He Comes in Judgment

I'm going to use two passages of scripture, one in chapter 22 of Matthew and one in chapter 23 of the book of Matthew, if you'd like to find those in your Bibles. Ever since I put this on, I've had a compelling desire to cough, and I hope that's over with. The passage in Matthew chapter 22, I think, is really the story of Jesus' life in a parable form. I think Jesus, when he gave this, knew that that's what it was. It had to be difficult for him because it wasn't a very wonderful or desirable parable. In this parable, Jesus is describing his own life and exactly what his mission was in this world. He had to know when he was telling it that this was about him because it was pretty late in his ministry. I'm going to read from verse 33 of chapter 21. Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants, they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. They will respect my son, he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, This is the heir. Come let's kill him and take his inheritance. So they took him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do with the tenants? He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, they replied, and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time. Jesus said to them, Have you never read the scriptures? The stone of the builders rejected has become the capstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to the people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held he was a prophet. Jesus, I think, knew he was the son in this story. He was the son that was going to be sent to a group of people who would not receive him well, who would only do whatever they could to hurt him, to destroy his life, his ministry, and his work. He knew what the calling he had really was. And when we talk about Advent, the appearing of Jesus, we think about the wonderful things that Jesus meant and things he did and what he was like. We think of Jesus and the value and importance he has to us, but Jesus had other things when he came to present himself to the world. One of the things Jesus came to do was to say, the judgment of God is coming to visit you. Jesus came not only to bring a message of hope to people, but to be sure to bring a message that the judgment of God was at hand. A part of the coming of Jesus is to warn us that the judgment of God is real, it is powerful, it is destructive, and cannot be avoided. In fact, that's the point of this passage I want to read in Matthew chapter 23. Jesus addresses here the religious people of his time. If you could get a picture in our own time of a church filled with preachers, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, deacons, the faithful members of the church, you would have a picture of the crowd to whom Jesus spoke. His words were not the comforting and kind words that we might expect. Certainly Jesus didn't mean that all the people who heard him say these words were the object of them, but he knew that those who were there needed to hear what he had to say. You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on this earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all of this will come upon this generation. He started with the most startling words, words that you would expect not of religious people or to religious people, but words you would expect him to speak in a jail or prison, a place where people who were criminals, violators of the law, people who had done things contrary openly to what God said they should do, but that's not what he did. To this group of people who read the Bible, knew the Bible, tried to live the Bible every day, who were dedicated to serve God, these were his words. You snakes, you vipers. Harsh words. What was he talking about? These religious people took great pride in their faithful religious life, but you see Jesus had already told them in a passage preceding this what he saw that was a problem with them. He said, you have never entered the kingdom of heaven. He didn't say this to thieves and robbers and murderers, he said it to religious people. These people read the Bible, never missed a church service, always tithed, but they never entered the kingdom of heaven. You see being religious and entering the kingdom of heaven are two entirely different things. Being religious, you can read the Bible, you can talk out loud to God, you can attend a church service, you can give your money, do all those things and never have yielded your life completely and totally to God. And you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless you yield yourself completely and totally to God. He said to them, you people are blind guides, you try to lead people into the kingdom of heaven when you yourself have never entered it. And when you make a disciple of someone and they come to you, you teach them how to be the same kind of follower of God you are, which is someone not in the kingdom of God. You teach them to depend on something other than God for their religious life and lifestyle. What they do is they depend on you and your teachings and your example and you're outside the kingdom. And so they just mock you and act like you. And then when you go out and look for disciples to make and you find them and you bring them, they are worse off than they were before you ever left to find them. That's why he called them snakes. You slither around in secret and then you bite people and your bite is deadly. It was spiritually deadly because it caused people around them to think that they would be acceptable in the eyes of God when it was the farthest thing from the truth. How will you ever escape hell, he said. Now what they've done is they've asked other people to come along with them in the same way and they're going to experience the same result or disaster. The most difficult person ever to lead into the kingdom of heaven is a religious person because they think in their own eyes that they're acceptable to God. But in reality, they can be far, far from him. How can you test that? You have to ask yourself, what is it that controls my life day to day? What controls my relationships? Is it my own will or interest or my own nature? Or is it the instructions of God? What controls the way I deal with my children or my parents or my spouse or my neighbors? What