Momma was Wrong, Understanding Ambition and Status in the Kingdom of God

Yeah.” So, apparently, it was an adventure, but it’s good for all of us that are here. We haven’t decided whether the group that is here is the remnant or the group that is there is the remnant. Every year I’ve done the camping Sunday. I usually drive over on Saturday and come back.

I didn’t do that this time because with the rain, we had a concert on Friday night at the vineyard and we were scrambling to handle the weather related things from that. But it’s always good for those of us that don’t make it to the camping weekend to get a time together on Sunday morning. And today our message is really a carryover from the last parable in Matthew, Matthew chapter 20. So if you turn to Matthew 20, this is really the parable of the vineyards part two. All right, let’s see your Bibles.

Good. All right, we got them trained. You know, I I know some of you are in the electronic world and I understand that, but I I love the fact if you bring your Bible because, for example, today we’re going to flip back and forth a little bit in the book of Matthew. And it’ll be easy to do that if you’ve got the book right in front of you. Matthew chapter 20.

And this is a entitled A Mother’s Request. Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons. And this woman, by the way, we’re not going to be too harsh on her because she’s she’s a woman of faith. But she was married to Zebedee. Zebedee shows up early in the Gospels and he doesn’t show up again.

So, she may be widowed by this time, but she’s the mother of the sons of Zebedee. And we know that she’s speaking for her sons. But from Mark chapter 10, we have a text that the boys ask this themselves. So, so we have James and John, grown adults, followers of Jesus, kind of there with an anxious question that mama decides to ask Jesus for them. Then the mother of Zebed’s sons came to Jesus with her sons.

And kneeling down, that word in the Greek means bowing down. She reverentially was bowing before Jesus believing that what she was asking he could do. Asked a favor of him. What is it you want? He asked.

She said, Grant that one of these sons of mine may sit at your right and one at your left in your kingdom. You don’t know what you’re asking for, Jesus said to them. Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink? We can, they answered a little too quickly. Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right hand for me to grant these places belongs to those for whom they have been prepared by my father.”

When the 10 heard this, okay, now it hit the fan. They were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “Now, I I’m going to develop this in a minute, but I’ve got to stop right now and say, look at the gentleness of Jesus. He has just he’s he’s moving to the last passion week. He is so overcome with what the father has asked him to do that he goes to the garden of Gethsemane and sweating blood, he asks the father if there’s another option.”

And with all of that mounting upon Jesus and with his male disciples discombobulated when he heard this, he called them together. You see how gentle Jesus is even in the midst of our failures. If we do this text right today, it should impact our hearts and our minds and enthusiastically motivate us to do better. And Jesus came to the 10 and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and the high officials exercise authority over them, not so with your with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be fir first must be your slave.

Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Really, we could entitle today’s message not so much mama was wrong. We could entitle it, be careful what you ask for. Because in fact, we live in a culture that permeates our beings 24/7 with success and winners and material things and and it takes regular wise thinking to work your way through it. I mean, I was just thinking on the farm that I have.

We’ve got 50 acres out there, and for years, I’ve wanted to buy an adjacent 20 acres because it would work within our farm. Come on, John. Back off. You don’t need that extra 20 acres. You’re all the time coaching yourself about what is it you want?

Well, we know that’s true. In fact, in a message to you months ago, I warned you that those who are lottery winners are ones who are some of the most miserable people on our planet. I can’t tell you how many clients I have said, some of whom have over 0,000 in credit card debt, I’ll be okay if I just win the lottery. William Bud Post won a Pennsylvania lottery of .2 2 million and within four years he was bankrupt.

He spent money helping his relatives and filed for bankruptcy with a million dollars in debt. Janet Lee St. Louis she inherit she won million in a lottery and later on sold her annual rights for a lump sum spent it all filed for bankruptcy and was left .5 million in debt and on and on. There was a man right in my own community years ago named Richard Anderson who won one of the first Oregon lotteryies and oddly enough he won a second one a couple of years later.

Richard Anderson died also in poverty. So you have to be careful what you wish for. And in fact that’s the message of this parable. In fact, a survey in a year ago identified for under age 20 what people are the happiest in the world. What nations have the citizens under 20 years old that are the happiest?

America did not make it as first or fifth or 10th or 20th. Young people in this country are about 28th in terms of a survey of happiness in our world. And so it’s it’s something that we live with the inundation and pressure of wanting to measure our lives by what we can see with our eyes when in fact Jesus is going to turn the tables on that. It’s also true for my own profession. As lawyers, we have taken surveys and a survey taken to of lawyers about two years ago found the following.

