Life of Christ #7 -Why Jesus Felt at Home With Sinners and Outcasts

Now He’s in a body, and He can talk, confront these people, and get a few things off His chest. He’s been wanting to say something, maybe for a thousand years. I don’t know how far back Jewish sanctimonious religiousness goes, but even before the Jewish people, before there was an Abraham, there must have been a Cain. There must have been a lot of people like this. He’s going to get to express Himself.

I see Him remembering Old Testament preachers, priests, their religious ways, their cruelty, total cruelty to God’s people, those who have for hundreds of years now dotted every I crossed every T. Why? Please, Him who is standing in the middle of that banquet at that moment. Now they’re face-to-face with Him, and He has something to tell them.

He has seen them live these lives of complete obedience. He’s watched these people for several hundred years trek to Jerusalem; hold their feet a certain way, their mouth a certain way, say certain prayers, and offer up their sacrifices. He remembers what they did in the wilderness, what they did when they came into Canaan, and what they did to one another. How they even stoned people who did not follow certain prescribed religious ways in order to please…Him. Now “Him” is present, and “Him” has a word for all of these people.

Go. Go. And learn what it means. I want mercy, not sacrifices. Away with your bullocks, your sacrifices, and your offerings. They are an abomination to me, but let justice roll down like waters. Away with your sacrifices, away with your rituals, away with your dots and your T’s. Who is our God most comfortable with? Those who are trying to please Him? Or those who are supposedly displeasing Him? Those who are trying to please Him are failing, and those who never thought about trying to please Him are pleasing Him. He’s having a perfectly wonderful time with those who received Him without complexity. He has a difficult time even standing in the same room with those who would please Him through prescribed measures and formulas. It’s an incredible story.

Now, the next time some young brother in a church really pulls a big one, and it’s the umpteenth time he’s really pulled a big one; go…and remember what it means: I would have mercy and not sacrifice. I have said these very words to myself in the presence of a problem when I was about half ready to choke someone. Gene, go and don’t come back until you have learned what it means. I desire mercy…even more than I desire scriptural obedience to the dot and letter of the New Testament. I have come to call for repentance, but only to sinners.

Brothers and sisters, the church of Jesus Christ ought to be known for her mercy, and I would say she also needs to be known for her organic relationship to Jesus Christ on a very natural level. If she could get past those two things, she could get back to being a revolution again.

Well, at some point, this banquet is over, and that’s the end of that. The banquet is over, and now we know they are at a seashore, by the sea. What is happening at this particular moment? I don’t know, but the scene is by the sea. Obviously, it is daytime, and a very low member of society has just thrown a banquet of dubious order and righteousness for a prophet who doesn’t seem to have many religious scruples or moral convictions about who He runs around with. And it turns out some of the people in the town follow John.

Now, John’s a good man, but he wears camel’s hair, and his people fast. They’re really serious. They want God to come and deliver Israel. They want Israel to repent of its sins, and this is a pretty heavy bunch of people. They’re facing some pretty heavy situations in Israel with being under foreign occupation, and these are dark hours as far as they’re concerned, and they are fasting. It’s heavy. It’s heavy time.

Now then, the Pharisees are keeping a fast, which means it turned up on their calendar. They have found the calendar fast. There’s a certain day they fast, and they fast, and so do their disciples. Oh boy, even…here I go again. Even the Pharisees are more scriptural in the way they raise up new Pharisees than we are when we raise up new workers. Even they didn’t have classrooms sitting up on a campus somewhere, clustered for four years.

Now, I don’t know how to handle this next sentence. It is so pregnant. The Pharisees are giving themselves to fasting and petition. I’m going to ask you one more time: Has the Lord ever met these Pharisees before? Okay, this time I would ask you where He has met them. He has been listening to them pray for 300-400 years. I am so impressed. I am so certain that those Pharisees pray the way Christians pray today. You come to a conference; we’re going to learn to pray. Have a conference on prayer. What do we start doing? We start telling God what we want. Pray…I’ll pray…I don’t want to pray…I’m tired of praying. You folks out there, I’d give this up for Lent if I were you. You can do it on good scriptural grounds; I’m about to give them to you.

The Pharisees are full of petitions. I can almost see them right now. Praying for our boys who have gone to war. Lord, take care of the zealots who are standing against these unrighteous, ungodly heathens who have occupied our land. Be with Josias as he goes to cut three throats today because this Roman has despoiled our land. Maybe it’s not quite that bad. Lord, come and pour down wrath upon these Greeks. Purge our land from all this wickedness. Lord, help Mary and Joe and Steve and Bill; they don’t have enough money. Pete and George and Jane are sick.

And here’s God all day long. He’s listening…and He’s listening…and He listens some more. All day long, that’s all God gets. Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me. God, do this; God, do that; God, do this; God, do that. That’s all He hears. All day long. Petitions, petitions, petitions, petitions. This morning, the same God got up, sat down on His throne, and began to tune in on earth, and 150,000 Christians are praying for the missionaries. Gene, we are supposed to pray for the missionaries. Don’t be so sure.