2017-01-29 Luke 20:9-18 Ownership Exacts a High Price

OWNERSHIP EXACTS A HIGH PRICE (Luke 20:9-18) January 29, 2017 Read Lu 20:9-18 – One night a mugger jumps a well-dressed man, pulls a gun and says, “Give me your money.” The man replies indignantly, “You can’t do that. I’m a US Senator.” The mugger replies, “In that case, give me MY money!” It’s an issue of ownership, and that’s what this parable is about. It’s not often that you hear someone say, “I hate God,” right? But outside of Christ, we all hate God. We repress and cover our hatred as indifference – say He’s irrelevant. But the Bible insists we hate Him. God says in Rom 8:4, “7 For the mind that is set on the flesh (self) is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” The natural mind is not just apathetic toward God, it is at war with God, and it is all about ownership. We intuitive know He owns us by right of Creation, but we want to own us. And so we hate Him. We know we owe Him, but we want what we want. So we hate Him. If that thought makes you uncomfortable, chances are you are living outside of Christ and in a state of denial. The parable relates specifically to Israel. But the application is scary relevant to every life. The vineyard owner is the hero. Tho He’s absent, nothing could be more foolish than to live as tho He does not matter. But that’s what these tenants do leading step-by-step to their own destruction. How does apathy toward, or hatred of God, lead there? Step by step. I. God’s Present -- Prostituted 9 And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while.” Absentee owners, ceding authority to trusted tenants were common in Jesus. The symbolism would have been obvious. The owner is God. The vineyard is Israel. Israel as vineyard is all over the OT in Isa 5, Jer 2, Psa 80, the Song of Solomon and many others. The temple where Jesus was standing had a richly carved grapevine 100 feet high sculpted around the door that led into the Holy Place. The owner’s absence represents the fact that God is not physically, present with His people. The tenants are religious leaders acting in His stead. But there’s a problem. The owner sends a servant in to collect his fruit. Mid v. 10: “But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed.” What’s 1 happening? The tenants are beginning to act like owners. They’ve gotten greedy. The vineyard was a result of the owner’s risk; the owner’s investment; the owner’s money. The tenants will be paid, but they are there to follow his instructions. The profits are his. But His absence has created an attitude of indifference. His request for return is seen as an intrusion. Indifference becomes hatred when accountability is demanded. The tenants beat the owner’s representative and send him packing. They are acting like owners. This represents what the scribes, Pharisees, priests and religious elite were doing in Israel. Claiming to be God’s representatives, they had so defiled His Law with their own interpretations and traditions that Judaism was theirs, not His. They were acting as owners, not as faithful stewards. The parable aims at Israel’s leaders who were prostituting God’s gift of their privileged position. But there is a broader application. Jesus is saying to all of us, “Look at your life. Where did you get it? It was a gift from God. You have abilities; you have intelligence; you have possessions; you have creativity; you have certain powers; you have privilege; you have health. Where did it all come from? It’s a present.” God challenges in I Cor 4:7, “What do you have that you did not receive?” Answer: nothing. Implication: we are all tenants. We’ve been given life with the expectation of a return. But like the tenants in the parable, we won’t listen. The Bible says it’s the nature of the human heart to think of itself as the owner of what we have been given as opposed to tenants. We are tenants acting like owners. We’ve been given a mind, but we are not to believe just anything. We’ve been given a relational and sexual desire. But we are not to use it just any way we want. All our privileges are to be managed for the One who gave them. They’re on loan, not owned. But the world with its self-help books and power seminars is saying just the opposite. You decide – your values, your agenda, your worldview – you decide. Those books are saying, “Act like an owner!” And Jesus is saying, “No, you’re a tenant!” We naturally say, “I will use my mind, ambition, money, position, advantages to advance my own cause, fulfill my own dreams, to provide for my own security.” God is far away if He exists at all. Perhaps you prayed once and He didn’t answer, so He’s really irrelevant. That’s how we act. The principle is this: God has given us a life, but we are to live it for Him. Instead, we act like we are owners. In so doing, we are prostituting God’s present – His gift of life. We are misusing and abusing it – promoting our glory instead of His. The idea of accountability stirs our hatred. II. God’s Patience -- Perverted 2 Now, at this point this parable takes a dramatic turn. After the servant has been beaten and turned away empty-handed, Jesus’ audience would have expected swift retribution. Anyone would have. Call the cops, oust the scoundrels and arrest them. Instead, the opposite happens. “11 And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away emptyhanded. 