Well, good morning and welcome
back to our study in the book of Luke. We're in chapter 20. It's been a week or two since
we've been engaged in this, but as we've been going through the
book of Luke, we're in kind of the final stages of the the finishing
work of Christ as He comes to Jerusalem for the last time. And previously He came into the
temple and threw out the money changers and they said, by whose
authority do you do this? And we had that dialogue there
that we looked into. And at the end of that chapter, verse 47 of Luke chapter 19 after
he cleansed the temple and said that this is my father's house
of prayer for all nations. And in verse 47, and he taught
daily in the temple, but the chief priests and the scribes
and the chief of the people sought to destroy him. So that was their
aim right along. And so in our last lesson in
Luke 20, verses 1-8, he came to pass on one of those days
as he taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel,
the chief priests and the scribes came upon him with the elders
and asked him by what authority he did those things. They couldn't deal with his reply. So now we're in verse 9. And then he began to speak to
the people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard,
and led it forth to husbandmen, 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.
And again he sent another servant, and they beat him also, and then
treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. And again he
sent a third, and they wounded him also, and cast him out. And
then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send
my beloved son. It may be they will reverence
him when they see him. But when the husbandmen saw him,
they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, that the
inheritance may be ours. And so they cast him out of the
vineyard and killed him. What therefore shall the Lord
of the vineyard do unto them? He shall come and destroy these
husbandmen and shall give the vineyard to others. And when
they heard it, they said, God forbid. And he beheld them and
said, What is this then that is written? The stone which the
builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner.
Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but whomsoever
it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." Boy, what an
interesting parable here. It just kind of covers the redemption
story from the beginning of time. When I read this, I just thought,
boy, what a parable of grace. The Lord would have just been
justified if He would have, after all these things as Hawker always
says, well, this parable is so plain that it needs no explanation
or no additional words by me. brings this parable and it encompasses
the whole scope of the redemption of the church. And it's addressed
to people, but it was most certainly heard by these same Pharisees
and the scribes and the chief priests that we just read about
in Luke chapter 19, verse 47, who were, they sought to destroy
him. And then when he brings us out
in this parable, they say, oh, God forbid, we would never do
that. And we'll look at that here in just a bit. 20 in our next lesson that we get
to in verse 19 after we just read this parable. And the chief
priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him. the same hour that he just give
this parable. And they said, God forbid, we would never do
that. They sought to lay hands on him, but they feared the people,
for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. He's saying derogatory things
about us. And so anyway, we'll engage in
that a little bit in our next lesson that we have. Again, we
have this parable. There's only really one more
parable in Luke after this one in the parable of the fig tree
in chapter 21. But we always remember this rule
of the parables that to you it is given to understand and to
them it is not given. And clearly they didn't really
understand. They just understood that he
was saying something derogatory about them that they didn't like.
and that he was calling attention to their malicious intent. But for the people, the believers,
unto you it is given to understand that. Back from Luke 8, verse
10. And what a miraculous declaration
we have here of the sovereign mercy of God Almighty to His
elect in a world that really neither believes in Him or desires
God or the Savior. And when I read that, I just
thought, you know, He would have just been justified if He would
have just incinerated everything instead of going through this.
But we just find that it's just the mercy of God and His grace
is just brought to our attention here over and over and over again.
So these unbelievers understood that something derogatory had
been spoken against them. But instead of it leading them
to repentance, ironically it just hardened their desire to
fulfill the very words of the parable. They sought to destroy
Him. And we just read that in the
next part of the first part of the next lesson. That same hour,
they sought to lay hands on him with the intent of having him
killed. And so we'll look at that a little
bit in our next lesson. But for today, this parable is
pretty self-explanatory. The things that are shown to
us, the certain man of the Lord God Almighty, the creator of
all, a vineyard, a world created by God for man and for God's
glory, and these husbandmen, these ones that were charged
with the delivering the gospel to
the people, the religious leaders who through all through time
had been charged with presenting the gospel from the very beginning. And the fruit of the vineyard
are persons, the elect, the sheep, the church who who were called
by this gospel that should have been presented, and ones that
God foreknew, ones that God predestinated, ones that God had selected in
eternity. And then he says, God chose by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And
we go through Romans, and he says, how shall they hear without
a preacher? And that's really what these
religious leaders were should have been doing, but they had
just converted everything into works, into keeping the law,
into works for salvation. And the servants here that are
spoken of are actually the true messengers of God who continuously
through time appeared in every age, and declared the true gospel
and called out the husbandmen who in unbelief and rejection
opposed the very gospel they should have presented. Boy, we
just see this as Norm's been going through the Old Testament
and in Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the... They just come at
these times, these servants of the Lord, these prophets, and
they say, you guys are not telling the truth of the Gospel. You
know, you're saying everywhere, peace, peace, but there is no
peace. And you're telling the people lies and attaching the
name of God to it. And Jesus chastised them from
that all the time. So, my beloved son here represents
the very Son of God who is no less described and declared.
