The Killers (Parable of the Tenents) – Luke Ch20v9to19

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

We’re continuing our series in the parables of Jesus under the general title, Provocative. And as we move through our parable this morning, I think we’re going to discover that of all the parables Jesus taught, this is one of the most provocative. Let’s begin this morning by taking you back to first-year science.

(0:27 – 2:07)

You remember the litmus test? You dipped a sheet of litmus paper, a little strip of litmus paper into a solution. And if the solution was acidic with a pH of below 4.5, then it would turn the paper red. And if the solution was an alkaline solution or a base solution with a pH of 8.3 or it turned the litmus paper blue.

Well, this sermon this morning is a bit like a spiritual litmus test. Your response to this sermon will give an accurate predictor of your current spiritual state and even an early indicator of your eternal destiny. That’s how provocative this parable is this morning.

For what is at stake every time you hear or listen to God’s Word is your eternal destiny. These moments together under God’s Word are life-defining moments. They are eternity-defining moments.

And if that sounds or feels provocative, then that’s exactly what this series is meant to feel. The parables of Jesus, as we’ve been seeing over these weeks, are meant to provoke reactions within us, emotional reactions, intellectual reactions, whole-life reactions. And as we’ll see today, some of these reactions can be pretty extreme, even murderous.

(2:09 – 5:40)

So in order to understand the provocative nature of the parable before us this morning, we need to understand the context. We learned that from our series in terms of how we look at the Bible, didn’t we? Following his incredibly provocative act in chapter 19, right at the end of chapter 19, if you’ve got your Bible open, look back there, you’ll see that Jesus has already been involved in provocative activity. He’s on his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.

He has entered the temple, and he’s chucked out all the people there who were treating God’s house as though it was a commercial enterprise. That’s a very provocative act by any measure. And following that incredibly provocative act in chapter 19, Jesus’ authority to carry out that act is being questioned by the religious leaders of the day.

And serious opposition is beginning to rise against him like a great tsunami, that within a week of our parable today, we’ll see Jesus dead and crucified. And following that provocative act, Jesus continues teaching in the temple. And against this background of toxic opposition, Jesus tells a parable about a vineyard, which in itself seems rather innocuous.

But of all Jesus’ parables, this is the one that is probably easiest to interpret, or at least the one that carried the thinnest disguise for the people that listened to it. For although it’s a parable, it’s told in the form of an allegory, and you can fairly easily identify the people whom Jesus is talking about. Certainly the leaders in the Jewish faith at that time clearly understood it, and it made them feel very uncomfortable.

Indeed, we notice that in the last verse that Theon read to us, they knew he had spoken this parable against them. It’s a story about a vineyard. So let’s apply another hermeneutical or interpretive principle.

Where have we seen a vineyard before? Well, the Jewish leader’s spider senses would have been fully alerted when they heard Jesus speaking about a vineyard, because a vineyard had been seen before in Isaiah chapter 5, where the prophet Isaiah gives us this incredible picture of a vineyard, the song of the vineyard. And that chapter gives us all the keys we need to unlock this story. The owner of the vineyard is God himself.

We would discover that if we read Isaiah chapter 5 in verse 2, God created a vineyard, and the vineyard was the nation of Israel. The tenants of the vineyard then are the people of Israel, specifically the leaders of the people. We would find that in verse 7 of Isaiah chapter 5. And then we would notice the purpose of the vineyard in Isaiah chapter 5 in verse 2, second half, and in verse 7, the second half.

The purpose of the vineyard, the purpose of God creating a people for himself was to produce a crop of good grapes, a harvest, Isaiah tells us, of justice and righteousness, a harvest of godly character that would stand out amongst all the other nations of the world. And people would look at that nation and think, wow, what’s going on there? They are so radically different. They do things so well.

(5:40 – 6:32)

I want to be like them. What’s the secret of their success and their incredibly godly lives? And that quality of character, God intended to bless the rest of the nations in the world. And then thirdly in the parable, we notice the servants.

