God is in Charge

did that he was right and they were wrong they were sure he was wrong but they knew that there was something guiding his life that was different than theirs and so they ask him what authority do you have to do this and who gave you this authority they hope to trick him into saying well that's what I thought I should do he didn't answer them because he knew they would listen what he had to say but he taught them something he wanted to teach them that they were living their lives outside of God's authority he was living his life under God's authority it makes a difference between heaven and hell it makes a difference between good and bad he used three illustrations they were important and they're sort of progressive starting out he talks about there's a man who's a father now in our culture fathers are sort of seen as a joke on the on the sitcoms they're always the sort of doofus guy but in the biblical days the father had supreme authority over his family and if he had grandchildren he was supreme authority over them too as long as the oldest male was around he had absolute authority over his family no one questioned that he used this illustration so father said to his son I want you to work in a vineyard the son said something unbelievable to that culture no I'm not going to do it that was a terrible thing for them to say it was really worthy of the death penalty under Jewish law if someone tells you they want to reinstate in America biblical law be careful disobeying your parents is the death penalty in biblical law kind of strict be careful about it but later he changed his mind he went and did it there's another son he said to him I want you to work in my vineyard he said yes father I'll be glad to do it I'll do that for sure but he never did it Jesus turned those around him and he said which one of these people did the father really approve of they all answered of course the son that went and did what his father asked him to do Jesus wanted those leaders to understand that it was not them saying Jesus there's not them saying God is our father and we pledge our allegiance to him it meant doing exactly what the father told them to do that's what Jesus was doing that was not what they were doing they were following the traditions of the Jewish religion they were following the traditions of the Sadducees he wanted to confront them with although they talk to religious language they were not surrendering their lives to the authority of God they'd refuse to listen to John the Baptist when he came and they'd refuse to listen to Jesus and then he moved the idea up just a notch he said there's a man who owned land and when you own land you control it it's yours you can do whatever you want with it he planted a vineyard spent a lot of money doing it a lot of time got everything exactly as it ought to be and he leased it to some people who were to take care of it for four years and when the fruit started bearing he wanted to come and take his part he sent a servant to do that and they ridiculed the servant that's what it means to abuse him they made fun of him ignored him he sent someone else and they did the same thing he sent someone else and they got mad now and they killed him and finally he sent a whole bunch and they killed them and then he said I'll send my son surely they'll take care of him they'll respect him Jesus was talking about himself he's talking this story about the father sending the prophets and talking about the father sending more prophets and talking about Jesus himself coming in they were ignoring the words of the authority of the owner of the world and you leaders of the temple listen to what I have to say and you say no these are the words that God is speaking to you if he was really the Lord of your life you would listen to these words you would recognize them and you would do what he asked you to do but no instead you're planning to kill me he turned to the crowd and said what is the man going to do owns this land they said why this man will get those scoundrels and kill everyone of them hard words for the leaders at the temple to hear but they knew what it meant for someone to reject the authority of the land owner he absolutely was in charge of everything and to reject that meant death when you reject the authority of the one in charge you pay and that's what Jesus was telling them and in this story Jesus raises all this just another notch a father a landowner and now the king what is it like when a man rejects his own king Jesus spoke to them again in parable saying the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son he sent his servants to those had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come but they refused to come then he sent more servants and said tell those who've been invited that I prepared my dinner my ox and fatted cattle have been butchered and everything is ready come to the wedding banquet but they paid no attention and went off one to his field another to his business the rest seized his servants mistreated them means they ridiculed them made fun of them and then killed them the king was enraged he sent his army and destroyed those murders and burned their city then he said to his servants the wedding banquet is ready but those have invited did not deserve to come go to the street corners and invite the banquet to the banquet anyone you find so the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find both good and bad to the wedding all in the wedding hall was filled with guests in the story Jesus is talking about something we don't know anything about and that is the power of the king the authority of the king you have a president he has some authority I heard one of the presidents say I always thought when you got to be president you had a lot of power when I got to be president I thought I had no power everybody else has their own ideas about how the country ought to be run but in kings in the ancient world it wasn't so when a king was elected king chosen king took over as king however he got in that position he had all authority the laws of the country had no authority over the king he was above the law everyone else had to live with the laws but not him if you wanted to steal a piece of land he could do it if you want to take somebody's wife he could do it if you want to take people's children to serve as servants to him or as concubines to him he could do it and you couldn't do anything about it he had absolute authority over all the land he could set the tax rate anywhere he wanted it to be we don't see very much of that in our world sometimes