Dear people of God, take comfort in this text. Know that this parable of Jesus is a parable about you. And that Jesus has given this parable because He loves you.
That is really what the parable is all about. It is about the love that God the Father and the Son have for the Church, the people of God. Jesus told His parable as a warning to the pastors, to the preachers and teachers from His Old Testament Church. They had not been faithful in their duties, they had not been faithful administrators of the church they had been given to attend. The same warning goes for today pastors. Do your duty. Tend your vineyard. Do it well and do it faithfully, because if you don’t you will see a wretched end, and the vineyard will be taken away from you and given to another.
But you? You are the vineyard, and the message that Jesus has hidden for you in this text is that he loves you! In fact, He loves you a lot. You are His vineyard. He has planted you and protected you. He has left nothing to chance.
In the parable, Jesus tells us of a master who planted a vineyard. But he was not merely content to just put the seed in the ground and let it grow. It was not enough to have the vines and the grapes, not for this master. He cared for his vines too much to simply leave them out on their own, to allow anyone and any thing to wander through and do whatever damage they would do. So he built a fence, a hedge, a wall all around the vineyard. Sometimes fences simply mark boundaries. Sometimes fences are built to keep things in. Sometimes fences are built to protect what is kept inside. This master built his fence to keep out thieves and wild animals, people and things who would come in to try to steal away the fruit from his precious vines.
But even that was not enough. He then went to the trouble of building a watchtower. A tower that stood up over the vineyard where his workers could keep watch over it, where they would be able to see where there was danger, where they would be able to see where there were thieves who were coming in to attack and to steal. The watchtower was built for the protection of the vines and their fruit.
But even that was not enough. The master knew that he would be gone. And while he was gone he wanted there to be workers in that vineyard, who would love it the way he loves it, who would care for it the way he cares for it, who would be his hands gardening and pruning and digging and fertilizing, but who would also be his eyes watching over and protecting, defending and guarding it from enemies and predators. The master loved his vineyard and he did whatever was needed to protect it and to preserve it.
Dear people of St Paul you are that vineyard. God the Father is your master. He has planted you in his vineyard. He carefully chose you, selected you from among the other vines to be his very own. He prepared a place for you in his vineyard where he would plant you. He lovingly dug in the soil of his vineyard and selected a spot, a place just for you, where you could sink your roots down deep into the soil to be fed with the nourishment that you need to thrive and bear fruit. Where you could grow up and grow strong. You are a vine planted in the vineyard of the Heavenly Father.
Just like the master in the parable saw to it that his vineyard would be protected and safe, God the Father who has planted you in the Church has seen to your protection and safety. After all, He has enemies in the world who want to steal you away from him and who want to destroy you. The devil and his demons would like nothing better that to sneak into his vineyard under cover of darkness and uproot you from your carefully chosen place and carry you away to your utter ruin. The Father would have none of that. He wants you to stay right where you are, so He has lovingly provided for your protection.
The master in the parable built a wall, a fence, a hedge around his vineyard to keep the predators out. The Father has done the same for you. He has given to you a wall of protection that completely surrounds you. It keeps the attacks of the Devil away from you so that you are safe. So that you are guarded and protected, so that you can not be stolen away. God has given to you the Bible as a fence a strong wall built up around you for your protection. God had his prophets and apostles write this book for you; for your benefit and blessing, for your learning, for your faith and your growth, but also for your protection.
The Word of God is wonderfully and blessedly specific. God enables us to see and understand this very thing. He tells us in the Book of Romans that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. (Romans 10:17) When we want to believe, when we want to see God and know God and understand God, when we want to know God is, when we have questions about God and what he has done and why he has done it the place where we go to find him is to His Word! To the Bible! To Genesis through Revelation and everything inbetween. It’s all there!
IN that way, the Bible is like the fence, the hedge that God has planted around his vineyard. It is a rock solid strong fence that nothing can break down and that nothing can break through. The Bible is boundary line, it is the property, the place where God can be found.
