The Expensive Gift

Matthew 26:6-13.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Mother’s Day, May 12, 2019.

Today is Mother’s Day and we want to honor each and every mom that works hard every day to take care of her family.  Today’s story is not necessarily about a mother, but it is about a woman who gives an expensive gift of love to Jesus.  I would say that a woman who gives expensive gifts of love to those around them is a very fine definition of what it means to be a mom. 

As we look at this story, I pray that all moms will find encouragement for their life of sacrifice, and I pray that the rest of us can also hear the call of the Holy Spirit showing us how to love in every situation.

She gives what she feels led to give

In this passage, the woman is unnamed, but we are told that it occurs at Bethany in the house of Simon the Leper during the week before Christ’s crucifixion.  This would make it highly likely that this passage is a parallel account of John 12 where a similar account takes place.  There we are told that this is Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus (the one who Jesus raised from the dead).  Simon the Leper is most likely someone who was healed by Jesus, otherwise he wouldn’t be receiving dinner guests.  Regardless, it isn’t important if we know the woman’s name for today’s purpose.  However, I will refer to the John 12 account from time to time.

Jesus seems to be at a meal that is interrupted by this woman who pours a small flask of expensive oil upon his head.  This is something that would not be very welcome in our society, but it would have been considered an honoring thing in this society.  The oil would smell nice, which would honor the person with both its costly value and its odor.  Also, anointing had the added social connection to the beginning of a priest’s service or the beginning of a king’s reign.  Israel would anoint their priests and kings as they launched their term of service.

However, we must recognize that the motivation behind the woman’s action is not made clear in the story.  One thing is certain; it is the Holy Spirit that is leading her to do this.  She loves the Lord and sought a way to show it.  Often our love for another person causes us to give things that cost us dearly.  In fact, the most costly thing that mother’s give is themselves.  What is it that stirs a woman to give herself to children, a spouse, and family?  I believe that it is the Spirit of God that stirs these things up in our hearts.

Others don’t understand her gift of love

We are told that the disciples are shocked that this expensive gift is being “wasted” in this way.  John 12 tells us that Judas the Betrayer was the one who led this rebuke, but clearly at least some of the other disciples joined in with him and voiced their disapproval.  The oil could have been sold and the money used for the poor.  Now, several things stick out with this objection.  It sounds very pious and also like good financial advice.  However, it doesn’t have the heart of the woman whose love is being spurred by the Holy Spirit.  In John 12 we are told that Judas was skimming money out of the treasury bag, which he carried.  Clearly his motivations are evil, but he masks the true intentions by mentioning the poor.  As for the other disciples, their motivations are not evil like those of Judas.  However, they are caught up in a wrong spirit that criticizes the woman’s gift.

People can often object to how we spend our time, our energy, and our money.  Those things that we do that are motivated by our flesh and selfishness are often deserving of such rebukes.  However, love often gives “wastefully.”  How much was Jesus worth?  In John 12 we are told that the oil was valued at 300 denarii.  This term is usually defined as 1 day’s wage for a common laborer.  That is ten months of wages!  In our terms today we would be talking about $20,000 or more.  That is a lot of money that might even make the most giving of us think twice.  Christ is not physically here for us to show our love like Mary was able to do.  How do we love Christ?  We do so by loving his followers as he loved us, selflessly and sacrificially.  We do so by obeying his command to share the Gospel with the world around us.  Now, there is no law of God that limits the actions of our love.  Yet, people will often criticize you when you love extravagantly.  They will tell you that you are forgiving too many times etc. and criticize your response.  However, don’t pay the critics any mind.  Just ask yourself this.  How is God leading me to love this person in this situation?  Then stick to what you believe He is saying.

Christ receives and defends her gift

It doesn’t really matter what others say about how you have loved those who are in your life.  It only matters what Jesus thinks about our love.  Christ not only receives her gift as a gift of love, but he also defends her before the other disciples.  Countering their “It should have been given to the poor” argument, Jesus states that the poor will always be there to help, but the opportunity to do this was quickly slipping away.  Jesus would be crucified within the week.

