A few days ago I watched the video released by the terrorist group ISIS, in which they set afire a captured Jordanian pilot. It was a gruesome video, and I don’t recommend that you watch it. It’s one of those things that you won’t be able to get out of your mind.

But I had my reasons for watching it. Not the least of which was that many Christians have been burned at the stake over the centuries. For instance, William Tyndale who was the first to translate the Bible into English was burned at the stake in 1536. And while it is one thing to know that from a historical perspective, it is another thing entirely to witness something like that in our lifetime, and to imagine what we might do if faced with such a fate.

As I was talking to someone about this tragic event later, they asked what seems to me to be a very pertinent question. They said, “What is it that causes people to do such horrible things? What is the root of this kind of evil?” My answer was that the Bible says that sin is the root of all evil. Sin is the root cause of all the problems of the world.

And true Christianity is the only religion in the world to really effectively deal with sin. Most religions of the world try to tell people how they are supposed to live, to establish some sort of ideal life style. They purport to tell people how they might aspire to be a better person. Some may even offer hope of a future after death. But most religions at best only offer a type of ascetic, monastic or meditative state whereby one through sheer willpower may hope to isolate himself somewhat from sin. But all these false religions fail to really deal effectively with sin.

But God’s plan to deal with sin meant that He would not just tell us what we must do, but He Himself would deal with the problem of sin. Theologians tell us that there are three characteristics of sin. The first characteristic of sin as delineated in the Bible is sin’s penalty. God told Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden at creation that if they sinned by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die. Likewise, Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. So the penalty of sin is death, eternal death, as defined by God. Death is not just God’s punishment for sin, but death is the inevitable outcome of sin. All sin leads to death. Inherent in sin is the penalty of death.

The second characteristic of sin is the power of sin. Romans 5:12 tells us, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” So the power of sin is found in the nature of sin. It is like a genetically transmitted cancer that spread to all men from one generation to the next, traceable back to their father Adam. It is man’s sinful nature that causes him to sin. In John 8:34 Jesus says that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” And as such they are held captive by Satan to do his will. This is the power of sin that all men are held captive under. Sin is relentless, overpowering, corrupting, and spread from generation to generation. Sin has power and dominion over it’s victims.

And then the third characteristic of sin is the presence of sin. Eastern religions tell their adherents that the only hope to escape this present state of sin is to withdraw oneself from society. Perhaps join a monastery where there is little temptation to sin. Or perhaps attempt to achieve nirvana through meditation whereby they can escape the presence of temptations. But that does not eradicate the presence of sin, that just gives one some temporary escape and even then only in a limited fashion. Even if it were possible by some strength of will for a person to limit sin in his body to some degree he still cannot escape the presence of sin in the world and the suffering that must be experienced due to it’s presence. The Bible tells us that the presence of sin entered the human race in the Garden of Eden, and it only grows worse with each succeeding generation.

In spite of all kinds of technological, scientific, educational, cultural and social advancements in society, things are not getting better and better, things are going from bad to worse. Wars and rumors of wars are increasing. People are killing and being killed in greater numbers than at any other time in history. Sex crimes and even sexual trafficking are reaching epidemic proportions. Abortions in the United States average one million babies killed a year. Divorce rates are at 50%. Drug abuse has reached pandemic status. Hundreds of thousands of people die of drug, alcohol and suicide related causes each year in the United States alone. Sixteen thousand murders are committed a year in the United States. All of this is the effect of sin. This is the presence of sin. It invades all of our lives. Even if you manage to live in a monastery in Tibet sin will still invade your life. Sin’s presence is inescapable.

From man’s perspective the situation is hopeless. But man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. In the midst of man’s hopelessness is where God intervenes. God’s strategy for dealing with sin doesn’t rely on the strength of man, or on the efforts of man or the will of man. God knew that man being inherently sinful could not escape sin’s penalty, nor overcome sin’s power, nor be delivered from sin’s presence. And so God stretched forth His own arm to save man by sending His Son, Jesus Christ to deal with sin. As Isaiah 59:1 tells us, “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save.” God Himself provided the antidote to sin. Continuing in vs. 15, “Now the LORD saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede;then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him.”

This is the gospel. This is what Christianity is all about. Christianity is not another religion that only tells you how you are supposed to live but it provides life by dealing with sin. Not only did Jesus illustrate by example how we are to live, but by His death He paid the penalty for our sin. Only God could pay the penalty for another’s sin, and Jesus did that on the cross for those that will accept Him as their Lord and Savior.

And then God raised Jesus bodily from the tomb to prove that Jesus had been able to pay the penalty for sin. If Jesus had not been holy, if He had not be deity, if He had not been utterly sinless, then God would have left Him in Hades. But because Christ was sinless, He was raised from the dead and over 500 people witnessed His resurrected body over the course of 40 days.

So God dealt with our penalty of sin by applying the punishment to Jesus at the cross. And because Christ was raised from the dead we can know that His sacrifice was acceptable to God. But that still leaves the power of sin and the presence of sin. What does the gospel of Christ offer to deal with that?

Well the answer is found in our passage today. After His resurrection, Jesus said to the disciples in vs. 49 “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” What is He talking about? Well, John provides a little more detail in his gospel. Look at John 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Who is the Helper? This is none other than the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus said, to give you power. He said you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you. Now some people have mistakenly taken this to mean that some sort of mystical force emanates from God to us at some point after our conversion so that we might experience God. They attribute weird feelings, or unknown tongues or some other ecstatic experiences to this power of the Holy Spirit.

But folks, that is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We are going to go into this in detail in a couple of weeks or so when we get into the book of Acts. But for now, just understand this; the Holy Spirit is not given to give you the goose bumps so you can feel saved. The Holy Spirit is given first so that you can be saved and secondly so you can act saved. So you can have power over sin. Listen again to John 16, starting in vs. 8-11, 13-15, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. … 13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

So then, the Holy Spirit’s ministry is to convict the world of sin, to lead us into righteousness, and to convict the world of the coming judgment. And John adds, the Holy Spirit will lead us into the truth through the Word of God. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak of His own initiative, but speaks the Word of Christ. So as God is, so is Christ, and as Christ is, so is the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit will not do anything that Christ did not do. But He is not limited to a physical body as Jesus was on earth. He is able to indwell the entire church and give them power over sin by leading them into the truth, and the truth will set them free.

God, in describing the new covenant that He would bring about in Christ said in Ezekiel 36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” Hebrews 10:16 says the same thing, “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM.” The power we have over sin is because God has given us the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts so that we are no longer controlled by sin as we once were. We are no longer captive to sin. But now we have a new heart and new desires because we are born of the Spirit, so we walk according to the Spirit.

Listen, if you are here today and you are convicted of sin, don’t quench the Holy Spirit. Don’t harden your hearts against the conviction of the Holy Spirit. His job is to use the Word of God to convict you, to lead you to recognize your need for righteousness. 1John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” As I said last week, repentance is the key to the gospel. It is the key to salvation. It is the key to justification and the key to sanctification. James 5:16 says “confess your sins one to another so that you may be healed.” He is not talking about physical healing, ladies and gentlemen, he’s talking about spiritual healing.

See, just as there are three categories or characterizations of sin, so are there three categories or stages of salvation. Salvation is justification, producing sanctification, resulting in glorification. Justification delivers us from the penalty of sin. Jesus was our substitute, paying our penalty by dying for us on the cross. Sanctification delivers us from the power of sin by yielding to the leading and conviction of the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis. And glorification is the last stage; the removal from the presence of sin.

That brings us back to our text. Jesus was received up into glory in the sight of His disciples. As He was talking to them, He led them out to the area near Bethany which was on the other side of the Mount of Olives, and He was taken up into heaven in their sight.

Why is that important? He was received into heaven. It is important because it foreshadows our glorification, when we will be delivered from the presence of sin. Christ’s ascension was witnessed by the apostles and the disciples gathered there. If Jesus had just suddenly stopped appearing during the 40 days without a bodily ascension with witnesses, then how would we know that He lives and is seated at the right hand of God as the gospel writers tell us? We know He lives and is seated in the heavenlies because He was seen taken up into heaven in bodily form. So His ascension validates the gospel and validates the promise of final deliverance from sin and all it’s effects.

Paul tells us He was received up into glory far above all rule and authority. Ephesians 1: 18-23 Paul says “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

This is speaking of the glorification of Christ. That is what the ascension reveals. Christ is above all things. Above the power of sin. Above the power of angels, above the power of Satan, above the power of kings and rulers. Above all things. Above every name that is named, not only in this age, but the age to come. Now that is Christ’s glorification. And we know that it is so because of the ascension of Christ.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there. Christ is the forerunner of the church. Because He is there, we will one day be there with Him. One day Jesus will return for us. And He will take us to be with Him forever. We who are saved are destined to be heirs with Christ. And when He comes again to receive us, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. That means that this body of sin will be done away with. This mortal will put on immortality. That means that this world and all it’s evil will be burned up and a new heaven and a new earth will come down out of Heaven and we will be forever with the Lord in a sinless, perfect environment. Sin’s presence will be dealt with forever. The devil and his angels will be dealt with forever. Evil men will be dealt with. Despots and megalomaniac rulers will be dealt with. All will be cast into the Lake of Fire which burns forever and ever. And righteousness will reign in this new heaven and new earth for eternity.

Oh folks, listen up! Christ’s ascension was the exclamation point on the gospel. It is the source of hope for the saints, the source of joy for the saints. Because we know that as He is, so are we to be. As the grave could not hold Him, neither can the grave hold us. As death had no power over Him, neither do we need to fear death. As He had power over sin, so can we have power over sin. As He was raised to glory, so we are going to be raised in glory. As sin cannot be in His presence, so we shall be delivered from sin’s presence. Jesus promised in John 14:3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

No wonder Luke tells us that the disciples “after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising God.” So should we be praising God and worshipping Him for all that He has accomplished for us that we so undeserving.

I want to close by continuing to read from Ephesians which we read while ago. We stopped at the end of chapter one. But let’s continue with chapter 2 which serves as a complete summary of the gospel: Eph. 2:1-10 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

And let me just point out a couple of things there which I want to leave you with today. The first one is that Paul says that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places… I want you to see that is not speaking of a future event, but a present event. Those of us that have been made alive in Christ have already been made alive, and have already been seated with Christ in heaven. That simply means that we have been delivered from the penalty of sin. As far as God is concerned, we are secure in Christ. We have already been seated in heaven with Christ spiritually speaking.

And then he says, all this has happened so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us. We have been positioned with Christ in heaven so that in eternity to come, God might shower us with the riches of His grace. This is our inheritance that is reserved for us. God has already set a table there for us with our name plaque on our chair next to Christ. And God does not change His mind. God will keep us and bring us into glory with Christ.

And then lastly, note that by grace we have been saved through faith, not as a result of works. It’s nothing we do to earn salvation. But then notice the last verse, for we are His workmanship, we are crafted and created and designed by God, for what? For good works. Not saved by good works, but saved for good works… which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

If you are here today and you are still in your sins, then I hope you understood the message of the gospel. Jesus has paid the penalty and suffered the punishment for your sins. If you will confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And if you are here today and are saved, born again by the Spirit of God, then I hope you realize that He has given you the Spirit so that you might have the power over sin. You were born of the blood of Jesus not so you can continue in sin so that grace may abound, but you were created in Christ Jesus for good works, to walk in them and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. And then for all of us that are dying daily to the sinful nature in order to walk in the Spirit, know that there is going to come a day when we will be delivered forever from the presence of sin. Rom. 8:18 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Let us continue without wavering to look forward to His appearing.

Jesus’ death dealt with the penalty of sin; our justification. His resurrection provided the power over sin; our sanctification. And His ascension promises deliverance from the presence of sin; our future glorification. The only question left is what will you do with Jesus? Will you accept Him as your Savior, or deny Him as your Lord? I trust that you will accept His free offer of salvation and find freedom from sin.

Last week we looked at the lessons learned on the road to Emmaus by two of Jesus’ disciples. And the lessons that these two men learned was basically a completion of their theology. They had an incomplete theology concerning the Messiah, and so Jesus helped them to see how the Old Testament scriptures spoke of His suffering. That was what they had not understood. They thought that Christ’s death eliminated Him from being the Messiah. Jesus showed them from scripture how His suffering and death were in fact predicted and consequently proved that He was the Messiah.

And then if you remember when He broke bread with them their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and immediately He vanished from their sight. The point I made was that now that they saw Him in scripture they did not need to see Him in the flesh. From this point on the gospel of Jesus Christ would be based on faith in the Christ they could not see, but who is revealed in scripture. Now today we are picking up where that story left off.

So our text tells us that immediately these two men got up from the table and headed back to Jerusalem, all seven miles by foot, in order to share with the apostles that they had just seen Jesus. But when they arrived, the apostles spoke to them of Jesus appearing to Simon Peter. Now to be frank with you, the way the story reads does not lend itself to that interpretation. The first impression when you read vs. 33 and 34 would seem to indicate it was the disciples from Emmaus that make the announcement in vs. 34. But Greek scholars tell us that the accusative form of the verb indicates that the ones speaking here are the apostles and not the two from Emmaus. So the best way to understand this verse is to realize that as the disciples from Emmaus enter the room, the apostles great them excitedly with the news that Jesus had indeed risen and appeared to Peter.

Now there is no real record of this event. But the apostle Paul writing later does confirm that Jesus appeared to Peter at this time. In 1Cor. 15:4-5 Paul says, “He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” Cephas of course being Simon Peter. So though Luke doesn’t fill us in on all the details here, he is giving us a condensed version of these events, the best interpretation is that at some point after His resurrection, before this event, Jesus sought out Peter and revealed Himself to him. And that is very significant because as we know Peter was devastated after his denial of Christ the night before the crucifixion. And so it is encouraging not only for us to know this, but obviously encouraging for Peter as well that after His resurrection Jesus seeks out Peter for a private time of reconciliation.

But the main thrust of Luke’s account here has to do with the rest of the apostles. So as the disciples from Emmaus were recounting what happened with them, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst and says “Peace be to you.” Now the next verse says that the apostles were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost. I guess that would not be an unusual response of most people if someone whom we knew was dead suddenly appeared in the middle of the room without opening a door. Sounds reasonable to me.

But Jesus says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them.

Now what are we to make from all of that? Well, one obvious point that is made clear here is that in spite of being able to walk through walls and appear in various places at various times seemingly at will, Jesus has physically risen from the dead. That is an important theological point. We don’t hear much discussion about that today, but in previous generations, especially in the first century or two after Christ’s resurrection, there was a lot of false doctrine which put forth the idea that Jesus was only a Spirit. And that His resurrection wasn’t a bodily resurrection but a spiritual one.

The main point though to be taken from this is that the physical, literal resurrection of Jesus is fundamental to the gospel. Rom. 10:9 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Why is the physical resurrection of Christ essential to salvation? Because it proves that Christ’s death was efficacious. It proved that God was satisfied with Christ’s sacrifice. It matters that His body came out of that grave because how else would we know that God was satisfied with His offering? We couldn’t see His Spirit. If it was just a spiritual resurrection then we would not have known for sure that God had in fact raised Him, that God had in fact been satisfied with His sacrifice. And without that assurance, we could not be sure that we are saved from our sins.   So the verification of Christ’s literal, physical resurrection is essential for the gospel. As Paul said in 1Cor. 15:14, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.”

So the fact of the gospel must be that it is literal, physical and historical. Paul goes on to say that Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time after His resurrection. That makes it historical. Five hundred witnesses makes it provable in a court of law. Luke goes on to say in Acts chapter 1 that Jesus appeared numerous times to various people over the space of 40 days. So the point is that the resurrection of Jesus was historical, literal and physical which is essential to the gospel. There is no doubt that Jesus was literally a historical figure that walked the earth 2000 years ago. And when you add to that the fact that He was raised from the dead then that establishes that He was in fact God in the flesh. That is the basis for our gospel.

Then starting in vs. 44 we read that Jesus began to do for the apostles what He had earlier done for the disciples from Emmaus. And that is, He opened their mind to understand the scriptures. Folks, this is so important. This is the reason that so many are deceived by false doctrines today. They haven’t had their minds opened to understand the scriptures. False doctrines always claim to be founded on scripture. But it’s possible to know scripture and yet not understand scripture. And so they build a doctrine or a theology based on a partial understanding of the gospel. This is exactly what had happened with the disciples.

