Jesus On God-Pushing
Part 12 in series Hearing Jesus Again
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
August 2, 2008
What I’m going to share with you tonight is huge. It’s beyond huge. It’s massive. It’s so big that if this teaching of Christ’s had been clearly taught and applied during the Middle Ages, there could have been no Crusades and no Inquisition. If it had been clearly taught and applied in our own lifetimes, Christians would not be widely considered to be rude, and more than willing to shove our beliefs down the throats of others. In fact if this original teaching of Christ’s had been faithfully and clearly taught to every generation of Christian, and if every person had been conscientious in applying it, then there would have never once in history been a forced conversion. At least not to Christianity. Think about that. No forced conversions. I can’t imagine a world free from them, can you? What a thought. That would mean that no religious wars would have ever been fought in the name of Jesus. It’s probably not much of a stretch to say Jesus would love that.
But not only would religious wars not have been fought. If the teaching I’m going to tell you about tonight had been clearly taught and consistently applied, the world would be free from all religious conversions where people felt guilted and scared into it. I tell you, tonight’s message is HUGE. If these words from Jesus that I’m going to talk to you about tonight had been clearly taught and applied, many of you in this room might not even be here because Wildwind is a church that specializes in helping people deal with the scars they have received in their previous church experiences. Most of those scars were dealt out by people who did not clearly understand and apply what I’m going to teach you about tonight. The whole notion of psychological and mental and emotional abuse in churches would not exist as we understand it today because this kind of abuse in churches would be impossible if we clearly taught and observed Christ’s words. Does this sound huge and revolutionary and church-changing and society-changing? It is. But do you know what? I’m not going to tell you anything new tonight. It’s stuff Jesus said two thousand years ago. I’m not going to add to Jesus’ insight. I’m just going to take Jesus seriously and assume that he meant what he said, and I’m going to put these words of his into a context where we can hear them again – hear them in a fresh way. Tonight’s sermon is called Jesus on God-Pushing.
Now if you had to cast a quick vote on this, do you think this would be a thumbs up or down vote for Jesus? After all, Jesus is the one Christians are so often trying to push on others. So would Jesus himself be for or against pushing Jesus on people? Are there any words of Christ that he ever said that would lead any of us to believe (in this age or in any previous age) that Jesus would think it’s a good idea to push God on people? In the New Testament, do we ever see Jesus pushing HIMSELF on anyone? Did Jesus ever force or even strongly COMPEL anyone to choose him? Did Jesus ever use methods such as guilt or manipulation to get people to listen to him? Did Jesus ever in any context make any attempt to override human free will? Scour the scripture. Examine it and I believe you will see for yourself that the answer is no, and not only no, but that Jesus always did the exact opposite. He always freely allowed people to make choices. He always refused to pursue those who rejected him and beg for one more chance. He always honored the dignity and free will of every person. Let us then look very carefully at Jesus’ teaching on God-pushing. Let’s begin by setting it in a clear context.
Last week we covered Jesus’ teaching on judging others. We learned that judging other people is a way of trying to control them. No one wants to be condemned or looked down upon, so people will often do what we want them to do simply to avoid our judgment or condemnation or disapproval. But when people do what we want them to do for this reason, we have forced our will upon them – “do what I want or else suffer the pain of judgment and disapproval and rejection.” There is no place for this in the heart that has surrendered to God and given up trying to force our will on other people. The surrendered heart wants only God’s will. And the surrendered heart realizes that the desire to do God’s will is a gift of grace, not something we can force on others. So to live happily in God’s kingdom, we must give up the practice of judging and condemning others, and we do this by cultivating the Kingdom hearts Jesus tells us about in the earlier sections of his Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus tells us the God-shaped heart will reject all attempts to control and manipulate and force our will on other people because we will have already surrendered our own will to God. Jesus points out two ways that we force ourselves on people. The first is through judging (condemning) people. We try to make people feel bad in various ways for not doing what we think they should do. This will often get them to bend to our will, and even if it doesn’t, we at least have the satisfaction of knowing they feel bad. We talked about this last week.
The second way Jesus says we try to force ourselves on people is we try to get them to accept our treasures – the good things in our lives – as their own. This is something most of us wouldn’t think about but again, if this had been clearly taught all through church history, many of the worst things that have happened in the name of God could never have occurred.
Matthew 7:6 (NCV)
6 "Don’t give holy things to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls before pigs. Pigs will only trample on them, and dogs will turn to attack you.
