All right, this morning we're
gonna be in Luke chapter 13. Luke 13. We're gonna look at
the parable that our Lord spake immediately following his words
to those people that were telling him about what Pilate had done
in mixing their blood with the sacrifices and regarding the
Tower of Siloam that fell on people. And he said in verse
three, that except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. And we saw how that our Lord
was teaching us that except God be gracious to us. except the Lord himself be gracious
to us, to turn our hearts, to give us a spirit of repentance
and deliver us from our sin, then our judgment, no matter
what we think of ourselves, our judgment is going to be just
as terrible as the judgment of the wicked. And it will be no
different there. When the Will Worshipper comes
to this passage and he reads these words that our Lord spoke,
he thinks the Lord is driving him back to his own flesh to
work harder, to be more focused, to try harder than what he's
trying there, and he turns to his religion to do that, he turns
to the works of the law to do that, he turns to his sacrifices
to bring this about to make himself more righteous. That's the will
worshipper, and that is the spirit of Antichrist. That's the one
who says, by his free will, he can give himself a heart for
the Lord. By his free will, he can produce
fruit and works at any time if he just applies himself to it.
That's will worship. That is the spirit of antichrist. And it's not at all what our
Lord is teaching his people in this passage. When our Lord said,
except your righteousnesses shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom
of God. When he said that, when he warned
us, the will worshiper thinks that that he's turning him back
to his righteousness, that except my righteousness exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees, well, I better buckle up. I better
pull up the bootstraps and try harder. That's not at all what
he's saying. What he's teaching us there is
that we need the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, because
no matter what we do, we're not going to surpass the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees. And they fell short. They came
up short of the glory of God. And that's how we are by nature.
We need the righteousness of Christ. He tells us this to turn
us from self to Christ. So our Lord's words, when he
says this, the sinner, the sinner, their heart is turned. The Lord is speaking to sinners.
He saves sinners. And so the sinner's heart cries
out, Lord, be merciful to me. Lord, be gracious to me. Lord,
give me your spirit of grace because I can't work righteousness. I can't just do better. I'm coming
up short of your glory because I'm a sinner, Lord. Have mercy
on me. And so the heart of the sinner
cries, Lord, I want to be found in your righteousness. I want
to be righteous. I don't want to be a sinner,
but I am, Lord. Have mercy on me. Please help
me. Help me, Lord. Paul wrote to
the Philippians in chapter 3, verse 8 through 10. He said,
doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus. That is that revelation of God
that's revealed Christ to me, who he is, why he came, what
he accomplished for me. There's nothing that surpasses
the excellency of this knowledge. My Lord, for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things and do count those things that I was
trusting in by nature, I count them but dumb that I may win
Christ and be found in him not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ. the righteousness, that righteousness
of Christ, which is of God by faith, that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings
being made conformable unto his death, that I would die daily
in this old man of flesh, that I might be conformed to the image
of his darling son, Jesus Christ, who loved me and gave himself
for me. So Christ is, when he's speaking of repentance here,
he's not talking about a repentance that turns you back to dead works
of the flesh to try harder. He's speaking of a repentance
that turns us, that turns his children to the righteousness
of Christ, to his faithfulness, to the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ who laid down his life for his people. So we need a
new birth, and this is what he's talking about. You need a new
birth. You must be born again of the Spirit of God, who then
takes the things of Christ and shows them to you effectually
in your heart. That's why he gives the Spirit,
to show you Christ effectually in your heart. Cry out to God
for that, for the effectual grace of God to reveal Christ to you. So repentance, that our Lord
is speaking of here, is not the condition for your salvation.
Repentance is the evidence that God has sent his Son to save
you from your sins. Repentance isn't the cause. It's
the effect of life in you. It's the evidence that God has
saved you from your sins. It's the work of the Spirit of
God given to you to reveal the new man in you, to reveal Christ
in you, to rejoice in the excellency of that knowledge of Christ.
So this parable that we're gonna look at today, it's an illustration
of these truths. He's turning you to Christ, not
to self. So let's read in verse 6. He spake also this parable,
a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and
he came and sought fruit thereon and found none. Now, The immediate
context here is that our Lord is speaking to the Jewish people,
right? That's the immediate context.
