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.

Whether or not you realize it, there has been a monumental shift within the modern church in the last century or so. Particularly in the last half of the last century, events and attitudes that perhaps seemed almost imperceptible at first have quickly gained a momentum and coalesced into a movement that has brought about sweeping changes throughout the church.

I would like to say that all these changes have been good. After all, there were some movements in the past such as the Reformation that swept through Europe and into America that changed the church for the better. But I’m afraid that is not the case with this movement. It’s difficult to put a name on it that encompasses everything that is going on. Some people have suggested that the movement should be called the New Emergent Church. But I don’t know if that is too limiting and in definitive .

Whatever it is that you want to call it, it is the most dangerous movement that Christianity has encountered since the Dark Ages.   It literally threatens to destroy not only the church as we know it, but it is also demonically designed to ultimately destroy souls by deluding them as to the true nature of the church, and specifically the true nature of the gospel.

Regardless of what you call this movement, regardless of the great diversity of denominations that are being sucked into it, it’s got one characteristic which is common to all. This great demonic delusion is focused on undermining the supreme authority of God’s word.   There really is no other greater purpose of the church other than to protect, to preserve, to proclaim and publish the word of God that men might be saved.   And yet today the word of God is almost nonexistent in many main line churches. And even when it is found, it’s importance, it’s prominence is diminished and relegated to an ancillary component of what is called worship. The scripture, which is the very essence of Christ, the Word of God, the voice of God, is subjugated to the whims of fashion, trends, technology, translations that emasculate the Word, teachers that downplay the authority of the Word, and so called spiritual experiences which trump the Word.

The incredible thing is that the greatest adversary of the church is not the atheists, nor the Islamists or any of the world’s agents in the media or government. But the greatest danger to the church is coming from within the church itself. The authority and supremacy of the Word of God is being attacked on so many different levels within the church in a varieties of ways and yet the average person is completely unaware of it. One of the primary ways this is happening has been through a shift in emphasis from the preaching of the Word of God with authority to an emphasis on what is called worship, or praise and worship.

Worship leaders today are often given a form of leadership found in the church that circumvents being vetted by the credentials for pastors or deacons found in 1 and 2 Timothy and yet they have more influence in the church many times than the pastor himself. People decide church associations today not based on what kind of preacher the pastor is, or even if he is preaching the word accurately, but they pick churches based on musical styles and often the worship leader’s talent.

Worship is often presented as a time of spiritual awareness, evoking an emotional response, a euphoric feeling that comes through music, sometimes an ecstatic outburst of emotion that is attributed to the Spirit. Worship has become a catch all for a multimedia presentation that encompasses, music, lights, images and sounds that coalesce in an experience that is loosely based on an even looser theology. The problem is that very often that theology,   if it’s not in outright error, is so lopsided in it’s perspective that it rarely presents the full gospel. It’s very often a partial gospel, encompassing a lopsided view of God as a one dimensional being who is limited in scope to only an emotional quotient called love, and which consequently sacrifices all the weightier issues of salvation such as sanctification and holiness as being archaic and out of touch or even legalistic.

Now as I alluded to earlier, there is nothing new under the sun. Technology may be newer, musical styles may have changed, but false theology has been around forever. The devil just keeps repackaging it, reformatting it for the next generation. Even in Jesus day, even with Jesus present, there are elements of false worship and errant theology that He has to deal with. So in this passage we are looking at today, in addition to looking at the historical account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, we will see a contrast of true worship and errant worship.

First of all though, let’s consider the context of this passage. It is obviously divinely connected to the passage preceding it. In that parable, Jesus told a story about a king who came to receive his kingdom in a far away country. And he put his servants in charge of the kingdom until he returned. But there were people in that country, his citizens, that said “we will not let this man reign over us.” Jesus says in the story that when the king returns, he first addresses those faithful slaves who were good stewards of what he entrusted to them. He rewards the faithful. But those that were unfaithful with their stewardship he takes away even what they have and gives it to the faithful. And those that rebelled against his kingship, he says he will slay in his presence.

Now that is the immediate context of this passage we are looking at today. Jesus is the King who is coming to receive His kingdom. He came preaching “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” He was the King come to receive a far away kingdom. And while He was on earth, He entrusts His servants with a stewardship. They are given the responsibility of managing the kingdom and utilizing it’s resources in a way that will benefit the kingdom.

And that is exactly what Jesus had been doing. He had called 12 disciples to follow Him, to learn from Him. They had been entrusted with His Word. They sat under His teaching. One day, they will transcribe those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and compile the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God. So in the time of His incarnation, Jesus delivers the Word of God, the gospel, to the disciples, not only the 12, but all those that truly leave all to follow Him and accept Him as Lord and King.

Now on this day, Jesus begins the final part of His journey to Jerusalem. He leaves Jericho, and approaches two small villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem and sends two of His disciples ahead into the village. He tells them that they will find there a donkey and her colt tied up there. And He tells the disciples that they are to bring Him the colt and if anyone asks what they are doing, they are to say that the Lord has need of it. So they go on ahead and they find everything exactly as He said.

So they bring back the colt to Jesus and put their robes on it for a saddle and then put Jesus on it. Now this is the first part of their worship. Notice first of all that worship involves obedience. These disciples are given a set of instructions that probably seemed kind of ridiculous to them at first. Go into the next village and you will find a colt tied there. Untie it and bring it here. And if someone asks you what you’re doing, then say the Lord has need of it. They probably were saying, “Right?!” This is a good way to get arrested. It didn’t make sense. Jesus hadn’t yet been to that village, so how could He know there was a colt tied there? And yet they unquestionably obeyed His world. They didn’t argue. They didn’t question. They did what He said, and the results were exactly like Jesus said they would be.

You know, the greatest detriment to true worship of God is our own intellect sometimes. We think we know better than God how to design a church, or how to relate to people. We think we know better than God how to attract a crowd, how to keep people’s interest. So we circumvent the preaching of the word and engineer some type of human program that we think will accomplish the end result that we want. But then at some point in the future, we discover that it didn’t really accomplish what we thought it would. 1Cor. 1:21 says that “since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.”

What those disciples didn’t realize, is that by being obedient to the word, they were also fulfilling Biblical prophecy. In Zechariah 9:9, written 500 years earlier, it was written, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

And that is another key to true worship. True worship in accordance with the word of God accomplishes the will of God. See, even though they did not initially understand what they were doing, or why they were doing it in this way, the word of God explained it. The disciples were more than willing to celebrate Jesus as the coming Messiah, as the conquering King who would deliver their nation from the iron fist of Rome. But if they had studied the scriptures, they would have discovered that Zechariah says that yes, He was coming as a King, but that His purpose was salvation, not to conquer Rome. Zechariah says, “He is just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey.” A donkey was not a war horse, but a beast of burden. Jesus came to bear our burdens, to bear the burden of sin to the cross and be offered there as a sacrifice for our sins so that we might have salvation. And salvation is the only way to enter His kingdom.

Jesus’ purpose in entering Jerusalem was completely contrary to the disciples expectations. Christ entered Jerusalem not to conquer Israel’s political enemies, but to conquer sin. To defeat sin, by dying on the cross, being buried in the grave, descending into hell, and then raised by the power of God after three days. He defeated sin by robbing sin of it’s penalty; spiritual death. That is another element of worship that is missing in so many modern churches today. There is no preaching about sin, no emphasis on the need for confession and repentance from sin. Listen, there is no salvation without repentance from sin. Salvation by it’s definition is deliverance from the penalty of sin which is death. But there is hardly any mention of sin in modern worship today. It’s all about relationship. It’s all about love. It’s all about grace. And yet the Bible is clear that there is no salvation without repentance of sin. Jesus said twice in Luke 13, that unless you repent you will perish.

I believe that repentance is pictured in the disciples laying down their garments in the road for Him to ride on. The robe was a man’s covering. It was his dignity, it signified his status. We have the same thing today. Our status is printed on our clothes. We put little horses and polo players on our clothes so that people will know our status. It tells people something about us. Clothes are our first line of defense. These disciples laid down their defenses. Jesus says in another place that a man’s robe was used to keep himself warm at night. And so I don’t want to belabor the illustration too much, but I believe that laying down your robe symbolized a laying down of your dignity, your status, it was humbling one’s self before God. It was acknowledging your submission to the Lordship of the King. It was recognizing that your covering was ineffective, and you needed to be clothed in the robe of righteousness that Jesus provided for us at the foot of the cross.

I find very often in modern worship, almost the exact opposite of humiliation. Instead of humbling oneself to worship, there is very often an exaltation of the musicians, an exaltation of the entertainers whereby they are receiving the adoration that belongs to God. That is a dangerous thing ladies and gentlemen. That’s why I said last week that natural talent is not synonymous with spiritual gifts. In fact, many times I think a natural talent can be a detriment to being used by God because it draws attention away from God to you. That’s why Paul said he was given a thorn in the flesh, to keep him from exalting himself. He was a brilliant man. That was well known even to the Governor Festus and King Agrippa which prompted Festus to say, “Your great learning is driving you mad.” So God gave Paul a thorn in his flesh to keep from exalting himself, so that the glory might be to God. God alone deserves our adoration.

