Marvelous in Our Eyes (Mark 12:1-12)

Rejection hurts, and the more you think the rejection says

about you, the more it hurts. You apply for a job, get an

interview, get a second interview.

But then they go with someone else, or the company's plans

change and they're no longer going to hire someone into the

role you were applying for. So they say you apply for

college and your top choice rejects you.

You apply for medical school and your top choice wait lists you.

Is that a rejection? If you don't get off the wait

list, it is. You ask someone if they're

willing to go out on a date and they decline.

That is definitely a rejection. There's no getting around it,

and there's no way not to take it personally.

When you try to publish a book, you typically have to write a

few sample chapters and then a proposal summarizing what you're

trying to do in the book. You send it around to publishers

to see if they're interested. I've done this a few times.

I once had a book rejected by all three divisions of the same

publisher. There is no division of that

publisher that did not consider my book and then reject it.

There was total unanimity. They ran the board.

They were as thorough as possible.

Every division considered, every division rejected.

I even began to wonder if they would open up a fourth division

of the publisher just so they could consider the proposal

again and then reject it again. The book is about Ecclesiastes.

Some of you might know it. I'm very thankful for the

publisher that it did, in fact, give it a home.

Why does rejection hurt? Because it's hard not to take it

personally. It's hard not to conclude from a

rejection that, OK, I'm not enough, I'm not smart enough,

I'm not skilled enough, I'm not attractive enough.

But there is a kind of rejection that says nothing about the one

being rejected and everything about the one doing the

rejecting. For instance, someone who has a

great deal of power in a company or in the government might be in

a position to fire someone just so they can replace that person

with a personal friend, or just so they can replace that person

with someone more loyal to them. If that's the case, the firing

says nothing whatsoever about the person being fired.

And yet, if you're the person getting fired, it's hard not to

take it personally. It's hard not to ask what's

wrong with me. When's the last time you were

rejected? How did it feel?

When we reject God, what does that say about Him and what does

it say about us? Our passage for this morning is

Mark 12, verses 1 to 12. If you don't have a Bible, you

Mark 12:1–12

can raise your hand and someone will bring you one.

And if you don't have a Bible because like you don't have one

at home, feel free to take this one, keep it, read it, and come

back to us and talk about it. In our passage, Jesus tells a

parable about rejection. Specifically, it's about the

long history of God's chosen people rejecting him, and he's

previewing how that rejection is about to come to a stunning

climax. But our rejection of God doesn't

get the last word. It's how Jesus parable ends, but

it's not how the passage ends. Please follow along as I read

Mark 12/1 to 12 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 wine press 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.

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 air, 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. 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, as they were seeking to arrest him,

but feared the people. Excuse me?

And 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.

Here's the main question our passage confronts us with.

What does God do about our rejection of him?

What does God do about our rejection of him?

We'll see the answer unfold in three points.

The 1st 2:00 will be on Jesus parable and the third will be on

his commentary on the parable at the end of the passage point #1

a long history of rejection. We see this in the first part of

Jesus parable verses one to five, a long history of

rejection looking at at verse one.

And he began to speak to them in parables.

Here Jesus is in the same place talking with the same people as

we saw last week at the end of Chapter 11.

He's in the temple. He's addressing the Sanhedrin.

That's the whole body of Israel's official religious

leadership made-up of the chief priests, the scribes and the

elders. Last week we saw how they

challenged Jesus authority, and Jesus flipped the question back

onto them. Now here Jesus goes on the

offensive against them. He tells them a story, and the

story holds up a mirror in which he means for them to see

themselves. The story begins in verse one.

A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit

for the wine press, and built a tower and leased it to tenants

and went into another country. Now the beginning of the story

immediately calls to mind Isaiah 5 verses one to seven, which

Jenny read to us just a few minutes ago.

There the Lord is the owner, and Israel is his vineyard.

Both there and here, the owner of the vineyard does everything

necessary in order for that vineyard to bear good fruit.

Both there and here, the owner does not receive the fruit he's

looking for. But there's one crucial

difference between Isaiah 5's parable of the vineyard and

Jesus is parable of the vineyard.

So, so he's using the Isaiah passage as a background.

You all are familiar with this. You know this passage from

Isaiah. There's one crucial difference

he's making in Isaiah 5, the dispute is only between the Lord

and the people as a whole. The Lord plants the vineyard.

He goes looking for fruit. He finds no fruit.