you see it in places where they have dictators some places in Africa some places in the world where people just come and take over and rule no one can say anything against them or they'll die we don't see that here but that's the kind of king he was talking about not like the Queen of England who has no power at all but someone who's a dictator with all the power and authority the kings in those days when they had something special to invite people to their house to their palace or wherever they were it was a great privilege and honor and when the king asked you to come you came or he killed you it was that straightforward king was having a son who was getting married like in most places someone who's powerful prominent wants to have a big dinner wants to make sure that celebration is befitting their social standing and since the king's the most important social person in all the nation this banquet was to be huge now when I say banquet the word that's used in the Bible here is for plural banquets for often the banquet lasted two weeks they'd be one every day meals every day for people eat they were very very big things and people took pride in the fact that the king would invite them it meant that they were somebody they special they were special so the king sent out invitations now it's different than what we do you send out an invitation you say the wedding is going to be at three o'clock on this day people know to come but this was a big affair took a lot of effort to make sure that everything was in places with common practice was that you would invite people and say to them we're going to have a wedding my son or daughter is getting married we're going to have a series of banquets for the week or two weeks or whatever the time it is and I want to alert you that we're going to have it but we don't know for sure when it's going to be yet because we don't have all the preparation finished but when everything's finished we'll send someone to bring you an invitation to say now you can come it's tomorrow so just alerted you to be ready whenever the invitation came and so he sent the invitations out everybody knew it was coming and then the time came when the banquet was ready and he sent people running out to say today is the day you come they paid no attention even though it was the king who invited them they acted like it didn't even matter the king's request was unimportant to them tell those who've been that he said they refused to come then he sent some more servants and said tell those who've been invited I prepared my dinner my oxen fatted cattle have been butchered everything is ready come to the wedding banquet in his patience the king could have normally killed all those people who were invited didn't come he gave them second opportunity he sent someone personally to all of them who had been invited to say I want to explain to you I butchered the cattle they're cooked all the meals ready we're just waiting for you to come the food is ready to eat they paid no attention they just ignored what was said to them it wasn't that they were doing wicked or evil things they were just saying to the king what you want from me doesn't matter to me no king would ever accept that from his citizens especially these who were important influential citizens these would have been rulers they would have been governors they would been his assistants they would have been generals in the army people in high social and political standing in the kingdom they ignored him they went off to do their business somewhere they went off to take care of their fields just ordinary things that were going on not anything wicked or evil but what they did was say you can't tell me what to do you don't run my life you don't boss me around I can do whatever I wanna do no king would tolerate that this was treason for them and it was worthy of the death sentence for them the king was very patient in what he had to say but this time they seized his servants ridiculed them and killed them the king was enraged now people are listening this story knew what Jesus was talking about the banquet was the king was God the banquet was the kingdom of heaven where God has his people gathered with him the messengers were his prophets had sent and here's Jesus who was sent and they were the ones who said to the king we're going to do exactly what we want with the temple we don't care if the Bible did say it was the place of prayer we are running it the way we think it ought to be run we've done this for a hundred years and we're going to keep on doing it they were rejecting the authority of John the Baptist who was sent to them the authority of the preaching of Jesus who was sent to them he was enraged the king was he sent his army to destroy those murderers and burn their city we don't know if this is prophecy Jesus gave for the burning of Jerusalem in 70 AD it would have been 30-40 years after his death but the book of Matthew was written we don't know when some say it was after 70 so the writing would have shown here that the punishment of Jerusalem being burned the Jews never believed that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed but now it was completely destroyed never since that day has the temple functioned like it did before then it was the end of it all of this is because the king told you what to do and you didn't listen he said to the servants the wedding banquet is ready but those I've invited did not deserve to come go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find so the servants went out into the street and gathered all the people they could find both good and bad and the wedding hall was filled with guests that's about you and me Jesus said I've come to the people of Israel they've listened to what I've had to say but they said no we don't want it so I'm opening the doors to all of the Gentiles in the world to say the banquet is prepared for you you come receive what I want to graciously give those who acknowledge me as the king of their lives you see what Jesus was pointing out was the implications of that first commandment you have nothing in your life that controls you more than me and when I say this is what you should do and this is the way you should do it you do that it's not a matter of believing that God exists it's not a matter of believing that the Bible is true it's a matter of doing what the father asked you to do it's a matter of paying to the owner of the vineyard his right just do it's a matter listening to the king in doing exactly what he tells you he wants you to do all these are ways Jesus has a pointing to the fact