Jesus uses a parable to confront religious leaders who presume upon God's grace while rejecting God's authority, God's messengers, and ultimately God's Son.
And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
For many of us, planting season is over.
It's starting to get a little hot, and some of the shrubs and the flowers and the different plants and trees that we had planned to plant, and we've either had to fish or cut bait. At some point, you get past the growing season. It was a real challenge for me.
I was even planting a rose bush this week, and I realized one of the great things about living in California is you can count on sunshine, but what you can't count on is water. It's a difficulty. You have to be very intentional when you plant.
Some of you know that very well. You have. I've been to your homes. You have very interesting and elaborate gardens or different plants, house plants that you care for, and you need to be very intentional with how it receives the sunlight it needs, whether it's a full sun, a partial sun, or a shade plant. You have to make sure it is properly watered, or, in my case, as I discovered this week, too much water can end up killing your plant if it's a drought-tolerant plant. So don't ask me to come over and be your gardener, but hopefully the rosemary will make it.
I'll let you know in a few months' time. But in any event, it's difficult work. It's rewarding work when it bears fruit.
Some of you have great fruit trees. You have tangerines or lemons or other kinds of fruit and citrus trees, and you're very grateful when it yields a crop, and you're gracious enough to bless us, your church, with that fruit as well. But sometimes we plant, and we dig, we water, we look at that water bill, but we say, " This is worth it.
I know this is worth it. You seed the grass, you fertilize, you tenderly care, and in the end, all you receive is dust. Jesus has used an agrarian parable of sorts before, in Mark's Gospel, chapter 11, with the cursing of the fig tree.
And there we saw that as he cursed a barren fig tree, so also he was pronouncing a curse upon a barren people and religious system in Jerusalem. The care, the concern, the labor that the Lord had spent upon his good garden. That's the picture that he is holding out for us.
And in fact, that's the picture that he draws our eyes to in the present passage. The Lord frequently uses the parable or image of a garden or vineyard. And sometimes it's not just a parable or an image.
In fact, it's a literal garden where he placed man in the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. And all along, the Lord God is showing us that he is a master gardener, but sin wrecks and ruins that garden, that vineyard. Jesus uses five vine parables throughout the gospels.
There appear for you in Luke 13, Matthew 20, Matthew 9, Matthew 21, and Mark 12 here in our passage. And in addition to his image in John chapter 15 about himself being the vine. And in telling us these things and using these images, for some of us, this may seem far removed.
We don't live in an agrarian society, though we do live in California, so we should know a little bit about vineyards. But in any event, the Lord is showing us that as he is the master gardener and does perform this great and gracious work, he finds that sin lying close at hand has brought much of it to ruin. And so he gives here in this passage, the Lord Jesus Christ speaks a parable.
One of the few in Mark's gospel, you notice outside of Mark chapter four, we get almost none, no parables, so to speak, literally no parables from Jesus in the sense that we get from Luke and Matthew and even John's account. And yet Mark records this one for us, a very important parable, a parable about the Lord's good garden and about some ungrateful tenants, ungrateful tenants who are not willing to turn over the fruit. It's a parable of judgment, just as the acted-out parable of the barren fig tree was a parable, a cursing miracle, you could say.
Also, this parable is a cursing parable targeted primarily at the religious leaders of the people of Israel. I hope you understood that as we look at verse 12 at the bottom there, who are they? Who are they? Who is Jesus speaking to? Certainly, he is speaking to us. All God's word is profitable, useful.
As Luke records, he is speaking in the presence of the crowd. And so they are getting this message as well. But chiefly and primarily, this is a message for the people that God has raised up to lead his flock or to tend his vineyard, the shepherds, the tenants, the farmers.
And he has a condemning word for them, a word of damnation, a vineyard here, a metaphor. This is chapter five. The picture of a vineyard is one Jesus uses intentionally to describe what the people of God ought to be.
And it shows us then in this parable, how severely God is going to judge those who prove to make his vineyard unprofitable and barren. So there's a theme here, and this is it. The theme here is that Jesus will use this parable to confront the religious leaders who presume upon God's grace.
