The Rejected Corner Stone
Notes
Transcript
Good Morning
Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything!
I used to hate facial hair, but over time it grew on me!
I want to congratulate our seniors again for completing high school. We will be praying for you guys as you continue to pursue your dreams! I pray that you will grow closer to God as you get out on your own and that you will find a church that preaches the Bible and get involved in that church. Don’t just go to a church, bless that body of believers with the talents that God has given you. Help that church in anyway you can. I know you will do great things. You are both amazing and I am proud of both of you.
Today we are going to be in Mark 12:1-12.
Last week we saw the religious leaders confront Jesus and ask Him where or who gave Him the authority to do what He was doing. We saw Jesus ask them a question and He asked a brilliant question to them, Is the baptism of John from heaven or from man? He knew that if the said heaven that they were acknowledging that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. That is what John taught and that is what God said when John baptized Jesus in the Jordan river. If they said it was from man, they would be calling John a false prophet and risking being stoned by the people. Once again, Jesus had them in check mate! They did not answer Jesus because they were afraid! Fear should never motivate us to not speak the truth. As believers, we truly have nothing to fear! We know how this ends! We know that Jesus defeated satan and has taken away death’s sting. We should have a boldness knowing all this. We should be able to lovingly tell the truth to all. That is why we are still here after we are saved. Salvation is just the beginning. If it were the end, we would go straight to heaven the moment we believed! That is not God’s plan or His will. He wants us to go to work and tell the world about His Son and what He has done for them.
Today we are going to look at Jesus telling a parable about the religious leaders who are still by Him. This is just after He asked them the question about John’s baptism. They are still in the temple courtyard and this is the same day. Jesus is going to foretell His death and rejection in this parable.
Please stand as we read God’s Word
1 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.
We haven’t seen many parables in the book of Mark. For whatever reason Mark does not record many of Jesus’ parables. Chapter 4 I believe was the last parable Mark recorded. Jesus frequently taught with parables. Jesus did this for a reason and He told us this reason in Mark 4:10-12
10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that
“ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ”
Most of the parables that Jesus taught had a meaning that was hidden and more difficult to understand. Not this parable. Jesus is telling a story that they knew and would have been familiar with. He is telling a story from Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied about the destruction of Jerusalem and Isreal. Jesus is using the same story with a different ending to predict His rejection and death. We can see this parable that Jesus is using in Isaiah 5:1-7
1 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!
This parable is a prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem and Isreal. Starting in verse 8, Isaiah begins to list all the woes against Isreal. They are some bad things that they had done and that was the wild grapes that he was talking about. They were not producing the fruit that God wanted them to produce. Instead they were producing inedible fruit.
Jesus is telling the same story but with a little different ending. He is for telling His rejection and the fact that God was going to go to the Gentiles.
It starts with a man who plants a vineyard and he puts a fence around it and builds a winepress and a tower to watch over the vineyard. All of this was come practice to the Jews. Vineyards were common in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. They would have all had these things in them, a fence, grape vines, winepress and tower. Nothing hard to understand or out of the ordinary. Jesus tells them that the owner leased the vineyard out and went on a long trip into another country. This was not uncommon either. Many of the fields and vineyards were leased out to people for them to work them and to share in the harvest. This is even common today!
Now when it was time for harvest the owner sent a servant to get was was owed the owner. A new vineyard takes 5 years to begin to produce! This was a long trip! Every trip was a long trip back then. They walked everywhere and the ships were wind powered. It was a much simpler time. We see that the tenants beat the servant and sent him away with nothing. Now, the owner was not trying to collect a lot of the harvest! Most of the harvest was commonly left to the tenants. The land owner would get a small portion of what the land produced. It was only fair for that to be that way. They put in all the work and sweat, they should get the lions share of the production. The land owner was not trying to steal from them, he only wanted what was due him, what they had agreed upon. We can see that the owner sent a second servant and that one was struck in the head and treated shamefully! And the owner sent another! This one they killed. By this time the audience is like, no don’t send any more!! What are you doing to these people. But the owner sends more, in fact he sends all the servants that he has. They are all either beaten or killed! The crowd is like NO! MORE! That is not all the owner says I have one more to send, my beloved son! Everyone is like NO! Don’t send him!! Surely they will respect the owner son and show him respect! Nope! They kill him and throw him out of the vineyard! Jesus asks, what will the owner do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others! I can hear the crowd shouting, YES! Justice for the owner and his son!
Next Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22-23
22 The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
23 This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This was part of the Halel, that was sung during Passover. They would have sung this already at least once this week. It would have been fresh in their minds.
The cornerstone is the most crucial stone in a building. It is the perfect stone that all other stones are set off of. It provides the level that the other stones are to go off of. Without it, the buildings would not be square and straight. Jesus is our cornerstone. He is our reference, our guide! He makes us level and straight.
So, who are the tenants of this story? The religious leaders! God chose Isreal as His chosen people. They were to reveal God to the world! They failed! They rejected God.
God sent His servants the prophets and the people rejected them, miss treated them and even killed some of them! All the way from Moses to John the Baptist. They were all rejected by the leaders and mistreated. It is written that Isaiah was sawn in half with a wooden saw! They were all mistreated by the leaders. None of them wanted to turn from their sins and back to God, so they beat and killed God’s servants.
Who is the son that was killed? It was Jesus. He is foretelling His rejection and death. Again, He plainly tells about what is going to happen to Him.
With the death of Jesus, God goes to the Gentiles! He sends the Apostles and His disciples to the Gentiles to teach them about God. The Church is born! God’s rejected Son had become the cornerstone of salvation and God’s Church! We are the new tenants of the vineyard! We are to read and study God’s Word and produce fruit so that when He comes to collect, we have a harvest to share with Him! He doesn’t leave us here to just sit around and wait for Him to come back! We are to be working and preparing the land for a harvest. We are to be planting seeds of the Gospel and watering and fertilizing! We have work to do! It is tiring work! But it is the most rewarding work you will ever do! God’s reward is so awesome!
Look at how the religious leaders reacted! The same way they did when Jesus asked them the question about John’s baptism. They were afraid of the people! They knew that Jesus was talking about them! They were scared and they left Him! Fear is not from God! We are not given a spirit of fear!
One thing we can see from this is that our God is a patient God! A loving God! He wants all to have the opportunity to come to Him. His Son, Jesus, died so that all can have salvation. Not all will come to salvation, but it is available to all. God is forgiving and patient! As His sons and daughters, we should be also! If God were not patient, we would never make it to salvation, He would strike us down in our sin! Praise God that He does not do that! He is patient even after we become His children, we still sin and do the wrong thing, and He is faithful to forgive us when we ask! We serve such a good God! amen!
Jesus’ death was not some accident that He didn’t know was coming! He foretold His death several times and He told exactly what would happen. Jesus didn’t have His life taken at the cross. He laid it down and gave it as a sacrifice for all sin. No one could or can take Jesus’ life, He freely laid down His life so that we can have life! He knew what was going to happen and was obedient to God unto death! He submitted to the will of His Father. So should we! God’s will for His children is to take the message of His Son to the world. We are to go, to Duncan, Oklahoma, the US, the World! Our job is to tell the Good News. Are we going to be obedient like Jesus? Or are we going to be like the religious leaders and do what we want and ignore the servants that God puts in our lives? I chose obedience! I want to hear, “well done my good and faithful servant!”
Let’s pray
