Beeson Podcast, Episode 355
Jonathan Bean
August 29, 2017

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today’s Beeson Podcast, this is that week in the month when we get to listen to a sermon and today’s sermon is a very special sermon. It’s a unique sermon by Jonathan Bean. Jonathan and Karla Bean are graduates of Beeson Divinity School. They came to our school some years ago, we got to know them, we fell in love with both of them, and they were such wonderful students and exemplars of the gospel in so many ways.
	I remember, Dr. Smith, one time I had to lead a conference in Spain in Sevilla, Spain and I asked Jonathan and Karla to go with me and they translated, they were organized, they were just wonderful helpers to me in so many ways. They served the cause of Christ in the field of global mission all over the world and done such fantastic things. In 2011, Jonathan was diagnosed with a brain tumor and he now is in hospice care. A few weeks ago you and I had the privilege to visit with him and be at his bed side, pray with him, read the Scriptures with him. Tell us about that visit.

Robert Smith:	It was a visit in which I recognized that Jonathan’s testimony of having faith in God during times of tranquility which sustained him during these times of turbulence. I was moved by what he said; in fact this message in itself is a soliloquy. It’s our opportunity to overhear him and to hear him talk to himself. Throughout the message you’ll hear him crying, you’ll hear him pleading, you’ll hear him saying, “I’m a dying man preaching to dying men,” to quote Richard Baxter.
	I thought Dean George about the song In Christ Alone as I saw him and as I reflected upon our visit I thought about this. “No guilt in life no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me. From life’s first cry to final breath Jesus demands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from his hand. Till he returns or calls me home. Here in the power of Christ I stand.”
	In this message he marries evangelism with discipleship. It’s a message about the authority of scripture and instead of going from verse to verse, he takes and incorporates these verses within the framework of scenes. Scene one, Gods patience in pursuing his will--gives us the verse. Scene two, man’s rebellion and rejection of God--gives us the verse. Scene three, Gods perfect plan accomplished. Scene four, the urgency of repentance and finally scene five, our role in God’s redemption.
	It’s Father’s Day, he honors his father and tells us in fact, in essence that the three things his father taught him was to invest himself in things that are eternal; in his Word, in other people and in those things that can never pass away. This is a moving message. My heart and his were both informed and inspired.

Timothy George:	You know Jonathan has been on the staff of the Church at Brook Hills since 2009, that’s where this sermon was preached on Father’s Day this past summer. Let’s go to that great church and listen to our dear friend Jonathan Bean as he proclaims God’s Word.

Jonathan Bean:	Well why don’t you go ahead and pull out your Bible to Mark chapter 12. We are going to be in the first 12 verses of Mark this morning picking up on where we’ve been in the series Meet Jesus. Following on where we were last week in chapter 11 and I want to just take a moment of pastoral privilege here and I want to thank you as a church. You guys have cared so very well for me and my family especially over the last six months where we’ve been kind of pulled into a crisis mode with chemotherapy and radiation and all of those things combined.
	You all have come around us as a church; you have loved us well, prayed for us, walked with us. By your love for one another you are an example of Christ to the world because people are watching and they have seen you care and I know that’s not just true in our lives. I have seen that played out in many other people’s lives as they walk through difficult, hard circumstances. You have been a people that have come around and demonstrated true biblical community and biblical care, thank you, thank you.
	Let’s continue to be that people that God is crafting us to be. Thank you for what God is doing in your lives. Also, having served now over eight years as a pastor here, I want to affirm something else I see in you and I think all the other pastors would agree. You are people that want to know and obey the Word of God. What an incredible thing. Not just a people that want information about the Word, not just the people that want to check some boxes of religious activity, no you want to know the Word and you want to obey the Word.
	It’s such a privilege to be a part of pastoring a people that want to know the Word. Where we fit week in and week out under the Word. No matter who is preaching we are here to hear from the Word of God and we are here to receive from God, so we know who we are and who he is.
	So let’s read the text this morning again Mark chapter 12 verses 1 through 12. Let me read it, “And he being Jesus, 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 get 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 they killed him and so with many others and some they beat and some they killed. He still had one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, ‘They will respect my son,’ but those tenants said to one another, ‘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 the Scripture; ‘the stone at the builders rejected has become the corner stone, this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.’ 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 away.”