He holds them accountable. But here in Jesus parable, the

key difference is the master of the vineyard leased it to

tenants. He hired people to run the

vineyard. They're supposed to care for it

under his authority. They're supposed to return a

portion of the profits of the proceeds to him.

It's a very common arrangement both back then and now.

Somebody owns this property, somebody's going to manage the

property, and there's certain things they owe to the owner.

So how did those tenants do versus 2 to 5?

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 someday

beat and some they killed. Now verse 2 begins with details

that fit the circumstances of Jesus day exactly.

There would have been a few year period in which the vineyards

come in a maturity. You don't expect any fruit and

after a certain time when it's ready, the the owner will

collect on part of the harvest. That's all perfectly normal.

It would have been agreed upon in advance what portion of the

proceeds they owe to him, but that the details begin to

stretch away from any kind of normal or plausible economic

behavior. Of course, in the ancient Middle

East, and dare I say it, today in our own society, there are

all sorts of disputes between absentee landlords and tenant

farmers or property managers or whatever it might be.

But the actions that these tenants take are extreme.

They're irrational, they're jarring, isn't going to come out

of nowhere. So.

So the owner sends a servant and you beat him up and you send

them back empty handed. OK, let me let me just make sure

I understand. You assault and humiliate the

next one. Oh, and oh, and then you kill

the one after that. OK.

Oh, and then you kill several more after.

Ah, I I see what is going on here.

This is you cannot explain this even in terms of the most, you

know, self interested, grasping whatever.

This just doesn't make sense and that's the point.

The characters in Jesus story act in ways that are irrational

and incomprehensible. That's because they are a mirror

for how Israel's leaders all throughout its history have

acted in ways that are irrational and incomprehensible.

For hundreds of years, the people of Israel went astray

into idolatry and injustice. And for hundreds of years, the

Lord sent prophet after prophet after prophet to call them back.

Here's how the Lord Himself summarizes that history in

Jeremiah Chapter 7, verses 25 and 26.

Jeremiah 7:25

From the day that your father's came out of the land of Egypt to

this day, I have persistently sent all My servants, the

prophets to them day after day. Yet they did not listen to Me or

incline their ear, but stiffened their neck.

They did worse than their fathers.

The way that Jesus is here summarizing the history of the

Lord's dealings with His people and their irrational, persistent

rejection of Him, is utterly in keeping with the way the Lord

himself said it through Jeremiah 600 years earlier.

It's the same sad story. There's 600 years more evidence,

sure, by Jesus time. But Jesus is indicting the

people for their rejection of God, His ways, His prophets, His

covenant, just like God himself did when He sent all those

prophets. What did Israel do to the

prophets themselves? They persecuted them.

They refused to listen to them. They killed some of them.

Jezebel tried to kill Elijah and hounded him within an inch of

his life. Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, was

stoned to death in the court of the temple.

Jeremiah himself was thrown into a pit.

The people's opposition to the Lord focused and zeroed in on

the messengers of the covenant, whom he sent to call them back

to repentance. So the story Jesus is telling is

a long history of rejection. It's Israel's leaders rejecting

God over centuries, refusing to listen to his messengers, not

only failing to bear fruit for God, but rejecting and

persecuting the messengers God sent to exhort them to return to

him and bear fruit. On a strictly human level,

neither the tenants behavior nor even the owner's behavior makes

sense. That's the point.

Jesus's story shows us both the Lord's inconceivable patience

and his people's inexcusable rebellion.

How does God respond to our rejection of Him?

With unspeakable patience, for centuries, God kept calling his

people to repent through prophet after prophet after prophet.

They kept breaking God's covenant, and God kept keeping

it. They kept turning their backs on

him, and God kept calling out to them.

They kept running from him, and God kept chasing them.

Every prophetic confrontation was a divine invitation to

reconcile. It was a divine invitation to

return and be restored to friendship with the God of the

universe. That is what God's calling out

to us to repent aims at, to come into friendship with the

Creator, the Lord, the Ruler, the Master of all that is.

That's what he's inviting us into.

But in our irrational, incomprehensible rejection of

Him, we harden our hearts against him.

We turn a blind eye. We silence his voice even when

God is, as it were, running after us.

We run away from Him all the faster.

God keeps calling out. God keeps sending messengers.

He did it throughout all of Israel's history and ever since

the death and resurrection of Christ.

For 2000 years, God has called people to repent by sending

missionary after missionary, evangelist after evangelist,

preacher after preacher to call people to repent and be saved.

