DAY #35: February 4, 2009 - Matthew 21:23-46

The heat is being turning up. A delegation of leading priests and other leaders from the temple came up to Jesus. They asked for his credentials and demanded that he tell them who gave him the authority to drive out the merchants from the Temple. If Jesus were to have answered that his authority came from God, which would be tantamount to declaring himself as the Messiah, they would have accused him of blasphemy and brought Him to trial immediately. (blasphemy carried the death penalty, Leviticus 24:10-23).

If Jesus were to say that his authority was his own, the religious leaders could dismiss him as a fanatic and could trust that the crowds would soon return to those with true authority (themselves). Jesus would not let himself be caught; turning the question on them, he exposed their motives and avoided their trap. Jesus’ question seems totally unrelated to the situation at hand, but Jesus knew that the leaders’ attitude about John the Baptist would reveal their true attitude toward him. In this question, Jesus implied that his authority came from the same source as John the Baptist’s. So Jesus asked these religious leaders what they thought: Did John’s baptism come from heaven [thus, from God] or was it merely human?

The interchange recorded among these factions of the religious leaders revealed their true motives. They weren’t interested in the truth; they simply hoped to trap him. If they answered that John’s baptism had come from heaven (with God’s authority), then they would incriminate themselves for not listening to John and believing his words. The Pharisees couldn’t win, so they hoped to save face by refusing to answer. Thus, Jesus was not obligated to answer their question. In reality, he had already answered it. His question about John the Baptist implied that both he and John received their authority from the same source. The religious leaders had already decided against Jesus, and nothing would stand in the way of their plan to kill him. They had already rejected both Jesus and John as God’s messengers, carrying on a long tradition of the leaders of Israel rejecting God’s prophets. This was the point that Jesus made in the following parable.

Jesus tells the parable of the Two Sons. The man in this parable represents God, while the two sons represent “sinners”. The first son said he would not go to the vineyard, but changed his mind and went anyway. This son represents the “sinner” and outcast who rejected the call but “repented” and then obeyed. The second son said he would go to the vineyard, but then didn’t go. This son represents the Jewish leaders of the day who said “yes” to the Kingdom message (that is, they accepted the outward call to Jewish piety) but did not obey its intent. They rejected the call to true obedience. They said they wanted to do God’s will, but they constantly disobeyed. They lacked insight into God’s real meaning, and they were too stubborn to listen to Jesus.

Jesus directed his question to the religious leaders, and they gave the obviously correct answer. The son who did what his father wanted was the son who eventually obeyed. Jesus explained that corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom of God before the religious leaders. These were astounding words. The tax collectors and prostitutes were representative of the despised classes, those who were the most despicable to the self-righteous leaders. The pious religious leaders had said they would “go to the vineyard” but then had refused. The tax collectors and prostitutes had obviously strayed from God, but those who repented of their sin would enter the Kingdom of God.

Jesus then tells the parable of the tenants. murderous plot. The main elements in this parable are (1) the landowner—God, (2) the vineyard—Israel, (3) the farmers—the Jewish religious leaders, (4) the landowner’s servants—the prophets and priests who remained faithful to God and preached to Israel, (5) the son—Jesus, and (6) the others—the Gentiles. In a vineyard such as this, the lookout tower would have been for guards who would protect the farm from thieves; the wall would have kept wild animals out.

The rent on the farm was paid by crops at harvest time, a common practice in this culture. So, as expected, the landowner sent his servants to collect the rent in the form of a share of the crop. But the farmers grabbed his servants, beating, killing, and stoning them. More servants were sent, and they received the same treatment. These “servants” refer to the prophets who had been sent to Israel over the centuries. Some had been beaten (Jeremiah 26:7-11; 38:1-28), some had been killed, some had been stoned. Jesus was reminding the religious leaders that God’s prophets often had been ridiculed and persecuted by God’s people.

The landowner then sent his son, thinking that surely the tenants would respect his son. The historical situation behind this section reflects the law that property would go to anyone in possession of it when the master died. So the tenants assumed that by killing the son and heir to the property, they would get the estate. So they murdered the son. With these words, Jesus was revealing to the religious leaders his knowledge of their desire to kill him. Jesus’ question forced the religious leaders to announce their own fate. These words allude to Isaiah 5:5 and continue the same imagery. In their answer to Jesus, the religious leaders announced themselves to be wicked men who deserved a horrible death.

