I would like to read God's word to you. We are gonna be reading from Mark chapter 11, beginning in verse 27, and we're gonna read all the way to verse 12. It says, and they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and scribes and elders came to him. And they said to him, by what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you this authority to do them? Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question. Answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me. And they discussed it with each other saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? But shall we say for man, they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, we do not know. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to go from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, they will respect my son. But those tenants said to each other, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. and they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. and they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them, so they left him and went astray. Pray with me. Father, we thank you so much that your rejection means our restoration, means our acceptance. And so we pray tonight as your word is open and as it's proclaimed, we pray that you would be honored, that you would be glorified, and that by your grace that we would be people who are transformed and who are changed. May you continue to use us by your grace to advance your kingdom for your glory and our good, we pray. Amen. Well, good evening. Glad you could make it out tonight. If this is your first Sunday night out in a little while, we are in the midst of a seven-part series on seven days, the last week of Jesus' life. The King is crowned. And tonight we are getting to our third day in that series. which would have been Jesus's Tuesday. We've been looking at the Gospel of Mark to have Mark lead us through what that last week of Jesus's life was like, primarily because we want to see the things that were important to Jesus. We want to see what made Jesus tick in his final week. You see, when you come down to the end of your life, when you come down to the end of your days. What's most important often is what comes out of your mouth and what you deal with. And so this is very pivotal and important for us to see. Just what was at the heart of Jesus? What was his main concern in this last week of his life? Now on Sunday, the first day of Jesus' entry into the city of Jerusalem, we saw the coming as King. Jesus came and presented Himself as King over all kings and Lord over all lords. And His disciples and followers worshipped Him and proclaimed Him to be the King as He entered the city. The next day, Monday, we looked at last week, Jesus came and showed us the zeal of the king. As he came into the city, there was that fig tree that was a symbol of national Israel and its leadership. And the fig tree had no fruit on it as it should have. And Jesus cursed the fig tree and then went into the temple and cleansed the temple from all the money changers and from all those that were seeking to sell animals for sacrifices as a way of showing and demonstrating that the temple, His Father's place, His house, was to be a house of prayer and worship for all the nations, that the gospel was for everyone. We saw the zeal of Jesus and the zeal of the King. Tonight, in this third day, Mark begins to walk us at the end of chapter 11 into chapter 12 into really what is probably the extent of two days of ministry. Mark doesn't get very clear except for verse 15 of chapter 11. No, I'm sorry, verse 20. They pass by in the morning of when these two days started. It seems that Jesus began his Tuesday and continued teaching on Tuesday on into Wednesday in the temple courts. all leading up to Thursday, the day that we celebrate and remember the Lord's Supper, Friday, the crucifixion, Saturday, the silent Saturday, and then Sunday, the resurrection. And just as Josh mentioned tonight, I want to encourage you if you've been coming out, be sure to put Good Friday in as part of your observance of worship to the Lord, because that evening we will be celebrating and we will remember as part of this series what happened on Good Friday, the crucifixion. But let's go back to today, this third day, probably Tuesday in Jesus' life, and see today what Jesus deals with. Now Tuesday is all about the authority of the King. The authority of the King. In Jesus' last two days here, before the Lord's Supper and His crucifixion, Jesus spent the predominant amount of His time teaching and preaching in the temple. He was there, as we saw in our text tonight, teaching and leading others, all a demonstration and an exhortation, an exhibit of His authority. He is using the powerful word of His mouth as the King of kings and Lord of lords to confront religious leaders who have held up Israel and have held up God's people in religiosity and legalism. He's using His words to confront them. He's using His words to break the bondage of people's legalism, to break the bondage of their sin, and for them to see that He is the King and to come and know Him. These last two days are full of confrontation. It is not a gentle, hey, Jesus