I wanna start this morning by asking you this question. Have you ever been a part of or witnessed, something like this happening on a school ground when you were a kid? You're playing or someone is playing and another boy or girl gets hit in the head or hurt somehow and they're crying and there's all commotion and the teacher's running onto the playground to see what's happened. And it's all an accident and one little boy or girl, and there's always one, says, that guy did it on purpose. Or, you know, something happened where something got swiped in a classroom or something went missing or someone was just being noisy and the blame comes on you.
Someone just points and says she did it. She was the one. Perhaps you've seen it. I've been the victim of that and it just doesn't cease to frustrate, does it? How dare they?
How dare they? How awful is that feeling? That frustration? That red hot fury of a person who can so easily put you in the crosshairs of a very angry teacher? Well, this morning I'm going to be that friend who dobs you in for something you may think you never did.
For a crime you may have no recollection of committing. And as you listen to this accusation this morning, I still hope we can be friends. The accusation is actually not mine. It's one that's actually very old and the accuser is not so much me or that annoying little kid on the jungle gym. It is made by Jesus himself in the week before his death.
I want us to have a look at that this morning. So if you do have your bibles with you, let's turn to Luke 20, and we're going to read from verse 9. Luke 20:9. He, who is Jesus, went on to tell the people this parable. A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers, and went away for a long time.
At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty handed. He sent still a third and they wounded him and threw him out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, what shall I do?
I will send my son whom I love. Perhaps they will respect him. But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. This is the heir, they said. Let's kill him and the inheritance will be ours.
So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. And Jesus asked, what then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and he will kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. When the people heard this, they said, may this never be. And Jesus looked directly at them and asked, then what is the meaning of that which is written?
The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed. The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately because they knew he had spoken this parable against them, but they were afraid of the people. So far, our reading. Growing up on a property in South Africa when I was still a young lad, we had a Zulu farmhand by the name of Philemon who oversaw the functioning of my parents' part time farm.
Now Philemon was an absolute blessing to us. An absolute blessing. He was like another uncle to us kids. We, he raised us partly, and my parents were very, very fond of him. He was more than a farmhand.
He was family. And he was more than a worker. He was a manager. He was a foreman. He managed that little hobby farm of ours while dad, who was a professional, would be working in the city.
My parents had the complete assurance that Philemon would look after the milking of the goats every day, that he would let the sheep out to pasture, that he would till the fields, that he would plant the potatoes, that he would maintain the property to an excellent standard. Philemon was the envy of the whole neighbourhood, of all our neighbours. Why? Because a foreman like him was hard to find. To this day, my family still says that he was a blessing and a godsend to us.
The parable which we heard Jesus telling talks about tenants who manage the property but poorly, very badly. Unlike Philemon, they were terrible managers. They mistreated and beat up any and all of the servants that the land owner sent to collect the fruit, the beautiful grapes of the vineyard. And ultimately, led to the death of his son so that they could claim the inheritance. Now Jesus often taught spiritual truths through parables or stories like this.
He often told these sort of stories with a meaning. And one of the recurring themes, if you've read these parables before, is of God, the father, being the landowner, being the farmer, being the head honcho. So we can safely assume that this is what God, Jesus is talking about again in this parable. But the question is, who are the tenants? Who are the tenants?
Who are those managers? Well, the bible answers that for us, thankfully, as well. In verse 19, we read that the religious leaders and the chief priests knew that this story was directed at them, knew that these tenants were probably them. The story made the claim that it was the elite that were the greedy, disloyal, and conniving tenants. The property that these tenants were looking after is the kingdom of God.
In the Old Testament, God's people, Israel, are referred to as being a vineyard, a farm. Sometimes they're referred to as a vine. The nation of Israel was God's kingdom, and it was the property that these tenants were managing. Now the fruit of the vineyard was to go to the rightful owner of the land. That's how it works.
You have managers that you pay to look after the soil to produce a crop, and they earn a salary. But the profits, the goods that came from the land was to go to the owner. And so very naturally, he sends his servants to go and pick this up. Elsewhere in other parables, Jesus talks of God's servants as being the prophets of the old testament. These were the messengers of God, the prophets of old, individuals who came to introduce God to people, to remind them who the owner was.
