Grace is truly amazing. If you turn in your Bibles to
Mark's Gospel, I've typed out the passage we're looking at
on your sheets, as well as Psalm 118, as well as Isaiah chapter 5, passages that
these men of the Sanhedrin knew off by heart. And so the Lord
Jesus, as we saw last week, is confronted by the Sanhedrin,
supposedly 70 in number. Not all 70 was there, but the
intention was that as a great crowd of religious people dressed
in their finery at their place of power in the temple, they
came to confront God just a few days before his death. And as
we saw last week, They came with deception and wickedness and
evil in their heart. And their question was not a
real question. Their question was a trap question. It was a trick question. They who knew that they held
the authority in the temple held religious and in a sense judicial
authority over life and death in Israel. They knew from their
Bibles that they were the ones who had authority. Their question
was not fair dinkum. Their question was designed to
trap the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus says in Mark
11.33, he says, he will not answer them. He doesn't say that he
cannot answer them, but he will not answer. But here in the parable
before us, we have the answer. And this parable is set before
us in great detail in all three of the synoptic Gospels, Matthew,
Mark and Luke. And so when God repeats something
in detail three times over, there are serious and important lessons
in it for us. And just as a word of warning
to us before we delve into this passage, it's so easy for us
when we read the scriptures to think that this relates to a
group of religious people 2,000 years ago, and they have been
dealt with well and truly. but we need to read the scriptures
as they relate to us and the circumstances around us. This
word that we have before us is a living, not a dead, a living
and an active word to us. It's a word for us today. A godly man, wrote John Trapp,
reads the scriptures as he does the law book. He holds himself
concerned in all that he reads. He finds his name written in
every passage and lays it to heart as if spoken to him. The wicked, on the other hand,
put off all they don't like and presume that it speaks about
others. The other question is, why does
the Lord Jesus speak in parables? He says to his disciples in Mark
chapter 4, he says, to you, to you disciples, it has been given,
a grace gift of God, to know the mystery of the kingdom of
God. But to those who are on the outside,
all things come in parables. And then this challenging verse,
that, so that, This is the result of the parables, not to give
instruction, so that seeing they may see and not perceive, and
hearing that they may hear and not understand, lest they should
turn and their sins be forgiven them. If you have ever wondered
what on earth the Lord is saying by those words, repeated often
in scripture, then listen to this parable. Listen to this
story of these men before us, and I trust the Holy Spirit will
make the meaning of that clear to you. The Lord tells us, take heed
to what you hear. With the same measure you use,
it will be measured to you. And to you who hear, more will
be given. For whoever has, to him more
will be given. Whoever has the grace of God,
grace will flow like a river, like a fountain, it will flow
and flow and flow. But whoever does not have even
what he has will be taken away from him. If you turn down to verse 12
in this chapter, you'll see that these men who came here as the
great Sanhedrin understood exactly what the Lord Jesus was saying.
As he began quoting from Isaiah chapter 5, they would have understood
exactly and would have been able to quote the rest of the chapter.
As he quoted Psalm 118, they would have been able to follow
along with all of those verses. They understood exactly what
was being said. And so we have here a parable
of God's dealings with the Jewish nation, both in great mercy and
in great judgment. And the message of the parable
is obvious, and it's the message for us here today. It's a warning to us of the danger
of despising gospel privileges. Those who despise the privileges
of the gospel caught the wrath of God. To remain in darkness
when light is available is a sure way to bring the judgment of
God down upon you. So often we have conversations
like the one I had this morning on the street and the one I had
in the library yesterday with a fellow who was for some time
a Catholic missionary. There are no such things as Catholic
missionaries. But he took his family to Africa 30 or 40 years
ago, and we've talked often about the things of the Lord. And yesterday,
as his poor old body is falling apart, we talked about, I talked
to him about my poor old body that's falling apart, and how
wonderful it is that there's a day coming when we'll meet
the Lord Jesus. And I talked to him about how
rather than fearing death, I'm looking forward to that great
and awesome day." And he listened and he listened, and his response
was, how are your kids doing? There we were on the brink of
talking about eternity, and this man wants to find some polite
way of changing the topic. We need also to remember that
these men who confronted God that morning in the temple have
lived out the promise that the Lord Jesus makes three times
in John chapter 8. They die in their sins. They have now for nearly 2,000
years been in hell, surrounded by their sins, surrounded by
the knowledge of these events that are before them. I pray
that God will make the Gospel a serious matter. If the Gospel we proclaim here
is not a matter of life and death, then go somewhere else. Find another preacher. The Gospel
that we are proclaiming is a matter of life and death, a matter of
eternal life and eternal death. Please let us not despise, as
these men did, the remarkable privileges that God has shown
us. Okay, let's begin in chapter
12, verse 1. A man planted a vineyard, set
a hedge around it, dug a place for a wine vat, built a tower,
and he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.
