In Hebrews 1:3 the scripture tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of [God’s] nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” And to that end, in the last couple of chapters we have seen Mark present different dimensions of Jesus’ divine nature, each displaying a different aspect of God’s character. In chapter 10 we see Jesus presented as the Good God, as the Savior, as our Sacrifice, as the Suffering Servant, as the Son of Man, and as the Son of David. In chapter 11, we see Jesus described as the Lord, as the coming King, and as the Righteous Judge.
These passages show that it’s simply bad theology to emphasize the characteristics of God in only one dimension, such as in God is love, without also taking into consideration His Lordship, His sovereignty, His holiness and the supreme judge of the earth. A lot of people are willing to accept the idea of a God, even perhaps Jesus as the Son of God, as long as He conforms to what they think God should be. God is ok as long as He is serving me and insuring that I have a good life. But a God that judges me, that determines what is right or wrong for me, that may send me to either heaven or hell, that’s a God that most people do not want to accept nor believe in. However, a god that you determine is not really God at all; it’s an idol formed according to your design. God said to Moses in Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am.” God is who He is, and as He has been from eternity past, and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth according to how He has revealed Himself through His Word.
So Jesus’ divinity is the issue that we see before the religious leaders of Israel in the passage we are studying today. They cannot dispute His manifested power to heal or raise the dead or feed thousands of people from a few loaves of bread. Nor can they dismiss the truth of His teaching. But they will not submit to Him as Lord. They will not submit to His rule and authority over them. Actually, in spite of the evidence that Jesus has given, they have determined that they will not have this man rule over them. And yet I believe that they had overwhelming evidence to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah. But they would reject Him and plot to kill Him because they would not have Him be Lord over them. And that really is the issue today as well. People are willing to believe that Jesus existed, even believe that He is the Savior, yet for a lot of people their faith fails at the point of declaring Jesus as Lord. They refuse to acknowledge His authority to rule their lives and consequently they will not let Him be the Lord of their life.
Now as we saw in the first part of the chapter, Jesus entered into the temple after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and looked around discretely during the evening, assessing what was going on. And then the next morning, Jesus came back to the temple with a vengeance, sweeping aside the money changers and the vendors of sacrificial animals, and basically putting a stop to all commerce in the temple. He disrupted the daily sacrifices, He stopped them from making money off of the temple service, and He basically asserted His authority over the temple as His house and His domain.
Well, we pick it up the story the following morning as Jesus and His disciples come back into Jerusalem and Jesus is once again walking through the temple, vs 27, and the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to Him, and began saying to Him, “By what authority are You doing these things, or who gave You this authority to do these things?”
Now lest you miss it, these are the top brass of Israel. These are the chief priests and the rulers of the Sanhedrin. They control the temple worship and all practices in the temple and thus, they control Israel. They are very powerful and very wealthy men. And at this point, they are very angry men. Their income has been interrupted and called into question during what was the busiest week for sacrifices and offerings of the year. It’s the equivalent of the week before Christmas in the Mall of America. Imagine if someone shut off the power and stopped everyone from doing business. There would be an uproar. And that’s what is happening here.
So they stop Jesus as He is walking in the temple, and they ask Him, “By what authority are you doing these things?” What authority do you have to disrupt the temple service and determine what is appropriate?
Jesus’ authority is really is a key question that they keep coming back to. They have previously accused Jesus of casting out demons by the Devil’s authority. They have resolutely refused to recognize Jesus’ authority as the Messiah, although they have had plenty of evidence for it, and of all people they should have been the first to acknowledge Him as the Messiah.
Well, Jesus answers their two questions with a question of His own. It’s interesting to note that 8 times in Mark’s gospel, the critics of Jesus ask Him a question in order to attack Him or try to trap Him, and each time Jesus answers with a question of His own. I think what that shows us is that often people are asking the wrong questions. It’s possible to ask a question designed to elicit a certain answer. I guess that is what the pollsters do. That’s why their polls are usually skewed to show the results that they want to show. But rather than play their game, Jesus asks His own question. And in that very thing, He shows His authority. God is not subject to our questions. God will ask the questions of us.
