Today we continue our study in the Word of God in Matthew chapter 21, verses 33 to 46. This parable is known as the parable of the wicked husbandmen, the wicked tenants. And we will read it first together from verses 33 to 46.
And the Lord Jesus told another parable and He said, "Hear another parable. There was a householder who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and let it out to tenants and went into another country. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again he sent other servants more than the first and they did the same to them. Afterwards 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 — that is, took the son — and cast 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." Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures, 'The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes'? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it." When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them. But when they tried to arrest Him, they feared the multitudes because they held Him, that is Jesus, to be a prophet.
Now, what is the heart of this parable? First of all, the Lord Jesus spoke this parable, as you can see, to the religious leaders of Israel. We see that in verse 45, that even the chief priests and Pharisees, the religious leaders, understood that the Lord Jesus was speaking about them. Now, how shall we grasp this parable? What is the key idea in this parable? Well, the key idea hinges on one word which keeps coming back in the New Testament, which is the word "fruit." It all has to do with the matter of fruit. This is the whole key idea in this passage.
Now, why does anybody plant a vineyard? Why would you plant grapes? A vineyard is somewhere where people grow grapes. Why does anyone plant a vineyard? Well, you plant a vineyard because you want fruit. You want to have some return on your investment. So the whole purpose of planting a vineyard is to get fruit. Now here immediately we see the spiritual lesson of it all. Because as you look at this passage, you realize what the vineyard represents. What does it represent? Well, to see what it represents is quite simple. All we need to do is compare two passages.
First, in verse 41, the Lord Jesus says, "What will the owner do to those tenants who did not give him his fruit, but instead put his servants to shame and to death?" They said, "Well, he will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out his vineyard to other tenants. He will let out his vineyard to other tenants." When we compare this with verse 43, we see the same thing: "The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to others, to another nation that produces its fruit." So the vineyard represents, by this simple comparison, the kingdom of God. In this parable, the kingdom of God is pictured as a vineyard. And this vineyard is taken away from those who don't produce its fruits and given to those who do.
So, coming back to our original question: why does anyone plant a vineyard? In order to have fruit. Translating this question to its meaning, we see that God establishes His kingdom in order to have spiritual fruit, of course. Now, this seems pretty clear, except when we come to ask the question: did we realize that God established His kingdom in order to obtain spiritual fruit? Do you realize that if you are in the kingdom of God, God expects to have spiritual fruit from you? That if you are in the kingdom of God, then you are in the same position as tenants. The tenants are in the vineyard. They are there in the vineyard — what for? In order to look after it and to produce the fruit that God expects. If you are in the kingdom of God, then you must understand what you are there for. God entrusts the kingdom of God to your care, that you may produce the fruit that He desires.
This is a concept of salvation which is often all too foreign to us. We think of salvation that God, as it were, established the kingdom so that we can go in there and eat the fruit and enjoy ourselves and get to heaven. That's not the concept of salvation in the Bible at all. The concept of salvation in the Bible is that you are saved by the power of God in order to produce fruit. This is most important to understand. And what that fruit is, we shall look at in a moment.
But first, let us try to get a clearer picture of this parable. This parable then begins in verse 33 by speaking about someone who is called the owner, the householder, who plants a vineyard. And what does he do? Well, he sets a hedge around it. That is, he builds a fence around it. And that is, of course, to protect the vineyard, to see that it is secure. And then he dug a wine press in it, because the fruit is then going to be crushed in order to produce wine. Wine being a symbol of joy — to give joy not only to the people in the vineyard but to bring joy to others. A task which the church has significantly and manifestly failed to fulfill in its generation. And then a tower is built. A tower was built, on the one hand, to give shade to those who work in it from the noonday heat. They need the shade. On the other hand, to give an outlook position in order to foresee problems that are going to come, in order to watch out for thieves who come in to steal, or watch out for animals that might come in to destroy the vine and harm the vine. So the tower serves both as protection for those within from the heat of the day, as well as for defense and protection of the vineyard.
