Tonight let’s consider the parable of the wicked husbandmen.
First, there is the preparation of the vineyard.
There were three steps in this. It was planted – and furnished with all equipment necessary for producing the fruit of the vine – that was the purpose of the vineyard. There is no reason to look for special meanings for the wall, the winepress and the tower. God called Israel out of Egypt in order to serve Him and to testify of His grace before the world. The theology possessed by Israel and the rites and ceremonies of Israel were all established by God. Jehovah planted this vineyard; He built the protective wall and the defensive tower. Jesus’ words should have taken those Jewish theologians right back to the Book of Isaiah, where all of this is expressed earlier.
When the vineyard was well-established, it was handed over to the husbandmen. By the way, this parable is repeated in the other two synoptic gospels. Matthew refers to the husbandmen as the rulers of Israel, but Luke suggests the people in general. No doubt the old adage fits in this case – “Like people, like priest.” Each aspect of Israel’s leadership – each of the groups that I mentioned earlier – represented different areas of Jewish society. The only people not represented were those whose faith was in Christ. The Sadducees and Pharisees and each of the others made their own particular boast of the law. But the harvest was not in religious words, but rather in righteous deeds – in godly living. Those people forgot that fruit was the end of the divine planting and equipment. Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought, and when He found those things, He was refreshed. But God had not been pleased or refreshed by Israel throughout their history.
Having installed the husbandmen, the owner went into another country. How many times did God issue a number of miracles and then step away? He did it with Moses and then again in the days of Elijah and Elisha. Then there were the ministries of Isaiah and Jeremiah. But after each cluster of miracles there followed decades or centuries of comparative divine silence. The vine was planted and then God expected it to grow and produce fruit on its own. Today we are in one of those long periods when God’s miraculous hand hasn’t been seen very often. It appears that the Lord expects us to be His hand – His husbandmen. The Lord is always near the faithful husbandman. The Lord blesses such a servant with joy and strength. If God didn’t bless there would be no fruit. Sadly the initial sin and misery of the unfaithful servants are that they think of their Lord as far away.
Then comes the habitual ill-treatment of the landowner’s messengers.
These are, of course, the prophets, whose office was primarily to plead for obedience and the fruit of the Spirit. But what happened to those servants? The whole history of Israel is summed up as a very dark picture. Generation after generation of princes, priests, and people had done the same thing to God’s prophets. The constant hostility of the Jews towards God’s prophets is almost unbelievable – but it is explainable.
From beating they go on to killing – and stoning is a specially savage form of killing. The opposition which began, as the former parable tells us, with polite hypocrisy and lip obedience, changed, under the pleading of the prophets, to refusal, and from that to violence and murder. The more God pleads with men, the more self-conscious and bitter their hatred becomes. The more bitter their hatred, the more God pleads, sending other messengers, more perhaps in number, or possibly of more weight, with a larger commission and clearer light. The longer someone goes in his rejection of God and the gospel, the more violent he becomes toward the truth. He who begins with “I go, sir,” and goes not, is headed toward picking up stones with a desire to crush the heads of the prophets and then to the Lord Himself, if they could.
Christ treats the whole Iong series of violent rejections as the acts of the same set of husbandmen. A stream is made up of billions of droplets of water – each different and yet they are all the same. The Pharisees and scribes, had different arguments for hating Christ than did the Sadducees. But the end result was the same – “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” They all declared that they were the children of Israel, but it was the same Israel which stoned the prophets who were sent unto them. In this case they weren’t standing on the shoulders of those who preceded them, they were bearing the weight of their forefathers on their shoulders and were being crushed by them.
Verses 37-39 speak of the mission of the Son and of its sad result.
First we notice the unique position which Christ claims. He spoke with honor of the earlier servants – the prophets of God. But clearly, He stands alone and above them – much closer to the Lord of the vineyard. Those prophets were faithful servants, but He is, as Mark says, “the only and beloved Son.”
Those chief priests, Sadducees and Pharisees understood Him well enough. The assertion was blasphemous to them, but it fit in perfect with all His acts in that last week. “Is this man the Person who He claims to be?” Those rulers – along with the rest of the nation – must decide whether they will bow to or reject their King. And they must do it with their eyes open. Jesus claimed to fill a unique position. He was either right or wrong in His claim. Is this a mere religious teacher, who made the mistake of thinking that He was the Son of God? No, this really is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Prince of God.
