This time love having the kids in here and hearing them sing. Now, as a reminder, we're looking at it's called the parable of the tenants. I I'm going to make a confession here. You know, the the title of our parables are not inspired. Your study Bibles just put those on what the editors think. Almost every time I start to study a parable, I feel like the parable has been misnamed. You ever notice that? I mean, they call it the parable of the prodigal son, but we know it's a parable of two sons. I think they have the emphasis maybe on the wrong one. And here we have like the parable of the tenants. That's what our study Bible calls it. But the more I study this, it's really a parable about the crucified son. What will people do with Jesus? He is the chief cornerstone that was rejected. So the focus of the parable is not so much the tenants, it's much more the Son of God who is sent into this vineyard, as Jesus in Mark 11 goes into the city, only eventually to be crucified. Here, the very next chapter, we have the Son of the Master going into the vineyard, only to be crucified. And so this parable of the crucified Son, or parable of the tenants, as our Bible calls it, is a parallel or a mirror of the triumphal entry So let's talk a little bit about the parable, and then here's what I want to do today. What Jesus does in this parable is masterful. He shocks everybody. There comes a point where people are just shocked. And what Jesus is doing when he shocks people, there are certain cultural narratives that the culture believes, and Jesus is overturning these in the parable. That's why they're shocked. And so the way I want to approach this parable is the same way Jesus is telling this parable. We're going to talk about what are those cultural narratives, or put in layman's terms, what do people in this world tend to believe about God, tend to believe about themselves, and how Jesus seeks to reshape or overturn those things. That's what we're going to talk about when we get to the actual parable. But let's take a few minutes and talk about the imagery. Verse 1 tells us, a man planted a vineyard and built a wall around it, dug a pit for the wine press and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. Now, no Jewish person would fail to recognize the imagery here. The vine is, of course, Israel. We know that from Isaiah chapter 5. God spoke of Israel as a vine. Anytime Israel hears the word vine, they think of themselves. Also, we know that just from history, that imagery of the vine in the vineyard, it's not only all over the Old Testament, it's all over kind of the relics in the first century. The great historian Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that when you walked into Herod's temple there, you would see images of vine at certain places. That's a picture that this is the house of Israel. And so no first century Jew would fail to recognize the significance of the relationship between the vine and the master. It is a relationship between God and Israel. And so the master of the vineyard rents out to tenant farmers. Very common in first century Rome. The landowners would farm out their land to tenant farmers. They'd go live comfortably in the cities. This was common in Jewish culture. It was common in Roman and Greco culture. A landlord would not expect that much of an income. I think historians tell us that the most a landlord would require is up to half of the wine, but apparently that was pretty rare. Normally, it's just a way to keep and cultivate that land. And so the tenant farmers would do actually pretty well on this land. The vineyard would take years to cultivate. So maybe for a couple of years, the landlord or the owner or the master would not seek to take any crop or take any money from the tenant farmers. But there would come a point where the harvest would really come in, and then the landlord would go and collect. Now, the reason it's important for the landlord to collect is there are laws on most books in other cultures that we don't have in the Western world. These, of course, are called squatter's laws. And you know that if somebody squats on your land or starts to develop a piece of land, that if the owner does not come and take an interest in that land, the government or the culture can deed that over to the squatter. It's kind of foreign to us in the Western world, but not that uncommon in other cultures. I remember when I was visiting Peru, I was outside of one of the cities and there was a huge, it might have been 70,000 people at this kind of town. And I said, tell me about the history of the town. He said, the town's only been here for like 20 years. And he said, this was actually somebody's property. But people came out of the mountains and started building houses on it. And because the landlord or the owner didn't take an interest in this land, eventually the government just deeded it over to everybody that had a house on the land. And now it's a totally developed town. So when you think about this parable of the tenants, there's something similar going on. The landlord has to take an interest and at least collect something, otherwise the squatter's rights are going to take effect. Now we're not there yet, but it's possible that that law is actually the music in the