1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
2 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.
3 And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.
4 And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.
5 And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.
6 Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.
7 But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.'
8 And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
9 What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.
10 And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner:
11 This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
12 And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.
Introduction
There once was a little boy who stayed with his grandmother and she sent him to church. She was too old to go herself, but when he returned home she always wanted a report on the sermon. And especially was she interested in the boy remembering the preacher’s text. He went to church one Sunday and it was as cold as a refrigerator in that church. He could hardly concentrate.
The preacher preached that day on the text, “Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen.” And he kept trying to think of that text that the preacher repeated a dozen times or more—“Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen.” It was so cold he could hardly do that and when he got home his grandmother said, “Well, grandson, what did the preacher preach on today?” He said, “Grandmother, he preached on the subject, ‘Many Were Cold but Some Were Frozen.’”
The first 12 verses of the book of Mark 12, make up one of the parables of Jesus. A parable, you know, is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Jesus had no stenographers to follow him around and write down all of his words. There were no TV cameras to catch what he had to say on tape and play it back. So he had to tell stories that were down to earth, that people could remember and could retain the message. And those stories in the New Testament are called parables, earthly stories from everyday life, things people knew about but they had a tremendous message behind them. And we are looking at one of those parables in Mark 12 today.
Jesus said that there was a certain man who planted a vineyard and he did everything that was necessary to make that vineyard as productive and as useful as possible. He put a hedge around it and that word hedge literally means “fence,” perhaps a stone fence to protect it, to keep the animals out, to keep thieves out. He also dug a hole for a wine vat to collect the juice pressed out of the grapes.
He built some towers and in those towers they would store the grapes after they had harvested them and the workmen would also sleep in those towers so the grapes and the workmen were kept safe. He did everything that was necessary to make this vineyard a good productive fruitful vineyard.
And then when he had done that, he let the vineyard out to some husbandman. Now that little phrase “he let the vineyard out” literally means that he rented it out or he leased it out. He let some tenant farmers work his vineyard. Now that’s a practice that has been going on since the beginning of recorded history. One man would own a piece of land that he did not want to work himself. And so he would let it out to tenant farmers and they would either pay him rent in money or they would pay him a certain percentage of what they produced. Perhaps they would work the land for half or perhaps for a quarter of the proceeds.
In the passing of time the grapes ripened and they were harvested and he should have received whatever he and the husbandman had agreed upon. But he was in a far country. And they probably thought he is not coming back. So they did not send him his share of the produce. So this man sent one of his servants to collect the rent, to get that which was rightly his. And these husbandman took that servant and they beat him and sent him on his way. They thought probably this would discourage the owner from trying to collect any more rent. But he sent another servant to them. And this time they stoned that servant and they wounded him. And in time the master sent another and then another and another. And they shamefully treated all of these servants and even killed some of them. He owned the vineyard and he had the right to a fair return on that land. But these tenants were acting as though they were owners. They were acting as though this vineyard belonged to them. And they seemed to resent the fact that the owner expected a profit and fruit from the vineyard.
Finally, the owner of the vineyard said, “I will send my son, my beloved son. Surely they will reverence him. Surely they will know that he has all of my authority.” But instead of receiving his son and respecting his son’s authority, the tenants rather said to themselves, “Let’s take him. He is the heir and we will kill him and the vineyard will belong to us.” So they killed him and they threw him out of the vineyard.
Now at that point Jesus speaks what I believe is the key verse in this parable in verse 9: “What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.” In a part of this parable Jesus is speaking prophetically. And so he continues with this: “And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?”
When Jesus had finished this parable, those who listened to him that day knew that he was talking to them and about them. And they wanted to take him and kill him right then. But because of the people who were watching and because of his immense popularity, they could not do it. And Jesus walked away. Now what is the meaning of this parable? What was Jesus trying to say to us in this simple story that was very familiar to people in that day and time?
In the story the man who planted the vineyard is God. He is the one who owns all things. The vineyard itself represents Israel. That’s a very common analogy in the Old Testament. Isaiah speaks of it and Paul speaks of it in the book of Romans. Many times the nation of Israel is referred to as the vineyard of God. They are God’s people, compared to a vineyard because he expects his people to be productive. He expects his people to be fruitful.
