Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Book of Acts, Chapter 4

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 8

A Reminder to All Who Have (or Seek) Power

Today for my quiet time with God, I read the 19th. chapter of John's gospel, with its account of Jesus' trial and execution.

These verses, part of the exchange between Jesus and the spineless but ruthless Roman governor Pilate struck me: "'Do you refuse to speak to me?' Pilate said. 'Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?' Jesus answered, 'You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above...'" (John 19:9-10)

God rules over this world in two ways.

First, He rules over those who have come to trust in Him through Jesus. True disciples of Jesus voluntarily accede to the gracious rule of God out of gratitude for the undeserved grace He bears for those who persist in turning from their sin and trusting in Him to give them victory over sin, death, and darkness. People who live in this kingdom seek, imperfectly, to love God and neighbor, trust in Christ, and live a lifestyle of daily repentance and renewal.

Second, God rules through imperfect human governments. Recognizing sinful human nature (as did the writers of the US Constitution, hence the system of "checks and balances") and the inherent human desire to be own gods and to rule over our neighbors, God gives coercive authority to earthly governments. Absent earthly governments with their coercive power, the world would be an infinitely more chaotic place than it is.

But earthly governments and earthly governors are to act justly. When they don't, Christians may and should seek redress...not for themselves, but for their neighbors who they love.

Romans 13:1 in the New Testament, for example, tells Christians: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established."

But just a chapter before, Christians are also told, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

In other words, for the sake of our neighbors, Christians are to obey their governments.

But for the sake of the same neighbor--and for our own eternal identities as disciples saved by grace through faith in Jesus, we are to stand against authorities when they act unjustly. The witness of Scripture is that this is particularly so when the victims of injustice are the poor, the stranger, the widow, the powerless, or the marginalized.

In John's account of Jesus' passion, Jesus offers no resistance to Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Jesus' concern is not for Himself, but for others. It was precisely to go to the cross as the perfect sinless sacrifice for human sin and to reverse the death sentence that sin brings every human being that Jesus came into the world.

Concerned though that Pilate has an understanding of reality and the lengths to which God was willing to go in order to spare us from death and separation from God (remember John 3:16), Jesus reminds Pilate, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above."

There's an important reminder here for all of us who wield power in this world, whether we're parents or teachers, politicians or pastors, generals, doctors, factory supervisors, employers, customers, or citizens: Whatever power has been given to us over the life of this world or our little corners of it, has been entrusted to us by God. That power is to be exercised lovingly, justly, and humbly.

May the God Who is revealed in Jesus Christ help us to do so.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who's the Boss?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship yesterday.]

Luke 20:9-20

The questions that today’s gospel lesson puts before us as disciples of Jesus are these: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge or live under that authority?

There are different kinds of authority, of course. In a verses of Luke's gospel that appear just beyond today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells His hearers to give to Caesar, that is to the government, what we owe the government and to God what we owe God. 

Because I feel privileged to live in the United States, I’ve never minded paying my taxes. Justice Holmes said: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” Scripture teaches and Lutherans have always believed in the necessity of government authority. Since not all people voluntarily accede to the authority of God, Who commands us to love God and neighbor, we need government to keep the sinful impulses of a fallen humanity at bay. While it’s right for Christians, in the name of Jesus, to demand that governments be loving and just--the prophets were sent by God to place this very demand on governments and peoples, we also realize that it’s beneficial to our neighbors and to us that governments exist. All of which is why I usually switch the channel any time a commercial for Optima Tax Relief comes on my TV screen: Jesus is clear that if we owe Caesar, we’re to pay Caesar.

But there is a far greater authority, an authority to which all of us--presidents, prime ministers, dictators, bishops, pastors, business people, accountants, teachers, contractors, doctors, lawyers, and everyone else is answerable. 

It's the authority of the One Who, after creating the first human beings and placing them in the garden, directed, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) God was asserting His authority. God gives the human race the world and commands us to use it and our whole lives in ways that honor God.

