Wednesday Bible Study: Vineyards and Fig Trees

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Send that to there. Nice. Oh, that's how it goes today. There we go. All right, so in a minute we'll be in the parable of the tenants, but before we do that we want to talk a little bit about the purpose of the parables, and as we've experienced, parables come in many different forms, some long, some short, some are pretty simple, others contain a lot. And I want to take a look at sort of a two-fold purpose in parables. One is that they teach. They help us understand things that we might not normally understand in a different way. So, for example, in Luke 13, Jesus will say, "What is the kingdom of God like?" And then he'll go on to tell a parable. He said, "What shall I compare it to? It's like a grain of a mustard seed."

And so he uses the familiar to help us understand the unfamiliar. The other thing that parables are intended to do, they're not just to teach us, but to help us apply and to transform that teaching. It's not just so we can know something for a test. It's so we can do something with what we know. So Jesus' purpose in telling the parable of the Good Samaritan wasn't just so that we would know who our neighbor was, but that we would know how to treat our neighbor. And the purpose in the parable that we talked about about forgiveness isn't just so we know what forgiveness is or how important it is, but rather that we would be able to forgive. And so one of the things that I was thinking about is why not just teach the facts and expect a proper response? Here's the proper response. Why spend time telling a story?

One of the reasons, and there's several, I just want to look at one that I think is applicable to our parables tonight, is that parables help us see the truth in a non-threatening way. So we have a fight-or-flight response. So when we're confronted with something, sometimes we run away, and sometimes we turn and fight. And that happens sometimes when we're confronted with the ugly truth of our sin. There's a tendency where we'll either run away from it, or we'll fight it. And so what parables do is they just sort of sneak up on us. So like, Dodger really likes to try to sit on our laps. Sometimes we don't want Dodger sitting on our laps, and so he'll be sitting on the couch, and then he'll just kind of worm his way a little closer, worm his way a little closer.

Like, looking around, he's like, "Oh, they don't notice me." Next thing you know, you have 85 pounds of dog sitting on your lap. And so what parables do is they address us, especially in our sin, in kind of a subtle way. They get close to us without maybe us noticing. So one of the ways that we see that in the Old Testament, if you remember David's sin with Bathsheba, and then the prophet Nathan comes in and says, "Well, let me tell you this story about a guy who has a bunch of sheep, and a guy who has one sheep, and the guy with a bunch of sheep takes the one sheep and kills it and eats it." And David gets all angry, and what does Nathan do? He looks at him and goes, "You are that man."

He used the parable to sort of move into this territory of addressing David's sin without David, first of all, running away from it or trying to fight him. And so parables kind of circumvent that. And so these parables tonight and the parable for next week, depending on how far we get this evening, they call us to evaluate our hearts and our minds and our actions and to, where necessary, confront our sin. And so as we think about the purpose of the parables, we want to see that sometimes they help us to address our sin in ways that help us to see it a little bit more clearly. So we're going to take a look at the parable of the wicked tenants. And the interesting thing about this parable is it's kind of like a buy one, get one free parable.

So Jesus is going to tell the parable where you have these guys who rent a vineyard, and then when he applies it in his application, he's going to essentially tell another parable to help us understand his explanation for the first parable. So I'm just going to read these 13 verses, and then we'll spend some time with it. Here another parable. There was a master of the house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to the tenants and went into another country. And when the season for fruit drew near, he sent servants to the tenants to get the fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. And he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them.

And finally he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son." But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance." And they took him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And they said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him fruits in their season." And Jesus said to them, "Have you ever read the Scriptures? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people, producing its fruits.

And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard this parable, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet." So the context of this parable comes after the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple, controversial events that lead to the religious leaders kind of doing that, "Well, who do you think you are?" kind of thing to Jesus, attacking him for what he has done. And so in part, he responds several different ways, but in part he responds through this parable. So I'll give a little bit of historical background and then sort of point out the surprising turn in this parable.

So a vineyard in this day, this would have been a very common sight. One commentator said that it's like one of the major cash crops. And we'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about the vine and the branches in the coming weeks. But this is a nice vineyard. So you've got a guy plants a vineyard, which takes a little bit to get to maturity. He digs a wine press. So not only do you have the grapes, but you have the means to turn them into a saleable commodity. It's protected. You've got a wall. You've got a little tower over here. And so what you do is you go up in the tower and you watch over the vineyard because you're worried about people sneaking in and stealing your grapes. But you're also worried about things like fire and pests. And so this gives you an opportunity to protect it.

