A Wanted Man Read online

  Just look at the visual language here in Ephesians 6:12: struggle…flesh…blood…powers…forces…darkness.

  Those are war metaphors, descriptors of steel and grit and straight-up hand-to-hand combat. And Jesus understood those terms when He spoke of the “thief” in John 10:10.

  In fact, Jesus didn’t just confront the war at hand. He confronted the one behind the war. He knew the nature and the heartbeat of the enemy.

  Jesus spoke with authority on the nature of the devil, and while I have no desire to go into a theology of the demonic, you need to know a few basic truths—arx axiom, a few first principles—that set the stage for the upcoming conversations you and I will be having about life as a wanted man.

  You must first know why Jesus chose these metaphors of sheep, a shepherd, and a thief as found in John 10.

  Jesus was illustrating life in the real world. He lived in the real world, and His stories, illustrations, and knowledge of life all made sense to the scores of people who encountered Him daily in that world in that time.

  Think about it: Has it ever struck you that before Jesus went out on His journey as the Messiah, He first was part owner in a small business? Jesus had a profit-and-loss statement. He knew market rates and cost of goods sold. He knew what it meant to have customers with unrealistic expectations.

  If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

  —SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR

  When a pretty girl walked past the carpenter shop, do you think Jesus turned His head in admiration? I do.

  Was He a man? Yes, a man without sin, but a man nonetheless. And that’s the part about Jesus that some evangelicals have never really been able to work through mentally. Myself included. It is tough to see Jesus as a man—a man like me. A man who needs deodorant. A man who gets blisters on his hands from working or a headache from pollen. How did He manage life in the same real world as I do—and never sin?

  It’s baffling—yet true.

  So when Jesus used this metaphor of a thief, a shepherd, and sheep, it was the perfect illustration for how life worked back then. It would have been no different than you starting out a story by saying, “So I grabbed my iPhone and asked Siri…” Everyone would know the context of your example.

  In John 9:40–41, just before Jesus went into the “thief” illustration where He warned us that we are all wanted men, He gave up some information about the nature of the enemy. He did it in such a way, however, that those opposed to Him in the crowd—the religious Pharisees—could listen in as He actually talked about them to the people He was warning about this “thief” and his agents.

  Just as the thief (Satan) and his agents (Pharisees) formed a militant group coming after the hearts and minds of everyday people in Jesus’ time, so they and the messaging they use are still around today.

  They just look different than they did back then.

  THE SIN JESUS DESPISED

  If there was one mind-set, one worldview, that Jesus simply all-out despised, it was the self-righteous arrogance of the religious elitists called Pharisees.

  Jesus seemingly never missed an opportunity to pick a fight with these guys. He’d call out their hypocrisy in public. He never dodged an opportunity to expose their toxic approach to life, for their toxicity flowed out to thousands of people around them. They held hostage the liberating truths about the nature of His Father, and that angered Jesus.

  Pharisees were the high-brass religious consultants of their day, devoted to leading people, but their destination for those people was nothing short of spiritual oppression.

  Pharisees turned the spiritual journey into a difficult uphill climb. Rocky. Bitter. Impossible.

  They made God out to be a cosmic accountant keeping up with debts owed and credits made. God was mysterious and hard to please, and evidently, by their standards, obsessed with depressingly trivial things like how many steps a person could take on a Sabbath day before it was considered work.

  These religious agents, the Pharisees, made up the rules. And they enforced them, too. Pretty great position to be in, if you ask me, in terms of guiding culture.

  To use Jesus’ words, they would “tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger” (Matthew 23:4).

  In Jesus’ day, Pharisees were half-truth agents, expounding false religious teaching laced with some level of truth that seemed just familiar enough to the human heart to weigh it down.

  While it may not make sense to you in a smartphone world, these religious authorities carried a monumental amount of street credibility.

  I get the sense from reading the New Testament that these men were despised on some levels while revered on others. They were held in high esteem because it appeared as if they lived a life righteously set apart, but they were self-righteously arrogant. They were givers of money, but they snobbishly made sure others knew they gave it.

  Jesus knew that these religious leaders didn’t really care about people coming to know God and developing a relationship with Him. In other words, they weren’t shepherds who cared about their “flocks.”

  So He capitalized on some easy branding while telling a story in a mixed crowd and drew a mental picture everyone could relate to: shepherds. These were rural people listening in, so He used that to His advantage.

  You’d likely never talk about the use of a CASE tractor and all its farming implements to a group of NASDAQ brokers, right? Of course not. If you’re a master communicator, you stick with the culture.

  In Jesus’ day, shepherds were all around.

  People had to deal with both shepherds and sheep constantly. If you walked through a village marketplace, sheep would be somewhere nearby. You could hear them. See them. Smell them. Shepherds were in the marketplace, too, doing commerce often. I’m guessing you could smell them, too!

