How Lust for Power makes us Deaf to The Truth ...

Have you ever wanted something so bad you could taste it (presuming it wasn’t food of course)?  Perhaps back when you were a child just prior to Christmas, you had your heart set on something you just “had” to have or you would die.  Or maybe it was something in your career; perhaps a new job, or a promotion that comes with a substantial pay raise.  You “need” something like this, as it will benefit you, your family, even the church as offerings will likely go up, now that you could “afford” them.  Or maybe you have an active imagination, and you are the type of person who dreams of finding a genie in a bottle who would grant you three wishes of your heart.  Don’t laugh.  How many of us treat God like that mythical genie, asking Him for something we still just “have” to have, something we desperately “need”, bargaining with Him that if He gives it to us, we will take some action we should have been doing all along, but now, for real, we will do it faithfully.  If only our God ([ahem] genie), gives us the thing our hearts desire the most.

It begs the question; what do you want?  Are you sure what you want is the right thing to want?  And in a perfect world for you, could you get what you want, if you only just a little more power over someone else?  Power is something the President has.  He uses it as he sees fit.  Ideally for what is best for our country.  The President is responsible for protecting the country, and he must from time to time, exercise power over others, particularly those bent on hurting you and I.  Do you suppose then, a President wishes for more power, or less of it?  With more power, would come more control, or at least the illusion of control.  With enough power, others would be afraid to take actions against you, lest you use your power in a response to what they did.  But if behavior is only moderated by fear, it cannot represent real change, or a real difference in motives.  Even when it comes to how we respond to God.  If we only fear His power, we do not really change, we just look to avoid getting caught, or rather, getting punished.

It is Satan who looks to rule his empire by power over others, and fear of reprisal.  What Satan wanted was to be like the Most High.  It was God’s power Satan craved, not His love.  Power is a strong aphrodisiac.  It is intoxicating.  It is corrupting for those who would crave it; or use what they believe they have of it.  And most of all, it can blind you to the truth, particularly to The Truth.  Lest you think otherwise, Matthew records for us a case of blinding truth, followed by a complete deafness to the truth no one wanted to hear.  It picks up in chapter twenty of his gospel to the Hebrews.  Keep in mind the common belief about the Messiah was that He was to overthrow Roman oppression and setup a kingdom that would never end.  This was a doctrine both the Pharisees and the Disciples of Christ shared.  It was so common, it was a “known” truth, something that could not be wrong, or false.  If you spoke against this basic doctrine, you were the heretic, not what everyone else believed.

But Jesus knew a truth we did not.  The kingdom He would begin, begins in the heart.  And it will have no end, as the heart begins to transform here, and continues its journey past perfection in Heaven.  The overthrow of the Roman Oppression would end, as when all evil ends, and how it ends.  Evil ends only when we choose to submit to Jesus and allow Him to transform us, putting an end to the evil within.  So Jesus had a perspective on the common belief of His day, that would never meet the expectations of either His followers, or the Sanhedrin that rules the nation.  It turns out, it is not the exercise of Jesus’ power that ends evil, it is the outpouring of His transformative love that ends it.  Love is the kind of power our God praises.  Love that opens eyes and ears to hear and see The Truth, and learn that what we thought we “knew”, was not so common after all.  Scripture through the lens of Jesus, instead of the certainty of our own hearts and minds about our particular interpretation, is a truth we have been deaf to, for quite some time.

Case in point Matthew picks up in verse 17 saying … “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, [verse 18] Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, [verse 19] And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.”  You and I know that the plain words of Jesus, would come to pass exactly as He said they would.  We have the benefit of hindsight.  At this point in time, the disciples did not.  They were still looking forward to an earthly kingdom with Jesus as King of Kings.  But a kingdom of power that begins in the here and now.  Power that exerts control over others.  Power they believed they would share by reason of their service and closeness to Jesus.  This is what every other kingdom in history had looked like before, why not the one the Messiah was destined to setup?  Yet what Jesus just said, in plain words, without metaphor, or symbolism, just the facts – was that what they expected was not going to come to pass.  Instead something entirely different would take place.  Something that would crush their earthly hopes, and establish their eternal ones forever and ever.  But they refused to hear.  They chose to be deaf to The Truth, because power looked more enticing.

Matthew continues the story in verse 20 saying … “Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. [verse 21] And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.”  James who would one day become the head of the new church in Jerusalem; and John the beloved, who would one day become the most significant prophet of any age – were looking for a different kind of power from Jesus at this moment.  They had their mom make a request of Jesus, to place one son on the right, and one on the left, the two most powerful positions in any earthly kingdom as they were the two closest to the king.  One would be considered the second most powerful person in the new kingdom.  The other would be considered the third most powerful.  Ages ago, Lucifer saw himself as equal to Christ by sitting on the other side of the Father God.  When He realized Jesus was actually second, and he would never have “that” kind of relationship with the Father, he became jealous, and over time enraged.  Why not him?  He served God since the day of his creation.  But this is what he failed to see, Lucifer despite his age, was in fact a created being.  Jesus was not – He was God – infinite and without end.  And in all likelihood, the creator of Lucifer and all the other angels.  But Lucifer hated this idea, to know that his power was not as great as Jesus, was more than he would ever want to admit.  A lust for power made him blind and deaf to the truth.  And nothing has changed.

