The Kings People | Why Don't I Hear from God? | Luke 7:29-35 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here at our Holotus venue, man, I'm so glad you came out.

If you're with us online, man, I'm so grateful for our online ministry.

So many people behind the scenes that make that ministry possible.

They get no love.

It's the introverts who don't want to stand in the lobbies and welcome people.

And so they get behind cameras and behind switchers and way behind the scenes and they build graphics.

Could you guys please show them some love for all the work they do?

People join us from all over Texas, all over the country, uh, some people from all over the world.

I'm so glad.

If you're in the San Antonio area, man, come get into one of our venues, man.

Get in the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is supernatural.

Uh, it is worth coming and being a part.

You guys don't know this, but there are people who watch every week in Victoria and in Austin, East Texas, West Texas.

And man, they will take time sometimes to drive in, to be a part of the body.

And so if you live four minutes away and you can't drive in, it's like you're getting shown up a little bit by our out-of-town folks.

So just show up, man.

We're making room.

I'm so glad to be with you guys.

If you're new, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta Church.

And uh last week, man, Pastor Tony brought an incredible word.

Help me honor Pastor Tony for the word that he brought us.

I believe when I met Tony, he was 24 years old.

Now there are some 24-year-olds in here, and you think you're all the way grown, and that's adorable.

Uh but uh those of us who have a few more years, you just know at 24 you're very young, but as a young man, he was a man after God's own heart.

He had a special calling on his life.

Uh the Lord was gracious enough to let me uh perceive that pretty quickly.

We just kind of threw him to the lions, man.

We put him on stage really early.

I gave him a really difficult passage.

His gifting was so evident.

But those who've been with us, have we not seen this guy step into his calling in a significant way?

So we thank God for that.

Tony is now pushing 30, which means he's basically almost dead now.

He's got three kids, man.

It's just amazing to see what God is doing.

I want to say something before I get into the text.

Uh, I'm so glad that you're here this Sunday.

I'm so glad you're with us online this Sunday.

Uh, but next Sunday, I cannot tell you, I I I don't know that I've ever shed so many tears preparing a sermon.

And I have this sense that there are people in your life who have seen themselves as disqualified from a relationship with God, disqualified from faith or spirituality.

Um, I think you have those people in your life, and this is the week you need to do whatever it takes to get them to Sunday service.

Next Sunday, that is their passage, and I believe God is gonna do a mighty work in all of our services next Sunday, but we have to do our job.

Our job is not meeting together and feeling good about ourselves.

We meet together.

What we do in this room only matters if we go move together and do something about it, and we all have the ministry of invitation, and there's someone in your life, and God's put them on your heart a bunch of times, and you have found your excuses.

You need to do whatever it takes to get them here next Sunday.

Does that make sense?

We gotta fill this place with people who maybe have walked away from God, they've been hurt by the church, they've been hurt by spirituality, or people who are far from God and have never known him because next week is their week.

And I'm very, very excited.

But I'm equally excited about today's message.

If you're new with us, we've been walking through the gospel of Luke very slowly.

We're in Luke chapter 7 right now.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

We've called this section the King's People.

The King's people.

So far in Luke, we found out that Jesus came to earth to solidify himself as the king of the universe, that he has a specific way that his kingdom operates that is very different, in fact, opposite from the kingdoms of this world.

With both of those things being true, we then ask the question: who belongs to this kingdom?

Who are the king's kind of people?

Now, if you've missed anything at MetaCurch, all of it is online, youtube.com slash metachurch.

Right now in Luke chapter 7, we're in this section about John the Baptist.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Two weeks ago, we saw that John had some doubts, and we're often very afraid of doubt because religion has told us that if we have doubt, that's evidence we don't have enough faith.

But what we see in John, who is the king's kind of people, is that doubt should be a trigger not for us to hide from God, but for us to run to God.

Amen?

And when we take our doubts and we bring them to God, it is not a lack of faith, it is some of the best evidence for your faith.

Last week, Pastor Tony taught us that we have all kinds of expectations that animate our life.

We must allow the king to set our expectations if we're gonna be the king's kind of people.

Now, today, so we talked about doubt, expectation.

Today we're gonna talk about revelation.

And when I say revelation, some of you immediately go to the last book of our Bible that is very confusing and a little bit scary.

We're talking about revelation in the simpler sense, and if I was to give the simplest definition for revelation, revelation is hearing from God.

Hearing from God.

And we all want to hear from God.

We all wish that God's word in our life was just as clear and as loud as my voice over this microphone right now.

We wish that we were more in step with Jesus.

We wish that we could perceive the movement of the Holy Spirit.

We wish that we knew what our gifts were and how to use them in the world.

We wish that we could get this deep insight, these words of knowledge that we could use to enhance other people's lives.

We all want that.

My guess is even those who are here at Metachurch today who don't even believe in Jesus, you're not convinced by the claims of Christianity yet.

Like, even you, if God would part the clouds and just speak, you'd be you're like, Yeah, I'd be a Christian if God would walk in the room and talk to me like that.

We all want to hear from God.

