TD Jakes - Torn Between The Two
Sometimes we are loyal to a fault. Have you ever been loyal to a fault? All the loyal people say amen. Yeah, it takes something for you to break away even when you know you should break away because you are loyal to a fault. The Pharisees were loyal to a tradition and an ideology that was supposed to be expectant of a Messiah, and yet when the Messiah comes that which they expected they rejected because they were loyal to orthodoxy because when you are orthodox you are accepted. The word orthodox is to fit in with that which is acceptable. And any time you fall in love with fitting in it becomes an idol in your life where the opinions of other people become more powerful to you than the Word of God itself.
Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. He is the Word incarnate. He is the Word made physical. He is the Word made tangible. He is God revealed in human form. He is that which the Pharisees had studied all of their lives, they were noted for being scholars and theologians and studying the Word of God. And here they are standing in front of the Word they studied and won't accept the Word that they studied because he has come in the flesh. The oxymoron is staggering that the religious people actually gave Jesus more trouble than the sinners. It was the church people that called him winebibber. It was the church people that called him Beelzebub. It was the church people that challenged his theology. It was the church people that attacked him. It was the church people because he came with new theology that threatened their orthodoxy, and if they gave up their orthodoxy, who would they be?
Sometimes being somebody important to people becomes more important than being somebody obedient to God. The idolatry of it all is staggering and Jesus speaks to them in parables because plain out truth did not seem to get through to them. He called them a generation of hypocrites and vipers and they wouldn't accept that, so he started talking to them in parables in the hope that maybe they would see themselves in the text. That they would understand that they were old fabric. That they had lost the ability to stretch, to grow, to evolve, to move forward, to become, they were worn and withered and weary and stained and stubborn and absolute. And Christ had come to do a new thing, but one cannot take new fabric and sew it to old fabric without there being a tear.
And some of us are so afraid of a tear that we won't accept anything new. Because it might make the old uncomfortable. And whoever told you that God won't make you uncomfortable didn't know God, because the God I know is disruptive. The God I know will make you uncomfortable. The God I know will wake you up at 2 o'clock in the morning. The God I know will have you pacing the floor. The God I know will challenge your ideas. The God I know will call you out on the carpet. The God I know will confront you. The God I know will reveal you and make you see yourself. I am sick of prophets that can see everybody but themselves. If you got that kind of revelation, how come you don't see you? I see, I say, I see, I say, I see... see your yourself! See yourself! Get a revelation on yourself! Hallelujah to God.
And the older I get the quicker I am to tell you, "Don't run up on me, 'cause I'll embarrass you". 'Cause I'm not gonna play along with your games. I'm not gonna be slain if I'm not slain. I'm not gonna fall out if I'm not falling out. I'm not gonna give consent to somebody I don't agree with. I don't agree with it. And the Bible said that old fabric and new fabric did not agree. Sometimes you gotta be bold enough to disagree. The problem today, we have too many coward questions. You're cowards, you wanna get along with the culture. You wanna be accepted by your friends. You wanna be accepted by your peers, and you're not willing to stand out and be scandalized and ostracized. And yet you say, "Though he slay me, yet shall I trust him".
Do you really trust him? Do you trust him when people are talking about you? Do you trust him when people are scandalizing you? Do you trust him when you're dealing with uncertainty? Do you trust him when you have to be vulnerable? Do you trust him when you have to be transparent? Or are you a little bit new, and a little bit old, and the trauma you deal with every day is that you are torn between the two. The you you are at work, and the you you are at church. The you you are when you're with your boys, and the you you are when you come in the sanctuary. There ought not to be two different yous. Hallelujah, the reason you don't have any peace is because there's too many of you standing in the same pair of shoes. One of the definitions of the word peace is to be at one again, to be one within yourself. The Bible said, "If the eye is single, the whole body is full of light".
You can't get revelation until you get single. You talking about getting married and you ain't single yet. Oh mess with me, I dare you. I'll fight you in here. You're not single! How can you get married when you're not single? You're still fragmented. You're still three quarters. You're still 516*. You gotta find wholeness. It's what the Bible calls, singleness of heart. Singleness of heart brings peace. But it is not easy to have singleness of hearts. Because there's always something pulling at you, drawing you, a gravitational pull to go backwards rather than forwards. I often say it, but it makes it no less true. You don't have to struggle to fall. All you have to do is let go. But if you're gonna climb a tree, it's gonna take some effort and some energy.
When you get ready to fall, you don't need any energy, just let go. If you let go, you're gonna fall, but if you hold on, you're gonna go higher, but expect to sweat if you're gonna go up. You're not gonna go up just because you want up, you're gonna have to put some work in it, some sweat in it, and grind it. But all you have to do to fall is let go. And some of us are torn. "Should I hold on, or should I let go? Should I endure, or should I let go? Should I fight for it, or should I just give in"? And we dress it up with religious statements, "If the Lord wants me to have it. If the Lord meant for me to be there he would open up a", you blame God because you lazy. Oh, I don't mean to make you mad tonight. You blame God for your laziness. You don't understand that there are some things that you have to put some work in it.
Sometimes you have to stretch forth your rod. Sometimes you have to stretch forth a withered hand. Sometimes you have to give your two fish and five loaves of bread, and you're praying to feed the 5000, but you're holding on to your lunch, and you're torn between the two. How can you say the scriptures don't work when you don't work 'em? Look at somebody and tell them, "It'll work if you work it". Yeah, it'll work if you work it. Every promise of God, it'll work if you work it. I've given you the land to possess it, but you still got to work it. Hallelujah, I'll give you houses that you didn't build, but you still gotta move into it. It'll work if you work it! It don't work if you don't work it. 'Til your steadfast, unmovable, always abounding, consistent, consistent, consistent, consistency.