So what he is leasing out here is a complete turnkey operation. He's not saying, "Well, here's a piece of land. Go and you put your cows on it or grow your corn on it." What he's saying is there is a completely operational business here that will support you and your family and bring the income. Here you go. He does a great job doing it. And so this would have been a common practice for those who are wealthy. They would rent out the vineyard for 25% to 30% of the harvest. And this would be due at the time of the harvest. So when you bring in the harvest, you set aside 25% to 30%, depending on your agreement, and you send it to the landowner. And so what happens is harvest time comes, and this takes a really surprising turn. He sends his messengers to get the fruit, and what does it say?

They took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. And he sent them other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them. So this is just like a three-time thing. In our world, what would we say? Three strikes and you're out. We're done giving you chances. He keeps sending servants. They keep treating them badly. And so he says, "I'll send my son. They'll listen to him." They do not. So ultimately the picture of judgment is that the owner will come, he's going to kill everybody, and give it to a new group of people. And you can almost hear the shock, probably in the people's reactions, because this would not be a normal reaction to kill the guy who's coming to collect the rent. It would have been unheard of. It would have been shocking. It would have come, people would go, "Whoa, why are they not paying their rent?"

Now, what's interesting is this is highly symbolic, and it would have, especially for the religious leaders, the symbolism would have been apparent. Throughout the Old Testament, the vineyard is a picture of Israel. Not just like once or twice, but repeatedly. It's not something that the religious leaders, who are Bible scholars, it's not something that they are going to miss. And the response of the owner, I don't think, is going to be lost on the listeners either, because if you go through the Old Testament, God sends prophet after prophet after prophet. Some they treat badly, some they kill, some they stone. Repeatedly, they routinely treated badly the prophets of God. And now these very people are plotting to take the life of the Son. So his message would not have been lost on them, because they'd be like, "Well, he killed all the prophets, and now this guy is claiming to be the Son."

And we know that they know this, because in verse 45, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived he was speaking about them. I think that's probably understated. It's not like, "Oh, yeah, it's about us." They probably knew right away what is happening. So he's not being subtle in any way with the religious leaders and confronting them with their sin. He's essentially saying, "You guys are the ones who are renting the vineyard, and instead of listening to the owner of the vineyard, you're killing his messenger." So before we dive into the explanation, any thoughts or comments about this? All right, so Jesus is going to explain this parable by telling us another parable. He said, "Have you ever read in Scriptures?" Now this is really insulting, because he's talking to people who have read the Bible,

studied the Bible, and we're talking about the Old Testament. They devoted their life to the Old Testament. They know the Psalms, in some cases have memorized a large portion of the Psalms, and so this is pretty insulting to go, "Well, have you? Do you even know anything about the Bible?" to the guys who are the experts in the Bible of the day. So he's going to quote from the 118th Psalm, "The stone that the Belders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him."

So what he's going to do is he's going to talk about the cornerstone. And so before we talk about what that means spiritually, let's talk about what it means in terms of construction. Or I guess if I can make up a word, constructionally. So in our modern days, this is kind of how we think of a cornerstone, which is sort of more commemorative. It's kind of a, you know, a marker. This is when the building was built. I remember the church we went to in Vermont. The cornerstone in the building was like, you know, the Church of Christ established 33 AD, right? That was the commemorative cornerstone that they put in. So this is the kind of cornerstone we're used to as being more of a sort of a commemoration of when the building was built.

Some of them in some of the more fancy buildings are actually a time capsule. So you put stuff inside the stone and seal it up, and then if the building is ever demolished, you can open it up and learn some history. That's not true in Jesus's day. It wasn't commemorative. It was an integral part of the building process. So this is my cornerstone illustration. So what you would do in Jesus's day if you were putting down a cornerstone, putting down a cornerstone, you would lay your stone, and that one stone, depending on if you had it in the right area, you would measure all the distances of the building. So your cornerstone determined the directions of your building, how far you go, the sizes, everything got measured from that one stone. So this word, cornerstone,

it's actually the kind of the chief stone, or the word in Greek I think is like head of the corner. It can mean this kind of stone. The stone that's in the corner that you first put down, that everything gets measured by. There are other kind of words that this cornerstone can refer to. So this would be what is called a capstone. So when you're building something with pillars, you get all the pillars up, and then you put a stone across the top, and what that does is it ties the structure together so your pillars aren't all kind of woggling around, right? They're tied together, and they're held together, and it gives the structure stability and firmness in both directions, in the ways your walls run. So it can be used as a picture of the stone that everything gets measured from. It can be used from the stone that ties everything together.