background. that when they say to themselves, we're finally going to crucify the sun and the inheritance will be ours, if he doesn't collect in due time, this land will come to us. So maybe that's the music in the background here. So they build protection. You can see here the vineyards are vulnerable to wild animals and robbers. They have hedges. They build hedges around them, sometimes thorny hedges. You could have moats. There are times they do stone walls, but you have to protect the vineyard from thieves and you have to protect it from wild animals. And right in the middle of the vineyard, they would put what was called a wine press. I have a picture of an ancient wine press behind us here. There's a number of different ways they would build these wine presses. For those that were not that well off, they would maybe just take a stone, just a single large stone, and squish the grapes on that. And wherever it ran off, they would try to collect. Other times you'd have one like what's before us. There on the edges they would crush the grapes. It would all run to the center where somebody would collect it and put it in wine skins there. They might have a long trough that ran down to where it would collect and collect the wine down there. But that's the picture that we get here. And then the final picture we have is there was a tower that was built right in the center. And they would build these towers for security. They would build it for storage, a place to store the wine and a place to store the grapes. And it was also a place to secure them, even from the elements, should the weather get bad. So, a lot of reasons they would build a tower. So Jesus paints for us this picture, very common picture, that you'd get in Palestine in the first century, of the landowner and the tenants. And next comes the unexpected twist, there's the killing fields, verse 2 through 8. The season is over, the master goes to collect his fruit, probably just a token amount so he can maintain ownership of the land. They could give him it in currency, they could give this to him in wine or grapes. He sends a servant in, verse 2 and 3, and they beat him and send him away empty-handed. It happens a second time, and then it happens a third time, and then from what Mark tells us, there's a series of people, servants, that the Master has sent in. Each is beaten, and each is shamed, and each is sent on his way. Now, who are these servants? Well, God is the owner. Israel is the vineyard. The tenants are obviously the religious leaders. And in this parable, it's fairly obvious that the servants that are being sent in, these are the prophets of old, right down to John the Baptist. And every time God sends a prophet to his people, they reject that message, persecute him or her, and send him away. It happened with Isaiah. He was sawed in half. It happened with Jeremiah. They threw him into a pit. Amos had to run for his life. Zechariah was stoned. Micah was smashed in the face. There's a long history here of God's people rejecting the prophets and rejecting the rule of God in their lives. Jesus, in Matthew 23, verse 34 through 35, puts it this way. He says, Therefore I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you kill and crucify, some you flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, he says, from the innocent blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah. Now, this really preaches in English, doesn't it? You persecute the prophets from what? A to Z, you see it? Abel to Zechariah. And it actually communicates well, but that's clearly not what Jesus is saying. Because in Hebrew and in Greek, these are not the first, and that's the first letter of the alphabet, but the Z is not the last. That's actually in the middle of both alphabets. But Jesus is talking about A to Z in a certain sense. Because in the Hebrew Bible, the very first martyr in Scripture is who? It's Abel in Genesis chapter 4. Cain kills Abel. His righteous blood cries out from the ground. But in the Hebrew Bible, not in our Bible, the Hebrew Bible, the last book is the book of Chronicles. They don't have 1st and 2nd Chronicles, it's just Chronicles. And the very last martyr in the Hebrew Bible is Zechariah. And so Jesus, in a sense, is saying, from the very first martyr, all the way to the end, we can use the English, from A to Z, every time I send someone to bring you a message, you end up persecuting him and sending him away. And so finally, in verse 6, he had left one to send, it was his son, whom he loved. And he sent him to them saying, they will finally, or lastly, they will respect my son. We could do a whole message on the word lastly or finally. Finally, they will respect my son. The word respect here, it's a cool word. It's a Greek word, entrepo. It actually means to turn around. It's a word that just means turn and go the other way. It's kind of a picture of repentance. And so the Master says, when I send my son, surely that will cause these people to see how much I care for them. Surely they will see my ownership of this vineyard. There's no way they're going to do to my son what they've done to the former prophets. Finally, lastly, and yet they do. Verse 7 sounds crazy to us. The tenants come and say, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. But