Christ my King. And on the second, men. ♪ Standing on the promises of red on the table ♪ is Ladies, please. I say. everyone on the last is is Jesus Christ. ♪ His fire and sun is unchanging grace ♪ ♪ In every wildness where we live ♪ ♪ Our anchor won't fail in the faith ♪ ♪ God rest his soul in perfect strength ♪ ♪ All of the ground will you safely stand ♪ ♪ All of the ground will you safely stand ♪ He took this vow, and it is vowed, so for the end, thou wilt be proud. Let all the crowd my soul be swayed. He, then, is all I know and say. One voice of sound, hear what I say. All around me singing stand, all around me Finish the chorus just with the voices, but everyone on the fourth verse. He shall come with trumpets sound O'er the land of the living and the dying, Rest in his righteousness alone, For Christ is standing for the throne. On Christ the solid rock I stand, All around is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. Please be seated. ♪ Beautiful hands that hold the bread ♪ ♪ Care for the sick and raise the dead ♪ ♪ Hands of healing, comfort and healing ♪ ♪ Beautiful hands of Jesus ♪ ♪ Beautiful plants waiting for me ♪ ♪ Bound to a cross that I might go free ♪ ♪ Weighing the price that justice demands ♪ ♪ Torn by the nails ♪ ♪ Beautiful hands ♪ ♪ Beautiful hands so strong and kind ♪ ♪ Held to a cross by love divine ♪ ♪ Broken and bleeding ♪ is You who shelter and guide you, beautiful hands of Jesus. Oh beautiful land, bleeding for me. Bound to a cross that I might go free. Paying the price that just as we met. Born by the name beautiful beautiful You would take your scriptures and open to Luke chapter 20. Charles would come and read those for us. We'll start at the beginning of the chapter and read through verse 19. And it came to pass that on one of those days, as he taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes came upon him with the elders. and spake unto him, saying, Tell us, by what authority doest thou these things? Or who is he that gave thee this authority? And he answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one thing, and answer me. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned within themselves, saying, If we shall say from heaven, he will say, Why then thou believest him not? But if we say of men, all the people will stone us, for they'd be persuaded that John was a prophet. And they answered that they could not tell whence it was. And Jesus said unto them, neither tell I you by what authority I do these things. Then began he to speak to the people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard and led it forth to husbandmen and went into a far country for a long time. And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard But the husbandmen beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent another servant, and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. And again he sent a third, and they wounded him also, and cast him out. Then said the Lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. It may be they will reverence him when they see him. But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. What therefore shall the Lord of the vineyard do unto them? He shall come and destroy these husbandmen and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. And he beheld them and said, what is this then that is written? The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder. And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him, and they feared the people, for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them." If the men would go ahead and come up from the offering, I want to explain just a little bit about the Thanksgiving and Christmas offering that we're taking. That offering will be our Christmas gift to the people that minister to us, to our church staff and to our school staff as well. And we have a goal of $20,000 for that offering. And the way we're going to distribute that is based on the amount of time that people spend ministering among us. So the full-time staff, both the church and the school staff, will get a portion of that gift money that you give. And then as people work less hours among us in ministry, then we'll adjust that downward, but that's how we'll divide it. So it won't be based on whether you work for the school or the church or whether you're the pastor. It'll be based on how much time people minister to us. So we want to give that gift to them. And so we hope you participate in that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the great gift that you have given to us as we read this morning that you gave your very son. We pray that we would be generous in giving back to you. And we thank especially at this time of year, the many things that we enjoy, the blessings that you give us, the many things that we have to be thankful for. Help us to live our lives that way and help us to act on that thankfulness that we have. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. do do so so Thank you, Larry. I think that could properly be called his Christmas guitar. Thank you very much for sharing that with us. We're going to sing one final song together as a congregation. It's 464, but you may know it by heart. While we sing, those going to junior church may be dismissed. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord. Please stand as we sing. O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. is is I am thy help, and I still will be. While stricken with health, ye have taught me to stand. I am thy righteous son, it was in death. ♪ Then through my retrials and salvation mine ♪ ♪ Thy grace, O salvation, shall be my supply ♪ ♪ One day it shall have heard me, I hope thee excel ♪ ♪ Thy cause to pursue ♪ Let's do the last verse all by ourselves. Voices singing out good and strong the soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose I. Amen. Peace, peace. All right, thank you for that good singing. And let's turn in the gospel of Luke chapter 20. And what an opportunity as we were just thinking about the promises of God, he will never forsake those who are his. And Jesus said, no man can pluck them out of his hand. And what a security and promise and assurance that we have that he that hath a son hath life. In Luke chapter 20, we've read the passage of scripture already, and just thinking about as we introduce, I grew up with four siblings, I was the middle of five children, and so I had an older brother and an older sister, and then two younger brothers. There are 16 years between the oldest and the youngest, And so my oldest sister sibling is seven years older than I am. And then my brother is five. And then there's four years between me and the next. And then eight years between me and the last one. And so as I remember specifically growing up, I remember at 12 years old, I was able to