35% of lawyers are depressed and consumed with not yet having arrived where they want to be. 67% have anxiety syndromes. 44% have substance and drug abuse and 19% of them have contemplated suicide. So when we get into a track and a mindset of be careful what you wish for, the Bible speaks with with some poignant directness on that. We actually had a really light-hearted and good conversation at the end of the men’s group yesterday morning.

I don’t mind sharing it with you. We were talking about we’re in the third of four parts dealing with money. Who were in 1 Timothy 6 about being ones who are to be rich in good works. And toward the end somehow the subject of vehicles came up and somebody mentioned a BMW. Somebody else mentioned a red BMW and all of a sudden all the eyes went to me and it was a 100% good humor but it was that thing that says what are the trappings that seem to artificially measure success.

I I had it as a seminarian as a young theologue when I was in seminary one of the professors Dr. Pentecost Mercedes and we had the poor judgment as students of being critical of him for driving that car. How could he as a Christian have that car? It was so silly. And now I realized later on how silly that was.

But I also I also worked for Dr. Ryrie. I was one of his teaching assistants. Ry Study Bible. And my trade that I supported my family on in seminary was cleaning swimming pools.

And Dr. Ryrie knows with the Lord now that I tell this story. One of the pools I cleaned was his pool because he and his wife individually and separately were millionaires. And so with all of the money associated with multi-millions of dollars, I would have times while I was cleaning his pool to talk to Dr. About money.

At one point he candidly said, “John,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you, money is a curse.” He was speaking from one who knew. Now, sadly, the Ryres ended up divorced before Dr. Ryy’s death, and I’m sad to say that, and I’ve been there and had that same experience, but it’s just a challenge. It’s a challenge to live in a wise way.

And Jesus hit that straight on with our text this morning. You remember we’re in our face toface series. We’ve done about 12 parables and we’ve got about four more to go. And today is part two of the parable of the vineyards. Now, the parable of the vineyards was an interesting one because the owner of the vineyard hired men at 9:00 in the morning, at 12:00, and then at 3:00.

And he promised each of them that he pay them for their labor. And you remember the parable ended with as they came and lined up to get pay that the ones who are promised a daenerius for a day’s work got that. But the one who worked the shorter days also got that as well. And there was great indignation. How is it that we worked all day for this pay?

They worked one hour and they got the same pay. And Jesus instruction to them was, and that’s why today is part two, his instruction was, if I want to give to the man who I hired the same as I gave you, don’t I have the right to do that what I want with what I do with my own money? Or are you envious because I’m generous? So this last will be first and the first will be last. And that’s the same message that’s the end of this dialogue with the mother of Zebedee and James and John.

The ones who are the greatest are the ones who are least. It’s counterintuitive to everything in our brain and everything our eye says. But Shakespeare is right when he said envy is the green sickness. It truly is something that permeates us in a way that distorts our perspective about life. Bacon, Charles Bacon says it has no holidays.

Envy doesn’t. Horatio said tyrants never invented a greater torment. Barry said it’s the most corroding of the vice vices. Sheridan referred to it as his play in the critic when he wrote, “There’s not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as this. Philip Bailey, the eloquent English poet of yestery year, vividly described envy as a c excuse me, a coat that comes hissing straight from hell.”

And speaking of hell, no one has done a better job of portraying envy than Dante. In his purgatory, the envious sit behind blind beggars by a wall. Their eyelids are sewn shut. The symbolism is apt, showing the reader that it’s one of the blindest sins, partly because it’s unreasonable. Partly because the envious person is sewed up in himself and swollen with poisonous thoughts in a dark, constricted world of almost unenduring, self-imposed anxiety.

Envy for the Christian is the 100% phenomena of every believer who wants to live for Jesus. You cannot escape it. It’s part of the human condition. In fact, it’s this squeaking, reaching, longing, reaching out that’s saying I’m not satisi satisfied with my current station in life. Now, when we get to the request of the mother of Zebedee, we’re surprised because only two chapters earlier, Jesus has been doing two things.

He’s been teaching about the value of humility and teaching about the fact that he’s going to die. For example, in your Bibles that you have in front of you, turn back to Matthew chapter 18. Matthew 18:es 1-4. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who’s the greatest in the kingdom of God?” He called a little child and had him stand among them.

And he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like these children, you’ll never enter the kingdom of God. Therefore, ever whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of God.” That was just days early, days earlier as we calculate it. And when you go to chapter 19 of Matthew verses 13 and 14, you see there and I’m reading 1913 and 14. Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them.

