Do You Respect Jesus? (Jake Enns)

Our sermon title this morning is Do you Respect Jesus?

We've all heard that we're supposed to love God.

We're supposed to love Jesus, We're supposed to love one

another. What is the definition of

respect? Respect simply means to hold in

high regard, to pay attention to, and to add value and to

reverence. When we respect a person, we're

careful how we treat that person, how we talk to them, how

we relate to them. We do our best not to bring

shame or pain into their lives. We cannot say that we respect

someone when we disregard them, push them aside, avoid them, or

worse, try to harm them and even cause them pain.

The Bible talks a lot about the principle of respect.

And again and again in Scripture, there were instances

when God's people no longer respected God.

They engaged in idol worship. They said they loved God, but

they were not really loving God. Before we go into our text this

morning, out of Mark chapter 12, the 1st 12 verses, I want to set

Mark 12 · chapter mention

the tone a bit for our sermon this morning.

And Isaiah chapter 29, verse 13, the prophet writes the words of

Isaiah 29:13

God. He says.

Therefore the Lord said, in as much as these people draw near

me, draw near with their mouths, and honor me with their lips,

but have removed their hearts far from me, and their fear

toward me is taught by the commandment of men.

Therefore, behold, I will again do a marvelous work among this

people, a marvelous work, and a wonder.

For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the

understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.

What things look like on the outside in Isaiah's day, in the

nation of Israel or the nation of Judah?

These people had no respect for God.

They said they did, but they didn't.

There was the spiritual decline in their time.

The outward appearances look good.

The temple worship was still happening in many ways.

You wouldn't tell by just looking at the temple itself

maybe, or the sacrifices, but all the rest of it was going on

was they couldn't be both and they fell into idol worship.

They disregarded God and as time went on one by one, after the

king after king, they just went further and further.

The prophets came and they prophesied.

They warned, told them to repent, and nothing worked.

And then, in time, the Babylonians came.

They conquered the land, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed,

the glorious temple of Solomon was destroyed, and they went to

exile. After 70 years of exile, some of

the people were given freedom to return.

Those who wanted to were allowed to, and they came back to

Jerusalem, rebuilt the city, rebuilt the wall, and again had

worship. But it was not the way it had

previously been under the rule of King David and Solomon.

While Fast forward to Jesus time.

The people of Israel were in their land, but it was not their

land so to speak. They were under the Roman

occupation, paying taxes to Rome, obeying the laws of Rome,

but had freedom to worship as the law dictated.

And they did. And they believed they were

doing a good thing. At least the the leaders

especially believed that they had the temple, they had the

worship services, the sacrificial services, but it was

spiritually dead, it was cold, it was not genuine.

Jesus was deeply disturbed by what he found and he writes in

and Matthew, the Gospel writer writes the following.

He says Jesus saying to them, hypocrites welded Isaiah, the

prophecy, prophecy about you saying these people draw near me

with their mouth and honor me, honor me with their lips, but

their heart is far from me and in vain they worship me,

teaching his doctrines, the commandments I've met.

I just noticed. Oh yes, it is on there.

I thought it was not, but it sounds not on my slide.

It's on there. That's good.

So teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men, that was

the problem that Jesus had with these people.

Well, that's kind of the backdrop a little bit to our

sermon this morning. We're continuing our sermon

series to the Gospel of Mark and up to this point we have

finished Chapter 11. We've not found one time in all

of Mark 1st 11 chapters where the religious leaders actually

took the time to pause and ask themselves, wait a minute, are

we missing something? Is there something we need to

learn and open up to Jesus? Maybe we were wrong.

That didn't happen one single time.

They just knew they were right. The crowds were wrong.

The crowds loved Jesus. They followed him.

But the Pharisees and the leaders, the Sadducees and the

scribes, the the, the legal teams they had no use from, they

despised him. They wanted to get rid of him in

the worst way. There was no respect or they

were all about keeping the law, no doubt about that.

But in reality, there was no one in the whole nation who was

farther away from God than these people.

The religious leaders, they had knowledge, but they had no

respect for Jesus. They had no relationship with

God. They thought they were the ones

who were favored by God who were right, but they were wrong.

And again it of Matthew, Jesus says woe to you scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the Kingdom of heaven

against men for you neither go in yourselves and nor do you

allow those who are entering to go in.

