Tag Archives: accountable

They Will Respect My Son!

Christian Life, , ,

THEY WILL RESPECT MY SON!

“Jesus told another story to the people. ‘A man planted a vineyard. He handed it over to farmhands and went on a trip….In time he sent a servant back to the farmhands to collect the profits, but they beat him and sent him off empty-handed….’

“Then the owner of the vineyard said,’…I’ll send my beloved son. They are bound to respect my son.’

“But when the farmhands saw him coming, they quickly put their heads together.’…This is the heir! Let’s kill him and have it all to ourselves.’ They killed him and threw him over the fence…

‘What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do? Right. He’ll come and clean house. Then he’ll assign the care of the vineyard to others…’“.’” Luke 20:9-15. (The Message).

What a daring story! Although Jesus was not afraid of outright exposure, which He sometimes used to strip off the masks of the religious frauds who tried to make out that they had impeccable religious performance records, a story like this one did the job just as well. Since parables were a rabbinical device to be heard or read for identification, they would have had to get the point, which did nothing to endear Jesus to them!

There is both symbolism and character portrayal in this parable. The vine was often used in the Old Testament as a symbol of Israel. “I will sing for the one I love a song about His vineyard: My loved one has a vineyard on a fertile hill…” Isaiah 5:1 (NIV). “Israel was a spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones.” Hosea 10:1 (NIV).

Both Isaiah and Hosea saw Israel as God’s vineyard, planted in their own land and tenderly cared for but treacherously unfaithful to their Creator.

In this story, the focus is on the leaders of God’s ‘vineyard’. The owner entrusted his vineyard to caretakers while he was away. He expected the farmhands to care for it faithfully and to give him the profits which rightfully belonged to him. Instead, the farmhands treated the property as though it were theirs and drove off any attempt to retrieve what was his.

What an exposure of the attitude of Israel’s spiritual leaders! They treated the people, not as a trust, but as their possession, teaching them falsehood and leading them astray so that they could maintain power over them. They resented Jesus’ intrusion because His passion was to show His people what God was really like and to set them free from these unscrupulous overlords.

They respected neither the prophets who were sent to challenge their power and their false teaching, nor the Son Himself who came from the Father to set the record straight and to restore His people to the Father. They had only one intent – to kill the Son so that they could retain the power to dominate His people.

Spiritual leadership is a sacred trust from God and those who are appointed to lead are both responsible and accountable to God because the people are His. What happens to them is the outcome of who leads and how they lead. Leaders and people are bonded together for one purpose – to be a reward for the sacrifice Jesus made to rescue us from the clutches of the devil and to reconcile and restore us to the Father.

“Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account…” Hebrews 13:17a (NIV).

Israel’s religious leaders forgot their sacred trust and were treated accordingly. To those of us who lead comes the reminder that we do not own the people. Our task is to be faithful imitators of our Rabbi so that we can attach them to Him, not to ourselves, for the eternal reward is His, not ours.

Our reward will be to hear His words, “Well done, good and faithful servant…”

Turn to God or Die

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TURN TO GOD OR DIE

“About that time some people came up and told Him about the Galileans Pilate had killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar. Jesus responded, ‘Do you think those murdered Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans. Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you too will die.” Luke 13:1-3 (The Message).

Can you catch the atmosphere of this conversation? Perhaps those who were reporting the incident were expecting an outburst of outrage from Jesus against Pilate’s bloodthirsty cruelty. They would have revelled in seeing His reaction and felt justified for bringing Him the news. They thought that He would have joined with them in condemning Pilate’s action.

What they did not expect was Jesus’ sober and non-theatrical response, turning the tables on them by putting them right in the picture. It was not about Pilate, or those he had murdered, but it was about them. They were in no position to condemn Pilate when they were equally guilty of a life of sin that would kill them if they did not repent.

Jesus made it clear that God does not grade sin when it comes to our eternal destiny. There are no such things as big sins and small sins. Everything that falls short of God’s perfection is sin. God even sees the imperfections of our physical bodies as ‘sin’ because that is not what He created in the beginning – hence the laws in the Old Testament that made provision for diseases, deformities and the shedding of blood. Anything imperfect was called ‘unclean’ – tamai – and required a sacrifice once cleansing had been established.

The fact that people died an unnatural death at the hands of a tyrant was no proof that they were worse sinners than anyone else. It only revealed the decision of an evil person in an evil world. God is so often blamed for the bad things that happen to us as though He were responsible for the choices we make and the consequences of those choices.

“The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.” Psalm 115:16 (NIV). God gave us human beings the task of governing the earth from the beginning, with the understanding that He would set the standards by which to rule since it is His world. Adam chose to reject God’s authority and set up his own standards under the devil’s influence. God did not withdraw His mandate but He does hold us responsible for what we do with it. Hence responsibility brings with it accountability to our Creator and irresponsibility, punishment.

There are no degrees of falling short; we can miss God’s perfection by an inch or a mile; it’s all the same. Missing the mark will bring retribution – that’s what Jesus was getting at. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Galileans who died at the hands of Pilate, they were all guilty. They all fell short and did not avail themselves of the mercy God invited them to receive through the death of His Son.

Comparing ourselves with those we consider worse than us does not absolve us of our guilt. It only reveals our foolishness in believing that we can somehow get past God’s perfect justice. God does not act arbitrarily. His justice is perfectly just because He leaves us to choose.

“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:11, 12 (NIV). God has extended an unconditional invitation to everyone to choose life based on His mercy. If we receive it, we have eternal life. If we reject it, we will experience the eternal hell He warned us about.

The choice is ours.

Monuments To Murderers

Christian Life, , ,

MONUMENTS TO MURDERERS

“’You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’ What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay.’” Luke 11:47-51 (The Message).

This is a serious charge against Jesus’ generation. He was holding them accountable for every murder their ancestors committed. By memorialising murdered prophets, they were sharing in their guilt, according to Jesus. Why was that? Although they were distancing themselves from their ancestors’ actions as a show of their disapproval, in actual fact, in their hearts they were just as guilty because they hated the truth and anyone who preached the truth.

Jesus was spot on because down the line they would do to Him what their ancestors had done to the prophets. But they would not just dispose of God’s prophets sent to tell the truth and warn them of the consequences of breaking God’s laws; they would kill the Son of God who came to show and tell them the truth about the Father and to rescue them from their self-destructive ways.

Jesus told a parable about seeds and soil. Two kinds of ground don’t even give the seed a chance to take root, the hard ground and the shallow ground. What is it that makes our hearts as hard as a pathway? Perhaps among many reasons for hard hearts is the persistent refusal to take God seriously. This takes us right back to the devil’s lie in the Garden of Eden. He duped the first pair into believing that they could make their own rules and get away with it.

And we still believe the same lie! God’s people chose to reject God’s way and make their own way. They worshipped idols and oppressed their fellow-Israelites and God let them face the consequences of their choices. And they did not learn!

Jesus came in person from the Father to show His people what the Father is like and what His government is like, and they rejected Him because they still wanted their own way even though it destroyed them. No wonder He called them ‘hopeless’!

But what about us? How do we fit into this damning accusation? If we refuse to take Jesus seriously, we retain the same guilt as the religious leaders of His day who yelled, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ together with the crowd who bayed for His blood.

Every person who hears the truth but refuses to believe it will carry the same guilt and pay the same price as those who murdered the prophets and who demanded Jesus’ death. It is impossible to destroy the truth. Truth is eternal because God is eternal and God is truth. Truth will destroy those who reject it. God takes no pleasure in destroying anyone but He cannot deny Himself. The choice is ours.