Fifth Sunday in Lent 3.17/13

Fifth Sunday in Lent 3/17/13 Text: Luke 9-20 Title: Whose Church is it? This Sunday I want us to take a closer look at the gospel reading for today. It shows us what happens when God’s people do not hold the Word of God central to their faith. It is a familiar story; one that I would wager everyone knows. Just before the reading for today we are told that Jesus is drawing large crowds, for as we are told elsewhere in God’s Word, he taught as one having authority and not like the teachers of the law who, for the most part just gave their opinions concerning the readings that they were studying that day in the synagogue. The religious leaders verbally attacked Jesus, as they questioned who had given him the authority to speak so clearly on the scripture he was teaching. Jesus responds to their question of who gave him the authority to speak as he did by telling them the parable that we are looking at today. I am sure that Jesus was not very far into the parable, before they knew who he was talking about; them. They knew that they were repeating Israel’s long history of running off and killing the prophets of God, who by the way the people believed, truly believed, spoke in God’s place when they preached. But they thought, just like the religious leaders of the past, that even though they had done all those things God would never take away their positions. So when Jesus said that the owner of the vineyard would destroy those who were to care for the vineyard and give to others they were horrified. No way. It cannot happen, for after all they were God’s chosen people to care for the people of Israel. It just could not happen. They could not believe it. God couldn’t do that to his chosen people. They were sure of that, for God had formed them himself. He just couldn’t do it. But then Jesus dropped the bombshell and everything changed. “What then is this that is written: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” That struck them, for Jesus was claiming that he was the cornerstone and that anyone who rejected him would be broken or worse yet crushed. Whether you were broken or crushed, either way was not good, for as one Rabbi wrote, “If a cup falls on a stone or if the stone falls on a cup, either way the cup ends up broken. They were horrified. If it were not for Jesus’ popularity they would have drug him out of the temple and killed him right then and there. The question is what went wrong with God’s chosen people; the people he had created, who he had rescued time and time again for thousand years? Why had they become such lousy caretakers of God’s vineyard Israel? All questions that need to be answered, so that we can learn from them. The answer is really very simple. They were in trouble because both the religious leaders and the people had forgotten who the head of the church was. God’s pure and infallible Word had been replaced with their own interpretations, their own applications, their own rules, and their own ideas of how to worship God. The Jewish religion had become their religion and not God’s. The Jewish religion was in a sad state. They thought, by the time Jesus was born that the Messiah the prophets had spoken of was going to be an earthly king who would drive out the Romans and restore the nation of Israel to its glory years when everyone lived a peaceful and fulfilling life. They just could not see that the Jesus standing right there before them teaching the Word of God with authority was the Messiah that the prophets of old had spoken about. They did not purposefully change God’s Word. It happened slowly; a little here, a little there, as they put human logic above their faith in God’s Word, as he had given it to them. They had to keep up with the times. God’s Word had to be updated. The old Laws were not good enough. Times had changed. There had to be new laws that better fit the times. And in the process God and the authority of his Word got lost and the Jewish people were crushed by the Romans in 70 AD. In the Bible study we are doing on Sunday morning titled Broken: Seven Christian rules that every Christian should break as often as possible, we have found how easy it is to substitute our human ideas and rules, thinking there Christian rules, but really are not, for God’s ideas and rules, as given to us in the Bible. And in the process God and the authority of his Word have gotten lost just as God and the authority of the Word had gotten lost in Jesus’ day. While there are many examples of what I just said, I think one of the clearest and most dangerous doctrinal changes to our faith has been the acceptance of evolution by Christians. It has far reaching consequences, much more than just saying that what God did not do what he said he did when he created the world and humankind. To believe that we came out of slime, than gradually advanced from simple animals, to monkeys, to a mixture of human and monkey, then to full humanness is to say that God also lied to us when he had put down for us the words of Romans 5:12 were we are told, "12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Think about it. In evolution from the very beginning, long before humankind is said to have walked upright there has been death. There has to be, if for no other reason than the survival of the fittest. But God says there was no death until Adam sinned. That poses a real problem if you believe in evolution, for evolution says there is death before God says there is death. Somebody is wrong; scientists or God. That is just one doctrine of many in God’s Word that has to go away. Either evolution, actually to be accurate I should say macroevolution is right or God’s Word is right. Both cannot be right because they are in conflict with each other. With the science of evolution the old traditions have to go, even though it is through the traditions of the apostles that God is speaking to us in the Bible. The old ways have to go, so that the new ways can be taught. Who wants to hear the old teachings that they are sinners, desperate sinners, who cannot save themselves? That type of teaching is a downer and does nothing for one’s self-esteem. It is much better to teach that God wants you to be happy even if it means that you have to lower God’s standards by changing the meaning of his Word. Sin is not sin, but only human weakness. What we do, we do because of outside influences. We are basically good and given enough time we will solve the problems of life and become, in a sense god’s ourselves. That is what is believed and in the process God and the authority of his Word are lost. That, my dear brothers and sisters is the sad state of Christianity today. We have, as a people, put ourselves above God and in doing so have lost God’s favor. What to do? We must repent, realizing our drive to find god in ourselves, throwing ourselves on his mercy, as we accept his authority as we know in the Word of God. God does not force anyone to love him, for what kind of love is that? Everyone must decide for themselves whether or not they are going to believe God’s Word is the infallible true word of God concerning our salvation. It is simply a matter of faith and human logic cannot be put above faith, for faith trusts that God’s Word is true in all it says. God and his saving work simply can’t be logically figured out because God’s Word comes from the mind of God who is so far above us in our thinking that as God’s Word says in 1 Corinthians 1:25 " For the foolishness (as if he has any which is the point) of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God (as if he is weak) is stronger than men." Left to our own devices we are doomed. But Jesus, the rejected stone, the Son that was killed, conquered sin, death, and the power of the devil with his holy life, his suffering, his death on a cross, and his resurrection from the dead. He is now the living cornerstone for me, for you, and for all who believe. Amen.