Now what is the point of this saying? The point of this saying is to show that the vineyard was very well laid out. It was very well established. It was not carelessly conceived. It was conceived wisely. It was prepared wisely in order that it would be able to produce fruit, that it would be a good vineyard. And the point of saying all this is that if there was a lack of fruit, it will not be due to the fault of the owner — that he did not make adequate preparations for the vineyard to be fruitful, that he was careless in its protection, that he built no fence around it, and therefore of course the vines were quickly damaged, that he did not prepare a proper wine press in it so that the fruit could not be processed, or that he did not provide it with a tower so that those who worked in it had no rest from the noonday heat and they had no outlook position to see that the vineyard was well kept and well preserved. The whole point then of this first verse is to say that if the tenants were unfruitful, it was no fault of the owner and it was no fault of the vineyard itself, because the vineyard was perfectly planned, prepared, and conceived.
Now, the next verse tells us that when the season of fruit came, and having made such excellent preparations for the vineyard, of course he had the right to expect some fruit. But when the season of fruit came, he sent his servants, his representatives, to get fruit, to ask for the fruit that was rightfully his. But not only did the servants get no fruit, they got a beating instead. And more than that, some of them even lost their lives in the process. Such was the aggressiveness and hostility of the tenants towards the owner.
Now, the legal implications of this parable, I will not go into in detail. For those of you interested in the legal background of this parable, you can refer to Professor Derrett's work. And I say this particularly for the benefit of the training team. You can refer to Professor Derrett's work on law in the New Testament. This will give you some picture, some background of the legal position of the tenants and of the owner. In those days in Galilee, there were many foreign owners of land in Israel. They were, you can say, absentee landlords. They owned a piece of land, and with this piece of land they did provide jobs for the local people but also some profit for themselves. Now, it was necessary that the owner had to send representatives according to the law every year, because if he failed for three consecutive years to send representatives to his vineyard, then under Jewish law, he loses the right to claim the fruit of that vineyard. He had to establish his rights of ownership by sending his servants year by year to establish his claims.
The attitude, on the other hand, of the tenants was this. You can see from their actions that they wanted to take possession of the vineyard themselves. They wanted to dispossess the owner and take the vineyard for themselves. And this, of course, is the reason why they set about killing the servants and finally also the son.
Now, the reason why the son was sent as the last resort from the legal position is also easy to understand, because by the fourth time, after the fourth year, if the fruit was not given, then of course the owner of the vineyard had to take legal action. And the only way he could take legal action was by a representative that had the power to take action. Now, a servant or a slave does not have the legal right to act in this way. But the son, being the heir, had the legal right to act on his father's behalf in any court of law, which the slaves could not do. So this is the legal background, which of course Matthew and the other evangelists simply leave out because they are concerned with the spiritual message. They are not concerned with the legal technicalities. But if we find the actions difficult to comprehend — why the tenants behaved in this way, or why the owner behaved in that way — because, for example, it seemed very strange that if they killed your servants, then you're going to risk the neck of your son. But the owner had no alternative, because only the son had the right, the power, to act legally on the father's behalf. And this is the reason why he says, "They will respect him." They will respect him because he has the right of legal action.
The tenants, for their part, were also trying to use the law in such a way that would favor them. For example, if they could claim that the vineyard was unfruitful and therefore they could not produce any fruit to give to the owner, they could then pass the blame legally to the owner to say that he had entrusted them with a vineyard that was unproductive. The vines were no good. And therefore they had put them into a position of bankruptcy. They — in fact, the owner then would owe the tenants money because he had given them a vineyard which was, in the very nature of the case, planted with inferior vines, not properly equipped, and therefore could not produce the necessary fruit. If they could prove this for three consecutive years, they could lay a lien, that is, they could lay a claim upon the land. And more than that, if they could kill the heir — which in fact they did — and kill him in a sort of legalized way, that is to say, if they could say they killed him because he tried to evict them forcefully and they acted in self-defense, then before the law they might have a case. They might have a case. If, for example, they claimed that the son arrived with a body of men to forcefully evict them without legal proceedings from the vineyard, then they acted in self-defense, and in the skirmish that followed, the son was killed. This, of course, would be very convenient at law, because then they were able to say, "Well, anyway, we acted in self-defense. Now the land has no more owner because the son is dead — he is the heir — and the land now will pass into our possession."
Now I spent only two or three minutes briefly to sketch the legal background of this so that you can see that the parables are not conjured up in a very fanciful manner but actually could have taken place — that this kind of situation could have actually happened. And the Lord Jesus uses an actual situation to draw a spiritual lesson from it.