The husbandman, the people who were tenant farmers in the vineyard, represent the leaders of Israel. It was their responsibility to bring Israel to her full potential by teaching the word of God, by leading her in the ways of God to bring her to be a fruitful nation. A group of people who revere God, a group of people who repented of their sins, a group of people who walked in righteousness. It was the responsibility of the leaders to bring the nation to its full potential. But the tragedy of the story is that these leaders, instead of acting like they were servants of God, they acted as though they owned the vineyard. And they resented any effort on the part of the owner to get a fair return to collect the fruit from his vineyard. And so they shamefully treated his servant.
The servants represent the prophets. The prophets came to Israel again and again, trying to remind them of the need for righteousness, the need to revere God, the need to repent of their sins, and many of them were treated shamefully. Jeremiah came and they treated him shamefully. Ezekiel spoke the word of the Lord and Amos did, and on and on. The prophets came one after another, and they were treated shamefully by the nation Israel. Finally, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son, and the son in this parable whom the owner sends his dearly beloved represents Jesus Christ himself.
Israel was not the fruitful nation it ought to be. Israel had become selfish. Israel had turned inward. Israel had become arrogant and proud and was not producing the fruit that God wanted from her. And so God sent his only begotten Son. But did Israel recognize Jesus as the Son of God? Did Israel bow before his Lordship, revere his authority, respond to his teaching? No. Instead they took Jesus by force, just as they did in this parable. And they crucified him, they killed him.
Now as Jesus was telling the story, at this point he became prophetic. He was saying that I am the Son of God. And you are going to treat me shamefully and take my life. And I shall be killed as the son of this owner was killed.
Then Jesus thinks about the resurrection, for he changes analogies from the vineyard to the building of the building. And he quotes from Psalm 118 and says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief and the cornerstone of the building and it is marvelous in our eyes.” Now that psalm is quoted four other times in the New Testament. It is one of the favorite quotations of those New Testament apostles as they declare that Jesus who was rejected by the nation Israel was raised from the dead and has become the chief cornerstone in the kingdom of God and in the church the living God. It is foretelling his resurrection. Jesus knew that he would die on the cross and that he would be raised from the dead.
As he told this story, when he got to the point of the people rejecting the son of the owner, Jesus said, “What shall that master do to you who have rejected his son?” He shall come and destroy you and he shall give the vineyard to another. He was warning Israel of the consequences of rejecting the Son of God. To reject Jesus is to reject God. And to reject God is to invite rejection and judgment in your own life. Israel was the people of God and they were intended to be a fruitful people to produce for God and they had become selfish. They had turned inward, they acted as though they were owners instead of tenants, and they had failed in their essential mission. And when they failed in their essential mission and rejected the Son of God, God rejected them. And he gave his work into the hands of the Gentiles.
The parable is teaching us about Israel’s rejection and failure to fulfill God’s mission. And it stands as a warning for all people of all times that if we fail in God’s purpose for us, then he will lay us aside and he will find someone else to do his work.
What troubles me today is that we as the people of God today might fail in our essential mission and purpose. As God expected Israel to be fruitful, so he expects us to be fruitful. As God has put us here for a purpose, he put Israel here for a purpose.
And God has every right and every intent of receiving fruit from our labor. But if we become selfish, if we turn inward, if we act as though we were owners instead of stewards serving him and seeking to build his kingdom, then we invite the same kind of judgment and the same kind of rejection that Israel came to in that day.
What is the fruit that God wants from his people today? It is the same fruit that he wanted from Israel. God’s purpose and God’s plans have not changed. He has simply changed in his approach. When Israel would not become a productive vineyard, he turned to the Gentiles and now he is expecting us to be his productive vineyard. And God wants certain fruits from your life and from mine and the warning is, “If you do not produce the fruit, then God will find someone who will.”