And the third kind of stone, the third word that we have for this kind of stone, would be this. This would be the keystone. And so when you're building an arch, you support the arch until you get to the very center of the arch, and you put that stone in, and that one stone that's in the center supports the rest of the arch. You take that one stone out, and the arch just falls down like you've just lost at Jenga. So these three different kinds of stone, and so the question is, which stone is it that Jesus is referring to? I think maybe it's all of them, and here's why. Because notice what he says in verse 44, "And the one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces," right? So that sounds like the cornerstone you put down first.

Somebody's gone through and they tripped on that most important stone, and they fall on it and they're broken to pieces. But then look what he says next, "And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." So Jesus kind of sums it all up. These things that tie the entire building together, things that you have that if you have them, without them the building doesn't work. What Jesus says is that you're missing the cornerstone. Have you read in Scriptures? Don't miss the importance of what I'm telling you specifically about myself, that I am the son sent from the owner of the vineyard, and you're about to kill me. So any thoughts or comments before we move on? All right, so a couple things that we can take from this in terms of what we can learn,

because it's really easy for me to look at this and kind of be gleeful that Jesus is sticking it to the religious leaders. You know, it's like, "Ha ha, he's going to show them what's up." But I think there's more to it. One is that we see the importance of Jesus, right? This continues throughout the New Testament, this picture of the cornerstone. Paul will talk about, you know, we are built on a foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus being the cornerstone, that he's the place from which we measure everything. He's the central part, and we can't get distracted and miss that. Much like these religious leaders did. And the crazy thing about the religious leaders, especially the Pharisees, is that their movement began out of a way to reform the Jewish faith, to go back to the Scriptures

and to bring the morally bankrupt culture back into line with the Word of God. And over time, what happens? They get distracted, and they begin to focus on themselves and their rules and their traditions rather than the Word of God. And one of the things that this does is calls us not to repeat their mistake. The other thing that I was thinking about as I was reading through this is the justice of God's judgment. So one of the things, the universal responses when people get in trouble, right, is we like to say, "Well, it's not fair." So we're in school, and we get in trouble for talking, and what do we go, "Well, Steve was talking too," right? And so when you get in trouble, we'd like to say, "Well, they're doing it too. It's not fair that I'm getting in trouble."

Or we get pulled over for speeding, some of you. And what is that? "Well, everybody else is doing it. It's not fair that I'm the one getting singled out." Because that guy was going just as fast, right? Some guy goes to jail. What is it? "Well, my trial wasn't fair." "This sentencing isn't fair." And so our sort of universal response to all of us when we face judgment is to say that it's not fair. And we tend to see God's justice that way. People react negatively to the idea of the justice of God because they'll say, "Well, it's not fair." But notice this parable about the vineyard, right? The vineyard owner expends great effort and cost to make a vineyard. He leases it to people who make an agreement, and when the time comes due to pay that agreement, what do they do? They attack his servants. They murder his servants.

He's sending servants in an exemplary example of patience, and then what does he do? Sends his son, and they kill him too. Is there any question that the owner of the vineyard is unjust to go and bring judgment upon them? Absolutely not, right? They've killed his servants. They've killed his son. They're taking property that's not theirs. They deserve justice. And one of the pictures for us is that when we see the justice of God, it comes in a way that is deserved. In fact, God is patient, and he is long-suffering with us, calling us continually to repentance. And so it's not just a lesson for those Pharisees who reject Jesus. It's a warning to not minimize him, but also for us to see the justice of God. Any thoughts or comments?