in the wilderness just teaching and everything is kind and nice and lovely. Jesus really is going for the jugular of the religious leaders. He is coming after them because of their wickedness, their hard-heartedness, and their blindness in leading the people astray from what God truly was about, from all that the Old Testament was truly about, namely, Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. So it should not surprise us that in today's scripture passage, what we find in this text is a bit of confrontation. The confrontation really boils down to this, authority. Maybe another way to put it is, who put Jesus in charge? Who gave him the power to come in here and say the kind of things that he's been saying, to do the sorts of things that he's been doing? Who made him king? It's a power struggle, and the religious leaders are not happy that here this man from Galilee, this man who is more than man, who is God himself, has come and entered their sacred precincts and has exerted his authority as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I wanna ask you a question tonight to work on your heart and to get you to think a little bit. How do you respond to the authority of another? I think over my ministry here at Santa Rosa Bible Church over the last seven years, eight years, one of the things that I've tried to communicate to the youth and the students that I've been leading and teaching has been that you are always, always, always, at one point in your life or another, you're always under the authority of someone else. Even as you get older and you own your own business and you think you're the head honcho, you still have to pay taxes. You're still under the authority of the government. You're still under the authority of God. It's an important lesson that we need to learn. It's something that we need to have written on our hearts because sin has rewired our hearts to think that we're the authority. That we have no other king except ourselves. That we answer to no one else. This passage tonight exerts to us the authority of the King. And just as Jesus will challenge the authority of the religious leaders in Israel in His day, so this passage challenges us about our own views of His authority. In fact, if I could put this sermon in a sentence tonight, I would tell you this, that those who reject the authority of the King will face, will experience the wrath of the King. that those who reject the authority of the King over their lives will one day experience the wrath of the King. And that's exactly what Jesus points us to. I hope tonight that some of you, I hope all of us, are sensitive to this and would say, I don't want to reject the King's authority. If there's wrath coming, I don't want any part of that. I want to be humble. I want to be submissive. I want to bow my knee rightly to the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords. And so I want to submit to His authority rightfully. And tonight, out of this passage, I want to kind of give us a diagnostic for how we can see where we stand in relationship to the King's authority. You see, it isn't just the blatant disrespect and disregard for Jesus' authority that traps us, although that's here. Often our hearts can begin to turn. and refuse and reject His authority in subtle ways. And this passage, Jesus' words here tonight, they expose for us, they reveal to us how we might be rejecting the authority of the King and not even know it. And so tonight I want to give us four signs of our rejection of the authority of Jesus. I want to give us four ways that you and I might look to our own hearts and say and see, am I rejecting Jesus' authority? Am I rejecting the King? There's four things here in this passage. We'll start in verse 27 and we'll unpack these together. The first one is there, it's verses 27 and 28. It's that we reject the authority of the king when we question the source of his authority. We reject the authority of the king when we question the source of his authority. Here's how this plays out, Jesus' day in the temple there on this Tuesday. And they came again to Jerusalem. And He, Jesus, was walking in the temple. So Jesus comes with His disciples and they're there in the temple again. Every day of Jesus' last week, He is there in the temple in one way or another. Again, he's there in the temple and the chief priest and the scribes and the elders came to him. Now this group, the chief priest, the scribes and the elders, that is the group that is in power at the temple. It's the Sanhedrin, these 71 elders who are the religious leaders and exert some even some political authority over the nation of Israel, although it's limited from the government of Rome. But here they are, these leaders of the temple, the chief priest, the scribes and the elders. And they're ready to challenge Jesus. Verse 28, they said to Him, by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them? Now they're probably asking Jesus about what had happened the earlier day, the previous day. Jesus, who gave you the right to march here into the temple, make a whip, kick over tables, get the livestock moving, cause a great commotion, and interrupt and ruin our day of business here in the temple? I