{"id":623,"date":"2020-10-22T16:57:28","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T23:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=623"},"modified":"2020-10-22T16:58:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T23:58:05","slug":"searching-for-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=623","title":{"rendered":"Searching for Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(based on Matthew 21:33-43)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were hired as the executive chef at an exclusive restaurant but then refused to spend any time in the kitchen, I don\u2019t imagine you\u2019d be holding on to that job very long. If you sign a lucrative contract as the starting QB in the NFL and end up rarely completing a pass, it won\u2019t be long before you find yourself sitting on the bench or playing for another team as a backup. The movie star leading in flop after flop at the box office will find the offers for roles eventually start to dwindle as they\u2019re offered to others. The point is, if you\u2019re hired to do a certain job and don\u2019t do it, it\u2019s only a matter of time before that job will be taken from you and given to someone else who will do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a nutshell, that was exactly the point Jesus was making in the parable he told in our Gospel today when he concluded, \u201cTherefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit\u201d (Mt. 21:43).<\/em><\/strong> Simply put, the Lord is searching for fruit, and where and when he doesn\u2019t find it, he will take his blessing elsewhere and provide others with the opportunity to produce its fruit. Where God\u2019s Word and the work he desires to carry out through it are despised or disregarded, he will take his Word and work elsewhere that he might bear fruit through others. Martin Luther observed: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor you should know that God\u2019s word and grace is like a passing shower of rain which does not return where it has once been. It has been with the Jews, but when it\u2019s gone it\u2019s gone, and now they have nothing. Paul brought it to the Greeks; but again when it\u2019s gone it\u2019s gone, and now they have the Turk. Rome and the Latins also had it; but when it\u2019s gone it\u2019s gone, and now they have the pope. And you Germans need not think that you will have it forever, for ingratitude and contempt will not make it stay. Therefore, seize it and hold it fast, whoever can; for lazy hands are bound to have a lean year\u201d (LW 45:352).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Sunday we had a short and sweet parable – only three characters in three verses. Today\u2019s parable is longer and more detailed. Thankfully, Jesus clearly spells out the point of this parable. Because he does, 1 ) we don\u2019t have to worry about missing out on the big picture because of all the details, but 2 ) we can also gain a better understanding of the main point by giving out attention to the various details of the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, we note that God took every care to set up his people for success. \u201cThere was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower\u201d (v.33). <\/em><\/strong>God had given his chosen people everything they needed to bear fruit. Even as their people were just being established in Egypt, the Lord granted them the lush lands of Goshen to settle in when Joseph brought his whole family there. The next stop after that was the land flowing with milk and honey that God had promised exclusively to them. And on the journey there the tabernacle in the desert was their portable house of worship to visualize for them the Lord was among them. At Mt. Sinai God further set them apart from every nation on earth by blessing them with the Ten Commandments and a special set of laws to bless them and protect them from the world\u2019s corruption. In describing the steps the landowner took to bless his future tenants, Jesus is simply putting into story the picture Isaiah painted from our First Lesson: \u201cI will sing for the one I love  song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well\u201d (5:1-2).<\/em><\/strong> Jesus put into a parable the very word picture painted by the prophet. The message: God had given his chosen people everything they needed to bear fruit. The Lord even raised the very question through Isaiah, \u201cWhat more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?\u201d (v.4).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now then, against this backdrop we have certain people represented in the parable, the tenants, the servants, and the son. The son plainly represents God\u2019s Son, Jesus. As for the tenants and the servants, the reaction of the hearers that Matthew provides after the parable shows that even they clearly understood who the wicked tenants represented. \u201cWhen the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus\u2019 parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet\u201d (Mt. 21:45-46). <\/em><\/strong>  That leaves the servants sent by the landowner to gather his fruit. These are the prophets the Lord sent again and again to his people in hopes that their message would yield fruit in his people (people like Isaiah, the prophet\/writer of today\u2019s First Lesson). But sadly, throughout the history of the Old Testament, God\u2019s people responded just as the religious leaders were responding at the conclusion of Jesus\u2019 parable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear how this parable applied at the time and in the circumstances during which Jesus told it, but is it as clear how the parable applies to us today? Surely it isn\u2019t recorded for us in the Bible just so that we have yet another opportunity to shake our heads and point our fingers in disappointment at those poor excuses for religious leaders, the full-of-themselves Pharisees. For in so doing, as Jesus\u2019 condemnation of them leads us to hold an even lower opinion of them through this parable, we can become blind to how easily our disappointment directed at the Pharisees can slowly mold us into their modern day counterparts! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We guard against that by striving to understand how any application of the parable can serve as a personal warning or application to us. Consider first how the tenants\u2019 behavior served as a warning to God\u2019s representatives in his church today. Their behavior in the parable showed a severe misunderstanding of their role int the vineyard – it wasn\u2019t their vineyard to operate and control as they saw fit; rather, it was the landowner\u2019s who had entrusted it to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When God\u2019s representatives in his church today forget that, the ship can very easily start to veer off-course. When church leaders take the wheel, so to speak, and speak\/act\/lead as if it is their ship to steer in the first place, they put everything at risk and potentially chart a course that may lead to a shipwreck. No pastor, ministry, or organizational leader has anything to manage except that which has been entrusted to them by God himself. This is not my church, for example, but God\u2019s church which he has privileged me to shepherd. No congregation belongs to any pastor, but to the Good Shepherd himself. God\u2019s vineyard is not for me to use to further my own