finally get my own room. because my oldest sibling went off to college and so I was able to confiscate, I mean take, I mean inherited... my own room and I was thankful for that I also remember when I was able to stay home and by myself that was I didn't have to have a babysitter that was a big deal to me at that time because previous to that you know we had had church people that had kept us graciously when my parents would go away my grandmother came a few times And we were able to stay with the different ones. But when my older brother would keep us, we enjoyed being babysat by my older brother because we could wrestle, we could play, we could watch TV, we could play Nintendo, and those types of things. But when my older sister or my sister kept us, it was a different story. We had to do chores. We had to clean the house, and clean the kitchen, and mow the yard, and clean our bedrooms, and wash the clothes, and do the laundry. She was the boss, right? And I didn't want my older sister to babysit us, because that meant we couldn't have fun, we couldn't play around. She, you know, she ran the roost there, getting us all doing all kinds of things, so that it was nice and clean when mom got back. Now, um... I don't know if you remember any of those kind of memories when someone else was the boss of you, could tell you what to do and make you clean up. I use that as an opening illustration because when we concluded chapter 19, Jesus had settled into the temple and he'd become the boss. He was given instructions. He was cleaning up. He was doing the laundry, he was cleaning up the temple of God. He had marched into Jerusalem as king of the Jews on a colt of a donkey. He had shown himself that he was the promised Messiah who would be the king, and he had a kingdom. He wept over Jerusalem and pronounced judgment as the divine prophet. When his eyes first saw that temple as he crossed the Mount of Olives, they welled up with tears and he began to lament and weep over the rejection of the truth and the rejection of this Messiah King. And then he marched at the end of chapter 19 into the temple complex and he overturned the money changers. He made a display in a violent place. John chapter two records that he made a cord of three strands and he used a whip. And it possibly at this second occasion, Jesus may have done the same exact thing. Remember, the court of the Gentiles had been filled instead of a place where people could come from all over the world and see the light and worship God. Now it had been a place of a fanfare and a spectacle and a money-making place where people did not want to come. And Jesus stepped in. Now no one could go from one side of the temple to the next side without showing their driver's license to one of the 12 or the Lord Jesus. We know that because Mark 12 and verse 16 in the parallel passage says this, and he would not suffer that any man would carry any vessel through the temple. Then in verse 19, Mark says, and when the evening was come, he went out of the city and in the morning he came back. And he taught the people in the temple. The indication is that Jesus did this display of authority on that Sunday when he marched into the temple on that Palm Sunday and set himself up as the authority over the temple. Then he left and he came back on that Monday morning and assumed his position as boss. And if you bring the harmony of the Gospels, the three synoptic Gospels, they record for us that possibly Jesus made this display of authority over the course of the first three days, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. On Tuesday, He comes in confrontation with the religious leaders because they've had enough, and He marches out of the Mount of Olives, and we have the Olivet Discourse that's recorded for us in Matthew 24 and 25. Now, remember the temple. to the Jewish people was the most sacred and religious place. It was the epic center of their religion. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the Jewish people would cry out. The high priest and the Sanhedrin and the priest all controlled this entire Judaism all throughout the world from that center spot on that hill of Zion in the temple, which was built in the complex of Herod. And Luke draws our attention on that day, the temple being turned into a place of compromise, into a place of confusion. Instead of coming to Jehovah and worshipping Jehovah and worshipping the King, the Lord of the temple, now they were paying homage to the laws and the demands of the religious leaders. What they said went. For the very first time that Jesus came to the temple in Luke, chapter two, as a 12 year old boy in his. You remember he came into the temple and pronounced this is my father's house and I must be about my father's business in Luke, chapter two. The first time that Jesus came to the temple in his earthly ministry, he found in John chapter 2 the temple was polluted and the confusion that was coming in and he cleansed it. Now at the end of Jesus's earthly ministry, just three days or four days before he is crucified, Jesus marches back into the temple and he said, this is my house and it shall be called a house of prayer. You've made it into a den of robbers, made it a parade and a spectacle. You see, there are some problems in the temple. We have problems, too. We talked about last week. We have problems with allowing Jesus to cleanse out. We have problems saying with the psalmist in Psalm 139, search me, O God, and know me, try me and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. We have a problem. We don't like to come under submission like the donkey did to its creator. We don't like to come into submission like Peter does when he leaves his nets and he leaves his boats and he says, Lord, I'll follow you. We have a problem because we struggle putting ourselves back up upon the throne. Now that brings us to chapter 20. Luke sandwiches this section verses 19 or 1 through 19 with confrontation. Look at verse 1 as it says, and it came to pass that on one of those days, probably Tuesday morning after he's been doing this since Sunday, that he taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel and the chief priests and scribes came upon him with the elders. Look in verse 19. And the chief priests and the scribes that same hour sought to lay hands on him. They feared the people and they perceived that he had spoken this parable against him. So right in the middle of this section between confrontation with the chief priests, scribes and elders, clearly what Jesus has done did not sit well with these people. The main body here against Jesus in the high court of the Jews would be seen as the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was set up as the court, that would include the high priest and all of his under-priestlings, if you want to put it