When God Sends His Son

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, let's now go to our time for our sermon. And our reading is from Matthew 21, 33 through 46 from the New Revised Standard Version. And a few words, again, of introduction about this. This is number three in our five-part sermon series about the vineyard. And today we're actually getting to the vineyard, like the actual vineyard, the actual story of Jesus' parable of the vineyard, which is kind of the center of it all. And as we read, you'll probably see a connection between this parable of the vineyard and the parable of the vineyard that we saw last week from Isaiah chapter 5. They're related. In fact, Jesus builds on that parable. So they're similar in some ways, but they're very different as well. And we're going to be looking at how they're different in just a second. But the background of this parable is particularly important. So what leads up to this parable? That's why it's such an important parable, because of where it takes place. It takes place in the flow of the gospel story. It doesn't happen at kind of a random place. It happens in the same place in all three of what we call the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It happens at the same place in all of them. It happens directly after Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and cleanses the temple, and his authority is questioned.

[1:14] And so the reading we just had was from Jared of Jesus cleansing the temple. Jesus goes in as if he owns the place, interesting, or as if his father owns. And he goes into the place and starts cleaning it out, saying, you can't do this stuff here. And people who were running it were angry about him. And they came to him and said, by what authority? By what authority are you coming into this town riding on a donkey, coming into the temple, knocking everything over? In essence, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? Right? And so now's the time where Jesus is like, you really want to know? Okay, I will tell you. Okay. Okay. This is really like the, this is a flashpoint in all the gospels, in all the synoptic gospels at least. Now you look at the gospels. This is a little background on the gospels. Early on in the gospels, you probably noticed this and maybe even scratched your head. That whenever anyone kind of figures out who Jesus is, whether it's a person or a demon or somebody like that. And they say, you really are the Messiah. Or you're the son of God. Jesus is like, yes, but let's hold on to that. He downplays it a bit. Don't tell everybody. yet. The time hasn't come for me to, you know, for that to be broadcast widely. But now the time

[2:30] has come. And in the gospels, as you read them, the story just keeps picking up. It just kind of keeps gathering steam, right? Jesus has encounters with religious leaders like Pharisees and Sadducees and all the rest. And those encounters get more intense as he goes. People come to him and say, can you come do this with me? Can you come do this with me? Or can I be part of it? And Jesus says, only if you're going to come with me to Jerusalem, can you come with me? I'm only going there. I can't go doing all these other things. So he's focusing himself on Jerusalem, on the cross. You look at Luke chapter 9, verse 52. It says, Jesus resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem. And from that point on, he was almost uninterruptible on his way to Jerusalem. And so the storm clouds are gathering. Sort of the narrative is really heating up. And that's, you could say, well, that's just good literature, right? The gospel is just good literature. It's just good literature. It's just gospel writers know how to tell a good story. They're building to a crescendo. But the reality is that's what was also happening with Jesus. He was gathering the people around him, the apostles, to come with him. He was doing all sorts of things, healing, doing miracles, not in a random way at

[3:39] all. But in maybe you could call it a slightly more relaxed way, he was establishing his following and his followers. But then he gathers all that and he goes to Jerusalem. And so he's in both time and in place. And so he's heading towards the most intense week of his life. And we're talking about just one week here between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. The most intense week of his life to Jerusalem, to the most sharp and contentious encounters with the religious leaders, and ultimately to the cross. And I'm even talking louder now and faster now because I want to try to do the same thing right now. It's all coming to this moment, right? Like the whole gospel is coming to this moment. And the question is, who do you really think you are? Who do you really think you are? And the question is, how do you really think you are? How do you really think you are? How do you really think you are? How do you really think you are? How do you really think you are? How do you really think you are how do you really think you how do you how how how how how how how how how how of the Old Testament to say, I'm gonna fill out this parable that you know and love, maybe you don't love it, but you know it, and I'm gonna show you that all of that

