's argument toward God is that God is fair, and God will never put out a disproportionate judgment.

Whatever hell it, it is not disproportionate, it is fair and it is just.

No where does it say that the soul will exist forever in torment. Mark 9:48, where it says “
their worm shall not die and the fire will never go out” is a direct quote from Isaiah 66:24 that states “the worm that eats them will not die and the fire will never be quenched.”

Perhaps this means that there will be an eternal testimony God's destruction of evil.

Now, one might say this: “The pastor is preaching against the reality of hell.”

What I am saying is that nowhere in the Bible do we find the idea that hell is eternal torture for the damned.

But we do see the Bible telling us that heaven is eternal bliss.

We do see the Bible telling us whatever God's judgment is, it will be fair.

And most importantly, the judgment is left to God.

That is why we are not to take our own revenge. We are commanded to let God be the administrator of vengeance. Romans 12:19.

Let God do it. God will do it more completely, but most importantly, God will do it with complete fairness. God will do it with His love and mercy in mind.

Let me reiterate what we have learned from this parable:

Evil exists and will be punished.

The enemy sows the evil in our midst.

God alone is the judge.

Desert or Prairie?

Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Focus: Perseverance in Christian Faith

Function: To help consider their own faithfulness

Form: Bible Study

Intro: I confess that I have preached this text several times and I am not sure I feel good about my previous attempts to explain this passage.

I think I have done a pretty good job of shaming people in an attempt to make them be the best kind of Christian they can be.

I suppose that coming to worship, and focusing a big portion of our worship service on the sermon, an exposition of God's Word means that we do indeed come for aid in our Christian life.

But shame does not come from God. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit quickens, moves, or stimulates us into change. But when God is working in our hearts to change our minds, our way of thinking, God never makes us feel like failures. God always lets us know that with Him, we can find new freedoms in becoming like Christ.

Having said that, at times, living out our Christian conviction can be a sacrifice, can be hard, can force between two choices, one may seem more pleasurable than the other, but we know that one is more like what Jesus would have us do.

So, when I preached this text, the message was titled: “What kind of soil are you?”

The parable is about 4 different kinds of soil.

My past title: “What kind of soil are you?” doesn't apply since it's impossible for us to change the kind of soil we are. The soil is kind of stuck there.

You can't press all the details of a parable, one has to find the main theme.

Fortunately, the main point of the parable is given to us right in the parable in verse 9. Let me read it: “⁹Whoever has ears, let them hear.” and then again, with the first word of verse 18, where our text picks back up again: “listen...”

Maybe the title should be “How well do you listen?”

I find the story to be very comforting to the disciples as they begin the task of going out into the entire world to share God's grace and message of hope.

The story reminds disciples that many will not respond well to the gospel message.

And their response is not our fault.

I believe Jesus wants us to use the parable as we are preaching the gospel with the hope that people will make up their minds to listen well because there are many who miss the blessing for lack of hearing.

The four soils:

The path. This is the place that is to busy. There is so much activity on the path that the seed never germinates. It is swept away by Satan himself.

How many people get so distracted by the busyness of life that they never take time to consider spiritual things?

How many times to do we actually ask ourselves the question, What does Jesus want me to do? Or What would Jesus Do?

We can get so busy we forget to ask that question.

The rocky soil, presumably along the side of the path.

The rock is to hard for the seed to take root.

Too hard for their to be fertile soil.

This person responds quickly, but has no real depth.

The text says they do well until trouble or persecution comes, because of the word, they fall away.

We don't practice infant baptism because we believe that a person should count well the cost of discipleship.

But we have seen it. People who are initially excited, but then fall away.

Unfortunately, we see this sometimes in prison.

The men respond well during the weekend, but later on, when their faith is challenged by gangs, drugs or their own lack of character, they resort to previous lives.

However, some of the times where the Church has grown the most is when there has been persecution. My brother told me that a missionary to Iran presented to their church about how strong the Church is in Iran, where they are persecuted the most. The same is true in China. The same was true in the 1^st Century.