Now look at vs. 37-38 “As soon as He was approaching, near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles which they had seen, shouting: “BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

So as the procession leaves Bethpage and ascends the Mount of Olives the disciples start to praise God with a loud voice for all the powerful works that they had seen. Now this sounds more like what we think of when we think of praise. But let’s look at the characteristics of their praise. First they recognized Him as King, and secondly they recognized him as Lord. So they acknowledge and praise Him as the rightful King of His creation, but they also submit to Him as Lord. You may remember last week I referenced that depending on the politics of the president, I may or may not care for the guy currently in office in the White House. But regardless, he is the president and I am a citizen of the United States. There are times when that is a grudging acceptance on my part. But my attitude is something else entirely when my guy gets in the White House. Then I proudly say that he is my President. Not just the president of the country that I happen to be living in, but my President. There is a difference, because I am in agreement with his politics, his platform.

That’s a poor illustration perhaps of what it means to acknowledge Jesus as King, and Jesus as Lord. Jesus as King is acknowledging His domain, His right to rule. Jesus as Lord is gladly submitting to His rule in my life. Listen, true worship is submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in my life. It’s not singing a couple of songs and continuing in my sin. It’s not clapping my hands on Sunday morning and sleeping with my boyfriend or girlfriend on Sunday night. That’s why I started off by saying that true worship is obedience and then repentance. You can’t worship God and continue in sin. Nor can you refuse to acknowledge your sin as sin. That is a big one today. In the new worship mentality they first undermine the authority of scripture so that they can no longer say with certainty what constitutes sin. Then they take away the onus of sin by an aberrant doctrine of grace, and then they eventually try to redefine sin as not sin after all. And once the devil gets you to the point where you no longer think your sin is sin then he has you in the place that he can destroy you. And that’s his goal all along.

Another important element of their praise was peace in heaven. They are not talking about peace on earth – the absence of war or strife which is the social gospel that a lot of churches are buying into. But the peace that heaven gives is peace with God. And peace with God only is possible when the justice of God and the wrath of God against sin is satisfied. Paul says in Romans that we were enemies of God and that through Jesus we have peace with God. Rom. 5:10 “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Rom. 5:1 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And secondly, having made peace, we now glorify God in heaven. How do we do that? Do we do that by simply saying it, by praising God in song, by repeating “glory to God?” No, not just singing praise, but living lives that bring praise to God. We glorify God not just with our mouths, but by the testimony of a transformed life. We saw that in Zaccheus. His transformation brought glory to God. Bartimaeus, his transformation brought glory to God. You want to worship God? Then let your transformation bring glory to God. Jesus said in Matt. 5:16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Your good works done as a result of your transformed heart will bring glory to God as people observe your behavior in your daily life.

Now when the Pharisees and the religious leaders heard the disciples praising Jesus as the Messiah King, these men revealed that they were in fact the very ones that said, “we will not have this man to rule over us.” And so they said to Jesus in vs. 39, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” Now this is an interesting thing for Jesus to say. It actually has a dual meaning. First and most obviously, Jesus is saying that God isn’t dependent upon our praise, but He can cause even inanimate objects to erupt in His praise if He so desires. There is a notion out there that God is this pitiful, narcissistic kind of God that sits in heaven almost in a fit of despondency, waiting and wishing that someone would call, someone would tell him how wonderful He is. That somehow God just needs people to tell Him how great He is in order for Him to be happy. And if you just do that on a regular basis, God will bless you in return.

I would just remind such people of what Paul said to the philosophers on Mars Hill, that “God is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.” God’s happiness is not dependent upon our praise.

But this statement about the stones is also a reference to judgment. In Habakkuk 2:11-12 the prophet writes about the judgment of God upon the city and says “Surely the stone will cry out from the wall, And the rafter will answer it from the framework. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed And founds a town with violence!” What Jesus is referencing here is that these men who are the rulers of Jerusalem that said “we will not have this man rule over us,” in denying Jesus the praise and recognition that He deserves are actually bringing upon their city the judgment of God for their rejection of His Son. That is exactly what the parable indicated in the previous chapter. That God would bring destruction upon those men that reject His Christ. And that is exactly what would happen to Jerusalem. God would bring judgment upon it just 40 years later because it rejected the Savior, God’s only Son. So what Jesus in essence is saying, is that even if these people were to fall silent, the stones of your city will cry out as a testament to the foolishness and the consequences of your rebellion.

Now that explains Jesus reaction and statement in the next few verses. Vs. 41 “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

Jesus wept over the city because He knew that their worship of Him was superficial. The crowds were following Him now, but they would be calling for His crucifixion in less than a week. They had a man centered theology rather than a God centered theology. In their version, God would bring the Messiah to deliver them from their enemies, to bring prosperity to their nation, to bring peace from their oppressors. It was a social kingdom, a political kingdom, that was solely for their benefit. And so Jesus is weeping over the city because He knows that in the plan of God there must be suffering before exaltation. He must first be their sacrifice in order to be their Savior, and only then can He be their King and they His citizens.

But the crowds aren’t interested in sacrifice. They don’t want to hear about suffering. They want a solution to their immediate problems. There are a lot of people today that are drawn to God, are drawn to a superficial kind of worship that is man-centric, that appeals to their emotions, appeals to their particular crisis. And the new worship template promises them an easy solution to their problem. God is love, and He just loves to love you, and because He loves you He will give you everything you want if you just believe that He loves you. What they fail to teach you though is the full counsel of God’s Word that requires that you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your might. And that if you truly love God like that, then God’s will must be paramount, it must take precedence over everything and every one. That means you cannot love God and the world, you cannot love God and money. You cannot love your family member or your girlfriend or your boyfriend more that God. God must have preeminence. There is a cost to loving God, and the cost is the love of the world.

Well, Jerusalem would within the week reject Jesus Christ as their Savior, as their Sacrifice. They would call for His crucifixion. And just 40 years later the historian Josephus would record that Titus would encircle Jerusalem, he would erect a wall, he would bring a siege upon the city, and then after 6 months in 70 AD he would break through the walls of Jerusalem and massacre every man, woman and child. Some would estimate that over 200,000 Jews would be killed inside the city. And then Titus set fire to the city. They believed that the walls of the Temple had gold in them and to get at the gold they burned the city and then tore apart the walls to get at the gold.  Today there is only one fragment of the city of Jerusalem still standing, the Wailing Wall. It’s where the Jews go to pray for the Messiah to come. They still refuse to recognize that He already came and they did not recognize the time of His visitation. Some of you here today, I wonder if you recognize that today is the day of Christ’s visitation? Today salvation has been presented to you. The question is whether or not you will accept Jesus as Lord and follow Him or reject Him.

Immediately after entering the city, Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those that were selling. In vs. 46 Jesus says to them, “It is written, ‘AND MY HOUSE SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PRAYER,’ but you have made it a ROBBERS’ DEN.” What an indictment against their house of worship! They had prostituted the temple of God. They had prostituted the sacrificial service. They had set up money changers and animal brokers and so forth within the temple walls to supposedly accommodate those that were coming to worship God. But instead they had corrupted the system to the point that instead of helping people worship God they were robbing people.

Ladies and gentlemen I am afraid that many churches today are prostituting the gospel of God. The house of God has been turned into a carnival. The church has bookstores and coffee shops and bazaars and dinners and marathons and car shows and flea markets and every possible entertainment and event going on. Yet as Proverbs says the people perish for lack of vision. The church has lost it’s vision, lost it’s purpose. The church isn’t a community center. It’s not a social hall. It’s not a concert hall. The church is a place where God’s people come together to worship God in Spirit and in truth. It’s the place where the water of life is given freely and without charge. It’s the place where people’s souls are fed, hearts are encouraged, and sinners are convicted. It’s not a place where we try to make sinners feel good about themselves. But where sinners repent and are delivered and set free. But unfortunately many churches today are robbing people of the gospel of salvation.

In the earliest church in Jerusalem during the time of the apostles, they were feeding the widows and the apostles said let us set aside certain men for that task. But as for us, the apostles said, “we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:4) That’s the priority of the church. And that’s the priority of worship as well.

So Jesus cleaned house. You know, I wish all these people that only believe that God is love could have been there that day when Jesus got a bull whip and overturned all the stalls and tables and drove out all the animals and vendors and money changers out of the temple. I don’t think most of those people would recognize Jesus nor would they worship Him. This was the second time by the way that Jesus cleaned out the temple. In John’s account it says the disciples remembered the proverb that said, “the zeal for your house has consumed me.”

Folks, we need some old fashioned zeal for the house of God. We need some zeal for the word of God and the preaching of the word of God. We need to put an end to the prostitution of Christianity, the business of the church and get back to being about the business of the kingdom of God.

That’s what we see Jesus bringing the people back to in vs. 47, 48. It says, after that “He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, and they could not find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said.” You see that? Jesus was teaching daily in the temple. He was preaching every day and the people were hanging on to His every word. That’s zeal for God. I long to see people with a zeal for the word of God, that don’t want to miss a service, don’t want to miss a message. That are willing to sacrifice the enticements of the world for the sake of knowing Jesus Christ and becoming conformed to His image.