[4:55] was always pointing to me and was always pointing to this moment, right? So the implications of that lead to his crucifixion, but the shockwaves of that are still reverberating through space and time up to this day. Like this moment that I'm gonna be talking about, it's not just this footnote in the gospels, it's not just this little part of history, it really sets the tone, it explains all of what Jesus has been all about all along and how he fits into God's plan for the whole world. And that's why I've said, and last week I said, this is the most important parable that Jesus ever tells. Now you could disagree with that and that's fine, you can, no problem. But when we're done at this, I hope you'll at least be persuaded a little bit that this is actually the most important parable that Jesus ever tells, is the story, this parable, of the vineyard. Okay, and so as I said, usually parables are a bit opaque, you're supposed to kind of think about them for a while, work on them in your brain, then they have more meaning. But in this case, it's pretty clear what's going on, at least to the people who hear it, because their reaction to it is immediate and it's full of anger, okay? So they know what is going on. So this one's a lot clearer,

[6:10] it's completely understood by the religious leaders. But it's us, that need to spend time understanding it. They understood it right away because of their culture, their history, their religious views, their life experiences, their familiarity with Isaiah and chapter five of Isaiah and so on. So what do I want you to listen for as we're about to read? Try to be thinking about who the various characters are in this parable and why Jesus is telling it and how it would feel to be on the receiving end of it as a religious leader. Okay, so try to put yourself in the spot of the listeners who are figuring it out in real time as he's saying it. So let's go to our reading now, Matthew 21. Jesus says, listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.

[7:08] Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves, although you could read that as servants, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

[7:28] Again, he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and get his inheritance. So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

[7:54] Now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him, he will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.

[8:10] Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.

[8:43] When the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds because they regarded him as a prophet. Let's pray.

[8:59] Father, thank you for your word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's look at the parable. I'm going to ask you to take your bulletin out. The Bible reading is printed in there, or look in your book. Matthew 21, verse 33.

[9:18] Double check. Yes, 21, 33. So let's look at the parable. First off, I want us to notice the similarities to Isaiah 5. Last week we talked about Isaiah 5. There's a vineyard with a wall around it, a wine press, and a watchtower. And then there's four things in common right there. So anyone listening then would have said, oh, this sounds a lot like Isaiah chapter 5. What's he up to? Is he going to retell that? Parable? We know that parable. But then the differences come in, right? In that parable, in Isaiah 5, it's what's called a juridical parable, where God is making his case about why he has been wronged and what he's going to do to rectify it. But in this case, the story changes. It's not just that there's a vineyard, that the fruit was expected from the vineyard, but that there was a landowner who leased it, who put and trusted it into the hands of some people, his chosen people, and went away.

[10:17] And at various times sent messengers to demand or to extract or to really, to give him what he expected from the vineyard. And these messengers, slaves, were one by one, you know, rejected, stoned, killed, tortured, put in prison, et cetera. We're drawing a little bit now from Israel's history. All right.

[10:42] And finally, this is, none of this is in Isaiah 5. The landowner says, well, I'll send my son because they'll have to respect him. He truly represents me if I go and send my son. And the tenants, the ones who are leasing the land, decide to kill the son because they think that then they can inherit the vineyard themselves. There won't be any claim on it, right?

[11:06] And Jesus in the parable doesn't say that those people will be destroyed. He asked the question. What will happen to these people? And it's very interesting that the people asking him the question about his authority then answer this question. They say, well, of course, any landowner whose son is killed by the tenants will come. And when he finally does come back, he'll clean house, you know. He's going to clean those people out of there. And he'll give or lease this vineyard to somebody else who will actually do what the contract says that they need to do, which is to turn over a portion of the land.

