“What Would Jesus Say to Howard Stern?”
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, 1 John 5:2-3, John 15:13
INTRODUCTION:
Howard Stern: He’s called “Shock-Jock.” He proclaims himself as “King of the Media.” Maybe he is. He has over 25 million listeners, his radio show is No. 1 in most large city markets and he earns $20 million doing what he does. And what does he do?
He is without a doubt one of the most controversial personalities in the media world. The content of his show degrades everyone & everything. His guests often engage in sexual activities while on the air. His commentary is so sexually explicit that he’s paid over $1 million in fines to the F.C.C. and his insensitivity knows no bounds!
Less than 24 hours after the shootings at Columbine, Stern shocked even his most avid fans by saying, “There were some really good-looking girls running out of the school.. Did those kids (the killers) try to have sex with any of those good-looking girls? They didn’t even do that? At least, if you’re going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn’t you have some sex?” It was called by many a “new low for radio” and he lost many sponsors over his crude remark. Yet it didn’t seem to phase him or change his insensitivity. Just four days after the September 11th terrorist attacks Stern said, “New York prostitutes ought to do what everyone else is doing. They ought to donate their services and go down and give sex to the fireman while they’re digging out the bodies.” Many condemned Stern’s remarks. Don Wildmon of the A.F.A. said, “While America weeps over the loss of thousands of its citizens, Howard Stern continues to spew his disillusioned perversion on national radio.”
What would Jesus say to a man like Howard Stern, to this “Shock- Jock”? I’ll tell you, this message was harder to prepare in some respects than lasts weeks on Osama bin Laden. At least bin Laden does what he does out of some belief, albeit a very twisted one, in God. Stern does what he does purely for selfish pursuits, for money and for fame. And the more I researched the man the more sickened I became. It’s hard to even explain in a forum like this what he does let alone find a redeeming quality in his life. But that’s from a human point of view. What we’ve been doing in this series is looking at these people & their problems from Jesus’ perspective. At one point, I really wondered if I’d made a mistake choosing Howard Stern. I prayed: “Lord, what could You say to him except, “Howard, where you’re going I hope you really like warm weather!” But I could almost hear Jesus say, “Tim, remember, I specialize in taking what people would call the “dregs of humanity” and make them into the “darlings of heaven.” And when you read about Jesus in the Bible that’s exactly what He did. Take Mary Magdalene, a demon possessed woman becoming one of the 1st witnesses to the resurrected Christ; the woman at the well, a sexually immoral person, who Jesus used as a soul winner, or Paul, a Christian murderer, who became the greatest missionary of all time. Jesus often took those who culture gave up on and helped them become “Godly Greats!” I think Jesus might just surprise us & Howard by what He would say. While I’m sure there is a wide range of comments Jesus might have for Howard, I’d like to suggest three pairs of unexpected words that He might say.
I. “I AGREE” (Sex is a good thing): 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
The first thing I think Jesus would say to Howard is “I agree. Sex is a good thing.” Howard Stern’s claims to fame is his creative descriptions and all too often, his crude referral to & use of sex. He once said, “I am to sex what Picasso is to painting.” But I can hear Jesus say to him, “Howard, sex is a great thing, but here’s where you’ve missed it. Sex is to be used only in the way God designed.” And Jesus could say that because He is the absolute authority on sex. In fact, in Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus in talking about sexual relations said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’” Now, Jesus is referring there to the 7th of the 10 commandments given by God Himself. But then He adds.. “But I tell you - that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” “You’ve heard it said.. But I tell you..” Jesus Christ is adding and giving additional wisdom into God’s commandments. Who else but the Son of God could give insight into what God has already said? Only one equal to God could do that. You know people can call Jesus a good teacher, moral man or even a prophet, but Jesus didn’t call Himself those things. He claimed equality with God and all of us must wrestle with that claim. Including Howard Stern. Jesus would say, “Howard, I am equal with God so I’m qualified to tell you how God designed sex to be used. It was never meant to be used as you have promoted it.. A selfish, secular, shallow, senseless lust. God knows that sexual relations were meant to be understood in the context of a lifelong commitment, in fact, it is intimacy in marriage that gives beauty to sex.”
But, let’s admit it. Howard Stern is not alone in promoting or practicing sex outside of God’s design. Our culture seems crazed with sex, we’ve misused & abused God’s sexual gift. I believe Jesus would say to Howard Stern and to us: “Please understand, the way many of you are using sex is so unhealthy for you and your relationships.” How does our culture practice sex outside of God’s design? Let me mention 4 ways:
(1) Sex before marriage. Pre-marital sex is unhealthy because it places lust, or the physical act, over commitment. That has never been the order that God intended. From the beginning of time God meant for the commitment to come before sexual relations. “Genesis 2:24 - “So a man will leave his father and mother, be united with his wife, and the two will become one body.” Do you see the order? The man and the woman unite first.. and notice what God calls them? Man and wife... not “boyfriend - girlfriend,” not “they’re “going out” “love each other” or even “engaged.” but man & wife. The “uniting” here is marriage and it is after the commitment of marriage that God then says they become one body. That’s God’s order and He knows best because He’s the One that not only designed our bodies for the sex act but designed us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually for when sex is to be consummated.
