"The Truth About Trifling"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's Word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now let's get to the Word of God. You know what it means to trifle with somebody? It means to treat a person is unimportant to trivialize a person or to play games with them.

It's the opposite of being serious or being genuine in your relationship with a person. And the reason I bring all this up about trivializing and trifling is because we're going to meet a man today in our passage who did exactly the same thing with Jesus Christ. He trifled with him. And the man's name is Herod. And we want to see how Jesus reacted to him and then draw some lessons from that about our attitudes towards Jesus Christ.

So let's look. Luke chapter 9 verse 1. It says in Luke chapter 9 verse 1 that when Jesus called the 12 together, the 12 apostles, you know, Peter, James, John, these guys, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick. He told them, take nothing for your journey.

No staff, no bag, no bread, no money. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. And if people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town as a testimony, as a judgment against them. So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. The only way there was to get a message around was to send out messengers or emissaries, which is exactly what Jesus did. He sent the 12 apostles out preaching a message. And the message is that he, Jesus, was the Messiah of Israel. And then he gave them the power to perform miracles as a way of corroborating the message that they were preaching. Now, he told them two things when they went.

Number one, he said to them, I want you to travel light. And number two, he said, I want you to respect whatever freewill choice people make about me. If somebody wants to receive me and accept me, go into their house and stay there as long as they want you to stay or as long as you're in town. If somebody rejects me and they don't want anything to do with me, he said, shake the dust off your feet and don't waste your time. Go to another city. Leave them alone. They made a freewill decision. They didn't want me. Respect that.

Go someplace else. This idea of shaking the dust of your feet off was an old Jewish custom. Whenever a pious Jewish person would move through someplace that was gentile and then arrive back in Israel, he would stop at the border of Israel and he would shake the dust of his feet off.

There's a sign of separation from those people and as a sign of judgment on those people. And so the disciples went and did exactly what Jesus told him to. Verse seven. Now, Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was going on. And it's important that we stop for a second and understand who this Herod was and what he was ruler over to help us appreciate what the Bible is really telling us. In thirty seven B.C., that's a long time before Luke nine, Herod the Great was made king over all of Israel by the Romans.

And Herod the Great was a fairly good king. He carried on some enormous building projects. He refurbished the temple. He built Masada. If any of you know the saga of Masada down in the Judean wilderness. And he lived until four B.C.

when he died in four B.C., his will stated that his kingdom ought to be divided among his three living sons. And one of those sons is the Herod that's here in Luke nine. His name was Herod Antipas, who was one of Herod's sons and was ruling at this time.

Now, what do we know about Herod Antipas? Well, what we know is from the Bible is that he was the ruler over Galilee and Perea. Perea is modern day Jordan. So he ruled over Galilee in the north and Jordan to the east. His capital was way down in the south, right on the east side of the Dead Sea.

Now, if you know anything about the topography of Israel, you know it is a long way from Galilee way down to the east side of the Dead Sea. And what I want you to notice is that his palace was abuzz with information and news about Jesus, who was way up at the Sea of Galilee. My point is, friends, that Jesus and the reputation that he had for his ministry and what he was doing had spread all throughout the Middle East of this time. We sometimes look at Jewish people who lived in the day of Jesus and we go, oh, isn't that stupid? The reason so many of them never received Jesus and never responded to him is because they just didn't know about it.

Wrong. If Herod, the ruler of the other side of the Jordan River, whose capital was hundreds of miles away, had heard about Jesus, be sure everybody living in Judea had. Now, there were three opinions at Herod's court about who this miracle working Jesus was. Look at verse seven. It says Herod was perplexed because some people were saying that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead and other people were saying that Elijah had come back. And other people were saying it was one of the prophets of the Old Testament who'd come back to life.

So these were the three opinions. The first one is that John the Baptist had returned from the dead. You see, Herod Antipas had killed John the Baptist. Herod Antipas was living with his brother's wife. And John the Baptist said, that's wrong.

You shouldn't do that. That's adultery. And so they cut his head off. And so now there were some people around the court going, oh, you know, you should never have done that. Now, God has raised John the Baptist up and send him back to kind of haunt you and follow you.

How'd you like to have people around there saying that to you? Shouldn't have done that, Herod. He's going to get you. Another theory was that it was Elijah raised from the dead. Another theory is that it was one of the prophets of the Old Testament.

You say, but Lon, I got a question. How can rational people come up with these kind of cockamamie ideas? Well, they had to come up with some way of explaining Jesus's incredible miracles. They had to come up with some kind of extraordinary person.

