“Marching to the Beat of Jesus’ Drum”

I need to start our time together with a confession of sorts.

Y’all know that I have a self-awareness that I am capable of carrying a tune, although I’m unable to unload it. At my best, I’m what you’d call a prison singer…behind a few bars and unable to find the right key. But that doesn’t make me disinterested in music! I love it!

For example, I am fascinated by our choir. They are wonderful, aren’t they? When they help lead us in worship and all of those personalities and all of those voices come together, I don’t know about you, but it’s a taste of heaven for me. And organizing and conducting all of this is our own, Pastor Eli who is doing a marvelous job.

I understand the importance of strong musical leadership to pull a group together because, here’s another confession for you, I once was in a rock band. For those who are keeping count, with that confession I may have just struck out with some people. Born in New York, raised in Natalia, and once a member of a rock band. Boy, am I grateful that social media didn’t come on the scene until after my days as a rocker…

Any way, I understand the need for leadership in a musical group, but I don’t have any idea what Pastor Eli is doing when he’s conducting the choir. I must be in a confessional mood today. I don’t know what lifting your arms up means versus letting them down. I don’t know why the movements are sometimes elegant or why they’re sometimes dramatic. I’m ignorant to this stuff. I know it means something but in my ignorance, it appears to be similar to an aircraft marshaller who helps park planes at the airport by using those neon lights.

I know Pastor Eli and the choir are gonna educate me after this.

But let me say this… While I lack any understanding of what is specifically going on during those movements of direction doesn’t negate my awareness that such leadership and direction is needed. More than that, I know that in any setting where people are to be led, clear direction and leadership structure is required. I couldn’t imagine our choir offering such wonderful tastes of heaven if we lacked Pastor Eli’s direction and they were just thirty or so voices doing each what they think is best. Nor could I imagine any better faring if I stood next to Pastor Eli during choir pieces and flailed my arms about while he was conducting things. Half the choir might look to him and the other half to me and it would be disastrous.

Wouldn’t a lack of leadership in any of our lives have the same disastrous result? Wouldn’t an overwhelming flood of noise from multiple voices pulling you in different directions have the same disastrous result? It begs the question,

Who is conducting your life?

And also, why does your answer to that question matter to the life of this church as we seek to march onward, together?

Well, on the subject of conducting our lives, we are talking about who is giving direction to us, or if you prefer, who is speaking into our lives. What we need to see first from our text is that you and I are inclined to welcome praise from earthly sources, or as I have now overhead, simply

Praise Misplaced: Earthly Acclaim

As I begin to address this heading, let me remind us that in the last two weeks, we have seen Jesus cast a demon out of a man who was unable to speak because of that demon. There was some sort of crowd around Jesus and the man when this happened and we know a few things from that miraculous work of Jesus:

The man who was once unable to speak, now can.

There were some people who were neutral about Jesus, simply marveling in something spiritual happening before their very eyes.

There were some other people who said that Jesus did his work by the hand of Satan.

There were a few other people who weren’t completely convinced about the source of Jesus’ power so they needed him to kick it up a notch for them to believe that he was operating with the power of God.

We took away then that as a church family, we each and we all must be mindful that when God moves among us, we each are called to respond to what God has chosen to do as we seek to be an authentic and genuine Christian community.

Then we saw Jesus continue to speak about the necessity for each of us to be genuinely works in progress as the Holy Spirit is is molding and shaping us to be more like Jesus every day while also warning that the threat to our church family’s ability to move forward together comes from any part of us that are only playing Christian by just managing their outward appearances rather than actually being Christian where the Spirit of Jesus is at work from the inside-out.

So, no one in audience to what Jesus has said to us thus far should have the impression that there is any way that you can be middle of the road about him. You can’t be “on the fence” about Jesus and be with Jesus. There’s no middle ground on matters of God’s kingdom and the gospel.

And Jesus has voiced all of this to that crowd of mixed reaction and what we have in Luke 11:27 is the most significant pro-Jesus response we’ve had so far. This woman isn’t in a place of opposition to Jesus nor is she neutral about what he’s done or said. She offers the following response:

Luke 11:27 (ESV)

… “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!”

Now, as we have been following along with Luke’s record, I don’t know about you, but I find this is a bit of an odd thing for anyone to say. Jesus has cast out a demon and the crowd’s response isn’t necessarily overwhelmingly positive. Borrowing some language that we may be exhausted from hearing right now, but perhaps among this crowd, Jesus isn’t necessarily polling well among this demographic. He wouldn’t be because Jesus has just voiced some very challenging facts about the kingdom of God and the fallenness of creation. I mean, while Jesus was explaining about the danger of just keeping appearances outwardly but still being spiritually empty in the paragraph that comes before this morning’s text, Jesus would talk about this same concern where he’d warn a bunch of religious people that they were like Matthew 23:27–28 “…like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Can I say to you that Jesus isn’t concerned with winning the popular vote by kissing babies and shaking hands?