But let us attend to the spiritual meaning of this. Now, when we look at this passage, anyone somewhat familiar with the Old Testament will see a close parallel to Isaiah chapter 5, especially verses 1 and 2. In fact, in the Greek, the words in Isaiah 5:1 and 2 actually appear in the Greek text of Matthew. Now, all this indicates that we have immediately a means of expounding this parable without resort to guesswork. Why? Because in Isaiah 5, the vineyard is Israel. The vineyard represents — or rather the keepers of the vineyard or the fruit in the vineyard — represents Israel. Israel then is portrayed in here as the keepers or tenants of the vineyard, and particularly the leaders of Israel, as we can see from verse 45.
So the parallel then is quite clear. God's kingdom — that is the vineyard — has been entrusted to Israel in the first place. But God wanted some fruit from Israel. Some spiritual fruit from Israel. So He sent His servants, namely the prophets. These servants, of course, represent the prophets of God that God sent to His people down through the centuries. Again and again He sent them there, reminding them of their obligations to God. As you read the prophets, you can see that the language of the prophets is constantly calling for spiritual fruit, reminding them that they are God's people, that they are in God's vineyard, and that they must produce the kind of fruit that God expects.
But what did the people of Israel do to the prophets? Well, they started out by ignoring them, sending them away empty-handed. Then finally, going still further to beat them up, insulting them. You saw what happened to Isaiah. You saw what happened to many of the prophets who were insulted and beaten. Jeremiah, for example, was dropped into a well and nearly died there if he was not rescued by a friend at the last minute. He was constantly persecuted by the Jews, and so in this way some of them in fact were put to death. So this is the way the Jews treated the servants of God. And we can see time and again that when God sought some fruit from His people — not from unbelievers, but from His people — He got nothing but rejection.
Now there is one further point to bear in mind. And that is in the last part of verse 33, it says that when the owner — that is the householder — had planted the vineyard, he went into another country. Now of course you can't say that God went into another country. That would make no great sense. But what is the point of this particular statement when the Lord Jesus includes this statement here? Well, the point of this statement is also very easy to understand when we compare it with other parts of the Lord's teaching. And that is to say that the kingdom of God has been entrusted to His people in such a way that — as God, if He were present, if the owner were present, He would have Himself the responsibility of the care and production of the vineyard. But His going away shows that He entrusts the welfare of His kingdom to His people completely in this present age.
The kingdom of God was then entrusted completely to the care of the Jews in the Old Testament period. They were made fully responsible for His kingdom. The same is true of us as Christians. We today are fully responsible for the kingdom. Therefore we must act responsibly. We cannot pass the buck on to someone else. God has put the kingdom in our care. He has now taken it away from the Jews, as we see here, and put it into the care of the church. And you know something — when I look at the performance of the church, I find that we not only have not done any better than the Jews; I fear that we have done an awful lot worse than the Jews.
Where have we returned to God the fruit that He desires? Where have we got this? What kind of fruit is the church producing today? Where is the church that so glorifies God with its purity and with His holiness and with His love that the world looks on in wonder and says, "Truly we can see God's light shining from this person or from this church"? Where are these kind of people today? Where is this kind of church today? My heart is very heavy when I ponder this very thing, that we have done — alas, we have done — so badly in offering to God the fruit that belongs to Him.
Like these tenants, like the Jews, we wanted to have all the benefits of God's kingdom. We wanted to have this hedge protecting us around. We wanted to have this winepress that produces the joy. We want to drink all the wine ourselves; we don't want to share it with anyone else. Even less do we want to give it to God. We don't want to give God any joy so long as we have the joy — that's good enough for us. And we use all the things that He has prepared for us — the tower, the hedge, the winepress, even the vines themselves — for our benefit, so that we can do with it whatever we please, just as these tenants wanted to do with it whatever they please. We have reduced Christianity in all these ways to a pitiful thing. We must return to a high standard of excellence. We must press forward.
And so this parable speaks powerfully to us. Why did God plant a vineyard? Why did God establish His kingdom? Because He will have His fruit. And He has entrusted this kingdom to our care. Therefore He is going to expect an account from us. Not just me, my friends. Not just me, brothers and sisters. You are tenants in this kingdom too, in His vineyard too. He is going to ask an account from you, not just from me. I may have to give a bigger account perhaps, having a little bit more responsibility. But all tenants have responsibility. Not only the one who has some degree of supervision to do. So be prepared, as the Old Testament prophet said to Israel, "Be prepared to meet thy God." Be prepared to give Him an account of your actions. Are you producing any fruit? If not, consider well the consequences of fruitlessness.