This isn’t always a popular message. Adam and Eve were tempted to sin by the serpent’s promise that if they disobeyed God, they would “be like God.” This is the central ambition of every child born to the human race--except Jesus: to be like God. 

And it’s especially the ambition of those to whom the world has given power, authority, comfort, prestige, and money, even in the smallest of doses. 

Jesus talks about the common human desire to usurp God’s authority and be gods unto ourselves in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 20:9-20. Let’s take a look at it.

Verse 9: “He went on to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.’”

Jesus has multiple audiences in mind when He speaks. 

1. He knows that His apostles are listening and will make us, as we read and hear their witness in Scripture, one of the audiences to what He says. He had promised the apostles that after He died and rose again, the Holy Spirit would help them to recall what He taught and did so that they could understand and teach others about Him as the Lord Who saves human beings by grace through faith in Christ alone (John 14:26; Ephesians 2:8-9). 

2. When Jesus first told this parable, He spoke it to a crowd of common people thronged around Him in the temple in Jerusalem. 

3. But He also knows that there are others listening in, the religious leaders anxious to hold onto their power to exploit others’ guilty consciences and have authority over them. 

Through the parable, Jesus is warning the religious leaders (and all of us who get little doses of authority in this life and may not handle it very well) that the authority that is a a trust from God will be one day be taken from those to whom it's granted unless they repent for their sins and trust in Him as the only One Who can make a human being right with God. 

This is a warning to all leaders, whatever their field. 

If they’re arrogant or unjust, if they show preference for those who can grease their palms, if they’re bullies, they will have to answer to God. 

When you’re the victim of evil leaders--whether at work, at school, at home, or in governments, you may wonder where God is. 

But in this parable, Jesus underscores the promise of Proverbs 11:21: “Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.” 

There will come a day, Isaiah 2:17 tells us, when, “The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted…”

In the centuries after God made His covenant with ancient Israel, He had sent one prophet and preacher after another, like the vineyard owner of Jesus’ parable sends servants to the renters in Jesus' parable, to tell His people (and the world) to give to God what they owed God for giving them life. 

In the Ten Commandments, God tells ancient Israel and the world: “You shall have no other gods before me…” (Exodus 20:2). Yet human beings have a marked penchant for worshiping idols they think will give them the ability to control their lives and get what they want.

Through the prophet Micah, God reminded the people of the world, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Yet, it's an enduring characteristic of the human race that we act unjustly, treat others unmercifully, and walk in arrogance away from God.

In Leviticus 19:33-34, God told His people, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God…” Yet the people of Israel (and the people of the world) have a decided penchant for turning life into a contest between "us" and "them," siloing us ourselves off from those we deem "different" or "other." 

In Jesus’ parable, the prophets and preachers of God’s truth, who reminded people of God’s authority over our lives, are portrayed as servants who are brutalized and murdered. It was precisely this human penchant for rejecting God’s servants that caused Jesus to lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.." (Luke 13:34)

In the parable, the vineyard owner is beside Himself with anguish over His tenants, as God is for us. When our kids first learned to drive and took off for work or school for the first hundred times, I remember the anxiety I felt as time seemed to drag as we awaited their return. Parents want their children to grow up, be independent, and do things for themselves. But you can't help but feel anxious as they take their first steps into adult responsibilities. Magnify the feelings of parents by an infinite amount and you can begin to imagine that anguish God feels for us as He places us in the vineyard, that is the world. God risks losing us by letting us go. He risks seeing us turn from, be contemptuous of, or to forget about His authority over us and losing us forever!

To reject God’s authority over our lives is also to reject His authority over our sins, our death, our vulnerabilities, His authority to give us new and everlasting life. 

It’s only when we entrust our whole lives to the gracious authority of God that He can give us all that He has in mind to give us through faith in Jesus, all that we can be as grown-up, maturing, confident, adult children of God. 