Jesus said in John 6:63 “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Listen folks, Paul reminded Timothy to hold onto the scripture which he had learned from childhood “which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Let’s not lose sight of the priority and preeminence of the word of God in our worship. And then let us be obedient to the word of God. And if we are obedient to the word of God then we will have no problem submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And when the Lordship of Christ is evident in our lives then our lives will be a living testimony to the glory of God. People will see our transformation, our good works and glorify God.

I pray that starting today you will renounce superficial worship. But diligently commit to living out Romans 12:1,2. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

If you were here last week then you will remember that we looked at the conversion of Zaccheus in the beginning of this chapter. Zaccheus was a man of small stature, but great faith. Although he had been a man that employed wicked, evil business practices before his conversion, after he met Jesus he was transformed into a man that used his unrighteous wealth for the kingdom of God.

Jesus said about Zaccheus that salvation had come to his house, because he too was a son of Abraham. Now last week I explained that Jesus used the phrase “son of Abraham” not to indicate that he was Jew. Practically everyone there was a Jew, including Zaccheus, but what Jesus is indicating that Zaccheus’ salvation was the result of something that was associated with Abraham in particular.

The Apostle Paul makes it clear that faith was the defining characteristic of Abraham. Gal. 3:6-7 says “Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.” So saving faith is the characteristic associated with Abraham. Paul is quoting from Genesis when he says that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So righteousness and salvation, comes as a result of faith. I would hope most of us would accept that doctrine.

But what exactly is faith? Listen, faith is believing the promises of God and then acting upon them. Let me say that again. Faith is believing the promises of God and then acting upon them. Saving faith is not just believing that God exists. The Bible says that the devils believe in God and tremble, yet they are not saved. Faith is not an emotional desire, it is not wishful thinking. Faith is not the power of positive thinking. Saving faith is acting upon the promises of God. Listen to what Heb. 11: 8 says, “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” See, his faith was characterized by action. Abraham believed God and he acted upon that belief, trusting that what God promised He was able to provide.

So Zaccheus was a child of Abraham because he was saved by faith. And how was his faith evidenced? How was his faith acted out? By the fact that he was willing to give half his money to the poor and pay back everyone he had defrauded with four times as much. Zaccheus showed true faith by his willingness to do from his heart what Jesus never told him to do. That is in direct contrast to the rich young ruler of the last chapter, that thought he was a child of Abraham by birth, thought that he was righteous, and yet his unwillingness to divest himself of his riches in order to follow Christ revealed that his heart was selfish and unrepentant. The rich young ruler went away sad, because he went away unsaved. Oh, he believed in God. But he did not have faith in God to do what Jesus asked him to do. That’s what James is talking about in James 1 when he says, I’ll show you my faith by my works. Zaccheus’ actions were the evidence of his faith.

Now all of that is by means of introduction and is very important to understanding our text today. Because as you can see in vs. 11, Jesus is still in Zaccheus’ house. So after declaring Zaccheus a son of Abraham, declaring that he was saved, Jesus is going to illustrate that principle of obedient faith with a parable. Now there is another purpose to the parable that is stated by Luke; that is, that Jesus used this to refute the common thinking that existed among the disciples, who supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately because He was going to Jerusalem. Now that is the obvious purpose to the parable. But as I have just pointed out, there is another very important lesson contained in this parable as well, which is how obedient faith is to be worked out in the meantime.

So let’s consider the stated purpose first; that the kingdom of God is going to be delayed. Jesus uses a story about a nobleman that receives a kingdom in a distant country. Now this would have been a familiar scenario for the crowd assembled there. Jesus made the parable up, but He may have used an actual historical situation to base it on that they would have undoubtedly been familiar with. History tells us that just before this time, there was a nobleman named Archelaus, who was one of three sons of King Herod, who had inherited kingship of the area surrounding Jericho where Zaccheus lived.   After his father’s death Archelaus went to Rome to receive the sovereignty from Caesar over this part of his father’s kingdom. Confirmation by the Roman emperor was necessary, because though Israel was Herod’s empire, in reality it was part of the Roman Empire. However, Archelaus was hated by the Jewish population. And so the Jews sent a delegation to Rome to dispute Archelaus’s claim to kingship. But nevertheless the emperor decided to appoint him as ruler over half of his father’s kingdom.

Now that is the historical context. The people would have very easily identified with the story. But the obvious point that Luke says that Jesus is making is that the king first receives the kingdom in a distant country, and then he goes back to be officially appointed as king.   In other words, there is going to be an extended time when the king is absent. He comes to his kingdom, and then he goes back to receive the kingdom which might have been like an official public ceremony and then one day in the future he comes back again to take his kingdom and demands a reckoning with those he left in charge and those that had opposed his kingship.

But this idea of the kingdom being delayed would have been a foreign concept to the disciples and whatever religious leaders were in attendance that day. Both Jesus and John the Baptist before Him had been going around the country preaching “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” That was the Messianic message that everyone had been wanting to hear for thousands of years. The followers of Jesus believed that Jesus was in fact the Messiah.   The rabbis and Pharisees and the religious leaders of Israel were speculating whether or not Jesus could be the Messiah. Most of them tended to believe that He was not. But the massive crowds that were following Him largely because of His miracles wanted to believe that He was the Messiah. In just a few days they would congregate in Jerusalem as He rode into town on a donkey during Passover week, and they would greet Him and celebrate Him as the Messiah.

The problem was that their Messianic theology did not match the reality of the scripture’s prophecies. Their theology centered on a literal kingship, the physical reinstatement of the throne of David that the Messiah would sit on. And they believed that He would overthrow the Roman yoke, defeat all their enemies, and Israel would become the greatest, most favored nation on the earth. They believed they would enjoy unrivaled peace and prosperity in this kingdom as God would rule and reign through the Messiah sitting on the throne in Jerusalem.

That’s why they did not understand all the talk about dying and crucifixion and that the Son of Man would suffer and be delivered up in Jerusalem. Even the disciples did not understand it. They would be arguing right up to the point of entering the Garden of Gethsemane about who was going to get to sit on Jesus right and left hands on thrones when Jesus received His kingdom. And that is why both the disciples and the crowd would all fall away from Him in His moment of suffering. Suffering did not fit into their theology.

And you know what? Suffering doesn’t fit into most modern evangelical’s theology either. Modern evangelical theology has distanced itself from many doctrines so clearly presented in the Bible like judgment, hell, suffering, tribulation and sacrifice. I believe that is why when in the end of the ages, just before Christ returns in the clouds which Jesus spoke about in Mark 12, that there will be a great falling away, which is going to be so deceitful that if it were possible it would deceive even the very elect. I don’t want to start an eschatological debate with anyone, but I believe that the church is going to go through the refiner’s fire of tribulation. If you follow the news, then you should understand that that fire is already kindled. So you better make sure that your theology is founded on the truth of God’s word and not some book you read or some movie you watched.

So Jesus tells them this parable to illustrate the correct eschatology. And that eschatology has not changed in two thousand years by the way. We are still living in the “in betweens,” the time between His first coming and His second coming. So let’s consider then what our responsibility is in this time in between. That is I think the real point to this illustration. Zaccheus’s utter transformation was the catalyst for this parable. His willingness to respond from the heart with even more than the law required him to do revealed that he had been truly saved. The law required that he give his tithe to the temple which would have been about 23 percent if you added everything up, and he said I’ll give half; 50% of all that I have. The law said if you defrauded someone you were to repay them twice as much, and Zaccheus said I’ll even double that. That was illustrative of the faith of Abraham. It’s illustrative of saving faith. It’s proof that his heart has been transformed from greedy to giving. From selfish and prideful to loving and humble. Those are the characteristics of someone who has been saved.

Jesus illustrates that kind of saving faith with this story. Now before the nobleman goes back to officially receive the kingdom, he calls 10 servants and gives them a mina each. Now a mina is equal to 100 days wages. And he says to them, “Do business with this until I come back.” Now there are three types of people that are represented in this parable. Three types but only two categories. And I believe every one of us here today are represented by one of these three types of people. The first group is the faithful slaves. That is the guy that made 10 minas and the guy that made 5 minas. They both are in the faithful category. They were obedient to the king and give him a return on their stewardship. The second category is the citizens that hated the king and said “we will not have this man rule over us.” These are the ones in flagrant rebellion. But the third category is the guy who did nothing with his mina. He is not any different from the second category actually. He isn’t in open, flagrant rebellion, but he reveals in his unfaithfulness that he was not willing to have the king rule over him either. Now as I said, I believe the Bible makes it clear that there are really only two categories of people in the world. Those that are saved, and those that are lost. There is no almost saved, no sort of saved, you cannot serve God and mammon. You are either in the kingdom or you are not. So even though there are three categories in this parable, there are really only two types of people.

And this is verified in scripture by the way. The most obvious parallel to this is an almost identical parable known as the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25 vs. 14. The parables are very similar. But the scripture is clear that they are in fact different parables given at different times in different places, even though a lot of the verbiage is the same. A talent by the way is a unit of money. It amazes me how people interpret that parable as God giving them talents like singing, or art, or acting or whatever. And then pastors will give seminars on how to discover your talents. Then they make the mistake of equating some natural or physical talent to a spiritual gift. And the next thing you know, the church looks like a version of American Idol.