But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” clear, straightforward messages about the subject of children and humility. Look at verse 21 of chapter 19. Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions to the rich man and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come follow me.” And that rich man though he had followed the commandments who was very wealthy went away sad because like we talked about with parables before wealth possessions are like barnacles and they attach themselves to us and they come just as we walk through our culture and we have to aggressively and poignantly say no I’m not going to do that. No, I’m not I’m going to resist that. I’m I’m going to 1 Corinthians 16 where we’re told to live proportionally. I’m going to live below my means, which is not the American way.

So envy is something that is something that is the contrast to humility. And if that wasn’t a staggering enough teaching to the disciples, look at the paragraph just before the mother of Zebedee. Jesus again predicts his death. Now, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, took the 12 disciples aside and said, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.

On the third day, he’ll be risen again.” This is the third time in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus says, “Take it to the bank.” Our winning formula goes through Gol Gotha. It goes to the cross and on the third day, I’ll rise again. And right on the heels of that, and we don’t know whether that message triggered this woman to ask Jesus this, but it had to be in close proximity to Jesus’s teaching on his death.

She says, “Well, I want you to do something special for my boys because I know we’re in a kind of a diminishing group here. We have a group of followers, men and women, Jesus, who are following you. And of that, there are the 12. And the 12 there are the three who you’ve done special considerations with and and traveled up to the mount with and I we want I want James and John to have a a front standing standing a premium place with you know Jesus says you don’t know what you ask for can you do And the boy said, “Piece of cake.” Really?

Seriously? What Jesus said was, “You will you will experience the cup that I am.” The cup in the Old Testament was the it was the taking on of the experience of those around you. And that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “You will drink of the cup.” And they did.

You remember what happened to John? John end up ended up banished to the aisle of Patmos where he wrote the book of Revelation. But he died in banishment. James, we are told in Acts chapter 12, it was about this time that King Herod arrested those who belong to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword.

11 of the 12 disciples died a martyr’s death. They would taste the cup in part that Jesus tasted. But he said, “Your formula is all wrong. You’re misunderstanding what it means to be great in the kingdom of God.” Because while in the world, greatness is getting on top, getting ahead, even if we have to step on a few heads.

That’s not greatness in the kingdom. So he in he teaches them that really that they need to re-evaluate their value system and their perspective and understand that greatness comes from self-giving. It comes from service to others. It comes from sacrificing our life for others. You know in our wonderful little church family here, I won’t embarrass him, but I’m going to embarrass him.

Dear Bud is here every week faithfully and his wife and him donated this piano. You don’t know Bud unless you’ve grabbed him as he’s come in. Very quiet. Dear Mary, others in our church going through going health issues. Those are the folks candidly that God is pleased with.

They quietly and faithfully maintain their devotion to God, doing for them, doing for him what asked of them. And we all are in that vineyard. You see the the problem with the vineyard and reason this is part two is because these these vineyard workers made three mistakes. The first mistake they made, the guys that started at 9:00 for a daenarius, they took on the kingdom of God in what one author called a merkantal spirit, a negotiated spirit. Okay, I’m going to be a follower of Jesus.

This is what I’m going to do and this is what I’m going to get out of it. It’s kind of guaranteed. I’m I’m going to be faithful. I’ll put my day in of work, but then I get my daenarius and I should get some proper standing within the first ranks of the kingdom because I’ve worked in that vineyard all day long. That merkantal spirit is contrary to the kingdom of God.

Now, we already know that from the parables. I mean, this is about the 12th parable we’ve been through. We’ve got about four more to go. But in the parables, we know already that Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is like four soils. The first soil goes on rocky ground by the path and Satan comes and snatches it up.

And when Jesus explains that in the book of Mark, he also says he snatches it out of the heart. So I don’t know whether that first group that Jesus is talking about are believers. They could be with that heart reference. But the second one, you remember the second soil had to do with rocky ground and the sh and the and the soil was shallow and so as life sprung up and the heat came there was withering. It didn’t persevere be because there was no depth.

The third soil was a soil that came among the thorns and the weeds. And in fact, the crop that grew up was wrapped around by the weeds and choked out and made of nonproductivity. So Jesus has been teaching about what it means to be productive, to not be just a merkantill merchant that says, “What I put into life is what I get out of it. In fact, I need to persevere within the circumstances and vineyard as God’s designed, including looking around at other workers that came in after me that may be in front of me or get the same reward. The parable of the weeds was the parable of weeds growing up on good seed.