And so I've given my sermon somewhat of a provocative title today.

It's a question: why don't I hear from God?

Okay, one of the things we do, if you're newer, uh, we don't come to metachurch to check the box and go, I went and sat in church.

We don't do that, we don't care about that.

We're here because we believe God can actually transform our lives.

And so we have to be brutally honest when we come together.

We gotta lay down all of our little fake plastic masks, and we gotta get really honest.

So here's a moment for honesty.

Who has ever had this thought or asked this question?

Why don't I hear from God?

Yeah, like everyone.

Now, I cannot exhaustively tell you why you may not be hearing from God today.

That would take too much time.

They give me 45 minutes to preach, and I use 55 of those 45 minutes.

And so today, in my 61-minute message, today in 72 minutes, I cannot exhaustively tell you why you may not be hearing from God.

But I think I can give you the first place to start.

And we can remove what for most people is the biggest obstacle.

And so we're gonna start walking through our text.

We're in Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

We're gonna look at verses 29 and 30 uh over and over again because we have to set the context.

I want to look at it broadly first and notice two things.

It says this, and when all the people, including the tax collectors, heard this, they acknowledged God's way of righteousness because they'd been baptized with John's baptism.

But since the Pharisees and the experts and the law had not been baptized by him, by John the Baptist, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.

The first thing I want you to notice, and this is why uh we handed out like 900 books of Luke, and we asked you to bring them with you, or if you need a Bible, we'll get one for you.

If you have the Bible in front of you, you'll catch some of these things that you can miss really easily, like up on a screen, or I think even on a digital device.

The first thing you'll notice is both of these verses are surrounded by parentheses.

And so let me tell you what this is.

If you've been with us, we're hearing from Jesus himself, and Luke is telling us that narrative with the words of Jesus, and now Luke, as the author, takes up his right to insert information into the narrative.

Have you ever been reading a book, and at the end of a paragraph, there's a little number, and you look down, and associated with those numbers, there's a footnote at the bottom.

That is the author giving you relevant information.

Now, this is just for me because it's fun.

How many of you read the footnotes?

Let me see, hands.

Yes, it's always 50% of the room.

Everyone who raised their hand, just so you guys know, those are the psychopaths in this room who read the footnotes.

The footnotes are valuable information, and and so this is what this is.

I'm gonna give you like a five-dollar word.

Uh, this is a parenthetical addition.

These are Luke's words.

But Luke goes, time out.

I need to give you some insight into exactly what's happening here in this narrative with Jesus.

And the second thing I want us to see is Luke is very clearly delineating out of the large crowd that Jesus is speaking to.

In the large crowd, there are two groups.

This is gonna matter.

The first group, these are tax collectors, they're also called sinners in today's passage, and who this represents is just the common, everyday people, aka, this is me and you.

The second group, these are the Pharisees, and more broadly, we could call these the religious leaders.

And what we're going to see is the common folk, the tax collectors and sinners, they received the message of Jesus, and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, they reject.

There's a large crowd, but within this crowd, there are two groups.

Let's look at our passage again.

And when all the common people heard this, they acknowledged God's way of righteousness.

But look at verse 30.

The Pharisees, the religious leaders, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.

Two groups and one large crowd, and they have diametrically opposite reactions to Jesus and Jesus' revelation.

Jesus is God.

God is speaking to them.

The common folk receive it, the religious leaders reject it.

Look at how they receive and reject.

Let's start with the rejection because it's so scary.

It says they rejected the plan of God for themselves.

God is speaking all of the time, God's trying to get your attention all of the time, and often we reject God's revelation.

You need to know this.

When you reject God's revelation, it must be replaced with something.

When you reject God, you must replace it with something.

Now we have those who received.

It says they acknowledged God's way of righteousness.

Let me tell you all this means.

It's so simple.

It means that they heard from God and they said, God, you're right.

We want to make this so complicated, bro.

We want to watch a thousand hours of theology debates on YouTube, and I do too, and I do watch them.

We want to know all the big words.

We want a religious system.

We go, I didn't take communion this month.

That's why I got a flat tire because I miss communion this way.

I was out, and I didn't say that I choked a little bit on my coffee because I didn't pray over the coffee.

I didn't pray over the coffee, so I choked on the coffee.

We want all this formula.

Like, what if your life of power and purpose and changing things and impacting the world is as simple as paying attention, hearing from God, and no matter what, going, God, you're right.

God brings conviction.

And when God brings conviction, we don't want to do it.

I had to apologize to someone this morning.

Every time I've ever been convicted to apologize, do you know what my flesh says immediately?

Don't want to.

And so we just go, okay, God's speaking, not gonna do it.

I gotta replace it with something, so I'm gonna replace it with my pride.

And the life you're actually called to that you literally cannot imagine how God could use you, is on the other side of just going, God, you're right.

God calls you to something, it makes zero sense.

And you take a step of faith anyway, because you go, you know what?

God, you're right.

These are the two options.

A large crowd, but two groups with directly opposite responses to Jesus.

And so this leaves us with the question, why?

Why was it that one of them received the message and one of the groups rejected?