The servants are the prophets sent by God to produce that fruit, to remind the people to stay on track, to remind them who they belong to and what their primary purpose is. And we see what happened to these prophets sent by God in verse 10, 11, and 12. And we notice that the people, the nation, didn’t listen to the servants that God sent them to prompt them and remind them to obey God’s word.

(6:33 – 8:04)

And you notice that their opposition to the people, to the servants, got worse and worse. Firstly in verse 10, the tenants beat them and sent the servant away empty-handed. That was the first round.

God sends another servant, but that one also they beat. But not only beat, they treated him shamefully and sent him away empty-handed with no fruit. And the third was wounded and thrown out.

That rising tide of opposition. You know what it’s like when you get nagged all the time for something. And the first time it’s irritating.

The second time it’s irritating and a little more irritating. And the third time it’s really irritating. That’s what’s happening here.

These people are becoming more and more irritated by the reminders sent by the owner of the vineyard. And this is a very thin disguise in how Jesus tells the story. And the isn’t lost on the Jewish leaders.

And Jesus has just cleansed the temple and they’re questioning his authority. We find that at the beginning of chapter 20. Who gave you the authority to do this, they say to him in verse 2. And he said, I’m not going to answer that question, but I’ll answer you a question.

Tell me, is John’s baptism from heaven or from men? He answers their question about his authority by asking a question about John the Baptist. How strange. How strange.

(8:06 – 9:21)

If John’s baptism was from God, then why didn’t you believe him? Why did you ignore him? Because you did to him what your nation has done to the prophets historically. You didn’t listen to him and you threw him out. And John was killed by Herod, the king of the Jews, you see.

He was rejected by the Jewish nation. He was the last of the prophets. And he was killed just like all the rest, you see.

And so what happens when the last of the prophets is not listened to? What does God then do? Well, in the parable, he sends his son. And that’s what he does in the New Testament. Who came after John the Baptist? Jesus.

Do you see? There was a man sent from God whose name was John and they rejected him. So God sends his son. What will they do to him? Well, they’re not going to listen, are they? And you’ll notice that it’s very clear that Jesus is speaking about himself here as the son.

(9:22 – 10:47)

And the reference to John is crucial. In verse 13, we have the phrase, the owner of the vineyard said, what shall I do? I will send my son whom I love. That’s a direct reference to the baptism of Jesus.

What happened at the baptism of Jesus? The heavens opened and what was God’s testimony about his son? This is my son whom I love. Same person, same reference. And Jesus says, what are you going to do to this beloved son? The parable told the truth about the Jewish nation.

God had planted that vineyard to produce the spiritual fruit of righteousness. He’d sent the prophets to help produce that fruit in the nation. And the prophets were God’s messengers seeking the fruit of that godly, distinctive, transformed character.

But they abused him and they wouldn’t listen to him. In fact, earlier on in his journey back to Jerusalem, when Jesus sees Jerusalem for the first time on his way back on what would be his last visit there, it breaks his heart. When he looks at the city, he cries.

It destroys him emotionally. I would have gathered you to myself, but you would not listen. You wouldn’t have me.

(10:48 – 12:39)

And then he says, so therefore your house is left to you desolate. There are consequences for rejecting the prophets and those whom God sends. So there’s a sense in which the next week of Jesus’ life is going to act out this parable as the Jewish leaders seek to destroy Jesus.

It begins almost immediately. If you read the next verse to the one that Fionn stopped at, we discover that keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies to try to catch him so that they could hand him over to the governor. And of course, we know how the story ends.

Gains impetus in chapter 22 when the leaders are trying to put him to death. And then at the end of chapter 2 and in chapter 23, verse 21, culminating in that cry, that great cry of hatred, murderous hatred, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him. We don’t want him to reign over us.