	This is a passage all about authority, all about authority. We know that as we gather each week, we gather to sit under the authority of God’s Word and in God’s Word we find out who God is and we find out who we are. And that God’s Word is what shapes what we believe about himself and what we believe about ourselves, not the other way around. We don’t start with our thoughts and our opinions about God and about ourselves, we start with God’s Word as our authority that teaches us who we are and who he is. Each week we gather and that’s why worship is full of the Word because we need to be reminded in Scripture who God says who he is and who God says we are.
	You know, it’s Father’s Day and actually my father is doing well but he had a heart attack this past week. He has recovered well but I’ve been thinking back on things my father has taught me. One of the things he used to say he said, “Son, invest your life in three things that are eternal; God, his Word, and other people.” Invest your lives in these three things. Today we look into God’s Word to see who he is and in so doing we are about things that have echoes into eternity and eternal consequences in our lives and through our lives to other people as well. Today let’s learn about God’s authority.
	Our culture also presses in and tells us all these ideas and things about God starting in a completely different place from God’s authoritative Word, starting in ideas and thoughts and opinions. I think in our culture there is a common view that God is nice. He is some kind of a grandfather in the sky that’s just handing out Werther’s Originals, you know? He is Santa Clause that we’d go to when we want to get a gift right and we dumb down a picture of who God is.
	Another myth in our culture about God, is that God is whoever we want him to be and so whatever we think, whatever we subjectively think about God is who God is. Effectively what we are doing is just creating a God in our own image. Not the true God and it’s wonder why our culture gets all mixed up. A third idea in our culture about God is that God is popular and that everybody will like him. I think we we’ll be surprised to find in this text as God reveals who he is and his authority that that’s absolutely not the case. People don’t like it and he is not popular.
	Why is this? Ultimately because we want to be in authority, we want to be in control, we all have issues with authority, don’t we? Just look back across your life, not just when you were a child--you still have issues of authority. We would much prefer just to have some controllables. Some outward religious actions that we could take, some boxes to check especially in this cultural Christian context in Birmingham, Alabama.
	“I did this therefore I’m good, I went to church I’m good.” Why? Because that keeps us in control of our lives and it keeps us in control of God versus having to thrust all of our hope, all of our expectations on Christ and trust and submit to his ultimate authority and rule in our lives. This issue of authority is not foreign to us; this issue of authority is not outside us, this issue of authority is right inside of us. We have to grapple with this text and this issue of authority and authority revealed this morning.
	All right, let’s put this passage in its context. Context is so important when we study a passage of Scripture because this comes right in the middle of the showdown in the Temple between the Jerusalem authorities and leaders and Jesus and his authority. Remember last week in the study in chapter 11 we have the Triumphal Entry of Jesus, people signing “Hosanna” coming in. Matt talked about the fig tree sandwich last week, talked about how Jesus curses the fig tree, goes up cleanses the Temple, goes back out and explains what’s going on with the fig tree.
	So this is in the middle of this big show down between the religious leaders and Jesus. Now in this passage we are back up on the Temple Mount, back up probably in Solomon’s portico, for sure sounded, surrounded by a big crowd of people and the Jewish religious authorities and Jesus’ leaders. Probably standing in Solomon portico underneath the 40 foot columns, looking out across the Kidron Valley, the dips out underneath with the Mount of Olives off in the distance. The Temple sitting behind quite a setting for Jesus to tell a story about his authority.
	Let’s set this up 11, chapter 11 verse 28. We see, “And they came again to Jerusalem and he was walking in the Temple and the chief priest and the 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?’”
	Now I want to stop right there, is this an authentic question? Genuine, honest question. By no means, they are not really asking him about his authority. They are in effect saying, “We are the authority, we are Jewish leaders. How is it that you are preaching and teaching and cleansing in the Temple and saying these horrendous things? Who do you think you are, Jesus?” It’s all about authority and I love the way Jesus does this. It’s beautiful to see what he does here.
	He doesn’t turn around and argue with them, he tells them a story. The story is so powerful. Everywhere I’ve traveled around the world, people use story to communicate the truth. It reaches down deep into our hearts. You know this is a parable of judgment. It’s important to set that context, but it’s intended to be a parable of judgment that penetrates to our hearts. Much like when the prophet Nathan went to David after David sinned with Bathsheba, he told him a story about a rich man that stole a poor man’s sheep for a banquet when somebody came. At the end Nathan said, “David, that man is you,” and David repents.