  If you’re a master communicator, you stick with the culture.

  One thing the locals knew about shepherds was this: they remained unquestionably committed to their sheep. They walked with them. Talked to them. Loved them. Protected them.

  There was something savagely tender about a shepherd. He eased gently through life, walking the hillsides, but without remorse he’d kill a predator intending to mess with the flock.

  “I Am the rule. So there are no more rules other than Me. Righteousness is found in a relationship with Me.”

  Pharisees didn’t protect anybody.

  Jesus saw Pharisees the way shepherds saw wolves or wild dogs. Like predators, Pharisees were there to do harm, and they lived smack in the middle of daily life.

  They kept the masses bound up in religious systems that kept them from a relationship with the God who made them.

  Don’t miss this….

  Pharisees thought finding God meant keeping the rules. “Keep the rules; keep God on your side” was their message. Remove the rules, and they literally didn’t know what to do.

  For a Pharisee, the rules were the relationship.

  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, along comes this man from Nazareth, and He basically says to them, “Okay, fellas, let’s make a new rule, and here it is: I Am the rule. So there are no more rules other than Me. Righteousness is found in a relationship with Me.”

  SOUTHERN CHRISTIANITY

  I live in the South. We are nice down here for the most part. We speak to people we don’t even know. No matter how educated Southerners may be, we say “y’all” and we all say “ain’t,” because those words just work.

  People outside the South make fun of us all the time, yet I ask you, where does everyone come to retire? Case. In. Point!

  One big problem with the South, at least when it comes to how we view Jesus, is that we’ve often mistaken discipleship for behavior modification—th
at is, be good, be nice, don’t cuss, don’t drink…. In other words, God favors good, clean living. So what has happened in the South over the last seventy-five years is that being a good, clean American citizen is basically the same thing as being a good Christian.

  And that’s a lie that comes straight from the pit of hell itself.

  Why? Because you simply don’t need Jesus to be good. Having Jesus in your life certainly helps you to be good, but being good is not anywhere the same as being godly.

  Pharisees were most certainly good citizens, but they were far from godly.

  So when the Nazarene came along with a new message about rule keeping, Pharisees could not relate.

  Obviously this was catastrophic to their society and religious culture. So catastrophic, actually, that I think most of today’s evangelicals don’t truly understand it in terms of how Jesus related to the Pharisees.

  When Jesus took the rules off the table, Pharisees didn’t know what to do. They now had to deal with the reality that their rule keeping was not the way to please God. Their guidelines for separating the sheep from the goats were now null and void.

  They couldn’t use their old measuring stick to sort out exactly who in society was a God follower and who wasn’t. So when this messianic Messenger came along and said, “No more measurement apart from Me,” their operational model immediately imploded.

  So they had to kill the Messenger.

  And that they did.

  For three days anyway.

  SMOKE SCREENS

  Jesus said to Pharisees on one occasion:

  “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

  JOHN 8:44

  Right there—did you see that?

  When talking to these Pharisees, the secret agents of Satan, Jesus gave insight about who they actually worked for—that is, He spoke of their employer.

  Jesus gave some painfully clear and equally fascinating insights about the devil’s nature. He knew the fallen angel “Lucifer,” His enemy, well.

  In John 8:44 Jesus used the words murderer and liar to describe him. He couldn’t have talked about Satan like that if he was someone Jesus had never met!

  The Pharisees were the oppressors, but they had a “money man.” They were the operatives, but their employer stayed in the back channels. And Jesus saw right through that.

  He called out their “father.”

  He was basically saying, “Look, I know you, and I know your daddy. You’re just like him. I see right through your elitism and into your dirty selves; you’re a bunch of soul thieves, just like your daddy.”

  Jesus made the point that these Pharisees were marketing agents for their daddy’s corporate culture.

  They had an agenda. As the voice of the enemy, they were shouting out all sorts of life principles to live by, and many people were listening.

  (You can’t miss that simple reality. People’s lives were full of competing voices.)

  Jesus, on the other hand, spoke of Himself as the “good shepherd” who lays down His life for His sheep (John 10:11). He could be trusted to lead humanity through rough terrain and eventually to heaven.

  WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

  You may be saying, “Okay, Jason, I get it. Pharisees were bad. Jesus was good. Why does this matter?”

  This illustration from John 10—about a thief and his thieves and a good shepherd—is a story within an ongoing story.

  Let me draw out a modern-day parallel about an employer and his employees. It’s a story about the heart of the employer, his corporate culture, and the type of products being sold to the masses.

  During Jesus’ time on earth, the Pharisees were the media of the message, the voices calling out to the masses. They shaped the culture that people were engaging in every day.