He's speaking to the nation of the Jews here. And I want you
to turn over to Isaiah 5. Isaiah 5. chapter 5. We'll look at the
first seven verses and see that in scriptures Israel is called
a vineyard. They are called a vineyard. It says in verse 1 Now will I sing to my well-beloved
a song of my beloved touching his vineyard." This is the vineyard
of the Lord. My well-beloved hath a vineyard
in a very fruitful hill. This is a fruitful hill. It doesn't
need dunging. It doesn't need any additional
fertilization in the soil. It's in a fertile hill. It's
in a fertile hill of his planting. And he fenced it, and gathered
out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and
built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress
therein. And he looked that it should
bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O
inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you,
between me and my vineyard, what could have been done more to
my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked,
how come when I looked that it should bring forth grapes brought
it forth wild grapes? And I couldn't help but notice
that an application of dung is never mentioned here in this
passage. Never brought out. And now, go to, verse five, I
will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away
the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up. There's nothing
stopping the wild animals from coming in. And eating it up and
break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down.
And I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned. Nope,
it won't be cared for. nor digged but there shall come
up briars and thorns I will also command the clouds that they
rain no rain upon it for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel and the men of Judah his pleasant plant
and he looked for judgment but behold depression right the fruit
is he's looking for judgment but all he's finding is oppression
He looked for righteousness, but behold, a cry. Not a cry
of the sinner crying out for grace, but a cry of one being
sinned against, of them doing wickedly in Israel there. And so it's not a coincidence
that our Lord here is giving us a parable of a vineyard to
the Jews here. And like those spoken to by the
prophet Isaiah, the Jews that our Lord is speaking to are spiritually
dead. And they're spiritually dead
while practicing the letter of the law. It was a dead letter
to them. dead letter, and they counted
themselves to be righteous by the things that they were doing,
and did not know that they were sinning and were an offense to
God. And so the Jews had many outward
blessings, many outward blessings. Paul tells us in Romans 3, verse
1 and 2, he asks, or he answers this question, what advantage
then hath the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision? Then he says, much in every way,
chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of
God. And what he means by that is
they had the law of Moses given to them. The prophets of God
were sent to them. They had the scriptures written
down. They saw these things. They had the practice of these
things. They saw these things in types and in shadows and in
pictures in the law and in the practice of the law. But the
problem is, and what it reveals is, man's flesh, our flesh, is
wicked. It's corrupt. It's defiled. It does not bring forth the good
grapes. It doesn't bring forth figs.
It brings forth rotten fruit. It brings forth briars and thistles
and thorns, things of the curse is what it brings forth. And
so what the Lord is showing us is that the works of the law
of Moses, you that would turn to the law of Moses to sanctify
yourselves, or to justify yourselves, to make yourselves more holy
and acceptable unto God, know this, that the law cannot free
a man from the law of sin and death. practice of the law doesn't
deliver you out from under the yoking bondage of the law of
sin and death. And what Paul said in Romans
8.3 was that what the law could not do, what the law of Moses
could not do in delivering you from the law of sin and death,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son
in the likeness of sinful flesh." In the likeness of it, meaning
he wasn't sinful. He came in the likeness of flesh,
but that it's not sinful, like your flesh or my flesh, because
he's not born of the seed of Adam. He's born of the seed of
woman, by the Holy Ghost. And for sin he condemned sin
in the flesh, that it has no more voice over you. It has nothing to say to determine
your inheritance with God. To say, no, no, no, he can't
go, he's a sinner. Nope, that voice is silenced
in Christ. He's condemned sin in the flesh. And so when our Lord says, except
ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, he's saying that his
people are turned from trusting this dead, weak flesh to trying
to work and labor and sacrifice and spend under the law of Moses. He turns us from that because
that's not our righteousness. He turns us to Christ, to life
in him. God the Father sent his son,
his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to destroy the
works of the devil, which were brought in in what he did to
Adam and Eve. So that through that one man,
Adam, sin entered the world, and death by sin. And so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sin. We're all sinners
in the eyes, of God. But to the sinner, he says, believe.
