Matthew 11:16-19
“To what should I compare this generation? It’s like children sitting in the marketplaces who call out to other children:
We played the flute for you,
but you didn’t dance;
we sang a lament,
but you didn’t mourn!
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
The majority of the time Jesus spent on earth doing his earthly ministry was done in Capernaum. Most of his miraculous works and wonders happened there. And yet that city was not known for its repentance and conversion to the Messiah.
Whenever Jesus says, “this generation”, it's not because they are wise or obedient. Some people just refuse to be satisfied even when they see astonishing evidence of divinity, and Jesus describes such contrary people as children who refuse to play with each other. Jesus is arranging a wedding feast but the people want a funeral service. Yet either way this generation isn't satisfied. John the Baptist is too forbidding for their tastes and Jesus is just too happy and full of life. John lived like a religious fanatic and Jesus showed a blatant disrespect for the scribes, Pharisees, lawyers.
So, let's be honest, what's really going on here is the religious community and social authorities want things they way they want them. They've got their bureaucratic religious systems and established political powers, and John and Jesus both operated outside that swamp. They went about their ways without concern for the "public good" as these "public servants" had regulated and presided over.
The root of the problem for most of the average men on the street who reject Jesus is their awareness that taking John and/or Jesus seriously requires that they change their lives. John demands that we repent, Jesus turns all our comfortable assumptions about our eternal lives on their heads. So much of what they both teach is good and wonderful and terribly frightening at the same time. They want us to come out from under the yoke of the law and yet obey it at the same time. Jesus wants us to stop making excuses and stop being angry toward one another stop being poor in spirit. And John wants us to reject our lives and live solely for the kingdom of God.
But what did both Jesus and John really teach?
“Wisdom is justified by her children”
They both taught that we're called to be true worshippers, the fruit of the Spirit of God, functioning in prayer and the ministry of The Word of God.
“By their fruits you will know them”
And therefore, our teachers and preachers have an extremely heavy burden and responsibility to make disciples and be discipled. And our religious leaders and social authorities must take their roles very seriously for they carry a great responsibility and importance governing the people. And not everyone is equipped for that role and the power they will have.
James 3:1-2
"Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check."
But where is that perfect believer?
Have you ever met him or her?
Discipling begins with positive and negative instructions. Jesus and John. Barriers and challenges with love and mercy. Not perfection really, but heading in that right direction, because there's a lot of things that are going to happen along the way that will cause people to stumble and there will come a need for admonishing. Both the disciple and the teacher will stumble. Jesus said when a man is fully discipled, he'll be like his teacher.
But what's the goal?
What's the ultimate goal?
When you've reached the point in your discipline, as a disciple and in your teaching as a minister, to where your involuntary responses are godly and virtuous then you know The Spirit of God is in control of that ministry. When you don't have to think about what is right but the fruit of your spiritual maturity just happens in a godly response to whatever you face, then you are in Christ's Spirit. And that will be evident enough. But it will be even more rejected by those who hate that Spirit light. They love their darkness and aren't going to love you.
So, what's a body to do?
Obey your leaders but choose them wisely. Look at their fruit. Our teachers live in the same world we all live, and they fall in the same way we fall. Bad things happen, not always because we're godless, sometimes it's because we're godly, think about Job. God will fix things when the disciple or the minister is gone astray if they are true worshippers. You'll especially know them by that fruit. Hope grows in adversity, and endurance grows as well. Sometimes things have to die for resurrection and restoration to happen, think Lazarus.
Hebrews 13:17
"Obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you."
Find the ministry that serves in the Holy Spirit, a praying ministry that is always searching and teaching the scriptures. And be found doing the fruitful things of ministry such as feeding those who are hungry, both hungry for bodily food and spiritual food. And clothe the naked, both those who have not and those who need to be clothed in righteousness. And visit with the sick and the prisoners, share your time and your thoughts about God's kingdom with them. Spend time together in both joy and in the Word of God. Be perfect worshippers who are both discipled and discipling in The Spirit.
God bless you and keep you now and every day.
Amen.
#Discipleship