But if you know your old testament, you see that these prophets were often rejected by the people. These prophets were often turned away. Kings and queens in Israel's history hunted down the prophets like Elijah. Kings and queens, the royal and religious elite imprisoned prophets like Jeremiah, ripping them from their homes, from their families, and leaving them to rot in dungeons. Messengers like Moses found fierce resistance, stubborn hearts at every turn.
God's greatest messengers in the nation of Israel were often treated with disdain and rejection. This was the sad history that Israel owned. And the people that Jesus was telling this to would have known it. They would have carried that with them. But if you knew this, and if you listened to this story, a slow creeping fear started crawling through your mind.
And it was this, that although it was these leaders of Jesus' time that felt the heat of Jesus' accusation, the wider people of Israel knew that they were not completely innocent of this either. They were often complicit in rejecting the messengers and the prophets. Whether that was through willful rejection or whether that was through a blase response to the news these guys brought. And so we see that there is a little bit more to the story than meets the eye. Now if you were a first century Jew listening to this, all of this story so far is pretty self explanatory.
You would listen to the components and the actors in this play, and you would be able to pick who these people are, what they represent, who they represent. Up until this last actor, and that was the son. That was a new dimension. That was a new actor in the play. The landowner was God, clearly.
The nation was Israel, God's vineyard. The tenants were the leaders of the time, the people who benefited from this land. The prophets were the messengers, but there was this one actor, this one new character in this story, and it was the landowner's very own son. The people could relate and understand all the metaphors and the symbolism, but this character was different. As we see in the story, everything leads up to this point.
Everything leads up to this point where the father says, maybe they'll listen to my son. Maybe they'll listen to him representing me and my right to this property. But this time, we see that instead of beating and turning this person away as a messenger, they realise that he is the one who has the stake in this property. He is the one who will inherit this land after the father passes away. And they think to themselves, if we kill him, there's no inheritor.
And legally, we will probably have a right to this property. And verse 15, coldly reads, they threw him out and killed him. And what a plot twist. The crowds are stunned. And then Jesus poses this question.
What do you think the father would have done? What do you think the father would have done? He'd seek justice. I don't know, if you've seen the movie Taken. Who's seen that movie?
Hands up. Three times? Well, you've got a daughter. That's why. It's about a dad whose daughter gets captured and sold in some sex slavery, and he just goes limb niece and just goes out with a vengeance and wins her back.
It's a satisfying movie. Any dads out there, they'll definitely, with daughters, they'll definitely relate to this. It's satisfying. Dad getting vengeance on the criminals who thought they'd get away scot free. And this is the image here.
Of course, the dad of his only son is going to make sure that justice is received, that justice is won. After Jesus tells this story, do you see how the listeners respond? It says verse 16, when the people heard this, they say, may this never be. May this never be. With bated breath, the crowd responds, I hope that never happens.
And it is this verse that strikes the hardest. Because if you've been a Christian for a while and if you've heard this parable before, you might think that Jesus is simply talking about the chief priests and the Pharisees and the religious leaders. But the entire crowd said, I hope this never happens. The entire crowd feels the pinch of Jesus' accusation because he is speaking to them. May this never be, they said.
Don't let this be done. And I asked the question, how could anyone kill the son of God? How could they do that? Who would kill the messiah? Who would kill the anointed one of God?
But this reveals, friends, so deeply and so profoundly and so embarrassingly the condition of our sinful hearts. The arrogance and the foolishness that ignores our guilt before God. The frightening thing it is for us to say, may this never happen, yet a week later, they were nailing Jesus to a cross. May this never happen. It is the arrogance and the foolishness of our hearts that continue to persevere on the one hand in rebellion against a good God who has given us His blessings upon blessings upon blessings.
And on the one hand, being in rebellion against Him, and on the other one, dreading a just and holy God who will get His property back, who will get what is His, and that is His glory. And we see our shallow, fair weather faith that says, as a token throwaway line, may this never be. May this never happen. But forgetting that we were the ones who caused the death of God's son. Before we are too quick to lay blame on the Jews of that time, before we are too quick to blame a corrupt leadership, before we say it was a frenzied mob of zealots, we have to read the words that people said, may this never be.
