Timestamp
- 10:35 - Introduction & Welcome
- 14:38 - We have changed our name from Frontline City to Crowd Church
- 18:49 - Mark's Gospel - The Parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1-12)
- 22:10 - What are parables?
- 23:20 - The Parable of the Tenants Introduction
- 24:56 - The Joy of Heaven
- 26:04 - The Tenants in the story
- 26:47 - Leadership is really stewardship
- 28:20 - The role of Leadership
- 29:19 - The deeper role of Leadership
- 30:00 - What is repentance?
- 31:25 - Dealing with the bad tenants
- 32:00 - Who are the servants?
- 33:06 - The distinctness of Jesus
- 35:00 - What about our challenge?
- 41:40 - Worship - Worthy of It All
- 49:41 - Catchup
- 54:04 - What's coming up and close.
Jesus speaking in a parable is called the Parable of the Tenants. And I've called my talk today this, how fruitful is your vineyard? Because for me, that's the big question that this parable raises.
What are parables?
Jesus used parables all the time, stories with hidden meaning. Parables are stories device designed to provoke a response.
You can either think, “nice story, thank you, Jesus” and then move on. Or you can engage with the story and work out where you fit in that story and what it means for you today. And so parables, they're just incredibly effective, powerful ways of teaching
This parable, Jesus told some 2000 years ago, today, will still have that same effect, it will discriminate it will divide, it will separators into one of those two groups, who say either, “well, nice parable, thanks, Jesus” and then get back on with life. For those who think, “hang on a second, there might be something in this, he might be describing me here, there might be something for me today in this parable”
I wonder which of those two groups we will be in.
The parable of the tenants
Now, this parable is called the parable of the tenants. And it basically works along with the ideas that we still have in today's society, where you have the landowners: those who own and rent out the land; and then you have the tenants: those who work the land on behalf of someone else.
The way that the tenants would pay for the use of that land in the time that Jesus spoke is that when harvest time came, the fruit would be gathered and given to the owner.
And then some would be kept back for those tenants, they would live on it or sell it for profit. It was a pretty good economic system that worked for everyone.
And Jesus uses this relationship to shape his story, his parable. He says there was a man who planted a vineyard carefully, deliberately, with the intention of wine.
After all, well, it doesn't matter if you're planting Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, you're planning in it for a yield, a harvest for fruit for wine, for joy, for celebration, that is the purpose.
And in this parable, the landowner is God - which makes perfect sense, if you think about it, because everything belongs to God, He is the ultimate landowner, he is the source, He is the Creator, he is the origin, he is the first cause of all things. They all belong to Him.
The Joy of Heaven
God’s desire is for joy and celebration. God is supremely interested, in joy. CS Lewis said, “Joy is the serious business of heaven”.
So God is the landowner. The Jewish people were the vineyard. And we know this because right throughout the Old Testament, the Jewish nation was referred to as God's vineyard. It was a metaphor or an image that helps those people understand, first of all, they were not their own. Their lives belong to God. They were his vineyard.
And secondly, well that God required some sort of fruit From the harvest from them
God, the landowner plants a vineyard, humanity, people from whom he desires fruit.
The Tenants
We've got the landowner, the vineyard owner, who employs tenants to care for the vineyard, to steward the vineyard, to steward his people.
On one level, the first level, these tenants were the religious and political leaders of Jesus's day. This is important to understand, the tenants are the leaders. That is a big idea.
Nothing and no one that we ever lead are truly ours, they belong to God, we are only ever merely stewards of that which God has entrusted to us.
I used to be a schoolteacher, but my classes those pupils, they weren't ever really mine. They belong to God, first and foremost, they were his. And that is a very powerful idea. It means God cared for them and loved them more than I could ever care for them or love them. And he had merely appointed me as a steward over them.
And now I lead the church in the church, but it's not my church, they're not my people, they are God's first and foremost. And once again, God has appointed me to steward his people.
Think about your family, your business.
Imagine the impact of seeing the family that we lead, or the business that we lead, or the team that we lead, or the nation that lead leads, imagine if we saw it not as there for us, as ours to produce fruit and resources for our benefit to serve us. But imagine if we saw them as belonging to God, as God's belonging to a God who loves them and cares for them and is deeply, deeply interested in their well being.
Imagine how that might impact your leadership, your stewardship.
The role of Leadership
And so the point of leadership, the point of stewardship, according to this parable that Jesus told is to nurture people who belong to God, who are loved by God, to nurture them into fruitfulness. The point is fruitfulness. To help others become fruitful. That is what leaders do.
But what does that look like? What does fruitfulness look like? What does it mean? On one level, it might look like that team that you lead, or that business that you run, or your family or your classroom, really investing in those people, so that they can thrive and be fruitful. That's what good stewardship, good leadership looks like.
