Transcript
In your Bibles, will you turn in your Bibles to the gospel of Luke chapter 20? The gospel of Luke and chapter 20. We want to begin reading at verse 9 of Luke chapter 20. Luke chapter 20, reading at verse 9.
Then He began to tell the people this parable: ‘A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vinedressers, and went into a far country for a long time. Now at vintage time he sent a servant to the vinedressers, that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the vinedressers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent another servant, and they beat him also, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And again he sent a third, and they wounded him also and cast him out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him when they see him.” But when the vinedressers saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.” So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others.’ And when they heard it they said, ‘Certainly not!’ Then He looked at them and said, ‘What then is this that is written:
The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone?Whoever falls on that stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.’
The world has more than its share of sad stories. But here is a story that kind of makes you feel good about things.
In October of 1985 Mrs. Sylvia Campbell was the principal of the Granbury Elementary School in Granbury. In October of that year she made a deal with her 750 students. She would carry out her part of the deal if the students would attain a 97 percent attendance rate. Now that was a significant target for the students to shoot at. You see in Texas educational funds are allotted to schools based on the number of pupils that they have. A 97 attendance record would have been a one percent increase in attendance or the equivalent of seven students. And that would have meant that the Granbury Elementary School would receive ten thousand dollars more the following year in school funding.
Now Mrs. Campbell was not too eager to perform her part of the bargain. And so she set the target high enough that she thought probably the students would not quite beat it. But in fact they surprised her and they met their target. And therefore she had to fulfill her part of the bargain which was to sit on the roof of the school for an entire school day. So on a Friday in November she climbed aboard a cherry picker, stepped out on the roof of the Granbury Elementary School, she sat down at a makeshift desk and proceeded to begin her work. The kids needed us to save cheered her every step of the way. “Mrs. Campbell! Mrs. Campbell!” Will she lunch up there? “Mrs. Campbell! Mrs. Campbell!”
Well Mrs. Campbell had planned to spend most of the day studying for an administrative examination and evaluating the gym teachers who had their classes in the schoolyard. But in fact she spent most of the day waving to the kids and posing at her desk for pictures. The desk being complete with an apple of course, a clock, a trash basket, and an umbrella just in case it rained. Whenever she wanted to conduct school business she had to lean over the roof and shout her orders above the screams and the chants of the kids, the groups that came in and out of the playground. In fact the children even serenaded Mrs. Campbell while she was up there singing their own version of popular songs like “On the Roof Again” and “Up on the Rooftop.” The whole process was such a success that Mrs. Campbell has issued a challenge to the rest of the principals in the district that next year the principal with the lowest attendance record will have to sit on the roof of their building.
Needless to say the kids were very well satisfied with their accomplishment. And five-year-old little Aaron Pilbrow probably said it all when he said, “We put her up there. We put her up there.” One of the residents of Granbury made this comment to the media. He said, “I think it’s great community spirit. She’s just a wonderful principal.” Hey folks, I’ll buy that evaluation of Mrs. Campbell. How about you?
And did you notice that in the whole process of this Mrs. Campbell was teaching her students a lesson? It was a lesson about responsibility, about responsibility. She had made them responsible for coming to school. Do I need to tell you that in our modern day and society one of the things that people try to avoid the most is responsibility? And if something goes wrong in their life they don’t like to accept the responsibility for themselves. It’s somebody else’s fault. It’s my husband’s fault. It’s my wife’s fault. It’s the school’s fault. It’s the neighborhood’s fault. It’s the church’s fault. It’s the government’s fault. We just do not like to accept responsibility.
And because this is a very serious issue my friends and because it is crucial that we do accept our God-given responsibilities I want to talk to you a few moments about that subject. And I would like to use as my topic this morning a motto that used to sit on the desk of President Harry S. Truman. In fact I saw it on his desk not in the White House but in the Truman Museum in Independence, Missouri when I visited there one time. The motto said this: “The buck stops here.” And that’s the title of my message to you this morning: “The buck stops here.”