So Jesus is using this opportunity to correct that here with the apostles. First as I mentioned earlier, He showed them the error of their theology that did not allow for a suffering Savior, that did not allow for the crucifixion of the Messiah. And to do that He showed them the scriptures. And so He is doing the same thing here with the eleven. He starts with the Law and then moves to the Psalms and then on through the prophets, teaching them how all these OT scriptures spoke of Him.

So Jesus is reiterating for the benefit of the apostles what we discovered last week, that the scriptures are fundamental to the gospel. The scriptures reveal God. That sounds like such a superfluous statement. And yet it had to be understood then and it desperately needs to be understood today. Extra biblical words of knowledge or dreams or visions or experiences cannot be relied upon. But the word of the Lord endures forever. It is the foundation of the gospel. Paul writes in Eph. 2:20 that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, that means the writings of the apostles and the prophets, the holy scriptures.

These are the scriptures which Paul told Timothy in 2Tim. 3:15 “that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” These scriptures that Paul refers to are the Old Testament scriptures. Jesus opens the mind of the apostles to understand the Old Testament scriptures. These are the scriptures that give you the wisdom that leads to salvation.

Listen folks, the gospel starts in Genesis, not Matthew. The wisdom that leads to salvation comes from understanding how God is revealed in all of scripture, how His plan for salvation was enacted before creation. If you do not understand the God which destroyed the world in the flood, and the God of the fire and smoke of Mt. Sinai, then you cannot understand the God of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Heb 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is unchanging, He is the everlasting God.

So the second point then is that the gospel is Biblical. It is founded on the scriptures and dependent understanding the full scope of the scriptures and how it all works together. It is not something completely new. It is not an interruption. But the gospel is a continuous thread that runs through all of the Bible which has to be understood as a whole.

Next in vs. 46 Jesus gives them a concise synopsis of the gospel. Luke 24:46-47 “and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” Incorporated in that simple statement is the plan, the purpose and the presentation of the gospel. The plan of God was the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of Christ which accomplishes our reconciliation with God, and then our mission to proclaim the gospel to the world. That is the gospel in a nutshell.

And the third major characteristic of the gospel as presented in this synopsis by Jesus is that the gospel is confessional. Now what do I mean by that? Well, I already showed in Rom. 10:9 the confessional nature of salvation. It reads “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

But to confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord is much more than simply accepting the historical reality of Jesus. The Bible says that the devils believe and tremble. Believing in the literal, historical reality of Jesus but not accepting Him as Lord and Savior only serves to condemn you, not save you.

To confess Jesus as Lord is really understood more clearly in this statement here in Luke by Jesus. His statement affirms that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, which means that He is the Son of God, that He was raised from the dead, which we just finished showing meant that God was satisfied by His sacrifice, that He was in fact God in the flesh, and that repentance for sins would be proclaimed or preached.

Now that is where I would like to camp out for a moment. Because I’m afraid that repentance is the aspect of salvation that is not being preached today. And yet I believe it is the key to salvation because it is the key to transformation. It is the key to conversion. Without it, there may be a head knowledge, but no change, no transformation, no conversion from death to life, from captivity to freedom.

Repentance is the act that turns the heart from self sufficiency to salvation. It is necessary to be saved, for one to turn from sin’s presence, sin’s power, sin’s dominance, and even sin’s consequence to that of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It’s a 180 degree turn in the opposite direction. Jesus said in Matt. 5 that salvation involved mourning for sin. That means having a desire to leave sin behind and pursue righteousness. This is true repentance. It’s not simply feeling bad about your circumstances, or feeling bad about your condition, it is not even feeling bad about the consequences that came from your sins, it is feeling bad about the reality of sin. It’s understanding that sin is an affront to a holy God.

The other day the President of the United States gave the annual State of the Union address. I did not watch it. I do not have to watch it to know that the state of our Union is deplorable. But I am much more concerned about the state of the church today than I am about the state of the Union. And I am here to tell you that the state of the church is in disarray. And I believe the reason for that disarray is because the church has abandoned the foundational truths of the gospel. Oh, most churches haven’t changed their official statement of faith printed somewhere in their literature. They still claim to hold to the foundational doctrines. But the truth is that many of the essential doctrines of the gospel are never emphasized anymore for fear of alienating someone. For fear of appearing condemning. And one of the first victims of this new apostasy has been to throw overboard the doctrine of repentance. And what is frightening is how this doctrinal error has infiltrated even many mainstream churches today at all levels to the point of completely undermining the gospel.

I was reading a booklet the other day by a mainstream evangelical church that purported to be teaching the way of salvation. And the author recounted a story about a homosexual man that had contracted AIDS, who called his office and said that he was dying and wanted to repent. This pastor told him, “The only thing I am interested in is this, that you let God love you.” He said in the booklet that even though the man had done wrong, that all that this man needed to do was to let God love him and to come to the point of loving himself.

There was no talk of the need for repentance. In fact, this dying man’s desire to repent was repulsed by this pastor. Even though Jesus said in our text in Luke 24 that repentance is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. Even though 1John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Folks, do not be deceived. To reject the doctrine of repentance is to reject the gospel. And not only do you reject the gospel, you reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 16:8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”   And if you reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit, then you cannot be saved because it is the Spirit that gives life.

Repentance is not only confessing your sins, but confessing the need to know the truth about God and that we are inadequate to do so on our own. Repentance is the key to the truth. 2Tim. 2:25 tells us that we are to preach the gospel “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”

See, this is why Jesus needed to open their minds to understand the scriptures. Repentance leads to the knowledge of the truth. And the truth is what makes possible salvation. The truth will set you free. When we know the truth, we come to our senses, we see things clearly, and that enables us to escape from the trap of the devil, where we have been held captive to do his will.

The devil’s lie is to say that there is no need for repentance, that God is love and if God is love then that overrules all other characteristics about God. God’s love as it is defined today is nothing short of permissiveness. We do what we want, live the way we want without any consequences to our sin. They fail to take into consideration that Hebrews 12 says that if God loves us, then He will discipline us, chastise us for our sins, so that we might share in His holiness.

But the problem is that this unwillingness to repent has caused a hardening of our hearts so that we cannot understand the truth, and therefore we have a perverted perspective of God. Going back to that booklet I was reading from a while ago, the author goes on to explain that this man did not need to repent to be saved, but to just let God love him. And he went on to explain what he believed biblical love looked like. He said “there is an order to God’s love. I am not to love other’s first. I cannot love even God unless I love myself. I must let God love me. That’s the way it goes. First I let God love me. Second I love myself. Third I love God, and finally I am free to love everyone else.”

I found it interesting that he did not provide any Biblical references for that theological statement. He just said, “that’s the way it goes.” Ok. Right…

Well, I have a couple of references that clearly declare the opposite. Jesus said in Luke 10:27 that the foremost commandment was this: “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” Notice how God’s statement puts ourselves at the end of the line, not at the beginning. You simply cannot square his comment with scripture. Love the Lord your God first, completely, with every fiber of your being. That hardly leaves room for you to love yourself first.

If you listened to this guy then you just made yourself an idol. You have put another god (yourself) above the Lord. Consider God’s definition of love in 1Cor. 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Did you notice the phrase concerning love, it “does not seek it’s own?” How can you obey that verse and love yourself first? It’s incompatible.

And yet I’m afraid that this perversion of love has become the foremost doctrine of the church today. This isn’t some lunatic fringe that I’m talking about. This is main stream so called evangelical churches that have emasculated the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many churches today never preach the very message that Jesus came to preach. “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” This was the message of John the Baptist, the message of Jesus, the message of the Apostles and the message of Paul. And it is still the message of the gospel today. Because the gospel hasn’t changed.

Listen, when we understand the doctrine of repentance, when we come to God in brokenness and humbleness, confessing our sins, asking Him to make us new, asking Him to lead us in the truth, then we are transformed by the power of the gospel. This is what is missing today in modern Christianity. We have been told to come as we are. And so we allow God to love us, allow Christ to die for us, and then we continue just as we are in our sins. We are never changed. We are never converted. We may be a bit more religious from time to time. We may even be sincere. We may even believe in Jesus. But we have never been converted.   We have never been transformed from death to life, from walking according to the course of this world to walking in the Spirit, from being dead in our sins to being made alive in Christ.

Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost says in Acts 3:19 in the KJV, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” Oh folks, we need a time of refreshing in the church today. And that conversion comes from a broken and contrite heart. David said “a broken and contrite heart O Lord you will not despise.”

How about you, do you need a time of refreshing in your life? Are you harboring sin that you have not given up to the Lord? If so, then Satan has you in his snare, to do his will. I got another email from a lady the other day. She occasionally sends me messages by Joseph Prince who is the foremost false teacher of this false doctrine which has eliminated repentance from the gospel. He teaches that as a Christian you don’t need to repent of your sins anymore. He is like the false teacher spoken of by Paul in 2Tim. 3:6-7 which says, “For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Ladies and gentlemen, do not be deceived. Repentance is the key to the gospel. Repent and the truth of God will be manifest to you, that you may be given forgiveness for your sins, that your heart may be renewed again with Christ, and that you might know the truth that will set you free.

This is the gospel. And when we understand that, then we are able to be what Jesus has purposed us to be; witnesses to a lost and dying world. This is our mission, the reason that He has saved us and left us here while He has gone away to prepare a place for us. That until He comes back we might tell the world His gospel. His gospel is powerful to save, to transform, when it is complete, when it is Biblical and when it is confessional.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I remember as a boy, I had a voracious appetite to read books. I grew up without a television and so reading was for me the primary source of entertainment. Everything I became interested in, I first of all went to the library and checked out every book I could find on the subject. And that was all fine and dandy until one day I decided I wanted to learn Karate. There were no Karate schools around, and if there were I would not have been allowed to attend them anyway. So I found a couple of books on the subject and started trying to learn it on my own. I put on a bathrobe which kind of looked like a Karate outfit and talked my little brother into joining me and began trying to do the things I saw them do in the books. But it wasn’t long before we found out that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. We seriously hurt one another trying to do stuff that we had not been fully trained to do. Eventually, we decided we better quit before we killed each other.

That same principle is true in Christianity. It’s possible to come to a certain understanding of the gospel, to make a certain amount of progress in your faith, to set sail so to speak in your journey, but because there is not sufficient knowledge of scripture or doctrine to go off course and encounter shipwreck. In Hosea 4:6 God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

But as we live in what is sometimes called the information age, the age of the internet, we must make a distinction between information and true knowledge. There is a lot of false information being bandied about out there. In fact, I would suggest that there has never been a time in history when so much information has been available.

We have yet to see what the result will be of what unmitigated access to information in this computer age will have on society. To some extent, we are conducting a massive social experiment. The general public’s access to the internet has only been going on about 20 years now. And this generation is being shaped by the internet in ways that have yet to be fully realized. In times past, a person had to have some sort of credentials in order to be published. Today, however, anyone with a computer can become an instant expert and throw his opinion out there on the internet. Truth has become practically indistinguishable from folly in the internet age.

So there is a lot of information out there, but I am here to tell you today that there is only one source of truth. Jesus told us in John 8:31, ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” God’s word is truth. Jesus was the manifestation of that eternal truth, which existed in the heavens before the world began, and became flesh and dwelt among us. So that Jesus might say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father except by Me.”

So the truth of God is contained in scripture. And as Paul told Timothy, knowledge of the scriptures is necessary to lead you to salvation. 2Tim. 3:15, “from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” But as we see in this account of the encounter on the Emmaus road by two of Jesus’ disciples, it is possible to know the God of the scriptures, to know some scripture, but to have a limited understanding of scripture. To lack the wisdom of applying scripture. And that is a dangerous thing.

There was obviously a limited view of theology that had been taught to most Jews at the time of Christ. And this viewpoint, especially as it pertained to the Messiah was flawed enough to keep people from recognizing Jesus as the manifestation of the Messiah. The whole nation had a limited, flawed theology of the Messiah because they camped out on some doctrines and dismissed others that did not mesh with their chosen theology.

Listen, we face the same dilemma today in modern Christianity. There is no lack of teaching, of books, of Bibles, available in every language, there is no lack of churches, of Bible schools, of preaching on the radio or on television and even on the internet. And yet our people are perishing for lack of knowledge. We have failed to do as Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, “study to show yourself approved unto God as a workman that does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”

Instead, the vast majority of people today that call themselves Christians have developed and bought into a limited version of theology. Many people today have a one dimensional view of God, they have denied the Lordship of Jesus Christ, they have denied the essential doctrine of sanctification without which the Hebrews 12:4 says no one will see the Lord, they have even gone so far as to deny that they have any sin, even though 1John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

It’s important for you to understand something in this day and age of instant experts and slick television evangelists and proliferating false doctrines, the Bible is God’s word from cover to cover. From Genesis to Revelation. Jesus is the Word of God in Genesis that spoke the word and created the universe, and Jesus is the Word of God in Revelation that will destroy His enemies by the two edged sword of His mouth. Heb. 13:8 affirms that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” A correct theology must incorporate all of what the Bible teaches into a comprehensive theology, without ignoring parts that don’t seem to meet with your template, but comparing scripture with scripture, the whole counsel of the word of God.

Having a scripturally centered theology is illustrated in this passage we are looking at today. There are some lessons presented here on the road to Emmaus that will help us to understand the principle of “sola scriptura,” the sufficiency of scripture which serves as the foundation for our sound doctrine.

Now there were two men, one of which was named Cleopas, who had been followers of Jesus. Yet in spite of following Him, in spite of hoping in Him, they now found themselves in spiritual shipwreck. They were like a ship without an anchor. They had just witnessed the crucifixion and it completely destroyed their theology. They had hoped that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. But when He was crucified it destroyed that hope, because they had been taught that the Messiah would bring about a political, social and spiritual change that would result in Him overturning Roman rule and taking the throne of David in Jerusalem. This was what they had been taught in the synagogues and by the priests, and they had plenty of scriptures to back up their theology. The only problem was that they did not consider the whole counsel of God’s word.

So Jesus suddenly appears to these two men as they are walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem. They are sad. They are down hearted over what has happened. And their faith is seriously in jeopardy. But as they are walking, Jesus comes up behind them and appears to them to be just another person on the road leaving Jerusalem after the Passover. Vs. 16 says that their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

Now I can’t read that without wondering why? Why couldn’t they recognize Jesus? I don’t believe that it was because His form was changed. Notice it says THEIR eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. I believe that Jesus veiled their eyes so that they could not recognize Him. They saw Him, they saw a normal person, but they didn’t recognize Him as Christ.

But why would Jesus do that? Was He just being mischievous? Was He playing a trick on them or trying to deceive them? No, I think He was making a point, illustrating an important principle which would be in operation now that the resurrection had taken place. His disciples would be entering a new phase of His ministry, which is where we walk by faith and not by sight. As Jesus would say to Thomas later in John 20:29, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Jesus is illustrating an important principle; that the person of Jesus Christ is revealed in scripture. Truth is revealed in scripture, and Jesus is the manifestation of that truth, the word of God. So when they saw the truth of scripture, they would see God. There eyes were closed until they believed in the word of God. This is why we put such an emphasis on the authority of scripture. This is why we preach the scriptures word by word, verse by verse. This is why it is so important. This is why we say that the scriptures are the inerrant, God breathed words of God. Heb. 4:12 says that “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword…” It’s alive, it’s active, it’s the Spirit of God contained in the word of God.

But I want you to notice something here. Jesus is walking along within earshot, incognito, listening to the disciples converse. I wonder how long Jesus walked near them, listening to their conversation? I wonder how often Christ is in our midst, even today, incognito, sitting in the back seat listening to us talk as we drive home from church in the car. Listening to us at work. Listening to our conversations with our friends. I think if we realized that He is always nearby then we would have a different way of talking.

So Jesus eventually comes alongside these guys and says, “what are you guys talking about? Why are you so sad?” And they stopped dead in their tracks and looked at Him in despair, “Are you the only person visiting Jerusalem who hasn’t heard of what has happened?” And Jesus said, “What things?”

