Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome: Good morning to those in person and those online, my name is Kent and I’m the student pastor here at Crosspoint and I’m truly glad that you have chosen to worship God with us this morning.

Introduction

I want to share a couple other announcements this morning.

Parent night tonight.

As students prepare for Ice Camp this upcoming weekend.

I want to ask you, church, to pray for the hearts of these students and leaders who will be going.

Please pray for a willingness to first accept Jesus as their savior if they haven’t already and then second for a desire to grow in their relationship with God.

We are already praising God for the numbers of students who have signed up to go.

This is our largest group that I have ever taken to Ice Camp in the three years that I’ve gone.

It’s exciting to see students desiring to continue to go back to camp year after year.

One student wrote to me, “I really liked it last year.

It was so fun; we got to hangout with friends and meet new friends.

I really love Ice Camp.”

Another student wrote, “I want to go to Ice Camp because I went last year and it helped me grow closer to God.

It is really fun discussing scripture with the youth leaders and friends.”

It’s awesome to see students’ desires to grow relationally with God.

To recognize that their life isn’t about themselves but rather about loving God and loving others.

In our text today of Luke 20, we see the Jewish religious leaders show almost the complete opposite attitude toward God.

The Jewish religious leaders made their life about themselves instead of truly submitting to God’s authority.

As we continue our study of Luke we come to a parable of the vineyard owner starting in Luke 20:9.

If you listened to Dave’s sermon last week, you heard about how The Jewish religious leaders were challenging the authority of Jesus because they didn’t believe that He is the Son of God.

This morning we are going to study a parable that speaks to the Jewish leaders unwillingness to submit to the authority of God.

If we pay close attention to this illustration of the Jewish leaders’ hearts, I think we will be reminded of some gospel truths in our own lives.

So if you have your bibles with you please meet me in Luke chapter 20 verse 9. Luke 20:9.

Now before we starting reading I want to point out a couple of things before hand.

Vineyard owner - God the Father

Vineyard - Israel

Tenant farmers - Jewish Religious leaders over time

First three servants - different Old Testament prophets

Son of the Vineyard owner - God the Son (Jesus)

With all this in mind, let’s go ahead and read this parable.

I’m reading from the CSB translation starting in Luke 20 verse 9.

9 Now he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, leased it to tenant farmers, and went away for a long time.

10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the farmers so that they might give him some fruit from the vineyard.

But the farmers beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

11 He sent yet another servant, but they beat that one too, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed.

12 And he sent yet a third, but they wounded this one too and threw him out.

13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do?

I will send my beloved son.

Perhaps they will respect him.’

14 “But when the tenant farmers saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, ‘This is the heir.

Let’s kill him, so that the inheritance will be ours.’

15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those farmers and give the vineyard to others.”

But when they heard this they said, “That must never happen!”

17 But he looked at them and said, “Then what is the meaning of this Scripture:,

The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone?,

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will shatter him.”

19 Then the scribes and the chief priests looked for a way to get their hands on him that very hour, because they knew he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

At first glance at this story, it may leave you flummoxed, or in a state of shock.

Based on external actions, you may be thinking how can the tenant farmers act in this way?

How can they be so hateful?

How can they be so self focused?

I think if we look deeper it may surprise us what we find.

As we peal back layers of this story we are trying to get to their hearts.

Because at the heart of a matter is a matter of the heart so let’s look at our story again and see if we see something about the heart of the tenant farmers.

As we look through Luke 20, if we go to verse 14 we will see a glimpse into their motive for their actions.

Read Luke 20:14

Did you catch it?

“so that the inheritance will be ours.”

The tenant farmers have commited the sin of Idolatry.

Idolatry- Trusting, serving or giving worship to something that is not God (repeat with me)

These tenant farmers had an idolatrous desire for money.

Their heart was focused on building their own wealth so much so that they were willing to kill for it.

Now when we talk about wealth we need to remember wealth or money itself in not inherently sinful, it’s how you view it.

Key word is loving money especially in ways that makes you disregard the needs of others in the church, in the community, and not realizing that everything you have has happened under God’s sovereign control.

In this parable we see that wealth is indeed viewed in a sinful idolatrous way.

The tenant farmers refuse to see that they are hired help, they don’t own the vineyard.

Plus they didn’t even plant the vineyard, the owner did!

Their job was to care for the vineyard and harvest it.

But along the way they saw the wealth in the harvest, saw that is was desirable, and didn’t want to share any of it.

They disregarded the well being of the servants that the owner sent as they beat them up.

When the opportunity came to take the vineyard for themselves, they killed the son of the vineyard owner.

This parable lines up with what the Jewish religious leaders have been doing to the nation of Israel since the old testament times.

God was the one who formed the nation of Israel, starting with Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob and his twelve sons, through 400 years of slavery in Egypt.

But after that we see along the way the Jewish leaders saw how the nation of Israel could benefit themselves and make them wealthy.

Ezekiel has this judgement against the Jewish religious leaders of his time.

This continues into the New Testament as Jewish religious leaders continue to abuse their position for wealth and power.

At the heart of these texts is an idolatrous desire for wealth and power instead of serving God and serving others.

The outward actions of the Jewish religious leaders make it obvious that they have idolatrous desires in their lives.

But getting to that point doesn’t happen overnight.

Idolatry can slowly creep into our lives without us noticing it.

I currently have the privilege to part of a great men’s group that meets here on Saturday mornings at 7am, and this semester we are reading “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis.

In the book it gives an example of a subtle temptation of idolatry.

For context purposes, this book is set in England during the time of World War 2. In one of letters from the senior demon, Screwtape, He writes to his nephew demon, Wormwood on the topic of making his patient- the human that Wormwood is tempting- into either a pacifist or a patriot during the war.

An excerpt from this letter reads as this.

“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same.

Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion.

Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.

Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘Cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war effort or of pacifism.”

What C.S. Lewis is not saying is that it’s bad to have opinions on current day issues.

But rather he is writing that we have to be careful that our opinions on current day issues don’t elevate higher than the gospel.

We have to be careful that it doesn’t become an idol.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when we give our attention, our energy, our money toward anything more than we give our attention, energy, and money toward the Gospel of Jesus Christ at that point we have lost sight of the beauty and importance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we have traded it for a lesser than substitute that in the end cannot save any souls.

C.S. Lewis in his book gives a good image of what it looks like to have idolatry slowly creep into our lives.

If we are not careful, after an idol has taken settled into our daily routine, we can become like the Jewish religious leaders where religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause’ and our worship is no longer fixated on Almighty God but rather on something else.

The tricky part of identifying the sin of idolatry in our lives is that many times idolatry can be consisted of “good” things.

Idolatry can be consisted of “good” things.

A spouse/desire for a spouse is a good thing to have, but a spouse can become an object of our worship when our identity is based on our spouse, we have put our spouse in the place where only God should be.