The Lord God Almighty is describing Israel as His vineyard, Israel,
His special chosen people. Out of all the nations on earth,
He chose this special privilege to be His people, to see His
wonders, to know of His gospel, and the God in his absolute sovereignty
graciously bestows on some wonderfully great opportunities and privileges
to hear the Gospel. And in His sovereignty, and in
His purposes for His glory, He withholds the Gospel from others. Just read Acts 16, verses 6 and
7. Twice Paul wanted to go and preach
in Asia, and God wouldn't let him go. God had a woman named
Lydia across the sea, and other people with her. God, in his sovereignty, can
give the Gospel and withhold the Gospel from those he sees
fit. Israel was in a remarkably privileged
situation. For thousands of years, the Gentile
nations in all of the rest of the world had been allowed to
stay in darkness and idolatry. while the nation Israel had the
light of the revelation of who God really is. So he called the
Jews this vineyard, this special planting of his, this special
chosen people of his, and he set a hedge around it. Faithful
Israel had no need to fear any enemies. God was their protection. God was able to save them. A remarkable night outside of
Jerusalem when Hezekiah was fearful of this huge army, over 185,000
men outside Jerusalem. God says to his people, simply
trust God. Hezekiah goes to the temple,
he lays out these demands from the Syrians before God. And God
says to Hezekiah, because you have prayed to me, I have heard. He simply called on his people,
just trust God. That night, 185,000 soldiers
died outside of Jerusalem, and the Israelites did not have to
lift a hand. He dug a place for a wine vat,
a place where the drink offerings of wine could be poured forth.
All pictures of the Lord Jesus. He built a tower in it. In other
words, God established a place for His worship in Israel alone. If you were to worship God, you
had to be in Israel. That's why the temple has the
Court of the Gentiles. To Israel alone he gave his law,
his tabernacles, his altar, his priesthood, his sacrifices, his
prophets. What remarkable privileges the
nation of Israel had. What remarkable blessings and
promises from God they could have enjoyed. what remarkable
privileges and blessings from God we have right now. We mustn't think that God's dealings
in some way have changed dramatically. God still is in the business
of glorifying His Holy Name, of glorifying His Son, of saving
His people from the mire that they have put themselves in by
their life of sin in this world. He still operates in grace and
mercy. And rather than thinking that
we have less responsibility 2,000 years after the resurrection,
our responsibility is a greater responsibility. We now have 2,000
years of God's faithful dealings with his church. We have 2,000
years of the witness of the power of the gospel proclaimed faithfully. We have 2,000 years of the witness
of the false gospel and what it will build. Empires will be
built on false gospels. But also, most significantly,
we've seen God Almighty plant this little church as His witness
in this town and in this land. We have seen Him set a hedge
around us when people would come and want to rob us of our freedom
in the Lord Jesus and put us back under the law and works. We have seen God set a hedge
around us by exposing those who in their hearts really hate the
Gospel and hate the Gospel giver. We've seen people exposed just
by proclaiming the Gospel of God's free grace. And as these
men came with all of their thyme, they were exposed before themselves
and their own conscience. They were exposed before the
crowds there in the temple. They were exposed so that God's
people would know to run and to flee to the Lord Jesus. Time
and time again we have seen God move amongst us. In six weeks
time, Brother Don will be here. God is sending. our brother from America. All
this way, a man whose health is frail, and whose doctors advise
him against travelling the sort of distances that it takes to
come here. And we could talk about what
men are doing, but as we saw last week, the issue is, what
is God doing? God is sending him. God sent
Clay Curtis last year. God is sending Lance Heller out
of the jungles of New Guinea to come here and to proclaim
the Gospel and to be encouraged amongst God's people. We are
a privileged people. These people were a privileged
people. Mercy scorned as these men scorned
the Lord Jesus. is judgment invited. And he put husbands, husband
men there. He let the vineyard out to husband