that our lives must be surrendered to the authority of God we can't do in this world what we want to we can't do what we feel like we can't do what's comfortable or convenient for us we're called to surrender our lives to God and to live that way every day it doesn't make any difference if your friends make fun of you it doesn't make any difference if your family thinks you're crazy it doesn't make any difference how much it costs you and if you should be put in jail and should die do it for the king has given you his instructions these are powerful demands placed on the life of a person it's easy to throw around the word Christian it's easy to throw around the word to say I'm a Christian ask Christ into my life but it's another thing to live in obedience to him as the Lord of your life we're different than these people I mean they had prophets come and stand in the city square and preach but we have all those prophets instructions written out to us in this book the Bible some of the people around maybe even those temple leaders never heard all the things that Jesus said but right here in this book we have all the things that Jesus said that are important for us to know right here in this book right here what does it mean when the king has said I've given you my instructions but you won't listen to them it means that you have this book and you don't read it you don't open it you don't come to a sermon prepared for you at church you don't go to Sunday school where you learn what God wants you to have you don't open this book and say God what should I do with my money this week I have a busy week how should I arrange my time what part of my time do you want God who is it that you have that you want me to invite the Bible school God should I help them in Bible school I'm gonna read this and find what you have to say to me that's what it means I know some people get upset that people say this is not a Christian nation but a Christian a nation can't become a Christian because a nation can't surrender itself to Christ as a human being can't a nation can't act as a human being does but what we talk about sometimes is the fact that this is a country where people claim to be followers of Christ I went on the internet this week to look at some statistics about how often people do read this book to hear the message of God and we don't know if they obey it but we do know if they read it if they tell us that surveys say 59 percent of people in this country read the book I mean even read it at all 41 percent never read this 41 percent of people in this country never read this book how can you obey something you don't even know what it says you can't I mean you can do what people tell you around you you can go to church and people tell you what you ought to do and you can listen to that but that's not obeying God that's obeying people the surveys that are read said 37 percent of people that read the Bible read it once a week when they go on Sunday morning they take their Bible and they open it and they read what they're saying there 37 percent that's the only time they do it the surveys say 14 percent of the people in this country are involved in a Bible study 14 percent 16 percent of people in this country say they read the Bible every day commitment to try to do that 16 percent 94 percent of people in this country do not read this each day to find God's direction for their life you see that ignoring the instructions of the king is the same as treason to have the book and say I'm too busy to read this is like in this story the messenger comes and says I have a banquet prepared for you and they say I'm too busy to listen to you I got some business I gotta take care of I got some field to plow I've got some things to do at my job that's what this story's about and to those people Jesus said God will kill them pretty straightforward isn't it? God's judgment on those who refuse to listen to him is death I think what God is telling us is it's important that you listen to what he tells you and when there's a sermon prepared you should be there to hear it when there's a Sanskrit lesson you should be there to hear it because God is speaking to you that's his way of doing it he gives us gifts of teachers and preachers to deliver his message and we can be down on those temple leaders because they didn't believe Jesus but that's the same thing I'm not listening to this because that's just another person talking well it is except that God calls them anoints them and gives them instructions then it becomes God speaking you see we're like these people in our country we say we love God and we say God's wonderful and we say we're Christian but when it comes to listening to his instructions about the kingdom and the banquet we're too busy we have something else to do I want to warn you your life is never going to work right as long as that takes place and all the people out there who are ignoring God are in deep deep trouble I know in this country you'll see surveys that say forty percent of the American people attend church we took a survey one time when I was pastoring and learned in Pawnee County went to every house in Pawnee County and asked how often you go to church never seldom once or twice a year monthly, weekly and we printed up this report and the Ministerial Alliance handed it out and you'd have thought we handed out the comic strips because the pastors were reading through that and they'd come to a name they knew and they'd start laughing what's the matter this guy said he comes to church every month I hadn't seen him I've been pastoring this church for five years who does he think he's kidding people don't always tell you the truth about how often they go to church but somebody figured out the idea let's go to a town like Great Ben and then we'll go around and count the people in the church every week and all the churches in town everywhere they've done this in our country 18 to 20 percent of the people in this country on a Sunday morning are in church 18 to 20 percent now let's say half of them were sick next week it's 36 to 40 would you say that there are that many people in this country who are obeying God his instructions for their life it's a scary and shameful thing what's going on in our land well would you think you know Southern Baptist we're a little different because you can't get in a Southern Baptist church unless you choose to you have to come and say to the congregation I've given my life to Jesus Christ and I promise today to live in obedience to him the rest of my life he is my boss he's my father he's my landowner he's my king