That’s the same language used in the parable here. Now until this point, I think it would be fair to say that God has shown incredible patience and perseverance with Israel. Douglas brought us a helpful word last Sunday evening about the patience of God.

And we see the patience of God in this parable, don’t we? Do you notice the patience of the owner of the vineyard in the parable? Again, and again, and again, he sends servants and pleads with the tenants of the vineyard for fruit. But they refuse and have nothing to do with them, and they produce nothing. They enjoyed incredible privileges as the people of God, but they didn’t take the responsibility for the kind of lifestyle that was appropriate with those privileges.

(12:40 – 13:14)

And yet, incredibly, God perseveres with them. He’s patient in sending his messengers over and over and over and over again, until finally he sends his son, his beloved son. But notice this, after he sends his son and they defy him and send him back dead, the master doesn’t have anything more to say.

(13:15 – 13:29)

Do you notice? After that, there is nothing more for the master to say. Why? Because Jesus is God’s last word. Jesus is God’s last word of grace.

(13:31 – 14:03)

And after rejecting Jesus, all that remains is a word of judgment. The words of grace have gone. You reject Jesus and God’s word of grace in him, the next word you will hear will be a word of judgment.

That’s what verse 15 says. What will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He’ll come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. That’s a word of judgment, you see.

(14:04 – 15:36)

And what a provocative word of judgment it is. Now, immediately Jesus pronounces that word of judgment. The people, the leaders of the Jewish nation were outraged.

Surely not. How on earth could God ever give what is ours by our birthright and by his promise and our inheritance? How would he ever give that to others? Jesus underlines the truth in verse 17 by quoting from Psalm 118, verses 22 and 23. The stone that the builders rejected, Jesus himself, he’s speaking about himself, becomes the cornerstone of a global building project that Peter describes in 1 Peter 2, 4 and 9. God’s great building project for the ages.

That had always been his plan. We know that from Hebrews 11. Abraham, who was given the promise, looked for a city, not with earthly foundations, but whose builder and architect was God himself.

Built on, we now know from this passage, the cornerstone, which is Jesus himself. The cornerstone was the keystone around which the dimensions of the building took their angles and their structure. So, the thrust of this parable is the awesome consequences and the awesome outcome of rejecting the privileges bestowed on people by God himself, particularly in relation to ignoring his word.

(15:38 – 17:41)

The implications of refusing to treat God seriously when he speaks, the implications of refusing to bow to his authority, the privileges of being God’s people are to be taken from them and given to the spiritual children of Abraham that Paul speaks about. There’s an awful anguish here, isn’t there? What a pain these Jewish leaders felt. The horror of realizing that their day was over.

They’d had their opportunity and they blew it and there was no way back for them now. But Jesus didn’t speak this parable only for the Jews. For the vineyard is a picture of the church of Jesus Christ, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Doesn’t Jesus himself say, I am the vine and you, my disciples, my people, are the branches connected to the vine? The vital truth is that God desires fruit from the vine. He always has done. That’s his purpose in having a people, to be distinctive, to show to the world what living under his rule and his authority looks like.

And God is passionate about this. He’s so passionate about it that he sends and sends and sends and sends his servants week after week, after week, after week, after months, after year, after decade, after century, after millennia, two of them. He’s still sending his servants looking for fruit in his people’s lives, looking for people who will be distinctive, who will stand for him in a fallen world and show what living under his rule looks like.

(17:43 – 18:23)

And look, he’s passionate about this. Look how concerned he is with it. Look at the effort and energy God puts into it.

You know how when you’re really eager about something that really matters to you, you give it everything you’ve got. You know that feeling? Some priority in your life that really matters. And you spend long hours and all your efforts to master it.

You know that phrase, 10,000 hours to master a skill of some kind, whether it’s golf or tennis or whatever it is. If you’ve watched the Andy Murray documentary on the iPlayer, you’ll have seen some of that. If you’ve watched the full swing documentary about golf on Netflix, you’ll have seen that.

