Lesson Focus:
The
church is God’s. He has allowed us to be
its workers so that we might produce good fruit. When we try and take ownership of the church
so that it serves our own interests we demonstrate our unfaithfulness.
Catch up on the story:
Jesus
has just pronounced judgment on the Jewish religious leaders for not believing
and obeying God. They sought to entrap
Jesus, but instead, Jesus turned their questions around on them. In the previous parable, the religious
leaders are the second son who says he will go into the field but then never
does, so they find themselves being left out as even the tax collectors and
prostitutes enter the kingdom of heaven before them.
Last
week’s parable, this parable, and the one that follows it (Matthew 22:1-3) all
belong together thematically. They all
illustrate how Israel’s religious leaders have missed something very
important.
Critical Questions:
1.
How
does this text reveal to us the nature and character of God/What is God doing
in this text?
- What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
- How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
The Text:
Those
same Jewish religious leaders who questioned Jesus about his authority now have
to listen to another parable. The first
parable, Matthew 21:28-32, the parable regarding two sons, did not paint the
religious leaders in a positive light.
The parable under our consideration at the moment will not end well
either. While the parable speaks a
powerful word to the Jewish religious leaders of the day, it also has much to
say to us. In this parable we see both
God’s steadfast faithfulness and love in the face of human sinfulness, as well
as his judgment.
We
find Jesus in the Temple complex surrounded by the religious leaders of the day
and, perhaps, his disciples. Jesus has
already told one parable and will now tell another. I can imagine him standing, as people draw
close to hear what he has to say, pointing a finger at the religious leaders
and forcefully uttering these words, “Listen to another parable!” It is important to understand that what is
translated “listen” is a second person, plural imperative. It is a command, not an invitation or a
request. “You all, you listen really well
to what I’m going so say!” The tone is a
bit more forceful than the previous introduction.
Unlike
the previous parables (and the following one) we have recently looked at, Jesus
does not begin with the familiar phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”
Rather, he chooses to jump right into the story, because the content of the parable
does not refer to the kingdom of heaven, but the sad state of affairs here on
earth.
There
was a man who owned a plot of land.
Because he owned the land he decided to place on that land a
vineyard. With care and love the
landowner begins to work. He plants the
vines, puts a fence up to protect his tender shoots, digs a wine press in anticipation
of the future fruit the vineyard will produce, and builds a watchtower. Keep in mind that from the time a vineyard is
planted to the time it produces its first grapes can be close to seven years. The owner of the land is not seeking to gain
a quick buck on his work. No, he has
lovingly invested himself in the vineyard knowing that he will not see fruit
for a long time. Finally, he leases the
vineyard and sets off on business in another country.
Most
commentators believe that the language at the beginning of this parable is
meant to invoke the beginning verses of Isaiah 5.
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;
he expected it to yield
grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
Indeed, Israel is often referred to in the Old
Testament as a vineyard that God has lovingly worked so hard to plant.
In
faith, God selected a few to be the workers who would exercise care over the
vineyard. These farmers, tenants in the
text, have been chosen by God to bring the vineyard to fruitfulness. The much expected harvest time has come and
the owner, knowing that there should be fruit, sends a messenger, one of his
slaves to collect the fruit. But the
farmers, rather than doing what the owner desires, beat one slave and then
killed the next one that the owner sends.
By
now a clearer image of what Jesus is getting at should be emerging. The vineyard owner is God. The vineyard that God has worked so hard to
plant is Israel, God’s chosen people.
The tenant farmers, the ones who were to guide Israel to fruitfulness,
are the Jewish religious leaders.
Lovingly, God has brought Israel into existence, he has provided for her
and set leaders over her to guide her.
Israel, however, through her history, did not always produce fruit. So, God would send prophets to her to call
her back to faithfulness. Time and time
again the prophets would speak the word of God only to be beaten and
killed.
In
the parable, the owner keeps sending slaves.
Each time he sent a slave, the slaves were treated worse than the ones
who preceded them. From this repeated
sending of messengers we get a rather astounding image of God. If you and I were in the position of the
vineyard owner in the parable, would we be so lenient with the tenant
farmers? I imagine that after the first
tenant was beaten or killed we all would have taken appropriate measures to ensure
that those who had acted so violently would be dealt with. Yet God, in his love and faithfulness,
exhausts all possible resources before executing judgment.
Remember
that God, over and over again throughout Israel’s history, swears his steadfast
love and faithfulness to Israel. The
prophet Hosea paints for us a picture of God’s struggle with Israel:
When Israel was a child, I loved
him,
and out of Egypt I called
my son.
2 The more I called them,
the more they went from
me;
they kept sacrificing to
the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that
I healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their
cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them. [Hosea 11:1-4]
And a few verses later,
8 How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O
Israel?
How can I make you like
Admah?
How can I treat you like
Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within
me;
my compassion grows warm
and tender.
9 I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy
Ephraim;
for I am God and no
mortal,
the Holy One in your
midst,
and I will not come in wrath. [Hosea 11:8-9]
Finally, in the parable, the owner of the vineyard
decides to send his son, believing that the son will be respected. The presence of the son will be like the
presence of the owner himself. So, the
owner sends the son and he meets the same fate as the other slaves. The tenant farmers seize him and, in a
twisted fit of logic, believe that they will receive the son’s inheritance once
he is gone.