[11:48] So if you look at some of the material material material with each other. I own the land, you plant on it, you fertilize it, you grow it, you harvest it, and I get some portion of that. Or I get a certain amount per year and you take the risk. I get a certain rent per year and you take the risk. So that's even understandable nowadays that some farmland is leased in our world, right? So that's, again, that's a bit how it's different, and but again how it's similar to, and how it's understandable to the people at the time. Now let's start asking these questions, right? What is the vineyard, right? What is the vineyard? We're going to kind of take, sort of expand on this parable and say, kind of figure out what is what. So we say, what is the vineyard? Well, in Isaiah 5, it tells us Israel is the vineyard. The vineyard is Israel. It's my chosen people who are expected to produce the fruit, right? And whether that's the land or all the people together, right? It's this, it's this group or entity that God has a covenant relationship with. He gives them all of his care and protection and love and the law and, and his guidance, and he expects from them their worship, but also that they would bless the nations by what they do, that they would bring the

[13:30] word to all the nations as well, as God said Abraham should do. Who are the tenants? Well, these could be the leaders of Israel. These could be the people who are in charge of guiding all the people into doing the right things and to producing this fruit. These are the ones who know better, right? These are the ones who know the law, who know what is required. They're the ones that are expected to gather the harvest and to give a portion of it to the, to the landowner. Now, who are the messengers? You probably figured some of this out. These are the prophets that God sent to his people over the years. And you can get a long list of all these prophets and how they were treated. Some of them were treated as the messengers, some of them were treated as the landowners. Okay. Many of them were treated terribly, right? Some of them were killed. We believe one was sawn in half. I mean, that sounds very painful. It wasn't the magic show. It was like, actually he got sawn in half. You know, um, they were, they were imprisoned. They cried. Think about Jeremiah as the weeping prophet, right? They had a hard time. So these, these messengers or slaves or servants that the landowner sends to the vineyard asking for the part of the harvest is like the

[14:40] prophets going to the vineyard. And they're like, oh, I'm going to the vineyard. I'm going to the vineyard. And they're like, oh, I'm going to the vineyard. I'm going to the vineyard. And they're like, oh, I'm going to the kings of Israel saying, look at everything that God has done for you. And yet you're living in idolatry or you're leading the people astray, or you're going after other gods or making alliances with other nations that I've told you not to do. You're not following me. You need to produce the fruits of righteousness. You need to produce those things and how those messengers are treated. Now, who is the owner and his son? You know, you're not going to get any points for getting this one right. Cause it's pretty obvious, right? The owner is God. This is clear from Isaiah five. It's clear from here. The son is gotta be Jesus Christ, but no, and no reasonable interpreters would say anything but that there's probably some fanciful interpretations of this parable where people would say, oh, the owner could be, you know, like hope or, you know, something weird like that, but it's not, that's not, you know, it's God, the father. It's very clear. And the son is Jesus. And finally, who are the other people that the vineyard is going to be given to?

[15:36] Well, the parable tells us that itself. We don't have to work too hard on it. It's the ones who will produce the fruit that's expected. I want to remind you of last week. So this time I got a slightly better, this is not a very big pumpkin, but this is at least as big as the pumpkin I was hoping to get from my little experiment over the summer, which was only really only a success as far as cucumbers and marigolds went. But I would wish this would be a little bit bigger. And then here's again, here's the reality of what I got. And it's, it's actually like a little snowman now. So I think it could work. It's I have this on my desk and it's very cute and decorative. And I've got three more at home that are even smaller than this. If you want one, you come find me because you could decorate. They're just really adorable, but they're a great reminder. God expected this and got this or even like microscopically, right? God's God is saying, well, we're going to give the vineyard to somebody who can add a minimum, make one of these, but maybe even one of these, right? Which I don't have up here. Maybe next week we'll have more pumpkins. We'll see how many pumpkins we can get. We can bring out to the pulpit. If anyone has a giant one, let me know and we'll plop it here next