I'm going to say that again. Jesus uses this parable to confront the religious leaders who presume and assume the grace of God, while at the same time rejecting God's authority, God's messengers, and ultimately God's son. And I hope you'll see why, in that sense, this is not just a message for the religious leaders to hear, for pastors and preachers and elders and teachers to hear, but also for all of God's people.
Maybe some of you this morning need to hear this, to hear this word for those who would presume upon the grace of God while, all the while, denying his right to his vineyard. This is one of seven controversies or conflicts that Jesus pursues with the religious leaders in the temple complex or the temple district, all within a single day. It's probably Tuesday in Passion Week.
It's going to be a long Passion Week, by the way, by the time we get to Mark chapter 16. That may come sometime in October or November, I'm not sure. But in any event, we're in Tuesday now, and up until chapter 13, we have a series of seven conflicts, four of which are started by different religious leaders, three of which are started by the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
In the previous passage, we saw the religious leaders, specifically the Sanhedrin, coming to Jesus with a question. Who gives you the right? What authority do you have to do these things, to teach and preach in the temple, to throw over our tables and cast all these things out and drive people out? What gives you the right? And we remember at that point, though they thought they had Jesus, Jesus turns it around on them and ends up silencing them. Well, now Jesus takes the opportunity in the same moment.
You know, it's been a week for us, but this is the same moment, Jesus is speaking to the same religious leaders, the council, the Sanhedrin, the elders, the priests, the chief priests, and the scribes. And now he goes on the offensive with this parable. And as we enter into the parable, I think we'll begin to see how not only does this confront us, but ultimately it gives us the only comfort we can have, the comfort that we will actually not live in the barren bleakness that we read earlier in Isaiah chapter five, but that we can, by God's grace and beneath his authority, receive a fruitful inheritance.
So let's enter into the parable. And to do so, we're going to look at some of the main actors in this parable first, beginning with the owner. The owner that Jesus speaks of, a man, planted a vineyard.
Generic man, Jesus made up stories all the time, parables. He came up with these stories all the time. They weren't necessarily historical accounts.
They were stories that made a point. And that's why we don't want to push parables too far, but they do tell us some very important things about reality, about how things work in the world, about God, about us, about sin. And so, in the first place, we see that Jesus describes this generic man.
This is the owner of the vineyard, he calls. That word for owner, I think, is a correct translation, but literally in the Greek, it is the word Lord, kurios, the Lord of the vineyard. So Jesus is talking about the Lord of the vineyard.
And if the vineyard is a stock and standard picture of Israel in the Old Testament, it would have been very apparent to the people of God, and certainly to the scribes and the chief priests and the Pharisees, that the Lord of the vineyard is none less than the Lord himself, the Lord God.
The first thing we see about this owner, this Lord, is his importance. Everything about the vineyard, everything about the reality of this vineyard, is dependent upon and initiated by the Lord.
There was nothing before he came, absolute nothingness. It's this Lord who comes and plants the vineyard. And Jesus gives us details.
Mark includes the details for us, which again should highlight that, because Mark doesn't always give us details but takes great pains to describe this process. The Lord came and planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it.
So he protected it. This wall, this fence, would have been used to keep animals out. They had vineyards like this in the Jerusalem area and throughout the land of Israel and Judah.
They knew what this looked like: this wall, this fence that keeps wild animals from eating the vineyard. He put up this fence to protect it. He built up, or he dug, excuse me, a pit for the wine press.
So this would be a pit where you could take your grapes and crush them down. Sorry, grape juice lovers, this is not for you to just drink grape juice. They're going to make wine out of this.
It's the whole point of a vineyard. Now, occasionally we find out that there are also fig trees in the vineyard, but generally it's a vineyard because there are vines there, and if there are vines, there's wine. They're going to be making wine, and you can imagine this owner is so excited about the process.