again, if we're talking about ancient laws, this kind of makes sense. The tenants feel like they have a right to the land. And so they think if we kill the son, that's the last one he'll send, the vineyard will belong to us. Finally, there's a confrontation, verse 9 through 12. And I just want to read this verse. Jesus here says in verse 10, haven't you read the scripture? The stone that the builders reject has become the capstone. The Lord has done this. This is marvelous in our eyes. That's a quote out of Psalm 118. I just want to make one point on this before we talk about these cultural narratives that Jesus is overturning. Why does Jesus quote this verse? Because it seems to be so out of place. And yet it makes complete sense if we understand the history. In Psalm 118, the picture is of Israel as the cornerstone to all the empires of the world. Now a cornerstone was that really big stone they would start the building with. And that would be the one upon which all of the stones would rest. And so the angle had to be right. And these were massive stones. I mean, we know from historians that the ones at the temple were like 36 feet long by 2 feet by 3 feet. We have no idea how they quarried these. There's another one near the temple of another building that's 32 by 2 by 2 or something like that, massive cornerstones. And in Psalm 118, we find out that God gave Israel as a gift to the world, that Israel is supposed to be the foundation of righteousness for the entire world, but the world rejected Israel. Now, what Jesus does here is incredibly offensive to a first century reader, because he says this, the same way those pagans rejected Israel, Israel now has rejected the Messiah. Israel has rejected God's plan for them. You can see how offensive this is, and you can see why we have verses like verse 12 that comes right after it. Then they looked for a way to arrest him. Gee, you think? You know? Jesus here is not being very culturally sensitive with this picture from Psalm 118. So what I want to do is talk about, we'll go as far as we can, maybe five or six cultural narratives, or we'll call them short-sighted views or myths, of what people commonly believe about God, salvation, sin, things like that. And Jesus here shocks people with a bit of a different picture. And the first one we've actually talked about, the parable of the prodigal son, we did about a month ago or two months ago, and it's this. So let's call it myth number one. We'll call it the myth of sin. Sin is basically breaking the rules. Sin is basically breaking the rules. Now, when I talk to people in our culture, especially a place like Western Connecticut, we talk to people on the streets, we talk to people in the workplace, and a word like sin comes up. What comes up in people's minds is basically breaking the rules. God has set up some rules, people break those rules. Religion is an attempt to stop people from breaking the rules of God, whatever they may be. But that's the picture. We have a very legal view of sin, that sin is just breaking rules. And it would totally depend on your background as to what those rules might be. So for example, in the Western world, God set up rules about sex, rules about gender, and things like that, and sin is breaking those rules. But if you come from a progressive background, maybe you have a different view. Maybe your view is God has set up rules about the environment, rules about how to treat the poor, and sin means you're breaking or violating those rules. In Eastern cultures, kind of patriarchy-type cultures, they would say God has set up rules about the family. Father's the head, the first son the heir, and sin is when we violate those laws or break those rules. So whatever your background is, almost across the board when we hear the word sin, what comes to mind is somebody is saying that people are breaking the rules of God. And yet that completely misses the point of what Jesus is going after here. I would dare say that's probably even dangerous definition of sin. Because what you start to do is you start to divide the world into those that keep the rules and those that what? break the rules. And those that feel like they're keeping the rules can sometimes feel very self-righteous against those they feel are breaking the rules. So we have to be careful about that rigid definition. But let's say this. In the parable, what do we see? Sin is not just breaking rules. Well, they're obviously breaking some rules. What are they doing? They're seeking to enjoy life apart from God. They're seeking life apart from God. They're what? They're running from God. They don't want a relationship with God, and that's the problem. In our parable, there is a breach in fellowship, there's a breach in relationship. I think the best way to put this might be, what is sin, biblically? Sin is when we enjoy the assets of the kingdom without enjoying the king. We enjoy the assets of creation without realizing there's a creator behind it. Seeking life apart from God. Seeking to enjoy life apart from God. It's not as simple as we break rules or don't break rules. It's much more than that. There's a breach in fellowship with God. This really comes out in the parable of the two sons, doesn't it? You know the prodigal son runs off into a far