He does comfort the downcast. He'll
speak words of reassurance to you when everybody else is speaking words
of condemnation to you. Be sure of it. But the same God who comforts the downcast also
confronts the dysfunctional. He loves you too much to leave you in something that is limiting
you. He's a confrontational God. I know that thinking of God as confrontational
may violate our perception of him as it was handed down to us, but God
is very confrontational. God will get up in the face of anything that will keep
you from being all he created you to be. Now before you take this as permission to just go
off on somebody and say you're being like Jesus, that's not the point of this lesson. The
point of the lesson is for you to realize God will break through any of the
beliefs you've developed about you, about him, or about others.
He's not scared to do that. So, if it means going to Pharaoh and saying,
"Let my people go" and he has to send frogs and turn the Nile into blood, and if God has
to send flies and locusts and plagues… Even if God has to kill off the firstborn of Egypt, he
will see to it that his people are really free, because he's a confrontational God. If it
means he has to put you in a lions' den and shut the mouth of the lion to show
Nebuchadnezzar that he is the great God and there is none above him, he'll do
that. He's not a conflict-avoiding God. A lot of us never experience the growth
because we will never face the conflict. One thing I love about Holly is when that
switch flips and she turns from sweet Holly, Mrs. Betterhalf Holly, smiling
Holly who y'all know and love and subscribe to her book club… Let
me tell you a story about Holly. This was right at Christmas time. She was
on with customer service. She is the most polite person. She's not nasty. She's not mean.
She's balanced. She's even. She can defuse. But at a certain point… Y'all have a perspective of
Holly. Right? She's so… And she is…usually. On this phone call, the customer service rep
wouldn't put her through to a supervisor. I don't know what Holly said, but at
some point, the lady said, "Ma'am, I'm going to go ahead and transfer
you to escalations." Holly said, "That's exactly where you need to put me:
escalations. That's the place for me: escalations. Escalate me." Holly said that. I'm like, "Who
are you? I know you, but I don't know you." When something got in her way… She's going to
try it the nice way, and everything like that, but there comes a time… Now listen. It's
okay sometimes for you to have that nice, gentle kind of faith about things in your
life. There's a time just to be nice and "Okay. I'm just going to wait and see how this
turns out." But when something really matters to God's heart and your heart… This is what I'm
trying to say: there comes a time to escalate. There comes a time when
people can't do it for you, so you have to go above the people and go
to the one who has all authority, all power. Aren't you glad God's power doesn't
need people's permission to operate, that if God decides to use you in a certain
way…? You can speak to the supervisor. If people aren't treating you well,
you can go to your Father and say, "Do you see how they're treating me? Do you see
how the situation is? Do you see how I'm trying? Would you please get involved before I lose my
mind and do something I'm going to regret?" God will step in. God will confront it. God will
tell Pharaoh. God has a mighty hand. God has an outstretched arm. God said, "I've seen the misery
of my people in Egypt, and I'm coming down there." Not everybody likes this kind of preaching.
It's not comfortable. But when you have an addiction that's robbing you of
the daylight of your life… So, as the conflict is escalating… This is one of five
stories in Mark's gospel that's showing us the confrontational nature of God. It's an interesting
one, because… I'll point out a few things to you. When Jesus is arguing with the scribes about the
Sabbath, they ask him, "Why are you breaking the Sabbath?" He's trying to teach them. "The Sabbath
is made for man. Man is not made for the Sabbath. You have this completely out of order." In other
words, "You have turned a gift into a limitation." When he healed this man on a Sabbath, all they
could say was, "That's the wrong day to do it." The Sabbath was given to people as a gift, but
they turned it into a limit. This is a sidenote: Don't let your gift become your limitation. Don't
let something God gave you in one season of your life to protect you become something in the next
season of your life that prevents you. Do you want an example? All right. I have a hundred of these.
The way we deal with people… Sometimes we learn to deal with people in a certain season of our
lives a certain way to survive because we have to. A lot of times, I've been swinging, like fighting,
and I didn't even look up and realize my enemy was gone and I was still swinging at the air. So my
style of doing things… The best example I can give to you of this from my own life is that the
way I've seen myself in certain seasons doesn't apply in other seasons. God can give you something
as a gift in one season… What am I thinking of? We wrote this other song we just put out
called "Talking to Jesus." Have you heard it? Chris can tell you. The whole
time we were writing that song… We wrote that with our friend Brandon Lake.
The whole time we were writing the song, it broke all of the rules of a worship
song. Worship songs are supposed to be like this. You're supposed to only say about
30 words and just scramble them all around. We're writing this song, and I'm
finding myself saying lyrics like, "Mama used to drag me to church Sunday mornings
and Wednesday nights, khaki pants and a polo shirt; boy, I put up a fight." I'm thinking, "Can
you say 'khaki pants' in a worship song?" Now, there's a reason worship songs are
supposed to have a certain focus. The reason is when we come in to sing with
our church, we want everybody to be able to access it. Maybe you didn't wear khaki pants
to church. So, you're worshiping God. "Lord, I love you." I'm talking to Jesus. "What a friend
I have in Jesus. Khaki pants? Huh?" It pulls you out of it. It's like, "Oh, I thought that was my
song, but I guess that's not for me." The crazy thing about it was that I found God trying to
give us a song about generational faith, but my rules for how God moves in worship were trying to
restrict the expression God wanted us to bring. Those rules were there for a reason.
