The Parable of the Wicked Tenants

Luke 20:9-20 The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is a summary of all that had happened in salvation history leading up to that moment:  God’s deep and abiding love for his people and their rejection of him at every turn.  I can only imagine the heartache of our Lord as he told it.

Jesus spoke these words on Tuesday of Holy Week and it was also a prophecy of what was to come in the next few days—the final rejection of Jesus by the Jews, his arrest in the garden and trial before religious and civil courts, and his death on the cross. 

But even though this story dealt with the past- and prophesied what was about to come in Holy Week- Jesus told it so that all of his people in every time and place—including us here today- could learn from it-- for the lessons contained in this parable are universal. 

It tells of God’s great love for sinners that leads him to send his Son into the world.  It tells us that God desires that our lives of faith would produce the fruits of faith and the work of his ministers in calling for those fruits.  And it tells us of the inescapable judgment to come and the measure of that judgment which is Jesus Christ.   Jesus says that:

“A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out.

            From the very beginning the Lord showed he was a God of grace who loved mankind and sought in every way possible to call them back to fellowship.  When Adam and Eve sinned it was God who sought them out and God who forgave them and God who covered their shame. 

So it was throughout salvation history:  God showing himself again and again to be merciful and forgiving—saving Noah and his family- and setting the Israelite slaves free from Egypt- and bringing Judah out of exile in Babylon.  All of salvation history testifies to the Good News that the Lord is the God who saves. 

His motivation in saving us is love and his purpose in saving us is that man would live in fellowship with him—reflecting in their own lives his holiness and love.  He expects the fruits of faith to be shown in the lives of those he has saved.

Time and time again God sent his servants to his people asking for the fruits of faith that were rightfully his—time and time again he sought the good works and changed lives that he had a right to expect from the people he had saved—and time and time again he was disappointed.

And not only were the fruits not there—the people that he had saved rejected the servants he spent to speak in his name and mistreated them shamefully. 

This was the sad history of God’s ancient people the Jews but it is not just ancient history but our history too.  The Lord is still the God who saves and he is still the God who has a purpose for the lives of those he saves—that we would produce the fruits of faith.

And yet much too often those fruits are not there.  For many people sitting in pews, a lifetime of church attendance has not made them better people—it has not caused them to follow the Lord’s guidance—it has not made them different than the world around them.  Instead they have cloaked their evil in the self-righteousness of church membership.

Now you would think that at some point in time in salvation history God would have simply given up —at some time in our lives he would wash his hands of the whole sorry mess—but he didn’t and he doesn’t.  Instead, he gave the greatest gift of love so that lives could be changed for time and eternity.  Jesus said that the owner of the vineyard asked himself:  ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’

Can you imagine a love like that?  A love that, even when it is rejected again and again, would continue to be there, working for our salvation?  That is the love that God has for the world---even for those who reject his love—even for those who will not give him the fruits of a changed life.  It is a love that shows itself finally and fully in the gift of his Son named Jesus.  Surely that kind of gift—that kind of love—would be received in faith.  But it was not. 

When the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Jesus told this story on Tuesday of Holy Week.  He visited the temple one last time and mourned over a people who rejected God’s salvation.  Just a few days later he was condemned by the Jewish court and put to death outside the walls of Jerusalem just as he prophesied.

Jesus said that they would do this because they wanted the inheritance apart from the heir—in other words, they wanted the blessings of God apart from the Son—they wanted a life with God apart from the hard work of admitting that they were sinners who needed saving.

Jesus’ parable is not only the judgment on the Jews but a warning to us.  Life with God and the blessings of God come to us in only one way—and that is through Jesus—through the admission that we are sinners who deserve God’s wrath and who take refuge in God’s Son. 

But to reject the Son—to reject his salvation—to ignore his plea for the fruits of faith—is to incur the judgment of the Father who sent him.  Jesus asked them:

What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Surely not!”

            Throughout salvation history—and especially in his covenant with the people of Israel—God had heard these words time and time again!  I will destroy the world with water except those who take refuge on the ark.  Surely not!  I will destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  Surely not!  I will destroy the city of Jerusalem and my own temple.  Surely not! 

Despite the protests of his people—despite their lack of fear of God—he showed himself to be utterly faithful to his promises—whether to save or judge.  And so Noah was saved and the world condemned.  Lot and his family were saved and Sodom destroyed.     

Salvation history is the story of God’s love and his desire to see sinners saved from his wrath but it was also the story of his holiness and his refusal to abide with sin and his willingness to execute his wrath in time and eternity.  He had done it in the past and he would do it again.

Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed in 70 A.D. and so it lies in ruins to this day.  The majority of Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah and they will spend eternity in hell because they rejected God’s salvation.  God’s judgment—spoken by God’s Son—is real.

But so is his promise to make a place in his vineyard for others.  From the time that Jesus ascended into heaven and poured out his Spirit upon the church in 33 A.D. to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. – in those forty years--the kingdom of God was radically changed from what it had been for thousands of years.

It was no longer primarily Jews who were the tenants of God’s vineyard-- it was the Gentiles who, hearing of God’s salvation:  repented of their sins, and put their faith in Jesus and took their place in God’s kingdom.  It’s why we have a place in his kingdom today.

But the same words of warning about losing our place are also given to us and it does us no good to say “surely not!”  In fact, those words blind us to the truth that we need to continue in faith because our life in the kingdom is only through a true and living and fruitful faith in Jesus.  The Bible says that when the Jews said “surely not”:

Jesus looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written:  “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?  Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” 

            With a cornerstone you can build something true and lasting and solid upon it- or it can be an instrument of utter destruction for those it falls upon or those who trip over it.  The same exact stone—two very different results. That’s the way Jesus is.

He is the cornerstone of the church—the people of God are built upon his blood and righteousness—their own lives are eternal temples filled with the living God.  But he is also the One who will be the destruction of all who are not built upon him.

As with the Jews of old, so with the Christians of this day, there is always the temptation to build our life with God on something else than Jesus.  Perhaps it is the idea that we are better and more deserving than others.  Perhaps it is some self-chosen act of piety.  Perhaps it is all that we do for the church. 

Whenever we try to build our lives with God on anything else than Jesus, we reject Jesus and to reject Jesus is stand under his terrible judgment in time and eternity.  Jesus spoke these words so that even in that late hour the Jews could know that it was not too late—that there was still time for them to turn from their evil ways and produce the fruits of faith.  The Bible says:

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.

            The preaching of the law-like Jesus was doing in this parable-is an interesting thing.  God intends that it would break our hard hearts and lead us to acknowledge our guilt and repent of our sins and turn to Jesus in faith for forgiveness.  But there are those—like the religious leaders of that day—who reject it and the one who speaks it because it reveals a truth about them that they cannot bear to see—that they are not the holy, righteous people they claim to be.

            And refusing to acknowledge their sins and turn to God for forgiveness they become hardened in their sins.  It happened to Cain and Pharaoh and Judas—and it happened to the Jewish leaders who planned to put Jesus to death.  But it does not have to happen to us. 

Today is the day to confess that, yes, we have sinned but then to receive Christ’s forgiveness and begin to show the fruits of faith in our lives.  Amen.