The New Kingdom.6

"Have you ever heard this reading from the scriptures:

“The stone which the builders have rejected has become the honored cornerstone; this is the Lord’s doing, and marvelous in our eyes?”

Behold, the kingdom of God will be taken from you who listen and do nothing and be given to a people working to bring forth fruit in their lives."

--Jesus

The Builders

Who are the "builders" in society? Why would it matter whether they rejected or accepted a thing? The case can be made it is either A: those who insist on maintaining the status quo (like the Pharisees of Jesus' time using legalism to keep people in line.) B: the visionaries who "see" the way society could be shaped through the marketplace or government coercion.

Henry Ford, for example, was a visionary who saw

how the automobile could change the way people lived. By devising a way to mass produce them and make them affordable, he allowed the marketplace to drive societal change.

The issues surrounding Covid 19 Vaccine is another example of a coercive method to change society

driven by the “experts”(a significant arm of today’s “builders”) . The Mrna technology is a complicated science that seems to hold great promise for healing many human diseases. But, like any complicated technology, for example cell phones, rather than patiently educating the public and allowing the marketplace to drive the acceptance of the change in dealing with disease, Governments are using the power of the state to force people into compliance and dramatic changes in society.

The builders of any era are usually the wealthy and/or credentialed who, of course, consider themselves superior to the common man and, by their worldview, reject any infringement on their goals. Manipulating public opinion is always an important aspect of the work of the builders. While living in Gratiot County Michigan several years ago, we encountered a technique developed for that purpose. It is called “The Delta Technique.” We discovered that our county had made a great effort to develop what they called “The Gratiot Master Plan.” It contained Eight objectives ranging from recreational activities to downtown business development. In essence, it was a Communist style central planning effort for the communities of Gratiot County.

The meeting we attended to introduce the “Master Plan” utilized the Delta Technique to near perfection. A charismatic Moderator introduced The Master Plan to an audience of about 100 citizens. Then the audience was broken down into 8 small groups where a Facilitator armed with a marker, paper sheets and easel guided discussion in the groups. Unbeknownst to the group the facilitator was trained to marginalize ideas that distracted from their objective. The facilitator’s goal was to enthusiastically report to the main audience that their group had freely come up ideas to implement the plan! Ideas the group was unwittingly led to embrace!

Questions the builders of Jesus’ day posed to Jesus usually had to do with His authority to teach and act in the way He did, which most often exposed their own spiritual bankruptcy. Questions such as “why do your disciples not follow the traditions of the elders?”, rather than show their spiritual authority demonstrated an arrogant unwillingness to learn from the Lord of Life.

George MacDonald accurately describes these types of questions as distractions from the essential work of doing what God asks us to do:

“[they] spring from the passion for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, not the fruit of the tree of life.

• Men would understand; they do not care to obey;
• to understand where it is impossible they should understand except by obeying.
• They would search into the work of the Lord instead of doing their part in it—
• thus making it impossible both for the Lord to go on with His work,
• and for themselves to become capable of seeing and understanding what He does.
• Instead of immediately obeying the Lord of Life, 
• the one condition upon which he can help them, 
• and in itself the beginning of their deliverance, 
• they set themselves to question their unenlightened intellects as to His plans for their deliverance…”

It reminds me of a young man on my bus recently who was acting up. I told him to stop what he was doing. He responded with, “Why?” I immediately stopped, got out of my seat and walked to the back of the bus to have a little chat. I reminded him that he will always have people in his life telling him what to do, and for the most part, they want him to make a good go in life. "Rather than question why and deciding for yourself if you’ll do what’s asked, the proper response, and the one that will ensure a lifelong measure of success, is to just do what’s asked and learn to quickly and cheerfully figure the best way to do it!"

After all, it's really an attitude of the heart, isn’t it? Rather than people who chafe at and question everything he tells them to do, why wouldn’t the King of Glory want to populate His kingdom with people of the humble heart, demonstrated by their desire to quickly, cheerfully and completely obey the things that show they trust and love Him! 

It is the only way to know His heart, understand His purposes and help Him build a society truly worth living in! Let us then, always be mindful that every time we do what the Lord asks us to do, or not do what He tells us not to, we are helping Him build a world worthy of Life and Love!