Speaker 1: 0:31

You all may be seated in this moment. Point to north, okay, everybody hold it there. And some of you guys are pointing above your heads. Come on, point towards the direction. Okay, now open your eyes and look at where everybody's pointing so you can see. Okay, the mystery. Who has the right? All right, you can sit down. You can sit down. I'm not even going to tell you. You guys are like who's right? This is a competition, all right.

Speaker 1: 0:54

So how do we find north? We find North according to the North star. And how do you find the North star? Well, there's specific ways. You follow, you follow the dippers right and eventually you'll find yourself to the North star. Here's actually a really cool time-lapse picture of the North star, where everything's else moving around it, and that's your true North. And a lot of us then actually find the North Star by looking at a compass right or where north is, by looking at a compass or your iPhone or your phone right. And I don't know if you guys know this, but when you're looking at a compass or a lot of you on your phone, you're not actually looking at true north, you're looking at magnetic north. And a lot of people don't understand that there's a difference. The magnetic north shifts based on the tectonic plates and the gravitational pull of the earth, and it's not always pointing the same direction. It actually varies in degrees how far it off is from too north, and you can actually go in your phone. If you've got an iPhone I don't know about the robot phone, but the iPhone one you can go in there and you can actually switch it to true north. Now here's the difference. Right now it's just over 13 degrees of a difference, and so if you left here and you were going to look at your compass and you were going to go towards the north, or what most people would look at as magnetic north, by the time you got to the North Pole you would have ended up in those degrees, over more than 40 miles away from true north, where you intended to be, without even realizing it that you had missed it completely.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I want to read a poem to you. This one is written by a prophet. It's a Hebrew prophet named Isaiah, son of Amos. In Isaiah, chapter five, he composed this short, compact love poem that has a parable in it Chapter five of Isaiah. I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard.

Speaker 1: 2:58

My loved one had a vineyard on fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and he planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a wine press as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and the people of Judea, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for my vineyard than what I have done for it when I looked for good grapes? Why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge and it will be destroyed. I will break down its walls and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and the berries and the thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.

Speaker 1: 3:54

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel and the people of Judea are the vines that he delighted in. And he looked for justice but saw bloodshed, for righteousness but heard cries of distress. So the whole point is God. God planted his covenant people. He rescued them out of slavery in Egypt, he brought them into the land, the land that he had promised Abraham and planted them there and gave them abundance, and he gave them the laws of the Torah, and that they would be shaped by God's justice and generosity to become a light to the nations. This is actually the language of Isaiah that they would become a light to the nations, or a city on a hill, and the nations would actually look to these people who would have been shaped by God's love, and see what human communities ought to really be like. And so God planted the vineyard and he looks for the grapes. And what does he see? Like stinky, rotten grapes. That's the metaphor that God comes into the vineyard looking for fruit. And what fruit is he looking for? Well, we see he's looking for justice and he's looking for righteousness, and so he's looking for these communities of Israel, this righteousness.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Righteousness is a key word throughout the Old Testament scriptures that describes a relationship, specifically healthy relationships. That's what this word means that people of whatever their differences are, whether it's social, economic class, ethnicity, gender, it doesn't matter but there would be right, equitable, fair relationships in Israel. And then you have justice. And those are actions, specifically legal actions, that were taken when relationships or righteousness was violated. It was when people were abusing each other or mistreating them or cheating one another, and there's no righteousness. So you do justice and it's an action that you would take to make things then right all over once more. And so God comes to his people that he planted in love and gave them generosity, and he looks for justice, but what does he find? Bloodshed. And he looks for righteousness, but what does he actually find? Distress. This was the message of Isaiah, and he used love poetry to communicate it in a parable, and he wasn't the last one to do that. So we've been following the career of another Israelite prophet, whose name is Jesus of Nazareth, and he has a similar message. He sees himself as another Isaiah, 700 years later, coming to the leaders of Jerusalem to hold them accountable for their mismanagement of God's vineyard, and introduces us to the parable that we're going to be looking at today.

Speaker 1: 6:55

We are in the book the gospel, according to Matthew, chapter 21. Jesus is in Jerusalem we're actually finishing chapter 21 today and Jesus, just like Isaiah, confronts the leaders of Jerusalem. Last week we saw that Jesus entered into the temple courts and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and essentially said who do you think you are? Because he just came into the temple of Jerusalem and just started disrupting everyone Like he was acting like he owned the place. He's acting kind of like he's a king and they're upset because they're like whoa, whoa, whoa. We run the place and Jesus disagrees and so he pulls this stunt turning over tables in the temple and they're upset and they confront him and they challenge him of who do you think you are? But what authority? And Jesus is like I'll answer your question if you answer my question first and they can't answer the question. And so he's like huh, I thought so.

