Jenny Baker: Good morning.
Jenny Baker: My name is Jenny Baker, and I have the blessing this morning to open our scriptures together and read from this morning's reading, which is found in the book of Mark Chapter 12.
Jenny Baker: And we're going to look at Mark Chapter 12, Verses One through 12.
Jenny Baker: "Jesus then began to speak to them in parables.
Jenny Baker: A man planted a vineyard.
Jenny Baker: He put a wall around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower.
Jenny Baker: Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.
Jenny Baker: At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard, but they seized him, and they beat him, and they sent him away empty-handed.
Jenny Baker: Then he sent another servant to them.
Jenny Baker: They struck this man on the head, and they treated him shamefully.
Jenny Baker: He sent still another, and that one they killed.
Jenny Baker: "He sent many others.
Jenny Baker: Some of them beat; others they killed.
Jenny Baker: He had one left to send, whom he loved, his son.
Jenny Baker: He sent him last of all, saying,'They will respect my son,' but the tenants said to one another,'This is the heir.
Jenny Baker: Come and let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they took him and killed him and threw him out in the vineyard.
Jenny Baker: What then will the owner of the vineyard do?
Jenny Baker: He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Jenny Baker: Haven't you read this passage of scripture?
Jenny Baker: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
Jenny Baker: The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Jenny Baker: Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders looked for a way to arrest him, because they knew he had spoken the parable against them, but they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him, and they went away."
Dan Werthman: Thank you Jenny, and if you haven't already opened your Bible, I invite you to open your Bible to Mark Chapter 12.
Dan Werthman: While you're opening there, I want to give you a brief update on the search for the next lead teaching pastor.
Dan Werthman: The search at this point seems to have focused upon three candidates.
Dan Werthman: All three candidates have been through a first interview.
Dan Werthman: All three candidates have had reference checks.
Dan Werthman: Two of the candidates have gone through a second interview with their wives, and the third candidate and his wife will have their second interview this afternoon.
Dan Werthman: So it is at a crucial time, and we covet your prayers.
Dan Werthman: We pray that you-- we ask that you would pray for the search team, for discernment to discern if God is narrowing us down to one of these men.
Dan Werthman: We ask that you pray for a unity of heart and mind among the pastoral search team as they consider these three men and their wives that God has put before us.
Dan Werthman: We are in the first 12 verses of Mark Chapter 12.
Dan Werthman: I've kind of entitled this"Rebellion in the Vineyard".
Dan Werthman: It reminds me almost, you know, of, like an episode of"Law and Order".
Dan Werthman: "Law and Order: Palestine" or something like that.
Dan Werthman: You know, it's such a shocking story that he tells.
Dan Werthman: I mean it reminds me: I read some time ago, in the Chicago Tribune, this was the headline of this article:"Brothers charged with killing landlord, hiding body in sewer".
Dan Werthman: You know, two brothers who had rented an apartment from a landlord and lived there a number of months and paid rent for a number of months.
Dan Werthman: At some point, they decided in their minds,"We don't want to pay rent anymore.
Dan Werthman: We want to act like we own this apartment." And so, when the owner of the apartment came that next month to collect the rent, these two brothers killed him, assaulted him and killed him.
Dan Werthman: And after trying to hide his body for awhile in the apartment, in finding, you know, there's some stench with that, they eventually found a sewer manhole cover, pried that off just out in front of their apartment and tried to hide the body in there.
Dan Werthman: Of course, as shocking as it is to us, that's, that's the kind of shock value this story is that Jesus is telling them.
Dan Werthman: He tells a story with a similar plot.
Dan Werthman: Now, it is a parable.
Dan Werthman: This isn't the first parable we've seen in the Gospel of Mark.
Dan Werthman: You may remember, we've said it over and over again.
Dan Werthman: A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
Dan Werthman: It takes an earthly scene that maybe we can all relate to in one way or another, but it has heavenly meaning that the Lord wants you and me to see, and the story is quite clear at the very beginning.
Dan Werthman: It starts out in Verse One: a man plants a vineyard.
Dan Werthman: That presumes that he has purchased the land, that he owns the land.
Dan Werthman: He has cleared the land of all the stones, which probably took a long time and a lot of effort, and then he plants a vineyard.
Dan Werthman: He probably planted hundreds of individual grapevines, going to great expense, great effort, great time.