Maybe you saw it or read about it this week but there was a very unusual murder trial that took place in the city of Fort Worth. A young man was on trial for murder because he had shot dead two young men who were in the district. The attorney thought that he should be convicted of murder. But his defense attorney raised a very unusual kind of defense that captured the attention of the national media. He felt that his client should not be held responsible for the death of these two men. Guess for what reason? Because he was suffering from urban survival syndrome which meant that he lived in an urban area that was full of violence. These two young men had quarreled with him about some money. And as an instinct of self-defense which you get in the ghetto he shot them dead even though they were not armed. Urban survival syndrome. Well if you watch this process you know that the jury ran up as a hung jury voting eleven to one for conviction. Almost nobody on the jury took the defense seriously. And one of the jurors said that urban survival syndrome was totally bunk. So there it is folks a brand new way of avoiding responsibility.
But if urban survival syndrome is a way of avoiding responsibility in fact this way is so old that it’s as old as the hills. It’s been here as long as men have been on the face of the planet. I call it me-first syndrome. Did you notice in the passage of scripture that we read just a few moments ago that we found some people who were suffering from me-first syndrome?
Please remember that we are now in the last week of our Lord’s earthly life. He is in Jerusalem and He is daily teaching in the temple of God. It may be that only a few moments before He told this story was the occasion when the rulers confronted Him, the chief priests and the scribes of the Pharisees. And they challenged Him to tell them where He got His authority from. And because He could see that they were not sincere He refused to give them an answer. And maybe these men had just barely left when Jesus turned back to the crowd and He told the crowd one of those lovely and unforgettable stories that we call a parable. And in this parable there is a man who owns a vineyard. And he leases his vineyard out to some vinedressers, some vineyard workers. Now these men of course were basically his employees. And they had a responsibility. Their responsibility was to take care of the vineyard, to cultivate the vineyard. And whenever the owner of the vineyard requested it their responsibility was to give him some of the fruit.
Well the time comes and the owner of the vineyard sends a servant to them so that they can give the servant the fruits of the vineyard. But what do they do? They beat him up and they send him away. Now the owner of this vineyard is a pretty patient man. And he sends another servant with the same request. And this time they beat him worse. They not only beat him up but they treat him shamefully. Maybe they spit in his face, tear his robe off of him. They send him away. Well with remarkable patience the owner of the vineyard sends a third servant. And this third servant gets it worst of all. This man is actually wounded and he is cast out of the vineyard. So obviously the owner of the vineyard has a problem. Right? And he says, “What shall I do?” And then he decides, “I will send to them my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him when they see him.” No way, Jose. No chance, buster. No way that was going to happen. And as soon as these vineyard keepers see the son they hold a council of war. “This is the heir. This is the guy who’s going to have the vineyard when the old man dies.” These men are not interested in fulfilling their responsibility to the owner of the vineyard. They want the vineyard for themselves. They’re suffering from the me-first syndrome.
Now there’s no mystery about the meaning of this parable. As even the rulers sort of got it. You see Jesus was in Judea and Jerusalem. And Jerusalem and Judea were the vineyard of God just as they were in the parable in Isaiah chapter 5. The vinedressers, the vineyard workers, were the rulers, the leaders, the chief priests, scribes, the Pharisees. And it was their responsibility to cultivate the vineyard and to yield to God the fruits He was looking for: the fruits of obedience, the fruits of worship. And instead of meeting their responsibility to God they treated the prophets shamefully. They were suffering from the me-first syndrome.
And did you know that every single Christian in this audience has at least one or more vineyards to keep? And by a Christian of course I mean a person who understands the Lord Jesus Christ has paid for their salvation on the cross of Calvary and they have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of everlasting life. The Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. But the minute you get saved God makes you in one way or another a vineyard keeper. You have a responsibility to God. And the tragedy is that sometimes Christians who know they are saved and on their way to heaven avoid their responsibility because they are suffering from me-first syndrome.