Now understand something, Jesus asks these leading questions, not to be duplicitous, but to get them to declare their theology, and then having heard it, he will use that as a means to teach them.

So they answer Him saying; “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened. But also some women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning, and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.”

So the key to their bad theology is this; they knew Jesus was a great prophet, but they had hoped He was the Messiah. However, the crucifixion of Christ had destroyed that hope, because their theology called for a living, physical king to take the throne and overturn their enemies. They were good on the glory part of their theology. But they had no understanding of the suffering part of the Messiah. They hadn’t been taught that in synagogue.

I find that analogous with a lot of Christian theology today. The television evangelists are really good on the glory part. They are all about having your best life now. They are really good on the parts about freedom in Christ, and blessings in Christ. But they have failed to comprehend the suffering parts. The forsaking of the world. The crucifixion of the flesh. The denial of the lusts and passions of the flesh so that we might live a God pleasing life. That part is not being preached today. They fail to understand the same thing these two on the road to Emmaus failed to understand; that the path to glory is on the road to suffering. The Messiah’s suffering was to come before His glorification. And Jesus said the disciple is not above His master, ladies and gentlemen. We must join the fellowship of His suffering in the present world if we expect to be glorified with Him in the next. Paul said in Rom. 8:17 that we are the children of God and fellow heirs with Christ “if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

So Jesus uses their bad theology as a jumping off place to preach a sermon. I love it. I also like what it says about how He preached a sermon. I like how the KJV says He expounded the scriptures to them. I do expository preaching here not because I can’t think of a good topical message. But because I think the power is in the word of God, and so we expound it, explain it to bring out the truth that is inherent in the word. You know, I can prove almost anything by finding a verse somewhere that seems to say something confirming what I am trying to assert. But expositional preaching is taking in consideration the full counsel of the word, from Genesis to Revelation as you explain a passage of scripture in context. The parameters of the context both in the immediate passage and then to all of scripture helps us to stay centered on the truth.

Jesus says in vs. 24, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

What scriptures is Jesus referring to? Well, the NT scriptures have not been written yet. So Jesus is preaching NT theology from OT scriptures. I want to be sure you get that today. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. The OT is still the inspired, eternal word of God. Jesus said He didn’t come to annul the law, but to fulfill it. So Jesus started with Moses, that means He started with Genesis and worked through the Pentateuch, which was called the Law, then through the Psalms, and through the minor prophets, showing them how they taught that the Messiah must suffer before He enters His glory.

Now we don’t have His message recorded for us here, but we do have His source material. We have the OT scriptures and we know what they say about Christ’s suffering. So we might surmise that the scriptures that the Lord taught from may have been such as these; He may have started with the promise to Eve in Genesis 3:15 that He would be the bruised seed which would crush the head of the serpent; He might have reminded them of the promise to Abraham in Genesis 22 that God would provide the lamb for the offering; I’m sure He pointed out that He was the Passover Lamb that was prescribed to deliver them from death in Exodus 12; that He was the scapegoat of Leviticus 16 that was offered for the atonement of the people; that He was the brazen serpent that was lifted up on a standard in Numbers 21; that He was the smitten rock in the wilderness from which came forth living waters according to Numbers 20; He was the suffering servant in Isaiah 50 that gave His back to those who strike Him and His beard to those who would pluck it; He was the One who bore our griefs in Isaiah 53, who was crushed for our iniquities, and the chastisement for our sins was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed; He was the Soul not abandoned to Sheol in Psalms 16; that He was the reproach of men in Psalm 22 whose bones are all pulled out of joint; that He was the One betrayed by His friend in Psalm 55; He was the weeping prophet of Jeremiah; He was the pierced son of David in Zechariah 12; and He was the smitten Shepherd in Zechariah 13. All of these and perhaps so many more would have been the subject of His message concerning His suffering.

Well, I don’t know how long of a message that was, but it probably took a while. Long enough that they were at the village where they were staying. And Jesus acted as if He was going to go on further. But they implored Him to stay with them. Once again, Jesus isn’t trying to deceive them. If they had not asked Him to stay with them then He would have gone on further. And that is instructive for us as well. Jesus is not going to force Himself on you. His desire is that you desire Him. The reason He created us was not to produce a bunch of robots who have to choose only one way or respond in only one way. He designed us for love, for a relationship, for communion, for fellowship. That is what He desires; a people who will choose to obey Him because they love Him and not because they have no choice.

When they listened to His words they said that their hearts burned with them. That is the way love feels. I ask you folks here today; does your heart burn at the reading of God’s word? Is that what the preaching of God’s word produces in you? It should if you are a true child of God. If you love God you will love His word. If you were separated from your wife or husband or girlfriend or boyfriend, would you find yourself bored with the reading of their letters? Or would your heart burn within you as you read their words? If you love them, you will love to read their words. It won’t be a chore. It’s an act of love.

And so that brings us to the last lesson to be learned on the road to Emmaus. The word of God brings us into communion with God. Jesus turned aside to go in with them and have dinner with them. And Luke says that “when He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight.”

What is the significance of all of that? Why did Jesus vanish as soon as they recognized Him? I think it was because He was continuing to teach them the principle of the sufficiency of scripture. By the word of Christ their souls were fed. By the word of God their hearts were warmed. By the word of God their doubts were erased. By the word of God their doctrine was established. By the word of God their faith was strengthened. By the word of God they were given hope. By the word of God they saw God.

I hear people today say that if only they could see God then they would believe in Him. But that is not how God has designed it. He says the just shall live by faith. Heb. 11:1 says “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” But it’s not as though God has asked us for blind faith. He has revealed Himself in His word. I believe that was what Jesus was teaching that day. He expounded the scriptures to teach them about Himself. And when they saw Him as the Word of God, in the word of God, then they truly saw God.

Listen, the picture presented here is Christ breaking the bread and blessing it and passing it to His disciples. It’s a picture of communion, which means fellowship. We can have fellowship with God through His word. We don’t need to seek extra biblical visions or experiences to have fellowship and communion with God. We find fellowship with God in communion with His word. And when these men saw Jesus in the word, then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him as sitting across from them. And when their eyes were opened, He vanished from their sight. They didn’t need to see Him anymore. Like Jesus told Thomas, “how much more blessed are those who don’t see Me and yet believe in Me.”

Listen, these men took advantage of the opportunity presented by the visitation of the Word. They begged Jesus to stay with them so that they could hear more of what He was teaching them. They had a hunger for truth. But they could have let Him leave when He made as if He was going to go further. There are times when we may come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and though we recognize it, we may not always act upon it. We may allow the moment to pass, and in so doing, we have let go an important opportunity to know Christ more fully. These men seized the opportunity of Christ’s availability, and they received a blessing. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.” If the Lord is speaking to you today, don’t let the opportunity pass to respond to Him. You may not get that chance again. Today is the acceptable day of salvation.   The word of the Lord has been preached. The truth of the gospel has been revealed through the word of God. How will you respond?

Jesus said in Rev. 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” You want to have communion with God, fellowship with the Son? Then open the door and invite Him in. He will not force His way in. But know this, that He loves you so much that He gave His only begotten Son that if you believe in Him, you will not perish but have eternal life. He came so that you might know the truth and that the truth shall make you free. The choice is yours. The Lord has come near to you today. I hope you will invite Him to stay with you.

As we look at this familiar passage today which deals with the crucifixion of Jesus, there is a temptation for a preacher to try to present something which is very familiar in a fresh way. And so often the way that is done is to dramatize the story by adding all sorts of details concerning the method of crucifixion, or the torture of crucifixion, or other details that might make the story more interesting.

But the gospel writers do not expend much effort attempting to dramatize the physical act of the crucifixion. Luke just states it as simply as possible in vs.33, saying “there they crucified Him.” No gory details of how that was accomplished, or how painful or horrific crucifixion was. And so I think it’s appropriate for us today to be mindful of the way the writer presents this event, so as not to unnecessarily dramatize it. Not that we want to minimize the pain and suffering of the cross, but to see first and foremost the purpose of the cross. To focus too much on the mechanics of the torture of the cross is to possibly miss the doctrine of the cross and that would be the greater tragedy.

So our goal today is not to give a dramatic description of the crucifixion, but the doctrine of the crucifixion. 1 Peter 3:18 states simply the doctrine of the crucifixion, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.”

Now in this passage today we will just consider a portion of the crucifixion, and in so doing we will discover first what qualifies Jesus to bring men to God, then man’s rejection of that qualification, and finally the salvation of one man who accepted Christ. And the key component of this salvation is the principle that Christ is King. Christ is King. I think that is what Luke is presenting here. The whole chapter up to this point has been predicated on the charge his accusers made about Him before Pilate. Their charge in vs. 2 was that He claimed to be a king, and that was deserving of death.

Notice that the chief priests accuse Him of being Christ, a King. They state it in such a way as to make the two synonymous. Christ is the Greek word which was translated from the title Messiah. Christos means Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of God. He was anointed to be the Ruler who would sit on the throne of David, who would rule the world with a rod of iron. The chief priests and scribes would have been very familiar with the Messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” So there was a correct understanding on the part of the Jews concerning the Messiah that He would also be a King, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

So that is the primary charge which the Jews made concerning Jesus, which they used to have Him put to death. And since that is the charge, Pilate tries Jesus on those grounds. In vs. 3, Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him and said, “It is as you say.” And yet Pilate finds no guilt in Him. He sees no evidence for His kingdom. He is looking at the physical evidence of a kingdom or a kingship and he doesn’t see it. And even Jesus Himself tells Pilate in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

So the central issue then is the kingship, or lordship of Jesus. Was He the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the anointed One who would set up His kingdom on earth? That is the central issue of that day, and it is the central issue of the ages. There is no disputing the fact that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died 2000 years ago. But there is much dispute as to the nature of this man. Was He in fact God incarnate, God in the flesh, or was He just a man? Was He just a kind man, perhaps a bit deluded, but a good teacher, a Gandhi like figure that taught peace through passivity? Or was He the Messiah, the anointed King of God in human form? And if He was indeed the King of Kings, as He claimed, then what should be our response to Him?

There can be but two possible responses; either reject Him as King, or worship Him as King. And in this passage we see those two responses depicted. First let’s look at several examples which Luke presents of the King rejected. We have already seen how Pilate acquiesced to the voices calling for Jesus to be crucified. We heard him ask if Jesus was indeed a King, and we heard Jesus tell him that it was so. And yet, ultimately Pilate rejects Jesus as King. He probably knew nothing of Jesus as Messiah, he cared nothing for Jewish religion. But he understood what it meant to be a king. It was what he desired for himself, it was his aspiration. And there was no way that he would bow to a Jewish prophet who claimed to be a king. That would mean he would have to relinquish his throne and bow to Jesus, to serve Him. And there was no way that Pilate would do that. So he agreed to crucify Jesus as the chief priests and the people demanded. He did what so many politicians do, he acquiesced to popular demand in order to preserve his position of power.

And in vs. 38 we read Pilate’s proclamation which he had written for the soldiers to place upon the head of the cross. “Now there was also an inscription above Him, ‘THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’” The chief priests had argued with Pilate, saying don’t write that this is the King of the Jews, but write that he said he was the King of the Jews. But Pilate refused to change it, saying, what I have written, I have written. And so by his own words he will be judged. He proclaimed that Jesus was the King of the Jews, and yet he rejected Him and had Him crucified.

So he consented to crucify Jesus. He handed him over to the Roman soldiers who led Him away to Golgotha, which means the Place of the Skull. And there they crucified Him, along with two criminals, one on either side. Little could they know that this fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12, which says that He was numbered with the transgressors.

The second group then that we see who reject Jesus was the soldiers. As they throw Jesus’ lacerated body onto the cross and pound the nails in His hands and feet, Jesus prays aloud, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Oh, the soldiers knew what they were doing all right. They had undoubtedly done this sort of work many times before. But what they could not understand was that they were pounding nails into the very Son of God. They thought it was some sort of joke. Pilate had written this sign to put on His cross announcing that Jesus was King of the Jews, and they began to make fun of Jesus because of it.

Vs. 36 “The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine, and saying, ‘If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!’” But obviously, this demand for Jesus to save Himself as evidence of His Kingship, or His Messiahship, shows that even these soldiers understood that there was something more implied in His Kingship than mere political power. They understood that it implied a supernatural power. Kings didn’t have power of immortality, but gods did. So if you were really God, they said, then save yourself from death. That is what they demanded. Even these pagan soldiers understood the connection between God and King that was implicit in His title. In fact, this theme is common to all those that reject Christ that day, in their minds the criteria for the Messiah was that He had to save Himself. And that is what they could not understand. That is why Jesus said that they did not know what they were doing. None of them understood that Christ came to die on the cross. It was His mission. Not to save Himself, but to die for them so that they might be saved.

This prayer for their forgiveness exemplified a love for His enemies that we are also told to show for those that hate us. To forgive those that hurt us, even as Christ forgave those that were crucifying Him. He recognized that they were lost, and they were the ones that He had come to save. As Jesus said in Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” These soldiers for the most part rejected Him as King, the reviled Him and mocked Him, though there is one that is identified in vs. 47, the centurion, whom we will look at next time who did eventually respond to that prayer and praised God after witnessing Jesus on the cross. We should learn from Jesus’ example that how we respond to people’s attacks on us can bring glory to God in spite of how painful it may seem to us in the meantime.

Luke says that these soldiers cast lots for His clothing. They saw the death of Christ as a means of gaining material things, and yet they missed completely the inestimable value of what Christ was accomplishing in His death. They gambled for His clothes, while He purchased for them a robe of righteousness with His blood. That act was prophesied in Psalm 22, by the way, as were many of the events of the crucifixion.

The other category of Christ rejecters that day was the crowd mentioned in vs. 35, “And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’ Once again you see the demand for Christ to validate His kingship by saving Himself. They could not understand the cross. It didn’t fit into their idea of what the Messiah/King was supposed to do. And the world today doesn’t appreciate the need for the cross either. 1Cor. 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The world isn’t really interested in a cross centered gospel. They don’t want to hear that they are sinners and God has poured out His wrath against sin by putting His Son on the cross. But they do want a gospel of deliverance. The world’s response to the offer of a Messiah is to say,   “get me out of this mess and then I will believe in You.” Christ is only beneficial to those in a dilemma. Those in a crisis. Don’t preach the message of the cross, instead preach the message of the crisis. That will sell. But don’t preach take up your cross and follow Me. That isn’t a popular message.

There was one other category of those that rejected Christ that day, and that was the two thieves on the cross on either side of Jesus. Even they were hurling abuse at Him. The other gospels tell us that initially they both began to pick up on the crowd and soldier’s rejection and mock Jesus. But Luke is the only gospel writer to show that there begins to be a distinction between the two criminals behavior. And so Luke describes one criminal as saying in vs. 39, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!”  He too shows a certain understanding of theology. He knows Jesus claimed to be the Christ. He knows that involves some sort of salvation. But he is obviously only interested in physical salvation from his suffering. He is mocking Jesus. And yet by his own words he too condemns himself. He admits Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus came to save, and yet he is only interested in physical salvation.

I’m afraid that a lot of people fall into this category. They are not sorry for their sins. They have no interest in repentance. They refuse to bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But they think that they have a certain understanding of theology. I’m often amazed at how unsaved people are quick to point out what errors there are in the Bible or in the church. They dismiss the need for their salvation by what they perceive to be the hypocrisy of others. And yet they are guilty of the very thing that they accuse Christians of. They do not do what they believe is the right thing to do. But in finding fault in another they somehow think that they can excuse themselves. But the Bible tells us that every man will give an account to God for the things that he did himself. And as James tells us in James 4:17 “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” We are all guilty of sin. Romans 3:10 says, “There is none righteous, no not one.” None of us have an excuse.

And that leads us to the last character that we will look at this morning, and the only one of this group for whom the crucifixion was efficacious. That would be the other thief that was hanging on a cross on the opposite side of Jesus. Though this man was a guilty criminal, though his sins so serious that he was punished with crucifixion, and though he too initially mocked Jesus, yet something has happened in his time on the cross to change his heart. And that change is apparent in his response to the other criminal’s mocking challenge to Jesus.