Dan Werthman: And then, to protect that vineyard, he builds a wall around it.
Dan Werthman: That wall may have been a stone wall.
Dan Werthman: That wall may have been a hedge of briars.
Dan Werthman: Either way, again, great expense was involved.
Dan Werthman: Great time and effort was expended to build that wall, to protect the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: But even more, he digs and constructs a winepress, and that's not like a little wood vat like you see in some of those pictures of people stamping on grapes.
Dan Werthman: In that day, you excavated a large pit in the earth, and then you line that with stonework, and that was just one of two pits you are going to build.
Dan Werthman: That was the pit that they put the grapes in, and those who crushed the grapes would crush the grapes in it.
Dan Werthman: But you also had to dig out a second pit a little lower than the first pit.
Dan Werthman: You had to line that with stone as well, and that was the pit that the crushed grapes, the juice from the crushed grapes would drain into where the wine would be collected.
Dan Werthman: Great expense, great effort, great time.
Dan Werthman: And if that wasn't enough, he built a watchtower.
Dan Werthman: He went to all the trouble of building a tower, a tower for those who ran the vineyard to watch for marauders, to watch for wild animals.
Dan Werthman: It was a place where they could live and find protection.
Dan Werthman: Again, great expense, great effort, great time involved.
Dan Werthman: After doing all of this, why does he do it?
Dan Werthman: He does it because he wants to harvest crops of grapes to make wine, and so he finds tenants.
Dan Werthman: He finds farmers.
Dan Werthman: They don't own the vineyard; he does, but he allows them to live there.
Dan Werthman: He allows them to work the land, to take advantage of all that he has provided in this vineyard in exchange for the understanding that they would provide him with a percentage of the harvest.
Dan Werthman: Now you and I hear that story, and it's just a story.
Dan Werthman: The Old Testament, religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders hearing that story, familiar with the Old Testament, they would have immediately recognized where Jesus drew that story from.
Dan Werthman: They would have been thinking to themselves,"That's Isaiah 5.
Dan Werthman: Isaiah 5.
Dan Werthman: Isaiah Chapter Five starts out with what's called The Song of the Vineyard, and I'm not going to read the whole song, but let me read the first verse.
Dan Werthman: "My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
Dan Werthman: He dug it and he cleared it of stones and he planted it with choice vines.
Dan Werthman: "He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes." He had an expectation that it would produce fruit, and it goes on.
Dan Werthman: But in Verse Seven God makes it absolutely clear, in the words of Isaiah, what the vineyard symbolizes.
Dan Werthman: Isaiah 5:7:"For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." So the people listening to Jesus would immediately have known that he was talking about the Jewish people.
Dan Werthman: He was talking about God's Old Covenant people.
Dan Werthman: In other words, what does the vineyard symbolize?
Dan Werthman: To the people immediately hearing this parable, it symbolized God's relationship to his chosen people.
Dan Werthman: Now, who are God's chosen people today?
Dan Werthman: And then we get into the whole understanding of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and that's a separate teaching that I don't have time for this morning.
Dan Werthman: But I would say this: with the coming of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for our sin and his resurrection and his promise of the New Kingdom, we live, those of us who know Christ as Savior and Lord, we live under the New Covenant.
Dan Werthman: And so this parable doesn't just speak to the Jews who are hearing it in that day.
Dan Werthman: This parable speaks to us.
Dan Werthman: God's New Covenant people.
Dan Werthman: It speaks first of all to our purpose.
Dan Werthman: What is our purpose?
Dan Werthman: Why, if you know Christ as Savior and Lord, why is he giving you this one more day, when you breathe his air, when you live in his vineyard?
Dan Werthman: Why is he giving you life?
Dan Werthman: Why doesn't he just immediately take you into heaven?
Dan Werthman: Well, we get an indication of that as the parable goes on in Verse Two:"At harvest time, the owner of the vineyard sends a servant to the tenants to collect the from them some of the fruit of the vineyard." In other words, the owner of the vineyard, he didn't just build this for a place for the tenants to live.
Dan Werthman: He expected the vineyard to be worked.
Dan Werthman: He expected the tenant farmers to produce fruit from the vineyard, fruit that he would enjoy.
Dan Werthman: So he had an expectation that all of this expense and all of this time and all of this effort would yield fruit.
