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09/20/2009 - An Investment Gone Bad, Mark 12:1-12

For many people the name Warren Buffett is synonymous with wise investing. In 2008 Buffett was recognized as the world's wealthiest person. He was the richest man in the world worth about $62 billion. Unfortunately, he lost $25 billion last year in the recession so he slipped to number two. He said he made some "dumb mistakes." So now according to Forbes magazine he's only worth $37 billion. Who's number one? Well, that's Bill Gates. He's back on top again this year because he only lost $18 billion so his net worth has dropped to just $40 billion. Just think of it. These two guys lost more money last year then all of us put together. Doesn't that make you feel better?

When we hear the name Bill Gates we think of computers and Microsoft the company he started back in the 1970's. But Warren Buffet is known for his wise investing. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1930, the second of three children. And his very first job was working in his grand pop's grocery store. When he was 13, he started delivering newspapers and that year filed his very first tax return deducting his bicycle and his watch as business expenses.

His first investment was a pinball machine that he bought for $25 when he was a freshman in high school and put it in a barber shop. Within a few months he owned three pinball machines and set them up in three different locations. After high school he went to the University of Nebraska and graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics and then got his master's degree in economics from Columbia University in 1951. He started an investment firm in Omaha in 1956 and during the 1960's heavily invested in a textile company called Berkshire Hathaway where he eventually became the CEO.

And over the years through wise investing in companies like The Washington Post and ABC and Coca-Cola along with a host of others he amassed his vast fortune and became known as the "Oracle of Omaha" because of his sound financial advice. When Warren Buffett speaks people listen.

Yet for all his wealth he's remained a modest man and still lives in the same five bedroom stucco house that he bought back in 1957 for $31,500. And now at the age of 79 he's gone on record saying that his goal is to give 85% of his wealth away before he dies largely through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Warren Buffett knows something about investing. He's made a lot of good ones over the years. And in our passage today we're going to see that God knows something about investing too, but one of his investments didn't turn out so well. It was an investment gone bad. If you have a Bible turn with me to Mark 12 as we continue our series through the gospel of Mark.

Remember, we're in the last week of Jesus' life, the week we call Holy Week or Passion Week. It began with the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the 10th day of Nissan, the day when the lambs were presented for inspection before the Passover. That was the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey presenting himself to the nation as their long awaited, promised King. He was the perfect Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. And as he rode into town the people recited Psalm 118, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!"

After he entered the city he went up to the Temple and walked through the Court of the Gentiles which historians tell us was about 18 acres large. It was a huge area. Our property here at Sunnyside is about seven acres including all the woods out back. So it was more than double the land we have here. It was a massive area filled with people and animals and tables and booths where money was exchanged and sacrifices were purchased. And in Jesus' day it was also filled with chaos and corruption.

So he checks it out on Sunday evening and comes up with a plan of what he's going to do. And then he heads back to Bethany where he spends the night most likely in the home of his good friend, Lazarus.

On Monday morning he leaves Bethany and walks the few miles back to Jerusalem and that's when he cleanses the temple. This week I discovered that Caiaphas, the high priest at the time of Jesus, made about three million dollars a year in today's currency off the shady business transactions that went on at the Temple. He got a big cut of the action. Imagine someone getting rich off religion! People have been doing it for centuries.

But on his way to the Temple Jesus curses a fig tree because it bore no fruit. This was the last of eighteen miracles that Mark records in his gospel before the resurrection and it's the only miracle that's destructive. And as Scott pointed out a few weeks ago, the fig tree was a powerful symbol of Israel, but like Israel it had produced no fruit so Jesus cursed it just like God would curse the nation with the judgment that was coming.

Now it's Tuesday, the day of questions and Jesus is back at Temple with his disciples walking through the porches that surround the temple courts. And he's confronted by the religious leaders who want to know who he thinks he is and what gives him the right to say the things he's saying and do the things he's doing. And Jesus will tell them what gives him the right and where his authority comes from if they can tell him where John the Baptist got his authority, because it came from the same place.

But they can't answer that question because if they say John got his authority from God Jesus will say, "Then why didn't you believe him?" But if they say John was crazy and was preaching his own wild ideas then the people would be upset with them because they all believed that John was a prophet sent by God. So they say, "We don't know." And Jesus says, "Fine. Neither will I tell you where my authority comes from."

And then with these religious leaders standing around him he launches into this parable, "The Parable of the Tenants," in Mark 12:1. Let's look at it together. Mark 12:1, Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place."

Jesus starts telling a story about a vineyard and a man who was making an investment. In Jesus' day wine was the beverage of choice in Israel. Everyone drank wine. In fact, I read this week that the average Jewish family drank about 350 liters of wine each year. Wine was much safer to drink in that culture than water. And wine making was a very profitable business. So it wasn't uncommon for someone of means to invest their money in a vineyard that would grow and press grapes and make and sell wine. It was done all the time. It was a good investment.

But like any investment it had to be protected. So after the man planted a vineyard he put a wall around it to keep out wild animals, dug a pit for the winepress, and built a tower to watch out for thieves and robbers. The owner gave his vineyard every possible chance to thrive and be successful. He took good care of it. And then he rented it out and moved to another place.

Now typically a new vineyard took about three years to produce fruit. And if the landowner was abiding by the Jewish Law he couldn't collect any fruit in the fourth year because that year's produce was considered holy and belonged to the Lord. But in the fifth year he could take the grapes and start cashing in on his investment.

So we read in verse 2, At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. ³But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

When the fifth year came he went to collect what was rightfully his. Usually the landowner would get 2/3rds of the harvest and the tenants would get 1/3^rd. But the servant got mugged and they sent away with nothing. Not a good start for his investment, but hopefully things would get better. Maybe the tenants were just having a bad day.