that way, and then the elders and the scribes, the ones who in the temple were in control of the Holy Scriptures, they were the ones that the Magi came to, and Herod said, search the Scriptures, and the scribes went back and searched the Scriptures in the temple courts to find the place of where the Messiah would be born. It was the scribes and the elders and the high priest that made up, to some extent, in the temple complex, the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of Israel. Now, this seems to be the only time in the Gospels that Jesus actually is confronted by the Sanhedrin while He's a free man. The next time the Sanhedrin gather together in front of Jesus, He will be chained. And there will be a mock court and the high priest Caiaphas will be in charge and will start to bring in witnesses. And Jesus is not free at that moment. The only other time that Jesus stands before this Supreme Court is on this occasion when they come and confront him on that Tuesday morning of the Passion Week. And at the end of this confrontation, the Supreme Court with the high priest will be so angry at Jesus that they will say, we've got to arrest him and we must destroy him. But they can't do it in front of the people. So it's at this point that they say, we need to find someone on the inside so that we can arrest him, not in public, but at night. And we can already have him tried, convicted, and on a cross. before anybody gets up on that Passover day. And all of that kind of comes to a head at this confrontation in Luke chapter 20. Jesus is doing this all on purpose. He knows that this will incite them to arrest him and kill them. He's not caught off guard. The disciples are the ones caught off guard. He's already told the disciples on multiple occasions, I'm going to Jerusalem. I will be delivered to the hands of sinners. They will beat him. They will scourge him and they will crucify him. And on the third day, he will rise again. And you remember, Peter and the disciples said, Lord, this will never happen. And Jesus said, Get thee behind me, Satan. Now, in this chapter, it's outlined. I put an outline here over the 19 verses and we'll attempt to go through these this morning as quickly as possible. The first off is the challenge in verses 1 and 2. The challenge to Jesus' authority. Then there's a counter-question from verses 3 down to verse 8. And then there's a comprehensive parable that is given from verses 9 down to verse 18. Let's look at the challenge. The challenge here is Jesus has marched into the temple and He is preaching the gospel. He is teaching them. Remember Jesus, at 12 years old, who came into the temple, was sitting before the doctors and the lawyers, and they were amazed at the questions He was asking. They were dazzled by, even the common folk, by the understanding of this little boy. In chapter 19, in verse 47, remember in previous chapter, He taught daily in the temple. Mark chapter 12 and verse 17 said that he taught them. Verse 18 of Mark 12 says, and they were all astonished at his doctrine. Mark tells us in verse 27 of that chapter that he was walking in the temple. So Jesus is doing more than just checking people's driver's license. He's doing more than just checking whether somebody's carrying a vessel from one side to the next or overturning the money changers and keeping people out from extorting one another. Jesus is also teaching and preaching. And what is he teaching and preaching around this complex? Well, in verse 1, the scripture tells us what he's teaching and preaching. He's preaching the gospel. Do you see that in verse 1? He's preaching the good news. That's the word. The gospel is the good news. You see, the temple sacrifices, they were bad news. There was a lot of blood in the Passover. There was a lot of separation. Remember, if you were a little boy or a little child that was coming up, you've had this little land that you've been taking care of, and you've been making sure that you fed it, and it was this special, and it was brought into your home, and it was cherished, and now you are bringing it up to the temple, and there before the priests, they were to slit its neck and slaughter its blood your family, that thing that you had brought in as part of your family. That was bad news. The corruption of the temple was bad news. The money changers in the temple was bad news. Caiaphas and his cronies were bad news. But Jesus is pointing out to the people in the temple good news. He's correcting the confusion. He's directing the information of the people that had come for the Passover to the good news of the gospel. The good news. One author states this good news is only good news to those who know the bad news. It's not good news if you don't know the bad news. Do you know the bad news this morning? You know, the bad news says that we are all sinners come short of God's glory. The bad news is, no matter how much righteousness and good deeds that you have to God, they are as filthy rags. No matter how many times you go to church, or how many times you read your Bible, or how many sacrifices that you make on your behalf, or how much you put into offering plate, the bad news is, it is never enough! The bad news is that there's judgment and we have the wrath of God over us. And the penalty that we deserve is a separation from God from all eternity in a place called hell, for the wages of sin is death. And there is none righteous, no, not one. We are all like sheep gone astray. Every one of us have turned to our own way. That's the bad news. And there is no hope for us in and of ourselves. No religion, no church, no good deed, no merit that you can ever do to somehow merit the grace of God. It's bad news. The bad news to the Jewish people was the fact that they had a list of laws of do's and don'ts and thou shalt and thou shalt not. Then on top of that, the Pharisees had added over 600 other laws. And then the religious leaders and Caiaphas and all of these different things that you had to do it just to be a Jew and just to follow God and all of these things just weighed heavy upon them like a burden that they could not get over. And yet marches into the temple that day, that Passover, the last Passover, and standing before them is the Lamb of God that will take away the sins of the world. And Jesus says in the midst of the bad news, in the midst of the reality that you're all sick. And there is no human cure. You're all blind, you're all deaf, you're all lame, you've all got leprosy. You've got a sickness that you cannot cure, but the good news is there's a doctor in the house. There's a shepherd who's come to seek and to save that which was lost. And there are a lot of people that are surrounded in the temple, the religious leaders on the first hand. They don't believe there is good news because they don't see