We're coming to the end of the Gospel of Mark, and this is out

of Matthew, but in the final days of Jesus life on earth

before his crucifixion, Jesus had some very tough speeches,

some very tough lectures, we could call it, or rebukes to the

leaders of his day. We want to finish the Gospel of

Mark by the end of August. So we won't be going through

every parable or every story that Jesus tells.

And I would like you to read the whole Gospel and finish reading

what we don't cover. So in today's passage, we'll be

looking at the story of the the vine dressers.

Chapter 12 is a long chapter. It's very densely packed, and we

cannot possibly do justice to all of it in one sermon on a

Sunday morning. So this morning, we're not going

to go through all of chapter 12. We'll only go through chapter

12, verse 1 to 12. It's the story of the vine

dressers, the guys who took care of the master's vineyard before

we read this passage. It's an it's, it's good for us

to just tie this together with what we had last Sunday out of

Chapter 11. Last Sunday in Chapter 11, we

have the story where the end of the chapter where the Pharisees

challenged he saying by what authority or who give you the

authority to do these things? And Jesus simply said, I'm going

to ask you a question. If you answer that, I'll answer

your question. He said the baptism of John,

John the Baptist, was it from heaven?

Was it from men? And they think, OK, if we say

from men, the crowd will stone us because they think it was

from God. If we say from God, Jesus will

say, why didn't you believe him? So they said we don't know and

they were trapped and truly they knew, but they just didn't want

it to be. So they knew John was right by

condemning what they did. They just say we cannot tell.

And Jesus says, I will not tell you either.

But what authority I do these things?

Well, at that point in time, Jesus could have just walked

away and said, you know what? I'm done with these guys.

They don't understand. They're closed, they're cold,

which they were, and Jesus could have left them.

But Jesus did not do that. What happened next is very

interesting. Jesus stayed with them.

He did not leave. Not this time.

It is safe to say, the way I see it, he went on the offensive

here for lack of better wording. He attacked them.

Maybe that's too harsh, but at least he confronted them.

Often times Jesus, Jesus did not seem to bother to engage people

in their arguments. But on this occasion he did not

leave it alone. He went after them.

He went after the Pharisees and they got it.

We'll, we'll read that in a minute.

Not physically, but in a verbal way.

He wanted to communicate to them in a way that left no doubt who

they, the Pharisees, were and who Jesus was and what was

happening and would eventually come to happen.

So with that, turn your Bibles to Mark chapter 12, verse 1 to

Mark 12:1–12

12. Then he began to speak to them

in parables. A man planted a vineyard and set

a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine VAT and built a

tower, and he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far

country. Now at vintage time he sent a

servant to the vine dressers that he might receive some of

the fruit of the vineyard from the vine dressers, and they took

him and beat him and sent him away empty handed.

Again he sent another servant, and at him they threw stones,

wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully

treated. And again he sent another, and

him they killed, and many others, beating some and killing

others. Therefore still having one son,

his beloved, he also sent him to them at last, saying, They will

respect my son. There it is.

But those vine dresses said among themselves, This is the

air. Come, let's kill him, and the

inheritance will be ours. So they took him and killed him

and cast him out of the vineyard.

Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do?

He will come and destroy the vine dressers and give the

vineyard to others. Have you not even read the

scripture? The stone which the builders

rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This was the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes.

And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitude,

for they knew He had spoken the parable against them.

So they left him and went away. It was the religious leaders who

turned and walked. Jesus had confronted them in

public and they knew it. This is one of those stories.

When you read it, it's like taking, you know, you buy these

mattresses in a box with a sponge mattress.

Once you take it out, you can never put it back.

It expands and fills this whole bed.

Kind of. That's what happened here.

You can never undo what he just did.

He exposed them. It is a parable.

One if, if, if, if it had weight mass, it's so heavy you couldn't

lift it, or if it had volume, nothing could contain it.

This parable illustrates the relationship that God wants with

the people He has entrusted the responsibility to, of taking

care of what He's blessed humanity with.

This parable also illustrates that God entrusted himself to

humanity through his son, and it illustrates what humanity did

with his son, and it also illustrates what God would do

and with his son by making him the chief cornerstone.

So in summary, this parable illustrates to us today that

it's never right for us to take at God's expense for self

gratification, what is not ours to take.

We're called to worship God. We're to do it with our lives,

with our whole being. So Jesus told this parable to

the religious leaders of his day because they had taken for

themselves, at God's expense, for self gratification, what was

never theirs to take. Since early times, godly people

have respected God. But those religious leaders in

Jerusalem, they did not respect God nor Jesus at all.

