SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
10/31/2012 9:58:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Question of
Authority Part Two
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Mark 12:1-12
Message of
the verses: Earlier in the month we looked at the first
part of “Question of Authority” from the end of the 11th chapter of
Mark, and now I want to finish this section from the first twelve verses of
Mark 12. The story actually continues on
and I suppose this is one of the reasons that we know that the scholars who put
into the Bible the different chapters were not always correct in where they put
them, but that is what we have and so we will go on with the story in this SD.
We need to remember that
Jesus is in the last week of His life here on planet earth as He will be
crucified by the Romans, and die for our sins exactly when the passover lamb
was to be slain, for John the Baptist said of Jesus when he saw Him, “Behold
the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It was not the desire of the religious rulers
of Israel, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes to kill Jesus on the day of
the Passover because they feared the people.
This was God’s plan all along to have His Son to die at this exact
moment in time and so nothing these people could do to stop it. Isaiah wrote that it pleased God to slay Him
“Isa 53:10 But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him
to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His
offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will
prosper in His hand.” This being said
the Romans, the Jews, and Judas were responsible in having Jesus killed and
they will have to answer for it.
Now we will pick up the
story we began a few weeks ago by looking at the first twelve verses of Mark
twelve.
“1 ¶ And He began to speak to them in parables:
"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. 2 "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. 3
"They took him, and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 "Again he sent them another slave, and
they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. 5 "And he sent another, and that one they
killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others. 6 "He had one more to send, a beloved son;
he sent him last of all to them, saying, ’They will respect my son.’ 7 "But those vine-growers said to one
another, ’This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be
ours!’ 8 "They took him, and killed
him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9
"What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy
the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others. 10 "Have you not even read this Scripture:
’THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone;
11 THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT
IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?" 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.”
Before we begin to look at
the parable in this section I want to review what Dr. Wiersbe wrote about
parables and why Jesus taught in parables.
He writes, “A parable begins innocently as a picture that arrests our attention and arouses our interest. But as we study the picture, it becomes a mirror in which we suddenly see
ourselves. If we continue to look by
faith, the mirror becomes a window
through which we see God and His truth.
How we respond to that truth will determine what further truth God will
teach us.” Before I go on with the rest
of this quote I want to state that the window of opportunity for these false
teachers of Israel was about to shut for at the end of this parable we will see
only a couple of more times that Jesus will teach anything to them and that
will be because they send people to trick Him.
The sad thing is that there will come a time in a person’s life when the
Spirit of God will stop working in the life of an unbeliever and they will then
be lost.
“Why did Jesus teach in
parables? His disciples asked Him that
very question (Mark 4:10-12; and see Matt. 13:10-17). A careful study of His reply reveals that
Jesus used parables both to hide the truth and to reveal it. The crowd did not judge the parables; the
parables judged the crowd. The careless
listener, who thought he knew everything, would hear only a story that he did
not really understand; and the results in his life would be judgment (see Matt.
11:25-30). The sincere listener, with a
desire to know God’s truth would ponder the parable, confess his ignorance,
submit to the Lord, and then begin to understand the spiritual lesson Jesus
wanted to teach.”
The parable that we have
before us would reveal where the sins of these leaders was heading. These leaders had already permitted John the
Baptist to be killed and shortly they would be a part in the killing of God’s
Son as this parable will show us. The
parable begins with a quote from the fifth chapter of the book of Isaiah, “1
¶ 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. 2 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. 3 "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and
men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard. 4 "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? 5
"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. 6
"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."
7 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.”
We see from these first
seven verses in Isaiah chapter five that the Lord calls Israel His
vineyard. The people of Israel would
plant things like wheat on the flat land and then on the hills would plant the
vineyards. There is a lot of rocks in
Israel and so before planting the vines they would did up all the rocks and
pile them up around the edges of the vineyard.