the bad news. You see, Jesus had said in the Gospel of Luke, the whole need not a physician. Why? Because they don't see themselves as sick. So Jesus preaching the good news in the context of a group of people, these were people who were short like Zacchaeus. These were people who were once blind like Barnabas. These were people like fishermen, like Peter, who knew that he was a doubting person, or doubting Thomas, or these disciples who knew they were just the weak things of the world. And yet they needed a Savior. And there Jesus stood preaching in the temple good news. In chapter 19 and verse 48, look at what it says. And he could not. This is the Pharisees and the religious leaders and the chief priests that tried to destroy him. But they could not of what they might do for all the people were attentive to him. They were listening to him. I like what one translation says. They hung on his every word. Listen, you if you know that you're sick. And you know there's a penalty over your life and you know the wrath of God is over you and your eternity is hell. When the Savior steps up, when the shepherd comes in and he begins to talk, you hang on his every word because you know he's telling you good news. He's saying that I am the door. And when Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7 verse 28 and 29, listen to what the people said. And when he had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one who had authority. One who had power, and notice what Matthew says, not like the scribes. So you're the Sanhedrin, you're the religious leaders, you're the scribes, you're the elders, you're the high priest, and you're standing back there in your little group and you're watching as Jesus is marching around the temple. He's cast out the money changers. He's whipped everyone into shape. He won't let anyone pass from one door to the next. without going through his authority. And then he walking around and he's preaching the good news that he is the king and there is a kingdom and you can come into the kingdom if you will come through him. And the religious leaders see the power and authority that Jesus has as everyone is hanging on his every word. And then they start to realize as people start gathering around him, they're no longer following them. There's a problem. Jesus was teaching biblically. Jesus had the word of God coming out of his mouth. You see, the scribes in the Sanhedrin were babbling on about man's opinion. Rabbi so-and-so said this. Rabbi so-and-so said that. Rabbi so-and-so said this. And they would go around and people would come to them and they continued to blabber off their own opinion. But when Jesus marched in, he's not saying Rabbi so-and-so or Rabbi so-and-so. He's saying, thus saith the Lord. You know what we need to hear? Jesus understands what the people needed to hear that day. They needed to hear the Word of God, not man's opinion. There are a lot of churches that are out there today that are having services all across America and all across the world that are blabbering on about man's opinion. And what the people need to hear is they need to flip open their Bible and they need to see what does God say. That's exactly what Jesus was doing. Jesus was pointing them to the word of God and telling them what God's word said. And in this pages of the scripture, Jesus was preaching the Bible and he was telling them, look it up and see what God said and realize that it is being fulfilled in your very ears at this moment. And this is what Jesus was going and doing in the temple, and it quickly made them mad. If I go at this pace, we're not going to finish 19 verses. Look at what the challenge is in verse 2. And he spake unto him, and they said, Tell us, by what authority do you do these things? And who in the world made you boss? Two questions. Where are you getting your authority from? And who told you to do this? You know what they're wanting Jesus to do? They're wanting Jesus to pull out his driver's license. And show them his credentials. What degree do you have? What authority do you have to come in here and make yourself boss of this place? Are you a high priest? Are you from the tribe of Levi? Where are you from? What school did you learn under? Who were your professors? And what gives you the right to come in here and to say you can't come in here and do this and overturn the tables? Who gives you the right to march into Jerusalem and claim the Zechariah passage that you're the king of the Jews and that you're coming in and you're setting the authority and you're becoming the priest and you're the prophet and you're the king. You see, they're challenging him. By what things do you come and do this? Jesus has upset the normal. He's come into the temple and he's changed things. And he starts to answer the deepest questions in people's lives. And they all had the answers. And Jesus literally and figuratively was turning the tables upside down. What authority? What power? Remember, this word was used of the centurion who came to Jesus in Luke chapter seven and verse eight. And he said, I am not worthy for you to come into my home. I am a man of authority and I know I'm a man of power and authority. And when I say to one come and when I say to another go, they come and go. And Jesus, you can at your word. Command and anything you want. will be done. That's the same word that they're asking. Who gave you the power to come in here and do what you're doing? You see, Jesus had displayed power and authority over the winds and waves. He had displayed power and authority over the sick and the disease, the demons and death. He had had power over all things. And his power had not been really displayed in the temple over the religious leaders face to face. They had all heard it second hand. Some of them had been sent out as delegates. And then they came back to the high priest and told them. But now Jesus is standing in the temple and is face to face with this high court of the land. And they are challenging his authority. They want Jesus to answer this. Is this power from man or is this power from heaven? And if Jesus claimed that his power was from heaven, then they could get him on the charge of blasphemy. What right do you have to come in here and make yourself Lord over this temple? Now, I wonder, oftentimes us siblings, when we were fussing and fighting in the house, oftentimes, hey, we were just normal kids like anyone else. And oftentimes what happens between siblings is one sibling starts to tell the other sibling what to do. You need to buckle up. You need to this and you need to this and that. And we would say, You're not the boss of me. That would be what we would say back and forth to one another. You're not the boss of me. Mama, the boss of me. Daddy, the boss of me. Now, as Jesus marches in and he sets himself up as