Dan Werthman: Well, what is the symbolism here?
Dan Werthman: Let me just see how awake you are this morning.
Dan Werthman: Who is the owner of the vineyard?
Dan Werthman: God is the owner of the vineyard, and that is as true in the day that Jesus is telling this as it is true today.
Dan Werthman: To them, God has made the vineyard of the nation of Israel.
Dan Werthman: He made that vineyard from which he would begin his gracious work of offering salvation, the fruit of salvation to all the world.
Dan Werthman: But that vineyard doesn't stop with the nation of Israel.
Dan Werthman: Today, that vineyard is much larger than Israel on this side of the cross and the empty tomb.
Dan Werthman: I mean, there is a sense in which, individually for you and me, there is a vineyard.
Dan Werthman: Your vineyard is everything that God has blessed you with.
Dan Werthman: Your vineyard, what he has entrusted to you as a tenant farmer in his vineyard, is the abilities he's given to you.
Dan Werthman: It's the resources that he has entrusted to you.
Dan Werthman: It is your health.
Dan Werthman: It is the relationships you have.
Dan Werthman: That is all of the things that you didn't make up yourself, you didn't create.
Dan Werthman: God has prepared these things for you.
Dan Werthman: He has entrusted them to you as a tenant farmer in his vineyard.
Dan Werthman: Now, this is not only true of us individually; there is a collective sense in which this is true.
Dan Werthman: Our collective vineyard as Central Church is everything that God has entrusted to us, and that includes not just our building and our facilities.
Dan Werthman: That includes our history, that includes our relationships and reputation in this community, that includes all those that he has gifted to be part of keeping the ministry going and expanding here.
Dan Werthman: We didn't create this.
Dan Werthman: We didn't build this church.
Dan Werthman: We don't bring, you know, things like we're the one who this church hinges upon.
Dan Werthman: No, God created this vineyard, and he placed every one of us in it as tenant farmers, part of working his vineyard, and what is the expectation?
Dan Werthman: Whether you look at the vineyard of your personal life, your individual life, or you look at the vineyard of our collective life as Central Church, our purpose is to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: We don't exist just for our own happiness, just for our own preferences, just for our own enjoyment.
Dan Werthman: We exist to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: Jesus says it this way in John 15:8:"By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit." This is how Jesus says,"You prove to be my disciples." We produce the fruit of bringing people to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: We produce the fruit of making them disciples, followers of Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: We produce the fruit of helping them, in turn, become those who make others into followers and disciples of Jesus Christ and reproducing themselves.
Dan Werthman: That is our purpose.
Dan Werthman: That's our purpose individually.
Dan Werthman: That is our purpose of a church.
Dan Werthman: It was certainly true at this time: God planted Israel to be a vineyard producing the fruit of salvation to the entire world, not just to the nation of Israel.
Dan Werthman: And now, under the New Covenant, you are a vine, a grapevine in God's vineyard, expected to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: Our church is like a row of vines in God's vineyard, expected to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: Other churches are like other rows of vineyards.
Dan Werthman: All of this is in God's grand vineyard, where he expects as the owner of the vineyard, the Lord of the vineyard, that there will be the fruit of salvation expanding to every nation, every tongue, every ethnicity, every tribe.
Dan Werthman: That's our purpose.
Dan Werthman: That's why, if you know Christ is Savior, if you know Christ is Lord, that's why you are breathing today.
Dan Werthman: He wants us to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: But the parable also portrays the human problem with this, and that is our second point: our pride.
Dan Werthman: And you can read how this plays out in the story.
Dan Werthman: When the owner of the vineyard sends his servant to collect the fruit, to see if there's fruit that he expects of the harvest that he is owed.
Dan Werthman: What happens?
Dan Werthman: The tenant farmers seize the servant, they beat him, and they send him away empty-handed.
Dan Werthman: That's Verse Three.
Dan Werthman: And incomprehensibly, he gives them another opportunity.
Dan Werthman: In Verse Four, he sends another servant to them.
Dan Werthman: What happens again?
Dan Werthman: These rebellious tenants, they strike this man on the head.
Dan Werthman: They treat him shamefully.
Dan Werthman: And at this point, although it seems pretty obvious to us that these rebellious tenant farmers are unrepentant, they're not going to change their mind in how they respond to the true owner of the vineyard, the owner sends even more servants.