(18:24 – 26:02)

These efforts and energies that people put into getting their golf handicap down or mastering a new computer game or passing an exam or getting the garden the way you want it, a hundred different things. But you’ll patiently persevere until you achieve it. What does God give his time and effort and energy to? God spends himself over and over and over and always has done sending his messengers to deliver his word to his people so that they will produce fruit.

That’s the thing that burns deepest in God’s heart, that you, God’s people, will be fruitful, that you’ll be like Jesus. That’s his passion. He won’t stop until he’s done it in heaven.

But his desire is that you become like him now, that you bear fruit. And he comes looking for fruit in your life, just like he did here to the people of Israel all those years ago. And what is this fruit? It’s the fruit of the spirit, isn’t it? It’s a godly transformation of our lives.

It’s likeness to Jesus. That’s what God sends his servants to produce. That’s what Jesus is looking for.

And where are they to be heard, these servants? Where is God’s voice to be heard today? This is where it’s to be heard, in his word, in the pages of Holy Scripture. Another principle we learned from our studies and how to understand the Bible is, speak only the word of God as the words of God. God sends his word and he speaks his voice again and again and again to bring forth fruit.

But what happens? What happens in the parable? What happens today? His people refuse to take him seriously. That’s what’s happening here. They silence God’s messengers.

They beat them up and they send them away. Ever had roast preacher for lunch? Now, that is something that God will persist in until the day of grace has ended. He will send and send and send and send and send his word.

But let me point out the warning of this parable to you. The warning is a warning in persisting to refuse to take God’s word seriously. It’s a warning about defying God’s authority over your life.

It’s a warning about silencing the voice of Scripture in your life by whatever means you might do that. Because when the word of God is faithfully taught, the voice of God is truly heard. And when the voice of God is truly heard, those who hear it, like the litmus paper, are either impressed and converted or they’re irritated and hardened.

Now, pause for a moment, my dear friends, this morning. Pause and ask yourself, in what ways might I be refusing to take God’s word seriously? In what areas am I treating God’s word lightly? How am I resisting its authority? How am I silencing the voice of God in my life? Am I in danger of taking God’s word lightly or defying its authority or taking it seriously? If you are, there’s only one conclusion to draw. It’s not the prophets or the Scripture you’re dismissing.

It’s not the preacher. It’s just him again. It’s not even the Scriptures itself.

It’s your quarrels with God himself, being no doubt. Because those who live that way are not really interested in what God wants, but in what they want. The solemn word of Jesus to the nation of Israel and to you this morning is that the day of privilege will end.

Have you ever realized what a great privilege this is for you this morning? Every week to sit under God’s word. Can you imagine the privilege? Think of the privilege in our nation. Scotland used to be known as Bible-loving Scotland, the land of the book.

We are a privileged people. You are privileged people because you hear God’s word. Our jurisprudence and our land is based on biblical principles.

Do we realize the privilege we have inherited? We’re giving away on a weekly basis. We’ve taken God’s word lightly. We’re dismissing it.

Our quarrel is with God himself. The solemn word of Jesus is that day of privilege will end. We already see some of that privilege starting to ebb and drift away in our culture, don’t we? Being no doubt, the day of reckoning will come when we hear the word of God, when we listen to the voice of God within it.

What God wants is not acquiescence or assent. Yep, I agree with that. That was a really good word.

I agreed with all of that this morning. God doesn’t even want admiration. What beautiful truth that was.

He doesn’t want approval. That was a great word. God doesn’t want any of those things.

It’s obedience he wants. It’s fruit he’s looking for. It’s dangerously possible for us in Greenview to agree with God’s word, to admire God’s word, to set our approval on God’s word, and to have God’s word at the center of all we do on the surface, but to dismiss God’s word as it is sent to us and never allow it to grip the depths of our being at the deepest places to change our lives.

