THE TRUIMPH OF GOD IS COMPLETELY FAIR

Matthew 21: 33-46

INTRODUCTION

In a recent poll conducted by the Harris Polling Company, 84% of Americans believed in life after death and 69% said they believed in a literal hell. Of the 84% who believe in life after death 63% believe they personally are going to heaven but only 1% believe they will go to hell. In other words, the majority of Americans believe that hell would be a just punishment for other people but not a just punishment for themselves. We all know people who deserve to go to hell. Many of us have actually pronounced that judgment upon some of those we believe should be punished with hell. However, when we consider ourselves in relation to God, few of us can think of any reason God would be so displeased with us that he would send us to hell. The majority of us think about ourselves the same way that the religious leaders and their followers thought about themselves in the days of Jesus.

We have been looking at the last week in the life of Jesus Christ on earth. We have watched as he entered Jerusalem, riding on the back of a donkey’s colt being hailed by the masses of Jewish people as God’s Savior. We have observed his angry “cleansing of the temple” and his declaration that the religious people of his day had turned what God intended to be a place of prayer into a den of thieves. He accused the religious leaders and their followers of using religious language and behavior, not to gain a relationship with God but to gain wealth, power and prestige. He has demonstrated, out in public for all to see, his divine power and majesty in the healing of the blind and crippled and by his teaching the people about the kingdom of God. Last week we saw how he worked to expose the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and to get them to turn from their hypocrisy and trust in him. He is attempting to get these self satisfied, self-righteous, Bible quoting, psalm singing, morally upright people to see their true condition. In vv. 28-32 he contrasted their response to John the Baptist to that of the tax-collectors and prostitutes who repented of their sins and believed what John said about Jesus, that he was the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. What Jesus told these people in vv. 31-32 is very shocking. It would feel to them like me telling you that Jeffry Dahmer or the pedophile priest that was just murdered while serving a life sentence in prison is in heaven but that your grandmother who went to church her entire life and worked in the homeless shelter every week for thirty years is in hell.

Like most Americans these men and their followers are absolutely sure that God is going to judge the world and that he is going to punish people by sending them to hell. What they don’t understand, as most Americans don’t understand, is that in spite of their religious and moral behavior, they deserve to go to hell. Like most religious Americans, the hundreds of threats and warnings in the Scriptures didn’t apply to them but to somebody else. The demand of God to repent of sin and trust in his promised suffering Messiah was not for them. Jesus is in the business of seeking to awaken these men to their true condition and to show how right it will be, if they do not turn around, for God to send them to hell.

Jesus is dealing with one of the most fundamental truths in the universe. God is absolutely just and men are absolutely accountable to respond to him in the way he demands. We do not get to determine what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what are the standards of God’s judgment upon the world. Jesus, in this one story, seeks to summarize one of the primary things that God has been doing in the world since the beginning of creation, displaying his justice in his dealings with men. Jesus wants to shock us, as he is seeking to shock these religious leaders into taking his absolute fairness serious. Presuming we are in good standing with God is the easiest and most natural thing for human beings to do so Jesus tells a story and holds up the nation of Israel to us so that we will not presume on God’s good favor but will respond to him as he requires. He is seeking to deliver us from self-righteousness and to embrace God’s mercy as our only hope.

MAIN POINT

God reveals his fairness to every human being by…

 

I. Showering human beings with kindness (v. 33)

Verse thirty-three is a summary of the history of the world and in particular the history of the nation of Israel from God’s point of view. Jesus uses a common metaphor from the OT with two very significant changes. If you’ll look back at Isaiah 5, we can see the similarities and then the differences. Notice in both places God plants a vineyard and does everything that can be done to prepare it to produce good grapes. As he says in Isaiah 5:4, “What more could I have done for my vineyard than I have done?” In this statement as in v. 33 of Matthew we are to think of all that God did to establish Israel as a nation that belongs to him, beginning with choosing the idol worshipping Abram and promising to make him into a great nation. We are to think of all his gracious dealings with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are to remember his kindness to Jacob’s eleven sons through the persecuted son, Joseph. We are to remember his bringing them out of Egypt and his giving the law, the temple worship, the sacrifices, the promises, 40 years of food, water and protection in the wilderness, victory over the Canaanite tribes, possession of the land of Canaan, King David and his heirs, etc.