The deeper role of Leadership
Now, on a slightly deeper level, more spiritual level. The Bible describes human fruitfulness with words like love, joy, peace, patience, self-control. These are called fruits of God's Spirit at work within us, values that we as leaders are called to cultivate within the groups that we lead and have influence over.
So at an even deeper level, I think that what Jesus was primarily talking about here, the fruit of this vineyard was first and foremost, repentance.
What is Repentance?
It simply means to recognise where your thinking is faulty, where your thinking doesn't line up with God's thinking, and to change and align your thinking in line with God’s. It's a course correction to align with God.
You can't really produce spiritual fruit like peace or joy, without repentance, without a change of thinking, without aligning how you think with how God thinks as revealed in the Bible, without recognising that God's way is the best possible way to live.
Dealing with the Bad Tenants
You will notice when you read the parable, that these tenants, they were not good tenants. They were bad tenants.
God sends along his servants to the tenants to collect the fruit, which is right. But the tenants reject the servants. They won't pay to the landowner, what is just to the landowner.
Who are the servants?
Well, these servants are the prophets of old. They are those who challenged the leaders of the nation throughout the Old Testament, to repent, to change their thinking, to produce fruit. And what we see throughout the history of the Old Testament, the history of Israel, the history of the world, is that those prophets, they were silenced. They were killed. The powers that be, have always silenced their prophets.
And Jesus, in particular, is referring to John the Baptist, one of those prophets who called out the hypocrisy of his day and of the leaders of his day. He called them into repentance. And so if you know the story, you'll know that King Herod had him arrested and beheaded.
Today, we might think about prophets who have called nations to peace and to justice and to equality, racial equality. People like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, people who were silenced or even killed. Of course, they were never truly silenced.
The distinctness of Jesus
So how does this parable and will, in the end, the landowner, he sends his only beloved Son, someone unique and distinct from all who had gone on before. Someone with an inheritance claim to the vineyard, someone with all the authority of the owner, of God, because he was God's Son.
What did the tenants do? They killed him.
Jesus is, of course talking about himself. He's talking about his divine nature as the unique beloved Son of God. He's talking about his purpose, as the world's greatest leader, his purpose to bring forth fruit from humanity, to lead humanity into true joy, true peace, true patience.
He's talking about the sort of death that he would die at the hand of sinful men. The religious and political authorities of the day. He is talking about his death on the cross.
Got the landowner, plants, a vineyard, humanity desiring good fruit, he entrusts humanity to leaders who actually carry on as if the world and if the people belong to them as if the people were there for their benefit. So God sends His prophets to request fruit from those leaders, but they ignore the prophets, they silence the prophets, they beat and even kill the prophets.
So God sends his son and they kill him, too.
What’s our challenge?
I think the parable challenges us to see ourselves as God's vineyard, we are God's vineyard, that means that your life is not your own. You belong to God, you are precious to God, you are the object of his attention and affection because you are his vineyard.
This parable shows us that God's desire for your life is that it would be fruitful, fruitful in every sense, but especially in that sense of bearing fruit like joy and peace, what the Apostle Paul in Galatians calls the fruit of the Spirit. That is God's desire for your life.
There's a challenge for all of us in those areas that we lead, whether it be a team, or a family, or a classroom, or a business or city or a nation. There's a challenge the people we lead, they're not ours, they're not there for our benefit. They are Gods, they belong to Him, they are precious to him, he loves them deeply more than we could ever love them, it is not your vineyard.
And actually, that's an incredible relief.
I remember when I was teaching and there was the really annoying kid in class who'd be so disruptive. They would make silly noises or poke the kid next to him, and I’m about to lose it and blow my top but then I would just say to myself, “John, That boy is loved by God. He is precious to God, he belongs to God.” And that would completely change my emotional response to that kid, and therefore my behaviour/
In all those things that we lead, the goal is to lead those who have been entrusted to us, those we've been called to steward into fruitfulness.
I think the parable also challenges us to consider how we respond to difficult people, like those prophets of old who put us in our place who gives up when requested feedback and criticism? Will we be humble enough to listen, to repent, to course-correct our thinking? Or will we silence them and ignore them?
I said at the start of the parable that these stories are designed to provoke a response to discriminate, we can either think well, “Nice story, Jesus, thanks for that today, John.” and then move on and get on with our lives. Or we can engage with the story. And we can work out where we are in the story and what that means for us today.
And so I pray for each of us as we listen today that you would actually hear God's speaking into your heart, leading you into his truth. And I pray that your vineyard, your life, those things that you lead would be incredibly fruitful and that you would lead them into joy and peace and all of the fruit that God's Spirit brings.