Chosen for a Task, Not a Status

Transcript

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[0:00] Our sermon reading is from Genesis 12, verses 1 through 4. This is the first in our sermon series called The Vineyard, and we'll understand a little bit more as we go on what is meant by the vineyard. But one idea I want to give you, an image of the vineyard, is kind of thinking about the vineyard is what God is doing in the world and what he wants us to be doing. So the vineyard involves work on some level. If you go to any vineyard, you realize that there's a lot of work required, required both to plant it and to harvest it and all the steps in between. And so I see the vineyard as a way to understand how our faith is put together. And this grows out, like I said, this grows out of some of my work on sabbatical, and it follows on from some of the sermons that I preached just before I left. And I would forgive you if you don't remember them, but we preached about four or five sermons on Abraham just before I left.

[0:53] And this kind of starts with that as a starting point, and then I'll get to that later. but we'll move forward to Isaiah and then to the Gospels. Isaiah next week and then to the Gospels in the last three weeks.

[1:07] So when you hear the name Abraham, and this is where I want you to be thinking as we read, when you hear the name Abraham, you should immediately think of the word covenant, okay? A covenant for Abraham, for all those people back then, was like an agreement. An agreement or a contract between God and his people. It was also somewhat like a peace treaty. Like it was an agreement to be friends and it was agreement that there were some obligations that each side had to do to keep their end of the bargain. And so if you rent, you have an agreement, you have a covenant with your landlord. They provide you a place to live, you provide them rent each month and so on. So there's all these sets of obligations that have to go both ways. That's the covenant. And Abraham is almost the archetype, but he's not the very first, but he's kind of like... the symbolic one. God makes several covenants with Abraham. But the first covenant, really, the first covenant that God makes is actually with Adam and Eve. And that was from our first reading. You get to live in the garden. I'm going to give you meaningful work.

[2:12] You're going to live in paradise. All you have to do is not do this one little thing, you know, like you had that, you know, those things like you had one job, you had one job and you failed at it. And so that was the covenant. You know, they brought their obedience and God brought paradise. You know, that was the arrangement. That was the very first covenant.

[2:35] And we know how that turned out, right? And actually, I would say that's the turning point in the Bible. If you wanted to look for a halfway point in the Bible, I think the halfway point of the Bible is after Genesis chapter two. The first two, and it's like really thin, you know, if you took a Bible, it would just be a few pages. The first two chapters of Genesis are God's beautiful covenant. It's a beautiful plan for the world. And everything from Genesis three on is how God is trying to get us back to that point. Like really is the hinge. Like how, how is God now going to repair this rift that has come between him and his creation? Right. And so, I mean, you could say, you know, if you want to find the Psalms really easy, you just open your Bible in half. That's kind of the quick way to do it. And then if you want to find the New Testament, just open that the right hand half and half again. If you want to get around your Bible quick. But if you want to get. To the first half of the Bible, just turn the first two pages over, I think. And there you are at Genesis one and two. So.

[3:33] Paradise and relationship is lost in act one. Act two is God trying to fix that. And I use the word trying. God is trying to fix it. And all the rest of the Bible, God is trying. And I, as I thought about that, I thought is is almost blasphemous, isn't it? To say that God tried to do something, isn't it? Because it's God we're talking. About he doesn't try. He's kind of more like Yoda, right? He's like, there is no try. Only do or I kind of got it wrong. But, you know, do or don't do. There is no try. I guess that's right. You know, God, God should be a little bit more like I'm going to do or I'm not going to do. I'm not going to try anything.

[4:13] But if you look at the scriptures, it really does seem that God keeps trying to repair this relationship with his creation. And so we look at the story of Noah. We look at the story of David. We look at the story of Abraham. We look at the story of Moses and David and on and on and on. And over the years, God continues to come back to his people saying, you didn't keep up your end of the bargain. I guess we can try a slightly different bargain and we'll see if you can keep that one.