What are holy things? What are pearls? Well, obviously our faith is a holy thing. Our understanding of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and what God does in our lives and why the church is important and how each person on earth can come to know God and live in his plan for their lives. That’s holy stuff. It’s sacred stuff. The value of God in your life is holy and sacred to you. Pearls are the things in life you treasure. Certainly God might be included in that, church might be included in that, but so would most other good things in your life. Your views about how to raise children. Maybe some of your political opinions. Your approach to marriage and money. The way you live is special to you. You have affection for it and that’s why you live the way you do and not the way someone else does. Your way of life and the things you value are pearls to you – they are precious things. And here we see that Jesus says that we are not to force our spiritual views or our way of life on others. Jesus names two animals here – pigs and dogs. Jesus is not being insulting by using these animals, he is trying to make an excellent point that, if we listened, could have saved humanity an awful lot of suffering. Why should we not throw pearls to pigs?
Because pigs cannot appreciate them. You can have something that is very precious, very special, very valuable to you. In fact, let’s say you have one item that is the most valuable thing you own. Would it be wise to go out to the farm and share it with the farm animals? Of course not. In fact, it would be stupid! Nothing wrong with the pigs or the dogs, it’s just that they cannot appreciate the value of what you have. Why?
Because pigs and dogs (and all animals) are living for the moment. They don’t sit around talking philosophy or sharing about relationships. They don’t pursue music and literature. They don’t enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with their families. They have priorities that are very basic. Eat, drink, and stay alive. That’s what they are about. No matter how special your treasures might be to you, they have no value to the pigs and the dogs. To give your sacred and precious things to them would be foolish, and show that you do not understand them.
In the same way, many people are living for the moment. They live to eat, drink, have fun, stay out of serious trouble, and remain as comfortable as possible at all times. They’re not digging for deeper spiritual insights, they’re not curious about the condition of their souls. As such, not everyone will appreciate the “treasures” we have to share with them. Look what Jesus said about how not everyone is ready to receive spiritual treasures:
Matthew 13:10-13 (MSG)
10 The disciples came up and asked, "Why do you tell stories?"
11 He replied, "You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them.
12 Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears.
13 That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.
Receptive insight. Readiness. Readiness. Not everyone is ready. Not everyone is able to appreciate and hear what a Christian may be saying about God. For years Christians have justified shoving their faith down the throats of people with verses like this:
Romans 10:17 (NKJV)
17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
The thought is, if faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the Word of God, then we get the Word of God into as many ears as possible by any means possible. We just give it to ‘em, whether they want to hear it or not. Based on this verse alone that would be a reasonable conclusion. But Jesus said that not everyone is able to hear. And not only did Jesus tell us that not everyone is able to hear, he also told us what will typically happen if we presume to try to force people to receive something they are not ready to receive.
Matthew 7:6 (NCV)
6 "Don’t give holy things to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls before pigs. Pigs will only trample on them, and dogs will turn to attack you.
Pigs will trample on them. In other words, some people will just walk all over you. Some people will just not appreciate what you have to say at all and treat your treasures like trash. Dogs will actually turn and attack you. In other words, some people will be outraged by what you have to say. They will feel judged and condemned by what you have said, and their response will be to become angry with you and attack you verbally, if not physically.
Look what Jesus said when he gave his disciples instructions on how to take his message into other towns:
Matthew 10:12-14 (MSG)
12 "When you knock on a door, be courteous in your greeting.
13 If they welcome you, be gentle in your conversation.
14 If they don’t welcome you, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.
Jesus said “knock,” he didn’t say, “pick the lock.” If we are welcomed, we are to be gentle. GENTLE! Why? Because if we are not gentle people feel what? Judged and condemned. They feel put-upon. The heart of God is to not do that! If the church completely woke up to this today, how much different would people’s perception of us be within just a few months? TOTALLY!
If we’re not welcomed, we’re to quietly withdraw. Not debate. Not argue. Not force it on them anyway. We are to wait until the Holy Spirit creates conditions – because only God’s Spirit creates the receptive insight that is necessary to really hear what is being said. As with so many things involving God, waiting is a big factor. Yet throughout history the church has charged ahead figuring it could accomplish God’s work for him with swords and stakes and soldiers, instead of waiting patiently for God to do the work that he will surely do. The Inquisition and the Crusades were both attempts made by the church to force people to convert to Christianity. The early settlers in America tried to force the Native Americans to convert under threat of torture or death.
Churches sometimes do this on smaller scales, often using tactics like threats of hell, or guilt, or even fear, to get people to convert.
