Mutiny, Mocking, and Murder

We worship a speaking God.

And we have the inestimable privilege to hear him speak.

So I encourage you, if you have your own copy of the Living Word of God, please take it and open it to Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

If you did not bring your own copy, that's okay.

There is one in the pew, and that is found on page 827.

We are approaching in the next couple of weeks the Lord's triumphal entry into the royal city of Jerusalem, followed a few days later by Good Friday, and then the magnificent Resurrection Sunday.

I don't want to infringe on anything that Walt has planned for those times, but I would like us to begin preparing our hearts and minds for that general time period.

And to do that, I would like to direct your attention this morning to Tuesday of Holy Week.

It's on that day that Jesus responded to challenges from Israel's leadership to his authority.

I'd like to begin reading in Matthew 21, verse 33, if you would like to follow along, and we'll read through the end of the chapter.

Matthew 21:33

The words of the Lord are Hear another parable.

When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants, the tenants, to get his fruit.

And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them.

Finally he sent his son to them, saying, They will respect my son.

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, This is the heir.

Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.

And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?

They said to Jesus, He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their season.

Jesus said to them, Have you never read in the Scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?

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

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on any one, it will crush him.

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.

And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.

Amen.

These are the last few days of the Lord's earthly ministry.

In the text of Matthew's gospel, the final week of his life is initiated at the beginning of this chapter, at the beginning of chapter 21, with the triumphal entry.

Jesus riding down the Mount of Olives, entering the city of Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people are streaming into the city of Jerusalem for the feasts of unleavened bread and Passover.

And Jesus is also there.

Having already arrived with the jubilant shouts of Galilean travelers proclaiming him the anticipated Messiah.

When he arrived, he immediately entered the temple, where he began to act.

Not simply as a teacher, as one of the rabbis, not as a prophet, though he was, but as king.

And even more than that, he began to act as God.

When he authoritatively cleared the temple, when he healed in an instant.

And even more when he accepted the praise of children that was designed only for God.

You know, that ought to have been the greatest day in the history of the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

Their Messiah, their God, was with them.

But the chief priests and the elders of Israel were not too keen on this man from Galilee.

He upset their established order.

He taught with an authority that even they, as leaders, did not dare to exercise.

And so they had questions running through their minds.

Who is this guy?

Who sent him?

Who gave him the authority to say these things?

Who gave him the authority to heal, to cleanse the temple, and above all, what right does he have to receive praise given only to God?

Those are questions that are posed to Jesus in the public form of the temple, beginning back in verse 23.

Well, Jesus responded to them.

His response, beginning in verse 25, is in the form of a question.

What about John the Baptizer?

The populace considered John to be a prophet, to be someone who spoke from God, who ministered in the power and with the authority that God had given him as a prophet.

So Jesus said if they would concede that John came from God and spoke from God, then they must also believe the same about Jesus because they had the same message and came from the same Father.

The Father sent John, the Father sent Jesus.

But they refused to believe that.

So Jesus told a story, a parable.

He wanted to illustrate the difference between those who believed in him and those who refused to believe in him.

In the story he told there was a man who owned a vineyard and he had two sons.

So he says to the first son, Son, go and work in the vineyard today.

Put in a good day's work.

And the son says, Sorry, Dad, I have other plans today.

Not going to happen.

Then he repents later on and decides to go and he spends a day in the vineyard.

The second son, Dad says, Son, go and work in the vineyard.

And he says, Sure, Dad, I'll go.

I don't have anything planned today.

But he never goes.

So his obedience is just lip service.

And Jesus intends those two sons to illustrate those who believed in him and those who didn't.

And it's a stark contrast.

Because in the Gospels we see that the worst of sinners are represented by tax collectors and prostitutes.

And Jesus intended those worst of sinners to be illustrated by the first son.

They said, No, we're not going to believe in the Son, but then they repent, they turn around, and they go and work in the vineyard, having trusted in Christ.

But the chief priests and the elders are like the second son.

They say, Oh, yes, we believe in God.

He's our Father.

We're descended from Abraham.