Verse 13: “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (Luke 20:13-15a) Here, Jesus prophesies His own crucifixion. Not interested in yielding to God the authority that they want to keep for themselves, the people of the world, led by the arrogant leaders of the Jews and the governor from Rome, would take Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem and murder Him. They didn’t realize that in voluntarily going to the cross, the sinless Jesus was dying for all human sin and that those who dare to lay down any claim to have authority over their own lives will have life with God that never ends.

Verse 15: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Here, Jesus says that there will be a great reversal, the very kind that His earthly mother Mary had spoken of in The Magnificat. In Jesus, Mary said, “...[God] has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:51-53)

Strangely enough, even the common people who heard Jesus tell this parable, were appalled by it. Our translation tells us that they responded to the idea that human arrogance would be punished by God by saying, “God forbid!” Actually, they say, in the Greek in which Luke and the other writers composed the New Testament, “Μὴ γένοιτο,” a more literal translation of which would be, “Never may it be!” Or, “No way!”

Why would they react like this? Jesus was offering them freedom from the arbitrary authority of self-glorifying human leaders. More than that, He was offering, as He still offers today, freedom from sin and death, freedom from the cruel demands of human authority, replacing them all with His loving lordship over our lives, the freedom to be all that a loving, omnipotent God can make of us for all eternity! 

The answer, I think is simple: As children of a fallen race who have only ever known the dog-eat-dog world in which we live, life in the kingdom of God is scary. 

We’ve never lived in a world in which we were accepted just as we are and helped to be all that we can be. 

We’ve never lived in a world that says if we will die to self, we will live with God. 

Accepting life in this upside down world that Jesus brings means that we must give up all pretense of having the authority of God over the world--or even our own lives. 

When death comes, as it does to us all, we must finally admit what we sometimes spend our lives trying to deny: Only the God we know in Christ can give us life. 

At the beginning of this message, I said that Jesus’ parable forces us to wrestle with two questions: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge that authority? 

It’s the God we meet in Jesus Who, alone, has authority over our lives, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise. 

And there’s only one way to acknowledge Christ’s authority: It’s to lay aside all our arrogance and sin and trust in Jesus alone to give us the greatest gift of all, eternal life from the hand of God. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Places God Shows Up

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio on Sunday, July 8, 2018.]

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

A friend of mine worked in a foundry where engine blocks for many makes and models of cars and trucks were made. He worked on a  production line. He used to tell me about a guy on his line who got on everyone’s nerves. He was one of those annoying Christians who, no matter what, had all his (and everyone else's) problems solved. According to my friend, a guy might say, “Man, it was so hot last night, I couldn’t sleep.” Mr. Super Christian would say, “Yeah, before I got saved, I couldn’t sleep.” Another might say, “My kid came in after curfew last night…” Or, “My wife is on me about new carpet…” Or, “I’ve had a bellyache all day…” Mr. Super Christian would charge into every such opening, telling his co-workers, “My kids used to come in after their curfew before I got saved..My wife used to get on me about needing new carpet before I got saved...I used to get bellyaches before I got saved.” He portrayed his life as completely problem-free because he had Jesus in it.

Look, a problem-free, pain-free life would be super. But in this world, it doesn’t exist, not even if you’re a Christian.

In our second Bible lesson for today, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, the apostle Paul, the first-century evangelist, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about the power of the Jesus and the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus--the Gospel--that Paul proclaims. 

Instead of the real Gospel or the real Jesus, they want preachers who’ll assure them that following Jesus will mean that their lives in this world will be problem-free.

In fact, shortly before Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, they’d been wowed by preachers who told them that if the crucified and risen Jesus was really working in their lives, they would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness. Paul sarcastically labeled these happy talk preachers, super-apostles.

Now, it is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including, as we talked about last week, healing. But no physical healing lasts indefinitely. This world is imperfect and that’s true whether you’re a Christian or not.

“So, in the face of these realities, where is the power of God and what good is your gospel?” the Corinthians demand of Paul. Their questions are pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive preacher. Sometimes, he could be downright boring. he didn't have a private jet or a rags to riched story. Far from it. To support himself as an itinerant preacher, Paul had to scratch out a living as a tentmaker. He wasn’t what the world would call a success. His Christian resume included being arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. The skeptics in the Corinth church labeled him a loser. But this loser Paul has a message for those who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and question his authority to share it.

