Quote from Forum Archives on March 8, 2010, 2:16 pm

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

 

SERIES: THE PERSON OF CHRIST #3/7

 

COME IN! I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU!

March 7, 2010

 

 

Text: Matthew 9:9-13

    

 

Christian author and speaker Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo tells of an unusual situation he once found himself in.  He had just flown to Hawaii for a speaking engagement and was trying to get some sleep that first night.  One problem - jet lag.  So there he was wide awake in the wee hours of the morning.  Instead of staying in his Honolulu hotel room, he decided to wander around a bit.  Before long, he found himself on Hotel Street, which happened to be a red light district.  He spotted the equivalent of an Hawaiian greasy spoon that was still open and wandered in.  A little later, about eight or nine boisterous ladies of the evening dropped in.  Their talk was loud and crude.  Tony felt uncomfortable in their presence and was just about to make his getaway when he heard the woman sitting beside him say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.  I’m going to be thirty-nine.”  The woman to whom the comment was made responded in an uncaring tone, “So what do you want from me?  A birthday party? What do you want?  Ya want me to get you a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”  “Come on!”  the other replied.  “Why do you have to be so mean?  I was just telling you, that’s all.  Why do you have to put me down?  I mean, why should you give me a birthday party?  I’ve never had one my whole life.  Why should I have one now?”  At that moment, Tony made a decision.

 

After they left, Tony asked the guy behind the counter, whose name was Harry, if they came in every night.  “The one right next to me, does she come in here every night?”  “Yeah, that’s Agnes.  Yeah, she comes in here every night.  Why d’ya want to know?”  “Well, here’s what I want you to do...”

 

By 3:30 the next morning, the little place was packed with balloons and streamers and party favors and people - the kind of people that wandered up and down Hotel Street through the night.  As soon as the birthday girl and her friend walked in, the place came alive with “Surprise!” and “Happy Birthday!”  People parted and created a little aisle that led to a table with a birthday cake on it.  On top of the cake were candles and Agnes spelled out in colored icing.  She was speechless and, for a long moment, seemed frozen in time.  Finally, with tears and wavering voice, she muttered, “Is it OK if I keep the cake a little while?  I mean is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”  Harry shrugged and answered, “Sure!  If you want to keep the cake, keep the cake.  Take it home with you if you want.”  “Can I?  I just live down the street.  I’ll be right back.  Honest!”  And she left carrying the cake like it was the Holy Grail. 

 

The place was silent after she left.  Not knowing what else to do, Tony broke the silence by saying, “What do you say we pray?”  Tony prayed for Agnes.  He prayed for her salvation.  He prayed that her life would be changed and that God would be good to her.  After the prayer, Harry leaned over the counter and said, “Hey!  You never told me you were a preacher.  What kind of church do you belong to?”  In a moment of inspiration, Tony answered, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.”  Harry stared a moment before responding.  “No you don’t.  There ain’t no such church, ‘cause if there was, I’d be going there.  I’d join a church like that!”  (Tony Campolo, The Kingdom of God Is a Party, Word Publishing: Dallas, TX, 1990, pp. 3-8)

 

What is it that attracted so many people to Jesus?  Jesus liked people and drew out the best in them.  Now Tony Campolo is no Jesus, and the situation he found himself was a little different than Jesus’, but there are some obvious parallels.  Let’s go back in time and set the stage for Matthew’s account in chapter nine.  It is early in Jesus’ ministry; he hasn’t even called all twelve of the disciples yet.  He had, for the most part, a few fishermen who were now supposed to be learning to be fishers of men.  They were a tight group.  After all, Jesus had not been on the scene all that long, but he was already making a name for himself.  He had done some teaching and done some healing.  He had followers.  “This is great!” his small band of disciples could have thought.  “We don’t know completely what this guy’s up to, but something pretty spectacular is going to happen.  Just look at the miracles he has already performed.  This Jesus is going to be somebody, and he wanted me in on it!  I’m in on the ground floor!” 

