Amen. Please be seated. If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 21. This morning verses 33 to 46 as we continue in the Gospel of Matthew and now we come to the second of three back-to-back parables that Jesus teaches in light of his rejection by the chief priests and elders and Pharisees.
Last week we heard the first of the three parables, the story of a man with two boys who asked them to go and work in the family vineyard. One said yes, but never did. The other, well, one said yes but never did. He's like the leaders of Israel who were all talk and no walk rejecting God's Messiah and salvation.
The other son said no, but then later changed his mind and repented. He's like the Jesus says like the text collectors and the prostitutes who enter the kingdom. They responded to the preaching of John. Those sinners, they were.
They knew it. And John, the Baptist held out hope in the Messiah and so they turned and trusted the Messiah. Well, now today we come to another story of God's vineyard. A parable Jesus speaks against those who in just a few short days.
Remember, we're in Passover week. We've been through Palm Sunday. It's now Tuesday. In just a few short days, Jesus will be arrested.
He'll be beaten. He'll take him outside the city walls of Jerusalem and crucify him. So let's hear the word of God. And may God give us a soft and receptive heart to its teaching.
Let's pray. Father, in heaven we ask, even as we're about to hear your word, that Jesus would be lifted high and exalted as King of Kings among us and Savior of sinners, the lover of our soul. And we ask Lord that we know not, you would teach us and what we have not, you would give to us and what we are not that you would make us in His name and for His glory, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Now let me invite you to hear the word of God from Matthew chapter 21 beginning at verse 33. Here another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.
When the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. And again, he sent other servants more than the first and they did the same to them. 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 have his inheritance.
And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore 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 let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons. 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 it. It is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces.
And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. When the chief priests of the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet. Amen.
This is God's word. May he cut our hearts with it. What's the meaning of each feature of this parable? And what does it teach us?
Well, the landowner in the parable is clearly God. The vineyard is Israel. The tenant farmers in the vineyard are those chief priests and elders and Pharisees who are to tend the vineyard of God. And the servants are sent by the landowner.
Well, those are the prophets that God has sent over time and over years to his people. And most importantly, the son of the landowner is Jesus. That's the basic story, how it overlaps the true reality. What does it mean?
Well, God's care for his people, his vineyard. And it shows his kindness and sending prophets to bring his word to his people. And it shows the wickedness of their mistreatment of his prophets and then of his very own son. And yet it shows also God's patience with them.
But no less truly, it reveals the justice of his judgments. And so it calls upon us to welcome God's son, the true Messiah, the King of the Kingdom, and to bear the fruit of his kingdom in our own true repentance. Now that's a mouthful. Let's unpack that a bit.
Let me highlight four or five things that we can learn from this very sobering and solemn parable. First, don't overlook the diligent care of God for his people. That's in verse 33. Here another parable, there was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.
So here's this man. He's obviously wealthy. He's dedicated a parcel of land to a vineyard that he planted it with vines. But more than that, he put a wine press in it with a vat to capture the Jews so the grapes wouldn't need to be transported elsewhere.
So there wouldn't be any loss or theft along the way, but they could be harvested and immediately pressed and made into good wine. And he built a wall around this vineyard to keep out animals and any thieves who might walk by and casually seek to steal. And he put a watchtower in the vineyard, obviously for the comfort and safety of the watchkeepers who could defend it from the thieves. We could also watch for fires and things of that nature.
The vineyard itself, of course, is a picture of Israel. And I say that because this was a well-known analogy for the Israelites. In fact, the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 5, I mean, listen to where Jesus got this notion, this parable. Let me sing for my beloved Isaiah 5, 1.
My love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and 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. In the number 7 for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. And the men of Judah are his pleasing planting.
So what we have here is the picture of the diligent care of God for his people. Nothing has been overlooked. Everything has been provided for for their fruitfulness, for life, for growth, for health, for safety, for defense, for care taking. And he's placed in his vineyard.
Well, these laborers or ministers as Calvin pointed out, he sent to them prophet after prophets. And at the end, he sent to them his own son. See, the diligent care God has for his people. But then by contrast, would you see the cruel and violent and foolish nature of sinners spent on rebellion?
I mean, just look at verses 34 to 39. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants to beat one, killed another, and stoned another. And again, he sent other servants more than the first.
And they did the same to them. Now, who are these who were so mistreated? These are the prophets of God. Men like Elijah, you remember who was driven into the wilderness as Jezebel killed the prophets?
At one point, he was buried under a hundred dead prophets, seeking his own safety in numbers. Zechariah, the son of Jeholida, the priest, stoned to death by command of King Joash in the courts of the house of the Lord, right near the altar. Or think of the prophet Jeremiah who was beaten and put in prison by irate officials outraged at his message. Or think most recently as we've seen, John the Baptist, the greatest of all who came before him, who was first imprisoned and then beheaded.