country, and then we find out by the end of the parable, the elder brother there is also putting up some resistance to the father. He looks at his father and says, I'm not like the prodigal son that ran off. I keep your rules, I keep your laws, I've done all this, and you don't make me marry with my friends. Jesus is trying to show in that parable that it's not just people who are breaking rules. What are they doing? They're seeking to enjoy life apart from God. Here's what the prodigal and the elder brother have in common. They both want the assets of the father, but they don't want the father. They both want the inheritance. They both want the farm. They want to get all that the father can give them financially and economically, but they don't love the father. You've got the same thing here. Let us kill the son and the what? Inheritance will be ours. They're doing the same thing, the prodigal and the elder did. They're seeking to enjoy life apart from God. And if you read cover to cover in the Bible, I think you'll discover that this relationship idea is all over the place. I mean, it's everywhere. Once you see it, it's everywhere. You ever drive around here in the fall? I mean, early fall. And you haven't thought about looking for leaves yet on trees? They change colors, as you know. And then as soon as you realize it, you look up and you what? It's like everywhere, you know? As soon as you realize that the Bible is not so much about who's keeping and who's breaking rules, it's more about this breach of fellowship, and God wants to bring people into fellowship with Him, you'll start to see it everywhere. You'll start to see in Genesis 4, when Cain kills Abel, what does it say? Cain went out of the presence of the Lord. Listen to that language. You'll read about Gomer in Hosea, in the book of Hosea, where his wife runs away from a relationship with him. You'll read Isaiah that says, all we like sheep have gone astray. You hear that language? That's running from God. That's running from a relationship with God. Isaiah doesn't look at the people and say, you're rule keepers, you're rule breakers. He doesn't do that. He says, look at how you're running away from a God that loves you. You start to see it everywhere. You see it with the prodigal. You see it here with the tenants. I just want to make one point before I move on. It takes incredible honesty, supernatural honesty, to see this in ourselves. To be honest with yourself and look past the rules you keep and past the rules you think you break and say, my heart is running from God. It takes supernatural honesty to the point where when you finally do it, you'll be amazed that it took you that long. It's almost like the dam breaks when the love flows to God. I've been a pastor for 18 years, I think. About 18 years. And in that time, you'll sit down with a lot of families. I've sat down with husbands and wives. I've sat down with families and teenage kids. You sit down with a family and their kids, and sometimes the parents need to repent. A lot of times the parents need to repent, right? I've been there, you've been there. But there are times when you might look at a teenager and it's just so obvious they're running from a parent that loves them and cares about them. That happens a lot, right? And you can look at that child. I mean, if we were all there, and 100 of us or 200 of us were watching, we'd all go, they're obviously running from a relationship from their mom, or running from a relationship from their dad. And we could all, and I could look and say, it's so obvious to everybody else, but I look and I say, you're running from a relationship with somebody who loves you, and I've never had anybody agree with me the first time. They always look back and say, no, I'm not, and they give 15 reasons why they're not. There's something about relationships, and there's such a stubbornness in our hearts, and yet, the very first moment they're willing to admit there's a breach in the relationship, and I'm running from somebody that loves me, there's an amazing repair that can take place. There's something supernatural that has to take place in our relationship with God. It's not just that we're saved by grace, though we are. Even the understanding that I am running away from God is something that God needs to reveal to us and show us in our hearts. There's a supernatural understanding because there is a resistance that we tend to put up. All right, here's myth number two. Myth number two. So myth number one, sin is just breaking the rules, but Jesus here shows it's not just that. There's a big breach in the relationship. Number two, acknowledging God is unnecessary as long as we are living good lives. or the only thing that matters is that we live a good life. Again, as we talk to people in our culture today, especially here in New England, this is the kind of stuff we might hear. This is the kind of stuff I might say or you might say. Maybe you'll invite somebody to believe in God or believe in Jesus or consider the life of Jesus, and a lot of times I'll hear things like this, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you live a good life. It doesn't matter what you believe, it doesn't matter who you trust, it doesn't matter what you believe about God, religion, scripture, anything