The whole, as Hawker says, the whole parable is so plain as
not to need much external commentary, seeing that the actual recorded
events of time are completely summarized in this parable. Everything
that he says in this parable has actually been recorded in
the Old Testament and is transpiring and taking place right before
their very eyes. And so some things that we should
note here in this lesson for the church that, as we look at
this parable, is the completely deadly effects of the fall on
the nature of man. And then the long-suffering patience
of God the Father as he waits for the early in the latter rain,
the earlier in the latter fruit. the eternal nature of the unchanging
love for the elect in the face of opposition and rejection. And we're all, you know, we're
all caught up in that because we're born with this nature and
until the new birth we're just at enmity against him. Another
thing, the almighty power which is required in every person to
overcome sin, death, and hell, and the utter reliability of
His word as He promised in every generation to bring to Himself
elect from every kindred, nation, and people. So what a condensed version of the entire scriptures
in this parable. The vineyard planted by God through
the Son and brought to life by the Spirit. We find that recorded
for us in Genesis. The first words recorded by Moses,
he says, Moses wrote of me. Genesis 1, in the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. What a picture
of the gospel in the very first paragraph of Genesis. And God said, let there be light,
and there was light. And then we find in John 1 how
Jesus is that light, that true light. Then we go on to Genesis
2, verse 7 and 8. And the Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted
a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He
had formed. You know, Colossians says that
for by him, in Colossians 1, 16, for by him were all things
created that are in the heaven, that are in earth, that are visible
and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers, all things were created by him and for him. So we have
to keep that in mind as we We look at this parable and realize
that God is the controller of everything that happens in this
world. There's nothing by accident,
there's nothing that occurs that's not according to His will and
purpose. Even these ones that we're reading
about here, we would never do that. But yet they were in their
minds and in their hearts, they were already doing it. And they
just hadn't had the time or the opportunity yet that was correct
yet. It was not yet, his time had
not yet come. but it was getting close. It
was within a few days. And you know, in Genesis, we
read about that creation, a man being formed out of the dust
by the Lord. He created him. And originally, he had a perfect
environment. than the fall. And in time, as
we conceive it, the fall occurred in eternity, though God had declared
the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. So this
was no accident. There was nothing that caught
him by surprise. There was nothing for which he
was not already taking care of for his people. And you know,
you have to look at the scriptures and say that he had this people
that he knew in eternity. Behold, I and the children whom
thou hast given me are for signs and wonders. So we knew that
he had a people, and in John 17 says, thine they were, and
thou gavest them to me to redeem. And so we see that all this is
in his scope and in his purpose and his We read the scripture
in Acts where it says everything was happening according to the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. And those two things
are linked together. They're the same. his foreknowledge and his determinate
counsel. They're not, well, I foresaw
that, so he foresaw it because he determined it. And he determined
it and therefore he knew it. So the two things are inextricably
linked together and can't really be separated. And, you know,
in time, In the purposes of God, we've
always had the husbandmen that are represented here as those
ones that should have been declaring the gospel and yet didn't, and
were always violently and vehemently opposed to God. And we find that
in Cain and Abel. To Cain, the gospel was preached
as well as it was to Abel, yet the gospel preached didn't profit
him, not being mixed with faith. in Cain, just the same as we
read about those folks coming out of the wilderness out of
Egypt. And that has to occur in every
age. It has to occur with all the
Lord's people. It has to occur, as we find here, from the very
beginning. Cain brought his own works and couldn't understand
why that didn't work. He didn't understand why that
didn't satisfy God. And his brother said, here's
a lamb that represents the lamb slain in our stead from before
the foundation of the world. And his brother just got angry
and killed him. And boy, you know, that's still
going on today. They may not kill you physically, but they
If they could figure out a way to do it, they would. When you
try to tell someone about the folly of free willism and all
that Arminian stuff, and explain to them sovereign grace, and
it's not by works of righteousness, which we have done, But by His
mercy and grace that He saves us through the gospel, preaching
of the gospel, they just get angry. And you try to say, well,
by the way, have you read Ephesians or Romans or anything in the
Old Testament? Have you actually read the Bible?
