Living Expectantly

Matthew 24:32- 25:13

A Message from Jesus to the church:

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation* will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”—Matthew 24:32-35 *Greek translated race

What thing is Jesus saying they will see?  The fourteen things that he had just prophesied about:

Responding to the Invitation

Matthew 21:28-44, 22:1-14

Good morning and welcome.  We are closing in on the end of this summer’s series on the parables of Jesus.  Today’s message is next to last.  Fred will close out the series next Sunday.

Somewhere back when Carl was putting the series together, he mentioned that we would be grouping the parables more topically rather than reading them chronologically which is exactly what we’ve done.  That’s one advantage of the series.  Each message stands on its own.  You should be able to pick up in any message without feeling lost.

It could just be a figment of my imaginative memory, but I also thought he mentioned back in those early discussions, we would not or might not cover all the parables.

How many parables did Jesus tell?  I’ve seen estimates between 40 and 46.  You might object, “How can you not know how many parables there are!”  Well, Jesus told parables more than once.  And, there are clearly parables that are similar but not the same.  The two parables last week were like that.  So, do you count those two as being the same or different?  There are other parables which are the same parable told at the same time, but recorded in more than one gospel.  If you count in order to get the maximum number of parables recorded including duplicates, you’ll end up with more than 60 in total.

Rewarding Faithfulness

Luke 19:11-27, Matthew 25:14-30

I love the word faithfulness. It’s not a very exciting or flashy word. A faithful person doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. Maybe faithful makes you think of an old dog that maybe isn’t too smart but always wants to be with you. But to be fair to dogs, their faithfulness is one of the things that makes them so appealing as pets and leads people to become so bonded with them. They are always glad to see you when you have been away. Their love (if you can really call it that) seems so simple and unconditional. They act like their lives revolve around you – which, I guess, they do.

I’m not sure that I want to use a dog as the best example of faithfulness. I wonder if they are guided more by instinct than by a conscious decision to love. But in any case, faithfulness is a wonderful quality in any relationship. We appreciate having faithful friends that we can count on to help us and support us in any circumstance. Of course, God, with his completely trustworthiness and unfailing love is our ultimate example of faithfulness, and faithfulness is what He calls us to in our relationship with Him.

Understanding God and Self

Luke 18:1-14

Welcome! How many of you have ever had to judge? If you have ever been on a jury you should raise your hand. If you are a parent you should certainly raise your hand. I think all of us at various times and in various ways are called on to judge, to make a decision about guilt or innocence or to decide what is appropriate going forward in some issue involving people. 

 

Today we look at two parables from Luke 18, and I would argue that both of these involve a judge. In the first parable this is very obvious, but if you think about it, you will see that it is also true in the second. The Old Testament has some powerful advice for judges that I think is as relevant today as it was when it was written, so I thought we would look at this first before going into our main passages today. The passage I want us to consider is from 2 Chronicles 19, and it involves the actions and instructions of Jehoshaphat king of Judah.

Grumbling over Grace

Matthew 20:1-16

Welcome! Today we continue our series on parables, looking at a parable from Matthew that I suspect on some level makes us all uncomfortable. Most translations of the Bible, in order to make things easier to find, add headings or titles to sections of Scripture. It is important to remember that these headings are not part of the Scriptures themselves; they are additions made by the editor of the particular translation. Our passage today is Matthew 20:1-16, and the heading in the NIV is “The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard,” but I prefer a title more like “The Parable of the Unconventional Landowner.” 

When a landowner, or more generally, a business owner, is unconventional in a good way, especially when it is obvious how much he cares for his workers or clients, we take note, because this is, generally speaking, a rare thing. I think of the classic movie as It’s a Wonderful Life an example. George Bailey, the central character, was the epitome of a generous and selfless man. Although George as a young man had big plans to go to college and build a career away from his home town, a series of circumstances leads George to forgo these and other plans in order to help his brother and to save his father’s business, a bank. Although it is not his desire, George eventually takes over the bank and starts a housing project, and there he is generous, kind, and merciful to his clients and tenants, so much so that when George himself ends up in a severe financial and legal bind as a result of his uncle’s carelessness, the entire town comes together to cover his financial needs. 