Dan Werthman: In Verse Five:"He sent still another, and that one they killed.
Dan Werthman: And he sent many others, and some of them they beat, and others they killed." The people hearing this parable, they would have known who these servants are.
Dan Werthman: These servants are the prophets.
Dan Werthman: The Old Testament is a history of God sending his prophets, speaking his word to rebellious Israel and Israel abusing and mistreating and even killing his prophets.
Dan Werthman: But it's not just Israel that rejects God's messengers.
Dan Werthman: Think of all the servants of God around the world, throughout history, who have been sent away, rejected, who have been treated shamefully, who've been beaten, who've even been killed.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because they're sharing the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: And even this morning, even today in different places of the world, even in places in our country, this is happening to men and women who try to faithfully present the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, the true Gospel.
Dan Werthman: There are many who reject that, who abuse the messengers, who kill the messengers.
Dan Werthman: Think even of how you may have behaved, perhaps prior to coming to faith in Jesus Christ, when someone was sent to you as a messenger with the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: Think of the many times that you may have rejected that message.
Dan Werthman: Think of how you may not have actually killed the messenger, but think of how you maligned the messenger or slandered the messenger or scoffed at the messenger, in a way, killing the messenger.
Dan Werthman: This is not just Israel.
Dan Werthman: This is all of us.
Dan Werthman: Finally, in Verse Six, the owner sends his own son, his son whom he loved.
Dan Werthman: He sent him last of all, saying,"They will respect my son." Why?
Dan Werthman: Because the son is the heir.
Dan Werthman: The servants didn't own the vineyard, but the son, the son is the air.
Dan Werthman: The son is the ultimate owner of the vineyard, and the owner sends the son.
Dan Werthman: But Verse Seven: the tenants say to one another they know this is the heir.
Dan Werthman: "If we kill him, then the vineyard will pass without ownership.
Dan Werthman: We can take ownership of it.
Dan Werthman: We can take control of it." They foolishly believe that by killing the son, they could gain ownership and control of the vineyard, and that's what they do in Verse Eight: they take him, and they kill him, and they throw him out of the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: What is the heavenly symbolism of this earthly story?
Dan Werthman: Who is the son?
Dan Werthman: The son is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, the Lord, the ultimate heir of the vineyard, and what happened to Jesus?
Dan Werthman: It hadn't happened at the point he's telling this parable, but it was about to.
Dan Werthman: They threw him out of the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: They took him outside the city walls, the Gospel writers say.
Dan Werthman: The writer of Hebrews says, Hebrews 13:12, that Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates at Golgotha for our sins.
Dan Werthman: They were about to do to Jesus exactly what he was saying in the story.
Dan Werthman: But this isn't just a picture of how the Jews killed Jesus; it's a picture of how the entire human race behaves toward Jesus, including us.
Dan Werthman: David Garland says it this way:"Just as the tenants foolishly believe that by killing the son, they could become owners of the vineyard, so humans(and that includes you and me), so humans think that by erasing God from their lives, they can take control of their earthly and eternal destinies." You want to know why Romans tells us why people want to deny the existence of God?
Dan Werthman: Because if you deny that there is an owner of the vineyard of your life, then then you can pretend you're the owner.
Dan Werthman: You can pretend that you're in control, but if you have to acknowledge that there is an owner of the vineyard, that all that you have and all you've been entrusted with, you didn't create, it's been put on loan to you.
Dan Werthman: You are a steward of it, and you have to bow to the owner of the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: And that's really what it all comes down to for all of us.
Dan Werthman: Just like these tenants, we don't naturally want to acknowledge that the vineyard of our lives belongs to the God who made it, even when we come into the kingdom, and we are believers, and we become part of the Church.
Dan Werthman: When we think about, well, the preferences that we wrestle with, it's again, it's a similar type of, we're not really acknowledging the owner of the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: We're still behaving like rebellious tenants.
Dan Werthman: We all have this strain of sinful pride in us that wants to establish that we control the vineyard, the vineyard of our lives, the vineyard of our church.
Dan Werthman: We want to seize control of everything in our lives, even if that means that we have to push God out of the picture to do it.
Dan Werthman: And what we should all be amazed by is God's patience, the third point today.