This would protect the vines from the animals and thieves as they would
also in some large vineyards would actually have gates where people could stand
and protect their vineyards. Now it
takes a while for the vines to produce fruit and as we look at the parable and
also the section from Isaiah we can see that God expected for Israel to begin
to produce fruit, but all they were producing was sour grapes or as the NASB
puts it “worthless grapes.” All of
Israel knew that the Messiah was to come, and if they would have understood the
prophecy from Daniel 9:24-27 they could have all figured out that this was the
time period that He should arrive and some did, for even foreigners knew of the
time of the birth of Jesus. Many believe
that these “kings” came from Babylon or around there because of Daniel’s
teaching. There were two people in the
temple who knew who Jesus was when He was just born, so people could know it
was His time. He had taught three years
and would expect to have fruit from His teaching, but generally there was not
much from the people of Israel. Imagine
having the very Son of God walking around teaching and preaching for three
years and few people knew that He was God’s Son.
Dr. Wiersbe writes that “In
order to retain his legal rights to the property, the owner had to receive produce
from the tenants, even if it was only some of the vegetables that grew between
the rows of the trees or vines. This
explains why the tenants refused to give him anything: they wanted to claim the
vineyard for themselves. It also
explains why the owner continued to sent agents to them; it was purely a
question of authority and ownership.
“If Mark 12:2-5 covers the
three years when the fruit was not used, then it was in the fourth year that
the beloved Son was sent. This is the year when the fruit was devoted
to the Lord (Lev. 19:24), and it makes the sending of the Son even more
meaningful. If the tenants cold do away
with the heir, they would have a clear claim to the property; so they cast him
out and killed Him. (See Hebrews
13:12-13), ‘12 Therefore Jesus also, that
He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
13 So, let us go out to Him outside the
camp, bearing His reproach.’”
We better begin to name who
the participants of this parable are.
We have already stated that the vineyard was Israel and the owner of the
vineyard is God. The ones that were sent
to collect payment from the tenants were the prophets. The tenants were the spiritual leaders of Israel.
The son was the Son of God.
The spiritual leaders had
miss used the teachings of the Scriptures and thus set up a false religious
system for Israel, and Jesus spoke of this to them on many occasions.
When we see the passage
from Isaiah five we know that it was written for the Jews who lived in Israel
before the captivity of them by Babylon, but now this parable speaks of the
time when Jesus was there and the coming Roman invasion of Israel that would
cause the Jews to be dispersed all around the world as spoken of in the 28
chapter of Deuteronomy. “De 28:68 ‘The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in
ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, ’You will never see it again!’
And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female
slaves, but there will be no buyer.’”
This is exactly what happened to them after the Romans destroyed the
temple and killed many people in 70 A. D.
There is one more quotation
from the OT in this parable that we need to look at and that is from Psalm 118:
22-23 which says, “22 The stone which
the builders rejected Has become the chief corner stone. 23 This is the LORD’S doing; It is marvelous in
our eyes.” Earlier when Jesus rode into
Jerusalem on the cold of a donkey His disciples quoted another section from
Psalm 118, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.”
Dr. Wiersbe states that
“The Stone’ was a well known symbol for the Messiah (Ex. 17:6; Dan. 2:34; Zech.
4:7; Rom. 9:32-33; 1Cor. 10:4; and 1Peter 2:6-8). The Servant-Judge announced a double verdict:
they had not only rejected the Son, but they had also refused the Stone! There could be only one consequence—judgment
(Matt. 22:1-14).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Understanding and
putting into practice the things we learn from the Scriptures comes from the
Holy Spirit of God who lives within the believer. As I come upon problems in my life I desire
to have the Spirit of God teach me solutions from His Word so that when I am
tempted by these problems I can remember the Word of God and that will help me
overcome these problems and temptations.
My Steps of Faith for Today: In writing this above I know that it takes
contentment from the Lord as I learn from His Word and it also takes being
transformed by the renewing of God’s Word.
Memory verses for the
week: Psalm 130:1-2
1 Out of the debts I cried to You, O LORD. 2 Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be
attentive to the voice of my supplications.
10/31/2012 11:35:37 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment