The Insanity of Killing God

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the privilege and the blessing it is to gather. As Your people, we don't take this for granted. What a blessing it is to gather and experience Your presence and give You Your due glory. We worship You, Father, and we thank You that the only way that we were allowed back into the Father's house, into the Father's presence was because of the sacrifice of the Son.

And Jesus, we thank You that You came and You lived a perfect life obedient to the Father, to the very last drop on the cross. And we thank You that You did that to provide a way, to provide a gateway into the Father's house. And we thank You that when we repent of sin, You do forgive us of our rebellion, of our hostility toward You, and we do acknowledge that that's real. In many ways, often we live as if You don't exist or as if You're not God over certain parts of our life where we just block that section out and live in indifference toward You and Your will. So we ask for forgiveness for that.

We pray from the holy Scriptures today that You teach us, that You, Holy Spirit, minister to us in a way that only You can. And I pray, do point out those places of rebellion in our hearts and in our lives and give us the grace to submit ourselves holistically to You. Lord, bless our time with the holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark, and the title of the sermon today is The Insanity of Killing God.

A few years back, I remember reading about a famous child actor who upon growing up claimed that he had divorced his parents. He claimed to have divorced himself from his parents. He said the words and perhaps he even filed some of the official legal documents, but of course he could not divorce himself from the reality of the origin of life.

As we meditate on Holy Week, the most important week in all of human history, we're given a front row to what happened to God when He became one of us. A few years ago, there was a famous song and there's a line that went, "What if God were one of us?" Well, He was and we killed him. And just imagine the insanity of doing this to really think that you can get rid of God. And you might not live in just complete outright vocal rebellion toward God, but you might live as if God is dead to you. Meaning the idea of God is so distant from your life, He might as well be dead to you. And aren't you doing the same thing as the Jews and the Romans? Aren't you attempting to kill God?

But you can't kill God. He's eternal, of course. Jesus, when they tried to keep Him down, they couldn't. He came back from the dead. And that shouldn't be surprising knowing who Christ was. We should have all seen that one coming. What is surprising is that anybody would want to kill God. Why would you try to liquidate the one who gave you life? You literally bear His image. His image is printed upon you. You're His. You belong to Him.

Why do we have this hostility in our hearts? Because we don't want to give up authority to govern our lives as we please. The stubborn grip on the throne of our lives leads to our self-destruction. Because you can't kill God, you can't get rid of the stubborn fact that God is, He always will be. And it would be wise of us to make peace with God while we still have a chance, while we're still alive, to accept His fatherly authority, to accept His love, to accept his provision and His protection, and to give Him His due, which is obedience of faith from the heart, to glorify Him, honor and worship Him.

And if you meditate upon it, it is absolutely insane to rebel against God because you won't win. He always wins. He's God. And rebelling against God will always lead to self-destruction, but still there's a desire to rebel. Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's greatest writers who knew all about self-destruction intimately, he coined the phenomenon of willful self-destruction as, quote, perverseness.

In one of his works, the Imp of the Perverse, Poe contends that just knowing something is wrong is the one unconquerable force that makes us do it. We all have an overwhelming tendency to do wrong for wrong's sake. We're all tempted by the forbidden fruit. And often, it's not the fruit itself that irresistibly draws us but the fact that it's forbidden. Don't do this is sometimes the only reason why we're tempted to do it. The forbidden is a powerful magnet pulling on our sinful hearts because deep inside, if we're honest, we absolutely despise someone telling us what to do, even if it is God, especially if it is God. And in our text today, Jesus reveals this innate suicidal enmity toward God and He graciously offers to save us, and He does it by allowing his own destruction, His own self-destruction, so to speak, to save us from our self-destruction. And thereby, He provides the means to replace, to plant that enmity toward God with love and obedience. Today, we're in Mark 12:1-17. Would you look at the text with me?

