Main Idea: What I want us to see today is that forgetting the focus God has for us risks losing the privileges God has given to us.

Introduction:

One of the more troubling reports I heard when I attended the Baptist World Alliance meeting recently was the report of the state of the Baptist church in Great Britain. A nation that gave to the world the more defined expression of what it means to be Baptist is now a wasteland spiritually. A nation that gave to our world the lives of great Baptist forefathers now suffers on the brink of extinction. Where once thousand would gather to hear men like Charles Spurgeon one hundred years ago, today the average Baptist church in England has less than 50 members.

Why? What has happened? There are many reasons but primarily it is that as a church or denomination they became increasingly resistant to be relevant to their culture, insisting on the traditions and methods of the past rather than seeking to speak to their world. Yet, in spite of the decline, there are signs of life among the youth (ages 18-30). One example is a young man named Simon Hall, who was part of a Baptist church in Leeds in Northern England. He persistently challenged his church to find ways to reach the youth of his city but was continually rejected. He noticed that the pubs were full of young people on a Sunday night while their church was empty. So, with a few other young people, he went to the pub on Sunday night and began to engage those there in conversation. He added some music and began to teach from the Bible. Soon those in the pub would gather (with their beer) around Simon to hear from God’s word. Now, as a result, there are other groups that have started. Hall has even been to the United States to share how God is moving—outside of the traditional church that rejected him. While that incident is encouraging, it is also heartbreaking to think that those charged with the focus of changing lives with the gospel of Jesus Christ had lost that privilege.

In the two parables read earlier Jesus confronts the leaders of the established religious tradition of his day with the reality that they had lost their focus and in turn were losing the privilege of being God’s instrument in the world. What I want us to see today is that as Christians, but particularly as a church, that forgetting the focus God has for us risks losing our privileges that God has given to us.

These hard words of Jesus are ones that apply to us and to our church today. We are constantly in danger of so focusing on our own needs, traditions or culture that we lose our vision to expand the capacity of God’s kingdom. How that happens is defined clearly in these stories of Jesus. They explain to us what our focus is to be, how that focus is forgotten and how our privilege to expand God’s kingdom is lost.

Let me take a moment to clarify for you the context of these two parables of Jesus. These stories were in response to the question by the religious leadership as to who gave Jesus his authority found in Matthew 21:23-27

In the parable found in Matthew 21:23-32 Jesus replies to the authorities’ question with a counter-question, which was common in Jewish debate. He argues that his authority and John’s derive from the same source—"heaven" (one Jewish way of saying, "from God"). To illustrate his point he tells them a story. The story is a very common one of a father asking his son to go and work for him in the vineyard. That a father should have asked his son to go work in the vineyard was natural. That the son should have refused to go would have offended Jewish moral sensibilities: this was an openly disobedient son, and disobedience was a punishable offense. But failing to go after promising to go was worse than not having promised; his son violated his word to his own father. The son who refused to go but repented clearly acted preferably. After the leaders respond with the obvious answer Jesus makes a powerful statement that tax gatherers and prostitutes would enter the kingdom before any of them. The pious regarded tax gatherers and prostitutes as outside practicing Judaism. Jesus could not have chosen a much more offensive comparison.

The next parable Jesus tells in Matthew 21:33-46 is also reflective of typical life in Palestine during the first century. Much of the rural Roman Empire was controlled by wealthy landowners, whose income from the land allowed them lives of complete leisure. Their estates were generally worked by tenant farmers, who were usually free peasants (as in Egypt), but sometimes by slaves (as in most of Italy). Landowners gained great honor among the poor if they were benevolent. They generally lived far away, often in cities, and had little personal contact with their workers. But the landowner in this parable is so benevolent that aristocrats would have considered him naïve.

Here Jesus addresses those who fancy themselves rulers of Israel, reminding them that they are merely custodians appointed by God (like the shepherds of Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34) over his vineyard. Jesus’ description follows the normal way to prepare a vineyard. Payments were rendered at harvest time, either by percentage (usually at least 25 percent) or a predetermined amount. Landowners always had power, socially and legally, to enforce their will on the tenants; a few reportedly even had squads of hired assassins to deal with troublesome tenants. Here the tenants act as if they are the ones with power, and they exploit it mercilessly (as opposed to the ideal of benevolent landowner).

The tenants presume too much about the inheritance. Although they could have seized it under certain legal conditions, the owner could also stipulate—and after their misdeeds certainly would—that someone else inherit the vineyard; or representatives of the emperor could have seized it. The story paints the tenants as incomparably wicked and stupid; yet the tenants are a transparent metaphor for the religious leaders who serve themselves rather than God—as Jesus’ hearers know.

Jesus uses a text from Psalm 118:22-23 to describe how they are rejecting him. The building referred to is the temple and as the cornerstone of a new temple, Jesus poses a threat to the builders of the old one (the Jewish aristocracy). Even though Israel was a "holy nation," God could replace them and give his blessing to those who reflect his will.

The question that comes though is what do these very harsh, judgmental parables say to us? They tell us about our focus, how it’s forgotten and when that focus is forgotten, the loss of our privileges.

1. What is our focus to be?

They first remind us as to what our focus as believers and as a church is to be. What is our focus? Our focus is to be aimed toward two areas: people that need including and purposes that will include them. What Jesus says in Matthew 21:30 is that those who the religious have discounted as the most worthless of all are to be given a higher priority in God’s kingdom than those assumed to have first place. He calls them "tax-gatherers and harlots."

