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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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