the authority, I wonder sometimes if we have the same spirit and attitude that the Sanhedrin have. You're not the boss of me. How in the world would puny man shake his fist in the face of the Almighty God and say, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Can God do this and question the authority of the Almighty Creator? It's exactly what's going on here. There is a challenge that is taking place. There's a counter question and we can go through this very quickly because I want to get to the parable in verses 3 down to verse 8. And when they asked him, Jesus answered and said, I'll ask you one thing and you answer me. The baptism of John, was that from heaven or was that from man? Jesus always answers a question with a question. He's done this a lot as we've walked through the gospel of Luke. Jesus will oftentimes turn the table back onto them and put them in the hot seat. And notice what they reason. The scripture says in verse five, they reason together. They're in a dilemma. One translation says they huddled together in a group to discuss this. The word reason is the idea that they come together and they're talking about it. They just said, OK, you are. What authority do you have? And Jesus says, I've got a question for you. John the Baptist, what authority did he have? Did he come from heaven? Or did it come from man? And they say, OK, come on over here. Let's get. And they get around in their group of 20 or 30 or however many there are, and they're actually doing a huddle. I reminded me this last doing this study when one of the things that we always enjoyed at Thanksgiving season is that when we got together as a family, especially as kids, we would always be able to get together. And on Thanksgiving Day, after we had eaten all of the food and we watched a little bit of football, we'd go out in the yard and we'd play football. And I remember as a little kid, my dad would get around. Sometimes we'd have other church people and kids that would come and play. And my dad would get us together and he would be the all-time quarterback on both teams. And then he would say, okay, now we're here, we're going to, we're going to huddle together. And so he'd get all three or four of us as little kids and we'd get together and he said, okay, we got to have a huddle. We got to have a plan. And this way he would do it. He said, I want you to go here and you to go to here. You go to here. When I say hut, you go. And there we go. And we clap and we go back and we go, all right, ready. And we didn't even know where we were going. We just, he'd say hut and we would just run. And we just kind of got together. We were reasoning together. We were seeing what the plan was. You can see these men as they come together and all these religious leaders who've got all of these degrees. And now they're stumped and they're talking, how are we going to answer this? If we say that John was from heaven, he received his authority from heaven, then he's going to turn around and he's going to say, why didn't we follow him? If we say that his authority was from men, then the people who had just heard are going to be angry with us because they perceive that he's a prophet, that he actually came from God. Jesus put him in a catch-22. And so notice how they come out here in this phrase. They come out and they plead the fifth. All right? It says in verse 7, and they answered. that they could not answer. We can tell you we don't know. So here they they plead and they put they put it back to Jesus, but Jesus has put him in a place and he says in verse eight and Jesus said, neither will I tell you by what authority. Jesus said, if you can't answer the simple question about where John the Baptist came from and where his authority came from, that I'm not going to answer Your question, not directly. You see, I have written in the side of my Bible, light rejected brings more darkness. But light receives brings more light. This is a sad display of the point here. Jesus condemns them with his silence. Now, oftentimes people say, you know what we cried, Lord, Lord, in your name. Look at all the religious things that we did in your name. And yet they will stand before God Almighty and he will say, I never knew you. Depart from me. What a what a shocking reality that they rejected the light of John. And Jesus said, if you rejected the light of John, I'm not going to give you an explanation of the power by which I came from. But he doesn't finish there. He actually, not within this counter question, now he responds in verse 9. And the Bible said he began to speak to the people this parable. A comprehensive parable. Now Jesus tells a story. And this parable is one of the most important parables, I believe, that Jesus tells. It is the last parable in the Gospel of Luke. Some have indicated that it possibly is the last parable that Jesus will tell. Just in a matter of two days, he's going to be on the cross. And so on this Tuesday of the Passion Week, he gives this last parable. And you know what? It's probably one of the most important parables that Jesus ever tells. In fact, it is a comprehensive parable. It's a story that gives us the whole picture of God's timetable in human history. This parable encompasses the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation. in one swoop. The whole scope of Scripture and the history told in one story, in one parable. You want to know what God is doing in history from Genesis to Revelation? Read this parable. If you were going to take someone into the Scripture and tell them the whole Bible, the whole history of salvation, history of God's plan for human history from Genesis to Revelation, there are two places in the Scripture you can go. You can go to Revelation chapter 12. And in Revelation chapter 12, John sees in an apocalyptic form the story of the whole Bible. And then you can take them to this parable. in Luke chapter 20. And here in this parable, you can see the whole story of the Bible. One author wrote this. This is the best description in the New Testament for God's program in the world. You read the parable. Can I just point out the story for us here in the characters? This parable tells about a vineyard. Remember in a parable, it is a earthly story with a spiritual application, with heavenly truth. And oftentimes Jesus would interpret the parable and give us the explanation. And sometimes Jesus would leave the parable as is, causing them to search. And sometimes the parable itself was just plain enough that you didn't have to go any further. to try and figure out the interpretation. And that's the conclusion at the end of this story. The scribes and Pharisees and the religious leaders and the high priests, they know exactly what Jesus is saying in this parable. Do you? Well, let's walk through it. The vineyard. The vineyard is a garden