mean, the Passover is coming. People have to sacrifice. You made a mess of things yesterday. Who gave you the right to do that? In some ways, they're questioning the credentials of Jesus. Jesus, you weren't trained at Jerusalem School of Biblical Studies and Old Testament Torah. Where'd you get your diploma? Jesus, you don't have your credentials from the ordination office of Jewish religious leaders. You don't have any right here. They're coming right at the source of Jesus' authority and saying, where'd you get that? Where did that come from? Who gave you that authority? By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them? Jesus, as we've seen throughout, through Mark, and as you read through the Gospel of Mark, you would see that this question is a bad question. All throughout Mark's gospel, Jesus has been demonstrating again and again and again exactly where his authority comes from. If you look at Mark 4 and 5, you see Jesus there with authority over nature as he calms the seas. You see Jesus with authority over demons as he casts them out of people that are held in bondage. You see Jesus with authority over sickness. You see Jesus with authority over death. There's only one place where this kind of authority and this kind of power comes from. And so it's a dumb question for them, as they've been in the midst of Jesus' life, as they've seen all that He's done, as they have been with Him from day one and seen His ministry, it's a dumb question for them to ask this. By what authority? Really? There's only one place where this kind of authority comes from. It's from God. Satan doesn't have the power to cast out Satan. Satan doesn't have the power to heal, does he? To raise the dead. Jesus does, and that power comes from God, and he's been displaying that again and again, but yet they come and they ask the question, where does this kind of authority come from? You and I today exhibit the same kind of rejection of Jesus' authority when we begin to question, skeptically question, where His authority comes from. In California, two battleships off the coast, I don't want to expose the military branch of service that they were a part of, but a couple of battleships were off the coast and a fog fell over the coastal area. And these two battleships were doing some maneuvers. As night fell on one of these ships, the captain went up to the bridge of the ship to make sure that everything was okay and to kind of keep watch. Shortly after dock, a lookout on the bridge spotted a light. And he reported it to the captain, there's a light off the starboard bow. And the captain asked, is it steady or is it moving? The lookout replied, it's steady, captain. And the captain believed, well, that was the other battleship and they were on a direct collision course. And so the captain called the signalman and said, signal the ship, shine your light to them and tell them you're on a collision course, advise them to move their course 20 degrees. And the signalman sent the signal on Morse code. He got the answer back, it's advisable that you change your course 20 degrees. The captain said to the signalman, send another message, tell him I'm a senior captain, change the course 20 degrees. The reply came back and said, I'm a seaman second class, change your course at once. The captain was outraged. He was furious. He said, signal them, we are a battleship. Change your course 20 degrees. The signal came back, I'm a lighthouse. Change your course 20 degrees. I tell you that story because oftentimes we look to the authority of Christ and we think much of ourselves and we question His authority. We question the source of the authority. Who gave Him the right to say that about my life? What credentials Jesus to make that kind of authority, that kind of claim on who I am and how I live. I'm king. I'm the boss. If we would look to Jesus, we would see that He is the King of all kings. He is the one with ultimate authority. I want to tell you tonight that it's not wrong for you to ask questions of the Scripture. It's not wrong as you study God's Word to look at it and to say, I don't understand this. This doesn't make sense. It's not clear to me. It certainly wasn't wrong to rightly ask, Jesus, where did this power come from? The issue here for these men, though, these religious leaders, wasn't the issue of a sincere question. It wasn't a sincere doubt, even. Their issue was skepticism completely. They knew where his authority came from, and they didn't want to deal with it. So often we can come to the Scriptures, and we can look at it and say, the Scripture says this about how I should live, and who cares? I don't want to hear that. What's the Bible have to say about that? I don't care. It's not authoritative for my life. What's even more dangerous for us is to take our Scriptures, our Bibles, the whole of them. As Paul says in Timothy, all Scripture is God-breathed, and it's dangerous for us to take our Scriptures and to cut out the parts that we don't like, to just remove the parts that we don't think are binding or authoritative or direct for us. This is the word of the King, all of it. All of it is written to reveal the King. Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection on the road to Emmaus, all scripture points to and is about me. All of the Old Testament reveals who I am. But when we come to Scripture with scissors in hands and say, no, I'm the authoritative one, we are rejecting the authority of Christ. Thomas Jefferson was notorious for this. He took the Bible, literally took the Bible, got a pair of scissors and cut out every passage that had to do with something supernatural or miraculous or divine. He cut out all of the deity of Christ and all he was left with was a sham of a book that had a few moral principles in it that all it was good for. This is God's divine authoritative word to our lives. Jesus as the speaker of this book is the divine authoritative king over our lives. We reject his authority when we question the source. Is that really authoritative? God's given us His word. We would do well to listen to it. A second way that we can reject the authority of the king is found in verses 29 to 33. We reject the authority of the king when we dodge the clarity of that authority. Here's how it happens in Jesus' day. They've come and they ask him this question. What authority do you have? Where did you get your credentials? It wasn't from us. And Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question. So he turns it. So let's put you guys on the hot seat now. Let's ask you the question. Answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. And here's the question that he asked. Verse 30. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me. Now here Jesus has immediately gone back some three years to this man in the wilderness, this prophet who came and he would proclaim, prepare the way of the Lord, make ready his path, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. And in Mark chapter one we read that all of Judea, all of Jerusalem, were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. His ministry was very public and it was very known. Probably some of the religious leaders that are questioning Jesus here were there with John at the Jordan River seeing his ministry firsthand. And Jesus lays out the question. John's ministry, which is summarized in the work of baptism that he did. John's ministry. Was it from God? Did God send John to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins? Did God send John to make ready the way for the Messiah, for the King? Or did he just do it of his own initiative? Did he, being a mere man, decide, hey, you know what, it'd be great. I'm gonna go dress up in camel hair, eat locusts, hang out in the wilderness, call people to repent. It'd be a fantastic ministry. Jesus is asking them the question, Where's John's ministry sourced in? From heaven or from man? Here's where the trouble comes for these religious leaders, verse 31. They have to get aside and huddle themselves around this. They're like, hang on a second, Jesus, we've got to talk this over. It's a little confusing. We're not so sure. Verse 31, they discussed it with one another. It's like, time out. Okay, guys, what do you think here? What are we going to do? I don't know. What do you think? Okay, well. If we say it's from heaven, if we say John came from heaven, Jesus is gonna throw the question right back at us. Why didn't you believe him? If God sent this man, why didn't you repent and be baptized and have your sins forgiven? Why aren't you ready for the king? Man, if we say it's from heaven, we're in trouble. We're on the hot seat. We look bad. But if we say from man, so if we deny John's heavenly sent divine calling and ministry, and we say just from man, he just engineered this himself, Verse 32 says, "...they were afraid of the people." It doesn't even finish the statement. It just says, "...if we say from man, they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John was really a prophet." I mean, there's no answer to it. It's just, if we say from man, it's... for us! It's bad! So they look at it, and this is what they do. They come back to Jesus and they say, "...we do not know." They completely skirt and dodge the question. Jesus, all right, this is real simple, okay? It's either God, heaven, or man. Pick one, okay? And they come back and, we don't know. We don't know. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Now here's the issue. These men, in a fear of man, have dodged the question completely, even though the answer was clear. Even though they knew it was clear. He was from God. All the people confess that. They probably had to believe that to a degree, and yet they skirt the question. They dodge it completely. They completely step aside the clarity of the authority of Jesus. We don't know. We're not sure. We have no idea how this works out. We're just as confused as you are. What's really happening here is they're taking what is very plain and clear from their experience, from their life, and God's work in their life, and they're clouding it. We can't be too sure. How often do we do this with the authority of Christ in the Scriptures? We know it's clear and plain what the Scripture calls us to, what it clearly says. And yet, because we reject the authority of the King, we sit there and make it murky. It's cloudy to us. Well, I don't know. Can it really