Dancing to Your Own Tune: Piping and Weeping

"They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept." --Luke 7:32

You might say they were control freaks. They would decide whether there would be dancing or whether there would be weeping. Woe to those who danced when these children wanted to weep, or to those who wept when the children wanted to dance.

Jesus' illustration compared the reaction of that generation who condemned John the Baptist for not feasting and drinking, saying that he had a devil. Without blinking an eye, they then condemned Jesus for eating and drinking, calling Him a drunk and a glutton.

They had no fixed principles, but were like children, whose only desire was to control the game. They didn't care what the game was as long as they controlled it. Because neither Jesus nor John danced to their tune, they had to be destroyed.

King David put it another way. Instead of tyrannical children in the marketplace, he termed them "Sons of Belial." In his farewell song to Israel, David, speaking from long experience, said of them: "But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands: But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." --2Sam. 3:6,7

In both cases, the children of Jesus' illustration and the rebellious in David's kingdom had one thing in common: they would not submit to Christ--for David was a type of Christ. They regard no rule but their own, following their own imagination.

There are times for weeping and there are times for dancing, but you and I do not decide the times. These are in the hands of God.

"Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life: Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the LORD." Ezekiel 13:22, 23