Christ’s next point is that both He and the Father knew that sending the Son was going to end badly. If He thought that He would be welcomed, He was disappointed. It was His last attempt. There is a sense in which Christ was God’s last appeal to the nation – to us. Waves of the enemy keep coming and now God is down to His last bullet. I suppose that language like this might disturb the Bible student. But this goes back to some of the deepest questions of theology. Why did God create man if He knew that man would sin against Him? Why did He keep pleading with man – with Israel – when He knew there would be nothing but rejection? How can we separate – should we separate – God’s long-suffering and grace from His ultimate plan? The parable expresses a great difficulty, but at the same time it reveals the ultimate love of God.
Christ, knowing the hearts of these men, better than they did themselves, puts their problems into plain words. “They said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.” Do you suppose that in their secret meetings, the Sanhedrin debated the true nature of Christ? In this parable, they knew that He was the Heir. Did Joseph of Aramathea, Nicodemus and others testify on behalf of this man from Nazareth? Didn’t the hearts of the others condemn them that they were doing the wrong thing? Wasn’t it their choice to steal the vineyard and all its produce, knowing that they had no right to it? I can’t say that it was true of everyone of them, but it was true of some of them. The ruling class clung to their privileges and forgot their responsibilities. And the common people were proud of their standing as Jews, and careless of God’s service. Neither wished to be reminded of their debt to the Lord of the vineyard, and their hostility to Jesus was mainly because He would call on them for fruit. If they could get this unwelcome and persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness.
And it is still the same today. So many people have a secret feeling that Christ has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they often turn from Him angrily, and sometimes hate Him. With what sad calmness does Jesus tell the fate of the Son, so certain that it is already as good as done. It was done in their counsels, and yet He doesn’t cease to plead with them. I wonder if one or two hearts were touched, and they withdrew themselves from this confederacy of murder.
The Lord suddenly turned to the rulers, and it might have thrown them off their guard. “What do you think should be done to those wicked servants?” Their answer leaped out before they had time to think that it would come back to bite them. “They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.”
This then produced the obvious application.
The Lord Jesus points to prophecy and psalm. He claimed in the plainest fashion that as the corner-stone, the kingdom of God was built upon Him. He branded the men standing before Him as incompetent contractors, who didn’t recognize the most important stone for their national temple. And then He declared, with triumphant confidence, the futility of opposition to Himself. Even though it will kill Him, He declared that God will build on Him, and that His place in the building, which shall rise through the ages, will be, to even careless eyes, the crown of God’s Creation. Strange words from a Man who knew that in a few days He would be crucified! Stranger still that they have come true!
Christ confirms the sentence just spoken by the rulers on themselves, but with a slight alteration. The parable stops being parabolic – Jesus uses the “u” word – “you.” “Thou art the man.” The husbandmen’s idea had been that killing the heir would make them lords of the vineyard. But the fact was that they were casting themselves out as they cast Him out. Christ is the heir, and the inheritance of God will not be given to any imposters. If we desire to share in any part of that inheritance, we must receive it through Christ, and not kill or reject, but trust and obey Him.
The enjoyment the blessings of the vineyard depends on honouring the Son, and on bringing forth the fruits which God means to have grown. And history has testified to what happens when God’s will is not accomplished. Historically, the blessings of the kingdom have been taken from the churches of Asia Minor, Africa, and Syria, because they bore no fruit. For a while Europe, and then England, were the center of the Lord’s gravity. Then it was passed to this country, but that doesn’t appear to be true any longer.
What doom is expressed in the last words here? To stumble at Christ, or to refuse His grace, and not to base our lives and hopes on Him is so dangerous on so many levels – here and now. In Daniel’s vision we see that stone in motion and it destroys the kingdoms of men. Today, Christ is offered to us as the Rock on which we may pile our hopes and never be confounded. But soon that Rock will come to judge. He will crush the mightiest opponent, and the confederation of all His enemies. That is a very dangerous place to stand.