In fact, this group of people had reinvented God after their

own comforts, what they interpreted the Old Testament to

believe and what worked for them.

And as far as Jesus was concerned, they wanted him dead

and gone. What we want to see first is

that we are stewards of what belongs to God.

Let me read verse one to four again.

Then he began to speak to them in parables.

A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place

for the wine VAT and built a tower, and he leased it to vine

dressers and went into far country.

Now at vintage time, he sent a servant to the vine dressers

that he might receive some of the fruit of the vineyard from

the vine dressers, and they took him and beat him and sent him

away empty handed. He sent them another servant and

him, they threw stones, wounded him in the head and sent him

away shamefully treated. Verse 5.

And again he sent another, and him they killed, and many

others, beating some and killing some.

You see, it begins with God. God is the planter.

He's the builder and He's the owner of the vineyard.

Our roles, my role, your role. We we're not owners, we are

stewards. We are managers.

We are stewards of what belongs to God.

God expects his people to be loyal.

From the early stories of history down through the

centuries, God has always looked for people who are trustworthy,

honest people of character, whom he could entrust with

responsibility to serve him, to work for him, to be people who

would glorify God in their life on earth.

God's plan has always been to work through people, for people

to live by example, living out their faith in God in tangible

ways that would communicate to the world around them a life of

loyalty and trust towards God. It started with Adam and Eve,

and we know what they did. And then Noah was found.

Faith from the eyes of the Lord. There's some very significant

character characters in Scripture that we can look to.

For instance, Abraham. Genesis chapter 12 tells us the

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

story of Abraham. He was 75 years old when God

called him out of the land of the Chaldeans and said, go to a

land I will show you and I'll bless you and make you a

blessing and treat all nations. We'll be blessed.

He was 75 years old. Abraham began the journey.

And if you read the story of Abraham from start to finish, he

was 75 years old when God began the journey.

He was 175 when he died. 100 year journey of faithfully,

obediently walking with God. Yes, he had some mishaps.

He lied a few times. He sometimes listened when he

shouldn't, and he didn't listen when he should.

But he was a man faithful after to God.

He respected God. He never received the promised

land, but his descendants would. And Abram's respect for God

resulted in many future generations being beneficiaries

of his obedience. And today we still benefit from

that. Another character in the Old

Testament is Joseph, chosen by God to be the one who would save

his family from starvation in a great famine.

He was an example of godliness, trust in God in an idolatrous

and ungodly culture. Because of his respect for God,

he was able to practice self-discipline when many a

young man would have fallen for temptation, and even when it

seemed everybody had forgotten him.

Joseph retained his respect for God, for God's code of conduct.

His loyalty to God resulted in saving his family, not just his

family, but the whole nation of Egypt.

Another man later ONS Moses, a leader whom got appointed to

lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.

Moses had a rough start, but he learned to respect God.

And against all odds, Moses followed God's command,

delivered God's people out of the land of slavery, the land of

Egypt, another man, King David, a man whom God took from

shepherding the sheep in the field to lead his people, the

nation of Israel. He was a young shepherd, but his

heart was right with God, and God used him to lead his people,

the nation of Israel. Yes, he committed sin a number

of times, but he repented each time, changed his ways.

He respected God. More kings came and went, some

godly kings and some not godly, some ungodly, but overall the

nation started to crumble and to just drift into idolatry and to

disrespect for God. The prophets came warning God's

people to to repent, to turn to God and change their ways, but

for the most part it wasn't vain.

Here and there was a good king, but mostly it wasn't vain.

God and His grace kept on sending the prophets, but to no

avail. Then we come to the stories of

Isaiah and Jeremiah, how God spoke through them, repeatedly

warning his people, but the messages went unheeded.

Eventually they had drifted so far that God withdrew his

protection. Babylonians came and overpowered

them, took them to exile from their homeland.

They had lost respect for God, His laws, His prophets, His

prophets, His ways, the worship and respect that was due God was

being channelled into all kinds of other things.

Here Jesus comes along and toward the very end of his

ministry on earth, he's confronting the Pharisees, what

they're doing, and he's telling them a story.

A vineyard like that, commentators say it would have

taken about four years from the time they would plant the

vineyard to the time it would bear fruit.

They understood the message. They understood the story.

They knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

Vineyards were everywhere in that country at the time.