He's building, he's digging out this pit so that one day he'll have a fresh vat of wine, fermented, aged well, eventually, and then he'll drink from this wine and enjoy it. He'll have dinner with his guests, and he'll celebrate what this vineyard has yielded, the grapes, the great grapes that come out from this vineyard. And to add onto all of this, we find this owner is building a tower, a tower which would not only house the tenants, but also provide an extra measure of defense, not against wild animals, but against any enemies who would come and seek to steal from the vineyard.
And so throughout all of this, we begin to see some attributes of God. God is the God who creates, and who protects, and who sustains, and who provides. That's true in all reality as God has created all things, and any measure of prosperity and protection that we enjoy in this world, whether Christian or not, is by the grace of the Lord God.
In addition, we find repeatedly in the Old Testament that God describes himself as specifically planting the vineyard of Israel. He took this out of Egypt, he says, and I planted her on the hill, and I tended to her, and I cared for her. Jesus intentionally mirrors the imagery and verbal parallels of Isaiah chapter 5, which tells the story of Israel.
You could say this, kids: What is one way to describe the whole history of the Old Testament? It is a gardener who is planting and tending his vineyard, an owner, a Lord who loves his people, and wants to see them fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and subduing it for the glory of God and their own good. That's his goal, and that's his purpose.
The second thing we see about this Lord, this owner, is that he has a purpose in all of this.
He is not doing this simply for fun. It's sort of been taxing work. Again, some of you know this very well.
When you seek to plant a garden, you go to your house, maybe when you bought your house, or whatever, that plot of land, you say, I'm going to make this into a garden, and you start to dig, and what do you find? Stones, and more stones, and more stones. There was a rabbi, apparently, who said that when God created the world, he took most of the stones and the rocks, and he threw them into Israel, because it was so annoying. Every time you had to dig a garden, you had to find the stones and get rid of them.
In fact, you would use those stones to build up the wall. It was kind of convenient in that sense, but it was a lot of work, and he's not doing it for nothing. He wants to see fruit.
He wants wine. He wants merriment. He wants dinner feasts.
He wants joy. He wants gladness and goodness. He wants his vineyard to be successful and fruitful, and this is the purpose he had even in the Garden of Eden, as he gave a mandate, not simply to the church, but to all humanity, through our forefather Adam, our first father, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
Why? Yesterday, I forgot even to pray for them. We should pray at the end of the service for their health and for their options. We walk for healthy options.
Why is the work of Options Health so worth supporting? Well, in one sense, because all life is valuable. Certainly, that is true, and all are made in God's image, but it goes even further than that. By virtue of the fact that every man, woman, boy, and girl is in the image of God, we are the glory of God going forth in the world.
That's our purpose. That's our design. God created us to be just a source of worship, not that he needs it.
He has other lands, other places. In fact, he is the God who needs nothing. He is totally and perfectly sufficient and happy in himself, but in his great love, he builds a vineyard so that we can delight in his love, and so that we can give and reflect glory back to him.
That's his purpose for this vineyard, and I think it shows us another attribute of the Lord, the owner of this vineyard.
Because this is his purpose, because he didn't need us to begin with. He didn't need to plant this vineyard.
He didn't need to go through all this trouble. He's willing to invest the time. I hope that wasn't lost on you as we read it this morning.
I hope you were scandalized. I know some of you were. You told me this morning you were scandalized when you read this passage in preparation for this Lord's Day, because we sent it out in advance, you're reading it, and you're saying, "I can't believe he didn't just call the cops on the first go-around."
Why did he, after the first time his servant came back beaten, and there were no grapes to show, there was no wine? It's probably what he would have been getting, not the grapes, but the wine. And consider this: when you plant a vineyard in Israel, you're not getting a crop in the first season.
It would take four years before any really good grapes would arise, and if this owner, this Lord, was following the law of Moses, that fourth year or that fourth year, that crop would be dedicated to the Lord anyway. So this is probably the fifth year, five years this Lord has waited for this crop, and now his first servant comes back, shame-faced and beaten, and he sends another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and then he sends his son. Why? Have you ever thought about why God is so patient? Maybe flip the question a little bit.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus doesn't just come right now? There are many terrible things happening in the world. There are wars. There's famine.