and I want to do what he tells me and so we say before that you were doing what you wanted to do right yeah okay you promise now that you're going to put that behind you so we bury a person in the water to say that old self-control life is gone and we raise that person up out of the water to say a new life has started with the spirit and control of you and now you're living with God as your king right yeah 16 million Southern Baptist church members on any given Sunday morning 37 percent of them are in church would you mind telling would you dare tell me that God is controlling those 16 million people the promise you see is like the first son the promise like the second son yeah I'll do what you say God and then just don't do it well even the people standing there knew that that wouldn't satisfy God it's like in that second story you know where he says I ask you now to give me the fruit of your life since you've given it to me where's the fruit of your life where the people in your life that you've led to be disciples in me and help them to come to know me where's the holiness in your life it's not there so many it's not enough to say Jesus Christ is my Lord those are just words what Jesus was saying is if you don't do the deal you haven't done anything and I want to tell you he said it's a death penalty it's a death penalty for church it's a death penalty for denomination it's a death penalty for the Jewish nation it was God is perfectly capable of destroying anything that exists in this world and he does destroy whoever and whatever does not accept him and acknowledge him as the king the sole ruler of their lives who listen to his instructions and do them that's what he's talking about Jesus has really given us an extended commentary on the first commandment you're to have nothing in this world to control your lifestyle and your character other than Almighty God if you want to come after me you must say no to your own desires and you must say I will do whatever you tell me whatever the cost is and then you must do exactly what I tell you the same thing the Bible's filled with hundreds of different ways of saying the same story but what I have to ask you today could you look God straight in the face and say you control my life you control my language you control my money you control my time you control me if you told me to teach Bible school I would do it in a heartbeat if you told me to give money to a mission offering I would give you exactly the same money you asked for even if I couldn't have enough money to eat that day God expects that people who claim to be his followers to live under his authority that's what his story's about and that's what his word for us is today would you bow your heads please for a moment to pray as I've looked at these things I've tried to ask myself over and over Lord is there anything in my life in rebellion to you and I know he's asked me to talk to people I haven't talked to and I've apologized to him for it for some of them I missed the opportunity they already moved what is it for you do you eagerly open the Bible to find out what God's word has for you today if not I wanna ask you to make a promise to God that you're gonna say God I'm gonna make it a priority in my life to read the Bible daily and I want you to promise you're going to read it every day because I don't want you to lie to God but it becomes a priority I will try my best to read it every day I'll make hearing your word preached and taught priority for my life and I want you to ask him God what is it that you've asked of me that I've not been willing to do I'll just tell you that there's not a one of us here and I'm cleaning myself in this if that's not an issue there are things that God asked me to do that I don't get around doing I'm sure it's true for you would you join me saying to God I apologize for that and I want you to know that I want to be obedient maybe you've never given your life to God said to him I give you everything in my life I wanna ask you to do that today before you get killed all of us are gonna die in some fashion too late you know what God's asked you to do been telling you should join this church I wanna ask you to do that today you know he wants you to be baptized want you to come and say I'm ready now to do this this is a time when God speaks to you the king is here as Debbie prayed he comes by means of the Holy Spirit he's talking to you and those thoughts you have about what you should do are God's talking to you Lord Jesus you are the king you're on your throne in heaven ruling this universe we ask you to speak to us what does our king want break down our stubbornness our self-centeredness our selfishness and make us humble before you that we might find your approval in the name of Jesus we ask this we're gonna sing an invitation hymn this morning it's an opportunity for you to come and express openly and publicly to God what you know he wants you to do the king has spoken you're invited to his banquet come everything's ready all you need to do is do what he tells you would you stand please as we sing I'll be here at the front Debbie will be here if you want to share your commitment with us you may want to come and pray your commitment to God that's for you I hear the Savior say thy strength indeed is small child of weakness watch and pray find in me thine all in all Jesus made it all all to him I owe sin had left a crimson stain he washed it white as snow Lord now in me I find thy power in thine alone can change the leper's spouse and melt the heart of stone Jesus made it all all to him I owe sin had left a crimson stain he washed it white as snow I want to thank you for your being here today I intended to mention this in a prayer time I did go to Mayo Clinic one year from my prostate surgery this is sort of the checkup time when they find out if there's your PSA is higher that means that there's still some of the cancer cells in your body and mine is so low they can't detect it so I had a good report and thankful to God for that I appreciate that thank you join me in thanking God thank you God for the care you give for us as your children we're never left alone or abandoned you always take care of us that's why it's so important for us to place you in the place of supreme control because you are so trustworthy thank you for your words to us give us a passion to hear them give us a passion to obey them and father for every one of us who made promises to you today you alone can give us the strength to keep them and so we trust you for our present and our future in the name of the king we pray amen