But they read it. It's just words on pages to them,
and they just take out of it what they want, the things that
they can do to justify their own behavior. And so in time,
there's always been the servants, the ables who present the gospel,
and the canes, the husbandmen who don't and are against it. Cain rejected it in favor of
his own works and killed the servant, just as we find in this
parable here. And so it goes through time to
this present day. By God's mercy, in every age
there's a remnant, according to the election of grace. And
the duty of the remnant is to proclaim the gospel of grace
that saved them. and not leave anything out, not
add anything. But it always meets with opposition. There's always a division because
of that. Jesus said in Matthew 23, we'll
read verse 27 through 31, Matthew chapter 23 says He's describing
and talking about these same fellows that He's dealing with
here in Luke. Woe unto you scribes and pharisees, you are hypocrites.
You are just actors is what that word hypocrite means. You are
just play actors. For you are like unto whited
sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward. They had all
the religious trappings that made them appear religious. but inside they're full of dead
men's bones and all uncleanness. And even so, ye also outwardly
appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy
and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
you're hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets
and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous and say, and this
next sentence here, Norm brings this up all the time. People
always say, well, you know, if I'd have been born back in those
days, I wouldn't have done that, right? But he says, they say,
if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have
been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. We would
not have killed them. And you know what? Their attitude
then would have been the same as it is now. And if Isaiah or
Jeremiah or Ezekiel or any of those that came and said, you
are telling a big lie on God, they would have said, oh, yeah.
And they would have killed them. They just would have. It's just
the nature that they were born with. And so he says, wherefore
be ye witnesses unto yourselves. You're your own witness. that
you are the children of them that killed the prophets." And
that's just what he's saying here in this parable in Luke
chapter 20. He says, I'll send my son, and
maybe you'll reverence him. And nope, we'll cast him out
of the vineyard. How pictorial of the scriptures.
Take him outside the camp and kill him. And that's what they
did. And they said, no. God forbid, we would never do
that. And they were all the time planning to do that very thing. So what a testimony. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest
the prophets, and stone them that are sent unto thee. That's
from back when we were in Luke chapter 13 quite some time back. How often would I have gathered
thy children together as a hand doth gather a brood under wings,
and you would not. You just, you know, apart from
the grace of God, you just would not. You cannot. The natural
man receives not the things of the Spirit of God. spiritually
discerned. Neither can he know them. He
can't even know them. And we always mention John 3.3,
unless a man be born again, he can't see the Kingdom of God. It can be right there. Jesus
could be right in their face and they didn't know Him. What
a testimony to sovereign mercy and almighty long-suffering here
and the eternal purposes of God in this parable. All these things. I sent you people. I sent you
servants. I sent you servants. I sent you
servants that told about the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world and You sent them away empty. Where was the fruit
that should have been produced from that? Well, we know that
there can be no fruit unless the Spirit breathes into them.
The breath of life takes the gospel and makes it effectual
in them. But these men should have been, they should have been
declaring that gospel And that should have been their duty,
and yet when the expected fruit should have been there, it wasn't
because they weren't saying anything that could be used in an effectual
way by the spirit. It was just, keep the law, don't
do this, don't do that. In Romans, this is brought out
very clearly in Romans 9. If you turn to Romans 9, verse
22-24, we'll just... Norm has that in his notes today
too. What if God, willing to show
His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much suffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. He put up with a
lot of stuff from the time of Adam to today. He's still putting up with a
lot of stuff, being long-suffering, enduring these ones that were
fitted to destruction, that He might make known the riches of
His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had aforeprepared unto
glory. There's another, what we used
to call the classified document verse. Aforeprepared unto glory. When did that happen? What does
he mean by a four? Well, that's an eternity. And
we can read on that in Ephesians here in a minute. But that even
us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the
Gentiles. So he put up with a lot of abuse
in time and used that even against their purposes that they had
to bring his people and gather them together in Christ. We have
a good example in the Old Testament where Joseph was thrown in the
pit and they said, well, let's kill him. Dad always liked him
best. Let's kill him and we'll get
his stuff and divvy it up. And one of the guys said, well,
you know what? There's money to be made here.
