Do It Anyway, by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Matthew 22:15-22

22:15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Him in what he said.
22:16 So they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that You are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for You do not regard people with partiality.
22:17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"
22:18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting Me to the test, you hypocrites?
22:19 Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought Him a denarius.
22:20 Then He said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?"
22:21 They answered, "The emperor's." Then He said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."
22:22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left Him and went away.

          The Jewish hierarchy of that age already had a religious system they liked, where they made the rules and they decided who was "in" and who was "out."  Jesus upset their system, so at every opportunity they tried to attack Him.  Heal a man on the Sabbath?  Wrong, they said.  Jesus did it anyway.

          Discuss who should and who should not pay the Roman Emperor's taxes?  Dangerous.  Jesus did it anyway.

          Release without stoning a woman caught in adultery?  Outrageous, they said.  Jesus did it anyway.

          If you are doing what God wants you to do, believing in Him in faith to lead, you are going to run head-on into people who will challenge you.  Many will be those outside of Christ who know well what they are doing is wrong, but they can't stand to have you say it out loud, to shine the light of truth on them.  So they attack you and if they can't dismiss the truth of what you say, they attempt to impugn you and disparage you so others will not trust you.   

          Sadly, some of these attacks will come from other Christians, as well.  They are usually on a different level of understanding and faith in God than you are.  Follow God, anyway.

          When you are stepping out in faith and others oppose you with worldly reasons why it won't work, why it can't work, why it shouldn't work.  Follow God, anyway.

          When they tell you that God is all love, and that if we really believed in God we would not be criticizing people, would not be creating dissension, would not be claiming God punishes, would not believe that God would hurt people.  Follow God, anyway.

          These are the people who have not seen what God has seen, perhaps not even what you have seen.  They say they love everyone, but their love does not extend as far as the love of Christ, who knows that "the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son" (Heb. 12:6), and "the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in" (Prov. 3:12), and He knows Psalm 94:12, "Blessed is the man You discipline, O Lord, the man You teach from Your law..."

          Everything is not always sweet and mild and wonderful.  Jesus Christ was brutally beaten, misused, and nailed to a cross, for you and for me.  The Father allowed that, for His own reasons; the salvation of you and myself.  We could not save ourselves, only the blood of the Son of God could save us, reunite us with the Father who created us.

          When they begin to assail you for shining the light of truth on sin on behalf of God saying things that create hard feelings, remind them that it was Jesus Himself who said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."  (Matt. 10:34)  For Jesus knew the truth of Leviticus 26:25, "And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands."

          Calamities such as these rained down upon Israel and Judah more than once when their fortified towns were besieged, when God had set blessings before them and they were disobedient, going their own way, doing their own thing, mistakenly believing that God is not a God of wrath when His people defy Him.

          Far too many people today are willing to follow a God of laisse faire, who will not interfere, who loves us no matter what we do so we can do anything, who cling to their own ideas of what a god should be and with deadly hubris declare, "Well, I wouldn't believe in a God who does the terrible things the Bible claims."  At the risk of eternal failure, they misunderstand.  God doesn't need their approval.  They need His in order for their names to be written in the Lamb's book of life.  Without that, I submit they have no future, they have no past, they don't exist.

          These are the people we desperately need to get into the Word of God that they might know Him for who He is.  The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not a human being, was never a human being, and His infinite ways are so far above our finite understanding as to be invisible to the human mind.

          God has even foreseen the argument of the worldly wise and in two places He responds.  First in Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change His mind.  Does He speak and then not act?  Does He promise and not fulfill?", and then in 1st Samuel 15:29, "He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man, that He should change His mind."

          God has said what He has said, and it stands.

          When people apply human reasoning to God, assuming what He would or would not do, would or would not approve, unless God has placed that in the writings of His inspired word of the Bible, they have no idea what they are talking about.  Such claims and expectations that run counter to scripture are inspired, not by God, but by the god of this world, who is at war with God and carries only enmity for mankind.

