Study inMark’s Gospel

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Rebel TenantsChap 11v27-12v12

Presentation 37

Presentation 37

IntroductionHave you ever played the game of forfeits? In the course of the game if you fail to answer a question correctly, then then you are required to pay a forfeit. It may be the singing of a song or, the repetition of a nursery rhyme. It tends to be something trivial and often mildly embarrassing!

The passage before us takes us into the realm of forfeit. But this is no trivial game and the forfeit paid underlines the seriousness of refusing to submit to God's rule.

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Authority Revealed And ChallengedJesus’ bold entry in kingly majesty into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his subsequent cleansing of the temple had a profoundly disturbing effect upon the religious community. They began to ask, 'Who does he think he is, what gives him the right...?'

In reply, Jesus put a simple question to them concerning John the Baptist. 'What do you think of that preacher, and his preaching?' John’s message exposed men's sin and called them to repentance. Large numbers, were convinced that John was God's prophet, and had publicly repented.

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Authority Revealed And ChallengedHowever, the religious leaders resisted John's ministry of repentance. Protecting their religious reputation was more important than responding to God’s voice. That is not uncommon in the church. Men and women think, ‘How after all these years of church membership or of holding office in the church can I admit that I need to change? What would people think of me? And if the truth be told, I don't want to change! I am going to stay just as I am.‘ And so they have their watchdogs patrol the outer perimeters of their hearts..

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Authority Revealed And ChallengedThe religious establishment had their guard up and that is what made is so hard for them to answer Jesus' question. If they said, ‘God was not in John's ministry’, the crowd would have turned on them. But if they agreed that God was its author then how could they account for their failure to respond? What moral cowards these men proved to be. They jumped on the fence and said, ‘We don't know'. That fence continues is still fulltoday. When people say they are, ‘unsure of the gospel’, they do not mean they want to come off the fence. They want to stay there enjoying being involved in the religious life of the church, but without living their lives under God's authority.

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A Trust BetrayedJesus brought the matter to a head by telling a parable. So clear is its meaning that it needs little interpretation. Indeed, v12 tells us that the religious fence-sitters identified themselves as the tenants in Jesus’ parable. The vineyard represented the people of God. Jesus parable begins in a similar fashion to the O.T. parable found in Isa. 5. But Jesus added some new elements.

The vineyard was let to tenants who refuse to providethe owner with any produce. Year after year a succession of servants and then the owner’s Son is sent but to no avail. In telling this story Jesus is doing much more than telling the enemies of his ministry that he knew they were planning to kill him.

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A Trust BetrayedJesus is teaching some searching lessons which have a wide-ranging application.

First, this parable is about a trust betrayed. The tenants were entrusted with the cultivation of the property not their own without their master constantly breathing down the back of their necks. You might argue that the owner took a great risk.

At one time or another we have all taken risks by trusting others with something that is valuable to us. What greater risk is there than the living God trusting fallible man with his work - with the advancement of his great kingdom.

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A Trust BetrayedLike the tenant farmers, we too have been give a great trust. God has not made us as machines that are incapable of thinking or choosing. He has made us for himself with both an individual and collective responsibility to give him fruit. He has invested in our lives to that end.

Think of the way in which you have benefitted from the instruction of his Word. God has also given us his Spirit to reproduce the likeness of Jesus within us. God continues to ask, 'What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?' Isa.5v4. Do we close our ears to God’s entreaties to provide him with spiritual fruit. Do we neglect opportunities for service, abuse privilege and betray trust?

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An Illusion FosteredSecondly, in this parable we discover an illusion fostered. The illusion that the tenants lived under was that they could usurp the rights of the owner. They held to the notion 'that possession is 9/10ths of the law'.

The idea of stewardship doesn't sit comfortably in the heart of sinful man. Why? Because sin is by nature anti-authoritarian. It is independent and self-oriented, rather than subservient and God-oriented. It is obsessed with 'self' instead of 'service'. Indeed it believes in 'self-service'. There's a preoccupation with ‘one’s rights'. The tenants in Jesus’ story would want to argue, ‘We deserve this property, our families have invested a great deal of time and energy on this land!’