like that, so long as you live a good life. And the idea there is you don't have to acknowledge God in virtually any way. As long as you're a good person, everything is okay. Now, I'm not going to get into the idea today that at the outset that makes no sense, because what you believe definitely affects your behavior. I'm not saying it affects your behavior overnight, but give it enough time and it'll affect your behavior. If you believe that this is all there is in this world, this is it, this is the end of the road, that is going to affect what you do with your life now. But if you believe there's an eternity, and you believe that there's a God, and someday we spend it with Him, or we stand before Him and give an account, that's going to change the way you live today, too. I'm not saying it changes overnight, but it's like braces on your teeth, you know? You put braces on a child's teeth, they don't straighten up overnight, but give them a few years, and those teeth get in line with the braces. Give your heart enough time and it starts to get in line with your belief. Put that aside for a minute, though. Notice a few things about this parable. Number one, the people are incredibly hardworking. They're incredibly hardworking tenants. Number two, they're very cooperative one with another, and that's key here. It's a community of cooperation. Jesus brings that out. And number three, they're seeking to make the community the best they can make it for the most possible people. And what I'm saying here is the only problem with these people, the only problem, it's not that they're not living good lives in that sense, but they've cut off their relationship to God. They've cut off their relationship to the master. And it'd be very easy for them in the parable to say, look, it doesn't matter what we believe. It doesn't matter whether we believe in God and Jesus, so long as we're living good lives. But Jesus undercuts this one. Jesus here with a prophetic voice shows that it does matter what you believe. It's not enough just to live a good life. And I think when we really think this through, it actually makes a lot of sense. So let me tell you a story about a widow and her son. As a widow and a son, she raises him. Let's call it a really tough neighborhood. She works really hard to put him through school. She struggles to make ends meet. She gets a second job. She does everything to make her son a success. And in the process, she pours her life into sharing her values with her son. Son, I don't want you to steal. I don't want you to loot. I don't want you to go and mistreat people. I want you to take care of the poor. She pours all these values into the son and really works hard so he has a good place to live. She gets him into the best possible school in the neighborhood. And after graduation, the man goes off from college, he goes into career, and he lives a really good life. He gives to the poor, he does a lot of really good things, he doesn't mistreat people, he doesn't steal, he tries to take care of his neighbors, but he never recognizes his mother. He never sends her a card. When she calls, he just rolls it over to voicemail. Anytime her name is brought up, he just kind of rolls his eyes like this. And the only time he wants anything to do with his mother is if he's kind of forced together in some kind of family function. That doesn't set too well with any of us. I would step out on a limb and say, there's a man who stands in need of forgiveness. Now suppose that man has a friend and they're talking and he says, tell me about the relationship with your mother. And he looks back at his friend and says, yeah, I live a really good life. I give to the poor. I take care of people. But I don't have anything to do with my mother. Again, I think he'd be better off saying, I'm a really bad person, I don't give to the poor, I steal from people, and I don't like my mother either, you know? I think we could actually stomach that. But to say, I'm going to live a really good life, and be completely unthankful to one that poured themselves into me, something doesn't jibe there for me, I don't know if it does for you. Somebody stands in need of forgiveness. The idea that Jesus is confronting here is that people are saying in the parable, we live a good life, we're in cooperation, we have an idea, but we don't want the master in our lives. And Jesus shows there's a community that stands in need of repentance. Number three is this. Here's a myth of religion. Serving God is a definitive mark of loving God. And what you find in this parable is that we can run from God, and at the same time, give the appearance of maybe serving God. Because here they are in the vineyard. They're serving, they're showing productivity. Again, we're talking about the religious leaders here, right? And these religious leaders are really trying to serve the vineyard. They're trying to make the most of what's going on. The religious leaders give the appearance of serving God. But in reality, they're working against the purposes of God. Everybody believed, by the way, that these Jewish leaders were doing a good thing. I think if you did a survey... See, this is the problem. One of the problems is we know the end of the story. You know what Jesus says