This is exactly what Peter writes in Second Peter 39.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count

slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should

perish, but that all should reach repentance.

The same God has now sent His servants, missionaries, pastors,

evangelists, and all of you who trust in Him out to call people

to repent and be restored. That's His goal for hardened,

irrational, inexplicable sinners.

That's what he wants for us all. God's patience is marvelous.

It's majestic. Human logic can't account for

it. Human values can't explain it.

God's patience is God's love long pursuing those who deserve

the opposites. God's patience is an expression

of his grace, his covenant commitment, His steadfast love.

God's patience aims at our it aims at your repentance.

Consider what Paul says in Romans 2.

Four. Or do you presume on the riches

of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that

the kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance?

Why is God patient with you? Because He wants you to give Him

your whole self. He wants your whole heart.

That's what His patience aims at.

Whether you're a Christian, excuse me, whether you're not a

Christian, whether you need to undergo the life transforming

act of repenting and trusting in Christ, turning your whole life

to Him and entrusting your whole self to Him.

That's what He wants. For you.

To give your whole self to Him and find your whole self giving

back, made new in Jesus. Well, if you are a Christian and

there's some sin that you're sitting on, some sin that you're

trying to hide and kind of put behind your back, they're trying

to keep from divine scrutiny. He wants your whole heart.

He wants your whole life. That's why he keeps on calling

out to you to repent. Is there anything in your life

where you've been tuning out repeated warnings from God?

Is there any way you're trying to silence God's voice to keep

him from getting through to this cherished sin?

Consider the warning of Proverbs 29.

One he who is often reproved yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly

be broken beyond healing. If you're not a believer in

Jesus, say for the sake of argument that there is a God.

Maybe you already believe in God and you're open to thinking,

well, Gee, is it really the God of the Bible?

Could this whole thing be true? In what ways has God already

been reaching out to you? In what ways has God already

been trying to get through to you?

What evidence has He given you of His existence, His goodness,

and His love for you? What does God do about our

rejection of Him? He responds with unspeakable,

incomprehensible patience. He pursues us.

He calls us to repentance. He sends servant after servant,

prophet after prophet, messenger after messenger to call us back

to Him. Is He doing that to you right

now? Jesus's story comes to its

climax in one more rejection, and this rejection is different

in kind from all the others. Point #2 the climax of

rejection. The climax of rejection.

We see this in the second-half of Jesus parable in verses 6 to

9. Consider verse 6, after all this

rejection, killing all these servants, how does he respond?

Verse 6, he had a still one other, a beloved son.

Finally he sent him to them saying they will respect my son.

Now we have to consider this statement on 2 levels.

There's the sort of human level of the character within the

story, and there's the way it represents God the Father on the

human level. The owner is taking a massive

risk. This is one last roll of the

dice. It is all riding on this now,

the the father's son would have been authorized to act on his

behalf. He did have a unique authority.

He had a unique role. He could come in and claim the

property, but still, was it really reasonable for this

father? After having every single

servant beaten or rejected or killed, it's a really a good

idea to send his son? Of course not.

What father in his right mind would do that?

That's just the question, of course.

On the divine level, God the Father himself knew what would

happen in sending his Son to earth.

Nothing in Jesus whole life took God by surprise.

He not only foresaw all of it, he ordained all of it.

Still, there's a reason Jesus portrays God the Father in this

way. It's precisely that the decision

to send the Son doesn't make sense.

This is not how you treat your enemies.

This is not how you treat people who have hated you and rejected

you. This is not how you treat

hardened killers. This is not sound, sober,

sensible, reasonable. It's none of that.

You know what it is. Instead, it's grace.

It's grace that scrambles all of our categories.

It's grace that refuses to be turned away by rejection after

rejection. It's grace that will not be

stopped by human hatred. It's grace that returns the

greatest good for the greatest evil.

Grace that will somehow even overcome human rejection.

In the parable, what was that Father thinking?

That's the question because it makes us ask, what was the

Father thinking? Scripture tells us what the

Father was thinking. For God so loved the world that

he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him

might not perish. But I've everlasting life, as we

even heard earlier in the service, He who did not spare

his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will He not also

with him graciously give us all things?

That's what the Father was thinking.

So the Father was showing. That's what the Father was

doing. He was opening up His heart to

show us the infinite depths of grace, that when you analyze it

in human terms of deserving and response, of cause and effect,

of what you do to preserve any kind of self-interest, it makes

no sense. It only makes sense if God is

infinitely loving, infinitely gracious, infinitely merciful,

and if He has resolved not to treat us according to anything

we have done or deserved, but only according to His infinite

mercy. Notice it in verse 6.