Was it because of their different stations in the community?

Was it because their different vocations, the jobs that they held in society?

Was it because of the amount of money that they earned?

Was it because their level of intelligence?

What was it?

What's the defining factor?

You see, let me tell you how I preach, like every Sunday.

Every Sunday, I draw that tension out, and then I don't give you the answer for 45 minutes.

And here's why.

Because I want your attention, and tension creates a tension.

So I don't tell you the answer till the end.

Today I'm going to give you the whole sermon in the first five minutes, and then I'm going to trust you to not fall asleep.

Okay?

The answers in the text.

And you could find it, but for the 40 bajillionth time, I'm gonna tell you you must slow down in scripture.

Luke tells us why they rejected and why they received.

So let's read it.

And when all the common people heard this, they acknowledged God's way of righteousness because this is a causal statement, because they had been baptized by John the Baptist.

Listen, verse 30.

But since the religious leaders had not been baptized by John the Baptist, this is a causal statement, they rejected the plan of God and they chose themselves.

I just want to make something very clear.

This isn't my idea, this isn't my interpretation, these aren't my theological priors, this is just us reading the inspired word of scripture.

The common people received Jesus that day because they were the people who John the Baptist that we learned about at the beginning of Luke, who was in the wilderness, he was a wild man, he wore animal skins, he didn't eat normal food, he ate crickets, and he and he drank honey, and he had long, crazy, nappy hair, and he was screaming at everyone, and he was saying, You have to repent.

The way you're viewing scripture is wrong, the way you measure success is wrong, your thoughts about the coming of the Savior are wrong, your thoughts about political power are wrong, your thoughts about your enemies are wrong, and so you've got to tear open your heart and tear open your mind and allow God to renew you from the inside out.

You have to change the way that you're thinking, change the way that you hear, change the way that you see, change the way that you perceive so that you will be ready when God comes to earth.

Some people received that message and were baptized by John, and many people and virtually all of the religious leaders rejected the message of John.

I'm gonna give you my big idea.

This is what I do 50 minutes in every Sunday.

I'm gonna give it to you right now, and then we're gonna take a graduate level journey through the scriptures, and by the end of this, you will be so far ahead of almost all Christians here in the West who do not understand this fundamental concept.

Here it is, it reads very simple, it's very difficult to apply.

Revelation received produces recognition.

Revelation rejected produces resistance.

God is speaking to us all of the time.

Amen.

All of the time.

Number one, we of all people are without excuse.

For for the first many centuries of the church, the printing press wasn't invented until the 1500s.

Nobody owned a Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

You might have one of the Gospels or a few pages of one of the gospels, and maybe a letter from Paul, or maybe a letter from Peter, and you would cherish it and protect it.

You would hand copy it so that you could pass it on to your community.

That's what they had.

We stand with that excuse.

These are the words of God.

You know how we know that?

Scripture tells us that.

It says that scripture is theonostas, it is breathed out by God.

We have bound for us, inspired for us, preserved for us, protected for us the words of God Himself.

All the revelation you will ever need in your life.

You do not need thunder and lightning, you do not need the clouds to part, you do not need supernatural intuition.

You need to open the words of God, and it contains all of the revelation you will ever need for the rest of your life.

And God speaks.

A world of cause and effect, a world of universal principles and laws.

God speaks to you through consequence, the patterns that you've been stuck in since childhood, and they keep coming up the same consequences, the same financial, the same relational, the same health consequences.

God is speaking to you through consequence, drawing you back to Himself.

He speaks to you through the unchanging laws of nature, going, hey, there is a law, and a law has a lawgiver.

Go find the law giver, you will find God.

God speaks to us through words of wisdom from the people that He has put around us, godly people to guide us.

God speaks to us through toxic, broken people.

Some of the most significant lessons God has ever taught me have been through broken men who have made failures of their life, broken leaders who have hurt multitudes, and I've got to stand there, who have hurt me, and God is whispering in that brokenness.

Pay attention.

God speaks to us through our greatest accomplishments and our worst mistakes.

God is so desperate to speak to you that he broke through eternity and came to our world and put on flesh and lived in our brokenness, allowed his creation to nail him to a cross, loved you so much, wanted to speak to you so much, overcame death itself.

You have a God who's desperate to speak to you.

He's speaking to you all of the time, which is revelation, hearing from God.

And you need to know this revelation never leaves you unchanged.

When revelation touches your life, it's never neutral.

Either you see, hear, or perceive God's revelation, and apply it.

That's receiving.

And apply it.

Not just hearers of the word, doers of the words of God.

Amen?

That's receiving.

And every time we receive, we are training ourselves, our vision gets sharper, our hearing gets sharper, our heart grows more perceptive.

The more you receive and apply revelation from God, the more you are prepared the next time God speaks.

And the opposite is true.

Every time God brings revelation into your life, God brings conviction into your life, God puts someone in your life team that every week you pray they won't be there because they keep reminding you something that God wants you to do and you don't want to do it.

Every time you reject the revelation of God, your eyes become dimmer and your ears become more deaf, and your heart becomes more hardened every time.