about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the scribes, and when you know that, it poisons your view of them. But if you went back into the first century, and you walked around Jerusalem and said, what do you think of the scribes? What do you think of the Pharisees? They'd all say, they are fantastic. They love everybody here. They take care of people. They serve God with their whole heart, and I aspire to be like them. We've probably been poisoned by Jesus' words to misunderstand the admiration that people had for them. Let me tell you how admired the Pharisees and the scribes were in the first century. In Matthew 15, Jesus starts to rebuke the scribes and the Pharisees, and His own disciples get embarrassed. They come back to Jesus, and you could just read it. You picture this. They're looking at Jesus going, Jesus, are you sure you want to say that? These are good people. They're kind of on our team, aren't they? So the picture in the first century of the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, they are serving God, and they're everything that everybody should be. But in this parable, Jesus shows us that those that are laboring in the vineyard, serving Israel, serving God, are actually out of alignment with God's heart. In other words, serving God is not synonymous with loving God. Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, he would say this, he would say, don't preach the gospel in order to save your own soul. Don't preach the gospel to save your own soul. What would Spurgeon mean by that? Spurgeon is saying that a lot of people go into ministry, pastors, missionaries, but let's be honest, it can be anybody. And you go not for the glory of God and not because you love people and you want to glorify God. You go because it can become a badge of self-righteousness for you. You go because you feel like you're serving God, and that's synonymous with loving God. And Spurgeon reminds us that's not true. You can be very busy with your hands in the dirt, be busy serving in the vineyard, and at the same time, ought to step with God. I think Jesus makes this point very well in Matthew 7. Remember what he says when he talks about prayer? Don't be like the hypocrites. They love to stand in the synagogues, being seen of other people. Don't pray like them. They keep babbling like the pagans. When you fast, don't look somber like the hypocrites do. Prayer and fasting, those are good things. But Jesus shows, while they're in the act of doing those things, their heart is far from God, and they're doing those for all the wrong reasons. Someone can run for God while giving the appearance of serving God. That's a danger. Here's myth number four. Our spiritual decisions are objective. This is the most philosophical point I'll make today. We make them after careful deliberation of the facts. I think this is one we have to park on, though, just for a minute. With the exception of the, we'll call it the philosophical community, almost everybody believes this. They believe what they believe about God and what they believe about religion and Jesus is based on objectivity. Almost everybody in our culture, with little exception, believes that here's what you do. You look at the evidence and then you make a decision. There is a God or there isn't a God. Or you look at the evidence of the resurrection. Jesus did rise or he didn't rise. We believe that we are very objective in our religious and moral decisions. It's almost like people in our culture believe they set up two columns, evidence for God, evidence against God, and then they objectively weigh that and make a decision there is or there is not a God. So we believe that our spiritual decisions are objective. We deliberate the facts and we make careful decisions. But Jesus shows us here that to believe or not to believe is very much a matter of the heart. Why did they reject the master of the vineyard? Because they don't believe he's the master of the vineyard? No, it's because of what? They want the vineyard. They want the inheritance. Here's my point. Do you realize that they have way too much interest bound up to even make an objective decision here? I mean, if you go to these people, the tenants, and say, he is the master or he isn't the master, he has a rightful place or he doesn't have a rightful place, every one of them is going to say, he's not the real master, we are. Why? They have a vested interest. Do you think they can be objective? Do you think they can really deliberate the facts? To believe or not to believe is a matter of the heart. And it's one of those things at the philosophical level, it's been overturned a million times, but I think at the street level, we still believe this. Thomas Nagel, NYU, in his book, The Last Ways, puts it this way. He says, I want atheism to be true. And I'm made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent, well-informed people I know are religious believers. The great philosopher Aldous Huxley attributes at least his decisions in life to not wanting... I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. What are Huxley saying? What is Nagel saying? They're just being honest. Now, I have no doubt that there are Christians that believe there's a God because they want to believe there's a God. And they