And it would have been, it would have been very common for a man

to own a vineyard and to lease it out or rent it out to

tenants. Everybody would have gotten that

story. But here Jesus puts a strange

twist to the story. The land owners of the vineyard,

the vineyard managers, they have not been lazy.

They've been working hard and it's producing fruit.

But their motive, they were doing the right things, but the

motive for doing the right things was wrong.

Doing the right things doesn't mean it's right.

They were taking care of the vineyard.

It was a fruitful place, but the reason why they were taking care

of that vineyard that was productive was wrong.

The reason was wrong. We're not respect for the

landowner. It was we're going to get this

for ourselves. They're taking ownership.

It was not theirs to take ownership of.

So Jesus telling these religious leaders, look, guys, what you've

done is wrong and they knew it. They understood.

OK, that's a nice parable, right?

So what about us? Does this even relate to us?

Does what happened in this parable happened to us?

Let's let's look. Do we view what God has

entrusted to us? Do we view it as ours to take an

own when actually we're just stewards.

We've been entrusted with the masters wealth for a season.

We may say, oh, we'd never respect God the way these vine

dressers did. Like you know, they shamefully

treated as prophets Jesus using these servants as prophets.

They're that's the same thing. So the owner sent a servant to

the divine dressers to take some of the fruit back to the owner,

but they responded very badly, aggressively send them away.

Shamefully, it says, oh, we would never do that, would we?

How do we conduct ourselves when we're faced with the truth that

we need to amend our ways, that we need to turn to God?

Maybe we're encouraged to give ourselves.

To turn to Christ. How do we treat such a 10?

We already are doing the right things in some way.

We are all vine dressers, we're all managers.

We've all been entrusted with some form of a vineyard that

we're to take care of. For some people, that's a

ministry in the church. For some, it's a job that they

go to Monday to Friday. For some, it's a business they

run. What is your vineyard?

What we do with a gift we've been given is an indicator of

our respect or disrespect for the giver of the gift.

In this story, the first servant comes, gets beaten shamefully

treated and sent him away empty. This is our vineyard.

We're taking this frost. You get lost.

We don't want you here. The second servant comes, he

gets treated worse. He gets injured in the head, it

says. The third servant comes.

He pays for it with his life. Many others were beaten and some

were killed. Well, we'd never kill anybody,

right? But do we shamefully treat those

who are different than we do? We shamefully respond to those

who remind us of our responsibilities?

Or maybe we don't kill physically, But do we push away

and push aside people who want to be part of our lives and

share in our lives? When we treat others as less

than and mistreat them, I dare say we disrespect Jesus.

When people who call themselves followers of Jesus mistreat

others, especially for the purpose of selfish gain, that

behavior falls into the category of what the vine dressers were

doing with the servants of the vineyard owner.

How should the vineyard owner deal with the situation?

What should he do? The vineyard owner in the story

does not give up hope. He has one more plan to see if

the vine dressers will do the right thing.

He decides to send his son. He says they will respect my

son. Therefore still having one son,

his beloved. He sent him to them at last,

last saying they will respect my son.

Why would he say that? He wanted to believe he was

gracious. He wanted to believe there was

some good in these tenants. He wanted them to make the final

choice, the good choice. He loved his son dearly.

He wanted to believe that because his son was part of him,

his own flesh and blood, they will take my son as they take me

because if he would come, they would have to give it back.

Well, they see the sun coming, and they take this as the

ultimate opportunity. The evil in their hearts showed

itself on full display. Notice verse 7.

But those vine dressers said among themselves, this is the

heir, Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.

So they took him and killed him and cast him out of the

vineyard. They would stop at nothing to

take full ownership. What did not belong to them,

What the vineyard owner had hoped would happen, what he

wanted, what would happen, what he counted on, did not happen.

Not only did it not happen, it happened.

It was worse. These tenants knew this is the

sun. They were aware, and the true

evil nature of these men showed itself in full display.

This was more than just not respecting the sun.

This was deliberate, intentional evil.

They wanted the one who had entrusted them with vineyard.

They wanted him out, and killing the sun was going to help in

that direction. They did not respect the sun.

They killed him. Imagine the scene, if you will,

from the time of planting the vineyard to the first harvest

would be about maybe four years. Time had passed.

The vineyard was producing. We can imagine how these

tenants, these managers would have said among themselves, you

know what, it's going to be a good year this year.

How much do we owe the boss? Nothing.

We've done all the work here. We've taken care of this place.