It is in our nature, friends, to pass the buck. It is in our nature to think that a simple statement like, God forbid, will avoid that moment where God will say to us, what you did was wrong. We see that people knew Jesus had directed the story at them. We see that people started making plans to stop him from saying anything more, to stop the feeling of guilt and accusation. And instead of yielding to the convictions of their conscience, that red hot burning sensation in their souls that only comes from knowing one's guilt before God.
Instead of admitting their guilt, their emotions boiled over into rage. And they said we have to get rid of this guy. They immediately started making plans. And instead of looking into their own souls, where the words of Jesus had hit sharply and wounded deeply, and instead of going to him and saying, you must have the remedy to this then as well. What is it that we must do?
Instead of doing that, they sought a way to shut him up so that his words could no longer penetrate their hearts and minds. And we see the irony. We see the absolute irony in this story come full circle. The prophecy that Jesus foretold in this parable, remember, a week before his death, the prophecy contained in this parable clicked into motion like a cog in a machine when they said, we have to get rid of this guy. And the hours and the minutes to Jesus' death started counting down.
When the people responded to Jesus' story with may this never be, he didn't flinch. He knew what was going on. He didn't flinch. He didn't hesitate. Verse 16 says, he looked at them directly.
He looked them in the eye, and he said to them with a steely voice, what does this scripture mean then? The stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone. If you have your bible there, you might see that there's a little letter written next to that that points to a passage in Psalm 118:22. This psalm was written seven hundred years before Jesus, at least, if not up to nine hundred years. And every Jew knew that this was a prophecy of the Messiah.
It talks about an individual who, like a broken brick, is chucked onto a rubbish pile. You know those bricks? If you've ever been a labourer or a brickie, they come on a pallet, and some of the top bricks are cracked and broken from the weight that's been on them. It's just part of the thing. You just get rid of it.
Useless. An individual who like a broken brick like on the rubbish pile, it's a person who would be considered worthless, a delinquent, and offcut of a person. Yet it was this stone, Jesus says, that the builders rejected that has become a capstone, a stone that sat at the corner of the arch to a doorway or the dome of a temple, the most important, most significant stone of the entire building. It's the stone that caps off a building. Jesus sees the shallowness of the crowd's response and knows the fickleness of their empty words, and he gives them a message that would only become clear after the events of Easter.
In Jesus, a seven hundred year old prophecy that speaks of a great reversal of fortune was going to happen. The one you've rejected, he said, will be the one who actually triumphs. On the cross that we celebrate today, Jesus wins through losing. On the cross, Jesus triumphs through defeat. On the cross, He achieves power through weakness and service.
He comes to wealth by giving it all away. That is the message of Good Friday. And Jesus' words, they strike hard and they strike deeply. It was the people of God's kingdom, all the stakeholders, all the beneficiaries of His blessings who are the tenants. In other words, it really is us.
And instead of giving the fruit of these blessings back to God and giving God the glory for what we have and saying thank you for this, We humbly manage these things. We humbly take a hold of them, and we give it back to you, God, to do with it whatever you please. We cling to it as if it's our own. The late John Stott put it this way, the essence of sin the essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God. We put ourselves where God deserves to be.
The tenants thought that they owned the land, that it was theirs. We might think we deserve what we've worked hard for, and so we'll do whatever it takes to hold on to it. The tenants clung to their fortune when in fact it was never theirs in the first place. We cling to our comfort. We cling to our time.
We cling to our positions, our identity as if it's our own. As if we'll do and we'll do whatever it takes to maintain them, and yet we know, if we really think about it, it disappears like that. The people listening to the story knew that the owner would get back what is his. He had the power to do it. It was not a matter of if, but when.