  Today, although the world doesn’t seem to place much value on “religious” teaching, spiritual truths are nevertheless critical to life. So the enemy, the employer, has changed the branding. He’s changed the sales pitch.

  The products have also changed somewhat, but the enemy’s motive has never changed. He’s still trying to destroy you.

  You are the target demographic. Everywhere you go, you are bombarded with messaging about you.

  What you deserve.

  What you should purchase.

  Why you deserve luxury.

  Why you should invest in this or why you should own that.

  How many voices are competing for your loyalty every day?

  That’s what it is about: loyalty.

  Your enemy Satan wants loyalty. He knows you’ll never outright pledge loyalty to him.

  Think about the last time you heard someone say, “Look, man, my allegiance is to Satan. He’s why I do what I do.” Only a few people who’ve ever walked the earth would say that outright.

  Your enemy will let you be loyal to yourself. He’ll let you demand your own way and do your own thing, because in the freedom to do your own thing, he knows that ultimately your loyalty will not be toward your heavenly Father.

  MESSAGING SHAPES CULTURE

  Have you ever thought about who is behind those voices and messages?

  Have you ever thought about the values you value?

  Have you ever thought about why you pledge loyalty to this philosophy or that one?

  Have you ever thought about why you choose not to tithe and what you actually do choose to use your money for?

  Have you ever thought about why you’re raising your kids without discipline—that is, why you won’t engage in biblical discipline but you’ll listen to secular psychologists?

  Have you ever thought about why you use a credit card for buying things you have no money to pay for, and what it says about how you view yourself?

  Have you ever thought about the values you value?

  Do you see where I’m going?

  Voices and messaging are all around, and if you think it’s just product development, content marketing, and corporations doing what they do, you are naive, because…

  Messaging shapes culture.

  Messaging shapes culture.

  WHAT I’M NOT SAYING

  I’m not saying that all of corporate America is evil.

  I’m not saying that the devil is behind every billboard. That’s not true at all.

  I’m also not implying, in any fashion, that today’s version of the Pharisees is the corporations, billboards, and marketing strategies that abound everywhere.

  The connection is that Pharisees were the shapers of culture in that day, and they had a messaging or branding system that shaped the way people thought.

  Besides looking different, nothing has changed much from that day to this: the thief is still the thief, and he still has messengers to carry his messages.

  His agenda is the same: getting you to buy into something that will eventually take first place in your heart.

  His agenda is the same: getting you to buy into something that will eventually take first place in your heart.

  “EVERY VIRUS NEEDS A SNEEZE”

  Not long ago I was listening to a Seth Godin podcast.

  If you are in any sort of business, you should know who Seth Godin is, because this guy is a freak of nature when it comes to talent. He’s recognized by Fortune 500 companies as one of the greatest marketing minds on planet Earth.

  I once heard financial guru Dave Ramsey say, “Seth Godin lives in the future.” Nothing could be truer. Seth Godin sees upcoming trends like nobody I’ve ever encountered.

  I’d like to be a proper academician here and give the correct reference for the following quote, but truthfully it would take me a week to locate where I heard him say it or write it, because I’ve read several of his books and listened to many podcasts that featured him as a guest interviewee. So I’m ju
st going to give credit here where credit is due.

  I once heard Godin, when speaking on the concept of idea creation, say, “Every virus needs a sneeze.”

  This word image changed me on many levels. I write books, produce videos, and create media for men with the goal of bringing them closer to the God who made the dirt under their boots.

  Men are visual—and Godin’s metaphor was perfect for me. He was right. You can have the best idea ever thought, but if you cannot find a way to sneeze that sucker to the rest of the world, it honestly doesn’t matter how good your idea is at all.

  When I began thinking about Pharisees and enemies and thieves and flocks and people and cultures and how all of these tie together with messaging, I thought of Godin’s analogy of viruses and sneezes.

  The Pharisees were sneezing the ideas their “father” was creating. And Satan is still sending out his deceptive messages today.

  Like every other grassroots movement that has ever existed, messaging is only as good as the quality of distribution. The bubonic plague that ravaged the Middle Ages would have been totally harmless unless it rode out to the masses on a vehicle, which in this case was a bite from the rat flea.

  In the John 10 era, Pharisees served as the agents Satan used to spread lies and deception. They were the vehicles that carried the message.

  Today the lies are the same, but the messengers are different.

  VOICES

  That’s what we are up against today. Messages. Voices. Noise from every corner that competes.

  You must be aware of the culture you live in daily. You must realize that you are living in a society where everything at every turn is competing for your loyalty and attention.

  Let me get ahead of something on this issue before you brush it off….

  There’s a boatload of men out there who carry the mentality, I don’t care about all of that. Those television ads, those radio spots, those banners that pop up on websites—I just ignore all that stuff because it doesn’t affect me.