Speaker 1: 7:52

And then he goes on to tell us three parables. We're looking at the second one today and these parables are all connected in flow and thought and they're all about why, how and what the result will be of Israel's leaders rejecting Jesus and the kingdom of God movement. The first parable that we explored last week it was the two sons and the father who asked his sons to go out and work in the vineyard. And the first one says, of course I will, but then went out and was like that's a lot of work to do, I don't want to do work, and then decides not to go. The other one actually said no, I don't want to go. But then he changed his mind and he goes and he works. Jesus says you, leaders of Jerusalem, you're like the rebellious son. You rejected this offer. You said, yes, I will do it. But then you didn't do it, you changed.

Speaker 1: 8:43

The second parable that we're looking at today is about Jesus telling the parable form. What is happening here in this very moment as the leaders reject Jesus. The third one that we'll unpack in August yes, I said August, I'm not kidding is the parable of the wedding banquet, where Jesus is talking about the rejection of the messengers that he will send after himself. And all of these parables are exploring what's going on in the hearts and in the minds of God's people as they reject their Messiah. So Matthew 21, verse 33,. Let's hear today's parable.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Jesus said listen to another parable. There was a land owner who planted a vineyard, he put a wall around it, he dug a wine press and he built a watchtower. I mean, come on, really Like right off the bat, can you see it? It's virtually a quotation from Isaiah's love poem, of the God of Israel singing to his beloved Israel about how his heart is broken and they've produced rotten fruit. And so here again Jesus, another Isaiah, talking about an owner and a vineyard. But Jesus is a poet of his own and it's not gonna be about rotten fruit. It's actually gonna be about rotten fruit. It's actually going to be about rotten farmers.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. Think about this modern day like an investment property that somebody makes an investment in a vineyard and sets it all up and prepares it and then hands it over to be cultivated by the vine growers, to be cultivated by the vine growers. Well, when it became harvest time, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. So again, now, who's putting the work in the farmers? Whose fruit is it? The owners and the tenants then seized his servants. They beat one, killed another and stoned a third. He then sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them in the same way. So now you have like this bloody massacre here. The owner has this mutiny on his hands that he has to deal with. He's hired these farmers and now they're killing people, like he hired them to work the vineyard, the farm, and now there's just like this rebellion and mutiny. Last of all.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Then it says he sent his son to them. They will respect my son. He said. Now this is where we might think, like is this guy stupid? Like why is he? You've seen what happened? Like the more he said, like this just doesn't happen. But remember, this is a parable and we don't wanna miss the point. So he sends his son, and his son has the authority, the most authority of all. The son is literally the embodiment of the family authority, or the father's authority and the estate. And so he says surely, surely they will respect my son. And I just wanna pause for a moment.

Speaker 1: 11:37

We're going to get a little like nerdy here with the Bible. The prophets and the poets of Israel love to tell poems and write love, poetry, and they like to play on words. And so one of those words that we unpack in here and we get to see because this was written in originally the language was Hebrew. The word for son in Hebrew is bin. So just hang on to that for a second. So the father sends the bin. This is the son. But the bin is then rejected and murdered. It says when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other. This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance. So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Speaker 1: 12:23

So something, as we're hearing this story or reading it, something shifted. Like you sit there and say how in the world, like how in the heck, did we go from these hired workers, farmers who signed this contract, says, yes, I'm going to work here, yes, I'm going to live here, I'm going to produce as much food as I possibly can for the owner. How does it go from that mindset to this totally fair contract, then killing any representatives of the owner and killing family members that we can have? You know suddenly that shifted in their head that this is my vineyard and it belongs to me. Like what's happening here when we're unpacking this and the fact that Jesus doesn't paint in the details as part of his parables, what it does is it actually invites you and I to participate in the meaning of what's happening here. And somehow these farmers have gotten in their mind that this vineyard should actually belong to them, right? And so they begin to foster this like delusion, and this delusion that it's theirs begins to motivate them in these really irrational ways, this violent behavior to like kill people and then kill the son of the owner of the vineyard. So something has shifted in their thinking. They think it's theirs and it's not. It's not their vineyard, it's not their land. The tools that they were using likely were not theirs. They were that, they were working with the houses that they were staying in to work. This space was not, none of it was theirs. It doesn't belong to them. And they've begun. They've begun to think that it ought to, that it ought to be theirs.