is it that controls my money and what is it that controls my schedule day by day? Do I ever stop to say to God, how do you want me to do this? Do I follow completely? All that I know that God wants me to do faithfully as possible? That's what it means to have God the Lord of your life, the one who absolutely controls your behavior. These were very religious people but God did not control their lives. Jesus knew the circumstances that they were in and he came to them, the advent, the coming of Jesus to tell them, you're going to hell. The coming of Jesus is not always an easy or pretty picture. Sometimes his words are words of power, danger, and fear. How in the world do you expect to escape hell? There is no earthly way. You can imagine that these people who thought that they were not only going to heaven but they were going to have chief seats when they got to heaven, that they were not excited about Jesus' advent into their world. Far from it. Jesus said to them, your snakes and your vipers and your life is deadly to those who come to you. Now you would think in doing this that he was writing them off. In fact, some people that you write about commentaries on the Bible imply that here Jesus is telling them that they've been predestined for eternity in hell and there was no way they could ever escape it. But then Jesus uses a word that says, my conclusion to what I've just told you is this. The word therefore alerts us to that. Jesus says, therefore, because you are outside the kingdom of God and because you are snakes and vipers and because you are misleading people and because you are destined for hell, because of that I am sending you prophets, wise men, and teachers. What a wonderful picture of God there is here. These people who were so rebellious and contrary to what God wanted them to be and God did not write them off. He said to them, if you were to stand before judgment right now, you will end up in hell. But I've come to give you a warning, a warning that that's your destiny and it can be changed because I'm sending you prophets. Now in the Bible, the prophet is not someone who can tell you like it's going to rain Wednesday at 2 or you're going to cross the street and find a dollar bill on the sidewalk six days from now. The prophet was someone who knew God intimately and personally, knew him so well that he knew what would happen if you disobeyed him, knew him so well that he knew what would happen if you asked God for help. If someone who knew God well enough to look at a person's life or at the nation and say, if you don't change your direction and your lifestyle, God will bring judgment. That's the prophet. Jesus was a prophet here. I've come to bring into your life a prophet, someone who will tell you what God is doing and what he wants to do in your life. That's what we have in Sunday school teachers and preachers who proclaim the word of God and say, if you do this, you'll find life in its fullness. If you don't, you'll find life empty and wasted. That's prophetic preaching. Here is what God will do if you do this. Here is what God will do if you do this. I will send someone to warn you continually about what's taking place in your life so that not only my words will you hear, but the words of others even after I'm gone. I will send you wise men. The wise people in the Bible are not necessarily educated or intellectual people, but they're people who know how to do the things God wants you to do, how to make wise choices, how to be able to live in relationships and do the right things or to treat people in a way that is best. So when you listen to someone who has wisdom, they can tell you how to put into practice the things of God. And I will send you teachers. Who are the prophets and the wise people and the teachers? They were the very people Jesus was talking to there that day. I'm going to send them into the world. They're going to record for you in the scriptures what I've told you. They're going to teach people what this is about so they begin to live it. This was a prophecy Jesus gave. You know why? Because he knew that every place in the world, God was interested in people being warned about the future. In every place in the history of the world and every time in the history of the world, he knew that there were people who need to have God's wisdom to be able to live correctly. He knew that at all times, wherever people were, there were people who would say, I want to follow God, but I don't know what to do. This was a prophecy. The disciples were a part of that prophecy, and you are a part of that prophecy. Did you come to know Christ? Then you know how to tell someone else how to come to him. Have you been able to make decisions in your own life that you know were what God wanted you to do? Then you know how to tell someone else how to make wise decisions. Have you learned how to read the Bible and pray, the importance of the church, the importance of being a witness? Then if you've learned those things yourself, you know how to teach them. I don't know if you realize this, but what Jesus was saying was, I'm going to in great big Kansas in 2012, send you some prophets and some teachers and some wise people who will help you. He was saying this to the people destined for hell. They're all around us. Everywhere you look, they're around us. And the answer to their need is found in you. Jesus said, unless you change, your destiny is hell. And I've come to warn you about that. But after I'm gone, I'm going to send some others, and they're going to continue the same thing that I'm doing for you. For if you do not learn, and you do not listen, and you do not turn, your life has no earthly hope of escaping hell. And I know how you're going to treat these people, if you've done it with me. Some of them you will kill and crucify. Others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. Synagogue was just a place they met for church. Some of the people who come telling you the message of Christ, you're actually going to beat in your church buildings. Some of them you're going to beat and kill. Do you know literally that there have been people in the history of this world who were burned at the stake because they took the Latin Bible, which no one could read, and translated the Latin words into English words so English