All right, I want to take a look at the barren fig tree for a few minutes. Here's a fig tree. I don't know if it's barren or not, but you can't really tell, so let's pretend like it is. So bearing fruit is a pretty familiar biblical theme. In fact, in the very last parable we saw, "Therefore I tell you the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people, producing its fruits." So part of that was that the religious leaders are not producing fruit. It's going to be taken away, given to a new people. And so I want us to think just a little bit about what it means to bear fruit. And so John the Baptizer, as he's out doing his baptizing, will say, when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees, he'll say, "You brood of vipers,"

which is a bunch of snakes, "who warned you to flee from the wrath that come bear fruit in keeping with repentance." Jesus will say, talking about that no tree, good tree, bears bad fruit. No bad tree bears good fruit. And then he will talk about the fruit and all of these things. He'll say, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks," that our words are the fruit of our hearts. Paul will say this, "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment. You may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, the glory and praise of God." This fruit comes not from our own effort, but from what God works within us to bring us to righteousness.

And we could go on and on when we talk about the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit can involve our actions. It can involve our attitudes, what we think. It can involve our words, what we say. Fruit involves sort of all of those outpourings of our character and our conduct. And additionally, we find that the picture of people coming to God in repentance and in salvation is a picture of fruit being born. And so, in this parable, let's go ahead and read the parable, and look at the fruitless fig tree. And he told this parable, "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?'

And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. If it should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.' And so this guy is upset with a tree in his vineyard. And one of the things I was thinking about it is, notice that it's not a tree in his neighbor's yard. It's not over the fence. It's not, you know, it's his vineyard. And so for three years this tree has taken up space, has not borne fruit. It's used his resources, the time involved in pruning, caring, protecting, and has given him nothing back. And so Jesus here is talking about people who aren't bearing fruit, I think in part the fruit of repentance. The context of this is not knowing. The words are coming forward, talk about the tower that falls, and they didn't know judgment was coming.

If they did, you know, they might have done something differently that we need to be in repentance because we don't know when judgment is coming. And so he's not talking about people in somebody else's yard. He's not talking about pagans and those guys over there and the dude who lives down the street or your crazy family member. He's talking about people who are specifically in the vineyard of God's kingdom. And so there are some who are not bearing fruit. And I was thinking about this, and there's a lot of reasons why Christian people don't bear fruit. Sometimes it's a matter of maturity. Trees take a while to mature and bear fruit, and sometimes that's the case. Some have stopped bearing fruit because they've got discouraged and frustrated with life. And so when Rachel was pregnant with Evelyn, one of my favorite stories about this, there was a pineapple.

She's like, "I'm going to cut up the pineapple." And I'm sitting there in the living room, and I hear this giant crash, and I said, "What happened?" And she goes, "I threw the pineapple away, making me mad." And sometimes our fruit bearing in our life, we just get tired of trying. We struggle with sin, and we struggle with sin, and we struggle with sin. We struggle for righteousness, and we finally go, "I can't do it." We give up. And so we become discouraged and frustrated. We like Elijah under the broom tree saying, "I've done all this work for you, Lord. Why? Nothing has made a difference." And then sometimes we start bearing fruit because we become impatient, right? We want it to happen right now, like the guy who prays, one of dad's favorite jokes, "Give me patience." Give me patience right now, right?

James will say this, "Therefore be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruits of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives early and late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand." We have a tendency to say, "You know what? I'm just going to want it, and I want it right now." And when we don't get fruit, we get frustrated, we give up. Some Christians don't bear fruit because they're resting on the harvest of the past, right? The church in Sardis. "I know your works. You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die. I have not found your works complete in the sight of God."

The church in Sardis saying, "Well, we did all this great stuff. We have this great reputation," but they had stopped producing fruit. So regardless of why fruit isn't being harvested, whether it's a maturity issue or we're frustrated because it's been a struggle, we're frustrated because we are impatient, what happens is, notice the continued result. You know, what's the continued result? Three years of unfruitfulness here. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And I made a joke to Dad today that if this tree was in the Merrill house, it would have been like six months and we would have chopped it down, right? It's like, "All right, let's get that tree out of here." And so God is extremely patient. Most of us would not have waited this time. And so this is a wake-up call for us to check our fruit.