Starting in vs. 40 we read, “But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!’”   And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” This dying criminal was saved in the last hour by faith in Christ Jesus. Everyone else said Jesus if you are the Christ save yourself. This man called out for Jesus to save him, and Jesus said that today he would be with Him in Paradise. Jesus doesn’t answer all the taunts of the crowd and the priests and the soldiers, but he answers the call of the penitent sinner.

And so I would like to look at this sinner and his response to Jesus as an illustration of what encompasses saving faith. At first glance we might look at the brief response of this man and wonder how it qualifies this man for salvation. But in spite of his economy of words Luke provides us with a full description of the doctrine of salvation if we look closely.

First of all, as he hangs on the cross, a witness to the crucifixion of the Messiah, he becomes very aware of God and the fear of God. He said to the other thief, “Do you not even fear God?” Listen, the first evidence that God is doing the work of conversion in a person’s life is a realization of the fear of God. I’m afraid the gospel of God is done a great disservice and possibly many well intentioned people are not saved because we substitute teaching the fear of God with the love of God. We are afraid that teaching the fear of God will scare people away and hope that teaching the love of God will seduce them to salvation. But I believe the Bible teaches both the fear of God and the love of God. However, 3 times, in Psalm 111:10, in Prov. 9:10 and in Prov. 1:7, the scriptures say that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

In Romans 3 which I quoted from while ago in vs. 10 it states that there is no one righteous, not even one, and then that section ends in vs. 18 with a culminating statement; “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” We sin because it is our nature to sin, but we continue in our sin, and progress in our sin, and harden our hearts toward God because we don’t fear God. We don’t fear judgment. We don’t fear the righteousness and holiness of God. We don’t care that our sin is an affront to a holy, righteous God and that He cannot abide sin.

But this thief on the cross, how exactly he came about it I don’t know, feared God. Maybe as the reality of his impending death sank in, he began to remember the scriptures his mother read to him as a boy. Maybe he remembered lessons he had been taught about hell and the judgment to come. But the beginning of wisdom for this man is the fear of God. He may not have thought much about God when he was embarking on a life of crime. He thought he could push such thoughts out of his mind. But now he is dying, and he realizes that he is going to have to face God at the judgment. And it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. So he comes to fear God.

The second essential element of his salvation came in the realization of his sinfulness. A proper fear of God usually results in a proper sense of one’s guilt. Verse 41 “And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” He says I know I’m a lawbreaker. It’s a true assessment of his condition. He’s guilty, he’s aware of his sinfulness, he’s in a sense saying I am a sinner. I deserve to die. I am receiving what I deserve for my deeds. This is the attitude of true repentance.

You know, only when you agree with the law of God that you deserve to die for your sins are you willing to die TO your sins. Repentance is simply dying to your sins. Crucifying the flesh and it’s sinful passions. Gal. 5:24 “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Those who continue in their sins show a disregard for the fear of God and they prove they have not truly repented of their sins.

The third essential element of his salvation that is evidenced in his confession that he believed in the righteousness of Christ.   Jesus was the spotless lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the earth. He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin. His sinlessness was evidence that He was the anointed Son of God. If He wasn’t without sin, then He could not atone for sin. Jesus said in John 8:46 “Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me?” His sinlessness was a greater witness to His divinity than His miracles. 2Cor. 5:11 says, “God made Jesus who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Salvation is only possible because Jesus was righteous, and because He was righteous, therefore Jesus was God.

When we talk about salvation we talk about the necessity for repentance and faith. And we see in this dying thief both of these attributes; repentance under the fear of divine wrath and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is one final expression of that saving faith that I am so glad that Luke incorporates for us here in this passage.   And that is the thief shows saving submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This principle is what ties all this passage together. As I have been saying, every skeptic, every scoffer, from Pilate, to the priests, to the soldiers and even the other thief on the cross all scoff and reject the Kingship of Christ. It’s been the constant theme of their mocking of Him. But this dying thief on the cross understands that Jesus is King. He understands that if Jesus is the Christ, then He must be King.

Look at what he says in vs. 42, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” You can’t have a kingdom unless you are a king. And so this dying thief sees what all these others could not see; that Jesus was the Christ, the King. The only way that happened was Jesus gave him eyes to see and a heart to understand.

I’m afraid that far too often the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a message that is lost in today’s modern version of Christianity; where Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from some sort of personal mediocrity, or some sort of crisis, so that we can have a more successful, happy life here on earth. I believe Luke includes this conversion to show us that the doctrine of Lordship is not an ancillary doctrine that can be added or ignored after conversion, but it is a necessary and vital part of salvation. We must be willing to acknowledge who Jesus is and then be willing to surrender our lives and will to Him to be used for His glory and for His kingdom.

If the other principles such as a proper fear of God, and true repentance, and a right understanding of the righteousness and holiness of Christ are in full effect, then the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ is a non issue. It naturally follows those things. It is a product of repentance and faith. And this man showed that he had the right kind of theology, producing saving faith.

Hey, and get this. He even has an understanding of the resurrection as well. Now that’s really incredible, isn’t it. You say, how do you know that? Well, he would have known that no one survived crucifixion, so he had to have believed that Jesus would die and then rise again and bring about his kingdom. Furthermore, I think you could even argue that he had an understanding that it was a spiritual kingdom.

And Jesus responds to this man’s faith with an affirmation and encouragement which is the hope that he would be with Christ in Paradise. Vs. 43, “And [Jesus] said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Now I would love to run down a rabbit trail with this statement and give you my version of eschatology, but I will leave that for another day. However, understand this; Paradise is wherever Jesus is. He says you will be with Me….in Paradise. Wherever Paradise is, Jesus is. It literally means the Garden of the Lord. It doesn’t mean the Garden of Eden, I think it will be better than that. But it does mean that there is no sin there. And as in the Garden of Eden man walked with God and talked with God so we that are saved as this man was saved will be with God in Paradise, in the presence of God, communing with God.

And finally, one last thing. Jesus said, “Today.” There is no separation from the love of God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Rom. 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul said in 2 Cor. 5:8 that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. It’s instantaneous. Listen, Jesus and the thief that day both died in the flesh, their bodies were placed in the ground, but they were alive in the Spirit. 1Pet. 3:18 “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”

Listen, for those who repent and have faith as this thief on the cross did, Jesus promised in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Do you repent and turn from your sins and in faith in Christ confess Him as your Lord and King? If you do this, you will live. You will never die. Christ came to die for you so that you might be saved. I pray that you won’t reject Him, but confess Him as your Lord and Savior.

The old hymn writer puts it well; “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.”

At the beginning of the hippie movement in 1965, a rock and roll band by the name of the Who wrote a song called, “My Generation” that helped define the age. If you were part of that generation, then you knew at the time who the band was talking about. It meant anyone younger than the age of thirty. One of the most famous lines of the song was, “I hope I die before I get old.” I guess thirty was considered old at that time. But I doubt the band members feel the same way today.

But even though they had a sense of who comprised their generation, the lines became blurred as the hippies grew up and the movement expanded. Today that generation is still around, having lived twice as long as they said they wanted to live. The point being, that the idea of a generation is kind of an indeterminate designation. Though it is widely accepted that a generation is about 40 years, no one can say for sure when a generation begins and when it ends. There are still people living today, for instance, who were part of the generation that lived through WW2.

The point that I’m trying to make is that when Jesus uses the phrase “this generation” in vs. 32, we’re not really sure exactly what He means. Because generation can mean people living during a general time period or it can mean people who are closely related in age. My view, and one that I think is widely shared among Biblical scholars is that generation in this passage refers not to people closely related in age, but related by an age. People living in a certain age, or an epoch, a time.

And that principle is born out by the question of the disciples which prompted this whole discourse. It’s found in Matthew’s version, chapter 24, vs.3, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” As I pointed out last week when we looked at this, I think the key to understanding this passage is that there are three ages presented in the Bible. There is the ancient age, from creation to the flood. That age lasted 2000 years and came to an end with a world wide flood which destroyed all life on earth except for those saved on the ark. And then there was a second age, which was the Jewish age, from Abraham to the Apostles. That age lasted for 2000 years as well and came to an end with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and Israel. Millions of Jews were massacred and the remainder dispersed, chased from one country to another, living without a homeland. And the third age mentioned in chapter 21vs. 24 is the age of the Gentiles. We are living in the age of the Gentiles. This age has lasted 2000 years as well. It began with the trampling underfoot of Jerusalem by the Gentiles in 70AD and I believe it’s nearing the end as signaled by the Jews retaking Jerusalem in 1967 and living once again in the nation of Israel. I believe that 6000 years of human history is fast approaching it’s climax, which is going to end with the destruction of the earth. 2Pet. 3:7 “But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

Now with that understanding it is possible to interpret this passage in a sort of sytematic way. But let me say as a caveat, that the phrase “this generation” is the source of a great deal of debate in theological circles. It has put at war various groups from differing camps within the eschatological debate that has been going on for almost a hundred years. And I don’t intend to get involved in that war this morning. I think it is impossible to be that dogmatic about a passage which obviously was intended to be somewhat obscure. So rather than focus on different viewpoints of end time theology, I would like to focus our attention on the point of it all. What was Jesus trying to say? What message was He trying to convey during these last hours with His disciples?   I think that is what is important, and not trying to figure out the day or the hour of our Lord’s return, which Jesus says is not our privilege to know. In the parallel account in Mark 13:32 Jesus adds, “But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”

So what is the main point that Jesus is trying to make? I believe that the context of this message, known as the Olivet Discourse, is a message concerning the end of the ages. I believe that it is clear that Jesus is trying to warn His disciples about the impending judgment of Israel, and how they are to live in the last days. They were living in the last days before the destruction of the temple, the last days of Israel as a nation, and the last days before there would be a great massacre and persecution of the Jews. It happened within their generation. It happened just as Jesus predicted within the next 40 years.

And I believe Jesus message was intended as a warning for future generations as well. We are living in the last days of the age of the Gentiles. We are living in the last hours before the great tribulation, and in the last days before the judgment of God is poured out upon the earth. So I believe that the message that Jesus gives here is a message which I have titled, “How to live in the last days.”

The way that I have decided to present this last section is to identify some key phrases or thoughts that are strung through these verses to give us something to hang onto as we consider how we are to live in the last days. And here is what I have extracted from this passage as to how we are to live in the last days; we need to straighten up, lift up, look up, keep our guard up, sober up, lighten up, wise up, pray up, and listen up.

Now let’s look briefly at each of these. The first is straighten up. Jesus said in vs. 28, “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up…” What things is Jesus talking about? Well, it’s obvious that He’s talking about the persecution, the distressing signs in the heavens, the fear from natural catastrophes that will take place and so forth. It stands to reason that in order to straighten up you must first have been bent over or knocked down.

So although in these last days we may get knocked down, we don’t stay down. I like how Paul talks about it in 2Cor. 4:7-11 “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” We can straighten up in the midst of tribulations or persecutions or hardships because we know that we have a higher calling, that there is a greater purpose to our suffering, so that even in the midst of all of these trials we are manifesting Jesus Christ to the world. That knowledge should make you straighten up. Paul said in Phil. 3:10-11 “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” So straighten up.

Secondly, Jesus says when these things begin to take place, lift up your heads. Listen, when the world starts getting you down, you have to take your eyes off of the world. Take your eyes off your circumstances and lift up your eyes to heaven. Psalm 121 says, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.”

And I’m going to stretch that phrase to include lifting up one another. Gal. 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” Listen, that is the purpose of the church, to bear one another’s burdens. To help hold each other up. To come to the aid of those that are hurting, or wounded. Lift up one another. Encourage the weak, the faint hearted.

Thirdly, look up. Vs. 31 says, “So you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near.” Jesus gave an illustration to help the disciples understand what He meant. He said when you see a fig tree starting to bud then you know that summer is near. I don’t know about you, but I love summer. Especially when I was a kid, but I feel like the older I get the more I like it as well. I just can’t stand winters anymore. So every year, I used to eagerly watch for the trees to start to bud. Because once I saw that happen, I knew that summer was near.

That’s what Jesus is talking about. There is no mystical message about fig trees here. It’s just when you see these things happening, be joyful. Look up! Jesus is coming back soon! It’s almost time for the consummation of the Kingdom of God. You know what He’s talking about? He said in vs. 27 that the Son of Man will come in the clouds with power and great glory. What He is saying is “Look up!” “I’m coming back soon.” Looking up means to live life with the expectancy of Jesus’ imminent return.

Jesus could come back today. Folks, how differently would we live if we had a real expectation that Jesus could come back today? Maybe early tomorrow morning. What would you do differently if you really believed that? I think one of the most poignant things that I have read was some transcripts of telephone calls from victims of the Twin Towers bombing. As the buildings were going up in flames, as people were dying all around them and they knew death for them was imminent, those people made phone calls to their loved ones. They wanted to take those last minutes to reach out to their families. I think if we lived with the expectation of Christ returning in the clouds in judgment and power and glory with all His angels, I think we would get serious about reaching some of our loved ones with the gospel. I think we would make some phone calls. I think we would visit some people. I hope so. I hope that when He comes He would find us about the business of the Kingdom of God.

Fourthly, how do you live in the last days? Straighten up, lift up, look up, and fourthly, keep your guard up. Jesus says in vs. 34, “Be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth.” We need to live in these last days on guard against the schemes of the devil. We need to guard our hearts and minds against temptation. Peter said in 1Pet. 5:8 “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Listen, make no mistake. You are living in enemy territory. The devil is your mortal enemy. He wants to distract you, capture you, trap you in some sin, and ultimately to destroy you. So be on guard. Be vigilant. Keep close watch over your souls.

Fifthly, sober up. “Be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness…” Listen, I’m not going to try to tell you that you can’t have a beer or a drink and be a Christian. But I am going to tell you this: the Bible makes it clear that we are to be sober. We are living in the last days. We are living in a critical time. Our enemy is fighting harder than ever, knowing that his days are short. And so God tells us 8 times in the NT to be sober. That means circumspect, calm, collected, using sound judgment at all times. We already saw that we are to be on guard. Do you think soldiers on guard should drink? Obviously not.

Peter said in 1Pet. 4:3 “For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.” Dissipation, by the way, means wasting your resources, squandering money, talents or resources by living for pleasure. Dissipation is wasting the grace of God by living for pleasure. That is not why Jesus bought us with His blood. Our freedom is not for licentiousness. We need to sober up.

Sixthly, we need to lighten up. “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life…” The worries of life. I’ve said it before many times, some things aren’t necessarily sins in and of themselves, but they are weights which hinder us and slow us down. Heb. 12:1 says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”   What weights are keeping you from running the race to the fullest? What weight is holding you back from really living fully for the Lord in these last days? It may not be a sin in and of itself, but if it’s keeping you from living out God’s purpose in your life then you need to get rid of it. Lay it aside. You’re running a race. You’re almost at the finish line, and some of you are trying to run with a lot of baggage that is slowing you down.

Jesus gave the familiar parable of the soils in Luke 8:14. He said, “The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” Lighten up, let go of the worries, riches and pleasures of the world so that you might bring forth fruit.

Seventh, we need to wise up. “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth.” Did you ever set a trap? I trapped once or twice when I was a boy. My dad always warned me to be careful because I could lose a finger setting the trap. The spring was so powerful and the jaws of the trap slammed shut so fast that it was very dangerous.

Jesus likens the last day, the day of judgment coming like the jaws of a steel trap, slamming shut the door before you can react. Jesus said that His coming will be like the lightning flashing in the evening sky, lighting up the sky from one end to the other in an instant, in a blinding flash. Jesus said in Matthew 24 that He is coming at an hour that you do not expect. Peter said He is coming like a thief. It won’t be announced. Jesus talked about the sudden destruction that is coming. The trap is that those people who have succumbed to the allure of this world, to dissipation and drunkenness and drugs and debauchery will suddenly find themselves mourning at the sudden appearance of Christ in glory. Wise up. Don’t be caught outside the door.

Eighth, how do you live in the last days? Pray up. Vs. 36, “But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Listen, you won’t be able to stand in that day if you are not leaning on the strength that God supplies. We need to be prayed up if we expect to be able to stand up in the last days. Ephesians 6 is the chapter which describes the armor of God. And in all the armor we have only two pieces of equipment that are offensive, that are weapons. One is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And the second is prayer.