It is amazing that people will end up sacrificing the specific person or people that God has put in their life for the sake of the unnamed masses of humanity.  There is nothing wrong with loving humanity and giving to causes that touch them with compassion.  However, if I don’t actively love the specific people in my life then I am a hypocrite.  Another way to think of it is that, we can neglect our love of the human in front of us for the sake of our love of humanity.  It is almost impossible to love humanity in a concrete way, but it is possible to love the individuals in your life today.

God is not worried about waste in the same way that we are.  Sure, we should not waste our money and live on frivolous and selfish things, however, neither should we let others who have a vested interest in our time, devotion, and money, tell us how to use it.  Rather, let us ask the Lord each day how to give love to the people in our life, as well as what organizations to support that are reaching people who are not in my life.  Just know that God has your back.  He simply wants you to grow in your ability to love, to become more like Him.

Her gift of love is greater than she knew

Probably no mother has completely understood the full impact of their sacrificial love.  We should do our best to help them through countless thankful actions, but even we do not completely understand.  Yet, God does.  Jesus explains in our passage that she is anointing him for his coming burial.  We know from the Gospels that none of the disciples really accepted the idea or understood that Christ really would be rejected and executed.   There is no reason to believe that Mary understood any more than they.  Her significant sacrifice was doing something beyond what she intended.

It is important for us to quit analyzing our actions of love after the fact in such a way that we are left feeling worthless.  We may even judge them as worthless or wasted ourselves.  For every child who has squandered the love of a great mom, is a mother’s heart that wrestles with self condemnation and sometimes the condemnation of people around them.  Yet, we are in the worst position to judge the value of our love.  Only God knows the true value of the blood, sweat, and tears that you have poured out in love for your family.  And if it is done in devotion to Christ, it is infinitely more valuable.  Incalculable.  Priceless!   Don’t let the spirit of this world cloud up or infect your heart with fear and doubt.  Rather, keep asking the Holy Spirit for guidance and trust that He will lead you until you hear Jesus say the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

By the way, the actions of Mary’s love left the room smelling of a pleasant odor.  The attitude of the disciples, however, was stinking it up.  Is it a pleasing odor before the Lord?

The Lord honors her gift of love

Let me close by recognizing that Jesus said this woman would have the honor of being so connected to the Gospel that 2,000 years later her story would not only endure, but also be proclaimed alongside of the Gospel.  What an honor!  However, it is still only a temporal honor that is in this life.  If the world were to stand another 2,000 years, few of us would have the honor of having our story remarked about all around the world.  The greater honor is not the honors that we are given in this world.  The true honor is that which will be given to us in the New Heavens and the New Earth after our resurrection.  Let’s love one another, but especially today; let’s reciprocate some of the love that mothers have selflessly poured into our life!

Expensive Gift Audio

Israel Trip Report

Youth Pastor Nick Hauenstein gives a report about places that he has visited in Israel that are also in the Bible.

Israel Trip Report Audio

Testing the Lord of the Sabbath

Mark 3:1-12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 28, 2019.

Today we resume our teaching through the Gospel of Mark.  By way of reminder, the end of chapter 2 tells of the Pharisees complaining of the disciples of Jesus breaking heads of grain off their stalks in order to eat them while they are on their way to the Synagogue.  They complain that it is the Sabbath and what they are doing is work.  True to form in that passage, Jesus stood up for them.

The Bible did not originally have chapter divisions, so we should understand that today’s story is thematically tied to the end of chapter 2.  Both of these stories are about the Sabbath day, and in both of them, Jesus pushes the issue and clarifies what God the Father really had in mind when He instituted the Sabbath and its prohibitions in the Law of Moses.

The Lord of the Sabbath heals on the Sabbath

Let’s recall the teaching of Jesus regarding the Sabbath from the earlier story in chapter 2.  Jesus asserted that he was the Lord of the Sabbath, and as Lord, he declared that their actions were not breaking the prohibition against working on the Sabbath.  Another crucial point is that Israel had not been created in order to honor the Sabbath and its rules.  Rather, the Sabbath had been created as a blessing for God’s people.  God was giving them the gift of rest.  Our passage today will add to this teaching on the Sabbath because Jesus will clearly demonstrate that healing is not a breach of the Sabbath laws either.