[16:45] week and say, this is what we're talking about. So I want you to remember now about Abraham and the covenant real quick, right? He's meant to bless all the nations and he's supposed to reverse the fall of, of humankind in Genesis three, Adam and Eve sin. I mean, when you think about that, that's the covenant is God's way of redeeming and rescuing his people who have fallen away from him. It's his plan to save the entire world. That's why when God makes a covenant with Abraham, he's not saying I'm going to make a great nation out of you and I'm going to bless you and your descendants, which he does say that, but he doesn't say that exclusively. He says through you, all nations will be blessed. God's plan is to redeem all of humanity through his chosen people that he's chosen for this task. And he starts with Abraham and God keeps trying, to do this from Abraham on. And I said, it's okay to say that he tries because what he's doing is he's depending on human cooperation and God values our agency. He values our free will. So he can only really try to make these covenants work. When there's something that just depends on me, I can do it. Like I could exercise in the morning. If I chose to do it, I could just do that. I'm not

[18:03] gonna because I'm lazy, but I could do it. But if there's something else, when there's someone else, when there's another person involved, I can only try. I could try to get you to come exercise with me tomorrow morning, but I can't make you do that. I don't have that kind of control or I'm not going to try to get that kind of control over you because that's dysfunctional and wrong. And God is the same way. He's trying with each covenant that he makes to bring the world back to him. And it depends on on other people, which is why he's trying. He's trying to persuade his people to choose him all the time, right? And he's trying to persuade his people to choose him all the time, right? And he's trying to persuade his people to choose him. So God tries many times in many ways. And this is the history of it. He tries with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They all had covenants with God. God had to keep trying. He tried with Moses and the covenant of the law. He sent the prophets and the judges coming and warning and pleading and crying. And some of them were imprisoned. And some of them were killed. And so on. And then God sent his people into exile. And then he promised to make a covenant that they could return. And they returned.

[19:09] So God tries many times. In many ways. And this is the history of it. He tries with Abraham, all of those didn't work. And that's the thing, isn't it? All these covenants that God tried didn't work. And it's like him sending wave after wave of servants to the vineyard asking for the produce only to receive a rejection and response. So finally, God's done trying, at least in the old way. And so he sends his son knowing that he will be rejected. It's the final move. It's when he goes from trying to doing. Because now that the son is involved in the son, you know, Jesus and God are so closely connected, as we understand in our understanding of the Trinity, that the son chooses to go to the cross, to Jerusalem, to the vineyard. And so now God is doing. This is the important thing. God is doing. This is a substitution in essence. And we're going to get to this, that this, how God changes how he tries to bring about covenant with his people, changes who's at the center of the covenant. Before what was at the center of the covenant was both God's promise and people's response. Now the covenant changes to God's promise and Jesus's response.

[20:27] So Jesus stands in for the people and he's obedient to God. He produces the fruit that the people themselves can't produce. And so it says, and this is kind of a play on words too, but it says, Jesus quotes from Psalm 118.

[20:45] He says, the stone that was rejected has become the cornerstone. The son is sent to the vineyard. The tenants reject him by killing him. They throw him out of the vineyard. It's kind of actually what reject means. Really kind of push him, really ejected him.

[21:03] And that. Thing that they rejected has now become the center, the cornerstone or the capstone, the top of the arch that holds the whole arch together. There's a few ways of interpreting that word cornerstone. Also the word son in Hebrew is Ben and the word stone in Hebrew is Eben. And so there's a bit of a word play going on in Psalm 118, but also here so that the son, the S if stone sounded like son, it would kind of work in English. The son that you've rejected has now become the indescribable, indispensable part of the vineyard itself. And that's how God is now reordering the world in his covenant. He still demands the produce, but the son is at the center of it. And he is the one who produces the fruit of obedience by going to the cross. And so if we had a pumpkin for Jesus, like I said, we would need like a giant. Now this is, this is too small. Even we would need a pumpkin to fill this room because Jesus does produce the obedience. That God asked for on our behalf.

