12 Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.
6 “He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
7 “But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
9 “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.
-Mark 12:1-12
Why does it seem like Jesus has no chill? This parable that Jesus tells is pretty dark. Yet, we need to remember that we’re about a few chapters away in the Gospel of Mark from Jesus’ death. His time on earth is beginning to diminish so Jesus is trying to relay some pretty important information quickly.
In nutshell, this passage tells us that God is patient and slow to anger but one day His judgment will come. The landowner in this story is God. The landowner’s servants are God’s prophets. The son of the landowner is Jesus. The tenants are the people of Israel who have kept rejecting God for thousands of years.
God is shown as patient because he kept sending his prophets and even sent Jesus to warn people to turn back from their sin. But people just kept rejecting God’s invitation to repent and eventually God’s judgment comes.
This is warning to us. Some of us have the mentality, “I’m just going to put God at the back-burner right now. I’l really start following Him seriously later in life. But right now, I’m going to do my own thing.”
That’s not how this Christianity thing works. You can’t game the system. There’s no hack for Christianity. God knows our hearts and our secret thoughts. You can’t out-trick or out-think God. When we’re say we’re focus on our relationship with God LATER, we’re saying that God isn’t really that important. We’re saying that God isn’t really God, it’s whatever else we’re focused on. What we’re really doing is rejecting God the same way the people of Israel kept rejecting God.
Are you putting God on the back-burner right now? Good thing we can come to Him even with out messed up motivations and stubborn hearts. He still receives us with open arms. But just like this story tells us, each of us have to decide if we’re going to follow Him or reject Him. In fact, we have to make that choice on a daily basis. What are you choosing today?
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