One of the sobering lessons of family life comes when you either look back on your upbringing or watch your own kids. There is a noticeable change from the firstborn to the last. With the first we may be so active and involved, but over time things change. One author summarizes those stages in this way:
The change in parenting allows us to be more relaxed as parents and perhaps better parents with age and experience. Change is not always so bad. But there are aspects in our life when change comes not from maturity, but from complacency or self-absorption. We may start off with the best of intentions, but all too soon those intentions are left in the dust of determination. When our indifference comes from a complacency we often find ourselves antagonistic to anything which challenges the status quo. While the above parenting scenario may be humorous, it is deadly in the Christian life. Complacency is the greatest threat to our Christian life, for like the frog in the kettle, we don’t know the heat is increasing and our lives are threatened. We should not so much fear outright atheism but a shadowy sense of God’s reality. It is not the vile corruption that should make the hairs stand on our neck, but when we think God is far too distant to care how we spend our life. This subtle and deadly shift from the excitement of our faith to the complacency of faith is always a very real and present danger. This shift can be found in the way we look at our lives: Our great grandparents called this day the Lord’s Day; our grandparents the Sabbath, our parents called it Sunday. We refer to it as the weekend. What was once holy wedlock became holy matrimony devolved into marriage and is now a convenient social convention. The tithe became a pledge which then was referred to as a gift and is now just a tax deduction. This gradual shift is so deadly that we must be careful not to be trapped by the quietness of complacency. It is a trap which ensnared the leaders of the church during Jesus’ day and is a trap that will entangle us. Our own self-satisfaction can easily produce complacency which in time will fester into antagonism unless we acknowledge our sin and repent. Recall from last week how the leaders stopped Jesus mid-sermon to ask Him a question: “By what authority do you do these things?” The overturned tables, the healings, the teachings concerning God’s grace directly challenged the authority of the Jewish leaders who had grown comfortable in their position. In their sinful self-satisfaction they could no longer recognize that their own leadership over the people was a gift from God, that their authority was delegated to them by God who stood incarnate before them. Jesus responds with three stories, three parables which trace the growing antagonism against God’s work among his people by the religious leadership. The first parable tells of two sons who were asked by the father to work in the vineyard. The first son refused but later changed his mind and obeyed. The second son responded dutifully but never followed through. Like this son, the leaders readily gave verbal adherence to what was right, but they did not know what repentance was all about. The second parable describes a Vineyard overseen by tenants who refuse to acknowledge the rightful authority over that land. As the first parable looked at the life of John the Baptist and the people’s response to his work, this parable focuses on their rejection of the owner’s son, the murder of Jesus. The final parable uses the image of a wedding feast as we are taken to the end of time when the rejection of the gospel continues and God comes to judge His people.
COMPLACENCY DESERVES JUDGMENT. When Jesus told this parable the ears of the people must have perked and the leaders’ burned, for the image of a vineyard was a familiar one in Israel. Centuries before the prophet Isaiah used the same picture. I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it." The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. Isaiah 5:1-7 For all the work that was put in to the vineyard, it grew only bad fruit. The response in Isaiah is to be expected: Rip it out. But there’s a difference in this parable. Here the focus is on not the vineyard, but those who are supposed to be taking care of the grapes. Since His target of attack are the religious leaders, His focus in the story are those who tend the vines. In that culture it was not unheard of for a wealthy landowner to purchase land, set up the vineyard, and lease it out to tenants. It would take about four years for new vines to begin to produce enough grapes to earn a profit. Before that time the yield would be just a few second-rate grapes. Nevertheless, according to the Jewish law, those who were hired to tend the vineyard sent a portion of those grapes to the owner of the land as a payment. This was necessary since, according to the Mishnah, if someone kept the harvest for three years in a row, they would take possession of the field. Notice what happens here: when the harvest time comes and the owner sends some of his servants to collect, they rough one up, kill another and stone the third. In verse 36, another crew comes the following year, but they get the same welcome. By the third year, the owner, who must get his rent to maintain ownership of the property, decides to send his own son, hopeful that this time they’ll come to their senses. The tenants see their chance. If they kill the son the owner has no one to will the property to; the three years would then soon be up and by squatter’s rights it would become theirs. Jesus turns to the leaders and asks an obvious question: “What should the owner do?” There is only one answer, everyone knew that - but in giving the answer they pronounce judgment on themselves. There is no reason for mercy - he’ll bring those wretches to a wretched end. As destructive as they have been, they should be destroyed. This was fulfilled forty years later when the Rome dismantled the last vestiges of autonomy. After a three year siege of Jerusalem, the Romans destroyed the Temple, razed the city walls and slaughtered the people. To drive the point home, Jesus turns to another Old Testament passage - Psalm 118. This psalm spoke of God’s protection of Israel down through the centuries as numerous nations attempted to bring it to an end. Israel was the stone which other nations ignored, thinking that it was too small and useless for anything worthwhile. But that which others passed over, God decided to use. Jesus takes this psalm about Israel and applies it to Himself : "I am that stone." What would make matters worse for the leaders, who obviously knew the passage, was that the next verse had just been sung by the hoards of people entering Jerusalem for the Passover and by the children in the temple area (verse 25): “Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” With this Jesus concludes answering their challenge to His authority by the promise: “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.” They had their opportunity; the cornerstone was right in front of them but they refused to accept it. They refused to produce fruit. They lost their place of privilege and were out of the program. Their mistake is likened to a builder who searches for the perfect piece to finish off a project - a capstone - like when the Vogel family goes on vacation and the garage is full of assorted paraphernalia for the trip, each piece must be picked