Let me digress here for just a minute and say that your natural talent and your spiritual gift are not always interchangeable. In fact, I’ve found that God may give you a spiritual gift that is not something that you are naturally talented in. Your natural talent may actually hinder you from doing the work of God. It’s too easy for pride to get involved when you have a natural talent.   A spiritual gift is when God equips you to do something by the power of the Holy Spirit that you could not do in the flesh. Got that? It has nothing to do with whether or not you think you are talented in a particular area. It has something to do with being obedient to do what God wants you to do when you can’t do it in your flesh, when it doesn’t come easy for you.

Paul is a great example of that. This was an extremely talented, intelligent man. But Paul said all those things that had been gain for him, he now counted them but rubbish. And God gave him a thorn in the flesh, he said, to keep him from exalting himself.   It’s commonly believed that the thorn in the flesh was a condition of near blindness, marked by a running infection in his eyes. And so it was said by the churches that in physical appearance Paul was contemptible, but his letters were weighty and strong. Now that characterizes a man that did not rely on natural talent, or charisma, or good looks, or great physical abilities, but relied on the wisdom and the power of God and was able to do amazing things.

But back to Matthew 25, in the parable of the talents you see an almost identical situation to the parable in Luke. Three men, each of them given a unit of money. And at the reckoning two are rewarded by their master, but one hid his talent. So when the slave tells his master that he hid his talent in the ground, the master’s response is to say, “You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. ‘Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. ‘Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.” But here is where the text is different. Jesus says in Matthews parable, “Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” See, Jesus reveals in Matthew’s parable that this unfaithful slave is considered as an unsaved person. He shows by his actions that he is not really saved. So in the parable of the talent there are only two possible categories; either saved or unsaved. Either of the faith, or of the faithless.

Now let’s go back to our text in Luke and look at the first type of person that Jesus mentions. And that is the flagrantly rebellious found in vs.14. These are the ones who send out a delegation saying, “We do not want this man to reign over us.” First of all, note that they are citizens of his kingdom. The fact that they do not like their king, or want to serve their king, or respect their king, does not invalidate the fact that he is still their king. You know, I may not like whoever happens to be in the White House from time to time. I may not agree with them, or even respect them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are the President of the United States, and I am a citizen of the United States. And as such I am subject to the laws of the United States. In fact, Peter tells us this is the Lord’s will. 1Pet. 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.” We are told to pray for those that are in authority over us. We are not told to rebel against authority. We are told to pay our taxes. Now that is even to an ungodly king or ungodly president.

But the point Jesus is making here is that even people that hate God and rebel against His rule are a part of His kingdom in the sense that they belong to Him.  I find it ironic that the very breath with which these God haters rail and rant against God is given to them by Christ. Col. 1:16-17 says, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

Yet Jesus says in this parable that even though they were part of His kingdom, they rebelled against Him and did not want to submit to His rule over them. John 1:10-12 “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”

So even though they do not accept Him as God, nor worship Him as God, yet they will still give an account to Him one day. The Bible says that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But for that confession to be effective, it must be a confession of faith. That which is seen is not faith. When they are brought before the Great White Throne judgment, and they see the Lamb of God who was slain, the Savior that they rejected, they will believe then. But it will be too late.

Jesus says as much in the last verse of the parable in vs. 27 “But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.” This is correlated in Rev. 20:12, 14-15 “And I saw the dead,(that is the unsaved, spiritually dead) the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. … Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Now the second type of person in the parable is that of the faithful. Jesus says that the slaves were each given mina. I believe that what the mina represents is not money or talents or even necessarily time, but the gospel – the full counsel of the word of God. In John chapter one Jesus is referred to as the Word. It says the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And all things were made by Him. And then skipping down it says, “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So the gospel is nothing less than all the scripture, all the Word of God. Jesus said in John 6:63, the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit and they are life. The Word of God is the greatest treasure, the gospel, the power of God unto salvation. It is the means by which the Holy Spirit teaches us and guides us. It is the Word of Life.

So these faithful slaves then represent those that are faithful to the Word of God. They have accepted it by faith, they are obedient to the Word by faith, and they bring about fruit in keeping to their measure of obedience. Now to prove that I remind you of the parable of the sower. I’m sure you are all familiar with that parable found in Matthew 13. Jesus says a farmer went out to sow seed. And some seed fell on good ground, some on rocky ground, some by the hard packed road, and some fell among thorns. You know the story, I hope. I won’t go through it all. But Jesus gives an explanation, because the disciples didn’t know what it meant. And Jesus explains that the seed was the Word of God. And the seed which fell on good soil produced a crop, some one hundred fold, some sixty and some thirty.   See, the crop is the evidence of their salvation. The Word of God enters into an obedient, faithful heart and produces fruit.

And then look at the reward. The king says to the one who returned ten minas, “Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you are to be in authority over ten cities.” And to the one who returned five minas, he said, “And you are to be over five cities.” Listen, do you realize that in the eternal glory we will rule and reign with Christ? That those who shared with Him in the fellowship of His sufferings here will also share with Him in His glory? The point here is to be laying up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust does not corrupt. God has promised to reward those who are faithful. So it behooves us to remember what Paul says in 2Cor. 9:6 “Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” Listen, there will be varying degrees of reward in heaven. Eternity lasts a long, long time folks. I hope that you are investing in heaven. Jesus’ last words to the church is found in Rev. 3: 21 “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”

Finally, let’s look at the unfaithful slave. He said, “Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.” The Greek word that is translated as exacting there is actually the word that we get austere from. It means harsh, severe, stern. This guy is revealing what he really thinks of his Master. He doesn’t like Him. He doesn’t want to submit to Him. He doesn’t really want this man to rule over him. He thinks he is too strict, too harsh.

The unfaithful slave says, you collect what you did not deposit, you reap what you did not sow. In other words, he thinks that God is over reaching his authority. God doesn’t really own everything. It’s kind of like the man who thinks that God can have my ten percent tithe, but the 90 % belongs to me. God can have an hour or so on Sunday mornings, but the rest of the week belongs to me.

There is even a bit of licentiousness in there. There is a hint of antinomianism couched in this rebuttal by the unfaithful slave. He says, you know, grace means that I don’t have to be concerned about works. You do the works with or without my help. You reap where you didn’t sow. You have the power that is supposed to be doing everything, and so I can do nothing. He excuses his disobedience by claiming that his master is so powerful that he doesn’t need his help.

I think that every generation has it’s pet heresy. There may be no new heresy under the sun, the devil just keeps repackaging them for each subsequent generation. But I think that one of the pet heresy’s of the 21^st century is that of antinomianism. It’s the belief that the grace of God is so overpowering, so encompassing, that it eliminates every human responsibility. And so there is no sin, there is no need to confess your sins, and there is no human responsibility. And though very few people are brash enough to come out and say it quite that frankly, the modern day false prophets are all teaching a version of it. Joel Olsteen, Joseph Prince, Joyce Meyer, they all have taken the prosperity gospel to it’s obvious, inevitable conclusion, and that is that God only wants you to be happy and prosperous and successful and healthy and all you have to do is have some form of faith and God removes all sin from you forever, and puts all the resources of heaven at your personal disposal and you never have to suffer, you never have to sacrifice your personal happiness, you never have to repent, or ever have anything bad happen, it’s all good, all the time. And people buying into that false doctrine by the thousands and they are being deceived that salvation doesn’t require surrender of this world, salvation doesn’t require repentance, salvation doesn’t require obedience, salvation doesn’t require sacrifice, salvation doesn’t require morality, and salvation doesn’t require righteousness.

Jesus uses this parable to teach that salvation is marked by obedience from the heart, and obedience is evidenced by your deeds. I could give you dozens of scriptures that emphasize that. But let me just quote a few quickly. James 1: 22 “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” James 4:17 “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Matt. 12:50 “For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.” Rom. 2:13 “for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” James 2:17 “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” 1John 2:3 “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” And 1John 3:7 “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.”

Don’t be deceived folks. We can’t always tell the wheat from the tares. But the Lord of the harvest will be able to tell the wheat from the tares, because it will be obvious by their fruit. I don’t know how many people are deceived into thinking that they can be right with God and not have to be obedient to what He commands. But I’m afraid that many people today fall into that camp. Jesus said in Matthew 7, “many people will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name?” And He will say unto them, “’I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.”

Listen, I think that this unfaithful steward thought that he would be ok when the king came back. He was presuming upon the grace of God. He didn’t think faith was much more than a feeling. He thought God was supposed to serve him, he didn’t think it was necessary for him to serve God. But he failed to realize that obedience is the means to sanctification. And Hebrews 12: 4 says that without sanctification, no one will see the Lord. Sanctification is the fruit of your salvation. It is the working out of your salvation with fear and trembling. It is what Zaccheus was doing when he promised to make restitution to all he had wronged. It was a zeal for righteousness that came out of a transformed heart.

