Join us as we unpack the timeless lessons from Jesus’ parables, examining their applicability to the modern era. In a world that seems incessantly on the edge of a crisis, it’s crucial to understand the spiritual call to bear fruit and avoid the pitfalls of complacency. We share thought-provoking insights and practical steps to ensure we are contributing positively to our spiritual communities, emphasizing the indispensable role of youth ministry as a cornerstone for the future generation.
If there is one thing that has become clear in the confusion of the past three weeks, it is this. We are at a turning point in history. Everyone seems to agree, in fact they were saying this on the first day of the present crisis, nothing in the world will ever be the same again. And that is surely true. But those who are telling us what the future will be are almost surely wrong. The reason is that it’s impossible to know the end of a thing from the beginning. It’s impossible to know for sure what will come next. A friend of mine yesterday posted a message on our forum saying this, quote, So far I’ve been able to visit three of at least four of the larger groups of believers here in the Florida Panhandle. This feast is different. The consensus is that we have entered the time of the end. Now I want to go on record as saying that I am not part of that consensus. It may turn out to be true that this is the beginning of the time of the end, but there is not enough information to arrive at that conclusion. Early in World War II, there were those who believed that they had seen unmistakable signs that we had entered the time of the end. And they could point to specific items in prophecy of the movements of nations and of peoples that actually did look that way. And the case that was made at the beginning of World War II that we were entering the last crisis at the end of man was a very strong case to be made. But it was wrong. When the temple fell… what, along about 69 A.D., when international events for Judah began to go sour, and when the Romans came marching into their country, these people actually saw Jerusalem encompassed about with armies. It fell. And the church of that era would have been as convinced as anyone could ever be that they had entered the time of the end. But they were wrong. The fact is, they couldn’t know that. They could see many signs of it. They saw warnings that they should heed, but there was no way for them to know whether they were at the time of the end or not, and as we now know, they were not. And in fact, when you really get it in perspective, we today have seen very little to tell us anything. We have seen one terrorist act, a big one to be sure, but since that one terrible act, we have seen nothing but talk. And from that talk, we tend to conclude that, well, we have entered the time of the end. Now, we may have, but there is no way that we can know that. It was Amos who said this, “‘Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid?’ Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord has not done it? Well, surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he reveals his secret to his servants, the prophets. Now, I did hear one prophecy after September 11th. It was that many people would be saying that this is the time of the end. That prediction has come to pass. But there’s been no credible prophet on the scene, so I have no reason to believe that God did this, nor do I have any reason to believe that we have entered the time of the end except in the broadest sense. But the world has changed, and the church needs to change as well. What kind of changes do we need to make? Where should we be going, and what should we be doing? There is a message, a lesson from Jesus’ teachings, I think, that is very poorly understood among God’s people. Perhaps it’s not well understood for the commonest of reasons. We thought it applied to someone else and not to us. I’m going to try to rectify that error this morning, if you’ll bear with me. Would you turn back to Matthew chapter 21, 33, when Jesus says, hear another parable. Yeah, yet another parable. And this theme that Jesus is developing in this parable is very common in the gospel accounts. It is a difficult thing for the people who heard him to hear. It was a difficult thing for them to understand. It was a hard thing for them to believe. He said this, “…there was a certain householder which planted a vineyard, hedged it around, digged a winepress in it and built a tower, lent it out to husbandmen and went into a far country.” Now, if you know your prophets, you will know this is an allegory that was drawn from Isaiah. In fact, it was in Isaiah, the song of my beloved concerning his vineyard that is advanced. You will know that it came from Isaiah and applies to the house of Israel. But even if you don’t know that, even if you had no awareness of that connection at all, it wouldn’t take you very long to figure out who Jesus is talking about here. he continues the wine press is all fixed and he went away and when the time of the fruit drew near he sent his servants to the husbandman that they might receive the fruits of it and the husbandman took his servants beat one killed another stoned another one and he sent some more servants and they did the same thing to them that’s an allegory but who in this allegory are these additional servants well they are Isaiah Jeremiah Amos Hosea Micah and so forth God sent prophets to them, sent Elijah along and said, do this, do that, repent of this, turn here. And the people stoned them, killed them, treated them shamefully in every way. So last of all, he sent to them his son saying, well, they will respect