Let’s look at it. Luke 20, starting in verse 1, “One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, “Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.””
The first and easiest game to play with God when He presses you to obey Him is the authority game. Here’s how the authority game has played out for thousands of years. God will press through the Holy Spirit, whatever means He wishes to use, He will say, “This is sin. This is what I want of you. This is what obedience to My commands looks like for you,” and if that hits us in a place where we have no intention of listening to that, submitting to that or being obedient to that, the most common game is the authority game.Now most of us, because we’re Bible Belt men and women, don’t have the courage or the eternal security to go, “Forget You altogether, Jesus,” and run.
We don’t become atheists and agnostics. Because we’ve been taught since we were born that there’s hell and we really don’t want to go there. So we can’t just go, “Forget it. I’m out.” So this authority game plays out a little different among Evangelicals. We don’t want to tell Jesus He has no authority; we just want to redefine what His authority is. So I’ll tell you the top three of what I hear all the time. When confronted by the Holy Spirit on a direction, people who have no intention of submitting to that Lordship, people with no intention of being obedient to God will do one of three things.
The first one is the most common. “Jesus wants me to be happy. He wouldn’t ask that of me.”
That’s by far the most common response to obedience. “Jesus wants me to be happy. He would not ask me to do that. He would not ask me to go there. He would not ask me to walk away from that. He would not ask me to give that away. Jesus wants me to be happy.” Now this is flawed on an unreal amount of levels. First of all, you’re going to have a hard time finding that text. Okay, so maybe we’ve got a problem. Maybe your problem isn’t Jesus; maybe your problem is the Scriptures. You love Jesus; it’s just the Scriptures you don’t believe.
Now we’ve got a bigger fundamental problem there. Because now who is Jesus? “Well, He’s whoever I say He is.” So you’re more comfortable with your invented Jesus than the historic one? “Yes I am.” Why? “Because my Jesus lets me do what I want.” Ah ha, now we’re into the depths of the soul. Jesus is far more interested in your joy and in your holiness than in your happiness. I really believe that the bulk of Evangelicals think that Jesus is Santa Claus and we’ve been nice and He’s kept track of that, and so there will never be any coal for us.
We believe that what we get is candy and fire trucks every day and that there is no difficulty in following Him. Or there’s this hyper-spiritualized following of Jesus where every decision to submit to Him is this joy-laden explosion of spunk. “Yea! I’m selling all I have and moving to India!” I’ve met friends who have done just that, and it was with great trepidation and great fear that they laid their lives at the feet of Christ and said, “Give me the strength.”
When you say, “Jesus wouldn’t ask me to do that because He wants me to be happy,” is you fundamentally shift His authority. “You don’t have authority over me. I’m going to recreate You so that you only require of me what is easy or natural for me to do for You.”
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