them. There is no greater privilege
than this in all of the world. There is no greater privilege
than we as a church have to be a place where we proclaim the
Gospel of God's free grace. When the world is proclaiming
works, when the world is proclaiming law, when the world is proclaiming
a Jesus who tries to do his best to save, but can't really unless
you add your activities to it. When the world talks about the
sovereignty of God, but the God they talk about is not sovereign
unless man allows him to be sovereign. What a privilege it is to declare
that it's finished, that the Lord Jesus is God, that on that
cross 2,000 years ago, He really did put away all the sins of
all of His people. He really did everything that
God had promised in the Old Testament would be done for this chosen
elect people. There is no greater privilege
in all of the world than this. There is no greater responsibility
under heaven than this. And God says that teachers will
be judged more harshly. We see where these teachers led
Israel. We see what darkness they had
because they turned away from the light that was available
for them. As Ezekiel says, you have despised
my holy things. Holy things happen where God
meets with his people. There's no greater place to be,
no greater privilege, no greater honor, no greater responsibility. he let his vineyard out to husbands
and he went to a far country. So after all those remarkable
manifestations of God's presence and blessing with the people
at the Red Sea and for 40 years in the wilderness, once they
were established in the land, God in many ways seemed as if
he had gone to a far land and he'd left his vineyard in the
hands of the husband. Now at vintage time, verse 2,
he sent a servant to the vinedressers that he might receive some of
the fruit of the vineyard from the vinedressers. What he requires
from the vinedressers is what was agreed at the beginning.
And in verse 6 he shows us what he expects from the vinedressers. At the end of verse 6 there is
one thing that God expects from husbandmen. For those who keep
the vineyard of God's planting, they will respect my son. God simply requires that we revere,
that we worship, that we honour his darling son. that be prior to the coming of
the Son in manifestation. Verse 3, God sent many people,
many, many, many. He sent servants to collect from the husbandmen. Verse 3, and they took him and
beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again they sent another He sent
them another servant and at him they threw stones and wounded
him in the head and sent him away shamefully treated. And again he sent another and
they killed him and many others, beating some and killing some. What a history of God's dealing
with nation Israel. This had gone on for 1500 years
in this vineyard of God's planting. All he was asking was what they
agreed to do. As Simon has been showing us,
at Mount Sinai, they said, you just tell us what to do and we'll
do it. We are the people. We have the
ability. We'll do it. Just give us the
word, give us the law, and we'll do it. One of the great pictures
in this passage, isn't it, is the total depravity. Total depravity
of man is not just a doctrine. It's a fact, and it's seen by
any who have eyes to see. To see who we are in ourselves,
we're dead to truth, totally dead to reason. totally dead
to the voice of conscience, totally dead to the perils to your souls,
totally dead to God's salvation, totally dead to the evil of self-righteousness,
totally dead to true holiness. Many were sent, all of them proclaiming
the same message. Revere my son. Respect my son. God has one word to this world. What about my son? So many people proclaim their
moral uprightness, and yet when it comes to the death of the
Lord Jesus, they're able to say that someone dying as an innocent
man on a cross is a meaningless thing in their lives. See, the
Lord Jesus has been teaching His disciples about radical discipleship. For all of these passages we've
been looking at, we have seen Jesus showing his disciples what
it is to be a child of God in this world. So often we are accused
of not preaching enough law and not preaching enough works. The reality is God is demanding
something much, much more from His people than just good moral
behaviour. To respect the Son in this world
and to honour the Son and to worship Him is to have happen
to you the things that happen to the Lord Jesus. to take up
your cross is not just something that happens to you like a sore
toe or a cold or something else. You actually take up the cross.
