The Story of the King

Introduction

Do you ever have trouble reading the Bible? Like you read it, and you can’t make heads or tails of it or figure out what in the world you need to understand about it? My guys in the Equip Men’s Bible Study might be feeling that way as we’re getting into the second half of Exodus this week.

Truth is, though, I think we that we all have those moments if we are serious about the study of God’s Word. But I know that part of the reason many Christs have a difficult time with the Word of God is because I think we’re often guilty of reading the Bible the wrong way. Now, don’t get me wrong; if you’re reading the Bible regularly, I’m not being critical. I’m just glad you’re reading the Bible.

But I had someone put it this way to me one time. Sometimes we read the Bible like we read our High School yearbook. You remember when you got your yearbook in high school, you remember the first thing that you would do? If you were like me, the first thing I always did when I got my yearbook, is I would open it up, and I would turn over to the back, and I would find my name, and then I would flip through all the pages trying to find myself in that yearbook. And after I looked at all the pictures of myself in there, then I would look around at all the pictures of my friends. And then I would close it up, and then I’d run around and try to get a bunch of people to write in it.

That’s the yearbook. That’s how we read a yearbook. We skim it. We look over it, but the only thing we focus on, the only parts that really interest us, are the parts that have to do with us.

And sometimes, that’s how we read the Bible. We read it like a yearbook. We skim it. We look over it, but the only thing we focus on, the only parts that interest me, are the parts that speak to me, or that affect some area of my life right here and right now.

But, you see, the Bible is not a yearbook, and, again, if you’re reading the Bible, I’m happy. But I want you to get past reading it like a yearbook, because there is so much more here, so much more to encourage you and build you up, if you see it as it really is. Because the Bible as it really is, is a story, a story that certainly involves you and me, because it’s a story about God’s love for you and me. But it’s not a story primarily ABOUT you and me. More than anything, this is a story about God and what He’s done to make Himself available to each of us.

And we see that story summarized in the passage of Scripture that we read together earlier, Luke chapter 20, verses 9-19. In this passage, we really see Jesus summarizing the entire Word of God, the entire Old Testament and New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation in just 11 verses.

But while this story is a good story, an incredibly good story for those of us who know God or who WILL know God, Jesus wasn’t telling this story to make the people listening to Him happy. No, in fact, Jesus targeted this story at some folks that would be very unhappy when they figured out the punchline. And don’t worry, we’ll get there. For now, the context.

Alright, so this parable occurs during the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. The books of Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the events of Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem one week prior to His crucifixion. At this point in the narrative, Jesus had His eyes fixed on the cross. He knew what was about to happen and intentionally went to the city of Jerusalem in to minister to the people there and to do what He came to earth to do.

Jesus had just entered Jerusalem, in what is commonly called the Triumphal Entry, and the crowds were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” After that, Jesus went into the temple and drove out the money-changers, upsetting the chief priests and scribes. Later, while Jesus was teaching and preaching the gospel in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders asked Him, “By what authority are you doing these things?”

And Jesus is still answering that question when He tells this parable that we just read together, the Parable of the Tenants, and as we’ll see, that gave these corrupt religious leaders another reason to kill Him.

Because in this parable, Jesus describes a landowner who planted a vineyard, leased it to some tenant farmers, and went on a journey. With this story, Jesus was doing what He always did—illustrate Kingdom principles with scenes from everyday life. It was very common in that day for landowners to rent their land to other people who would do the work.

And as payment, these tenant farmers were usually required to turn over anywhere from one-fourth and one-half of the produce. Again, Jesus was describing something that would have been familiar to the people.

He also made the point that this parable was about the ancient Jewish people. Remember, Jesus was Jewish, his entire audience, with very few exceptions, was Jewish. The image of a vineyard a symbol used often in the Old Testament for the Jewish people, a lot like a bald eagle is our national symbol. In fact, the Jewish people would have recognized this story, because at least Mark’s version is really similar to the “Song of the Vineyard” from the prophet Isaiah.

Look at Mark’s version of this story in Mark chapter 12:1

Mark 12:1 NASB 2020

And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to vine-growers and went on a journey.

Now check out Isaiah chapter 5:

Isaiah 5:1–2 NASB 2020

Let me sing now for my beloved A song of my beloved about His vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around, cleared it of stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it, And also carved out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones.

See the similarities? So, the question we have to ask is who’s who in this Parable of the Tenants?

Again, as we’ve seen, the vineyard is Israel. The owner of the vineyard is God. The tenant farmers who leased the vineyard were the religious leaders of Israel. The servants who the owner of the vineyard sent to the tenant farmers were the prophets of the Old Testament. Who do you think the beloved son was? That’s right, it was Jesus.

