Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric October 15, 2021
Seeing the World as We Are
Matthew 11:16-19, The Voice - What is this
generation like? You are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling
out, “When we played the flute, you did not dance; and when we sang a dirge,
you did not mourn.” What I mean is this:
When John came, he dressed in the clothes of a prophet, and he did not eat and
drink like others but lived on honey and wild locusts. And people wondered if
he was crazy, if he had been possessed by a demon. Then the Son of Man appeared—He didn’t fast,
as John had, but ate with sinners and drank wine. And the people said, “This
man is a glutton! He’s a drunk! And He hangs around with tax collectors and
sinners, to boot.” Well, Wisdom will be vindicated by her actions—not by your
opinions.
In the passage for today, Jesus is
lamenting the resistance to God’s kingdom that he mentioned in his defense of
John that we read yesterday. John was
labeled demon-possessed because he didn’t do what the people expected. Jesus Himself was labeled a glutton and a
drunk for eating and drinking with the wrong sorts of people. This may sound like nothing more than Jesus
venting about the hard time he and John have had as they have pursued their
mission, but I invite us to see the deeper principle that he is describing
because it is still being played out two thousand years later as God’s kingdom
continues to unfold.
People
naturally struggle with being called to a new way of living. John called people to repent because the
Kingdom of God was coming. Some people
did, but most continued as if nothing had happened. Jesus announces that the Kingdom has arrived
and the people repeatedly ran Him out of town.
As we’ll see in tomorrow’s passage, he performed miraculous works in
multiple towns with barely any response.
Ultimately, we know that Jesus and His Kingdom were rejected forcefully
when He was nailed to a cross. When you
call people to change the way they are living, even when embracing that change
can help them, they often respond drastically to keep doing what they have been
doing.
I point
this out as if it is only others that act this way; it is not. I act this way too. I often react badly when others, however
lovingly, tried to point out an error in my thinking and/or doing. When God first called me to be a pastor, I
pursued at least three other vocations before I became open to what God was
offering. Almost always, when I am
confronted with a truth that requires me to change my thinking or behavior, my
first instinct is to fight it or go in the other direction. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at recognizing
when this instinctive reaction has been triggered and I sometimes am able to
override it with some clear thinking and engaged faith. But that first instinct to resist has never
gone away in me. And in my decades of
observation of others, I know I’m not the only one with this issue.
The
Kingdom of God is still unfolding; the revolution that John announced and Jesus
catalyzed is still calling us to live differently than we are now. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow, but for
today consider this question.
Question: What is
something you know God wants you to do differently but, as of this moment, the
resistance instinct in you has won out?
Prayer: Have mercy on
us, Savior. Help us confront the
resistance to Your kingdom that persists in our spirit so that we may embrace
the life that truly is life. Amen
Prayer Focus: Spend
some time confessing your own personal struggles with doing what you know is
right to God today.
Song: Man in the
Mirror – Michael Jackson
