Good morning. My name is Jenny Baker, and I have the blessing this morning to open our scriptures together and read from this morning's reading, which is found in the book of Mark Chapter 12. And we're going to look at Mark Chapter 12, Verses One through 12. "Jesus then began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.
At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard, but they seized him, and they beat him, and they sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them. They struck this man on the head, and they treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. "He sent many others. Some of them beat; others they killed. He had one left to send, whom he loved, his son.
He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son,' but the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come and let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they took him and killed him and threw him out in the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven't you read this passage of scripture? The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders looked for a way to arrest him, because they knew he had spoken the parable against them, but they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him, and they went away."
Thank you Jenny, and if you haven't already opened your Bible, I invite you to open your Bible to Mark Chapter 12. While you're opening there , I want to give you a brief update on the search for the next lead teaching pastor. The search at this point seems to have focused upon three candidates. All three candidates have been through a first interview. All three candidates have had reference checks.
Two of the candidates have gone through a second interview with their wives, and the third candidate and his wife will have their second interview this afternoon. So it is at a crucial time, and we covet your prayers. We pray that you-- we ask that you would pray for the search team, for discernment to discern if God is narrowing us down to one of these men.
We ask that you pray for a unity of heart and mind among the pastoral search team as they consider these three men and their wives that God has put before us. We are in the first 12 verses of Mark Chapter 12. I've kind of entitled this "Rebellion in the Vineyard". It reminds me almost, you know, of, like an episode of "Law and Order". "Law and Order: Palestine" or something like that. You know, it's such a shocking story that he tells.
I mean it reminds me: I read some time ago, in the Chicago Tribune, this was the headline of this article: "Brothers charged with killing landlord, hiding body in sewer". You know , two brothers who had rented an apartment from a landlord and lived there a number of months and paid rent for a number of months. At some point, they decided in their minds, "We don't want to pay rent anymore. We want to act like we own this apartment."
And so, when the owner of the apartment came that next month to collect the rent, these two brothers killed him, assaulted him and killed him. And after trying to hide his body for awhile in the apartment, in finding, you know, there's some stench with that, they eventually found a sewer manhole cover, pried that off just out in front of their apartment and tried to hide the body in there.
Of course, as shocking as it is to us, that's, that's the kind of shock value this story is that Jesus is telling them. He tells a story with a similar plot. Now, it is a parable. This isn't the first parable we've seen in the Gospel of Mark. You may remember, we've said it over and over again. A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
It takes an earthly scene that maybe we can all relate to in one way or another, but it has heavenly meaning that the Lord wants you and me to see, and the story is quite clear at the very beginning. It starts out in Verse One: a man plants a vineyard. That presumes that he has purchased the land, that he owns the land. He has cleared the land of all the stones, which probably took a long time and a lot of effort, and then he plants a vineyard.
He probably planted hundreds of individual grapevines, going to great expense, great effort, great time. And then, to protect that vineyard, he builds a wall around it. That wall may have been a stone wall. That wall may have been a hedge of briars. Either way, again, great expense was involved. Great time and effort was expended to build that wall, to protect the vineyard.
But even more, he digs and constructs a winepress, and that's not like a little wood vat like you see in some of those pictures of people stamping on grapes. In that day, you excavated a large pit in the earth, and then you line that with stonework, and that was just one of two pits you are going to build. That was the pit that they put the grapes in, and those who crushed the grapes would crush the grapes in it. But you also had to dig out a second pit a little lower than the first pit.
You had to line that with stone as well, and that was the pit that the crushed grapes, the juice from the crushed grapes would drain into where the wine would be collected. Great expense, great effort, great time. And if that wasn't enough, he built a watchtower. He went to all the trouble of building a tower, a tower for those who ran the vineyard to watch for marauders, to watch for wild animals. It was a place where they could live and find protection.
Again, great expense, great effort, great time involved. After doing all of this, why does he do it? He does it because he wants to harvest crops of grapes to make wine, and so he finds tenants. He finds farmers. They don't own the vineyard; he does, but he allows them to live there. He allows them to work the land, to take advantage of all that he has provided in this vineyard in exchange for the understanding that they would provide him with a percentage of the harvest.
Now you and I hear that story, and it's just a story. The Old Testament, religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders hearing that story, familiar with the Old Testament, they would have immediately recognized where Jesus drew that story from. They would have been thinking to themselves, "That's Isaiah 5. Isaiah 5. Isaiah Chapter Five starts out with what's called The Song of the Vineyard, and I'm not going to read the whole song, but let me read the first verse.