There is no neutral.

And so here's how we think I know God wants me to stop this.

Look, I've read, I've read it, I know I shouldn't be doing it.

I'm gonna fix it.

Look, I'm in my 20s, bro.

I gotta have my party era for a minute, you know.

And so I'm gonna do my thing.

I'm not gonna do it yet.

And we think nothing's happening.

We think we're just like coasting with God.

I'm not really growing in my faith, but you know, I've got time for that down the road.

There is no coasting.

You are actively closing your eyes, shutting your ears, and hardening your hearts when you reject the revelation of God.

I'm gonna give you an illustration that I promise you I get asked to preach at other churches sometimes.

This is the only church I would use this illustration.

I promise you, promise you, only at Metachurch.

And so, look, I'm gonna ask you a question.

Do not raise your hand.

This is not a raise your hand kind of thing, this is nothing to be proud of.

But I just know us, if you're new, a lot of us had some BC days, some before Christ days that were a little round.

Have you ever been blackout drunk?

Don't raise your hands.

Don't raise your hands.

Here's something that's true.

Uh no one gets blackout drunk on your first drink.

For most people, on your first drink.

You will swear it doesn't affect you at all.

Now, scientifically, we just know some things.

We know that's not true.

Even if you are a seasoned alcohol consumer, one drink has subtly and slowly begun to impair your motor skills and lower your inhibitions.

We know that.

Three drinks in, you know that.

Five drinks in, something starts to go.

A lot of people, the first thing to go is their hearing.

And so for the rest of the night, they're going, What did he say?

He said, What?

Where are we going?

You can't hear.

Eventually your vision, your vision gets blurry or double or triple.

Your inhibition's lower.

And here's the thing three drinks in, five drinks in, most people are aware of their impairment.

So five drinks in, most people will like throw someone their keys or call an Uber.

Isn't it interesting though?

Eight, nine, eleven, twelve drinks in, you will swear that you could pilot a fighter jet if you needed to.

And you have no business getting in a car, but that's the person who it's hardest to get the keys from.

And then at some point, you black out.

Now here's what's very scary about blacking out is you are awake, but you are not aware.

And this is very serious.

And you know, if you're someone who's following Jesus and you're drinking to the point that you're blacked out, I'm just here to tell you that your revelation today is you gotta stop that and you might need help.

Seriously.

Because when you black out, like if you're fortunate enough to not hurt yourself or not hurt someone else or not go to jail, the next day your friends have to fill you in on all the things that you did and that were done to you, and you have no memory.

It's actually very scary.

What does getting blackout drunk have to do with Luke chapter 7?

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Let me just say in front of God and everyone else, officially nothing.

This is not a passage about drinking.

But the metaphor is very helpful because on your first drink, second drink, third drink, you're like, bro, I'm good.

And in some regards, you are.

You could walk, you could touch.

You're not that impaired.

So it's true, no one gets blackout on one drink.

Let me tell you what else is true.

Nobody gets to blackout without the first drink.

And I think it's a helpful metaphor because a lot of life works this way.

You don't eat yourself into serious health problems on one day, but it does start somewhere.

The drinking analogy is helpful because it can all happen on one night.

What happens is God brings something to us and we reject it.

And we don't go blackout, but you better believe it starts to impair your ability to receive revelation from God.

The first time, the second time, the third time that you are not allowing God to speak into your life, bro, you're still gonna pull up to Sunday service.

In the music, you're still gonna love the Lord and be singing and praising, worship.

You might still open your Bible a few times a week and get in there, but eventually, when it's been months of God trying to bring this change into your life and you reject and you will not do it, you won't make the apology, you won't make the call, you won't start the new adventure, you won't make the change in your relationship, you won't let down your pride.

Eventually, what happens is every time you open the word, conviction is coming, and you know you're not gonna do anything about it, so it's easier not to open it.

And every time you go to life team, you're gonna be asked to apply something into your life, and you know you're not gonna do it, so you start going to life team.

And pretty soon the distance starts to grow between you and God, and eventually your eyes shut and your ears become deaf, and your heart becomes hardened.

This is a key truth that often the question isn't what's the next thing that God is going to say to me.

The question is more like, what is the thing God's already asked me that I haven't been willing to do?

Where have I rejected God and replaced it with something else, probably myself?

Maybe the culture, maybe money, maybe pride.

Where do I need to surrender and go, God, this is hard, but you're right.

You're right, and I'll do it.

Here's what I want to show you.

Uh, this is gonna be, this is gonna be less, Pastor Clayton more, Professor Clayton.

Why I get to be a professor, I don't know.

I barely got out of high school, but I'm gonna call myself Professor Clayton today.

I wanna show you this and how it is just all over Scripture.

Look at Romans chapter one.

It says this for God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness, listen, suppress the truth.

You could translate that, reject the revelation.

Here's what it says since what could be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, that is, God's eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.

And as a result, people are without excuse for though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.

Instead, listen to how this happens.

Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.

This is progressive action over time.

We all stand with that excuse because God is just revealing himself to us all the time.

And every time we walk away and we reject and we say, God, I get it, but I'm not ready.

