Springs Lighthouse Church

Pastor Brian Michaels: Matthew Chapter 21. We left off at verse 33. Matthew 21:33, and let's pray.

Father, You are an amazing God. We gather here as Your people, declaring that we're just amazed by You. We are so grateful for who You are and for Your heart to minister to and speak to Your people. Lord, I pray that You would work today through the frailty of a man, that Your Holy Spirit would be the one that speaks to our hearts. Lord, that You would sort through anything that is not of You, and Lord, that You would simply draw us close to Yourself. We ask it in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, right on.

As we came out of Chapter 20 of the Book of Matthew and into Chapter 21, and I mentioned this to you last week, we've actually for a couple of weeks dealt with this issue of Jesus' conflict with the religious leaders and the problem that was going on within the nation of Israel spiritually at that time. We come into Chapter 21 and we see Jesus with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we commemorate and celebrate as Palm Sunday. It marks His last week of earthly ministry.

Jesus comes into the temple area, and you remember He proceeds to cleanse the temple, to clear the temple. It was something He also did at the beginning of His ministry, but now He also does it at the end of His ministry. I'm not going to rehash everything that we've studied thus far. I will say that it's important for us to understand when Jesus is clearing the temple, when He is turning over the stools and the stalls of the people who were buying and selling in the temple. They were buying and selling sacrificial animals, and they were ripping off the people.

What was happening was that they were colluding with the religious leadership. So when you brought your lamb or your dove or your goat or your bull—of course, this is Passover time, it was primarily lambs for this sacrifice—when they were brought for the sacrifice, the priest would inspect it. If it was in any way blemished, then that lamb would be rejected. Those who were buying and selling in the temple precincts had supposedly pre-approved lambs already annotated as kosher.

You could buy these lambs, and of course, they would cost two or three times what it would cost to buy them outside. The people were getting rich who were buying and selling, and they were ripping off the people in order to give a kickback to the religious leaders. It was all corrupt. It was all co-opted. Why did He turn over the tables of the money changers? Why was He scattering their money? Can you imagine what that looked like when all that coinage just went all over the place? They didn't have paper money back then; it was all coins.

What was that about? If you're bringing your offering to the temple, you had to bring it in the temple shekel. You could not use Roman coinage or Greek coinage that was popular throughout the empire. You had to have it exchanged for the temple shekel, and again, they would charge exorbitant exchange rates and give a kickback to the religious leaders. This is why Jesus was incensed.

All of that brings Him into direct conflict with the religious leadership, who were virulently opposed to anything that He was doing. They hated His teaching. Why? Because Jesus had already explained. They were binding burdens that were heavy to bear and laying them on the people—anything that made the religious elite look better than those they were supposedly ministering to, when they were not actually ministering to anyone. They were ministering to themselves, enriching themselves.

Jesus comes along with teachings like, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Well, that was very different from what the religious leaders were telling them. "You have to obey the law and you have to keep the minutiae of the law." The law to them was not just what the Scripture declared; the law was all of their tradition and religiosity and Churchianity that went along with it.

Many of us have been there and suffered under that kind of oppressive spirituality. Jesus was different, and the religious leaders are opposing His teaching. They're opposed to His popularity, so great conflict is brewing. Now, Jesus has come alongside the path coming back to the city. He sees a fig tree. He's hungry. He sees leaves on the fig tree. There should be figs there. He walks over to it. There are no figs on the fig tree. He curses it, and it withers away.

There was a lesson in that for His disciples. They completely missed it, as they commonly did. But the fig tree in that sense represented the nation of Israel. Many times in the Old Testament Scriptures, the fig tree is used to represent the nation of Israel. God is looking for fruit from His people. He was then, He is now. He wants us to be fruitful for His glory, and He came along and Israel was not fruitful. So they were rejected.

That rejection, by the way, is not forever. I need to make sure that I express that. We live in a very anti-Semitic time again, and I want to make sure that what I am not saying is that God has rejected Israel. He rejected where they were at that time. When you read the Book of Romans, Paul makes it clear that God is not finished with Israel yet. When you read the Book of Revelation, you realize we're entering into what the Old Testament Scriptures call the time of Jacob's trouble, what we call the Great Tribulation. That seven-year period, God is going to deal with Israel again. It's that 70th week of Daniel Chapter 9 that still needs to be fulfilled.