The Israel of old was entrusted with the oracles of God. When others were in darkness, they were in light. When others wandered without any sense of direction, God told them what to do. They had the prophets and they had the law and God blessed Israel as few other nations that had ever existed on the face of the earth have been blessed. And in the light of all of their blessings and a clear knowledge of what they were to do, they did not produce for God. God has blessed us. We, like Israel of old, have the oracles of God. We have his word. We have means of spreading that word and doing his work that Israel never dreamed of. We cannot possibly believe that if we fail as they failed that God shall overlook it. We must know that he expects something out of us and if we are not faithful to that charge, God will lay us aside and find somebody who will do his work as it ought to be done.
What fruit does God expect from us? There are four fruits that he has always expected from all of his people.
1. The fruit of a holy life. A long time ago Micah the prophet said, “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?” (Micah 6:6) And the answer that he gave himself that we are “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).
Micah was contrasting a religion that was essentially ceremonial, that had nothing to do with everyday life, with that kind of religion that God wants for every one of us. And that is the kind that shows itself in the business world and in our home life and in our neighborhood and in our social life, that kind of religion that affects a man’s conduct, and that issues forth into holy righteous living. It is always been true that God puts sincerity and genuine living before ritual and ceremony.
David, who sinned against the Lord, came in Psalm 51 to make that great confession to him. And he said in that psalm, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it.” What God delights in is a broken and a contrite heart. What God wants is sincerity in our lives, in our conduct, that issues forth into righteous living in daily life. Paul put it this way: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:1-2).
He wants us to present ourselves as a holy sacrifice. And the writer of Hebrews warns us that there is a holiness without which no man shall see God. And I’m here to say to you, that as a congregation and as individuals God expects holy living out of us. We cannot live as we please or talk as we please or go where we please and have the blessings of God upon us. Ever and always his people are to be holy people because God himself is holy. We need to search our hearts individually and as a congregation ask whether we are walking and talking and thinking and acting in holiness. That is the fruit that God wants from us. And if we do not produce, God will lay us aside as he laid Israel aside. God’s purposes will be triumphant just as his Son was after the crucifixion. And if he has to find someone else he will do it.
2. Loving fellowship. God wants not only the fruit of holy living but the fruit of a loving fellowship. From the beginning God’s people have needed to be together. We need not only God, we need one another. And we need that fellowship of believers. And so he brought his people together in the Old Testament and he has continued that through the church throughout the ages.
The psalmist talking about that kind of loving fellowship that binds people together said, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1) Unity and union are not the same thing. Two things can be tied together, but that does not mean that there is unity between them. Unity and being unanimous are not the same thing. People do not have to see eye to eye in order to walk arm in arm. Two men can be brothers without being identical twins. There is room for differences. But unity comes when there is a common commitment to a purpose that is greater than your opinion or my opinion. And we surrender some of our opinions so that together we might do that which is most important the work of God. And ever and always the work of God goes forward most effectively in an atmosphere of love and unity among the people of God.
Jesus said “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). The one distinguishing that ought to characterize God’s people is that kind of love. It is not our orthodoxy in belief, it is our faithfulness in attendance, it is not our generosity in giving, it is our love. And unless that is in a fellowship, God’s work cannot issue forth like it ought to. And it keeps the church and the people from being as fruitful as they ought to be. God wants it. God expects it. He demands it of us. The fruit of holy living, the fruit of loving unity.
3. Service. He wants and expects the fruit of humble, sacrificial service. We are to have a servant’s heart. The disciples were arguing one time about who is greatest in the kingdom of God. And Jesus said, “In the unbelieving world, the one who is greatest is the one who rules over people. And the more people he rules over, the greater he is.” The unbelieving world has a pyramid type of society and the closer you get to the top, the more people there are under you, the greater you are. But Jesus said, “In my kingdom it shall not be so. In my kingdom the pyramid is inverted and the greatest among you are those who are the servants of all.” Jesus said, “In my kingdom the top is in reality at the bottom. The great ones are those who serve other people. And the more you serve in God’s sight, the greater you are.”