There's idolatry and unrighteousness. People are literally bowing down to golden statues around the world. God certainly is being mocked and blasphemed.
People are starving, and they're suffering. Why doesn't Jesus come right now? Why don't you just show up, Lord? Now we should pray, Lord Jesus, come quickly. We should earnestly and urgently pray for this, but friends, do you not understand that God is so patient that if he had come but a few years earlier, some of you would be damned right now.
Let that sink in for all of us. We are the fruit of God's patient dealing with us. Just consider that.
That's part of this parable. Jesus is showing us the patience and the kindness of the Lord God, but that patience has an end, and so the Holy Spirit in the book of Romans draws out so acutely for us, do you presume, oh man, they're speaking to the Jewish leaders, I think, if we interpret it properly in the context of Romans, speaking to the Jews, the law following Jews, you, oh man, who presume to judge, do you not know that you will be judged? Do you presume upon the patience and forbearance of God, not knowing that patience is meant to lead you to repentance? Don't you know what he's looking for? He wants fruit, but he's not getting it in this parable.
And so we see the second group of characters, the tenants, the tenants who I think very clearly in the context, not only of this parable, but in the context of how this image is used in the Old Testament refers to not the people of Israel generally, though they certainly can bear condemnation, the people who are going to be shouting crucify, crucify him, they're going to bear their guilt.
But Jesus has a certain group of Jews in view, and that's the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, the Herodians, all of them.
And the first thing I think we need to notice about these people is that they had a responsibility, just three quick notes on their responsibility. This is true in the Old and New Testaments.
And it's also true incidentally about God's people today, the leaders of God's people today, those whom God raises up and appoints. The word for appoint, by the way, is ordained. That's why in our church, the leaders, the officers of the church, the pastors, the elders, the deacons, they don't just kind of show up one day, and we're like, hey, look at that.
We've got a deacon, we've got an elder, we've got a pastor. They're ordained. They're appointed.
And that is the church acting as the church, saying, God has raised you up for this purpose. What purpose are they raised for? Well, in the first instance, they're raised to feed. This is repeated in the Old Testament.
That's why the image of a shepherd really gets at a lot of these things. But "shepherd" was actually the word for shepherd. Ra'ah is specifically a feeder.
He's a feeder. He feeds the sheep. And so also the leaders of Israel were called to feed the sheep by teaching them the law and the words of the Lord.
They were to be prophets in a sense, teaching and admonishing, rebuking and correcting. They were to tell the people God's truth and so lead them out of peril and everlasting hell. That was one of their responsibilities.
Another of their responsibilities was to plead for the sheep. This, if not the prophetic aspect of their ministry, was to be their priestly aspect. And specifically, the priests and the chief priest of all were to do this, were to plead on behalf of the people, to offer up sacrifices for the people, for the atonement of their sins.
This was to plead. The chief priest would go with the names of the tribes of Israel on his breast into the holy of holies and cry out before the Lord, have mercy, oh Lord, have mercy upon them, upon us all. They were to feed, to plead, and to lead.
These are what the kings did, or at least they were supposed to do, to lead the people in righteousness and in equity, to deal justly, to defend the innocent, and also to punish the guilty. And yet, in Jesus' parable, we find that they are doing none of these things. Now, in fact, the fruit that the owner, the Lord, is looking for, the fruit of a healthy people, a God-fearing people, a people who are prospering spiritually, who are fed, who have been pleaded for, who are led, who know the grace and the mercy of God, are finding that their leaders are actually feeding themselves upon the sheep.
They're putting the people off to the side, not giving a thought for them before the Lord, and they are leading them to their own destruction.
This was true in Isaiah's day. It was true in Jeremiah's day.
It was true throughout Israel's entire history. If you read this afternoon and want to do a little extra reading, go look up Nehemiah chapter nine. It's a long chapter.
