LIKE BARKING DOGS
Matthew 7:15-29, 13:34
S: Celebrate Jesus
Th: Communication
Pr: Jesus spoke God’s truth in everyday language.
?: How? How did Jesus speak?
KW: Characteristics
TS: We will find in our study three characteristics that
demonstrate how Jesus spoke to engage his listeners.
The _____ characteristic that Jesus demonstrated to engage his listeners is He was…
I. DISCERNABLE (Matthew 7:15-27)
II. DRAMATIC (Matthew 13:34)
III. DEFINITIVE (Matthew 7:28-29)
RMBC 2/20/00 AM
INTRODUCTION:
1. Did you ever wonder what they were saying?
ILL dogs hey! hey!
I wonder this all the time with my dog. He barks a lot. If you ever come to our house, I must warn you, you will most likely be greeted by a barking dog. Now, I really don’t know what he is saying, except that I think he’s scared and wants us to deal with the stranger in our midst.
There was a Far Side cartoon on my door a while ago that talked about a scientist that had invented a dog translator machine. As he wore this machine, everywhere he went, he understood exactly what dogs were saying. It was actually quite simple. Every dog was saying, “hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!”
Well, even though dogs do give us clues to what they are thinking or what their needs are…
2. It is frustrating to attempt to understand someone that is not speaking our language.
It is usually frustrating to both.
You are never quite sure that you have been understood.
TRANSITION:
1. This is our fifth Sunday (Day 29) of our 50-Day Adventure called “Celebrate Jesus: Discover What Makes Him Attractive to So Many People.”
We have been celebrating Jesus and discovering what He was like as He walked this earth.
In turn, it is our goal to just not know what Jesus was like, but to be like Him.
So far, we have learned that…
1.1 Jesus stayed spiritually connected and directed by God.
Using the story of the Samaritan woman, we learned that…
1.2 Jesus shattered the stereotypes of “us” and “them.”
Using the story of the calling of Matthew the tax collector, we learned that…
1.3 Jesus liked people and drew out the best in them.
Using the story of the washing of the disciples’ feet, we learned that…
1.4 Jesus knew his identity yet served with humility.
Today, we want to speak about how Jesus communicated,
We all know that…
2. It is helpful to us when people speak clearly.
It is also helpful when we come across someone that will go the extra mile to make sure that we understand.
Take for example this story…
ILL 50 Day Message
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that called for a small employee contribution. The company was paying all the rest. Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed; otherwise, the plan was off. Sam’s boss and his fellow workers pleaded and cajoled, but to no avail. Sam said that the plan would never pay off. Finally, the company president called Sam into his office. “Sam,” he said, “here’s a copy of the new pension plan, and here’s a pen. I want you to sign the papers. I’m sorry, but if you don’t sign, you’re fired—as of right now.” Sam signed the papers immediately. “Now,” said the president, “would you mind telling me why you couldn’t have signed earlier?” “Well, sir,” replied Sam, “nobody explained it to me quite so clearly.”
Well, we chuckle at that story, but the truth is, Jesus spoke in the same kind of way.
He was not difficult to understand.
He did not, like my philosophy professor at college, speak over your head.
In fact…
3. JESUS SPOKE GOD’S TRUTH IN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE.
The question we want to answer today is how ?
How did Jesus speak?
Well…
4. We will find three characteristics that demonstrate how Jesus spoke to engage his listeners.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first characteristic that Jesus demonstrated to engage his listeners is He was DISCERNABLE (Matthew 7:15-27).
We need to recognize that the longer that we are Christians, the more our language becomes out of touch of where people are and how they think.
For…
1. We develop our own religious jargon that is gibberish to seekers.
In fact, when we have the opportunity to share our faith, it might come out something like this…
ILL DRAMA “Huh?”
2. Jesus spoke in terms that everyone could understand.
Note the way Jesus speaks in Matthew 7:
(15) Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
(16) By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
(24) Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Jesus used common and understandable examples from the world around them.
Because he wanted people to be discerning regarding those that were teaching, he refers to some teachers as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
Wolves were a common threat to both shepherds and a flock of sheep.
The warning was that some teachers looked OK, but they were wolves that would eventually destroy them.
Jesus also talked about teaching that was like rotten fruit.
Everybody knew the stench of decaying fruit.
It was something to stay away from.
When Jesus wanted to talk about how lives are to be lived, He challenged them by using an illustration that was familiar to all—building.
He encouraged people to build their lives on the right foundation.