There was a young man who years ago applied for a job in a factory. The person who fills that opening must be able to shoulder all of my worries. The young applicant said, “That’s a tough job. How much are you paid?” And the owner of the factory said, “I will pay you ten thousand dollars.” A lot of money in those days. That’s maybe like a fifty thousand dollar salary. “I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars a year,” he says, “if you will really take on all of my worries.” The young man was beginning to get a little suspicious. And he said to the owner, “Where is the ten thousand dollars coming from?” And the owner replied, “That my friend is your first worry.” Now folks that job has some responsibilities. Am I right? But you know sometimes we treat God as if we were kind of the negligent heavenly master and it’s His responsibility to take care of us. Don’t we? Come to church. Aren’t we in church this morning? And we sort of treat God as if He’s responsible to make things go right in our home and our family. We make God responsible. And we forget that our families and our church are the vineyards in which God has put us. And that you and I are responsible there.
There was a preacher some time ago who had a special book. The book was labeled “Members’ complaints against one another.” And whenever a member of his congregation would come to him in his office, and that was often, in order to complain about another member of the congregation he would always get out the book. And he would take out a pen and he would say, “I’m going to write down in this book exactly what you told me. And then I would like you to sign the book. That way if I have to bring up this matter officially I know what you can testify to.” Almost without exception the member said something like, “Oh no, I don’t think I could sign something like that.” The minister said he had the book for 40 years. He must have opened it a thousand times. He never wrote a line.
Hey folks, anybody here ever criticized Victory Street Bible Chapel? Anybody ever criticized somebody else in the congregation? Don’t lie to me. We’ve all done it. But when you did it did you accept the responsibility of doing something about the criticism that you leveled against the church or against your fellow Christians? Did you sign on for that responsibility? And how about this? Did you ever criticize anybody in your family? Hey we all know no exceptions here. Right? But when you did did you also accept the responsibility of doing whatever you could to correct the problem about which you complained? Did you sign on for that responsibility?
Don’t you see what we do? We treat the church as if it was the place where our needs should be met. We treat the family as a place where we ought to be happy. And these are the vineyards in which God has placed us. And we have a solemn responsibility. Now listen carefully. If anything has gone seriously wrong in your home, in your family, who do you blame? God? Another family member? Or do you consider the possibility that if you had been the kind of person God wanted you to be that might be different? If you had prayed more faithfully, if you had walked with God, if you had done the things God was looking for you could do so that by your mother Christian commitment things might have been different.
Now listen to me. You want those around in churches and Victory Street is no exception. No exception. We complain about the things that are wrong. And we say it’s my wife’s fault, my husband’s fault, it’s somebody else’s fault. So look in the mirror. The chances are that a large part of the blame lies on the shoulders of the person who is looking back at you out of the mirror. Don’t pass the blame around. That’s something we do when we are putting ourselves first and thinking that they’re going to operate the way we want them to operate. Let’s remember one simple fact: the buck stops here.
Well the vineyard workers made a horrible mistake didn’t they? They went through with their plan. They seized the son of the vineyard owner. They took him outside the vineyard and they killed him. They murdered him in cold blood. And Jesus says to His audience, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” And He answers His own question. “He will come and destroy those vinedressers and will give the vineyard to others.” And as He says this a murmur of sorts goes through the crowd. “Certainly not!” It shouldn’t be that that won’t happen. “Truly surely not!” But it did happen before the week was over. You see Jesus was the Son of God. And the rulers who were the vineyard keepers, the responsible parties in Israel, had Him arrested, had Him tried, had Him executed. He was buried in the grave. But that wasn’t the end of it.
Jesus goes on to say to His crowd, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Whoever falls on the stone shall be broken, but on whomever it falls it will grind him to powder.” And on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. And not long after that He ascended to heaven. And God said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” And then the stone which the builders rejected had become the head of the corner, the chief cornerstone. And little did the nation of Israel know that they already fell on the stone and were broken. And in less than 40 years the Roman armies invaded Judea. They surrounded the city of Jerusalem. And at the end of that war it was reported that something like a million Jews had lost their life. The city of Jerusalem had been destroyed. The temple of God had been burned to the ground. The stone had fallen upon Israel.
Now listen today from this story we can learn a final lesson. If we do not accept the responsibilities that God has given to us sooner or later there will be payback. We will fall on this stone and be broken or the stone will crush us from above. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about losing your salvation. Nobody can lose their salvation once they believe in Christ. And Jesus said, “He that comes to me I will in no wise cast out.” But I want to tell you something that all over the United States today there are Christian people whose lives abroad, their homes are broken, their marriages are broken, their children are in desperate trouble, maybe they’ve lost their health. You know why? Because they did not accept their responsibilities in the vineyard where God had placed them.