Jesus had just told his disciples what was to come to pass.  They ignored it.  They made themselves blind to it, deaf to His words, and chose to pursue a path to power, based on a doctrine they held, that the church affirmed, that was completely wrong.  What we “know” is true, through the lens of Jesus, may not be true at all.  Scriptures were correct.  Isaiah was correct.  It was the interpretation of Isaiah, by the church of His day, that was in error.  This was not a problem in the Word, as there is no problem with the Word today.  The problem is not in Scripture.  It is in our arrogance of what we “know”, of how we interpret the Word, that so often is absent the lens of Jesus, and therefore in error now, as it was in error then.  And just like the first disciples of Christ, we pursue positions of power, even if they are in the church.  We reason that positions of great responsibility come with “power” over the church itself.  We have decision making authority having been put “in charge” of something.  Like James and John, we seek to put ourselves over our brethren, based on our proximity to Jesus.  But Jesus has other ideas about power, service, and authority.

Jesus responds to mom’s request picking back up in verse 22 saying … “But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able.”  The cup Jesus refers to is not a royal goblet.  It is not a golden chalice filled with the best grape juice (wine) that could be pressed by delicate hands.  Instead it is a cup of woe, of pain, and eventually of death for a mission of redemption.  This would be forever the cause of Christ, to see the world redeemed, and evil ended because we ask Him to end it, in us.  The baptism Jesus refers to is not a simple immersion in the river Jordan as how He once began His own ministry.  It is a baptism in blood, His own.  His entire body would be drenched in His own blood.  Bathed in it from relentless torture, and sadistic cruelty.  The world has no tolerance for the Love of Jesus.  The world run by Satan hates His love.  For His love can redeem, cleanse, and remove evil from the hearts of men.  The disciples having no idea what they are agreeing to, seeing only this question as a stepping stone to the power they seek, agree to it blindly.

Jesus continues in verse 23 saying … “And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.”  So Jesus tells them, they are to follow His path, though they have no understanding what that means at the moment.  In reality it is good news.  They are to join His cause, and no matter what it may cost them, or do to their bodies, or end their lives – it is worth it.  But the prize they seek, is not for Jesus to hand out.  It is for His Father to decide who is to sit closest to Jesus in the kingdom to come.  In this, as in ALL things, Jesus submits His will to that of His Father.  Jesus has learned to trust His Father in ALL things.  Even if this is a disappointment to mom and her two sons, it is a truth they must contend with.  And deafness persists, as even still they harbor hope the Father will still pick the two of them.

Now things get tense.  When a co-worker stabs you in the back, you are likely not to take too kindly to it.  The remaining disciples were not too happy either.  Matthew continues in verse 24 saying … “And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. [verse 25] But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. [verse 26] But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; [verse 27] And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: [verse 28] Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  The other ten want power too.  Having two brothers try to propel themselves to the front of the line and take power that might otherwise belong to one of them, makes them all mad.  Notice, it was not just Judas who was mad.  Nor was it Judas scheming here to be number one in the new regime.  Scripture never says Judas tries this.  This was James and John scheming.  And ALL the other ten mad about it – Peter as much as Judas.

Then Jesus begins to explain that great positions in His kingdom begin with great service.  The most important position, is a position that is able to “serve” all the others.  Jesus uses His own life, as a key example of this fact.  Nothing in His church will be built on traditional ideas of power, or authority, but on service and dependence upon Him.  That lesson lays in the same plain words Jesus has a habit of using.  And still our modern day lust for power, even in matters of religion and church authority, keeps us deaf to The Truth.  While none of us are the President of the United States, many would be content to be the President of our denomination, or conference, or group of churches, or even our local church.  Sure we may not refer to that role with the term President, instead we call it pastor, or bishop, or priest, or elder.  But at the core of our titles is an assumption of power, not power based in service to all, but power based on the prowess of our spiritual growth.  And it keeps us deaf to His truth, to The Truth.

We lust for power and shun humility and the service that might accompany it.  We find ourselves following the same path as James and John before they really understood the mission of Jesus.  But we still have the benefit of hindsight.  We already know the end of this story, the reasons for the story.  And yet still we seek the aphrodisiac of power, instead of the simple humble service we might perform upon our neighbor, our family, our co-workers, or more profoundly upon the one who would call themselves our enemy.  It begs the question; what do you want?  Do you trust what you want?  Jesus didn’t.  Jesus deferred to the will of His Father in ALL things.  The total absence of self, and the absolute ability to serve everyone else, even if it cost Him His life; in fact, knowing it would.  Let us pray for the transformation of our character’s, of who we are, of what we want, of how we think and what we believe, until we are in full harmony with our God, His laws burned into the fabric of who we are, and His love echoing through us without reservation, or limit, for the world who remain in such desperate need …