Thoughts From Luke - Day 86

                                           Luke 20:10-16.19

 He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. ¹⁰ At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹ He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. ¹² He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
¹³ “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
¹⁴ “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ¹⁵ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶ He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
When the people heard this, they said, “God forbid!”
¹⁹ The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.


         Here in this parable we see the Christian world view. First of all, our lives, our very existence, everything we have and are, is due to a good benevolent Father and all He asks of mankind is their recognition of that and submission to His rule over them. Unfortunately mankind has said that they don't want His rule over them nor do they want to recognize that everything they are and have is due to Him. How dare He tell us what is right or wrong, what to do with our money, or interfere with my sex life for example. I recently watched a season of the Bachelor with my wife and there was this one young woman that was trying to win him over with her sexuality. One night she even snuck into his bedroom to try to get an advantage. At the "women tell all" episode, it was interesting to see how many women stuck up for her saying we are all free to express ourselves sexually any way we want to and how dare we judge. In other words, "God, you have no right into this area of my life." No wonder we are in a post-Christian time in our country, people don't want God telling them how to live.

      Does this post-Christian society kill the messengers like they did in this parable? No, we're too civilized for that, so we use the legal system to destroy them. I was just reading a book by Randy Alcorn who tells of his experience with Operation Rescue, which was an anti-abortion movement late in the 20th century, that tried to rescue babies before they were killed. I use those harsh terms because that is what the Bible teaches these fetuses are and how God, whose rule we are under, views them. He was imprisoned and fined $9.5 million by a court ruling. All this because women don't want God telling them what they can or can't do with "their" bodies.

      Let me explain evolution to you. Hundreds of millions of years ago, lightening struck a pool and the right combination of elements were present to form the precursor amino acids to life, Somehow a single celled organism came to life and replicated and over time grew legs and breathing ability and crawled onto dry land. Over millions of years this turned into monkeys which turned into us, this all happening despite the fact that in this world disorder doesn't turn into order, random doesn't turn into complex, there are no transitional forms walking around in our world to illustrate this happening, and if it did happen, there would have to be one of the opposite sex forming at the same pace in the same vicinity for the species to survive. The amazing thing to me is that people believe this and you can't get a job in a university science department if you don't. Why? Because if evolution is true, then there is no God in authority over you and that is what the vineyard people in the parable wanted and it is still true today.

       The APA, American psychiatric Association listed Homosexuality as a psychiatric illness until 1973 until a group of activists engineered the change in definition. Over 40 years it has evolved from abnormal behavior to something so normal that it should be taught in schools to our children as an alternative life style and if people feel differently they should attend cultural sensitivity classes. In fact, it has become a crime in California to counsel a person out of a homosexual lifestyle even if they ask for help. How could things have changed so much in 40 years that it has been proposed that now there be a psychologic illness called "intolerant personality disorder" where people that exhibit racism, sexism, or homophobia are the mentally ill ones? It happens because God calls homosexuality a sin and people don't want God telling them how to live their life and who they can and can't have sex with. Therefore the messengers aren't killed today, they are just removed from their positions of influence.

           Even in the midst of this, God, the vineyard owner, sends His son to them as their last chance because He doesn't want to remove them from His presence. He doesn't want to judge us. Don't they realize that without God's goodness, there is no vineyard- there is no food- there is no home- their family would starve... Everything good in life is from God and they are pushing Him out of their existence. The choice is up to us - are we willing to bow our knee to Him and surrender our lives to Him or will He some day say to you, "you didn't want me in life, you will not have me in death either. Go into an eternal existence without me, without any goodness, a place so bad I call it Hell."