"And He began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." But those tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours." And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.' What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Have you not read this Scripture? "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."' And they were seeking to arrest Him but feared the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them. So they left Him and went away. And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap Him in his talk. And they came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not?' But knowing their hypocrisy, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.' And they brought one and He said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to Him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. First, our three points to frame over our time. First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. Second, suicidal enmity toward the messengers. And third, suicidal enmity toward the Son.

First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. After Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Passover week, Holy Week, and He entered by receiving the worship from the people, they cried out, "Hosanna, God save us." He received their acclamations and did not reject them. And by doing so, He's throwing down the gauntlet. The time has come for Him to do a face-off with the spiritual authorities of the day. And after deflecting the religious leader's hostile challenge to His authority in the previous text, Jesus tells a parable here, and it's a powerful parable. And a lot of people think parables are just stories. They're not. Parables are used as verbal weapons. And here, Jesus Christ is leveling a wrecking ball of a parable. And what are they weapons against? Against the people, not the people themselves, but the ideas that they are promulgating, the ideas that they represent.

And what are the ideas that Jesus is wrecking here with His words? They're ideas of authority. He's demolishing their man-made authority structures which put them higher than God. And this, friends, of course is very highly relevant because this is every single person's problem. We put human authority above God's authority, and no one is higher than God and no one is higher in authority than God the Father. Read Matthew 23 this week as you prepare for Good Friday. Matthew 23 is the sermon that got Jesus crucified. He was murdered because of His words. That's how powerful of a wrecking ball they were. Jesus' sermon, Matthew 23, destroys all of the authority structures of Israel of that day. And in Matthew 23:8-9, Jesus says this, "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth for you have one Father who is in heaven."

Now, anyone listening at that time was incredibly offended by these words. In one sentence, Jesus dismantles the Jewish system of authority showing them no, a rabbi is not higher than God himself. God's word and not human tradition is preeminent in authority. And then He says don't call anyone father in one fell swoop. He is dismantling the system of authority in the Catholic Church that has a man at the very top of the system of authority. Jesus says don't call anyone father. And I've always found it confusing that Catholics call priests father but don't let them ever become a father. That's all confusing and Jesus knocks all that down.How did Jesus teach us to pray to the Father? Our Father. Jesus didn't pray to Jesus. Jesus prayed to the Father. And this is important that when you do pray, pray to God the Father because it reminds us who's in charge. It reminds us who has ultimate authority over us. He created us, He cultivates us, He protects us, and He owns us.

Mark 12:1, "Jesus began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.'" We're not told how the man got the capital that was needed to buy the land and buy the equipment, the infrastructure, et cetera. Most likely this is a man that had to work for years, maybe a decade plus, to accumulate the capital, and he takes on risk and he works really hard and he does this in order to reap a harvest from his work.

And the main purpose of verse 1 isn't just to elaborate details of the allegory, et cetera. The details here are to show that this is all done in love. This is a man who worked hard with the land, with his hands, with what the Lord has given him to create something beautiful. And what's the fence for? The fence is to protect what this man has lovingly created. He of course here represents God the Father. Later on in the text, we know that he sends a son. Therefore, he is a father. The man represents God the Father, and the Father is a creator, he's a cultivator, and he's a protector. The fence was there to protect from external threats, but it turned out that the threats were internal.

And this is a good reminder of every father's job. If you've been given the blessing of being a father, your job is to create, to cultivate, and to protect. Protect the child from threats, external and internal. We are to teach our children about sin within and we are to protect. We are teach them about the sinful flesh that is hostile toward God, and we are to teach them that there are consequences for sin. Yes, God does give grace, He does forgive, but we want to prevent you from the consequences of sin. And we are to teach them about grace and teach them how to flee sin and pursue righteousness because living righteously delights God the Father's heart. And when God is delighted, He delights to bless.

The imagery and the details used in this text are taken from Isaiah 5 where the vineyard stands for Israel and the man for God. An ancient Jewish and Christian texts interpret the tower and the wine vat in Isaiah 5 as the temple and its altar and defense may stand for the walls of Jerusalem. Would you look at Isaiah 5:1-7 with me? "Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked forward it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, oh, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked forward to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do in my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness, but behold, an outcry."