You know, the writer of Hebrews will later say of all those who've been mistreated and tortured for serving God. It says, some suffered mocking and flogging. And even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned.
They were sawn in two. They were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats. Testitude afflicted and is treated of whom the world was not worthy.
The world was not worthy of the servants of God. And Jesus says, and worldly leaders in Israel killed them. That's how the people so uniquely blessed by the Lord of old, the people of old in their generations, treated God and his messengers. God planted a beautiful vineyard in Israel.
But alas, the problem for the vineyard was within. Some of you will know the movie by M night. I don't know how to say this last time. It's a movie called the village and Amish style sort of community that lives cut off from the outside world by by going to the woods.
And in the woods, they're told, are these dangerous creatures. They have an uneasy truth with the creatures as long as they don't go into the woods, the creatures leave them alone. But the truth is that the dangerous creatures are the creation of the elders of the community who use the fear of the creatures to keep the people within the village. Why?
Because they fear the influence of the world upon their religious community. So they cut off the world and they separated the world. But what they discovered in their community, and sorry if you hadn't seen it, but it's been a lot of years, what they discovered in their community that evil still exists and it exists within, they brought it with them when they sought to hide themselves from the world. Their own sinful hearts and lives were a constant source of trouble and temptation.
And that is so often how it is. Often the church says, you know, our troubles are those outside the community. And the problem today is the world. Well, there is a devil and the world as it is set in opposition to God is a problem and a source of temptation.
But the world and the devil are not the only enemies of God and the only problems the church faces. We must never forget that not only the world and the devil, but also the flesh is our enemy. The sinful nature of each one of us is our problem. And too often the enemy of the church is not the enemy outside, but the enemy within.
That is the corrupt leadership of hypocrites who don't think they need Jesus to save them. They reject Jesus as their Messiah. And imagine they're doing just fine without Him and they tell you you are too. If you don't think that happens across communities that claim to be Christian churches, you're not paying attention.
The best thing for the church of course is when her leaders know that they are the chief of sinner and most in need of Jesus. And then having been graced by Him, they're in the best position to show us God's grace too. So Jesus here is telling a parable about what the chief priests and elders in Israel are doing. And they're the problem in Israel.
They've rejected the prophets before them. They've rejected the message of John the Baptist and now they are rejecting the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. And they are cruel and they are violent, but that is also they are deluded. These tenets plan to and do kill not merely the servants but the Son.
Verse 37, finally, the owner of the vineyard sent his son to them saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenant saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Now why do they think killing the son is going to abound to their own enrichment? Well, as others have noticed, they have apparently reasoned that after the servants have been assaulted and murdered, if the landowner was still alive, he wouldn't send his son, would he? But the appearance of the son is perhaps suggestive to them that the son's father is gone and the son is the heir and the son owns the vineyard and they then imagine to themselves if we kill him. Well, everybody knows we've been working the land.
Everybody knows that this is where we labor. Surely we have a claim to it if the owner and his son are gone. Now, of course, no just court would give them the land knowing they've murdered the owner. But maybe they think they can get away with it.
Maybe they think they can bribe a judge. The point is that Jesus is saying these tenant farmers who are the spiritual leaders of Israel have forgotten that the vineyard is the Lord and it's not theirs and they will never manage to twist it out of his hand and into theirs. And so instead of bowing the knee to the son because they're deluded, they have exalted themselves to God's place. How foolish is the sinful heart of man?
How delusional? What about us? Do we not ourselves have a sinful disposition? And at times, have we not seen in our own heart a kind of cruelty or a propensity to violence, certainly foolishness, maybe a hard-hearted rejection of the Savior and God's rule?
Do we not ourselves stare in the face of tremendous privileges from God in all his diligent care of us and provision for us and in bringing us the message of reconciliation through his son? And have we not also said to him? No. No.
I will not listen to you. I do not trust you. I will not serve you. I'd rather you were gone and the vineyard could be bind to do with it whatever I want.
Is that not the story of our hearts? That's the story of the world. That's the story of Adam and all his posterity, what then can change our sinful hearts? Well, take it from an old African slave trader who had a blasphemous mouth and lived a licentious life that would shock you if you read it who could say later after the Lord graced him, amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved the wretch like me.
You know the name John Newton. He said this in another poem, In Evil Long I Took the Light, Un-odded by Shane Orfear, Till a new object struck my sight and stopped my wild career. I saw one hanging on a tree in agony and blood who fixed his languid eyes on me as near his cross I stood. Sure, never to my latest breath can I forget that look.
It seemed to charge me with his death, though not a word he spoke. My conscience felt and owned the gilts and plunged me in despair. I saw my sins his blood had spilt and helped to nail him there. A second look he gave which said, I freely all forgive.
