Who Do You Listen To? Series

I’m not going to read the poem this morning, but it starts out like this.

“It was - six men of Indostan - to learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind).”

As all 6 blind men touch the elephant, they sense the parts they touch are like a fan, a spear, a wall… etc.. For example, one of the lines says: “The Fourth reached out and felt about the knee. "'Tis clear enough the Elephant is very like a tree!" And the goes on and on like that.

And then, after all the blind men make their conclusions, the author says: “And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was PARTLY in the right… ALL were in the WRONG! So, oft in theologic wars (conflicts over the nature of God), (people) rail on in utter ignorance of what each other means, And (prattle on) about an Elephant (that) not one of them has seen!”

The moral of the poem: Everybody who tells you that they know what God is like is partly right… but they are COMPLETELY wrong because no one has seen God.

But there one serious flaw in this poem, and the flaw is this: yes all the blind men in the poem were wrong, and all of them came to wrong conclusions. But no matter what conclusions they may have come to… IT WAS STILL AN ELEPHANT! The fact that they were wrong in what they concluded, didn’t change the fact that it was still an elephant!

If they could just see the elephant then they would know what it was like. Just as, if you could SEE GOD then you’d know what HE is like! Well, Jesus said: ‘Whoever has SEEN me has SEEN the Father’” (John 14:9). And John 1:14 “(God) became flesh and dwelt amongst us.”

If you want to see what God is like… look at Jesus. Everything Jesus DID in the Gospels were the Works of God. Everything Jesus SAID were the Words of God. Every act of mercy, and kindness, and love that Jesus showed: that was God in the flesh showing us how much God cares for us. So, when you look to Jesus, and you listen to Jesus, you’ve seen and heard God.

All the other world religions will tell you what they think god is like, but in Jesus - God became flesh so we could actually see what God was like. And that’s the first truth Jesus revealed - He showed us what God was like.

Now, the 2nd truth was this: Jesus showed us what WE are like.

ILLUS: I saw a meme on the internet recently that said this: “Everyone makes mistakes in life, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay for them the rest of their life. Sometimes GOOD PEOPLE make bad choices. It DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE BAD, it means they are human.” (words capitalized by me to emphasize).

Now I understand what the meme was trying to say. But when I read that…and red flags went up all over the place because essentially it was saying – there are GOOD people, and there are BAD people. BAD people do BAD things because that’s what they’re good at… being bad. But GOOD people do GOOD things because that’s they’re good at…being GOOD. Now occasionally GOOD PEOPLE do BAD stuff, but that doesn’t mean they’re BAD people - it just means they made a mistake.