Isaiah looks at Jerusalem and sees that it is full of
idolatry, she has become a whore.
Sometimes all that glitters isn't gold.
The church can be just like this, chasing after everything but her Lord. We can chase signs and wonders, prosperity,
poverty, social justice, numerical growth, community, you name it we can
idealize and therefore idolize it. When
we spend our time together primarily discussing secondary things we should pay
attention and realize what we have done.
Jerusalem, Isaiah writes, has neglected things like righteousness and
justice, standard prophetic warnings but only because they are those things
most important to God and most often neglected by men who are pursuing earthly
rewards. Rewards come in all shapes and
sizes. We are called to put Him first
and becoming like Him in our character and concerns are to flow from that
primary pursuit. How many times in your
day do you think of Him? If the answer
is, less than I think about (fill in the blank), then you might be an idolater.
It seems impossible to imagine such a situation where a man
would plant a vineyard, let it to tenants, and then the tenants would lay claim
to it, rejecting the demand for rents due to the extent they would beat those
who come to collect and ultimately kill the son of the owner. Jesus is speaking prophetically, just like
any other prophet, in this parable. He
is telling both what has happened and what will happen and He is speaking of
Jerusalem in many ways. Only a few
decades after His death the temple will be destroyed. Those who were sent represent the prophets
and He is speaking prophetically of what will soon happen to Him, the Son of
God, the owner of the vineyard. He has
the same claim on the church, it was established by His sacrifice and is His
bride. He has the same claim on our
lives and all the produce thereof, His gift of life and the gifts and talents
we have enables all fruitfulness. Do you
worship Him for that or do you deny His claim?
Paul writes of wrong motives in a way that Isaiah would
appreciate. Sometimes the heart doesn't
even see its own idolatry but here Paul speaks directly to those issues. He says that he speaks not to please man but
to please God who tests the heart. There
are many vain reasons to proclaim the Gospel and this is the most insidious, to
be acclaimed and thought well of by other people. He says that neither flatter nor greed was
his motive in coming to Thessalonica to proclaim the Gospel, he was merely
taking God at His word, following the words of Jesus that they would proclaim
Him in all the world and in that work He would be with them. Greed was ruled out, public acclaim was
certainly not the motive, Paul primarily received grief and hardship for his
missionary work. It was not his own
kingdom with which Paul was concerned, but God's. We too easily fall into the trap of celebrity
worship in our culture, whether secular or religious celebrities. At the end of the day, Paul says all he urged
was that they walk worthy of the call of God, not worship him as the
messenger. It was all about Jesus, not
Paul.
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