Listen to God (Mt 21:33-46)

I had the great pleasure this week of sitting beside Murray Robertson, formerly senior pastor of Spreydon Baptist of forty years and soaking in his seven observations of the Church in New Zealand today. He brought to this group of Canterbury Presbyterian ministers also many gems of wisdom about how to get the Church back to “get go.” But one comment intrigued me concerning as he said, “seeing the beginning of the end of the long night of theological liberalism.” Then a friend posted a link to the following by Tim Tennant:

In his 1937 landmark book, The Kingdom of God in America, Richard Niebuhr memorably described the message of Protestant liberalism as “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”  In the ensuing years Niebuhr’s statement has become one of the more well-known summaries of the failure of Protestant liberalism to properly reflect the apostolic message.  Tragically, Niebuhr’s devastating critique is on the brink of being equally applicable to contemporary, evangelical Christianity.  Who has lost sight more of the depth of human sin, the certainty of God’s judgment and the call to repentance and transformation at the feet of a crucified savior than today’s populistic, evangelical churches? … If liberalism is guilty of demythologizing the miraculous, we have surely been guilty of trivializing it. – Timothy C. Tennent, Ph.D,  Fall Convocation, 2011.

The Church was supposed to be the place people were to come to find spirituality. The Church was to be the “on-earth” manifestation of Jesus Christ. Church had instead become a place of intellectual exercise not dissimilar to the lecture halls the speakers had been trained in. Church became instead a place where you learned what not to do instead of a place you experienced the powerful and healing goodness of the new wine of the vineyard of Almighty God. How would you feel if your tenant paid no rent and let the farm go to wreck and ruin.

There is a problem exposed in this reading from Matthew 21 still limits the church to a similar story. The church is made up of many people who are children of God and yet are acting like they are only able to play church games. Our Father in heaven sees this and worries for his children that they instead of being creators in His likeness they spend all their lives playing games instead of living by faith in the way of Jesus Christ. But how is the parent going to wake up His children to what they are doing; well he sends a prophet to speak to them of what amazing revelations still remain inactive inside of them. In this reading we see that those who were in leadership of Israel's spirituality were to miss out on great wonders in store. What they had been given was about to be taken from them.

People play games with God all the time like the “Pretend He cannot see” game and the “Analyse and test Him” game.  Jesus asked his followers to practice the “faith” and see if you can become as good as our heroes Peter, Paul and Mary. This is what Saint Paul was talking about in Corinthians 11, “Imitate me as I also imitate Christ.” The chief priests and elders of the temple were given the root of Abraham the Father of faith and the vine of Isaac and Jacob renamed Israel but instead of bearing the fruit of faith they were playing political games with the son of God.  Some might say that this was necessary because the Son of God had to go to the cross and die for the sins of all but here Jesus was as they recognised speaking as a prophet to turn them to salvation. 

The church today can be just the same but it doesn’t have to be. Many of you have been told that the gifts of the Spirit were only for the Apostles of the New Testament; that when the cannon was closed so to the miraculous things of the Spirit stopped. But this is a lie limiting the Church from its power to be the real answer to the world’s problems.  We are the children of Almighty God; not sons and daughters of disobedience but children of obedience to the commands of God to love in faith and hope which is the fruit of the root of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Love does not as in the parable run off the owners messengers and kill the preachers but rather love waters the plant that is the vine of God’s offspring and that love prunes and nurtures and gathers in the grapes and makes sweet wine. 

Hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. (Heb 11:1-2) To gain a good testimony we must be exercising our faith in love, which is a spiritual instrument worthy of children of the Father of faith and love.  Now faith broadly cast may be misinterpreted as a belief system but that does not separate us from Hindu, Buddhist or any other religion.  What identifies a Christian is the model of our Lord Jesus Christ. The model is shining example of what faith produces in the vine of the earth.  Jesus typified faith by, “Doing what he saw the Father doing.” Seeing what the Father is doing is a spiritual exercise open to all those who have had their spirit awakened in His Spirit. We are to wait on the Holy Spirit, praying in a heavenly language and looking with our spiritual eyes into the kingdom of heaven. We know this because we pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “give us this day our daily bread.” Do not be deceived as to believe this does not include you because you can’t have visions. All it means is you probably aren’t practicing on your spiritual instrument.