But they never go to the vineyard to work.

It's just lip service.

Then Jesus told another story.

Another parable.

It's not the same kind of parable, but one that builds on the previous one while communicating a slightly different truth.

It's the story of a wealthy, powerful landowner.

And as the story was told, there's a master of a house who owned a piece of property.

The owner was the despot of the property.

He was lord and master over everything related to his home and his property.

That meant if he were kind and benevolent and everything ran smoothly, then that would be beneficial for those living under his authority and serving him as servants.

But if he were a terrible despot, he could be cruel and harsh and dreadful.

The landowner owned a piece of property.

A piece of property that served no apparent purpose.

It was just an area of land that was filled with rocks and probably weeds and shrubs.

So he set about clearing it, doing a lot of manual labor or servants doing manual labor, picking up each stone and moving it to another place to clear the land, to prepare it for planting new pieces, new plants of grapevines.

Of course, this vineyard would need some protection.

Following the laborious process of clearing the land of rocks, the landowner would use those same rocks to build a low wall that would have circled the vineyard.

Would have carefully stacked those rocks into a wall about two feet in width and maybe three or four feet in height.

Nothing extremely tall, not terribly high, but it would be enough to keep most wild animals out and potentially to deter a would-be thief.

There was also, though, a tower in the vineyard.

These elevated platforms were constructed of stones or sometimes of wood, and they served several purposes.

On the one hand, it was elevated so that you could see out across the entire vineyard and even beyond the low-lying wall.

You might say it was a defensive platform to watch for animals and thieves.

But it would also serve as a respite.

The workers could take a break in the heat of the day and come and rest in its shade.

There are even records that these towers served on occasion as the home for the master or the vineyard keeper during the harvest time.

A good vineyard is not a good vineyard without a wine press.

These were often carved out of rock.

It would begin with a large level area dug about a foot deep in the rock and often covered with a painted mosaic, sort of like a ceramic-like tile.

After the grapes were cut off of the vines, they would be dropped in this depression, and the servants would come and walk over the grapes, crushing them with their feet.

Sometimes, especially in constructed wine presses that were built above ground, there would be an indentation in the center of the wine press.

The juice would be pushed towards that center indentation, and after the juice was pushed there, they would also push the remains of the grapes to that center area.

And they would have a rock that would be cut specifically for the purpose of sitting down in that indentation to get a final crushing of the grapes out so they could get every last drop of juice.

That juice would then flow through a filtered channel into a large collection basin where the servants would descend into that basin via some steps, fill jars with that grape juice, and put it into a storage area.

That was the process.

All of this the landowner did from scratch.

There was nothing with which to begin.

Nothing but a patch of unused, worthless, rocky ground that the Lord of the Vineyard then transformed into a first-class vineyard.

The amount of effort and attention and even wealth going into that kind of work is quite impressive.

And after all of that is done, the landowner moves to another country.

That may seem surprising to you.

It's not as surprising as it may sound to us.

It's likely that some, if not many, of these leaders to whom Jesus was speaking would have had a very similar situation.

They would have had a sort of a getaway home somewhere else in Palestine that they could get away and rest and relax, maybe even use as some sort of investment income.

Maybe similar to a lake home around here.

But the landowner in this story is not able to just pick up and leave.

Or all of his work would go to waste.

So to ensure the continuation of his vineyard and to receive some return on his investment, he leased out the vineyard to some tenant farmers.

According to historical records of the time, this would be an arrangement where the tenant farmers did all of the work.

And each year the owner would receive his share of the harvest, most likely a 30 to 50 percent share.

The tenant farmers took the rest as their share.

And that way the farmers had work and regular income without the bother of startup or overhead expenses.

And the landowner would receive a nice return on his investments.

So once the lease arrangement is secured, the landowner took off to enjoy the comforts of another location.

We need to know that that simple act demonstrated extreme patience.

It demonstrated patience because it generally took four years of growing before vines would produce any profit.

After planting, there would be four years of labor, four years of watching over the vineyard, four years of pruning, four years of fertilizing before any profit was ever realized.