And here’s the point Jesus is making. God had planted Israel as His choice vineyard. He had brought them out of slavery in Egypt, out of wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and into a good land. He had rented this “vineyard” out to farmers, leaders in the nation, who were supposed to lead God’s people. He had also protected them throughout their history, given them good things so that they could produce good fruit.

And in all that, we see the first fact that we need to take away from this passage:

God has blessed us to be a blessing to those around us.

God blesses His people to bless others! The story of the Old Testament is exactly what Jesus describes here in these few verses. God blesses the people, but the people ignore God’s blessings, they complain about God’s blessings and they rebel against God’s blessings.

In our Equip Men’s Bible Study (Wednesdays, 5:30 AM), we’ve been reading Exodus when Moses led the people out of Egypt. They had been slaves in Egypt, treated horribly, driven mercilessly. And then God took them out of slavery and walked with them—His very presence going before them as a beacon of hope and comfort. He fed them, sustained them with manna that they woke up to every morning, but…if you know the story, you know, it wasn’t long before they complained against that manna and even went so far as to wish they were back in slavery in Egypt!

And that’s the kind of thing we see again and again throughout the Old Testament. God blesses the people of God and they reject His blessings. But God blessed the people of Israel for a purpose. He blessed them so that they would bear fruit.

Now, what kind of fruit did God want from this vineyard? He wanted good fruit, of course. But instead of justice and righteousness, He got disobedience, injustice, depravity, sinfulness. He wanted this vineyard to be a shining example of how vineyards should be run all over the world and produce fruit, but instead, this vineyard only produced bad fruit.

Church, would you agree that God has blessed us? He has, hasn’t He? He has blessed us more than we can comprehend. He has forgiven us, saved us, given us hope and a future. But he hasn’t given us those blessings to hoard. Sometimes we’re guilty of that. We find ourselves thinking, “Thank God I’m not like that person or that person or that person.” We sit by while the world around us dissolves into chaos and sin. Friend, God hasn’t blessed us, He hasn’t given us what He has given us for us to sit on it. He has blessed us to be a blessing to others.

Back to the story. When the time was right for produce, the owner sent servants to the tenants to get some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenant farmers treated those servants horribly. Some they beat and some they killed.

In the same way, God had sent servants to collect fruit from the people of Israel. The servants in the parable represent the Old Testament prophets who God had sent to seek spiritual fruit in Israel. God had sent them to call the people to repentance and obedience to Him. But instead of listening to God’s prophets, turning back to Him, and using their blessings to bless the nations around them, the people of Israel rejected the prophets, beat the prophets, and sometimes even killed the prophets.

Jeremiah was beaten and put in stocks (Jer. 20:2). Isaiah, tradition says, was the prophet sawn in two. A prophet named Zechariah, was stoned to death in the court of the temple (2 Chron. 24:21).

In Nehemiah, we’re told, “Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you…”

And in recent days, John the Baptist had been beheaded.

And now, Israel’s leaders were doing what they had been doing for hundreds of years – persecuting the messengers of God. God was patient with the community that surrounded the vineyard He had planted. He sent many servants (the prophets) to call His people to repentance and collect fruit from the vineyard. But they were not willing.

This is another one of the big facts about God that we see in this big Story of the King. God blessed us, so we could bless those around us. Second…

God is patient, even when we ignore His blessings.

We look at this passage, at all of the Old Testament, and we think, “Why didn’t God just wipe them out sooner?” But, friend, God’s nature is not like ours. He is infinitely more patient than we are. And I, for one, am glad of that. You see, God’s nature is the same toward us as it was toward Israel. He gave Israel every opportunity to turn to Him, to receive Him and to love Him. And He gives us those opportunities today. That’s why He hasn’t returned yet; He’s giving as many as are willing the opportunity to turn to Him, because Scripture tells us, “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Dear brother or sister, how many times has God called out to you? Forgiven you? How long has He been patient with you? Aren’t you thankful that our God is patient?

Whatever we can say about God, we cannot say that He is impatient or unmerciful. He is a God of great patience and mercy. So patient and so merciful that He was even willing to send his very own beloved son to them, even after they had beaten and killed his servants. The owner of the vineyard believed that those wicked tenant farmers would at least respect his son.

Of course, we know that the son in the parable represents Jesus. Calling him the “beloved son” here reminds us of Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration. Both times, if you remember, God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son.” The point is clear: Through the years, God had sent many prophets to His people who were rejected and some were killed. God was now sending His very own, beloved Son.

The tenants in the parable killed the beloved son just as the leadership of Israel was going to kill Jesus.