mean that? Does the Bible really say that? I don't know. I'm not so sure. This is... This is the very first and same thing that Satan did with Eve in the garden when he came to her to deceive her. And he said, did God really say, shall not eat from that tree? I mean, is that what God really said? He put the doubt and the question into her mind and he made what was abundantly clear by the word of God absolutely cloudy in her mind. Why do we do the same thing with the clear, revealed Word of God and the authority of Jesus? It's because we don't like His authority. We're rejecting His authority. So does the Scripture really say? What are you struggling with right now? And you're looking at the Scripture and you're saying, it's really cloudy on that. Really? I think many times we find that the Scripture isn't as cloudy as we think. We're just too lazy to study it, to work at it. In fact, I believe the Scripture is very clear about our lives. The problem isn't that it's hard to understand or that it's murky, it's that we don't want to deal with it and apply it to our lives. I want to give you an example of the way the church in America today is even beginning to make things that are clear cloudy. We have an issue in our culture that's rising where the Scripture is very clear that the men, qualified men, are to be elders or pastors of the church. Paul is clear on that, absolutely clear when he calls elders and he says to them, the elders are to be husbands of one wife. And Paul says in 1 Timothy that men are to be the teachers of the word and women are to not hold authority over men as elders in the church. It's very clear. And yet our culture today has looked at that and said, well, I don't know if we like that. I don't know if it's as clear as it should be. Maybe that's just a cultural issue for the day. Scripture is abundantly clear. It points it out. I just point that out to see how we have taken Scripture, how we've taken the authority of Christ, who is the head leader of the church. We take things that we struggle with and wrestle with and we make them murky because we want to dodge out from underneath them. It's a rejection of His authority. We reject the authority of the King when we question the source of His authority. We reject the authority of the King when we dodge the clarity of that authority. It's very clear here where John came from. There's no question about where Jesus has come from. But these men can't swallow it. They can't take it. Are you making what the Scriptures make abundantly clear and twisting them to be cloudy so that you aren't held responsible for your conduct, for your way of life, for your following Christ? If you are, you're exhibiting rejection of Jesus' ultimate authority over your life. Well, the passage continues this day with these religious leaders, continues, and Jesus tells us in verse one of chapter 12 that he begins to, we read that he begins to tell them parables. And this parable here reveals for us a couple more ways that we might reject the king's authority. The third way is there in the first five verses of this parable, in that we reject authority, we reject the king's authority when we ignore the grace of the authority. It's an interesting parable here. Jesus tells it, a man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. This was something that was very common, very prevalent in Galilee in Jesus' day. Landowners, wealthy landowners would buy up lots of land, they would take care of it, they would prepare it, as Jesus talks about this man doing. He planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, built a tower, He's prepared it and made it ready for some tenants to come in and just work it. A very simple and expected thing for them to do. They're going to make some money on the grapes and the wine, and the landowner is going to make some money. He's going to have some fruit from his own land as well. Very common practice in Jesus' day. So they can relate to this, they get it. He says in verse two, when the season came, the landowner sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. I mean, this is an acceptable arrangement. Hey, here's the deals of the contract on the land, okay? I'm gonna let you guys work it, and you guys can have, we'll say 45% of the produce that's there, and I'll have 55% of the produce. But the land is yours, you can work it, tend it, we'll just split it that way. Okay, that sounds great. So the time comes, Leonard sends a servant, he comes to the vineyard, and here's the shocking thing, verse 3, they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. The servant comes and says, hey, portion's due, the master sent me for it, let's have it and I'll be out of your way, you know, have a great day. They're like, are you kidding me? Boom, just pound on him, beat him, sent him away empty-handed. Here's the amazing thing, verse 4, So again, he, the landowner, sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. He's like, all right, maybe this guy was a little bit of a goof, they didn't recognize him, they weren't ready. It's fine, I'll be gracious, we'll send another one. We'll send another servant, maybe another servant that they would know better, they would