So I'm not saying that God has turned His back on and rejected Israel. What I'm saying is He looked for fruit, there was none, and so the Gospel was going to go outside of Israel. We'll see that very clearly in a moment. He wanted fruit; He found none. So the religious leaders come and they challenge Jesus' authority. "By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you that authority?" He says, "I'll tell you what, I've got a question for you. You answer mine, I'll answer yours. Where did John the Baptist get his authority?"

They get in this little huddle together. You can just see them, they're all gathered around. "Well, if we say that he got his authority from men, then we're going to be in trouble because the people saw him as a prophet and they believe he got his authority from God. But if we say that he got his authority from God, then Jesus is going to say, 'Well then why didn't you believe him?' So we don't know. So let's just tell him we don't know. Ready? Break!"

"We don't know where he got his authority." Jesus basically is saying to them, "Well then you're not equipped to deal with my answer as to where my authority comes from, and I won't answer you." Then He tells these religious leaders a parable. We looked at this last week, the parable of the two sons. In a nutshell, it goes like this: a father went to his two boys and said, "I need you to go work in the vineyard today." One said, "I'm not going," but he went. The other said, "Sure, Dad, I'll go," and then he didn't go.

Jesus asked the religious leaders, "Well, which one actually did the will of his father? The one who said he would but then didn't, or the one who said he wouldn't but then changed his mind and went?" "The one who changed his mind and went." "Good Pharisee, right answer." Then Jesus hits them with this line, and this is where we concluded last week: "Tax collectors, whom they despised, tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but tax collectors and harlots believed him, and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him."

How offensive that must have been to those religious leaders. The tax collectors that you hate, that are collecting taxes from God's people for an oppressive, evil Roman Empire, they're getting to heaven before you. The harlots walking around with their four-inch clear heels, they're getting to heaven before you do. You can just see these guys, the religious elite, with steam blowing out of their ears.

Then Jesus says this, verse 33: "Hear another parable." The first parable that He told that we studied last week had to do with the authority of the Father. "Where does my authority come from? Let me lay out this authority issue, but let me do it in a parable." Remember that a parable is from the Greek parabolé. It means to cast something alongside of something else, to cast alongside. Para meaning to come alongside, bolé meaning to throw.

What Jesus does with parables is He takes a spiritual truth and He lays it alongside of an example from everyday life that all of the people would have immediately recognized and understood. So there is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. This next parable He's about to tell deals not so much with the authority of the Father, but the authority of the Son that has been granted by the Father. So they're linked together.

He says, "Hear another parable: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it and built a tower." They would have understood this picture. We don't so much today unless you make regular trips to Napa. You probably don't recognize a lot of this. But the way that they would set things up, a man would go, he would buy a field, he would go through, he would clear it of all of its stones, he would cultivate the land, he would plant a vineyard.

Then there are three things mentioned here specifically that he did in conjunction with the vineyard. He put a hedge around it. That was to block easy access from intruders, whether man or beast. You have to get through the hedge if a beast is going to come in and start eating the grapes or if a person is going to come in and steal the grapes. Then he built a tower in it. A tower is where a watchman would stand to note if anyone had come into the garden, into the vineyard, that had gotten through the hedge, whether man or beast, then he could send someone over to deal with the problem.

Then you had, of course, a wine press because you can gather all the grapes from the vineyard, but they don't do you much good if you don't have a place to press them out so you can make your wine. This man, this wealthy man, a landowner, has land, he plants a vineyard, he puts a hedge around it, puts a wine press in it, he builds a tower, and then he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.

In this agrarian society, this would have been very easily understood by the people. The guy gets it all set up, he leases it to a vinedresser or also called sometimes a husbandman, who would come in and take care of making sure that the grapes grew, that they ripened, that they were harvested, that they were pressed. The way that it generally worked in that day and that culture, the landowner got two-thirds of the proceeds, the vinedresser got one-third of the proceeds.

That's the way this was all set up. But the Jewish mind, the Hebrew mind, immediately would be prompted to go back to a section of their Scripture that some of you are familiar with. Some of you have been around the Church, around biblical teaching long enough that your brain probably already went to Isaiah Chapter 5. Most of those Jewish people standing around would have probably gone back to Isaiah Chapter 5.

Let me tell you who I know would have: the religious leaders. They understood the pictures. They understood the shadows and the symbolism because not only is Israel represented many times in their Scriptures as a fig tree, but Israel is also represented many times in their Scriptures as a vineyard. Isaiah Chapter 5 gives us a classic example of this.