"My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and he cleared it of stones and he planted it with choice vines. "He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes." He had an expectation that it would produce fruit, and it goes on. But in Verse Seven God makes it absolutely clear, in the words of Isaiah, what the vineyard symbolizes. Isaiah 5:7: "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel."
So the people listening to Jesus would immediately have known that he was talking about the Jewish people. He was talking about God's Old Covenant people. In other words, what does the vineyard symbolize? To the people immediately hearing this parable, it symbolized God's relationship to his chosen people. Now, who are God's chosen people today?
And then we get into the whole understanding of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and that's a separate teaching that I don't have time for this morning. But I would say this: with the coming of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for our sin and his resurrection and his promise of the New Kingdom, we live, those of us who know Christ as Savior and Lord, we live under the New Covenant. And so this parable doesn't just speak to the Jews who are hearing it in that day.
This parable speaks to us. God's New Covenant people. It speaks first of all to our purpose. What is our purpose? Why, if you know Christ as Savior and Lord, why is he giving you this one more day, when you breathe his air, when you live in his vineyard? Why is he giving you life? Why doesn't he just immediately take you into heaven?
Well, we get an indication of that as the parable goes on in Verse Two: "At harvest time, the owner of the vineyard sends a servant to the tenants to collect the from them some of the fruit of the vineyard." In other words, the owner of the vineyard, he didn't just build this for a place for the tenants to live. He expected the vineyard to be worked. He expected the tenant farmers to produce fruit from the vineyard, fruit that he would enjoy.
So he had an expectation that all of this expense and all of this time and all of this effort would yield fruit. Well, what is the symbolism here? Let me just see how awake you are this morning. Who is the owner of the vineyard? God is the owner of the vineyard, and that is as true in the day that Jesus is telling this as it is true today. To them, God has made the vineyard of the nation of Israel.
He made that vineyard from which he would begin his gracious work of offering salvation, the fruit of salvation to all the world. But that vineyard doesn't stop with the nation of Israel. Today, that vineyard is much larger than Israel on this side of the cross and the empty tomb. I mean, there is a sense in which, individually for you and me, there is a vineyard. Your vineyard is everything that God has blessed you with.
Your vineyard, what he has entrusted to you as a tenant farmer in his vineyard, is the abilities he's given to you. It's the resources that he has entrusted to you. It is your health. It is the relationships you have. That is all of the things that you didn't make up yourself, you didn't create. God has prepared these things for you. He has entrusted them to you as a tenant farmer in his vineyard. Now, this is not only true of us individually; there is a collective sense in which this is true.
Our collective vineyard as Central Church is everything that God has entrusted to us, and that includes not just our building and our facilities. That includes our history, that includes our relationships and reputation in this community, that includes all those that he has gifted to be part of keeping the ministry going and expanding here. We didn't create this. We didn't build this church. We don't bring, you know, things like we're the one who this church hinges upon.
No, God created this vineyard, and he placed every one of us in it as tenant farmers, part of working his vineyard, and what is the expectation? Whether you look at the vineyard of your personal life, your individual life, or you look at the vineyard of our collective life as Central Church, our purpose is to produce fruit. We don't exist just for our own happiness, just for our own preferences, just for our own enjoyment. We exist to produce fruit.
Jesus says it this way in John 15:8: "By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit." This is how Jesus says, "You prove to be my disciples." We produce the fruit of bringing people to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We produce the fruit of making them disciples, followers of Jesus Christ. We produce the fruit of helping them, in turn, become those who make others into followers and disciples of Jesus Christ and reproducing themselves. That is our purpose.
That's our purpose individually. That is our purpose of a church. It was certainly true at this time: God planted Israel to be a vineyard producing the fruit of salvation to the entire world, not just to the nation of Israel. And now, under the New Covenant, you are a vine, a grapevine in God's vineyard, expected to produce fruit. Our church is like a row of vines in God's vineyard, expected to produce fruit. Other churches are like other rows of vineyards.
All of this is in God's grand vineyard, where he expects as the owner of the vineyard, the Lord of the vineyard, that there will be the fruit of salvation expanding to every nation, every tongue, every ethnicity, every tribe. That's our purpose. That's why, if you know Christ is Savior, if you know Christ is Lord, that's why you are breathing today. He wants us to produce fruit. But the parable also portrays the human problem with this, and that is our second point: our pride.
And you can read how this plays out in the story. When the owner of the vineyard sends his servant to collect the fruit, to see if there's fruit that he expects of the harvest that he is owed. What happens? The tenant farmers seize the servant, they beat him, and they send him away empty-handed. That's Verse Three. And incomprehensibly, he gives them another opportunity. In Verse Four, he sends another servant to them. What happens again?