of olives or grapes. It was set out. This vineyard pictures for us the people of God, the nation of Israel. The Old Testament often used a vineyard as a symbol of God's people. Isaiah 5, Jeremiah 2, and Ezekiel 15 specifically. That the nation of Israel was like a garden. And when Jesus mentioned a certain man had a vineyard, the religious leaders in the temple would have automatically understood that what that symbolized, that vineyard symbolized the nation of Israel, God's people in the Old Testament. A special garden of a wonderful place of peace and delight, a place that God would bring forth his people and bring about his glory over all the nations. This garden where God met with his people and gave them his law through Moses and gave them a land in Joshua and settled his name with them and gave them a place to worship. This vineyard would begin in Genesis chapter 12 and work its way all the way to the book of Malachi, almost the entire Old Testament. This would be the time frame of the Old Testament scriptures from Genesis 12 with the Abraham being called out of the earth, the Chaldees, and then given a land and given a promise and given a son and given a people that would eventually spread itself out into the land with a nation and a king and a law and a government and high priest and worship. And it would filter itself all the way to the time of Jesus's birth in the book of Matthew. This vineyard speaks. of the nation of Israel. They clearly understood that. Notice in the passage here, not only the vineyard that Jesus speaks of, but a certain man planted a vineyard. Look down at verse 13. Then said the Lord of the vineyard. Look at verse 15. So they cast him out. What therefore shall the Lord of the vineyard do unto them? If the vineyard is the nation of Israel, who is the Lord of the vineyard? Who is the certain man who planted and established and made his promises with this vineyard? This is none other than God Yahweh, God Jehovah. This is none other than the Lord who put his name upon them, who owns them, and bound himself to them, and became his people, and he became their God. And like a father to them, like a husband to them, he bound himself, as Hosea says, like a husband to his wife. This is God the Father. is this owner of the vineyard. Then you look down at the husbandman in verse 9, it said, and he lent it forth. In other words, he allowed the husbandman now to take charge of it and to take care of it as he went into a far country. Now, the word husbandman here can be translated tenants or maybe just a practical way, farmers. One who cultivates. One who gets with a shovel and a hoe and digs the ground and takes care of the vine and picks the fruit and make sure it's watered and taken care of. Now, who are the husbandmen? Who are the farmers? Who are the tenants? You see, these were the fathers and the judges and the kings and the leaders and the priests and religious leaders, such as the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and the scribes. You see, God had given a responsibility and a stewardship to those who were in leadership in the land of Israel. They were given a stewardship to produce fruit. Oftentimes, the prophets would talk of the leaders as being God's shepherds to lead his people and to point them to the owner, to the Lord of the harvest, to the Lord of the vineyard. These leaders, kings, oftentimes are judges or priests or religious leaders were given the accountability to the Lord to lead the people in the word, to honor him in their worship, to honor him with the temple and the sacrifices to produce fruit. To till the ground, they were given the stewardship to point people to God. These were the husband and these were the farmers. And then you have three servants that were sent here. As we sell in the scripture, they said in verse 10, in a season was sent a servant to the husbandman that they would give him the fruit of the vineyard. But the husbandman beat him and sent him away empty. Then there was another in verse 11, the husbandman who was sent another servant. They beat him also. They entreated him shamefully and they send him away. And then there was a third servant who was sent. And yet they wounded him also and they cast him out. The first two they sent away, humiliated. But the last one they took and they wounded him and they beat him and they took him by the nap of the neck and they cast him out and threw him. Out and rejected him. Who are the servants, the servants for the Old Testament prophets that God sent to his people? These are the Old Testament men who spoke the truth of God to the people, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel, Hosea and Zechariah, Elijah and Samuel and Moses. And then last, John the Baptist. They were sent to call the people back to him. Oftentimes they were warning the people of the false shepherds and false prophets who were telling them lies, leading them astray. Instead of leading them to God's word, they were actually leading them away from God's word. Instead of bringing them to the temple and pointing them to the light, they were bringing them to the temple and pointing them to themselves. The money changers in their own religion and their own laws and their own burdens so that people would fall down and worship them. The writer of Hebrews says this, talking about these servants. They were stoned. They were sawn asunder. They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goats, destitute and mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. When Martin Luther came to this point in the parable, Martin Luther cried out and said, if I were God and the world treated me as they had treated him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces. What do you think the Lord of the vineyard would do after sending three servants and every one of them being beaten and cast out? I would be like Martin Luther. I would have given up. I would have wiped them out and started out with a whole new people. But what does the Lord of the vineyard do? He doesn't give up. No, he sends them his son. Look down in the passage. And the Lord of the vineyard are in verse. Yeah. In verse 13, then said the Lord of the vineyard, what shall I do? I will send my beloved son. And it may be that they will honor or reverence him when they see him. I will send my beloved son. The most precious son, the most valuable things in the eyes of the Lord, the owner, the father, he sent him into such a terrible place so that they might reverence him and honor him and bow before him when they see him. That's the intent. Can you imagine sending your child into the streets of Mexico all alone or of Mexico City all alone? Can you imagine sending your little girl down into the wolves walking the streets of any major city in the United States? I read just this last week. The