Eph. 6:18 says, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.” To live in these last days we need to pray all the times in the Spirit. We need to be praying for one another all the time. We need to pray for our children all the time. We need to pray for our wives or husbands all the time. Paul said in the next verse to especially pray for him that he would be given the words to say. We need to pray for our pastor all the time.

Listen, I don’t dare think that I am holier or more righteous than any of you simply because I am a pastor. I’m just like you are. I bleed, I get sick, I get disappointed, I get tired, I even get backslidden sometimes. But one thing I think I do have that perhaps you don’t have. And that is I am the subject to a special strategy of Satan due to my position to destroy me, to destroy my family, to destroy my testimony, to tempt me to be unfaithful to the gospel. I know my weaknesses, and I know how hard Satan is trying to defeat me. Because if he can cut off the head, he can kill the body. I covet your prayers. We need to pray up.

Finally, number 9, we need to listen up. Listen up. Vs. 37 “Now during the day He was teaching in the temple, but at evening He would go out and spend the night on the mount that is called Olivet. And all the people would get up early in the morning to come to Him in the temple to listen to Him.” You want to stand firm in the last days? Then attend to the teaching of God’s word. Don’t neglect coming to church. Don’t neglect coming to Bible study. The word of God is truth. The word of God is life. The word of God is eternal. Jesus said in vs. 33, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” The word of God is our strength. The word of God is our comfort. The word of God is sufficient for every need. 2Tim. 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” You could translate it better, “so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Listen, I am all for private devotions. I think everyone should have a quiet time and study the word of God on their own. But I want to impress on you the necessity of corporate worship. But it’s not just a time to get together and listen to a speech and maybe hear some songs. But God has called preachers to teach the word, to rebuke, to convict, to encourage in ways that don’t always come out of your personal Bible study. When we study our Bibles we tend to gloss over some areas and dwell on others that happen to appeal to our interests at the moment. But a God called preacher is going to preach the word of God in such a way that will exhort you to action, that will convict you of sin, and build up the weaker elements of the body.

Paul exhorted a young preacher by the name of Timothy to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” I’m afraid that time has come. It is the last days, and such a great deception has occurred that if possible even the very elect would be deceived. False prophets have risen. Church’s lamps have gone out. Christian’s love has grown cold. And people have turned away from the truth and turned aside to teachers that tickle their ears with stories and jokes and nice sounding platitudes.

If you are going to live in these last days for the Lord, then you need to come together with the body of Christ and strengthen one another, fellowship with one another, and submit to the preaching of the truth of God’s word from a pastor who has been appointed and annointed to preach the gospel.

Well, there you have it. We are living in the last days. Christ is coming back soon. It could be today. Maybe tomorrow morning. Let’s live like it’s our last day on earth. Let’s be ready when Jesus appears like lightning in the clouds, with all the angels of God with Him. On that day, the whole earth will be shaken, and every eye will see Him, and all who have not trusted in Him will mourn. Let us be ready. Let’s pray.

Today in our popular culture there seems to be a fascination with apocalyptic themes. Movies and books like Hunger Games or Maze Runner are set in a post apocalyptic world. All sorts of movies have been made which feature an end of the world scenario, where atomic blasts, or great floods or swarms of zombies end life on earth as we know it. It’s a popular topic right now.

And it’s happening on the religious front as well. Harold Kamping of Family Radio caught the world’s attention with his prophecy that the rapture would happen on May 21, 2011. Some of the biggest religious themed book sales have been from the Left Behind series. A new version of the movie is out now featuring Nicholas Cage. According to an article I saw on Fox News the other day, Hollywood now sees the rapture as viable subject matter that has found it’s way into several new offerings. The world seems to be fixated on end of the world scenarios. And a lot of things in the world have contributed to that, such as the Middle East conflict, the AIDS epidemic, the birth of the atomic bomb, and various epidemics such as the ebola virus that has so many people worried today. And not the least of all these reasons is the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948, and then their takeover of part of Jerusalem in 1967. What makes this astonishing is that for 2000 years the nation of Israel did not exist. And now within most of our lifetimes, we have witnessed it’s rebirth which seems directly tied to end time theology.

The most often requested book of the Bible that people want me to study through is the book of Revelation. I could probably pack our Wednesday night Bible study at my house if I would just announce that I was going to study Revelation. I will tell you right now that I have no plans on doing that any time in the near future. However, I am going to start to teach today the Olivet Discourse which is Christ’s direct teaching on the end of the age, His final message. We will just present an overview or introduction of this today, and we will probably take another couple of weeks or so to go through it. So perhaps if you will make a point of being here it will help you to develop a Biblical context of eschatology. We are not going to answer every question. I personally don’t think we can answer every question. Paul himself called it a mystery. But I do intend on doing my best to exegete Christ’s message that He gave in response to the disciples questions concerning the end of the age. The question of when will these things be, and what will be the signs of the end of the age?

For today though, I want to start by putting this in context by reminding you of my message last week. Last week we looked at the end of chapter 20 through the first four verses of chapter 21. And if you will recall, the main point of my message was Christ’s rebuke against mindless religion. He had challenged the priests and religious leaders to answer a question concerning the Messiah, who they all claimed to believe in, by contrasting certain passages in the Bible with their theology. And they couldn’t do it. They didn’t want to consider what the Bible said if it countered what they practiced. They had built a religion that they were comfortable with, that gave them a certain measure of power, that provided them with money and prestige, and they were content with that. In fact, more than that, they fiercely protected their position and all the religious trappings that went along with their doctrine. So much so that they were ready and willing to kill the Son of God because He threatened their religion. So I proposed last week that they had a mindless religion. It wasn’t based on the authority of scripture, it was based on a long tradition of rituals and teachings and interpretations that had over time corrupted their religion. It no longer saved. It no longer had the power to deliver. It was an empty, false, mindless religion.

Then if you remember the scene changes as Jesus sees the rich people coming into the outer court of the temple and giving their offerings. They gave them in such a way as to be noticed. It was done with fanfare. But Jesus noticed a poor woman who only had two cents to her name and she gave all that she had to live on to the temple. She gave her entire financial worth to a religious system that was false, that was empty, that could not do anything other than rob the poor people that were coming there hoping for some sort of deliverance.

Now that is the setting for our passage today. Jesus declares judgment against this mindless, false religion that dupes and takes advantage of people, and He declares judgment against the Godless temple and all that it represents. As Jesus and the disciples are walking out of the temple, the disciples point out the beautiful architecture and the gifts and so forth that adorned it, Jesus says to them in vs. 6, “As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.”

Now for the disciples, this must have been a shocking statement. It must have been almost impossible for them to comprehend what He was talking about. And to illustrate that I need to give you a brief description of the temple. The temple was a massive building that dominated the skyline of Jerusalem. It was 500 yards wide by 400 yards wide. Some of the huge stones used in the construction were as long as 67’ and 7.5’ tall by 9’ thick. So it was a massive building, 5 football fields long, built upon the temple mount which was known as Mount Moriah, or Mount Zion. As you entered Jerusalem you ascended up to the temple. And as you ascended the sun would reflect with a blinding glare off of the temple which was made of white stones and covered in gold plates.

So the disciples, these simple Galilean fishermen, were obviously awestruck by the grandeur and magnificence of the temple. But to really understand the significance of the temple you also need to know a little of the history of it. As I said, it was constructed on what was believed to be Mount Moriah. This was the mountain where Abraham took Isaac to offer him on the altar. This was the location of the great first temple which King Solomon had built over a 1000 years earlier. It had been destroyed by the Babylonians but then had been rebuilt by Zerubbabel 500 years before Christ. Then Herod the Great had begun a major renovation of the temple which lasted 80 years and which was almost finished at the time Jesus and the disciples are there. So there was a thousand year history associated with it.

So not only was it important architecturally, and historically, but also socially. The temple was the religious epicenter for all of Israel, and for all the Jews scattered throughout the Middle East in various countries. It was the Mecca which Jews would travel to from all the Gentile nations at certain feast times. It was the only place where sacrifices could be offered. It was the headquarters of the Levitical priesthood and the high priest. It was in every way, the center of Jewish life, religious, judicial, governmental, social and economic. But more importantly than that, it was considered the house of God. I remember well when I was a kid being rebuked by some church lady that I shouldn’t run or make loud noises or whatever because I was in the house of God. I never quite understood that. I lived right next to the church in the parsonage, and so I was quite familiar with the building. And I knew that God was too big to be confined to that building, or that the physical elements were somehow sacred.

But for the Israelites, the temple literally was the house of God. It’s Biblical name in the Hebrew language meant house of God. The temple was the architectural equivalent to the tabernacle that Moses built which traveled with the Jews as they went to the Promised Land. It was comprised of various courtyards, starting with the court of the Gentiles, then the court of women, then the sanctuary, and inside that the Holy of Holies which was where the presence of God was.

So in every respect the temple represented so much to the average Jew that he could not imagine Jewish life without it. He could not imagine that God would allow the temple to be destroyed. It was just incomprehensible. So we have to understand the significance of the temple, to understand the significance of what Jesus is saying. When Jesus declares that there will not be one stone left upon another, it is not just the destruction of a religious edifice, but the destruction of an entire religious system, an entire way of life.

See, Jesus is pronouncing the judgment of God upon the temple as a symbol of all that Judaism represented. Judaism, as I have said, was a mindless religion. They had replaced the true meaning of the scriptures with the Talmud, which was their interpretation and application of principles and rituals which governed their religion. It was never inspired by God. And yet it had replaced the authority of God’s word. The Talmud was the authority. It was the traditions of the rabbis and religious leaders.   So their religion was mindless, false and empty.

And not only was their religion empty, but their temple was empty. God had left the building a long time before. I don’t know when the Holy of Holies stopped being filled with the presence of God. But I would suspect that it was around the time that Herod the Great took over the renovation of the temple. In the Old Testament law, the prescription had been to tie a bell around the ankle of the high priest when he went into the Holy of Holies once a year so that if he was sinful in the presence of God, then when God struck him dead they would hear that the bell was no longer tinkling. They used to tie a rope around the high priest so if that happened they could pull him out by the rope. Because no one could go in there to get him out without being killed. But some historians say that when Herod rebuilt the temple he defied the Holy of Holies. But in any case, the priests themselves had become corrupt. By this time, the office of the high priest was a political appointment of Rome. And so these corrupt, sinful priests officiated at the temple, even to the high priest going through the rituals in the Holy of Holies, and yet none of them are stuck dead. Why? The answer is that God had left the building long before.

I can’t help but make the association with many churches today. Many denominations in America were founded in times of true revival by true believers. And certainly the Spirit of God was present. They taught the Word of God. They were sanctified, holy people worshipping God in Spirit and in truth. But through the years, as godly men died off and new ministers were hired according to popular vote, by how entertaining of a speaker they were, and how nice their personality was, regardless of their doctrine or lack of it, at some point in many of our churches today in America God left the building.   They are still going through the motions, they still have plenty of people attending, still have plenty of religious activity, but God has left the building.   All that’s left is just mindless religion and Godless temples of religious enthusiasm. And I would suggest that God’s judgment is coming upon the apostate church in a similar fashion as it came upon the temple. I would remind you of Peter’s warning in 1Pet. 4:17 “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”

So we must understand that Jesus is declaring that not only will the temple be destroyed, but that the system of Judaism is coming to an end. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD as Jesus prophesied by Titus who sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. One of his soldiers set fire to the Holy of Holies and it spread to all of the temple. Josephus records that the gold plates which covered the outside of the building melted and so they pried apart all the stones in order to get at the gold, leaving not one stone upon another as Jesus had said. Without the temple there can be no sacrifices. The sacrifices and offerings ended in 70AD. The system of Judaism ended in 70 AD. The Levitical priesthood ended in 70 AD.

We’re going to look in the next couple of weeks at more detail in regards to this prophecy and the destruction of Jerusalem. But what I want you to understand today is something that the disciples could not understand at this point. And that is that as Jesus was pronouncing doom upon the temple He was also announcing deliverance. Jeremiah 31:31-34 says, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Jeremiah was talking about a new day that will come when God will not be worshipped externally in rituals and symbols and temples, but inwardly. God will dwell not in temples made with hands, but in the temples of our bodies, in our hearts. When Jesus offered Himself as the final sacrifice on the cross, old things passed away, and all things became new. The temple and sacrifices and priesthood were done away with. What had only been pictured in the old covenant was now realized in Jesus Christ, and so the old picture was no longer necessary because the reality was present. Jesus was now the high priest, eternal in the heavens, ever living to make intercession for us. Jesus was the Lamb of God, offered as the final sacrifice for the sins of the world. And by faith in Him, faith that He was the Son of God, faith in His efficacy to be the atonement for sin, we are forgiven for our sins. And because we are forgiven of our sins we are holy, whereby we are made holy temples of His Spirit who dwells in us.

That is the essence of the new covenant that does away with the symbolism and ritual of the old. Having been forgiven, made holy and made temples of the Spirit of Christ, who has written the law of God upon our hearts. That is, we have new desires, new appetites, new life through the Spirit who lives in us. That is how we are able to know the Lord, to have communion with God. We no longer need a high priest to intercede for us with daily sacrifices. Our high priest was the perfect, final sacrifice and now lives to make intercession for us. His Spirit dwells in us so that we have perfect communion with God because the indwelling Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Listen, this is a simple message today. I want you to be fully cognizant of the great privilege that we have in Christ Jesus. We who were outside of the covenant, Gentiles who were unable to enter the temple, now have access to the Holy Spirit, because we have the Holy of Holies in us. On the day that Jesus was crucified, just two days from the Olivet Discourse, the veil which separated the Holy of Holies from the sanctuary was rent in two, from the top to the bottom, signifying that a new way was opened up to God. It was opened up to every race, every people of every nation. God opened up salvation from being the provenance of the Jews, to being available to all who would call upon the name of Jesus and believe in Him. The plan of salvation was given not just to a nation, but to the church, made up of people from every nation and every tongue.

But not only do we have a great privilege as the old temple system is done away, we also have a great responsibility as we are the recipients of the new covenant. 1Cor. 6:19-20 says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” See, just as the presence of God dwelt in the old temple, so the presence of God dwells in our temple. We are the body of Christ. The church is the body of Christ. His Spirit dwells in us that we might do His will.

Heb. 10:5-7 says, “Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE. “THEN I SAID, ‘BEHOLD, I HAVE COME (IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME) TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'”

That is the purpose of our salvation. That is why we are here on this earth. To be the body of Jesus Christ. To be the physical manifestation of Christ to the world. To do the will of Jesus Christ. He has saved us. He has forgiven us. He has purchased us. He has sanctified us by His precious blood. So that we might be holy, temples of God, guided by His Spirit, to do the will of God, to live out the law of God, to bring glory to God, and to cause men to glorify God when they see our good works.

I would just ask you a question in closing today. Are you going through the motions in a mindless religion? Are you worshipping God in some church building that God left a long time ago, simply because it is tradition, it’s something you are comfortable with, something that you have grown accustomed to and don’t want to break away from? Every week I quote Jesus who said, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.”

In light of what we talked about this morning, I hope you realize that verse means that if you do not have the Spirit of God living in your temple, then you can’t worship God. If you don’t worship Him according to His truth, then you can’t worship God. God is not mindless. God has given us His word, and for those that are saved, He has given us His Spirit. And now the Spirit leads us by His word, and directs our hearts that we might obey Him and do His will.

Do you have the Holy Spirit living inside you? I’m not asking if you have had some sort of spiritual experience that you think might be attributed to the Holy Spirit. I’m asking if you have received the promise of the Holy Spirit as a result of becoming a holy temple of the Lord. Does your life, your interests, your desires, your actions reflect that He has written His laws upon your heart? Listen, the way to God has been opened up by the blood of Jesus Christ? Forgiveness from sin is available for all that will trust in Him. God will transfer your sins to Jesus and His righteousness to you so that you may be holy. And having been made holy, we are then a temple of the Holy Spirit who will guide and control our lives. If you believe that and want forgiveness, then it’s available to all who will call upon the Lord. He is ready and able to save all those who come to Him in faith.