So God is saying He's entrusted His people, the people of Israel, with His law, with His prophets, with His temple, with His priests and with land. And the expectation was that they would bear fruit for the Lord. The religious leaders were expected to govern Israel by God's Word, and the people were to be self-governed by God's Word. That didn't happen. So this man that planted this vineyard built the walls around it. He leases it out to tenants. They draft a lease with clear expectations, a clear payment for the rent, for leasing the land, and then the man went into another country.

The application for all of us, the broader application is very clear. What this parable is telling us is that we are not our own. That we are not owners. That we do not own our lives. No, our time is leased to us. Our health is leased to us. Our bodies are leased to us from God the Father. You are a tenant, not an owner. And verse 2, "When the season came, he," the father, "sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard." So at the proper time, at time of harvest, he goes. And his graciousness, his generosity is evident in the text in that he doesn't demand most of the crop. He doesn't even demand half of the crop. No, he just wants some, some of the fruit of the vineyard. In biblical narrative, fruit is often a term to designate a life that's lived in obedience to God, a life in which people use the talents, the opportunities, the gifts that God has given us, our very lives for the Lord. And then the Lord loves to bless the fruitful life with more fruit.

And here, what we see, one of the things that we notice here is there is a clear relationship between the tenants and the owner. It's a hierarchical relationship. It's a vertical relationship. A lot of people when they think about Christianity and they say, "No, Christianity is not a religion. It's a relationship." And I say, "Yes, it is a relationship. We are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself." And to love the Lord, and that's the summary of the commandments, we keep His commandments. That's what Jesus said. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And so we are not to forget that our relationship with the Lord is not horizontal and He is in charge, He is God, He is in authority. The relationship is offered to us by the grace of Jesus Christ. And the only way you enter into relationship with God the Father is on your knees, in humble repentance, forever defying His authority.

And do the tenants pay their rent? No, of course not. Verse 3, "And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed." What are the tenants doing here? They start acting like owners. Why should we pay you? We did all the work." And they forget that they were gifted, so to speak, that all this work that was done prior. In a sense, they disown the owner. It's almost as if the owner doesn't exist. And this is happening nowadays with squatter's rights, et cetera. That's exactly what they do. The tenants decide that they're the owners and they're exercising so-called squatter's rights.

How does this appear in our lives, in our world? Well, it's when people start looking at reality and think, "I'm going to decide how reality is. I get to decide what truth is. I'm going to live my truth. I am in authority of the definition. These are the values that I've chosen for myself, the reality that I've created. It's my body, therefore my sexuality, therefore my moral code. I decide. I'm a master of my own fate, the captain of my own soul." And here, what Jesus is doing is exposing the sinfulness in our rebellious hearts, this desire to claim ownership. But to claim ownership of yourself, to live as if you are your own, you're usurping the owner.

And why do they act like this? Why do we act like this? Because we are born in a flesh that is hostile to God. Romans 8:7, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot." So the hostility has to do with the law. When we see God's law, we see God's demands upon us and we're hostile that God, You would demand these things. The owner just wanted a portion. He wanted some of the fruit of the harvest.

And how does that apply to us? Well, the Lord wants all of us. He wants our whole life. But you know that you are living in ordered worship to the Lord. You are living underneath the authority of the Lord when you do govern yourself by the Ten Commandments. And you realize that the commandments are the way of life. This is the path of freedom.

And one of them, the first commandments says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That's the very first one. The fourth commandment says, "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath day holy." And there God makes a very specific, very clear demand. "One-seventh of your time, one day a week is mine." And by the way, this is how you grow. This is one of the greatest means of grace where you just commit and say, "Lord, I'm going to give you Sunday. Lord, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. Lord, I'm going to devote myself to the scriptures in prayer on Sunday." The Lord also tells us in the commandment, "Thou shall not steal." And God Himself, in Malachi 2, points to the commandment and he says, "You're stealing from me by not bringing the tithes to me." And there, we get very specific that God does want 10% of our earned income that we give to Him, give to His kingdom, or give to His church.