self-interests. It does not exist as a means to line my pockets or advance an agenda. The tenants forgot that, and just as it did not end well, so will it be for any under shepherd or leader in the church who forgets whose vineyard it really is in which we\u2019re working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, but the parable doesn\u2019t just serve as a warning to God\u2019s representatives in his church, but to everyone<\/em> in his church. For the way the tenants treated the servants sent to collect the harvest ought to be a clear warning to all of us in how we also treat God\u2019s representatives in his church. Remember that it was the landowner himself who sent the servants to the tenants. So to mistreat or abuse the servants as God\u2019s people mistreated and abused his prophets throughout the Old Testament, is tantamount to mistreating and abusing the landowner – God – himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this happen in Christ\u2019s church today? Of course it does, otherwise we\u2019d have to conclude the Jesus was quite oblivious in providing a warning in this parable that is unnecessary. When a message from the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed, but falls on ears that do not wish to hear it or have it applied to their lives, nowadays the hearer may simply depart from one place in favor of another messenger or community whose message is more suitable to their palate, even if it uses God\u2019s Word to lie and deceive instead of hold forth the truth. Or, and this may be even more common in this day and age in which there\u2019s no shortage of access to messages via video, podcast, blog, etc., we simply choose to avoid or ignore one of the servants sent by the landowner in favor of another, leaving issues unresolved. When we disregard the efforts of pastors, elders, and church leaders to communicate and reach out to us, we are essentially letting God know that we\u2019re not interested in his efforts to care for his sheep or that we don\u2019t agree with how God is doing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing what not to do is one thing; correcting it is another. The wonderful part of this parable is that making corrections is actually some of the most desirable fruit God craves in his vineyard. It\u2019s called repentance, and it means acknowledging wrong on our part, turning from that sinful, unrighteous behavior, and turning to the Son of the landowner for forgiveness. For God\u2019s representatives, this means confessing when they have not guarded their hearts from seeing their position as self-serving instead of serving selflessly. It means confessing when we\u2019ve placed our ways before His. It means acknowledging the times we\u2019ve defiantly claimed his vineyard as our own to do with it what we please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also bear this fruit when we acknowledge our role in mistreating those servants God sends to us to collect the harvest. We confess that we don\u2019t pray enough for those God sends to serve us. We repent of the times we ignore their efforts to serve us. We acknowledge that we let our personal indifferences and preferences get in the way of their service to us and not taking their words and actions in the kindest possible way. When in repentance we turn from our own mistreatment of God\u2019s servant to the Suffering Servant himself, Jesus, for forgiveness, we rejoice that he never turned his back on those who turn away from him, those who mistreated and abused him, and not even those who would crucify him, but even pleaded to the Father for their forgiveness. Rest assured, the forgiveness for which he pleaded has been applied to you and me as well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we respond when faced with those unpleasant calls to repentance? Hopefully not the way the chief priests and Pharisees responded when Jesus told this parable! Rather, let us swallow the bitter pill of repentance and embrace that such difficult steps are exactly the types of fruit God wants to see in our lives! Through the ongoing practice of repentance we are actually removing the rocks and tilling the soil, enabling the Holy Spirit to produce abundant fruit in us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are furthermore equipped and empowered to bear abundant fruit when the burden of doing so is removed by the Savior whose perfect harvest of fruit fully satisfied the landowner\u2019s demand and expectation. Where we have forgotten whose vineyard it is that has been entrusted to us, when we\u2019ve treated God\u2019s servants as poorly as the tenants in the parable, the Landowner\u2019s Son has not. His Father\u2019s will, not his own self-serving purposes, was his only concern 100% of his time on earth. Even the religious leaders who plotted against him and finally murdered him, he always treated with respect, even when he directed his harsh calls to repentance at them. The Son produced the perfect harvest of fruit, removing the burden from our shoulders to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, at the same time, the Son inspires and moves us to step our fruit-bearing up. Does that mean we have to start a ministry that helps feed 1 million starving children or build 100,000 homes for the homeless, or rescue thousands of sex-trafficked children? Of course it doesn\u2019t. But\u2026 could it? What if we the only thing holding us back from bearing abundant fruit on that scale is ourselves? What if we\u2019ve been too quick to think so little of ourselves – and actually it\u2019s God we\u2019re thinking too little of – that we\u2019ve never dreamed of, envisioned, or prayed for God to bear that kind of fruit through us? Could it be possible? My response to that question would simply be, \u201cHave you not seen the astronomical things God has done in Scripture and throughout history through his people?\u201d You better believe God is capable of producing that kind of harvest of fruit in our lives! Maybe all we need to do is remember that he can, and provide him with the opportunities to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you haven\u2019t been hired as an executive chef at some exclusive restaurant or signed on to some lucrative contract in the sporting world or offered a starring role in the next blockbuster movie. No, you\u2019ve been called to something far greater – you\u2019ve been brought into God\u2019s vineyard to produce something that will last far longer than a fine plate of food, or championship, or academy award – you\u2019ve been set apart to produce fruit that will not only cause God to grin from ear-to-ear with delight, but fruit that has the potential to make an eternal impact in the lives of others. Let\u2019s get to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(based on Matthew 21:33-43) If you were hired as the executive chef at an exclusive restaurant but then refused to spend any time in the kitchen, I don\u2019t imagine you\u2019d be holding on to that job very long. If you sign a lucrative contract as the starting QB in the NFL and end up rarely… Continue reading Searching for Fruit<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,65],"tags":[66,67,36],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parables-of-jesus-series","category-sermons","tag-parable","tag-repentance","tag-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p842FN-a3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}