Wary of being a braggart, Paul uses the third person to describe a personal experience he’d had years earlier. Verse 2: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” 

Paul had an amazing experience of heaven. But, he says, that experience, awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus. God's power, Paul shows us today, is most readily seen in two other ways that the super-apostles never would have dreamed of: The first way is in God's grace. The second way is in our weakness.

Grace, you know, is God’s charity, God’s act and offer of acceptance to those who willing to repent and willing to entrust their entire lives to Jesus Christ alone. Grace doesn’t paper over or ignore our sins. It forgives them and offers a new and everlasting way of living, with Jesus by our sides. God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before we have this life with Him. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:8: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Life with God is a free gift for all who have faith in Christ. That's grace.

The super-apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said, basically, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.” They said that Paul’s troubles proved that he was faithless. 

People say things like this today. They don’t understand grace! Having the grace of God that comes only from Jesus Christ in our lives doesn’t mean that our lives will be perfect; it means, rather, that we will still have God’s grace even when things are not perfect! Even when we’re not perfect!

In verse 7 of our lesson, Paul says, “...in order to keep me from becoming conceited [by all the amazing things God had shown to him and done through him], I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”  

We have no idea what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. But, whatever it was, three times, Paul says, he had asked God in prayer to remove the thorn. And three times God’s answer came back (verse 9), “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God refused to bring Paul the relief Paul sought, telling Paul that His grace was all thr apostle really needed. God refused to remove the thorn so that Paul would remember that. Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. Everybody. 

They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. 

They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed—health, wealth, connections, the big house, the respect of others, happiness, good times—are nice, but they're not what we need the most. 

What we need the most is the life-giving grace of God given through Jesus Christ. God's tough, incessant, faithful grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.

This leads to the second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ: our weakness. Listen: God gives those humble enough to admit their weakness the strength they need for living.  

You were with a loved one as they were dying and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do all that you needed to do, but, with God’s help, you did it. 

You had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it, but with Jesus by your side, you did. 

In order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability and, after prayer in Jesus’ Name, God helped you study and to learn what you needed to learn to pass. 

To pay your bills, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the energy, yet God’s Spirit-filled you with the needed energy. 

In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I’m too weak to face it.” And in each case, God told you, “I know you’re too weak. But My power belongs only to those wise enough and faithful enough to know they need it."

This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove his unidentified thorn in the flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “I’m not going to take you around it. I’m going to take you through it. You’ll have to learn to lean on My power more and more each day, and not on your own.” 

Why did God tell Paul this? Why does God sometimes tell us the very same thing? Because, God says in verse 9: “...my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is seen only in people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ. When we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything. We acknowledge our weakness, our emptiness, and the God we know in Christ fills us up with His power and His grace. In the name of Jesus, God powers us up. Paul writes in verse 10: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” [emphasis mine]

Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us. 

If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s a great sign! 

It means you’re seeing life on this earth clearly. You’re able to give up on relying on yourself and able to depend on Jesus Christ alone. Contrary to a popular saying, the Lord does not help those who help themselves; He helps those who admit that they need the Lord’s help. 

Call out to the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus and let God the Holy Spirit fill you with strength you can’t generate on your own.

Life in this world does not always make sense nor does God promise us that it will be easy. But, God’s Word assures us, we can do all things through Him as He strengthens us (Philippians 4:3). 

Our strong God stands at the ready to give us grace and strength in all circumstances. If we will let go of our skepticism (along with our fears, our need for control, and our skepticism) and let Him take over, God will see us through everything in His power...and do so all the way to eternity. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.] 

Don't Miss the Obvious!

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:23-32
When I was a kid, I heard a recurring phrase from my dad.