[22:10] So the expectation doesn't change, but the fruit is produced when the new tenants are in Jesus. So how, how are the tenants, the new tenants, how are they going to be faithful to what's asked of them? Well, they can't produce it anymore because Jesus has produced it for them. And we understand this, that the spirit actually, as we're indwelt by the spirit, that's when we do the things that God requires us very hard to do them on our own, on our own, but the spirit guides us in them. So they can't do it without him and he is in the center of the vineyard. And so you could say this, this all fits together. The, the, this, the way he's telling the story is again, an answer to the question, who do you think you are? And what do you think you're doing? Well, he says, I'm the son that you've rejected. I've become the center. The covenant is now going to be centered around me. And you can join me in what I'm doing, or you can reject me. And if you reject me, the vineyard will be taken away from you and be given to somebody else who will be in me and who will produce with me and through me what God requires. Now, one thing that we have to address, and this is a side note, but super related because it's contemporary too.

[23:29] You could ask yourself, does this mean, and some people have asked this, that God is un-choosing. Right? The Jews and replacing them with the Gentiles. I'm going to say that again, because I think, and I want you to understand that. Some people have asked, is God un-choosing the Jews as his chosen people and replacing them with the Gentiles? Right? And that's a good question, right?

[23:53] But the answer is absolutely not. That's the wrong way of looking at it, actually. That, unfortunately though, some people have made that interpretation and has led to racist and anti-Semitic views among Christians. Because Christians would say, we're the new chosen people. We replaced you. We have all the blessings and promises. And since you've rejected them, then it's open season on you, right? In that sense. And that's not what it says. It says God will take the vineyard, the place where he expects good fruit of blessing the whole world, and he'll take it away from those who won't produce it and give it to the ones who will. There's nothing there about Jews and Gentiles. It's about those who will produce or those who won't produce. Those who are in the sun or those who are not in the sun. Those who accept the sun or those who reject the sun. Right? So the people who inherit the vineyard are those who choose the sun, whether they're Jews or Gentiles. Now, nowadays it's possible you could say that Jews will say, well, anyone who becomes a Christian is no longer a Jew. And they have the right to say that, I guess. But don't forget that all the apostles were Jewish. Right? And the vineyard was given to them.

[25:04] They were Jews. And they thought of themselves as Jews. All their life. Right? They were just Jewish followers of Jesus. So we don't think about this parable in this way. But it has been misused in this way. And that's important to know. So we'll close that little chapter there.

[25:19] It's clear, as I said earlier, that the people he was challenging understood exactly what he meant. You know, sometimes parables, like we said, they're a little obscure. Like, oh, what does that mean? That's really thought provoking. This one, by the time he was done with it. They were like, oh, oh, he's talking about us. Oh, oh, snap. You know, you could go like that. Right? They're like, oh, he did not. So they knew Isaiah five. They knew Jesus was retelling that parable, but with a twist. They got that Jesus was identifying himself as the son and that he was claiming that he was God's son. That kind of made them mad. And they got that he was predicting that God would take away their vineyard because of their rejection of the son. And he said it in clear terms to all this will be taken away from you and given to those who produce the fruit. Right. And even if they didn't believe him, like some of them were like, oh, he's just delusional. But it didn't matter because they knew that he believed what he was saying and he was saying it out loud. The time for him to be subtle about who he was and what he was doing early on in his ministry. That was over. This is the week where Jesus tells everybody everything about what he's doing.

[26:37] The fact that he tells it in the parable doesn't matter because this is a very clear parable. It's very clear how to interpret this parable, at least for them. The challenge we have is interpreting for today, but they understood right away. And the proof is in verse 46, the very last verse of our reading, they wanted to arrest him for it, but they were afraid to at the moment. And so they waited until a better time when they could do it. And we know when that was. So.

