Day #73: March 14, 2009 - Mark 11:27-12:12

Today is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice in that thought this morning.

The teaching recorded from today's passage transpired on Tuesday morning, as Jesus and the disciples were on their way back into Jerusalem. They returned to the Temple, where Jesus had thrown out the merchants and money changers the day before.

A delegation of religious leaders stopped Jesus to question him regarding his actions the day before. This group of leaders was already plotting to kill Jesus, but they couldn’t figure out how to do it. His popularity was far too widespread and his miracle-working powers too well known. So they continued to try to trap him. They asked for his credentials and demanded that he tell them who gave him the authority to drive out the merchants from the Temple.

If Jesus were to answer that his authority came from God, which would be tantamount to saying he was the Messiah and the Son of God, they would accuse him of blasphemy (blasphemy carried the death penalty; Leviticus 24:10-23). If Jesus were to say that his authority was his own, they could dismiss him as a fanatic and could trust that the crowds would soon return to those with true authority (themselves). But Jesus would not let himself be caught. Turning the question on them, he exposed their motives and avoided their trap.

This interchange revealed the religious leaders true motives. They weren’t interested in the truth; they didn’t want an answer to their question so they could finally understand Jesus—they simply hoped to trap him. But they found themselves in a position of looking foolish in front of the crowd. If they answered that John’s baptism had come from heaven, then they would incriminate themselves for not listening to John and believing his words.

If they rejected John as having any divine authority, then they also were rejecting Jesus’ authority and would be in danger of the crowd, since everyone thought that John was a prophet. If they accepted John’s authority, they would then have to admit that Jesus also had divine authority. The leaders couldn’t win, so they hoped to save face by refusing to take either alternative. Thus, Jesus was not obligated to answer their question. The religious leaders had already decided against Jesus, carrying on a long tradition of the leaders of Israel rejecting God’s prophets.

Then, Jesus began to speak about a vineyard. The well-versed religious leaders surely recognized the correlation with Isaiah 5:1-7, where Isaiah described Israel as a vineyard. Isaiah’s described judgment on Israel; Jesus’ parable described judgment too.

Galilee had many such estates with absentee owners who had hired tenant farmers to care for the fields and crops. The tenant farmers paid their “rent” by giving a portion of the crop to the landowner, who would send servants at harvest time to collect it. When the grape harvest came, the absentee landowner sent servants to collect the rent—generally this amounted to a quarter to a half of the crop. All of these servants were either beaten up or killed. In Jesus’ parable, the servants that were sent to the tenants refer to the prophets and priests whom God had sent over the years to the nation of Israel. Instead of listening to the prophets, the religious leadership had mistreated them and had stubbornly refused to listen.

With all the servants having been mistreated or killed, the landowner had only one messenger left—his beloved son. This son was sent to collect the fruit in hopes that the farmers would respect the son. This son refers to Jesus. This is the same description God used at Jesus’ baptism and at the Transfiguration. The son was sent to the stubborn and rebellious nation of Israel to win them back to God.

The tenants probably thought that the arrival of the son meant that his father (the landowner) had died. In Palestine at that time, “ownerless” or unclaimed land could be owned by whoever claimed it first. Thus they reasoned that if they murdered the son, they could get the estate for themselves. What would the landowner do in this case? All agreed that the landowner would come, kill the tenants, and lease the vineyard to others who would care for it.

Over hundreds of years, Israel’s kings and religious leaders had rejected God’s prophets—beating, humiliating, and killing them. Most recently, John the Baptist had been rejected as a prophet by Israel’s leaders. Next Jesus, the beloved Son of God, already rejected by the religious leaders, would be killed. Jesus explained that the Jewish leaders would be accountable for his death because in rejecting the messengers and the Son, they had rejected God himself. God’s judgment would be spiritual death and the transfer of the privileges of ownership to others, namely, the Gentiles. In this parable Jesus spoke of the beginning of the Christian church among the Gentiles. God would not totally reject Israel; in ancient times he always preserved a remnant of faithful people.

Jesus quoted from Psalm 118:22-23. Like the son who was rejected and murdered by the tenant farmers, Jesus referred to himself as the stone rejected by the builders. The cornerstone is the most important stone in a building, used as the standard to make sure the other stones of the building are straight and level. Israel’s leadership, like the builders looking for an appropriate cornerstone, would toss Jesus aside because he didn’t seem to have the right qualifications. They wanted a political king, not a spiritual one. Yet God’s plans will not be thwarted. One day that rejected stone will indeed become a “cornerstone,” for Jesus will come as a king to inaugurate an unending Kingdom. And he had already begun a spiritual Kingdom as the cornerstone of a brand-new “building,” the Christian church . Jesus’ life and teaching would be the church’s foundation.

When the Jewish leaders realized that they were the wicked farmers in Jesus’ parable, they wanted to arrest him. But the presence of all those people, hanging on Jesus’ every word, caused these religious leaders to fear a riot if they were to forcibly take Jesus away. There was nothing to do but go away somewhere to gather new ideas and think of new questions to try to trap Jesus.

SO WHAT? (what will I do with what I have read today?)

I am torn between being grateful for the mercy of God that is once again reveled in this passage and the unbelievable evil of man. We serve and love a God of second and third and fourth chances. His mercies never end.

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

"This is the day the Lord has made. Let's rejoice and be glad today!" Psalm 118:24 (GW)

Father, today, may I embrace the day You have given me and live it to the full. Help me squeeze every bit of life out of this day and make it count for you. Give me eyes to love and a heart to meet needs. Drive every bit of hypocrisy and legalism out of me. Protect me from just reading Your word and understanding Your word and yet, not doing anything with Your word.

Help me put Your word into practice in my life today.

"Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should." Psalm 90:12 (LB)