I'm Talking About Fruit

• Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 21:33-46

with Nehemiah 8:1-10

www.FirstChurchBville.com  @FirstUMCBville   @kerrfunk

• This parable makes me ask questions. One beauty of a parable is how you are drawn in, you don’t just file it away, but you interact with it, you ponder its flavors. I invited the congregation to discuss the answers with people seated near them.

• What is the rental agreement?
Did tenant farmers violate rental agreement?

How might this situation apply to you…
(think of the door to a teenager’s room… “private territory”…
but what exactly is ‘ownership’ when you’re a minor?)

à God is owner, creator, original farmer…
God entrusts people but we do not become lord…
People remain stewards. Servants. Renters. Workers.
We are not the owners.

• What do we know about the tenants? (not much, and nothing good. Violent greedy schemers. Murderous.)

What do we know about the owner?
(worker, farmer, traveler. NOT MURDEROUS. WANTS FRUIT)

• By the way, have you heard a similar scenario, of a landowner planting a vineyard?
It’s in Isaiah 5. Familiar to Jesus’ hearers. What happened then?
(I will take away its hedge and it will be destroyed. I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland… I will command the clouds not to rain on it… The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel…)

What happens in Jesus’ parable? Not destruction of the house but the invitation to new workers. Because why? Because God wants FRUIT

Why did God create at all? For fruit. For relationship. To bring God joy.

• What for fruit does God want?

• James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

• Back to Matthew, verse 43: the kingdom will be given to a people who produce its fruit.
Consider the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23: love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control. THESE are the things God wants people to produce in the world. & equips people to do, if we will acknowledge that God is God and we are not…

• I started out saying this parable makes me ask questions,
and I leave you with these questions:

- Where in this parable do you see yourself?
an earlier tenant? A future tenant?

- Are you putting yourself in a position to produce fruit?
or are you hoping somehow to be found faithful?

• Hymn 385 Let Us Plead For Faith Alone

Matthew 21:33-46

³³ “Listen to another parable,” [Jesus said to the chief priests and Pharisees.]
“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it to tenant farmers and took a trip. ³⁴ When it was time for harvest, he sent his servants to the tenant farmers to collect his fruit. ³⁵ But the tenant farmers grabbed his servants. They beat some of them, and some of them they killed. Some of them they stoned to death.

³⁶ “Again the landowner sent other servants, more than the first group. They treated them in the same way. ³⁷ Finally he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

³⁸ “But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come on, let’s kill him and we’ll have his inheritance.’ ³⁹ They grabbed him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

⁴⁰ “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenant farmers?” [Jesus asked the chief priests and Pharisees].

⁴¹ They replied, “He will totally destroy those wicked farmers and rent the vineyard to other tenant farmers who will give him the fruit when it’s ready.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the scriptures, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes? ^{[Psalm 118:22-23] 43} Therefore, I tell you that God’s kingdom will be taken away from you and will be given to a people who produce its fruit. ⁴⁴ Whoever falls on this stone will be crushed. And the stone will crush the person it falls on.”

⁴⁵ Now when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard the parable, they knew Jesus was talking about them. ⁴⁶ They were trying to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, who thought he was a prophet.