LANDLORDS & TENANTS
A Sermon On:
GENESIS 1.1-31
MATTHEW 21.33-41
PREPARED BY
KEN GEHRELS
PASTOR
CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH
NEPEAN, ONTARIO
We were sitting around a table some time ago, talking about the circumstances of our lives. One of the people with me there began to fume and sputter about their living conditions, their housing in particular. It happened to be a town house complex in a mid-sized Ontario community. But oh, what a litany of complaints:
-the rooms were too small
-the by-laws of the corporation governing the complex kept changing through the months.
-a number of undesirable neighbours were making things unbearable for just about everyone else.
-the rents were high
-needed repairs weren't being made.
Complaints like these aren't uncommon. Fact of the matter is, if you ask a group of landlords, you will end up with an equally long, if not significantly longer list of beefs against the tenants.
It's all part of the ongoing Landlord-Tenant saga. One party looking for accommodation. Another party with extra accommodation available. One party willing to pay. Another looking to make a buck. Deals are struck. Living arrangements are made. People move in... and out... and back in again.
Sometimes this process involves whole groups of people, as is the case with various aboriginal groups seeking land claim settlements with the federal government. Only in this case the whole issue is much more clouded. Who is the tenant? And who is the landlord? Who owes who how much? What are the rights involved? Who dictates those rights? Its a thorny issue that few politicians are willing to tackle head on.
Against this kind of a mixed-up, jumbled background I want to turn our attention to one landlord in particular. This one owns ranches and city lots. He holds the deeds to an incredibly large number of islands, streams, lakes, forests and fields.
He owns them completely. The real estate, the water rights and mineral rights, development rights, full control over ALL resources. It's total ownership. And unlike a lot of other landlords, who are willing to make a deal, and who often are engaged in the process of flipping real estate, this Landlord never puts anything on the block. Ever.
This amazing landlord is, of course, God - the Creator of all the Cosmos. Continents and oceans, sky and land, heaven and earth - they all belong to him.
And yet, he allows us to live on his property, rent-free. More than that, actually. He also allows us free and unrestricted use of his great bank of resources, from which we may and DO borrow, rent-free, interest-free.
It is our Lord's ownership of the Universe, and our living in it as tenants that we want to focus on today.
Consider the message of Genesis 1. In carefully, descriptive language, language that is reminiscent of an ancient Royal Proclamation, a proclamation from the throne room of heaven, we are told and shown that God has made the entire creation - from the bottom up. It is all is the result of his masterful work. We hear that in the constantly repeated phrase - "And God said.... and there was..."
Follow the language of the chapter -
It begins with God's creation of the raw materials out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. At stage it all was still formless and empty, a swirling mass of jumble; sort of like a contractor dumping a load of building supplies on the site - piles of stuff everywhere, nothing put together. Then the delicate, brilliant, powerful process begins to move:
Days 1,2 and 3 of creation, where the great Landlord moves around the swirling mass and forms the basic structure of the universe, the underlying components, he frames the house, if you will.
a/ Day 1: God creates separates light from darkness in the uppermost reaches of the heavens
b/ Day 2: He creates the sky and the great oceans
c/ Day 3: He forms up the dry ground with vegetation
Now the structure is in place, and he begins to fill it, moving things into the house he has built, so to speak. This is days 4,5 & 6:
a/ Day 4: The sun and moon are created to fill the outer heavens with the light by day and night
b/ Day 5: Sea creatures fill the great oceans and birds flock through the air
c/ Day 6: All sorts of creatures begin to run across the dry ground of God's earth.
And, as the crowning act an image of the Creator is made - humanity, man and woman. In the ancient world emperors would set up stone images, statues of themselves, throughout their kingdom proclaiming their sovereignty.
God goes one better, creating living likenesses of himself to proclaim and respond to His sovereignty, and to also function as His advocates, His representatives, His workers in His empire.
Understand the message, dear people.
Understand it WELL!
Nothing in this Cosmos just happened to be.
Nothing is there on its own.
Nothing is there that does not have a stamp of ownership on it.
Everything has been deliberately and carefully made by God
Is Owned by him,
cared for by him.
Nothing is independent of him.
Nothing has life apart from him.
Neither the great external structure
Nor the many smaller things that fill it.
Absolutely nothing!
That's not an easy message for us to understand. It never has been an easy message for any human being to understand. People all along the way seem to have this incredible desire to accumulate possessions, acquire land, and maintain control
over it. They proudly proclaim it "MINE!"
That, very crassly, is in large measure the whole underlying message of western capitalism. Basically, "you are what you own." And oh, how we all have fallen for that. We've all become tremendous accumulators of wealth. And we look at it as "ours."