Now this kingdom is entrusted to the tenants until when? Verse 40 is quite specific about this: until the owner comes again. "When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" Even that specific point is there. You and I are entrusted with the welfare of God's kingdom until He comes again to judge. And when we are faced with this kind of responsibility, we dare not be slack if we are not foolish.
Now, in verse 34 it says, "When the season of fruit drew near." Here there is a legal technicality we again need to understand. From Leviticus chapter 19, verses 23 to 24, we see a law concerning the growing of fruit trees and the planting of a vineyard. And in this law, which is also mentioned in the Mishnah, in the Jewish book of law, we learn that a vineyard is not expected to be productive until the fifth year. It takes time for vines to establish themselves, for vines to produce fruit. And the owner is not expected to get very much fruit until the fifth year. But within the compass of a vineyard, other fruits are grown, not only vines. Anyone who knows something about agriculture knows that you do not just plant one thing in a field. Many times you get better results by planting other things as well. So in the same way, in a Jewish vineyard, often cucumbers were planted, pumpkins were planted, and melons and other such fruits. And so within the vineyard, although the owner of the vineyard could expect no grapes and no wine until the fifth year, he could expect other kinds of fruit such as those mentioned within the first four years. And therefore the season of fruit — he comes to look for some return from his vineyard.
There is also another point of law here. In the first four years, an owner may receive only one-tenth of the produce of the vineyard under Jewish law. He receives only one-tenth of the produce. But in the fifth year, he can expect to receive one-half of the produce, because by that time the vineyard is in full-scale production, and he can receive one-half. But before that he may not receive more than one-tenth, so that the economic pressure on the keepers of the vineyard is not too heavy, and not too ruinous.
The spiritual lesson of this is also quite evident. That if you are a very young Christian, in the first four years or so, the Lord expects much less from you. He is much more patient; He is much more understanding in His dealings with you. But as you go on in the Christian life, He expects more and more from you. You can say, if you like to follow this analogy, that by the fifth year, He expects a lot from you. From one-tenth, it jumps to one-half. He is beginning to expect more.
When you are a young Christian, you are like a spiritual baby. You don't expect too much from babies. I mean, if he talks rather unclearly and he can hardly say "daddy" or "mommy," well, you are not going to say, "What's the matter with you? Are you stupid? Can't you say 'mommy, daddy' after one year?" Well, you don't say that to a child. You know the time has not yet come. But by the time he is five, you expect that he is going to behave in a much more educated manner. I mean, if he is still pouring his milk all over his shirt, you are beginning to get much less patient with this. When he was a baby, he dropped the milk bottle, he knocked everything over, the food was all over the floor, and you are still smiling because after all, he is only a baby. It doesn't matter too much. But at five years old and he is still throwing all the food on the floor and dishing half his lunch over his shirt — you are not going to be quite so patient, because you expect a lot more at that age.
In the same way, you see the beauty of the details in such a parable, that when you are a very young Christian, the Lord treats you far more gently, far more patiently. He expects some fruit from you, certainly He does. But when you fail, He is much more kind with you, much more patient. But as you go on in the Christian life, the standard gets higher and higher. And when you reach the place of those who are committed to full-time service, then you expect a very high standard of excellence. And when you reach the position of being a servant such as a pastor, you expect even more from such a person, and rightly so. You would expect a pastor to behave in ways far more glorifying to the Lord than you would expect of a young Christian. You have the right to expect that. And you have the right to demand it. Or rather, God has the right to demand it. And when those who serve the Lord in a fully committed sense fail to do so, you also expect, for that same reason, the discipline to be much, much more severe. And this is exactly true in the principle of the Word of God. "To whom much is given," the Word of God says, "much is required." Because you have been given so much, the demands are very much higher.
