Emile Callier was a philosophy professor at Princeton.
And in his early life, even his early academic life,
he was a consummate materialist, a naturalist.
In other words, he studied philosophy for a living
and had rejected all possibility of the supernatural, the transcendent.
He was more or less an atheist.
And this served him well, this worldview, until World War I.
And following the horrors of such a war,
his books, when he came back to them,
didn't sustain him the way they had.
He found the philosophy that he had built his life on to be empty.
He found it to be impotent.
He found it to be incapable of helping him make sense of either the horror that he had seen in the war
or of his own heart and soul.
Then one day, his wife brought home a Bible that she had unintentionally,
sort of almost accidentally acquired at a used bookstore in town.
And here's what he says about it.
And this is after a long period of searching in his life,
searching and searching and searching,
and not finding what he was looking for.
He says,
I literally grabbed the book and rushed to my study with it.
And he opens to the teachings of Jesus,
just randomly opens to a place where Jesus is teaching.
And he says,
I read and I read and I read,
now aloud with an indescribable warmth surging within.
I could not find words to express my awe and wonder,
and suddenly the realization dawned upon me,
this was the book that would understand me.
I needed it so much, yet unaware,
I had attempted to write my own in vain.
The more you spend time reading the Bible,
and some of you know this,
the more you spend time reading the Bible,
the more you will find this to be true.
That the more you read the Bible,
the more it reads you.
It's the only book out there that the more you read it,
the more you try to understand it,
the more you will actually experience it reading you.
And as Callie says,
explaining you to yourself.
It uncovers things in your heart.
It illuminates things that you're not aware of,
that you can't see, that you won't see.
It sometimes illuminates things that are uncomfortable,
things that we don't like to admit.
But the more you read it,
the more you realize it's true.
And one of the places this happens most
is when you read the parables of Jesus,
because that's what the parables are designed to do.
They're stories about everyday things,
and yet they reveal deep, profound spiritual truth.
And so this summer we've been looking at
some of Jesus' parables,
stories about everyday things
and what they reveal.
And tonight we're looking at this parable
that's commonly referred to
as the parable of the wicked tenants
in Luke chapter 20, verses 9 to 19.
So what I want to do tonight
is to look at a summary of this parable,
and then we're going to look at what it shows us.
It shows us three things.
It shows us first our motives,
and then God's heart,
and then lastly Jesus' mission.
Our motives, God's heart, and Jesus' mission.
Let's pray for God's guidance in this.
Lord, we gather here tonight
from all manner of backgrounds
and assumptions and even beliefs.
Some of us have given our lives to you
and endeavor to follow you in faith.
Lord, others of us here are not sure
what we think about you
or if you're even there,
but we know that of all your great promises,
you've promised to make yourself known
to those who seek you,
to reveal yourself,
to speak to us, Lord.
So we pray that these words
would be for us your word.
We pray that that would happen
by your spirit, Lord,
for our good and for your glory.
And we ask this in your son's name.
Amen.
So first of all,
let's just summarize this parable.
It's one that's probably familiar
to many of you,
but just to give you a quick summary
of the context of this parable.
Jesus presents us with a situation
that is more or less a common situation
really then and now.
Not much has changed
with the kind of arrangement
that we see here.
A man buys some land
with his own money
and then he invests in that land
and he tills the soil
and he plants vines.
And in another version of this story
in one of the other Gospels,
we hear that he sets up
all of the things,
all of the resources necessary
to have a fully functioning vineyard
to produce wine.
You know, he sets up a wine press
and buildings
and all, you know,
storage bins
and everything that you would need.
And he sets all this up
out of his own pocket
and then he brings in,
as was common,
tenant farmers
to work it.
And he goes on a long journey
to a distant land.
And the relationship
that the tenant farmers
would have to the owner
is this.
They were paid,
you know,
sort of an income,
days' wages
to work the vineyard.
And yet the vineyard
belonged to the owner.
And so the expectation
is that they would
oversee and care for the vineyard
according to the owner's instructions,
according to his guidance,
and for his profit.