people could read them, and the leaders of the church burned them at the stake? One of them, they tore the pages out of his book and threw it on the fire as he burned alive to see what happened to him. Oh, I'm not going to kid you about this. You take the responsibility of being a prophet, that is, telling the message of God to people. If you continue the way you are, your life is going to end up in hell. They're not going to fix you a good Christmas dinner. Probably they're not going to like you, but they will hear the truth. You better be sure that's what God wants you to say when you say it too. The prophet doesn't say it just because he's steamed or doesn't like someone, but because the message is on his heart and mind so powerfully, he can't avoid it. So God has sent Jesus into the world to warn the world, and his coming means that he sent us into the world for the very same things. You are to be prophets. I know God well enough to know that if you live this way, you'll never make it into the kingdom of heaven. He sent us into the world for wisdom when someone comes and says, I don't know what to do about my kids or my family or my job or my life. My life is just at the end of itself. He puts in your mind the wisdom that he has so that you can say to them, here are the principles I found in the word of God. Here are the instructions from God to help you be able to do this. Be careful when people come to you telling you their problems, because God has put you in that place to listen to them and give them wise words. Don't fly off with your feelings. I wouldn't let anybody treat me that way. You know, that kind of feeling we usually have when someone comes and tells us how abusive someone's been to them or mean or unkind they've been. You stop and say, what did Jesus tell people to do in circumstances like this? And then you give them wise words. And whenever you've found someone who wants to know how to be able to live the way God tells them, it's your responsibility to teach them. It's not mine alone, it's all of ours to teach them. You see, Jesus told two things that we were to do. One is we're to be holy as he was holy, and the second is we're to make disciples. You have that responsibility. Why do you have it? Because there are people going to hell. That's the same reason Jesus was concerned about these people. If you keep the way you're living, you're going to go to hell. I have to warn you about that. And to those of his disciples who said, we believe what you have to say and we want to follow you, he said, okay, come along and I will teach you how to live as God wants you to live. I will teach you how to talk to God. I will teach you how to learn. I will teach you how to listen to the Holy Spirit so that you'll know how to be able to live. Now these people that Jesus was talking to, they were religious people, but something happened to them. People of Israel had a long history with God and it was always rocky with him. From the time he brought the people of Israel out of Egypt into the land of promise, he said to them before they would enter, I don't want you to worship any other gods but me. I want you to be faithful to me and listen to me and do what I tell you to do. But they moved into this land where there were different people who were farmers. They'd never farmed and they were raising great crops and they said, hey, how you do that raising your crops that way? And he said, well, we go down and worship Baal, the God of water, and he sends water on our crops. And they begin to think, wow, you know, maybe Yahweh, our God, doesn't water the crops like Baal does. And so they said, you know, we're not going to leave Yahweh, but we're going to go over here and make sacrifices to Baal. And the moment they did that, they said, God, you told us no one else but you. And they violated it. And the moment they did that, then God backed away and said, okay, I'm not going to guide you. I'm not going to provide for you. And I'm not going to protect you. You're on your own. And boy, they'd get in a mess. And then all of a sudden, one day they'd wake up and say, why is our life in our country so miserable? Oh, I know. We're worshiping Baal. We're going to quit that. We're going to go over and worship Yahweh. But you read the Old Testament, it's over and over and over and over again. Every other generation seems to have turned that way. God sent a prophet. He said, God told you when he gave you this promised land that if you didn't serve him alone and you began to act like the people who lived here before you came, he would drive you out of this land. He said, oh, no, no, no. God made a promise to Abraham and he's never going to break it. This is our land. He's never going to do that. He said, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the prophets, they didn't believe it. And then the kingdom was divided. And then the northern kingdom fell. And the southern kingdom didn't wake up and say, well, you know, maybe we'd better change our ways. They say, well, it's never going to happen to us. We're the place where Jerusalem is. Nothing's going to happen to us. And then the southern kingdom fell. After the siege and captivity in Babylon, never again did the people of Israel turn to Baal. To God's judgment, cured him of the habit. But you know what happened to them? The spirit of trusting something other than God is powerful and Satan is always deceptive. When they were in the land of Babylon, they turned away from the temple. They didn't have it anymore. They turned to the scriptures. And so the rabbis began to interpret the scriptures as what it meant to love God, what it meant to keep the Sabbath, what it meant to love your parents. And there were thousands of pages, written pages of instructions on human being instructions on how to keep the law. Then the Pharisees began to turn from God to the written instructions of other people about how to follow the law. They turned from Baal to other humans who are telling them what to do. And that's who Jesus was addressing. So you don't go to Baal anymore, but you listen to all these people, the rabbis who give you instructions and you follow them in great detail and you pay no attention to the words from God that I'm speaking to you. And you cannot even tell the difference between the