Street Meeting Twenty Fifth

Matthew 21:23-46 / Mark 11:27-12:12 / Luke 20:1-19

"Tell us," the Pharisees arrogantly demanded, standing entitled in their own perceived righteousness, that Jesus should explain by what authority He performed His wonders. They sat as judges over the very Christ of God, determining in their biased minds to expose Him as an impostor, and somebody who is beneath them.

So it is to this very day. Every audience present in the public proclamation of the Gospel assumes this same position of judgment. They size up the messenger as though he were a commoner, thinking whether what this fellow says is worth their attention, or if he is at least amusing enough to spare a few minutes of their vanity.

The unregenerate soul looks upon the Truth not as a life-line to a drowning man, but as a curiosity to be measured against his own biases and the stubborn pride of his personal beliefs. More often than not, he judges the message of salvation to be a thing of so little weight that it may be safely cast aside for a more convenient season. "Here comes this fool once again to disturb the peace," he says to himself, and the solemn encounter—the very call of God to his soul—is forgotten before the sun sets. He does not realize that while he sits in judgment of the Word, it is the Word that is judging him (John 3:18). They treat the herald of the King as a babbler and a nuisance, unaware that the message they despise is the final offer of peace before his life is required of him (Luke 12:20). To treat the eternal as a matter of amusement is the height of spiritual madness; so it is with every son of Adam who is content to embrace a religion that offers no assurance no salvation.

There be fiends presently who could be saints tomorrow. Such is this drunk and foul Rizalista who came to argue and claimed to be all knowing as he displayed condescending arrogance. He boasts he is able to save himself, leaning upon his own intellect and the memory of a dead patriot. To his darkened mind, he has no need to depend on any other—least of all upon Jesus, whom he blasphemously deems beneath his hero, Jose Rizal.

To those unfamiliar with this cult, it is a sect that ascribes divinity to a martyred man—elevating a national hero to the throne of the Almighty. These rural folk believe that their hero yet lives in some hidden state, waiting to deliver them from the pangs of poverty and the yoke of oppression. They have fashioned for themselves a "Filipino Christ," weaving together Romish rituals with ancient Malay superstition, creating a deadly stew of error that ensnares thousands of simple souls.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Rizalist cults, such as the Iglesia Sagrada ni Lahi (Holy Church of the Race) and the Banner of the Race Church (the largest group), synthesize Roman Catholic rituals, images, and organization with traditional Filipino elements. Some 300,000 rural people adhere to these cults. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rizalist-cult)

What is this but that old corruption of the garden? It is the creature worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. It is a man building a tower of his own merits and his own idols, reaching for a heaven he can never attain by his own hand. He rejects the only Name God has ordained for the redemption of souls, preferring the honors of a dead man, to the glory of the Son of God. Such arrogance will pay a heavy fine; he boasts of his liberty while he remains a prisoner to his own foolishness. Pray that the scales might fall from his eyes, lest he find at the great reckoning that the hero he worshipped, will burn as an unredeemed rebel, just as he would, without Christ as His Savior.

I am not come to deliver an acceptable and friendly message to the ears of this people, nor to seek the favor the crowd, much less of the proud. To make peace with the unbelieving is a matter for which I could not care less. I shall never utter to the people that which God never said to the dead in their trespasses; I will never soothe the rebel with the false words, "God loves you," while he remains in his hatred for God. Nay. The message has been etched in the heavens from the very beginning: 

"You have sinned against the infinite holiness of the Almighty, and the weight of your transgressions hangs heavy over your head, thus will you die in your sins. Therefore I urge you, turn to Christ and live! Else, how can you hope to escape, if you dare to judge, instead of believing, in the only Name that God has given unto you for your deliverance? Be reconciled to God while the door of mercy yet stands wide open. The LORD commands all of you to Repent, that your sins may be blotted out by the blood of the Lamb. There is no other refuge, no other safety, and no other name given among men whereby you can be saved, except by Jesus Christ."

You boast that you can attain to the gates of heaven by the merit of your own good works? May your good works perish with you in hell; they are but filthy rags in the presence of a thrice-holy God. What is the good works of a worm that it should deserve a place in the mansions of the King? To believe that your meager deeds—tainted as they are by the poison of self-love and the vanity of the flesh—could ever satisfy the demands of infinite justice is the highest form of spiritual treason. You offer the Almighty the very coins of your rebellion and call it a ransom.

If you trust in your own hand to pull you from the mire, you shall only sink the deeper. Every deed you count as a virtue, built upon the rejection of the Son of God, is but another stone in the wall that shuts you out from glory. Unless you abhor your own righteousness and confess that you can do nothing to save yourself—unable to pay the debt of even a single transgression out of your countless sins—and cast yourself entirely upon the finished work of Christ, your works shall be the very millstone that sinks you in the lake of eternal fire. Let a man be stripped of his pride, or let him be stripped of his soul; there is no middle ground between the grace offered in Christ, and the damnation of the proud.

Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.”
Mark 11:29-30

I challenge you this day to find any shadow of evil or any stitch of falsehood in the words I speak: "God is offering you eternal life through the death of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who was delivered to pay the full ransom for your crimes. Here is reconciliation; here is peace with the Almighty!"

Do any of you believe God would lie? Do you find any wrong in this report? Is there any malice in the offer of a pardon to a condemned man? If your reason cannot find a flaw, and your conscience cannot find a lie, then why do you still refuse to believe? If the message is pure and the promise is sure, your hesitation is not born of a lack of evidence, but of a love for your rebellion. You stand like a man dying of thirst who acknowledges the water is clean, yet refuses to drink. To admit the truth of the Gospel and yet remain in your unbelief is to say with the Pharisees, "we do not know." If there be no wrong in the message, then the wrong lies entirely within you—in a heart convinced to perish in its pride rather than humbly admit that indeed you have sinned against God (Psalm 41:4).

Christ is under no obligation to stand trial before the bar of human reason or to prove His worth to those who have already resolved to reject Him. You cannot convince a man with the Truth when his heart is bent on believing a lie; he will sooner call the sun dark than admit the light that exposes his own corruption.

The Lord knows His sheep—He has called them by name before the foundations of the world were laid. We, however, walk in the dimness of our sight and know not who will hear and who will forbear. Therefore, we do not labor because we possess the power to convert, but because we received a command to obey (Mark 16:15).

We proclaim the Gospel because it is the sole ordained instrument of the Almighty for the redemption of the lost sheep, the very voice by which the Great Shepherd calls His own out of the darkness of this world, and by which the unbelieving is also condemned (John 12:48). Our duty is not to ensure the success of the message, but to maintain its purity. We cast the seed upon all soils, knowing that while some will trample it and others will mock it, the sheep will surely hear the Master’s voice in the proclamation and follow Him. We are but witnesses of a higher calling; if the world remains deaf, it is not for a lack of sound, but for a lack of ears to hear. We preach, we warn, and we persuade—not to win an argument, but to gather the elect back to the Father.