These rebellious tenants, they strike this man on the head. They treat him shamefully. And at this point, although it seems pretty obvious to us that these rebellious tenant farmers are unrepentant, they're not going to change their mind in how they respond to the true owner of the vineyard, the owner sends even more servants. In Verse Five: "He sent still another, and that one they killed. And he sent many others, and some of them they beat, and others they killed."
The people hearing this parable, they would have known who these servants are. These servants are the prophets. The Old Testament is a history of God sending his prophets, speaking his word to rebellious Israel and Israel abusing and mistreating and even killing his prophets. But it's not just Israel that rejects God's messengers.
Think of all the servants of God around the world, throughout history, who have been sent away, rejected, who have been treated shamefully, who've been beaten, who've even been killed. Why? Because they're sharing the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. And even this morning, even today in different places of the world, even in places in our country, this is happening to men and women who try to faithfully present the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, the true Gospel.
There are many who reject that, who abuse the messengers, who kill the messengers. Think even of how you may have behaved, perhaps prior to coming to faith in Jesus Christ, when someone was sent to you as a messenger with the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. Think of the many times that you may have rejected that message.
Think of how you may not have actually killed the messenger, but think of how you maligned the messenger or slandered the messenger or scoffed at the messenger, in a way, killing the messenger. This is not just Israel. This is all of us. Finally, in Verse Six, the owner sends his own son, his son whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, "They will respect my son." Why? Because the son is the heir. The servants didn't own the vineyard, but the son, the son is the air.
The son is the ultimate owner of the vineyard, and the owner sends the son. But Verse Seven: the tenants say to one another they know this is the heir. "If we kill him, then the vineyard will pass without ownership. We can take ownership of it. We can take control of it ." They foolishly believe that by killing the son, they could gain ownership and control of the vineyard, and that's what they do in Verse Eight: they take him, and they kill him, and they throw him out of the vineyard.
What is the heavenly symbolism of this earthly story? Who is the son? The son is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, the Lord, the ultimate heir of the vineyard, and what happened to Jesus? It hadn't happened at the point he's telling this parable, but it was about to. They threw him out of the vineyard. They took him outside the city walls, the Gospel writers say. The writer of Hebrews says, Hebrews 13:12, that Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates at Golgotha for our sins.
They were about to do to Jesus exactly what he was saying in the story. But this isn't just a picture of how the Jews killed Jesus; it's a picture of how the entire human race behaves toward Jesus, including us.
David Garland says it this way: "Just as the tenants foolishly believe that by killing the son, they could become owners of the vineyard, so humans (and that includes you and me), so humans think that by erasing God from their lives, they can take control of their earthly and eternal destinies." You want to know why Romans tells us why people want to deny the existence of God? Because if you deny that there is an owner of the vineyard of your life, then then you can pretend you're the owner.
You can pretend that you're in control, but if you have to acknowledge that there is an owner of the vineyard, that all that you have and all you've been entrusted with, you didn't create, it's been put on loan to you. You are a steward of it, and you have to bow to the owner of the vineyard. And that's really what it all comes down to for all of us.
Just like these tenants, we don't naturally want to acknowledge that the vineyard of our lives belongs to the God who made it, even when we come into the kingdom, and we are believers, and we become part of the Church. When we think about, well, the preferences that we wrestle with, it's again, it's a similar type of, we're not really acknowledging the owner of the vineyard. We're still behaving like rebellious tenants.
We all have this strain of sinful pride in us that wants to establish that we control the vineyard, the vineyard of our lives, the vineyard of our church. We want to seize control of everything in our lives, even if that means that we have to push God out of the picture to do it. And what we should all be amazed by is God's patience, the third point today. Think of God's patience here. When the servants return to the owner empty-handed and even abused, beaten up, what does the owner do?
He doesn't immediately fly off the handle in anger. He doesn't call up his army to come in and wipe out these rebellious tenants, does he? No, he sends messenger after messenger. Finally, he even sends his beloved son, and this to us looks humanly foolish. Why would he do that? Why would he said servant after servant? Why would he put his son in danger like that? It's the same kind of confusion, I think, sometimes we experience when we look at all that is happening in the world around us.
People in our world today seem to be just like these tenants: getting away with injustice and abuse and even murder. And God's servants continue to be rejected and mocked and abused and even killed, and there seems to be no accountability for all this rebellion in our world today. But Jesus is saying here, "Actually, this reflects the patient and loving character of God." God is holy. God is righteous.