But the church would say that there is danger in them there hills. Spirituality of this sort is full of problems and we must stick to the teachings of the Church which will keep us safe against heresies which have so dogged Christianity for many centuries. Safety efforts don’t always eliminate danger as was the case when the Cave Creek viewing platform when guard rails collapsed and sent many young people to their death below. Sorry but seat belts have little hope of saving lives in a plane crash. The many life boats saved only a small number of lives when the unsinkable Titanic sunk. The appropriate response to danger is to tread cautiously rather than go at it like a bull at a gate, risking all in a bid to be first. 

There is a risk involved in faith journeys with God but there is as much risk in walking to the local café for a mocha and sausage roll.  We are at risk all of the time; at risk of cancer, diabetes, heart attack and more. We live with risk all of the time and take out insurance policies to cope with it; in fact we manage it every day of our lives. To say that we should avoid spirituality and faith in a bid to eliminate the risk of going astray is in fact like the ostrich who buries its head in the sand. It is a game to “pretend God cannot see’ and a game to “analyse and test God.” No we are not to play these games all day long but to practice our instrument of faith in God, to bring fruit from the vineyard for the owner.

In the parable of the Great Supper Jesus teaches on the blessing received by those who feed luxuriously in the kingdom of God. He tells the story of those who were invited to a banquet making somewhat offensive excuses not to attend so he invited the poor, lame, maimed and blind to eat this banquet instead. What is this banquet Jesus is talking about here? Well those heaven-visioned kids I met in India it is fruit of the trees of heaven, great sweet cherries that when plucked immediately regrow another. To the one who is poor & lame its legs to be mobile and earn a living, to the blind a new set of eyes to see the world around him. To us who live in relative affluence and private hospitalisation it’s probably a morsel of dry bread and thimble of imitation wine easily passed by for a game of golf.

What we have here before us is all that the kingdom of heaven has to give yet we treat it with disdain because it might make us look a bit silly amongst our peers. Ours is a very blessed paradise with more than we need at our finger tips yet we disdain like the guests mentioned above the very generous host who would provide richly for our every need Himself. Of the fruit of the vine of faith Isaiah says, "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live.  (Is 55:2-3a)

We need to hear Almighty God who speaks to man in many different ways; often in a cryptic or mysterious manner. God is the same today as in the past and in the future. God spoke to Moses the great prophet directly but less directly though others. To the children of Israel a cloud was given to lead them by day and a pillar of fire by night. God talked to a wayward prophet Balaam opening the mouth of his donkey which saw the angel placed in his path and refused to walk on saying, “What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times.” To Jeremiah he spoke through the symbol of a tipped over cooking pot that great devastation was to come from the Babylonians. 

Well as it happened last week I was walking and asking the Lord what to do about an issue that was bothering me and I came upon an unbroken thermometer half in and half out of its case on the road and later in the local dry river bed the heat of the stones in some specific area made me warm in the otherwise cold night air. Then as if God had implanted a thought in me saying, “Take the temperature of the people concerning the church at Carew.” The more I thought about it the more I could grasp what a great way of describing it and there would be harmless enough calling a meeting of residents to pray and discuss its future. 

This did not answer my question but I think showed God’s heart had other priorities and my questions had answers in basic scriptural wisdom. This highlights the difficulty that often we are asking the wrong questions as servants. Paul said we do not know what to ask of God and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help us to make our intercessions to our Father in heaven often with groaning from the heart. We really need to practice our faith and hear the messages God is giving us. A pity to miss these wouldn’t you say. I also want to know what God is speaking to you.  Grace to you.