Matthew 11:7-19

Matthew 11:7-19 
English Standard Version (ESV) 

  There was a story the other day about a theater filled with families who fled the theater when a trailer for a horror movie came on, scaring the daylights out of every child in the theater.  If such a thing happened with our kids, they wouldn't sleep for days, and three years from now, we'd still be talking them out of being terrified of whatever they had seen.  When you go to a children's movie, you expect things to be a certain way -- no one is expecting a horror movie.
  The question for the Pharisees was this:  were they willing to set down their expectations and accept that God was doing a new thing in Jesus Christ?  The Scriptures had pointed forwards to Christ, but their minds and hearts had become so certain of what they expected that they were unwilling to accept him as King.  Jesus was warning them that he had come to confront sin and idolatry, and that accepting him as Messiah would not be easy -- there was transformation to come.
  Are you willing to change?  Am I willing to change?  Popular religion today often follows a "Jesus plus" method -- people want Jesus on top of their lives, but they don't really want to change anything.  They only want the rewards, not the challenge (not realizing they miss out on the growth). Whatever you're holding on to, whether it is your idea of success or your reputation or perhaps fears that have come to shape your life, we have to be willing to give those up, for to accept him as King means to reject all the other false Kings we've established in our life.  It's a hard road to walk, but the view is beautiful, and it is eternal, and it is what we were made for.