Our setting is inside a synagogue.  It is not clear how many sick or infirmed people went to synagogues during these days.  However, we are told that a man with a withered hand was in attendance.  We do not have a scientific description of what is wrong with his hand.  However, the end effect is that it is shrunken (most likely from atrophied muscles) and lacks strength.  He is disabled with a hand that is practically useless to him.  We are given no back story.  Does he always come to this synagogue?  Was he asked to come by others, perhaps the Pharisees who wish to test Jesus?  We cannot know these things.

We are told, however, that the people at the synagogue were watching to see if Jesus would heal the man even though the religious authorities had made it clear that they believed doing so would break the Sabbath commands. 

Like any group the “they” here is a mixed group.  Some of them are on the side of Jesus and hope that he will heal the man.  In fact, the man with the withered hand would most definitely be in this group.  Yet, there are Pharisees in the group, and others with them, who are watching for evil purposes.  They are hoping to find grounds for accusing Jesus.  The word translated as accuse could be used for both private settings or placing a formal accusation before a court.  They want evidence that they can then use to bring Jesus before the religious court of the land, the Sanhedrin.  Thus, you could say that everybody wants Jesus to heal the man, but for very different reasons, some that are good and some that are bad.

Jesus clearly understands the trap that is set for him.  However, He also knows that the religious authorities are very mistaken in their decrees.  He is not breaking the law as they would so charge.  The Sabbath was made for God’s people.  It was intended to be a blessing and not a curse.  People typically worked 7 days a week.  Yet, God tells His people to take one day off to rest and worship Him.  If they do this then He will bless them even more than if they had worked that day.  Jesus poses two parallel questions to highlight a proper analysis of what he is doing.

The first is this.  Is it lawful to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath?  Though no discussion ensues, we could clearly cross off doing evil.  There was no day, Sabbath or otherwise, upon which it was deemed acceptable or lawful to do evil, period.  Thus, we should always be doing good.  Next, we look at the first half of the question.  Is it lawful to do good?  Now, the Pharisees could have responded that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath, but certain things which would normally be good (aka, working), were prohibited and thus unlawful only on that day.  The problem here is that Jesus has turned the trap back on them.  Of the two parties, Jesus and the Pharisees, Jesus is clearly doing good; he is healing someone.  However, the Pharisees seem to be trying to trap him on the Sabbath, which is not such a good thing to do to someone.  They sit in judgment of Jesus for healing a man’s withered hand, all the while, they are seeking to destroy Jesus.  They are blind to the irony of their own actions.

Now back to the issue of whether this particular good thing was prohibited by the law.  There is no place in the Law of Moses where they are instructed not to heal on the Sabbath.  They are simply told not to work.  This is not a scientific term that is defined by a maximum number of joules per day.  It is social term that would generally refer to the way that most people made a living.  This was to be a day of rest, but the people did plenty of things that technically required work.  They got out of bed, they went to synagogue, the priests would teach, etc.  Just how much “work” is Jesus expending to heal this guy?  The problem with defining healing as work is that it is just too convoluted and raises too many questions about what God really intended with the law in the first place.  The silence of the Pharisees is proof that they have no answer.  They only want the evidence.

It is easy to take Scripture, or the words of Jesus, and twist them to your own benefit.  Thus, a person could go out and harvest their crop the next Sabbath and say, “Isn’t it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?”  Yet, harvesting is explicitly prohibited on the Sabbath, healing isn’t.  Jesus clearly is not justifying something that is explicitly prohibited.

The second question basically asks the same thing.  Is it lawful to save life or heal on the Sabbath?  This takes the point to a finer state.  They are seeking to kill him because he is seeking to help people.  Who is wrong in such a case, and especially on the Sabbath?

