Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 20:9-19
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  April 7, 2019

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to enjoy cooking. Some of it has come by necessity because of family schedules, but I do enjoy preparing meals for our family. When it comes to cooking, there are a couple of ingredients that you see fairly often that are preceded by the word, “minced.” Do you know what that means? It comes from a Latin word which mean to make smaller. Ingredients like onions and garlic are minced, made minute or miniscule to lessen their potency. It makes that flavor more palatable. That same concept has found its way into the English language. Someone who speaks very bluntly, very directly can be described as someone who “doesn’t mince his words.” While it’s probably not always the best form of communication, there are times when we really need to make a point, we need to get our message across, and mincing words isn’t going to help.

Jesus had reached that point. It’s Tuesday of Holy Week as we find him beginning to tell the crowd this parable. And it marks a dramatic shift in his message. If we follow the pattern of Jesus’ parables in Luke’s Gospel, we notice that Jesus becomes more and more direct in rebuking sins, specifically the sins of the religious leaders. Already this Holy Week, the Pharisees and experts in the Law have challenged Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. On Monday, he drove the money changers from the Temple a second time and Luke says, “but the chief priests, the experts in the law, and the leaders of the people continued to look for a way to put him to death. They could not find any way to do it, because all the people were clinging to him and listening.” Just before our lesson, the chief priests again challenged Jesus’ authority to do all these things, to teach the people. When Jesus asked them about the authority of John’s baptism, they didn’t dare to answer the question, because they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

Up to that point Jesus’ parables had been less direct, less attacking. But no longer. It’s clear that these religious leaders had hardened their hearts against Jesus. This was their last chance to repent. Jesus was not going to mince his words in this parable. If they still rejected him, the only thing left for them was judgment.

“[Jesus] began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard,” The man in Jesus’ parable is God. God planted a vineyard, a place where he could cultivate the land so it would produce fruit. The vineyard was the people of Israel. Isaiah gives us that same picture: “The vineyard of the Lᴏʀᴅ Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight.” This parable is a picture of the relationship between God and his people. “He leased it to some tenant farmers,” The farmers were the leaders of Israel, the chief priests, the experts in the Law, the Sanhedrin. They were to help guide the people to be a prosperous people. “and went away on a journey for a long time. When it was the right time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard.” The servants sent to the tenant farmers were the prophets. These messengers of God, men like Elijah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, were sent to make sure that the vineyard was prosperous and to rebuke the people if the fruit wasn’t showing. And here’s where the story takes a tragic turn. “When it was the right time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenant farmers beat the servant and sent him away  empty-handed.”

That’s how the people of Israel treated the prophets. This isn’t the first time that Jesus accuses the people of Israel of doing this. In his lament over Jerusalem Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her!” Jesus isn’t mincing words he when he describes the beating. He uses a Greek word that talks about flaying the skin. They beat the servant bloody and sent him away with not fruit. Let’s just pause there for a moment. If you were the owner of the vineyard, what would you do at this point? Think about that. We’re not going to explore it here, but think about what you’d do after that first servant came back bloody and beaten and with no fruit. “The man went ahead and sent yet another servant, but they also beat him, treated him shamefully, and sent him away              empty-handed. He then sent yet a third. They also wounded him and threw him out.” The owner sends a second and third servant to these tenants, these farmers. Is his patience rewarded? No, they treat these servants even worse than the first. No only did they beat the second servant bloody, bu they treated him shamefully. And the third, they traumatized him, wounded him severely and threw him out of the vineyard.

Three servants sent; three servants beaten and bloodied and traumatized. As the owner of the vineyard, what would your next move be? More servants? More chances? “The owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do? I will send my son, whom I love. Perhaps they will respect him.’” The treatment of the servants goes beyond belief.And yet the master continued to send the servant to these rebellious people. But his Son, whom he loved? How could a loving father send his own Son to these cruel people?

