Lord of the Vineyard — E.A. Johnston

The Lord of the Vineyard and Its Solemn Warning

I have a very solemn message to bring before you today, friends, and I fear it has deep and frightful ramifications to us today. The title of my message is, The Lord of the Vineyard, and my text can be found in Luke's Gospel in chapter 20.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verses 9 through 18. Let me read us this striking passage of scripture at this time. Here now is the word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word.

Jesus Confronts the Religious Leaders

Let me preface this passage, friends, with the following background to the text as seen in the beginning of chapter 20. In the preceding verses, we find Jesus in the Jewish temple as he preached the gospel.

Verse 1 states,. Then the Jewish religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, get their blood pressure all worked up in jealous anger, and they question Jesus' authority. And Jesus silences these religious hypocrites by asking them a question about the authority of John the Baptist.

Then Jesus begins to relate a parable to them, which brings us to our text today. And this parable that Jesus speaks, why, it is the most descriptive and telling of all his parables, which speaks of their approaching rejection and murder of the Messiah, the Son of God, and the coming destruction of their beloved city and temple, of which the very stones will be thrown down upon them, crushing them to death.

The Vineyard as a Picture of God's People

Then began he to speak to the people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard, and led it forth to husbandmen, and went to a far country for a long time. Let me pause here, friends, to say that the vineyard is the Jewish nation, and the vinedressers are the Jewish leaders.

In John's Gospel, in chapter 15 and verse 1, it states, I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman. The Greek transliteration reads, I am the genuine vine, and my father is the tiller of the soil.

So we have this often spoke of imagery in our Bibles, of the people of God as a vineyard that God keeps and tends, and watches over like a husbandman would take tender care of what he's planted, to watch, to see the expected fruit appear.

Just go through your Old Testament, friends, and see the oft-repeated imagery of Israel as a vineyard, whom God in His mercy and love sent as prophets time and time again to turn the people of God back to Him, and who looked for fruit on that vine, but that produced only wild grapes in their backsliding condition.

So here in our text in Luke, Jesus informs these religious phonies of their common destruction. And at the season He sent a servant to the husbandmen, that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard.

But the husbandmen beat him and sent him away empty. This reference reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah, who wept like a baby over his sin and countrymen in their rejection of God to the point where he was empty of tears from his anguish over them.

Now look at the reference to the many prophets God sent to His wayward people over time. And again He sent another servant, and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty.

And again He sent a third, and they wounded him also, and cast him out. Then said the Lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. It may be they will reverence him when they see him.

But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

What therefore shall the Lord of the vineyard do unto them? He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. Let me pause here, friends, to say these hypocritical Jews that crucified the Lord of glory would rather kill the Messiah than lose their temple and their ceremonies.

But God comes and wipes them like a dirty plate, and introduces the times of the Gentiles, which is the present dispensation which we live in today, right before His return. Now hear the searching and terrifying words that Jesus now unfolds to them as He looks them in the eye while He delivers the following prophecy to them.

The Rejected Stone and the Judgment of Jerusalem

And He beheld them and said, What is this then that is written? The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner. Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

Listen, friends, as our Savior prophesied concern of Jerusalem, that a stone should not be left upon a stone, so it was fulfilled forty years after His ascension by Vespasian the emperor, and his son Titus, who, having besieged Jerusalem, the Jews were oppressed with a grievous famine, in which their food was old shoes, leather, old hay, and the dung of beasts.

There died partly of the sword and partly of the famine, eleven hundred thousand of the poorer sort, two thousand in one night were imbibed, six thousand were burned in the porch of the temple, the whole city was sacked and burned and laid level to the ground, and ninety-seven thousand taken captives and applied to base in miserable service, so says both the historians Eusebius and Josephus.

It was recorded that Vespasian broke into their city at Kidron, where they took Christ, on the same feast day that Christ was taken. He whipped them where they whipped Christ. He sold twenty Jews for a penny, as they sold Christ for thirty pence.

Apostasy and the Loss of National Privilege

Let me tell you, friends, that the concept of God that is predominantly held in our so-called churches today is the exact opposite of the one of the living God of the Bible, who rained down hell on his own vineyard and destroyed it and gave it to others.

The widespread apostasy that runs rampant throughout our churches today has draped us with a false sense of security that we can sin all we want to and still have the favor of God. But America, once favored by God, has the land of revival, has lost her privileges, just like the Jewish nation, by turning her back on the God of the Bible, by legislating him out of our country.

And this sin-loving nation is experiencing the remedial judgments of an offended God. Our streets have been turned red, drenched with the blood of a violent society that's spinning out of control and into grips of drugs and drunkenness and drowning in the filth of perversion.

I believe the same can be said for England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland, at least what I saw of it as I visited those countries, all each favored by God with glorious revivals, whose own churches have dwindled or closed down along with the influence and authority of the gospel, and by whose hands chose legislators who've chosen to promote evil over good to where God has removed himself in a remedial judgment of the withdrawn presence of God.

Isaiah's Vineyard Lament and the Removal of Protection

God in his mercy sent the Old Testament prophets to the Jewish church to demand from them the duty and obedience they owed to God. We see this clearly in Isaiah chapter 5 and verses 4 through 6, which declares the lament of the broken heart of God.

What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked at, it should bring forth grapes, brought forth wild grapes, and now, go to, I tell you what I will do to my vineyard.

I will take away the hedge thereof, and it should be eaten up, and break down the wall thereof, and it should be trodden down, and I will lay it waste, and it shall not be pruned nor digged, but there shall come up briars and thorns.

I will also command the clouds that there rain no rain upon it. Listen, friends, God has withdrawn himself from among us and has left us to our own devices. Our cities are filled with violence and drugs, and our young people today are godless and addicted to drugs, while our churches carry on with their self-preservation, while the world drops into hell all around us, at a time when clouds of war gather above us as China builds up her military might, and as Russia builds up her military might, and as the Arabs and Islamic nations grow in their hatred of us as a country, oh, why, oh, why aren't the pastors of this land on their faces before God, laying flat out in their sanctuaries, weeping before the porch and the altar over the sins of the nation, and crying out to God in repentance and humility to spare us and to save our young people today with a Holy Ghost revival?

The Urgent Call to Repentance and Revival

It's a great mystery to me. The only thing that concerns us in our spiritual state of drunkenness is how good we look within our denomination. All out of time and history, where the nations line up like dominoes, ready to fall one upon the other in economic collapse, war and famine, the only thing that will save us is a heaven-sent revival.

But I fear we are so far gone away from the heart of God that we only deserve His destruction. God have mercy on us all.