I encourage you to read it all. Nehemiah chapter nine is a great example of what we as a church ought to do when we confess our sins to the Lord, because it is a history of Israel confessing how they had time and time again rejected the work of the Lord, and specifically the messengers of the Lord, the servants that the Lord sent in the parable, those are the prophets. And so we find Moses was frequently opposed and criticized by Israel.
At times, they even said they were going to stone Moses. Moses, who led them out of Egypt, almost to the very cusp of the promised land, was going to be killed by them. Samuel, the prophet Samuel, also rejected at times.
And God reminded Samuel, " Don't worry, Samuel, they're not really rejecting you. They're truly rejecting me. We have the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who were hunted to the brink of death.
We have a prophet Micaiah who was struck in the face for speaking God's truth to the wicked King Ahab. We have the prophet Zechariah, not Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, from whom we get the book of Zechariah. That's a later prophet, but an earlier prophet, Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada.
Jehoiada was a priest and a prophet. He was someone who led King Joash and taught him accurately the way of the Lord. And Joash thanked Jehoiada for his service.
But when Jehoiada died, Zechariah, his son, took his place and confronted the king. Confronted the king because he was departing from God's truth. And so what did Zechariah get as his reward? He was stoned to death in the temple court.
That's why in one of the other gospels, Jesus says, " Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. Why? Woe to you because the blood of the prophets is staining your hands from the blood of Abel. Remember Cain, who killed Abel? All the way to the blood of Zechariah from A to Z. You have their blood upon your hands.
And Jesus says, You build tombs to celebrate them. Imagine this. They were looking at the history that the chief priests and the scribes, the tenants, they were looking at their history, and they knew about all the murder and the bloodshed.
They knew about that, but they said that was our fathers. We're going to build a tomb to honor Zechariah. We're going to build a tomb to honor Moses.
We're going to build a statue to honor Elisha and Elijah. And Jesus says, don't you understand? You're no better. You're filling up, Jesus says, you are filling up the measure of your fathers because you're not just going to kill servants.
You're not just going to kill messengers. You're going to kill the son. Calvin, John Calvin says in connection with this, for the more honorable and illustrious their condition is, that is the condition of the tenants, the shepherds, the ministers, the pastors, the preachers, the elders, the deacons, the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and all of them.
They have an illustrious and honorable position and condition, yet they lie under so much deeper obligation to God not to be indolent in their work, not to neglect their work. Not many of you should want to be teachers, brothers. So says the apostle James, because they will be held to a higher account.
So much more detestable, Calvin says, and is so much more detestable and defiling the baseness of those who pour contempt. Think about that, kids. A bucket of contempt, of scorn, of mockery, a bucket of contempt they pour upon the kindness of God, upon his patience, upon his love.
They pour contempt upon him and upon the great honor which they've already received from him, and they will be judged. They kept mocking the messengers of God, so says the chronicler in 2 Chronicles 36, despising the Lord and scoffing at his prophets until there is an, until there is a day, the Lord Jesus says in the parable, and in fact we know in the parallel accounts, in the gospel accounts, that there's actually a bit of call and response as he's speaking in the context of the people. The people are enraged at this, that the tenants would do this to all of these servants, and then finally to the son, and so they actually shout aloud that they've got to, the owner's got to do something.
Let him kill those wretched wretches. Let them see a wretched end, they say. And so Jesus says, yes, you're right.
What will the owner do? He'll come and destroy them. And so also the prophecy, or rather the paradigm of 2 Chronicles 36, which happened in the Old Testament, so also will happen in the New. They kept mocking the messengers of God, they despised his word, they scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no more patience, no more kindness, no more remedy.
You stiff-necked people, the last word and testament of the deacon, Stephen, one of the first deacons in the Bible, also the first martyr in Acts chapter 7, you stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, the Messiah, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who receive the law as delivered by angels. You had the very word of God in your hands, and Stephen says you didn't keep it.
You didn't keep it. You turned the volume down on God, and you turned it down, and you turned it down here until he couldn't hear. You couldn't hear him anymore.