12 And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out.” What is this? This is God’s almost infinite patience. God who “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (II Pet 3:9), giving chance after undeserved chance to His wicked tenants. The messengers are the prophets God kept sending to Israel. Stephen charged Israel’s leaders with crimes against the prophets prior to his own stoning death. Acts 7:51, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. 52 Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” They drove Elijah into the wilderness. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit. Isaiah was sawn in two. Zechariah was stoned to death near the altar. And yet God kept sending messengers. And after 400 years of silence, He had sent yet another – John the Baptist. But the Pharisees had hated him, too. Because they hated God. You say, “They didn’t hate God. They were trying to please God. Their whole life was about keeping His law. They were the “back to the Bible” movement of their time.” But don’t you see, that’s the very reason they hated God. They hated God because they didn’t know grace. They hated His law because they couldn’t keep it. They knew they could not, so they perverted His law with their own traditions. And they slavishly labored to keep those commands, hating every minute of it. They never got past Law to grace. And when messengers arrived saying, “It’s not about performance; it’s about repentance. It’s not about your perfection; it’s about His. It’s not about outward compliance; it’s about inward cleansing” they killed the messengers. They never got past Law to Grace and so they hated God instead of loving God. But what of us? Do we also hate God because we don’t know grace? How many of His messengers have we beaten and killed? J. C. Ryle says in our rebellious human nature “If we could pull God down from His throne, we would.” Since we can’t get to Him, we kill the messengers sent to underscore His ownership. We ask, “What has He done for me?” and say, “The gospel makes no sense. His claims are invalid.” But the truth is, we want to own what is rightfully His. The gospel is so simple a child can understand. Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and now offers forgiveness if we will only 3 repent. How hard is that? But we pervert God’s patience in our life by beating and killing His messengers. Who are the messengers? Parents, perhaps. Friends, a campus ministry, a book, the Bible, a pastor, some stranger that God sent into your life one day. But you’ve beaten them all and sent them away empty-handed, trading a few years of playing owner for an eternity of separation from God. You want your ambition more than Him. You want your empty pleasures more than Him. You want your sexuality more than Him. God is saying, “Would you please give me the steering wheel?” But you beat up His messengers – perverting His patience as tho it will last forever. It will not. Edmund Clowney notes: “People ask, If God exists, why doesn't He prove it? Why doesn't God appear with lightning and thunder to accompany His presence? The story of the Bible gives a full answer to this question. God did so appear [at Sinai]; He will so appear again. The reason he does not now appear is not that He is reluctant to persuade unbelievers, but the opposite.” He’s giving them time to repent. But the time will not last forever, Beloved. Rom 2:4, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” He’s saying, “Don’t pervert God’s patience by presuming on it. It’s not intended to be ignored! It’s intended to lead to repentance.” Every messenger is one more sign of grace, but they’re not forever. III. God’s Payment -- Profaned The amazing truth about God is that what He demands; He supplies. That’s grace! What He demands (a lot!) – He supplies (at huge cost). That’s what will make you fall in love with Him when you get it. The Pharisees never got it. 13 Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do?” Obvious answer: take revenge! Exact justice! But not this owner. He’s not giving up on His rebellious tenants yet. 13 Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do?” I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ 14 But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ [Perhaps they thought the Son’s arrival signaled the death of the owner. Whatever, they continued to act like owners] 15 And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” One final chance at redemption and they blew it. They killed the son. 4 This was aimed squarely between the eyes of Israel’s religious leaders. And they knew it. Mid v. 19: “they perceived that he had told this parable against them.” They’ve killed all the prophets up to and including John the Baptist, and now the Son has arrived. Jesus is claiming that title here. The