	Jesus is doing something very similar here yet the religious leaders do not repent, they do not turn to him at the end of this, they turn away from him. Jesus builds his story on very common Old Testament imagery and everybody understands exactly what’s going on here. They ask him, “Who do you think you are?” and he reveals by telling a story that summarized the whole redemptive story, all of the Old Testament history in a few short verses.
	He sums it all up such to where in verse 12 they say the perceived that he had told the parable against them. Everybody standing there is very clear about this parable. Sometimes Jesus tells parables that are veiled, that people don’t understand that afterwards he has to go and explain to his disciples that they don’t even understand. This is not one of those parables. Jesus tells this parable and everybody present kind of goes, “Whoa.” They all know exactly what he is saying. Let’s make sure we unpack it and we come away with that clear understanding as well.
	Jesus is using strong Old Testament imagery out of Isaiah chapter 5 that talks about a man and his vineyard and it’s clear in Isaiah 5 that the man is God and the vineyard is the people of Israel. Jesus builds on this very same thing; the owner in the story is God, the vineyard is Israel, the tenants are the leaders of Israel, the servants are the Old Testament prophets and the son is Jesus Christ. We need to start by thinking how this story applies and applies to us. We need to ask who do you identify with in the story? Who do you identify with?
	You know the first hearers, these Jerusalem leaders probably when they first begin to hear the story at the beginning they probably identified with the owner. These are the wealthy landlords of Israel, who had had to work things out with unrighteous tenants so they are automatically inclined to be there. Jesus tells the story so masterfully and turns it around to where they see who they are.
	Throughout church history as different commentators have talked about this passage, often the church has only seen application of this passage in Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Son. Only that all, that was just something applied back there. To accurately apply this parable to our lives today and feel the weight of this parable of judgment we have to remember that we, you and I today are the unrighteous tenants. We are the Jerusalem leaders; we need to feel the weight of judgment in this passage.
	The story breaks down into what we are going to look at five scenes in the story. The first scene in verses 1 and 2, we see God’s patient pursuit of his people. God’s patient pursuit of his people. Look how God cares for his people; he planted the vineyard, he protects the vineyard, he provides for the vineyard and he expects to enjoy the fruit of the vineyard. God cares for his people. Verse 1 it says, “And he began to speak to them in parables and when he had planted a vineyard, he put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased to tenants and went away to another country. When the season came he sent his servant to the tenants to get some of the fruit of the vineyard.”
	I don’t know about you but there’s not many vineyards around here. Are you guys familiar with vineyards, kind if know the way they work? I know I wasn’t, in fact this is a passage I have rarely heard. I couldn’t remember ever having heard this passage preached. Now I’m a preacher’s kid and grew up in church and I still haven’t heard this passage preached, but this is a powerful passage we need to grapple with.
	I’ve been trying to wrestle through how we wouldn’t be a modern retelling of this and this is the best I’ve been able to come up with. Still far short, Jesus is the master storyteller but trying to think through what this would look like and possibly in our context, this could look something like a family business. Leader of the family gets an idea for a business; develops the idea, invests the capital, sets it up legally, strives hard to get the business up and running. Once it begins to have some revenue possibly even some profit finds people to work the business, to manage the business.
	After sometime goes and sends someone to collect some of the fruit, some of the profit of the business but the messenger is rejected. He sends another and they are rejected, sends another and they are rejected. Finally he says, “I’m going to send my child, they’ll respect my child.” The child is going and the managers of the business look and see the child and say, “The heir is coming, let’s kill him and take the business for ourselves.”
	This is a story meant to shock. The story I just told you is more like a mob movie, than the story we would find in the Bible, right? No, that wouldn’t happen, that’s not the way things work. It is meant to grab our attention and see how unrighteous these tenants are. In ancient Israel, between a fourth and half of the fruit of the vineyard was supposed to go back to the owner. These tenants are not only content living off of the vineyard; they want to seize the vineyard for themselves. They want to be the owner of the vineyard and this is a perfect picture of Israel’s relationship to God, but we see Gods patient pursuit of his people.
	In 2 Peter 3:9, it teaches that God is patient towards us, not wishing that any should perish but that all may reach repentance. Aren’t you thankful for God’s patience and his pursuit in your life? Think back across your life, I know I can look back and see God patiently pursuing me time and again in the ways that didn’t deserve. Him sending people and circumstances into my life to call me back to him and I know that you share similar stories as well. God is patient with us and he pursues us.
