When Jesus Spoke Truth to Power

Mark 12:1–12 (ESV)

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.

Isaiah 5:1–7 (ESV)

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!

Terms explained.

Vineyard = Israel, Isaiah 5:7

Beloved in Isaiah = God

Beloved Son in Mark = God the Son

James Brooks

In his commentary on Mark

First, the description of the vineyard in v. 1c is entirely accurate. Second, absentee landlords of huge estates and landless tenant farmers were quite common in Galilee in Jesus’ day. The tenants usually were required to turn over between one-fourth and one-half of the produce to the owner’s agents. As a result they were barely able to survive—a situation that produced much discontent.

Jesus speaks to a reality of oppression that many of his hearers would relate. They would be like yeah, we know of people who plant vineyards. It can be 3 to 4 years of hard work before the vines produce fruit. Then the greedy landowners demand half of the profit. The law would be on the landowner’s side. The hearers would know of situations where tenants would be jailed or kicked off the land after working hard but the landowner did not feel satisfied with the production.

So Jesus’ story harkens back to Isaiah 5 and God’s kindness bestowed upon Israel. he took them out of slavery to a land flowing with milk and honey. He set a hedge of protection about them. They had only the duty to honor and

Spurgeon says:

Remember, that Jesus Christ when he comes to us to-day, as the messenger of the Father, comes for no personal ends. When the messengers were sent by the householder, it was to claim the householder’s rent; when the heir came, it was for the same purpose. So it is in the human emblem; but in the divine this becomes less conspicuous. When Jesus pleads with us, although he urges us to render unto God our love and our obedience, yet God does not stand in need of these as the householder stood in need of his rents. What is it to the infinite Jehovah whether thou serve him or not? If thou rebel against God, will he be less glorious? If thou wilt not obey the Lord, what difference can it make to his boundless happiness? Will his crown shine the less brightly, or his heaven be less resplendent because thou choosest to be a rebel against him? What if the tow strive with the fire, will the fire be quenched thereby? If a gnat should contend with yonder blast furnace, you know what the end would be. It is for thine own sake that God would have thee yield to him; how can it be for his own? If he were hungry he would not tell thee, for the cattle on a thousand hills are his. He can crush whole worlds to dust, “or with his word or with his nod”; and dost thou think he has aught to gain from thee? Thou alone wilt be the gainer or the loser; therefore when Jesus prays thee to repent, believe thou in the disinterestedness of his heart; believe that it can be nothing but the tenderest regard for thy well-being which makes him warn thee. Hear how Jehovah puts it: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” A messenger after many rejections, a messenger who comes solely out of love to us, ought to have our respectful attention.

God graciously blessed and provided for His people, Israel.

Israel’s Leaders have a history of rejecting His rule.

Daniel 9:6 (NASB95)

6 “Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.

They wanted power.

They wanted position.

They wanted comfort.

They wanted God to bless their decisions rather than obeying Him.

Rebellion will always be punished.

Pointing out the past sins of others often blinds us to our own weakness.

Mark Winger in discussing human nature shared several ways in which people become blind to their own immorality and sin. If you were to ask people in general, hey do you mess up? Do you sin? Most people intuitively agree.

The American forces made the Germans who lived in large cities, walk to the concentration camps.

The people walked and laughed as if they headed out to a picnic.

The Daily Mail records that

Harrowing footage has emerged of German civilians forced to see a Nazi death camp after they were liberated by Allies following World War two.

Many of those seeing the horror of the concentration camps for the first time were visibly shaken and many were moved to tears.

Footage shows a large group of citizens at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, Germany.

Allies wanted citizens to see the atrocities carried out in their name by the Nazis, who established the camp in 1937.

Debate has raged ever since the war about how much the average German citizen knew about the horrors of the holocaust. It was widely accepted in the immediate aftermath of the war that most of the population had no idea about what was going on in the camps, and that they would have been horrified if they had. However more recent research has suggested that a lot of the population were indeed aware that camps existed, and knew that Jewish people were being taken to the camps, with Nazi propaganda sending out a relentless anti-Jewish message to its population.

Did the Assyrians see their butchery as evil or merely business as usual?

It took a lightening strike on his ship for John Newton to see his slaving as wicked.

But when it comes to our present sin and culpability, we often become blind or seared.

How many of take a stand against the atrocities of our time?

How many of us subtly participate in ignoring the plight of our fellow imager?

How many times do we dwell in the shadow of unrepentant sin?

How often do we allow God to search our minds and inner most thoughts so that we can see Him clearly?

Rather than inspecting rotten fruit of others from the past, I need focus on God’s assessment on my Present Disposition.

Psalm 139:23–24 NLT

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.