Criminals in the Vineyard (Part A)

From the time of Moses to the time of Elijah, continuous rebellion and idolatry and apostasy occurred. Joshua said, I don't think you guys could do this. My house is going to serve the Lord, but I don't think you guys are up to it.

You say you are. He was right, largely. Before the coming of John the Baptizer, they were persecuted. It was persistent persecution. These heavens sent prophets.

But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Mark chapter 12 as he starts a brand new study called Criminals in the Vineyard. He set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat, and built a tower. And he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country. Now at vintage time, he sent a servant to the vine dressers that he might receive some of the fruit of the vineyard from the vine dressers. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty handed. Again he sent them another servant, and at him they threw stones, wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully treated. And again he sent another, and him they killed, and many others beating some and killing some, therefore still having one son, his beloved.

He also sent him to them last saying, they will respect my son. But those vine dressers said among themselves, this is the heir, come let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. So they took him and killed him and cast him out of the vineyard. Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine dressers and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture?

The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief's cornerstone. This is Yahweh's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. And they sought to lay hands on him, but feared the multitude, for they knew he had spoken the parable against them. So they left him and went away. Criminals in the vineyard, Jesus at the temple mount, there he was confronted by the religious leaders, and they challenged his authority.

By what authority do you do these things? And they were talking about not only his teaching, but his turning over tables and just rebuking them, and his entire ministry was a threat to them. And he, of course, put them on defense in this verbal exchange. He asked them questions that they were not ready to answer.

Instead of just leaving it there, he intensifies his attack. He used the vineyard metaphor from Isaiah 5 to out their criminal behavior. These are religious leaders, but they're criminals in the vineyard, as we just read the parable. And so this sketch of them is quite remarkable. So again, so we don't lose sight of what's happening.

He's teaching at the temple. They interrupt him. He asked them a question before he answered their question.

They could not answer it. And then he says, let me tell you a story about you chaps. And he lays it out, and it is just brutal if you're on the receiving end. And they knew it. They knew it so much, they wanted to kill him on the spot, but they could not. They began to plan his death for daring to tell the truth about them.

We can't look at this story and say, well, you know, that was the Pharisees and Sadducees, and that's how they were then. No, this is how people can be and are many times. They are still people that react this way to the truth. You simply tell them the truth that they know, and they turn on you. Paul had to deal with you.

Because I tell you the truth, am I now therefore your enemy? He says this to Christians. Well, at least they said they were Christians. Not only were these people going in the opposite direction of God, they were committing criminal acts against God. You know, there are those that just, they're not following God. There are others that are actually attacking God, committing crimes. Both of them can damn your soul, but this one, this one stands out, these crimes against God, and so Jesus depicts them as the criminals that they are in the parable. Trampling the laws of God, trampling lives of people in real life outside of the parable. So in other words, the reason why they were so offended, because they understood this was not just a fairy tale, this was not a story that we just read and dismiss and go on about our business, that this was what they were doing.

I struggle to understand this kind of behavior. I think any rational mind struggles to understand it, but then we factor in the whole sin, sinful nature, and we begin, we have to accept it because it is true, it is fact. What can make otherwise amazing human beings so inexplicably blind and violent in the face of spiritual truth? I mean, human beings do some amazing things as humans go. No other created being on earth can do what humans can do. And yet, they still can't figure out who their Lord is. God even, Isaiah the prophet says, you know, donkeys can figure out where they belong.

What's your problem? Well, it is that invisible attack of a devil whose influences are very visible. The devil is invisible himself, but his work is not. But they refuse to acknowledge, they refuse to acknowledge that Satan works, he functions, he does things. To this day, there are people that refuse to, I mean, how do you order, just an extreme example, how do you order a mob hit while you're sitting in church? And not understand that there is a very real Satan and you are accountable to a holy God. What is wrong with people that think this way?

Well, Christ tells us, you know, I don't want you to be too occupied with why they think that way, I want you to give them the message from me to them through you. And so we look at verse 1 now, then he began to speak to them in parables, like they reminded him of a story, their behavior. Oh, that reminds me, the prophet Isaiah covered this.

A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower and he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country. Now, a parable is not a riddle, it is meant to be understood and they got it, and so do we. Sometimes we struggle to get the parables because they're, you know, from, you know, the ancient days of the way the lifestyle, the way, you know, how many of you have sown seed recently, for example.

But they are meant to be understood. This parable is not for the crowds that he was teaching and the other people there in the temple, it was particularly for the shepherds. Those who were supposed to be leading the flock and he says, a man planted a vineyard. Well, God is the owner of the vineyard. He is the one establishing the vineyard. Israel is the vineyard in the parable. It says, and set a hedge around it. That would be the commandments and the blessings that come from them.