(2) Living together before marriage is also outside of God’s design. Co-habitation is unhealthy because it disregards Godly commitment all together. Living together before marriage is nothing more than “playing house.” It’s being shown that living together is not best. Charles Colson sites the National Survey of Families & Households. In that survey they came up with some startling data. It found that almost half of all couples who cohabit break up before marriage. That even if these couples do marry, the divorce rate skyrockets, up to 80%! And this study found that in these “living together” relationships that women are 62x more likely to be assaulted by their boyfriends than by a husband. Why? Because couples who cohabit are reversing God’s order, a relationship without the Godly principle of “to death do us part.” God makes it clear that before intimacy there’s to be a public, permanent commitment.
(3) Adultery is outside of God’s design too. When one has a sexual relationship with someone other than their spouse it rips apart the “one-flesh” seal of commitment. The word “united” in Gen. 2:24 that we read earlier? It’s the Hebrew equivalent of our “super-glue.” Marriage is to be a super bond of faithfulness. When trust is lost it becomes so difficult, not impossible, but incredibly difficult to rebuild. And so many have been hurt by this sin. Yet still our culture promotes adultery as acceptable. Did you know there’s a company called “The Alibi Agency.” This London based agency’s slogan is: “We serve those who stray.” Here’s what’s on their web site: “With the pressures of modern life many of us have occasion to stray from our long term partners & dally with a brief sexual relationship with a third party, this is often a short term affair, inconsequential to our long term plans & relationships, but with modern communications, and media, it has become increasingly difficult to be able to carry on such a temporary dalliance, without risk of detection.. The Alibi Agency was established to provide a way out of this situation, we offer a Service which can help to protect your loved ones from undue anxiety, & help ensure the stability of a long term relationship by offering secure and professional handling of "Alibi’s" for you.. For instance:- we can provide you with invitations to corporate events, to cover your absence, we will provide telephone answering so that if someone tries to contact you, our receptionists will handle the call in the manner which was pre-arranged with you, as maybe a hotel receptionist, or a golf club secretary, she will offer to call your room, or have you paged, giving recognition to the fact that you are actually resident in the facility..” It goes on but you bet the picture.. It’s a very expensive service costing some $10k. But in the last 2 months they’ve received 1800 requests for their services, 33% of those from women. Two things here: (1) I use this only as an illustration to demonstrate how low we have sunk. If you use this information to cheat.. God will know! (2) God has a better way! One that’s a whole lot cheaper and much less stressful - it’s called faithfulness! living by God’s design.
(4) What Howard Stern promotes most- lustful thoughts are unhealthy. Jesus said the one who “lusts in their heart has already committed adultery.” Someone might ask: “Is it merely thinking of another person wrong?” Jesus would say, “No, having the thought is not wrong but figuring how to obtain it is.” Martin Luther said: “You can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair!” Once a circus performer each night would allow a huge Python snake to encircle him and then at the last moment he’d throw the Python off to the roar of the crowd. But one night when he went to throw off the snake he couldn’t and the crowd watched in horror as the snake squeezed the life out of him. What the performer failed to realize is that with each passing performance the snake was becoming stronger. That’s what happens if you stew on the thought, it grows stronger.
1 Thess. 4:3-5 (bulletin) gives us our Heavenly Father’s desires: “God wants you to stay away from sexual sins. He wants each of you to learn to control your own body.. Don’t use your body for sexual sin.”(NCV) You see, there is no Victorian prudity in Jesus’ view toward sex. He would say, “Howard, I agree. Sex is good, in fact it’s God given, but it’s to be used as He designed it.”
II. “I’M REAL” (I want what is best for you): 1 John 5:3-5
I think Jesus would surprise Howard by saying, “I’m real.” That alone would be unexpected because he is an unbeliever. Howard Alan Stern grew up as a Jewish boy who went to Synagogue but found it boring and irrelevant. You can hear that in some of Howard’s views on religion and God. “I’m sickened by all religions. Religion divides people.” “Religion has no relevance to life, it’s like a caveman kissing a rock, so what?” Here’s what he said on his radio show about the afterlife: “Here’s what happens when you die – you sit in a box and get eaten by worms. I guarantee you that when you die, nothing cool happens.” And the reason he doesn’t accept God is because of the God He thinks Is.. He grew up seeing God as someone who doesn’t tolerate questions, who enjoys heaping on guilt, who issues rigid rules, and who will always find something wrong whenever people are having fun. He once said, “God is the ultimate party pooper.. There can be no God when the God I hear about says “No” to all the fun things and allows all the bad thing to keep happening.” What a sad, hopeless view of life, death and God.