I’m going to close by reading Heb. 10:16-25 as both an encouragement and an invitation to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,” He then says, “AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.” Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

Recently, my brother in law, who had been a missionary for 37 years passed away from an illness. And of course, he left my sister as a widow who is going to have to figure out a way to support herself now without a husband. His death made my wife and I think about the fact that I should get some life insurance in case something should happen to me. And so last week I contacted a man in this church who sells insurance and he helped show me some of my options.

From what I gathered I could lock in a rate over 10 or 20 years by paying a certain amount of money each month. But the more I thought about it, I couldn’t help but think how ironic it is that the insurance company is betting that I would not die before the end of my term, and I am betting that I will die. If I had the faith of my insurance company in my long term health, then I wouldn’t buy insurance.

But the insurance company isn’t stupid. They are going to go over my health with a fine tooth comb. They are going to narrow the odds down as much as possible. And for my part, I am seriously considering all the options as well. This is a big financial commitment for me. There are a lot of things that are going to factor into my decision, and of course, it has potentially significant long term effects and benefits.

All of that prompted me to think, as I was preparing for this message, that a lot of people are more likely to spend more time, more money and more consideration on something like buying life insurance than on their eternal security. Blood tests, Doctor visits, urine samples, you name it, it all comes under scrutiny before I get the insurance, and then I commit to paying month by month for 10 to 20 years. And the really funny thing is, if I die, I win the bet, but I don’t get the money. My wife does. It makes you wonder who she is betting on.

But I’m afraid the average Joe is not nearly as concerned about his eternal security. From my experience, I think the average guy treats religion a little bit like buying life insurance, but with a whole lot less diligence. Someone suggested to me that I should look at some of those life insurance companies you see advertised on late night television and see if I could find something cheaper. And my response was, “No way. The last thing I want to do is spend all that money for 10 or 20 years and then find out that the insurance company was some flim flam outfit and have it not pay off.” And yet that is exactly the way a lot of people treat religion. They don’t really examine their doctrine. They blindly think that sincerity or good intentions is some measure of security. They are really just hoping that in the end it will all pay off somehow, but they really don’t know for sure.

Well, today’s passage addresses that very issue. The issue of mindlessly following a religion and hoping that somehow your sincerity will be of some merit in the hereafter. Hoping that God doesn’t care all that much about the details. Thinking He won’t look that closely. The average person doesn’t really know what he believes, and he certainly can’t say why he believes what he claims. He is just hoping for the best. He has no authority to back up what he is hoping for.

Well Jesus taught about the kingdom of God as one having authority. He spoke with authority because He was the Word of God made flesh, speaking the word of God to flesh. His message was the gospel of the kingdom of God. He was the way to the kingdom; no one can come to the Father except through Him, only by His sacrifice can we be saved. Jesus was teaching the gospel in the temple every day in the last hours before His crucifixion.

And as you will recall, a delegation made up of the religious leaders had been asking Him a series of trick questions, hoping to entrap Him in something they could use to arrest Him. So when the religious leaders had exhausted their trick questions and weren’t able to trap Him, Jesus turns the tables upon them and asks them a question. “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” It isn’t a trick question, it is a theological question. It is a doctrinal question. Listen, doctrine is not a dirty word, ladies and gentlemen. On the contrary, you need to know doctrine. You need to rightly divide the word of truth so that you will not be ashamed at His coming. There are many false doctrines out there. There are many deviant theologies out there. There are many false prophets and false teachers in the world. They cannot all be true. The Bible says, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” You better know sound Biblical doctrine. You need to know what you believe and why.

I saw a bumper sticker on a car the other day in Rehoboth, and it said, “God is too big for just one religion.” Wow. What theology. What utter nonsense. First of all, you admit that there is a God. Then by that very reason, is it not reasonable to assume that if there is a God then He should have a say in how we are to approach Him? If God is really as big as you say, then does it not behoove us to find out how He desires to be worshipped? Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” You better know the truth, because only the truth will set you free.

So Jesus asks a question focused on that very point. You see, these religious leaders had a religion. They had a belief system. And what is really significant is that their religion believed in the one, true Jehovah God, and furthermore, they accepted the teaching that there would come one who was the Messiah who would be the deliverer of Israel. And yet, it’s obvious from our study of Luke, that these religious leaders were not saved, they were lost. In fact, they were so blinded by their religion that they were plotting to kill the Messiah who was Jesus Christ because they did not think that He fit into their religious doctrine of the Messiah. So they were very religious and yet very lost.

I would imagine that in a crowd this size that there must be someone here today that are lost. If you died today you would end up in Hell. You are lost even though you believe in the existence of God. You believe that we should worship God. That is presumably why you are here today. And yet you are lost and on your way to Hell. You may even believe in Jesus. You believe that He lived on this earth 2000 years ago. You might even believe that somehow or another He was divine. And yet you can still be lost.

These scribes and Pharisees that Jesus is addressing are proof that it is possible to have a sort of mindless, thoughtless religion that has a modicum of truth in it and yet be lost. You can go through the motions without knowing why you are doing it. Many people are worshipping somewhere today, today being Sunday, and they don’t know why they are worshipping on Sunday rather than Saturday. And they really don’t care. They are just going through the motions. Some of them are mumbling catechisms and Latin phrases and opening their mouths to receive a tiny wafer and they don’t know why they are doing it. And yet they hope that it will somehow suffice on judgment day. Someone told them that they can achieve righteousness by going through certain rituals.

And on the other end of the spectrum it’s just as bad if not worse. People in some evangelical churches are being told that if they hold their palms up a certain way they are receiving something spiritual. And if they clap their hands together they are worshipping. And if they speak in some unintelligible gibberish they are praying to God. These poor folks are being taught that they don’t need to focus on doctrine, they need to focus on feeling. They just need to feel the love. That is all that matters. They have forgotten the exhortation of Jesus that if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.   No, they want to experience something, even if it is mindless.

These poor people are being exploited in the name of religion. They are being told that feeling spiritual is equal to being spiritual. So anything that makes you feel a certain way, or act a certain way must be of the Holy Spirit. And so in some churches today people are falling down on the ground and going into convulsions and they are told that is being slain in the Spirit. Others are falling down drunk, laughing and reeling around unable to act or speak coherently and they are being told that they are drunk in the Spirit. Others are laughing, howling at the moon, shrieking in laughter to the point that it drowns out everything else, and they are told that is holy laughter. Listen, don’t be deceived; Christianity is not a mindless religion. God is not the author of confusion but of order and discipline and truth. The Holy Spirit is not a feeling, He’s not a force, He is the Spirit of Jesus Christ living among us. If Jesus didn’t do it, then the Holy Spirit will not do it. They are not different entities, they are One God. As God is, so was Jesus in the flesh, (if you have seen Me you have seen the Father) and as Jesus is, so is the Holy Spirit. (John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me…”) God is One. You need to know your theology and doctrine. Because many deceivers have gone out into the world and are leading many people astray. And these false prophets that are blaspheming the name of the Holy Spirit by teaching people to go after strange spirits have forgotten what Jesus said in Matt. 12:31 “Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

It is not possible to have a sort of mindless, thoughtless form of Christianity that is void of sound doctrine and Biblical theology. But it isn’t possible to have an experiential type of Christianity that is divorced from sound doctrine. You are either worshipping God in Spirit and in truth or you will be found outside of the door of the kingdom of God, saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not do great things in your name? Lord, Lord, did we not even do miracles in your name?” And they will hear Jesus say as He promised in Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.”

Listen, you want to guard against a superficial, mindless religion? Then you need to go to the Word of God and get serious about studying it. Not reading books loosely based on the word of God, not watching movies with a mildly religious, positive theme. “But studying to show yourselves approved unto God a workman that doesn’t need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15) You need to understand the primacy, the authority, and the sufficiency of scripture. You need to understand that Jesus is described in John 1 as the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And then you need to understand that the Holy Spirit breathed upon certain appointed men, inspiring them to write down His words, bringing to their minds remembrance of the things which He had told them so that we may have confidence in the scriptures. 2Tim. 3:16-17 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect(complete), thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” You want to be a complete Christian? It’s not found in some mystical spiritual experience. Immerse yourself in the Word of God and obey it.

So the religious leaders confronting Jesus that day are mindless. They are thoughtlessly, blindly following a phony religion, in spite of having everything that they needed for salvation right in front of them. They have seen the truth and yet rejected it. They have stopped short of becoming a disciple. Folks, I am afraid that is exactly our problem here today. There are some people that come out here on the beach to hear what that crazy surfer preacher might say this week. There are some that might come because it’s a beautiful day, and maybe they might see a dolphin while I’m preaching and they can work on their tan at the same time. They have heard all they need to know in order to be saved and yet they are not saved. One of the saddest verses of scripture that comes to mind about this time of year is Jeremiah 8:20 “Harvest is past, summer is ended, And we are not saved.” And so we wonder why we don’t grow. We wonder why every year when we go back indoors we no longer see some people anymore. The fact is that we don’t grow by getting more and more people to come out on the beach for a service on a sunny day. The church grows by making disciples. We grow by making disciples, not by adding spectators to the church. Making disciples is being obedient to the word.

So true to form, when Jesus teaches He relies upon the scriptures. He confronts their mindless religion by asking them to consider the scriptures and make a rational decision on the basis of what it says. He asks the question, ““How is it that they say the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, ‘SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR YOUR FEET.’ Therefore David calls Him ‘Lord,’ and how is He his son?”

Now the answer to His question is one that they either cannot or will not allow themselves to see. And there is an element to this question that may be hard for us to see, because we aren’t reading it in the Hebrew. Luke is writing in Greek obviously. But Jesus is quoting from Psalm 110 which was written in Hebrew.   And in the Hebrew there is a distinction in the word Lord. The Jews considered the proper name of God as sacred to the point that they did not say it aloud. And so they had a tradition of writing the name of God, the name Jehovah, with just the consonants. And then when reading the name of Jehovah, they would insert the word Lord in it’s place. This was an ultra conservative approach to avoiding using the name of the Lord in vain. Now in your Old Testament, you will sometimes notice that the word Lord is in all capital letters. That is done to show you that the word LORD is substituted for the name Jehovah. So when the Psalmist David says, “The LORD said to my Lord,” he is saying, Jehovah said to my Lord.

The word Lord with a capital L and small letters is from the Hebrew word, Adonai. Adonai means Lord, either used of God or sometimes used in reference to men. It means the supreme ruler. He to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master. The possessor and disposer of a thing or person. The owner; one who has control of the person, the master. In matters of state: the sovereign, prince, chief, the emperor. It is a title of honor expressive of respect and reverence, with which servants greet their master. This title is given to: God, the Messiah.

So the question is how can the Messiah be David’s son, when David writes in Ps. 110 that Jehovah says to my Lord? The scribes and Pharisees can’t answer that. They haven’t thought about it. They have a template for the Messiah that He will be a descendent of David and sit on his throne, and so therefore they are looking for a human descendent of David who will literally sit on the throne of Israel, and defeat their enemies. And so they refuse to consider any scriptures that don’t align with that doctrine.

What Jesus is trying to teach them, is that the Messiah is God in human flesh. Revelation 22:16 says that He is the root and the offspring of David. In other words, by his human nature he was the offspring of David, a branch of his family; by his divine nature he was the root of David, from whom David had his being and life, salvation by grace. What Jesus is teaching is that Christ, as God, was David’s Lord, but Christ, as man, was David’s Son.

Listen, the reason that the scribes and Pharisees were not saved, was that they would not recognize Jesus as Lord, as God. I think that we have almost the opposite problem today in the church. We recognize Jesus as God, but not as Lord. The doctrine of the lordship of Jesus Christ is not a popular doctrine today. At the very best modern theologians and preachers want to regulate it to some sort of advanced stage of sanctification that really isn’t necessary for salvation. But for the most part it is not taught at all. The whole emphasis today is upon justification by grace. But Hebrews 12:14 says that without sanctification, no one will see the Lord.

Rom 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” To understand what it means to confess Jesus as Lord you just need to turn back a few verses to Luke 19 where Jesus gives a parable about the land owner who planted a vineyard and sent his servants to receive his yearly allowance. And the vinegrowers kept beating up his servants and sending them back empty handed. And it says in vs. 14, “But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” See, lordship is recognizing that Jesus Christ is the Master of the vineyard. He is the supreme ruler of the earth. Everything that we have is given to us by God. Our very lives are upheld by His power. Our heart keeps beating by the power of God. Our next breath is taken because God gives it to us. And so lordship is recognizing, confessing, that Jesus is Lord of your life. Confessing that we belong to Him. He is our Master, He decides our purpose. We live according to His will, not manipulate Him to serve our will.

These Pharisees were indicative of the citizens that said, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” They rejected Jesus as Lord. And Jesus said in the parable that when the Master returns to take His vineyard, He said “But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.”

Jesus then gives a scathing indictment of these scribes and Pharisees, while at the same time warning His disciples. See, even disciples can fall prey to this kind of self righteous posturing, this religious fervor, that is actually a damning phony religion. He is highlighting hypocritical religion. He says in vs. 46, ““Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”

What Jesus is warning about is religion for show. About seeking publicity, seeking honor, seeking earthly prominence in the religious realm. Matthews gospel records some more of what Jesus said in this regard. He says in Matt. 23:13, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” See, that is the danger of phony religion. They not only are not saved themselves, they make sure that no one else is saved either. And then in vs. 15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” That is another scathing indictment. Their false doctrine spreads like gangrene and corrupts everyone who hears it. And that is why Jesus says that these false teachers will receive a greater condemnation.

Jesus is not only describing the scribes and Pharisees, but He is painting a picture that should serve as a warning for us today as well. Beware of religious leaders who put on a show, who parade around in long, flowing robes, Christian costumes, hoping that they will look pious by the clothes and funny hats they are wearing. They love to be called “the right Reverend Dr. so and so, and they have all these degrees that are attached to their titles that are designed to convince you they know what they are talking about. They love the places of honor, and they love to make long public prayers so that people can be sure to see how holy they are. And yet the fact is it is all a hypocritical mask. Jesus says they do it to devour widow’s houses. What He means is they take from vulnerable widows, defrauding old ladies who are maybe easily deceived by their fake piety and they take their money by promising them some eternal benefit due to their holiness. One of the very people that the temple was to be concerned about and seek to help were widows. It is still a priority for the church though we do not have the same social structure that they had which left these women without much recourse. But the fact is that they take advantage of the most vulnerable among us for monetary gain.

I must tell you that a lot of the modern Christian television preachers capitalize on the sympathies of vulnerable, elderly women. They are flying around the country in multimillion dollar jets living in $10,000 a night hotel suites while making money off of old ladies who are hoping that their gift will be multiplied by God according to the false teaching of these shysters. Beware of these false prophets.

Finally, Luke presents an illustration to ram this principle home. I will not belabor it, since you are all familiar with it, I’m sure. But as Jesus was teaching He was sitting in the Court of the Women in the Temple where the people would come and present their offerings. The temple priests had made these trumpet type of horns that were mounted on the walls so that people could drop in their offerings. And Luke says that as Jesus is teaching He looks up and sees the rich putting their offerings in the treasury. And He sees an opportunity for an illustration. The illustration has a two fold application as we will see in a moment. But let’s look at it first.

Luke 21:2-4 “And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, ‘Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.’”

So here is the picture; Jesus has just finished condemning the religious leaders for their rejection of His Lordship, and He has characterized them as showboating self righteous hypocrites who take advantage of old ladies. Now He looks up and all these rich people come in to the treasury and make their offerings. They had engineered it in such a way that it was a very public thing. People could watch the worshippers come in and present their offerings. They could hear the sound of the coins clinking in the horns and tell how much or how little a person was giving. The Pharisees were known for actually blowing a horn before they gave in order to make sure that everyone knew that they were giving. But then Jesus juxtaposes this grandiose religious expression with a little old widow who comes in and probably would have escaped all notice in the activity of the temple. She wasn’t dressed in finery, she didn’t blow a trumpet, and the sound of her two cents I’m sure didn’t make a dint in the din of the temple court. No one noticed her. No one nodded approvingly or applauded. But God saw her. God knew that she gave all that she had to live on. She gave everything she had to the Lord.