          The god of this world would have us glorify human thinking, would have us give glory to human beings regardless of what they do.  Oh, we can think what we want about the behavior of others, but we should not criticize them because after all we are all human beings and children of God.  But, no, we're not all children of God the Father.

          Jesus gave us a vivid example of this in John 8, which begins with men bringing a woman to the temple court to be stoned for adultery.  I always wonder, where was the man, her accomplice?  And since Jesus had recommended that he among her accusers who was without sin should throw the first stone, they each drifted away until she was alone with no accusers.

          By the way, while Jesus waited for her first accuser without sin to throw the first stone, He knelt there in the courtyard and wrote in the dirt of the ground.  The Bible doesn't say what He wrote, but as Jesus was present throughout history, I've always wondered if what He wrote might have been any portion of what the disembodied fingers wrote on the castle wall of the disobedient King Belshazzar, "Mene, mene, tekel, Peres."  (Daniel 5:1-30)  Belshazzar was shaken and offered rich gifts to anyone who could interpret.  Daniel, after he had reminded the King that his father, King Belteshazzar, had obeyed God, but this king had not, interpreted the writings as follows:  "Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.  Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.  Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

          King Belshazzar, king over the mighty Babylonian empire, was murdered that night.  I wonder what Jesus wrote on the ground because their blasphemous opposition to Jesus seems to fit the translation of Tekel, "You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." 

          Nevertheless, Jesus' answer to the accused woman, who they obviously thought should have been stone, infuriated the other Jews there, and they accused him of being demon-possessed.  After all, they claimed to be the children of God.  But Jesus said to them, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:41-44)

          When men weight God's word down with their own web of laws and regulations and requirements, going beyond what He says to us, when they claim those things which cannot be found to agree with the God-inspired scripture of the Bible, when they seek to raise up human thoughts and intentions and desires above those of Him who created us, that is not of God.  That is, as Jesus pointed out, directly from the father of lies and not of God.

          I continue to say, on the basis of God's word to us, that America is under judgment because we not only say what is called by God an abomination and a sin is not a sin, but also because many among us, claiming the mantle of God, require and pressure those holding to the word of God to abandon His word and agree with what is called for by base human desires.  They make their case all the worse before God because when confronted by His word, they question the veracity and inspirational truth of the Bible.

          To such people I must ask, how can you call yourselves Christian and do not the things He says?  Plus, when you deny the truth of the Bible, you call Jesus a liar.  Repeatedly, Jesus Christ refers to the scripture both He and the Jews knew, attesting to its truth and its wisdom, as the very word of God. 

          How can you attest to the living truth of the Islamic Koran, encourage the faith of the Islamic people and the religion of Islam, and still claim to believe in God, ignoring the very first Commandment of God, which Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfill?  The first commandment reads, "You shall have no other gods before Me."

          The entire Word of God must be taken in context; the entire Word for the entire God.  Cherry-picking or twisting or denying the meaning of a text to "prove" a point which the entire scripture denies is to lie before God, all the worse because the Word of God has been used to create the lie.

          For those who deny the truth of scripture, or those who would twist scripture to say what it was never intended as the God-inspired Word of God to say, I offer the warning of 1st Cor. 6:9-10. "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

          At this point someone may ask, then where is the love of God?  In response, I offer you these three verses from scripture:

          1.  "If you love me, keep My commandments."  (John 14:15)

          2.  "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another."  (John 13:34, 35).

           3.  In response to a request from Moses, God answered, in part, "I will proclaim My name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."  (Exodus 33:19)

          Live so as to show that you understand God's love, as well as the meaning of Matthew 7:13-14, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

          For just a few verses later, in verses 21-23 , the Word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12), states, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and in Your name drive out demons and in Your name perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

          Amen.

From Mother Teresa, of the Missionaries of Charity

          I add to the end of this sermon, a listing found written on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for abandoned children in Calcutta, India:

          People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

          If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

           If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

          If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

           What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

           If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

           The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

          Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

          In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.