Let me say to you that in the judgment on that day, the pastors will be judged by God far more severely than anyone else. They are the ones who are going to meet with the judgment of God far more severely. That is why the Apostle James says, "Don't be too eager, don't be too much in a hurry to want to become a teacher or a pastor." Because God's requirements from you will be that much more severe. I have good reason to fear and tremble, as you can see. No reason to feel proud, or even less to feel complacent. Because what God will expect of me is enough to make my knees shake. And the Apostle Paul understood this matter very well. As he said in Philippians chapter 2, verse 12 and onwards, that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The Apostle Paul many times speaks of fear and trembling, because he knows that if God's mercy was great to him, so will God's judgment be if he fails in the employment of that mercy.
So here again, even in this matter of the vineyard, you see, that in the first four years, the expectations from the vineyard are there, but much less. I wonder how long you've been a Christian. Let me tell you, God is very patient, but He has very high demands. And if you intend to be a wishy-washy Christian, then I say to you right from the beginning: forget it. Because you are dealing with the living God. And His standards are very high. As the Lord Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew chapter 5, verse 48, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." That's a standard. That's a very high standard to meet. We cannot be perfect in the sense of being sinless, but we must be perfect in the sense that our devotion and our commitment to God is complete. It is absolute. It is without question.
Now if you say that the standards of being a Christian are too high, then you are quite right. Just read the Sermon on the Mount and you will see that it is so. But shall we then flee from being a Christian because the standards are high? Not indeed. Do people run away from the Olympics because the standard of the Olympics is so much higher than the school track meet or the local town track meet or the provincial track meet? Of course not. It is precisely because the standards are so high in the Olympics that people rise to the challenge — or at least those who are worthy will rise to the challenge. And we are left not in our own strength to accomplish what is put before us. Rather, God has provided us with all that is necessary that this vineyard will not fail. So here we can see the parable and the picture of it ever more clearly.
But now let us ask a number of questions as we proceed. We have asked already the first question: why does anyone plant a vineyard? Why does God establish His kingdom? It is because God expects to have His fruit — the fruit, the spiritual fruit of His people. Secondly, we need to ask the question then: what is the fruit that God seeks? What does He want from us? What is it that He seeks? From a vineyard it is very easy to understand what is the fruit. Well, if it is a vineyard, then what fruit you want is grapes, of course, or wine, or both. But what is the spiritual fruit? I think that it is not hard for us to understand either, because the Scripture leaves us in no doubt about it.
First of all, the fruit that He wants from us, that He expects from us, is faith. Faith, which means not just one act of believing, but faith — a continuing believing, that is faithfulness. He expects faithfulness from His people. We see that in Luke chapter 18, verse 8, and we looked at that the other day. The second thing we can see that the Lord Jesus, or God, wants from us, is stated plainly in Isaiah chapter 5, verse 7, which as we saw is the parallel to this passage. And there in Isaiah 5, verse 7, it tells us what God expects of the Jews. He expected them to produce justice, but instead there was bloodshed. He expected from them righteousness, but instead He got
# The Kingdom Will Be Given to a Nation Producing Its Fruits — The Fruit God Seeks (Matthew 21:33-46)
His people is again plainly stated so that the Jews or these tenants could not say they didn't know what God wanted. "What does the Lord require of you?" the prophet Micah says, Micah chapter 6, verse 8. And Micah was one of these servants of God who came to look for the fruit and found none. "What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice and to love faithfulness" — the word is steadfast love, a faithful love, a true commitment — "and to walk humbly with your God." What does God want? He wants justice. He wants faithfulness. He wants humble communion with Himself.
Well, coming to the New Testament, if we take this in the fourth point, what does God want from Christians today? Well, He wants the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit. And you know that the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23, is a ninefold fruit which is exactly like a bunch of grapes. It doesn't say "the fruits of the Spirit" but "the fruit." It is one bunch of fruits, all joined to the same stem, like a bunch of grapes. The fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, and all these other things.
Now you can see, and we can see even a fifth point here. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 3, the apostle says, "This is the will of God, that you be holy." This is the will of God: your sanctification, in 1 Thessalonians 4:3.
Now you'll notice one thing. It seems as though God is demanding fruit from us because He wants the fruit. But if you look at this fruit you will see that of course the more fruit you produce, the more you will have yourself. Remember the law? He takes one-tenth in the first four years; He takes half. But depending on how great is the quantity, if the quantity is very great, then your half is also very big, isn't it? So you are getting the blessing in the very process of giving. It is foolish to suppose that God takes everything from us. Much of the fruit that you produce is to your own blessing as well as to the blessing of others. In fact, all the fruit is hardly going to be eaten by the owner. It's going to go elsewhere to the markets and to the blessing of others.