You know,
ostensibly,
we can assume
that the owner hoped
to turn a profit.
That once he cleared
all of his overhead,
he would actually make
some money off this.
And so the tenants
were there
to govern
according to his instructions
and for his profit.
And then look what happens.
The owner goes away.
Harvest time comes.
The owner sends a servant
to collect some of the fruit.
And what happens?
They beat the servant
and they send him back
empty-handed.
And so the owner
sends another servant
and they treat him even worse.
They not only beat him,
but they treat him shamefully.
We can probably imagine
some of the things
that that would entail.
And they send him back
empty-handed.
So the owner sends
a third servant.
And it says
they wounded him.
It says that in the English,
but the Greek word is
traumatizo.
In other words,
they traumatized him.
And they send him back
empty-handed.
And the owner says,
well, surely if I send
my own son,
they'll listen to my son.
And we know how
the story ends.
When they see the son,
they realize an opportunity
and they capitalize
on that opportunity
by taking the son
out of the vineyard
and killing him.
So Jesus tells this parable
and obviously
his original listeners
would have been shocked.
It's a pretty appalling story.
In fact,
their initial reaction
is to say,
heavens no.
So what we want to do
is ask,
what did this
originally mean to them?
And then how does this
then apply to us?
And as I said,
we're going to ask this
in three headers.
The first of which is,
this story actually
reveals something
about our motives
as human beings.
See,
on one level,
this was about Israel.
Right?
If you look back
in the Old Testament,
the prophets like
Isaiah,
Jeremiah,
in the Psalms,
they refer to,
Hosea as well,
they refer to Israel
as God's vineyard.
So anytime you see
a reference to a vineyard,
think Israel.
And so on one level,
Jesus is talking about Israel.
The leaders of Israel
are like the tenants,
the scribes
and the Pharisees.
And Jesus is saying this,
God has blessed Israel.
God has given Israel
everything
to make it what it is.
He's provided
for his people.
And Israel is like
a vineyard.
And the leaders
were supposed to
govern and lead Israel
in accordance with
God's law,
his word,
and for God's glory
rather than their own
glory,
their own power,
their own prominence.
And so on one level,
Jesus is illustrating
that reality.
But on a deeper level,
this is actually
revealing something deep
about all human beings.
And what it's revealing
is sort of two realities
that clash together
in our hearts.
Two coexisting truths
that can't coexist
and they clash.
And they are this.
First of all,
our life
is meant to be
God's vineyard
in the world.
Your life
is meant to be
God's vineyard
in the world.
There's a beautiful
kind of related reference
in Ephesians 2
where the Greek
is poema
and Paul says
our lives
are God's poems
in the world,
God's poetry
to the world.
Your life
is meant to be
God's vineyard.
In other words,
we are the tenants
of our life.
We're not the owners
of our lives.
We're the tenants.
So all of your,
I mean,
think about your life
for a second.
All of your intelligence,
all of your talents,
I mean,
if you know anything
about this congregation,
this room is filled
with some of the most
intelligent,
talented people
I've ever personally
known,
the concentration
of that in this room
is unbelievable.
But all of your intelligence,
all of your talents,
all of your learning,
all of your education,
all of your creativity,
all of your,
the privilege
that got you
to where you are
in your life,
all of the resources,
that all of that
is God's investment
in this vineyard.
God set it up.
And like any good tenant,
we are meant to live
and to use all of this
according to God's instructions
and for God's,
not profit,
but God's glory.
That's the design,
that's the intention
for his purposes
and not our own.
So that's the first thing
that we see.
Your life,
my life,
is meant to be God's vineyard
in this world.
The second thing,
here's what clashes with it.
Knowing that we are tenants,
we know deep down
that we're tenants,
we hate it.
We hate it.
And you may say,
well,
I'm a Christian,
I don't hate it.
You hate it.
We all hate it.
We hate it
because we all
want to be owners.
And so we hate God
because we're not.
We hate God
because
every reminder,
every reference
to the very fact of God
implicitly tells us
you don't own your life.
You don't own this vineyard.