We could sell him as a slave and we'll kill two birds with
one stone. We'll be rid of him, and we'll have a little, a few
shekels in our pocket to boot. And so that's what they did.
And of course, you know how that story went. And what did he say
at the end when he revealed himself? He says, You meant this for evil,
but God worked it for good to save much people alive. What
a picture of the gospel there. They're very evil intentions
God permitted and used to even save them when they would
have died from starvation. And so that's what it tells us
in Romans 9, 22 through 24. He put up with and endured with
much long suffering these ones, these vessels of wrath fitted
to destruction that he might make known the riches of his
glory on the vessels of mercy. fitted and prepared for glory,
predestined, as we might say. So these verses in Romans just
tell us so much of God's grace to the church, willingly enduring
the wretchedness of the effects of sin that in time His purposes
would be complete. In the fullness of time, He's
going to gather all things together in Christ. And so enduring and
even using those who were opposed to Him and who would never turn
to accomplish grace through the gospel of the death of his son
in the stead of the church, instead of the people of God, instead
of the sheep, the elect. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. It begins in Ephesians 1, verse
3. I think we have enough time.
We'll just read that because it's just difficult to take a little taste of that. It's so rich and full about the
church. But there in Ephesians 1, verse
3, Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ according as a result of Him having chosen us in Him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according
to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of
His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved, in
whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath
abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known
unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure,
which He hath purposed in Himself. It just tells us so much about
God. that in the dispensation of the
fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even
in him." And then it goes on and says a bunch more classified
stuff there. You can read that. Secret stuff,
we'd say. That's not secret stuff. The
pastor used to tell me, this is not for you. This is high
stuff. Well, it's there. Seems pretty
plain to me. thing that tells us how wonderful
the grace of God is to the church, and how much enduring of sin
He puts up with to effect His purpose of grace in those who
He gave Christ to redeem from the covenant of grace from before
the foundation of the world. So in every generation described
in our text there, in Luke and in Romans, we have two elements. It always comes down to that,
doesn't it? It always comes down to two elements. You have those
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction and vessels of mercy who He had
before prepared unto glory. And the vessels of mercy are
called in each age a remnant according to the election of
grace, as Paul wrote. And it does apply in every age. You know, Elijah wrote that in
1 Kings 19.10. He wrote that in 840 B.C. And Paul's quoting it here in
A.D. 57 when he wrote that to the
Romans. So there's about 900 years of
time that has elapsed, gone by, and the same things are still
valid then as they were in Paul's age and as they are in our time,
in our age. In Romans 11, 2, "...God hath
not cast away his people which he foreknew, what the Scriptures
say of Elias, or how he maketh intercession to God against Israel,
saying, Lord, they've killed thy prophets." Killed those servants
and sent them away empty. And they dig down thine altars
and I'm left alone and they seek my life. He felt pretty lonesome. They were trying to kill him
and he was hiding out. But what saith the answer of
God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven
thousand men that you don't know about. They're known to me. All of God's works are known
unto him from the beginning. I have reserved to myself 7,000
men who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so,
at this present time also, there's a remnant according to the election
of grace, 900 years after Elijah said the very same thing. And of course, they tried to
kill Paul all the time. Oh yeah, I was stoned and beaten
and left for dead and thrown in prison. All those things that
he said just turned out to be for the furtherance of the Gospel.
But you know, back when we were in Luke 11, there are some telling
words that describe the activities of these ones that are here called
the husbandmen. He says, Woe unto you lawyers,
for you have taken away the key of knowledge. and you entered
not in yourselves, and them that were entering in you hindered."
Boy, we don't want to be guilty of that. It's our duty to declare
the Gospel in truth. That's what Paul said. I'm free
from the blood of all men. I've not shunned to declare unto
you all the Gospel concerning God. I'm not buttering it up. I'm not leaving anything out.
I'm not changing it. Giving it to you straight. Giving
you what I got. But the ones that are saying,
well, it's up to you. You can come or you can not.
It's just a choice that you make. And he says that in every year,
the stone which the builders rejected, that should have been
their foundation stone, their solid stone, they rejected it
and they substituted a block of sandstone. comprised of works,
kind of an allegory of what we're talking about here, crumbly.
I don't know if you're familiar with sandstone, but it's crumbly. It's not very good. Their solid stone they rejected
and they substituted a block of sandstone comprised of works
that crumbled from its very inception. It was just rotten from the minute
they laid it down. And it couldn't support anything.
