Episode 1363: Fruit of the Kingdom

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,363 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast

[00:00:07] Chris Mamula: I'm Chris Mamula. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to take control of your money is.

[00:00:19] key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:35] Scott Maderer: But is he really describing judgment? Is he saying God is going to do this to you? Or is he simply saying this is the natural consequence? This isn't an angry God. This is just what naturally happens. This isn't somebody getting back at the people. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:59] If [00:01:00] you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:28] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Exodus 20, verses 1 4, 7 9, and 12 20. And I also talk about Matthew 21, verses 33 46. I share how the Ten Commandments may not be what we make them out to be, and I also talk about how, all too often, we reject grace for a burden every time. Exodus chapter 20 verses 20 says, [00:02:00] Then God spoke all these words, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

[00:02:07] You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that's in the water under the earth. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

[00:02:26] Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land of the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

[00:02:45] You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor shall you covet your neighbor's wife, or male, or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, [00:03:00] they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us or we will die.

[00:03:09] And Moses said to the people, Do not be afraid, for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you, so you do not sin. Matthew chapter 21 verses 33 through 46 says, Listen to another parable. This is Jesus talking. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.

[00:03:33] Then he leased it to his tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way.

[00:03:51] Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, They will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and [00:04:00] get his inheritance. So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to these tenants?

[00:04:09] And the crowd said to him, He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time. And Jesus said to them, Have you never read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.

[00:04:28] Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. When the chief priest and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized he was speaking about them.

[00:04:46] They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds because they regarded him as a prophet. Starting with the words from Exodus, I think we've all heard or seen various [00:05:00] versions of the Ten Commandments, and this is that part of Exodus, but a lot of times, I think we misinterpret these words, and if you look at what a lot of Hebrew Believers and Hebrew professors and folks that have studied the original text say first off It's not actually described as commandments.

[00:05:23] They're just described as the verses or the passages If you look at it, they don't seem to fit in with the spirit of what's going on during Exodus, this whole 40 years of wandering and finding out where the promised land is this journey to discovering a relationship with God that's going on in Exodus.

[00:05:46] In the very first verse, it says, God spoke these words, I'm the one who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery. These commandments, these verses begin by pointing out an act of [00:06:00] redemption, an act of grace. God reached out in relationship with grace. And yet we hear these commandments as if there's some sort of heavy burden or command laid on us out of fear and anger with a wagging finger like y'all are screwing up.

[00:06:19] But God doesn't seem to be commanding obedience as much as God is inviting us into a new relationship with these verses. These aren't just commandments, they're descriptions. I brought you out of slavery so that you can be in relationship with me, not other gods, not the gods of your own making, not the idols that you put up the money, the Facebook, the career, the success, the trophy spouse, the relationships.

[00:06:52] No, you can put me first. I'm the one who loved you and gave you freedom so that you can love [00:07:00] others, but you do that by loving me first. Know that I'm always going to be here. I will never leave you. That's part of the invitation here. And that by following that pattern of leaning into God, then you won't...

[00:07:19] You'll treasure everything, you'll treasure all life, you'll treasure other people, you'll honor the covenants you make between you and others, you, you won't covet, you'll be content, you won't act out of fear or anger or hatred, you won't do this because you're afraid that you'll be punished or exiled, but instead you'll do it just because it comes from your heart, you will have been transformed from the inside out, That seems to be the vision that God is trying to paint, and yet a lot of times we hear it as this angry thing.

[00:07:54] They do, right there in the passage, they talk about, they respond in fear God says this to us and we're [00:08:00] gonna die. But how we embrace that presence of God in our life is what allows us to live it out in community into a pattern that others see. And instead of looking at it and going, I want to be like that because you know they're afraid of all this stuff.

[00:08:16] I want to be like that because they're in a relationship that I covet as well. I covet that presence of God myself as well. It really just sums up to be more like Jesus. which brings us to the Matthew passage. What happens if we don't live into that relationship in

[00:08:40] an

[00:08:40] Scott Maderer: authentic way? What happens if we don't lean into the presence of God in an authentic way?

[00:08:48] If instead of seeing these words as a description of a way of living a more fulfilling and more connected life, we see them as a burden, we see them as something to be afraid of, we see them [00:09:00] as angry commandments, as rules, as laws, then, we've been given in charge, we've been told we're responsible, we're in charge of the kingdom, and at the end of that parable that Jesus tells, whenever they weren't, Giving the fruit of the kingdom it's due and giving it to the owner What does the crowd say notice?

[00:09:23] It's not Jesus at the end. It's the crowd that says kill the son If he they killed the son to get his inheritance if they've done this then the Lord the owner will kill them I Mean, I'm not sure if that's how Jesus was going to sum up the story or not But he says, when the owner comes, what will he do?

[00:09:45] And they say, those people deserve a miserable death. I'm not sure if that was originally going to be the ending or not, but Jesus leans into it and says maybe instead of [00:10:00] grace, y'all are leaning into that fear. Maybe because of this, that unspoken feeling that you have, you're not really in that relationship.

[00:10:11] You're rejecting the very thing that is good for you, the very presence that is supporting you, the very relationship that you're invited into. And, okay, the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. But is he really describing judgment? Is he saying God is going to do this to you?

[00:10:37] Or is he simply saying this is the natural consequence? This isn't an angry God. This is just what naturally happens. This isn't somebody getting back at the people. This is something that you tried to do and what ended up happening was a natural consequence. [00:11:00] of trying to do it. The cornerstone is the thing that holds it all together.

[00:11:07] And Jesus seems to be saying by not being in relationship, by not being in connection with that thing that holds you all together, the natural consequence of that is not fitting in and not belonging and not making the fruits of the kingdom real. Instead, the natural consequence is you have that same judgment because you're judging others.

[00:11:37] You're calling it upon yourself through your own actions, not through God's, but through ours. And there's a way out of that. That way is grace. Thanks for listening.

[00:11:55] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. [00:12:00] As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this

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