[27:03] We're almost going to almost at the end here, but I'm going to tell you in the next few weeks, we're going to unpack what all of this means to us is a very why this is such an important parable. We'll keep going at it. But again, let's say that it's an important parable because Jesus uses this parable to actually explain who he is and what he's doing and what God's going to do in the world and how the final covenant really looks. So that's why it's such an important parable. But. Here. Here are a couple of teasers to look forward to. What does this parable mean for us? We get what it means for God, for Jesus, for the people back then they understood it. But what does it mean for us? Well, one thing is this. If we believe that the vineyard has been given to us, then we have to understand that we can't do any work in this vineyard without Jesus at the center of it all. Okay. Jesus is now at the center of the he's the one that was rejected has now become the cornerstone or the capstone. Okay. So we're going to have to understand that. Jesus is now at the center of God's covenant relationship with humanity. And if we're in the vineyard, if we've inherited the vineyard, we can't produce anything in the vineyard unless Jesus is part of it and in the center of it.

[28:16] And unless we are in Jesus, any work we do without Jesus in the center won't produce anything. If we do work without Jesus at the center, I'm going to keep doing this with the pumpkins because it's just too fun. This is what we get without Jesus in the center. We get small fruit or no fruit. Right. But we'll get big fruit if Jesus is at the center of what we do as a church in their vineyard. Right. Now the scary part, another idea. If the vineyard was taken away from other people, it can be taken away from us.

[28:47] Let that sink in. God can still remove his glory from the temple. God can come and look at this church and say, where's the fruit. I've sent you messenger after messenger, but you haven't produced anything. I'm going to give this vineyard to somebody who can do something with it. You know, and just as a side note, I think it makes sense for some churches that if nothing is being produced there, if no growth is happening, that you can discern it all. I mean, sometimes there's growth happening that you can't see it's under the surface. Praise God for that. But if after a certain amount of time, there's no growth, it is in our, our church, our denomination says this to churches that are, that are kind of on the edge. And not really thriving. They say, sometimes the best thing you can do with your church is to celebrate all the great things that have happened in your church.

[29:40] Decide together that you're going to close the church, sell the property and give the proceeds to somebody who's planting a church somewhere else in a place where it's going to thrive. And thus in a way you're kind of giving the vineyard to somebody else who can do something with it. Right? I don't think we're there. I don't think we're there. We're not going to sell this church tomorrow. We don't have a real estate agent coming over here to put a for sale sign in front of the church, but we should never be afraid of that idea. If God tells us you guys aren't with what you've been given, you're not producing much or at all time for you to pack it up and give this to somebody who can do something with it. Right? Okay. Finally, the final teaser. Well, and then we're almost done. The ways in which the relief religious leaders were not producing fruit back then. Very interesting. Okay. So the ways in which the relief religious leaders were not producing fruit back then are amazingly similar to the ways our religious leaders are acting and not producing fruit. So our religious leaders, I'm talking about your pastors. I'm talking about politicians who claim that they're Christians, or sometimes they're the same people.

[30:45] And that's really confusing to me. And it should be to you that the way the religious leaders in the time of Jesus were acting and not producing fruit is surprisingly similar to today and how our religious leaders are. We're not producing fruit. We're not producing fruit.

[31:03] So if you want to get some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some information for some his people. That's the other side of the covenant. He always finds a way. Even giving the vineyard to somebody else is a sign that he hasn't given up on his people because he cares about the word going to all the nations for them to be blessed. And he says, you're not blessing all the nations. I care about all the nations. So I'm going to give the vineyard to somebody who can bless all the nations. So God doesn't give up on all the nations and God doesn't give up on his vineyard. There's always a way that he can work through it. So God doesn't give up on us. He expects fruit, but now the son produces the fruit and we will too, if we are in him, that's what it takes. We have to have him at the center. So the first work of the vineyard is to choose the son and to accept him rather than reject him and the fruit will follow. So that's it until next week. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word.

[32:25] Thank you for this parable, which is quite clear to us. Father, help these lessons be planted deep in the soil of our hearts, that they would grow fruit for you. Amen.