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An Illusion FosteredI cringe when people say, 'My family have been in this church for many generations, therefore we should have a controlling say in what happens'. That is an illusion.

The church is God's church. We are merely stewards and as such accountable for our behaviour to God. But also at an individual level people say, 'My life is my life and I can do what I like with it. My money is my money, my time is my time, my gifts are my gifts, my talents are my talents, I can do what I want with them'. That too is an illusion!

Our lives and all that we possess rightly belong to God. We are stewards of them. Stewardship does not sit comfortably in a heart unbowed to God's right to rule.

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An Illusion FosteredThe tenants were deluded into believing that they could make the vineyard their own. And so they defiantly rejected the owner’s request for the fruit of their service. The messengers proved to be disturbing irritants with a capacity for bursting their illusion. In practice they stirred sleeping consciences. The tenants attempted to silence conscience, first, by refusing to listen to the messengers and then by mistreating them.

The Owner’s patience with them was interpreted as weakness. And when the Owner's Son appeared they saw a glorious opportunity to settle the ownership question once and for all. The climax of their rebellion was to kill the heir.

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An Illusion FosteredOf course the immediate application identifies the Jewish religious leaders as those who for centuries had mistreated the prophets sent by God to call his people back to faithfulness, and fruitful service.

The contemporary application points to those in church today who would close their ears to God's Word. But by so doing they are crucifying the Son of God afresh. Does that sound extreme? Read Heb.6.4-8... The writer is saying that the fruitlessness and the practical rejection of Christ's rule in the lives of those who profess to belong to him demonstrates the ingenuousness of their profession.

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A Forfeit PaidThis parable is not only about a trust betrayed and an illusion exposed it is about a forfeit paid v9. The fulfilment took place quite literally in 70AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. The leaders had rejected God's rule and God's Son. They were like a mason who discards a stone that he thinks useless only to discover he had thrown away the very piece that could hold the whole building together. By rejecting Jesus they rejected the one who alone could have enriched their lives and brought them into the presence of the living God. What a forfeit they paid! Their short term gain became a long term loss. The kingdom and its development was entrusted to other hands.

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A Forfeit PaidLest we be complacent ,Paul restates this teaching in Rom. 11v19-21... where he explains that God broke off the branches of the Jewish nation from his vine in order to graft in a different stock the Gentile church.

But if God did not spare natural branches because of their fruitlessness and hardness of heart will he spare those branches that he has grafted in if they prove faithless and fruitless? Of course not! They too will be rejected.

God continues to send his servants to us to remind us of our debt to him. Again and again he reminds us he is looking for spiritual fruit in our lives

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A Forfeit PaidGod’s messengers are often the griefs and sorrows of life designed to cause us to find our ultimate joy in God. But the question is, ‘How do we respond to the messengers that God sends?’

Do we welcome them and seek to learn from them or, do we seek to silence them. Do we put our minds into neutral, harden our hearts, jump onto a non-existent fence, and determine that we will remain impervious to God's most gentle and reasonable entreaties. By so doing, we are saying that we will take a forfeit. It is not the forfeit of a moment but of all eternity - exclusion from the presence and the blessings of God.

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ConclusionPassages such as this one are not easy to unpack. It is no light thing to remind a people whom you love that their rejection of God's rule in their lives will result in his rejection of them from his presence and blessing.

However, I do not want to leave you with the harsh reality of judgement and rejection overwhelming your mind and heart. Rather focus upon God, who has done all in his power to make your life fruitful. He says, ‘What more could I have done for you than I have done?' This great God patiently waits taking one rebuff after another. He condescends to make the gentlest of entreaties to our hearts.

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ConclusionWe may have poured cold water over Jesus week after week yet still he comes back. The truly remarkable thing about the parable Jesus told, is not that God came and dealt with those who rejected his rule but that he took so long to do so! What remarkable patience God has towards us.

We are all very familiar with the words of Rev. 3v20 'Behold I stand at the door and knock' Did you know the tense of the verb used allows the translation, 'I stand and I keep on standing'. He is the waiting God, whose love lasts and outlasts. Will you give him the fruit of obedience while there is still time?