Barriers against intruders, that's what the fence of the law, the rabbis would say, it protects us. And then he says, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower. This is before power tools. This was a lot of work. This was an investment of labor and care. He invested himself into Israel.

That's part of the story. Listening to the story, they would have understood that, what it takes to make a vineyard like this. And he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country. So he entrusted what he put all of this labor and care into. He entrusted it to these men who were capable. They had the aptitude to oversee the vineyard and produce a profit. It was a good deal. It would be a good deal for everyone. The owner of the vineyard would receive a percentage.

They would receive, you know, whatever was left over, which was the larger share. Jesus said this to Peter and he says it to all pastors. He said to him, tend my sheep.

That's what these leaders were supposed to do. In this parable, remaining strict to the metaphor, they were to tend the vineyard. Well, the vineyard is Israel. And the vine dressers were the shepherds. His choice of the vineyard and the wicked people connected with it. Again, taken from Isaiah chapter 5. We'll get to some of that in about 30 seconds or less. But God saying to humanity, I care and I have expectations. I'm willing to work with you, but I have expectations.

And it will benefit both of us. What God wanted from Israel was the cultivated grape, but what he got was the sour grape, the less desirable one. And there was no excuse for this, no good excuse for this. So now going to Isaiah 5 from where Jesus is drawing his parable, though he makes some adjustments in the parable because Isaiah stays focused on the vineyard, whereas Christ, of course, stays focused on the vine dressers themselves. He makes it very personal. Isaiah 5 verse 2. He dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. See, there's the cultivated item that should not bring forth sour grapes. He built a tower in its mist, also made a wine press in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.

Those are the sour ones, the lesser grade. Verse 4 of Isaiah 5. What more could he have done to my vineyard that I have not done in it?

You can hear the lamentation of God to Israel way back 700 years ago to the prophet Isaiah to the nation. What more could I have done to keep you from going to worship Baal, to keep you from going to look for strength from some other source in the universe, witchcraft and other forbidden avenues? What more could I have done? Well, he could send his son to die for sinners, and he does do that. And still God says to some, what more could I have done? This is the kind of thing we are to preach.

When we're out, when we leave the church and we find ourselves out in the world, we pray that God would send us someone to preach. Have you ever heard about the parable of the vineyard that started in Isaiah? He said, do you know who Isaiah is? He says, what more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it?

Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? So he's not saying this to them, but this is what he's building his parable from. They knew this parable in Isaiah. They knew exactly what he was talking about.

No explanation was necessary. That's why Mark is careful to make this remark. At the end of it all, they knew he was talking about them. Isaiah continues in the seventh verse of his fifth chapter four. The vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. Those who were to receive help from the leaders, from those that oversaw the vineyard, they did not get the help. Consequently, this vineyard was handed over to the Gentiles for destruction. First the Assyrians, then the Babylonians. That same doom is to be repeated on Israel, the Israel that Jesus was now in, at the hands of the Romans.

And it was going to come in stages, it was going to be violent, and it was all prophetic. In verse two he continues, now at vintage time, remember he's telling the story as metaphor, at vintage time he sent a servant to the vine dressers that he might receive some of the fruit of the vineyard from the vine dressers. Well it's fair, I mean this was the agreement, the covenant that he had with them.

I'll let you watch over my field, you give me a percentage, you keep the rest. Everybody has a job, everybody has some income, tenant farmers. And again he's modifying the parable by focusing on the role of the vine dressers and not so much the vineyard as Isaiah. They both get to the same place, it's just how they do it. And so what does God want? God wants loyalty. He wants to be loved in return. But it was not to be, not by these people.

It would be by the church. Peter loved, you know, they all love the Lord. I'm not trying to say Peter loved him more than the others, but Peter is in the forefront. We see Peter love him, we see him weeping bitterly because he failed the one he loved so much. God wasn't getting that from others. We come to church, we sing songs, we love the Lord.

We raise our arms up, we weep sometimes, we just love the Lord. But there's so many people that hate him. And you want to say, do you even understand what you're hating?

Or do you just think that you can just hate indiscriminately? You can treat God the way you would never want to be treated yourself. To which they would respond, they don't believe it, what makes you think your book is right, it's a matter of interpretation. If you really want truth, if you really want God, he's going to know it. And he's going to begin to work in your heart so that when you come across a Christian, you will receive.

So that is quite revealing, is it not? He continues here in verse 3, And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Well, I guess in the parable, if you try to apply some logic to the parable, you say, well, maybe the owner of the vineyard said, well, maybe they were just drunk that day. Something just must have, you know, this is not normal. What right, what right had they to beat anyone?

None. That's what made them criminals. These were gangsters. And that's who was overseeing the people of Israel. We've had it in church history.

