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Author: Stephen Weller
666 words, 4 minutes read time

Servant Abuse

Scripture: Matthew 21:35; Mark 12:1-5; Luke 20:9, 11-12

With the previous lesson we covered another short section in which Jesus confronts the religious leaders with another question and a parable of two sons. With this lesson we begin a much longer section, covering another parable; the parable of the wicked tenants.

^{Lk 20:9} And he began to tell the people this parable: ^{Mk 12:1} “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. ² When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.”

As Jesus continues to teach, he uses another parable to convey his message to the people, primarily to the religious leaders. As with most of his parables, the story draws on something from everyday life that most who are listening can identify with. In this story a vineyard is again used for illustration.

Jesus sets the stage, so to speak, by identifying a man who planted a vineyard, constructed a fence around it for protection, dug a pit for a winepress, and built a tower. Once the work was complete, the man leased it to tenants to care for it while he went to another country. There is still one more character needed in the story and that is a servant of the man who would be sent, in the fruit bearing season, to the tenants to get some of the fruit of the vineyard.

At this point everything appears to be ok until the servant arrives to obtain some fruit for his master, the man in the story. At this point the sinful nature of the tenants comes to the forefront in the form of selfishness by resisting to fulfill the request of the servant. Instead of providing the requested fruit the tenants decided to keep it for themselves and took the servant and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

^{Mk 12:4} Again he sent to them another servant, ^{Lk 20:11} they also beat and treated him shamefully, ^{Mt 21:35} and stoned another, ^{Mk 12:4} and they struck him on the head, ^{Lk 20:11} and sent him away empty-handed. ^{Lk 20:12} And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. ^{Mk 12:5} And he sent another, and him they killed. And so, with many others: some they beat, and some they killed.

The man continues to send servants to the tenants to secure his portion of the fruit but without success. This reminds one of God sending his prophets to Israel with a message, but the religious leaders failed to listen to or heed the message and instead treated them as the tenants were treating the servants in this parable.

What would the man do to obtain the fruit that was rightfully his? The owner of the vineyard came up with a plan and set it into motion, but we will have to wait until the next lesson to learn about the plan and the results.

Conclusion

Today, we as believers are the tenants that God has assigned work to do to produce fruit for him in the lives of others. A question to each of my readers is, “How well are you doing in producing fruit for God by doing the work he has assigned to you to do (Ephesians 2:10)? Are you ignoring the assigned work as you seek the comforts and pleasures of the world and in the process become enemies of God? I pray that your relationship with God and your obedience to him is more important than your friendship with the world. Don’t fall short of God’s grace and fail to enjoy the kindness of his grace.