	Do not forget God’s past faithfulness in your life in the midst of your present circumstances. You may be going through all kinds of hardship, but remember God’s faithfulness to you in the past is a sign of his future and present faithfulness to you now. Psalm 100, verse 5 has been so key on the journey that we’ve been walking on over the last few years. “For God is good,” never forget that brother and sister. “God is good, God is good, his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations.” Do not forget Gods patient pursuit of you and his loving kindness.
	Yet this moves into scene two where we see man’s relentless rejection of God. Man’s relentless rejection of God. “And they took him and they beat him and they sent away, him away empty handed. And again he sent them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent them another and they killed him and so with many others, some they beat and some they killed.” The tenants only care about their own benefit. They are not content with benefiting though, they want to be owners themselves.
	This reminds us of the very first garden. Not just a vineyard but the very first the Garden of Eden and this has been God, the story of God’s people throughout all of time. We have wanted to throw out the owner of the vineyard and own the vineyard ourselves. God set us up in the Garden of Eden perfectly yet we were not content to follow his rule.
	Man has never wanted to submit to God’s authority but has always wanted to be the owner himself. Many servants he sent, constant rejection, this is the story of God’s people, this is the summary, the story of the Old Testament. This is the cycle of the whole Old Testament story. Our kids study this and learn this in children’s ministry and student ministry. The people of God falling to disobedience, God disciplines them. They call out on him and repent, he delivers them and repeat disobedience, discipline, repentance, deliverance and repeat again and again and again.
	Remember God sends his servants Elijah, Isaiah and so many others. Jesus is summarizing for everyone present, and for us here, the history of God’s relationship with God’s people. We are tenants, they are tenants intended to care for the garden until the owner, until the king returns.
	I was trying to think of a way to illustrate this and I thought about the Lord of the Rings. Anybody here fan of the Lord of the Rings read it, watched the movie? There is a scene in the Lord of the Rings about the Steward of Gondor. You may recall this scene, the steward of Gondor is supposed to care for the city until the return of the king. Instead of caring for it, he has taken over the city and he is ruling it as his own and you see him there sitting at the table enjoying the fruit of the city eating his meal as the meal drips down his face.
	Gandalf the wizard comes to him and tells him that the king is returning. Instead of looking up in excitement and anticipation, he looks down and you can see his mind rolling on how can he prevent the return of the king. This is an example of what is going on here; rejecting the return of the king. Jesus is telling a parable that’s meant to reach into our hearts and grip us and see our rejection of him but by God’s grace this parable doesn’t end with man’s rejection of God, there is a further scene. God’s perfect plan accomplished.
	Scene three, “And still he had another beloved son and he sent to them. They will respect my son but those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir, come let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.’ They took him and they killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. Have you not read the scripture? ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone.’” Think about this, right there standing before them Jesus is prophesying to them what they are about to go and do. Think about the grace and mercy of that, again a further opportunity to turn.
	He is prophesying his rejection and he is also proclaiming in his quotation of Psalm 118 who he is that he is a Messiah. The quote out of Psalm 118 about him becoming the chief corner stone is linked to all the messianic titles that Jesus is given in the Triumphal Entry. It’s unmistakable that he is telling them in his parable his identity and he is answering their question that they originally asked about authority and he is affirming to them, “I am the son of God. I am the Messiah. Meet Jesus: God in the flesh. I am the key stone that holds the eternal Temple of God together.” It is constructed and held together in Christ.”
	We see him proclaiming who he is, he is also prophesying his rejection but his ultimate exaltation in telling them who he is and he is doing all of this standing right in front of the Temple, the old stone, physical temple. Knowing that God has accomplished his perfect plan of salvation and he has accomplished that plan despite rejection, humiliation and suffering is incredibly encouraging to all of us when we realize that he is accomplishing his perfect plan in each one of our lives, no matter what we are currently walking through.
	Think about that, you may feel like you are at the last straw in your marriage. You may know not where to turn in the relationship with your child or your parents. You may not know when your next pay check is coming from. You world may be spiraling out of control because of health issues. All kinds of things may be spinning out of control in your life and you are desperately looking for what to grab onto and I want to tell you: look to your salvation. Look to God the same one that accomplished your salvation has not left you and will not ever leave you.
	He is with you, he will not abandon you. God specializes, specializes, in bringing life out of the ashes. This is what he does with his son Jesus Christ to accomplish our salvation and he does this again and again brothers and sisters. In the middle of our circumstances, trust him, he is faithful. He will give you the strength to step forward in faith. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy by no means, but God is strong. He is your rock.