God, I know you're asking, but it doesn't make sense.

God, I just can't, they've hurt me too bad.

Every time we walk away and we reject God, progressively we are getting more and more, listen, impaired in our ability to see God, to hear God.

And some of us who know God are living in a spiritual blackout.

You are coasting through this life, unaware of anything spiritual.

You're living for man, you're living for the kingdoms of this world, you are setting the metrics of your life by what the culture tells you success looks like.

And just like when you go blackout, the next morning your friends have to pull you in and fill you in.

Man, here's what you did, and here's what happened, and here's all the crazy things.

Bro, you're going to wake up someday standing in front of Jesus, and Jesus will be that friend and say, Come, I want you to look at all the things you missed for 35 years while you were spiritually blacked out.

All the opportunities that I had for you, all the things I was calling you to, all the gifts that I gave you that you never got to unlock.

We can reject God so many times that we go blind and deaf and our hearts go hardened to the things of God.

Why?

Because his revelation comes and we reject it.

Let me show you from the words of Jesus Himself.

In John's gospel, the people were beginning to rise up against Jesus, and they were going, I don't think you're all who you say you are.

And a lot of people were rejecting him.

Here's why Jesus says they reject him.

In John chapter 5, verse 46.

John 5:46

Jesus says, For if you believed Moses, you would believe me.

Because Moses wrote about me.

But if you don't believe what Moses wrote, how will you believe my words?

If you don't understand the concept I'm teaching today, this is a confusing passage.

Moses lived 1500 years before Jesus.

Moses also wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Now, Moses wrote it, but what do we know?

God inspired it.

So those are the words of God through Moses.

Here's what the people in Jesus' day were doing.

They were reading the revelation that God gave through Moses, God's words through Moses, into their scriptures, but they are not applying it how God revealed it.

They are taking and twisting up the scriptures so that they will fit with their desires, their life, what they want, how they are living.

And so Jesus goes, listen, Jesus is God.

When Jesus speaks, that is God speaking.

He's going, look, the same God spoke through Moses and you rejected it.

Why do you think you'll listen to me?

Those who rejected God speaking through Moses now reject Jesus.

Those who receive revelation through Moses receive Jesus.

Those who listen to God's word through the prophet John the Baptist receive the words of Jesus, the same God.

Those who reject the revelation from God through John the Baptist reject Jesus, it's the same God speaking.

And so when we reject previous revelation, we close our ears to future revelation.

And when we are willing to receive, and remember, that means see, hear, perceive, and apply.

You can see, hear, and perceive revelation, and if you run away from it, that is the category rejection.

But when you receive it and apply it, you are training yourself how to see, hear, and perceive God.

And John tells us, Luke tells us in John's gospel, and we see it over and over again all throughout scripture.

As we get into the book of Acts, this is the history of the Christian church, we see examples of this, both positive and negative.

I want to show you a picture from Acts chapter 19, starting in verse 1.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, and he found some disciples.

He asked the disciples, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

No, they told him.

Listen, we haven't even heard there is a Holy Spirit.

Paul is confused, so he asks, Into what then were you baptized?

And they have a great answer.

We were baptized by John the Baptist.

By Acts 19, we are over a decade past the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which means it was 10, 11, 12, 15 years ago that these men were baptized by John the Baptist, and they've never heard of Jesus.

They don't know about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

They're unaware of this movement called the Ecclesia, the church.

But they went out to the wilderness and they heard John preach, repent.

Tear open your heart.

You don't understand God.

And so open your heart and let God transform you from the inside out.

They heard it, they received it, and they applied it by getting in the water and getting baptized by John the Baptist.

And so, what do you think happens when they hear about Jesus?

I'll show you.

Paul said, John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.

And when they heard this, immediately they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.

Let me ask you something.

Do you think in this small interaction they had every single one of their questions and concerns answered before they got into the water and put their faith in Jesus?

No.

But because they had received the prior revelation, their minds and hearts were ready when the revelation of Jesus came.

The same thing is true on the other side.

Towards the end of Acts in Acts 28, Paul it says, day and night is preaching and persuading and inspiring and explaining, and he's doing whatever it takes to get people to Jesus, but a large group of his Jewish audience just rejected it outright.

So Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah in reference to the condition of these people.

Here's what he says in Acts chapter 28 for the hearts of these people have grown callous, not one drink to blackout.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

They've grown progressively over time callous.

Their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes.

Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their heart and turn, and God would heal them.

This is good news because there may be somebody listening to this right now who right now you are in a spiritual blackout.

And let me tell you, I have been there.

My life before following Christ was trying to live my own way by my own ideas with my own beliefs for my own glory.

And I knew Jesus, but I was so far from Jesus, I could not hear him, I could not see him, I could not perceive him.

And if you're in a spiritual blackout, the amazing thing is, although you have gone to such an extreme degree of rejection of God that you have blinded yourself, deafened yourself, hardened your heart, Jesus still comes after you.

And Paul just told us that today, if you will turn, today if you will repent and open up your heart, God will heal you today.