And the disciples came and said, “We’re going crazy here. We can’t we can’t we can’t harvest our our seed because of the weeds.” And Jesus said, “Leave it alone. Let it go because in the final day the seeds and the crop will be harvested from the weeds and the weeds will be put into the fire. In other words, disciples be patient with the circumstances in life that I’ve given you.

We looked at the parable of the mustard seed. The mustard seed that though it’s the smallest of the seed grows up to be the largest of the crops. And Jesus was saying, hang on. The kingdom of God, though it’s starting small, is a work of God that will grow to every proportion God wants it to. We looked at the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearls.

And we saw those who would give everything they have in order for that treasure, in order for that pearl to make that focus, to make that our target in life. And then we looked at this vineyard and the workers who were quick to compare what God had promised them with what might be for someone else. I had a instruction that I gave my students when I taught at the Bible college because as they got back their papers and their test scores, they were quick to compare and and I encourage them with that verse in 2 Corinthians which says, “Be careful those compare themselves with other because the others because they end up without understanding.” It is a natural tendency to look at what’s in your neighbor’s driveway, to look at that house, to look at that car, to look at these clothes, to look at some kind of vocation that you are or not in or that where you want to be that you’re wishing for that you’re not there yet. And Jesus says, “Hold on.

Hang on. Stay in the circumstances of life that God has you now. Stay in that vineyard. Stay in your track. Be faithful.

And understand that you’re really working not for a daenerius, not for what you earn or deserve, working for the master. You’re following him. The second mistake that these workers made was they forgot that the ownership of the vineyard is the master, not them. Not only do we guard against a merkantil spirit, but we understand who we’re working for. Who among us today said to our hearts, “Start beating.”

Didn’t happen. Every day is a gift from God. And you can take every day with enthusiasm and say, “God, what do you have for me today? Who do you have for me to meet?” When I actually my plans go different and people show up or don’t show up or even I’m driving in a different loca direction than I because I missed an exit or I’m concentrated wrong or something.

I’m now regular saying, “God, what do you have in this for me? What is it that maybe I didn’t structure for my day that you have for my day? You can be one who allows me to give a good word or a cup of water in the name of Jesus. The third mistake that these workers of the vineyard made was the issue of envy and jealousy which are really sister concepts in the Bible. Elva McAllister wrote a poem on Envy and she went like this.

Envy went to church this morning. Being Legion, he sat in every other pew. Envy fingered wool and silk fabrics, hung price tags on suits and neck ties. Envy paced through the parking lot, scrutinized chrome and paint. There we go.

On the cars, I guess. Envy marched to the chancel with the choir. During the processional, Envy prodded plain jane wives and bright wives married to milktoast dullards. Any kind men married to knife tongue shrews. Envy thumped at widows and widowers.

Jabbed and kicked college girls without escorts. Lighted invisible fires inside khaki jackets. Envy conferred often this morning with all of his brothers. He liked his Sunday scores today, but not enough because the antidote was some of his intended clients had sipped an antidote marked grace and were a body flower named love. That’s who we are.

We’re people who are followers of Jesus who are marked out by a love for Jesus. And if we wonder whether in fact it’s worth it, whether in fact he who’s gone before us is in fact worthy of our praise, we look at the one who gave his life a ransom for us. It is true what is said in Proverbs 4:23, “Guard your hearts because in it is the wellspring of life.” There is another poem which every time we consider the subject of personal goals and misdirected perspectives and being able to renew our hearts and minds in a way that is honorable to him. I don’t know about you, but I have to begin again every day because every day is a failure.

Every day there’s some kind of hitch in my giddy up that distracts me from the kind of values that God wants for my life. Kathleen Wheeler wrote a wrote a poem called Beginning a New. Some of you know this and have talked to me about it before. He came to my desk with quivering lips. The lesson was done.

Have you a new leaf for me, dear teacher? I have spoiled this one. I took his leaf, all soiled and blotted, and gave him a new one, all unspotted. And into his tired heart I smiled. Do better now, my child.

I went to the throne with trembling heart. The day was done. Have you a new day for me, dear master? I’ve spoiled this one. He took my day, all soiled and blotted, and gave me a new one, all unspotted.

Then into my tired heart, he smiled. Do better now, my child. Are you ready for a new day? I am. Let’s pray.

Lord, it’s with grateful hearts that we understand we are marked out by love and grace that’s come from him who is our savior. We are people who by the joy that’s set before us follow him who is our savior. We have his example and are encouraged by the biblical writers to take the attitude that was the same for Jesus which being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 4,560 words.