Well, once you start getting very precise that this is what the commands demand of us, well, this is where people begin to experience the hostility within our hearts. For most of us, unbelief in God or lack of belief, it's not a head issue. It's not that there's not enough evidence. No, it's a will issue. Do we want to do the will of God? And there's hostility there. Intellectual skepticism for Christianity is often nothing more than a flimsy veneer covering deep-seated hostility.

Aldous Huxley, the philosopher who coined the term agnostic and author of Brave New World, he said this, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. For myself has, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality of Christianity because it interfered with our sexual freedom. There was one admirably, simple method of justifying ourselves, agnosticism." Thomas Nagel in The Last Word writes, "I want atheism to be true. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that."

These tenants know that they are tenants and they hate it. They want to work for their own profit. They want to be the owners. And in many ways, we would rather like them live with this illusion of independence or self-sufficiency. But the day of reckoning is coming and the owner was sending messengers to try to get the tenants to come to their senses. And this is point 2, a suicidal enmity toward the messengers.

In verse 4 of Mark 12 says, "Again, he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully." Sometimes when I preach a sermon, someone comes up to me and say, "Pastor, that was a great sermon, good sermon." And I always say the same thing. I say, "Praise be to God. And also, I'm just the messenger. Just the messenger. I'm like the mail man. I'm like UPS guy. I like that I'm bringing you packages." I like the UPS guy because he can park anywhere he wants, sidewalks, et cetera. But I say that tongue-in-cheek because I'm always thinking about this parable. "Oh, you like that? Keep coming back." We're going to continue preaching the text. And there will be messages in which you realize that, "I don't like that message. It doesn't make me feel good. It offends my sensibilities." So when you hear a sermon like that, for me, I'm just a messenger. I'm just the UPS guy. Don't kill me.

If you try, there's many a lesson here, if you are called to proclaim the Word of God and to do it very publicly, do it out front, if you are called as a man of God to proclaim the Word of God, become a pastor, I just want you to know you will get opposition and the opposition is going to be hostile. And as the world becomes more and more in hostility toward the Lord, just know there will be a cost for bringing the clear message. They struck him in the head. They wounded this gentleman. And here, this series of messengers are echoes of the prophets that the Lord sent to his people and they suffered ill-treatment from their fellow Israelites. And Jesus also taught in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Blessed are you when others persecute you and revile you for my name's sake. Great is your reward in heaven."

Mark 12:5, "And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed." The immediate application is that God sent prophets to the religious leaders to tell them, "Hey, stop acting like owners. Tend God's vineyard with God's Word for His prophet." And you see the incredible grace of this owner. He could have just called the authorities on these people. They could have been thrown out. No, he sends a messenger. He sends another messenger. He sends another messenger. Just incredible patience on this man's part.

And this is what God had been doing all throughout salvific history of holy Scripture. He promised, "I will not leave myself without a witness." So He kept sending them. Jeremiah sent to the people, was beaten on multiple occasions, thrown into a pit, and finally stoned to death. Elijah, Amos, both of them were banished and forced to hide in caves. Ezekiel was murdered after a sermon. Habakkuk was stoned. Zechariah got chased into the temple and stoned near the altar. Uriah who prophesied around the same time as Jeremiah, he tried to escape into exile but the king tracked him down, brought him back to Israel, and ran him through with a sword. The prophet Micah was punched in the face by false prophets. Isaiah was put into a log and cut in half. And that's not even to mention what happened to the apostles.

The religious people of the day, as they're hearing the sermon, they thought they looked at their past and the past of Israel's relation to the prophets and they thought it was something that they had grown past, that they were too righteous, that they were too morally upright to do something like this. And the irony, of course, was that they're about to do something much worse than their fathers had done in that they're going to kill the Son of God.