Jesus says about that unfaithful slave, that they will take away what he has and give it to him that had 10 minas. And when they questioned the wisdom of that, Jesus gave them the principle; “I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.” This is the principle of spiritual life. The one who has real life, abundant life in Christ, life through the Spirit, new life, the life that brings forth fruit, that produces growth, the one who has that kind of life, more shall be given to him. At the Bema seat judgment, when God rewards the faithful, he will give those that were faithful more responsibility. He will give those faithful in little things, great things. Oh, the value of being faithful in little things. Zech. 4:10 says, “For who has despised the day of small things?” Be faithful in little things, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be found faithful at the judgment.

But for the one who does not have that kind of life that produces fruit, that evidences new life, that is born of the Spirit and by the power of the Spirit works the works of God, that is obedient to the Word of God, to that person that does not have spiritual life, even the life that he has will be taken away. His physical life will end and all that he has worked for here on this earth will not serve him in the next. And his spiritual life will be forever destroyed. He will be forever separated from God because he said “I will not allow this Man to rule over me.” He placed himself on a higher pedestal than God. Everything that he worked for will be taken from him and he will be cast into the Lake of Fire.

Well, the question I would ask you in closing is; if your spiritual life was to be judged by the evidence, would you be counted among the faithful or the unfaithful? Are you gladly responding to the rule of God over your life, being about the business of the kingdom until Christ returns, looking forward to your reward? Or are you rejecting the absolute rule of Christ? Have you tucked away a bit of religion that you hope is enough, presuming upon the grace of God, while indulging in your sin? I hope that you are in the first group. But if you honestly examine yourself in the light of God’s word and you recognize by the conviction of the Holy Spirit that you are not living a life of surrender to Christ’s rule, then I beg of you, surrender yourself to Him today.   Call upon Him while He may be found. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. Today Jesus is calling you. I pray you will answer that call by repenting of your sins, and faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, resulting in obedience.

If you have been with us very often during these last two years that we have been preaching through the book of Luke, then you will recall that the reoccurring theme of Jesus’ ministry was the preaching of the kingdom of God; what it means, what are the requirements and how to enter it. And one of the major components of entering the kingdom of God is that a person must be desperate. They must have reached the point of being sick of their sin, the point of mourning over their sin, and desperately hungering and thirsting for righteousness. They have to have come to the realization that they are absolutely lost and without hope in this world. These principles were clearly presented in one of Jesus first recorded messages; the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount; blessed are the poor in spirit; that is those that recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn over their sin, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. All of those statements speak of the requirements of entering or being accepted in the kingdom of God. You have to humble yourselves, realize your spiritual bankruptcy, that you have no claim on the kingdom of God, mourn over your sin, that’s true repentance, and then hunger and thirst after the righteousness that only the grace of God can provide, by transference of your sins to Jesus, and His righteousness to you. That is salvation in a nutshell.

For three years Jesus has been preaching this message of repentance, that the kingdom of God is at hand. For 3 years God’s invitation to enter the kingdom was extended to all who would come. “Whosoever will may come.” But now Jesus is reaching the end goal of His earthly ministry. He is almost at Jerusalem. It is the Passover season, and in the providence of God Jesus Himself will be offered as the Passover Lamb for the sins of the world. The Passover symbolically represented that Jesus’ shed blood each person must put on the doorposts of their house, so that they might escape death. He is resolutely going to offer Himself at Calvary’s cross as a sacrifice for sins. And this will happen in just a few days.

And so it is in that context that we come across this story today. One more story illustrating how to enter the kingdom of God before Jesus enters Jerusalem and submits Himself to the crucifixion. Jesus takes a slight detour on his way to Jerusalem because He has a divine appointment with a sinner in the town of Jericho. Actually, He had two appointments. He had an appointment on the outskirts of Jericho with a blind beggar named Bartimaeus who exemplified the desperation necessary for salvation. We looked at that story last week as Jesus healed Bartimaeus, who Jesus declared was saved because of his faith.

Now coming into Jericho, great crowds are pressing around Him. Jesus’ fame has reached it’s climax and thousands are following Him into Jerusalem where they will throw down palm branches and cheer Him as the Messiah King. So it says in vs. 1 that Jesus was passing through Jericho. At least that was how it would seem to the casual observer. That this was all just chance, circumstance. Jesus just happened to be passing by. It says the same thing in the previous chapter about Jesus’ encounter with the blind beggar Bartimeaus. It would seem as though Jesus was just passing by and Bartimeaus happened to be in the vicinity. But Jesus doesn’t do anything haphazardly. God knows what is going to happen before it happens. He knows who is going to be there before they themselves know. Some of you here today may think that it’s just happenstance that you happen to be here today. You just happened to see a sign. You didn’t really plan on being here. But let me assure you, God knew you would be here today.   Today, Jesus is passing by. The kingdom of God is coming near. The question is how will you respond?

Well, there was a man in Jericho that responded in a dramatic way to the news that Christ passing by. The man’s name was Zaccheus. He was a chief tax collector and was very rich according to vs. 2. Now we should all be familiar with tax collectors by now. They were hated by everyone as traitors to their country. But they were also hated not only because of their politics but because they were unscrupulous. They extracted more taxes than really were required because the system allowed them to charge a commission. And so they would charge much more than they should and pocket the overage, and they could get away with this because the Roman government backed them up. But Zaccheus wasn’t just a normal tax collector, that was bad enough, but he was the chief tax collector. That means he was the regional manager of the tax collectors that worked in that area. So he was a very rich man, and everyone knew that he made his money by taking advantage of his own people. He would have been well known, and hated by all.

But though Zaccheus was very rich, yet implied in this account is the fact that he was very unsatisfied with his life. His name Zaccheus meant “pure.” And yet he knew that he was anything but pure. His name must have been the brunt of many a joke in the town as people would have said his name with derision. It says in vs. 3 that he wanted to see who Jesus was. Obviously, the fame of Jesus had reached this town. He had probably already heard about many of Jesus’ miracles long before He healed the blind beggar outside of town. Chances are he heard of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead just a few months before in Bethany which was just down the road a ways. People were saying that never a man spoke like this Man spoke. People were wondering aloud if Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

So the implication in this passage is that Zaccheus was miserable in his sin. His riches had not made him happy. He was the chief of sinners, and he knew it. And he was miserable. But somehow he understood that Jesus offered more than just physical healing, Jesus offered spiritual healing; hope of reconciliation with God. And Zaccheus knew that he needed spiritual healing. Under the system of Judaism, tax collectors were not even allowed in the synagogue or the temple. They basically were unredeemable people in the eyes of the religious establishment. And so he had no recourse for his sinfulness. But when he hears Jesus is passing through his town, he is desperate to see him.

Now there was one other characteristic of Zaccheus that we are all familiar with. Zaccheus was very short in stature. He was vertically impaired. That probably was a point of considerable suffering for him. The abuse that he must have suffered from being short may have contributed to him choosing a career path such as he had. I heard somebody describe Zaccheus once as looking kind of like Danny Devito, the actor. And I’ve had that image stuck inside my head ever since. Now you have it too. But I don’t know if he really looked like that. But I’m sure that his stature only added to the derision that people felt towards him. But though he might have overcome his stature in the business field, yet amongst the crowd that day he was unable to see Jesus over the shoulders of the townspeople.

Vs. 4 “So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.” Now this reveals the desperation that Zaccheus felt. He was a man that occupied a pretty exalted position in the community. He was well known. And he was already the object of derision. But this man must have been so desperate to see Jesus that he could care less what people thought about him. He could care less that climbing a tree would make him the laughing stock of the town. He just wanted to see Jesus.

You know, I was thinking the other day about the world’s version of beauty. There is more money spent by the average woman today on makeup and beauty products and treatments in one year than is probably spent on an entire family’s groceries in many third world countries. My daughter was telling me the other day about a mascara that is very popular right now that costs $60. And yet people will pay almost any price if something promises to help you achieve beauty. But the standard of beauty that the media puts out there is so distorted and unrealistic. Unfortunately a lot of us buy into it, and if we don’t see ourselves as measuring up to that standard, then we become disillusioned, we feel disenfranchised from society.

Thankfully, God doesn’t see us that way. We are all precious in His sight. As we have been studying Genesis on Wednesday nights we have heard repeatedly that God created us in His image, in His likeness. David said in Psalm 139 that “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Listen, I have news for you. None of us are perfect. Not even the airbrushed models in the magazines are perfect. But God is not concerned about our outward appearance. God is concerned about our hearts. And God loves us regardless of how we may appear to the world. He loves us in spite of our deficiencies. God made you for a purpose. He knew you when you were still in your mother’s womb. He loved you even before you were born. Jesus didn’t look at Zaccheus the way his neighbors did. Jesus saw his heart, and he saw a heart that was mourning over his sin, and seeking after righteousness. Jesus saw a soul worth saving. And Jesus says in vs. 10 that He came to earth to seek and to save those that are lost. Jesus came to seek and to save those that are disillusioned, that are disenfranchised.