Vs 29, And Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question, and you answer Me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven, or from men? Answer Me.” That’s an important question we need to ask ourselves in our ministry and in our worship even today. Is it from God or from men? If we really consider our worship, our ministry, our church from that perspective, then I think there are a lot of sacred cows in the church that might fail the test. A lot of what we take for granted in church should be subjected to that paradigm. Is it from God or from men?
Now according to Mark chapter 1 the baptism from John was the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was the conclusion to the message of “prepare the way, the kingdom of God is at hand.” The Messiah is coming. So in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, John urged the Jews to repent and be baptized, which symbolized the confession of their sins. And when John eventually saw Jesus coming to him, he said in John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
The scribes and the chief priests knew all of that of course. They had come out to see the baptism of John and He called them a “brood of vipers,” telling them to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So they weren’t fans of John the Baptist. But Jesus had them cornered with this question. Vs 31 They [began] reasoning among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say, 'Then why did you not believe him?' 32 "But shall we say, 'From men'?"--they were afraid of the people, for everyone considered John to have been a real prophet.”
So the religious leaders considered their options, and they didn’t like them. They wanted approval from the people, but they had rejected John’s ministry. So they answered “We don’t know.” They would have been more honest had they said, “We won’t say.” And Jesus responds to that unsaid answer. Jesus *said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
The question that comes to my mind is why didn’t Jesus tell them who He was? Why not state outright that He was the Son of God? People are still debating today whether or not Jesus said He was the Son of God. The Pharisees said to him on another occasion, in John 10:24, “how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, (that is the Messiah) tell us plainly.” And when Jesus said in response, “I and the Father are one,” they took up stones to kill Him.
Now they still want to kill Him. And the reason they want Him to say that He is the Son of God is they want to accuse Him of blasphemy and put Him to death. And at His trial in a few days, they will do exactly that, and make that same accusation. But that time is not yet. Jesus has an appointed time to die, and that is on the Passover, when the Lamb of God will be slain for the sin of the world. And that’s still three days away. It is not yet the appointed time to die, so Jesus doesn’t give them the plain answer they want to hear. They want Him to answer that He is the Son of God, so that they will have a reason to convict Him of blasphemy and put Him to death. But the crux of faith is not that Jesus confesses that He is Lord, but that He wants man to confess that He is Lord.
So rather than give them an outright, plain answer, Jesus gives them a parable. Remember why Jesus said He used parables? Back in chapter 4 vs 11 Jesus told His disciples, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that WHILE SEEING, THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND WHILE HEARING, THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND, OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT RETURN AND BE FORGIVEN.”
The parable then He gives is based on Isaiah 5:1-7. This is one of the most clear parables that Jesus has given, because it is so obviously based on Isaiah 5 that they would have known exactly what He was referring to. Most parables Jesus gave He also needed to explain how to understand them. But in this case, their knowledge of Isaiah should have provided them the key. Isaiah gives an allegory in chapter 5, “Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard. "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? "So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. "I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it." For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel And the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.”
God said that Israel is His vineyard. He planted the vineyard, and tilled it, and took care of it, and protected it, and yet it did not produce the fruit of righteousness. So God pronounces judgment upon it.
Now keeping that allegory in mind, let’s look at the parable which Jesus gives the religious leaders at the beginning of chapter 12. "A man PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT, AND DUG A VAT UNDER THE WINE PRESS AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. "At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers. "They took him, and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. "Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. "And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others. "He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' "But those vine-growers said to one another, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!' "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 vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others. "Have you not even read this Scripture: 'THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?"
The correlation to Isaiah 5 is obvious. But Jesus adds a new element. He says the owner sent his servants to receive some of the produce from the vine growers. The vine growers are those who have been given stewardship over the vineyard. My father, when he was a young man, grew up during the Depression. And like a lot of people back then, they did not have very much money. They lived on a farm in eastern North Carolina, and they were sharecroppers. Sharecroppers lived on someone else’s farm, they took care of the farm and tended it for the landowner. Then at harvest time, they would reap the crops and pay the owner a percentage of the yield. That was the way they made a living. They didn’t own the land, they didn’t pay for the seed, etc, they simply were stewards of the owners farm and investment.
So what Jesus is describing is that when the servants of the landowner come to receive his share, the sharecroppers attack the servant and send him back empty handed. The amazing thing is that when the servant comes back to the owner, the owner doesn’t go and take retribution on the tenants, but instead he patiently sends another servant, and then another one, each time having his servants beaten and rejected by the sharecroppers. That shows tremendous patience and long-suffering of the landowner.