He will give you vision again today, he will open your ears today, he will soften your heart today.

In Romans 1, it says we are without excuse.

Not everybody has one of these.

There are credible reports from around the world, many of them from unreached areas where Islam is the only allowable religion of men and women who are having dreams and visions, revelations of Jesus Christ.

Buddhists having dreams, visions, revelations of Jesus Christ.

The question for them is the same question for you and I.

What will you do with the revelation that you've been given?

And if you receive it and apply it, more revelation is coming.

And you will be the kind of person who is learning to see it and hear it and perceive it.

One of the most documented examples of this happened in the 1940s in an unreached area in Ethiopia.

There was a man named Warasa Wanjay.

And he knew nothing about Christ, he knew nothing about Christianity.

They had their own religious system.

They had a creator God who was not a personal God, a God that was not interested in humanity or in relationship.

They called their God in their language Magano, and then they also believed in a primary evil force named Shaitan.

Sounds a little bit like Satan.

For those of you who don't believe in the supernatural realm, wake up, open up your eyes, it's real.

This man looked around at the creation, at a world of universal principles, at a world of cause and effect, at the beauty of what this creator had given to creation.

He was aware of his consciousness that was different than the other aspects of creation.

And he didn't quite buy the lie that this God truly was impersonal.

And so he cried out to his God, Would you reveal yourself to me?

Shortly after, Warasa was given a vision, and the vision was very specific.

It centered around the largest sycamore tree in the area that sat right outside of their village.

And in this vision, he saw two very, very pale figures who had come.

He didn't know what to make of it.

Now, here's how you want the story to go.

Here's how I want the story to go.

God gives me a vision, and then 65 seconds later, some white guys pull up under the sycamore tree.

That's what I want.

Eight years go by.

Eight years.

What Walrasa doesn't know is behind the scenes there are missionaries who feel called to Ethiopia, but not to his village.

They make a play to go where they think they are supposed to go, and the Ethiopian government shuts it down, and so they have to have a plan B.

It's their plan B, it's always God's plan A.

And so they reroute to Warrasa's village.

And as they approach, they make a strategic decision.

We need a landmark that will make it easy for people to find us and the gospel.

What about the sycamore tree on the edge of the village?

Significantly larger than the rest.

That day Warrasa went into the village, and as he looked at the sycamore tree, eight years later, he saw two pale men.

He went and they shared the gospel that he was right.

The revelation he received that maybe God does want something to do with you was correct.

They shared with him, as a matter of fact, God so desperately wants to reveal himself to you that he came out of his home and down into ours.

He so desperately wanted you to be able to understand him, that he put on flesh and became a human.

He so desperately wanted to connect you to God that he took the punishment that is owed to you, put it upon himself, and allowed himself to be brutally sacrificed that this God so desperately wants relationship with you that even death could not hold him back from that relationship.

And three days later, he walked out of his own grave.

So Warassah could come into a relationship with the God that he never knew.

Revival swept through the villages, and within a few decades, they reported there were over 200 faith communities in Ethiopia that started with a vision of a sycamore tree.

God is revealing himself all of the time, and the question is what do we do with the revelation that we receive?

Let's go back to Luke chapter 7 and close out our passage.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

This is after Luke's footnote.

We get back into the words of Jesus Himself.

In verse 31, Jesus says this about the group that rejected him.

To what then should I compare the people of this generation?

And what are they like?

They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to each other.

We played the flute for you, but you didn't dance.

We sang a lament, but you didn't weep.

Let me paint the picture for you.

Uh in the ancient Near East, the marketplace is where everything happened.

This is where commerce happened.

This is where you would go shop for your needs.

This is where you would sell your own supplies.

This is where business took place.

This is where connection happened between adults, and the kids had to go.

And so, I mean, all of us have been seven and been in HEB for like way too long and wanting to die.

But we know we're gonna go home to like our Nintendo's or PlayStations, we're fine.

In the ancient world, you could be in the marketplace for hours upon hours, and so the kids would huddle up and they would play games, and the parents were fine because the kids were occupied.

Now, the type of games they would play are very, very elementary games, the kind of games we would play when we were very little, which is basically I'm going to recreate with my imagination things I have witnessed, which is why some of the first games that we ever play are family.

Let's play family.

I'm the mom, you're the dad, y'all are the kids, uh, you're weird, you're the gerbil.

You get to be the gerbil.

I don't know, I don't make the rules.

Let's play family.

And you just play what you see.

And so these kids, in Jesus' metaphor, they are playing cultural events that they've all witnessed.

And so, playing the flute, this is what would happen at a big celebration, like a birthday or a wedding.

Let's play wedding, everyone calm.

And then they go, okay, now you don't want to play that.

Let's let's play funeral.

We've all been to a funeral.

Now that sounds really morbid, but there weren't PlayStations back then.

And so they'd play funeral and all pretend to cry, and then they would all laugh hysterically.

Here's what's happening: there's two groups of kids.

One group is trying to entice the other group to play.

The other group is not having it.

They go, hey, let's play wedding.

And they go, now we're good.

Okay, if that's if that's not your speed, let's play funeral.