So Jesus comes directly under the tree that Zaccheus is sitting in and He looks up at him and says, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” I think it is amazing that upon hearing Jesus call out his name, that Zaccheus didn’t fall right out of the tree. Here’s this guy that is hated by everyone, despised, and literally looked down upon as a despicable human being, and yet Jesus not only stops and talks to him, but He knows his name. And not only does He know his name, Jesus says He must come to stay at his house.

Listen, if you met a stranger walking down the street, and they came up to you and called you by name, wouldn’t you be amazed? Wouldn’t you wonder what else they knew about you? Zaccheus must have realized that if Jesus knew his name, then he knew everything else about him too. For he had never met Jesus. And yet Jesus knew his name. I’m sure that when Jesus looked Zaccheus in the eye and called out his name, he knew that Jesus could see right through him and knew all about him.

Did you know that God knows your name? Do you know that God knows where you live, what you do inside your house, what you do and say and think when you are alone? Do you know that God knows your innermost thoughts? And yet even though God knows you, He knows every sin that you have done, yet He still desires you to be reconciled to Him. He still wants your company, your fellowship, your love. What an amazing thing! That the Holy, Righteous Creator of the Universe wants you, to love you, and to have your love be for Him. Did you know that is why God created you? God created mankind to be the bride of Christ. To be like Him, in His likeness, made in His image, to be a helpmate to Him as Eve was to Adam. And to make it possible for sinful man to be united with Him, God made Jesus a sacrifice for our sins, that we might be made righteous and holy too, so that we would be a suitable mate to His Son.

I don’t know about you, but if Jesus said to me that I was to come down from the tree because He was coming to stay at my house, I would want to make a quick phone call home and see if I couldn’t get the place straightened up real quick first. I would want to run ahead and hide a few things in the closet before Jesus got there. Wouldn’t you? If Jesus were to follow you home from church today, would you be ashamed of what He might see there? How about if He decided to spend the night?

Yet Vs. 6 says that Zaccheus climbed down from the tree and received Him gladly. Listen, the difference for Zaccheus was that he wasn’t hiding anything. He realized that Jesus already knew everything about him. And Zaccheus was willing to have Jesus come home, he was glad to have Jesus come home with him, because Zaccheus was sick and tired of being sinful and wicked. He knew that Jesus had already seen his sinfulness and wickedness. He had nothing to hide. He had already opened his heart to Jesus. Now he gladly opened his house to Jesus. He was ready to receive Jesus as Lord, and that meant that he was ready to clean house.

How about you? Are you ready to clean house? Are you ready to empty out the closets that are hiding your secret sins? Have you ever really opened your heart, realizing that God sees the secrets of men’s hearts? If you really believe that, if you are truly mourning over your sin and hungering for righteousness, then you should be glad to receive Jesus into your house. Let Him cleanse you from every sin and stain, from every impure thing. Listen, there is great joy in knowing forgiveness. Of confessing and repenting of your sins and knowing God forgives you. Zaccheus meant pure. But up to now he had been impure, unholy, unrighteous. But when Jesus came in to his heart, Zaccheus was finally pure. And when a person really gets their heart right, then their house gets right too.

By the way, I came across an interesting historical note attributed to Clement of Alexandria, one of the church fathers. Clement said that Zaccheus became a very prominent Christian leader and ended up a pastor of the church in Caesarea, later to be succeeded by none other than Cornelius, the centurion. That may be the reason that Zaccheus is named by Luke. By the time that Luke writes this gospel, Zaccheus may have already been well known as a church leader.

Now as an interesting side note Luke reveals in vs. 7 the fickleness of the crowd. When they saw Jesus go off with Zaccheus, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Like I said, the same crowd that is fawning after Jesus in Jericho ends up throwing palm branches and calling out “Hosanna!” in Jerusalem a few days later. But then a few days after that it’s the same crowd that calls out “crucify Him!” Popular opinion is fickle, it’s temperamental. Jesus doesn’t ever go out of His way to please a crowd or to attempt to draw a crowd. In fact, He often seems to go out of His way to show that the crowd is drawn to the broad way that leads to destruction, but few are they that find the narrow way that leads to eternal life. Popularity and great crowds are never a barometer of spiritual truth, ladies and gentlemen.

Now I’m sure you can’t help but notice that there seems to be a lot of information missing between vs. 6 and vs. 8. Obviously, vs. 8 illustrates that Zaccheus was converted. But the details are missing. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Luke seems to jump from Jesus announcing that He is coming to spend the night with Zaccheus to Zaccheus’s statement of how he will right the wrongs he has committed.

And yet I think that this is purposely written this way to provoke the reader to ask a very important question. The question is this: How do we validate salvation? I have been a pastor of this church now for 8 years, and I have been in Christian ministry many years before that. But even though I spend my life trying to tell people what it means to be saved, sometimes I feel like I am completely inadequate to even lead someone to Christ. I can tell them all the things that they need to understand, all the elements, all the doctrines, and yet I cannot ensure that they are really, truly saved. Sometimes I don’t really know whether they have truly been transformed or not.

And so I ask myself this same question; how do we evaluate salvation? Is it by some emotional response to the gospel? If someone cries and has an emotional response, is that an indication that they are saved? Or is it like the charismatics claim? Does one tell a Christian by the fact that they had a charismatic, ecstatic experience? How is real salvation to be evaluated?

Well I think that the answer is found right here in the example of Zaccheus. The validation of salvation is found in the evidence of true repentance. I think the Holy Spirit deliberately leaves out all the details of what Jesus must have said to Zaccheus. He deliberately leaves out the details of what kind of prayer that Zaccheus might have prayed, or what his emotional state might have been. Instead, the Holy Spirit focuses our attention on Zaccheus’ contrition. See repentance is so much more than simply saying I’m sorry, or even feeling sorry. Repentance is doing a 180 degree turn and going the other direction. Repentance is not just being forgiven for your sins, but turning from your sins, and as we see in the case of Zaccheus, even making restitution for your sins. Now that is a novel concept in 21^st century evangelical Christianity, I know. But that is the result of salvation that we see in this passage, and I think it is at the heart of the gospel.

You see, Jesus went into the house of a sinner, but He came out of the house of a saint. That is the transformation of salvation. Salvation is conversion, from the heart of a sinner, to the heart of a saint. From a son of the devil, to a son of God. From a worker of evil, to a worker of righteousness. That is the result of transformation and the mark or evidence of salvation. That is what James 2 is talking about when he says, “I will show you my faith by my works.”

See, Zaccheus is presented here in stark contrast to the rich young ruler of the last chapter. The rich young ruler thought he was righteous, he did good deeds, but Jesus revealed that his heart was evil because he had made money his idol. But this man who knew he was a sinner, was desperate to be converted, Jesus reveals his heart is evil and he repents. And then he shows his repentance by his works; he makes restitution for his sins to the point of becoming bankrupt.

Listen to vs. 8, “Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” I mean, I’m not very good at math, but I can figure out that if you give half of your money to the poor, and with the other half you give all the people that you defrauded in your life 4 times what you took from them, the end result is going to be bankruptcy. Especially in the case of the chief of tax collectors. This guy made his money defrauding people. And so the only reason he doesn’t do what Jesus told the rich young ruler to do in the last chapter – that is, sell everything and give it to the poor- the only reason he doesn’t do that is that he knows that he needs to make right the people that he defrauded first and that is going to take half of his money. Then the other half he will give to the poor. Then he is going to be broke. But though he may be broke, he is going to be right with God and right with his fellow man. Listen, you can’t say you are right with God and yet hate your husband, or your neighbor, or cheat someone in business. So the scripture indicates that Zaccheus gladly exchanged his sordid life for righteousness from God, even if it meant that he had to lose everything to gain it. That’s a good definition of a citizen of the kingdom of God, by the way. Someone who gladly gives up self rule to submission to the rule of Christ in their lives.

Some of you, if you are paying attention, are saying to yourself right about now, “boy, this is starting to sound just like all of Roy’s other sermons. You have to give everything up to enter the kingdom. You have to forsake everything to be a disciple of Christ. Doesn’t Roy know any other sermon? Isn’t there any other way to be a Christian?” Well, if that is your attitude then I am afraid that I am going to disappoint you once more. You can have no other god before our God. Money can’t be your god. Career can’t be your god. Your wife or husband or boyfriend can’t be your god. Anything that you put ahead of God is an idol. A false god. And the first commandment is that you shall have no other gods before Me.

You may say, but wait a minute Roy, you just quoted the law. And we’re under grace now, we’re not under the law. Really? Well I would like to point out to you the effect of grace. Zaccheus was saved by grace through faith, the same way we all are, the same way Abraham was, by the way. The same way Moses was and everyone that has been saved in human history. All are saved by grace through faith. But grace doesn’t eliminate the law, it satisfies it. It even goes beyond it. That’s illustrated by the fact that Zaccheus doesn’t just come up with this figure of repaying four times what he defrauded out of his imagination. No, Zaccheus, sinner though he was, knew the law. Zaccheus knew that in Exodus 22 the law required that if you robbed someone by a breach of trust, then double restitution was required. Zaccheus doubles that. Grace doesn’t permit him to forget about the law, but grace provokes him to go twice as far as the law required. Grace doesn’t exempt you from doing what is right. Grace just exempts you from the penalty for doing wrong.