Let’s take a step back for a moment to survey the scene. Everything that Jesus has said up to this point has been a history lesson. And his audience got it. They knew the history. They knew how Isaiah had described them as a vineyard. They knew how their leaders had treated God’s messengers, the prophets. They even recognized Jesus as the owner’s son, as Jesus loved to refer to himself as the Son of Man, even the Son of God. And that’s what infuriated the leaders! They already had charged him with blasphemy, and here he is doing it again! But now Jesus moves out of the past and into the very near future. “But when the tenant farmers saw him, they talked it over with one another. They said, ‘This is the heir. Let’s kill him, so that the inheritance will be ours.’ They threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” Can you believe the absurdity of it all? Can you imagine how far gone you must be to believe that if you killed the owner’s son you’d inherit the vineyard? Yet, that’s exactly what happens in a hardened heart that wants nothing to do with God’s Will. It doesn’t think rationally according to holiness. “So what will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” What would you do? When would enough be enough? Wouldn’t you at the very least have those tenants removed? You’d get them out of there. You’d be sure that justice was served, that punishment was meted out. And that’s exactly what happens.

“He will come and destroy those  tenant farmers and give the vineyard to others.” God will come in judgment and destroy his enemies. The inheritance, the vineyard that once was theirs will be give to others. “When they heard this, they said, “May it never be!” The crowd listening to Jesus was mortified! No, never! Let us never be those kinds of tenants.! I wonder if the religious leaders mixed in crowd joined in the exclamation? I’m guessing not. Hardened hearts are hardly concerned with God’s will. They’re more concerned with what they want. And it’s here that Jesus goes in for the kill. But he looked at them and said, “Then what about this that is written: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush the one on whom it falls.”

To show them that this story, this attack on the religious leaders wasn’t just from Jesus’ imagination, he quotes from Psalm 118. Psalm 118 is a beautiful psalm which speak of national deliverance, deliverance by the Messiah, deliverance by suffering. It’s a psalm the people knew well. The children would learn it from little on and recite it much like our children recite the pledge of allegiance. These children would speak the words of this psalm to celebrate God’s deliverance for them, the promise of God’s Messiah, despised and yet the capstone. The capstone was also called the keystone. It was the center stone of the archway. If you took that stone away, the whole arch would come crumbling down. Another way to translate this word is to translate “cornerstone.” The cornerstone was the most important stone in the entire building. Every other stone was laid according to the cornerstone.

Jesus pulls out the Jewish pledge of allegiance and asks what it means. Who is this rejected stone that would become the most important stone, no matter which way you look at it? Who is this stone that will cause those who rejected it to fall and be broken, that will fall on those who rejected it and crush them? “That very hour the chief priests and the experts in the law began looking for a way to lay hands on him, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.”

How ironic that the leaders were afraid of the stones the people would throw, but not afraid of the capstone, the cornerstone! It’s clear that they didn’t take God’s message to heart. They did not repent. They continued to harden their hearts against his Word. And that hardening, which was all their own doing, would lead to their destruction.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what in the world the sermon theme is talking about since we haven’t mentioned it at all. There’s an old Jewish proverb that says: If a stone falls on a pot, woe to the pot. If the pot falls on the stone, woe to the pot. Either way, woe to the pot!” It would only be three days later that these Jewish leaders would crucify Jesus. Only three days later that they would seemingly win. But Jesus is the cornerstone, the capstone. And though his suffering was painful, his torture traumatic, his death real; it didn’t defeat him. No, instead the rock fell on the pot of death and crushed it. The pot full of those who hardened their hearts against him fell on him and was broken to pieces.

And that’s the warning to us. It may seem like God’s Word is abused and misused in this world. It may seem like God doesn’t care about what’s happening in his vineyard. But he does. He’s patient beyond what we would be! He continues to send his faithful servants with his Word to lead sinners to repentance, to produce that fruits of faith that he desires. But, if people continue to reject, if they continue to treat his Word and his servants with contempt, then woe to the pot. God’s judgment will come! And either way, it’s woe to the pot!

Too often, we’ve been the pot. We’ve despised the Word. We’ve abused the messenger. We’ve withheld the fruit. But God sent his Son, whom the builders rejected to be the capstone, to be the cornerstone, to be the most important building block in our lives, the foundation of everything we do. Jesus died to take away all your sins. He offers you his free forgiveness. He provides the guide and foundation for your life. Stop being the pot! Instead, by God’s power: “come to him, the Living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious, you also, like living stones, are being built as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, in order to bring spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  For it says in Scripture: See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who believes in him will certainly not be put to shame.”

Just look at the lengths God is willing to go to save you! Don’t test that patience! Don’t be the pot! Because either way, whether the rock falls on the pot or the pot on the rock, it’s woe to the pot. Amen.