The Parable of the Tenant Farmers

The Parable Ends

So they grabbed him, dragged him out of the vineyard and murdered him. Feeling good yet? Where were we? He murdered them. Yes. “When the owner of the vineyard returns,” Jesus asked, “what do you think he will do to those farmers?” The religious leaders said, “He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest.” Then Jesus asked them, “Didn’t you ever read this in the scriptures? The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see. I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.” When the leading priests and Pharisees heard this parable, they realized he was telling the story against them. They were the tenant farmers, the wicked farmers. They wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowds, who considered Jesus a prophet.

So, like I said, a really feel-good story, isn’t it? Are you feeling uplifted? There are some amazing truths in here that I’m hoping we’re going to mine out of this today.

The Landowner and the Tenant Farmers

This is Jesus again explaining the kingdom of God, explaining who his Father is. Guess who the landowner is? Anybody know? The Father is the landowner. Guess who the son is? Jesus. Okay, good, we’re tracking on the same page here.

In this parable, Jesus uses, as he often did, pictures that people in first-century Israel would understand. It was common in those days for landowners who owned multiple bits of land and couldn’t look after it all to lease it out to tenant farmers, and then to have a profit-sharing arrangement, which is illustrated in this story when the owner sent his servants to collect his share. So they would have understood that. It was an opportunity for the tenant farmers, the people who had leased the land, either to act honorably and work diligently and produce a harvest and give the owner his share when he came to collect, or, as Jesus illustrates in this story, greed could take over. They could say, “We’re doing all this work. Why does he expect anything out of this?” And so they would mistreat and beat and kill. Never mind just sending the servants away empty-handed. They killed some and stoned one. Quite a story.

A current example in today’s world might be a man who sets up a business, buys a building, equips it with all the equipment needed to produce whatever he wants to produce, brings in materials and gets things started, puts in a security system, puts in everything that’s needed, and then leases it out, or entrusts it to managers, with a profit-sharing arrangement. We’re not all farmers here. Anybody here a farmer? There may be a few businessmen. So that picture might be a current one.

A Vineyard Fully Provisioned

The thing is, it’s all set up. It’s completely set up for the people who were leasing it. They didn’t have to do anything in the setup. They didn’t even have to invest anything. The owner invested it all. That becomes important later on. He created a perfect, well-equipped vineyard, provisioned with everything the tenant farmers could need to produce a harvest. He didn’t say to them, “Here’s a plot of land. I expect a grape harvest next year, so get at it and buy plants.” No, he did all that. He planted the vineyard. He built a wall for protection against wild animals that would come in and eat the vines or the grapes. He brought in the equipment. He dug a pit for squeezing the grapes, because obviously this is a wine-production vineyard. And then he built a tower so they could look out over everything. Everything was perfectly set up for their success. He made the investment and then he leased it to these guys.

Leasing it to them gave them the legal right to manage it. It’s like this building. We lease this building, we don’t own it, and we’re in the process of trying to renegotiate the lease, but we have the legal right to be here. Nobody can come in while we have leased this place and say, “What are you guys doing here?” These tenant farmers had the legal right to be there. They weren’t squatters. They were entitled by the owner to take charge of this vineyard. All they had to do was make use of everything the owner had provided.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t work to be done. Pam and I grew up in the Okanagan, where vineyards are a thing, and there is a lot of work involved. There’s constant weeding, pruning, trimming, watering. That was the tenant farmers’ investment. They didn’t invest in equipment or land or plants, but they invested their time and energy in producing the crop. If they didn’t do their job, there wouldn’t be a crop, or it would be a very substandard one.

Eden, the Promised Land, and Israel

We can look back historically and see that this could relate to several different situations. I’ll name a couple. Actually, the Garden of Eden, isn’t that interesting? The owner, God, created a perfect environment, created all these bits and pieces, and last he created a man and a woman and put them in the garden. They were like the tenant farmers, if you like. They were given legal right to be there. God said to them, Genesis 1:28, “Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.'” So it could be a picture of that, a perfect setup for them, and God saying, “I’m commissioning you to reign in this area,” while it all still belongs to him.