words from God and the words from people. That's why you're headed for hell. And unless you can stop and say, oh God, we listen to no one on this earth but you, and we obey no one on this earth but you, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. What happens to religious people today, we don't follow Baal, and we don't, we laugh at the people who follow these great rituals in the scriptures. But you know what we rely on? Ourselves. I think I'm okay. I think I'm as good as the person over here. I think I'm good enough to go to heaven. You know, nowhere in the Bible does it say those are qualifications to get into heaven. We rely on this great human wisdom. And you talk to people. You think you're going to go to heaven? Most of them will say yeah. Say why? And they won't tell you because Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life. They'll tell you I'm good, or I do good things for people. I see so many funerals I do and families say, oh yeah, he's a good old guy, good old lady. They give you a shirt off their back as if that was the key to heaven, generosity. Our world, the people you know, that you work with, that you live around, are going to hell because they worship something other than God. It's their own idea about how to get there. The wisdom of the community instead of the wisdom of God. And it is to these people that you have been sent to do two things. To live a holy life in their presence like Jesus lived a life of holiness and obedience to God. So that everyone who knows you will tell that there is something about you that is unique. That there is something about your life that is different. And it is God who makes that difference attractive to them. And then when you get to know them and you get to talk to them and you get to ask them about their own relationship with God or whatever they're doing in their life, you have an opportunity to be a prophet and tell them what's going to happen unless they change their direction. You have an opportunity to give them wisdom because God has taught you how to treat people, how to be married, how to raise your children, how to live your life, how to work with people who are obstinate and hard to work with and how to be able to learn how to follow God. And you are responsible for teaching them. Every person who has entered the kingdom of heaven is to look around them and find people who are on the road to hell. How do you know? Well, because you know what it means to be on the road to heaven. And if you know what the difference between an interstate and a dirt road is, you can tell the difference between people on the road to hell and people on the road to heaven. You can see that. God gives you eyes to see it. And if you have never noticed that, you should stop at some point in your prayer life and say, God, show me the people around me who are already condemned. He'll show them to you. And then you live this life of obedience to God around them and they will see in you something that they have not found and that they want. And then when you build a relationship, a friendship with them so that they feel close enough to you to tell you what's on their mind and heart, you can give them the wisdom of God that you've learned, not because you're smarter than them, but because God has given it to you. And then when they say, I too want to follow Jesus, you say, okay, you come to church with me. You come to my Sunday school class, my small group, whatever way you're going to disciple them and you listen to what's happening, what's said, and you and I will talk about it. And you begin to put into practice what you've learned. It is every single one of our jobs. What Jesus asks of us is to be the fulfillment of his prophecy. I am sending to those of you who are bound for hell, someone who will tell you what I want you to do. Someone who will give you my wisdom. Someone who will teach you how to follow me. And for the people who know you, you are the fulfillment of that prophecy. Will everybody run up and throw their arms around you and say, oh, you're so wonderful. You've done such a good job for me. They won't all do that. There'll be a few who will. There'll be a lot of them who think you're goofy, who think you're weird, and you are. You're weird because normal to them is going to hell, you know, normal. That makes you weird. And they're going to abuse you. Fortunately, in our land, they don't kill us, but if you lived in many other lands in this world, you would die for the very thing that you're doing here today. Jesus said, because you're going to hell, I'm going to prepare someone to help you. And I send these people into your life. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berekiah. You see, the people who abuse you and make fun of you are building for themselves the wrath of God because everything they do to resist you or hurt you or criticize you or make you feel bad or kill you is building for them the judgment of God. God's going to take care of this deal if you do your job. Now, he says here the judgment is not I'm going to punish you for killing the prophets. He said, if you participate in the same thing that the people who killed prophets from the very beginning are doing, you're a part of that family and you're going to suffer everything that comes to them. See, there are two families in the world. They're the family of God and the family of the devil. And everything the family of God receives as a part of that family, you're going to get it. Everything that the devil in his family receives, if you're a part of that family, you're going to get it. All the way back to Abel, the first man recorded, killed in scripture, murdered in scripture. The blood of that man comes to the family of the devil. And you want to be in that family? They're still paying the price for that one. And then all the way to Zechariah. Now, you see, we have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus to Malachi in the Old Testament. But the Jewish Bible was Genesis and it ended with 2 Chronicles. So he's saying every person killed from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of it was up to Jesus' time. All of the anger and wrath of God is stored up for the family of the devil. And because you've joined that family, you're going to get the flow of