 

One day, though, Jesus starts to meddle with his little tight-knit group.  He comes up to this Matthew fellow, a tax collector, and says, simply, “Follow me.”  The Visual Bible video series of Matthew shows some classic facial expressions here.  There’s Jesus, leaning over the tax table and looking into Matthew’s eyes with an impish twinkle in his own eyes and a grin spread across his face.  Matthew looks up in surprise, but then begins to smile a little, too.  Meanwhile, we see the disciples behind Jesus, and they are not smiling.  Incredulous and frowning, yes, but not smiling.  “Whoa, there, Jesus!” their expressions say.  “Let’s back up the truck here and talk about this.  We’ve got a pretty sweet deal going on here.  We’re a good group.  What do you mean asking a tax collector to ‘follow you?’  You sure know how to rock the boat, don’t you?  We can’t be seen hanging around with a tax collector!  They’re despicable!  They’re thieves!  They’re traitors to our country and to God!  You just can’t go and ruin a good thing like this!”

 

But he did, didn’t he?  And before the others knew what hit them, Matthew was one of them, and they were at Matthew’s place having dinner with people that they would not have dared touch, much less talked to, a little earlier that day.  And here’s Jesus, right in the middle of them!  It’s not long before the other disciples’ fears began to be realized.  Jesus had drawn unwelcome attention to him and to them.  “Oh, no!  Here come the Pharisees.”

 

It’s at this point that I want you to remember a little dialogue about Christianity that you may have heard on Christian radio over the years.  One guy mentions Jesus Christ in the conversation and another guy says, “Hey, I don’t want to talk about religion.”  “I’m not,” is the reply.  “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.”  I understand completely the intent of this promotion, but I am not completely in agreement.  Religion need not be a dirty word.  Biblically, an alternative word usage for religion is worship.  The Hebrew concept of faith is the response of the whole person to God’s call and obedience to His command.  (F. D. Gealy, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4, p. 32)  Religion has become problematic – the dirty word - whenever the concept and attitude of relationship with God has been replaced with only laws, doctrines, and organizational conformity.

 

God’s revelation with humanity has always been relational and religious.  He was in relationship with Adam and Eve; with Abraham; with Moses; with the whole Israel nation; with David.  In Jesus Christ, He was in relationship with fishermen; with lepers; with Samaritans; with Roman centurions; with tax collectors; with sinners.  He tried to be in relationship with Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the law, but their religious systems did not allow them to be in relationship with those they determined were unclean.

 

But along comes the Son of the Living God who opens his arms and his heart to the very people in society that calcified religion kept neatly tucked out of the way.  To become a Jewish believer in Jesus’ day, meant months, if not years, of rigorous discipline and training.  There is nothing wrong with discipline and training, but even successful completion of this rigorous training did not ensure that a worshiper could enter into every area of the temple.  It was still possible to be excluded from areas of the religious fellowship.  Now, here’s Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, going around dining with and healing and forgiving tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and beggars and all sorts of rabble.  Jesus put the relationship back into religion.  Religion didn’t disappear with Jesus, but relationship with God returned to religion.  Those who drank from Jesus’ well of living water were able to recognize the spiritual gift they had been given.  They were able to recognize the relationship that God wanted them to have with Him and with each other.  Those who stood afar off and stayed shrouded in their relationless religion could only frown and grumble and plot.  Whoever heard of a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning?  No wonder Jesus told them in Matthew 21:31 that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” 

 

We, too, are the beneficiaries of the relationship which Jesus displayed.  Because he is the Son of the Living God, the religious, or spiritual, relationship that he established with all he walked with and talked with is ours as well.  We are saved and enter the kingdom of God when we repent of our sins and believe that Jesus was crucified and resurrected to wash away our sins.  Most of us here today know this and have experienced this.  Praise God! 

 

That’s not the problem.  The problem is that sometimes we who are saved have forgotten who it is that Jesus came to save.  Sure, Jesus is going to save the good citizens and the straight A students.  He’s going to save the basketball stars and the football stars and the baseball stars.  He’s going to save all the people we like to associate with if they let Jesus into their hearts.  But he’s also going to save the prisoners out at the Miami County Correctional Facility.  He’s going to save the folks who couldn’t get up this morning because they’re too hung over from last night’s binge.  He’s going to save the folks who think of the church as just the source of their next free meal.  He’s going to save these folks and a whole lot more if they do what many of us have done: believe that Jesus bled and died for their sins and that through the overpowering love of the Son of the Living God and him alone, they can enter the kingdom of God.  The question is: are we going to allow and even help Jesus do what he came to do or are we going to get in the way with relationless religion?  It is Jesus who teaches us how to draw out the best in people when we let him.  Whoever heard of a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning?  Jesus has.