And I wonder, though this is a message for me, and for Tony, and John, and Dave, and Mitchell, and all leaders and teachers in God's church, I wonder, are you someone who turns the volume down on God? Do you mock the messengers of God, despising his word and scoffing at his prophets? Because the wrath of the Lord will arise, and I can assure you, more than I am sure of anything else in this world, the wrath will arise, and there will be no remedy at that day. But before that wrath arises, it is the wrath of man that we see in the parable, as the son is brutally murdered by these tenants. This should be obvious.
It was obvious to the religious leaders. It should be obvious to you who this son is. This is the beloved son.
We've seen twice now in Mark's gospel, before this passage, a beloved son mentioned, first at the baptism of Jesus, and then at his transfiguration. Twice in Mark's gospel, the heavens themselves were rent asunder, and the voice of Almighty God rang down, clear as crystal, and as a bell from heaven, this is my beloved son. Listen to him.
Listen to him. I'm sending him to you. Listen to him.
They've got to listen to him. This is my beloved son, my only begotten son, and yet all along this son knew full well, as did his father in heaven, that he would be mocked, that he would be betrayed, that he would be beaten, broken, killed, and cast outside. Notice there's an escalation in the way they treat the servants, until finally they treat the son worse than any of them.
They don't even dignify his body with a burial, but they cast him outside so that he can be devoured by the beasts. They defile him. They defile his son, and I just think that we don't appreciate, perhaps, just how heinous this is, how heinous it would be for any of you parents to have your dear child, your beloved child, so brutally treated, and yet how much more heinous it is, because we're talking about not just any beloved son, but the beloved son, the eternally beloved and begotten son, the son by whom all things were made, through whom all things were made, for whom all things were made, as the Bible says, the Lord and giver of all that we can see, the Lord Jesus Christ, and they cast him into the trash bin.
They killed him. They killed him because they wanted the vineyard for themselves. There's a twisted, demented logic going on in the mind of the tenants here.
They murder. They murder the very last source of life and forgiveness they might have. In fact, they think that they're going to get an inheritance out of this.
That's the great true irony of the whole thing. They think that by killing the son, they're going to gain the vineyard. They're going to rule the roost, but instead they're simply paving the way for their own demise.
More shocking still, that's not the most scandalous thing in our whole parable here, but the most scandalous thing of it all is that the son goes willingly. The father sends him, and the son goes willingly. You think I'm going to call CPS on this guy?
How is he sending his son? Indeed, none of us would dare send our son or daughter into such a dangerous situation, but he did not spare his son. That's the point, guys. He didn't spare his son.
He didn't spare his beloved son. The thing that you could love more than anything in the world, God loving God, God the Father loving his son in the Holy Spirit from all eternity, and yet he sends him. All along, Jesus had been telling us this.
He'd been telling it back in Mark chapter 831, Mark chapter 931, and Mark chapter 1033. Three times he told his disciples, " This is what's going to happen to me. The chief priests, the elders, and the scribes, who were they? The Sanhedrin.
They're going to come. They're going to reject me. They're going to kill me.
They're going to mock me. They're going to despise me. They're going to hand me over to the Gentiles.
They're going to cast me out. All along, I knew this was going to happen. All along, I'm going willingly because I have a purpose in this, and he gives us a hint of it when he quotes from Psalm 118.
He says, " Have you not read this scripture? That's very offensive, by the way. You're talking to a bunch of church teachers. Didn't you read the Bible? More offensive, a bit of salt in the wounds there, because this very Psalm had just been quoted the previous Sunday when Jesus had been entering into Jerusalem.
Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That's straight out of Psalm 118. And so also, Jesus says, now, I know you guys just heard that, but did you read it? Did you consider it? That the stone that the builders, the leaders, the teachers, the appointed and anointed leaders and shepherds of Israel, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
Or maybe your translation says "capstone" or "keystone"? Two different images in the Bible that we get. It's not clear in this context which one Jesus is going for.