And of course, Jesus is portraying a picture of the patience of God and prophets that He sent to Israel, His vineyard. And again and again they persecuted and even killed His prophets. But God was patient with Israel, sending HIs prophets one after another down through the centuries until at last God sends His only Beloved Son. There is a poignancy in Jesus’s statement, “he sent him last of all to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’” But rather than show respect, Jesus says instead they conspire together and say, “‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’ They took him, and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.”
Let’s be sure we don’t miss the courage of Jesus, who is looking into the angry, arrogant faces of the very ones who in just three days would arrest Him and try Him and crucify Him, thinking that they had kept the nation of Israel for their own selfish gain. Jesus knows that they are plotting to kill Him. And in a not very subtle way He is calling them out and exposing their evil hearts.
So Jesus concludes the parable with a question, which Mark records for us the answer in vs9 "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others.” Because of the hardness of their hearts and their rejection and murder of God’s Son, the gospel of salvation, the kingdom of God, will be taken from Israel and be given to another people, or nations, who will render fruit in due season. There we see the justice and the wrath of God. God is loving, God is long suffering and patient towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But there will come a day when God will come to the vineyard, fully expecting His due, and on that day every deed will be judged, whether good or evil. The day of judgment had come upon Israel. They thought they were judging Jesus. But in effect they were condemning themselves. In just three days, the curtain of the temple would be rent into from top to bottom. The Spirit of God would depart from the temple. And in one generation, just 40 years, the temple would lay in ruins and the religious leaders would be scattered and killed because they rejected the Holy Son of God during His visitation.
Now to the question of by what authority did Jesus do these things, the answer is obviously that Jesus is the Son of God who came to visit His vineyard. And so to make that point unmistakably clear, Jesus says in vs 10, in which He quotes from Psalm 118:22, 23, "Have you not even read this Scripture: 'THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?"
Jesus is saying that He is the stone which they the builders had rejected, but God had made Him the cornerstone of His church. They would reject Him and even crucify Him, but marvelously God would raise Him from the dead, and He would be the cornerstone of the church, a new temple which is the people, or vineyard of God.
So in answer to the priests question, Jesus Himself is the authority. After Jesus rose from the dead in a few more days He would say according to Matt. 28:18 "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is the Lord of the vineyard, He is the King of heaven and Creator of all the earth. He has the authority over all and we as His people must submit to Him as both Lord and Savior. If we reject Him, we do so to our own eternal condemnation.
Mark concludes this passage by telling us that the religious leaders knew that Jesus had spoken this parable about them. He had pronounced judgment upon them, and they in turn pronounced judgment upon Christ. Vs 12 “And they were seeking to seize Him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that He spoke the parable against them. And so they left Him and went away.” Within a few days time they would act to kill Him and in so doing they would seal their own fate. The patience of God would soon come to an end for the nation of Israel and God would open the kingdom to the Gentiles as the Church of God.
But the principle that was in effect for Israel is also in effect for the church. The church is God’s house. He is the builder of it. He is the Lord of the church. We are His temple, and He is the cornerstone. Christ has laid down His life for the church. Christ has planted carefully His church by the word of God. He has sown it with the seed of truth. He has watered it, sent His prophets to tend to it. And one day Christ will come again to receive the fruit of His church.
Phil. 2:8-11 says, “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
We need to understand that Jesus is the authority in the church. We need to ask ourselves if what we are doing in response to that authority is of God or man. And we need to bow to Him and submit to His authority over our lives. That is what it means to worship Him. Rom 12:1-2 says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, [which is] your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
In connection with the events of the Passion Week we have seen two figures in which Jesus has presented the church as a fruit yielding plant; the fig tree, and the vineyard. The symbolism is intended to teach us that our purpose is to bear fruit. Jesus said in John 15:8, "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” Jesus said we glorify God when we bear fruit. And we bear fruit when we bear a resemblance to the image of Jesus Christ. When we act like He acted, when we look like He looked, and when we work as He worked. In short, when we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ then we bear fruit and the Father is glorified. And we are able to be like Christ because we have the Spirit of Christ working in us. Let us therefore walk not according to the lusts of the flesh, but walk by the Spirit of God, that we might bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
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