[4:45] One thing about God, though, is that he doesn't give up on his creation. This is so important. If you look at the covenant that God makes with Noah after the flood has subsided. And there's a rainbow in the sky. He says, I'm never going to do this again. I'm committed to the people that I've created. I'm not going to destroy anymore. So, you know, God, God, I think God could have if he was more of a Yoda, you know, he was more of a doer than a trier. God could have said, well, I'm going to send Adam and Eve out of the garden. Good luck out there in the wilderness, wherever you are. And he could have created two more new people.

[5:22] He could have done that. And he could have put the tree that he didn't want to plant. He could have put the tree that he didn't want them to eat on top of a really tall mountain. You know, it made it harder for them to eat it. But God respects the volition, the choices that people make. And so he continues to live and work through, live in, live with and work through Adam and Eve and all their descendants through the ups and downs and everything like that. So God is committed to the people he's already made and he limits his own action by that. He won't erase them and start over and he won't violate their own choices. So that's important.

[5:57] Instead, he always asks himself, how can he bring them back into this state of living in paradise and doing meaningful work, tending the garden and creation? And the answer is by covenant. How? There's a different covenant. You know, if you keep reading through the Bible, you find a new covenant and a new covenant and covenant until finally, as we'll see, there's one final covenant. And that's the one we're living in now. But that's a little bit later on. So in our reading, though, I want you to listen for the third part. And that's the first part. The third part is the terms of the covenant that God makes with Abraham when he calls him to move to the promised land. This is Genesis 12. I'm only going to read verses one through four because those are the ones that we're paying attention to today. Genesis 12, one through four. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. So that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.

[7:13] Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, I ask you to think about this covenant that you just heard. What terms do we see in this covenant, right? Abraham, what does he have to do? He has to go. That's all he has to really do. He's just got to open the door to his house and put one foot in front of the other and start walking, basically. Unless he had a camel, then he just had to feed his camel and get on his camel's back and make the camel walk. It doesn't matter. He had to start off in one direction. That's all he had to do at this point. And trust. I mean, it was kind of implicit in walking there. He was trusting that God would show him the way. So Abraham's part of this bargain was just leaving his house, leaving where he was and going somewhere else. And actually there was a lot holding him back. There was a lot of family drama going on for Abraham at that time. It made it harder for him to leave Haran. And he eventually went. It took him a while.

[8:12] So that was the start. But what are God's promises? It's actually kind of a lopsided deal. It's like a really good deal. What do you get for walking out your door, Abram? Well, God's going to show him a new land that eventually his descendants will take possession of. He's going to make Abraham's offspring into a great nation, which sounds really great. And God's going to protect him from those who curse him and bless those who bless him. And finally, and so that's three things right there. And the fourth is that all the nations in the world will be blessed through Abraham and his faithfulness, which isn't actually a good deal for Abraham. You know? It doesn't give him anything. But it gives the world something. So God, in a way, is kind of making a covenant with the world, too. He's saying, in and through you, because of your faithfulness, if you keep this covenant, the world will be blessed because of you. And that's so important to remember, that God's intention when he called Abraham. I keep saying Abraham, but at this point his name is Abram. When God called Abram, his intention was to bless the entire world, not just one nation. Not just one little group of people. Super important. Okay.

[9:26] Now, and just to talk about that just briefly, the covenants that God makes with Abraham were to, in essence, set apart his grandchildren and so on, all his line out, to be the chosen people. And you've heard this phrase before, right? God's chosen people. You've heard this phrase before. It sounds kind of nice. It sounds kind of exclusive. How do you get to be one of the chosen ones? You know?

[9:51] But this is often made. It's often misunderstood. Because I think when we hear the word chosen, we might think better, right? Or more special. And that's not really, I don't think, what it is. Think about it this way. It's not better, but chosen for a task that they are uniquely able to do. So, for example, if I give my kids some chores, and one of them, one of the chores involves using a power drill, right? I would only ask the child, I would only choose the child that can operate it safely, which so far is none of them, but this is a future dream, you know, that they can handle power tools safely. We'll get there. We'll get there.

[10:35] Right now, it's kind of we do it together. But eventually, I will trust them to use the power drill. But there's a time I could see where only one of them knows how to do it. So I wouldn't ask the other two to do it. I would choose the one who could do it safely, who could do it well. And so I think God is similar. God's chosen people are not better or smarter or more beautiful or whatever you want to say. They're chosen for a particular task that they uniquely can do. And so they're chosen for what?

