The Living Word: A Daily Devotional with Jeff & Dale from The Jenkins Institute

“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they

perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were

seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to

be a prophet” (Matthew 21:45-46 ESV).

Even though they were seeing Him directly—knowledgeable of His

miracles, aware of His fulfillment of prophecy, aware that He is speaking

directly to them—they just can’t let go of their comfort zones, perceived

status, and selfish ambitions. 

“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

stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the

Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”(Matthew 21:41-42, ESV).

People in Jamaica have a wonderful saying to keep things in perspective

and not to get too worried about life. They say

Sometimes we see scenes in courtrooms where a lot of drama unfolds.

Some of the saddest scenes involve children. Few scenes are more

perplexing than watching heartbroken parents speak of their child’s

murder while the killer smirks. Occasionally, a father loses control and

leaps at the perpetrator and is restrained by security. To murder

someone’s child is one of the worst things humankind can do.

This parable indicates that the vineyard tenants had succumbed to greed

and avarice. Matthew 21:37-39 says, “Finally 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 and threw him out of the vineyard

and killed him.” After killing the servants by which the owner had sent

messages, they killed His Son as well. Several books have been written by

Bill O’Reilly and co-authored by Martin Dugard about how people have

been killed. Almost seven million have been sold. 

This parable features the story of a man who invests in a vineyard that he

will lease to tenants. He lays the foundation, builds the necessary

structures, and provides the essentials—the land, the stone winepress,

the fence, and the tower where watchmen can oversee the whole

operation. He has a lot invested. The tenants will “keep” the vineyard,

prune the vines, protect the crop, repel thieves and animals, harvest the

crop, press the juice, and then share the profits with the owner. This is an

example of sharecropping.

The great enemy of true religion is false religion, and perhaps the most

insidious form of false religion is a mistaken trust that religious

observance can substitute for righteousness.

In the pagan world of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans largely divorced

worship of their gods from questions of moral good and evil. The gods

were to be manipulated by sacrifice and pleased by praise. Christianity

teaches otherwise. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the

Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep

oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27, ESV).

Everything in this life has an end. Even the gifts God has given us and the

work He has assigned us pass away. They find their lasting significance in

how they affect the life that never ends.

Thus, we receive God’s gifts in this life as a sacred trust, knowing that

they are placed in our care but belong to God, and that we must give an

account. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so

that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body,

whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10, ESV).

By its nature, law creates duty. We must obey the law’s commands. We

sometimes mistake grace as though it frees us from duty. Instead, grace

deepens duty. “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be

required” (Luke 12:48, ESV). This is especially true when grace has been

extended so that we can serve a nobler purpose than mere compliance

with law.

Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard describes God’s gracious blessing of His

people, Israel. He chose Israel as His vineyard to serve His purpose, a

purpose that could only be achieved with the help of His blessing. Just as

a vineyard in the natural world produces fruit that could never come into

existence without careful cultivation, so God expects His vineyard to bear

better fruit than the world would otherwise produce. Tragically, Israel

frustrated His purpose. His blessings were wasted. “[H]e looked for it to

yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2, ESV).

The history of God’s people in the Old Testament is largely a history of

failure. In Judges, repeated cycles of rebellion, punishment, and

deliverance lead not to grateful obedience but to deeper depravity. Under

their kings, the Israelites continue to fail. No king in the history of the

northern kingdom of Israel is described as doing what is right, and the

southern kingdom of Judah experiences only brief reformations in its

long descent to destruction. What went wrong? Who is to blame?

One of the most basic and powerful human desires is the wish to

belong, to have someone regard us as their own and thus naturally

have a stake in our happiness and care for us as their own.

God claims Christians as His own. “See what kind of love the Father

has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we

are” (1 John 3:1-2, ESV). Peter describes us as “a chosen race, a

royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1

Peter 2:9, ESV). Paul describes us as “his workmans