The Keys of The Kingdom Week One - Bear The Fruit

 

The Keys to The Kingdom

In the Gospel accounts, Jesus consistently speaks of the “kingdom of heaven,” not primarily as someplace we go when we die, but as God's reign breaking into the world through Jesus. The central question of the series becomes:

If Jesus is our King, what does it look like to live by the values of his Kingdom while surrounded by kingdoms that operate under very different rules?

Today we’re going to study one of Jesus most pointed, hard, and difficult parables about the kingdom of God, and a warning to religious people.  

People lose their minds over property ownership and property lines.  

Have you ever had a dispute with a neighbor about property lines, like who owns what?

When I lived in Tallahassee, Florida, I had this neighbor, Bruce, who took exception to my mowing the grass that he believed was behind his property line.  To be fair, we were talking about, like, a space that was three feet wide.  

After he complained bitterly about this alleged incursion, I pulled out the property survey and measured things.  I discovered that he was actually dead wrong, and if anything, he was the one staking a claim to my property.  I even found the survey markers to prove it. 

Bruce was undeterred.  He was certain all of the information was false.  He even put up little wooden stakes in the ground to clearly mark where I was not to mow.  

In the end, I decided that my personal peace was worth way more than being right about something small.  

As I prepared for this sermon, I went on Reddit to see if anyone else had a similar experience, and sure enough, I found someone in the exact same situation.  He decided to let the neighbor mow the grass so he didn't have to.   

In one comment on his post, another guy said, "In my state, if your neighbor cares for that bit of property for ten years, it's considered his property."  Apparently, they found this out the hard way when the neighbor erected a fence.  

Isn't this kind of thing ridiculous?  In so many ways we walk around acting like little kids when it comes to things we supposedly own.  "Mine!"  

It reminds me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo.   

Jesus looked at these kinds of things through the lens of the kingdom of God.  

The kingdoms of this world ask: “What belongs to me?”

The kingdom of God asks: “What has God entrusted to me?”

IN GOD’S KINGDOM EVERYTHING IS A GIFT, AND EVERY GIFT HAS A RESPONSIBILITY

Matthew 21:33-46

• Let’s set the scene here—it’s important. 

Jesus is teaching in the Temple, most likely on the Southern or Teaching steps where rabbis would gather to teach their students.  He's drawn quite a crowd, including the people who are trying to figure out how to get rid of him, the religious elite: priests, lawyers, biblical scholars, etc. 

33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away.* 

• The landowner invested everything so the harvest would be plentiful. 

The landowner provides everything for the tenants to thrive.  

34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.* 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.* 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’* 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 

• The tenants absolutely shoot the messengers, and then the heir.  

Things go south quickly.  They beat the messengers and end up killing the landowner's son, with an eye on taking everything for themselves, not just the harvest.  

40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”*

• Jesus is totally setting up the religious leaders who take advantage.  

The religious leaders of Jesus' day included a pretty awful group of greedy, dishonest, immoral leaders who collaborated with the Romans and oppressed their own people for gain.  

42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;s

this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?*

43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits.* 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

• Who’s who in the story?  What does the vineyard represent?  

Landowner: God; Tenants: Those to whom God bestowed everything needed to be ready for the Messiah - the Torah, Temple, and traditions meant to be life-giving, not onerous.  

45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

• Jesus reveals something of what the whole story is about, and it stings.  

The tenants' fundamental mistake is more than violence or greed. They begin behaving as though the vineyard belongs to them.

Some Thoughts

• This parable opens space for deep gratitude to God for God’s gifts. 

If the tenants had not been greedy or mistaken about their ownership, they could have experienced gratitude, which would have led them to generosity of spirit.  

How do we respond to God's grace and gifts in our own lives?  Do we attribute them to God, or do we hold on to them tightly as ours?

• This parable reveals the unexpectedness of Christ’s work in the world. 

Jesus showed people what God's kingdom looks like when God gets what God wants.  It was an unexpected, gentle revolution that required surrender, obedience, and sacrifice.  

Are we willing to follow Christ's example and hold loosely all the things we think we own (money, possessions, prestige, firmly held beliefs, politics, and more)?

• What we do with the gifts of God’s kingdom matters eternally.  

When we practice kingdom living and realize that everything we have is a gift and carries a responsibility, we can begin acting eternally with all that we have been given.  Jesus taught over and over again how we bring the kingdom into view when we have an eternal mindset about our present.  This isn't about longing for heaven; it's about longing for the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  

IN GOD’S KINGDOM EVERYTHING IS A GIFT, AND EVERY GIFT HAS A RESPONSIBILITY