Believe. It's a faith. It's not of your
works. It's a faith, which he gives. And he says, believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and all your
house shall be saved. This body and soul shall be saved,
believing in Christ. For whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. Paul said in Romans 10,
verses 9 and 10, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus Christ, and shalt believe in thine heart that God
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation. And so that law of Moses cannot
save you, cannot deliver you from the yoking bondage of the
law of sin and death, but God saves his people by faith, by
the faithfulness of Christ who gives gifts unto men by which
that faith is given to us whereby we believe Christ alone for salvation. Now, Let us never mistake thinking
that when our Lord was speaking here to the Jews that it excuses
us, or that it's not for us to hear it, or that it's intended
for someone else. Paul told the Romans in Romans
15, 4, he said, whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning. that we, through patience and
comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. These words written
in the Gospels and the Epistles are the Scriptures along with
the Old Testament. These words are written aforetime
for our help, brethren, that we would hear and grow in Christ. And there's many in our day.
The point is is that we should never shut our ear up to it because
there's many in our day in so-called Christian churches and even in
the true churches where Christ is preached. If the Lord leave
us to ourselves, this flesh is hard, hard-hearted, thick-headed,
stiff-necked. We have a closed-up ear to hear
the Lord speak. We need his grace to hear him,
not in flesh, but by the Spirit. by the Spirit. So picking up
now in verse 7, Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard,
Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree,
and find none. Cut it down, why cumbereth it
the ground? Now, who is this certain man? We're not told. And who is this
vine dresser of his vineyard in this parable? We're not told. It doesn't say exactly who it
is. There's no interpretation. Christ gives no interpretation
after he says this in relation to what he had said, except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Searching the scriptures, you'll
see that the Lord gives another parable in the Gospels where
he uses a vineyard. And we're going to go to the
one later in Luke, in Luke chapter 20. So turn there now. It's also
this same parable that's in Luke 20 is used in Mark and in Matthew. So go to this parable in Luke
20. And I'm not going to read all
of it, but we'll just read verse 9 and 10. And then we'll pick
up in verse 15 and close with verse 19. Luke 20, verse 9. Then began he to speak to the
people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard
and led it forth to husbandmen, to vinedressers, and went into
a far country for a long time. And at the season, he sent a
servant to the husbandmen. that they should give him of
the fruit of the vineyard. But the husbandmen beat him and
sent him away empty. They shamefully treated all that
were sent to them to collect the fruit for the man who planted
the vineyard. It's his vineyard, and he's coming
to collect the fruit. He let these other people work
it, but now that it came time for fruit, they're not giving
it up, and they treated the people he sent shamefully. And that
includes what they did to his beloved son. In verse 15, they
cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. What, therefore,
our Lord asks, shall the Lord of the vineyard do unto them?
And Christ tells them, verse 16, he shall come and destroy
these husbandmen and shall give the vineyard to others. And when
they heard it, when the Jews heard that, they said, God forbid,
nope, that's not gonna happen. God would never do that. They
understood what he was saying. Nope, nope, it won't be taken
from us. And he beheld them and said,
what is this then that is written? The stone which the builders
rejected, the same is made the head of the corner. What do the
scriptures mean if this isn't speaking of the rejection of
Christ and how that he should be exalted and he would rule
and reign over all of his father's kingdom. And so he's the head
of the kingdom of God. So clearly in this parable, He's
the son, Jesus Christ is the son, who comes looking for the
fruit among the Jews. But they loved their fleshly
works. They loved their dead letter
religion that cannot save. And so they remained under the
law of sin and death. and could not make a righteousness
for themselves. And verse 19 tells us the chief
priests and the scribes at the same hour sought to lay hands
on Christ and they feared the people for they perceived that
he had spoken this parable against them. All right, so in Luke chapter
20, we have a sight of what salvation looks like in the hands of men.
It's death. It's death. That's what man would
do. It's death. He works death. It's not salvation
at all. It's just more of wicked works
in rejecting, in despising the salvation of God and God's righteousness. And our Lord tells us what the
will of man would do. What the free will of man would
do is that we will not come unto Christ that we might have life.
That's man's will. He won't. He will not. He wills
not to come to Christ that he might have life. If left to yourselves,
that's right where you'll stay. You'll never come to Christ.
