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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Listen to another parable: There was a
landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in
it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and
moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants
to the tenants to collect his fruit.”
“The tenants seized his servants; they
beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to
them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last
of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.”
“But when the tenants saw the son, they
said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his
inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed
him.”
“Therefore, when the owner of the
vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
“He will bring those wretches to a
wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants,
who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read
in the Scriptures:”
“‘The stone the builders rejected has
become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our
eyes’?”
“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of
God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its
fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom
it falls will be crushed.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees
heard Jesus’ parables, they knew He was talking about them. They looked for a
way to arrest Him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held
that He was a prophet.
Matthew 21:33-46
This ends today’s reading
from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Today
is the third in a series of devotions centered on what is known as Passion Week,
the week that spans from Palm Sunday to Easter.
In
our first devotion, we looked at Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, an arrival marked
with a pomp and circumstance reserved for royalty. Indeed, the King of all
kings had arrived in the holy city but when the people were asked who Jesus
was, you’ll recall they said He was just a prophet from Nazarene, prompting the
question, “Did they really know who He was?”
The
second devotion in this series was centered on Jesus’ second day in Jerusalem,
a day that saw Him cause a stir in the courtyard of the Gentiles after finding illicit
money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals crowding a place intended to
be a place of prayer. Through His actions, we were shown the absolute necessity
of standing up and taking a stand for the Lord when the need presents itself.
And
that brings us to today and the third devotion of this Passion Week series. As
we move to the third day Jesus is in Jerusalem, we find Him going back to His ministry
roots and teaching those who had gathered to listen to Him. Of course, that
teaching took the form of parables and as we see in one of them, Jesus specifically
targeted a certain audience while giving all glimpse into what His future held.
Look
again at this passage as we continue to draw from the 21st Chapter of Matthew’s
Gospel:
“Listen
to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall
around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the
vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time
approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.”
“The
tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.
Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants
treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will
respect my son,’ he said.”
“But
when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come,
let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of
the vineyard and killed him.”
“Therefore,
when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
“He
will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent
the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at
harvest time.”
Jesus
said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:”
“‘The
stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
“Therefore
I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a
people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be
broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
When
the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew He was
talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest Him, but they were afraid
of the crowd because the people held that He was a prophet. Matthew 21:33-46
Before
we probe deep into the depths of what Jesus was trying to convey, we need to
first define key components of the parable to help us in our understanding.
To
begin, we need to look at the matter of the landowner and the vineyard. The
landowner Jesus is talking about here is none other than God, His Father and
ours. Note the vineyard would never exist had it not been for the landowner
creating it first. The landowner planted the vineyard and put things in place
to make sure the vineyard was protected and able to be productive.
So
if the landowner was God, who or what did the vineyard represent?
We
go to the Old Testament and the Book of Isaiah for the answer:
The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the
nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. Isaiah
5:7
The
word of God makes things easy for us. The nation of Israel is the vineyard,
planted by God, the landowner, to be productive for Him with the people being
the tenants, the vines who God intended to bear fruit.
We
now have the base with which to look at the rest of the parable.
What
did the landowner do?
He
left the vineyard in the hands of His tenants who had an obligation to produce
for the landowner. In other words, God’s people, the tenants, were not just
living in the land for free. There was a rent to be paid to the landowner, in
this case, the fruit that Jesus mentions.
The
landowner allowed the tenants to live in the vineyard and, in return, they were
to pay Him at the appointed time. The scriptures tell us that the landowner did
not go directly to the tenants to collect what they owed him but rather sent a
succession of messengers to collect what was due. Each was mistreated in some
way with at least one of the messengers killed.
Who
did the messengers represent?
They
were none other than the prophets that God sent to His people and if you know
anything about the Old Testament, you know the Israelites mistreated God’s
prophets over and over and over again as they rejected God’s word and will to
follow their own will and way. We should note here that God was very patient
with the tenants just as He was with His people before Jesus came. He could
have sent immediate judgment on them for the way they disregarded Him and those
He sent in His name but He didn’t. He gave His people every possible chance to
try and correct their ways before taking action against them and such was the
case in the parable Jesus was telling.
Well,
there came a juncture when the landowner realized that sending messengers was
not achieving the desired result. And so the landowner came up with another
idea. He would send his son because surely the tenants would respect him, the
very flesh and blood of the landowner.
Of
course, the son represented none other than Jesus Himself, the very flesh and
blood of God the Father.
Would
the outcome be any different?
Sadly,
it wasn’t. For when the tenants saw that the landowner had sent his son, they
saw the opportunity to capitalize on the situation thinking that if they killed
the landowner’s heir (the son) then they could take his inheritance. And so
that’s what they did, they took the son, “threw him out of the vineyard, and
killed him.”
Are
you starting to get the big picture yet?
If
the vineyard’s tenants were representative of the Israelites and the landowner’s
son was representative of Jesus, can you see what is going to happen in
Jerusalem?
Jesus
was foretelling His own death at the hands of the Israelites who would be
rallied against Him by the very chief priests and Pharisees who stood listening
to the parable. As the scriptures tell us, they certainly figured it out but
instead of repenting and turning their hearts away from making the parable come
true, instead they immediately began to ponder ways to arrest Jesus, something
they would not do on this third day of the Passion Week but would succeed doing
a few days later.
So
what’s our takeaway?
Well,
God had sent His Son to try and get His people to produce the fruit He expected
them to provide Him. But as we know, the Israelites were going to reject Jesus
and kill Him just as readily as the tenants killed the landowner’s son, an act
that would bring God’s judgment upon them, a judgment predicted by the very
people Jesus was teaching. Ironically, they would be the very wretches who
would be brought to a wretched end. Such will be the case for anyone who
chooses to reject God’s Son, Jesus.
For
a day is coming when the once rejected Son who was crucified, died, was
resurrected from the dead, and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of
His Father will return as the victorious Judge of the world, taking those who
placed their belief, faith, and trust in Him as Savior to the new heaven and
earth while vanquishing everyone else into the lake of fire where they will be
utterly destroyed with the earth and heavens as we know them now.
Until
then, we are still God’s people, placed in His creation vineyard to bear the
fruits of the Spirit and lead others to their salvation through Jesus, the once
rejected Son who now serves as the Blessed Savior, the precious Lamb of God who
took away the sins of the world.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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