ultimate messenger from God is on scene. And – He knows what’s coming. Those God-haters are going to kill Him. He knows it; they know it. But they are squandering the best chance at redemption they’ll ever have. Kenneth Bailey tells of the late King Hussein of Jordan being informed by security one night in the early 1980’s that a group of 75 Jordanian offers were plotting in a nearby barracks to overthrow his government. Security was seeking permission to attack. But the king refused. He ordered a helicopter to land him on the flat roof. As he exited he told the pilot, “If you hear gun shots, fly away at once without me.” Then, unarmed, he walked down 2 to the meeting room of the rebels and quietly addressed them: “Gentlemen, I know you are planning to take over and install a military dictator. If you do this, the army will break apart, the country will be plunged into civil war and thousands of innocent people will be killed. There is no need for this. Here I am. Kill me and proceed. That way, only one man will die.” The stunned rebels took only a moment to rush forward to kiss the king’s hand and pledge loyalty for life. His vulnerability and courage saved the day. It was not to be so for the Son of God. They were going to kill Him, and incredibly, Caiaphas, the high priest urged the same argument to stiffen the spines of his fellow plotters in Jn 11:50: “Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He just meant they would avoid further costly encounters with Jesus. But unwittingly he was prophesying a truth he never got personally. For here is where “amazing” enters the picture. Yes, they killed Him; but only because He let them kill Him. And He did so because by His death, the penalty for the sins of all who believe in Him was secured. Even His executioners might be forgiven. What they meant for evil, God intended for good. The death of the Son would secure life for all who would stop acting as owners and give their life to Him. How good is that? That’s grace, Beloved. This parable highlights God’s love. In the face of Israel’s hard-heartedness, He persisted and persisted and persisted. One prophet after another was abused or killed. Luther said, “If I were God and the world treated me as it treated Him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces.” Justice would be served! But God wanted mercy. So He sent His own Son and turned the worst that man could do into something wonderful. Spurgeon says, “If you reject him, 5 he answers you with tears; if you wound him, he bleeds out cleansing; if you kill him, he dies to redeem; if you bury him, he rises again to bring resurrection. Jesus is love made manifest.” In His death, the Son paid for the very sin of rejecting Him. But we must not profane that payment by further rejection. The dead Son is now alive again, and next time He comes, 16 He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Finally – justice! Don’t insist on justice, Beloved. Plead for mercy. You cannot win acting as owner of yourself; you can only destroy yourself. IV. God’s Pre-eminence -- Predestined That is the point of Jesus final comment here. “17) But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written: “ ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? 18) Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” Simple message. “I, the Son, am the chief building block of all that God is doing to redeem this world. So be aware, the stone you are throwing aside is the one God has chosen to be the center of everything. If you pit yourself against that stone by claiming ownership of your own life, it will crush you. God’s will always prevails in the end.” His pre-eminence is a forgone conclusion. Your short-term gain will be your long-term condemnation. But He was crushed so you wouldn’t have to be if you will only accept it. Conc – So, let me summarize this parable in 5 propositions: 1) God has given us a life, but we are to live it for Him. 2) Instead, we begin to act like owners. 3) God sends messengers to remind us we are not owners, but we reject them with increasing violence. 4) God sends His own Son, but we kill Him because in the end, it is Him or us. He’s making the same claim you are. 5) God extends mercy to all who ask; others will be broken by justice. Your choice. Will it be you or Him? Lord Byron, the notorious English poet, whose scandalous love affairs included his half-sister, was an infidel to the end. Faced with his mortality as he lay dying of a fever at age 36 he was given one last chance. But he exclaimed from his deathbed, “Shall I sue for mercy?” Long pause. “Come, come, no weakness; let’s be a man to the last.” Acting as owner to the end, he traded mercy for justice. He had no idea what he was missing out on by insisting on being his own owner. Ownership comes at a high price. He would do differently now if he could, but it’s too late for him. But not for me; not for you. C. S. Lewis said it best: “There are two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to 6 whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” Please be the former. Let’s pray. 7