Truth Taught-Jesus is the beloved Son who was sent by the Father to be rejected, suffer and die. He was rejected by evil men but vindicated by His Father. All who trust in Him will have everlasting life.
Pastoral Prayer
Last time, we saw the final text from Mark 11 where the Sanhedrin approach Jesus in the Temple to ask Him about His authority. Where did you get the authority to do the things You are doing? Our Lord in a brilliant move of omniscience asks them a question. It was regarding the baptism of John. Was it from heaven or from man. He caught them in His trap. They responded; we don’t know.
They knew if they said from heaven then they would be forced to affirm everything Jesus said. If they said from man then there would be an uproar among the people because they saw John the Baptist as a true prophet so they said, we don’t know.
The leadership of Judaism was very corrupt and out to destroy Jesus. They have been hunting Him down now for three years and He has sidestepped their traps all along. Our Lord knows the time is at hand and in two days He will be crucified.
It’s also time for these corrupt leaders to be exposed as criminals walking around as if righteous. It’s time for the cross and its time for the curtain to be pulled back so the world can see the reality of the corrupt of Judaism.
The story Jesus is going to tell will expose them for who they really are. Our Lord had one day in the Temple and He preached the Gospel to the people and exposed the Jewish leadership in front of everyone for who they really are. The people love Jesus and He teaches them truth and heals their diseases. His time is about up so He will expose these evil leaders for who they really are.
Please Stand…
Gracious and Glorious Father, this is Your word, give us eyes to see and ears to hear Your Word and Your Son Jesus Christ. Equip us through Your Word to love You more and to love others more, for Your glory…Amen.
Mark 12:1–12 (ESV)
12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“ ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
1. A Judgement Parable (12:1a)
12 And he began to speak to them in parables.
This parable had a purpose and it was to expose the planned attempt on Jesus’ own life. He was never seeking to bypass the cross because that’s why He came. He was incarnate so that He could die for the sins of His people. However, His goal here is to expose these evil religious men for who they really are.
While exposing them for the murderers they are, He also desires to bring about a response from all those who are also hearing this story. When the crowd hears this parable, they too are brought to a point of decision. They will see the wickedness of these leaders.
How does our Lord accomplish this amazing task…expose the Sanhedrin for who they are and cause the people to respond appropriately toward them? He forms a parable that is taken from another parable in the OT. I want to read that one first.
Isaiah 5:1–7 (ESV)
5 Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
2 He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
4 What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
6 I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, an outcry!
Israel has been compared to a vineyard. The idea is that God carried the choice vine from Egypt and planted it in the Promised Land, upon a fertile hill. He cleared out the rocks, the other nations. However, it did not produce choice fruit. The vine only produced sour and rotten fruit. God will destroy Judah and the City of Jerusalem. The Temple will also be destroyed. There will be nothing left except a few that were taken to Babylon into captivity. That’s the point of Isaiah’s parable
That is what is on the horizon for Judah during the writing of Isaiah.
Those religious leaders understood the Isaiah parable because they had learned from their youth. They knew its meaning.
Judaism was to be the dispenser of justice and righteousness. Those who were leaders were to be the godly teachers and lead the people toward God but instead they corrupted the people and led them away from God.
2. Jesus’ Parable About Israel and Their Rejection of the Son (12:1b-9)
“A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Our Lord takes the Isaiah parable and adjusts it for His own purposes. The wicked tenants are the Leaders of Judaism. They were entrusted with the care of God’s vineyard, the people of Israel. God, then is the Landowner who sent servants who are the prophets, time and again. John the Baptist being a prime example of a prophet sent by God and being treated shamefully. Then, of course, we see Jesus is the Son sent from the Father to Israel to collect the fruit that should belong to God, the Father but the tenants have taken over what is rightfully God’s.
So, what does the Owner of the vineyard do in our Lord’s parable? He destroys the tenants and gives the vineyard to others…the Gentiles.
The allusion to the Isaiah parable at the beginning and at the end is Jesus’ deliberate move to show those religious leaders what is about to happen to them after they do what they’re about to do to Him, the Owner’s Son.