Isaiah Chapter 5 says this: "Let me sing to my well-beloved, a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard: My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also made a wine press in it." Does that sound familiar? Isn't that what we just read? This is why their minds would have gone immediately back to what Isaiah is saying.

So this man plants a vineyard. He made a wine press in it, put a tower in its midst. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please. This is where God starts to speak through Isaiah's prophecy.

"Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, what more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done in it? Judge please between me and my vineyard, the Lord says. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now, please let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge and it will be burned, and break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste, it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it."

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, just in case there was any question. And the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. This is the exact picture that Jesus has just presented to these religious leaders. What Isaiah talks about that happened during the Babylonian captivity is about to happen again in 70 AD when the Romans come through and completely destroy the Temple Mount and eradicate the city of Jerusalem.

If that's not enough, Psalm 80 gives us a very similar picture to this. If you were to read Psalm 80 beginning in verse 8, it says this: "You have brought a vine out of Egypt." That's pretty clear, isn't it? God brought Israel out of Egypt. "You brought a vine out of Egypt, you have cast out the nations and planted it." He brought them into the land of Canaan, cast out those nations and planted Israel in that land.

"You prepared room for it and caused it to take deep root and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow and the mighty cedar with its boughs. She sent out her boughs to the sea, that's all the way to the Mediterranean, and her branches to the river, the Jordan River. Why have you broken down her hedges so that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit? The boar out of the wood uproots it and the wild beast of the field devours it. Return, we beseech you, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see, and visit this vine and the vineyard which your right hand has planted and the branch that you made strong for yourself."

The Jewish people and the Hebrew mind, and particularly the intelligence of these religious leaders, would have taken them back to these passages. It's why in a moment they're going to get it, that Jesus is talking about them. He's just described God took a people that was not a nation, delivered them, brought them into the land, planted them in the land, made them a nation, took care of them, and then desired fruit from them.

Kind of sounds a lot like what God has done for us. Rescued us from the world system, brought us to Himself. He's cared for us, He's nurtured us because we deserved it? No way. There is no way we deserved it. He loved us because He loved us. He demonstrated that love for us. When we got our life all perfected and got everything taken care of, Christ died for us. Isn't that what the Scripture says? That's not what the Scripture says. He demonstrated His love for us in that while we were still sinners, He died for us.

But now He expects fruit from us—not to earn His favor, but because we're enjoying His favor. He wants fruit. He wanted fruit from Israel. So verse 34, back to our text: "Now when vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers that they might receive its fruit." God had taken care of His people, He cultivated them, He wanted fruit from them. "And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another."

Now, Jesus doesn't name these servants that are beaten, killed, and stoned, but we could easily apply Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. God keeps sending His servants to Israel; they wouldn't hear Him. So verse 36, "Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them." Maybe Hosea, Amos, Obadiah. Some of you are saying, "Who?" Those are minor prophets.

Let me just clarify for those of you that might be new to the Scripture. You have major prophets, you have minor prophets. Major prophets: Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the like, Isaiah. And you've got minor prophets like Amos, Hosea, Obadiah, Malachi. It's Malachi, not Malachi, you Italians. But here's the thing. You don't have major prophets and minor prophets like all the minor prophets just didn't quite make it to the big leagues. They're triple-A prophets. No, their books are shorter, that's all it means.

If they're shorter, those are the ones we never go through and never talk about. Listen, someday you're going to be in heaven and you're going to walk to somebody and I don't know if we'll have little name tags, "Hello, my name is," and you'll say, "I'm Brian." He'll say, "Oh, I'm Amos. Did you read my book?" You don't want to say, "I'm sorry, I've never read your book."

So read those things now, please. Because what I want is for someone to say, "Yes, I did read, I studied your book, Amos. I know all about you and what you've written for us." And he'll say, "You must have gone to Springs Lighthouse." So there. So again, He sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them.

Then verse 37, "Last of all he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.'" Verse 38 means that what we're about to read in verse 39 becomes first-degree murder. It's premeditated, it's thought out, it's planned for. So verse 39, "They took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him."

Well, this answers for us the question in Isaiah Chapter 5, verse 4, when God says, "What more could have been done for my vineyard that I have not done in it? What more could I do?" Well, this is what more He could do: He could send His very Son. And the One that was standing in front of these religious leaders was the exemplification of what more God could do, and it was the final place of what more God could do. He sent His Son, and they were about to kill Him, weren't they?