On December the 7th 1941 very early in the morning more than 350 Japanese warplanes took off and headed in the direction of Pearl Harbor. While they were still 137 miles away at seven a.m. in the morning two American soldiers who were monitoring a radar screen at the Pacific Ocean saw suddenly dots on their radar screen and more dots and more dots. That was screaming filled with dots. They reported what they were seeing to their supervising officer who happened to be a youthful lieutenant. And there was no other officer on duty. Instead of doing his responsible thing and really taking it out the lieutenant leaped to the conclusion that these were planes coming from California. And he said to the soldiers on duty at the radar station, “Don’t worry about it.” Fifty minutes later the attack began. After two hours the United States had lost eight big battleships. It had lost six airfields. Almost all things had been wiped out. With the loss of 2400 men. And in the 50 minutes between the sighting and the attack there was time enough to scramble the airplanes, to prepare the battleships, to shelter the troops. And in his greatest moment of responsibility during his military career that lieutenant failed in nature.
Let me warn you. If you do not accept the responsibilities God given to you, if you say to yourself “I’m not going to worry about it,” you’re asking for catastrophe. You’re asking for a disaster. In the August 1960 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal there was a very touching story written by a heartbroken mother. In a very rough way I’m going to paraphrase this mother’s story. She said something like this. She said, “We loved it but my husband was too busy to spend time with him when he was young. I just couldn’t bring myself to punish him for his misbehavior. We took his side against his teachers when his teachers at school complained about his work and conduct. When he was a teenager he would hardly discuss the time of day with us. He was expelled from school. We gave him money to keep him from stealing. The gap.” And then the mother said, “I cried when the police came and I had to turn my boy over to them as they searched him. It seemed to me that my life had ended.” You know what the title of that article was? The title was “I Raised a Hoodlum.”
Folks your home is your vineyard. This church is your vineyard. Accept the responsibilities that God has given to you in order to avoid a moment in your life when it seems that your life has ended because you’ve been overtaken by this aspect. Remember and never forget the buck stops here.
I don’t know how many of you might have read recently about Michael Dennis. Michael Dennis is a 30 year old black man who was living as a homeless person in the city of New Orleans. About two weeks ago he was panhandling at an intersection and he saw a car hit by a truck and the car burst into flames. Michael Dennis the homeless jobless black man rushed into the flames of that car twice. He saved 67 year old Elizabeth Walter and he saved her 79 year old husband Elmo. I’ve had to report the couple was in the hospital doing well and they were expected to recover. Was it his responsibility to go into the flames? Well I wouldn’t dare to say something. I wouldn’t dare to say so. But he made it his responsibility. And good things began to happen. He received ten thousand dollars from the General Motors Corporation. The Hibernia National Bank in New Orleans started a fund drive for him. He accepted a job from Medical Management Options in Baton Rouge where he will have a house to live in. And what does he think about in terms of the future? He says, “I want to build a shelter for the homeless people who step next to me.” And then he added, “Then maybe I will buy a car.” Does he suffer from the me-first syndrome? Doesn’t sound like it. Doesn’t sound like it.
And friends when you accept the responsibilities that God lays in front of you, when you really accept them, good things, good things can begin to happen.
The songwriter has said it beautifully:
You have longed for sweet peace and for faith to increase
And have earnestly fervently prayed.
But you cannot have rest or be perfectly blessed
Until all on the altar is laid.
Oh you never can know what the Lord will bestow
Of the blessings for which you have prayed
Till your body and soul He doth fully control
And your all on the altar is laid.
Is your all on the altar of sacrifice made?
Your heart does the Spirit control?
You can only be blessed and have peace and sweet rest
When you yield Him your body and soul.
Won’t you do that today Christian friends? Remember the buck stops here.
Shall we pray? Father it is solemn. It is serious to consider the responsibilities that you have laid before each and every person in this audience who knows the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us not to be careless or selfish about those responsibilities. May we accept them so you can bless us fully. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.