The law not only convicted Zaccheus of his sin, but it revealed the requirement of repentance and restitution. It revealed the attitude of a heart that desired to be right with God. Paul said that the law was good, if one used it lawfully. But the law was given to show us our sinfulness, and to show us our need for a Savior. The law shows us the standard of God’s righteousness. The difference under grace is that we now have the penalty of the law removed, so that we do not die for our sins, but we are forgiven our sins and cleansed of all unrighteousness. The difference under grace is that having been credited with Christ’s righteousness, we are now given the Spirit of Christ to live in us that we might do the works of righteousness by the strength that He provides. God describes that process of salvation in Ezek. 36:26-27 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 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.”

That is the power of a transformed life, by the way. It is the power of the testimony that you who were a sinner, a dirty rotten scoundrel, have been made into a new creature, old things are passed away. But your testimony to the world of God’s saving power is that you now give where you once took, share instead of being greedy, love instead of hate, do good instead of evil. That’s the testimony of the saved. That’s the evidence of a transformed heart.

Now Zaccheus’ statement of repentance elicits an amazing response from Jesus. Vs. 9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.” Zaccheus is saved. Why? Because he is a son of Abraham. What does that mean? Well, I alluded to it just a minute ago. Abraham is the father of faith. Saving faith. Paul says in Gal. 3:6-7 “Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.”

Listen, what does it mean to have faith, to believe? What does it mean to have saving faith? I will tell you. It doesn’t mean that you merely believe that God exists, or even that Jesus exists. The Bible says that the demons also believe and they are not saved. Faith means trusting in Christ as your Lord. As the Lord of your life. Trusting Him enough to surrender everything to follow Him. To discard every treasure for the sake of knowing the greatest treasure; to know that you are forgiven. Trust Him enough to forsake your sins. Trusting that God has justified you by the blood of Jesus Christ shed as the Passover Lamb upon a cross as your substitute. The kind of faith that will turn away from everything that the world says is valuable, for the sake of knowing Jesus as Lord.

Do you have that kind of faith? If you do, then your conversion ought to resemble that of Zaccheus. Your repentance should stir you to make things right with those you have wronged, and give up everything that hinders you from following Christ every day, with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your might. No more idols. No more hidden closets. Everything laid out for His inspection.

Listen, today Jesus is passing by. You happened to be here. But it is not by chance. Jesus wants you to come down off your ivory tower of respectability, and invite Him into your house, welcome Him to stay with you, not just for the night, but for the rest of your life. 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.” What is your response to Jesus? He is passing by. Do not let Him leave without seeing Him today, without surrendering to Him today.

Jesus said in vs. 10 in our text, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Jesus is passing by today. He came seeking you, the lost. Will you invite Him to come home with you today? He is here now. Don’t miss this opportunity. You don’t know when He might come this way again. Today is the day of salvation. Let’s pray.

On the 17th of March, 2010, a SEAL team 6 squadron of special operators were attempting to take out an enemy that was barricaded inside a compound in Afghanistan. Among the special operators involved in the mission was Adam Brown, a man that had overcome tremendous obstacles in his life such as drug addiction as the result of accepting Jesus as his Savior. In the years following his conversion, he had continued an uphill battle against all sorts of difficulties and physical impairments in order to eventually be accepted as a member of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world.  And he did so while maintaining his testimony as one who had been redeemed by the power of Christ to save.  On this particular night, the U.S. Forces mission was in grave danger of being compromised.  They were engaging the enemy in a fire fight, and a number of their team had become pinned down by very heavy fire from the enemy compound. In an effort to protect his men, Adam Brown left the safety of his position and  charged the enemy to gain a better vantage point, drawing fire away from his pinned down comrades and placing himself in the direct line of fire. His selfless action relieved the attack on his men, but unfortunately the action resulted in Adam being struck by enemy fire. One other member of  his team was  also wounded, but Adam’s heroic action saved the rest of his team.   However, tragically, Adam Brown paid the ultimate sacrifice as the result of his wounds.  He left behind a wife and two young children.  There is a book written about Adam called Fearless, that will be coming out in the near future as a movie.  The producers say that they will not diminish the Christian testimony that Adam had.  I hope that it will be a way to expand Adam’s impact for the Lord to millions of people as the Lord continues to use his life as a witness for the gospel.

We rightly hold up such men as Adam Brown as the finest examples of heroism.  Jesus Himself said that “greater love has no man than this, than a man lays down his life for his friends.”  We often talk about our Christianity in terms of God loving us, and our love for God.  But I wonder how far are we willing to take that kind of love?  Christ loved us so much that He was willing to become the ultimate sacrifice for us.  But the question I put to you today is are you willing to lay down your life because of your love for Christ?

So I have entitled today’s message as The Ultimate Sacrifice.  And this message should be viewed in the context of the passage immediately before in which the rich young ruler was unwilling to sacrifice his riches and possessions which defined his life in order to follow Christ and enter into eternal life.  And in response to that tragic response to the gospel, in  vs. 28  Peter says, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.” And Matthew records that Peter adds to that statement, “what then shall there be for us?”

Jesus answers in vs. 29 that “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”  In other words, there will be an eternal reward for those that are willing to make earthly sacrifices for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Now in that context of sacrifice, Jesus takes the 12 disciples apart from the crowd and tells them that He is going to give Himself as the ultimate sacrifice.  He says in vs. 31, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.  For He will be handed over to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon,  and after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him; and the third day He will rise again.”

But the disciples don’t understand what He is talking about.  Vs. 34 “But the disciples understood none of these things, and the meaning of this statement was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said.”  Luke says the same thing three different ways I think to emphasize the utter lack of comprehension concerning the purpose and plan of the Messiah.  He says they couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t see it, and they couldn’t comprehend it.  In other words, they didn’t have a clue what He was talking about.

Now the problem wasn’t that Jesus wasn’t making Himself clear, the problem was that what Jesus was saying didn’t mesh with their theology.  They had their Messianic theology all worked out.  All Jews knew what the rabbis taught concerning the coming of the Messiah.  Their theology taught that when the Messiah comes, He would be a king in the line of David, and He would take back the throne of Israel.  He was going to conquer all the enemies of Israel.  He would bring prosperity and blessing back to the Jews.  They believed that Israel would then take it’s place as the reigning nation of the world and all the other nations would come bow down to them.

The thing is, they had so many scriptures that seemed to back up that theology that I cannot even begin to show them to you this morning.  We don’t have time.  But practically half of the Psalms speak of this King who will crush all their enemies and rule over the world and bring peace to Israel.  I’ll just give you an example from Isaiah and you can follow this on your own if you are so inclined. Isaiah 9:6-7 “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. 7 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 the disciples have a big problem with what Jesus is saying.  That’s why Luke says it three different ways that they couldn’t understand it.  Their theology didn’t allow for a suffering Savior.  They believed in a conquering king.  And so Jesus announcing that He was going to be arrested and killed must mean that He is not really the Messiah.  And that is a real problem for them, because they have left their homes, their families and their jobs in order to follow Him, in hope that when He comes into His kingdom, they will sit on thrones on his right hand and left hand and judge the nations with Him.  They think that they have too much invested in this guy to see Him get killed off.

The problem is that they don’t include all the scriptural prophecies in their theology, because they have a theology that they particularly like and they don’t fit the template.  They like their prosperity and blessing theology just fine.  But no one likes the suffering and dying theology.  So all the scriptures that talked about suffering and dying they somehow had spiritualized or just out right ignored for the sake of their theology.

Folks, I hope you are getting the picture here.  I hope you are catching the analogy.  Because the modern church today has it’s own pet theology as well.  And the God of the Bible doesn’t really always mesh with our theology.  The Christian experience that we like to promote and believe in is often at odds with the Christian experience that is taught in the Bible.  I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  But I’m just telling you what the Bible says.  I’m telling you what Jesus says.  And I’m afraid that the truth of the gospel has run afoul of a lot of so called evangelical Christian’s theology.  So the dilemma that a lot of people have is do we continue to worship our pet view of God, the God that we think is going to work everything out for us so that we never have to get sick, we never have to suffer, we never lose our possessions, we never go bankrupt, we never get persecuted… or do we pick up our cross and follow Jesus Christ to the cross?

Do I need to remind you of the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-24  “And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. 24 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

Now Jesus references that the prophets spoke of the sufferings that were prescribed for Him.  And I just want to share a couple of them with you, just so you know what He was talking about.  I told you while ago that many references are found in the Psalms that speak of the Messiah being a conquering King.  But we have to be careful not to cherry pick our way through the scriptures, claiming the ones we like and discarding the ones we don’t.  The Jews should have considered for instance Psalm 22 which speaks of the sufferings of Christ. Psalm  22:1-2 “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.  O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest.”  It goes on to say in vs. 14 “I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me.  My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet.  I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me;  They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.”  All of that would be fulfilled at the cross.

Or perhaps they should have not only considered Isaiah 9, but also Isaiah 53; 3, “He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.”

