On the surface, the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21:33-46) looks rather harsh. It’s a short story, but the fact that it’s filled with violence might cause us to miss that this is actually a story about God’s incredible patience and grace.
First, look at the fact that the landowner (God) gives the vineyard to us to enjoy to begin with. Life and the pleasures that go with it are a great gift that God gives us to be happy.
Second, God shows us his grace through the repeated, patient warnings he sends the rebellious tenants. In this story, he sends two groups of servants and then finally his own son, and his tenants attack every one of them. He doesn’t send them just one messenger—one chance to repent—but chance after chance after chance.
The same is true for us. God, in us grace, sends us repeated warnings as his rebellious children. It could be through a sermon or a devotional—like this one. It could be through natural experiences, like aging, which reminds us that we don’t last forever and everything we have is borrowed; in other words, we are tenants, not the owner.
That gracious warning could also come through unfulfilled longings. C.S. Lewis said he often felt that life was spent chasing after “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” His conclusion was not that these longings lead nowhere, but rather, “If I find in myself a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Life in itself is a messenger constantly coming at you, pummeling you with the difficult truth: “You’re not in charge. You are not the owner; you are the tenant.”
But the ultimate way God showed mercy to us, of course, was by sending his Son.
You have to stand a little dumbfounded by the mercy of God shown to these tenants. After they had killed the other messengers, he sent his son to them. Would anyone else ever show that kind of mercy in that situation? Is that how you would have reacted to tenants that stole your vineyard—by sending your beloved child to try to get through to them?
God’s mercy, revealed in stories like this, is staggering. The reason we think ourselves more merciful than God is we don’t perceive the depth of the evil of what we’ve done. God sent his Son, knowing full well what we would do to him. Why?
First, Scripture says that he was demonstrating his love for us (Romans 5:8). He was putting it on display in a way we could never doubt and never forget. We see that he was willing to make himself vulnerable and put himself in harm’s way for no other reason than to rescue us.
Second, he was enabling us to trust him by showing us his willingness to identify with us. He had no personal vested interest in becoming one of us other than to lead us to safety.
Here’s another “parable” that helps explain what God was doing. It’s from my friend Joby Martin:
“The vacant lot next to the place where I lived in college was full of carpenter ants. When I would leave for class, the neighbor’s kid would be on his Big Wheel. He would go to the vacant lot and spread jelly all over the place. The ants were thrilled, and somehow they would let all their ant friends know—maybe they put on Ant-Facebook—‘Hey, come get the free jelly at the vacant lot!’ Then this kid would wait until all the ants got there and power slide with his Big Wheel through the lot and kill all the ants. (He had issues.)
“Now, if I loved ants and wanted to communicate with them, it would be impossible to try to stand over them and say, ‘Hear ye, hear ye, all ye ants! Thou shalt not eat the jelly, because it will lead to thy death.’ They would just look at me and say, ‘Look at the size of that boot.’ But if I were just an ant, I wouldn’t have the perspective to understand that psycho Big Wheel kid is on his way with jelly and death. So, I would need to simultaneously be big and powerful enough to have the right perspective and yet small as an ant to be able to communicate with them—to grow up like an ant, speak ant language, and yet still have the right perspective. And then one day, at just the right time, I would enter the colony and say, ‘Behold, ants! Follow me. I know the jelly tastes good. But look around. See all the ant legs and squished body parts? That’s going to be you one day. Follow me across the street where there’s no psycho Big Wheel kid—because his mom won’t let him cross the street.’”
That’s what the coming of Jesus is like.
Sort of.
I know that’s a ridiculous comparison. But is it really any more scandalous or ridiculous than what God did?
In becoming a man, he demonstrated his love for us and showed us that we could trust him, and his death became the means by which he saved us. Our murder of him became the means of our forgiveness. He died for our sin, paying our penalty in our place.
And now, we have a choice:
“Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is what the Lord has done and it is wonderful in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit. Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will shatter him.”
Matthew 21:42-44 CSB
You choose whether to let Christ’s death compel you to repent and build your life on him or ignore him and let him crush you.
God, in his mercy, has sent us messenger after messenger to remind us that we are not owners. And finally, he sent us Jesus.
That grace is amazing, but this parable shows us that it won’t last forever. Don’t ignore the warnings. If you won’t listen to the Son, whom would you listen to?
