Life of Christ #10 – When Doctrine Gets in the Way of Knowing Christ

Well, now we have the parable, and I think we see an angry Lord, a disgusted Lord, something like that. Here’s what I see: a young man, about 29, taking a repaired table back to some old lady. As he comes back toward his carpenter shop, he passes through a large and busy marketplace, and there are two groups of kids. One group of kids sits over here on these steps, and another group sits over here on these steps, and these kids over here began to play a funeral dirge on their flutes. They holler to the other kids across the street, “Mourn for us! We’ll play the flute, you mourn. Beat your breast.”

Other kids: “No, I don’t do that.” “Well, you were talking about wanting to play something. Here’s something to play.” “Well, I don’t play that.” So, the little kids with the flute begin to play a merry wedding tune. “Well, dance, dance then. Dance to the wedding. You want to play? Here’s something fun to play. Dance to the wedding tune.”

“No, I don’t want to play that either. Don’t want to beat my chest and wail, and I don’t want to dance.” This young carpenter looks at that and says, “Yeah.” He hears a Pharisee walk past him right about that time, when the Pharisee says, “Have you been out to the desert? There’s a demon-possessed man out there. He fasts. He teaches the harshest of things I’ve ever heard in my life. That man is possessed of a demon.” The Lord said, “Yes, I wonder what you’ll say about a year from now, about me.” So today he remembers the two groups of children in the marketplace. Someone has supposed that children play games, and if you think that this is not true, I was in the jungles of Thailand with the Hmong, and I watched the children playing there in a refugee camp, and those kids had a disc. All of them had a disc and one stick. They had that little disc, and they’d chase that disc around with that stick. They played with that all day long. A child will find something to play with, and he doesn’t have to know that there are so many toys in the 20th century over here in America. He can play with almost anything.

It’s been assumed that children played two games. One was the wedding; one was the funeral. If you played funeral, you would…you’re imitating your parents, and if you were playing wedding, you’d go…and some of the kids didn’t want to play the one. And the Lord says, “That’s the Pharisees. Nothing that God can do will satisfy them. Nothing God can do will satisfy them.”

I want to talk for a few minutes. John came preaching an ascetic gospel. The Pharisees said, “He’s got a demon. He’s ascetic.” Jesus came, having a good time, drinking and eating, and they called him a drunkard and a friend of criminals and sinners. They said that he was a drunkard and a glutton, and there was nothing God could do that could please them. They would not respond to either one, and the question is, what on earth is going on with these men that they will not respond to the very God to whom they are totally devoted?

I’m going to get off of the indwelling Father, and I’m on meddle for a few minutes. In my judgment, what will prevent a devoutly religious person who has faith in the Hebrew God and obeys everything about that God is that he will no longer respond to that God because he’s locked into personal dogma. That when you denominate yourself, you thereby say, “I cannot have fellowship with anybody, not even God, if he does not conform to the dogma that I have set up.” I wish I could tell you I’ve never seen illustrations of that, but within the Christian faith, when we get structured in what we believe, I have seen brothers call other brothers demon-possessed because they did not believe in that particular doctrine.

The Methodists used to say that the Baptist idea of once saved, always saved had come right out of the pits of hell. The Baptists used to say the Methodists believed that you can fall from salvation, and that was born right in the pits of hell, and they could get pretty mean about it. You start confining Methodists to believing things right out of the pits of hell, and the Baptists right out of the pits of hell…one of them has got to be wrong, but they both are married to their doctrines – a vitalist doctrine that has grown greater than God himself.

I have to ask myself: Here are the Pharisees, here are the doctors of the law, here are the scribes, here are the Sadducees, and here are the priests. And there’s John the Baptist. What could he have said that would have made them happy, and say that man was of God? Now think about it. What could he have said to make them happy? There’s only one thing…those were arrogant, arrogant, pride-filled men…there was only one thing a prophet could say, especially a prophet that mean. The only thing he could have said that would have made them happy…

Let’s say today a big delegation goes out—the authoritarian, authoritative delegation that’s going to decide what John is. They’ve come out from Jerusalem, and John is preaching to these people, and he’s saying, “You soldiers are robbing people, and you’re forcing old women to carry your luggage for you. You tax collectors are getting more Roman money from the people—the Roman money from the people—than Rome ever wanted, and you’re putting it in your sacks, and you’re getting fat from the money of the poor. And those of you who are committing adultery and stealing and lying and cheating, the wrath of God is going to fall on you.”

If he had turned and said, “If you want to know how to live and what God expects of you, be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees are there, and they’ve opened their doors, and you ought to go join them.” “That’s right, that man’s of God; that man’s of God,” because he would have agreed with their dogma. You can become so straitjacketed in what you believe that if God doesn’t believe it, and if one sent from God does not approve it, you will miss your reward, and that is not only true of the religious Pharisee; that is true of the Christian. That is rampantly true all over the earth, because it’s not just salvation; it’s so much of the blessings of God that our sectarian nature prevents us from hearing the riches of other brothers and sisters, because their dogma is different from our own. If you have a very aggressive religious movement or Christian movement in our day, and it’s taking people from you and your group, woe be those people when your wrath turns on them.

I want to ask you a question; I want this recorded now and forever. Do people in cults have rights? Do people who belong to cults have rights? Sure. More or less rights than you have? A few less, don’t they? They need to stay in their place, right? That’s right. Well, dear brothers, that’s not true in this country. In this country, occultists are supposed to have the same rights as everybody else, but they don’t get them because of community pressure.

Do a Hare Krishna, a Maharishi Ji, or a Jehovah’s Witness have the rights that you have? Those people are all going to go to hell…but you’ve got no right to persecute them. That’s between them and God, and it’s not your place to make their lives miserable. “But they’re winning converts, and they’re taking people from salvation.” That’s not any of your business either. It’s really not. “You mean you’re going to let all those cults grow and send all those people to hell?” If I have to choose between that and persecuting those people, I think I’ll just let them succeed. “But can’t you warn against them?” Yeah, but I think I’ll probably knife my spirit to death while I’m doing it. And I’m going to hurt a lot of Christians and make them very, very prejudiced while I warn them against some group.