A World Full of
Options
This
world is filled with options, isn’t it?
We live in a country that provides us with so many different choices
that we are used to picking and choosing whatever we want. And those things that we don’t want we can either
throw away or leave on the shelf or just ignore. When you go to a restaurant you have an
entire menu of choices - and if there is something on your plate that you don’t
like, you can leave it there. When you grab
the newspaper or look online you can pick and choose what you want to read and
what you don’t - and if there is an article that isn’t as interesting as you
thought it would be, you simply stop reading and move on to the next one. When you walk into a store you have thousands
of different pieces of clothing from which you can pick and choose. And if you pick something, bring it home, and
find out that you don’t really like it, you can take it back and choose
something else. We have been blessed
with so many options in this world that we have little tolerance for what we
don’t like. We aren’t going to put up
with it; we aren’t going to deal with it.
We are going to fill our plate only with those things that appeal to us
and nothing more.
Jesus Was
Treated Like an Option
Jesus
appealed to the people in his home town at first. The local kid made famous had come back! The one everyone was talking about had come
home! “I went to school with him!” “I grew up down the street with him!” “I’ve known him for 20 years!” And so the townspeople wanted this young man
they had known before he became famous to be their guest speaker one Saturday
morning in the Synagogue. And so Jesus
took the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he read a very specific passage from the
61st chapter, and he began to tell them that he was the Messiah whom
this Old Testament prophecy predicted.
Many of them were impressed, “This carpenter’s son turned out
alright! He can really turn a phrase and
hold an audience’s attention for someone who grew up around here!” But their positive first impression soon
turned sour.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote
this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we
have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no
prophet is accepted in his hometown. I
assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky
was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout
the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath
in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time
of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the
Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue
were furious when they heard this. They
got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on
which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and
went on his way.
The people
liked Jesus explaining Old Testament prophecy.
But they didn’t like the law.
They didn’t appreciate Jesus insinuating that they were sinners and that
the Gentiles were just as important as God’s own Israelite nation. And they were not going to put up with
something they did not want to hear - especially from this self-proclaimed
prophet who dared to lecture the people whom he grew up with! And so they physically grabbed Jesus and threw
him out of the city. And then they pulled
Jesus to the edge of a cliff to get rid of him once and for all, only to have
Jesus walk right through their hands and go on his way.
The
people in Jesus’ hometown picked and chose what they wanted to hear and what
they didn’t. They were OK with Jesus
teaching them about the words of Isaiah, but they weren’t happy when the topic
switched to their unbelief. They were OK
with Jesus’ words of wisdom, but not with his words of conviction. They were OK when Jesus was talking about
himself, but not when he started talking about them. When Jesus started speaking about things that
were contrary to what they thought and what they wanted to hear, they weren’t
going to listen anymore. And no one was
going to make them. They treated God’s
Word like it was just another option: We’ll pick this but not that. We want to hear that but not this. And we have every right to do so.
That
same attitude is still around today, isn’t it?
People pick this out of God’s Word but ignore that. And other people pick that out of God’s Word
but refuse to believe this. As if the
Bible were a buffet: a spread of food from which people can pick and choose
whatever suits their fancy. A little of
this and a little of that. If it looks
good I’ll try it; if it tastes good I’ll keep it; if my stomach agrees with it
then I might come back for me. But there
are things I don’t like; there are items I don’t even want to try; and there
are things that I will throw away if it upsets my stomach.
But
let’s not just blame this attitude on nameless and faceless people “out
there.” Let’s take a close look at our
own attitudes when it comes to God’s Word - because we do the same thing! I do the same thing anyway. I’m OK when the Bible talks about what Jesus
did on this earth for me, but I’m not too thrilled about reading how I am
supposed to act like as a Christian. I
don’t mind reading about the gospel, but I don’t really like reading about the
law describing my sinfulness. I don’t
have a problem listening to the songs of praise in the book of Psalms for
example, but I don’t usually feel like listening to those books that point out
my faults and failures. And at those
times when I read something in the Bible or I hear something in the Bible that
I know I should be doing but I don’t really want to do it, sometimes I just
don’t think about it. Because if I don’t
think about it then I won’t feel guilty!
And if I don’t feel guilty then I can go about my life how I want to
instead of listening to what the Bible says!