Dan Werthman: Think of God's patience here.
Dan Werthman: When the servants return to the owner empty-handed and even abused, beaten up, what does the owner do?
Dan Werthman: He doesn't immediately fly off the handle in anger.
Dan Werthman: He doesn't call up his army to come in and wipe out these rebellious tenants, does he?
Dan Werthman: No, he sends messenger after messenger.
Dan Werthman: Finally, he even sends his beloved son, and this to us looks humanly foolish.
Dan Werthman: Why would he do that?
Dan Werthman: Why would he said servant after servant?
Dan Werthman: Why would he put his son in danger like that?
Dan Werthman: It's the same kind of confusion, I think, sometimes we experience when we look at all that is happening in the world around us.
Dan Werthman: People in our world today seem to be just like these tenants: getting away with injustice and abuse and even murder.
Dan Werthman: And God's servants continue to be rejected and mocked and abused and even killed, and there seems to be no accountability for all this rebellion in our world today.
Dan Werthman: But Jesus is saying here,"Actually, this reflects the patient and loving character of God." God is holy.
Dan Werthman: God is righteous.
Dan Werthman: God is just, but God is also the God that the Apostle Peter describes as"the one who is patient with you not wanting you to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance".
Dan Werthman: This is why Paul says in Romans 2,"Do you think lightly of the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance?" You know, I think about this in my own life.
Dan Werthman: Although I turned to Christ at a relatively young age, I still had many years, and I think back sometimes with regret over those many years when I lived my life like those tenants.
Dan Werthman: What I had, I claimed as mine.
Dan Werthman: My abilities, I claimed pridefully as my own.
Dan Werthman: My choices, my decisions, what I thought I got to do in life, I operated as if I owned the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: And maybe you're that way, too.
Dan Werthman: Maybe that was your past coming to Christ, or maybe you're still there this morning.
Dan Werthman: So I ask you, how about you?
Dan Werthman: Has God's patience with you, the fact that he's allowed you to live another day, has his patience and kindness led you to repentance, led you to the place where you acknowledged him as lord of the vineyard, as the one who was created everything, as the one who gives you life, gives you all you have, all you've been entrusted with?
Dan Werthman: Or are you still living in the mindset of these tenants?
Dan Werthman: Are you still living like these rebellious tenants, saying,"I don't want anybody telling me what to do.
Dan Werthman: I want to control the shots in my life"?
Dan Werthman: Well, now that leads into our fourth point.
Dan Werthman: Although God's forbearance and patience go beyond what we can humanly understand, there does come a time when his patience comes to an end, and he will wait no longer.
Dan Werthman: The fourth point is God's punishment.
Dan Werthman: God has shown incomprehensible patience, as it's symbolized in this parable, not just with Israel, but with all of the human race.
Dan Werthman: But the conclusion of this parable shows his patience will come to an end.
Dan Werthman: Verse Nine: what will the owner of the vineyard do?
Dan Werthman: He will come and destroy the tenants.
Dan Werthman: Maybe the tenants thought at this point,"He's an absentee landlord." Maybe they thought of him as impotent or or powerless, you know, unwilling to do what it takes to enforce what is just.
Dan Werthman: But all of a sudden, this owner who has seemed so impotent and so distant becomes lord of the vineyard, and he crushes all the rebellion.
Dan Werthman: And by the way, as Jesus is speaking this to the Jewish religious leaders who are functioning like these rebellious tenants, he knows in just 40 years there will be a partial fulfillment of that, when in 70 A.D., God allows the Roman armies to surround rebellious Jerusalem, to break down its walls, to destroy its temple, and to eradicate the nation of Israel.
Dan Werthman: The nation of Israel came to an end for almost 1900 years.
Dan Werthman: But this is also a warning of what will happen to all who persist in rebellion against the Lord of the vineyard.
Dan Werthman: And whether you live openly rebellious, raising your fist in the air, or whether you have a really good surface appearance, and you look like a proper man or woman to everybody around you, but inwardly, you're in control of your life.
Dan Werthman: Either way, if you persist in your rebellion, God will bring to the point where he brings about judgment and condemnation and punishment.
Dan Werthman: The patient God is patient only for so long, but I'm so glad the Gospel doesn't end there.
Dan Werthman: The Gospel actually ends with our fifth point: God's provision.