my son. And everyone knows who the son is, don’t we, from this parable. It is Jesus. Now when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir, come, let’s kill him and let’s seize on his inheritance. And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard and slew him. When the Lord of the vineyard comes, Jesus asked the men standing around him here, who have not yet tumbled to the fact he’s talking about them. He said, when the Lord of it comes, what will he do to those husbandmen? The men who are standing there are actually asked to pass judgment on themselves. But they don’t know. So they say, well, he will surely destroy those miserably destroyed, those wicked men, and let out his vineyard to other husbandmen who shall render to him their fruits in their season. Think about this judgment. He will destroy those miserable men. And he will let out his vineyard to someone else. Because they didn’t do what they were expected to do. Jesus said, didn’t you ever read the scriptures? The stone which the builders has rejected has become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing. It’s marvelous in your eyes. Wherefore, I say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. Now the import, the weight of that statement is, you know, a little bit beyond my capacity really to carry it across to you. It’s a heavy statement, and I know the men who heard it did not fully grasp the meaning of it. Sometimes we complicate things with our own ideas, but think about it in this way. The Jewish religion, the Jewish religious establishment had the kingdom of God, for if they had not had it, it could not be taken from them, right? Right? The Jewish establishment had, in some sense of the expression, the kingdom of God. And he says it will be taken away from them and given to somebody else. On what basis? On the basis of results. Fruits is the word he uses because he’s talking about fruit of the vineyard. But it’s an allegory and you have to look in the allegory and say, well, what are we talking about here? Well, it’s very clear. God expected results from these men. He did not get the results he wanted. And he says, I’m taking the whole thing away from you and I’m going to give it to somebody else. It’s God does that sort of thing. Do you think that might send a shiver of fear down our backs today to realize God’s like that? That he would give you a job, give you time to do it, come back to see if you’d done it, and if you hadn’t, he’d take the job away from you and give it to somebody else. Would God do that? Well, he did, didn’t he? Did it very distinctly in the first century and by Jesus. So we know that if a people do not produce the results that God demands, they will lose their place at the table and be replaced by someone else. Most people read this parable, apply it to the Jews, and never imagine for a moment that it could apply again to us here right now. But of course it can. And apparently it’s something we don’t think much about because if we did think about it, we would by now have done something about it. And on the evidence, I don’t really think we have. Where do you think the Pharisees and the Sadducees went wrong? And what do you suppose we might be able to learn from their failure? The fact is they made one of the most persistent and pernicious mistakes ever made by God’s people. I say persistent because it’s happened long, long ago, long before Jesus came on the scene. It happened then and it’s happened since to the church of God as well. They made one of the most persistent and pernicious mistakes ever made by God’s people. They presumed that they had status with God, and therefore they were okay. They had status. Their error was the presumption of status and the assumption of entitlement. We are in the right place. This is God’s temple. We are the right people. We have the truth. God is with us. Now you think about this for a moment and it leads logically to the corollary. We are the people and you are not. The old exclusivism that stinks up the church so often and so thoroughly. This is going to be hard to understand. It’s going to be a little hard to follow. But you need to bear with me on this because the presumption of status and of entitlement is one of those things that led the Jews to be finally rejected by God. And it’s stalking us here right now. John the Baptist on one day was baptizing the River Jordan. It was early in his career. He was very popular, and people were flocking to him, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees came down to his baptism as well. And he saw them come down there. What he’s saying about this, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, some of them were good people, of course, and some of them were bad people, just like any other cadre of people. But you have to understand that in the context of the New Testament, the Pharisees and the Sadducees represent the religious establishment of the time. He sees the establishment coming down to his baptism, and he says to them, O generation of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth fruit, therefore, fruits proper for repentance. And don’t think to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father. For I tell you, God is able to raise up of these stones children to Abraham. Now you understand what’s happening here and what he’s saying to these people? These are people coming down here who assume that because they are children of Abraham, they have identity, they have status, they are God’s people, they are special to God, and nothing bad can come upon them. What he is telling them is the fact that you are children of Abraham won’t buy you anything. You’d better