Imagine their conversations and them saying things like, you

know what, let's just take it. Let's just take hold of it.

Let we'll just we'll just take it for ourselves again.

It was not that they were lazy. They had worked hard.

Now crop was ready. But they took it for themselves

that no intention of giving anything to the vineyard owner.

They went all out the pick. The workers are picking the

grapes, processing them in the wine press.

Juice is being stored for fermentation to become wine.

Harvest is in progress. Until one day a servant comes.

He's got to go. No use for him.

The next guy comes, we sent the last one away.

We were sending away and they hurt him.

The third one, OK, You, you're it.

We're going to kill you. And they did.

No intention of fulfilling their obligation to the owner.

Everything was for them. They mistreated the master

servant and said, boy, shamefully, they injured the

second one, killed the third one.

And finally, it's time for the sun thinking that they can do

this. We may think, well that makes no

sense and it's truth does not make sense, but that's how

selfishness works. Selfishness does not operate on

the making sense principle. Selfishness operates on the what

can I get for myself? I don't care what it does to the

other person. That's how selfishness works.

Once a person knowingly embraces what they know is wrong, they've

set themselves on a trajectory of self destruction that leads

to death. What happened next in the story

is unavoidable. There was no going back from

what happened when they killed the son.

It's been said choices are optional, but consequences are

standard. When you make a choice with that

choice, you also then include all the consequences of that

choice. Like you decide you're going to

rob a bank. That's a choice.

With a choice, you can also embrace the idea.

OK, I'll probably get arrested and thrown in jail.

You can't avoid that. Choices are optional.

Consequences are standard. They're not optional.

Verse 9. Therefore, what will the owner

of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the

vine dressers and give the vineyard to others.

When Jesus was telling this story, he was alluding to what

was going to happen to the Jewish religious system and its

leaders. They, the leaders, would in the

very near future no longer be leaders in the temple.

In fact, there would no longer be any temple.

In less than 40 years, 30 some years or so, the owner of the

vineyard would come. He would show up.

His absence now did not mean he was not going to come.

Jesus said he will destroy the vine dresses.

They will be eliminated. In other words, they would be

killed and many, many were. The vineyard would be given to

others. The ministry of the Kingdom

would no longer be theirs. There would still be a vineyard,

but in a different way, in a different form.

Under no longer under these tenants.

There's no uncertainty about any of this.

This was going to happen from history we know it did.

The consequences for disrespecting the sun.

Commentators mentioned that in 30 plus years after Jesus said

these words, the city of Jerusalem with this temple and

all it stood for was destroyed, was demolished in Matthew 24, in

the final week of Jesus life. Jesus says these words in

Matthew. Then Jesus went out and departed

from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him

the buildings of the temple, and Jesus said to them, Do you not

see all these things assuredly say to you, not one stone shall

be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down?

It did happen. Not one stone was left on

another. The temple has to this day never

been rebuilt. The Jewish religion system has

continued in different forms, but that system, the temple

worship system, the sacrificial system was gone.

Just as a side note here this morning, there have been many

modern day would be teachers and prophets who've predicted

rebuilding of the temple and this year and that year and

different things and on and on. I have seen and heard so many of

these things. I would just caution people

don't put stock and dates and places and times.

We know the system of the the Jewish religious system was

done. It would no longer be the

channel through which God was going to show His grace to the

world. The church was born shortly

after that. Jesus died, rose from the dead,

went to heaven, Pentecost, the Spirit came down and the

transition was done. The birth of the church was that

the vineyard is still going on today.

The ministry continues, but early on, right after this

transition, before the destruction of Jerusalem, the

Jewish leaders, they did everything in their power to, to

subdue, to squash this new movement.

They did not want this change to happen.

They resisted the forming of the church.

There was nothing they could do. And then some 30 years later,

the Romans came and Jerusalem was destroyed in the temple with

it. Jesus says in verse 10 of Mark

Mark 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12, Do you, have you not even read the Scripture?

The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief

cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing in its

marvelous in our eyes. And they sought to lay hands on

him, but feared the multitude, for they knew he had spoken the

parable against them. So they left him and went away.

What should they have done? They should have paused and

thought, you know what, let's pause, let's think.

Maybe we need to repent. We're not rightfully doing this.

We're we are vine dressers who are taking ownership of what's

not ours. For all the spiritual blindness

of the religious leaders, they knew this was against them.