Dan Werthman: And Jesus includes this in this episode.
Dan Werthman: Jesus says that God will not only destroy the rebellious tenants.
Dan Werthman: In other words, he will ultimately condemn and punish all who reject him, but at the same time, he will give the vineyard to others.
Dan Werthman: He will give the vineyard to others.
Dan Werthman: God's saving work, in other words, it's not stymied by the fact that that there is hardness of heart among these Jews.
Dan Werthman: In place of these old covenant people that rejected their Messiah, God establishes his New Covenant people.
Dan Werthman: God establishes the Church of Jesus Christ that is made up of everyone who embraces the true heir of the vineyard, the son of the owner of the vineyard, Jesus Christ as savior and Lord.
Dan Werthman: And so now under the New Covenant, doesn't matter if you're Jewish.
Dan Werthman: In fact, Paul says in Galatians 3:28 it no longer matters whether you're Jewish or gentile.
Dan Werthman: It no longer matters whether you are slave or free or economic status, and it no longer even matters whether you are male or female.
Dan Werthman: The only thing that matters is whether you are in Christ Jesus, whether you recognize that Christ is the Messiah, that he is the heir of the vineyard, that he is Lord and that he is king.
Dan Werthman: It doesn't matter what nationality you come from, what ethnicity, what gender you are: if you believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, as the Lord of the vineyard, you become part of his vineyard kingdom.
Dan Werthman: You are saved.
Dan Werthman: And Jesus ends this parable by quoting from Psalm 118.
Dan Werthman: That seems kind of out of place until we understand that's the same psalm that the people were chanting in the Triumphal Entry when he entered Jerusalem, just back in chapter 11, and he picks out one particular verse.
Dan Werthman: "Haven't you read the scripture?" he says to these proud Jewish religious leaders.
Dan Werthman: "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone." And just to give you a little context of this, what is he describing?
Dan Werthman: He's describing, really-- this quote describes how the temple was previously destroyed long before the Romans.
Dan Werthman: In 587 BC, the Babylonians surrounded Jerusalem and did the same thing to it that the Romans would do.
Dan Werthman: They destroyed, they leveled, the temple.
Dan Werthman: They took down every stone.
Dan Werthman: They created just piles of rubble.
Dan Werthman: And when Ezra and Nehemiah came later to rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, what they found is just these piles of broken stone, and among these broken stones, as they sought to rebuild the temple and the walls, there were stones that the builders of trying to rebuild the city would say,"That's broken.
Dan Werthman: "That was from the old structure.
Dan Werthman: We can't use that anymore." They would reject it.
Dan Werthman: But the image is of God, out of those piles of rubble, rebuilding a new temple.
Dan Werthman: Not a temple of stone; a living temple.
Dan Werthman: The religious leaders know the meaning of this, even if we don't get it, because we're not as familiar with the Old Testament past.
Dan Werthman: The stone, they know, refers to the Messiah.
Dan Werthman: The builders are they, the religious Jewish religious leaders who are rejecting Christ as Messiah.
Dan Werthman: But the story, the parable, the point here is that he is not just a stone; he is ultimately, he, Jesus, is the capstone of God's New Covenant kingdom, and again, this brings in images that we may not be familiar with.
Dan Werthman: There's a diagram up on the screen of a capstone and a keystone.
Dan Werthman: Some of your versions may talk about a cornerstone.
Dan Werthman: I don't think that's the correct interpretation here.
Dan Werthman: What Jesus describes here is probably either a capstone, that final stone that is placed upon the structure that becomes the pinnacle of the structure, or it's the keystone, that that stone that is placed in the arch that holds the whole arch and the whole wall together.
Dan Werthman: Whatever the specific meaning, the stone we see is the most important one of all, and that is who Jesus is to us.
Dan Werthman: That's why Peter picks up on this image, making it absolutely clear in 1 Peter 2:"Now to you who believe, who believe in Jesus as the Christ, this stone is precious." But to those who do not believe, those who reject the Christ as the heir of the vineyard, the stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone, and a stone that causes men to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.
Dan Werthman: The application is pretty clear: you can either believe that Jesus is God's Messiah, your Savior and your King, or you reject him as the Jewish religious leaders did.
Dan Werthman: There is no in-between, and if you believe you are not only saved, but Peter goes on to say God makes you a living stone.