The imagery of the stone rejected by the builders is taken from Psalm 118:22-23, referring to the deliverance of Israel from a situation when it seemed that their enemies had triumphed. Their deliverance could only be attributed to God’s miraculous intervention. Although Jesus had been rejected by many of his people, he will become the cornerstone of his new building, the church (Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:6-7). It seemed that Jesus had been rejected and defeated by his own people, the Jews, but God would raise him from the dead and seat him at his own right hand.

By their rejection of the prophets’ message and finally of the Son himself, Israel showed that they were incapable of repentance and belief. So the Kingdom would be taken away from them and given to a unity of Jews and Gentiles, a foreshadowing of the church. Jesus used this metaphor to show that one stone can affect people different ways, depending on how they relate to it. Ideally they will build on it; many, however, will stumble over it. At the Last Judgment, God’s enemies will be crushed by it. At that time, Christ, the “building block,” will become the “crushing stone.” He offers mercy and forgiveness now, and he promises judgment later.

It seems that the religious leaders finally understood something, for here they realized Jesus was pointing at them, that they were the “wicked men” who were plotting to kill the son and who would have the “vineyard” taken away from them. They became very angry, so much so that they wanted to arrest him. But, these Jewish leaders wouldn’t do so just yet, because they still feared the crowds. To arrest Jesus would have caused an uprising against them and an uproar that they couldn’t afford with the Romans ready to come down on them.

SO WHAT? (what will I do with what I have read today?)

I am blown away by the evil that man is capable of. I just saw the movie "Taken", which detailed the kidnapping of a mans daughter, for the purpose of selling her in sex trade. While just a movie, for me, it brings front and center again that we must confront the evil that exists in the worlds today. This passage reminds me of that same type of evil. I am taken aback by the plotting and the scheming and the anger and bitterness of the Pharisees. Their pride was wounded, and now they are out for blood. The blood of our Lord. The blatant disregard for what was right or just or moral is sickening to me.

How does this happen? How can this be? Was there not one person who was willing to stand up and go against the other religious leaders? Was there not one whose heart was pierced by the ugliness of their behavior? Lord, help me be that one. I am reminded of the following verses -

“This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the devil and all his angels.” Ephesians 6:12 (MB)

“There will be more and more evil in the world, so most people will stop showing their love for each other.” Matthew 24:12 (NCV)

I know it will be long, but below I have pasted my maunscript from my message last November from the series - "The Power of Yes". The message was entitled, "Pushing back the darkness".

What does God want us to do with evil? Three things. First, when it comes to evil, don’t deny or ignore evil exists, face evil.

Folks, you know this - So many times, when it comes to evil, we choose to close our eyes, change the channel. If you’re watching a TV show late at night and there’s an ad for a relief agency that shows a child starving – change the channel as fast as you can. You’re watching something else and there come a news report of a tragedy – change that channel as fast as you can.

Why do we do this? What I’ve noticed in myself and I imagine it’s probably true of many of you - I think we ignore it, because if we acknowledge that it exists then there is in us at least a sense of responsibility that maybe we should do something about it. And to do something about it would mean I’d have to change my schedule, my agenda, my hopes, my dreams, what I’m doing today. It would be uncomfortable for me to do that. So we choose apathy.

Jake Thoene, a domestic counter terrorism expert says this “Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same really. Evil wills it; apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all. Apathy doesn’t care as long as it’s not personally inconvenienced.”

But the Bible tells us that is not the appropriate response to evil. James 4:17 says, “Anyone who knows the right thing to do but doesn’t do it is sinning.” So here’s the hard reality right out of the shoot this morning. If you know there’s evil in the world – and let’s face it; you do know there’s evil in the world. You and I all know it. If we choose to do nothing about evil, we are sinning.

Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place. Not just because of those who do evil but because of those who look on evil and do nothing.”

There’s a story in the Old Testament, where the children of Israel, choose to follow the pagan gods of the other nations around them. This one time, they followed a god name Molech, a pagan god of the Ammonites. Molech was the god of fire. Part of the worship of Molech was to take children and burn them as a sacrifice to Molech. God said if you do that or if you see it happening and you don’t stop it that is evil – that is sin.

Listen to Leviticus 20:4-5 - “If the people of the land look the other way as if nothing had happened, when a man gives his child to the god Molech I will resolutely reject all who join him.” In our world today there is evil happening twenty-four/seven. There’s not a minute of the day that evil is not happening in the most profound, perverse, gross, painful ways.