Jesus describes the Son as beloved.

We've heard that twice in Mark chapter one, verse 11, Chapter

9, verse 7, at Jesus baptism and at the transfiguration.

At Jesus baptism, the Father declared to him, You are my

beloved Son. At the transfiguration, he

declared to the disciples with him, This is my beloved son.

The son in the parable is God's unique son.

He's his one son. He's his beloved son.

All this points to Jesus is eternal, divine sonship.

He is God's unique, beloved, only begotten son.

Notice it says in verse 6. Finally, finally he sent him to

them. The Greek word is eschaton,

meaning last this son comes, last this son comes, finally

this son comes to bring in God's Kingdom.

This son comes with his father's authority to his father's

property to claim his father's rightful due.

So how did the tenants respond? Verses 7 and 8.

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. That's important to recognize

that the tenants did not think this would somehow give them a

legal right to the vineyard. They're not abiding by the law

here. They're just trying to seize a

selfish opportunity. If we get the air out of the

way, we can seize the property. That's what they're thinking and

of course Jesus parable previews how the official religious

leadership of Israel will treat him.

He's already predicted 3 times they'll deliver him over to

death. We've seen in Chapter 11 verse

18 they're already scheming to destroy him.

So the official religious leaders of Jesus day are acting

like these tenants. They're acting like the vineyard

is bears, not gods. They care more about staying in

power than about submitting to God's authority.

They are stewards acting like owners.

And now the true king has returned.

They're trying to steal from God and keep what they can get for

themselves. Ultimately, the religious

leaders actions showed that they loved what they could get from

God more than they loved God himself.

If they truly loved God, they would have loved His beloved

Son. If they truly loved God, they

would have received Him and worshipped Him.

When He showed up in the flesh. That was the test, and they

failed it. Instead of receiving Him, they

killed him. They reason if we kill the air,

we take the place of the air. Here's the essence of sin.

Here's the essence of humanity's opposition to God.

If we can dispense with God, if we can even kill God, then we

get to become our own God. That is the essence of sin.

A fallen, sinful human thinks that a dead God is more

convenient than the living God. Why?

Because a dead God cannot tell you what to do.

A dead God cannot issue commands.

A dead God cannot enforce those commands.

A dead God cannot send you warnings that, if you pay any

kind of attention to them, should make you tremble and

quake and lose sleep at night if you are not in the right with

him. The living God, oh, he does all

that and more. Dead God, nothing.

A dead God lets you be your own God.

Do you really want a dead God? Do you really want to be

responsible for killing God? Frederick Nietzsche, no

Christian and no friend of Christianity, still said some

true stuff sometimes. Late 19th century.

He said this God is dead, God remains dead and we have killed

him. How shall we comfort ourselves,

the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest

of all that the world has yet owned, has bled to death under

our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?

What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have

to invent? In Jesus story, the long history

of rejection comes to its climax in the rejection of the beloved

Son. But that still leaves the owner

and the tenants and the vineyard.

So what's he's going? What's the owner going to do?

That's what Jesus asks and answers in verse 9.

What will the owner of the vineyard do?

He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to

others. The owner of the vineyard is, of

course, the the Lord, the Master, the God of Israel.

He is unfathomably patient, but there is a limit to his

patience. He is fantastically gracious.

He is also at the same time, unswervingly just so.

What will he do? He'll judge the tenants.

He will execute his justice and vengeance against them.

He will do that against Israel's official leadership.

And he will set over his vineyard other leaders, leaders

who will submit to him and bear fruit for him, just like in

Jesus's demonstration in the temple back in Chapter 11 here

at the conclusion of this parable, Jesus's warning

implicitly about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

That's going to come in 70 AD as an expression of God's

judgement. The official stewardship of this

whole class of leaders will come to an end.

They will suffer God's judgment, and they will be removed from

office. Do you understand and embrace

the rightness of God's judgments?

Do you see it as good that God will fully and finally hold evil

to account? Know what this verse doesn't

mean. It's easy, I think, to draw some

exaggerated conclusions from this verse.

Jesus doesn't teach that the owner rejects or destroys his

vineyard. That is, God doesn't destroy or

reject Israel. Of course, the people of Israel

were LED astray by their leaders.