It could also relate to later in Israel’s history, the land flowing with milk and honey. Remember that phrase, when they were slaves in Egypt and then the Exodus, and God said he would take them to a land flowing with milk and honey. When the spies went in, they said, “Man, it took two of us to carry a bunch of grapes.” I can’t even imagine what kind of grapes they had. It was a ridiculously abundant land, and he said, “I’m giving it to you.” But they had to go with him and take it step by step. It was a rich land, a good land, a perfect land for them. The pinnacle was probably when David was king and later when Solomon was king, at least the first part of his reign. That was the high point of Israel ruling and reigning in the land God had given them. Of course it did go south, didn’t it? But that was the pinnacle.

The Tenants Were Israel’s Leaders

The main application of this story, though, is the state of Israel at the time Jesus was telling this tale. The Pharisees and scribes got it at the end, didn’t they? They realized Jesus was telling the story against them. They were the evil farmers. So the main application is the state of Israel at the time of Jesus, and the story sums up the whole history of the old covenant people of God. The whole Old Testament is full of examples of God sending messengers to tell the people, “Come back to my ways. Why are you straying away?” Sometimes there would be a short-term revival under a righteous king, but often it didn’t last past him. His son would take over and raise up idols, Asherah poles, whatever it took to honor pagan gods. So the story sums up the history of God’s dealing with Israel. Jesus is reminding them that God came to them multiple times.

So the nation of Israel at that moment, particularly the religious leaders, the Pharisees and others who were against Jesus, were the tenant farmers he was talking about. And as I said, they got that. They weren’t dense. They knew what Jesus was getting at. The servants are the prophets sent by God all the way through the Old Testament, the old covenant, where different ones would rise up. Most were not listened to. Some were listened to for a short period of time, and then the people backslid again. Some were ignored, some were mistreated, some were killed, right up to and including John the Baptist, the last one before the son, who came to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” John the Baptist was executed by Herod.

And Jesus himself is the son the Father sent as a last resort. That doesn’t mean the Father was running out of ideas or resources. That wasn’t the point. The point is that he actually sent his son to get the tenant farmers back on track. Of course, Jesus is prophesying that they will kill the son. This story comes fairly close to the end. It’s after the triumphal entry, just a few days before the son would be killed.

Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem

So the story ends with the truth that persistent rejection of God’s messengers produces consequences. Jesus mourns over the coming consequences. Here’s another feel-good story: Jesus mourning over Jerusalem, Luke 19:41. This is part of the triumphal entry, when he’s marching in and everyone’s shouting “Hosanna.” But when he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it’s too late and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long, your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”

Wow. That was the end result of hundreds and hundreds of years of messengers coming and saying, “Come on, wake up, people, get back on track,” the owner sending messenger after messenger. Finally the son comes, and he says there are consequences coming for rejecting the messengers and rejecting the son. And of course that happened, I believe in 70 AD, when the Romans smushed them to bits. Is smushed a good word? When I say smushed, you understand smushed, don’t you? It was terrible. They obliterated their temple, their culture, everything, and scattered them to the four corners of the world. So Jesus is prophesying the consequences of rejecting the son, the final messenger that the owner, God, had sent.

What the Owner Shows Us

What can we draw from this parable, which is about the kingdom of God? We can draw some good ideas about the owner. First of all, God will provision and prepare before he gives an assignment. He didn’t get the tenant farmers together and say, “Here’s a piece of land. Go nuts.” He got it all ready for them and then leased it out. In creation, he made the man and the woman after everything else was perfectly set up and ready for them, and he gave them something to rule and reign over. He set it all up. He provisioned it. He financed it. So God will always provide and prepare when he gives an assignment. If we have an assignment (we’re going to get to that in a few minutes, at the end), we can be guaranteed that God has provisioned us for what we need today. We say that often around here: we have what we need today to do what God wants us to do today. When God wants us to do something different tomorrow, he will provide that too. God doesn’t say, “There’s an obstacle. Have fun with that. Let me know how it goes.” He provides and prepares his people for what he wants them to do at that moment.

The second thing is that God expects production. He expects a return on his investment. If you’re wondering about that, think of the parable of the talents. The ones who produced and invested and multiplied heard, “Yay, come and enter into the joy and rest of your Lord.” The one who did nothing with his had it taken away and given to somebody who would produce, a proven producer. So this isn’t the only parable Jesus tells where there are consequences for not producing. He expects production, but he isn’t whipping us along with “Come on, get busy, work harder.” That isn’t the point. He gives each of us a vineyard, which we’ll get to in a minute.