Persecution can grow a Church. But Satan is an enemy to the healing power of the good news. There are lots of views of who, or what, Satan is. So, for our discussion, let us agree to the common denominator here: Evil is real. I want to give 2 stories contrasting Satanic persecution that built the church, and a Satanic attack that stole away the seed.

I saw it happen in Haiti.

Tell story of Village 9.

• Poor village
• 3 miles to potable water
• had to be 13 to have clothes
• I was desperate to preach, what could I know about their lives
• But a sermon came to me that morning about the nature of evil and the reality of Satan.
• They had an obvious choice, to us, the choice is not so obvious
• 5 minutes into the service we sang “when I die, I am going to live again...”
• We spent the next two hours filled with joy.
• It was Acts Chapter 2
• Somewhere in there I preached, but I was a small part of the whole event.
• I kept noticing the men walk out of the room and walk back in with a concerned look on their face.
• But the atmosphere was electric!
• The joy of the Lord seemed to form a bubble over that building as it filled the building.
  • The sense of God's presence reminded me once during VBS when a tornado headed directly toward the church.
  • The trailer court emptied out with all of the residents hiding in basement and the VBS director started singing the VBS songs to calm the Children and again that sense of being a bubble occurred and that tornado literally lifted off the ground a mile from the Church, went directly over the Church and touched down again about a half a mile past us.
• I digress for a moment.
• Sunday night, we were going back to village 9 for another meeting and no one from our group wanted to go with us.
• I asked why and then found out that the concerned look on the men's faces was because there were 6 Voodoo priests doctors circling the Church trying to cast a spell on us.
• But there was no getting through.
• Here is the point. Persecution and Satan himself, whether you believe Satan is a metaphor for evil, or a real fallen angel, either way, it/he attacks new Christians.

Contrast with Cheeseburger and the woman.

The Thorny Soil.

Dare I say that this can easily describe us?

To be fair, the admonition is to listen well.

And I know that because there are times in my life when I have responded in all four ways to the message.

So, without shame, let us look at the thorny soil.

The seed wants to grow.

It has good enough soil to take a good permanent root. But there are too many distractions.

A few years ago a family member stole a large sum of money from my wife, her sister and her brother. I wanted to be angry. Forgiveness was hard. But that is the worries of this world getting in the way...

Here is the thing, in order to have a strong crop, you gotta weed the garden.

Now, next week we will look at the parable in the interim of this passage, how weeding the garden is God's job, not ours.

But the weeds need to be pulled.

And Jesus tells us this part of that parable, hoping we will listen to the fact that weeds will choke out the good soil.

Jim Wetzel, not our Jim Wetzel, but the one who used to write the gardening column for the FW News Sentinel wrote this once: “a weed is an unwanted plant.”

His point was that even a beautiful flower growing in the pumpkin plant is a weed because of its place.

Sometimes the things that distract us and choke out our fruitfulness as Christians aren't evil.

We are called, by Christ, to do good works for Him while living under the sun.

And finally, there is the good soil that produces abundant fruit.

The lesson from this is not what kind of soil we are, but that when we are disciples of Christ, we do produce fruit.

And producing fruit is what matters to God.

Again, I don't say this to shame anyone.

Jesus didn't tell this parable so that the plants would uproot themselves into some place different, but so that people would pay attention to what they are hearing.

We can get to busy to even respond to Jesus.

I suppose that is the saddest condition of all.

We can be excited for a short time, but have no root and soon fall away.

We can take root, but allow ourselves to be distracted.

Or, we can make up our minds to be in it for the long haul.

But, I am not going to ask you what kind of soil you are.

This is a faithful Church. You do very well.

All of us always know that we can do more.

No shame from me.

So, what I am going to ask is what kind of soil are we sewing the seed onto?

Is it a Desert, or is it a Prairie?

There is a lot of busyness in our culture. The minute the gospel is preached, another idea or the struggle just to stay alive chokes out the message.

There is a lot of rocky soil. There are so many things clamoring for our enthusiasm, that we can get excited, and then fall into excitement for something else and forget the most important things.

There are a lot of thorns that distract us from our mission.

But there is also a faithful God who weeds, prunes, waters and encourages us.

I wonder if the call to keep on listening is a call for us to keep together.

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.