Venezuelan gangs and human trafficking that's taking place in the four major cities in the state of Tennessee. It frightens me what I'm hearing today in America. I couldn't even watch that movie last year that came out of the horrors of the things that they're doing to children, the human trafficking, that movie, The Sound of Freedom. Now you get that in your mind and then try and fathom John 3 16. For God so loved the world. That he gave his only begotten son. knowing what is going to happen to him, knowing how they would treat him, knowing how they treated the prophets before him. What would you do? Would you take your son? Would you take your daughter and would you feed them to the lions and feed them to the wolves, knowing that would be the outcome? Listen to me, this is how much God loves you. He was willing to send his only begotten son. And mind you, Jesus was willing to go. And here we see him standing before the wolves, standing before the cartel of Jerusalem, boldly in the den of thieves, sticking it to them. And this story doesn't turn out like we would think it would. Not quite yet. Look at verse 14. The Bible says, And the husbandmen saw him, and they reasoned among themselves. I wonder if there's a bit of irony here. It's the same word that was used of when they huddled together and reasoned whether they were going to answer him or not. Jesus throws that in the story. When the Son of Man shows up, will they reverence him? They get into their holy huddle and they start talking about what are they going to do with this son that the Lord of the vineyard has sent. What are they going to do? So as they get together and they huddle together, they say, let us kill him and we'll take the vineyard for ourselves. So they cast him out of the vineyard and they kill him. They took him outside of the city, outside of the vineyard, and they slaughtered him. If this isn't prophecy, then I don't know what it is. You see, Jesus is answering their original question. By what authority do you do these things? I am the son. I am the one sent from above from the Lord of the vineyard. And my authority comes from him. What will the Lord of the vineyard do? Notice what Jesus says. What, therefore, shall the Lord of the vineyard do to them? He shall come and destroy these husbandmen and shall give the vineyard to another. Now, I know our time is brief here and we're just about over on our time, but don't miss that. He's going to come and destroy the vineyard, not the vineyard. He's going to come and destroy the husbandmen, the tenants, the ones in charge. the ones who were given the responsibility to produce the fruit, the ones who were in leadership over the nation of Israel. And what will he do? He will take that king. He will take that kingdom and he will open it to another. Now, put your dispensational thinking cap on it for a moment. We're seeing the picture of God's plan throughout human history. When Jesus came to his own, his own refused him not. And Jesus presented himself as the king of the Jews. And the Jews rejected him, and the Jews crucified him, and the Jews rejected the kingdom offer. What did God do? What did the father do when his son was rejected? He took the king and he opened a door to another. Now, I don't believe God nullified and void all his Old Testament prophecies to the nation of Israel. He didn't replace Israel with the church. He didn't establish a new Israel and replace Israel with the new people of God. What he did, according to the Apostle Paul, the prophets, and Jesus himself, he engrafted on a new people. And when the door was shut in the face of the Savior, read Peter in Acts chapter 2 and Stephen in Acts chapter 7. Read Paul in Romans chapter 11. God opened a window of opportunity to a new institution, a mystery that was once hidden is now revealed. I want you to know, folks, that what we are reading in this parable, all of a sudden we come to verse 16 and we find Calvary Baptist Church. We read Gentiles who have now come and can be and partake of the blessings of that kingdom. That's you and I. This is the church age. The promise, the new covenant is now being dropped upon a new group of people, a new believers. And I wish I had time to share with you all the theological and wonderful passages concerning this little book. When Jesus says he will give it to another. Paul takes this and he runs with it in the book of Galatians and Romans and Ephesians and Colossians. Remember, we're seeing God's plan for human history here. Now, look at what the Sanhedrin say in verse 16. When Jesus says he's going to take. The promise and the son, he's going to open it to another. And they said when they heard this, God forbid. This is the only time in the Gospels this phrase is used. Paul uses it, I believe Paul uses that phrase 10 times in the book of Romans. May it never be. You see, they knew exactly what Jesus was saying. They didn't have a hard time understanding this parable. In other words, you can't take God's people and Israel and discard them and give the blessings of the covenant to another group of people. They don't belong here. They're not Jewish. They're not circumcised. They're not the sons of Abraham. You can't destroy our system of religion and this temple and these sacrifices that have been established for thousands of years. And just like that, move to another institution. Oh yes, he can. We, a new people of God, have now been adopted, not by birth, but by faith, as sons of Abraham. Because God came and not circumcised in the flesh, but Paul said circumcised in the heart, And by faith we have been placed at the supper table of his grace, no longer scrounging around for the crumbs that fell from the master's table, but now seated side by side with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You see, the gospel then, when it was rejected, Jesus said, went out on the highways and byways and alleyways and back streets of every city and found a wretched Gentile begging from crumbs of grace for God so love the world. You see, the Jewish pride and snobbery had come to the place where they thought that the Messiah and the king was all for themselves. It was always God's plan. to open the door to a wider group. Look what Jesus goes into in verse 17 and 18 and we must close. And he looked at them and he said, I wonder what that look looked like. That'd be a great painting, wouldn't it? To look the high priest in the face with that stern, maybe with a whip in his hand and said, what is this then that is written? Everyone, Jesus says, pull out your Bible, and guess what? It was written a long time ago that the stone that the builders rejected, the stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner. I don't have time, but this is taken from Psalm 118, when they said, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. In