We need the grace of God. to overcome our wicked hearts,
to overcome this flesh, to overcome the law of sin and death, and
deliver us from that death, to give us light and life and salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the will of man. Peter
declares it after the resurrection when he said, Christ. the Beloved
Son of God, Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have
crucified and slain Him." That's the will of man. That's the free
will of man. It's a bondage to death and wicked
works. That's all that it does. So contrary
to man having a free will by which he can save himself and
decide whether or not he's going to let God save him, contrary
to that lie, that Antichrist spirit, his will is in bondage
to sin and death. He will not be freed from it
by the law of Moses. He will not be freed from the
law of sin and death by the practices of religion. He will not be freed
from the law of sin and death by his best works, by his best
practices, by his best efforts. He is not free at all, but rather
he's dead in trespasses and sins. That's the testimony of scripture
about man. He's dead in trespasses and sins.
He cannot save himself or free himself. Man can only be saved
by the Lord Jesus Christ whom the Father sent to save his people
from their sins. He came to destroy the works
of the devil and he did it. He destroyed that yoking bondage
that kept us dead in our sins and delivered us out from that
law which could not save. And so he, by his grace, gives
us his spirit. He gives us eternal life. He
gives us light and the knowledge of Christ our Savior and what
he has done for us by his grace and power. And he does it through
faith by his grace. Saying in Ephesians 2.8, for
by grace are you saved through faith. And that, that faith is
not of yourselves, it is the gift of God that delivers you
from beginning to end. It's all of his grace, brethren.
Therefore, back in our text, If when man hears this parable,
if he hears this parable in the flesh, the work that they do
will surely fail. Look at Luke 13, verse eight
and nine. If man answers him, right? If
this is man, who's the vine dresser, as we saw in Luke 20, that this
is speaking of Israel here. Man would say, Lord, let it alone
this year also till I dig about it and dung it. And if it bear
fruit, well. And if not, then after that,
thou shalt cut it down. That's how man hears it. If he
hears it that he's the one being driven to works, then the work
will be cut down. It'll be cast into everlasting
hellfire. never to be seen again, it will
not live. The reason why is because man's
best works are but dumb, as Paul said. They're but dumb. They
don't profit me anything. They count nothing to save me,
to deliver me from sin and death. They don't give me light. They
don't give me life. They don't give me liberty. I
have no standing with holy God by my works. By my works, just
as Paul said, everything I was, being a Hebrew of the Hebrews,
being born of the tribe of Benjamin, being a Pharisee of the Pharisees,
blameless before the law, being circumcised on the eighth day,
all those works I count by dung that I may win Christ and be
found in him, in his righteousness, not my own. And so the dung of
man cannot save him. But if these words be spoken
by Christ to the Father who sent him, if he answers and says unto
him that sent him, Lord, let it alone this year also till
I shall dig about it and dung it. And if it bear fruit, well. And if not, then after that thou
shalt cut it down." Then what it's saying here, because Christ
doesn't fail, He cannot fail. And so if this is speaking of
Christ here though, what it's showing us is that the hardness
of man's heart is so hard that with all the miracles that Christ
did before men in healing their sicknesses and diseases, taking
them to himself, in speaking all the words which he heard
the Father say and the Father sent him to say, and saying that
if left to himself, that fig tree ain't going to bear no fruit.
It's not going to bear any fruit. It's going to remain hard and
dead. Because they saw Christ. They
saw him and refused him and would not hear him. They did not receive
him, but they stumbled over him like a stone put in their way.
They stumbled over the capstone, the choice stone of God. And so it would testify here
that left to himself Man, it won't do any good. Seeing all
those miracles, all that grace, all that wonder that Christ did
for his people, it affected the hardness of man's heart not one
bit. That gospel word, which the Lord
gives to you to feed you, though it profit you, to the person
sitting right next to you, or to another person, it profits
nothing. They don't care for it. It's
a yucky taste. They don't like it at all, even
though it's precious to you. And so even after our Lord rose
from the dead, he sent his apostles and preachers to declare the
good news. They were made witnesses of these
things, who Christ was, what he did in his coming, how that
he raised from the dead according to his word of promise, and they
would not hear it or believe it. And so what did the Lord
do? He destroyed them in 70 AD. He sent the Romans in, and they
destroyed the city. They killed many people, and
they took down their religion. They destroyed their temple.