And these were some of the best ideas they could come up with for who he could be and be extraordinary. He said, but Lon, Jesus already told him who he was. He already told him he was the Messiah. He already told him he was God in the flesh. Why didn't they just accept the explanation he gave them?

That's a very good question. Let's think about the answer for a second, because, you know, people today are doing the very same thing. People today are trying to find all kinds of alternate explanations for who Jesus is, just like these people were. Some people say, well, you know, he was a great prophet. Some people said, well, he was a noble teacher. Some people say, well, he was a misdirected rabbi. Some people have said he was a magician. But friends, when I look at all these explanations, the stuff that all these people come up with, as far as I'm concerned, it's far more difficult to accept all the crazy stuff they come up with than just to accept the answer Jesus gave.

So why are these people jumping through the hoops and doing all these crazy things to try to re-explain Jesus? Listen, because if you can explain Jesus away as anything other than God in the flesh, then you can ignore him. I mean, if he's not God in the flesh, ignore him. If he's not really God in the flesh, then he's no threat to your lifestyle. And he's no threat to your value system. You can just dismiss him and blow him off.

And that's it. But if he's really God in the flesh the way he claimed, then that's a whole different ball game, isn't it? And then you can't blow him off like that. Then what he said and what he taught about you, your lifestyle, your relationship to God, your value system, you can't blow it off if he's really God. And you see, I'm convinced that there are people in our world, and always have been, who are so committed to their lifestyle and so committed to the way they want to live and so committed to their value system that they will jump through any hoop to redefine Jesus Christ rather than letting Jesus Christ redefine them. Let me just stop for a second and ask you, what explanation for who Jesus Christ is are you living with? Make sure the explanation you're living with is based on fact and not based on some fantasy you've got just so you can avoid Jesus Christ's impact on your life. You understand what I'm saying?

C.S. Lewis said, and I quote, he said, A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic on the level of a man who says he's a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell himself. You and I must make a choice. Either Jesus was and is the Son of God or else he's a madman, but nothing in between will work.

Well, let's go on. Verse nine. But Herod said, I beheaded John. I know it's not John, but he says, I don't know who he is.

Who is this person I hear these things about? Look at the end of the verse. And he tried to see Jesus. He tried to see Jesus. He wanted to know who this Jesus guy was. Now, that's the end of our passage, but it's not the end of the story. I want you to turn back to Luke chapter twenty three, because you see, Herod did get to see Jesus before it was all over. Remember it ended and said here he wanted to see him?

Well, he gets to. Jesus is in front of Pontius Pilate now. On hearing this, Pilate asked if Jesus was a Galilean. And when he learned that Jesus was and he was under Herod's jurisdiction. Remember, Herod was the ruler of Perea and Galilee, remember? Then it says that he sent him to Herod because Herod was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover at that time.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was very happy because for a long time he'd been wanting to see him from what he had heard about him. He was hoping to see Jesus perform some miracle, but not he was not interested in seeing him because of anything spiritual. He didn't want to become a follower of Jesus Christ. He didn't want anything personal from Jesus Christ. That's not why he wanted to see him. He wanted to see him to see if he could work a miracle.

In these days, rulers would have court entertainment. And this is what Herod wanted from Jesus Christ. He wanted Jesus to become part of the royal entertainment for the day, kind of like a court jester.

You say, Lon, how do you know that? I know that because of what he did when Jesus wouldn't do a miracle for him. Look down at verse 9. He plied Jesus with many questions, but Jesus wouldn't even answer him. Jesus snubbed him.

Not only wouldn't do a miracle, he wouldn't even answer him. And then verse 11, Herod and his soldiers ridiculed Jesus and mocked him, dressed him in an elegant robe, and sent him back to Pilate. Folks, if Herod had really been interested in anything serious that Jesus was offering, this is not how he would have treated him.

He trivialized him and trifled with him. And as a result, would you notice how Jesus responded? Jesus wouldn't even talk to him.

Look what's really interesting here. The lowest man on the society totem pole, whenever they came to Jesus and in sincerity asked for help, they always got it, didn't they? He never turned anybody down who was sincere. But here this king comes, arrogant and trifling, who wanted a miracle just to tickle his curiosity. And Jesus snubbed him. Well, that's the end of our passage, but it leaves us with the most important question, which is? So what?

Very good. When I was studying this passage this week, I don't know if it hit you as strange, but it hit me very strange to think of Jesus standing there in front of Herod and just refusing to answer him. Does that strike you strange? I mean, I've kind of got this image of Jesus of being so warm with people and so affable with people and such a people guy that to think of him as just standing there and snubbing somebody like this just seems out of character. Does it strike any of you like that?

It really hit me that way. And yet I believe in his doing that. There's a great lesson here for us. And here's the lesson. God is looking for and God responds to people who are serious about him.

That's the lesson. Remember Zacchaeus? The Bible says Zacchaeus was trying to see Jesus. That's why I climbed up in the tree.

True. And what did Jesus do? He embraced him.

He went to his house. He stood up for him when people criticized Zacchaeus his way of life, because Zacchaeus was serious about Christ. And yet Herod, the Bible says the very same thing about Herod that he was trying to see Jesus. But Jesus ignored him and snubbed him. The difference was he wasn't serious about Christ. Let me repeat my point that God responds to people who are serious about him. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and you don't have one now. But at least you're serious about checking this thing out that we're talking about, checking out who Jesus is and checking out what it means to be personally his own child, personally to have him be your savior. May I say to you that no matter how long it takes you to do that, if your heart is really genuine and you're really sincere, God will be infinitely patient with you.

And he'll keep revealing more and more of himself to you little by little in the chunks that you can take it until you come to the place that you're convinced and you're ready to accept him as your personal Lord and savior. And you know, there were many of us here who moved at tortoise pace through this whole thing. I mean, we didn't go real fast through this. It took us a long time to make up our mind.

And God stuck with us, didn't he? If you're here and you're not serious, let me just say you're not going to get much from Jesus Christ. When I have people come into my office and see me and they go, Lon, I'm not really sure about this. I don't think I'm really ready to make this kind of commitment. I say, that's great. I say, look, if you're really serious about finding out whether Jesus is who he said he is, let me give you a piece of advice. Tell him you're serious. Tell him that if he really makes himself known to you, you will give your life to him and then leave yourself wide open and just tell him God do it. And I said, I promise you, God will make himself known to you.

I don't know how, but he will. If you're serious, God deals with people who are serious. And even once we become Christians, God still wants us to be serious. You know, and I know that out there in the world every week we face the struggle of not letting the world wear us down and distract us from having a serious commitment to Jesus Christ.

Everything out there is aimed at getting our mind on other things and our bodies on other things. So we just go on autopilot in our relationship with Christ and we're not really serious. As Christians, we need to be just as serious about our relationship with Christ as we were when we were seeking the Lord. Because, friend, God will make you the most special focus of his heart. If you're serious about him as a Christian, he'll do things in your life in the most marvelous way. He'll provide for you and protect you and extricate you out of the message you get yourself in all the time.

And you'll come out smelling like a rose in spite of how bad you messed up. If you're really serious about your relationship with him and if you're not as a Christian, you're just not going to see God do a whole lot in your life. It's just that simple.

God doesn't honor people, Christians, who are on autopilot. There's a verse in the Bible that means a lot to me. I have a calligraphy on my wall at home. A friend did it for me.

Here it is. It's in 2 Chronicles 16, 9. It says, the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth like radar, just back and forth. Looking for what? Well, it says, looking for people whose hearts are completely his. Why does he look for those people?

Listen. So that he might show himself mighty on their behalf. And you know the way I read this verse? The way I read it is that as a Christian, I don't need to be all that mighty in myself. But what I need to have is a mighty serious commitment to Jesus Christ and God will make up the difference.

I need to be putting my energy on having a mighty serious relationship with Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ will make up the difference. And God just doesn't do this for me. He'll do it for you if you're a Christian. God doesn't play favorites.

God will honor any Christian who's willing to get serious about their relationship with him. Any of you ever ask, why should I? That's a good question. There's nothing wrong with that question. Why should you make Jesus Christ the serious focus of your life?

Let me give you three reasons in closing. Number one, because he's a holy God, because we're dealing with a holy God. We're dealing with an awesome being. And friends, when we're dealing with something awesome, it demands a higher level of seriousness than when we're dealing with something trivial.

He deserves to be taken seriously. Number two reason is not only are we dealing with a holy God, but we're also going to have to give an account to this holy God. And we're going to have a performance review in front of this holy God. You know, Jesus Christ, when he left here, what did he say? He said, I'm coming back and you're going to have a performance review if you're a Christian. Second Corinthians chapter five says we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of what we've done in our bodies, whether it's good or it's bad. Now, does that mean if you'll go to heaven or not based on that? This is not a go to heaven or go to hell thing. This is a performance review for Christians. You're going to have one.

So am I if you're a Christian. And you know what? The older I get, the more that performance review scares me to death, scares me to death.