There's an important lesson here for us. When you hear about the sins of people before us or sins of people today, it's so easy to look on people with disdain as if we've somehow progressed past sin. We have not. We do all each. We have a fallen heart. So when we see someone who sins, we shouldn't say, "What's wrong with them?" We should say, "What's wrong with the human heart? What's wrong with my heart? There go I, but for the grace of God." And it is grace that God sends messengers into our lives, and what do they tell us? They remind us that there is a God who is over us. He's the owner, we're the tenants. And if we've been living as owners, we are to repent because a day of reckoning, a day of judgment is coming.

There will be times, dear Christian, that you won't like the message, the message of Scripture. You won't like when a brother or sister, they bring the message to you. And by the way, this is why it's so important to be part of a church, be plugged into a church, be part of a community group where you're walking with brothers and sisters, where you've covenanted together. So that when there does come a moment where you need someone to call you out, your brother and sister are there and they say, "You've given me permission to do this by joining the church. I need to bring this message to you." At those moments, do not reject the messenger. At those moments, receive the message humbly and bring it to the Lord and say, "Lord, is there truth to this?"

If you don't like the message, don't just leave. It is tempting in those moments when someone calls out your sin to just bounce, to go find a church who don't really talk about sin, where they tickle your ears, where they give you a palatable message, where you just feel good about yourself all the time. No, no. You need a church that calls you out. You need a church to remind you of how much of a wicked sinner you are so that the cross of Jesus Christ is so much more meaningful. Lord Jesus, You save me from the sin. We need this reminder that we are not the owners and that God is a God who makes demands of us. There's many a church today that preaches a message about a God that demands nothing, a God that does nothing, one whom we can control with a modest investment of time and money. In those churches, those people aren't really seeking the true God of the universe.

Romans 3:10 says, "None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God." Now, CS Lewis in his work called he Miracles, he has this tremendous low quote. "An impersonal God, well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness inside our own heads better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap, best of all. But God himself alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hushed suddenly. Was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion, man's search for God, suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found him? We never meant it to come to that. Worse still, supposing he had found us?"

God sends us messengers. Sometimes it's through preachers or pastors. Sometimes it's through brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's through providential life circumstances that they shatter the illusion that you're in control. Sometimes it's just looking in the mirror and you're like, "Oh, what happened?" We're aging. That's what happened. The fragility of life where you get that phone call where a beloved has cancer, a beloved is in the hospital, all of a sudden your worldview just shatters. And those are all gracious reminders that we are living on borrowed time. Sometimes it's unfulfilled longings where you work for years, you work for a goal to become something, to become a person, to achieve something, and then you get it and then all you feel is emptiness inside because you realize, "I worked so hard for so long for something that doesn't satisfy."

Lewis writes elsewhere. "If I find myself desires which nothing in this world will satisfy, the only explanation is that I was created for another world." God shows His grace toward us in this story in repeated ways. He sends messengers, messengers to remind them, "Hey, you want to be in a right relationship with the owner. It's for your good. You're going to flourish." And also, this is a good owner. He gives him a vineyard. I don't know if anyone's ever done a vineyard tour in California, Napa Valley. I've never done it. I've driven by. I've looked over covetously. No, I've repented. But this is majestic. This is the reason why lots of these great movies, the end with a vineyard, it's almost like heaven. It smells nice. There's grapes. There's wine, and praise be to God.

But this shows the graciousness of the owner. What a great God we have. He's not just a lawgiver. He could have just created a prison, thrown them inside and said, "You're going to do what I say." That's not what he does. In love, He says, "Okay, here's everything that I have created, I've cultivated, I've protected. I'm entrusting it to you. Keep growing it. And all I ask for is a portion in return." If God were merely a lawgiver, I could in a sense understand people against Him. But He's not just a lawgiver. He's the giver of every good and perfect gift, including His law. He is the source and fount of every blessing and yet people spurn Him.

