THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE

Sunday (7/28), gather with your church family as we turn our attention to Matthew’s Gospel (21:33-46).

The passage before us is from Passion Week. As was His pattern, in Jerusalem, He would spend His time ministering to the multitude gathered in the Temple.

On this occasion, as He was teaching, the Chief Priest and his cronies abruptly interrupted him, arrogantly demanding to know, “By what authority was He doing these things? And who gave Him this authority?”

Jesus quickly dismissed their question by asking His own. When they refused to answer, He told the first of two parables that would be His final attempt to get them to recognize their wickedness, repent of their sin, and turn toward God.

Before the religious hypocrites could respond, Jesus shared another parable that also had a prophetic warning regarding their position, the Temple, and the city. Unbeknownst to them, their entire way of life would be destroyed right before their eyes in just under forty years.

King David had asked this poignant question several hundred years earlier: “If the foundations are destroyed, What can the righteous do?" The Pharisees answered that question in the way they had led the Jewish nation into an abyss of apostasy with cold, dead religion.

They were fanatics about keeping the Mosaic law and simultaneously hardening their heart toward God and His anointed, Jesus Christ.

Israel, like many nations that are being led into darkness today, the population, no matter how much they protest, finds themselves victims of those globalist, satanic leaders who are working toward a utopia which, in their minds, is a world without God.

So, what hope do people have? If no one is listening, does that mean life as they know it is over? Jesus answers those questions by pointing the people of His day and today to Himself. He is the Chief Cornerstone.

That means He is the foundation that can’t be destroyed and the One who holds everything together.

When people recognize that they can not trust anyone or institution to save them, whether they lived in Israel of that day or any nation today.

Instead, they must look to the only One who died on the cross so they can be forgiven.

By trusting in His name, their sins, which they were powerless against, will have their power broken, and in their place will be a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

But at the same time, if, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, one continues to live life on their terms, hardening their heart to the promises that God has made, not only will they be crushed by the globalist entity that is fulfilling Bible prophecy by uniting the world into one world government which hates God and His Christ.

And if that is bad enough, they will stand before the One who had promised everlasting life to hear the sentence of eternal condemnation when their life is over.

We, the church, must understand just as Israel was on the precipice of destruction, so is our nation. Each day that goes by is another opportunity for our leaders to poke God in the eye with their godless ideology. God will not be mocked!

The time of the Great Tribulation, a seven-year period in which God’s wrath is poured out due to their rejection of His Son Jesus Christ, is coming.

Therefore, we must boldly proclaim to everyone that the only hope for our nation and the world is found in Jesus Christ.

I look forward to our time together. Please pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the entire Calvary Chapel family.

There are several opportunities for worship: on-campus (10:00 a.m.), drive-in church (92.1fm), and online (Facebook and YouTube: Calvary Inverness).

IN HIS STRONG LOVE,

Pastor