The essence of sin, the essence of our brokenness is thinking we are God and substituting ourselves with where He should be. We put ourselves where only God deserves to be. But Stott continues. He says, the essence of the cross the essence of the cross is God substituting Himself for us. God puts Himself where we deserve to be.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says this, God made Him, made Jesus, who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And so we see another reversal. Jesus, was the broken brick, chucked into the skip, was actually the rightful capstone. The beautiful pieces that deserve the glory, who we thought we were, the beautiful pieces that deserve it all, we were the ones that were the crumbly, fragile, broken offcuts that needed to be rid of. We were the tenants who should have met justice at God's hand.
But yet, despite, while we thought we were getting rid of the son to rob Him of His glory, in that moment, He turned it all around. And while we thought we had killed the son, it was in fact our sin that was killed on that cross. And without our knowing, without our planning, when we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us. And while His blood was on our hands, He gave us perfection. We received His righteousness.
God made Jesus Christ, who had no sin, to be sin for us that we might receive the righteousness of God. And friends, that understanding and that knowledge changes us. It changes us. If we understand that, if we grasp that, your life will be different. Tim Keller, a pastor in New York, says this, the fact that Jesus had to die for me humbled me out of my pride.
The fact that Jesus had to die for me humbled me out of my pride, but the fact that He was glad to do it has saved me from all fear. Sacrifice, friends, some part of your public holiday this weekend to think about where you really are in this story. Are you the ones who need to be humbled out of a shallow faith that says, may this never be. God forbid. I hope He doesn't judge my actions too harshly.
I hope my life is generally more good than bad. The gospel message is, this morning, so humbling that you are a murderer at least. It was humanity that rejected Jesus. It is our daily greed at clinging to the blessings of God's kingdom without giving Him the glory that He deserves, that is the death knell for us. Knowing Jesus had to die for me humbled me out of my pride.
Do you realise pride in your life? Resistance and rebellion against God. Or perhaps you know that pride is not your issue. You know that you have missed the mark. You know that no one needs to convince you of that.
Perhaps you may need to know this morning that the fear you have of God's rejection of you has been lifted. You have been set free from God's judgement. And it also happened on that cross. Jesus Christ embodied God's love for you and for me on that cross. And the cross that we hold to and the cross that we see and the cross that we make so much a part of our faith is an everlasting testament to God's love.
Since Jesus wilfully, resolutely went to the cross for me and for you, we can know gladly that He welcomes us as sons and daughters into His family, as a rescued child. And there is no doubt of that. There is no doubt of that, friends. Before we knew Him, the bible says He died for us. While we were still powerless to do anything about it, in fact, while we were still enemies of God, Jesus died for us.
That is how much He loves us. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for hitting us really hard this morning. Because, well, this is the most important news that we will ever hear. This is the most important philosophy.
This is the most important life message. This is the best life coaching we can ever receive. And that is to know that we are dirty, rotten sinners in need of a loving, faithful, merciful saviour. Lord, it is and it was our sin that held You on that cross. And Father, before we think of ourselves too highly, we need to remember that.
Before we think of ourselves deserving too much, we need to remember that. That humbles us, Lord, out of our pride. It drives us back to You. It places us on our knees to simply say thank You. We cannot add anything more to that, but thank You.
And we receive that truth, and we write it upon our hearts, and we tattoo it on our minds that we need You. Father, forgive us for clinging to what is not ours. Father, forgive us for thinking that we deserve whatever is around us and forgetting the one who has given it. At the same time, Father, for those of us who are very, very much attuned to this, understand this really well. Father, help us when we are fearful, that You are a God who will come to finally bring justice to a world that is so unjust.
A world that has drawn away from You, that has rebelled against You in so many ways. A world that does murder and rape and kill and cheat and lie. Father, we know that You have to set these things right. We know that there must be a price to pay, but, Father, thank You that You have paid that. And by paying that, Lord, we have been set free from fear.
We've been set free from angst and anxiety because we know and our hearts have been set free that You are a God of love and that You have loved us before we even knew You. Father, as we celebrate this weekend, I pray for our safety. But I also pray, Lord, that this may be something that resounds with us. And as we hear part b on Sunday of the power and the vindication of this moment, Lord. We pray that we may also rise with You in the power and the joy of the resurrection.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.