Now why was Jesus taking them aside to tell them that He must suffer and die?  I believe it was because Jesus was on His way to the cross.  He was deliberately, methodically going according to the plan predetermined in eternity past, that He would offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.  He would be the substitute for those that would trust in Him for the forgiveness of their sins.  This was the plan of God from eternity past.   On the day of Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter would make that exact point in his message.  In Acts 2:23 he says,  “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”

Perhaps what the disciples fail to realize is that the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ is coming to a close.  He is on His way to Jerusalem.  It is the Passover season and people are joining them from the various regions and there is this huge entourage of the multitude that will sweep into Jerusalem with Jesus riding on a donkey’s colt and they will call out “Hosanna, to the Son of David; BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the highest!”  It’s going to seem like to the disciples that Jesus is on His way to receiving the kingdom, He is about to be coronated, and yet within a few days that very crowd that called out “Hosanna!” will cry out, “away with Him, crucify Him!”

They do not realize that He is about to hand over the dispensation of His kingdom, the stewardship of His kingdom to them.  That He will be crucified and buried, and in three days He will rise from the grave and a few weeks from then He will ascend to His Father in Heaven.  They don’t understand that He will entrust the kingdom to them, and that they will have to suffer the same hardships that He suffered.  As the apostle Paul said in Phil. 3:10 “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

Jesus knew that they would indeed join with Him in the fellowship of His sufferings.  Peter would be hanged upside down on a cross.  James would die at Passover as well just 11 years later than Jesus.  Andrew would be crucified.  Matthew was killed by the sword.  James the son of Alpheus was thrown from the temple and then clubbed until he died. Thomas was killed with a spear.  Matthias, who took the place of Judas was beheaded as was the apostle Paul.

I’m sure that some of you sitting here today are thinking, yeah, but that was the apostles.  They were specially picked out by Christ for that role and they will get special recognition in heaven.  But that is not for us.  They did that so that we could live the victorious life of blessing and health and wealth. I’m afraid that this false thinking has overtaken even the elect.  I’m afraid that we have forgotten that we are all called to be disciples.  And that we are called in the great commission to make disciples.  I’m afraid that we are short selling Christianity today as a pie in the sky and eat it here too type of religion that requires no sacrifice on our part, no suffering. We are told it’s all supposed to be joy and peace here on earth.

I would just like to briefly remind you of what Jesus had to say about discipleship.  He said in Matt. 10:24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.”  In Matt. 10:34-38  “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 “For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36 and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. 37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

He taught His disciples in Luke 14 that must count the cost if they were to enter the kingdom of God.  He said in Luke 14:33 “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”  He said in Matt. 10:22 “You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”

Listen, I am afraid that we have short sold the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We have told everyone that it doesn’t cost us anything to come to Christ when Jesus Himself says that it will cost you your life.  It will cost you your family.  It may cost you your home.  It may cost you your possessions, your riches.  I will guarantee you one thing it will cost;  it will cost you your idols.  Whatever it is that you are holding onto.  Whatever it is that you are not willing to renounce for the sake of the kingdom.

But you say, wait a minute!  What I am holding onto isn’t a sin.  It’s not something that the Bible says is a sin.  Well, there is no law against being rich is there?  Yet, because the rich young ruler was not willing to obey Christ and sell everything and follow Him, he revealed it was an idol.  He put his riches above following Christ.  And he went away sad because he knew that because he made his possessions his god that disqualified him from the kingdom of heaven.

Listen, Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us that we might make the ultimate sacrifice for Him.  What is that, you ask?  It is surrendering your soul, your life, your ambitions, everything surrendered to the authority, the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  That is what discipleship requires.  Everything.

Jesus makes it clear in Mark 8 that salvation requires complete trust and faith in Christ.  Not just a feeling, but acting on that faith by surrendering everything to follow Him.  Surrendering your will, your life, your all for Him.  That is the only way to receive eternal life and become a disciple.  And discipleship is a daily process of crucifixion, of crucifying your life for His life lived in you. [Mar 8:34-37 NASB] 34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 35 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? 37 “For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Now let’s look in closing at a simple illustration that Luke gives of a person who exemplifies leaving everything to become a disciple and gain eternal life.  As Jesus is heading towards Jericho on His way to Jerusalem, there is a blind beggar sitting by the road.  Mark tells us this man was named Bartimeaus.  Undoubtedly he was a fixture in the community.  He probably had his spot by the gate that he sat at and begged everyday.  A blind man in that day had very little other resources, there would have been no welfare system.  He was helpless, living on the street and begging.  All he had would have been the cloak on his back that served as his coat and his bed.  And the blind man heard the commotion, he heard the crowd following Jesus and he asked someone what was going on.  And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.  And this blind man hearing that springs into action.  He begins crying out to Jesus in a loud voice.

Now this blind beggar illustrates the exemplary components of what it means to become a disciple of Christ.   First of all, notice that this man is desperate.  He realizes that he has no other hope. There is no possible cure for his blindness.  Jesus is the only hope he has.  So he yells as loudly as he can.  And when they tell him to shut up he just screams all the louder.  He is absolutely desperate.  That marks the kind of desperation that is required for those seeking eternal life.

Secondly, he is a beggar.  That is a direct illustration of the principle Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount;  He said blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.  The word used there actually references the act of begging.  Of being helpless, hopeless, totally dependent on the kindness and mercy of someone else.  So desperation and recognizing that you are spiritually bankrupt, a beggar.

Thirdly, He says, “Jesus, Son of David.”  He has his theology right.  They told him it was Jesus of Nazareth, but he calls out “Jesus Son of David.”  It’s a Messianic title.  He calls Jesus his  King. And then He calls Him “Lord.”  Kyrios.  It is a word for deity, but it also means Master, Sovereign, Possessor of All Things.   This guy knows that Jesus is the Son of God and is willing to surrender everything to Him.

Fourthly, he says, “have mercy on me.”  This is an indication that he comes in repentance. He comes asking for mercy.  Mercy is not getting what you deserve.  He is asking Christ to be merciful.  To not give him what he deserves as a result of his sinfulness.

And fifthly, he recognizes that he was blind.  When Jesus asks him what do you want Me to do for you?  He answers, “I want to regain my sight.”  He knows he is blind.  Now that may seem obvious, but the fact is that most people are not saved because they don’t recognize that they are lost.  I said last week that though it was sad that the rich young ruler went away from Jesus without being saved, yet at least it was good that he went away having been confronted with the fact that he was a sinner.  Listen, you have to realize that you are a sinner before you can be saved.  You have to know that you are lost.  And when you come to that realization and in desperation come to Jesus as your only hope of salvation, and call on Him in faith and repentance than He will save you.  This man not only recognizes that he  is blind, but he recognizes that Jesus is the source of life.

So when Jesus hears him calling to Him He calls Bartimaeus to be brought to him.  And the blind beggar throws off his cloak, gets up from the gate where he has been sitting for years and comes to Jesus.

Jesus says to him in vs. 42, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.”  Actually, the translators don’t do this justice.  Literally it is your faith has saved you.  The Greek word is sozo, it means saved.  Listen, Jesus didn’t need people’s faith to heal them.  Jesus healed demoniacs, dead people (He brought them back to life).  He healed people with faith and without faith.  He says that your faith has saved you.  You may not need faith to be healed but you need faith to be saved, don’t you? Eph. 2:8  “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” [Heb 11:6 NASB] 6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

And then look quickly at the conclusion of this man’s salvation. Luke 18:43 “Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.”  This blind beggar becomes saved, and then immediately he becomes a disciple.  He leaves everything and begins to follow Jesus. He has no interest in going back to the squalor of the beggar’s corner by the gate.  He doesn’t put back on the filthy rag that was his cloak.  He is given sight and wants nothing more to do with the kind of life that he had before.  He knows there is nothing of value there. He realizes that Jesus is the source of life and therefore follows Him completely, leaving behind everything that once defined his existence.  And what was done in his life by the transforming power of Jesus Christ causes people to glorify God.  That’s the power of discipleship.  That’s the result of following Christ.

Maybe you are asking, Well, Roy, what does it mean to follow Christ?  How is that done on a practical level? The purpose of our salvation is to make us like Christ.  To be molded in His image. [Rom 8:29 NASB] 29 “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.”  God gives us the Spirit of Christ to live in our redeemed earthly bodies, that we might have the power to become conformed to His image, that Christ may live in us.  It is dying to ourselves, so that the Holy Spirit may live through our bodies.

On a practical level that means being obedient to His word; walking in accordance with the Holy Spirit who leads us by the word of God.  What He tells us to do in His word we do. Eph 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  And Romans 12: reminds us that even as Christ laid down His life for the kingdom, so God requires of disciples that we also lay down our lives for the kingdom.  Rom 12:1  “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”  And that process can be painful as we join in the fellowship of His sufferings.  Paul goes on to say in 2Tim. 2:3-5  “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. 5 Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.”

Listen, there is a prize, a reward for those that suffer with Christ, that leave everything to follow Him.  Jesus told the disciples back in our text in Luke 18, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”  I hope that you will seek the eternal reward that God has prepared for those that love him above all else.  I pray that your eyes may receive sight, so that having seen Jesus, you realize that He is the prize worth surrendering everything to follow.