Next, we are told that the hardness of their hearts angers Jesus.  No one answers Jesus because they are no match intellectually and spiritually.  However, that is not what angers Jesus.  They have no answer and yet they cling to their purpose of working against him.  It is that they would harden their hearts and double down on wickedness that angers him.  Not everyone in that room had hard hearts.  However, one minister put it this way.  It is as if a man could fly (yes, like superman), but they can only focus on whether or not he has a pilot’s license to do so.  He is healing a man’s withered hand, for David’s sake!  The signs that Jesus was the Messiah, or the anointed savior from God, were unmistakable.  The powerful way in which he could touch a person or speak a word and they would be healed would floor modern man.  Jesus was not whipping out a secret elixir that he had people drink. He was not operating as some kind of Renaissance Man among the ignorant, a scientist among the superstitious.  Yet, neither was it some kind of magic.  In fact, the word for miracle in the Bible does not mean, a breach of the laws of physics.  It simply means a powerful work as opposed to those things we normally see and do.  What kind of power can speak a command and a person is healed?  The same power that the Creator used when He spoke the universe into existence.  No, they knew that these were not tricks set up by an illusionist.  This was the power that only the God of the Universe could wield, and yet they were refusing to believe. 

Jesus was rarely angry, but this is one of those few times where it says that he was.  God had bent over backwards to do in their day what every generation before them had been desiring and begging God to do.  They were being inundated with God’s grace and instead they hardened their hearts, nit-picked his actions, and sought to destroy him.  It was as if you were in the middle of helping someone, who desperately needed help, and they began condemning you for the way you are doing it.  Our natural impulse would be to walk away and leave them to their own devices, but Jesus is not a coward.  He sees a man who wants to be free in the midst of a bunch of jackals who could care less what his experience would be after this meeting was over. 

Jesus could have diffused the situation by telling the guy to meet him after the service behind the synagogue, where no one would be looking, or he could have told him to come by the next morning.  Yet again, Jesus is not a coward.  Everyone there needed to understand the truth and not be intimidated by the sophistication that comes from people who have intelligent minds, but wicked hearts.  So, Jesus tells the man to stretch out his hand.

Though this is a powerful work, it requires no exertion on the part of Jesus.  He is not sweating or going through some long ritual.  In the time it took him to lift up his arm and show his hand, it was healed.  I know that this creates a problem for some.  If it is so easy for God to heal disease then why doesn’t He do so for the countless millions who are suffering physical problems today?  If He is really good then mustn’t He have to heal us?  Doesn’t the fact that He doesn’t mean that He really isn’t good?  These are real questions and I do not want to ridicule them.  However, the Bible posits that our physical problems are merely a result of a larger problem that couldn’t be “healed” in such a way.  Our sin, and rebellion against God, is the greater problem.  If God were to heal all disease instantly then it would be equivalent to mitigating every law of physics when a person might be hurt by it.  A man jumps off a cliff, but God must intervene to keep him from hitting the ground and dying.  A person shoots up with heroine, but God must intervene and keep them from any negative consequences.  This is the logical result of such a world.  That is not the kind of “good” that the Father is.  He wants us to become like Him, and therefore, He allows us to see the results of our choices so that we may see that His way is best for ourselves.

The Pharisees were unimpressed, or refused to allow themselves to be impressed.  It states that they went out to plot with the Herodians to destroy Jesus.  The point of this statement is that it is an unnatural alliance.  The Herodians are a political party who support Herod as the King of Israel.  The Pharisees, and others like them, rejected this position because Herod was not from the line of David and wasn’t even an Israelite; he was an Edomite.  It would be like a number of cattle ranchers going out to plot with PETA in order to destroy a common enemy.  Let’s read the next scene, starting at verse 7.

Multitudes come to see Jesus

Jesus goes out from the Synagogue to the Sea of Galilee.  It appears that this section is a general statement and is not saying that all of this happened on the same day.  The point is that the Synagogue had become a hostile place and so Jesus moved out to the Sea of Galilee and ministers to the multitudes of people who would come to see him.  The synagogue saw one miracle that day and then Jesus left.  The experience outside the Synagogue was far greater.  Their hostility was bottling up something that couldn’t be bottled up and so they missed out on much that Jesus did.  We are told that multitudes came from all over the area.  The list of places is basically: everywhere within Israel, Idumea (the Greek term for the land of Edom south of the Dead Sea, and Tyre and Sidon (places outside of Israel in the North).  The multitudes become so large that a boat is kept nearby so that Jesus would not be crushed.  In other gospels it mentions that Jesus would also stand in the boat further out in the water, so that more people could hear.  That’s what we call a good problem.