	The parable of the vineyard, the parable of the tenants is filled with a profound sense of God’s sovereign control over all things; all things in the universe, all things in our lives as well. The big things right down to the very specific items on your agenda Monday morning. God is sovereign, in control, he cares and he is active in our lives, never forget it. This is what the Word of God shows us and teaches us about who he is and who we are.
	In the story of Nathan and David, remember David repented. These leaders as we already talked about did not repent, they hardened their heart and I want to call us not to do the same. Do not turn away and harden your heart as they did. This is often when we are confronted with the authority of God, this is often what we want to do. We don’t want to submit to a God that requires all authority from our lives and we want to turn away. We want to remain in control of our lives and often we want to kill God out of our lives.
	Don’t do it, don’t do it and this moves us into the next scene; the urgency of repentance, the urgency of repentance. 9 to 12, what will the owner of the vineyard do? “He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Wow. Sobering, sobering reminder; destroy the tenants give the vineyard to others. I think it’s interesting here, we got Peter standing here along with the disciples and a few months later Peter is arrested by the same group of religious leaders for healing someone and he is brought in front of them and he is asked a very similar question, “By whose authority did you do this? “
	In chapter 4 beginning in verse 12 I think Peter remembering what Jesus said to them quotes Psalm 18 and very similar to what Jesus says he says it like this beginning verse 10 through 13. Peter to these very similar leaders, he says, “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” by the name under the authority of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, “whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. By him this man is standing before you well.
	This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you the builders which has become the corner stone and there is salvation in no one else. Hear this, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men they were astonished and they recognized they had been with Jesus.” Isn’t that like God? He gives those that eventually crucified him further opportunity to hear from Peter months later again and gives them an opportunity to repent and believe.
	The Bible is full of God, evidence of God’s patient pursuit of his people but the Bible is also full of God’s ultimate justice. God is not an eternally absentee landlord. He will return. Do not walk away as the religious leaders did and attempt to kill God out of your lives, life. As Peter said, “There is salvation in no other name.”
	2 Corinthians 5:11 Paul said, “Knowing the fear of the Lord we persuade men.” One scholar put it this way, “Remember once more that if you do not hear the well beloved Son of God and you have refused your last hope. He is God’s ultimatum, nothing remains when Christ is refused. No one else can be sent, heaven itself contains no further messenger, if Christ is rejected, hope is rejected.” I should like every person here that is unconverted to remember that there is no other Gospel and there is no more sacrifice for sin.
	We live in a cultural world and we look around and we think often there is no justice, no accountability everybody is getting away with it. Not true. The Day of Judgment will come for all mankind and we will be judged based on how we respond to Jesus Christ. God’s judgment will inevitably come. Charles Spurgeon said, “If you reject him, he answers you with tears. If you wound him, he bleeds out cleansing. If you kill him, he dies to redeem. If you bury him, he rises again to bring us resurrection. Jesus is love manifest.”
	In this parable and throughout all of the council scripture we see God’s, both God’s patience and God’s final judgment present. We live in a world that often we don’t think about the urgency or repentance or the shortness of our lives. We drive past cemeteries and don’t even think about it. I think maybe one of the few places that actually a moment of the internal nature of our, the shortness and brevity of our lives breaks in, maybe on Facebook.
	You guys might think this is a little funny but just about every day somebody posts a picture and they are like, “Look at little Billy this is when he was six, man I can’t believe how quick time flies.” That’s a moment; a window in that eternity breaks into our everyday lives and reminds us that life is short. Life is short, it is fleeting, it is here today gone tomorrow.
	As a dying man preaching to dying men and women, boys and girls. Don’t miss the opportunity to turn in repentance and trust in Jesus Christ. If you are not a Christ follower, if you are not a Christ follower, Jesus came and lived a perfect life that you could not live, so that he could die the perfect death to make amends for your sin and bring you back into right relationship with the holy Father. He is calling you to turn and put your faith in him, to cast everything in your life upon hope in him and what he has done and to realize and submit to his rule and reign in your life.
	In so doing he will restore you to right relationship with the Father and you will live in the way that you were designed to, a return to the garden so to speak where God reigns and rules and we serve him as his people. If you are, or claim to be a Christ follower, but know that you are not living in submission to his authority, you are in a very dangerous place my friend. Turn away from self-rule, run back to Christ, think about his patience and kindness and love for you and come back to Christ now. Submit to his authority and reign and rule. He is good and his plans are perfect for your life. Do not turn away from him today, turn and repent.