The tenants don't listen to the messengers so the owner sends his son, and this is point 3, suicidal enmity toward the Son. Verse 6, "He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." The phrase "beloved son" echoes a story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac. God came to him and said, "Take your son, your only son, your long-awaited son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him." Finally, He sent him to them last of all eschaton in the Greek. It's a technical term for the end of days. "Perhaps they'll respect my son." In verse 7, "But those tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.'" "This is the heir, come."

And readers, if you're reading this for the first time, you would imagine that okay, tenants, they finally come to their senses when they recognize the son as the father's surrogate. And perhaps if they sat down and reason things out, they would say, "Come on, let's get out of here. What are we doing? The judgment of the owner is coming down upon us." But instead of adopting the prudent course of respecting the son, they adopt the insane one of murdering him. And it's absolutely insane because there is no court that would've accepted the fact that their owners, especially if the owner was killed or the owner's son was killed. And this is a very well resourced father. What do they think is going to happen if they kill the father's beloved son? Here, we see suicidal enmity has blinded them to the insanity of this plan.

And what are they longing for? For freedom from the owner. And this is what a lot of people want today. They want freedom from God, not recognizing that there is no freedom from God. We are designed to find our true freedom and right relationship with God and right relationship with his laws. True freedom isn't found when we usurp all control or all rules. It's found when we find the God who created us. We're created in His image. He knows how we're wired and He knows how we are to operate, to flourish. And we do that according to His law. The world says there is no truth. You make your own truth. And Jesus responds and He says, "No, I am the truth. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

And what's the truth? The truth is that you are a sinner. I'm a sinner. We've transgressed God's law. But Jesus is a savior and He loves you. His love frees you to love Him back. And if we love Him, we keep His commandments. And here again, we see just how incomprehensible the mercy of this owner is and how incomprehensible the mercy of God is. After they kill messenger after messenger after messenger, He sends His beloved Son. "Come, let us kill him." That phrase is an echo of the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. And since the tenant's words are identical with those of Joseph's evil brothers, we see a connection.

The tenants of course act irrationally. And that's what God charges Israel with in doing in Isaiah 1:2-3. Chapter 1:2-3, "Hear, oh heavens, and give ear, oh earth, for the Lord has spoken. 'Children have I reared and brought up but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey it's master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand.'" What do they do with the son? Verse 8, "And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard." The language here is reminiscent of the cross that Jesus Christ was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem. The greatest evidence for our deep-seated hostility to God is the one time in the history of the world when God made himself physically vulnerable, people arrested Him, beat Him, tortured, crucified, and murdered Him.

John 15:23-25 says, the words of Christ, "Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father, but the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. 'They hated me without cause.'" It's like the Lord of the sheep, the great Shepherd, Jesus Christ. It says if He summons a few sheep from the flock and sends them back to the flock and say, "Teach the sheep how to live, teach the sheep my ways." And what do the sheep do? The sheep take them and begin to kill them. And then the shepherd becomes the sheep and the sheep slaughter him.

Well, it turned out these weren't sheep at all. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. And what do you do with wolves who destroy sheep? You destroy them. And that's Mark 12:9, "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others." The owner of the vineyard and the greatest courtyards is the Lord, the Lord of the vineyard. It's the same word that's used for God in the Old Testament, Yahweh. There will be a time when Yahweh comes back. There will be a time where the Lord of the vineyard is going to come and He's going to judge. He'll come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Who are the tenants in the immediate context? The Jewish leaders recognize that Jesus is talking about them. They view themselves as the tenants. They realize exactly what he's saying and they want to kill him. That's the insanity of it. He's calling the shots. He's telling the parable, "Do not do this. Do not kill the son." And they plan to kill the son. And if you follow this parable closely, you realize the removal of the tenants from the vineyard and transferring it to others. Jesus here is talking about deposing the Jewish leadership from spiritual authority over the people of God and then transferring that spiritual leadership to the church where Jesus Christ is the head of His body, the church. She is His bride. He is the head. And all throughout the Book of Acts, we see them wielding that authority.