Now the next thing we need to ask here is: who are those who refuse to give this fruit? Who are these people? And here we come to the painful answer, as we noticed a bit earlier. It is God's people who fail to give the fruit to God. It is the same story all the time in history. It is the same story all the time. God is not saying that the non-Christians failed. He is not putting the blame on the unbelievers. The blame goes to the Jews. And in this generation, to the Christians. It is the religious leaders who fail. It is we who have to be hard on ourselves. Because if we are not hard on ourselves, God is going to be very hard on us. As the Word of God says, "He that judges himself will not be judged by God." We have been too easy on ourselves. And whenever we exercise discipline, people are amazed: "Oh, this being too tough. This being too hard." Let me tell you that if you don't exercise discipline, God will exercise it, and that will be an awful lot tougher. However, we need to be hard on ourselves if we are going to have the mercy of God upon us.
So when we look at this parable, we see that those who fail, of all people, are the people of God who fail. That is the great tragedy in this generation, and indeed in every generation in the history of the church. And if we are not to fail, we must, as I say again, learn to be harder on ourselves — not so easygoing, not so complacent.
Now, the fourth thing we need to ask here is: why do they treat God's servants in this way? Why do they fail to produce the fruit and treat God's messengers in this way in this parable? Well, verse 38 gives us the answer right here. And what does verse 38 say? "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir. Let us kill him and have his inheritance.'" What is the reason? They want to have the vineyard for themselves. They want to be able to do with the vineyard and to do with the fruits just whatever they please.
Oh yes, it is exactly as they did to God's servants, as they did to John the Baptist. In Matthew 17, verse 12, the Lord Jesus said that when Elijah came — that is, when John the Baptist came, the servant of God came — they did with him whatever they pleased. They did with him whatever they pleased. This is the root of the problem in the church. This is the root with every Christian that will fail. It is individualism. It is self-centeredness. It is: "I want to do what I please. This is the way I want to have it." And if we come with this kind of attitude, insisting on our own way and our own interests, you cannot be a Christian like this.
Let me say it to you very bluntly. Anyone who is thinking to be a Christian and thinks that by becoming a Christian you can simply get all the benefits of God's kingdom, you can get salvation, you can get all the blessings, and you can just go and do your own thing — as we mentioned that song, "I Did It My Way." It is always "my way" that I did it. And we find something even to sing about there. Let me tell you that in the judgment, that was one song you would like to have forgotten, that you would never learn such a song in your life. Because when God starts doing things His way, and those who do things their way will find the whole going very unpleasant.
But the most pitiful thing of all is this: that when you do things your own way, you are going to bring nothing but disaster and unhappiness. Why do you persist in this? Yet there are those who want to serve God and who want to do things their way. Let us ask ourselves. Let us ask yourself, if you are a tenant in God's vineyard, if you are a Christian, if you are a disciple — ask yourself, I beg of you, very honestly, and here we come to the point of loving the truth that we talked about the other day — this vital principle: Are you really living the life of a Christian in God's way? Are you really doing this? Answer this question very honestly. Ask yourself, "Am I living the Christian life in God's way?" If not, then see what is going to happen to you, because you will not produce God's fruit. You are not going to produce the fruit; you are not going to give God the fruit that He desires from you. You are going to treat God's vineyard and God's blessings and God's mercy in whatever way you want to do it.
I see this thing in Christian life all the time. It is the rejection of the lordship of Christ — not in words, of course, but in practice. You reject His lordship in your life. Consider the way you make your plans. Consider the way you do things. Consider the way you think at this present time. In which of these ways have you put God's interest first? Be very honest in replying to this question. When did you put God's interest first in practice? I don't mean in theory. I don't mean in words. But in practice. And if you can answer this question honestly, you might just save your soul. You might just not end up as one of these tenants that come under God's judgment.
