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WHAT A SAVIOR! #3
SEND MIKEY TO DO THE JOB
Have you ever heard the story about the rebellious
sharecroppers? It’s one of Jesus’ own parables, and you can find it in
Matthew 21. There seem to be a lot of stories in Jesus’ bag of anecdotes
about someone who gets things going, and then is away on a long journey;
this is one of those. But a wealthy landowner put some tenants in charge
of looking after his vineyard. Then – off he goes on a year-long cruise
to exotic foreign locales. But when it’s time to collect the harvest and
bank the proceeds, and he sends some of his servants back to the old country
to get the payoff, these tenants beat up the emissaries. In fact, they
kill one or two of them. So the boss sends some more men out to the Napa
wine vineyards, and the same thing happens to them. The men hardly get
as far as Yountville before these thugs blow up their SUVs too.
So the owner, now in desperation, says: “Okay, I’ll send My own Son. At
least they’re respect HIM.” But you know, He meets with the worst fate
of all. Thinking they can now wrest control of the vineyard if they kill
the heir, that’s what the wicked servants do.
We’re studying together for a few weeks here the nature and the mission
of Jesus when He came to this world. If you’re one of the millions who
went to see the blockbuster film, The Passion of the Christ, you realize
that this parable by Jesus is ABOUT Jesus. And those who were listening
that day knew it! As Jesus’ opponents – the priests and the Pharisees
– heard Him tell the story, they could see themselves right in the plot
line.
But here’s the question we want to prayerfully continue with. As Jesus
was here on earth, what role did He fill? Was He God’s emissary? God’s
best and last ambassador? Was He here to do the bidding of the One who
sent Him, even though that meant sure death?
You know, the answer to all of those question is yes. “God sent His Son.”
That’s John 3:16. God sent His appointed heir. That’s powerfully expressed
in Hebrews 1:2:
“In these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.”
And yes, Jesus came down to earth to do the will of
His Father. He admits that in the book of John, chapter six:
“For I have come down from heaven not to do My will
but to do the will of Him who sent Me.”
We’re into some heavy, heavy theology here, friend,
and we have to proceed with prayerful caution. Yesterday we read in God’s
Word that Jesus and God are eternally and equally co-existent. God didn’t
start before Jesus; God didn’t “father” Jesus. God didn’t ever give Jesus
powers that He didn’t already possess in His own being. And yet we find
here that Jesus is obeying the Father, doing the Father’s will, seeking
to honor the Father, being sent BY the Father.
Here in Southern California we recently went through a tough five-month
period where you had to go to Smart & Final, and then to Costco, and
over to Trader Joe’s in order to get your groceries. Why? Because three
of the major supermarket chains were in a lockout labor dispute. Shelves
were bare, the picketers were out in the parking lot. For five months!
How do logjams like that finally get broken up? Well, I didn’t follow
the details too closely, but I imagine there were mediators and emissaries
on both sides who eventually sat down at a table. The top executives at
Von’s, Ralph’s, and Albertson’s didn’t go themselves; they “sent their
son,” so to speak. “This underling, this lesser executive, will speak
on our behalf,” they announced.
Maybe you remember a Tom Hanks film a number of years ago where he suggested
that all of life’s problems, all the hard theologies in the world, can
be addressed from movie lines out of the old film, The Godfather. I certainly
won’t endorse that theology, but maybe you do remember a quick snippet
where Michael Corleone, the son, has to meet with some Las Vegas bigshot.
And when the encounter goes poorly, and Mike offends the guy he’s negotiating
with, there’s a sense that, well, Moe Greene should have just dealt with
the Don directly. Not the son. Because Michael is “lesser.” He’s inferior.
He doesn’t have all the family connections yet. He doesn’t have full authority
yet. He’s one notch above the family joke: “Send Fredo to do that.” Maybe
Tom Hagen, the family consiglieri, should just intervene by taking the
matter back to New York and talking to Marlon Brando himself.
Well, friend, that’s enough of THAT for sure! But here in this far more
noble story that culminates at Calvary and a Resurrection Sunday, I want
to suggest to you that we have a loving Father and an obedient Son who
are in perfect accord and both with full authority over this universe.
Right at the end of Matthew, Jesus says to His disciples and loved ones
as He’s about to depart and return to heaven:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given
to Me.”
And it’s hard for us to grasp, but that “giving” does
not mean that Jesus is simply God’s errand boy, or that He is the new
“Don” who doesn’t yet have full control of the family. What happened at
the Cross isn’t like that grocery strike where a distant God simply sent
a “lesser” representative to the bargaining table.
It’s interesting that the evangelical writer John Stott picks up on that
very idea, and notes the crucial distinction.
“Whenever we have cast Jesus Christ,” he writes, “in
the role of a third party, who intervened to rescue us from an angry God,
we have been guilty of a travesty which stands condemned, since it is
God Himself who loved the world and God who took the initiative to send
His Son to die for us.”
Most world religions have three parties: wicked us,
a holy and angry God, and then some intermediary in the middle. But not
in the Christian faith!
You know, anytime you buy or sell a house, you encounter a moment when
the realtor and the party he’s representing are just a few shades of gray
apart. “I don’t know,” the Century 21 agent says, straightening the lapels
on his yellow coat. “I’m not sure they’ll go for that offer. But you know
what? Let’s run it by them and see.” He hints to you like he’s on your
side, and then of course, he goes back to the party he’s representing,
and slants the same offer to suit THEM. But friend, Jesus didn’t come
down to this world to broker a deal on behalf of a heavenly Father who
felt differently than He did. We must never think that God was angry,
and Jesus cooled Him down. We must never entertain the idea that God’s
wrath against sin could only be pacified by Jesus’ blood on the cross.
Jesus and God are equals, co-existent, always existent, in perfect unity
of purpose. Always. One never talks the other into something. They never
go round and round, with one finally persuading each other. God never
“bosses” Jesus around. There was never a time when the emergency of sin
caught them by surprise, and where God and Jesus had to go into a huddle
and say: “We didn’t see this coming? Now what? What’s our contingency
plan?” That never happened. And yet, when Jesus in His humanity was afraid
of the Cross’s agonies, dreading the rejection and the heartbreak of “lostness,”
He had enough faith to “obey” what He already know was their joint will.
There’s a line that is contained in my denomination’s statement of faith.
And you know, when churches go through the painful, sometimes contentious
process of forming, of gathering together a group of like-minded disciples,
there can be discussion and debate as old heresies are slowly laid aside.
I’ll be the first to say that there were early Adventists who weren’t
ready to embrace the pillar of truth where Jesus Christ is eternally pre-existent
and fully equal with the Father, fully divine in all aspects. But here’s
what the statement reads like today – and I’m so thankful that it does:
“Christ is ONE with the Eternal Father – one in nature,
equal in power and authority, God in the highest sense, eternal and self-existent,
with life original, unborrowed, underived; Christ existed from all eternity,
distinct from, but united with, the Father, possessing the same glory,
and all the divine attributes.”
We want to spend some serious time here going through
the many, many compelling reasons why Jesus Christ is absolutely and fully
100% God. Not lesser. Not a shadow of heaven’s highest power. When that
little Baby was born in a manger, and when He healed, and when He hung
on that Cross and had Mel Gibson’s hand drive in the nails, that was God
in all His fullness dying for my sins and yours.
Would you agree with me that all Christian theology falls into place only
when Jesus is rightly in HIS place? He spent time on the Cross. He spent
time in the tomb. But the place He belongs for all eternity is on the
throne of our lives – as our Savior AND our God.
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