This is something that the typical resident of Palestine would have to think about for Palestine was full of gullies.
If you built there, your home would be washed out.
The use of a building motif gave adequate warning that they are to take care about that which will serve as the foundation of their lives.
The use of what is familiar and understandable is a communication technique that continues until today.
It is why I take special care to look for and pick out illustrations for a message.
Illustrations come from what we all hold in common and shed light on principles that are found in God’s Word.
3. How about you?
Can people understand you?
Or do you have your own version of “Christianeze”?
If we are to follow the example of Jesus, we will work toward being understood by those that listen to us.
II. The second characteristic that Jesus demonstrated to engage his listeners is He was DRAMATIC (Matthew 13:34).
Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
You know…
1. There is nothing like a good story to catch attention.
Jesus knew this.
It is why He used them so frequently.
They were excellent teaching tools.
ILL A modern prodigal son (Yancey: Amazing Grace, p. 49-51—modified)
A young girl grows up on an apple orchard in western New York about 45 minutes from Buffalo. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.
She has visited New York City only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group when they were doing a tour. Because the news always reported in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown New York City, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not New York City.
Her second day in New York City she meets a man who drives the biggest car she has ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and arranges a place for to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she has ever felt before. She decides that she was right all along. Her parents were keeping her from all the fun.
The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car - she calls him "Boss" - teaches her a few things that men like. Since she’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.
She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline "Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in New York City.
After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can’t mess around, he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word - a teenage girl at night in downtown New York City can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in western New York City; when hundreds of apple trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of trees in chase of a tennis ball.
God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."
It takes about twenty hours for a bus to make all the stops between New York City and Buffalo; and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault; it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.
The bus has been driving with lights on since Syracuse. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Buffalo. Oh, God is about all she can pray.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they’re there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus termi-nal in Buffalo, New York, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and -great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!"
Out of the crowd of well wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I’m sorry. I know..."
He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home."
Perhaps the testimony of that runaway is similar to your own.
You were lost.
But you discovered that you had a heavenly Father who welcomed you when it seemed no one else would.
And the touch of that kind of grace and mercy has changed you for a lifetime.
You see…
2. Another dramatic story that captures attention is your testimony.
We all hold this same thing in common.
We are all runaways.
And we have all been welcomed back by our Father, who has opened His arms and His home for our return.
He has longed for our return and His anger caused by the pain of rejection is long gone.
It is a story that you can tell.
It is a story that you have to tell.
3. How about you?
Are you willing to tell your story?
III. The third characteristic that Jesus demonstrated to engage his listeners is He was DEFINITIVE (Matthew 7:28-29).
(28) When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, (29) because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
1. We live in an atmosphere where falsehood prevails.
This is not something that is an American issue alone.
It is a human nature issue.
Lies pervade the world’s cultures.
Why is this true?
ILL 50 Day (Lucy)
Lucy from Peanuts gives us a clue. On the first day of the new school year, students in her class were told to write an essay about returning to school. Lucy wrote: “Vacations are nice, but it’s good to get back to school. There is nothing more satisfying or challenging than education, and I look forward to a year of expanding knowledge.” After the teacher expressed her delight over the paper, Lucy leaned over and whispered to Charlie Brown, “After a while, you learn what sells.”
While it seems we live in a world of lies, what our hearts crave is the truth.
Down deep, we need to know what is real.
When Jesus was on earth, this is what He provided.
For Jesus was the embodiment of truth.
Whenever He spoke, He stated the truth.
When the teachers of Jesus’ time spoke, they derived their authority from Jewish tradition and from the fact that they reiterated the teachings of the fathers.
They did not speak on their own.
Rather, they put out all the different views and then argued about them.
2. In contrast, Jesus spoke the truth with authority.
When Jesus spoke, the text tells us that the people were amazed, and even dumbfounded.
People began to speak to one another, asking questions, wanting to know if hey heard correctly, and expressing wonder.
Jesus was so different from the other scribes that they were literally “beside themselves.”
The authority of the scribes was substantially different from that of Jesus.
Theirs was the authority of prestigious training at a rabbinical school approved by the Sanhedrin.
Their authority came with the position that they held.
They could not take Jesus so seriously.
He was the mere “son of a carpenter.”
But the authority of Jesus’ teaching was self-authenticating.
When He spoke, people had to listen.
APPLICATION:
Jesus spoke the truth of God in everyday language.
