“Drunkards, Demons, and Blindness”

Scripture: Matthew 11:16-30

There's a story of a garment buyer who traveled to Korea on a buying trip. It was his job to purchase vast quantities of clothing for a large department store in New York. After a banquet where he was wined and dined by his Korean hosts, he, as the guest of honor, was invited to speak before all the would-be suppliers.
He told a long and complicated joke, after which only he laughed, since he only spoke English. The translator stood and said a few short sentences in Korean. The hall broke loose. Men cried, they clapped, they whistled, they screamed. The buyer was pleased that he was such a success, but curious how his long story could be so compressed and still carry such punch.
What did the interpreter say to them? He later asked someone who had been present. The interpreter said, “Fat man with big checkbook told funny story. Do what you think appropriate.”
- Homeletics Online

All the folks needed to appreciate the story was the perspective! And we need perspective on the viewpoints of others if we are to understand what they are all about, and Jesus understands that. He understands our failure to follow him, he understands our love that tends to be weak and ineffectual at times, he understands that we can be self centered and arrogant in our relationships with others, and he understands our need to be forgiven.
Humanity on the other hand, seldom, if ever, understands what God is about.

Read Matthew 11:16-19

Throughout history, the rift that has developed between us and God is not so much due to our sinful nature as it is to our failure to understand and appreciate God for who he truly is. We want him to be like us. We want him to think and act and reason like we do. We want him to follow the same standards that guide our world, to administer justice by a myriad of definitions to suit the desires of each and every individual, and to see our human condition through the same bloodshot and bleary eyes that we see through.
Neither John nor Jesus could walk in an earthly context, and therefore they were labeled as outcasts – John as being demon possessed, and Jesus as a fat old drunk.

But we’ve got it backward. We need to set our “rose colored glasses” aside, and see Jesus and his ways without a worldly tint.

Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw, in his book Distorted Truth: What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Battle for the Mind, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), contends that there are two distances that separate us from a complete knowledge of the absolutes that could guide our lives (145).

The first is the distance between creature and Creator. This is an eternal distance. It will never go away. Since God is infinite and we are finite, we will never know as God knows. This means that there may very well be dimensions of God's moral standards that we will never fully understand.

The second distance separates the way we are now from the way we will someday be. We shall be changed. We will never know as God knows, but we will someday understand things much better than we do now: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
--Donald C. Posterski, "True to You: Living Our Faith in Our Multi-minded World", Canada: Wood Lake Books, Inc., 1995), 56.

Since John was offering a message that went completely against the conventional thought of the day, and whose appearance and living was as unconventional as his message, it was assumed that he was being controlled by something other than Divine inspiration.
Since Jesus, who some claimed to be Messiah, was acting totally different than the way that God should, or rather was expected, to act, he too wasn’t to be trusted. Why in the world would God, or any holy man for that matter, want to spend time socializing with the likes of “those people”? He must be addicted to food and drink. This Jesus must be an addict! Shame on him!

When you don’t understand the message, and when you don’t trust the messenger, and when you can’t make the messenger change the tune, then the only option left is to drag the other person down to your level.

Read Matthew 11:20-24

We don’t read a lot about Korazin and Bethsaida in scripture, but we see Capernaum mentioned quite often. Capernaum became the unofficial home for Jesus during his ministry, if Jesus could ever claim to have a single place called “home” (Matthew 4:12-16). And he pronounces a word of condemnation on all three.
Was it because of their wicked existence?
Was it because they had completely rejected Jesus and his teaching?
Apparently not!
The passage says that the “woes” are declared on each one because they had received the teachings, but did not repent of their ways!
Miracles had been performed in the cities, and the people must have seen that Jesus was no ordinary man. But they didn’t take the next step.
They had heard the teaching, and they had to have known that Jesus had an authority unlike any other in all of history. But they didn’t take the words to heart.

They heard the words and experienced the miracles, but were blind to the meaning. They had been with the Messiah, and somehow never quite came to understand the blessing that the Lord was offering them. So who will actually be the eternal outcast? Jesus tells them that on the Judgment Day, even Sodom, the city that had been destroyed by the rain of heavenly fire, would fare much better than they would.

Read Matthew 11:25-30

“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to who the Son chooses to reveal him.”
And who does Jesus choose? All who will follow him and who will put the things of earth far behind them.

So what can we learn from this passage?
First, that even though Jesus’ teaching isn’t always clear and concise and straightforward, even though he taught using parables so that the meaning might be hidden, that shouldn’t prevent us from being his disciple.
Second, just because the teaching isn’t always to our liking, that is no reason to reject the teacher and the things he stands for.
And third, the decision as to who will be an outcast in the world resides in the hearts and minds of mankind. But the authority for casting out in eternity is God’s and God’s alone.
And who will get to know the Father and his great plan? Those who come to Jesus Christ and claim him as the authority for their life.

John was accused of being demon lead, but only because he didn’t dance to the tune that the world played. Jesus was ridiculed for eating and drinking and rejoicing with sinners, but only because he didn’t teach the lessons that the world wanted to hear.
Jesus knew about rejection, and that is what he is telling us in the last 3 verses of our lesson today. If you are being ridiculed and rejected by the people of this world, he understands. And if, in our misery, in our exhaustion, in our failure, in our pain, we turn it all over to Christ, we will come to know a life in the here and now that we can live with, and we will know a life in the eternal that will give us far more than we could ever hope and dream about.

Drunkenness, demon possession, blindness, deafness – Jesus knows about it all, and wants us to know that the woes pronounced on the 3 cities don’t have to be the final word for our lives, and that the only tune that we need to dance to is his. And what a glorious dance it will be!