God is just, but God is also the God that the Apostle Peter describes as "the one who is patient with you not wanting you to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance". This is why Paul says in Romans 2, "Do you think lightly of the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance?" You know, I think about this in my own life.
Although I turned to Christ at a relatively young age, I still had many years, and I think back sometimes with regret over those many years when I lived my life like those tenants. What I had, I claimed as mine. My abilities, I claimed pridefully as my own. My choices, my decisions, what I thought I got to do in life, I operated as if I owned the vineyard. And maybe you're that way, too. Maybe that was your past coming to Christ, or maybe you're still there this morning.
So I ask you, how about you? Has God's patience with you, the fact that he's allowed you to live another day, has his patience and kindness led you to repentance, led you to the place where you acknowledged him as lord of the vineyard, as the one who was created everything, as the one who gives you life, gives you all you have, all you've been entrusted with? Or are you still living in the mindset of these tenants?
Are you still living like these rebellious tenants, saying, "I don't want anybody telling me what to do. I want to control the shots in my life"? Well, now that leads into our fourth point. Although God's forbearance and patience go beyond what we can humanly understand, there does come a time when his patience comes to an end, and he will wait no longer. The fourth point is God's punishment.
God has shown incomprehensible patience, as it's symbolized in this parable, not just with Israel, but with all of the human race. But the conclusion of this parable shows his patience will come to an end. Verse Nine: what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants. Maybe the tenants thought at this point, "He's an absentee landlord." Maybe they thought of him as impotent or or powerless, you know, unwilling to do what it takes to enforce what is just.
But all of a sudden, this owner who has seemed so impotent and so distant becomes lord of the vineyard, and he crushes all the rebellion. And by the way, as Jesus is speaking this to the Jewish religious leaders who are functioning like these rebellious tenants , he knows in just 40 years there will be a partial fulfillment of that, when in 70 A.D., God allows the Roman armies to surround rebellious Jerusalem, to break down its walls, to destroy its temple, and to eradicate the nation of Israel.
The nation of Israel came to an end for almost 1900 years. But this is also a warning of what will happen to all who persist in rebellion against the Lord of the vineyard. And whether you live openly rebellious, raising your fist in the air, or whether you have a really good surface appearance, and you look like a proper man or woman to everybody around you, but inwardly, you're in control of your life.
Either way, if you persist in your rebellion, God will bring to the point where he brings about judgment and condemnation and punishment. The patient God is patient only for so long, but I'm so glad the Gospel doesn't end there. The Gospel actually ends with our fifth point: God's provision. And Jesus includes this in this episode. Jesus says that God will not only destroy the rebellious tenants.
In other words, he will ultimately condemn and punish all who reject him, but at the same time, he will give the vineyard to others. He will give the vineyard to others. God's saving work, in other words, it's not stymied by the fact that that there is hardness of heart among these Jews. In place of these old covenant people that rejected their Messiah, God establishes his New Covenant people.
God establishes the Church of Jesus Christ that is made up of everyone who embraces the true heir of the vineyard, the son of the owner of the vineyard, Jesus Christ as savior and Lord. And so now under the New Covenant, doesn't matter if you're Jewish. In fact, Paul says in Galatians 3:28 it no longer matters whether you're Jewish or gentile. It no longer matters whether you are slave or free or economic status, and it no longer even matters whether you are male or female.
The only thing that matters is whether you are in Christ Jesus, whether you recognize that Christ is the Messiah, that he is the heir of the vineyard, that he is Lord and that he is king. It doesn't matter what nationality you come from, what ethnicity, what gender you are: if you believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, as the Lord of the vineyard, you become part of his vineyard kingdom. You are saved. And Jesus ends this parable by quoting from Psalm 118.
That seems kind of out of place until we understand that's the same psalm that the people were chanting in the Triumphal Entry when he entered Jerusalem, just back in chapter 11, and he picks out one particular verse. "Haven't you read the scripture?" he says to these proud Jewish religious leaders. "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone." And just to give you a little context of this, what is he describing?
He's describing, really-- this quote describes how the temple was previously destroyed long before the Romans. In 587 BC, the Babylonians surrounded Jerusalem and did the same thing to it that the Romans would do. They destroyed, they leveled, the temple. They took down every stone. They created just piles of rubble.
And when Ezra and Nehemiah came later to rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, what they found is just these piles of broken stone, and among these broken stones, as they sought to rebuild the temple and the walls, there were stones that the builders of trying to rebuild the city would say, "That's broken. "That was from the old structure. We can't use that anymore." They would reject it. But the image is of God, out of those piles of rubble, rebuilding a new temple.