What I love about this parable is it sort of interposes the justice of God and the grace of God together. Look at what it says. The vine dresser will say this, "Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig down around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. If not, you can cut it down." So God's justice calls for the tree to be cut down and God's grace gives it more time. Now this is not a contradiction, right? Because if grace is rejected, grace is ignored, justice comes. God's heart is not to throw this tree into the fire. It's to work on you and in you to bring you to fruitfulness. And so here's the picture of this tree, and I love this because the tree deserves to be cut down, but it gets another chance.

Patience continues. And so the vine dresser comes to the broken and fruitless tree and says, "You know what? I'm going to go to work on you." And so that's what he does. And so you have this wonderful picture in this parable of both the justice and the patience of God. And so I want us to think just a little bit about how we can bear fruit, and not just to those who are not bearing fruit, but to those of us, if you are bearing fruit, to be conscious of these things. One of the things to consider is where does our strength come from? And this is important because for a short time, we can bear a whole lot of fruit in our own strength. I remember, it was probably like 12 years ago, I was like, "I'm going to be this gardener guy." And so I ordered these mini fruit trees.

So I had a mini lemon tree, a mini orange tree, and a mini lime tree. And I was like, "Yeah." So I get them, and I got there, and they blossomed. Like the day I got them and unpacked them, I was like, "Yeah, they're going to grow!" You know, they're like this tall, and they all bore fruit, and then they died, right? Because they weren't, you know, and I read later that when they blossom at that age, you're supposed to pick the blossoms off and let them mature because they don't have the energy to produce fruit. And the same is true with us. If we try to produce fruit out of our own strength, we will ultimately fail. Your strength has to come from the power of God. 1 Peter 4 will say, "Whoever speaks, speak as one, speaks the oracles of God,

whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory, dominion, forever and ever. Amen." So we've got to evaluate our strength. The other thing is we need to nourish our roots. And we'll talk a little bit about this next week, so I won't spend a lot of time with it. This week where Jesus talks about the vine and the branches, and he gives us some specific ways that we can hold on to the vine. Sometimes you have to prune the branches. There's branches in our life that take up energy. We grew up with a bunch of apple trees. And so there were years where they got pruned, and then our job was to go pick up all the sticks and throw them on the brush pile.

You cut off the branches that aren't producing fruit, that are just taking the energy of the tree. And there are times that we have to prune things in our lives. And third, or fourth, depending on how you're counting, is to use the manure of life. That's what he says. We're going to put some fertilizer, some manure on it. And I was thinking about it. Manure has some interesting perspectives. So our kids, we drive by a field that's been freshly fertilized by a bunch of cows. They're like, "Ew, that smells disgusting." And my grandma Nelson, every time we drove by a freshly fertilized field, she would say, "Well, your grandfather always said that smells like money." Right? Because the farmer's going out, he's fertilizing it, his crops are going to grow. And so depending on your perspective, you can see that as something that's really gross or something that has a benefit.

And sometimes in life, we find ourselves in situations that just stink. Right? That are just hard. They're difficult. They cause pain. One of the things that God does is he uses those to dig around our roots and to fertilize us and to bring us to growth and fruitfulness. One of my favorite illustrations of that is Charles Spurgeon, who died at 57 years old. He died really young. He had a ministry of 38 years. His wife, when she was 33 years, becomes an invalid. And for the next 27 years, she rarely ever gets to even go to church with her husband. He was sick. In his last 22 years of ministry, Charles Spurgeon, one-third of that time, he was getting over sickness, trying to get his strength back from sickness, or taking time off trying to prevent sickness,

taking precautions against the return of illness. At the age of 22, early in his ministry, he was preaching in a big building. Somebody yells, "Fire!" People stampeded because of that. There was no fire. Seven people were killed. Spurgeon sunk into a deep depression over that. He struggled with that and the guilt over that for the rest of his life. And so here's what he says toward the end of his life: "I am afraid that all the grace that I have gotten out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable. Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house." And what Spurgeon says is the thing that caused me to grow the most wasn't those times where everything was good,

but it was all of the struggles that God dug down around his roots and brought in difficult situations that caused him to be more fruitful. Any thoughts or comments about this parable? All right, next week, John 15. We'll talk about the vine and the branches. We'll have a word of prayer. Amen. Be dismissed. Father in heaven, thank you for allowing us to gather around your word this evening. Help us to evaluate our lives, to look to our fruitfulness. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for grace. It's in his name we pray. Amen.