This blood is for thy ransom paid. I die that thou may live. Thus, while his death, my sin displays in all its darkest hue such as the mystery of grace it seals my pardon to with pleasing grief and mournful joy. My spirit now is filled that I should such a life destroy yet live by him I killed.
Have you stood by that cross? Have you seen that look? It's the look of a great loving tender gracious Savior. Your sins put him to death upon the tree.
But his love put him to death upon the tree. His love for sinners. What a privilege to hear the gospel. If we hard our hearts against God's Word, against God's Son, then where are we?
We're standing not at the foot of the cross in awe and worship and thankfulness. We're standing with the chief priests and the elders and the Pharisees, unawed by shame or fear. Our shame, our what ought to be fear. Yet he loved us.
And so I ask you do you know and own your need for his forgiveness and his grace. J.C. Ryle writes, men never saw God face to face but once when Jesus became a man and lived on earth. They saw him holy, harmless, undefiled, going about doing good.
Yet they wouldn't have him. Rebelled against him and at last killed him. And he draws this lesson. Let's dismiss from our minds the idea that there's an innate good in our hearts.
Let's put away the common notion that seeing and knowing what is good is enough to make a man a Christian. The great experiment has been made in the instance of the Jewish nation. Nothing but the spirit of God can change the heart. We must be born again.
We must be born from above. We must have the spirit of God and lighten our eyes in the knowledge of Christ. Give us a new heart, a changed heart, a warm heart to Christ. Oh, may the spirit of God enlighten the eyes of our hearts in the knowledge of Christ.
That's the second thing. Then notice thirdly God's extravagant patience with Israel's leaders. There are details here that induce some skeptics to say there's no way Jesus told this story because no one would believe it. I mean no one can believe it.
It's totally unreasonable. No landowner would have acted this way. We might say. He sent servant after servant and they were mocked and beaten and killed and stoned.
Nobody's going to send their son, they say. But that's exactly the point. God did send his son because God is utterly different than how you and I would act against such vile, cruel, violent enemies. No mere human landowner would have done that.
And that's the point. What would you have done? He would have put those, well as they themselves said, those wretches to a miserable death. What would you and I do if, well, if we've been in this situation and I suppose we'd have sent in the troops.
We'd have gathered up our own private militia perhaps and marched on those cold-blooded murderers and responded in kind. Or at least I think most of us would have thought that's what I'd like to do. Surely I'd like them to get their comeuppance, to have them paid back in kind. I for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
How dare they? Let's see them put to death. But you know what God did? Every time there was a rebellion against his prophets whom he sent to his people over the years and they killed the prophets.
You know what God did? He didn't heap stones on the people and kill them too. He sent them more prophets and more prophets. Yes, to rebuke them.
But why would you keep sending prophets to rebuke unless it's because you love them? Because you care about their well-being. You care about their soul. If all you want is their death and destruction.
You do a sneak attack. You send an assassin. You just take them out. But God continued to send to his people, his prophets.
And finally he sent his own son. What does that tell you about the patience? The extravagant patience of God with sinners. I'm going to touch you much.
Then notice, fourthly, the just judgment of God against those who reject his Messiah. It's very clear in verses 40 and 41. Jesus, what's the question to that? When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?
They said to him, he will put those righteous to him miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons. Now notice of course what Jesus has done here. Once again he has brought his audience into the story and made them a part of the story. And this case by the story he's told, he's actually elicited from them the the justice of their own judgment.
They approve of the punishment that they deserve. I mean he accomplishes this brilliantly. It's no surprise that he'd been done before by one of his own prophets. Nathan you remember after well King David had taken the wife of another man, even one of his mighty man, one of his closest companions, trusted warriors.
David who had sought to cover up his involvement in her pregnancy, who then sent this man out to be killed by his enemies and not protected by his fellow soldiers. And you know when Nathan the prophet went to him and told him, well he told him a story. Do you remember the story? He told him the story of a poor man who had a small family and a small little cottage, modest of means and a little lamb.
And that little lamb had lived with him many years and had been treated by them like a family pet. It was so dear to them. They flew out of his own hand, sat in his lap like a little dog and her cat I guess if you're cat person. And there was a rich man who wanted to throw a party and instead of butchering one of his own lambs, he stole the lamb from the poor man.
And David heard this story from Nathan the prophet and his anger is kindled against the rich man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die. And he shall restore the lamb forefold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, you are the man.
And David was cut to the heart of course. Having indicted himself, having declared his own guilt, having pronounced his own just sentence. Well so too have these religious leaders. They know what their rebellion truly deserves.