Listen, I go out of my way to not talk about giving here at the Beach Fellowship. I may occasionally talk about money, as the word talks about it, then I talk about it. But I don’t talk about giving if I don’t have to. I believe that God loves a cheerful giver. So I am not going to try to compel people to give. All that I will say about this illustration is that it shows that God sees the gift, but more importantly God sees the sacrifice involved in the gift. David said in 2 Samuel 24:24 that he would not give God that which cost him nothing. God sees not the monetary size of the gift, but the sacrificial proportion of the gift. Jesus noted this widow because while others gave out of their surplus, she gave out of her poverty.

But the greater illustration that I think is here is that of the lordship principle. This widow had a proper view of the lordship of God. She rightly recognized that everything she had was the Lord’s. She didn’t have a ten percent view, but a 100% view. You know, that’s why I don’t preach about tithing. Tithing is an OT law that required Israelites to give a tenth of all they had to the Lord. And in the new covenant, we are no longer under the law. We are under grace. But listen, grace does not do away with the law, grace fulfills the law and then more. If the law was 10%, then grace is 100%. It’s recognizing that Jesus deserves everything I have because of the gratitude I have for His immeasurable gift to me. Salvation is about giving all that I have to the Lord to be used for His glory. I give Him all of me, everything I renounce, everything I turn over to Him. And so the lordship of Christ requires that I surrender all.

And there is, as I said another application of this incident. And that is that this sincere, God loving woman gave her offering to the treasury of the very men that were devouring widow’s houses. Though this woman was a great illustration of surrendering everything to God, there is no indication that she was saved. If she did not recognize Jesus as God then she could not be saved. Luke just records that she went in, gave her offering, and presumably left. God saw her gift. But unfortunately she was still victimized by a false system of religion that promised her some sort of righteousness as a result of her offering. And so she probably didn’t leave feeling all that great about her offering. The rabbis taught that the giving alms was a means of pardoning sin. It was a false doctrine. It was designed to fill their coffers, but it could not atone for sin. It serves as a classic example of how these false religious leaders were devouring widow’s houses.

And as we look at the next section in this chapter next week, we will see Jesus pronouncement of judgment upon this temple, and this system which victimized the very ones that they were supposed to be helping by teaching them a false religion and ignoring the truth of God’s word. Within 35 years from that day, the temple would be destroyed and all the priests killed or scattered. God’s judgment would be poured out on them for their false religion.

Folks, I wonder how many of you here this morning would rather continue in your comfortable, established false religion than find freedom in the truth of God’ word? I wonder how many prefer a form of religion, without the power of it, the power of the truth which brings about conversion and produces sanctification? I wonder how many will reject the lordship of Jesus Christ, and say “we will not let Christ rule over us, He will not decide for us, He will not tell us what to do.” I wonder how many will continue to think that they can be saved and not sanctified. I hope no one.   Jesus said in Luke 6:46 “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

I hope no one leaves here today without submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Giving of themselves first and foremost, 100% to the Lord, realizing that He is Lord, and all their life and being belong to Him.

Today’s passage is one that is probably familiar to many of you here today. It’s been used in a variety of contexts, not the least of which is to augment the idea of the separation of church and state. However, it does not teach that. Neither Jesus or the apostles ever taught separation of church and state. That is not a Christian doctrine, but it is decidedly an anti-Christian doctrine that has been foisted upon us by an anti-Christian government, and fortified by a misinterpretation of this passage. God is sovereign over all the world, and as such is sovereign over all governments of the world. Man only thinks that he can separate government from God.

But we will look at the correct interpretation of this passage in just a moment. First of all though let’s look at the context of this event. This event comes as part of a trilogy of trick questions, concocted by a delegation made up of representatives of every religious faction in Israel; notably the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Herodians and the Sadducees. I will not bore you with the differences between these various factions. Just know that this was the equivalent of getting the Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and the Tea Party to all come together and agree on something. All of these parties were traditionally political enemies or at least adversaries for religious control in Israel. So getting them together and in agreement meant only one thing, Jesus was a considered a greater enemy, a greater threat to all of them than they were to each other. So these former enemies were united by a common enemy.

The only problem was that Jesus was anything but common. And so they constantly were undone by Jesus’ wisdom which surpassed all their combined cunning and scheming. But that doesn’t seem to stop them from trying. These guys kind of remind me of Wile E. Fox on the old Roadrunner cartoons. They keep coming up with these elaborate, clever schemes, and Jesus turns them right around on them time after time. We saw that last week with the question they had concerning from where He got His authority. Jesus answered their question with a question of His own which they could not answer without revealing their duplicitous nature, so they had to plead the fifth. His wisdom is beyond their capacity to refute.

But like Wile E. Coyote, these guys don’t know when to quit. They become even more angry, more spiteful and even more cunning in their attempt to catch Him in something they can use to destroy Him. Look at vs. 19-20; “The scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on Him that very hour, and they feared the people; for they understood that He spoke this parable against them. So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, in order that they might catch Him in some statement, so that they could deliver Him to the rule and the authority of the governor.”

It’s interesting that Luke characterizes these spies as having to pretend that they were righteous. Even though they were the religious elite, they had to pretend to be righteous. So these spies who are pretending to be righteous come to Jesus, try to blend in with the crowd and then try to trick Jesus by asking Him a predetermined question that had been concocted by their superiors, the highest ranking officials in the religious orders of Israel. It was a question designed to trap Jesus no matter which way He answered it. As far as they were concerned, it had no right answer. They thought that there were only two ways of answering it, and one way would seriously hurt Jesus’ standing with the people, and answering it the other way would put Him in trouble with the Roman government. And they really thought He would answer it in such a way as to enable them to charge Him with sedition against the Roman government. That was really their plan. That way He would be executed by the Romans and they would seem to be innocent of the whole affair. But of course they would reap the benefits by regaining and maintaining the status quo of their religious standing.

So here is their question, vs. 21,22; They questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, we know that You speak and teach correctly, and You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

Now we have already noted their craftiness, but notice also their flattery. Be wary of people that come to you with flattering speech, ladies and gentlemen. Righteous pretenders love to use flattery to get an advantage. Some of the greatest injury to our church has come through people who were adept at flattery. They love to butter you up by lavishing compliments on you before they stick the butter knife in your back. Beware of flattery. Note also that their own speech condemns them. They say we know you speak the truth. I love that one. Those same flatterers that I have had the pleasure of encountering can’t help but say something to the effect like “Roy is a great teacher, no one is preaching the word of God like Roy is.” And yet in the next breath they condemn you for preaching too much of it. They criticize your doctrine. One day they will be judged by their own words.

So herein lies the craftiness of their question. They really think that Jesus is just a rabble rouser. He has a rough band of disciples traveling with Him that are made up of fishermen and tax collectors and at least one or two of them are considered Zealots. The Zealots were radical insurrectionists who wanted to overthrow the rule of the Romans. So that is more than likely the association that they made with Jesus. They supposed that He would oppose paying taxes to Caesar. Now if they could get Him to say that, then they would have a hangable offense with which to charge Jesus and bring Him before a Roman court.

In fact, even though Jesus does not say that you should not pay taxes, actually quite the opposite, it does not stop them from lying and claiming that He said that when they brought Him before Pilate a few days later. Luke 23:2 says, “And they began to accuse Him, saying, ‘We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.’”

But the other possible answer that they supposed Jesus would say was just as condemning. Because Caesar claimed to be divine and was considered a god in the pantheon of Roman Gods. So if Jesus supported taxation they could not only use that to hurt His standing among the common people who were handicapped by the severe Roman tax on just about everything, but they could also claim He was guilty of breaking Jewish law. Furthermore, in the law it says that you shall make no graven image and the currency of the Roman government, particularly the denarius, was engraved with the image of the Emperor. So they figured they would get Him either way He answered, and they really expected Him to side with the insurrectionists.

Look at how Jesus answers them though. His wisdom exceeds their trickery. Vs. 23-25 “But He detected their trickery and said to them, ‘Show Me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?’ They said, ‘Caesar’s.’ And He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Now this is a brilliant answer, not only because He eludes their trap, but because He establishes truth in such a way that it becomes an enduring principle for the ages. He doesn’t just answer their question in such a way as to escape immediate judgment, or get out of the question, but He fully answers them in a way in which they cannot refute, and at the same time establishes an enduring principle for how we are to live our lives today no matter what the culture or the time period we find ourselves in. Such is the nature of the truth of the Word of God. It is timeless. It is enduring. Even 2000 years later it is still relevant, still pertinent and still true. That is why we preach the word of God, ladies and gentlemen. It is truth, it is eternal truth, and only the truth will set you free. Man’s attempts at rationalization cannot even begin to address life’s great questions, but God’s truth is able to discern between truth and error and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Jesus gives a two part answer and so I want to examine each part in turn. Each part is a principle that we can employ as we make decisions on a day to day basis as to how we are to live in a godless world. The first part of Jesus’ answer is, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Now this is brilliant. First of all, Jesus asks them for a denarius. Matthew adds some additional information in his gospel which helps us to understand the significance of this a little better. In Matt. 22:19 Jesus says “Show Me the coin used for the poll-tax.” And they brought Him a denarius.” A poll tax was the tax levied at the census, when everyone had to register. If you remember, that was the reason Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem to register for the census and pay a poll tax. So this was the particular tax that the religious leaders were addressing. And that poll tax was paid with Roman currency, which was a denarius. So Jesus asks to see the coin that was required by the Romans.

And He asks them to tell Him what image and inscription is on the coin. The answer is that it was Caesar, probably Tiberius Caesar, and the inscription even alluded to his divinity. The point Jesus is making is that this is Caesar’s money, his image is engraved on it and his inscription is engraved on it. So Jesus says, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

Now it’s helpful I think to understand the word translated “render.” It is “ä-po-dē’-dō-mē” in the original Greek. It means to pay back a debt, to give back something that belongs to someone else, to repay. Now that helps us to understand what Jesus is saying. Not only does the money belong to Caesar’s government, but the idea is that Caesar has provided certain things as the head of the government, and that has incurred a debt on their part. They must repay that debt to the government.

Now that is a godly principle, is it not? We are to pay our debts. If we owe something to someone, Jesus said in Matt. 5, then before you go to the temple to present yourself to worship God, go make amends with the one whom you owe. In other words, you cannot worship God when you owe a debt to someone that you haven’t paid. We saw that principle when we looked at Zaccheus a few weeks ago. When he got right with God he immediately wanted to get right with those he had defrauded.

So in effect what Jesus is saying is that since you owe the government for it’s services, it’s protection, it’s roads, it’s enforcement of laws, give them what is due them. Pay your taxes because it’s a debt that you owe to the government for providing certain services to it’s citizens. See, rather than teaching the separation of church and state, the Biblical principle is that God has established government to be His ministers of justice and order and the rule of law. Paul says in Romans 13:1-2 “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.” He goes on to say in Rom. 13:5-8 “Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” And then Paul states the overriding principle in vs. 8 “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” That’s the royal law of God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Even to the point of loving your enemy.

Let me tell you something to help put this in perspective. When Paul wrote these words he was most likely in prison awaiting trial by none other than the Caesar of that period, who was the evil Emperor Nero. This man would one day have Paul’s head cut off. This was an emperor who castrated a young man and then married him in a public, royal, homosexual marriage ceremony. This was the same guy that used to light up his palace gardens for parties at night with Christians burning on stakes. And yet Paul says give honor to whom honor is due. As citizens we have a debt to our government that must be honored, even when it is not a God honoring government.

Now you may say well maybe Paul didn’t realize how bad Nero was. Well, Jesus certainly knew how bad Tiberius Caesar was. When Jesus looked at that denarius and said render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, He knew full well that in just 3 days by Caesar’s government He himself would be led like a sheep to the slaughter to hang from a cross by Roman soldiers. And yet Jesus said, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesars.” Listen, it’s not for you to rebel against those whom God has given a measure of authority to. God established government for the benefit of His kingdom. And God will hold Caesar accountable for things that belong to Caesar. But He will also hold you accountable for your subjection to authority.

Peter says in 1 Peter 2:13-14, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” By such faithful acts, Christians “may silence the ignorance of foolish men” and be found as good citizens. We give no cause for offense to the government by disobeying the government. We owe them good citizenship. And when we do so we can silence the critics.

And that is exactly what happened here in the passage in Luke. The religious leaders were silenced by the answer of Jesus. They were unable to find fault with the wisdom of God. Luke 20:26 “And they were unable to catch Him in a saying in the presence of the people; and being amazed at His answer, they became silent.” Listen, if you want to silence your critics then rely upon the wisdom of God’s word and be obedient to God’s principles. Are you having wife problems? “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” Fulfill the royal law, love one another. Even love your enemy. Are you having husband problems? “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” Fulfill the royal law, love one another. Even love your enemy. Are you having business problems? “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” Fulfill the royal law, love one another. Even love your enemy. No matter what the problem in this world of relationships, the answer is the same. Owe no one nothing, instead love them. Give them what is due them. Honor them. Respect them. And you will silence your critics.

Now let’s look at the other side of the equation. “Render unto God the things that are God’s.” Now how are we to understand this principle? Well, first of all, use the same formula that Jesus used in the first principle. What did God make in His image? Man. Man was made in the image of God. Gen. 1:27 says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Folks, I don’t know if you have contemplated the full implications of that verse or not. But I have as far as my limited intellectual capacity allows. We looked at it extensively in our study of Genesis that we have been doing on Wednesday night.

To be made in the image of God indicates a number of things. But one thing is fundamental. We were not made to be autonomous. We were not made to be independent, free agents. We were made for God’s purposes. We were made to be the bride of Christ. We were made to be the objects of God’s love, to be like God, conformed to the image of Christ. To be one Spirit with God. To be one in fellowship and communion with God. That is why God made man. Ephesians 5 makes it clear that marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the church’s relationship with Christ. Just as a husband and his wife are to be one flesh, so Christ and His church are to be one spirit. That is why Christ gave His life for the church, because He loved her with an even greater love than a man loves his bride. God made man for His glory, for His pleasure, to satisfy His purposes. We are not some cosmic accident. We belong to God because He made us specifically for Himself.

Now once you start to comprehend that concept, then the principle, “render unto God the things that are Gods” starts to become a little more clear, doesn’t it? At the very least, we must respond in love to God’s love towards us. We must give our lives to God, commit our lives to God. We must give back our lives for His glory. We must give ourselves totally and completely to Him, forsaking all others, being faithful only to your Him so long as you shall live… so help you God. That’s where you start. That’s what it means to render to God the things that are God’s.

That’s what it means to be a Christian, by the way. It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship. But don’t you dare take that word relationship lightly or flippantly. It’s not a flirtatious relationship, it’s not a relationship marked by infidelity. It’s not a relationship based on a casual friendship. It’s not a modern day kind of relationship where you take all you can get without commitment, without sacrifice.   But “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” Fulfill the royal law, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your might.”

Listen, this passage isn’t so much a treatise on the importance of paying your taxes. It’s the message of the gospel. You were made and stamped in the image of God. You were made for communion and a relationship with God. You were made to be one with God. But sin broke that communion and relationship. Man rebelled against his Maker, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. Man obeyed Satan’s word, and rebelled against God’s word and as such rightly brought upon himself the sentence of death. But God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes on Him, should not perish but have eternal life.  The eternal Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. But the world did not know Him. They rejected Him. These religious leaders, Peter said later in Acts 2, “delivered [Jesus] over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, and nailed Him to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”

This same Jesus is now seated in heaven at the right hand of the Father, having paid the penalty for sin to those that will believe in Him. Peter said, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” This is the plan of God to reconcile man, to make him holy by the blood of Jesus, and to put His Spirit within them so that they might be one with Him.

Ladies and gentlemen, the question of the hour is simply this. Have you rendered unto God the things that are God’s? Have you given Him your life? Are you withholding from God what you rightfully owe Him? One day every knee will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Caesars will bow, kings will bow, presidents will bow, all the governments will bow before the throne of Christ. But those who gave their lives in faith to Christ in this life will be seated on the throne beside Him in the next life. And those who refused to bow to Him in this life, those who refused to give Him honor in this life, those who rebelled against Him in this life, even though they may bow then, will not be part of His kingdom. But they will be cast out of the marriage feast into a place prepared for the devil and his angels, the Lake of Fire.