Not a temple of stone; a living temple. The religious leaders know the meaning of this, even if we don't get it, because we're not as familiar with the Old Testament past. The stone, they know, refers to the Messiah. The builders are they, the religious Jewish religious leaders who are rejecting Christ as Messiah.
But the story, the parable, the point here is that he is not just a stone; he is ultimately, he, Jesus, is the capstone of God's New Covenant kingdom, and again, this brings in images that we may not be familiar with. There's a diagram up on the screen of a capstone and a keystone. Some of your versions may talk about a cornerstone. I don't think that's the correct interpretation here.
What Jesus describes here is probably either a capstone, that final stone that is placed upon the structure that becomes the pinnacle of the structure, or it's the keystone, that that stone that is placed in the arch that holds the whole arch and the whole wall together. Whatever the specific meaning, the stone we see is the most important one of all, and that is who Jesus is to us.
That's why Peter picks up on this image, making it absolutely clear in 1 Peter 2: "Now to you who believe, who believe in Jesus as the Christ, this stone is precious." But to those who do not believe, those who reject the Christ as the heir of the vineyard, the stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone, and a stone that causes men to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.
The application is pretty clear: you can either believe that Jesus is God's Messiah, your Savior and your King, or you reject him as the Jewish religious leaders did. There is no in-between, and if you believe you are not only saved, but Peter goes on to say God makes you a living stone. You become part of this new, spiritual New Covenant temple that God is building.
But many who want to be their own lords of the vineyard, many who want to run their own life their own way, Jesus says they will stumble over him. Matthew says they will even be crushed by him, the living stone. And the rejection of the stone by the Jewish religious leaders leading to the crucifixion of Jesus, that wasn't an aberration of God's plan. That was all, Jesus makes the point, that was all included in God's plan.
That's verse 11. Quoting Psalm 118, Verse 23: "The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." Even their rejection of Jesus, even their evil actions in crucifying him, God providentially used to accomplish our salvation, to take Jesus to the cross, where he paid the penalty for your and my sins that we might be saved. Peter makes this clear in Acts 4:28: "They only did what God's power and God's will had decided beforehand should happen."
God uses the rejection of Jesus Christ, both then and now, for the greater purpose that is marvelous in all of the eyes of those who have eyes to see him. Let me close with this application of those five points, those five "P"s. It doesn't normally happen that I get all my points starting with the same letter. I know you think they teach that in seminary, but that's not a rule or anything like that. It just worked out this week. What is God's purpose for you?
Your purpose is more than just to live a happy, trouble-free life, as impossible as that is in this fallen world. Your purpose, the reason he saves you, the reason he has sent Jesus to you, is that you might live for him, that you might be a faithful laborer in his vineyard, and you might produce fruit. You might bring others to him, and you might help them become followers and disciples and makers of other disciples. That's our purpose.
That's why we breathe the air we breathe even today, but what gets in the way of that? Our pride. And every one of us, both on the front side of accepting Christ, but even after, we wrestle with that desire that one way or another, we want to be lords of our own vineyard. We want to be in control of our lives. But we have a God who is greatly patient with us. He sends us his servants. He sent us his son. He is kind and forbearing and patient, because he doesn't want any of us to perish.
He wants every one of us come to a true saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. He wants every one of us to produce fruit. The reason that he's placed us in his vineyard. The warning, though: those who reject him til the end face God's punishment, but the Gospel, God's provision, He provides Jesus the Christ, the capstone. He provides Jesus as the keystone, the one that holds the whole wall of his temple together. He becomes the crucial stone. He becomes what our salvation is based upon.
Is this marvelous in your eyes? Do you have eyes to see this? Do you embrace the heir of the vineyard? Do you accept the surrender to being a faithful servant, a tenant farmer in the Lord's vineyard? Let's pray. Oh Lord God, may we see our purpose more clearly.
If there is anyone here who does not know, this morning, Jesus as the Savior, the Lord of the vineyard, Lord, help them to see that the world they live in and all that they enjoy, that is all your doing, all your creation, and you've merely allowed them to live into it until they come to a saving knowledge of you.
For those of us who who have, and we know Jesus as Savior and Lord, help us to see that the point of our ongoing life is not just to create a life that makes us happy; it is to be faithful servants and to produce fruit, to produce the fruit of salvation in the growth of your kingdom. Oh Lord, we thank you for your great patience with us. We hear the warning of your punishment for those who persist in rebellion.
We worship and thank you for your provision of Christ as our chief capstone, our keystone. We worship him, Lord, we embrace him as our Lord. Make us faithful laborers that we would produce your fruit. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.