The Sanhedrin rejected John the Baptist and now they are rejecting God’s last Messenger, His only Son. With this final rejection comes the transferring of the vineyard to the Gentiles. God is producing a new Israel who follows the true Messiah. All this will be accomplished in the death, burial and resurrection of the Son, Jesus Christ.
The Landowner sends all His servants one by one and they are mistreated and some are killed. Now, here’s where Jesus draws everyone into the story. He says, the Owner is now going to send His Son. If you’re staying with the story, this is where you say, NO!! Don’t do it, don’t send Your Son!! They will kill Him too!! I can image some in the crowd that day gasping when Jesus said that part.
6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’
3. The Landowner’s Purpose in Sending His Son (12:10-12)
10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“ ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
The Stone the builders rejected is of course the Lord Jesus. Here by quoting this text Psalm 118:22, Jesus is identifying Himself as the rejected Son sent by the Father to the vineyard.
The Stone Jesus Christ was rejected by the builders (Israel) and especially the leaders of Judaism. However, after His ultimate rejection dying on the cross, God has vindicated Him by raising Him from the dead. Now Jesus is the Cornerstone of the new Temple.
God will turn His Son’s seeming defeat into a great victory. This is exactly what we are told in Acts 4…
Acts 4:5–12 (ESV)
5 On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
God’s purpose in sending Jesus to His vineyard was to die at the hands of evil men. What looks like the defeat of Jesus and victory for Satan and those Religious leaders will, in fact, be their defeat and Jesus’ victory.
In Luke’s parallel passage, He shows us even more clearly what is happening. At the end of the story the religious leaders are saying surely not. May it never be. This was in response to the part about the tenants killing the Landowner’s beloved Son. They were declaring with very forceful language this will never happen! Yet, they are the very ones plotting Jesus, the beloved Son’s death.
4. Because the Beloved Son was Rejected and Killed, We Have Eternal Life
Isaiah sang at the beginning of his parable because he expected Judah to bring glory to God based on all the blessings they enjoyed. God had personally rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He had delivered them from their horrible bondage. He had planted them in the Promised Land and very fertile soil…a land flowing with milk and honey. He cleared out all the other pagan people. They were the choice vine. He built a fine watchtower in which to look over them…God is omniscient. Everything God did for Judah’s advantage so that they would produce good fruit never worked out. All they ever produced were sour grapes. All they produced was sin.
This is the picture of the Old Covenant. Apart from Christ, humanity will always fall short of the glory of God. Even with all the advantages such as Judah had, they still come up short.
Isaiah begins his song based on what he expected. He begins singing with joy in the great fruit from Judah. His singing stops very quickly, however, when he discovers that the bountiful sweet grapes never were manifested and only sour grapes came forth.
I want to encourage you today that in Jesus Christ, God has planted all of us in just the right spot. Our roots grow deep in Jesus wherever God has us and we are producing, not sour grapes but sweet fruit because we are in Christ.
Left to ourselves we would be no different than those in Judah. Left to ourselves all we could ever produce would be sour grapes. Even if we were planted in perfect soil with perfect rainfall, we would still produce sour grapes. Why?
There are none righteous no not one.
By faith, we are planted in Christ. In Christ, God has us in the right place in life. He has us exactly where He wants us to produce love for Jesus and love for others.
We can sing… My beloved had a vineyard
Our song continues and does not ever stop. Our beloved is Jesus and we are His vineyard. Apart from Christ we cannot produce anything God desires. We have all the advantages in Christ.
I pray we see our wonderful position in Christ. He is all for us that God requires. We have a wonderful heritage and God has planted us on a fruitful hill in Christ and in Christ you are producing sweet grapes for the glory of God.
In this life we may have trials and struggles but never forget where we are planted…our roots are in Christ. Being in Christ we must still seek to be fruitful.
We are called to produce sweet grapes in our children, family, friends and those around us. Seek to be the sweet fruit yourself. Love Christ and praise God for where He has planted you. Never forget that by faith, our roots grow deep into Christ our Savior and we will not be moved.
Resources Used:
https://www.gty.org/sermons/41-60/the-rejected-cornerstone
Isaiah 5:1-7 by CH Spurgeon
Mark by William Lane
Mark by James Edwards
Words of grace
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