This is certainly a challenge for us, which brings us to our fifth action point of the adventure:
1. SCREEN YOUR MESSAGE: Tie popular culture to spiritual truth.
When it comes to the message that we have, we recognize that on one side is the Eternal Word in its biblical and historical context.
On the other side is our present situation, within a temporary culture, needing a practical application of truth.
And this is our responsibility.
We have to put the two together.
We have to adapt our methodology, holding both to the absolute truth of God’s message and its need to be applied to today’s culture.
Our adventure material encourages us to see the value of art in this area.
ILL 50 Day: Harvey [also in Jesus book]
According to Paul Harvey, there is power of art over argument. He puts it this way…
“Nobody could have persuaded a generation to produce a baby boom—yet Shirley Temple movies made every couple want to have one. Military enlistments were lagging for our Air Force until, almost overnight, a movie called Top Gun had recruits standing in line. The power of art over argument. The elevation of the downtrodden never relies on logic. It is instead facilitated by the persistent persuasion of gifted penman. British sweatshops for children existed only until Dickens wrote about them. American slaves were slaves only until Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about them. Oh, yes, Lincoln himself credited her with having started the Civil War. The power of art over argument. Animal rights activists bemoan the difficulty of making most people relate to animals. Yet, once upon a time, a cartoonist named Walt Disney created an animal character called Bambi, and in one year, deer hunting nose-dived from a $5.7 million business to a $1 million business. The power of art over argument. Statues mandating more humane treatment for draft horses were initiated by a book: Black Beauty. You want to convince the unconvinced? Don’t call to arms—call to art!
There are things that influence our culture, and thus our neighbors, coworkers and friends.
Perhaps films do it more than any other medium during these days for they speak the language of our culture.
As Christians, though, we often shy from the film industry because we do not want to be supportive of amoral or immoral material.
We are critical of the content and the language
So while we complain about what bothers us, we miss the opportunity to speak to the hearts involved in our culture.
We miss the opportunity to bridge the gap between the eternal and the present culture.
So when someone speaks of the Titanic, we can ask, “What do you think it is like to be confronted with death?”
When someone comments on seeing Liar, Liar on television the other night, we can discuss thoughtfully the issues of human nature and truth telling.
When our children watch the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, if we dare we can discuss why formalized religion seems to persecute those that are different.
When we see The Fugitive, we can discuss what lengths we might go if we were unjustly accused.
If we are willing, we can guide the modern story toward eternal truth.
We can be a bridge between what they are familiar with to what they are not.
A little while ago, we sang…
2. “This is my story, this is my song”
You have a story to tell.
It is a story that needs to be told in everyday language.
2.1 Be conversational.
We are not to lecture.
Rather, we are to be a participant in conversation.
It is not our job to dominate, but to converse.
In the midst of this conversation, we should…
2.2 Be warm and personal.
Be yourself.
And don’t be afraid to be humorous.
Especially be able to laugh at yourself.
In the process…
2.3 Avoid religious jargon.
We can come up with the most ostentatious presentations.
We can use five-dollar words.
But they are ineffective and all they convey is about how smart we are.
The problem, though, is this is not about us.
It is about them.
So…
2.4 Talk with people, not at them.
It is easy to become so content-oriented rather than people-oriented.
We tend to go for formulas which we indiscriminately apply to everyone.
“Here are the steps to peace with God.”
“There are four spiritual laws.”
“Has anyone taken you down the Romans road?”
It is not that any of these things are bad.
In fact, they can be very helpful.
But if we are more interested in communicating what is in them and not with the people, we get it all backwards.
So do it right, we must…
2.5 Be a good listener.
We need to be sensitive.
We have to know the needs and interests of those that we are speaking with.
Basically, it comes down to this:
2.6 Simplify: Speak the truth of God in everyday language.
Remember this…
Jesus’ passion was people.
He lived with people.
He loved people.
He cried with people.
He challenged people.
He translated the heartbeat of a loving God into a language that people could understand.
So the questions we need to ask ourselves is…
Do we sound like the annoying barking of neighborhood dogs at night?
Or do we sound like someone who has cared enough to know the culture so that we could communicate the truth of God in order for it to be understood?
BENEDICTION:
Be clear…speak in such a way that can be understood; use language that is not full of theological trappings; use language that speaks to the heart of people’s concern and interests;
Tell the story…tell the story of how God loves people; tell your story of how God pursued you; it is a story worth hearing;
Speak the truth…be in awe of the fact that God has revealed the truth of the universe to you and now expects you to communicate it to others; don’t hold back; be bold and be confident.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