They had no response. They knew the crowd was hanging

on to Jesus teachings, so they turned and walked away.

But in the end, Jesus does become Jesus.

The disrespected Son is the ruler.

They knew it was against them. They left and walked away.

And that's that. What about you and I?

They went away to come back again, which they did, and they

attacked again. You read the story, read chapter

12, read the story, read the rest of it.

Jesus was the rejected stone. The cornerstone in a building

structure was the was the main stone out of which everything

else was bit, from which everything else was referenced

or or measured and so on. And Jesus is the cornerstone.

They didn't want Jesus to be the cornerstone.

They didn't want him to be any stone, but not now.

Is he a stone? He's the cornerstone.

He's the king. You see the application here is

the question is not will Jesus get what's his?

That's not the question. The question is, will we

surrender our hearts to him and give to Jesus what is his?

Will we do that or will we destroy ourselves trying to

withhold it from him? And Isaiah reading Isaiah again

verse chapter 45 verse 22 look to me and be saved.

The prophet writes, all you ends for the of the earth, for I am

God. There is no other I've sworn by

myself the words gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall

not return that to me. Every knee shall bow, every

tongue shall take an oath. He shall say surely in the Lord

of righteousness and strength to him men shall come, and all

shall be ashamed who are incensed against him.

In the Lord all the descendants of Israel shall be justified and

shall glory. When the church began and the

gospel spread, it was under the preaching, the apostles, and the

conviction of the Holy Spirit that many people repented.

Not just the common people, even priests, even some of these guys

who would have maybe been there with Jesus and walked away.

Some of them became obedient to the faith, the message at home.

Jesus told this parable to the leaders of his time to

communicate to them the importance of holding themselves

in relation to God and His plan for His Kingdom on earth.

Those leaders got it very wrong. They used religion for selfish

gain, making it look as though they were doing God's work, but

in reality we're only following man made traditions and rules.

God was not part of it, it only looked like He was.

So what's the application for us?

This story of Jesus suffering and death is now over 2000 years

ago, but the truth of the story echoes down to us through the

halls of time just as if he said it today.

So do we respect Jesus? Do you respect Jesus?

Maybe you want to but need to know how.

You start by surrendering, by repenting.

Jesus gave his life. The sins are paid for and in

grace He saves us. By faith in Him as grace saves

us. We can't come to Him on our own.

We need Him. Then comes the working out of

that commitment. So if we're going to respect

Jesus, then we need to treat people like Jesus would treat

people. We can't have contempt for a

person and then respect Jesus. At the same time we can't

marginalized people in the same time respect Jesus.

We can't mistreat people in the same time respect Jesus.

We can't consider ourselves higher than others and at the

same time respect Jesus. If we exalt ourselves, we're not

respecting Him. We need to ask, where are we

holding on to, what we need to let go?

Put it this way, are there areas of life where we put ourselves

before Jesus? If we do, we're disrespecting

Him. He's made it very clear in

Matthew 25 that how we treat each other is how we treat Him.

So how do I view people as someone to get benefit from or

someone to add value to? If I fail to treat my fellow

human beings with respect, with dignity, with honesty and

integrity, then I'm disrespecting Jesus.

Respecting people does not mean I'll never speak hard truth,

does not mean there'll never be difficult conversations, but

always redemptively hoping it will lead towards Christ

likeness. That's my prayer for us as a

church, for us as families, as individuals.

We will be people who respect Jesus by living out the

principle of His kingdoms here on earth respectfully with each

other, and that we will be faithful vineyard workers in the

work that He's given us to do. Let us pray, Lord, when you walk

this earth from the people whom you should have received the

utmost respect, you did not only get any respect, you were pushed

aside and arrested and tortured and killed.

In the end, on the people's part, it was to get rid of you.

But as you told them, you would become the cornerstone, and you

did. There's no one greater than you,

Lord Jesus. For over 2000 years now in human

time, you've been Lord and King and you will never die.

You will reign in eternity. Your desire is to reign in the

hearts of your image bearers, us, your people.

Your aim is to set us free, free to have a relationship with you,

a respect to trust and love that will live in eternity.

Lord, help us not to just know that.

Help us to practice it. Help us to live with respect

towards each other as you taught us.

Our world needs that, our nation needs it and our churches do

too. The marriages in our community

need it and we all need it and we need it amongst ourselves.

Thank you Lord for your word to us.

Teach us how to walk in humility and respect to you, thank you

Jesus. Amen.