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*TITLE**:  *Live to Receive a Blessing!
*SCRIPTURE: *   Matthew 21:33-46
 
Our parable today is called The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.
If you manage an apartment building or own a rental house, you might know about wicked tenants -- but I hope not.
Wicked tenants move in, but they won't move out.
They live in your apartment but refuse to pay the rent.
Sometimes they poke holes in the wallboard -- and stuff up the plumbing-- and paint the bedroom purple.
Some of you may rent out one house while living in another.
For the most part that’s O.K., but a wicked tenant can become an expensive nightmare.
In our parable today, the wicked tenants were even worse.
The rental property was a vineyard, and the rent was grapes.
The tenants were to share the fruit of the vineyard with the landowner.
Before the landowner rented the vineyard, he fixed it up -- put a fence around it -- dug a wine press -- built a watchtower.
He made it as nice as a vineyard could be, and then he leased it to the tenants and went away.
At harvest time, the landowner sent servants to collect his share of the fruit -- but the tenants beat one servant and killed another and stoned another.
That's even worse than poking holes in the wallboard.
So the landowner sent more servants.
The tenants beat and killed them too.
So the landowner sent his son, expecting that they would respect his son.
Now by this time, you are probably thinking that the landowner is not very smart.
Why would he, after the tenants mistreated his servants, send more servants?
Why not call the police?
Why not put the wicked tenants in jail?
Above all, why would he send his son?
If the tenants were violent twice, why would he think they would treat his son with respect?
Was this landowner a bit thick in the head?
The answer is that the landowner was not thick in the head but was thick in the heart.
The landowner in this parable, you see, is God -- and this is a parable about God's longsuffering patience -- his love -- his desire to redeem the wicked tenants.
That might not seem to make much sense, but God is like that.
God loves us even when we least deserve it.
God wants us to love him so that he can bless us.
God keeps trying to win us even when we have proven to be losers.
So this landlord put it all on the line.
He sent his son to collect the rent, hoping that the tenants would respect his son.
But they didn't respect the son.
When they saw the son, they said, "This is our chance.
This is the heir to the vineyard.
If we kill him, we can have the vineyard."
And so they forced the son out of the vineyard and killed him.
The son, of course, is Jesus.
Before Jesus began telling this parable, he had cleansed the temple -- had used a whip to run off the moneychangers.
He had made quite a nuisance of himself, and the religious leaders had been critical of him.
So Jesus told them this parable about the wicked tenants killing the landowner's son.
Then he asked this question:
* *
*"Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, *
*what will he do to those tenants?"*
They answered:
 
"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."
Then Jesus quoted a verse from Isaiah that talked about the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone -- the most important stone.
And then Jesus said:
 
*"Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you *
*and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom."*
And finally Jesus said:
 
*"The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; *
*and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."*
That last sentence is a bit mysterious, but Jesus was warning them that God's patience has an end.
Those who persist in rejecting God will find themselves crushed by the stone with which God had intended to help them.
Jesus was warning us to be careful about stretching our rebellion too far -- because it will snap back in our face.
But it is even more serious than that.
Jesus was telling us that our relationship to God is a matter of life and death.
God has placed us in his vineyard, and wants nothing more than to see us do well.
He is loving, patient, and forgiving.
But there will come a time when his patience will come to an end.
When that happens, the stone that he sent to be the cornerstone of our lives will crush us -- and we will die.
We have seen it happen.
We know that it is true.
We have seen young people who have burned out their brains using drugs.
We have seen people who drink their breakfast from a bottle.
We have seen young women standing under streetlamps, selling their bodies and their souls.
We have seen gangs of young men in our city streets -- living by the sword and dying by the sword.
We must not forget that God loves those people -- the people in rebellion.
But we also must not forget that, at some point, God abandons them to their rebellion.
At that point, the stone that was meant to be the cornerstone of their lives becomes instead a crushing stone that takes their lives.
We must remember all of this, in part, so that we will be motivated to carry the Gospel to those in rebellion.
We must remember it, too, because we too are tempted to rebel against God -- to ignore God.
And our children are tempted to rebel -- to ignore God.
We must remember the potential for death so that we will be motivated to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
We must remember that it is critically important to give them a strong spiritual foundation so that they will be able to resist the many temptations with which they are faced daily.
Rebellion against God is deadly.
As one example, we know that God has established certain physical laws, such as the law of gravity, which know that we must respect.
We can't ignore the law of gravity, or it will crush us.
We might find another law to counterbalance gravity so that we can fly -- but we dare not ignore gravity.
If we try to ignore the law of gravity -- or if we toy with it too lightly -- we are likely to find that there is a price to be paid.
I learned an interesting piece of trivia this week.
Eight-four years ago (Nov.
21, 1921), the first air-to-air refueling took place over Long Beach, California.
Wing walker Wesley May walked across the top wing of a biplane with a five-gallon can of gas strapped to his back.
A second plane flew near, and May caught its wing and hoisted himself aboard.
Then he poured the gas from the can into the second plane while in flight.
It was a historic moment -- but a dangerous one.
Wesley May was toying with gravity.
May was a brave man, but a foolish one.
When another wing walker barely escaped a fatal fall, May sent a telegraph that said, "When present wing walker is killed, I want the job."
The other wing walker fell and was killed, so they hired May -- but he didn't last long.
His chute malfunctioned, and he was killed when he hit the ground in -- of all places -- a cemetery.
(Justin Hardy, "Legacy of Flight," /Aviation History/, Nov. 2005).
I doubt that there is a person in this congregation who will be tempted to ignore the law of gravity.
I doubt that any of us are tempted to walk across the wing of an airplane with a five-gallon can of gas strapped to our back.
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