You see the ultimate motive
of the tenants
in verse 15.
It says,
when the sun comes,
they say,
this is the air.
Let us kill him.
Why?
So that the inheritance
may be ours,
right?
All human beings
are tenants
who live like owners.
We're tenants
and we live like owners.
Whenever you feel
a sense of
try as you might not to,
superiority,
whenever you feel
a sense that,
you know,
we don't boast outright
but we're really good
at things like social media
at kind of
the humble brag,
sort of very
indirectly letting people
know about our accomplishments,
you know.
Whenever we're tempted
to do that,
we are being tempted
to think like owners,
you know.
Those of you,
and many of you,
you know,
you're right at this phase
in life.
Many of you,
where you're beginning
to arrive,
you know.
You know,
I hear more and more,
as opposed to
eight years ago
when we started,
I hear more and more
sort of people
who are at the beginning
of their careers
are starting to get
to the place
that they wanted to be.
You know,
I studied,
I went to school,
I prepared,
and now I'm arrived.
I'm where I wanted to be.
I'm here.
And I wonder if deep down
when we realize that,
we don't think,
I made it because of me.
I got here.
I did this.
It's because I'm unique
and I made it happen
by the sweat of my brow.
We don't think about
the fact that
your intelligence
and your ability
and the resources
that brought you
into the world
and the education
and all that you had,
you have no more
to do that
than the color of your hair.
You had no say in that.
Our anxiety,
most of our anxiety
is a result of what?
Us trying to control
things that we can't control.
Trying to control the future.
Trying to control
future outcomes.
Trying to think through
every possibility,
every contingency
and be ready for it.
Or we try to control
the opinion
that other people have of us.
We try to manage that.
All of the reasons
that we have anxiety
and we could go on
and on about that
are ultimately about
us trying to have control
over things
that we don't have control.
In other words,
trying to live like owners
rather than tenants.
Our country was founded
in part on ideals
about liberty
that can be traced back
to the late 14th century.
William of Ockham,
famous for Ockham's razor.
And Ockham was one
of the first people
to articulate something
called nominalism.
Nominalist philosophy.
And via his influence
on people like John Locke
and Thomas Jefferson,
these seed ideas
have over the last
several hundred years
sloured into
defining assumptions
that shape all of us
in how we think.
Assumptions that we don't
even question.
They're in the background.
They're fundamental.
But they're shaping
our lives,
they're shaping
our worldviews,
they're shaping
our entire culture.
This kind of view
that Ockham sort of
gets credit
for first articulating
is summarized
perfectly actually
in a Supreme Court
decision written
by Justice Kennedy
way back in 1992.
He says this,
at the heart of liberty
is the right to define
one's own concept
of existence,
of meaning,
of the universe,
and of the mystery
of human life.
This is back in 92.
At the heart of liberty
is the right to define
one's own concept
of existence,
of meaning,
of the universe,
and of the mystery
of human life.
In other words,
by this definition,
liberty
means living
like we own the place.
Liberty,
true freedom
by this definition,
is having the freedom
to define
the most fundamental
aspects of existence,
including existence,
any way we choose.
it's living
like we own the place.
And the kind of
corollary to this
is it says,
I can't be free
unless,
I can't be free
unless
I'm the owner
of my life.
Anything that tells me
I'm not in charge,
anything that would
presume to define
these things for me
is a prison.
And that's something
that needs to be
escaped from.
It needs to be,
we need to break
out of that.
So freedom
equals the freedom
to choose
at the deepest level.
That is built
into the DNA,
that's not a liberal thing,
it's not a conservative thing,
that's built into the DNA
of our culture,
of our country.
It is so deep
that we don't even question it.
It's in our bones,
it's in our marrow.
And as technology advances,
our confidence
in this grows.
We have the rise
of movements
like the transhumanist movement,
which I think
the church needs
to be talking
a lot more about.
Transhumanism,
which is the belief
that through technology
we will improve upon
humanity.
Humanity 2.0,
3.0,
10.0.
Right?
We can overcome death.
