Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2007 : March 25, 2007

Theme: You Have It All

Church year occasion: Lent 5

Sometimes we wake up on the wrong side of the bed and everything seems to go from bad to worse. And we don't know why. When I was younger, I didn't exactly understand that expression. My bed was against the wall, so I could only wake up on one side of my bed. Nevertheless, my mother would tell me after a particularly grumpy morning that I had managed to wake up on the wrong side of the bed anyway. Now I know what she meant.

But there are other days when we wake up on the right side of the bed, especially this time of year in the spring. The flowers are starting to bloom; the buds are coming out on the trees and bushes; the rabbits are running all over the place; the birds are back. Everything seems right with the world. Even those squabbles that you had with someone the previous week, some of which may have been more than little squabbles, just don't seem that important anymore. Life is good. My family has difficulties, but they're managable. My job isn't the best perhaps, but I can live with it. I've got personal struggles, but somehow I don't feel overwhelmed by them anymore. For some reason, even though I could be complaining about how the car doesn't start and how somebody just toilet-papered my trees and how I have to go to the doctor again and how I just made a fool out of myself in front of all kinds of people at the grocery store when I dropped the glass applesauce jar -- yet, for some reason, everything is OK. And I don't know why.

Today Jesus will tell you why you can wake up every morning on the right side of the bed. Because, through him, you have it all.

The Jews at Jesus' time had it all, but they threw it away. Jesus tells us how in his parable to them. He says, "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time." There was an agreement made between the owner of the vineyard and the workers. At harvest time, they would receive some of it as their pay and the owner would expect some of the harvest as well -- after all, it was his vineyard. But the workers weren't content with just some of harvest -- they wanted it all. So when the owner sent three of his servants, one-by-one, to collect what was rightfully his, the tenants beat and wounded them and threw them out empty-handed, one after the other. And just so you understand how horribly they treated these servants, the word "beat" actually means to "tear the skin off" of something or, in this case, someone. They had everything they could have every wanted, but they wanted more, and they stopped at nothing to get it.

The people Jesus was speaking to, including his enemies, understood what he was saying right away. The owner of the vineyard is God. He poured his love and power into his plan of salvation for the world. And then he entrusted it to a certain group of people -- the nation of Israel, the Jews of the Old Testament. He gave them everything as his people. In Romans 9:4-5, the Apostle Paul says, "Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ." God's people had it all. But what did they do with it? They despised it and God who gave it to them. We can think of how the Israelites worshiped other gods time after time, how they trusted in alliances and earthly powers when times got rough instead of trusting their almighty God, how they constantly grumbled and complained even with all the blessings they had.

But the great sin Jesus speaks of was very specific. In the parable, they mistreated, beat up and threw out of the vineyard the servants of the owner. Who do the servants of the owner represent? The prophets God sent to his people to make sure they knew his Word and his will, and especially so they would recognize the promised Messiah when God would finally send him. But they didn't just mistreat the prophets. They ridiculed them; they rejected their words which were from God himself; they imprisoned them; and, in many cases, they murdered them. After such reckless hatred toward God and his Word, you would expect God to destroy them right then and there. But God was patient. He kept reaching out to his wayward people, even disciplining them with enemy nations so they would turn back to him. But they continued to turn away, all but a few.

But God still loved them all and showed it. In the parable that was shown when the owner of the vineyard finally came to a decision after his servants were mistreated so badly: "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.' But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him."

There are only a few times recorded in Scripture when Jesus cried in his life. One was when his friend Lazarus died. Another was when he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Luke tells us, "As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, 'If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace -- but now it is hidden from your eyes.' " (Luke 19:41-42) Jesus cried because the only thing that would bring them peace with God was trusting in God's Son for their salvation. But they would have no peace because they rejected Jesus as their Savior. Instead, as the parable said, they would kill him. In real life, it happened only a few days after Jesus spoke this parable to them.

As a result of rejecting God's only Son and their only way of salvation, Jesus told them what would happen. "What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others." God's patience with his people was very long, but it would come to an end. After they treated him and his Word of salvation and his servants who spoke that Word so horribly, he would eventually give them what they wanted. They wanted nothing to do with God during their lives, so they would have nothing to do with God for eternity -- they would be shut out of his presence forever. That is the fate of all who reject Jesus as Savior. For them, he will only be their Judge. And as a result, God would give his Word of salvation to others -- Gentiles, you and me. Although non-Jews, or Gentiles, were always part of God's plan, they wouldn't know the message of salvation on a large scale until the Jews rejected it and it was proclaimed to the world.

"When the people heard this, they said, 'May this never be!' " This is the strongest way of saying "No!" that the Greek language has. The people realized how horribly they had treated the prophets. But how long would it last? How many in that crowd would only a few days later be shouting, "Crucify him!"? The Jewish leaders would be. Even then their plot against Jesus was close to fruition. They would murder him. They rejected his servants who brought God's Word to them because they didn't want to hear it, and so they rejected God's Word and the God who gave it to them. They had it all, but they threw it away when they threw the landowner's son out of the vineyard, when they crucified Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem.

Where do we fit into this story? We can very easily see ourselves as the farmers, the tenants who treated God and his Word and his servants so shamefully. We do that when we find better things on the Lord's Day to do than to be in God's house listening to God's Word. We do that when we have our own ideas of what God's Word says, and when we hear something different from one of God's messengers, we simply ignore it because it doesn't fit into our idea of what we think it should say. We are those farmers every time we "don't continue to do everything written in the book of the law," or, in other words, every time we sin. And as a result, God says we are cursed and deserve to be thrown out from God's grace and to be rejected by him forever.

That's what Jesus meant when he said, " 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.' Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed." There's a Jewish proverb that says, "If a stone falls on a pot, woe to the pot. if the pot falls on the stone, woe to the pot. either way, woe to the pot." Anyone who rejects Christ in this life, will be rejected and crushed eternally by Christ in the next life.

Should that not make you ask, "How do I treat Christ?" My sins caused him to die. My rejection of his Word or not using his Word every day means I should be crushed by his anger. But then notice what God does. He says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." Jesus suffered for every time we despised him and his Word. He was punished in our place. He paid the full payment for all our sins. Notice the love the landowner had for his people even when they were treating his servants so badly. He continued to send his servants, he continued to proclaim his Word of salvation to them. And he continues to do that with us as well. And when we are ready to see that our rejection of God's Word and God's will puts us in the same boat as the tenants in the story, may we cry out, "May this never be!" Let us repent of our sins, and turn to the only One who can save us. Let us turn to the landowner's son, Jesus, the Son of God, who takes away the sin of the world. That means he takes away our sins as well -- every one of them. That makes all the difference in our daily lives.

Sometimes we wake up on the wrong side of the bed and everything seems to go from bad to worse. And we don't know why. But as Christians we have every reason to wake up on the right side of the bed. Even if everything is going from bad to worse, we still have a Savior who loved us so much that, in spite of our sins against him, he suffered and died to give us the forgiveness of our every sin, hope right now in a very dark world, and eternal life when he finally takes us from this world. Knowing Jesus, and Jesus knowing you, gives you every reason every morning to wake up on the right side of the bed. Everything might not be right with the world. But that's OK. Everything is right between us and God because of Jesus. You have it all. Amen.