Speaker 1: 14:04

And Jesus finishes this parable by then asking a question in verse 40. So he's sent servants, he sent his bin. Now the owner is going to go himself. And then Jesus doesn't close this out, he actually pitches it to his listeners. He says so what do they do to the tenants? What will he do to the tenants? You tell me, what should he do? Now? We need to remember who are the people that are listening to Jesus right now. Who is he talking? To Remember, if we go all the way back, it was the elders and the chief priests, the elders of the people and the chief priests, the ones who said who do you think you are? And so now, suddenly, they find themselves enveloped in the story, and so they're like well, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end, bring them to justice, they replied, and he will rent then the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time. So let's not forget what this whole thing is about. Fruit, right? The owners invested into a vineyard to produce fruit, so one way or another, fruit is going to happen here. Those farmers didn't work out like they really really didn't work out, and so we're going to bring in some new farmers who are going to produce fruit.

Speaker 1: 15:30

So, for this parable, let's take stock so far of what we're understanding. What's the vineyard? Any ideas? It's Israel. It's the land, it's the temple. Who are the farmers? They're the leaders of Israel, they're the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the elders.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Right, who in the story are the prophets or the servants? I just gave you the answer they're the prophets. They're the prophets. This was one of the most common ways that they were referred to Isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel. You know God would send them all over the Old Testament as prophets, but as my servants to serve the people, and were to give a warning and would warn Israel and accuse them of bloodshed and distress and then call them to justice and righteousness. So then, who's the son, who's the Ben? Yeah, it's Jesus. It's Jesus presenting himself as the culmination of the owner and to communicate to his people and actually be the very embodiment of the father, his people, and actually be the very embodiment of the father. So then, what does this mean? And who are the other tenants? Who are the other ones who are going to get this? What does it mean? That they're going to face justice and then the vineyard will be given over to other farmers.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Well, jesus, he kind of explains, but he explains it by then quoting even more ancient Hebrew poetry. You see this in verse 42. Jesus said to them have you never read in the scriptures? The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and the Lord has done this and is marvelous in our eyes. So this is from Psalm 118.

Speaker 1: 17:24

This is where he's quoting from, right here, and it's this remarkable poem. It's a poem that was actually sung Psalm 113 through 118. That's called the great halal. This was actually sung in temple liturgy all throughout Passover week. And remember what week are we in right now? Passover. This is where we are at.

Speaker 1: 17:46

And so, jesus. He's quoting a poem that's being recited every day in the temple and it's a poem about this individual who undergoes great sufferings because of persecution from enemies and he calls out to God in distress and he says save me and deliver me. And God then delivers this suffering one of Psalm 118. And he vindicates him and he exalts him over his enemies. And then the poet reflects back on how God vindicated him and he uses this metaphor, this imagery of stones and quarries and cornerstones and rejected rocks, just to help you get this picture in your head. This is a picture of the southwest corner of the walls that still today support the Temple Mount. These are 2,000-year-old stones. I mean just for us to wrap our mind around that just a little bit. And you look up, like four or five stories up, and there's this huge plaza where the Dome of the Rock of Today is and where the Temple of Jesus Day was. You know what's fascinating about this and having been there myself is like Jesus certainly walked by these stones when he went into the temple.

Speaker 1: 18:59

These stones were actually architected and commissioned by King Herod. This is the Herod that actually was trying to kill baby Jesus when he was a baby in Bethlehem, massive stones. It's so difficult actually to comprehend it, like even how they moved it, when you're there in person. And these would have been the best stones because they're on display in a way that none of the other stones are. It's the cornerstone, in a way that none of the other stones are. It's the cornerstone.

Speaker 1: 19:29

And so the poem is actually inviting us into this other little parable. Imagine, before all of these stones were carved out, the rock quarry. It's rough, it's huge, there's massive boulders and there's a whole bunch of them. And the architect has invited the builder to come in and inspect the stones. And so the builder's gonna be going like, yes, that one's good, I want that one, let's use that one. No, that one has like a crack in it or the edge isn't right, and so that one's bad, we're going to throw it out. So that's kind of the scene that you have going right there.