This is what the two metaphors share in common. But notice the profound differences. In Isaiah God comes to his vineyard and looks for fruit on the vines and finds only rotten fruit. In Jesus’ story, God rents the vineyard out to “tenant-farmers” and he sends his servants to them to collect the rent payments they agreed upon. The farmers have entered into a contract with the landowner, and owe him a portion of the harvest while they get to enjoy the rest of the harvest of grapes. This points then to the major distinction between the two stories. In Isaiah 5:7 we are told, “The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel.” However, in Jesus’ story the tenant farmers are the Jewish religious leaders who refused to believe John the Baptist and all those who follow their teaching. The vineyard does not represent Israel but the kingdom of God (Compare vv. 41 with 43). In other words, all the privileges and benefits of being a member of God’s kingdom were made available to the Jewish nation. The Jewish leaders, to whom Jesus is speaking, were appointed caretakers of those promises. However, the Jewish religious leaders and their followers have acted presumptuously. They have presumed that because they were descendants of Abraham, and possessed the word of God and the temple and were heirs of David that they were automatically under God’s favor. So in Jesus’ story it isn’t the vineyard that is found wanting and destroyed it is those who have been the caretakers of the promises of the kingdom of God who are found wanting and destroyed.

Let’s consider the enormous mercy that v. 33 is describing. The point of v. 33 is that the Jewish nation and especially these leaders were swimming in grace. God’s kindness had been poured out upon the Jewish nation for thousands of years. He was, at the moment Jesus spoke to them, continuing to pour out his undeserved and unmerited favor upon them. The privileges and benefits they were receiving as members of the nation Israel were vast. The whole point of the vineyard metaphor is that the vineyard has been completely prepared to produce maximum fruit. The caretakers do not produce the abundant fruit, they merely get to enjoy it. The vineyard and its fruit are a gift, the result of grace, not works. This is what the Jewish leaders had forgotten. Probably better to say, this is what the religious leaders refused to accept. This is the way it is with human beings. We naturally think, “The good things that I have are due to my hard effort. When my life is going well, it is because of what I have done. When my life is going poorly, it is because of what someone else has unjustly done to me.” These religious leaders, along with the majority of Americans, believe McDonald’s old advertising slogan, “You deserve a break today.” Whenever we say, “I don’t deserve to be treated like this” or “I deserve better than this”, we are forgetting the most basic thing about reality: everything is a gift.

It is without question that God gave more gifts to Israel than he did to any other nation. He chose Israel out of all the nations of the world and did for them what he did not do for any other nation. As a result, he holds them to a higher level of accountability. His wrath against their disobedience is greater than against any other nation. However, what is true of Israel is also true of every nation on earth to a lesser extent. Every nation and every human being is swimming in grace. Psalm 145 says, “The Lord has compassion on all he has made.” This is Paul’s argument when he said to the idol worshippers in the Greek town of Lystra, “In the past, God let all the nations go their own way. Yet he did not leave himself without testimony. He has given you rain from heaven and crops in their season, he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

Every human being is the recipient of overwhelming kindness. You did nothing to bring yourself into existence. You do nothing to keep yourself in existence. The world continues to operate in a way that supports your life without your even thinking about it. Last night, while you slept, the air you breathed did not turn to a poisonous gas. Just think about the rain we are now receiving. We went for 53 days without widespread rain in Rock County. Did any of you do anything to bring this precious rain to us? Was there a massive turning away from sin in Rock County? A few of us may have prayed about it but was there a community wide call for fasting and prayer? No. God sent the rain in spite of how we live and contrary to what we deserve. This is the condition of every living human being. We all are swimming in undeserved kindness.

