It describes the Jews, but all of us also. God has given us privileges, pleasures, many good gifts. We are a vineyard and God looks to us for fruit, and sends messengers to us. He says, ‘What do you think you are doing with your lives? Do you think you can do as you like?’ God expects you to live for him, pray to him, love him, obey him. God has sent the Saviour and the vineyard of this world will be translated into the eternal heavens. Christ has come to plead for us, to die for us. He is the last messenger. If we reject him and think I can live as I like, there is no more opportunity.
This is the age of atheism, unbelief. Atheism occupies the vineyard. What is atheism? It is willing yourself to think God is not there. Put off any fear of him: you can live as you like. But what does atheism produce? No seeking after God, no worship. You can’t even say that there is any moral uprightness; its aim is to obliterate that. It is about the cult of self-worship. All that matters is my rights. Have I not got a right to be a homosexual? Di I want an abortion? It is your right to do as you like with your body. We are like sheep. It has taken a very short time to get people to turn away from morality to atheism. The only caution is – as long as it doesn’t utterly harm anyone else. See how devious it is. ‘You believe in equality: you are not a racist are you?’ Of course not, we reply, that is unbiblical. ‘Then what about every sexual orientation? You must respect all people’s right to do as they like. It is reasonable to explore homosexuality, as long as it does no harm.’ Nonsense – the very thing as a perversion, and yet young people are to be told all sexual orientations are equally valid, so that if they think they have found the emotional signs, they are forced down the road from which they cannot be extracted. How can you say, there is no harm? Abortion is okay as long as there is no harm. No harm? There is a potential life there. How vile all this is. Suppose that life goes on and you ask that person, would it be harmful to you if you had been aborted? They can’t argue it, but instead they have to use soap operas to change people’s minds. Atheism is all about the death of God: get rid of God. That is why, having taken life, and rejected conscience, we have tried to kill him. ‘If God is dead, everything is permitted’, said one well known author. If you say you are an atheist you are attempting the impossible – you cannot get rid of God. That, the scribes and Pharisees were to discover.