Yours to Keep :: Matthew 21:33-46
The kingdom of God will be ... given to a people producing its fruits.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has been very good to you. Very, very good.
Throughout your 150-year history, He has revealed himself to be extremely generous to you. He has given you everything. He has blessed this congregation and set you apart in Appleton City. He has provided you with fertile land and an abundance of rich fruits. Through the Word, today he has sung a new song to you.
He has poured out his Holy Spirit upon you, so that you may be found in Christ. He has redeemed you from your sin, and he looks out after you. Even though you know your body will wear out, he has endowed you with faith, that you may know him and the power of his resurrection.
And now today, He has prepared for you the finest feast of forgiveness, his Supper, where he will deliver again to you his life-giving body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. He trod those grapes alone for you.
LIFE IN THE VINEYARD HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER, HAS IT?
The question, therefore, comes to mind ...
I. If God has been so patient, so generous, so good, why do so many of us reject him so often ... acting like we own the place ...
ignoring his laws that hedge us in ... ignoring his calls to repent and bear fruit in keeping with repentance ... ignoring the wisdom he sends to us before we beat him, kill him, and cast him out of our lives?
The religious leaders of Israel fell into this worldly trap.
They considered themselves to be guardians, keepers and caretakers of God’s vineyard, God’s congregation. They considered themselves to be good stewards of faith, hard workers who deserved better things. “We are, after all, “God’s chosen people,” they said. “Since God chose us, we’re special. What could possibly go wrong,” they asked?
The problem is, they didn’t want to share the fruit God had given them to share; they had forgotten that the vineyard didn’t belong to them, and that the kingdom is actually yours to lose.
They got the wild idea that they were Number 1.
Most of you, no doubt have had the experience of trying over and over again to cure someone of a pet sin that makes you and or those around you miserable. The sin may have been cheating, overeating, excessive drinking. It may have been a bad temper, a nasty tongue, or a martyr complex. Maybe it is just self-righteousness.
This sinner may be someone close to you ... your husband or wife, sister or brother, son or daughter, boss, friend, or neighbor. Maybe it’s someone on the other side of the sanctuary.
At any rate, more times than you can count, you’ve approached so-and-so tactfully and kindly to straighten them out about the way things ought to be. Yet they refused to change. Desperately, you mumble something about leopards never changing their spots and the thoughtless cliche may cross your mind of letting the person go to hell ... which ironically ... is precisely what could happen.
By now you are probably saying, “Pastor, I know somebody just like that ... and you have described them to a T.”
II. There it stands, the root sin of those in our Gospel reading today: Refusing to bear fruit while looking out for themselves.
When our Lord Jesus told the parable of the vineyard to the Jewish leaders of the day, he was not speaking merely metaphorically. It was Tuesday of Holy Week.
Two days earlier, Jesus had triumphantly entered the gates of his earthly vineyard, the city we call Jerusalem, literally the city of peace. He entered to the praise of the people, who had been healed by him, who had been saved by him by grace through faith in him.
The Pharisees and the elders, that is, the people who have been dedicating their lives to hearing the word of God for most, if not all, of their lives didn’t like any of it.
Jesus, who made you prophet, priest and king? The rulers said.
By what authority are you doing these things?
Who do you think you are, healing the people on the Sabbath, forgiving their sins, and making them whole!
Do you have a God complex?
They challenged him at every corner, doing everything but throwing stones.
So Jesus in turn told them three parables. Today’s is the second of the three. We heard the first one last week: the Parable of the Two Sons.
Hear another parable, Jesus said: There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants. Then he went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
Again, he sent others servants, more than the first, and they did the same. Finally, he sent his son. 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.
III. The problem this parable probes is the problem that comes with privilege. Too many of us suffer from privilege.
Privilege doesn’t do too well on its own. It needs friends such as responsibility and accountability to keep it in line. We get strange ideas that privilege is something we deserve because of position or tradition. It comes through education and connections. It comes through hard work and time served.
The privileged love life in the vineyard, wherever it may be, declaring like the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Philippians: If anyone has reason for confidence ... well, I have more. ... Look at me: I am a Hebrew of Hebrews. My family has deep roots here: We’re from the tribe of Benjamin.
Look at me! Don’t you want to be just like me?
Look at me! I am blameless.
As long as we continue to think this way, as long as we continue to ignore our sin and our need for forgiveness, thinking that forgiveness is something for special situations, we are putting ourselves in danger ... just like the privileged of Jerusalem, who show themselves to be good-for-nothings. That’s the Greek word we try to call wretched.
So Jesus is crying out one last time. Repent, every one of you, or you will surely die a wretched, good-for-nothing death.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t be like the first tenants of the vineyard. Adam and Eve had been warned that they would surely die in their sin if they ate the forbidden fruit. But full of themselves, they went for it, and discovered how wretched they had become.
God then gave a vineyard he planted for the Israelites, who ignored the hedge, that is the law that the Lord set around them. They failed to believe God’s Word that told them that ...
Fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training, but a person is truly worthy and well prepared to receive the gifts of life, and salvation who has faith in these words, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Anyone who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared for God’s gifts, for the words “for you” require all hearts to believe.
And Jesus asked, When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers ... who failed to repent, who failed to confess their sins, who failed to see their need for a savior, who failed to believe the promises of God? Yes, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and rent out the vineyard to others who will give him the fruits in their seasons.
IV. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord has provided you with a beautiful garden, a vineyard of heavenly proportions. In faith, it is yours to keep.
Here, we have the joy of bearing his fruit. To help guide us, the law leads us away from idolatry of ourselves and our jealousies; from anger, envy, and hopelessness; from misery and all the fruits of the flesh that leave us in a wretched, good-for-nothing life. The law shows us our sin, and our need for a savior.
Won’t you listen to it, now ... recognizing that our lives apart from the vineyard are rubbish in order that we may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of our own but one that comes through faith in Christ?
In the fullness of time God did indeed send forth Christ to those of us in the vineyard ... so that he could live for you, die for you, be buried for you, be raised from the dead for you, and ascend into heaven where he is preparing a place for you.
Just a couple of days after Jesus told this parable to the Jewish religious leaders, the Sanhedrin seized our Lord in the midst of his prayers. They hauled him into a mock trial, where they slandered him. They twisted his words to suit their own needs, declaring that his good was evil and that their evil was good.
They turned him over to the Romans to be flogged and mocked and mangled. They arranged for him to be cast out of his vineyard and executed on a cross.
And he did this for you ... the new people of Israel ... so that through his resurrection you will gain the ultimate fruit ... a living faith, a living hope, and a living love.
God has now chosen you and entrusted his vineyard to you. It is yours to keep.
He has enlightened you with his gifts and is sanctifying and making you new men and women in Christ so that you can bear fruit like no other: the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us therefore respond to his love and mercy by letting our light shine before men, so that all may see the glory of living in God’s vineyard. Don’t quit speaking the truth of God’s love for the world and the hope you have in Him.
To his glory and our good.