A cornerstone is the foundation stone from which the rest of the building is judged and built upon. The capstone, or keystone, could be the crowning final stone laid, or, if it is the keystone, the stone that holds the arch and everything together. Either way, Jesus is telling us that though he is to be rejected, like a bit of stone that the builders looked at and said, " This is worthless.
Get it out of here. I want nothing to do with this. That very stone becomes the center and the substrate of it all.
The very basis and foundation, the very corner and capstone, this stone becomes the chief stone, and it is marvelous, Jesus says. Jesus says, " Though you cast me aside, I will be raised up. Though you throw me down, I will ascend.
I will ascend like a keystone up in the arch. I will ascend. I will be raised up.
I will be glorified. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Jesus is the stone, so says the apostles in Acts chapter 4. The stone that was rejected by you, the builders who should have known better, that stone has now become the cornerstone, and they add, there is no salvation, no salvation in anywhere else or anyone else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we may be saved.
God had a purpose for it. He will have his vineyard. He will get the wine.
He will get the fruit, and he's going to do it even at the cost of his own son's life, for his son, he will raise up, and his son will ascend, and his son will be glorified, and his son will reign, and his son will come soon, and he will bring a feast with him, just as his first miracle, as recorded in John chapter 2, was a bringing of wine to a wedding. So also on the last day, he will bring the wine. He will bring the people of God, the vineyard of God.
He will bring all people, he tells us, a different kind of people than perhaps we might have expected. Not casting all the Jews off, certainly not, but the vineyard will be given to others, he says. In other words, to anyone who has the word of God and despises it, they're cast out, but to those who would hear and heed it, Jew and Gentile alike, to those who would turn in repentance and faith to the Lord Jesus Christ and discover him to be the corner and capstone, to look for him, to not reject him, but to receive him, to not walk away from him, but to wonder at him, and to worship him, to them they will receive the vineyard, they will receive the inheritance, they will receive anything and everything they could have ever possibly imagined.
The grace and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, when he comes on the final day, and which one of us who trusts in that cornerstone will on that day be disappointed? Which one of us will say, "I wish I had just pushed him away; it would have been better for me to hold on to the vineyard when I had it"? Instead of receiving his authority, receiving his claim upon us, Jesus says, " You've got to take up your cross, you've got to follow me, you've got to be willing to die. But no one who hopes upon that cornerstone, who builds upon that foundation, who looks up to that capstone and is held together by him, no one who does so will be disappointed.
Not a one. I think that leaves us with just some final thoughts as we consider the majesty of Christ in all of this. The upside-down sort of kingdom that he brings in to bear, those who should have known better, who reject the Lord, yet those who were formerly cast out are brought in, Jew and Gentile alike.
As we close, I think Jesus has a message for us. A message for us, a message for you, certainly a message for me. And I want to phrase that message in four quick diagnostic questions.
Questions to you, questions that I'm asking myself this morning. Jesus' message in this parable first, are you content to be a tenant, a steward, or do you demand to rule the vineyard? Are you content to receive all your lot from the Lord and to give over all that he demands from you, or do you want to hold onto it tightly for yourself? I don't know what that is, whether it's time or money or family or sin of some kind or another. Is there something you're holding onto that you would not be willing to give over to the Lord? Second question, do you listen to the messengers of the Lord, or do you ignore and reject them? That certainly means you've not been listening to a word I've been saying, okay? Listen now for the next minute.
Do you listen to the preaching and the teaching that goes on in this church? More than that, do you heed the word of God? Do you actually care what this Bible says to you? Do you really believe that this is God speaking to you, or are you willing to cast it aside as soon as it becomes inconvenient to you? How often do we treat God's word like an inconvenience, something we can just take up when we need encouragement or put aside when we need to focus? But instead, do you listen? Because these messengers are coming, but there will be a day when they stop.
We take it for granted how easy it is to access the Word of God. We've got audio Bibles. We've got physical Bibles.
