The Parables of Jesus

Chris Buttery

Sacramento Central SDA Church

The Parables of Jesus: When Jesus Finds No Fruit

This morning's message is entitled, When Jesus Finds No Fruit.

In his autobiography, Made in America, Walmart founder Sam Walton, he describes 3 pillars that make a great company.

On a quiet evening in Illinois in 2002, all 3 pillars were knocked down impressively in less than a half an hour.

I'm gonna read to you here what I read in a book And it will, well, it not only amuse you, but it'll get us thinking here a little bit as we head into our message.

Heading into Walmart, the writer said, in Janiso, and this again is in Illinois, to pick up a prescription, a 73-year-old woman stopped by a newspaper box outside the store.

As a woman removed her paper and turned away, the door slammed shut on the drooping hood of her jacket.

Unable to wriggle out of the garment thanks to a recent shoulder surgery, the septuagenarian, I think I pronounced that right, looked around for assistance.

A young woman spotted her predicament and went into the store to find a helpful Walmart employee.

Respect for the individual was on the way.

Alas, the woman was informed that Walmart had a strict policy against tampering with newspaper boxes.

So with the woman still held hostage by the Quad Cities dispatch, Argus, a Walmart employee, mindful of the all-important service to the customer, called the paper to have someone sent out to liberate her.

The woman politely suggested that the employee simply cough up 2 quarters and open the door.

This concept wasn't found in Sam Walton's book of employee hand, the employee handbook.

The store she explained didn't offer refunds for newspapers.

15 minutes passed, no sign of dispatch, Argus rescue squad.

Desperate, the senior laid out the plan again.

2 quarters placed 1 after the other in the newspaper slot would result in unlocking the door which would enable me to be free, 50 cents, door, freedom.

Throwing corporate guidelines to the wind, the employee tried the coin solution and bingo, Another customer helped.

Now the woman's grateful daughter later came to the store and entrusted a $5 bill to the Walmart employee for use solely to underwrite future pedestrian releases.

It was proof that when people work together to strive for excellence, everybody wins." That's a funny story for sure.

We can all relate to certain company absurdities that we've all experienced.

We've all entered well-known stores that makes high professions and our expectations that run high as we anticipate top-notch service.

But when they're let down, or we're let down, those who know better treat us with indifference.

What's the boss supposed to do with lackluster effort put forth by the staff.

What's a God to do with his people when they don't meet his simple expectations, especially when every provision has been made for their success?

Jesus tells another fascinating story in the Gospels, and I want to encourage you, invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 21.

Tells another story that answers this very question.

This 1 is right on the heels of the 1 about the 2 boys who were told to go out and work in their father's vineyard.

That story was related to highlight the importance of obedience to the Lord.

This parable answers the question, what's a God to do with His people when they don't meet His expectations?

We're dealing with solemn subjects here this morning, and so let's continue.

The parable is about a vineyard, but in this case, it's leased out to tenants that are to be cared, this vineyard is to be cared for.

So let's read Matthew chapter 21 and we'll read verse 33 together.

There was a certain land owner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.

And he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country.

So Jesus tells the story about simply a certain landowner who rents out his vineyard while he goes away on a journey far away.

Jesus is referencing the vineyard analogy God used to speak to Israel back there in the time of Isaiah.

And when you read there in Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 1, Israel is the vineyard.

And the men in that vineyard, according to verse 7 of Isaiah chapter 5, are the pleasant vine.

God planted His vineyard, His church, He removed the stones, He placed a hedge about it, He put a tower in the middle of it, and He expected fruit to grow.

What was the fruit that He expected from His people?

They were to reveal His principles, His character, the fruit of His goodness, His mercy, His truth, which was to stand out in direct contrast to the heathen nations who bore the fruits of violence and crime and greed and oppression.

That was the first thing, to reveal His principles, His character, the fruit of His goodness.

The second fruit they were to produce, and it's up there, was to lead others to trust God.

They were to impart the blessings they received at the hand of God to others.

They were to help them become acquainted with the true God.

And the history of the Jewish nation started when he called Abraham out of idolatry to preserve God's truth about him and his children and his grandchildren Isaac and Jacob and then of course Joseph also bore witness to the true God and Then God delivered Abraham's descendants out of that pagan nation, Egypt, to serve him and to continue the witness borne by those who came before.

The possibilities for Israel were phenomenal, Phenomenal.