Speaker 1: 19:56

So this poem, this poet, depicts himself as actually one of the rejected stones. The builders have looked at the stone and says no, it's ugly, it's compromised, it's cracked, it's not going to be the showcase stone. But in reality the poet says no, in God's eyes, yeah, that's the one, that's totally the one, and the stone that the builders have rejected is the stone that God will then make the showcase, and it's not going to just be another stone in the wall, it's going to be the cornerstone, and if it's near the bottom, that means that the stone is so strong that it can hold the weight of the entire edifice and the whole structure right there, and everything is built off in support with that. So do you see what's happening in this little stone parable here? Okay, now, this is brilliant, because this is just another word play right here. So the word for stone in Hebrew wait for it is ebin. So you have been and you have ebin.

Speaker 1: 21:02

So this is Jesus telling the story about the rejected son, or Ben. And then he quotes from another poem, that in his own parable about the rejected Eben. And in both cases there's this crazy reversal. In the first case it's about a parable of the ludicracy of these farmers that reject the Ben and murder him. And then this poem, it's about the sadness and this tragedy of the builders rejecting because in actual reality, this was the most important stone all along. The son was killed, the bin was killed, but then the e-bin gets the decision of the builders reversed.

Speaker 1: 21:46

So what does all this mean? Verse 43. Therefore, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit, because that's what this is all about, friends Producing fruit. Who is the you when it says right there? Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you. Remember who he was teaching to and talking with? The chief priests, yeah, and the elders, the leaders of the people of Israel. And so Jesus himself is coming, as another Isaiah, to the leaders of the people. And these leaders of the people were called to curate and steward the temple and the meeting place of heaven and earth where God met with his people. They were called to teach the people the laws of the Torah that would guide Israel to become a light to the nations, to become the city on a hill and to show everybody else that God had designed human communities to actually look like this, at least in their day and in their context. In reality, they did a horrible job. They totally botched the job they did in Isaiah's day and then they did in Jesus's day, and so here we have him calling to account, says you guys lost your opportunity, the kingdom of God. This will be a place, a community, a community where God reigns over his people. But there is a new regime now coming and you're being ousted from leadership and God's going to find a new building, a new cornerstone, a whole new temple structure. But this temple structure is not going to be a physical one. It's going to be the bin.

Speaker 1: 23:40

And the gospel, according to John if you read around the story, the Jews, it says, asked what sign that he would give. What sign would Jesus give to show his authority? And he said I will destroy this temple and I will raise it up again in three days. And then John like whispers in our ear, the listeners, and says the temple he was speaking about was himself. It's the bin which it happened historically In Jesus's mind.

Speaker 1: 24:15

He's here to restart God's covenant people because the jobs they failed again and he's come as the king of Israel and he's going to restart the covenant people of God. He's going to call the leaders of Israel to account. Now, what he's not saying right here is that somehow the people of Israel as a whole are done. That's not what he's saying, you know. He's not saying like we're going to do this whole new thing, and we're going to call it the church. No, jesus, he's the Messiah of Israel, and who's following him? Who's been following him so far? Lots of people, but those lots of people, what's their ethnicity? They're all Jewish. They're all Jewish, and they actually will continue to be for a couple of decades.

Speaker 1: 25:06

And Jesus, here is. This whole moment is about him reconstituting the covenant people of God around himself as leader, and this people group was always meant to be a people group and a family that have encompassed and wrapped their arms around all of the nations around them. And this, though, is a Jewish messianic movement, which actually, over history, is why Christianity, throughout much of its history, christians, have been trying to distance themselves from their Jewish heritage, and it's literally like cutting off the branch that you're sitting on. So here's the point, jesus he's pointing to himself as the new leader of the covenant people, because the people that were there, the leaders, have messed this job up. And then he gets really intense. In verse 44, he says anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. Anyone on whom it falls will be crushed, and what he's doing here is he's predicting the destruction of Jerusalem because they've rejected their Messiah. And again we know because we're ahead in history.

Speaker 1: 26:15

It happened Verse 45,. Then when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus's parables, all of a sudden they were like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, he's talking about us. And so they looked for a way to arrest him. But they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet. So Jesus comes, he warns the people of Israel, he accuses them of total mismanagement of the kingdom, that they had this opportunity to be brought into God's story and what God wanted to do in the world. And then something inside their minds and hearts shifted. And suddenly now we're going to murder the Ben and reject the Eben, but in reality God's going to do something marvelous and he's going to reverse their decision. And he's going to do something marvelous and he's going to reverse their decision and he's going to actually undo the murder by taking the rejected Eben and raising the Ben from the dead. It's really quite beautiful this whole passage and how it works together.