It's everything
from extending
the life
of human beings
infinitely,
which some people
believe that we can do
with enough money
and enough technology.
There's big money
going into that,
all the way to
genetically engineering
our children.
The transhumanist movement.
And the question is,
if we're the owners
of our lives,
if we're the owners
of the vineyard,
then why not?
What's to stop us?
What reason is there
possibly not to do this
if we're the owners,
and if that's the only
way we can be free?
But,
what the Bible says
is the Bible shows us
that this concept
of human independence
and autonomy
didn't start with Ockham.
You go all the way
back to Genesis chapter 3,
the story of the fall,
and this is exactly
what happened.
This is when this
definition of freedom
originated.
When human beings
said to God,
we would rather decide
for ourselves
right from wrong.
We'll still worship you,
but we want to do it
on our terms.
That's Genesis 3.
Not on your terms,
on our terms.
We'll decide.
And what the Bible says
is that this human act
of saying to God,
we want the freedom
to choose the most
fundamental things
for ourselves,
that this is what's wrong
with the world.
It's tenants saying to God,
from now on,
we want to be owners.
We want to be co-owners
with you.
That was the promise
that the serpent gave.
You'll be like God.
God.
Simply put,
this creates an enormous
problem for us
because we're not
independent beings.
We're not autonomous beings.
We're fundamentally
dependent beings,
and we hate that.
But we're ultimately
powerless,
not over just the world,
but even our own lives.
You know,
there are so many people
who say,
well, you know,
look at my life,
and look at all the stuff
that's happened,
and all this hard stuff
that's happened,
and all the stuff
I've had to go through.
My life is nothing
like I thought it would be.
It's nothing like
I wanted it to be.
How could I believe in God?
I think it's actually
making an opposite point.
My life is nothing
like I want it to be,
ergo,
the only thing
that you can derive
from that is,
you're not God.
Because if you were,
your life would be
exactly like you want it to be.
But it's not,
which means you're not
in charge,
which means somebody
else must be.
So this is the first point.
Our life,
our life is God's vineyard.
That's what it's designed to be.
God's vineyard.
But we prefer the illusion,
and again,
through things like technology,
we have a very convincing illusion
that in fact,
we're the owners.
And we hate,
hate anyone or anything
that reminds us otherwise.
Right?
So the second question is this.
How does the owner
of the parable,
in the parable,
respond to the tenants,
and thus,
what do we learn about God's heart?
How God responds to this?
So second point,
God's heart.
What does the owner do?
He sends the first servant,
and the tenants
physically assault him
and send him back
to the master,
empty-handed.
Now,
when this happens,
first servant goes,
they beat the crap out of him,
they send him back.
What would happen,
in most cases,
then and now?
Not much difference.
Right?
Imagine you own a restaurant,
and the manager of the restaurant
does this,
or imagine you own a property,
and the property manager
embezzles all the profits,
right?
And you send somebody
to kind of,
you know,
have there be a reckoning
and send me some of the profits,
and that person comes back
in a wheelchair.
What do you do?
Well,
in the least,
you would fire that person
and probably press charges.
But what does this owner do?
He sends another servant.
They do worse things to him.
He sends another servant.
They do worse things to him.
And then he sends his son.
What does this tell us
about this owner
and his heart?
Look at this owner
and look at his heart.
Again,
on one level,
this is talking about Israel.
It's talking about
all of the profits
that God sent to his people
over the ages.
And if you want to look at
look at the prophets.
They were severely mistreated
and rejected
and hated.
You know?
God is straight up honest
with Jeremiah
at the beginning of his ministry.
You're going to have this message
and they're going to hate you for it
and they're not going to believe you
and they're going to beat you up
and treat you shamefully.
You know?
Bon voyage.
You know?
What we see here
is a God of unimaginable patience
and mercy.
Unimaginable patience and mercy.
He sends messenger
messenger after messenger
after messenger
over and over and over.
Why?
Because he loves the tenants.
Because he loves us.
He gives them one chance
after another.
And he loves us that way.
Don't you understand?
He uses all of the circumstances
in our lives
in this very same way.