For three harvest seasons, the Lord of the vineyard is patient, knowing that's the process, biding his time to see some return on his investment.

For four long growing seasons, he's patient until those vines are mature enough to produce some profitable fruit.

And when the time finally came for a good harvest, the Lord sent some of his slaves to collect his share.

Perhaps he wanted some of the actual grapes or maybe the crushed juice, but it may only be that he desired the profit that came from the sale of that juice.

We don't know.

Those details aren't told to us.

He just desired to collect his share of the profit.

That was the arrangement, after all.

He owned the land.

The property was his, the wall was his, the tower was his, and the grape vines were his.

He had merely leased out the property for a price.

He was the master, he was the despot of the vineyard.

But those tenants were not so ready to give up such a large share of the profit.

Even if it was to the owner.

Think about it.

They had worked long and hard for that harvest, years.

And they were not about to let some guy's servants come and take that for which they had labored for years.

Besides, there were more of them than there were of the servants.

So as the servants of the Lord of the vineyard arrived and entered the vineyard through that low-lying wall, the farmers surrounded them.

One they beat to a pulp.

Another they just simply killed.

Another they stoned until he died.

None except maybe the beaten one would return to tell the owner.

The beaten one may return, but they had ensured that it would only be after a long time of recovery.

There was no apparent concern whatsoever on their part for their sin being discovered.

And amazingly, amazingly, the landowner is just shockingly merciful.

He doesn't give the tenants the boot.

That's what I would have done.

Sorry, see ya.

At best, they deserve to be evicted from the vineyard without any profit for themselves because they violated the lease agreement.

At worst, they deserve to be imprisoned or even put to death themselves.

But no, this landowner is merciful.

Disregarding the insult to his name.

Fully expecting a different response, the owner sent a second delegation of servants.

This time he sent more than the first.

Perhaps the larger number of servants would convince those tenant farmers to give up the required portion of the profit.

But those tenants refused to be convicted by the owner's mercy.

They weren't about to give him what was due.

They treated this group of servants with the same treatment as the others.

Beatings, stonings, and death.

The leaders to whom Jesus directed this parable would have had their jaws hit the floor.

They would have been aghast at the situation.

The tenant farmers were shaming the landowner in participating in this mutiny against his authority.

No one in his right mind would put up with such mocking insubordination.

There was no respect for authority, no respect for the position of the Lord of the vineyard.

The honor due to the landowner was simply rejected and replaced with taunting scorn.

Many would have considered the landowner a fool for having been merciful the first time.

Instead, they would have expected quick and merciless retaliation in order to maintain his honor.

But instead, he sent more servants.

And now they are mostly dead.

Killed by the farmers.

That put the landowner in an incredibly tough place.

There was no respect for him.

His honor had been derided twice.

He played the fool once by extending mercy.

He's now been insulted not once, but twice.

What will he do?

The common thought would have been retaliation must be swift and it must be harsh.

Instead, the Lord of the vineyard is absurdly gracious.

Verse 37.

Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, They will respect my son.

The chief priests and the elders of Israel would have been speechless.

This was unheard of.

The landowner was being exceedingly foolish.

It would have been one thing to perhaps send the son with a small army to punish the farmers, maybe even exterminate them.

But to show mercy yet again by sending his very son, no one would do such a thing.

That's absurd.

Culturally, the son would go with the full authority of the father.

As his messenger, the son deserved the full respect and honor that should be given to his father, the rightful owner of the vineyard.

And the father was hopeful that the hearts of the farmers would be changed by the impact of sending his own son.

He desired that those farmers see him in his son, that they would perhaps be humbled by his patience.

And his mercy and his grace and respond to the coming of his son.

Son traveled from the distant home to the location of the vineyard.

And as he approached the vineyard, the tenants saw the sun and they said to themselves, This is the air.

Here's our opportunity.

Come, let us kill him and take his inheritance.

And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Stunning.

Utterly stunning.

The grace of the Lord of the vineyard was spat upon.

His position and his authority were nothing to them.