And that brings us to the third big fact that we should heed from this Story of the King. God has blessed us to be blessing to those around us, God is patient, even when we ignore his blessings, and third…

Even though God is patient, we should remember that judgment is coming.

After this, Jesus said the following:

Luke 20:17 NASB 2020

But Jesus looked at them and said, “Then what is this statement that has been written: ‘A stone which the builders rejected, this has become the chief cornerstone’?

Citing Psalms (118:22) Jesus referred to Himself as the stone that Israel had rejected, the stone that was in fact the cornerstone of what God was building. Even as He spoke these words in the parable, Jesus was on His way to the cross to die for the sins of mankind and rescue a people for God that included anyone, not just Jewish people, but anyone who would come in faith to Him.

God’s plan all along was for His Son to be the cornerstone of His holy, set apart people. What that means for us is that God’s will for the church, for all the people of His Kingdom, is that we will be built on nothing less than Jesus Christ. Not our programs or our methods, not our ordinances or our procedures, not our leadership and our personalities, and certainly not the politics of the day, but Jesus and Jesus alone!

Our hope must be built on nothing less than Jesus Christ and HIS righteousness, because if it is, it is a false hope. When we lose sight of the reason we are here, when we make church about us or about what we want or about things that do not really matter in eternity, we are in danger of rejecting Jesus and being useless in God’s vineyard. That is a bad place to be. The religious leadership of Jesus’ day understood the parable and realized that Jesus was talking about them.

But they didn’t want to do anything about it. They were the tenants of God’s vineyard who were unworthy to be in it and on whom God was declaring judgment. But instead of changing, they decided to kill Jesus, thus fulfilling their part in this story. By killing Jesus, they confirmed that they were really the evil tenants who rejected the owner’s servants and killed the owner’s son.

In Matthew’s account of the same parable, Jesus asked a question. He asked what should happen to those evil tenants who killed the owner’s Son. The people answered, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other vine-growers.”

Then Jesus said this:

Matthew 21:43 NASB 2020

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit.

That’s the rest of the Bible after this. After Jesus is killed, after He is buried and after He rises from the dead, just before He ascends into heaven, He tells His disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, even to the outermost parts of the earth. Luke, in Acts chapter 13 put it this way:

Acts 13:46 NASB 2020

Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first. Since you repudiate it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.

After the Jewish leadership rejected the message of hope through Jesus Christ, God sent it to the nations who gladly received it. The Good News of Jesus Christ spread like wildfire throughout the region. Multitudes received the good news, inherited eternal life and came into the Kingdom of God. What we see in this parable is not only God’s judgment on the generation of His people who had rejected Him, His servants, and His Son, but we also see the grace extended to all nations, all people groups of the earth who would receive Him.

And that includes us.

As we close, when we read this parable, we need to be careful not make the mistake that because Jesus was speaking primarily to His Jewish audience, it does not apply to us as well. We are just like those religious leaders of His day and we must take an account of our own place in God’s vineyard. Just as these tenant farmers in the parable rented land from the owner of the vineyard to do some work, God given to us what He has given us to work and produce for Him fruit in His kingdom.

God gives each of us time, talents and treasures and He will hold us accountable to how we use them. The vineyard belongs to Him. The Kingdom belongs to Him. We are only stewards of it, tenant farmers, who are allowed to work it. God expects us to produce righteousness and good works for His glory.

And so the question we ought to ask ourselves is this: What are we doing in God’s vineyard? Are you producing fruit for the owner of the vineyard? Or are you trusting in a prayer you prayed a long time ago, thinking that there’s nothing else you need to do? Maybe you’ve forgotten whose vineyard it is, and you think that your life, or the things you have, or the church are all about you.

Are you like the evil tenants in this parable who rejected God’s message, who rejected God’s servants that He sent to them, or even who killed His Son in favor of something they wanted more? Is that you? Do not turn from God and His Son. Get right with God today. Turn to the cornerstone, not to some temporary tent that you are creating that won’t last the next storm. God is not building a brick and mortar building for a certain group of people to assemble once or twice a week.

God is building a holy people who will love Him and each other and who will reach the lost world for Jesus Christ.

How do you get in on that? Fall on the cornerstone. In verse 18, Jesus says…

Luke 20:18 NASB 2020

“Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will crush him.”

If you fall on the cornerstone, King Jesus, you will be broken to pieces. The old you will be shattered, buried forever, as you are raised to new life. It’s much better, infinitely better to fall on the cornerstone than for His judgement to fall on you.

Have you fallen on the Cornerstone, King Jesus? Have you entered this Story, the Story of Redemption and Hope? If not, you can do that today. Today, you can turn from your sin and ask Jesus to save you. Today, you can give Him your life.

If you haven’t, won’t you fall on the cornerstone today?