God Is Patient

Next, God is very patient. How long did God continue to send messengers to the nation of Israel, over generation after generation, until finally he sent his son? The Bible says that at the right time, at the perfect time, God sent his son to pave the way for us to be back in relationship with God. The lesson here is that God is very patient. He will repeatedly call his people through various messengers, but persistent rejection or apathy will lead to consequences.

It also highlights, interestingly enough, that the kingdom of God is not limited to a nationality. Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees and the religious leaders. That’s his audience at that point, probably with others as well, but that’s who it’s aimed at. He says, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation that will produce what the owner expects.” It will be given to those who will produce the fruit the Father is looking for.

Hearing His Voice and His Messengers

We can’t consign this parable to history only. Although we can see creation or the land flowing with milk and honey in it, and use different things from history, Jesus was speaking directly to those people right there, right then. And today it also relates to us.

Today we believe that as sons and daughters of our Father, we can learn to hear his voice. We can grow in hearing his voice. We may start out thinking we can’t hear God’s voice, but as we learn, as we grow, as we are taught, as we practice, we will learn to hear it. That’s one way God will get his message to us about what he wants us to do in our vineyard. Another way is through his messengers, because he still uses messengers. It’s not just each individual person and their relationship with their Father, as vital and intimate as that is intended to be for sons and daughters. Ephesians 4 says there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, whose job it is to teach and train and equip and release the people to do the work of the ministry, to enter into their own vineyard.

Each one of you has a constituency, as we often say. You have people you see every day or every week that I don’t see, that nobody else in this place sees, and that’s your vineyard. That’s where you have been planted, wherever you have some influence over people and some relationship with people. That is the place where God has placed you, and he has provisioned you and prepared you and gotten you ready. He will give you the words to say, if you need to say words, and he will prompt you into actions to show his love, to show him reaching out to them. So God will speak to us directly, of course, through the Holy Spirit, and he will also speak to us through apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to equip us and help us release ourselves and this community into the vineyard he has prepared for us.

So the messengers today could be the Holy Spirit directly. They could also be leaders who teach the word of God. And it’s up to us not to be the tenant farmers who outright rejected the words of God, or who just smile and nod and don’t do anything. How many have ever done that? Thank you for a few honest souls. People sometimes say that if we could get saved through sermons, we’d have been saved long ago, because we’ve heard thousands of them. You hear a new one every Sunday, and you’re hearing one now. But we don’t need a thousand sermons. We need to be open to what the Holy Spirit might say to you at any given time when somebody is teaching the word. For everyone who shows up, or who is hearing on the livestream, there may be a word that the Holy Spirit quickens to you, and it might not even be anything I, or whoever is up here, will say. How many can relate to that? How many of us have sat in church and suddenly thought, “That right there, that’s what the Holy Spirit is saying to me”? Our job is not to reject it, and it is not to be apathetic toward it either. Our job is to say, “Oh, you took the time, Holy Spirit, to quicken that, to drive that into my conscious thinking. So what do you want me to do about it?” Because as we’ve always heard, you can say anything you want to, but what you do shows what you really believe. It’s action.

The Danger of Apathy

We don’t want to be like the foolish builder in the Sermon on the Mount, which we’ve referenced so many times around here. Jesus said, “Whoever hears these teachings of mine but does not build them into their life is like a foolish builder whose life will collapse in a heap of ruins when the pressure comes,” because they did not take the time to build their lives on Jesus’ teachings. That may be a consequence. A crisis may come up in your life and you’re shattered and destroyed, and you find yourself asking, “How can I get back to the solid rock? How can I get back to building on what you have asked me to do?” So ignoring, rejecting, or having apathy toward the message will bring consequences.

The landowner, the Father, is interested in each vineyard producing a harvest. If we continually refuse to engage in our vineyard, the lesson of the parable is that at some point what was assigned to us will be given to someone else. That’s what happened with the nation of Israel. The religious leaders heard Jesus say, “Because of your rejection and the killing of the son, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation that will produce the fruit.” That’s on a grand scale. But for us individually, and for us as The River, even if we do not engage in what God has given us to do, individually and as a community, at some point God may decide to give our assignment to somebody else. Does anybody want that? No.