Dan Werthman: You become part of this new, spiritual New Covenant temple that God is building.
Dan Werthman: But many who want to be their own lords of the vineyard, many who want to run their own life their own way, Jesus says they will stumble over him.
Dan Werthman: Matthew says they will even be crushed by him, the living stone.
Dan Werthman: And the rejection of the stone by the Jewish religious leaders leading to the crucifixion of Jesus, that wasn't an aberration of God's plan.
Dan Werthman: That was all, Jesus makes the point, that was all included in God's plan.
Dan Werthman: That's verse 11.
Dan Werthman: Quoting Psalm 118, Verse 23:"The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." Even their rejection of Jesus, even their evil actions in crucifying him, God providentially used to accomplish our salvation, to take Jesus to the cross, where he paid the penalty for your and my sins that we might be saved.
Dan Werthman: Peter makes this clear in Acts 4:28:"They only did what God's power and God's will had decided beforehand should happen." God uses the rejection of Jesus Christ, both then and now, for the greater purpose that is marvelous in all of the eyes of those who have eyes to see him.
Dan Werthman: Let me close with this application of those five points, those five"P"s.
Dan Werthman: It doesn't normally happen that I get all my points starting with the same letter.
Dan Werthman: I know you think they teach that in seminary, but that's not a rule or anything like that.
Dan Werthman: It just worked out this week.
Dan Werthman: What is God's purpose for you?
Dan Werthman: Your purpose is more than just to live a happy, trouble-free life, as impossible as that is in this fallen world.
Dan Werthman: Your purpose, the reason he saves you, the reason he has sent Jesus to you, is that you might live for him, that you might be a faithful laborer in his vineyard, and you might produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: You might bring others to him, and you might help them become followers and disciples and makers of other disciples.
Dan Werthman: That's our purpose.
Dan Werthman: That's why we breathe the air we breathe even today, but what gets in the way of that?
Dan Werthman: Our pride.
Dan Werthman: And every one of us, both on the front side of accepting Christ, but even after, we wrestle with that desire that one way or another, we want to be lords of our own vineyard.
Dan Werthman: We want to be in control of our lives.
Dan Werthman: But we have a God who is greatly patient with us.
Dan Werthman: He sends us his servants.
Dan Werthman: He sent us his son.
Dan Werthman: He is kind and forbearing and patient, because he doesn't want any of us to perish.
Dan Werthman: He wants every one of us come to a true saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: He wants every one of us to produce fruit.
Dan Werthman: The reason that he's placed us in his vineyard.
Dan Werthman: The warning, though: those who reject him til the end face God's punishment, but the Gospel, God's provision, He provides Jesus the Christ, the capstone.
Dan Werthman: He provides Jesus as the keystone, the one that holds the whole wall of his temple together.
Dan Werthman: He becomes the crucial stone.
Dan Werthman: He becomes what our salvation is based upon.
Dan Werthman: Is this marvelous in your eyes?
Dan Werthman: Do you have eyes to see this?
Dan Werthman: Do you embrace the heir of the vineyard?
Dan Werthman: Do you accept the surrender to being a faithful servant, a tenant farmer in the Lord's vineyard?
Dan Werthman: Let's pray.
Dan Werthman: Oh Lord God, may we see our purpose more clearly.
Dan Werthman: If there is anyone here who does not know, this morning, Jesus as the Savior, the Lord of the vineyard, Lord, help them to see that the world they live in and all that they enjoy, that is all your doing, all your creation, and you've merely allowed them to live into it until they come to a saving knowledge of you.
Dan Werthman: For those of us who who have, and we know Jesus as Savior and Lord, help us to see that the point of our ongoing life is not just to create a life that makes us happy; it is to be faithful servants and to produce fruit, to produce the fruit of salvation in the growth of your kingdom.
Dan Werthman: Oh Lord, we thank you for your great patience with us.
Dan Werthman: We hear the warning of your punishment for those who persist in rebellion.
Dan Werthman: We worship and thank you for your provision of Christ as our chief capstone, our keystone.
Dan Werthman: We worship him, Lord, we embrace him as our Lord.
Dan Werthman: Make us faithful laborers that we would produce your fruit.
Dan Werthman: We pray this in Jesus' name.
Dan Werthman: Amen.