Individuals do this too. Some Christians will try to get people to convert by pushing God on them in various ways and often by combining the push with large amounts of condemnation and judgment.
What a contrast this is to the way of Jesus. Ever notice that as you read the story of the crucifixion, you don’t read of a single attempt by the Son of God to share God’s kingdom and his true identity as God with the soldiers who crucified him? Interesting isn’t it? He prayed that God would forgive them for killing him. But he never tried to evangelize them. Jesus knew they were not in a place to receive what was sacred. He knew that his treasures were trash to them.
In Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, when the son came to the Father and insisted on getting his share of the inheritance up front, then took off to squander it on drugs and sex, to me one of the most striking things is that the Father gave his Son the money and let him to go. He didn’t chase after him or beg or get dramatic about it. He let him go. In the account of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus what he should do to be saved, Jesus told the man to give away his money, realizing that money was the man’s real God. The Bible says this rich man went away sad because he had great wealth.
Matthew 19:22 (NIV)
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
In other words, he chose to reject Jesus in favor of keeping his money. And Jesus let him go. In his interactions with people, Jesus practiced what he preached, modeling for us what he taught about gentleness and not making any attempt to force the message on anyone, but simply speaking the truth directly and quietly and allowing people to make a choice. I have never seen the verse in the Bible that reads:
MIA 1:1-2 (TUB – The Unknown Bible)
1And so Jesus did argue and debate and beat the man soundly around the ears with the scrolls until he cried uncle. 2When the man still refused to acknowledge Jesus as God, Jesus went out from that place in a huff, with a self-righteous snort, saying unto him, “Fine – then don’t blame me when thou burnest in hell.”
Of course I’m being facetious, and I realize this isn’t exactly what happens, but the point is that our Lord never forced our Lord on anybody. You and I need to not force our Lord on anybody either. We need to be watching for signs that a person does not want to hear what we have to say, that they are not in a place to regard our treasure as anything more than trash, or our pearls as anything more than propaganda. We need to speak to those who seem to be receptive and pray for those who do not.
Once we understand that it is God’s Holy Spirit that creates conditions of readiness, not anything we say or do, then we realize that we are not responsible for whether or not a person accepts Christ, or even whether or not they will listen. That is simply not something we have to carry around! And of course, in keeping with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, judging and condemning people and pushing ourselves and God on them will be increasingly out of place in hearts that have given up violence and lust and faithlessness and revenge and verbal manipulation and anxiety and all the other things Jesus has already spoken about.
A person with a God-shaped heart does not carry around with it a sense that it is our responsibility to force God on people. In fact a person with a God-shaped heart is positive of the exact opposite. A person with a God-shaped heart has confidence not in its own abilities, but in God. This kind of person knows that when a someone is ready, when they have received God’s grace that enables them to see and say yes to God, we won’t need to force God on them – they’ll be running to the door to meet God on their own! A person with a God-shaped heart has given up judgment and condemnation as ways of controlling other people. They do not sense a need to push God or their opinions or way of life on anyone else because they have confidence that God is always moving, always working, and that God will faithfully complete his work. They do not see the point of engaging in forceful debate about God and religion with people because they do not have a need for others to agree with them or see their point of view. They have been set free from inappropriate burdens carried around for others and are now able to care for people without crossing the line into dysfunction and co-dependence. They have learned how it can be true that we live our lives wanting to see every person come to know God, and yet we live without a sense that we have to strive to make it happen. They have learned the secret of Jesus’ promise:
Matthew 11:30 (MSG)
30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly."
Is this you? Is it becoming you? Do you see in yourself that tendency to debate and argue, to force your treasures and pearls on people who don’t really appreciate them? Do you carry with you a sense of guilt because so and so isn’t yet the person you think they ought to be and you think it’s your job to fix them? Do you often feel frustrated that the people around you aren’t taking more of your advice and living the way you would like to see them live? In a moment I want to pray that God would help us see these things in ourselves and begin showing us the way out.
You might be thinking, “Okay – if I can’t cajole people, if I can’t make grand promises to them to inspire their confidence, and if I can’t in any way condemn or judge them, how do I get people to do what I would like them to do? If you’re thinking that, it’s a great question, and I’m going to give you the answer right now, and next week I’m going to teach you how it works. The way you get what you want out of people is – drum roll please – you ask them for what you want. Sounds simple, but it’s incredibly powerful. I hope you’re here next week to learn about the power of the ask. Let’s pray.