This brings to mind one aspect of flaw that we each are prone to that threatens our ability as a congregation to march onward, together, and that is our ability to humbly come before the Lord and fully submit to his word. Did you know the Bible serves as a mirror and reveals to us where we come up short in comparison to Jesus? Of course, we have to be open to such things.

I mean, I have imagined myself in among that crowd, witness to all of this we’ve studied in the last few weeks, I’ve wondered if the feeling among the crowd is something like that tension we all know the feeling of in a room when there’s two sides who aren’t necessarily going at it, but they’ve made it clear that the two sides are not going to line up. These people who have been challenging Jesus didn’t ask for Jesus to speak into their lives. They didn’t come up to Jesus and say, “Hey, you look like an expert on God. We think we may be whitewashed tombs that look good on the outside but are filled with death on the inside. Do you think that’s true? And if so, could you give us a few pointers?” No, from a place of love, Jesus spoke truth. Just truth in love for these people and their eternal state. See, often we’re not looking for that sort of stuff, we’re looking for more of what this woman is offering in Luke 11:27. We want praise.

Now, we aren’t told what her motivation specifically is, but I think that the woman mentioned announces what she does to break some tension. I contend there was tension among the crowd that heard Jesus speak in response to the marvelers, the doubters, and the skeptics. And it may not be the case for all of us, but when we sense that tension, there’s often a desire to cut it with a joke or a distraction, isn’t there? Well-placed dad jokes accomplish that, don’t they? Like, did you hear about the person who won the department award for most secretive person in the workplace? In his acceptance speech, he was quoted as saying, “I can’t tell you how this makes me feel.” Remember that one the next time you’re in a tense situation and assuredly, there’ll be some who chuckle and with such a break, most in the situation would be put at some ease.

The woman interjects by offering a word of blessing just so Jesus would know some people there were actually receptive to his work and teaching. This woman wants to attribute praise to specifically Jesus’ mother for her contribution to the welfare and upbringing of this truth-speaking, kingdom revealing prophet. And notice, Jesus redirects both she and the crowd away from the praise of man to obedience to the Word. Now, I’ll deal with our call to obedience shortly, but let me just speak to the idea of misplacing praise for a moment.

I need to speak first to the specific example of the praise that follows proclaiming the word of God like we see in the exchange between this woman and the Lord Jesus. My friends who are preachers of the word and my friends who are teachers of the word, be wary of what you do with the praises of your audience. Why beware them? As one who has received countless praises…like, “Great message, pastor.” And so on… I believe that those praises are not offered with any intention to do harm. They’re genuinely offered as encouragements. But I say beware them because if you do not dismiss them from your mind as quickly as they came, they can make your head swell so much that you may not be to walk through any doors. Don’t accumulate them like a trophy case of personal accomplishments of your greatness, redirect them as examples of God’s greatness to use a weak and broken vessel such as yourself for his glory.

Here’s another example of empty praise I need to speak to… This woman praised Jesus’ mother and it would’ve been culturally acceptable to do so because mothers in the first century were expected to teach their children sound morals. So this woman is praising Jesus’ mother for his obvious ability to distinguish right from wrong. It would have been an incredible honor upon the household of Jesus. But can I tell you that our personal pursuit of praise for our family and from our family can become enslaving? You need to know that I was not saved by Jesus until I was eighteen. And before that, I was like any other teenager. Vulnerable. Looking for my place in society. In search of a sense of worth. And I walked down the road of searching out worth that would have come if I had just received my father’s praise. There’s something about daddy’s and sons that I would guess isn’t too far different from mama’s and their girls. This son coveted his daddy’s praise. I wanted my dad to validate me. My dad worked two jobs and on the weekend he worked around the house. I wasn’t like him in terms of being really handy with my hands, but I wanted him to see that I worked hard, too. And that I was working hard to bring honor to our family name. And it didn’t matter, nothing about me was ever praiseworthy from my dad.

See, we are so prone to want to be validated by others. If I can be vulnerable before you, I’m not exactly free from what I just shared. But in calling me into salvation, Jesus has begun the work of renewing my mind. In other words, he’s rewiring the way I think about things. The world wants any one of us to ride the wave of earthly praises, and the Holy Spirit would see the deep parts of us excavated and that we would learn to see what life as a citizen of God’s kingdom ought to be like. Where on this subject of earthly acclaim and misplacing praise, you and I can chew on a verse like

Galatians 1:10 ESV

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

See, the praises of others…whether it’s offered without solicitation or they’re something you pursue…they’re a voice that our heart so desperately wants to cling to and ride, but would find us seeking the approval from sources who are less than God. And notice how all this renders us individually concerning our effectiveness as Christians. If we are succumbing to the voice of empty praises, we are not serving Christ. And if any of us here are not serving Christ, then it follows that our unity and our ability to march onward is threatened. It takes courage to serve Christ in an age where everyone follows their hearts and the praises of men. And if we lack that courage, we’d be marching to the beat of countless drummers who are not in sync, seeing us each go our own way.