Not necessarily always
the good stuff.
Probably more often
the hard stuff,
the bad stuff,
the stuff we don't want.
all ways of trying
to shake us
and wake us up
and make us realize
we're not the owners,
we're not in charge.
To go on pretending
that we're in charge
is an exercise in futility.
They say to give somebody
responsibility
without authority
is a recipe for insanity, right?
That's bad management.
But that's exactly
what we're doing.
We're trying to have
responsibility
over everything
with absolutely no authority.
It will make us crazy
if we insist
on living that way.
But just like in the parable,
this is not something
that we can be talked out of.
I mean, at the deepest level,
we want to be the owners
and nothing anyone says
can convince us otherwise.
That's why Romans 8
says that our minds
on their own
are hostile toward God.
They are enmity toward God.
So far, this parable
has shown us
these two things, right?
First, our lives
are God's vineyard,
but we prefer
to ignore that fact
and live as though
we're the owners
instead of the tenants.
That's our motive.
The second thing
it shows us
is that God's heart
is incredibly patient,
incredibly merciful,
and he's the kind of God
who gives chance
after chance
after chance.
But the problem is
that nothing,
none of the prophets,
even the greatest prophet,
right?
John the Baptist,
what happened
to John the Baptist,
right?
He had the audacity
to call out
Herod Antipas
over issues
of sexual morality.
He confronted him
because he was
committing adultery.
He got his head chopped off.
That's what happens
to the prophets.
He was saying,
your sex life isn't,
you're not the owner
of that.
That's part of God's vineyard.
He got his head chopped off.
Nothing can convince us
of this
or overcome
this heart-level enmity
that we have
toward God.
Thus,
the final point,
Jesus' mission.
When you get to this part
of the parable,
you have to imagine
the kind of dramatic
irony and tension
in the room
as Jesus is telling
this parable.
I mean,
it's sort of layers
of irony and tension
because Jesus,
there Jesus is,
the Son of God
in the flesh
talking to the leaders
of Israel.
He's telling them
a story about
wicked tenants
who,
when the owner
sins the Son,
they kill him.
And as Jesus
is telling this parable,
what does verse 19 say?
Even as he's telling
the parable,
you have the scribes
and the Pharisees
saying,
we want to lay hands
on him and kill him
right now.
But they can't,
they won't,
because they're afraid
the people will riot.
So the parable
is actually,
the truth of the parable
is being demonstrated
even as Jesus tells it.
And what this really does
is it brings us
to the majesty
and the brilliance
of the gospel.
Because it presents
this question,
what do you do
if you're God
and you love the world
that you made
and you love the people
that you put in the world
to take care of it
in your name,
the tenants?
What do you do
if you're God
and you love those people
and yet you know
that those people
hate you so much
that no matter
what you do,
no matter what you do,
they won't come back
to you.
And they hate you
so much that the moment
you become vulnerable,
they will grab you
and kill you.
And that's exactly
what happens.
So what do you do
if you're God
and you're in that situation?
How do you save people
who want to kill you?
That's the brilliance
of the gospel.
You use your own death
as the means of salvation.
You use your own death.
Jesus' mission
is to take our place
by becoming our rebellion,
becoming enmity,
and then dying
on our behalf.
In other words,
what you see on the cross
is God subverting
the hatred
of the tenants,
using it,
repurposing it,
redefining it.
So he used our rebellion
as the means
of our salvation.
It's beautiful.
It's the only hope
we ever could have had.
And the only thing
that can convince us
to let go
of this illusion
of control,
the only thing
that will loosen
the white-knuckle death grip
that we have
on our lives
is when we look
at the love of God
on the cross.
And when that,
through the power
of the Holy Spirit,
begins to convince us
that a God
who would do that
for us
can better be trusted
with our lives
even than we can.
And it's that point
that we cross
where we're looking
at the cross
and through
the power
of the Spirit
we begin to realize
that our life
is in better hands
when God
is in control.
That we can trust
Him and His love
and His power
more than ourselves.
And that's when
that transition
begins to happen.