Their leaders bear responsibility for that, and and

so do the people. But Jesus parable does not teach

that God rejects Israel and delivers his Kingdom over to

Gentile Christians. Instead he teaches here that God

rejects Israel's leaders and transfers authority over his

people to others. So you have to ask, who are the

others? The parable doesn't say

explicitly, but I think in the context with Jesus squaring off

against the official leaders, Jesus leading his disciples,

equipping them, commissioning them, preparing them for their

role, I think the clearest answer is Jesus and the 12

apostles are the new tenants. Jesus is not saying that God is

rejecting Israel and replacing it with the church.

He's saying that God is taking authority away from unfaithful

leaders and giving it to faithful leaders as the climax

of a long history of rejection. Israel's leaders reject God's

beloved son, and so God rejects them.

That's the end of the parable. Jesus himself immediately goes

on to teach that while this is the end of the parable, it is

not the end of the story. It's not the end of the story

for him, and it's not the end of the story for you and me .3

Rejection ordained and reversed. Rejection ordained and reversed.

We see this in verses 11:50, especially in Jesus citation of

scripture. In verses 10 and 11, right after

Jesus finishes the parable, he adds his own biblical commentary

to it. He brings a pastor of scripture

in to interpret it. So in verse 10 he introduces

that passage with a question, Have you not read this

scripture? Now that's a rhetorical

question. Of course they've read this

scripture. They're thoroughly trained

religious professionals. They probably memorized the

passage before they were 13. They probably recited it

thousands of times. Of course they've read it.

But Jesus question is charging them with missing the point of

it completely. The passage of Psalm 118, verses

Psalms 118:22

22 and 23, which Jesus cites in full in verses 10 and 11, the

stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.

So how does Jesus parable end? It ends with the sun rejected by

the leaders. That's the link with Psalm 118,

Psalms 118:22

verse 22. The leaders are the builders.

They're in charge of God's people, and Jesus is the stone

they reject. So Jesus's scriptural commentary

begins right where the story ends.

It starts from their rejection of him, and it proclaims what's

going to happen next. What happens to the rejected

stone? He becomes the cornerstone.

Think about a building project. They're assembling materials.

It probably refers to the even the building of the temple is

kind of the background builders have to inspect is this stone

the right shape, size, density, all those kind of things.

You have to inspect the materials before you use them.

So this is a builders, those in charge setting this particular

stone aside as unfit for purpose.

But that stone turns out to be the most important stone in the

whole building. It could mean it's the

cornerstone in the sense that everything's built around it.

It could be more of an arch stone or a capstone that holds

up the weight of the whole building.

Either way, this one stone is crucial to how the whole

building hangs together as a unit, as a body, it is the most

important stone. So somehow in this Psalm, the

stone goes from being rejected to being exalted, from being set

aside to being supreme. How does that happen?

The next bit of the Psalm tells us, at least implicitly, this

was the Lord's doing. They rejected the stone, and God

reversed their rejection. God overturned their rejection.

God rejected their rejection. God exalted the one that they

killed and set aside. God reversed their verdict that

this son was worthless and to be despised.

How? By raising him from the dead and

installing him in glory at his right hand.

This son wasn't worthless, but priceless.

As first Peter says, this son isn't to be despised but

worshipped. So the rulers of the temple

rejected and destroyed Jesus, but Jesus is now the cornerstone

of a new temple. All those who are united to Him

by faith are God's end time temple, indwelt by His Spirit.

That gives us an image, a picture of what God has been

after all along. He created this universe as a

showcase of His glory. He created humanity to live in

fellowship with Him and find fulfillment in Him, to dwell

with Him face to face and be satisfied in Him.

But ever since Adam and Eve, we've rejected him consistently,

every single one of us, in the depths of our hearts.

Nobody starts off, nobody enters this life rightly relating to

God. Nobody starts off this life.

Nobody enters into this world worshipping God as He deserves.

We are all have rejected and turned away from God.

What we deserve is what the owner of the vineyard did to

those tenants. What God's done instead is send

His Son to be rejected, to pay the price for our sins, to be

raised from the dead, and to now invite and call and summon

everyone to repent and trust in Him.

That is the only way to be right with God, and it is a way to be

right with God that depends on nothing you have done, nothing

you're doing right now, nothing you will do.

All you need to do is turn from sin and receive this gift of

salvation by faith. The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone. God reversed humanity's

rejection of Jesus by raising Him from the dead.