The sending of the sun was simply seen as an opportunity to finally, once and for all, be rid of the demands of the Lord of the vineyard.

And they foolishly believed that if the sun sort of unexpectedly disappeared, the vineyard would be theirs.

That set up Jesus' challenging question to the leaders of God's chosen people.

He asked them this question when therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?

Fair question.

Notice that there is no if he comes.

It is when he comes.

The owner of the vineyard will come and he will deal with those tenants.

What will he do?

How will he respond to those farmers who have dared to insult him three times, testing his patience and his mercy, who would dare to beat and murder his servant messengers, and then his own son?

The chief priests and the elders declare the sentence that ought to be given.

They say, He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.

There's a play on words here to emphasize how strongly the chief priests and the elders felt about this situation.

If we were to translate it very literally, it would be something like, he will put those bad ones to a bad death.

But the idea is intended to be more intensive than that.

Something like, he will put those wretches to a wretched death.

In their astonishment at the actions of the farmers, these leaders react with vicious justice.

No mercy should be granted to those farmers who would treat the Lord of the vineyard in such a way.

Everyone who killed the son and shamed the father ought to be put to death.

They deserve to die.

So Jesus responds now.

Beginning in verse 42 through verse 44, he says to those leaders that they are self-condemned.

They have just passed judgment on themselves.

Quoting from Psalm 118, Jesus sort of brings in a different illustration, one from a quarry.

When they would begin building a new building, they would go to the quarry and they would begin carving out sections of rock that would be used for the foundation stones and then for the walls of the building, so on and so forth.

God cut out a particular stone for a particular purpose, but when the construction workers saw the stone, they determined that, you know what, it's not really sufficient for what it was designed for.

We need a different stone.

But God thought otherwise.

God took that stone and made it the chief stone, the chief stone of the corner.

Therefore, Jesus said, The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

Friends, God's patience and mercy have their limits.

Yes, he is a gracious God.

Yes, he is a merciful God.

Yes, he is a forgiving God.

That's illustrated in the parable, is it not?

He kept sending more servants, but there came a point at which God said, Enough is enough.

The leaders of Israel judged the story correctly.

When the messengers and the son were murdered, the Lord of the vineyard should return, and he should give those wretched farmers a wretched death.

And it's now here that we finally begin to see where Jesus is headed with this parable.

We know this because of a parallel passage in Isaiah 5.

Let me read to you Isaiah 5.

Let me sing a song for my beloved, Isaiah writes.

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and he cleared it of stones, and he planted it with choice vines.

He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it only yielded wild or sour grapes.

See, God planted Israel as his vines, expecting choice fruit.

But his vineyard only produced sour grapes.

And now Jesus said the leaders of Israel were like those tenant farmers whom God expected to tend the vineyard.

And when the time came to produce fruit, and from whom God expected a return.

And the time for harvest came.

And God sent the prophets.

Some they beat.

Some they stoned.

Some they killed.

And God sent more prophets.

And they killed those two.

And so at last, in the fullness of time, God sent his own son, expecting honor and respect for him because he came in the image of the Father.

But they would throw him outside the city and murder him.

Israel, God's chosen people and her leaders, were not producing the required fruit.

They rejected God's servants.

They would, in a few short days, from this moment, take his beloved son outside the city walls and lift him up on a tree to die.

Rather than produce the fruit of belief in the Son to the glory of the Father, they mocked him and insulted his authority and sought to steal his glory by means of murder.

And in just over a month from this moment, God would initiate a new work, bringing into the vineyard people who would be faithful to his calling.

He would begin to work with a new group of called-out people who would produce the expected fruit.

And as for these leaders, and anyone else who rejects the true Lord of the Vineyard, who does not receive his son, who came with all of the authority of the Father, Jesus says, the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces.

And when the stone falls on anyone, it will crush him.

I'm pretty certain they didn't understand all that Jesus meant when he said that parable.

But they were able to comprehend that he was speaking about them, and they didn't like it one little bit.

It made them angry.

They grasped that Jesus was intending the vicious farmers to mirror their disregard for him.

