We're the Vineyard; He's the Cornerstone

The Life of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

“We the Vineyard, He the Cornerstone”

 Text: Mark 12:1-12 (See also: Mt 21:33-36; Lk 20:9-19; Is 5:1-7)

Focus: God entrusts us with his mission that is built on Jesus.

Welcome

 Hello Jericho Ridge and welcome to our online time together.

• As you can see, this Sunday, we are giving our worship and support teams time to be at home with their families.
• So while we aren’t offering singing in our live stream this morning, we will have a Family News piece … a video update from the McCarthys that we’ll make available after the live feed.

• Now, as I would if we were gathering in person at the Jericho Centre, I invite you top up your beverage, and let’s begin to quiet ourselves and focus in on what God has for us.
• One of the most profound ways we can be unified in spirit while practicing “social-distancing” is through prayer.
• So church, let’s call on the omnipresent Holy Spirit to bring our spirits together … pray with me.

Mark 12 in Context

 This Lent, our focus is on the Gospel of Mark’s exposé of Jesus.

• So I invite you to open your Bibles to Mark 12 as we continue to ask the question, “Who is Jesus?”
• Now, before we read our passage, let’s remind ourselves of where we are at in Mark … what’s the context for Mark 12?

• The previous chapter, Mark 11 signals Jesus’ final week on earth as he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey.
  • We call this the Triumphal Entry, and normally we use this passage on Palm Sunday, as it marks the coming of Easter weekend/Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
  • So Pastor Brad will revisit Mark 11 in more detail in a couple of weeks on Palm Sunday.

Without pre-empting Brad, we still need to have a sense of what happened in Mark 11 to understand what’s happening in Mark 12…

• In Mark 11, Jesus enters Jerusalem with people shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
• Israelites are celebrating Jesus’ arrival by laying out palm branches, signaling victory and triumph for their nation.
  • In other words, the King has arrived and He will usher in the Kingdom that the Jews have long been waiting for.

After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the temple and chases out the moneychangers doing business in God’s house.

• We hear Jesus say things like, “This is a house of prayer for all nations and you’ve turned it into a den of thieves.”
• And we see the reaction of the religious leaders, as Jesus completely disrupts their systems and practices…
• Immediately, the Jewish leaders start to plot how to kill Jesus … an incredible juxtaposition of his triumphal entry.

• Finally, in Mark 11, the leaders confront Jesus and ask, “Who are you? Who gave you the right to come and turn everything upside-down? Who do you think you are, Jesus?!”

Which is the question that weaves throughout the Gospel of Mark … and is the question we need to ask today, “Who does Jesus think he is, and who do we/I in my spirit say he is?”

• It’s the overarching focus for Mark 12, starting in vv.1-12, where Jesus uses the story of a vineyard to begin his answer to the question of who he is,

12 Then Jesus began teaching them with stories: “A man planted a vineyard. He built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. ² At the time of the grape harvest, he sent one of his servants to collect his share of the crop. ³ But the farmers grabbed the servant, beat him up, and sent him back empty-handed. ⁴ The owner then sent another servant, but they insulted him and beat him over the head. ⁵ The next servant he sent was killed. Others he sent were either beaten or killed, ⁶ until there was only one left—his son whom he loved dearly. The owner finally sent him, thinking, ‘Surely they will respect my son.’

⁷ “But the tenant farmers said to one another, ‘Here comes the heir to this estate. Let’s kill him and get the estate for ourselves!’ ⁸ So they grabbed him and murdered him and threw his body out of the vineyard.

⁹ “What do you suppose the owner of the vineyard will do?” Jesus asked. “I’ll tell you—he will come and kill those farmers and lease the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Didn’t you ever read this in the Scriptures? (Quoting Ps 118:22-23)

‘The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.
¹¹ This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see.’”

¹² The religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus because they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. But they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.

The story describes a familiar scene for the Jews.

• Jesus is recalling the prophet Isaiah’s writings in 5:1-7.
  • The man who plants the vineyard → God the Father.
  • The vineyard → Israel
  • The tenants → the religious leaders of Israel
  • The servants → the faithful OT prophets
  • The beloved son → Jesus
• A man has a vineyard and he rents it to tenants.
• The tenants misappropriate his property.
• When the owner sends messengers to collect what is rightfully his, the tenants beat and kill them.
• Eventually the owner sends his son, and they kill him too.
• The landowner is angry and is going to remove/kill the tenants and lease/go into relationship with other tenants.