And you see that through the history of Jerusalem when it was destroyed in the Jewish war in years 66 through 73 as the church grew by the power of the Spirit. Therefore, the banished tenants represent Israel and the favored others, the early church which was the fusion of Jews and Gentiles who represent true Israel. Israel has lost its status as the people of God as symbolized by the catastrophic defeat in the Jewish war and has been replaced by the church. In Mark 12:10, Jesus continues, "Have you not read this Scripture? 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and this was the Lord's doing and it was marvelous in our eyes.'"

Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18, one of the five Psalms of the Hallel sung throughout Passover week. And when he entered in Jerusalem and everyone cried out, "Hosanna in the highest," they were quoting from the Psalm as well. So Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18 and He says, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." He's talking about Himself. "I will be rejected but I am actually a foundational stone, the cornerstone for the church, for the people of God." And that cornerstone imagery, it's very clear. That's the most important stone in the foundation. But here in this text, in particular in Isaiah 28, it talks about Jesus as the foundational stone. But here for cornerstone, the Greek word for head is used. It's the head stone. And some commentators have argued that this is the elevated cornerstone or the key stone in the arch of the temple. And evidence for this is there was a head of the corner crowning the temple of God.

So in one sense, Jesus Christ is our foundation, but he's also the crown of our lives. He's a crown of the church. He is the head of our lives. He was rejected, but his rejection led to our acceptance. Therefore, it's marvelous in our eyes. The father, when he sent the son, He said, "They will respect my son." And in a sense you read that and you're like, "That seems highly naive. Messenger after messenger was killed. Why do you think they're going to respect your son?" In a sense, yeah, they didn't respect him. But in a sense this is also prophetic. There will come a time when everybody will respect the name of Jesus Christ. Either we accept His name, either we accept His authority and lordship over our lives now in humility, we come humbly, or we will be humbled when He returns for the second judgment. When the son shows up, he's killed out of enmity. But the wisdom and the beauty of the glory of the gospel is the very killing that comes from their enmity is the very way in which God slays that enmity.

Verse 12, "When they were seeking to arrest Him but fear the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them, so they left Him and went away." They still fear the crowd because the crowd is still with Jesus so they need to hatch a plan where they take the crowd support away from Jesus. And that's what the next part of the text is about in verse 13. "And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk." The Herodians are mentioned here because Herod was a proxy of Caesar. So he would collect the taxes from the Jewish people and the taxes then funneled through his coffers would go to Caesar. Obviously, he made a killing off of it.

So the Herodians, they wanted the people to pay the taxes, hot button issue. And they know it's a trick because Jesus, if you say, "No, don't pay your taxes," now we can appeal to Caesar and he's going to kill you. If you say, "Go and pay your taxes," now the people will say, "Oh Jesus said you were the king. Why are we supporting Rome?" So that's the trap.

Mark 12:14, "They came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And should we pay them or should we not?'" They start by saying, "You are true," which is hypocritical because he is true. They're unwittingly witnessing to the truth. But a few lines earlier, the chief scribes sent a question. They said through their proxies, they said, "By whose authority are you doing the things you're doing?" And here, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we know you are true. We know whose authority." Obviously they're being hypocritical.

"You are true." That means there's no sin, there's no lies, there's no prevarication. "You do not care about anyone's opinion," meaning you fear God over people. So when people's opinions contradict the will of God or the teaching of God, you don't care. "And you are not swayed by appearances," meaning you don't judge by appearances. You don't show partiality. And in that, in this, he's reflecting God Himself for Samuel 16:7. "But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance on the height of his stature because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" And the trap here is they're saying, "Lord, if you don't care about anyone's opinions, you definitely don't care about the emperor's opinions."

And the Messiah according to Isaiah 11:3 would imitate God in making impartial judgments. Isaiah 11:3, "And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear." And Jesus, we know that You truly teach the way of God. That's what Jesus came to do, teach the way of God. And then the question, is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? And then here are the taxes, the poll tax that Caesar demanded off of every person. How does Jesus respond? Verse 15. "But knowing their hypocrisy, their pretense, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.'"