recognize as a little bit more professional in the way he talks to them, just has it right. They send him, guess what? They strike him on the head, they beat him, they treat him shamefully. Verse five just amazes me more and more. They sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed. Jesus is just putting it out there in simple terms. This landowner has sent messenger after messenger after messenger. Some they beat, some they kill, but all of them they've disregarded and disrespected. They treated them shamefully. They've rejected them again after again after again. Now what's interesting, and to help us interpret this parable, at verse 12 we read, they perceived that He, Jesus, told the parable against them. This is a parable, a visual picture for them, of what Jesus was seeing in Israel itself. He's saying, this is exactly how it is. God has prepared this land, this place for you to live and to be fruitful and to be a blessing to all the nations. And he sent prophets, he sent messengers, one after another after another to tell you, be ready for the coming of the king, prepare the way, repent, know God, trust him, one after another after another. And what have you guys done with the prophets? Some you've beat, some you've killed, and God keeps sending them. Some people ask, why are there so many prophetical books in the Old Testament? That's because God was gracious and He was just sending messenger after messenger after messenger. Hey, here's my grace to you. Here's my word to you. Repent. The King is coming. The land owner has made an arrangement, a covenant with you. Fulfill your part of it. They reject Him and they reject the servants. But the point I want us to see here is that God in sending messenger after messenger, word after word, is really sending His grace. God's word in His message is a message of grace. It's a message of good news. It's a message that we have a King who has come and who has lived the perfect life that we couldn't live and who has died for our sins in our place when we couldn't do that. And He's been risen to life again so that we might have life again. That is the message of the Bible. And again and again and again, His word stands before us and calls us to repent, to stop placing our faith in our own authority, and to repent and place our faith and trust in the King who is authoritative over all. Message after message after message. How often do we come to hear the Word of God, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, and it really just hits our hearts and deflects off? Nothing changes. We don't want anything to change. We just want to do our time and get out. And yet God, by His grace, is sending message after message after message of His grace to us, calling us to repentance, calling us to faith, calling us to Christ. His Word is a continual source of grace to us. And if we would hear it and just reject it, we're really rejecting His authority overall. We're rejecting the King. Ray Ortland Jr., a pastor in Nashville, says that every passage in the Bible is a pastor in written form, able to help a particular kind of sinner and sufferer. The Word of God is His grace to us. It's grace that we would even have in our culture today copies of the Word of God that you can read and hear the Word of God, hear the voice of God in your own language. Even in a translation that is on a reading level, you would understand. There are cultures and places in the world that don't even have a chapter of this book. Again, it's God's grace to us. And just as Jesus points out in this parable, just as God sent prophets to Israel again and again and again and again and again to call them to repentance, they rejected the authority of God, they rejected the authority of the king, and they treated shamefully They killed, they destroyed the messengers. Are you rejecting the authority of the King because you're ignoring His grace to you? This place, this time, His Word is a means of grace by which you would grow and know Him. The community of the church, the faithful, is a means of grace by which you would hear the Word of God and respond in faith. Are you ignoring His grace? Are you ignoring the kindness, the undeserved favor of the King? If so, you're rejecting His authority. Well, how does the parable end? It shows us the fourth diagnostic, the fourth way that we would reject the King's authority. We reject the King's authority when we destroy the identity of the authority, the person of the authority. So finally, in verse 6, we see the landowner still had one other. There's one more person on the scene who can get it through to them. One more person who can bring this to bear. A beloved son. I think Jesus chose those words for a very important reason. They were the very words, it was the very statement that God the Father had made about Him at His baptism, Mark 1, and also at His transfiguration in Mark 9. This was the identity that God the Father had bestowed upon the Son. This is my beloved Son. And so Jesus in telling the parable says the landowner has one other option, the beloved Son. He's pointing to himself and he's saying, I'm that beloved son. I'm the one here in your midst. Finally, he sent him to them saying, they will