God ordained this whole saga of rejection and reversal to bring

about our salvation. This is why the Psalm says this

was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

That could be a one sentence summary of the whole of Mark's

gospel. Mark is a gospel of paradox.

It's a gospel of reversal. It's a gospel of human amazement

at the staggering, unpredictable work of God.

God delights to reverse situations that look utterly

helpless. God delights to show his power

by doing what is humanly impossible.

You might not see a way out, but perhaps God has already

eternally ordained a way out. God can create a way out from

rejection, a way out from resistance, a way out from

hardened opposition. God can create a way out from

death. The grave does not tie God's

hands or lessen his power. Even from death.

God has a way out that only he can accomplish and for which

only he will be praised. The God who can deliver from

death, the God who can raise himself from death, the God who

can raise you from death, works marvels and deserves your trust,

deserves your confidence, deserves your praise.

This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The whole shape of the Christian life is marveling at God's

gracious reversal of our rejection of Him.

I once was lost, but now I am found.

Was blind, but now I see. That's why grace is amazing.

It's marvelous. It's astonishing.

God refuses to let our rejection have the last word.

God makes actual what is humanly impossible if you're a believer

in the Lord Jesus Christ. One regular spiritual habit you

should practice is marveling and who God is and what He's done

for you in Christ. Do this in private and in

public. Do this in personal devotions,

family devotions, and in corporate worship.

What is there to marvel at in the Christian life?

God's own infinitely perfect being and character.

Any true thought you think about the God of the universe is cause

for marveling. Does God's providential rule

over history that he sovereignly ordains all that comes to pass

and knows how to bring good out of evil, more grounds for

marveling? There's God's plan of salvation

culminating in the cross and resurrection, how God used the

greatest act of human rejection of God ever to bring about the

salvation of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

There's the mystery and marvel of the Trinity, of Christ's

incarnation, of the depth of what he accomplished for us all

in his death and resurrection. There's Christ's return, as Paul

proclaims in 2nd Thessalonians 110, when he comes on that day

to be glorified in his Saints and to be marvelled at among

those who believe. There's God's preserving and

sanctifying work in your own life, considering how He's

remade you, changed you, transformed you in ways that are

far beyond your own power. One more ground for marveling

would be the way he so lovingly, so tenderly, turns frowning

providences into causes for rejoicing, whether in retrospect

or sometimes even in the moment. What do we do together in our

corporate worship? We marvel this was the Lord's

doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

We marvel at who God is. We marvel at His dramatic works

of reversing human rejection. We marvel at the depth of His

love displayed and sending His Son for us.

We marvel at His promise to return and His power to set the

universe right. God ordained His people's

rejection of His Son, and He reversed that in the

resurrection. That's what Jesus is saying.

Psalm 118 prophecies. The Psalm itself is a prophecy

of what would happen to Him. Now this is part of the story

that in Mark hasn't happened yet, but it will, Brothers and

sisters, it has. The leaders of Israel said no to

Jesus, but God said yes by raising him from the dead.

Humanity said no by killing him. God said yes by raising him.

Whose word was stronger, humanities or gods.

If you've never said yes to Jesus, turn your no into a yes

today. There's one more part of the

passage we need to consider briefly, the very end, verse 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. The plot continues with their

plotting against Jesus. They know Jesus is indicting

them, calling them out, and they don't like it.

But they also know that Jesus has a lot of popular support, so

they can't just go, you know, get them convicted and killed.

They need some kind of scheme. They need some kind of pretext.

They need a clever way to do this.

They're stuck. Eventually they will find a way,

but ultimately, and seeking to destroy Jesus, they will destroy

only themselves. They think they're calling the

shots, but they are reading lines from a script God has

written. This was the Lord's doing, and

it is marvelous. In our eyes, rejection hurts.

But when it comes to our rejection of God, that rejection

says nothing about God and everything about us.

Our rejection of God hurts God not at all, but it hurts us

infinitely. What do you want to have the

last word in your life? You're no or God's yes.

Here's what God wants most for you.

Receive his Son, Receive the Savior who was rejected by men

and raised up by God, Man of Sorrows, Lamb of God by his own

betrayed. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, this was your doing, and it is marvellous in

our eyes. May we continue by faith to

embrace the stone the builders rejected.

May we be enabled to endure whatever rejection You ordained

for us in union with Him. May You grant us to help each

other persevere in the hope of seeing every human rejection of

You either overturned or held to account.

Father, may we put our confidence in Christ and so not

be put to shame in Jesus name, Amen.