The small work within the Synagogue is offset by the amazing things happening on the shores of the Galilee.  We must always watch our hearts and our spirits because our hard hearts can push the grace of God away and send it elsewhere.  Even then, God is gracious to keep working on our hard hearts in order to bring us back to repentance and softness towards him. 

Mark mentions that the evil spirits were crying out, “You are the Son of God.”  Yet, Jesus shut them down very quickly.  He would not let demons be his evangelists, nor was it time to press the issue of His true identity.  God had a particular timing for the crucifixion of Jesus and the evangelization of the nations to the Son of God.

As we close this morning, it may be easy to think that this is just a story to get people motivated to serve God.  The problem with this is that it is not a mythical story about beings long ago that no one had ever seen.  It was witnessed and contemporaneously written down by people who were there.  The evidence of Jesus and what he did is powerful, but often discounted because it came from His followers.  Yet, the rejection of Jesus and his execution is also witnessed by his detractors.  When we say that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, we are saying that he is the Lord of the Rest and the Peace that God has for whosoever will follow Him.  Why would we fight against God and the good thing/s that He wants to give us?  Why not accept the Lord Jesus and rejoice in the favor that we have been given from the Creator?

I pray that today we will be a people who are not hard-hearted, and stiffened against the work that Jesus is doing.  Instead let us whole-heartedly embrace God’s work of calling all men everywhere to repent and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior!

Testing the Lord audio

Empty Promises

Mark 12:1-12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 21, 2019.

Today is Easter Sunday and therefore we are going to look at another passage further ahead in Mark than we currently are in our exposition of this Gospel.  Next Sunday we will be back on course.

Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, celebrates the day that our Lord Jesus conquered sin and death.  It is easy to scoff at such things.  However, the amount of evidence regarding both his death (he did not merely swoon) and his resurrection is overwhelming (over 500 people testified to multiple accounts with many people at the same event).

We can hide behind the sophistication of modern man.  Yet, we still find ourselves in the same place as those in the first century or even two millennia before that.  We are still fallen people who are extremely broken inside and who need a savior.

Today we celebrate the reality that God has a plan to save us, and Jesus Christ is the man He has given to us to lead us to salvation.

The parable that we are going to look at this morning is one that Jesus told in the temple compound during the last week of his life.  This parable gives us a metaphor to help us understand just what was going on when Jesus was crucified and yet later raised from the dead.

Understanding the Parable

In verses 1-8, Jesus tells a parable that presses the issue of his coming execution.  The public is not aware that the leaders have decided to execute Jesus when they can, but Jesus does.  In this parable the metaphor has a biblical precedent from Isaiah 5.  There Isaiah tells a parable in which he states that Israel is the vineyard of God.  He even speaks of a tower for defense and a winepress.  This sets up an easy identification for the hearers, but also for us.

Let’s walk through the parable and identify each element.  First, we see that the man who owns the vineyard clearly represents God and, as we stated earlier, the vineyard represents Israel.  It would be better to use the phrase, the people of God, because this puts a better image in our mind.  It is not about a nation, but about a people who belong to God and are in relationship with Him.   The next element is the vinedressers, which are also translated as farmers or tenant farmers.  The Greek word that is used literally means worker of the earth and is where we get the name George.  The are the leaders of Israel who are supposed to ensure that the people of God are fruitful in their lives.  Technically, this means both the political and religious leaders, but it is told during his last week while he is in the temple.  So, it seems that the religious leaders are taking the brunt of the teaching- this is most likely due to the fact that the political leadership had long been separated from Israel with Herod (not from the tribe of Judah) receiving his position as king from Caesar.  I would quibble with the word tenant farmer, not because it ruins the parable, but because the emphasis is not on the fact that they are getting paid.  It is on the fact that their job is to oversee the vineyard and make sure it is fruitful for God.  They had taken their offices under the guise of performing the purposes of the Lord, and yet, too often these became empty promises that were not fulfilled.  They superficially performed the purposes of the Lord while all along serving their own interests.