Of course, the son in the parable is Jesus. God, after having all of his messengers
rejected and most of them killed, sends his son. Now, we might stop and ask ourselves, Is God
so ignorant that he believes that by sending his son any different outcome
might be achieved? Perhaps this is where
the direct correspondence with actual characters ends. At the same time, however, we know that God
is not ignorant or stupid, but that God, because of his faithfulness and love,
will go to the extreme to bring about restored relationship with his beloved.
Next, Jesus puts a question to the religious leaders,
“Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those
tenants?” In an ironic twist the
religious leaders speak their own judgment.
The owner of the vineyard will come personally and put those nasty
tenant farmers to a miserable death. He
will then give the vineyard to another tenant who will hand over the fruit that
the field yields.
In response to the leaders pronouncement of judgment
Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22-23. According
to Bruner, in this Psalm Israel was the stone that had been rejected by other
human authorities, but God had restored the stone through the return from Exile. Jesus is, no doubt, referring to himself as
the stone that the builder rejected.
Only this time, the rejection is coming from Israel’s religious leaders
not from the gentile nations.[1] Even though these religious leaders will
reject Jesus, he is indeed the cornerstone through his death and resurrection.
In the previous parable Jesus pronounces judgment on
the Jewish religious leaders by declaring that even the tax collectors and
prostitutes will enter the kingdom before them.
In this parable Jesus goes a step further. These religious leaders, because of their
unwillingness and incompetence in guiding the people toward righteousness and
fruitfulness, the kingdom of God will be taken away from them! Their place in the kingdom will be given to
another people (in Greek “people” is actually “nation” or “gentiles”).
These people are the church, comprised of both Jews
and Gentiles who turn and begin living faithful, fruitful lives. It has always been God’s plan to bring
non-Jewish nations into the people of God.
If we remember back to the promise God gives Abraham in Genesis 12,
Israel is to be a blessing to the entire world.
God’s salvation come through the Jewish people by way of Jesus, but it
is for all people.
A word of caution must be spoken here. Throughout the ages it has been believed that
the Jews have been completely rejected by God because of their rejection of
Jesus. This belief has led to massive
and systematic persecution of the Jewish people by Christians. This belief cannot be substantiated with the
Bible, either from this passage or others.
Jesus, in this passage, is not rejecting all Jewish people. His disciples are all Jewish! Rather, the
context of the last few passages makes it clear that who Jesus is rejecting are
the people who are supposed to be caring for and instructing God’s people so
that they might produce fruit and be faithful.
I am sure that the religious leaders were not very
happy about Jesus’ story and his pronouncement of judgment on them. At that moment, they would have very much
liked to arrest him, but they could not because they were afraid of the
crowd. They were afraid of the crowd
because the crowd knew Jesus was special, a prophet at least, perhaps someone
even greater.
So What?
I
think the main issue here, for us, is the issue of ownership. In the parable, the tenants acted in the way
they did because they desired to own and control the vineyard and its
produce. As we have seen, the tenants
are Israel’s religious leaders. In a
certain way, these religious leaders had taken ownership over Israel and had
done the work so that Israel would produce the fruit that was beneficial to the
religious leaders. Their leadership of
Israel was not so that God might bless the world through Israel, or that God
might be glorified through Israel, but so that the religious leaders might be
blessed and glorified. They had it
backwards.
I
believe this is our tendency with anything we involve ourselves with. No matter how good or noble the cause is, as
our hearts are bent in on ourselves, we search for ways to make even the
greatest causes serve our own needs.
This is our temptation as we serve in the church. The church is God’s. Its mission is to proclaim the good news of
Jesus Christ in word and in deed. It is
our job to tend the vineyard so that when it produces fruit we give the fruit
to God. We cannot keep the vineyard’s
produce. We cannot hope to make the
vineyard our own. It belongs to God.
Critical Questions:
1.
How
does this text reveal to us the nature and character of God/What is God doing
in this text?
a.
God
is a great giver of chances. Israel had
many chances to be faithful. The tenants
in the story had many chances as well.
At the same time, however, God is serious about the faithfulness and
obedience of those who he has called to follow him. Only after we have demonstrated our complete
rejection of him does he give us over to the judgment we have selected for
ourselves.
- What does holiness look like in this text?
- Holiness, in this passage, is being faithfully aware that we do not own the church. The church is a gift from God. We are its stewards. We have the responsibility to work with the Spirit to produce fruit that is acceptable to God.
- How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
- Our activities in the church should be aimed at producing fruit that is acceptable to God.
Specific Discussion
Questions:
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself
quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were
very unfamiliar with the story.
1.
Why does Jesus use another story about a vineyard? Read Isaiah 5:1-2. Who is the vineyard in Isaiah?
2.
Who does all the work in getting the vineyard
ready? Why might who does the work be
important?
3.
Who are the characters in the parable and whom might
they represent?
4.
The tenants think the land will become theirs if they
kill the son. What actually ends up
happening? To whom is the land given?
5.
The main issue of the parable is ownership. The tenants want to own the land so they can
keep its produce. How might Israel’s
religious leaders have done the same thing?
6.
As a church, have we ever sought to have the church
benefit us? In what ways have we tried
to “own” the church?
[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew:
A Commentary: The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28, Revised & enlarged edition
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 381.
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