And Jesus leads us,
as we're kind of
bringing this to a close
in verses 17 and 18,
Jesus leads us
with this choice.
He says,
knowing these things
that I've laid out,
you can either
continue living
like an owner
and that will
eventually crush you.
You will eventually
be crushed
doing that.
Or,
or,
He becomes
the cornerstone
of your life.
It's either or.
Either you continue
pretending you're an owner
and ultimately
that's a dead end
and you will be
crushed by that
because you're never
meant to do that.
Or He becomes
the cornerstone.
No middle ground.
And when we talk
about cornerstone,
it's hard to get our minds
around what that's
talking about.
Do you remember
when we were kids
and we were going to school
and you first learned
about plate tectonics?
Remember how you learned
that this theory,
this kind of geological theory
that you have,
you know,
all the continents
and you have the land masses
and you have the mountains
and the valleys
and you have all the topography,
the contours of the world
that you can see,
but the thing that really
defines the shape
of the world
that we can see
is actually way down deep
where we can't see.
It's the kind of
these plates
that are floating
on the mantle
of the earth
and they move
and thus we have
continental drift.
Remember learning this?
Plate tectonics.
You're like,
yeah,
I was just thinking
about that.
If you don't remember
learning it,
you should have learned it.
That's what we learn.
That's how our world works.
On an ideological level,
on an ideological level,
just as the world
that we see,
the shape of that world
is largely determined
by the rock underneath,
the bedrock
that we can't see.
So our world views,
our assumptions,
the place from which
we reason,
not so much
the reasoning itself
but the place
from which we reason,
is almost entirely shaped
by bedrock assumptions.
These plates
that are the bedrock
at the very foundation
upon which we build
our world view.
And we all have
a world view.
And what Jesus
is saying is,
you'll either be crushed
because you're trying
to be an owner
in a world
where you're the tenant,
or I become that bedrock.
I become the plate
underneath your world view.
I become the foundation,
the cornerstone
upon which
you build everything else.
It's an entire
redefining
from the ground up
of the entire way
that you see yourself,
God,
meaning,
purpose,
existence,
identity,
flourishing,
freedom.
So for example,
for example,
I'll just give you
one example.
For Jesus to become
our cornerstone
means that he becomes
the bedrock upon which
our definition of
something like freedom
rests,
right?
Unlike Ockham
or Locke
or Justice Kennedy,
there is a parallel
understanding of freedom
that goes all the way
back through Aquinas,
Augustine,
all the way back
to Jesus.
It's parallel
and yet utterly distinct,
but it runs all
throughout history.
From Genesis 3,
you have this one
definition of freedom,
and then when Jesus
comes,
you have another
definition of freedom.
And what they would
say is this,
that freedom is not
just the ability
to choose,
but to choose well.
In other words,
it's the freedom
to choose
that for which
you were made.
That's freedom.
And you were made,
friends,
you were made
for the love of God.
Like a fish
was made for water
and can only flourish
when it is thoroughly
immersed in water,
you were made
for the love of God.
And you will not flourish,
you will not be free
unless you are immersed
in that love,
unless you are immersed
on the kind of love
that we see on display
on the cross of Christ.
You will not be free
unless you are able
to choose that love,
to plunge into it,
to be immersed in it.
But the promise is this,
the promise that Jesus
gives to us
in John chapter 15
is this,
the more we are
immersed in that love,
the more we abide
in that love,
the more we will
bear fruit,
the more we will become
and our lives will become
God's vineyards
in this world.
Let's pray.
Our Father in heaven,
we have just said
that these are things
that we cannot be convinced
of intellectually,
Lord,
that this is not ultimately
an intellectual issue.
It's a profoundly
spiritual issue.
We need your Holy Spirit
to take these words
to illuminate
where this is true
in our hearts
and then to illuminate
for us
the compelling,
otherworldly love
of Jesus Christ
to melt our hearts
that we would see
the beauty
of the invitation
to walk in freedom
by plunging
into that love
just as you plunged
into the world
to show it to us.
And we pray this,
Lord,
in your Son's holy name.
Amen.