Fundamentally, you might look for all the world like a respectable Christian believer here this morning, and you may have looked that way for years. You may have been coming to Greenview for years or other churches. You might attend the Lord’s Supper every week as a priority.

It’s possible to be doing all of that, yet deep down to be refusing, refusing to allow God to change your life. At those points of deepest resistance, we might not be killers in the sense that we kill the Son of God, but we kill God’s word in our lives. So let me ask you, in what areas of your life could it be that you’re refusing to allow God to change you this morning? What does that look like for you? No one would know.

No one does know. But you know, and you know God knows. Those areas where you’re saying to God, even right now, I will not be moved.

(26:04 – 27:04)

No, I’m not obeying you in that area. For the warning of the passage here this morning is that the day of grace will end. One day God will stop speaking.

It will end for you, and it will be given to others. And if you think you’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you, if you’re a young person here this morning, can I plead with you from the depths of my heart as an old guy now, don’t put this off. One of my daughter’s friends who was at her wedding last year, as we speak today, lies in intensive care, having their breathing tube removed, and probably won’t live much longer than a week, who knows, having been hit by and ending up under a London bus.

(27:06 – 27:13)

Now, I’m not saying that to scare you. This is the reality of life. These are life and death issues.

(27:14 – 27:55)

There is no reason that is not any one of us. And as I look out on you this morning, as I see you having your tea later and your coffee as I see you leave, I cannot tell how you have heard this word. I can’t tell how you’ve heard God’s word this morning.

You can never tell how anyone else hears God’s word, but you know how you’ve heard it. And although I can’t tell how you’ve heard God’s word, one thing I do know is that your eternal destiny is tied to your response to it. You see, in that sense, you’re faced with an inescapable choice.

(27:56 – 30:56)

Grace and I flew back from Northern Ireland yesterday on a plane, and I was just thinking at 15,000 feet from Belfast to Glasgow, it’s not a long flight, but I was just thinking, as I often do in a plane, we’re kind of stuck here. There’s not many options. You’re in that metal tube.

We’re in the metal tube of life, folks. There’s no way out of these issues. We’re here.

There’s an inevitability about this. And I’m thinking, you better get this landing right. You’ve got one chance to do it.

You better get your landing right, spiritually, hadn’t you? Because you’ve only got one chance to do it. And so, if that feels uncomfortable, then you’ve been confronted with this story that’s 2,000 years old, and yet it resonates right into your life. Just as these people here in the story, were confronted with the story from Isaiah all those hundreds of years before that was as relevant for them as it was in Isaiah’s day, do you see? And the ending of the story for them carries the same challenge for us.

For like them, we might refuse to listen to Jesus. We might reject him. We may ignore him.

We may dismiss him, but we can’t escape him. We cannot escape him. Do you see how the story ends? The stone, the builders, those ancient leaders of the nation rejected has been designated by God as the cornerstone upon which all future purposes of God are built.

That great city of God that will last forever, built on all that Jesus has done. He’s laid the foundations for that city by his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. He’s gone to prepare a place for those who trust him.

And what does it mean to trust him? Well, it means that we must confront him one-to-one as that cornerstone. And as we do so, we’ll find that one of two things will happen. Either the cornerstone will break us or the cornerstone will crush us.

Do you notice? In verse 18, everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed. So you have a choice. You can come and throw yourself onto that cornerstone this morning and allow all of your pride, all of your sin, all of your rebellion and resistance to God to be broken and allow him to remake you as his child, or you can resist that and ignore God’s Word and continue to hold out in your life those areas that you will not give in to God on, but be in no doubt.

(30:58 – 31:21)

Should that be your choice, you will be crushed on the final day. The text is clear. So my word to you this morning, dear friends, is to use a verse from the book of Hebrews.

(31:24 – 31:39)

Today, today, another day of patience and grace from God himself. You’ve heard this word again, privileged again. Today, see to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking.

(31:40 – 31:50)

And today, if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your heart. Don’t harden your heart. Amen.

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