Next, in our parable we see that the man sends servants at the appropriate time to get evidence of how fruitful the vineyard is.  These servants have been with the man and are the special or extra-ordinary teachers that God sent from time to time known as the prophets.  The leaders of Israel were also servants of God, but they represent those who spend their time in the vineyard all the time.  They are the day to day servants of God.  The prophets would come at special times with a special mission.  They would give direction and corrective instructions from the Lord so that Israel could be fruitful.  In light of the spiritual nature of the parable, the fruit that God is looking for is evidence that the people are growing in their trust of God and living according to His Word.  The very Scripture that the religious leaders took care to copy and memorize testified that the prophets were generally abused and often put to death by the political and religious leaders of Israel.  Thus, as God sent his prophets to help make Israel fruitful, they would abuse them and kill them.  Yet, later they would give lip-service to them.

This leads to the man deciding to send his beloved son.  Of course, this represents Jesus.  The parable presents it as a hopeful attempt to turn things around.  However, in many other places we are told that Jesus was sent knowing that he would be abused, executed, and excommunicated (i.e. thrown out of the vineyard).  Thus, the leaders would kill the Son and leave their promise to tend to the people of God for God’s purposes unfulfilled.

As the parable ends, we are left asking if it was really as bad as the parable shows.  Somewhere along the line, the leaders had lost sight that this nation belonged to God literally.  They existed for His purposes, not theirs.  They had edged God out by pushing Him high into the heavens, but using the system for their own ends.  When Jesus arrived on the scene, they could only see that Jesus would inflame the hopes of the people that He was Messiah.  Rome would then come in and quash it, while holding the religious leaders responsible for letting it happen.  They would lose their authority and that couldn’t happen in their minds.

Lest we seem too hard on the Israelite people, let’s use the parable as a set of glasses for our times.  If we look at our times religiously, we must confess that the leaders of the Church of Jesus have often fallen into the same mentality as those of Israel did.  We give lip service to God and His purposes, but we abuse and kill those prophetic voices that He sends from time to time.  O sure, there are real heretics that must be faced and rejected, but not everyone labeled a heretic throughout the Church’s history were so.  Our leaders have too often hijacked the people of God and their devotion to Him for their own ends and purposes. 

What if we look at our times nationally (the United States of America, or insert your nation here)?  Are not our leaders leading us in a way that serves their own purposes and do they not lack any care for what the God of heaven thinks?  Sure, there are anomalies, but the majority give God lip service at the best.  Was it not God who supernaturally enabled us to break free from the political tyranny of King George III.  Side note, it is interesting that George’s name has the root used in our parable.  He was King Vinedresser, but had come to think the vines were all for him and his pleasure.  The testimony of our forefathers is that we succeeded by God’s help, period.  Has not the Lord of America come looking, from time to time, for godly fruit by sending special, prophetic voices, only to be cast aside and ignored?  Are we not, as a society, killing the Word of God as we cast it aside and live for our own purposes?  Also, this begs the question.  Do you not know that your own life is itself a vineyard of which God has put you in charge in order that it be fruitful for His purposes?  His ways lead to life, but ours continually lead to ever more creative expressions of death.

God still has a plan that cannot be thwarted

The parable does get rather dark and foreboding.  Jesus in verse 9 asks the question.  What will the owner of the vineyard do?  They are going to be removed and destroyed.  Ultimately, they will not succeed in their attempt to use God’s people for their own ends.  They will be removed and God’s purposes will continue unthwarted. 

The religious and political leaders would do exactly what this parable says.  They would reject Jesus, abuse him, execute him, and then excommunicate him.  This is why the book of Hebrews makes such a big deal about Jesus being crucified outside of the city gates.  This ancient sign of extreme banishment (extreme in that they also killed the person) was the ultimate rejection.  Hebrews 13:12-14 says, “Therefore, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.  Therefore, let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.  For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.”  We are in danger of losing the eternal for the sake of holding on to the temporary at all times.  Is it not better to surrender that which you cannot keep in order to receive that which you cannot lose?  You can and should trust God.  His plan is not thwarted, and cannot be thwarted, whether by man or spiritual powers in the heavenlies.

