One of my co-workers was down in the dumps a few months ago, so I asked
him what was wrong. He told me that his son had worked hard to achieve an
important milestone in his life, so he invited a number of people to his house
to celebrate his son’s success, but some close friends and relatives didn’t
come. He said that some of them had legitimate reasons but others just made (in
his words) "lame excuses". His son had worked really hard for several
years to get to this point and he couldn't understand their behavior. He told
me, "If there's some issue they have with me, that's fine, I can
understand that. I've got more than my fair share of quirks and imperfections.
Why hold that against my son, though? What did he do to deserve such
disrespect?" You see, their lack of respect for him was not the issue; it
was the lack of respect for his son that upset him so much.
I was thinking about his situation today, and it reminded me of the
Lord's words in Matthew 21:33-41: “Hear another parable. There was a master of
a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in
it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country.
When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get
his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and
stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did
the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect
my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is
the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him
and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of
the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He
will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other
tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” In this parable, God is
the master of the house, the tenants are the Israelites, the servants are God's
prophets, and the master's son is Jesus. The Israelites refused to listen to
the prophets, beat them and killed them, and then nailed God's son to a tree.
What was God's judgment against these wicked tenants (the Israelites)? The
vineyard (God's kingdom) was transferred to other tenants (the church) on the
day of Pentecost, and Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in AD 70.
My friend was justifiably upset about the lack of respect for his son.
How much more then was God justified in his wrath against those who treated his
son so shamefully? There's a lesson and a warning in all of this for us today.
If we say we love God but our actions show no respect for his son because they
are contrary to his son's teachings, how can we expect to escape God's
righteous judgment? Or how can we use God's grace as a license to sin when his
son paid such a terrible price to give us that grace? Romans 6:15-16:
"What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By
no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient
slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to
death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?"