I don't want to play funeral.

Let's play hide and seek.

I don't want to hide.

Let's play tag, I don't want to get sweaty.

Let's play Red Rover.

I don't wanna.

It's like at a certain point, after they've pitched every game imaginable, you have to conclude the other group isn't rejecting the games.

They are rejecting the ones who are offering the games.

This is the group that has rejected Jesus.

Jesus is gonna make that clear.

Verse 33, Jesus goes, For John the Baptist did not come eating bread or drinking wine, and you say he has a demon.

The Son of Man, Jesus, has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

The thing is, John came speaking the words of God.

Jesus obviously comes speaking the words of God, but John and Jesus are very different packages.

And the people look at John and they go, Oh, John's weird.

John eats bugs, oh, I'm out on that.

John has nappy hair.

John's way out in the wilderness.

I don't want to go out travel.

John's too mean.

He yells all the time in his preaching.

It's like, fine, how about Jesus?

Jesus is like completely different than John.

He he is in the culture, he's in the town, he's at your table.

He's not just drinking wine, he's turning water into wine so the party can continue.

And they go, Oh, I don't know about that.

He probably shouldn't eat with those people.

And look at him, he's kind of like a drunk out there, just drinking wine.

It's like, okay, eventually, it's not the people, it's not the package, it's the revelation itself that you are rejecting.

And we've got to be very Careful here because as Americans, more than any people who've ever walked the earth, we are a people of great preference.

You'll find this hard to believe, but like most people throughout history didn't feel entitled to an opinion about everything.

And the real danger is in modern Christianity, preference can become an excuse, a smokescreen to hide you from revelation.

And so we see this all the time.

People have a million preferences about their church.

It's like, oh, it's too loud.

So I can't go there, it's too loud.

I could never meet I could never get a message there.

It's just way too loud.

But the next church will be way too quiet.

And this one has way too many hymns.

And this one never, so why don't we do hymns?

And this one has a fog machine.

And this one we don't really like how they sing.

And this one that they sing songs that are all about me and not about God.

And this one, they only talk about God, and I can't apply it to myself.

My pastor yells too much.

My pastor's too sheepish.

My pastor's too political.

My pastor won't touch any political topics.

We have endless preferences.

And the question is like, fine, have your preference.

I have my preference.

I don't like all singers the same.

I'm sorry.

I don't like all speakers and preachers the same.

Some communicate to me in a way that I just receive a little easier.

Fine.

Have your preference.

I don't like every flavor of ice cream.

Why is pistachio and ice cream?

I don't understand.

Have your preferences.

But when your preference gets in the way of revelation, you have a problem.

Because I promise you, all of us who are preaching and sharing the word, there is only one who has ever been a perfect vessel, the man, Jesus Christ.

And the rest of us are just broken people trying to do our best.

Have your preference, but if your preference is an excuse, it's like, well, I can't go to that life team, and I can't go to that for this reason, and I didn't really like that, and their snacks were nasty, and they're too far.

It's like maybe when you go to the life team, conviction comes into your life, and you don't want that conviction.

You're not rejecting the program, you're rejecting God's revelation.

You're doing anything you can to run from it.

Man, I'm just gonna be very honest with y'all.

Uh it's like I take a weekend to celebrate 14 years of marriage, and I just got I get flooded with texts and emails about like, you know, I mean, the other the other speakers are great, but it's just not really the same when you're not.

Fine.

Fine.

Have your preference.

But do not allow your preference to get in the way of revelation.

What what happens if a bus hits me tomorrow?

Someone else is gonna take this stage and become your primary preacher.

Will you be able to receive revelation?

I've been in ministry a very long time.

What if in the next few years God calls me to a three-month sabbatical?

It's like we will say out loud, there's nothing I want more than to hear from God.

And then the NFL season starts.

And the cowboys have an early game.

And attendance tanks.

So if we're gonna be about it, let's be about it.

What is more important?

And I promise you, like if you spent any actual time with me, you would realize just how broken of a vessel I am, and that it's the most humbling thing in the world that God is using me here at Metachurch.

And what you will learn is that as you mature in your faith, you can receive revelation from anybody that God will speak to you through the most unlikely people.

And the question is, can you receive it?

And is there any sense of urgency on your life to listen?

To hear from God, to see what he's doing, to do it, and to do something about it.

I'm gonna go to the last verse, but I'm gonna put it next to verse 29 because the last verse is now about those who receive.

Verse 29, let me remind you, when all the people, including tax collectors, heard this, they acknowledged God's way of righteousness because they had been baptized with John's baptism.

They were the kind of people who received revelation, and they were willing to go, God, you're right.

God's speaking through John telling me to repent, he's right.

God is telling me that I'm allowing politics to trump my spirituality, God, you're right.

God is telling me that I gotta let down my pride and start loving my bride selflessly, God, you're right.

God's telling me I'm being foolish in this area, God, you're right.

God's telling me that I'm misusing the resources that He's put in my bank account.

God, you're right.

God, you are right, and I will do something about it.

And watch what God will do through your life if you are willing to do this.