You pick it up as yours and you carry it. And as Spurgeon said,
you carry it until it's so comfortable on you that you feel a bit lost
when it's not there. To take up your cross is a much,
much bigger deal than just outwardly moral behavior. Verse 6. Therefore, at the end of all
of this, at the end of this time, of God sending man after man
after man, His own men, with His own message of judgment and
grace, His own message of proclaiming His Son, therefore still having
one Son, His Beloved, He also sent Him to them last, saying,
They will respect My Son. The words of this verse are the
words that God the Father used at the baptism of the Lord Jesus
and at His transfiguration, My Son, The Beloved. They will reverence My Son. They will respect My Son. They will either respect Him
in grace here or as those Pharisees who spent the last 2,000 years
in hell. They will respect the Lord Jesus
for His holiness and for His judgment. They will hate the
place they are, but they will acknowledge to all the world
that God is right and God is just. And in verse 7 we have another
example of what happens when men get together with other men
to work out what is best in the eyes of men. These are the bindressers
who'd made the deal. And here they are in verse 7
saying, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the
inheritance will be ours. They really did believe. that
nation Israel and that temple was theirs. Theirs to control. Theirs as a place where they
get honor and glory and the esteem of men. And they did. They wanted the inheritance.
All men, since the fall of our father Adam, have wanted the
inheritance. We want to take it for ourselves. God's children receive a much
bigger inheritance by grace. See, what the Lord Jesus is showing
us again, that the intent of the questions of these men was
not really to find out information from God. Their intentions always
were to kill God. The enemies of the Gospel have
one intention, to kill God. What wickedness is hidden behind
such polite faces? Turn in your Bibles, just turn
over a few chapters to Luke chapter 20, when there's a verse here
that I hope shocks you. Because this is the verse, the
passage in Luke which follows this same exposition we have
here. Having had this rebuke from Isaiah
5, having had this rebuke from Psalm 118, this is where men
who conspire together with other men in religion find themselves
going. Luke 20 verse 20, so they watched
him and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, so that they
might seize him on his words in order to deliver him to the
power and the authority of the governor. What a remarkable thing. Here we have the vinedressers,
the husbandmen of Israel, gathering together and saying, how can
we get Norm Day to put on some clothes as an actor and go to
this Jesus and pretend to be righteous? What a dangerous, dangerous thing
it is to play games with God. To turn your back on the light
that is available to you will just leave you in darkness and
more and more darkness and wickedness and stupidity. These were the
religious leaders of the world. The religious leaders, they love
religion, they love their religious duties, they love their religious
activities, they love their religious ceremonies, they love their religious
history and their tradition. But really they utterly despised
God, His Son, and His Gospel. And they would, if they could
get their hands on Him, cast God's Son off His throne, out
of His kingdom, and kill Him. Verse 8. So they took Him, and
killed Him, and cast Him out of the vineyard. You've got to
keep remembering the events of this last week are God's dealings. The Lord prophesied these words
exactly, told His disciples again and again what these people would
do to Him. They took Him that night in the
Garden of Gethsemane. They cast Him out of their vineyard. They cast Him out of Nation Israel
and its legal system and handed him over to the Gentiles. They cast him out of their city
to die as a cursed man whose place of burial was destined,
they thought, to be the stinking, burning garbage dump outside
of Jerusalem. Isaiah 5.4 says, What more could
have I have done, could have been done to my vineyard that
I had not done in it? What will the owner, verse 9,
what will the owner of the vineyard do? See, God's response always is
one of absolute perfect justice. It is right for God to do what
He does with the wicked. And listen to the promises of
God. He will come. He will destroy, and that word
destroy is a strong, strong word. to come to an end, to disappear,
to cease to exist, to no longer exist. And He will give. God's judgment
is perfectly just. If we despise the Kingdom of
God, if we despise His Word, if we despise His worship, if
we despise His people, it will be taken from us. But there's grace, wonderful
grace in the midst of these verses, aren't there? Wonderful to know
and trust the absolute sovereignty of God in all things. Then he
says to them, have you not read this scripture? The stone which
the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. These men were the builders of
Israel. They were responsible for that
nation being built as a nation which honoured God and served
Him. When we build buildings, not
so much these days, but they used to have a special stone. a foundation stone that was opened
by someone special like the Queen, and often in that stone they
would actually have a capsule and put a whole bunch of incredibly
special documents. When Spurgeon had the Tabernacle
building in London built, he actually had a whole bunch of
documents which were significant to him put into this stone, and
the Lord Jesus himself according to 1 Peter, is the living stone. He's the tried stone. He's elect
and He's precious and He's God's appointed stone. And in Him,
as Cole read to us earlier, are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. In Him Hidden from the eyes of
these men are all the wonders of the New Covenant promises.