God reveals his fairness to every human being by…

•  Showering human beings with kindness

•  And by…

II. Patiently pursuing those who reject his kindness (vv. 34-39)

The nation Israel stands as God’s primary evidence that even when human beings are given every reason to love and trust him, they do not. That is the point of vv. 34-39. Jesus, in this simple little story summarizes God’s dealings with Israel. God did everything that can be done to make his love plain to these people. However, their history shows that even when human beings are given every opportunity to see the glory of God and to experience the love of God in very tangible ways, they do not respond to him with love. Jesus shows this in the story by telling us that the landowner sent his servants to receive from the tenant farmers the rent they owed him. What was the “fruit” God was looking for? The “rent” God was looking for was gratitude for his grace and trust in his promises that led to lives lived in devotion to him and love for others.

The history of the OT is God sending his servants: judges, priests, kings and prophets to ask the people of Israel to stop trusting in the gifts God gave and to start trusting in him. Repeatedly the nation Israel rejected these servants and their request to trust and love God. Their history is one of complaining that God is not treating them as they deserve, demanding they be treated better all the while they worship false gods and disobey God’s laws. The prophets are ignored, scorned, ridiculed, beaten and sometimes killed, just as Jesus says in the story. John the Baptist stands last in a long line of servants who have come to Israel looking for the “rent” that God is due. It’s important that you see that not all of Israel refused to pay that rent. The disciples, the tax-collectors and prostitutes, the children in the temple, the blind and the lame, all turned from their self-righteousness and their sin and rendered to God what he wants, thanks for his grace and trust in his promises. They stopped depending upon their own goodness, they turned away from demanding a good life on planet earth, and they trusted in Jesus as their only hope. However, the religious and moral leaders of Israel and all who followed them rejected John as they rejected all the prophets who were before John.

Verses 35-39 are one of the clearest and most tender descriptions of the patience and long suffering love of God in the Bible. So many people, when they read the OT come away with a view of an angry God. This is such a false reading of the Scriptures. God is so patient and bears so much from us. These verses describe thousands of years of God dealing with his people, pleading with them to turn and to trust in him. The abuse, hatred, and scorn that God endured throughout the OT is astounding. Just think about this story. If you were the landowner and the first servant you sent to collect the rent was beaten up, what would you do? I’ll tell you what you would do. You would call the police and have them evicted. You would prosecute them to the full extent of the law. If you don’t know that about yourself, you don’t know yourself very well. Look how quickly you write people out of your life. For most of us, all it takes is one rude comment, one perceived slight and our hearts are full of wrath and rejection. Yet here is the perfect God who has only acted in kindness towards these people and when he looks for thanks and when he looks for trust in his faithfulness all he gets is cursing and hostility and complaining and indifference and ingratitude. Yet he keeps coming back to get kicked in the face, again and again. As the prophet Hosea so graphically shows, he takes his whoring wife back time after time. Finally, he sends his son to the people who have rejected, mocked, and killed every servant he has sent to get them to turn. He sends his only son to them and do they respect him and love him? No, they kill him. Just like Joseph’s brothers plotted how they would kill him, so the unbelieving Jews and the unbelieving Gentiles gathered together and plotted how they would do away with the only Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The sense I got as I read and meditated on this story was the apparent naiveté and foolishness of this landowner. Why does he keep sending servants to such evil people? Why doesn’t he call the police? Why in the world would he send his only son to these cruel and hardhearted people in light of what they’ve done? The only answer is his longsuffering love for them. He yearns to live with his people as the great provider who receives back their joyful gratitude and delighted trust.