[11:05] To bless all the nations in the world. God loves all these other nations just as much as Abraham's children. He loves them. He made them. He wants to bless them through one person and his descendants. So they're chosen. They're chosen for work. They're chosen for vocation, really.

[11:23] And so they were, because they were chosen, they were given these great gifts. They were given the law, the covenant, the land, and the presence of God in their midst. The presence of God lived in the temple. And so that they could learn and grow and ultimately they would bless other nations and the whole world. And so he's kind of like Spider-Man, right? Much is expected from those to whom much is given. So God not only chose these people, but he says, you have a bigger responsibility because you know this stuff. You have the benefit of all these things that I have poured into you. That's the covenant. Covenant is always to bless the entire world through your faithfulness.

[12:04] So there was a problem. Now this problem keeps coming back. God always keeps his covenant. God always continues to work with the people he has. He doesn't replace them, right? He doesn't start over with somebody else. He even threatened to with Moses. You know, he said, I'm going to get rid of all these people and start over with you. And Moses talks him out of it. Far be it from you, God. You know, don't do it.

[12:27] The problem is Israel kept not keeping covenant with God. Abram makes a bunch of mistakes. Isaac makes mistakes. Jacob makes mistakes. Jacob makes a lot of mistakes. If you want to read about mistake guy, it's Jacob. Mistake after mistake after mistake. And on and on and on it goes. Moses makes mistakes. Right? All these people. David makes a lot of mistakes. He does some good things well. You know, Solomon makes some mistakes. He builds the temple at least. God's presence comes from the tent to the temple and it lives there. And then we read on and on and on through the Kings, through Chronicles and all the rest. This cycle up and down of the people being faithful and then slipping into hydrology. That's something different. And to, well, maybe hydrology is if they're worshiping water or something. But so they were slipping into idolatry.

[13:21] And, you know, God, I think, realized at some point that what the definition of insanity is. Right? You keep doing the same thing over and over again. And he kept hoping for a different outcome. So God finally had it in his mind that he was going to change what he was doing. And we're going to get to that in just a second. Now, the final straw, I think you could probably find in Ezekiel chapter 10. Ezekiel has a vision. And in this vision, the presence or the glory of God basically puts on its boots and it just shanties out of the temple. I know this is kind of a silly way of saying it. But the presence of God lifts itself up and it goes out of the temple. And it's really deep and dark and a little bit frightening because God's saying, I can't abide with these people anymore. And I can't abide this place because this place, it should be a place of glory. It should be a place of worship and purity. It's completely corrupt. I can't live here anymore.

[14:21] And so the presence of God leaves the temple. And it goes east. It's interesting. It goes east. Well, what's interesting is he can't live in that place anymore. He can't oversee this land anymore. The land is polluted. So he goes east. And who goes east to? The people go east because they're taken captive. They're sent into captivity. And again, God doesn't give up on his people. He goes where they go. He doesn't start over. The remnant, the few people that manage to make it to Babylon alive and back, God goes with them. And he lives with them in Babylon. And he actually helps them write the Bible, I think. A lot of the Bible is written down in Babylon. And he promises them in Isaiah, for example, you're going to come back. You're going to come back. You're going to come back. And eventually they do come back as we read. And so we have a vision.

[15:16] And God keeps trying. Like I said, God keeps trying. And he makes one final try. But it's different than trying this time because he realizes if he's going to rely on humans to keep their end of the bargain, they'll always fail. It's just human nature. And so he actually does become a little more like Yoda. And instead of trying again, he does. And he says, instead of you keeping the covenant, I'm going to send my son. And he will keep the covenant on your behalf. So this is the big change. This is the big change. And there's no more covenants after Jesus. That's the final covenant. That's the one we're living in now. That's the final way that God is going to reconcile his whole creation to himself that got broken in Genesis 3. It's in the person of Jesus. And it's in his work on the cross. And it's in his resurrection from the dead. All of that seals this new covenant that God makes. It's his final move.