These wretches should be put to a wretched death. These bad men should come to a bad end. And this kind of knowledge is actually part of the horror of hell. Do you know that those who suffer the just judgment of God in hell will know that this is what they have chosen and this is indeed what they deserve for the rebellion against the king.
So then fifthly, we must embrace the Messiah by faith and bear the fruit of true repentance. Notice in verses 42 to 44, Jesus doesn't just leave them there with that hanging, you know. What does he say? Well he quotes from Psalm 118 and it's in verse 42.
Have you never read the scriptures and he makes that quote. Now actually we've actually recently in our study, early in Matthew, heard a quote from Psalm 18 previously on Palm Sunday or that is on the Palm Sunday that Jesus was there crying out as the children did. Hosanna to the son of David blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Psalm 18 was on the hearts and minds of the people traditionally yearly at the Passover.
And the children worship Jesus, the son of David. And Jesus goes part of that same psalm to explain his parable. He says, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone or the capstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
And of course it refers to the rejection of the cornerstone by the builders. The very foundation stone of the building, the one that sets the whole edifice in place gives its proper orientation, sets the level of the foundation and the right angle of the quarters. These builders have rejected in rejecting him, the Messiah. And Jesus is appealing in verse 44 to the stone about which the prophet Daniel spoke in Daniel chapter two.
You may remember, we'll notice the language of 43 and 44. Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit and the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. In Daniel chapter two, Daniel saw a vision of a stone cut out from a mountain by no human hand and it broke in pieces the iron and the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold which represented the empires of the world and it struck them, says Daniel, and it crushed them and became a great mountain that filled the earth.
Jesus is saying, you can go ahead and oppose me. You can go ahead and arrest me. You can kill me. It will not hinder my church.
It will not be my ultimate demise. It won't stop me from building the church, but it will be, if you don't repent, deadly to you. As another noted, there's an old rabbinic saying that goes like this, if a pot falls on a rock, woe to the pot. And if a rock falls on a pot, woe to the pot.
Either way, woe to the pot. It's crushed either way. If you stumble over Christ as the Messiah, woe to you. If you oppose him, woe to you.
Because his kingdom will be established and it will fill the earth and you need to be in it and not outside of it. You need to belong and not stand against it. Isn't it interesting here though? I do think perhaps that Jesus is not really teaching them that the Messiah, the cornerstone, is the true plum line of the building.
But also the plum line of God's justice. So he has in a way subtly drawn them back perhaps from a kind of vigilante justice or a personal retribution that they intend for him over perceived wrongs by him. Who is this upstart whipper snapper saying all this stuff against us? No.
In fact, it may be he has just provoked them to seek what is just. That is a civil trial, an ecclesiastical trial, not merely to secretly put him to death, but to do so openly publicly. And what they think will be justly in the courts though we know it was a kangaroo court and a farce. And so even here Jesus prompts his enemies to do his will even as they wicked as they are wickedly go about it.
But he invites them to consider who he is as the cornerstone and the danger they're in if they don't embrace him. But also not only the judgment they deserve, but notice that verses 41 to 43 in other consequences, the vineyard will be taken from them and given to others. Jesus is pointing there to the inclusion of the Gentiles in the kingdom of God. There are those in Israel who reject the Messiah, yet God has his people everywhere and the gospel will go to all the nations of the world.
And people from every tribe in Tongue and Nation and language will belong to the kingdom. And so they have one of two choices. They can either be part of the kingdom and be blessed in it or they can oppose it. And Jesus says be crushed by the stone of the kingdom.
And so let's just be clear about this. When a people or a tribe or a tongue or a nation or a language reject the Messiah in their own generation, God may justly take from them the good news of the gospel and give it to others who will hear. And so often the history of the world demonstrates that is just exactly what he does as the gospel moves from one place to another, from one nation to another. So what should we be?
We should be a people who receive it, who welcome the Messiah, who repent of our sins and bear the fruit of the vineyard, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Let us not be like the chief priests and the elders and the Pharisees in verses 45 and 46 who heard the parables. They received he was speaking about them and they still sought to arrest him because they wanted to be done with him. So to conclude, do you see in this the diligent care of God for his people and the terrible sinfulness of man and yet the extravagant patience of God and the centrality of God sending his son in the awfulness of a judgment that awaits those who reject him and our need ourselves to repent and trust in the Messiah for salvation and so bear the fruit.
Well, let me ask you this. Do you feel helpless in that? I mean, do you feel helpless even to believe and to repent? Well, you are.
By nature because of sin, you are helpless, but Jesus delights to help the helpless and Jesus himself says this as we close, inviting you to call upon him. He says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you abide in me and I and you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing but you trust in him and all will be well.
Let's pray. Father, convert the unconverted. Grant new hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit. Help us to see Jesus.
Help us to trust in him. Grant that we would, in his name I pray, amen. Amen. Let's stand together and say.