I might not be physically dragging Christ to the edge of a cliff in
order to throw him off, but I am certainly picking and choosing what I want to
listen to and what I don’t.
What are
those topics that you pick and choose?
And what are those verses of the Bible that you leave there on the
buffet table because you don’t even want to touch them? Usually those things that we leave are those
words that confront us with the reality of our sins. Because no one likes be told that they are
wrong, do they? No one likes to admit
that they are at fault and are responsible for their actions. No one likes to hear: “You are not right in
what you are doing. You are not
justified in your actions. You are being
selfish and conceited. You are being
stubborn and unloving. You are acting
like an unbeliever, not like one of God’s children. You can try to convince yourself otherwise,
but you are not as good as you pretend to be.”
Do you
like hearing that? Do you enjoy reading
those words of the Bible that prick your conscience and make your stomach churn
with guilt because of what you do and who you are? I know I don’t. And I also know that I ignore those words
sometimes and pass over those words sometimes and purposely forget to put them
into practice sometimes. It’s a wonder
why the Lord doesn’t start to ignore me, why he doesn’t pass over me and
purposely forget me. I think I would if
I were him. Because why should the Lord
bother with us if we don’t want to bother with his Word? Why should the Lord choose to stand by our
side when we pick and choose only what we want to hear and only when we want to
hear it?
Jesus Picked
& Chose Us
Jesus
chose to go into Nazareth that day and preach to the people of his hometown even
though he knew they wouldn’t like what he had to say. Why did he do that? Why did Jesus choose to spend time preaching
the Word to people who weren’t going to want to listen anyway? After they tried to kill him, after they
attempted to throw him off a cliff, Jesus continued to go from town to town
preaching and healing and leading the people.
And sometimes people believed. But
a lot of times people did not. In fact,
he spent quite a bit of energy answering questions and telling parables to the
chief priests and the teachers of the law who would end up plotting his death. Why did Jesus do that? Why did Jesus choose to put all of that
effort into explaining the Word of God to those who would ignore it? Of course, Jesus chose to spend a lot of time
with Judas too - the man who would betray him.
Jesus chose to expend some effort explaining to the Jewish leaders who
he was while they were putting him on trial.
Jesus even chose to be patient with Pontius Pilate, revealing to the
Roman governor what the “truth” really was and what Jesus had come to do. Jesus spent a lot of time on these people who
refused to hear his words and who ended up going in the opposite
direction. And so why would Jesus do
that? Why did Jesus choose to spend his
time (and we might even say “waste his time”) on people like that? Because he loved them. He loved them even if they didn’t love him
back. And he wanted them to be brought
to faith in their Savior through the powerful Word of God that he
preached. He loved them. And he was not going to let them go without a
fight.
And so
he fought. And he battled. He preached and he taught and he healed. And he got caught. And he was tortured. And he died.
But he won. Jesus won the war. And he won it for those who didn’t want to
listen and for those who refused to hear and for those who had rejected his
Word. And although most of them never
did believe in him as their Savior, he chose to go through all of that for them
anyway because he loved them. He wasn’t
forced to do it. He wasn’t required to
do it. He chose to.
And
here’s the amazing thing about God’s love: out of all the people of this world,
out of all of the human beings of this earth, out of all the people he could
have picked, your Lord has picked and has chosen us. Why?
Because he loves us. And why does
he love us? I don’t know! Why should he love people like us? But he does.
Because he has chosen us. And how
do we know that he has chosen us? The
Bible says that we know we have been chosen because we believe in Jesus as our
Savior. Which means he has worked faith
in our hearts through his powerful Word of God and he wants us to end up in
heaven with him forever.
Even
though there are times when we ignore his Word and refuse his Word and pick and
choose from his Word, he continues to pick and choose us. No matter what you have done in the past he
picks and he chooses you. Even if you
act like those people from Nazareth sometimes, he will not give up on you. Even if you refuse to apply God’s Word to
your life at times, he will not turn his back on you. Even if you completely ignore his
instructions for a while, he will not walk away. Because he has picked you. He has chosen you. He has died for you. He has risen for you. He has forgiven you. And he has given you this forgiveness through
the marks of the Church: the gospel in Word and sacrament. What a gracious God we have! What an amazing Lord that he would pick and
choose people like us! We truly are
blessed. And under the Lord’s love, we
always will be.
Amen.
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the
Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.” Ps. 33:12
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