[16:22] And when we come forward to the time of Jesus, we find that Israel, he's living in Israel at that time. They have the land back, but not really. They have the temple back, but it's corrupted again. When I say they have the land back, but not really, they have the land because they're living on it. But it's also overrun with foreigners that they don't like. There's an occupying army there. They don't really feel like they have taken all the land back. The temple, which they had hoped God's presence would re-inhabit, was corrupted by money and by power and by politics. Oh, you know, that would just drive me up the wall if our churches were like that. Oh, I guess they are. You know, it's too bad. I don't know. I think there's a real problem that we're going to have to face is how much money, politics, and power are corrupting our churches. And that's how it was in Jesus' day. And so you could say that they were back from exile, but they weren't really because they were still in captivity, just in their own home turf. And sin was still reigning supreme even in their places of worship.

[17:29] So that's the environment that Jesus comes into. And as we'll see in coming weeks, I'm not going to talk about it this week, his response is to tell a parable. The parable is the vineyard. That's why we're talking about the vineyard. Now, we'll save that for a few weeks from now.

[17:46] You may begin to ask about the chosen people. Who are the chosen people? We know who they were in Abraham's time, David's time, and so on. But who are they after this new covenant, right? If they continue to be chosen, they will be chosen. If they continue to misuse the gifts that they're given by not blessing the whole world, would God ever give those gifts to somebody else? Would God ever say, you haven't done... I mean, there's a parable about this, isn't there?

[18:18] Would God ever say, you haven't done what I've asked you to do with these gifts. I need to give them to somebody else. And would those other people then be chosen in the same sense to do the work that God requires, which is to bless the whole world with God's love? And as you may guess, the answer is yes. God wants choosing people more than he does. More than he wants chosen people. I thought that was clever. You could write that one down. I thought, oh, this is good. I made that up. God wants choosing people more than he wants chosen people. He wants the people who choose to join what he's doing for the world. Those choosing people end up kind of becoming the chosen people. These are the ones who want to go along with what God is doing. And so in the future weeks, we're going to see in more detail how all the covenants are brought together in Jesus and how Jesus defines being the new chosen people. The people with this important task. And that's the new. So there's a new Israel. They're interesting. There's a new Israel after Jesus. The Apostle Paul talks about that somewhat, too. So I want to. And finally, I just want to talk about the vineyard. I want you to think of the vineyard as the whole world in one sense.

[19:21] It's God's promise. It's this provision of God to live in his world, which isn't a paradise anymore, we have to admit. But it's a place of blessing if we can find it. And God wants us to have meaningful work in the glory of God. And he wants us to have a garden, which we could call the vineyard. And he wants to bless the world through what we're doing. That's God's plan. And there's parables about the vineyard. These places where our faithfulness and our work show. So there's some important parables about the vineyard. Next week, we'll look at a parable in Isaiah 5 about the vineyard. And then the following weeks, more in-depth of the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, each have a version of Jesus' parable of the vineyard, which we'll explore. And other topics that are related to those. But God expects us to work in the vineyard, and he expects us to yield its produce to him. And here's the final thought.

[20:15] I want to encourage you to think of our church almost like a vineyard. It's a place where things are planted and grow and are harvested. Even it's like a microcosm of the world that God is asking us to be in. If you look at the back of your bulletin, there are these, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know exactly what to call them. Phases. Phases of life or tasks that are in the vineyard. It says working in the vineyard. There's a little box there. You know, it starts with preparing the soil. We'll talk about what these things mean in future weeks, not today. Preparing the soil. Planting the seed.

[20:51] Watering and tending the growth. Harvest. Sounds good. Yielding the harvest to the landlord, because the landlord expects it. And then starting again with an enlarged vineyard. And then starting again with a new vineyard, perhaps. And each week we're going to look at how our church can be doing these things. These different acts of work in the vineyard. So that's it. That's our kind of introduction to our vineyard series. And I'm excited for the next four sessions. Let's pray.

[21:20] Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for this meaningful work that you've set us in the world. Help us to live into this work. Live into this study in the next few weeks. Teach us, we pray. In Jesus' name.