13th May 2010

Mark 12:1-12 – The Parable of the Vineyard Tenants.

• Fairly obvious as to what Jesus is saying here.
• He describes a group of tenants who are obviously an analogy for the religious elite – chief priests, elders and teachers of the law. They are just stewards of what God has entrusted to them.
• They do not give back to God what they owe Him and when He has sent prophets to remind them to do this they either beat or kill them.
• So finally God sends His Son [Jesus] – when it says that the owner of the vineyard “thinks to Himself” – it is not suggesting that god was caught by surprise more that there was a sense of Him thinking “you would think that surely…”.
• The tenants kill the son expecting to inherit and grab hold of everything finally to themselves.
• Interestingly; the scripture that Jesus quotes is from the same Psalm that just a few verses later describes Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem a few days earlier.
• So there is a double whammy here for his questioners;
• Firstly the parable that tells them that they have killed God’s prophets and are about to kill His son.
• Secondly the remez where Jesus tells them basically look ‘You rejected me – the Son - I am the capstone – look at how I just got here – it was prophesied in advance!”.
• I need to be challenged as a leader that I can fall into the same trap that they did. Also that I must keep my heart soft because after all of this – after the very clear indications; they were so bent on power, status etc and their hearts were so hard that they still did exactly what Jesus was warning them about.
• Praying for a soft heart today.