Now, listen, they can't kill Him yet because it wasn't time yet. And again, this is important. We're going to see in just a moment, they want to kill Him right now. They want to kill Jesus at this very moment, but they can't. Why? Because Jesus wasn't put to death at someone else's whim. Jesus died being in full and complete control of His death. He gave His life; it was not taken from Him.

So verse 40, "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes," and Jesus asks them a question after telling them the story, "therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?" They said to Him, "He will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons." Interesting, they knew what justice was supposed to look like, but they're not executing judgment as leaders of the people.

Jesus said to them, verse 42, "Have you never read in the Scriptures?" Matthew loves recording that, doesn't he? It's like every time Jesus said that, I think Matthew was like, "Ooh, that's going in the book." Because this is like saying to the seminary professors of their day, "Hey, by the way guys, do you read your Bible? Have you ever read this? 'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.'"

He quotes from Psalm 118, and He references this chief cornerstone, which in that day, in ancient architecture, the chief cornerstone was the most essential, basic element of their architecture. The chief cornerstone was laid first, and everything else was marked off from that. The rest of the building was lined up on that stone. Everything that came after depended on that chief cornerstone. And Jesus said, "Have you never read that the chief cornerstone would be rejected? It's still the chief cornerstone, and this is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes."

"Therefore," verse 43, "I say to you," and get this, He's talking to the religious leaders. He tells them the story and then says, "What do you think that landowner is going to do?" "Well, they're going to throw those other vinedressers out, and he's going to kill them and destroy them, not just destroy them, but destroy them miserably." I'm not sure what that looks like. "And then he's going to lease it to other vinedressers."

And Jesus says, "Therefore I say to you, verse 43, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it." How many of you in this room right now, raise your hand if to your knowledge you have no direct Jewish ethnicity? Okay, that makes you a Gentile. It just means non-Jew. This verse should make you pleased—not for the assault on the people of Israel, but for what it means for us.

Because in Jesus' day, the Jewish religious leaders thought there was no hope for all of you who just raised your hands. In their mind and their understanding, everyone who just raised your hands, you were created by God for a singular purpose, and that is when the temperature in hell starts to die down a little bit, we'll throw a couple more of you on the fire. That was their mindset.

What Jesus is saying right here, and again, this is going to be offensive to them, He's going to take the things of the kingdom of God from you and He's going to give it to those outside of Israel. It doesn't mean that people that are Israeli, Hebrew, Jews, it doesn't mean they can't come to Christ. It does not mean that at all. What it means is predominantly the Church is made up of non-Jews today. That's all that Jesus is saying; it will travel outside of Israel.

Verse 44: "Whoever falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder." Going back to the chief cornerstone, which is a reference to Jesus, and He says, "Whoever falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder." You say, "I don't know, at first glance that kind of looks like the same thing." It's very different.

What He's saying here in regard to this cornerstone Jesus is, you fall upon Him in brokenness and humility and repentance and confession, and He in your brokenness will meet you there. It's that place that these religious leaders, most of them, could never get to. They had so convinced themselves that they were ultra-spiritual. In their own spirituality, in their own mind, in their own sense of religiosity, they thought, "Man, we are set.

We're Jews and we're Pharisees and Sadducees and religious leaders and lawyers and scribes, and they're all lumped together in this elite group. We certainly are on our way to heaven, and maybe some of the masses, these rebellious folks out here, the tax collectors, the harlots, they're gone, but maybe some of the regular masses can make it in. Gentiles? No way. Tax collectors? No way. Harlots? No way." And Jesus is really giving them the business.

You fall upon the chief cornerstone in brokenness, God will meet you there. Because a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench. Isn't that what Jesus has already said? But if you wait and that stone has to fall upon you in judgment without faith in Jesus Christ, it's going to grind to powder. It is said that the wheels of God's judgment turn slowly, but they grind thoroughly. And that's where these religious leaders are.

Verse 45, "When the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking of them." Light dawns over marble head. Wait a minute, you could just see their faces. "Oh, He's going to take that vineyard and He's going to give it to other vinedressers and He'll destroy those vinedressers miserably." And Jesus says the kingdom of God is going to be taken from you and given to others. And they're like, "Wait, what? I think He's talking about us."

Well, at least they finally got it. So verse 46, "When they sought to lay hands on him," isn't that sweet? They want to pray for him and bless him. Not hardly. They want to kill him. When they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitudes because they took him for a prophet. At this point, they truly want to kill him, but they're afraid of the opinion polls.