The fifth thing we want to ask here is: what happened then to those tenants who failed to produce the fruit? What happened? What happened to them? If you think that because you are in God's kingdom, that once you are in God's kingdom you will always be in God's kingdom, and you will always be safe — you haven't read the Bible, my dear friend. Look carefully at what it says here. Don't listen to what I say; just listen to what the Lord Jesus says. In fact, He solicited the answer from the mouth of His hearers. He says, "You tell me what the owner will do when he comes. What do you think?" That because they are tenants in His vineyard, that that spares them from His judgment? What kind of reasoning is this? On the contrary, it is precisely because they are His tenants that He will judge them. And this is precisely what God said to Israel: "Because you, and you alone, of all the people of this world that I know — you I know, of all these people. Because you are my people, therefore I will judge you." Because you are my people, I will judge you. In a sense, of course, everyone is God's people, in the sense that you are God's creature. You have been created by God. He will judge you simply because you are His creation. But if you belong to Him in a twofold sense — both by creation and redemption — He is going to expect a great deal more from you, as you can see.
And so what is the answer? He solicits the answer from their mouth, in verse 41: "They said to Him, 'He will put those wretches to a miserable death.'" Oh, they also knew the answer. I mean, you kill His servants and He is going to say, "Oh, very nice job. You did a good job of killing my servants. Why didn't you beat them a bit harder last time?" I mean, this is too ridiculous. If you kill His servants, if you rejected His claim and His lordship, then you have what is coming to you. You are dealing with the living God. And He will come. He will certainly come. And here you have a word which is translated here: "miserable wretches." A miserable death. "He will put those wretches to a miserable death." This is very hard to translate into English. In the Greek you have "bad, badly; terrible, terribly." He will put them to death. He will put them to a terrible death. Such will be the judgment that these persons deserve.
You know, God is a God of love. But never make the mistake to think that because He is a God of love, that He does not exercise judgment. That is the mistake that many people make. It is precisely because love cannot tolerate this kind of selfishness, God cannot tolerate this kind of evil, that He will certainly deal with it. And what is more, the thing after that is that the vineyard, in verse 41, will then be let out, will be taken away from them and let out to others.
We have today the strange doctrine in the church that tells us that once you are in the vineyard, you are always in the vineyard, and the vineyard will never be taken away from you. That once you are in the kingdom, you are always in the kingdom, and the kingdom will never be taken away from you. Now if we want to invent doctrines to suit our fancies and to tickle our ears, we are doing the very thing that the Word of God warned us that we would be doing in the last days. We invent doctrines to make ourselves secure. More plain than these words, one cannot get, unless one is deliberately deaf and deliberately blind. More plain than this, one cannot get. The people who were in the vineyard had the kingdom taken away, the vineyard taken away. More than that — in fact, not only was it taken away from them, they were put to death. They ended up in destruction. And Paul says the same thing to the Christians in Romans chapter 11: "If He did not spare the natural branches" — to change the metaphor — "but cut them off, neither will He spare you." Except you abide in His kindness. Except you live in such a way that you produce the kind of fruit that He expects. The whole thing hinges on this fruit.
Now the sixth thing we need to ask here, very quickly, is to learn another lesson: to look at it from the point of view of the servants that were sent there, who got beaten up and got killed. Why is a true servant of God hated by the leaders of the kingdom of God? Why were the true servants of God hated by the Jews? Why were they hated? Why are true servants of God still going to be hated in this generation, and rejected by the church? Why is this so? And what is more, we can ask a subsidiary question to this: how can you tell whether a servant of God is true or false? How do you know that this person coming to preach this message is really a servant of God?
Well, from this parable, you have a very plain and clear criterion. And it is simply this: that a true servant of God comes and demands the fruit. That's why he is hated. If he didn't demand anything, nobody would hate him. If he had come to the tenants and said, "Oh, you guys are doing wonderful work. You don't want to give any fruit to the owner? Oh, that's okay. I mean, once you've got the vineyard, you always have the vineyard, so don't have to worry about it." If you preach like that, nobody is going to stone you. Certainly the tenants will not stone you. They will say, "Oh, you are our friend. Come in, come in."
But any servant of God, as in the Old Testament prophets, coming along and demanding fruit — saying, "God will have His fruit. You must live the life of righteousness and holiness. You must turn away from your sins. And you must not only just make one repentance and thereby secure eternal life, but you must live a life of continuing holiness. You must live in this way." You know what happens when you preach like that? Surprise, surprise. The church will throw you out. They will throw you out. You don't believe it? You try it sometime. I have tried it, and I know from experience.