verse 22, you find this verse, a very obscure, interesting verse and it shows up and then it goes away. But Jesus picks out this very obscure verse that probably a lot of the religious leaders had never even really thought about. It was at this point in my study that I got out of my desk and I went out the door. And I went out to the back portion of the yard where they're building the wall and they finished the wall. There are some stacks of stones. that for some reason, the Mason chose not to use this one. It was thrown onto the ground. You see, a Mason, when he has a list of stones, he looks at them and he picks the ones that he likes that would fit the best. But when he gets a stone that he doesn't like and he looks at it and he sees it and he says, hmm, this is just not what I'm looking for. I do that, but David would be mad at me. and make a big old dent, threw it away. The cornerstone was the foundation stone by which a building would be built on. And the Masons would bring out these stones and the Mason would decide which one was the foundation that everything would lay upon. It was the most important stone. And if a stone was not to the liking of the Mason, then the Mason would reject the stone and throw it away. And Jesus comes to this group of people And he said, I presented myself as king and prophet and priest. I've given you the gospel of the good news that I've come to seek and to say that which was lost and sent from heaven from my God to do the will of the father who sent me. And here I am standing before you. And because I'm a Nazarene. Because I'm a Galilean. Because I'm a simple carpenter. Because I don't have degrees from your universities. Because I'm walking around with a group of people who are fishermen and women and tax collectors and sinners. Because I wear a crown of thorns. Because I stretch my arms out and I'm going to be nailed to a cross. Because I'm going to be beaten with stripes upon my back. Because I don't meet your demands. You're going to reject me. And that door is gonna swing wide open for the next 2024 years to a group of people who are gonna say, Lord, thank you that your grace came open enough to all of us so that now we can believe in the son and come to him and it would be open. We don't reject the stone. In fact, we post a crucifix We put it around our neck. We put it in our home. We sing the old rugged cross, a place of crucifixion, a place that was a stumbling stone to the Jews is now a stepping stone for a lost and dying world to say, thank you, Lord, for sending your son to die for me. What's the application this morning here? Number one, we have a responsibility that God has given us. We have the gospel to share to a lost and dying world. We have the faith that has been entrusted to us to grow and produce fruit. And as the tenants in this parable, we too have the word of God that we must not ignore. We can be too preoccupied by our own things, wanting to be our own rulers of our own kingdom. We want the vineyard for ourselves. Instead of surrendering to the son and obeying the father. You've been given a responsibility to open your ears and follow God's word. We should stand in all at the grace of God, the father who would send his only son to die. What a sacrifice. Don't take it for granted this week of Thanksgiving that the Jesus, the chief cornerstone, came and was rejected and took our hell on his shoulders on the cross. so that you could know the Father. And then we should be warned today about judgment. The last verse of this parable in verse 16, or verse 18, when the stone falls upon those and grinds them to powder, that's the great white throne judgment in the book of Revelation, when every person will stand and give an account, what did they do with Jesus? And if you reject him on this earth, there is judgment. We don't like to hear about judgment because judgment means we must be accountable to someone higher than ourselves. And the sober reminder should prompt us today to be prepared because we will all stand before Jesus Christ when it all comes and it's all done. Will we stand forgiven or will we stand rejected? by the Savior. Father, I pray as we close today. Lord, the whole scope of the story of the Bible told in this one parable, and they knew exactly what Jesus was saying. They perceived that he spake this parable of them. Lord, I pray that you would help us today as believers. Thank you for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that extends. To a Gentile, a wretched sinner like me, not even born. In a Jewish family. But the gospel is open. And Lord, you took a tragedy, the rejection of your son. To open the way by which a church would be planted and churches would be planted all around the world so that the kingdom of God could be made up of more than just Jews. Would be made up of all peoples from every tribe and tongue and kindred in every nation. You're not finished with your people. You'll come back one day, reestablish and bring those people back. But right now they've been cast off. And it is our responsibility in this age to take the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. Would we not fail like the tenants did, like the husbandman did to ignore our responsibility? Would we do what we need to do with heads bowed and eyes closed at the invitation today? Maybe the Lord spoken to your heart. I don't know in what area that God would be dealing with you, but as Stephanie plays here, just where you're seated. If you don't know Jesus as your savior, would you right now trust in him before it's too late? Reach out, don't reject him, don't reject that offer, that stone that came. Take your penalty, take the wrath of God. And as believers today, we have a responsibility to share that light, maybe with family or friends this week who've rejected you before, but in a loving way, you need to tell them again about the Savior who came and died for them. The reality of the fact that we may one day stand before our Lord Jesus Christ. And as believers, we will give an account. Judgment is real. What will we do with Jesus? I'm going to ask that she play through one more time, then we'll close the service. I appreciate your attention today. It's a long passage. As we go into the Christmas season, we see exactly why God sent his son. Is he the boss of you? Can he have his way? Can he clean out your temple? Will you do what he commands? Father, thank you for the time that we have this morning to study your word. Thank you that it is powerful and quick and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it is by which a young man can cleanse his way when we take heed according to your word. Bless us as we go. Thank you for this season, and we enjoy the time. If you tarry, you're coming. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. God bless you. You are dismissed.