repent. And then he said this, And now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. And every tree that brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. No one believed it could happen to them, but it did. It did. Now, do I have to spell this out for you? Modern religious organizations of churches who make the presumption of status before God are making the same mistake that the Pharisees did. Status is not good enough. The axe will be laid to the root of every tree. We have seen this happen at least once in the past five years. The axe was laid to the root of a very large religious organization. What makes us think that it can’t happen again? It happened in the first century. I have no idea how many times it’s happened since then. Whenever God’s people, wherever they were, failed to produce the fruit that was expected of them, the axe was laid to the root of the tree and it was cut down and it was cast into the fire. We have seen it happen. It can happen again. And unless our churches, your churches, begin to bear fruit, they are going to face the axe and the fire. Who you are is not enough. What you believe is not enough. Who you affiliate with is not enough. Your ethnic identity is not enough. None of these things that give you status, none of them give you any entitlement with God whatsoever. The essential thing is we’re going to have to produce. Let’s try another parable of Jesus, and this one’s fairly familiar to all of us, I think. It’s found in Matthew 25. I’m trying to help us to understand what I mean when I talk about the danger of the presumption of status. Assuming that you have status and entitlement with God. The kingdom of heaven shall be likened unto ten virgins that took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. All ten of these virgins had the same status. They are all proclaimed as virgins. So what they are, who they are, is the same across the group. However, five of them were wise virgins. Five of them were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. And while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. Now one thing is clear. They all have at this point in time the same status, but they do not have the same performance. Some made preparation beyond the obvious. Some of them made no preparation at all. While the bridegroom waited, they all slumbered, they all slept. At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him. All those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps, and the foolish said to the wise, Give us of your oil, our lamps are gone out. We are entitled to some of your oil. There is an assumption of entitlement. You give us some of what you’ve got. Unfortunately, in this case, there wasn’t enough. And the wives said, we can’t. There wouldn’t be enough for us and you. You go rather to them that sell and buy for yourself. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came. They were ready, went in with him to the marriage. And, and this is the chilling projection, the door was shut. The other virgins came and said, Lord, open to us. And he answered and said, I’m going to tell you the truth. I don’t know you. Who are you? Watch therefore. Because you don’t know the hour when your Lord does come. And so you can charge about thinking this is the time of the end or this is not the time of the end, but the bottom line all the way down the line is you don’t know. You can’t know. What are you supposed to do? You are supposed to have a state of readiness that you can maintain at all times and all generations. That’s what you’re supposed to do. And you’re never supposed to assume that you’re all right because you are in the right church, hold the right set of doctrines, you’re the right ethnic people, you know, who you are, what status you are, that you’re special with God. None of that, folks, none of it is going to cut it when the time comes. Now, it would have been wrong, wouldn’t it, to tell those five virgins before all this came down, look, you don’t have a thing in the world to worry about. Right? It would have been good, really, for those five virgins to have had someone come along and put a little bit of the fear of God in them, wouldn’t it? Before they came to this place. The fact is, it would be wrong for me to tell the church today that we’ve got nothing to fear. We’ve got a problem in this sense that because of a past association some of us have had with what we might call a fear-based religion or a religion that engaged in fear for control purposes, that therefore fear is wrong and we’ve got to get away from fear and it’s important that we not be afraid of anything. It’s the same mistake people make down through all generations of reacting away from one thing and then winding up making another error. The truth is there is something for us to fear. You know what it is? It’s God. There was a time, I think, when the church had a pretty clear understanding of what it meant to fear God, but somewhere along the line, that’s gone off and disappeared from us, and we think, well, we’re going to be all right because we’re the church of God. We have the truth, and we know God’s doctrine. The rest of these people don’t know it, and so we’ll be all right, and they won’t. The truth is, I think there’s a very real possibility of some of our people and some of our churches being left behind, if I may borrow a title, directly because they presume upon their status as the church of God. This presumption of status is a long-standing error, and one of my favorite prophecies, those of you who have heard it before will have to hear it again, is Jeremiah chapter 7. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying this, I want you to stand up in the gate of the Lord’s house. And proclaim there this word and say, listen to this word, all you of Judah, and all you that enter into these gates here to worship Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel. Listen. You want to know what God says? Listen. Amend your ways and your doings, and I’ll cause you to dwell in this place. Turn yourself around. Stop doing what you’ve been doing and do what’s right. I’ll cause you to stay here. Amend your ways and your doings. Don’t trust in lying words saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. You realize what they were doing? They were saying, well, this is the temple of God. Nothing can happen to me here. This is an eternal building. It will be here forever. God will come back to this place, and I’m safe here. They assumed that they had the status of place here. He says, no, if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you don’t oppress the stranger, if you don’t oppress the fatherless, if you don’t oppress the widow, if you don’t shed innocent blood in this place, and you stop this nonsense of walking after other gods to your hurt, yeah, then I’ll cause you to dwell in this place, but it isn’t going to work because the temple is here. It’s going to work only because you change your way of life. But your problem, people, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Can’t do you any good. Do you think you can steal, kill people, commit adultery, swear falsely, even go out and burn incense to Baal and then come here into this place and stand here and say, oh, well, we’re delivered to do all these abominations. Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? I’ll tell you what, says God, I’ve seen it. But now go to my place, which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first. And you see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. I did that. I was driving north out of Jerusalem in a rented Volkswagen. And as I went down the road, I saw a sign pointing off to the right that said Shiloh. And these words came right back into my mind. It says, go to Shiloh. And since I like to do what the Lord says, I hung a right and went down a little old dirt road a ways to what was supposedly Shiloh. What I found there was nothing. And that seems to be the point. You think this is my place, that this is an eternal building, that this is the temple of God, this marvelous edifice. Okay, go up at Shiloh and see what status of place meant to anybody in times gone past. Shiloh is a bunch of bare rocks on the ground. There is absolutely nothing there. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but go to Pasadena. Go to Big Sandy. Go to Brickett Wood. Now for those of you who don’t know, these were the three major bastions of the old church. The great centers of learning, the great centers of where the church had made a great investment, and these were the educational institutions for the world tomorrow. Brickett Wood, how many of you know who owns Brickett Wood now? The electricity board in England owns Brickett Wood. Big Sandy, now owned by Hobby Lobby, who have turned the use of it over to some other religious organization. And Pasadena is falling into the hands of a real estate developer. Actually, there’s a metaphor there as well. It is in escrow, and it appears that it could remain in escrow possibly until Christ returns. Who knows the progress that they’re making. Now, we were in the right place. We were the right people. We had the truth. God was with us. And this led directly to the corollary of exclusivism. We are the people, and you’re not. And look where it ultimately ended up. What did it all finally turn out to be worth? Well, there’s a certain price tag that’s been put on the Pasadena campus, and the big sandy campus already sold, and Brick and Wood sold off years ago, and what those prices were, I don’t know, but that’s what it all came out to be worth, was so many dollars in the bank to somebody somewhere. And everything that we built and thought we were doing so great with all came to nothing. Think about that. It’s important to understand. If we can see what it meant then, Why is it that we can’t see it now? Because the same spirit, same spirit is at work in the church right now. A church that is not consumed by any kind of a drive to bear fruit. You know, any church where the spirit of exclusivism and the presumption of status is at work is headed for the axe and the fire. You can write that down and tell you that I told you that in the middle of the feast in the year 2001 because it is as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise. There’s a parable and an example, two different things in Jesus’ ministry, that provide a cautionary tale for all of us, that back up what I’m trying to tell you here right now. One of them is found in Luke, the 13th chapter. It’s the parable. There were present at that season in Jerusalem some people who came to Jesus to tell him the story about some Galileans who were down to offer sacrifice and whatever reason Pilate had come upon them and he had mingled their own blood with the blood of their sacrifice. He killed them all right there in temple. And Jesus answering said, do you tell me this? Do you think that these Galileans were sinners above everybody in Galilee because this happened to them? No. If you don’t repent, you’re going to die the same way. Then he says, Do you think they were sinners above everybody in Jerusalem? No. If you don’t repent, the same thing is going to happen to you. And then he said a parable. A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it, and he didn’t find any. He said to the dresser of the vineyard, Look, I’ve