Here’s where I think Jesus would really surprise him and anyone who has this unfortunate & twisted view of God. Jesus would say, “Howard, I am real, I am relevant and I want what is best for you! I want you to have a life of hope, peace & purpose. I’m not the ultimate party pooper, just the opposite, I’m the ultimate giver of the good life!”Look at 1 John 5:3-4 printed for you in your bulletin. “This is love for God: to obey His commands. And (here it comes) His commands are not burdensome.” God wants everyone to find Him and know Him. Jer. 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart..” And when you find the God of the Bible you’ll see that He has not laid burdensome stuff on us, He is the God of the good life, He only says “No” to things that are self-destructive. If you are a parent you understand this principle.
Say you have an active 5 year old and you buy a house, on a fairly busy street. So, you put up a chain link fence around your front yard so that your son can play out there. But one day you see this ball of energy trying to tear down the fence. You go out and say, “Honey, what are you doing?” To which he says, “I want to play out there! I’m tired of being in here, it’s not fun!” You say, “Well, we can’t play out there, it’s dangerous. See the cars? You could get hurt or even killed. I love you, so I want what’s best for you and in this case, that’s you staying in here.” Well, he’s mad- “I won’t! You don’t want what’s best for me! You just don’t want me to have any fun! I’m tearing down this fence!” And as a parent, knowing more about life and what’s right than a 5-year-old, you pick him up & take him in the house, & he’s not happy! Why? Because you want to ruin his life, because you don’t want him to have fun? No, because you really do want what’s best for him! That’s God! Our Heavenly Father created us.. He knows what’s best!
Jesus knew this world would be full of trouble but He said He’d help us. Jn 16:33- “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Jesus has overcome the world so we can overcome it too. When you get beyond the misconceptions & come to a true understanding of who God really is you’ll find that God is not One who arbitrarily issues rules to undermine your fun but lovingly offers you wise & sensible counsel to save you from hurting yourself & others. He designed you, He knows how you can maximize your life. Would you like to overcome the world’s troubles? 1 Jn. 5:5 - “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” Jesus isn’t a “party-pooper” but a loving God, who wants to give you a life of peace & purpose here & perfection in the life to come.
III. “I UNDERSTAND” - (We all need to feel significant) John 5:13
I think the final pair of words from Jesus would be the most unexpected. I believe He would tell Howard, “I understand.” To a man who’s probably expecting to get slapped down by God, I think those words would grab Howard’s attention. I could hear Jesus elaborate this way: “I understand Howard, how living a life without me can cause you to seek ultimate fulfillment in other ways; including ways that are self-destructive and self-defeating. I’ve seen people fall into that trap time and time again.. Believe me, I understand.”
I think Jesus would look beyond Howard’s bawdy headline grabbing behavior and expose the things that are driving him. After all, like each of us, his outward behavior is just a manifestation of what’s going on inside. Don’t misunderstand. I don’t think Jesus would just blithely overlook his sinful actions - the Bible makes it clear that God is perfectly loving but also perfectly just and sin will be judged. But I think Jesus would take the time to heal the inner source of pain that’s provoking him to this outward and outrageous conduct.
That’s what Jesus did when He encountered a Samaritan woman at a well, as described in John 4. From His divine insight, Jesus knew that this woman had been divorced from five different husbands and that she was currently living a sexually immoral life with a man who wasn’t her husband.. She was living with someone. While He didn’t excuse her behavior, Jesus did peer inside of her and diagnose how her misconduct was being driven by a spiritual void in her life. You see, God has created within everyone of us the need for Him and when we don’t fill that space with His love then we will desperately look to fill it in some other way, not even realizing that it is Him we need. That was this woman’s case.. She was thirsty but didn’t know what she longed for. Jesus gave her the divine truth that she thirsted for, knowing that as she grew in her understanding and love of God, it would eventually revolutionize the way she lived her life.
So what is driving Howard Stern? When you study his life it becomes pretty clear that Howard is searching for significance. His ex-wife Alison said it this way: “For Howard, being Howard isn’t enough. Outside his media persona, he always feels inadequate, he always needs to be somebody.” Howard said it this way: “I need to be hated.” Stern admits that he does what he does out of a sense of never quite measuring up. He grew up in a predominately black neighborhood, a tall and homely Jewish kid picked on by other boys and rejected by girls. The inability to be accepted caused him to actually stay in doors most of his teen life because the “out-doors” was too painful. Add to this rejection was the fact that his mother was a very strict and in Howard’s words, “an oppressive and overwhelming parent,” a woman Howard never felt he could please. You can see how this compulsion for significance plays out in his life. He’s on a treadmill of having to do something more outrageous year after year to maintain the interest and admiration of his fans so he will feel worthwhile. Psychologists tell us that often our sense of worth is based on what the most important people in our life think of us. For Howard, it seems the most important people in his life are his listeners, because they are the ones that affirm him as an individual. You see, he craves the affirmation of his fans to prove he is somebody. But what happens when his popularity begins to slip? What happens when he is no longer liked because he is no longer hated?