Speaker 1: 27:27

So again, to remind us, who is Jesus talking to? The chief priests and the elders of the people of ancient Israel? Now, I can tell you that I have never been either of those, and nor have you. He's not talking to the disciples here. He's talking to the leaders of Israel. Go back to verse 43. Therefore, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and then given to a people who will produce its fruit. You see that what is God's purpose in the world? In this metaphor? To produce fruit. You with me, right? So what kind of fruit? Well, it's the fruit of the kingdom of righteousness and right relationships, and God's on a mission to somehow redeem and to restore and set right what we have made of his good world. He's doing so through Jesus and the people and the family that Jesus is actually forming here.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Let's, for a moment, just jump to the very end. Some of you guys are going to really like this. Let's go to the end of Matthew. We'll just finish it right here, chapter 28, verse 18. That's the end. Right, we'll be there in a while, but yes, so Jesus, he's come to his disciples now and he's raised from the dead, and then he says to them all authority he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Speaker 1: 28:58

The kingdom of God, the reign and the rule of God over his people in this world has been taken away from you, the chief priests and the elders, and it has been given to the one who has authority over heaven and earth. So now King Jesus says to his farmers make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, initiating them into community in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and then teaching them to produce fruit, or, as he says it here, to obey everything I have commanded. Now think back to what has he commanded you. What has he commanded you as we've walked through the gospel of Matthew over these last three years? Right, what has he commanded you?

Speaker 1: 29:50

The whole thing is about love for your neighbor, loving your neighbor as yourself and treating people the way that you want to be treated and that he has treated them, and bearing fruit for the kingdom and justice and righteousness and right relationships and forgiveness and sexual integrity and generosity and extreme loyalty and commitment to each other and our well-being and the well-being of those around us in our cities and our communities. It's producing fruit. God's whole point is to form a people who will produce fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And so the warning to the leaders of Jesus' day is not directed at me or you, but there's a warning that's implicit in it. So what's the whole point of following Jesus To produce fruit? Right, he wants to produce fruit in the world and through his people.

Speaker 1: 30:54

So how, I think we have to understand. How do you get to a mindset and a mindset like what the farmers did in this parable. How do you get to a place where suddenly, you reject the bin, where there's someone who's invited you to participate and be a part of their deal, and then you start to come to think of this actually as your deal, that all of a sudden, you see everything is actually owed to you and belongs to you and you start behaving in these ways that are totally irrational and destructive and they don't make any sense. Like that's what happened here, right, and in this parable, they've been invited in to participate in somebody else's story, that someone's on mission to produce fruit, and the shift happens when, all of the sudden, I begin to view things as mine. This was their shift, that they clearly at some point began to see the vineyard as belonging to them, and so they're gonna do whatever it takes to defend what is mine, because this guy's coming to collect and claim the fruit.

Speaker 1: 32:05

So the question would be is what mindsets do I find myself in that prevent me from following the teachings of Jesus and becoming apathetic as his disciple? It's that I forget that I have been invited into participating in Jesus's vineyard and I come to see my life, my opportunities, my resources, my relationships as mine. But the reality is everything is a gift from the God that Jesus called generous father, and with gifts comes responsibility, and the responsibility in this parable is to produce fruit. Jesus wants us to see everything as a gift. The set of circumstances doesn't belong to me. I don't own any of this. These aren't my people, this isn't my house, this isn't my job. It's a gift and you and we have been hired to work in the vineyard and produce fruit. But the moment, the moment that I see or think everyone else owes me, god owes me, this is mine it all just starts to go downhill, and that's the delusion that Jesus in this parable Fruit. That's true north, that's the true north.

Speaker 1: 33:57

So ask yourself what magnetic pulls are causing a shift in you. What are the things pulling you away from true north, creating the delusion that ends up creating the circumstance where you're miles away from where you were actually meant to be because you followed magnetic north. Do you remember when it was exciting and fresh Maybe some of you have lost that when following Jesus was exciting and you got to relax in him and it was fresh? But there's these, like tectonic plates, shifting and pulling you where you have been pulled into a place where you think that you just own it all and then you realize you're not producing fruit. And he in the rejected Eben becomes the vindicated Ben who, despite our rejection, god vindicates and brings back to life because he loves us, he's committed to us and he's committed to you. So, whether you live into the delusion or whether you are trying to wake up to the reality from that delusion, he loves you. He is so committed to you. Will you stand as we respond in worship?