Whose Vineyard Is It?: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 12:1-12)

If you were being opposed by people who had the power to really hurt you, how would you react?  Would you pull back?  Would you attack?

Jesus was in the midst of the storm during Passion Week, his week in Jerusalem before his crucifixion.  Knowing this will result in his death he continues to press his case to Israel, for them to receive him as their Messiah and submit to the requirements of his kingdom.

And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. (Mark 12:1-12, ESV)

The leaders of Israel, represented by the Sanhedrin, are wanting to arrest Jesus but fear the populace, who are, with them, listening to Jesus’ parable and just picking up that they might be the subject of it.  Ya think?

Israel’s leaders are responsible for the persecution and death of many of God’s prophets, whom He sent to warn Israel of her defection from their God.  Now God sends His son, a clear statement by Jesus that he views himself as more than just a prophet of God.  And he clearly knows that he is going to be killed.  The outlandishness of this is depicted in the story by the servants thinking they don’t need to pay the landlord his rent and don’t need to receive his emissaries, Jesus included.

But despite the attempt of the leaders of Israel to get rid of Jesus, God will take the “rejected” stone and make it the cornerstone of a new structure, a new temple, made up of Jews and Gentiles who have believed in God’s Son and His kingdom.  This quote from Psalm 118 applies to the “righteous” one, any righteous one, who is rejected only to be used by God for rebuilding the people.  Jesus is the ultimate righteous one, so this psalm applies most uniquely to him.

Does this mean that national Israel no longer has any claim to the promises of the Old Testament for her future?  I don’t believe so.  Romans 11 makes it clear that God will again graft national Israel back into the vine supplied by Abraham’s promises.

Oh, the amazing patience, mercy and grace of our God!  If we had been the vineyard’s owner that very first rejection of our emissary would have been visited with our wrath.  We wouldn’t have kept sending wave after wave of messengers.  So many think of the God of the Old Testament as overly wrathful but fail to realize the hundreds of years He put up with a rebellious people.  His judgment is never rushed and never overdone.