On hearing this story, the religious leaders didn’t even need an explanation of what Jesus was trying to communicate.

• Look at verse 12,
  ¹² The religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus because they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. But, they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.
• The religious leaders are the tenants and God is less-than-satisfied with what is going on under their leadership.
• They were entrusted with cultivating something for others and for the sake of a future kingdom and harvest.
• Jesus calls them out on their blatant failure around what had God entrusted to them and for what purpose?
• He uses two metaphors to indicate their failure and to answer their defiant question, “Who do you think you are Jesus?”

 Metaphor #1

 The first metaphor is the “vineyard/Israel” that was entrusted to the Jewish religious leaders by God.

• As I mentioned earlier, the reference is to Isaiah 5.
• But actually goes back to the promise God made to Abraham (Gen.12) about being a blessing to all families on earth.
• Israel is God’s vineyard and they were always blessed to be a blessing to all people, to all nations.
  • They are God’s vineyard planted in the world, to display the goodness/holiness of God to all people.
  • They are intended to be a reflection of God and act as an attractant for other nations towards God.
• The religious leaders are supposed to be cultivating that vineyard/the nation for this explicit purpose.

It’s not a new message for the religious leaders … they’ve heard God talk about this through the prophet Isaiah 5.

Now I will sing for the one I love, a song about his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a rich and fertile hill. ² He plowed the land, cleared its stones, and planted it with the best vines. In the middle he built a watchtower and carved a winepress in the nearby rocks. Then he waited for a harvest of sweet grapes, but the grapes that grew were bitter.

³ Now, you people of Jerusalem and Judah, you judge between me and my vineyard. ⁴ What more could I have done for my vineyard that I have not already done? When I expected sweet grapes, why did my vineyard give me bitter grapes?

⁵ Now let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will tear down its hedges and let it be destroyed. I will break down its walls and let the animals trample it. ⁶ I will make it a wild place where the vines are not pruned and the ground is not hoed, a place overgrown with briers and thorns. I will command the clouds to drop no rain on it.

⁷ The nation of Israel is the vineyard of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. The people of Judah are his pleasant garden. He expected a crop of justice, but instead he found oppression. He expected to find righteousness, but instead he heard cries of violence.

• Jesus simply refreshes Isaiah’s imagery for the leaders.
• And he is accusing them of repeating history:
  • They have completely forgotten God’s purpose for them.
  • They are oppressing the marginalized.
  • They are in a self-centered shield & protect against other nations (i.e. Rome) mode of existence.
• This isn’t the kind of “vineyard” that God can use to attract all other people/nations to himself.
• And so God finally has no choice but send His own beloved Son, Jesus, to confront and reclaim what is His.
• Jesus has arrived!
• And seamlessly, the religious leaders assume their roles in the drama by immediately rejecting and plotting to kill the Owner’s beloved Son…
• Which leads us to metaphor #2.

 Metaphor #2

 In Mark 12:10, Jesus asks,

¹⁰ Didn’t you ever read this in the Scriptures? (Quoting Psalm 118:22-23)

‘The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.
¹¹ This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see.’”

Jesus shifts from “vineyard” imagery to a “building” metaphor.

• What’s a “cornerstone”?
  • The cornerstone concept comes from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation;
  • Its importance is crucial because all other stones are set in reference to this one stone;
  • It governs the grade & integrity of the whole structure.
• And Jesus says he is the rejected cornerstone in God’s construction of the nation/his people.
• Jesus is telling the Jewish leaders they’ve oriented their foundation and its structures on the wrong cornerstone.

Again, this isn’t a new image for the Jewish religious leaders.

• Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament Psalm 118,

⁸ It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in people.
⁹ It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes…

¹⁹ Open for me the gates where the righteous enter, and I will go in and thank the Lord.
²⁰ These gates lead to the presence of the Lord, and the godly enter there.
²¹ I thank you for answering my prayer and giving me victory!

²² The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.
²³ This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see.
²⁴ This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

The Temple has become the heart of the nation of Israel.

• We already know that the leaders are running God’s vineyard amuck … the nation is not functioning as it was intended to.
• And the temple stands as a symbolic monstrosity of what is wrong … what is causing God’s vineyard/nation to fail…
• The temple is built on the wrong cornerstone and consequently its integrity is lacking to such an extent that it needs to be destroyed.