Here's what God says: He says, Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.

Luke's doing something, it's hard to see in English, it's easy in the Greek.

He's using the same verb.

The ones who are willing to say, God, you are right, will be proved right by God.

The world will go, you're doing what?

You're giving how much money?

You're getting back with them after they you're forgiving them.

You're going where?

You're gonna talk to who?

It won't make any sense.

But if you're willing to say, God, you're right, over time, God will show you to be right.

Let me give it to you again.

Revelation received produces recognition, revelation rejected produces resistance.

Your vision will grow dimmer, your ears will grow more deaf, and your heart will grow harder and harder.

Here's how John opened his gospel.

He says this, he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God.

He came to his own people and they rejected him.

Let me tell you about this rejection from God's own people.

It did not start with crucify him, crucify him.

It started with John's kind of weird.

I don't know, all this yelling in the wilderness, I don't know.

Jesus is like partying with bad people.

I'm not really sure.

It starts with small rejections, greater and greater impairment, and finally, spiritual blackout.

And we can do something about it, even right now.

I know the Holy Spirit is knocking on the door of your heart.

Why don't I hear from God?

That's my message.

Here's the question we should start with.

It's a very uncomfortable question.

Where have I rejected God's revelation?

Now your knee-jerk reaction will be, oh, I've never done that.

I wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't reject God's revelation.

But you do.

So do I.

I'm not talking about like just throwing it all away and going online and claiming atheism.

I'm talking about an apology that you know God's calling you to make and you just won't do it.

A pattern that so many people who love you have pointed out, and you're not willing to break it.

I'm talking about the areas where God has brought wisdom and conviction and wise counsel.

And listen, you're still saying, I'm right.

It's time to say, God, you're right.

You've been trying to get my attention for years.

Young people, especially those who are being raised by godly parents.

Your parents aren't perfect.

But God has put them as a cover over your life.

And they're giving you revelation all the time and a lot of times.

Look, I've been 14, I've been 11, I've been 17.

And your reaction to your parents' wisdom, to that revelation, is normally rolling your eyes, stomping back to your room.

Here's the problem: you will be an adult, and it will happen sooner than you think.

And your parents will not be covering you.

There will be nothing between you and your heavenly father.

And you will have spent all of your formative years training yourself on how to close your eyes and shut your ears to revelation.

And you'll be 22 or 32 or 52 wondering, why don't I hear from God?

Right now, you can learn to humble yourself, hear revelation, and apply it into your life, and become the kind of person who, when God speaks, you hear it and you do something about it.

For some of us in the room today, your first step is the first step.

You don't hear from Jesus because you don't have a relationship with Jesus.

And I promise he's after you, he's pursuing you, he's loving you, he is showing up in ways that you can't imagine.

He loved you so much he came to this world and gave his life for you.

But Jesus will not force himself on you.

He knocks on the door of your heart every single day.

It's your job to open, it's your job to respond to that revelation.

Here's what the author of Hebrews writes He says, Watch out, brothers and sisters, so there won't be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

But encourage each other daily.

Listen, while it's still called today, so that you will be not hardened by sin's deception, while it's still called today, while there is still time on the clock, while you still have breath in your lungs, while your heart is still beating, while you still have another day here on earth, another day where God has gonna come and put in the cloud and send Jesus back to us.

Today is the day to get right.

Here in just a little while, across our venues, we're gonna go into a time of prayer.

We're gonna ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us all the areas where we've rejected the revelation of God.

But first, I want you to join me in a time of prayer.

Across our venues, if you'd bow your head and close your eyes, create a little space.

I I'm gonna keep it simple.

When this many people are gathered across different spaces and online, there's somebody who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus.

And man, I'd bet anything that right now the Spirit of God is pressing in on your life because God loves you.

He wants you to receive his revelation, he wants to open your eyes, to open your ears, to soften your heart, he wants to forgive all of your sins that separate you from God.

He wants to give you a gift called everlasting life, where death does not have the final word in your life, and where you get to come back into face-to-face communion with your heavenly Father at the end of this life.

All of that is on offer, and your response is faith.

Jesus didn't come offering a religious program, he came desperate for a relationship with you, and that relationship comes through faith.

And so if you're here and you've never had a moment in your life where you intentionally decided to put your faith in Jesus, I want you to do that today.

With everyone's eyes closed, I'm gonna ask you if you're ready for that, to just raise up your hand.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that just says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen, amen, amen.

As hands are up, I want you to know that God sees your faith right now and accepts it.

Scripture says all of your sins are now covered by the sacrifice of Christ, and there's nothing separating you from your heavenly Father now and in eternity.

What I want to do is help you acknowledge this through a very simple prayer.

If you raised your hand, I want to ask for you to pray this with me.

All believers will pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this, Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Let me pray for you.

Jesus, I thank you for every hand that was raised, every heart that's been made new.

We give you all of the glory for it.

I pray they would find out the next revelation you have for them and the next step that you're calling them to take.

And now, as we go into a time of prayer, search us, oh God.

Reveal things to us.

And I pray that we would truly receive that revelation.

We pray it in Jesus' name.