respect my son. My son comes in the flesh, they will respect him. But those tenants said to one another, this is the heir. Let's kill him and the inheritance will be ours. Can you see the lunacy in this? If you're renting from someone, And the rightful owner sends the inheritor of that place to you and you say, hey, if we kill the kid who inherits this, we get it. Utter insanity. That's not how it works at all. But yet they believed in some way that if they killed the son, it's all theirs. They have the authority over it now. They have the power, they have the control. And so they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. Jesus is just pointing forward again to his crucifixion. This is what's going to happen to me. I'm going to be killed, beaten, thrown out of the city, marked among the criminals, the Gentiles. Jesus asked the question, what will the owner of the vineyard do? What will happen to those who reject the authority of the king? The landowner will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read the scripture? And here Jesus points them to Psalm 118. This is the same psalm, it's even in the same stanza of the psalm that was mentioned two weeks ago as they walked into Jerusalem and the king was worshipped, Hosanna, Hosanna. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Psalm 118, it's in the same stanza. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. They've rejected the king. They've rejected the authority. And that one who they have rejected has been set over them as Lord over all, King over all kings. He is the cornerstone and it was God's good pleasure to do that. We reject the authority of the king when we destroy the identity of the authority. That's what these religious leaders were out to do. That is the deepest phase and expression of rejection there is. To utterly destroy Christ. To utterly destroy and defame the King. They did that in their day. We do that in our own day by displaying and declaring Jesus isn't God. He's not the king over all things. He's not the ruler and authoritative law for my life. He's not my Savior. He has no bearing on my life. He has no authority to speak in and to command me to follow Him, to love God and to love others. to go and to proclaim the gospel and make disciples of all the nations. Jesus, we reject His authority by saying, He has no place in my life. I have no room for Him. I wish He was dead. How many of us would reject the authority of the King, who is King over all things? And so in verse 12 we find that they were seeking to arrest him, but again they feared the people, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them. So they left him and went away. At the end of this day, Jesus has confronted the religious leaders about his authority. Really they started it. By what authority do you do this? And Jesus finished it. Who do you say that I am? Who has the authority here? I'm the king of kings, the beloved son I come from God. Are you going to receive my grace or are you going to reject me and kill me? By God's grace, we can rejoice in the fact that although he was rejected, it was God's good purpose and plan that he be rejected so that we could receive his authority, so that we could bow the knee to Christ and humbly submit to him and say, yes, you are Lord and King and ruler over my life. You are God and Savior. He took the wrath of God that we deserve, that Jesus talked about here. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants. It's an expression of his wrath. He will come and destroy them and give the vineyard to others. Jesus took the wrath of God the Father so that we wouldn't have to experience it. So that we can humble our hearts, repent, and by faith place ourselves under the authority of the King. Are you rejecting Jesus's authority? Are you subtly doing it? You're discounting his word. You're making what's clear confusing. Trying to dodge your way out of what he has called you to and what is clearly revealed. You're ignoring his grace. If you're rejecting the authority of the king, tonight I want to call you to repent. to repent, to come back to Him and say, I've rejected Your authority. Forgive me. Your Son has died for my rejection. You, Jesus, have taken my place for my rejection. Receive me back. Forgive me and allow me to live humbly underneath Your rule and reign. You are the King and I am not. Will you pray with me? Father, the result of our rejection of the King is that we would experience the wrath of the King. And yet you promise and you reveal to us that everyone who repents, who comes and recognizes our rejection of Jesus would be forgiven. So Lord, I pray that tonight we would bow our knee and humble ourselves. That we would confess that Jesus is Lord and that our lives would be changed that we would walk away from here ready to live under the authority of Christ as the King. Father, give us sensitive hearts to diagnose and to see our rejection of His authority. Give us humble hearts to repent. Thank you that your wrath has been poured out on Jesus the Son. We are grateful for the cross and for all that he has done. May we live in submission to him. We thank you for your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.