Think about human trafficking. You might not even be familiar with that term. But it simply means that instead of trafficking in goods, people are trafficked. People are sold and bought. That market of human trafficking is estimated to be about a fifty-two billion dollar business in our world.

Each year there are more than two million children that are exploited in the global sex trade. Two million children! You could say, “But that happens other places. That doesn’t happens here.” There are about seventeen thousand children in the United States who are being exploited through sex trafficking.

Did you know there are twenty-seven million men and women and boys and girls who are slaves? 800,000 people are sold into slavery each year. There are more slaves alive today than have ever been in the history of the world. Slavery was not just a thing of the past. Slavery is happening today.

Do you know about “The Street of the Little Flowers” in Cambodia? Dateline did an expose of this a few years ago with an organization called International Justice Mission “The Street of the Little Flowers” is a place where young girls are held behind iron doors that are padlocked shut while western tourists sit and wait for dark.

When it’s dark then those padlocked doors are opened and you can buy a little girl for three hundred dollars. For three hundred dollars a week you can take her to your hotel room. You can do whatever you want to her, with her, and bring her back at the end of the week and be done with her.

Folks, this is evil. Some of you about now are wishing you hadn’t come today because it is so painful. It’s so awful. Others of you are asking -“How are we supposed to respond?” What are we supposed to do about the evil in our world? Not deny it! Don’t ignore it. Don’t close your eyes to it. Not pretend it doesn’t exist. We face it.

I could stop right there and say, there’s our marching orders. Go on out. Oppose evil. As a follower of Jesus Christ, there are your marching orders. Go! But there is more evil to look at. It’s the evil that’s within ourselves. It’s just as dark. In fact, how do you think evil is done? It’s done by people. It’s done by people! We do evil. It’s not them. It’s we! We do evil!

And we prefer to deny that too. We say things like “I just had a bad day…. I have a little trouble with this… I had a struggle with that for a while…” We don’t want to call what we do evil. We don’t want to call what we think evil. We want to deny it. If I don’t want to look at evil in the world, I sure don’t want to look at the evil inside of me.

Folks, the Bible teaches that people are basically evil who have the capacity to do good when they know Jesus Christ. I know that goes against the humanists who believe that man is basically good, but have you picked up a newspaper lately? We are not basically good. We are basically at our core, evil.

We are only able to do good when Jesus Christ lives within us. The Apostle Paul says Romans 7:18, “I know that good does not live in me, that is in my human nature. For even though the desire to do good is in me I am not able to do it.”

The truth is, given the right circumstances, every one of us is capable of any sin. If you don’t know that, you are in denial about the depths and capacity for evil in your own soul. T. H. Lawrence said, “This is the very worst wickedness. That we refuse to acknowledge that evil that is in us.”

How many of you have seen the movie “Alien”? Scary Movie. What scared me most was not the alien that was out there – somewhere. What scared me most was the alien that actually grew inside another human being. It grew and grew and the alien popped out. When the alien popped out of a fellow human being that scared me to death. WHY?

Because there’s something about it that goes, “Oh, my goodness. There’s a monster inside of me. There is a monster growing inside of me. There is evil growing inside of me. And that is horrible.” Yet, that is what all of us experience every day of our lives. We all experience the fact that there is evil growing inside of us. And what will we do about it? You turn to God.

Folks, the only person who can look all through all the layers of your personality, through all the hiding, through all the masks, through all the pretenses, through all the Mr. Nice Guy persona, through all the Miss Wonderful persona, the only person who can look deep in to the depths of your soul and not run in horror is God. The things that I never want any of you to know, never want anybody to know, the things I’ve thought, the things I’ve said, the things I’ve wanted. But to know God has seen that stuff in me and still says to me, “Mike, I’ve seen it all and I love you.” WOW.

The next step is not to accept evil. But to hate evil and battle against evil. In Psalm 97:10 it says “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.” You might be surprised to know that God says that we’re supposed to hate something as Christians. But we are. We are supposed to hate evil. We are to become seriously disturbed and outraged if you will by evil.

Let me ask you this morning - what disturbs you? The mortgage crisis? The stock market plunges? Maybe you’re disturbed by the dismal season the 49ers or Raiders are having. Maybe you’re disturbed by your golf score. Maybe you’re disturbed by your weight. I’m always disturbed by my weight… but that’s another subject. (YES)

My point is we get disturbed about the most trivial things in life. Petty things, we get so worked up about. Yet the things that should disturb us, we don’t even pay attention. We just leave it. I can’t do that any more. I’m done with that. Proverbs 25:26 says, “If the godly compromise with the wicked it is like polluting a fountain or muddying a spring.”