What hope is there for us to hear clearly among all the possible voices of distraction? Well, simply that we must…

Prioritize Listening: Hope is Revealed in the Word

I confess that I thought of originally calling this heading, “The Voice of God” but I concluded that sounded too charismatic and left way too much open to interpretation. But in the theme of voices that are speaking in to our lives, can I call to our attention that God has spoken to us in his word? Jesus hears the woman’s praise of his mother and assumption of where blessing is found and redirects everyone there to discover where true blessing is found:

Luke 11:28 (ESV)

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

I want to speak to an obstacle to this and then offer two encouragements from this verse. In speaking to the obstacle, let me start by asking you, where is the word of God in your life? Maybe someone says, “Pastor I try to listen to it from my Bible app when I can.” Or another person says, “Well, I have every intention of getting to that, but the phone rang or the kids needed something or…” and the list goes on. Whether you’re physically reading it or audibly hearing it some other way, can you guess what the greatest threat to your hearing the word of God is? It’s not your busyness. It’s your self-confidence. There are not many of us who skip meals for days. Why’s that? Because there are physical responses in the design of our bodies that alert us and remind us to the fact that we need food. And God has given his word, the Bible, to you and to me to provide for us spiritual nourishment that our hearts require. What does it say if we can go days or weeks, starving our hearts of exactly what they need? Please hear me… Jesus connects blessedness with first hearing the word. If that’s been a challenging thing for you to regularly do, it’s not about “making the time” to do it. The obstacle is your prideful self-confidence that consciously or not, is leading you down a path of independence from the Lord and the family of faith he’s placed you in. That self-confidence is something that you need to put to death. The Bible speaks of itself as a seed and let me tell you, and seeds are designed by God to grow. And the word of God is a seed that is designed to grow in the rich soil of humility.

In humility, we can go to the Bible, and grow in greater intimacy with the God of the word. As we saturate our lives in the word, we know Jesus more fully, who is the Word made flesh. Let me speak to

Hearing the Word of God

Many times Jesus instructed those he taught saying, “he who has ear to hear, let him hear.” It is important to hear the words of the Lord. Today that can include studying the word as well as listening to the word preached. You can easily access messages from faithful ministers of the word through so many different avenues. Even the messages preached from this pulpit can be replayed on social media and every place you can find podcasts.

Jesus gave us the word, which has been kept for all time in the Bible. The challenge for each of us is to study the word and seek the truth of what is written. And while I mentioned that there are faithful ministers of God’s word earlier, I will also caution you that there are many teachings taught in the name of Christ that are not part of the New Covenant, so it is important we learn the truth for ourselves and listen to it. Now, about

Keeping the Word of God

Jesus also taught that to hear the word only is not enough. He said, Matthew 7:26–27 “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

It is more important to both hear and do the word of God. That is why when Jesus replied to the woman in the crowd he said, Luke 11:28 “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

The key to receiving the blessings of the Lord are to firstly hear the word of the Lord and then to keep that word. It is in the application of the word of the Lord to your life that you are blessed. It is when you apply Jesus’ words in your life that the work of transformation takes place and we walk with Jesus.

We asked earlier a question. It was, “Who is conducting your life?”

If we’re marching to the beat of what we each think is best or if we’re following our sinful, prideful hearts or if we’re following the pursuit of empty praise, then brothers and sisters, we have no hope of us…all of us…being effective and making an impact for the kingdom. But, if we humbly submit ourselves to Christ, then we’ll find that

Following the Word is our hope of marching onward, together

We will know blessedness no matter our circumstance if we hear and do the word of God. We’ll know it because we’ll be marching to the beat of Jesus’ drum.

That’s good news, to me. That if we tune ourselves to Jesus, we can accomplish more than we can ever imagine, together. But do you want to know what’s even better news? For as much as we want to march along with Jesus, we already know that each one of us will be prone to misstep. There’ll be times when we need to go left and our inclination will be to go right. The greatest news is that in our call to hear and do the word, when we fail to be perfectly obedient somewhere along the way, we’re reminded that Jesus was perfectly obedient. The Bible says that Jesus was obedient to the Father. And that Jesus was so obedient that he was led to death on a cross. And on that cross where Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied so that whomsoever would trust in Jesus for salvation can be saved from their sin. The sin in their past. The sin in their present. And the sin of their future. So that whomsoever would set course to follow the Word wouldn’t have to bear the pressure of perfection. That’s part of the function of the grace of God. Where we lack and where we falter, when you and I are in Christ, with each misstep, Jesus announces, “That misstep is covered. That one is too. And that one too. Yup, even that one, too.”

We’re charged to hear the word and to do the word, but don’t leave here with a burden you and I were never meant to carry. Neither should you leave here hearing only what I’ve said in the last minute or two as your permission to not trust and obey Jesus.

Let me leave you with some practical ways for the Christian to hear the word and do the word as we each seek to march to the beat of Jesus’ drum.

1. Daily read and mediate upon Scripture

2. Make your life within the church a big deal

3. Properly order your life by giving the Lord your best, not your left overs

4. Seek to serve and invest in others, within the church and throughout the community

5. Openly live out and share the Gospel

Following the Word is our hope of marching onward, together.