When God speaks to Israel here He says that He has given
them many signs and they paid no heed.
He sent famine and drought and other natural disasters onto them and yet
they made no change and so now this final judgment is coming. I don't want to attribute all natural
disasters to God's judgment but do we honestly ask if such is the case? Most of the people I know who talk about such
things are cranks who believe the country or some other country is under
judgment or should be anyway. Jesus said
that there would be earthquakes and floods and also wars and rumors of war when
the end was coming. In the end of this
passage God reminds the people that the earth and indeed the entire universe
belong to Him as creator. "He who
forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his
thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the
earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!" Do we need to reconsider some things? Paul tells the Romans that the created order
and the lack thereof bespeak their creator.
Is the word they speak also living and active or is the canon of
creation a closed canon?
Most of the time when Jesus taught in parables there was at
least some confusion about His message.
Not so here. The leaders knew
exactly who He was talking about, them.
The parable clearly is speaking of the Lord planting a vineyard (an
image Isaiah and the Psalms use as well so it was very familiar to His
listeners) and giving it to some tenants.
The Law makes clear that the Land belongs to the Lord and the people
then are tenants who pay rent in the form of tithes and offerings from the
produce of the Land. The harvest is
celebrated with festivals when a portion is given to Him. The tenants, however, refuse to grant that
He, in fact, is owed these rents and refuse all who come to collect what is
due. These collectors represent the
prophets whom the Lord sent to remind them of the realities of their
situation. Finally, the parable says
that the owner sent his son and the tenants determined that if they killed him
then surely the landlord would make no further attempt. Either the landlord was dead or he would get
the message. Judgment is being passed
but not on the world, on the people of God who have rejected Him and His
Son. Sin has now overcome them.
Peter says that in the day of judgment the entire universe
will be dissolved. All will be burned
with fire and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. We, however, await the new heavens and the
new earth which will be the place where righteousness dwells. These are incredibly vivid images of God's
destruction of His own creation. It is
under judgment because of our sin. That
should tells us some things about how God sees sin, that what we do is the
cause of the destruction of the universe.
That reality should change the way we think about sin, confession,
repentance and the magnitude of what Jesus did for us at the cross shouldn't
it? It also should tell us what Paul
meant when He wrote that all creation is groaning for the revelation of the
sons of God, it is under judgment and captivity and it longs for the true Adam
and sons of Adam to care for it as its creator intended.
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