Translating that into our own culture, Jesus says that where we might find the most sleazy, greasy, self-serving politician and the most vulgar, immoral, prostitute who sees their own need of grace, that they are a higher priority than those of us who are far removed from any of those things. You see, neither John the Baptist nor Jesus himself made their priority those who were already included in God’s kingdom. Instead, they took God’s word of grace to those most needing it, those excluded from God’s kingdom.

In the second parable he points out in Matthew 21:43 that because of their failure to understand his mission and purpose that God was going to take from them his blessing and give it to another who would produce results. Hear again what he says, "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit" (Matthew 21:43 NIV).

Fruit is the result of healthy growth. The fruit trees in our area are there for the purpose of producing fruit. Their purpose is not to provide shade or halt erosion; their purpose is to produce fruit. Our purpose as a Christian and as a church is to ultimately produce the results of our relationship with Jesus Christ. We do that by maintaining our personal, intimate dependence on our relationship with Jesus Christ (John 15:1-6).

Our focus as a Christian and as a church is to be people who are outside of God’s rule and those plans and purposes that will enable people to come under God’s rule in their life. That means that our focus is not primarily to be on those who are just like us or those plans and purposes just for us.

2. If people outside of God’s rule and purposes that bring others under God’s rule is our focus, how is that focus forgotten or neglected?

These two parables show us two ways that our focus can be neglected or forgotten: affirmation without application (28-29) and preservation without production (32-34).

In the parable of the two sons the error of the first son who was asked to go and work was that he affirmed verbally and perhaps mentally the commands of his father but there was no application of what was commanded. In fact, the original language says when asked to go the son said, "I will, Sir!" It’s used emphatically as if there is no question that he could not be counted on. What happened? He didn’t do what he said. That is affirmation without application.

You and I strand guilty of the same sin. We know full well that those who have rejected Christ and His kingdom are to be our focus. We know that the strategy of our church ministry is to have the focus of those things that reach those people. Yet we affirm and agree with our lips and with our mind that’s true but we don’t apply it—we don’t do anything with what we know. Affirmation without application is one way we forget our focus.

In the next parable the fault or sin committed here that causes us to forget our focus is what I call preservation without production. You see, those who were sent to produce results from the privilege given to them by the landowner wanted to preserve whatever they produced for themselves. It was their desire to preserve without having to share what they produced. Jesus’ point was that the Jews had preserved their traditions but had produced nothing.

The principle of seeking to preserve all of our blessings and privileges for ourselves is one we must guard against. Please understand that there are traditions, values and principles that we as a church must seek to preserve. The danger is to preserve them without understanding that life, spiritual life, is to be produced from those things we are seeking to preserve. Too often we decide that the function of something, if it is to be valid, must follow a certain form. The reality is that Jesus addresses not only here but specially in the parable of the wineskins (Matthew 9:14-18) that form needs to follow function. What are we preserving that has ceased to produce life in God’s kingdom?

When we affirm God’s commands without applying them and when we try to preserve our blessings without producing life for God’s kingdom we risk forgetting our focus.

3. It’s one thing to forget that our focus is to be people and purposes that expand God’s kingdom. It’s another problem when we forget our focus by agreeing without applying and preserving without producing. Yet the tragedy really lies in the fact because of those two things we lose the privilege of being God’s instrument for expanding His kingdom.

What privileges do we lose?

First, we lose the privilege of the responsibility of sharing Jesus with those who need him most. Paul wrote in Romans 1:14-15: "I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome" (NIV). He saw himself with the privileged responsibility of telling those without Christ of the good news of grace. When Jesus tells the religious authorities that the most undesirable will enter before them into God’s kingdom, he is saying that they have lost the privilege of sharing that message. So can we! It’s not that we don’t know or don’t go through the motions of trying to tell, it’s just that no one listens anymore because they know we really don’t care. The sad truth is that too often the privilege that is lost may never be given again.

Another privilege that is lost is that we lost the privilege of seeing God’s rule expanded to the communities of our world. Once again let the words of Matthew 21:43 hang in your mind. God comes to our lives and our churches and asks with every reason for the results of His blessings. When we turn him away saying, "God, just leave us alone. We will keep what we have." He will look at a world in need and a resistant people and church and say, "Fine, I’ll use someone else!" We can be in danger of losing that privilege of taking the gospel to a world around us.

The point is, though, it doesn’t have to happen!

Conclusion: Perhaps one of the more painful examples of what I am earnestly trying to communicate occurred while I was in The Czech Republic. While visiting Radek and his wife Katrina I met a lovely young woman named Marta. Marta is a Bible college graduate and serves as the youth minister for the First Baptist Church of Prague. Her husband works in a local Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. She has made the decision to leave the ministry.

Now understand that the Czech Baptist Union has 26 churches with less than 2400 members. There are easily 9 million people in The Czech Republic. The city of Prague has a population of well over a million people. The Baptist work in The Czech Republic can’t afford to lose anyone.

Why is she leaving the ministry? Because the churches’ traditions in that city refuse to be relevant to their culture. In a union where there has not been a new church started in decades this church clings to its past more than its future. She has been scolded because of the music she sings with the youth, for the fact that she wears pants instead of a dress, for the idea that her hair is short when it should be long, that she wants to have activities out in the city because it is too hard at night to come back to the church, and that she is a woman and not a man.

She asked me, "Bruce, should I stay and wait for things to change?" My response to her was, "Marta, you don’t have time. You ask, "Why can’t that church see?" I say to you, "Why can’t we?"

There is another parable that I want to close with and it is found in Luke 13:6-9: "Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’" There is hope and there is time. The Holy Spirit of God is wanting to use you and me to expand His kingdom. He may need to dig around the roots and loosen up the dirt but if we will let Him He will use our lives. This is our time, this is our privilege. Let’s keep our focus.

Sunday, August 8, 1999

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org.