Perhaps this visual will help us grasp what’s happening within the nation of Israel:

• The misconstruction of Israel’s religious and political system is astounding when we put into physical images that compare its evolution over generations:

Let’s start with a familiar facility that many North Americans worship at on Sunday mornings … the football field.

• Typical stadium seating about 65,000 people.

During the time of Moses, the Israelites built a tabernacle.

• It was the earthly vessel holding God’s presence.
• You can see that it was a tent and not very big.
• It could be packed up and moved wherever God desired to go.
• Words like humble, simple, versatile, nimble… come to mind.

A few hundred years later, the Israelites want an earthly King.

• Eventually, King David wants to build a permanent structure in place of the tabernacle.
• David’s son, King Solomon, builds the temple, which was roughly the same size as the tabernacle.
• The difference is in the extravagant décor and it being fixed in one place.
• God warned that He did not want a temple, but allows it with the provision that if the nation veered from His purposes, God would abandon the temple and it would be destroyed…
• Which is what Isaiah warned would happen in Isaiah 5.
• And in 586 BC, the Babylonian Empire destroyed the temple.

500 years later during Jesus’ time on earth, King Herod is king in Jerusalem and he spent 40 years building a new temple…

• …which cannot be described with words such as humble, simple, versatile, or nimble.

Friends, this is the symbolic and very physical backdrop to Jesus’ encounter with the Jewish leaders in Mark 12.

• It was a marker of the misdirection that the religious leaders were taking God’s people (the vineyard).

• Think about what this structure says about the cultivating that was taking place in the vineyard/God’s people.
• On what cornerstone was that structure and the systems that flowed out of it, built on?

Herod wanted to become powerful enough to defeat the Romans.

• The Israelites wanted a Messiah, a religious King who would accomplish the same goal.
• Jesus didn’t seem to fit that bill, so they get rid of him.
• Eventually, Israel did go to war with Rome, and in AD 70, Rome destroyed the physical temple for the last time.
• God did not prevent that from happening because he had already begun a new kingdom based on a new cornerstone.

 Who are We & Who is Jesus Today?

 We are a part of this new kingdom that is built on Jesus Christ.

• We as God’s people remain entrusted with God’s goal of blessing all families/nations, and attracting them to him.
• Jesus remains the cornerstone of this kingdom and mission!
• Jesus answers the Jewish leaders’ questions with a resounding, “I am the beloved Son and I am the cornerstone! This is God the Father’s doing and it is a wonderful thing to see!”

Jericho Ridge, we exist and strive to be a faith community that echoes those words!

• Our mission is to ensure that we/the vineyard is a blessing to all families on the earth … that is what God has entrusted to us.
  • Nothing short will satisfy God.
• There is no other cornerstone to build on than Jesus!
  • Nothing else will prevail in God’s kingdom.

The days in which Jesus confronted the religious leaders were shrouded with oppressive forces that created an atmosphere of uncertainty and dis--ease for God’s people.

• Things were not as they ought to be.
• The people, the world longed for relief, for a Saviour.
• Sound familiar?
  • Is COVID-19 causing your identity/world to shake to the point of questioning who we are as God’s people and who Jesus is as the cornerstone of the kingdom?

Friends, God is not shaken … He is still entrusting his mission for this world to us/his church.

• We are still called as God’s people, to cultivate the vineyard so that it produces godly fruit that attracts all those around us to God.
• We are blessed to be a blessing to the nations so that every person can be in relationship with God.
• Our charge has not changed from Abraham, to Solomon, to Isaiah, to the religious leaders Jesus confronted.

And our confident hope must continue to be singular in origin … we must stand on the cornerstone, who is Jesus.

• Psalm 118,

²² The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.
²³ This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see.
²⁴ This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Friends, especially in these days, all the nations of the world, all the families in our neighbourhoods, are taste-testing from God’s vineyard and faith-testing God’s foundation.

• What an opportunity we have to be God’s blessing to those around us.

Let’s pray…

Sending

Friends, I send you into the week and into whatever it holds, with the words of Romans 15,

¹³ I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. ¹⁴ I am fully convinced, my dear brothers and sisters, that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well you can teach others all about them.

Go with God’s confident hope into this week.  Amen.