Paul called it the terror of the Lord. And I understand more the older I get what he's talking about, because I got all kinds of loose ends in my life. Look, I know what I'm made of and I'm scared of that performance review. And that's scary. And you know what?

In light of that, I would suggest you and I take pretty seriously the way we live down here. There's many a time I'm on the verge of doing something and God says to me, when you stand in front of me, you're going to give an account of this. Now, you better make sure you want to do this because it's coming back around here, pal. And I can't tell you how many things that I shouldn't have done that I didn't do for that very reason.

I didn't ever want to see him again coming around on me. This is a good reason to live for the Lord and be serious. Third and finally, not only should we be serious because we're dealing with God, who is an awesome being and because we're going to all have a performance review. But third and finally, as Christians, we need to understand that people out there are really lost for all eternity without Jesus Christ. And we're the messengers God has sent. We're like the guys in Luke nine that Jesus sent out to tell them the good news.

Jesus didn't pick television or radio or crown books to tell him the good news. He chose us, but he can't use us if we're not serious in our walk with him. We need to understand in this world, when it comes to people's souls, we're not playing for funsies. This is not for funsies. This is for keeps. This is the real thing. This is not practice. This is the game. And God can only use people to reach others who are serious about their walk with him. The stakes are high, friends, eternally so.

And that demands a level of intensity from us that reflects how serious the stakes are. He said, why does this mean we can never laugh as Christians? I hope not.

I laugh all the time. Does this mean we can't have fun in life? No. Does it mean we can't enjoy life and have nice things?

Absolutely not. But it means that running down through the middle of all of that, there is a seriousness about spiritual things and a seriousness about our relationship with Christ and a seriousness about why God left us here. Don't go on autopilot. God can't use you on autopilot.

He can only use you if you're serious about your walk with him. Voltaire. Any of you know the name Voltaire? Great French philosopher, consummate atheist, had nothing to do with Christianity and nothing good really to say about it. But the stories told one day about him and a friend walking through the streets of Paris, and they passed a Christian procession, a Christian parade, and Voltaire stopped.

It had a cross in the front and he took his hat off and he tipped his hat to the parade. His friend couldn't believe it. His friend was flabbergasted. His friend turned to him and said, Monsieur Voltaire, he said, have you become a Christian? Are you a believer? Voltaire said, absolutely not.

No way. He said, but when God and I pass, we salute each other, but we never speak. And when I read that story, I thought, isn't that a nice little picture of how people are when it comes to Jesus Christ? I mean, you're either in the parade marching behind the cross or you're standing on the sidelines with Voltaire, tipping your hat to the parade, but you're not a part of it.

And he wasn't unkind or disrespectful. You don't have to be unkind or disrespectful to be out of the parade. All you have to do is be on autopilot and not be serious in your walk with Jesus Christ. But I guarantee you, every single one of us here is either in the parade or we're standing with Voltaire tipping our hat as it goes by.

It's one or the other. There's no place else to be. So where are you? Remember, God responds to and God honors people who are serious in their relationship with him.

And I hope that's where you are. So God can respond to you and God can use you. Don't let the world wear you down.

Don't go on autopilot. You stay in that parade with Jesus Christ and you'll be glad you did. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the word of God to our hearts this morning. And I want to pray that you would take the word of God and that you would use it in a very special way to challenge and encourage people here today. If someone's here today and they're not a Christian, they've never committed their life in a real and personal way to you. I pray, Lord, that you would encourage them, that you love them and that you're going to stick by them and you're going to walk with them hand in hand. As long as they're serious about really knowing whether or not you're real and whether or not this thing called a personal relationship with Christ really exists. So, Lord Jesus, honor the hearts of those who are here today, even if they're not Christians yet.

Honor their heart if they're serious and they're genuine and reveal yourself to them, I pray. And for those of us here who are Christians, I pray that you would help us to fight off the attempts of the world every week to help us go into neutral in our walk with you. Help us to be in the parade, not on the sideline with Voltaire, but in the parade, marching behind the cross and making a difference in this world for you. Do that in our hearts and lives, Lord, not only so that we can face you and be happy when we meet you and hear, well done, good and faithful servant, but also, Lord, so that we can see people come to know Christ down here and have their lives radically changed for all eternity. Give us that sense of vision and commitment. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would renew the seriousness of every one of us as we walk out of here today in our walk with Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to So What with Dr. Lon Solomon. So What is an outreach of Lon Solomon Ministries. To listen to today's message or for more information, visit our website, lonsolomonministries.org. Thank you for your support. If you would like to contact us, please visit our website or call us at 866-788-7770. We hope you will join us next time when Lon seeks to answer one of life's most important questions, So What.