But they feared the crowds more than they feared the sun.

They feared people more than they feared the Lord of the Vineyard.

And the time had come for the tenant farmers.

They had already, by this point, rejected the last servant sent to them.

Had they believed in John the Baptizer's message, they would have accepted the Lord of the Vineyard's son along with the worst of sinners.

Instead, they rejected John and they would kill the Son.

They proceeded to mock the Father and to kill the author of life.

And as the leaders had answered the parable in harsh terms, that the Lord of the vineyard should respond with harsh justice, so too Jesus declared that he would be a rock crushing those who remained in unbelief.

There's more to that theme in Scripture.

There's both judgment and hope in that one verse.

There's the judgment of unbelief, saying, This stone is a stone that people are going to stumble over and who is going to crush them.

But for those who turn and repent like the worst of sinners, there's no shame in trusting in him.

There's only joy and hope.

Beloved, that tells us that even to this day, Jesus is this stone.

And we stand, as it were, in the place of the tenant farmers.

For those who receive the Son, he becomes our head, the cornerstone holding us together.

But for those who disobey the word of God, rejecting the word of his servants and rejecting the sun, he becomes a stumbling stone that will one day crush everyone who rejects him.

Let me be very clear for a moment.

This may be the day that the sun confronts you.

The Lord of the Vineyard sent his servants, the prophets of old, to bear witness to him.

He gave them authority to speak in his name, and they faithfully declared his words to you in the scriptures.

And even more, he has sent his son, his only son, the unique one, God the Son, who bore the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

He came bearing the authority of the Father.

The Father sent him so that you might receive him, believe in him, and live, so that when confronted with the Son, you ought to say with Thomas, my Lord and the God of me.

But for those who reject him, as the tenant farmers did in the story, God will cause him to be a crushing stone.

Just a few days prior, the Son of God rode down the Mount of Olives on a donkey to jubilant shouts, accompanied by triumphant celebration.

A few days later, the tenant farmers would take Jesus outside the vineyard.

After he was beaten and mocked, they would lift him up on a cross of wood to die a despicable death.

Beloved, the testimony of Scripture is that we have all sinned.

And by our sin, we have participated with the farmers in the killing of the author of life.

We, by reason of our sin, participated in that mutiny against the Lord of the Vineyard.

We rejected his word, we mocked his name, and we murdered his son.

But the amazing, incomprehensible irony is that the actions of humanity against the Son of God were not an afterthought.

The Lord of the Vineyard himself purposed to send his son to die before time ever began, in order that the death of his son by the hands of sinful, mutinous people might be the grisly, bleak, black sky upon which the brilliance of his glory and salvation would shine.

That shameful, despicable act of killing the author of life was evidence that we are altogether serious when we reject the Lord of the Vineyard.

There's no one who desires God.

Not even one.

But for his grace, we would all shout in anger against the Son, crucify him, crucify him.

We want the vineyard.

And if God were some sort of implacable despot, we would be faced with certain harsh terror at his rage over the senseless killing of his son.

But in the unfathomable grace of God, the Son of God faced the cross with a purpose.

He entered the vineyard of earth to hang upon an abominable tree, while the Lord of the vineyard, his own father, unrelentingly hurled his wrath upon the Son.

He bore the infinite wrath of the Father for the very ones who wanted him dead.

He was resolute in enduring the shame of the cross so that he might save some of us who threw him out of his own vineyard and murdered him.

Talk about absurd grace.

His creation still to this day desires to take him outside the vineyard and lift him up to die.

But there will be some in God's grace who receive him, who believe in the Son, who become his disciples, and then go out to proclaim the excellencies of him who called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So the major question from this passage is this which one are you?

Let's pray.

Our Lord God, we come and we bow before you in humility, confessing our sin before you.

We acknowledge our part in the big picture of the death of your son.

But we give you praise that we can relish in the absurd grace of a great God who bore our punishment.

We lift you up.

We give you all the praise, all the honor and adoration that we can.

And as we sang earlier, we declare to you that all we have is Christ the Son.

Amen.

Walt, would you come up?