The Parable of the Tenants

Bible Passage: Mark 12:1-12

INTRO

“Soma Church exists to love the body of Christ and equip them to do the work of ministry here, near and far, all for the glory of God.”

Believe it or not one of my favorite podcast genres to listen to is health and wellness.

And in today’s world, there is no shortage of that type of content.

From Andrew Huberman teaching how to fall asleep and wake up on time to biohacking and cold plunging the podcast library is your oyster.

But my favorite thing to learn about and hear smart people talk about is the intricate design and abilities of the human body.

I mean, we legitimately have superpowers. We can heal ourselves, fight off disease and infection. We have super computers that live between our ears.

One of the superpowers that I find really interesting is our ability to speak and recognize speech.

We are the only species on the planet that has developed language to communicate with one another.

But we can also recognize voices.

And ya know, when I hear that, I can’t help but think about how spiritual that actually is.

We worship a God who speaks… But a lot of times, we don’t listen.

BODY

Last week we ended Mark 11 with Jesus entering into an old fashioned stand off between Jesus and the soon to be old guard of Israel (More on that later).

And in this stand off, Jesus backed the elders, scribes and pharisees into a corner that they could not get out of and forced them to show the true posture of their hearts.

They have no desire to genuinely inquire about the validity of Jesus’ claims or His teachings. They have decided that He is a threat to everything they have constructed.

So when they dishonestly answer Jesus’s question regarding wether John the Baptist was from God or not by saying “We do not know” Jesus looks at them and says…

English Standard Version Chapter 11

“Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Jesus is washing His hands of the jewish leaders and now as we move into today’s story He begins a multi round boxing match with these men as they continue to do anything they can to discredit him, defame him or trap him in order to kill him.

And today, in round 1, Jesus is gonna tell a parable or a fictional story that is meant to shed light on the hypocrisy and godlessness of the jewish people.

So let’s begin to read Jesus’s story and break down what it means…

Mark 12:1–5 ESV

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. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed.

Let’s start breaking this down at the very beginning where Mark tells us that Jesus was speaking in parables.

As we have discussed earlier in the book of Mark, Jesus uses parables to hide truth within a story. for people who have spiritual ears to hear and eyes to see they are instructive and life giving but for those who don’t they are confusing and as we will see today, frustrating.

This parable in particular is a statement of judgement towards the Sanhedrin and the jewish people.

The story begins with a man who owns a vineyard and not just any vineyard but one on which the owner spared no expense.

He put a fence around it to protect it from harm and a watchtower to have constant protective eyes watching.

And it says he leased it to tenants or renters.

Now this was common in the days of Jesus. Land owners would rent out there farming land to tenants who would work the land and tend to the crops.

The season came for the owner of the land to go and retrieve his crop so he sends one of his servants to go and collect and the tenants rough him up and send him back. So he sends another and the same thing happens and then another that they killed.

Now let’s pause here and unpack this… a few moments ago we said that this parable was told as a word of judgement or an indictment against the jews and their leaders.

And when they heard Jesus saying these things, they would have immediately begun quoting Isaiah 5 in their minds because that is what Jesus is referencing in this story.

Isaiah 5:1–5 “Let me sing for my beloved 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 hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 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? 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.”

The owner of the land is God, the vineyard is the people of Israel, the fence is likely representing the protection of God (the wall of Jerusalem) the watchtower are the leaders of Jerusalem who keep careful watch over the people of God ensuring that they follow His commands the tenants are the jewish people and the servants are the prophets of God in the OT.

Isaiah is a book that precedes the time of this story today by hundreds of years but the problems plaguing the jews are the same.

Isaiah 5:4 “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?”

God has chosen His people to be a blessing to the nations as they show and invite the world to worship the one true God but they have done the opposite.

They were set apart to bear fruit but all they have done is yield rotten fruit.

But God is kind so over and over and over again, He sent his men to His people to call them back to Him. But almost every time they didn’t listen. Their hearts were hardened.

And not only did they not listen to the prophets, they abused and killed them for their message.

Isaiah was sawed in half by King Manasseh, Ezekiel was put to death by the leaders of Israel, Zechariah was killed by the king in the LORD’s court and Jeremiah was treated with contempt and rejected for his message.

Jesus actually rebukes them head on for this in Matthew 23:29-31

Matthew 23:29–31 ESV

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

The Jewish people and in this account specifically, the leaders have no appetite for truth.

This is no different today… We bear the truth of God for the world yet we are the most hated of all the religions.

But the thing to walk away with is that our God is patient and kind.

He gives us more opportunities than we deserve to repent of our sin and receive His kindness.

But the people of Israel don’t want to receive.

Mark 12:6–8 ESV

He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.

So the owner sends His beloved son to come and make an appeal to the tenants of the land but they kill him in hopes of receiving all that the owner had if the son was out of the picture.

Jesus again calls the shot and says that the tenants of the land will kill the beloved son of the owner.

And then Jesus asks Mark 12:9-12

Mark 12:9–12 ESV

What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture: “ ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” 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.

God has moved on from His people the jews. No longer will they be the people through whom God reaches out to the world through.

And this made the jewish leaders so angry that they were ready to arrest Jesus on the spot because they knew this was about them.

The word of God is life to those who believe and death to those who do not.

CLOSING

Now I know this is a lot of info but lets apply this as we close…

First, God has not forsaken His plan of setting apart a people for Himself.

He has washed His hands of the people of Israel but He still has a people that He says “is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

God’s people is now His church and His church is people from every nation tribe and tongue and if you bear the name of Christ you are God’s child and His plan to save the world.

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Second, do not harden your heart to the voice of God.

If you repeatedly hear the voice of God telling you the same thing over and over… listen

Finally, repent of your sin and trust in Christ as your savior. He is the hope and the plan for you to know God and be saved from yourself, sin and from Hell.

If you are hearing the gospel today tomorrow or the next day it is your opportunity to repent and believe. Don’t be like the jewish people because there will be a day when time runs out.

PRAY