Look at verse 4,Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. The second guy didn't fare any better. He got hit on the head and abused.

Verse 5, He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed. It was the same story over and over again. Every servant was brutalized. And after a while you have to wonder, "What's up with the landowner? When's he going to give up?" This is crazy! It's not working. His investment had turned into a nightmare. He should have kept his money in the bank.

Look at verse 6, "He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son.'⁷"But the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' ⁸So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹"What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

This is a sad, violent parable that needed no explanation to the crowd standing in the porch that day. They all knew what the vineyard was. The vineyard was the nation of Israel. The vine was the national symbol of Israel. It was to Israel what the bald eagle is to the United States of America. The vine was minted on their coins. There was a solid gold, six-foot grapevine worth millions that hung over the door of the Temple in Jerusalem.

God had planted Israel on this earth as a vine meant to produce fruit, to be righteous and to uphold justice, to be a blessing to this world, and to draw all nations to the one true God. They were to be his people and he was to be their God. They were to show the world a better to live. Remember, they were going to be God's rescue team to a lost and broken world, but the vine went bad and failed to produce fruit.

Listen to how God expresses his grief through Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah 5:1-7 (p.468), I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. ²He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in itand cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. ³"Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.⁴What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? ⁵Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. ⁶I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it." ⁷The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

That's God's heart for his people. The reason the landowner kept sending his servants was because he loved his vineyard and wouldn't give up on it. That's the reason he finally sent his own son. But the vineyard failed to produce. Instead of being part of the solution to the violence and poverty and injustice in this world Israel became part of the problem. They didn't want to listen to God and partner with him. And now God's patience has run out and he's going to judge them for that.

He's going to destroy the vineyard and plant a new one which is why Jesus will say in just a few days that, "I'm the true vine. I'm the new Israel. I will succeed where the nation failed." Jesus will be the vine and will accomplish what God had desired all along. He will produce fruit that will bless this world. And the amazing thing to me is that he intends to produce his fruit through his followers, through ordinary people like you and me who are connected to him through faith and who allow the Holy Spirit to live and work through them.

Against the backdrop of this parable he will say in John 15:5, "I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing."

"The vineyard has been given to others," Jesus says. And that's us. Jesus is looking to produce his fruit through us. That's why issues of right living and peacemaking and justice and poverty should of great concern to us. We are to be the blessing to this world that Israel was meant to me. We are to reflect who God is to a lost and broken world so that others will be drawn to him.

So the vineyard in the story is Israel gone bad after all God's good care. The landowner, of course, is God. The tenants are the religious leaders that over the years brutalized God's servants the prophets and in less than a week they'll brutalize God's own Son too and for that they'll be judged.

This is another indictment on the nation that refused to recognize its King and Jesus isn't going to back off. He curses the fig tree. He cleanses the temple. He destroys the vineyard because it all has to come down and something brand new has to come and take its place. And we're part of that brand new vineyard if we're connected by faith to the vine who is Jesus.

And then he quotes Psalm 118 again, the same Psalm that had been shouted and sung two days before at his triumphal entry.

Look at verse 10, Haven't you read this passage of Scripture: "'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; ¹¹the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

Psalm 118 was often recited by those who were going up to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. It was a familiar Psalm to the Jewish people. And because of what's going to happen to Jesus in a few days he likens himself to the stone the builders rejected that ultimately became the cornerstone or the capstone of Solomon's original Temple. It's an amazing story.

We know from Scripture that when Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem there was no sounds. There was no hammering, no cutting, no pounding, no sawing. The Temple was built in complete silence out of reverence for God if you can imagine that! The massive stones that were used were quarried off site. And they were cut to such exact specifications that when they arrived at the construction site they fit perfectly in place.

And as the story goes at one point a huge rock was quarried and shaped to its exact dimensions and sent to the Temple. But when it arrived the builders didn't know where it went. It didn't seem to match the blueprints they had. So they set it aside. But as time passed the rock kept getting in the way and so the builders pushed it over the edge of a bank and it rolled down into the Kidron Valley and everyone forgot about it until it was time to set the cornerstone in place.

But the builders couldn't find the cornerstone so they sent word back to the quarry. And they said they didn't have it. It had already been cut and shipped. Then someone remembered that huge "extra" rock that had been pushed over the bank and rolled down into the valley. And when the workers got the stone and hoisted it into place it fit perfectly as the cornerstone of the Temple.

Jesus says, "I'm that stone that was rejected. I'm the stone that got pushed away. I'm the one who's the cornerstone of this brand new kingdom that I've come to establish. This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."

Look at verse 12, Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.

The New Testament writers love this image of Jesus as the stone that was rejected that has become the cornerstone of our faith. Paul uses it in Ephesians 2 and Romans 9. Peter uses it in 1 Peter 2 and in his message in Acts 4:11-12 where he says, Jesus is "'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.' ¹²Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved."

Jesus succeeded where all others failed. He is the rescuer that we all need. Salvation is found in no one else but Jesus the Messiah. And if we put our faith in him we will be saved from the penalty of sin, for the power of sin, and one day from the presence of sin.

Even some of the priests who wanted to kill him that day eventually believed and were saved. As Acts 6:7 records, So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

It's easy to read these passages and be critical of the religious leaders of Jesus' day. And there's good reason to be. Their hearts were hard. But we need to realize that now we are God's vineyard. We are the ones that he wants to do his work through. He wants to bring his blessings to this world through us. And he wants our hearts to be soft and sensitive to the ways he speaks to us through his Word, and through his Spirit, and through our pain, and through the voices of those who know us and love us and care about us. "If you love me then keep my commandments," he says.

"I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.