A few weeks ago there was a surveyor who came out to the property to mark out the boundaries of our property line. We hired them because he was coming to survey the land that has been donated by the Burns family and he was hoping to get the dimensions marked out properly. If you walk around the property lines you can see markers that clearly define where the property is. As long as you are inside that boundary line you are on St Paul’s property. Boundaries mark ownership, within those boundaries is St Paul Chuckery.
Those boundaries are a blessing for our congregation. They mark out what belongs to us, but more than that, those boundary lines are marked to a specific spot, a definite location. You can look it up on a map, in a phone book, plug it in to a gps and you will find the right spot, the exact place where you need to go. Those boundaries give a definite security.
The Bible functions in that exact way for us. The Bible is the boundary line that marks out the location of the place where we go to find God. Lots of people are looking for God these days. Lots of people want to find him – many of them don’t ever get there because they don’t know where to look. God tells us. He gives us his address, his coordinates where he will always be. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the WORD! It is plain and simple. Not complicated. God doesn’t make us go off on a journey to find him, he doesn’t only reveal himself after some sort of a spirit walk or journey. God is right here in his word.
What a blessing! We don’t to have to wander too and fro, back and forth searching for him, wondering where he is and if we have found him. We don’t have to be blown back and forth, to never be sure if we are in the right spot. He wants us to be firmly planted and to know that we are inside his boundary lines, inside the place where he has promised that while we are there we belong to him and we are safe and secure inside the place where he has planted us.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t let that assurance be taken away from you. The devil hates it when Christian are confident in their faith. He hates it when Christians are comforted by the assurance of God’s promises. He would rather that we wonder, that we have doubts, that we not be so sure about God and the things he has promised us in His Word. The devil wants to take that confidence away from us.
One of his subtle tricks, one of the sly little things he does is to sneak into the minds of Christians and tell them that God’s word is not enough, that there needs to be more. God’s Word isn’t enough. The things that he has promised to do for you are not enough. You won’t be sure that he loves you and you won’t love him back until something extra has happened. Until God has come face to face with you, slipped you a personal note or an invitation, and then answered all your really tough questions face to face. Don’t believe these lies. Don’t let these ideas creep into your mind and steal away from you the confidence that God has given in his Word of promise.
I have loved you with and everlasting love. [Jeremiah 31.3]
God so loved the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life. [John 3.16]
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, [39] nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]
What more do we need?
God in his unbounded love for us has reduced himself to paper – to Words on a page so that we always know where to find him. So that we can always know where the boundaries of his vineyard lie. Because God has limited himself to His Word we never have to be in doubt. We never have to wonder where those boundary lines are. We never have to question whether or not we are still planted in His vineyard. As long as we are standing on the word we are planted in the vineyard.
The master cares for his vineyard. He loves his vineyard. He loves it so much and so deeply that he relentlessly provides for and cares for it.
In the parable, when the workers were unfaithful, that is to say, when the pastors of His church had been unfaithful with the Church and simply wanted to keep it from themselves, the master sent his servants – they were thrown out and beaten and even killed. When the master saw what his workers had done, and fully aware of their violent tendencies he sent his son, hoping to restore the workers but at the same time fully aware of the risk to his son. His Son was murdered.
In the same way, when God sent his son to the pastors of His Old Testament Church they rejected his son, they threw him out of the vineyard and they killed him. God loved his church so much that he even risked, he even sacrificed his son to protect it and to possess it.
God has planted you in his vineyard. He has called you to faith and he has planted you in the boundary lines that he has marked out for you so that you could be confident that he has you. You don’t have to go looking for him, you don’t have to wonder if you have found him. You don’t have to wait for a special invitation in your mailbox or go wandering out in the woods. All you have to do is go to church. All you have to do is open your bible. All you have to do is bloom and grow where he has planted you protected you and preserved you. Where he has held nothing back to keep you.
Amen.
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