You can do things that are wrong and you can do things that are bad and still be a leader. Leaders can do bad things. I don't know why we seem to not be able to understand that. We live in a culture right now that there are certain things and certain lines you cannot cross. If you do, then that somehow negates all of your leadership potential and ability. That's hogwash.

These guys, however—good, bad, indifferent, it doesn't matter—they're not leaders. This is a politician. A politician is the one who doesn't have a position that they will hold to ethically, morally because it is the thing that they believe in. A politician has to see which way the wind is blowing, and wherever the opinion polls are at, that's where I'm going to be. That's these guys. They feared the multitude. They wanted to kill Jesus, which obviously was wrong, but they feared the multitude. God is using all of this because it's not time yet. They've got a few more days before Jesus goes to the cross.

Here's where I want to close, because I don't want to get into Chapter 22. The next thing is just way too long; we don't have time. I would do it, but there's another service coming in. But verse 44, I want to go back to verse 44: "Whoever falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder."

The Bible tells us that Jesus is a stone in a number of senses. We obviously see it here. Paul also talks about Jesus being a stumbling stone, doesn't he? Paul talks about Jesus being a stumbling stone to the Jewish people particularly, but I think it's easy to apply to all of what I would call religious people. If you're new to Springs Lighthouse, let me make this clear. When I say religious people, I'm not talking about people who know and love and follow Jesus.

I'm talking about religious people who think that they're going to be favored by God because of all the wonderful things they do and they're waiting for their good to be weighed against their bad—all that we talked about last week. That's religion, trying to relink with God on the basis of what I do. That is what every religious system in the world teaches and does, except Christianity.

It's really a big difference. Every religious system says, "Do this and you'll be favored by God. Do this and God will care about you. Do this and God will love you. Do this and you'll attain some state of perfection." Only Christianity says, "You can't do this, so God did it for you." He sent His Son to die in our place because we couldn't reach heaven. That was the entire point.

So when I say religious, understand what I mean. For religious people, Jesus is a stumbling stone. You know how this works. Not only were some of you there yourself, but you have family members. You go back home for celebrations, you go home for Thanksgiving, you go home for Christmas, and you talk to your family members and you try to explain to them how they need to come to Jesus by faith and receive His grace and His forgiveness, not by our merit but by what He has done.

Then we're robed with His righteousness and God sees us as perfect, and you need to receive the love of Jesus Christ by faith. They're like, "Are you telling me that I'm not going to heaven without faith in Jesus?" Yeah, that's what I'm telling you, but I'm not telling you that; the Bible says that. Jesus said that. "But I've gone to church all my life and I'm a member of the church and I've been baptized and I've been confirmed. And you're telling me I'm not going to heaven?"

Yeah, you need Jesus. I'm telling you you can, but you need faith in Jesus Christ. See, that's a stumbling stone for them. They can't get past it. They keep tripping over it because their Churchianity gets in the way. Or we see Jesus in places like Daniel Chapter 2 being described as a smiting stone, and it's kind of what's being referenced here. Reject Jesus as Savior, and that stone will fall on you and grind you to powder. If you reject Him, well then you've put God in a position where He has to be just.

See, God is just with every one of us who receive Christ. It's just that His justice was carried out in the person of Jesus so that we can be justified and our judgment has already fallen on Him. But if you don't have faith in Jesus Christ, then your judgment is still remaining in you. So where does that leave people? It leaves people with a choice to make. And there was a choice in that day.

Here's an interesting thing to consider. As Jesus is talking to these religious leaders and they're glaring at him, the hostility oozing out of them as they deal with Jesus. Was there a Pharisee named Nicodemus in the bunch? John Chapter 3, right, we know the story. Nicodemus was the Pharisee who came to Jesus that night. It's the classic Nick at Night passage.

He comes to Jesus and he says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" It's such a crazy question because you don't do anything to inherit something. Inheritance is a gift. And Jesus said, "You must be born again." Well, Nicodemus would make that choice, wouldn't he? He'd make the right choice. Was there a man in that group by the name of Joseph who came from a place called Arimathea?

The wealthy man who ultimately made that choice and realized who Jesus was and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus when it was taken down from the cross so that this wealthy man having a family tomb could lay the body of Jesus, who was considered a convicted criminal at that point, and lay that body in his tomb. Crazy thing to consider, right? Wealthy religious man making a choice to believe in who Jesus said He was, taking that body.

