Dirge or Dance is a sermon I listened to by Kris Vallotton from Bethel Church in Redding, CA. The revelation in this message completely shook everything in me. I was going to try and make some sort of blog out of it, but there’s just too much goodness to leave out. So I decided to just write out the notes I took. It’s a lot, but take breaks if needed, because every bit of it is worth soaking in (seriously)! I pray this truth rocks you more than it did me. I pray this truth completely transforms your way of thinking. I pray it leaves you needing more than you’ve ever needed before.
Jesus’ job is to build the church, our job is to build the Kingdom.
All churches are in the Kingdom, but the Kingdom is not in all the churches.
Our responsibility is to expand His Kingdom.
Q: Why is it that the Kingdom is not in every church?
A: We are caught between two epic seasons. An epic in God means a certain way He deals with certain people in a certain time. The two epics we are caught in between is that we are either singing the dirge or playing the flute.
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep (Luke 7:18-35). The problem today is that so much of the church has been baptized into the baptism of John, but are completely unfamiliar with the baptism of Jesus.
Acts 19:2-6 Paul said, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not ever heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people of the one who was to come after him, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.
The baptism of John is to sing the dirge. The dirge is the song that played at funerals- it is the sad song. It is true that the greatest prophet in the OT, John, sang the dirge, but the greatest prophet in the NT, Jesus, played the flute. It is no longer our responsibility to sing the dirge, because when Jesus conquered the Grave, we entered a new epic season. God is creating an epic shift in the way we do ministry because we are called to bring the Gospel, which is the Good News.
Isaiah 42:9-10 talks about how the former things have come to pass and how we should start singing a new song to the Lord. Isaiah isn’t talking about a literal song. It is a metaphor. He is using the word ‘song’ to reference a new way of thinking. John sang the dirge and we didn’t mourn, Jesus played the flute and we didn’t dance. It was never recorded that Jesus played the flute or that John sang the dirge. They are using music as a metaphor for their ministries. So many Christians think their responsibility is to sing the dirge because John sang the dirge. It is true that he was the greatest prophet in the OT, but it is also true that Jesus said that the one least in the Kingdom is greater than John. We aren’t supposed to be following John’s ministry any longer!
Also, both Jesus and John’s clothing is mentioned. John came on the scene and wore camels hair, a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. Jesus wore such a garment that when he was crucified the people gambled, and used his clothes as the reward for the gambling tournament.
Q: Why is this so significant?
A: Because it is another metaphor of how different their ministries were. One guy is eating locusts and honey, preaching repentance to prepare the way for the Kingdom, and baptizing people into repentance. On the other hand, Jesus’ first public message is a wedding. John shows up in the wilderness preaching repentance while Jesus shows up celebrating at a wedding, making wine when they ran out!
There is something spiritual about wanting to be crucified. When we receive Jesus we were crucified with Christ. But it says, “for the joys set before him, he endured the cross.” He didn’t enjoy the cross.
And because he endured the cross, we have come into a new covenant.
In Luke 4:18 Jesus is giving his inauguration speech. He is reading straight from Isaiah 61, but it is interesting to notice that He stops in the middle of the sentence, rolls the scroll back up, and sits down. Where did He stop? He stops at “The year of the Lord’s favor.” He didn’t finish reading the end of the verse, which goes on to say in Isaiah, “vengeance in the day of our God.”
Why? Because Jesus didn’t come to judge the world, he came that the world might be saved. We have changed epic seasons. No longer are we supposed to sing the dirge because we have been baptized into the dance.
The moral of the OT story is that sin deserves to be judged, and that the soul that sins should die. But guess what, we are hidden in the Trojan Horse of Jesus! When Jesus died on the Cross, it changed Heaven’s perspective. God fulfilled justice so that he no longer had to release his judgment. God no longer gives us what we deserve because He gave it to Jesus.
Our ministry isn’t to judge the world! The OT was a different epic season, and we entered into a new one when Jesus died on the Cross; all the wrath of God was poured out onto Him. And what did Jesus do? He created justice so God could release mercy.
Also, there is a difference between the last days and the last day:
1. The last days is mentioned several times in the NT and is always mentioned as a spirit of reconciliation.
+Joel called the last days great and glorious.
2. The last day is mentioned 9 times in the NT and is always congruent with judgment day.
+Malachi said there is a last day coming and it would be great and terrible.
The ministry we have been given in the last days is the ministry of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not counting trespasses against people.
And because these are the last days, God is pouring out his spirit on His sons and daughters (Acts 2:17-21). It wasn’t just for that one period of time that we read in the book of Acts. It is specifically for this epic season until the return of Jesus on the last day.
Q: When exactly did the great and glorious days start?
A: When the sun turned to dark and the moon turned to blood.
It’s really difficult when we let the gift of teacher interpret prophetic revelation. It is not supposed to be taken as literal. In Jewish culture, they were accustomed to God speaking in hilogryphics. Joel understood that God was going to pour out His spirit, and the thing that would mark it would be the sun and the moon. Joel recognized there was a difference between great and terrible, and great and glorious.