And it never can, and it never will, and it never does. And
they always have problems with that. Well, the reason you, today,
yesterday you thought you were saved, but today because your
behavior was deplorable, now you think you're not. Because
it all depends on you, what you do or what you don't do, and
not what Christ has done. He says, Oh, wretched man that
I am. I'm the chiefest. I am the worst sinner, is what
Paul said. And that fellow that prayed that prayer. Lord, apply the atonement to
me, the sinner, the sinner. So these guys that changed the
Gospel and substitute this crumbly foundation of works, which couldn't
ever bear any weight, And then they add more stuff on top of
that. They start off bad, then they
start adding all this stuff that you gotta do or can't do or don't
do. Ezekiel wrote about that and
he called it They've daubed it with untempered
mortar. Didn't have enough cement in
it to make it stick together and it was crumbly. And the Lord
says, whoever falls on this stone, this solid stone, it's going
to break them. And whosoever this stone falls
on, it's going to grind them to powder. And these rejecters,
when they fall on the stone of Christ, they're broken. They
can't stand. Yet the spirit of unbelief in them is so pervasive
that the more they hear the truth, the angrier they get. because
it shows them that what they've been doing is worthless. And they just get real angry
on it. What do you mean? I worked hard for these vegetables.
I planted them. I weeded them. I watered them. I thinned them and I pruned them. Here's the results of all my
work, all the stuff that I did." And God says that he had not
respect for all that work that he did on his own. Ezekiel wrote,
they laid a foundation with faulty material. Then they built on
that crumbling foundation a wall which can never stand no matter
what they do to try and make it seem true. It just doesn't
hold up. In Ezekiel 13, 10, it says, because
even because they've seduced my people, seduced them, saying,
peace. If you do these things and you'll
have peace with God. And one built up a wall and others
daubed it with untempered mortar. And then he skipped down to Ezekiel
13, 14. He says, so will I break down
the wall that you've daubed with untempered mortar, and bring
it down to the ground, so the foundation thereof shall be discovered,
and it shall fail. It shall fall, and you shall
be consumed in the midst thereof, and you shall know that I am
the Lord. Sometime they're going to know that their efforts, their
work was was not. Around here, there's a lot of
cement in some old buildings around this town that they didn't
put enough cement in the mixture. It's mostly sand and aggregate
and stuff. Norm and I worked on a couple
of them, and you couldn't hardly hook anything onto it. It was rotten clear down, and
we worked on a building up in Dufur one time, and they said,
we want this place fixed, but the foundation is a little scuzzy.
And we said, well, we'll try to cut through this part that's
deteriorated in the cement and get down to some good material.
Then we can build on that. But the more we cut, the more
rotten it got. Turned out it was rotten all
the way down to the earth. You could never build anything
on it. It was just no good. And there's lots of that around
where they just didn't, they said, well, we can save We can
save $5 a ton by just skimping on the cement that we throw in
there. Instead of having a five-bag mix, we'll have a three-bag mix,
and I won't be around when that goes bad. It's the same thing in religion.
So telling this parable that the unbelievers cast the son
out of the vineyard and kill him, cast out Christ, think they're
doing good. And their true motive was revealed
in verse 14, that the inheritance might be ours. We want the credit
for that. We ran into that here. A fellow
wrote us because we were getting too much coverage on Sermon Audio,
and they said, you're taking away our kudos. You're getting too much. People
are listening to you and not to us. And therefore, we're not
getting our kudos. We want the reward. We want the
inheritance. And it was awful. So they want the credit. They
want the reward. The same rejected stone is to
those who the Lord has redeemed, the precious stone, the foundation
stone, the solid stone, the foundation of all of our faith. And Paul
quotes that in Romans 9.33, as it's written, Behold, I lay in
Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense, and whosoever believeth
on him shall not be ashamed. We sing that hymn, On Christ
the Solid Rock I Stand, that's from from Luke 6 and Matthew 7 about
the building on the sand or the rock and foolish man built his
house on the sand. And this pastor from England
wrote that in 1834. Baptist pastor in Sussex,
West Sussex, England at the Rehoboam Baptist Church wrote that hymn. His name was Edward Mote. on
Christ the solid rock I stand, the foundation that will never
fail, the basis for all of our Gospels. So by grace, believe,
and the solid stone will be your precious stone, your sure foundation. So until next time, thank you
for your attention, and be free. The parable of grace.