for the perfect fit. They had the perfect piece but refused to use it. What they overlooked was the preeminent piece, the crowning jewel. This is what Christ is. In Scripture He is the foundation, the cornerstone, the first stone laid down so that all else is fit to it. He is likened to the final piece of the puzzle, the capstone, the last piece placed in an arch to hold the rest up. The builders, the religious leaders wanted nothing to do with it, so their empire would come crashing down on them. The capstone in verse 42 probably refers to the top stone of roof parapets. Remember in this part of the world one’s roof was his living room. A capstone on the roof, if too low, could be tripped over by an unwary person, sending him over the edge. If it is insecurely fastened, leaning over it could dislodge it and send it crashing onto the head of some passerby. Jesus is drawing together here the parable of the vineyard and the promise about the forgotten stone. The religious leaders agree that the tenants should be punished. Here Jesus describes how it will happen. What they have passed over as being non-essential will be placed at the top of God’s building. It is the final piece. They, however, having ignored it will trip over it or it will fall on their head. Christ assumes a premier place, but also a dangerous place. In their complacency what they overlooked will crush them, will grind them to dust. Notice how they respond in verse 45: Rather than being fearful for their fate, in their blinded rage, they only plot His death. Aaron Burr, the 3rd Vice President of the U.S., was reared in a godly home and admonished to accept Christ by his grandfather Jonathan Edwards. But he refused to listen. Instead, he declared that he wanted nothing to do with God and said he wished the Lord would leave him alone. He did achieve a measure of political success in spite of repeated disappointments. But he was also involved in continuous strife, and when he was 48 years old, he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He lived for 32 more years, but through all this time he was unhappy and unproductive. It was during this sad chapter in his life that he declared to a group of friends, "Sixty years ago I told God that if He would let me alone, I would let Him alone, and God has not bothered about me since." But Burr realized that God had not really left him alone, but had hounded him all those years. The loneliness of his life reflected his complacency toward God and the turmoil he felt was the grinding judgment of God in his life. You may be more like these chief priests and scribes than you realize. You may identify with Aaron Burr. You have had the benefits of a covenant family, your life is relatively smooth. You are comfortable but also complacent. What is the fruit in your life? What area of the vineyard has God given you to tend but you think it is your own ability that makes you what you are? If you are not producing fruit, there is only one reason. If there is no evidence of God’s grace in your life, perhaps a verbal profession, but no reality, the answer is easy: you are not His. Do you see God’s work of grace in your life; if not, what is your response? Does it cause you to acknowledge your need of Christ more? Great. God is at work. But, does it stir up in you the desire to distance yourself more and more from God? If so, that complacency will be crushed by that which you reject and it will grind you to pieces. Fortunately that is not all there is in this parable. Certainly our complacency deserves judgment, but the good news is that God’s compassion delays God’s judgment. COMPASSION DELAYS JUDGMENT. God plants, provides and protects His people. God gives us all we need. Notice how the owner takes care of everything. He plants the vines, he protects them with a wall, he has the winepress dug and erects the watchtower. All we are called to do is allow His fruit to come and to give Him what is due to Him. There is no reason for us ever to conclude that we do not have enough to produce the good works God desires of us. We are never at a loss. God’s compassion is such that despite our innate inertia, our sinful self-absorption and our common complacency, God is at work in us to produce that which He desires. God repeatedly comes to us. Just as the owner sent not just one servant, but several at various times to respond, so God comes to us not just with a one time offer, but again and again and again. He came through the Old Testament prophets, through the New Testament Apostles. He comes still to us as those prophets and apostles are read each and every week and we hear again the promise of His grace to those who will acknowledge their desire to throw out the owner’s son. God sends His own Son. What stands out to me as most foolish in this story is that the owner, after his servants are beaten, killed and tortured, sends his son. I would never do that. But God does. God is not like us; He goes to the ultimate extreme to bring us to Him. Through various means He draws us to respond to Him as we should, but then God speaks His final Word through the Incarnation. Never did grace appear more gracious than when God sent His Son. Just as the owner sends his son to the vineyard not to kill and punish, but sends him to his death, so our Father sent His Son 2000 years ago to die. Although each of us in our complacency deserve to be crushed by the capstone, God calls us to acknowledge our sinfulness and trust that Christ was crushed for us for. As Isaiah 53:5 tells us: “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.” While we deserve to be ground to powder, it was the Lord’s will to crush His Son in our place, to cause Him to suffer for our sin. God’s judgment on these leaders was not immediate, but it came. The Father’s compassion is patient toward us as well, desiring we repent, that we confess our complacency, that we become stewards, giving to Him the fruitfulness of our lives. Instead of consuming all we are and have upon ourselves, trying to satisfy our own petty concerns and passions, God wants each and every one of us to be fruit bearers. On April 16, 1991, several tornadoes tore through the town of Andover, Kansas, and 13 people lost their lives. The sad thing is that at least some of these deaths could have been prevented. Many people didn't heed the warnings to take cover. A newspaper account of the tragedy said, "When police and fire officials, TV forecasters, and the weather service began telling people to take cover, some waited too long to respond. Others apparently ignored the warnings. At the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park, where more than 225 trailers were destroyed, many people never even left their homes. Only about 200 of the park's 700 residents headed into its storm shelter. All 13 victims were killed at the trailer park. For 40 years, Andover has warned its residents of tornadoes by sending police and fire vehicles into the streets, lights flashing and sirens wailing. This time the vehicles were out even before the weather service told people to take cover (about 20 minutes before the twister hit). Despite the warnings, many people were still casually walking along the street. The man in charge of the National Weather Service office in Wichita commented, `Researchers and sociologists have told us people don't do a thing when they hear a warning. They don't do anything until they perceive they are at risk.'" |