believe in Jesus because they want to believe in Jesus. It's a matter of the heart. Christians have always maintained that. It's a matter of the heart, too. But I push back against this idea that everybody in our culture is objective, that everybody's deliberate in weighing the evidence. Nagel's right. Huxley's right. We have motives for what we want to believe. It really is more a matter of the heart than we care to admit. faith in what you believe it's true there are facts that we deliberate but then it's a matter of do we want to believe this or do we not want to believe this it's a real good picture of this not only in the parable where they reject the Sun and the prophets not based on the evidence but based on their decision in the heart But in John 11, I can't think of a better place that this is unpacked in the Gospels than this. The chief priests and the Pharisees gather the council. Verse 47, what are we to do? This man performs many signs. Jesus is performing miracles. And one of them says this, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation. What are the chief priests, what are the religious leaders saying? They're not saying, well, based on the evidence, he's probably not the Messiah, so we're not going to believe in him, we're going to put him on a cross. What are they saying? They're saying, yeah, we're going to lose our capital, we're going to lose our inheritance, we're going to lose our nation. I'm simply making the point, we're not as objective as we think. When you start to think about, is there a God? If you're not a Christian here, I'm glad you're here. And if you are a Christian, I'm glad you're here. And I'm not trying to necessarily get you from unbelief to belief. I just want you to take your foot off the base a little bit today, if it works this way, OK? If you're here and you're not a Christian, can you at least admit that you have a huge vested interest in the question, is there a God? A huge vested interest in the question, is Jesus really his son? Was he raised from the dead? Because if there is a God, he has a big claim on your life. And if Jesus did rise from the dead, he has a big claim on your life. You have way too much interest bound up in that question to be completely objective. And as Christians, I think we have to be doubly careful, because you can claim you believe in God and claim you believe in Jesus, but don't you think we have certain interests where we might want an alternative view of Jesus instead of the biblical one? So we've got to be careful. Here's the best illustration I can come up with, one that speaks to my heart at least. Helps me to understand I'm probably not as objective as I think. Let's say that you're called to the jury. You're called to a local jury. Let's call it a civil trial. And you get into the jury room, and you find out what the case is about. The case is about your father. He's being sued. He's a multimillionaire. He's being sued, right? So your father is about to be sued. You are someone that when he passes, you're going to get a massive inheritance. Do you think you can sit on that jury and be objective? Boy, if you can, bless you, because I can't. You have too much interest in that case. And the court would tell you, you need to recuse yourself because you have way too much interest in this case. I'm simply making the point, is there a God? Is the master really the master of the vineyard? There's a lot bound up in our hearts that we really don't care to admit, but it's there. And I'm simply making the argument that if you're not a Christian and you're saying, I've looked at the facts and there is no God, I've looked at the facts and Jesus didn't rise from the dead, can I at least get you to take your foot off the base this much? It's not completely the facts. You didn't completely deliberate. There's something in our hearts that makes us want or not want these things. I'm just calling us to recognize that here in the parable. Let's do two more here if we can. Number one, we'll call it the myth of self-assessment. And this is when Jesus really brings it to a head in verse 9. I'll read it in a minute. But I am an impartial judge of my own moral character. I doubt that any of us are really impartial judges of our own moral character. And notice what verse 9 says. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven't you read the scripture? And then verse 12, they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken a parable against them, and they were afraid of the crowd, so they went their way. What you have in a story like this is the tenants get really angry as Jesus starts to tell the story. You see that? When he talks about a master and an owner and they're killing the son and they're killing the servants, they start to get very angry on the inside. But then Jesus looks at them and says, I'm talking about you. And they realize that they get really angry at other people for the same things that they're committing. They're not a very good judge of their own moral character. Remember that story in the Old Testament, Nathan and Daniel? This is a really good parallel, where David commits adultery and then he commits a murder, and he doesn't feel that bad. All the while, David's murdering people and committing adultery. He's condemning