	If God is doing his work in your life right now, there are countless people here that I would love to talk to you more about that, so many people. Reach out, talk to somebody. Come up and talk to me or one of the other pastors afterwards, go to this area, the access corner, don’t walk out of here rejecting Christ.
	God’s grace, if you are hearing this right now, it is God’s patient pursuit of you. Turn and trust in him and talk to somebody, we’d love to walk with you and what that looks like. If you have honest questions, genuine questions please that’s great, we would love to talk to you about those, as well. To turn and trust and this moves us into the final scene, scene five. Our role in God’s redemptive story, our role in God’s redemptive story.
	I’ve been trying to think about what a picture of a good steward looks like and I was reflecting back when we lived in Central Asia. We worked as missionaries out in Central Asia and when we lived there, we needed a place to live so we found a little house to live in. We bought it, probably $20,000, carried a basket full of money into the bank to buy it and walked out with the deed to this house and a couple of months later we had to unexpectedly leave the country. We had this house, we entrusted it to the care of a care giver and we left not knowing when we would be back.
	About seven months later, I had the opportunity to unexpectedly return. Nobody knew I was coming. Just showed up in the city after getting off an overnight train. What do you think the first thing I did? I went to check on my house. I went and there it’s always a gate around the house. I went and knocked on the gate, I didn’t know if anybody would even be there and immediately the caretaker poked out his head came and opened up the gate. As I walked in, I realized all the flowers were manicured, the lawn was cut, he had swept out the drive way, the leaves were raked. The house looked immaculate.
	We embraced he said, “I’ll be back in just a minute,” and he run inside the house quickly prepared tea as was the custom, got tea, ran back out set up two folding chairs under the grapevine in the yard and I sat down with him and we sat down and I had tea with the caretaker. We began to talk and I asked him and I realized through talking to him that he had done this every single day, faithfully awaiting. The picture of a good and faithful steward awaiting the return of the king.
	In 9 verse b, I think we have to see where we are located as God’s people. See this isn’t just a story about the Old Testament Jesus is telling, this is the story about all of redemptive history. We have to locate ourselves in the stories as well and we have to realize that we are stewards of the gospel to others. We have to see our role in the redemptive story, so who are these others? Well, first of all we are the others because this was about the gospel going from Israel to the gentiles and we are gentiles.
	The mission impulse of this passage flows on beyond us to the others who have yet to hear about God’s authority. We are also caretakers of the gospel meant to steward the gospel on to others who have yet to hear of God’s authority. Jesus’ supreme authority over all things, so the gospel doesn’t stop with us but flows on through us. Every week at the end of our gathering we repeat the great commission, how does that begin?

Congregation:	All authority.

Jonathan Bean:	All what?

Congregation:	Authority.

Jonathan Bean:	Wow think about that, the very authority of Jesus given to us as he sends us out to continue to carry out his plan and his purposes in the world. We go with that very authority, we go out. Each week, we are scattered and we are sent out as stewards of the gospel to share the gospel, to make disciples; in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our parks and places of play, in our work places, down in the urban parts of our city, wherever God takes us. In our neighborhoods, across the country quite literally as people go all over the country on business this very week from our country and quite literally across the world as we send people out to the ends of the earth. This is why we send people out to the hard places as well, not just to what’s near us but also to the ends of the earth.
	You know, this past week we had a short term team in the Middle East sharing the gospel with Muslims. There is a young married Muslim man that heard the gospel and didn’t immediately believe but he was connected with our partners. When he talked without partner and heard the gospel again, he did believe and came to faith and called his wife and shared the gospel with his wife and she believed as well. Now this couple is working with our partners there and beginning the discipleship process all the way on the other side of the earth.
	This is what the authority of God and Christ can do in and through us, his people. No one is too far from the saving hand of God. I want to challenge us this week, we are in this series meet Jesus and we come each week and we look into the book of Mark and we meet Jesus, we encounter Jesus but you will go past people all week long that don’t know Jesus. You will have opportunities this week, if you are looking for them, to introduce people to Jesus.
	You are a steward of the gospel, open up your eyes and your antenna. Ask God to show you where and how you need to introduce people to Jesus this week and step forward in faith. Not in your abilities but in faith in the authority and the power of the gospel to transform lives. Give others the same opportunity that you have had to meet Jesus this week.

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