that too. It's not just what you've done. It's what all your family has also done. That's family in, family of God, the family of the devil. The cup of God's anger is going to be filled and poured out on all those people who resist me. So you don't have to worry about feeling uncomfortable to go knock on somebody's door or to walk up to them and talk to them. For they might say something bad to you. For they might make you feel uncomfortable. But our Father has plans for every person who hurts you. And He has plans for every person who obeys Him. It's just our choice as to which of those families we want to be a part of. I tell you the truth, all of this will come on this generation to whom He was speaking. And when we read the story of Jesus' life all over the world for two thousand years, the word Pharisee is a bad word. It was marked. In every generation we have the same responsibility. Jesus came into the world to warn us of impending danger and to tell us there was a way out. And His message didn't stop with His life because He said, now I'm sending some other people to finish the job. I have good news for you. You are the other people He sent. Would you bow your heads for a moment? I can tell you whether or not you are in that group is to ask yourself this question. Have I surrendered my life to live in obedience to God? When I make the decisions in my life, do I ask God what I should do? Do I follow the teachings of the scriptures? If you're doing what you know God wants you to do, then you're in that family because surrendering your life to God's control is what makes you a follower of His. Doesn't matter what else you've done in your life or haven't done. That is the key. You can be very religious and be lost because religion can actually stand in your way of surrendering obedience to God. It can cause you to be obedient to a preacher or a denomination. That's God. So if you know that you've made that commitment to Him, the next thing He asks of you, these two things, are you living a life of holiness? Or have you learned to be satisfied compromising, to be as good as the people around you, to be as dedicated to God as the people at church, to be as moral as the people you work with? See, this is the Pharisee deal. You can't do that. And all you have to do is say to God, is there anything in my life you don't want and you don't like? And I will guarantee you, He'll tell you. Just get you a notebook and start writing. He won't give it all to you at once, but He'll get you started. Now do you know something He has in your life that He doesn't like? You must give that to Him. Ask Him to take it away and replace it with something worthwhile. You must live this holy life to be the person God sends into the world. The second, are you making disciples? I don't mean are you praying for your relatives to get saved. Pagans would do that if they thought they were going to hell. The love of God prays for strangers, people you don't like to come to know Christ. You don't have some people you're praying for, one or two or three, that you're really focused on to say, I want these people to come to know Christ, I want to ask you this morning to make that promise to God. You show me two or three people that seem to me not to know you, and I'll begin to pray for them earnestly. I'll begin to make friends with them. And when the opportunity comes, I will share your prophecy, your wisdom, your teachings. And then you will have someone you know who's come to know Christ because of you. So Father, you know our hearts and our minds, you know who we are. You came into this world to warn us. So warn us right now, each one of us. Warn us about what stands between us and you, that we would be like your followers, not the Pharisees, and we'd want to get rid of it. Turn it over to you instead of turning away from you. As we sing this invitation hymn, Father, if there's something you want each of us to make a promise or a commitment about, let us know. Give us the strength of courage and faith to do what you tell us is right. In the name of Jesus, I ask this, amen. We're going to sing an invitation hymn this morning. It's just a way by which we say, I want you to think about what you've been hearing as God was talking to you during your prayer time, and it's an opportunity for you if you feel led to come and say, this is a commitment I know God wants me to make, and I'm going to make it publicly and openly so you can help me be accountable for keeping the promise I've made to God. You know how much easier it is to go on a diet when everybody in your family knows you're on it? You know how much easier it is to be a follower of Jesus when everyone around you knows that you're supposed to be following him? That's what God has made us a family for, to help each other in our spiritual lives. Would you stand, please, as we sing this? If God has spoken to you, you do what he tells you. That marks you as a child of God. Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, He bears them all and frees us from the accursed load. I bring my guilt to Jesus, to wash my crimson stains, Widen His blood most precious, till not a stain remains. I lay my wants on Jesus, all fullness dwells in Him. He heals all my diseases, He doth my soul redeem. I lay my griefs on Jesus, my burdens and my cares, He from them all releases, He all my sorrows shares. If God has raised issues, of course, in your mind and heart today, you can always call me, sit down and talk with me. I'll be glad to give you guidance that God gives me to help you know how to fulfill what He's asked of you. Join me in prayer. And so, Lord, we do yield to You everything in our lives and hearts. We do joyously accept the assignment that You've given to us, to be prophets and wise people and teachers to a world destined for hell. We ask that we might have the courage of those who've gone before us to never back away from the mission that will change the lives of people and the world in which we live. In the name of Jesus, we go to live this life to which You called us. Amen. For our closing, we're going to do Isn't He, which we sang earlier. Isn't He beautiful, beautiful? Isn't He Prince of Peace, Son of God? Isn't He, isn't He wonderful, wonderful? Isn't He Counselor, Almighty God? Isn't He in me? And He, isn't He?