There was in a church one little boy who truly loved Jesus.  He loved to hear the Bible stories, and he loved doing his Sunday school worksheets.  One Christmas was to be special to him, because he would get to be in the Christmas play about Jesus.  He longed to be Joseph, but everyone knew he wouldn’t get the lead role.  He couldn’t, because he had a limp.  You couldn’t have a limping Joseph.  How about a shepherd who heard the angels speak and hurried off to worship Jesus?  No, that wouldn’t do.  A lame shepherd wouldn’t work in the Christmas program.  One of the wise men?  To bring gifts to the baby and to go worship him would be wonderful.  No, a limping wise man would not be very regal.  Let’s face it, it you don’t fit in, you don’t fit in.  But it was determined that there was one part that would fit - the innkeeper.  All he had to do was open the door when Joseph knocked and tell them there was no room at the inn.  But how that disappointed him.  To have to turn away Mary and Joseph and their soon-to-be-born baby Jesus away was almost more than he could bear.  But he stuck with it, and soon the pageant’s evening came.  All was going great until Joseph and Mary approached the door of the inn.  Even before Joseph could get close enough to knock, the door flung open and the aspiring actor yelled out, “Come in; I’ve been expecting you!”

 

You’ve heard this story from me before, but it fits here!  Don’t you see it?  The Pharisees, who displayed a righteousness that even Jesus spoke about positively; the Pharisees who were fasting and praying and tithing and keeping the Laws for the sake of a coming Messiah, missed him!  They were in the play; they were right there with the Son of the Living God, and they missed him.  What did they do when the Messiah healed those who were unclean?  They got mad.  What did they do when the Messiah healed on the Sabbath?  They got mad.  What did they do when the Messiah forgave sins?  They got mad.  What did they do when the Messiah triumphantly rode into town on a donkey?  They got mad.  What did they do when the Messiah ate dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners?  They got mad.  They got mad enough to plot against him; to get one of the twelve to betray him; to stand him before a kangaroo court; to haul him off before the Roman authority; to incite the crowd to yell for the release of a criminal; to ensure that he was hung on a cross until dead; to seal the tomb; and to post some guards.  There, that was the end of that problem!  That fixed that!  They closed the doors of their hearts and souls on this so-called Messiah.

 

But what about the others?  The tax collectors and the sinners?  They may not have known much about religion, but they knew a lot about relationship.  They saw what Jesus did, and they heard what Jesus said, and some even did what Jesus commanded, and that was enough for them.  “Come in; we’ve been expecting you!”  And Jesus came in and ate and taught and healed and forgave all of those who flung open the doors of their hearts.  Jesus didn’t let religion get in the way of saving relationships; he opened the door to redemptive religion through relationships. 

 

What does this mean for us?  If the Pharisees had their way, it wouldn’t mean anything to us.  We would go through life without any relationship with the Living God.  We would be doomed.  Praise the Lord, the Pharisees did not have their way.  That means we all have, or have had, a joyful choice.  Where is your heart today?  Right now?  Is Jesus shut tightly out, or have you flung open your door and shouted, “Come in; I’ve been expecting you!”  And the Jesus who relates personally to you and you and you and me will be there in a flash to party with you over salvation.

 

What?  You’re already a sinner saved by grace?  Great!  Wonderful!  But you had still better make sure that door that invites Jesus in is still flung open, “Come in; I’ve been expecting you!”  Why?  Because so many others need to know how to let Jesus in.  Don’t be a Pharisee; don’t be guilty in this life of shutting a sinner off from the salvation of Jesus’ relationship and Jesus’ religion.  “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  Come in!  I’ve been expecting you!

 

 

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

179 W. Broadway

PO Box 515

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com

 

 

 

 

 

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