My dear friends, it is not just Israel who has been pursued by God. Yes, they were recipients of extravagant grace in the coming of the prophets through the centuries and yes Jesus did come in person to the Jewish people. However, every human being has had God speak to them through his creation and through their conscience asking them to repay him the thanks he is due. Yet, as Paul says in Romans 1, “Although they knew God they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise they became fools… they worshipped and served created things, rather than the Creator who is forever praised.” Now, even more than the nation Israel, you have had God come to you through his word, by his gospel and ask you to repay him what he is due. He asks of you that you would live in gratitude for his many kindnesses; that you trust him alone to be all you need. He asks you to stop acting as if you own the vineyard and to start acting as though you are a tenant, dependent upon the kindness and provision of the landowner. He seeks for you to stop demanding that life treat you fair and begin rejoicing that God is not treating you as you deserve but is pouring out abundant grace at every moment and offers even more grace in the person of his Son. God is patiently pleading with you to turn from sin and from the promises of this world and to receive his Son as the treasure of your life.

God reveals his fairness to every human being by…

•  Showering human beings with kindness

•  Patiently pursuing those who reject his kindness

•  And by…

III. Finally rejecting those who reject him (vv. 40-46)

Verses 40-41 are electric with suspense. Jesus finishes his story of the long-suffering and abused landowner and asks, “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” He asks a question of these religious leaders and they respond with quick and decisive judgment. Just like King David after the prophet Nathan told him a story. Do you remember this incident? King David, at the peak of his power, after God has given him victory over all his enemies and established him as the greatest king in the world at that time commits adultery. He not only has sex with the wife of one of his chief and most loyal officers who is out fighting for him; but he also tries to cover up his sin when Bathsheba is found to be pregnant. He brings her husband home from the battle under pretense of wanting a report from him and two nights in a row he gets him drunk and tells him to go home and sleep with his wife. Uriah is too honorable to enjoy the comforts of his own home while his men are sleeping in tents far from home and sleeps in the gate of the palace rather than go home. On the third day, David gives Uriah sealed orders to be delivered to the general, Joab. The orders that Uriah delivers to Joab are orders for Joab to set Uriah in the heaviest fighting and then tell everyone to withdraw except for Uriah so that he will be killed. Joab does as he is ordered and Uriah is killed. David waits for the month of mourning of Bathsheba to be completed and then he marries her. For the next year they enjoy the bliss of married life and the birth of their child together. David daily goes to the temple, offers the king’s sacrifice, and acts as though nothing is amiss between he and God.

The prophet Nathan comes to him and tells the story of a poor peasant family who owned one sheep. It was like a family pet, even living in the home with the family. The poor man had a very wealthy neighbor with hundreds of sheep in his flocks. However, when the wealthy man had someone visit unexpectedly, rather than killing one of his own sheep to feed his guest, he took the poor man’s sheep and killed it. When David heard this story he was filled with rage and demanded that the wealthy man be brought to justice and punished. Just like these religious leaders are filled with rage at the tenant farmers and know what should happen to them. Everyone knows, including the religious leaders that the murderous tenant farmers deserve to die for their many crimes. Everyone knows, including the religious folks, that the vineyard should be rented to people who will give the landowner what he is due. What the religious leaders do not get is that they are the tenant farmers. This, by the way is the difference between David and these men. David repented when he understood Nathan was talking about him. These men plot to arrest and kill Jesus when they realize he is talking about them.

In vv. 42-44 Jesus applies the story to these religious leaders. He quotes Psalm 118: 22-23. In the psalm, these verses refer first to David. Nobody thought David would be the great King of Israel, not Samuel, not his dad, not his brothers, not King Saul, not Goliath, not the ten tribes allied with Ephraim. All the “builders” rejected David as king but he came to be the great king of Israel, by the purpose and power of God. However, as Jesus quotes them here, he is applying them to himself. He is David’s greater Son who is the fulfillment of all the promises made to David. He is the cornerstone that the entire building of God’s kingdom is laid upon and yet no one knew who he was. As the prophet Isaiah said, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” The “builders”, beginning with King Herod who tried to kill him, his family who believed he was crazy, the religious leaders who accused him of being Satan himself, all rejected him. Today it continues. Human beings continue to reject him as the cornerstone of reality and of their lives.