Dad would be working around the house, as he always did--fixing a car, remodeling a room, painting the house, doing a home repair--and I would be doing what I always did, nothing. Dad would tell me to look for something--say, a “⅜ widget-whats-it-majiggie”--and I would be unable to find it. Then, Dad would get out from under the car or climb off the ladder or whatever, then go right to the thing he wanted, then tell me, “Mark, if it was a snake, it would have bitten you.” Dad was right because I seemed to have a knack for not seeing the obvious. (I often still do.)

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus encounters people who either don’t see or refuse to see the obvious.

Let’s take a look at the lesson, Matthew 21:23-32. As we prepare to do so, let’s set the scene. The day before this encounter, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday. People hailed Jesus as the Messiah or the Christ, the Hebrew and Greek versions, respectively, for God’s Anointed King, the Savior that Jews had been awaiting for centuries.

On entering Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and civic life, Jesus had gone to the temple. There, He overturned the tables of the money-changers who took advantage of the piety of simple Jewish folk, charging them exorbitantly for temple currency and for sheep and doves for temple sacrifices. As one scholar has written, Jesus acted like He owned the place. (Which, of course, as God in the flesh, He did.)

As today’s lesson begins, Jesus is approached by the men who think of themselves as the ones in charge of the temple, as well as of Jewish religious life, and the final judges of what was right or wrong, godly or ungodly. Take a look at the lesson, please.

“Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. ‘By what authority are you doing these things?’ they asked. ‘And who gave you this authority?’” Their question basically, is this: “Who said that You could and say the things You’ve been doing and saying, Jesus?”

In English, the word authority is related to the word author. Authors, of course, are people who, with their words, create worlds, characters, and events. We believe that the God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the, as Peter says in Acts 3:15, “the Author of life.”

It’s this God Who, with the mere power of His Word, made everything that exists. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” and “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” and humanity came into being (Genesis 1:3, 26).

We believe, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who makes faith possible, that Jesus was and is the very Word of God, Who took on our human flesh so that He could die for our sin and rise to give eternal life with God to all who see Jesus for Who follow Him.

But the chief priests and the elders of the people, who were experts in God’s Old Testament Word didn’t see Jesus in this way at all. And it’s not as though others weren’t seeing that Jesus was the Author of life. They were!

Remember the Canaanite woman, a foreigner to the Jews, who had called Jesus, “Lord, Son of David” (Matthew 15:22)? She had seen who Jesus was.

And remember how Peter told Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

And just the day before these “leaders” came to see Jesus, the Palm Sunday crowds had welcomed Him as Messiah.

Jesus once scored the temple authorities, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees as “blind guides” (Matthew 15:14). In their blindness, they challenge Jesus.

Verse 24: “Jesus replied, ‘I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?’” (Matthew 21:24-25).

Jesus is not engaging in any trickery here. He is trying to help these blind guides who, from their study of Scripture, should know where His authority came from because of Who He is, to see.

The question that Jesus asks them is also about authority. Who had given John the authority to call people to repentance and to point others to Jesus, the Messiah of Whom God the Father said in John’s presence, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)?

Look at what happens next, starting with the second part of verse 25: “[The chief priests and the elders] discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, ‘We don’t know.’ Then he said, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” (Matthew 21:25-27)

I suspect that the calculated response of the temple leaders betrays an important fact: They weren’t as blind to the obvious as they claimed to be. They knew that John the Baptist’s authority came from heaven, that is, from God. And they knew that Jesus’ authority came from the same place; they even knew, I think, Who Jesus was.

They had heard or seen that Jesus was raising dead people, curing diseases, casting out demons, calming storms, feeding masses of people, speaking God’s truth.

They saw, but refused to publicly acknowledge that Jesus’ authority came from His being the Author of life.

Their aim in asking the question about authority was to discredit Jesus so that they could get Jesus crucified and be rid of Him. They want Jesus dead and gone to protect their own supposed authority. They’re like the tenants in a parable would tell shortly after this encounter who said to each other, “This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance'” (Matthew 21:38).