Denarius was a Roman currency. You pay Roman taxes with Roman currency. Denarius represented a day's wage. And if you take the coin, on the front, it was inscription. There was Tiberius with a laurel crowned head. And then the inscription around his head said "Tiberius Caesar, son of the deified Augustus, himself Augustus". And on the reverse side it would say Pontifex Maximus, which is high priest. On the one side it says he is Dei. They were deifying Caesar, and he's also our high priest. Blasphemous. And this is why the Jews had a problem with these coins is blasphemous.

And Jesus said, "Bring me one." In verse 16, "They brought one and he said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him." I remember when I read this for the first time as a kid. I fell in love with Jesus because I was like, "Ah, Jesus is the best trash talker. He's better than anybody. He puts it."

But the deeper you study the Scripture, you realize just the profound depth of the wisdom of God. They start the conversation with a battle for authority and He ends the conversation with a battle of authority. Who wins? God Himself. What is Jesus saying here? He's saying, "Whose image is on that coin? Caesar's. Okay, give unto Caesar's what is Caesar's." And then he says, "Whose image is on you? Whose image is on you? Whose image and likeness is on you? Give unto God's yourself what is God's genius." The coin which bears the image of Caesar, we give to Caesar. We however, as men and women who bear the image of God, we owe ourselves to God. We will give Caesar's unto Caesar but we will not render unto Caesar what is God's even if Caesar demands it. No, we won't.

So this is a reminder for us friends to give what is God's to God. Give your whole life as a living sacrifice to the Lord. Bring your Sabbath to the Lord. Give your tithes to the Lord. Use your talents for the Lord's kingdom. And we do this because we long to, not just because we're obligated to. Know that duty has become a choice. John Newton in Amazing Grace writes, "Our pleasure and our duty, the opposite before. Since we have seen His beauty, are joined, depart no more." Our pleasure and our duty, it is our pleasure to do our duty for the Lord. Newton's friend William Cowper wrote, "To see the law by Christ fulfilled and to hear His pardoning voice changes a slave into a child and duty into choice."

And what's the only thing that can heal our hearts of our enmity and hostility toward God? It's recognizing and accepting the love of God for us. Corinthians 5:18 says, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

If you're here today and you're not sure where you stand before God, if you were to die today and you're not sure where you would go, today, you have a decision to make. If you do not repent of your sins, if you do not place your faith in Christ, if you do not accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and His grace, if you died today, you are going to be separated from God for all eternity and His wrath will be upon you in a place called hell. But thankfully, you're not dead yet. Thankfully, we still have a chance to repent. And thanks be to the work of Christ, we can be forgiven. If you don't admit you're an enemy, you'll stay one and you'll be crushed when Christ returns to judge. If you admit you're an enemy, you'll no longer be one Lord, I have been an enemy. I have been in rebellion. Lord, forgive me. I accept your amnesty. Lord, welcome me into your kingdom.

Matthew 21:44, "And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." Either allow your hard heart to be shattered by His love and then He heals it or remain at war with God, which is suicidal and you will be crushed. We come humbly to the Lord or we will be humbled in the judgment. Either you say to God, "God, Thy will be done. I'm not my own," or God will one day say to you, "Thy will be done. You are your own. Go."

I'm going to close by praying the Lord's prayer as Jesus taught us to pray. And you're welcome to pray in your heart with me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Father, we thank You for sending your Son, and Lord Jesus, we thank You that You went to the cross with eyes wide open. You knew the cost and it was a terrible cost, but You did that in order to atone for our sins. And we thank You, Holy Spirit, that You're with us today. And I pray, if there's anyone who is still stuck in their rebellious ways, I pray, Lord, melt their hearts. I pray give them spiritual resurrection of their souls in this Holy Week. I pray that this week will be holy in their lives, that they will be drawn into Your kingdom and into Your church. And Lord, bless us this week as we meditate upon your final week before the crucifixion. And Lord, give us opportunities to share the great gospel with our friends, neighbors, or anyone else who would listen. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.