Agendas
When he (Jesus) came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and demanded to know who gave him authority to teach and who gave him permission to do it. Matthew 21:23
This is a classic example of man's agenda coming into direct conflict with God's agenda. If you asked these men about it, they would have told you they WERE following God's agenda. How arrogant! How human! We have our own way of doing things and not even the Son of God can change us.
God has his own agenda of how things are to be done and we must learn to do things his way if we want to see a great move of God. I am talking about a move that is so great, even unsaved people will recognize it as God and be drawn to us, and we won't have to beg them because the Holy Spirit will draw them in. Sometimes our Church services get out of control with emotion and we think God really moved because we cried or shouted. I don't know about you but I can cry when I think about how good God is to me or when I watch a sad movie on tv. My emotions are not a good gauge of whether the Spirit of God is moving. It takes knowing in your "Knower," deep in your heart of hearts that it is God. To know this, you must know the Holy Spirit of God by experience and remember the Word of God you have received in the secret places of the Most High. An easier way to say this is you spend a lot of private time with God.
Jesus' life and death are excellent examples of this. Jesus knew what was God and what wasn't God because he separated himself from the ministry to spend time with God. He knew God well enough to judge quickly if the spirit was from God or not. When leaders don't spend enough time with God, they will be deceived into thinking God only moves certain ways. The Pharisee leaders believed they were right, wanted to prove they were right, refused to admit they might be wrong and because of pride crucified the Son of God.
People have been killed, human rights denied and acceptance withheld by those who have a different agenda than God. God is love. Love is God's agenda and love does no harm. Love is so big it can not be clearly defined by the human mind. We live on the outskirts of knowledge, never fully comprehending the full scope of God's agenda, twisting it to fit our finite conceptions and fall very short of the glory God intended us to experience.
Not many people walk in the freedom of God's agenda. They get hold of parts and think they have it all. "God loves this and God hates that" is how they like to define God's agenda for mankind but they forget they know in part. God can't be put in a box. The Pharisees tried defining God by law, controlling themselves and others by rules and regulations that no one could follow. We all like things well defined but faith is not following rules and regulations. It is simply following God wherever he leads. The law is rigid. Faith is flexible and without faith it is impossible to please God.
The chief priests and elders were ruled by an agenda of ritual and law. Jesus was ruled by faith. He followed God's agenda. He didn't need or seek out the approval of his peers. He sought to please God in everything he said and everything he did. He walked to the beat of a different drum, following a beat no one else could hear. The leadership thought he was a fake prophet, a charlatan, and yet he raised the dead, healed the sick and performed miracles. They couldn't see God working because their eyes were blinded by their tradition. They made the word of God of no effect in their lives. Jesus was the word in action. He lived the word openly for all to see. He followed God and they followed a set of rules and regulations.
There is a false sense of security in man's agenda. We don't like to make mistakes. We don't like to do things different ways. We call it "order." It makes us feel that we are pleasing God to follow a set regimen but actually this is man trying to control how others worship God. When God's agenda of love is followed, we will honor each other by respecting what God is doing in another's life. This is more often done in what we call Sunday School than it is in church services. We find freedom to share what God is speaking into our hearts without anyone demanding proof of our authority to speak. Many church services are too rigid to allow room for a move of the Holy Spirit. There is no room for people to minister to God. Yes, sometimes you can do something: sing or read a poem or scripture but only if it is approved by the leadership early enough to get it into the bulletin. They like to think this is the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals allow spontaneous words from God in services but only if the service is so emotionally charged, that it is kind of squeezed in. What has happened to waiting on the Lord? We just don't want to take the time.
Jesus was questioned in the temple because he stepped out of the normal. He was teaching but had never been to seminary. He was filling a pastor's position in the synagogue but he wasn't ordained. His papers weren't in order. He didn't have the seal of approval from the elders. His timing was off. He was out of order.
Did Jesus care? Of course not, after all he is God. His desire was that all men accept him as the Messiah. However, he wasn't willing to seek their favor through man's agenda. Jesus sought after God's acceptance. You cannot seek the approval of people and God at the same time.
So what are we to do? We must seek after God's agenda and be flexible. We will sometimes make mistakes because we are human but I would rather make a mistake stepping out for God than quench the Spirit of God. Sometimes new truth is revealed to us and we take it and run it into the ground, elaborating on it until it fits our own personal agenda. However, if we are flexible, God will keep pulling us back to where we need to be to please him.
John and James were following Jesus when they wanted to call down fire on a city, destroying it in his name. Peter started out with God's agenda but was rebuked by Paul for being two-faced. These people became great leaders because they stayed flexible. They could be corrected.
The chief priests and elders were not flexible. Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, the redeemer of the world corrected them and what did they do? They killed him.