Why would a man like that put the body of a convicted criminal in his family tomb? Well, besides the fact that he probably knew he only needed it for the weekend. Some of you will get that on the way home. But he made a choice to believe. I wonder if there was a young man named Saul who came from a place called Tarsus because we know Saul was a Pharisee. We know he was on the Sanhedrin. Was he at this time or was it sometime later that he became a part of that group?

Was he there that day? Because he would not make that choice right away, would he? He would set out with a zeal in his heart to persecute and destroy the Church. And as he's on his horse with his entourage heading towards Damascus on that Damascus road with letters to arrest Christians there and bring them back to Jerusalem, the Lord appears to him, knocks him, well quite literally off his high horse.

Laying there on his back, blinded. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" And Saul's response is just classic: "Who are you, Lord? Because whoever You are You just knocked me down, struck me blind, so I guess I better submit. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It's hard for you to kick against the goads, isn't it, Saul?" But that man's name was changed to Paul. He becomes, of course, the great apostle Paul.

Were they there as all of this is taking place? Because every one of them at this moment is being called to a choice. This is a point of decision for them. Some may have made it at that moment. We know a couple of them did make the right choice, but it might have been later, like with Saul of Tarsus. Here's what I know. Most of us in this room today, we've made the same choice. Amen?

We've made the choice to recognize that Jesus is who He claimed to be, that He is the way, He is the truth, and no one comes to the Father but through Him. You take issue with that, take issue with Him, not me. That's what the word of God says. That's what Jesus said. "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." And so we've made that choice.

So what does that mean? Well, that means that He is our chief cornerstone, and our life is now measured by Him. Our life takes direction off of Him. Everything in our life needs to now be measured off of Him. And this brings great freedom if you think about it. As a husband, I'm not measured off another husband. Amen? My life is not measured on you other husbands in here that are much better husbands than me.

But I am measured off Jesus and what He has declared and what He has commanded for me as a husband. I don't need to get my compass for life off of a heroin user. He is my chief cornerstone. You really don't want me measuring my life off of other pastors. You want me to be the man that I am. I hope that you appreciate the transparency I try to bring to the pulpit so that we understand we are all in this together.

We have different gifts and we have different callings, but there is no difference between any of us and any one in leadership. Every single one of us needs Jesus just as much today as we ever did. And we're all in this life together, but we take our cues off of our chief cornerstone. Amen? He's the one we measure our life off of.

And so Father, as we begin to wrap up our time together, we are so grateful for what You've done for us, that we don't have to be trapped in some system of dos and don'ts. There's not a list of things we have to do; there are so many things we get to do. And we get to change our attitude, Lord, from having to try and earn Your favor to just rejoicing in Your favor, wallowing in Your favor, enjoying Your favor, and from there we get to bear fruit for Your honor and for Your glory.

So Lord, make us a fellowship that experiences that joy and freedom that we have in You, that we walk in it each and every day. And Lord, thank You for the opportunities that we have to bring honor and glory to You by the way we live our lives, by the words that we use as we bless and encourage other people.

And Lord, maybe even as we have opportunity to call them to a point of decision, speaking the truth, doing it in love. Father, may love rule over everything that we do, but speaking the truth to call people to a point of decision. And Lord, before we take communion together, I pray that You would be moving on hearts in this place or perhaps among those who are watching online, that You would be by Your Spirit calling people to a point of decision. To lay aside whatever it is that we think was going to make us okay with You and just to embrace Jesus.

And while heads are bowed and eyes are closed, I want to give anyone an opportunity who wants to do so this morning to say, "Yes, Pastor, that's me. Pray for me. I'm ready to place my faith and trust in Jesus Christ. I believe that when He went to that cross, He went in my place. He paid the penalty and the price for my sin so that I could be forgiven and I could be cleansed."

And as He taught us to pray, I just want to pray, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner." And I believe He will show mercy to me because of Jesus. Is there anyone at all? Just slip your hand up in the air, lift your head, make eye contact with me, let me pray with you this morning. Anyone at all that would say, "Yes, Pastor, pray for me. I need to give my heart and life to Jesus today." Anybody at all?

Then Father, we thank You for all that You have done for us, for all that You are for us. As we come to this table, Your table today, we do so wanting to commune with You and with Your people. As we take the bread, we do it together, all of us partaking of the same bread, becoming one with each other as we celebrate our oneness with You.

As we take the cup, Lord, we do so together, drinking together from the cup that makes us one, one with one another as we celebrate our oneness with You. So Father, minister to the hearts and lives of Your people today. I ask it in Jesus' precious and most holy name. Amen.