It's true you know. We've all been sucked right in. Think of it this way. I trust all of us who run households have taken out a fire insurance policy to cover the contents of our homes. One of the things that insurance companies like you to keep is a tabulated list of all your possessions. Have you ever tried to do that?
"Oh, that's easy you say."
Oh yeah? Try it this afternoon, and I'll bet you that by the time you're halfway through the fifth page, and only into the second room of the house, you will realize what a daunting task it is, and what an amazing amount of stuff you have accumulated. Where'd I get all this?
You see?
Into THAT kind of a world, where we sit surrounded by our stuff, marches the truth of Genesis 1, reflected in the words of Psalm 24:1 -
The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
And that, my friends, includes the multi-paged list of possessions that you and I prepare for our insurance companies, right down to the knives and spoons in the kitchen drawer. The title on these goods is not in our name but in God's. Even though he allows us to "possess" much, he remains the final Owner!
Though its tough to swallow in our great consumeristic society, where the right to ownership is so esteemed, let's never lose sight of this truth!
Let's take a few moments today to reset our sights, regain our focus.
Then, once we have refocussed on who owns what, understand another thing. Understand that the Great Cosmic Landlord not only makes this world available to us, along with all its resources. He actually puts us in charge of it. He makes us "Building Superintendents", so to speak.
Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.....God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. [Gen 1.26,28]
These words are what has been commonly called the great Cultural Mandate.
We, as a human race, are called to rule the world, to subdue it: in other words, to develop it, work it, make it productive, unleashing the wealth of resources within it.
It's an awesome challenge, and a marvellous responsibility.
Can you imagine it?
The great King, the Creator, the Landlord of heaven and earth wants people like you and me to develop his world for him, to manage it!
To explore it - and seek answers to some of the great mysteries
To develop it - unpacking the latent potential
To cultivate it - using it for the well-being of all
To care for it - managing the resources carefully to preserve them for another generation.
And how have we image-bearers of the Master responded?
Sewage poured into rivers; sulphur and nitrous oxides into the air; pop cans and candy wrappers along streets and sidewalks, toxic chemicals into the soils. Animal and plant species exterminated at ever increasing rates. Resources ravaged in the name of economic development.
That's not subduing in the manner creation speaks of it -- that's rape, and destruction!
Witness the distribution of resources - we in North America, with 5% of the world's population, grabbing for ourselves some 87% of the food, clothing, shelter resources, and luxury.
We have gone on a wild rampage through creation like wild barbarians, rather than treading carefully as guests in someone's house - which we are.
So thanks be to God that his grace is larger than our fallenness. Thanks be to God that he, the Great Divine Landlord, has grace available for we fallen Stewards.
He came to us who were like stewards in a vineyard, tenants who refuse to recognise the legitimate claims of the Owner, and who have been treating it like our own.
He came to us in the person of His son, Jesus Christ.
We tenants took that son and killed him.
But in that death there was payment for the crimes we have committed against our God, for the sins which we are guilty of, the offenses for which we stand culpable before God's throne.
He died on the cross, suffering death in our place, the curse of God, the forsakeness of God in our place.
He has conquered death to set us free.
In him there is complete restoration. Our slate is wiped clean.
If we give our lives in faith to Jesus Christ, confess that we too have been part of the grab-as-can-grab attitude in the world, that we too have been less than faithful in our service of the Master
If we ask him for forgiveness,
Then we are marvellously freed, forgiven, and adopted into the family of the Landlord, considered children - sons and daughters - of God!
By His great and totally undeserved grace, we have a new lease on life, and a new opportunity for service!
Understand that, fellow believers. It's not a cheap lease. It cost the Landlord plenty - the life of his own son. But it is freely available to all who come in humility and open their hearts to receive it.
Understand also that it is in this grace that we are able to function once more as stewards. The project is not lost. We have not been evicted - even though in our own merits we certainly deserve that fate!
We are renewed in Jesus Christ - it is his gift to us.
And now our gift back to him is to give of ourselves in love: It is to think again that this good God entrusts us with his riches, and to use them accordingly - giving the first and the best as our love gift to the Lord; sharing from the remainder with those in need; and using what we do for ourselves in a careful, thankful manner.
It is to handle with great care those things that have his stamp of ownership on them.
It is to live, day by day, with the sense of responsibility to the Landlord, and a joy that for Jesus' sake, we can handle that responsibility until he comes again.
We can take up the challenge of Genesis 1.28 again - working as building superintendents for the Landlord, until that great and final day when he returns.