Planning Ahead

Luke 16:1-15, 19-31

Our title for today holds a certain irony for me, as I was well on my way toward preparing a message on the Parable of the Talents, until on Friday I realized that my passages for today were supposed to be from Luke 16: the Parables of the Shrewd Manager and of The Rich Man and Lazarus. So my “planning ahead” had gone awry, except that I will be speaking on the Talents passage in August, so my work was not actually wasted. There is also overlap in some of the concepts that Jesus is teaching about, so it has been good to think about those beforehand. So anyway, you can think about today’s message as the first of two that I will do on the teachings of Jesus concerning how to handle money and possessions.

You may be aware that 16 of the 38 parables in the gospels have something to do with money and possessions and that the Bible as a whole has more verses on money and wealth than on prayer, faith, and salvation combined. Jesus recognized the importance of wealth and possessions – but also their potential to lead us away from God. The function of wealth has been corrupted by sin. What God intended as an expression and source of blessing has become a source of pride and security apart from God. People think that money gives them control over their lives and allows them to live autonomously. Money is a source of status and power – just look at our political system. As 1 Timothy 6:10 puts it, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Losing and Finding

Luke 15:3-32

Welcome! Today we continue our series on the parables of Jesus, and we come to some of the most well-known, most discussed parables of all. Lots and lots of people who have never cracked open a Bible to read it for themselves still know something about these parables. And for those of us who have gone to church for many years, it can be hard to look at these parables freshly, attentively, because we think there is nothing else that can be said, nothing new to learn.

 But I challenge you today to fight against this attitude, to believe in faith that God can still stir your heart freshly with these parables. These parables are well-known, oft-discussed for a reason: they are powerful. They are deep. Actually they are amazingly rich, in my opinion the magnum opus (great work) of parable writing for all time.

When we began this series I explained that a parable literally a “laying alongside,” a telling of a story with common everyday scenes and situations to draw an easily understood picture to tell us something about something else, a spiritual truth, something more abstract, something deeper, something that is otherwise harder to understand. Now there are lots of different reasons spiritual things can be difficult to understand. One that you might first think of is that it is strange, complex, seemingly even self-contradictory, like the twin Biblical truths of predestination and free will, or the nature of God as three-in-one. But another reason a spiritual truth can be hard to grasp is because we just can’t accept it; it goes against a core belief we have that we just can’t seem to abandon. I would argue that today’s parables are really in this latter category.

Being a True Disciple

Luke 14:25-35

… Jesus … said:  “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  Luke 14:25-35

Deferring Honor

Luke 14:7-24

I think we all have some fear that we will go through life unnoticed.  It starts at an early age.  I see it in my children.  I remember it from my own childhood.  What are the two favorite words of a little child?  “Look daddy!” or “Look mommy!”  “Whoa, that’s amazing!” a parent exclaims while trying to hide to hide the fact that they’ve seen it a million times.  “Did you see me?” a child will ask.  And believe me, you’d better be looking or you might have to see it another ten times to make up for the one time you missed it.

Fast forward to the teenage years.  A girl finally gets the boy of her dreams.  She’s felt insecure and things aren’t going well at home for her parents.  She’s looking for love, for someone to notice her.  She’s looking for someone to make her feel worthy.  

A teenage boy will give in to peer-pressure.  He’ll give in to alcohol, drugs or some other illegal activity because he feels respected by other guys for doing those things.  

Later in life there’s jockeying for position and all kinds of politics while moving up the corporate latter.  “The only way I can move up,” the desperate employee thinks, “is to make myself look better than anyone else.  Then I can finally be respected.  I’ve got to look out for me first or I’ll be out of a job.”

Helping and Seeking Help

Luke 10:25-42, Luke 11:5-8

It’s great to be back with you today, after what seemed to be a very long trip for me – 8 weeks since I was last here with you in church. Having missed so many of the messages in this series I am a little worried about repeating what others have said, but I’m confident that you will bear with me if I do. Our topic today, Helping and Seeking Help, is an appropriate one, considering what I recently experienced concerning relief efforts in Nepal in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes on April 25^th and May 12^th (I was in Nepal for the second one) that killed more than 8000 people and destroyed about half a million homes. One of the encouraging things that I saw was an outpouring of love and compassion by Nepali Christians who wanted to reach out to help the people in the most-affected areas. In many cases, they were the “first responders,” and people did notice that they were generally the most equitable and unselfish in providing food and other necessities. We’ll see today how important this kind of “love in action” is in our response to God’s call on our lives.