We've got scripture written on the walls of this church. Every surface here has a Bible verse. And you can read the Bible backward and forwards, but are you going to listen? Are you going to pray? Are you going to meditate upon it? Maybe I would suggest you even memorize it, to internalize it, as Psalm 119 tells us, so that I might not sin against him, so that I might heed his messengers and not mock him.
Third, do you assume that God will always be patient? Do you presume upon the kindness and forbearance of God? Ben, do you think that you can go on sinning, or can you ignore the Lord God and that he's a kind and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and I can just trust in that and be fine and go about my way? Jesus says, not going to do. Are you willing to submit to him? Are you going to repent to him? Because today is the day that he's calling to you, and he's calling to you, and he's sending servant after servant and messenger after messenger, kids. He's sending you Sunday school teachers.
Are you going to listen to them? Are you going to mock the word and the messengers of God and ignore them? Because God will not always be patient. His suffering is long. His long suffering, that's what the way the Hebrew Bible describes him, not that he suffers in himself, but he is willing to put up with a lot, but there is a time when time will end.
So do not assume that he is always patient because he is not. He will come to judge in glory, and you will either be on that day, every one of you, every boy, girl, man, woman in this room and in the entire world will find themselves either standing on the cornerstone or crushed beneath him. Finally, and in connection to all of this, fourthly, now that you're faced with Jesus, you can't ignore him.
You're here this morning. He's speaking to you in the text. Now that you're faced with Jesus, will you rebel or will you revere? Will you worship or will you just walk away? That's the really sad note at the very end of the passage in chapter 12, or excuse me, verse 12, is that they understand he's talking about them.
They understand the Bible. They know what Jesus is saying, and yet they decide to walk away. Really bitter twist in that.
The only reason why they don't arrest him on the spot is that they're afraid, not of the son who's going to come and judge them one day, but of the people. They fear the people. They're afraid of what people think of me and what I'm going to do, and what they're going to do to me because the people hold this man in honor.
We've got to find a way to get him, trap him, take him away without the people getting involved. All along, Jesus has been telling them, " Are you not afraid of the master? Do you not countenance the Lord? Who cares what the president of the United States thinks of me or the king or the queen of England or any chief official or my friend or my family? Who cares what anybody thinks of me if the Lord God thinketh not of me well? Feared the people, and they walked away, walked away. Don't make apostasy your story.
Don't walk away from him this day. If this is the day of salvation, this is the day the Lord calls to you. This is the day when you can turn to him, and you can cry out to that cornerstone and say, “Please don't crush me. Please don't dash me to pieces. I want to live. I want to submit my life to you.”
“This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” That's the picture of the church in the end. A church that, if we are to take the keystone image here, looks up.
A church that lives looking up. Not necessarily physically, you're going to get a little sore. That's what the angel said to the disciples in Acts.
He said, " Why do you keep looking up? Don't you know he's going to come down one day? But in a sense, Jesus does command us to keep looking up. To look up to that stone, that stone that one day will descend in a cloud of glory with all the angels on the trumpet. And indeed we will sing on that day, who look at him.
Whoa, isn't this marvelous in our eyes? This stone that the builders rejected, who could have thought this up? The stone that they rejected has become the chief cornerstone. And so I'll just conclude in the words of a, probably of a sermon better than the one I've just preached from 1 Peter chapter 2. So in light of all these things, put away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into if indeed you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. As you, Delta Oaks, come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, good wine, fresh fruit acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For it stands in scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe. But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
They, the chief priests and the elders and the scribes, the apostates, the false pastors of the world, they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do, but you, you are a chosen race. You are a holy priesthood. You are a royal nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you're God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you receive mercy, not judgment, not casting out, not condemnation, not crushing. You receive in Christ the cornerstone of mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, keeping the keys of the vineyard to yourself. Those passions of the flesh wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the nations honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your fruit, your good deeds, and so seeing that, then glorify.
Delta Oaks, when they see you fruitful, fruitful for the sake of the Lord and for the good of his vineyard, when they see you, may they then glorify God on the day when he descends. Amen. Would you please rise?