Jesus not only said that, Jesus practiced that. So, one day in the last week of his life, he met with his disciples in an upper room and while they were bickering about positions in the kingdom, jockeying for who was going to be at his right hand and at his left hand, Jesus took a towel and girded himself with it, and took a basin of water and walked among those disciples and he untied their sandals and one by one Jesus washed their feet. That was the work of a slave. While they were arguing about being prime ministers in his cabinet, Jesus was washing their feet.
And when he finished, he said, “Do you realize what happened here today? If I be Lord and Master, and I have washed your feet, then you ought to wash one another’s feet.” He sat the example. He was willing to stoop and serve. And he was saying, “That’s the spirit that ought to characterize the people of God in any age.”
When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet he was not giving us an ordinance that we should duplicate as the Lord’s Supper or baptism. And one of the reasons we know that is that it is only mentioned one other time in all the rest of the New Testament. They talk about the Lord’s Supper and about baptism again and again in Acts and in the Epistles, but only once is there a reference to washing feet, which indicates that it was not intended to be an ordinance to be repeated again and again. He is not talking about literally washing people’s feet. He is talking about that attitude of heart and mind that makes a person willing to be a servant.
As God’s people we are not to strut around trying to be tinhorn dictators, we should not be trying to throw our weight around and be pyramid climbers. It is our responsibility to take the place of humble service and Jesus is saying, “That is the fruit that I want from you. And if you want to be great in my sight, then learn to wash feet. Learn to be a servant.” That was the fruit he wanted from Israel. She was chosen to be a servant nation. But Israel became proud and arrogant and turned inward and forgot about that service.
4. Evangelism. Jesus wants from us the fruit of a holy life and the fruit of a loving fellowship, and the fruit of a servant’s heart. Then, finally, he wants the fruit of a fervent evangelism. You know that God expected Israel to be a missionary nation. He never chose Israel just for herself, he chose Israel that she might in turn be a nation of priests, a holy nation to bring others unto God. But she quickly forgot that.
Case in point, Jonah the prophet. God came to him and said, “I want you to go to Nineveh, that pagan city, the capital city of your enemy, and preach. And if you preach Nineveh will repent.” Jonah could have cared less about Nineveh repenting. In fact it would have overjoyed him for the judgment of God to fall upon Nineveh. He didn’t know anything about the heart of God. The heart of God that beats for the souls of all men and longs for every nation to know him and follow him and serve him. Jonah missed all of that. Jonah rebelled against God and God dealt with Jonah severely until he realized that it was his responsibility to go and preach to all people.
God has not put us here just to enjoy the fruits of the vineyard ourselves, they are not here just for our plucking and our enjoying, they are here that we might serve God with them and through them. And unless we become productive in winning people to Christ, our whole world of Christ, then we court disaster and the rejection of God himself. Israel failed to be fruitful and God rejected her. And if we fail to be fruitful, we invite the same kind of rejection. The challenge then is that we realize that we are but servants, we are but tenants, we are but stewards, we are here to serve him. We are to build his kingdom and to give ourselves tirelessly to that work.
The ultimate rejection is to reject his Son, Jesus. You see Jesus understood that he was the Son of God. The servants came and they were beaten and killed and shamefully treated; then came the Son. And Jesus said, “I am the Son of God.” Jesus knew that he would be crucified. He said they will kill the son and cast him out of the vineyard. The crucifixion did not take him by surprise. He faced it squarely and accepted it as the will of God.
He died knowing that it would happen. But he also knew that the stone that the builders rejected would become the chief and the cornerstone and that though he died on the cross and was buried in the tomb he would be raised from the dead on the third day.
Israel sealed her doom that day when she rejected the Son. The ultimate rejection, the sin of all sins, is to reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the Son of God who is come to reap that which rightfully belongs to the Father. God deserves your highest and my highest, our best. He deserves righteousness and repentance, and reverence. And if we do not give it to him, then we court his judgment upon us.
The question of Pilate is the question of every man: “What shall you do with Jesus who is called the Christ?” What we need to do is to recognize him as God’s Son, to reverence and follow him, and then to allow him to work in our lives, to make us fruitful for God and for his kingdom.