These builders, these scribes, these Pharisees, they could see
nothing of beauty in the Lord Jesus, nothing that they could
build upon. He couldn't be made to fit in
their world. He couldn't be made as part of
the building that they had built for themselves by their wisdom
and by their works, and they cast him away. And they reckoned,
according to Peter, as he spoke to these same people just six
weeks later, he said, which seems to you to be nothing, to be set
at naught by you builders." They reckoned him to be nothing, just
a worthless man who was a troubler of Israel and needed to be got
rid of. But what a stone, what a foundation
stone for Lord Jesus. He is the stone on which the
whole house of God is being built. And God laid this stone. God laid this stone, a rock,
a sure rock, a rock which God's people run to and hide in. They hide in that cleft in that
rock. And he's hidden within him all
these precious things for God's people. And this church built
on that foundation. Throughout this world, God, on
that foundation, the foundation He laid, is building His Church. And nothing, nothing on this
earth, nothing in hell, nothing in Satan's schemes, nothing in
the schemes of man, is ever going to do anything to shake that
foundation. And it grows together into a
holy temple in the Lord. This was, verse 11, this was
the Lord's doing. It was God's doing. As we saw
last week, all that matters in spiritual things are spiritual
things. As Spurgeon said, every grain
of true faith in this world is a divine creation, and every
hour in which the true Church exists is a prolonged miracle. God only does wonders. We live in the midst of amazing
miracles and wonders from God, not the nonsense that goes on
in the religious world, but God gathering his people by the gospel,
building them together. It's not the goodness of human
nature nor the force of reasoning which honors the Lord Jesus and
builds up his church, but it's built with the power from above. And that's why the end of that
verse says, and it is marvelous in our eyes. It's marvelous in our eyes. In
judgment, There is mercy. In the midst of what happens,
God calls on his servants to comfort his people. What comfort
there is in this sure foundation. And we actually see it according
to God. We actually experience it in
our lives. Jesus reigns. His power is felt,
and by faith we see our great King, far above all of these
things of the earth, reigning supremely, doing His mighty,
powerful, wonderful work. It never ceases, says Spurgeon,
to astonish us as we see even here below, God by means of weakness
defeating power, by the simplicity of His word baffling the craft
of men, and by the invisible influence of His Spirit exalting
His Son in human hearts in the teeth of open and determined
opposition. That word marvelous in our eyes
can be translated, it is wonderfully done. As God's people see what
God has done around them, and in them, and gathering together,
we say, it is wonderfully, wonderfully done. These men knew exactly what the
Lord Jesus was saying. Verse 12, they sought to lay
hands on him, but feared the multitude. The fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom. The fear of men just brings a
snare. They were more interested in
how they could scheme and plot with men than they were in honouring
God. And the light which they thought
was their light was actually darkness. And the darkness became
darker and darker and darker. Light shunned. The gospel shunned,
the worship of God with his people shunned is a sure way to bring
darkness and more darkness. May God give us the grace to
see with spiritual eyes what he's doing amongst us, what he's
doing around this world. And let's finish with that verse
that we didn't look at from Psalm 118. But after these words from
the Lord Jesus, there's a great encouragement, isn't it? This
foundation stone laid by God is not going to be damaged in
any way, but in verse 24, of Psalm 118, this is the day the
Lord has made. This day right now is the day
the Lord has made for us in this world. We will rejoice and be
glad in it. There is absolutely no better
day for us to be bearing witness to the Lord Jesus than today,
right here, right now. This is the day the Lord has
made. We will rejoice and be glad in
it. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven,
we thank you for the foundation stone that we can build our lives
upon, that we can take rest in when everything else in this
world is stormy and unsure. There is a rock that is higher
than ourselves. There is a city of refuge. There
is a person of refuge. We praise You for the Gospel
of our Lord Jesus, our Father. We thank You that the work is
done, that Your people can rest in faith in Him. Please protect
us, our Father, from being like men who fear men, from being
like men who want a scheme, to cause the things of God to happen. Cause us to be people of faith,
our Father. So we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.