It’s after the temple leaders’ refusal to answer Jesus’ question that Jesus tells a parable. A man has two sons. He asked them, not to find a “⅜ widget-whats-it-majiggie,” but to work in his vineyard. The first son refused, but then “changed his mind” and got to work. (The word translated as "changed his mind" in Matthew's original text, written in Greek, is one of the common New Testament words for repented. To repent is to change one's mind about walking away from God and His will and to instead, seek to walk with God and in God's will.) The second son told his father that he would work in the vineyard, but then skipped out. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” Jesus asked those crowded around Him. Obviously, it was the son who changed his mind and did what his father asked of him.

The chief priests and the elders couldn’t have escaped understanding what Jesus was saying. They loved being seen as men of God, people who knew God and followed God. When they saw God face to face in Jesus though, they refused to follow Him. They refused to repent for sin. They refused to put their faith in Jesus and so have the life with God that only Jesus can give.

But when notorious sinners like tax collectors and prostitutes, people who had been saying no to God all their lives, heard John the Baptist’s call to repentance, did repent, heard Jesus’ call to surrendering faith and believed in Him.

Which of these two groups of people did the will of God?

Which of them saw that Jesus was and is “the way, and the truth, and the life”: those who honored Jesus with their mouths or those who gave Jesus their lives?

The answers to those questions are obvious.

But let me tell you the questions this gospel lesson forces me to ask myself.

First: Is there a disconnect between the faith I profess on Sunday mornings and the life I lead the rest of the week?

Second: If I really see Jesus as the Author of my life and the only One Who can give me life with God, life as it was meant to be lived, why do I so often live as though I didn’t see?

Here are some of the reasons I ask these questions:

I worry when I should pray.

I keep sinning when I should repent.

I observe when I should serve.

I lament over others’ sorry spiritual estate when I should be telling them about Jesus.

I watch TV when I should be reading God’s Word.

The chief priests and the elders talked a good game, but in truth, they preferred having authority over their own lives, rather than yielding authority to God. The second son in Jesus’ parable talked obedience, but he lived differently. Sometimes anyway, I can be just like them!

Our commitment to obedience to God is the measure not only of whether we see Jesus rightly, but also whether we will live in God’s kingdom.

If we see and follow Jesus as our Messiah King, we will seek to obey God. 

If we don’t see nor follow Jesus as our Messiah King, we will refuse to obey God, no matter what creeds, prayers, and songs we mouth on Sunday mornings.

A man once told me, “I believe in Jesus. But I have things I want to do that God doesn’t approve of. I’ll get right with God when I’m older.” Really?

When our congregation's friend, Carl, went to bed this past Monday night, he had no idea that he was close to drawing his last breaths on this earth. But, thank God, he went to bed that night believing in Jesus, seeking to follow Him faithfully, seeking to serve faithfully in His name. And the grief of his family is lightened in the knowledge that Carl is with the Lord in Whom he trusted.

Tomorrow on this earth is promised to nobody. The time to follow Jesus is now!

Jesus is calling us to hold nothing back from His lordship.

If we think that God’s rules for our marriage and sexual lives, our finances, our attitudes toward those who are different from us, or the ways we use God’s name apply to others, but not to us, we walk away from God. 

If we think that Jesus has only set super-saints free to believe in Him, love their neighbors, move mountains with mustard seed prayers, or fight for justice, then we really don’t see Jesus as our God and Messiah.

Faith is seen in our willingness to obey when Jesus says to repent and to obey too, when Jesus says to believe in Him and trust in His grace.

In this life, our obedience will never be perfect. That's why it's so important to live in a relationship of daily repentance and renewal with the God revealed in Jesus. We don't want to wander from Him, allowing sin to capture us and drive a wedge between our saving God and us. We want to have His forgiveness, grace, and power working in our lives today. We want to be ready to face eternity and live in His kingdom always.

I was struck this past week during my quiet time by 1 John 2:3-5: “We know that we have come to know [God] if we keep his commands. Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them…”

Let’s not lose sight of the obvious: That the Lord Who died and rose from the grave can give us new and everlasting lives and He alone deserves to have full authority over our lives.

May our lives be marked by faith in and obedience to the God we know in Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).