But think about this. What would happen if Howard Stern were to come to an accurate understanding of who God is and start seeing Him as the most important person in his life? That would settle his self-worth issue once & for all. In fact it will settle all our issues of self-worth. Because you see Jesus Christ would tell Howard and all of us.. “You are somebody! In fact He is so convinced of our worth that He thought we were worth dying for!! Rom. 5:6-8 - “When we were unable to help ourselves, at the moment of our need, Christ died for us, although we were living against God. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.”(NCV) Jesus died for us despite our faults! He said it like this in John 15:13 (bulletin)- “..I love you. And here is how to measure it- the greatest love is shown when a person lays down his life for his friends; and you are my friends..”(LB) And Jesus laid down His life. I believe Jesus would say to Howard and to all of us. “I understand what happens when I’m missing from the core of a person’s life. I understand how you feel compelled to search elsewhere for significance, acceptance, self-worth and love. That search has taken you to some dangerous and destructive places. But.. Please, please understand, the only thing that can really satisfy the center of your soul is Me!” And that’s true for each one of us. Do you find yourself trying to measure your personal value by your boss, or parents or what your friends think of you? Are you keeping score of your worth by the number of promotions, the size of your checkbook, the baskets or goals you score or the number of sexual encounters? If you’re looking in those places you’re looking in the wrong places and your search will never end. Only Jesus can pull the plug on that cycle. When He becomes the most important person in your life then you know you are a somebody, somebody worth dying for.
And Jesus would use one more pair of words for Howard and all of us today.. He’d say, “I’ll help.” I’ll help you realize all you can be. I’ll help you find true significance in Me. But.. I can only help you if you let me.” The Bible uses the metaphor of adoption to express this help. Gal. 4: 4-5 - “But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, to buy freedom for us.. so that he could adopt us as his very own children.”(LB) This adoption imagery seems especially appropriate for Howard or anyone who’s searching for real belonging and affirmation.
On the internet and big city papers you can find heart-rending classifieds of desperate couples trying to contact unwed mothers to adopt their babies. Like this one: “Imagine a childless couple providing with overflowing love, a wonderland of friends and family. We’re a warmhearted, caring couple, ready to share our lives, our hearts, our home. Your baby will have a lifetime of security, stability and happiness, with a devoted mom and an adoring dad.” Think how vulnerable that couple was being by placing that ad to tell the world how they’re aching to pour out their love on a child. But think for a moment how vulnerable Jesus allows Himself to be? Basically, He says the same thing in the Bible. If Jesus were to place one of those adoption ads, it might read like this:
“I’ll take the person who feels inadequate and mediocre. I’ll take the notorious, the unworthy. I’ll take the misguided, the one who is steeped in immorality, the person who’s on a treadmill of trying to prove they’re somebody. And I’ll provide a depth of love that they can’t find in empty sexuality or materialism or worldly accolades. I’ll offer satisfaction that will endure. I’ll provide security that will continue into eternity. And I’ll give them brothers and sisters who will love them for who they are and help them be all they can be.” Instead of a phone number at the end there might be this verse from John 1:12- “..to all who believed him and received him, he gave the right to become children of God.” When you extract the verbs I’ve underlined, you’ve got a precise equation for what you need to do to be welcomed into God’s family.. Believe + Receive = Become.. That formula is a mind-boggling expression of the compassion and love that God is aching to pour out on each one of us - if we’ll let him. What kind of God is this, who prefers the human reclamation business to the human condemnation business? It’s the God of creation, the God of calvary.. And I think that makes this God Someone awful hard to resist.. Even for a “Shock-Jock.”
Prayer: “Father, first of all I want to pray for the salvation of Howard Stern. As I studied this man my heart went from sickened to deeply saddened. For I now see a man who is desperately searching for significance, a man who has put the applause of men over the acceptance of a Savior who wants so badly for Him to come home. How empty, how lonely, how lost.
And my heart goes out to those today in the sound of my voice who are also searching for what You have to offer. Who are placing their acceptance, their value in something or someone who was never designed to be able to give it to them. May they see You this day, O Lord. The real You.. The One who offers light, the One who offers love, who says to each one of us.. “Please know that you are Somebody... somebody I’d love to adopt into My family, somebody worth dying for.”
And may all of us understand that you are in the reclamation business, not the condemnation business and need us to share that message of love and hope while there is still time to do so.. Even as we do now. In the name of Jesus.. Amen.