Do you hear what I'm saying to you? You have to understand this, that if your diligent, diligency will get you there. Oh yeah, you gotta be diligent. You gotta go after it, it'll get you there. But consistency will keep you there. And gratitude will give you more of what's there. So you have to be diligent to get there, you have to be consistent to stay there, and you have to be grateful to get everything out of being there. Some people get there but they're not grateful. They get there and they got a bad attitude. They get there and they got a bad disposition. But gratitude unlocks the fullness of where you're at. That's why the devil that wants you to be grateful, he wants you to be worried. He wants you to be worried. He can't stop you from being in a blessed place, but he wants you to be worried so you're torn between being blessed and being worried. Oh I'm gonna get with you tonight. And you are torn between the two.
I don't wanna get torn between the two. Now let me show you what I'm talking about, I'm gonna show you something. I'm gonna show you something. I have to run through it now. Get your Bible, go to John 3, chapter 1-12, and I'm gonna show you what I mean. And I want you to take your religious glasses off and read the text like you never heard it, because if you read it like you heard it, you gonna miss it. Right? Because we're not gonna read it with old skins. We're just gonna read it like we never read it. "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. That same came to Jesus by night," he snuck to Jesus by night, because he is a ruler of the Pharisees. The very folk Jesus just got through fussing at, "And said unto Him, 'Rabbi, we know,'" new wine, "that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him". And the moment he told Jesus he had new wine, Jesus told him, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, you must be born again, because if you're not born again, you cannot see the kingdom".
You cannot have this kind of revelation and go back and play with the Pharisees. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. See, once you see who he is, you can't go back into blindness and act like you don't know what you know. So you can give up on being a secret agent for Jesus and coming by night to him. He said, "I know you must be born again, because you just showed me you got new wine. But where you came from is old skins". "And Nicodemus saith unto Him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?'" We're dealing with skin, we're dealing with skin. "And Jesus answered, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'" Cannot go in. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, 'Ye must be born again.'"
Hold it a minute. "Ye must be born again". Jesus, wait a minute, he didn't ask you about being born again. He just told you that he knew that no man could do these things, save God be with him. And called you Rabbi, and said, "I know that you are the truth". And Jesus says, "You must be born again, because you cannot hold revelation in old skins". Now, Nicodemus is in a dilemma because does he go back to the skins, and he is a ruler of the Pharisees, or does he follow Jesus, which is the wine? Jesus says to him, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it come and whether it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit". You're looking for physical stuff, I'm talking about spiritual stuff. "Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, 'How can these things be?'"
Wait, Nicodemus didn't say, "Yes, Lord, I repent. Yes, Lord, I accept you. Yes, Lord, I believe. Yes, Lord, I follow you. Yes, Lord, I commit". He said, "How can these things be"? "Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Art thou a master of Israel, and knoweth not these things?'" Don't you study the Word? Don't you know the Word when you hear the Word? "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things"? So, the thing that most scholars wrestle with, is yes, Jesus told Nicodemus, "He must be born again". But was he? I ain't gonna bother y'all tonight. Did you read anything in that text that says Nicodemus was born again? Did Jesus not say, "You received not what I gave you".
So I'm not judging him. I don't know. All I know is that the scriptures leave some ambiguity as if Nicodemus is torn between the two. He is coming to see Jesus by night, but he's hanging out with the Pharisees by day. And we don't hear anything else about Nicodemus until the Crucifixion. We don't see him at the miracles. We don't see him at the Last Supper. We don't see him when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of his garment. We don't see him when he raised Jairus's daughter from the dead. We don't even see him when he's on his way to the cross, when blind Bartimaeus cried out, "Have mercy on me, thou Son of David, oh that I might receive my sight".
The only thing we know for sure is that Nicodemus is torn between the two. And the question tonight, my brothers and sisters, is simply this: did Nicodemus spend all of his life torn between the two, unable to respond? I don't know. The Bible doesn't make it clear. I cannot find any place where he obeyed what Jesus said. He only heard what Jesus said. And I want to know, do you obey what Jesus said, or do you only hear what Jesus said? And if you hear it and don't obey it, then what is your Pharisee that keeps you torn between the two? Was it love that made him give the 100 shekels, or guilt? I cannot find a moment that answers that question. Are you here because you love Jesus, or do you only come when you're guilty? And the worst part of it is... cause said he knew who Jesus was. He said, "No man can do these things, save God be with him".
And Jesus says, "What you doing with them Pharisees"? Who are your Pharisees? Who is it that Jesus would ask, "How could you know me like you know me, and still stay with them"? "Verily, verily, I say unto you, you can't know this much about me and not be born again. You can't take this new wine and put it in the old skin". You watching me right now, how can you know what you know and still run with who you run with? Has the seduction of being accepted by the Pharisees raveled the revelation of what you know about Jesus? And are you just torn between the two? So let a man examine himself. Where are your Pharisees? Who would Jesus be shocked to see that you can't separate from to be with him? How long will you have new wine and old skins? Because if you really know who Jesus is, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must be born again. No, ifs, no asks, no maybes, no choices. You know too much. You've seen too much. He's shown himself too strong in your life.