Brats

I heard a brilliant sermon by Dr Claasen yesterday. Titled “Brats”, it was an insightful, thought-provoking sermon. Intrigued? You should be.

Tantrum

By way of introduction, there’s something I heard on the radio a few minutes ago that will help bring this concept home. There’s a clever concept in America where expectant parents can find out the gender of their child in a novel way. Instead of finding out at the ultrasound, you can do so by cake.

You get the cake, cut into it and the colour inside tells you if you’re expecting a boy or girl. Here’s a boy’s reaction¹ to discovering he’s getting another little sister….

…21st material I believe. Notice how the sisters promptly clear out. No one likes being around tantrums.

Here’s the reality, kids are adults unfiltered. Many of us haven’t really progressed beyond this stage² especially in our relationship with God.

Brats

Back to the sermon³. The Jewish people were under the thumb of the Roman empire. Along comes this radical, charismatic, miracle-working teacher who draws the crowds. Naturally, the people begin to speculate if He is going to be another Judas Maccabeus, one who will lead them in throwing off the yoke of their oppressors.

Jesus disappointed them by not fulfilling that expectation. In fact, He did worse. He even declared He is God.
The authorities threw a tantrum.

They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, saying:

‘We played the flute for you,
And you did not dance;
We mourned to you,
And you did not weep.’

Jesus, Luke 7:32

Before we sit back and smugly wag our finger at history, let’s reflect – is it only history?
We demand of God the things we want. Our culture has roots in the cult of individuality with selfies and photoshopping our pictures being the fruits of this tree.

We also have an entertainment obsession⁴ where the average person will have spent nine years of their life watching TV by age 65. Combine this with internet use, we’re spending 28% of our waking hours being entertained with gaming, movies, face booking etc.

Entertainment used to be defined as a diversion. Today, you would have to say that it’s a way of life. And this colours the way we approach God. This mindset has bled over into our expectations of God.

Entertainment delivers instant gratification, so we expect God to give us instant gratification. We’re not getting what we want so we change the TV channel or switch the website. If we’re not getting what we want we go church surfing. God took His time in creation as well as in the molding and testing of Moses and Joseph before they were ready to lead. We however want the miraculous instantly, but God says you can and need to wait

Entertainment puts no demands on us. The fee is paid and satisfaction is expected with no further demands. We put money in the collection and expect satisfaction from our churches with no further demands. A church which only aims to entertain will only draw spectators, not transformed disciples who will change the world.
We want to be happy, we don’t want to feel bad about ourselves. So some churches aim to please with no talk of sin, hell or repentance.

A person who expects everything his way instantly is a brat.

God will not dance for us. He will take His time. He will make demands. He will call us to repentance. And in the end, aren’t you glad He does? After all, no one likes a brat.

 

Special Thanks for Dr Claasen for allowing me to summarise and publish the ideas of this brilliant sermon.

¹this video was posted online around the same time as when the sermon was preached. How’s that for timing?

²look no further than gendercide, the selective abortion of baby girls in many countries across the world. If you don’t sort your culture out at the child stage, it will come home to roost when they are adults.

³In the abscence of a recording, you’ll have to content yourself my limited recollection of it. If ever this gets put online, I’ll link it.

⁴The correlation with a thought expressed in the previous post “Hijacked” is timely.

Image from Calvin & Hobbes