When John Wesley came along to the Church of England and said to the Church of England, "We must have holiness in the Church of England," he was thrown out. You would have thought the church, of course, would understand that holiness is very necessary. I mean, what's the problem? John Wesley, even though he was an ordained preacher of the Church of England, was forbidden to preach in any of the churches of England. He was forbidden even to preach in the church where his father had been the pastor. And when his father died, he was not allowed even to say the funeral for him in the church. He had to stand outside the church in order to conduct the funeral. What was his crime? His crime was that he preached holiness. Surprising, isn't it? Remarkable indeed. Strange indeed.
How do you tell a servant of God? Very easy. There is no complicated trick by which you have to assess: "Is this a true servant of God? Do I have to measure him and see whether he's the right height, whether he's got the right features for a servant of God?" We don't have to go into any of this. Just listen to his message. If he comes along and says, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, you know he's a false prophet. That's what the Old Testament says. "Everything is fine. Just relax. Everything is okay. No problem at all." In fact, you can tell a true servant of God simply by looking for one element in his message, and that is: whether in his message he's looking for holiness.
John Sung was the same way. Anyone who reads John Sung's message will know he was a true servant of God. Everywhere he is preaching holiness. He is preaching holiness everywhere. God used this man so mightily. And today we all give him lip service. But when John Sung was preaching in China, the missionaries rejected him. The other Christian workers rejected him. The pastors rejected him. And today we are all praising him after he is dead. Just like the Jews. When the prophets had died — when their fathers had killed the prophets — now they whitewashed the tombs of the prophets. And that is what the Lord Jesus said to the Jews: "You hypocrites. You today whitewash the tombs of the prophets. You beautify and adorn the tombs of the prophets. But your fathers put them to death, and you are still going to put the prophets to death of this generation. But you worship the prophets of a past generation because they can't touch you anymore." Can they? I mean, they don't speak to you anymore. They don't condemn you anymore. So you can say, "Oh, wonderful man. Wonderful man he is." Today they are all saying, "What a wonderful person John Wesley was." Because John Wesley isn't here anymore to thunder against the evils of the church, to thunder against the pitiful condition of the moral conditions of the church of his day. He is not here anymore. So we can talk about him nicely because he is dead. And thereby, as the Lord Jesus says, we prove ourselves to be the hypocrites that we are.
So understand one thing. Whether you read a book or you listen to a message, just look for this element: holiness. The fruit that God seeks from His people.
Let us conclude then with this last question. What is the importance of this fruit? This fruit is of the very essence of the Christian life. I beg of you to understand. We are not talking about some unimportant element. I have mentioned to you right at the beginning that fruit is a very important thing in the New Testament. In fact, the word "fruit" occurs 66 times in the New Testament. And the verb form of it occurs another 8 times. And altogether we have some 74, 75 times in the New Testament. Fruit is very important.
Now Paul made a very interesting statement in Romans chapter 7, verse 4. He tells us that the whole point of our becoming a Christian is in order that we may bear fruit for God. Paul himself understood this point perfectly. The whole point of our becoming a Christian, as Paul understood it so clearly, in Romans 7:4, is that we might bear fruit for God. Why did Jesus make us His own? Why did He redeem us? Why did He die and rise again from the dead? So that we may bear fruit for God. This is the crucial element. This is the key issue.
So whether or not you are a true Christian, you need ask yourself only this question. Are you a true Christian? Then ask yourself: are you bearing any fruit? Is there any holiness in your life? That's the question. Very easy to establish whether you are a true Christian or not. It doesn't take some complicated device to find out. Just look at your life. Is there holiness there? Is there some fruit you are offering to God? Then you know whether you are a true Christian or not. Or do you know whether God is close to you? Do you experience God's power working within? Again, very easy to see. Just ask yourself: is there any fruit coming forth? Are you conducting yourself in your home, in your school, in your apartment, like a Christian? Is there some beauty in your life? Something delicious, something fragrant like fruit, something nourishing for other people? Fruit is very nourishing to other people. It is very fragrant to smell. Very satisfying. Or are you forever causing stress and conflict, getting on everybody else's nerves? I mean, you may love the Lord — no one contests that point. The question is not whether you love the Lord or whether you think you love the Lord. The question is: is there some fruit in your life? That's the only question you need to ask. Then you know whether you are a true Christian. You know whether God's power is working in you or not. Because you cannot produce this fruit except by God's power, God's life working in you.
Consider then this thing very well: the importance of fruit. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.