I trust that if you have committed your life to a marriage relationship with Christ you will be found to be a good steward today. Not only of your obligations to the government, to your marriage, to your employer, to every governing authority established by God, but also I hope you are found to be a good steward of your obligation to God. 1Cor. 6:19-20 says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” Render to God the things that are God’s. God requires nothing less than your very life, your will, your purpose. God rightly demands it all. Give back unto God the things that are God’s.

As I’m sure you realize by now, it is imperative that as we study each passage in Luke’s gospel, we must always consider the context in which it is found in first of all. And so today we must remember that this parable comes as a result of the religious leaders of Jerusalem indignantly demanding to know what authority Jesus was coming into the temple and throwing out the vendors and money changers, and teaching and preaching to the people. They wanted to know who or what was His authority.

But instead of answering them directly, Jesus asked them a question. He said, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” And of course, the religious leaders decided that they couldn’t publicly answer that question because the people rightly believed that John was a prophet, in fact he was the prophet foretold of in Malachi that would prepare the way for the Messiah. So if they said that John was a prophet of God, then the obvious rebuttal would be “then why didn’t you believe him?” And if they said he wasn’t a prophet, the people might rise up and stone them. So they said, “we cannot say”, or “we don’t know.” They pled the fifth. And so Jesus says, “neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Now that is the context in which Jesus gives this parable. It is an indirect way of answering them. He won’t answer them directly, but in the course of the parable, the answer will become clear where He gets His authority. But there is another context to this passage that is not quite so apparent, yet just as important.

The greater context of this parable is found in the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah and Jeremiah as well as the Psalmist David spoke of Israel as a vineyard. It was a well known allegory that especially the religious leaders would be familiar with. And Isaiah in particular seems to be the one that Jesus is drawing inspiration from in this parable. Let’s look at it for a moment.

Isaiah 5: 1 “Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. 2 He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. … 4 “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? 5 “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. 6 “I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.” 7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel And the men of Judah His delightful plant.”

So in Isaiah 5 you have a song about the land of Judah in Israel. And God speaks allegorically how he protected and provided for and nurtured Israel. How He did everything He could do to provide for her and protect her. And that as a result of His providence He expected to see Judah produce good fruit. But instead, the song says that Judah produced nothing but worthless sour berries. So God pronounces a curse upon them and says that He will remove His protection from them and let the animals and the thieves and whatever else may come in and ravage the land.

Israel’s defining characteristic was that it did not worship a pantheon of idols, but worshipped the only true God, Jehovah. God had revealed Himself to them, through Abraham and then Moses and the prophets. God had given them His word, His promises and His law. God’s word told them that they were to be different from all the other nations of the world not only in customs and diet and ceremonies, but in every facet of society, they were to be a holy people, set apart by God to be His people exclusively, to be a testimony and a witness to the world.

But though God kept His promise and providentially drove out all their enemies and blessed them with every conceivable blessing, the people took advantage of His providence to indulge their own greediness and corruption. Furthermore, they lusted after the things that the rest of the world had. The prophets often used the analogy of a wife that turned to whoredom and prostitution, going after every gross desire of the flesh to describe how Israel repeatedly went after the false gods of other nations and worshipped them. They constantly wanted to be like the other pagan countries that surrounded them.

So God reminds them through this song in Isaiah that He had done everything for them that He could possibly do, taken away their enemies, protected them, provided for them in every way, but they had failed to produce fruit. And God warns them that because of their rebellion the day will come when He will turn away from them and His protective presence will be withdrawn. One day they will wake up and find themselves like Samson, who the Bible says did not realize that God’s strength had left him and shook himself and went out to face his attackers and was captured and tortured. So it will be with Israel.

Isaiah’s song goes on to say that even God’s favor is removed His anger is not yet spent. It says that He will call “a distant nation, and will whistle for it from the ends of the earth; and behold, it will come with speed swiftly.” This nation of warriors will be relentless, untiring, and bring devastation and destruction like a ravaging lion.

Now that is the historical, prophetic context to this parable that the hearers would have immediately recognized as pertaining to Israel. But now let’s look at the parable as Jesus tells it. And by the way, there is a parallel version of this parable in Matthew 21. Matthew adds some interesting factors to the story that Luke does not, such as He dug around the vineyard and put a tower in it which makes it almost identical to Isaiah 5.

But what Jesus does in this parable is He uses the analogy of Israel being a vineyard but then brings the focus upon those men that were put in place as vine growers, or caretakers. This is where the story is focused, on the caretakers, those given the responsibility for the stewardship of the vineyard. These were the ones who were responsible for the spiritual well being of Israel, for the good fruit of Israel. They were the ones given responsibility for the stewardship of God’s word, for the administration of God’s kingdom.

Jesus says that eventually the owner of the vineyard sent a slave to receive some of the fruit that was supposed to be returned to the owner. But the vine growers beat him up and sent him away empty handed. So the owner sends a second slave and then a third, and these they beat up as well. They refuse to give the owner his due. He invested all the resources, he provided all the things necessary to expect good fruit, but they refuse to acknowledge their debt to him, and instead beat up his servants.

So finally, the owner of the vineyard decides to send his beloved son, in hope that they will certainly honor him. But the vine growers seeing the son say amongst themselves, this is the heir, let us kill him and the vineyard will be ours. And so they kill the son.

You can bet the religious leaders by now had figured out that this was a story about them. They were the ones in charge of the administration of the vineyard. They knew that Israel had mistreated or killed all the prophets that God had sent them in the past. In fact, history tells us that Isaiah, who as I pointed out was one of the originators of the vineyard analogy, was in fact sawn in two with a wooden saw.

But there were two groups of people there listening that day. There were the disciples of Jesus that were in the temple that Jesus was preaching to, and there was the religious delegation made up of high priests and Pharisees and so forth.

So when Jesus asks the question, “What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” I believe the disciples are the ones that answer ““He will come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others.” But the shocked religious leaders say “may it never be!” They know that what the disciples and Jesus are saying is that God will remove them from their stewardship and give it to others who will administer their stewardship in such a way as to bring forth fruit. But they say “may it never be! We will never allow it.” See, the whole point of their delegation was to say that Jesus had no authority. They considered themselves the authority in Israel, and Jesus threatened them. He threatened their power, their position, and so they wanted to kill Him. And they would in just 3 days time.

Vs. 17, “But Jesus looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” I love how Jesus constantly quotes scripture. He who was the Word made flesh, and speaks the word of God with authority. He sets an example for us that endures today. Especially in light of the way in which the word of God today is being discarded in favor of relativism in an attempt to not be offensive.

Jesus is quoting from Psalm 118 by the way, which most of the Pharisees would have known by heart. Psalm 118 is what the people were quoting from when they called out “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” just a couple of days prior when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. And now Jesus uses that very same Psalm to say “I am the stone which you the builders rejected. I am the cornerstone spoken of in Psalm 118. Isaiah added in Isaiah chapter 8 that He is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

Listen, why do people stumble over Jesus Christ? Why is Jesus offensive? The religious leaders stumbled over Him because first of all He told them they were sinners just like everyone else. Maybe even worse sinners than everyone else. They were worse because they refused to recognize that they were sinners. The only sin that God cannot forgive is the sin of unrepentance. Please understand something folks. The gospel, if it is being handled accurately, is not supposed to seduce people into the kingdom by singing songs of love, love, love. The gospel breaks people over the rock of offense; the rock of Jesus Christ who alone is righteous and holy. The gospel seeks to first of all convict you of your sin, to break your will to self rule, to autonomy, to doing what is right in your own eyes, and recognizing and submitting to the word of God that declares what constitutes righteousness and sinfulness. That is what it means to confess Jesus as both Lord and Savior.

That is what Jesus meant when He said, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” Either you fall on the rock that is Jesus Christ in brokenness, bowing to His Lordship over your life, breaking your pride, breaking your selfishness, or the rock that is Christ will fall on you, scattering you like dust. You will be destroyed. God’s judgment will fall on you if you reject the Cornerstone.

But if you accept Christ as the cornerstone, then Eph 2:19-22 says “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” A cornerstone was laid at the foundation of a building, by which the building is made true and all it’s lines are drawn from.   Christ as the cornerstone symbolizes that His truth is laid as the foundation for the church, upon which was laid the scriptures of the apostles. The word of God then is the foundation that the church is built upon, which it must stay true to. And as Christians, we are being built up into a holy temple, as we live our lives according to it’s blueprint. When the Holy Spirit is living in our temple, then we will bear the fruit of the Spirit, having been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ laid down for us in His word.

Now that’s the interpretation of the parable. Let’s look at the application. If you remember we started with Isaiah 5. That parable was a nationalistic allegory. It was speaking of the nation of Israel that had rejected the reign of God over their lives, and though there were certainly a few individuals that had not bowed their knee to Baal, as a whole, the nation of Israel became apostate. They became idolatrous. And so God brought a nation of warriors from Assyria who destroyed their cities, the temple and their palaces, destroying thousands of them and taking others into captivity. By the time Jesus quotes Isaiah 5, almost 700 years have passed, and Israel has gone from 12 tribes to just three; Benjamin, Judah and Levi. But their apostasy has resurfaced to the extent that they actually will crucify the Messiah, God’s only beloved Son. So the warning of impending judgment is still appropriate. Within the lifetime of many of those very leaders who call for Christ’s death, the Roman army under the General Titus would sack the city of Jerusalem and kill hundreds of thousands of Jews, and destroy the temple so that one stone wasn’t left upon another. The stone that the builders rejected scattered them like dust.

I cannot help but see the parallels of Judah to the United States today. We too were a nation that benefited from the presence of God in a very special way. No other nation on earth had the blessings that America has had. No other nation in the world was founded on Christian principles found in God’s actual word other than America. God used religious persecution to bring a great nation of people together from many foreign countries, many of which had persecuted them for their religious views and for trying to be true to God’s word. We have become the greatest nation on the face of the earth. In the beginning it was established on the word of God. God’s word is written on our government buildings, its verses were inscribed on our monuments, even our currency stated our faith in God, and for almost 200 years our schools used the Holy Bible as it’s textbook. Our country went on to export Christianity to the world through missionaries to every continent on the globe. There were churches on every street corner. Some of the greatest revivals known to man swept across this country, turning men’s hearts to God with great fervor.

Yet as time went on, we like Israel grew complacent, and we grew more and more materialistic. We became consumed with possessions and the lusts of the flesh. Today America has become a nation that is not defined by their Christian values anymore, but rather defined by our decadence and rampant consumerism. And I am afraid that the time is coming soon, when God will whistle to a foreign army who will come against this nation with the same zeal that Babylon did against Israel. And God will give our stewardship to a nation that will render to Him good fruit in due season.

But Jesus’ version of this parable is not just a nationalistic allegory, but also an ecclesiastical allegory. Here in this version Christ added the element of the caretakers. This was a veiled reference to the religious leaders. The priesthood of Israel particularly had been entrusted with the oracles of God. They had been entrusted with the worship, with the administration of the temple. They were to teach and to lead the people in righteousness and holiness. But the fact that Jesus continually pointed out was that the religious leaders were actually hypocrites. They had perverted the truth for their own purposes. They had their positions by means of political appointment rather than divine appointment. They had sold out to the Roman government for a measure of power. They were in it for the money, they were in it for the acclaim of people, they were in it because they loved to appear righteous. They were in it for the social standing. And they were willing to kill the Messiah in order to keep their position and power.

Jesus is saying that their stewardship will be taken away. Within their lifetime, the temple would be destroyed. The ancestral records would be destroyed. From what I understand today no Jew is able to know for certain if they are from a particular tribe. So there can’t be priests anymore, because they had to be from the tribe of Levi. There can’t be sacrifices anymore, because they had to be done in the temple in Jerusalem. All that they relied upon, their power, their prestige, their position of reverence, was destroyed.   The cornerstone that they rejected fell on them and scattered them into pieces that could never be put back together.

Folks, once again I’m afraid that there is a direct analogy here to the church leadership in America today. We have a greater privilege than Israel ever had. We have the complete scriptures, Old and New Testaments, inspired by God, written down for our instruction. Christ took away the stewardship from the priests and gave it to the lowly disciples. The apostles who were unlearned, uncredentialed, didn’t graduate from an approved rabbinical school were given the stewardship of the gospel. And these faithful men proclaimed it, protected it, and preserved it in the New Testament scriptures and then passed it on to preachers and evangelists. Eph 4:11-13 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

I wish I could unequivocally say that our generation of pastors and teachers had proved reliable in the stewardship of the gospel handed down from the apostles and prophets. But I am afraid that even a cursory look at the state of the church today in America reveals that we have neglected our primary purpose – the protection, proclamation and presentation of the Word of God – because we have been too concerned about our position, our social status, and our little bit of power to really preach the full counsel of the word of God. Even a cursory look at the majority of churches out there reveals that the clergy does not consider the preaching of God’s word a priority. Today ministers are more like managers, overseeing programs and employees and property administration. And the word of God is neglected. People are starving for the truth and not getting it. Instead we are building bigger buildings, adding bigger salaries, running coffee shops and bookstores and putting on concerts, but we have relinquished our number one priority; the preaching of the word of God. I am afraid that in the very near future, this enterprise in America that we call the church will be done away with. I heard Al Mohler and John McArthur speak on this subject last spring at a pastor’s conference. Already legislation is in the works to take away tax exemption from churches, not only in contributions, but in property taxes. If church contributions lost their tax exemption it would be harmful but not necessarily disastrous. But if property taxes are one day levied against the church then most churches and church based institutions would be forced to close. And when that day comes I think we will see who was in it for the money. When preaching the gospel may land you in jail then I wonder how many will want to preach at all. I am afraid that day is coming soon in America, and it will be our own fault. Church leadership has left it’s purpose which is proclaiming the whole gospel of Jesus Christ to the church.

One final application, this parable also has an individual analogy. As the Jewish people were given a stewardship and that stewardship was taken away, so as Christians we are given a stewardship. We are given the greatest gift of all, the gift of salvation. God’s beloved Son willingly gave His life as a sacrifice for the sins of those who would confess Him as Lord. We are given the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ Himself to live within us to guide us, and strengthen us and teach us. And we have been given the gift of God’s word, God’s very breath of life written down, easily available to everyone to carry with them. Today the word of God has never been more accessible, more portable. And yet what are we doing with our stewardship? Oh, we may not literally beat up the pastor, but we can despise the preaching of the Word. We may not literally crucify Christ, but we can insult the Spirit of grace by sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth. Hebrews 10:29 says,            “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, ‘THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

God grafted us Gentiles, people who were outside of the covenant, outside of the nation of Israel, without hope, God grafted us into His vineyard. He made us part of His chosen people, the church. He has freed us from the enslavement of sin and the fear of death. He has given us an inheritance in heaven, given us a promise to reign on thrones with Christ for eternity. Such things cannot be comprehended. And yet I’m afraid that many Christians today are totally enslaved to this world. They are totally enamored by the lusts of this world. Like the Israelites, we lust after the leeks and garlic of Egypt. We lust after the very things that God has delivered us from. Rather than seeking righteousness and holiness by suffering with Christ, we seek friendship with the world, we seek social status and prestige and bigger and better material things, rather than laying up our treasures in heaven.

Listen, I will close by referring to what Matthew includes in his gospel’s account of this parable. In Matthew 21:43 it records Jesus as saying, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it.” I don’t think that this verse is teaching that you can lose your salvation, but I do think it teaches that God expects a return on your stewardship. Grace is not the result of works, but grace should produce works. Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

I don’t know your heart today. God knows your heart. But if your heart is right, then your fruit should be evident. If God is on the throne of your heart, then God has a right to expect fruit from His vine. Jesus said in John 15:16 “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain.”

How do we bring forth good fruit? By being found true to the cornerstone. By establishing our lives upon the cornerstone of Christ’s word, being built up into a holy temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwells. By crucifying the desires of the flesh daily so that Christ may live in our mortal bodies. By submitting joyfully to the rule of Christ over our hearts. When Christ is our cornerstone, then we will build our lives on His foundation and according to His plan. That produces a building that brings glory to God. That produces a fruit that will remain. I pray that today you come to the cornerstone in brokenness, that you may be built up according to the truth of God’s word.