The scribes were there for a reason: to preserve the identity of God's people. But
sometimes what was sent to preserve something begins to prevent something. I wonder if
that has happened in your life. I wonder if you need new rules. While we're at it,
I wonder who built your roof to begin with. Who set the limit to say, "This is what God
can do through you and no more. This is what you're gifted at and no more. This
is what people from your background, your education, your age… This is what
you can do and no more." I was talking to my friend who's 43 the other day, and
he was talking like his career was over. Then I told him about the guy who is 59
who reinvented and became a millionaire. Who put that roof on you? Who put the roof on
you that if you aren't married by 25 there's something wrong with you? Who put that roof
on you? Who put the roof on what we think God can do in church that we think God has to be
confined to a building? The irony of my ministry is that everything God has done through me
was something I told him he couldn't do. I'm stubborn. I need the Holy Spirit. I need God's
help because I'm so stubborn. I have these rules, like, "Online church isn't real." Said me. Now
do you see why I feel bad for these scribes? These guys I've been preaching about all of these
years… "These scribes, these teachers of the law, these Pharisees…" It's like there was a Pharisee
in me. It's what I'm trying to deal with. It's not the crowd blocking the door I
have to worry about. I told our team, "I don't think church online can be real church,"
because I'd never seen it before. If you've never seen it before, you believe it can't be real. If
you've never seen a healthy marriage… Verse 12: "This amazed everyone and
they praised God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'"
The same thing they said in praise is also the problem. "We've never seen anything
like this before, so this can't be God. This is not the image I had of it. This is not the
imagination I had of it. He's not doing the rules we want him to do. It's not following the rules."
At the same time Jesus is breaking the rules, the men are breaking a roof. I realized
there were two roofs being removed in Mark, chapter 2. One was physical. It was Peter's
house, by the way. No, it really was. It says, "When Jesus came to the house
in Capernaum…" That's the one where they based out of. It was Peter's
house. If it would have been John, he would have kicked those boys off the roof,
because John had good sense. But Peter was like, "I like your style. That's like something
I would do. Oh, we'll get a new roof. Let's break the roof. Let's get this done." Peter
loved a mosh pit. Peter loved a crowd dive. Peter doesn't care. He didn't give a crap
and cut off an ear. Jesus can put it back. I told Elijah the other day… I said, "I hope I
set a good example for you. I hope I show you how to treat a woman. I hope I show you how
to maneuver through difficult times. I hope I show you something about how to seek God, be
creative, make friends with your own creativity, don't let it turn inward, make sure
you use it in service of others. I hope I show you a few things about Romanian
deadlifts and Arnold presses and some things you can take with you the rest of your
life. I hope I show you some good music, like Nirvana Nevermind and other classic
gospel albums of the 90s." Y'all have limitations on genres. I'm telling you, there's
some good worship music you haven't heard yet. But I said, "If you discover something…" Listen
to this. This is something I would say to anybody, but I said it to my oldest son. I said, "If
you see something in me that limits who God has made you to be, don't be loyal to my
limitations." Here's the example I gave him. I had a friend who used to train other preachers
how to preach, and they would try to copy him. But they would copy not only the good things
he did, because he was an amazing evangelist; they would even copy his mannerisms that were just
incidental or glitchy. One thing in particular… He said they tried to walk like him when they
preached. They were trying to walk like him, not realizing he had a bad back. So, they're
limping across the stage to be like their mentor. I thought, "That's crazy, man.
They're imitating your injury. They're seeing you do something, and
they are thinking that because you do it, it must be right." So I told Elijah, "Don't
imitate my injury. Imitate me as I imitate Christ." This is what I told him: "I think my
ceiling can be your floor." I don't mean in a pulpit as a preacher. I'm not limiting my
kids that they need to be in the ministry. They are going to be in the ministry. It
just might not be my style of ministry. It might not be a pulpit or preaching or an
acoustic guitar. What if one of them leads worship with a track beat? What if that's the
next wave of God's anointed holy music on the earth? What if they don't work at a church
at all, but what if God uses them in a great way in the world? After all, most of the
miracles Jesus did were in the marketplace. Why do we try to confine God to
the places we're most comfortable in? Why do we think the most important
stuff God is going to do is going to be through a preacher? The only point
of a pulpit is to empower you for your field…for your field. You need a new
roof. You keep banging up on the things… Here's what happens through life. You
learn lies and become loyal to them, and then those lies become limits.