Martin Luther King Junior said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Do you get that? He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. If we do not hate evil, what happens to those little girls on the street of flowers?

Folks, if we don’t choose to battle evil we have collaborated we are as guilty, we let it happen. As Christians, we have an obligation, a responsibility to come against evil. To no longer accept it but hate it. There is a war on evil and we must be part of the resistance. The forces of good against the forces of evil. We fight. We resist. We stand.

And you need to get this – this is so important - we don’t fight with the weapons that the world has. The world uses weapons like torture and murder and cruelty and rape and violence. But we use the weapons of God which are love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, justice, pretence and perseverance. Those are the weapons of a believer.

Listen if you would to Proverbs 31:8.“Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless.” Folks, there are people who have no one to speak for them. There are women; little girls who are so vulnerable. There are children who have no one to advocate for them. There are people in our world – the poor. People need to have a voice.

You can raise your voice. And in fact it’s not just a matter of you can, you must! The word of God tells us that we are to be a voice for those who have no voice. We are speak up for those who are helpless. It is not an option. It’s not “Well maybe someday I’ll do it!” It is a command! In our resistance, in our fighting against evil we raise our voices.

Discover the power of Saying Yes to God by pushing back the darkness. In our town hall meetings, I’ll be sharing how you can do this. I can’t do it alone. What if we could develop a human trafficking outreach ministry? A homeless ministry? A domestic abuse and child abuse ministry? A battered spouse ministry? There are things we can do as a church. There are things we must do.

We can’t do it all, but we can do something! What will be you part? What will be your role in pushing back the darkness? God invites you – to be a part of the resistance in the name of Jesus. Life is a battle and it’s a real battle. We are to face evil, not deny it. We are to hate evil and battle evil, not just accept it. There’s one other thing and this is what makes us like Jesus.

We don’t return evil, we overcome it. This is totally the opposite of what the world teaches. When somebody hurts you, you want to hurt them back. When somebody hits me, I want to hit them back. When somebody slanders you, you want to slander them back. When somebody stabs you in the back, it is your natural inclination to stab them in the back, back.

And, God says, No. That is not the way you’re going to win this battle. Romans 12:21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil [not with retaliation but] with good.” That is God’s way of winning the battle. You overcome evil with good.

This is why Jesus Christ came to earth. Jesus came to earth to show you don’t destroy evil with evil. You destroy it by overcoming it with good. You don’t retaliate. You overcome it with good. The Bible says in 1 John 3:8, “The Son of God came for this purpose; to destroy the devil’s work.” He came to obliterate it. He came to eradicate it. He came to wipe it out.

One day evil is going to end in the universe. If you want to be on the winning side you better get on God’s side, because evil is going to lose. I’m going to read a verse and if you are ready to enlist in the resistance against evil, I want you to stand after this verse. Psalm 94:16, “Who will help me fight against the wicked? Who will stand with me against those who do evil?”

This is what you were born for. You were born for battle. You were created to combat evil. That desire in you – that competitive desire – is the desire to do good. Last week, I talked about walking through a door to the ride of your life. This door is not just a door to miracles. It’s not just a door to adventure. It is a door to a battle.

In your bulletins again this week is a 4x6 card. If you would, take the card out. I don’t want you to sign it – but I do want you to write down a simple phrase - I’m in. I’m enlisting in the resistance. Just like last week, share your decision with someone. Sign up for the town hall meeting. Don’t just walk by – I’ve got no time for this.

Would you pray this prayer in your heart? “Dear God, I know that life is a battle. I know in my heart that evil has sometimes won the day and selfishness has won the day and sin has won the day in my life and I’m sorry. I ask You to forgive me. I want to be on the right side. On the side of God. Jesus Christ, I need Your goodness inside me. I need Your forgiveness and I need salvation.

Jesus, from this day forward, I’m in the battle. I’m not going to deny evil in my own life or around me. I’m not going to just accept it. Instead Lord, I’m going to battle against it. I’m going to turn away from it. I’m going to acknowledge it and I’m going to overcome it with Your grace and Your help. Lord, help me overcoming evil with good. Jesus, please do that in my life. Today I say Yes to You.”