Not one stone stood upon another, so they can't even now practice
it, though they claim to practice it. They can't even fulfill the
law anymore because the Lord destroyed it. And our Lord said,
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee. How often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings. And ye would not, because that's
the free will of man left to himself. Behold, he said, your
house is left to you desolate, destroyed." So we need a work
of grace wrought in our hearts. Otherwise, we won't repent, we
won't believe, except God be gracious to us and sovereignly
overcome us and deliver us out of the strong man's house. That's
how steeped in death and mire we are by nature. Except God
come in and pull us out, take us out, drag us out of there
to Christ, we will not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
if you believe not Christ, you don't know the Father. You might
be religious, you might be a seemingly spiritual person, but you don't
know the true and living God apart from Jesus Christ, who
saves almighty sovereignly by his free will, as it pleases
him. That's how he saves his people.
And so what we see in this is that we need the righteousness
of Christ. We need Christ Jesus to save
us. Because if it's our works, we
fail. If left to our own will, we fail. We need the grace of
God in Christ. Because this fig tree of man's
religion bears no fruit. No fruit. Instead, our Lord Jesus
Christ went to another tree. the tree of the cross, a tree
that wasn't even rooted in the ground. He went to the tree of
the cross and there he sacrificed himself to the Father, shedding
his own blood for the remission of the sins of his people. And
he died and was buried and rose again the third day for the justification
of you that believe him and trust him. His death produced the fruit
that we cannot produce by the law of Moses. His death produces
that righteous fruit. He makes us righteous by himself. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit. And that's how we're made fruitful,
in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. He redeemed his people. And he
made that tree of death, upon which he was sacrificed a fruitful
tree, to bear much fruit in his people. much fruit in his people
through his death and sacrifice so that by him we are made fruitful
not by that fig tree of the law but by the righteousness of Christ
by his salvation were made fruitful wherefore my brethren Paul said
ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that
ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from
the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. That's how we're made fruitful,
by Christ Jesus. He makes us fruitful in Him.
So the coming of Christ in the flesh, doing what He did in obedience
to the Father, it not only reveals and manifests the darkness and
the deadness in man's heart, but it also reveals the light
of God in the face of Jesus Christ and the hope which he gives to
his people by faith who believe him. And so he reveals to us
all we need to know about man's free will, eating from that fig
tree which produces no fruit, Paul said it in Galatians 3,
22, that the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise
by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. That fig tree of the law was
made to Israel as that tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
which brought a curse upon the people. And that fig tree of
the law cannot bear fruit in you. It cannot give you life. It shows us our sin. And Paul
said in Galatians 3, 13 and 14, that Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is
written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. that the blessing
of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Not the works of the law, but
through faith. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. All who believe on him for the
forgiveness of sins receive the forgiveness of sins. All who
trust him I can say that freely, you that believe him shall be
saved. Because if you believe Him, it's
a testimony of His grace in you. He stirs you up to show you your
sin, to show you the darkness of the law, to turn from the
law and to be turned to Christ, to go to Him, to cry out to Him.
And our Lord promises not only the forgiveness of sins, but
that in you shall spring up a well of water, of everlasting water,
quenching your thirst, knowing that he's my righteousness. I
don't need another righteousness. I don't need to go back to that
law anymore. I'm righteous in Christ alone. And he settles us right there.
But if you refuse him as the Jews did, you shall be cut down
and destroyed like that fig tree. Was cut down and destroyed. I
pray the Lord sanctify you unto himself by his spirit. that he
give you a hearing ear, that he put his word in good soil,
having prepared your heart by his spirit to receive that word
and that nothing take it away, that nothing beat it down or
destroy it, but that it grow up and be a fruitful tree by
the blood of Christ, in some of you, some 100 fold, some 60,
some 30 fold, as it pleases the Lord. Now is the day of salvation. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
that he is the Son of God. Trust him who gave himself as
the Lamb of God to give you life and light and salvation and liberty
and fruitfulness in him. He's able, brethren. For the
scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Amen.