So we are encouraged to listen. Hebrews 4:7 says, “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your heart.” He is always speaking. We know God speaks. We know we can hear his voice. We know we can hear him through our intimate relationship with him, and through each other, through leaders, and also through the community, through members of the community, where anybody can have a word, an arrow the Holy Spirit drives in that says, “I want you to know this. Pay attention to that.”

Just like the parable of the talents, where a person did not invest and use his master’s resources wisely and had it taken away and given to somebody who would, that’s what the kingdom of God is like. We’re not trying to be mean, and we’re not saying God is mean. He is simply interested in you moving into and looking after the vineyard he’s given you, looking after the assignments he gives us from time to time, individually and corporately. He doesn’t want us to ignore them or avoid them or have apathy toward them. He wants us to do what the tenant farmers had to do. There was weeding, there was watering, there was trimming, there was pruning, there was harvesting, there was squishing grapes. There was action involved. It wasn’t sitting back in a La-Z-Boy and expecting a harvest. We are asked to take action in the things God has given us to do.

When we say it will be taken away, the point is not to instill fear in us, with “Oh no, I wonder if God’s going to take away my assignment.” The right response is to say, “Lord Jesus, please help me to act on what you’re saying to me. Help me to move in my vineyard, in my constituency, in the areas where you are speaking to me and showing me my assignment. Help me to engage with it. Show me what I can do, because you have faithfully provisioned me to fulfill any assignment you give me.”

What Is Your Vineyard?

So, Hebrews 4:7, “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your heart.” It relates to us individually. What is my vineyard that the Father has given me? We can each ask ourselves that. What is my vineyard that the Father has created and provisioned and supplied, so that I can produce a harvest, partner with him and do the work? God expects each of us to engage in the good works that are prepared for us. Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s masterpiece.” I love that part. I am God’s masterpiece. Amen, enough said. “He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” He didn’t create a masterpiece so that we could settle into a La-Z-Boy life and wait for everything to come in. We are to engage in the good works he’s prepared for us. We’re to trim, prune, water, weed, harvest, squish, whatever it takes to produce the harvest in the vineyard we have been given as a community, right here, right now.

What is our vineyard? Where do we have influence? Where can we, as a community, and not just individually, ask what good works God has prepared for The River Community Church to participate in? And are we doing them? Are we engaging in the good works God has prepared for us and provisioned for us? Along with the assignment comes the provision. This isn’t a heavy burden. He doesn’t say, “I want you to go out and change Abbotsford. Let me know how that goes. I’ll come back and check in a decade.” He prepares us. He provisions us through relationships with others, through whatever it might be, even financially. He prepares us and provisions us for what he wants us to do. He has promised to provide.

Closing Reflection & Prayer

So what is the Father saying to you right now? As we close, maybe just close your eyes, and we’re going to have a little moment here before we finish. What has he been speaking to you today, or even this week? If you can’t think of anything right now, what is the last thing you heard God say to you, or ask of you directly? Or what was the last thing you heard when one of his messengers, anybody in the community, said something to you that you knew the Holy Spirit was saying, “This is for you”? And the question is, are we engaging in it? What has God been saying to each of you individually? And then what is God saying to The River? Have we engaged?

At any point in the process of Jesus’ parable, the tenant farmers could have turned, because God is a forgiving God. They could have had a much different ending. They could have said, “Yes, I will give the Father the fruit he’s after. I will give the owner what he is asking. I will participate with him.” Because when you participate with the Father in his business, you get the thrill of actually doing something that has eternal value and eternal consequences. Thank you, God. So we need to ask ourselves what it is that God is saying to us, and whether we are engaging in it. It can be a big thing. It can be a little thing. Sometimes a lot of little things add up to a big thing.

Let’s stand together as we pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for your word, Jesus. Thank you for teaching us through stories we can relate to what your Father is like and what the kingdom of God is like. And thank you that this story, like the parable of the talents, teaches us the urgency of engaging with what we have been given and what we have been provided with already. So, Father, we don’t want to moan and groan about what we don’t have. We want to look at what we do have and say, “Father, help us to use fully what you have given us right now to produce the fruit that you intended for us to produce, individually and as a church together as a community.” In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. And I invite the prayer people to come up.