other murderers, and he's condemning other adulterers. And Nathan comes and tells him a story about a man who had a little sheep. And then next door, there's a man who has a big flock. And that big flock man came and stole the little sheep from that little flock guy. And David gets enraged and says, that man must pay. And Nathan says, David, you're the man. Don't you see it? Jesus does something similar here. He tells a story where people are rejecting the Master. And he looks at them and says, don't you see? I'm talking about you. It's very easy to see things in other people that we don't see in ourselves. And I'll tell you this, we are very, very gracious with ourselves and probably very hard on other people. One of the great passages in Scripture for me is that Romans 1 and 2, where Paul says this, he says, oh man, I'm quoting King James here, you can tell, oh man, you know, he says, don't you see that you're gonna be judged by the same judgment that you judge other people? And this is why that's so relevant, because what Paul is saying is, there's people that say things like, it's not fair that God would judge me by his own righteous standard, and Paul is saying he doesn't have to. He can judge you by your own righteous standard. And so here's a picture. Imagine you and I, if we walked around, and every moral comment we ever made was written down in a book. You know, that mother's not very good. She let her kid eat jelly at the restaurant. I don't know, you know? Moral judgment goes in the book, you know? My neighbor, I can't stand him. His leaves blow in my yard. You know? That teacher is horrible for giving my child a D. Everybody knows my child worked really hard. Moral care, you know? That person, look at how loose they are, lascivious they are, they're bad. You know, all the moral judgments that you and I make go in a book. Put aside God's moral standard for a minute. Let's sit at the judgment seat, pull out that book and have that book read back to you. My question, do you think you could pass your own moral standard? I couldn't pass mine. That's what's happening in this parable. Jesus is showing them, you're not as righteous as you think. You've fallen off the boat in so many ways and you just don't see it. I want to close with this thought. Let's close with the last myth and it's this. The last myth tells us that God saves good people. And that's kind of the narrative, I think, that our culture believes. I know that's what my friends, a lot of them believe, that God comes to good people. God saves good people. He rescues good people. In other words, good people are people that God blesses and takes to heaven. Bad people are those that he puts that glass ceiling on. God saves good people. What's amazing about this parable is the kindness of the master is exaggerated. I mean, you and I, we know Jesus spoke this, but anybody listening to this for the first time would say, no way. No way, this would never happen. No master would ever be that long-suffering, especially in one of these shame-honor cultures. I mean, the moment he sent a servant in and they sent him away, the master's bringing the army to crush every tenant in there. It's this is exaggerated. They're all standing here reading this going this would never happen. This couldn't happen. Nobody has this much patience. Nobody has this much endurance. And we find in a passage like this is God's kindness is coming to the people, not because of their goodness, but despite it. He's not reaching out to those in the vineyard because they're good and because they work hard and because they treat these servants so well. He sends his son. Why? He sends his son, not because of them, but despite them. And in every one of us, something is true here of our own salvation if you're a believer in Christ. That we are saved by grace, not by works. God does not extend kindness to us because we deserve it. He didn't extend kindness and patience to us because we're better than most people. Truth is, we're probably not. We are in a relationship with God, not because of us, but despite us. It's by grace, and it's by grace alone. As we think about this Holy Week, that picture of grace ought to be in our minds. The sun was crucified there in the vineyard, and that that that that that fell upon the sun can count for us. Jesus is crucified on the cross and he brings us into a relationship with God when we put our faith in him And it's not because he owes us something. Oh, no Despite that it's because he's gracious and he's kind and he's loving and he extends this to us So before we close with a song, I just asked you this question. Have you have you crossed that line? Have you put your faith in Christ if you believed in him? not just assuming some of the things Jesus says here, but have you thought about the cross and the resurrection and said, God has given me this gift in Christ, not because I'm good, but despite it. And I'm no longer going to trust in my own way to God. I'm not going to trust in my own works. I'm going to put my faith in Jesus and Jesus alone. Have you crossed that line of faith? Have you made that step and made that commitment to Jesus? I invite you to do that today. That's something you can do even right now. Let's bow our heads and close our eyes and close the