Example: Joseph in the OT had a dream, and in it he saw wheat bowing down to him. Immediately he knew that the wheat represented his brothers. He then had another dream where he saw the sun and the moon bowing down to him. He then told his father, and instantly, without hesitation, his father knew that the sun and the moon represented father and mother.
Q: What does this mean for us?
A: When Jesus died on the cross, it says that the sun was darkened. And what happened to Jesus? He turned to blood. He was the very reflection of the father. The moon doesn’t have light of it’s own, it is simply a reflection of the sun. Therefore, when the sun turned dark, the moon turned to blood.
A lot of people are mourning when the should be dancing! Every time the people who sing the dirge see signs of something negative, they automatically assume it’s the great and terrible. The truth is, if we are singing the dirge, we are looking for evidence that we are supposed to be sad. When Christ died, we entered into a Kingdom not of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy. The Kingdom is made up of 2/3 happy thoughts!
The ones singing the dirge believe everything negative that happens is the judgment of God: the economy crashing, the twin towers. There is a difference between sowing and reaping, and judgment.
+Judgment is a decision by God to either punish or reward people for their actions. Judgment means that God makes the decision.
+Sowing and reaping is the natural outcome of whatever seed is planted.
I don’t think God’s making judgments against us. I think He’s actually trying to save us from reaping what we have sowed. He is trying to release us from the seeds of our own demise. The things that are happening are not about the judgment of God, it’s about the stupidity of man.
People don’t get into the Kingdom because of their works. Hollywood deserves to be judged? How about you! There is this weird thing in Christianity that once we get right with God and start walking in wholeness, we somehow inherit short-term memory loss. WHILE WE WERE SINNERS, WE WERE INVITED INTO THE KINGDOM. Somehow, we forget that we didn’t get here because of our acts; we got here because of His.
I mean does it really make sense that we say God is so mad about abortion-death– in America, that He is going to kill a whole bunch of people just to make His point? If God is full of love and compassion, how can we believe He is going to kill in order to prove He hates it? And we can make claims with the OT, but we are not in that epic season anymore. It’s why Jesus died.
We don’t even realize it, but we are actually part of the problem. People abort their children because they don’t know about the love of God. I don’t think it helps when we represent God as only having 2 attitudes: happy or I’m going to kill you. God actually has all the gametes of emotions; He even has emotions we’ve probably never experienced yet. And He grieves, yes, but does that mean He is angry about everything? I’d like to think not.
For those reading this and are mad, when we change epic seasons in the day of the Lord, I don’t want to make you more mad by ruining your “job description,” but you won’t be the judge. On judgment day, you won’t be the one judging, but you will be judged.
The only thing God calls us to be is salt and light in this world.
Salt= preservation.
Light= revelation.
Background: The people would salt all their food because there was no refrigeration, so they would reuse the salt over and over again. They would taste the salt every time they used it to make sure it didn’t taste like fish instead of salt. If it did taste like fish they would know that meant the salt saturated. They would then take the saturated salt and throw it on the streets, it would rain, and then it would turn into hard pavement. Jesus said if the salt becomes tasteless it is good for nothing and will be thrown out under the feet of men. That’s why it was trampled under men’s feet. It was their pavement.
Q: How do we know if salt goes bad?
A: If it starts to taste like the thing it is supposed to be preserving.
Our salt begins to lose its flavor when we start to judge the people we are supposed to be preserving.
Jesus then goes on to say we are the light of the world. Some people are saying stupid things like, “The light is getting lighter and the dark is getting darker.” The metaphor doesn’t work! If you turn the lights up, the darkness can’t get darker while the light gets lighter. The only way darkness can get darker is if you put your light… under a basket. In fact, Jesus went on to say to set this light on a hill. It is scientifically impossible to set a light on a hill, turn it up, and for it to become darker.
This is just something to soothe our conscience in believing our ministry is still good even though our city sucks.
As dual citizens of Heaven and of earth, it is our responsibility to bring Heaven down to earth. We aren’t called to reflect a culture, we are called to transform it. It is not true when people make claims that our citizenship is not of this world. Paul argued that he was a Roman citizen; Jesus said to give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and give to God that which is God’s.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says when we became a new creation, we became the first creation. New means never before created. We became the first creature to live in 2 dimensions simultaneously. We are seated in Heavenly places with Christ (which is reality, not philosophy), and we are also very much citizens of the earth. We are supposed to take the citizenship we have in Heaven and bring it to earth!
If our words aren’t comforting, extolling, and exhorting then we should be able to recognize that it doesn’t sound like God. We should be so attractive that harlots break into our meetings and weep over our feet because they feel so comfortable around people that don’t condemn them.
Still need proof the times have changed?
John lost his head! Why is it so significant that the last OT prophet was beheaded? Because God severed that way of thinking! Where did Jesus die? On the Cross at Golgotha, the place of the skull. Jesus didn’t lose His head because we are supposed to have the mind of Christ, not the mind of John.
Are you ready to start playing the flute yet?