been coming here for three years looking for fruit on this fig tree, and I haven’t found a thing. Cut it down. Why is it taking up space and cumbering the ground? Get it out of here. Let’s put something else in this spot in the garden. And the gardener answered him and said, Lord, let it alone this year until I dig about it and dung it. If it bear fruit well, if not, after that you can cut it down. There are two major truths to draw from this parable. One, The failure to bear fruit brings certain correction. The form of the correction is not necessarily clear. In this case, it was digging and dunging about a plant. But what he is simply saying this, is if you don’t bear fruit initially, there is going to come a period of time of correction. And in the end, the continued failure to bear fruit is fatal. Now, there is not much question in my mind that what Jesus is talking about here, in his original, it was about the Pharisees and the religious establishment in Jerusalem. But it will be just as true to any group of people who are called by God, established by God, used by God, to any group of people to whom God has given a commission and expected some kind of results from it, they can expect the same kind of treatment that Israel got. And it’s something we ought to sit up and pay attention to. The fig tree will be fertilized and cultivated, but still if it doesn’t bear fruit, it’s going to be cut down. And there’s one more, and I think this may even be a little bit more spookier, if I may use that term, than the first one. And it’s also about a fig tree. It’s found in Mark, the 11th chapter. Jesus entered into Jerusalem, into the temple, and he looked around on all the things that were there. And even time was come, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. On the morrow, as they were coming back from Bethany, he was hungry. And he saw a fig tree not very far away. It had leaves. And he came to see if maybe he could find something to eat. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves. For the time of figs was not yet. Now, I don’t know why. I have read this little example many times and never noticed this. You might want to underline that phrase. The time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said to the tree, No man eat fruit of you hereafter forever. And his disciples heard it. And they came to Jerusalem, and Jesus went into the temple, and he began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple. He threw over the money changers’ tables and the seats of those that sold doves. He did all that. And then in verse 19, when evening was come, he went out of the city. And the next morning they passed by. They saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter said, Master, look, the fig tree you cursed has been withered away. The moral to this story, when Jesus comes to you or to your church looking for fruit, he had better find it. Even if you think it’s out of season. Because that little line that’s in there, there were no figs on it because it wasn’t time for them. Fig tree was innocent. It just wasn’t time. And it’s a strange thing for him then to turn and curse this tree and say what he did. But what you have to conclude, there’s no way to go with it from there, is that Jesus expects you to bear fruit whether it’s time or whether it’s not. And we have a terrible habit of saying, well, I will get around to it sometime. Is your church planning on going to work someday? Well, what if Jesus comes to your church looking for fruit before that day has come about? It does not appear that Jesus wants any excuses. If you are waiting for the time of figs for you to get some work done and bear some fruit, you may be left to the axe and to the fire. How important is timing anyway? Why, whoever told us we were supposed to wait before we went to work? There’s another little example of this that I think is worth seeing. It’s John 4, and I’ll begin reading in verse 31. There’s quite a bit that goes before this. It’s the account of the meeting of the woman at the well of Samaria. But his disciples came to Jesus and said, Master, it’s time. You need to eat something. In verse 32, he said, I got meat to eat that you don’t know of. You don’t know anything about the food that I’ve got. And they said, well, did somebody brought him something to eat? And they said, and Jesus said to them, you don’t understand. My meat, my food, is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. To finish his work. This was more important than eating to Jesus by a long shot. Then he said this rather strange thing. Don’t you say there are four months and then comes the harvest? And I can see us standing around saying, well, I know there’s going to be a big move that God’s going to make in the end of the age, and the time is out here ahead of us when something big is going to happen in the church, and maybe we’re all waiting on a sovereign act of God, that there will be a sovereign act of God, and the church will begin to grow and to flourish and all this again. Jesus said, you’re saying there are four months to harvest. Then, but I say to you, lift up your eyes, look at the fields, for they are white already unto harvest.” There is more work to be done than there are people to do it right now. You don’t need to think of a harvest being out there sometime way off in the future. Then he said this remarkable saying, He that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto life eternal, so both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. Is there any incentive to go to work? He said, He that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto life eternal, so that the man who sowed back when and the man that reaps right now can rejoice together. Herein is that saying true. One sows, another reaps. I sent you to reap what you didn’t bestow any labor on. Other men have labored, and you have entered into their labor. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all the prophets and the apostles before us have all been out here sowing seed all over the place. And here we are 2,000 years after Jesus’ time, still reaping the harvest that he has sowed. And it seems to me from all these examples and these parables that the time to move is now. If we don’t move, we’ll be left behind. And the axe… We’d be left behind to the axe and to the fire. Do you know what is one of the greatest barriers we have in the churches of God? One of the biggest problems we have? It is that we trust in our status as Sabbatarians to see us through. That little word, a big word, Sabbatarian, which we can wear as a label on a jacket, we think that status of being a Sabbatarian puts us in good with God. Listen to this warning from Jesus. Matthew 11, verse 20. He began to upbraid all the cities in which all of his mighty works had been done. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works had been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. They would have been there. He says, I’ll tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than it will be for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven. You’re going to be brought down to hell, for if the mighty works that had been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would still be a city today. They would have repented of it. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Now let me call something to your attention which should be obvious. The people in Bethsaida and the people in Capernaum were Sabbatarians. And they kept the holy days. Two things that are very important to us, two things that are very important to me, to which I have a great commitment, a lifetime commitment, and believe deeply in them. But at the same time, I have to understand that my status as a Sabbatarian at the label is just not enough. The people of Capernaum were Sabbatarians and kept the holy days. The people of Sodom were not. And yet they will find more tolerance in the day of judgment than the people of Capernaum. That status is not enough to keep you from being left behind to the axe and to the fire. How many of you think that you are better Sabbatarians than the Pharisees were? You see, and the Pharisees are those to whom Jesus said the axis, or actually John said the axis laid to the root of every tree. And they’re going to be cast into the fire. This is what we have to come to understand. Now I want to tell you one more place where the Pharisees went wrong. Perhaps we can learn something important from this. In Luke 18 and verse 9, he says, spoke a parable unto those people who were standing around listening to him speak, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Now, I could stop right there and wax eloquent on that one verse alone. They trusted in themselves that they were righteous. That’s bad enough. But they went beyond that to despise others. We are the people and you are not. This is where the self-righteousness comes in. So in answer to that, he said, two men went up to the temple to pray, as fell one a Pharisee, the other a Republican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. And he might have said, I keep the Sabbath, I keep the holy days. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. You all know the result. The publican went down to his house, the sinner justified, and the Pharisee did not. The Pharisee trusted his status as a righteous man. He was arrogant and carried a presumption of status. Too many people in the churches of God today are still to this day trusting in their status, and I think it is fair to say they despise others. I think we need to repent of that. But what should we do? Surely I’m not going to chastise you like this and then not give you an idea of what you ought to be doing. Well, you continue on with what Jesus said after this parable. They brought to him also infants that he would touch them. And when his disciples saw it, they rebuked the man and they called them unto him and said, And he called them, he rebuked them and said, Suffer little children to come to me. Don’t forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter in. What am I saying? Well, right on the heels of this statement that Jesus made about the trusting in yourself that you’re righteous and despising others and the lack of justification, he brings a little child in and says, Suffer little children to come to me. We can start by helping little children come to Jesus. That’s something we can do. We can do it today. We can do it tomorrow. We can do it in our churches. We can do it as an ongoing part of the ministry that our churches have. I am convicted that of all the ministries waiting on the church of God today, nothing is more important than youth ministry. It’s crucial. I don’t know why we should think that we are prepared to evangelize the world when we cannot successfully evangelize our own children. Here’s one simple thing, one simple concrete thing you can do. There is a book available titled Youth Ministry for Small Churches. Get a copy. Read it. Take it to your church and say, ìWhat can we do about this?