Almost all the pulps were gangsters. One was killed in the act of physical adultery. So this isn't something that's bizarre in the sense of history.

It's bizarre to heaven, to God it is. From the time of Moses to the time of Elijah, continuous rebellion and idolatry and apostasy occurred. Joshua said, I don't think you guys could do this. My house is going to serve the Lord, but I don't think you guys are up to it.

You say you are. He was right, largely. In the days of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, who was the last of the prophets to be martyred before the coming of John the baptizer. They were persecuted. It was persistent persecution. These heaven-sent prophets. Matthew 23 verse 35, Jesus speaking, He says to these same people, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Because you weren't listening to God. You were listening to yourselves.

You were out for you in God's name as these vine dressers were. In Hebrews, He says, of whom the world was not worthy. What makes them not worthy? Well, their resistance to fact and truth. Stephen, the first martyr of the church, under full-blown anointing, told them the truth about themselves and they killed him.

And this is what he said. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? So, did they miss one? He said, Stephen still speaking, and they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one. Now remember, Stephen is Jewish. He's one of them ethnically speaking, but he's not one of them spiritually speaking. Stephen then said, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers.

He says, of the just one whom you have become, murderers and betrayers. This stuff really happens. It's not like you watch some of these goofy movies where, you know, that never happens. If that happens, you know, you watch the explosion and they're just walking away and their hair is flowing. And it's like, yeah, the concussion would kill them. They're too close.

This really happened. Wickedness against God's messengers. Again, it's been persistent through the ages. It's now happening to us. What do we do? What do we do? We stand up to them and tell them the truth. That's what. No matter what. Whether they like it or not.

You get to say your little perverted notions about them. The diabolical things that are happening now are unprecedented. Maybe before Noah, when the world was all huddled together, maybe at Babel, before the tongues were split, but never globally. There the world was centralized in one area.

Everybody was there. But the globe was uninhabited. Now the globe is pretty much, there are no more frontiers.

And, I mean, you can get a steak dinner in Antarctica. People have gone everywhere and they've taken their sin with them. But the perversity that we're seeing nowadays, Sodom and Gomorrah has gone global and it has gone nuclear.

I'll come back to more of that. So what do we do? We stand up with the gospel.

We give them our message. Because still, within those numbers of perverted souls, there are those that can be saved. Our Bibles have blood on its pages. And that's what Jesus was saying. Which of the prophets, I mean, that was Stephen, but the Lord saying, you know, from Abel to Zechariah. Blood for preaching the truth. In this parable, he is the son, as we stood and read the word, he is the son that will be killed and he knows it. That's the big difference.

He knows it. Then came John the Baptist. And when it was time for John to be martyred, the Jews really had no direct involvement in that, but they looked the other way when he was arrested and beheaded and they could have stopped it.

They could have at least protested and they did not. And now they're going to plot the death of the Son of God. For daring to practice what he preached, that sounds like us today. Are we not persecuted for daring to practice what we preach? How dare you disagree with me? I can speak my perverted notions and you can't protest, but you can't speak righteous notions without severe punishment.

Such is the history, such are the facts. Verse 4, again, he sent them another servant and at him they threw stones, wounded him in the head and sent him away shamefully treated. These, of course, in the parable are the prophets from generation to generation. So it's not God didn't send, okay, he sent, you know, one prophet in the days of Ahab, he sends Elijah and that's it.

No, that's not it. He sends one for every generation. He's an unbroken witness.

He always has his remnant. He always has his voice available and Israel knew it. And so this character here, these characters here beginning in verse 4 and throughout this parable are his prophets entrusted with God's word to be God's voice. This is, a microcosm of this is in Moses. God said to Moses, you will be like God and Aaron will be like your prophet. I will speak to you, Moses, and you will tell Aaron and Aaron will speak it.

That's how God works. He speaks from heaven to the prophet, from the prophet to the people. Exodus, chapter 7, verse 1. So Yahweh said to Moses, see, I have made you as God to Pharaoh and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. Now if you think that that is some sort of, you know, evolution to deity in humans then you're out of your mind.

That is not at all what's going on. Moses was not divine. Man cannot be divine. We can be Christ-like. We will be perfected and like him in heaven but we will never be gods. That New Age nonsense is just so ridiculous.

Let's move on. I mean, if someone says, you know, they are turning into a god, just ask them to hover. I mean, you're divine. You can do all sorts of stuff. Hover.

They can't. And anyway, if that's childish, it's even better. Anyway, back to verse 4. To them, Christ was wrong for pointing it out. We know Isaiah says, you know, there are those that call evil good and good evil and we're surrounded by them.

There's this infestation of them now. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the Book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the Book of Mark, like here on Cross Reference Radio.