Jesus would be rejected and killed, but this would not extinguish the fact that He is the key component to God’s plan.  In verses 10-11, Jesus reminds the leaders of Psalm 118:22-23.  There the psalmist uses the imagery of building the temple of God.  In such building projects, the stones would be fashioned at a remote quarry and then arrive at the building site with some mark explaining its place in the structure.  The builders are the leaders of God’s people who are supposed to have the skill and knowledge to take the stone and put it in the proper place.  The psalmist speaks of a stone that arrives, but the builders reject it and cast it aside.  However, the God of heaven overrules them and uses it as the most important stone of all, the key foundation stone.  These leaders were rejecting the most important part of God’s plan, and He would intervene so that Christ would indeed be what He was sent to be.

Though our parable is challenging the earthly human leaders, there is another layer to this whole thing.  We forget that Jesus is very aware of the evil, spiritual forces around him.  Just as many of his sayings slighted the religious leaders who overheard them, so too they also slight the spiritual powers in rebellion to God.  This parable is no different.  There were spiritual powers who had been put in charge of the nations after the Tower of Babel incident.  These powers had abused their delegated authority and twisted the peoples’ hearts with false religion that lifted the rebellious spiritual powers up as gods.  They too were complicit in the execution of the Son of God and therefore fall under the same judgment given here.  In fact, the spiritual component makes even more sense than the human.  The religious leaders never looked at Jesus as the Son of God who must be killed so that they can inherit those who belong to God.  However, this makes perfect sense of the spiritual powers.  They knew exactly who Jesus was and apparently believed that they could kill Jesus and seize mankind for themselves.

Nearly 40 years after the death of Jesus, after a time of his disciples warning the nation of Israel of the coming destruction and God’s plan of escape, the Roman legions destroyed the city and dismantled the temple stone by stone.  The people of God, who clung to Christ, went to the world with this rejected stone that had now become the chief stone, not just of Israel, but of the whole world.  If you wonder what in the world God is doing then I would put it this way.  He is offering anyone who will an opportunity to be a part of His people, and to participate in a kingdom that will come into existence at the Second Coming of Jesus.  He is not as enamored with our buildings, institutions, and plans, as much as we are.  He is more interested in you, that you are bearing the fruit of faith, the fruit of trusting His Word and living for Jesus in this dark world.

This brings us to the reality that the promises of God are counterbalanced with the promises of the world and those spiritual powers behind it.  This world promises us better things if we will cast Jesus aside and pursue pleasure, or wealth, or fame and accomplishment.  All of these things still leave you feeling empty in the end.  Why?  They do so because we were not created to be satisfied with temporary and material things.  We are trying to stuff small temporary things into an enormous eternal space that is as vast as the universe.  You cannot fill it with the temporary.  Only God can fill that space.  Only a relationship with Him can fulfill the promise of peace and joy.

Over time the philosophies of the world have turned away from God and religion, and towards man.  We must do it.  No God will do it for us.  These are the mantras of humanistic materialism.  Sadly, too many Christians practically do the same thing by pushing God as far up into the heavens as they can.  He doesn’t intervene.  He expects us to do it for ourselves.  Such philosophies have no real basis for upholding good values.  We can pretend that love is a good value, but if we have a philosophy that states humanity is an accident and there is no absolute truth, then why is love good?  Is life precious?  Without God, we only find the precious nature of life ground out of us on every side.  Hopelessness and despair continue to reign from shore to shore and we have no peace because we have rejected the Prince of Peace.

You may feel like God has not kept His promises to humanity, but remember.  He is the God of the resurrection.  Jesus did not back away from the last step to the cross out of fear and lack of faith in His Father.  He showed us that if we would live for God all the way through our death, without turning back, then He will exalt us in due time.  There is a day when the people of God from every generation will be resurrected in the same way that Jesus was, almost 2,000 years ago.  I hope that you have made the choice to be apart of that day because the promises of God will never fail!

God will keep His promises to us.  If you have waffled on trusting Christ then do it today.  If you have been partially trusting Christ, yet basically floating aimlessly, then choose to fully trust Him today.  If you have been trusting Jesus, then don’t let this world rob you of your victory.  Jesus overcame this world by His faith in the Father, and therefore, He is given a place above every other name.  Through Him, you too can overcome and take your place at His side as the Father brings a fulfillment to every word that He ever gave us.  Jesus rose up from the g rave because He is greater than death.  Those who trust Him cannot be destroyed by death, but only made stronger!

Empty Promises Audio