î You can get the book from Amazon.com. You can get it from CEM. We have it stocked in our bookstore, although if all of you ordered it today, we couldn’t supply that order. Youth ministry for small churches. I don’t know the author, but you can find it easily enough. You know, I have often been asked, this is a curious thing in this time in which we live in which the church has been divided and splintered. People have asked me, what are you doing about the next generation of ministers for the church? For a while, I was a little bit stumped by the question. What are we going to do for the next generation of leadership for the church? And then I realized that what we are doing at CEM is the most important thing that can be done for the leadership of the church in the next generation. We are teaching the children, the next generation of the church, to know God, to know Jesus Christ, to know that he is their friend, to know that he loves them, to help them to understand the Bible, to become biblically literate, to where when they come of age they will be in a position to lead the church. One of the reasons why I’m not prepared to stand up here before you and say that we have entered the end times, because I know that if I do, half the church will quit work. Some of us can remember back in a time when people weren’t even getting dental work done because they wouldn’t then think they’d have to because the church would go to a place of safety in 72 and Christ would be back by 75 and there’s no need for us to do any of that kind of stuff. So I’m not going to stand here and tell you that we’ve entered the end times because I don’t trust you not to quit work. There would be no youth ministry. There would be no next generation of the church. And you know something? It occurred to me just this morning. That the church of God has virtually thrown away three generations of children. Just run them off. I mean, we were talking to one family this week that out of 12 kids of this particular fellow’s acquaintance in his own family, extended family, only one of them, he was the only one that’s still in the church after all these years. And some surveys have been done. And the numbers of people who have grown up in the church of God who are still in the church of God are minuscule. You know why? Why? Because we always thought there would be no next generation. The time of the end was coming. Christ would return. There was no reason to prepare for the next generation of the church because there wouldn’t be one. That’s the end result of deciding that the time of the end is at hand and it’s time for us to all quit work and go somewhere else. If we don’t do this, one of the reasons I’m doing this, if I say it, we’ll quit work, there’ll be no youth ministry, no next generation of the church, and it’ll be left to God to raise up stones to finish his work, and some of us will just be left behind to the axe and to the fire. Finally, Matthew 24 and verse 6. I scribbled this out of my Bible. I want you to fill in the blanks of the last two words of this verse. You know what responsive reading is, don’t you? I read something and then you read something back. I’m going to read you all except the last two words of this verse, and I want you then to read the last two words to me. And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not troubled, for the end is near. Not yet. So how can we join a consensus that says we have entered the time of the end? Actually, down in verse 42 of Matthew, there’s a very important passage. Watch, therefore, for you don’t know in what hour your Lord should come. And then there are those who equivocate. Well, yeah, we may not know the hour, but we can know the day. Jesus said you don’t know the day or the day or the hour, but maybe we can know the year. Forget about it. Know this, if the good man of the house had known what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and not suffered his house to be broken up. So you be ready, for in such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man comes. This is the part that I keep coming back to in my own heart and mind. Who is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord has made ruler over his household to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find having fled for his life. It’s an old trick, but it still works, doesn’t it? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find so doing. The expectation is that whatever the job I have been given to do, whatever job you have been given to do, that what our greatest joy and happiness and our greatest fulfillment should be is that when Christ returns, he will find us in the middle of starting another project in that mission that he has given us to do. Carrying on and getting on with what there is to be done. Verily I say unto you, he’ll make him ruler over all his goods. Want to be a ruler in the kingdom of God? You keep doing the job that God has given you until he comes and he tells you to stop. As I said earlier, the churches in our tradition have virtually thrown away three generations of children. And the axe has been laid to the root of the church that did that. I don’t know what your church thinks it means to bear fruit for God. But whatever it is, don’t you think you should be doing something about it? Remember what John said, Now the axe is laid to the root of every tree. Therefore every tree which brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. I think we can do better than that.
Join us as we unpack the timeless lessons from Jesus’ parables, examining their applicability to the modern era. In a world that seems incessantly on the edge of a crisis, it’s crucial to understand the spiritual call to bear fruit and avoid the pitfalls of complacency. We share thought-provoking insights and practical steps to ensure we are contributing positively to our spiritual communities, emphasizing the indispensable role of youth ministry as a cornerstone for the future generation.