Jesus tells the Jewish religious leaders that God is going to do exactly what they said should be done. He is taking away the kingdom of God from them and giving it to a nation that produces its fruit. The chief “fruit” that God is looking for is trust in Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of all reality. Their rejection and eventual killing of him is the final evidence that regardless of their religious performance and moral behavior they are refusing to give God what he is due. They are going to be shattered as they stumble over Jesus and they are going to be crushed by him because of their rejection of him.

This story does not teach that God is rejecting Israel. He does not reject Israel as a nation, he rejects those in Israel, like the religious leaders, who are unwilling to repent of their sins and trust and love Jesus as God’s Savior from sin. He rejects all who trust in their own goodness, in their own religious and moral behavior, in all those who refuse to acknowledge that everything is a gift and who refuse to embrace Jesus as God’s Savior. Everyone knows, just like the religious leaders, what the tenant farmers deserve. However, just like the religious leaders, everyone is blind to the fact we are acting like the tenant farmers in our unwillingness to confess our sins, give thanks to God for his kindness and trust in Jesus Christ as our life. The religious leaders amazingly, leave this conversation with Jesus and do what Jesus described the tenant farmers as doing. They plot how they might do away with him.

God reveals his fairness to every human being by…

•  Showering human beings with kindness

•  Patiently pursuing those who reject his kindness

•  Finally rejecting those who reject him

•  And by…

IV. Accepting those who accept his son (v. 43b-44)

Maybe this is already clear to you but it is absolutely critical that you don’t miss it. When Jesus says that he is taking the kingdom of God away from the religious leaders and giving it to those who produce its fruit, the chief question you and I ought to be asking is this, “Am I one of those to whom God has given the kingdom of God?” The way to know is to ask the question, “am I producing the fruit of the kingdom of God?” What is the fruit of the kingdom of God? First and foremost, it is accepting Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of all that matters. It is viewing Jesus the way that a builder views the cornerstone. Everything relates to him and is dependent upon him. You have not accepted Christ as God’s cornerstone by simply affirming that you believe certain facts about him or telling him you don’t want to go to hell. Builders have not accepted a stone as the cornerstone of the building by simply saying they like it. They must build the building upon it and in relation to it. So, is Jesus Christ the center, foundation, and chief person in your life? Is your entire life arranged around him? If he is not, then you are going to be justly crushed by him when he comes again.

God shows his justice in accepting all those who accept his son because he punished his son for the sins of all who trust in him. God always punishes sin. He either punishes it by sending the unbelieving sinner, like these religious leaders, to hell or he punishes it by killing his own Son for the sinners who embrace Jesus as the cornerstone of their life.

Imagine for a moment that you are one of the tenant farmers in Jesus’ story. You have enjoyed all the profit from the vineyard. You have helped to beat up and kill the servants of the landowner. You helped to viciously attack the landowner’s son and kill him and have been living for many years as though you would never be called to account for what you have done. You enjoy the vineyard and its fruit as though you have a right to it. One day you hear from a friend that the landowner is returning with a massive army and for the first time guilt creeps into your heart and then fear of what the landowner will do to you. Your friend also tells you the most amazing thing. The landowner’s son, whom you helped to kill, is alive. He has been raised from the dead and is leading the armies of his father to destroy all his enemies. However, the landowner is offering a full and complete pardon to all who will acknowledge their guilt and his Son as their king. Every tenant farmer who will repent and who will trust in the Son will be spared. What will you do? This is the choice that faces each one of us. We all are tenant farmers, enjoying the fruit of God’s kingdom. We all had a hand in the killing of Jesus. He is alive and is returning to bring “these wretches to a wretched end”. Yet, amazingly, the resurrected Christ, who is waiting to lead the armies of God back to this vineyard, offers himself in your place and if you will embrace him as the cornerstone of life, you will be granted a full and complete pardon.

God reveals his fairness to every human being by…

•  Showering human beings with kindness

•  Patiently pursuing those who reject his kindness

•  Finally rejecting those who reject him

•  Accepting those who accept his son

BENEDICTION

May God grant you the gift of repentance and of faith in Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of your life.