Obedience would make them a marvel in prosperity, in wisdom, in skill, in enterprise, in health, in wealth, and most importantly, in character.

All of these favors, however, were conditional upon obedience.

So through Israel, God wanted to teach the nations the important spiritual truths of redemption and how to reclaim Eden.

Having a relationship with God, obeying God, this is how restoration of Eden occurs.

But sadly, as we know the story pretty well, they didn't fulfill their purpose.

In Isaiah chapter 5, instead of bringing forth good grapes, they brought forth wild fruit, wild grapes.

God had done everything for them to prosper and to succeed, but they failed.

And So what's a God to do when His people don't meet His simple expectations?

The story continues in Matthew chapter 21.

So the vine dresser, the landowner, leases out his vineyard to these individuals so he can go away to a far country.

Verse 34, now when vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vine dresses, he sent his servants to the vine dresses that they might receive its fruit.

And so when the time had come for the land owner to take stock of his vineyard to see if any fruit was produced, he sent his servants, he sent individuals there to go and take account.

So the land owner sends his employees to inspect the work of the tenant.

God established His people there back there in the Old Testament, established them.

They weren't doing too good in general at fulfilling his purposes.

And so God sends someone and sends somebodies to help, to help out, sends somebodies to guide them and to lead them.

He doesn't just leave Israel to herself, but goes after her to see how she's doing and encourages her to meet her high expectations that he's justifiably placed on her, but sadly, sadly, they don't listen.

The story continues, verse 35, and the vine dressers took His servants and beat 1 and killed 1 and stoned another.

Verse 36, again He sent out other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them.

They refused to change, they refused to be transformed, they refused to bring forth the fruit of humility and self-sacrificing love.

If only, if only they had realized that the outcome of their attitude would be robbing others of the religious guidance and holy example their heavenly Father had desired of them, but instead, instead they made the sacred things of God appear a farce.

They became a huge stumbling block to the heathen, and they turned away from ever having the chance of receiving salvation through the Savior.

Of course, the tenants in this particular parable that Jesus is teaching represented the religious leaders, not only of New Testament Israel, but Old Testament Israel.

They were not true to their trust and they were self-serving.

You know, they had read the handbook, they'd read the law, they'd read the word of God, and they'd pledged themselves obedience to it.

All that the Lord has said, we will do, is what they said, but instead, they placed policies around the intent of the law, thus loading heavy burdens on the people, enforcing them to conform to the customs not founded on the Word of God.

All these heaped up requirements in turn made God's people indifferent to the hurt and the needs of those not only in their midst but also of those outside the camp.

And as we're gonna put it up on the screen if you don't mind, they were stuck between policy and piety.

That's where God's people were, stuck between policy and piety.

They were stuck between knowing what they knew to be the right thing to do.

Human decency based on humility and self-sacrificing love.

And they were stuck between that and mounted up policies.

Loopholes to avoid going out of your way, going out of their way to help others.

And here's where our opening story is mimicked in the lives of God's ancient people, like the Walmart employee who should have freed the hooded 70-something from the newspaper box but didn't because she was stuck between knowing what human decency dictated and her company's policy that prevented her from doing the right thing.

The Parables of Jesus: Noun or Verb Christian?

You know, we're a homeschooling family, and being a homeschooling family, you have the privilege of going over some things, over some ground that you may have, or at least I've forgotten about when I was young.

You know, you ever wonder why you do the things you do, why you say the things you say, how you can write the way you write, how you, do you know the correct grammatical structure of a sentence?

Now you write sentences often and I assume correctly, and I guess that some of you couldn't tell me the rules for what goes where when you're constructing a sentence, why it is.

Now I certainly don't know everything there is to know about these things, but I've been hearing an awful lot recently about adjectives and pronouns and nouns and verbs and all the rest of those elements that help build a sentence.

Every 2 little interesting elements in a sentence are common, and those are the nouns and those are the verbs.

In the following sentence, what is the noun, or which, or what are the nouns?

Adam likes to ride his bike every day after school.

Okay, now we're gonna focus on the word bike.

Now this isn't elementary school all over again.

All right, so verb, noun, the noun is bike.

The verb is an action word or it's a doing word.

The verb in the same sentence is, Adam likes to ride his bike every day after school.

Ride, that's exactly right, you've got it.

A noun is an object that's there in the sentence.

It's important, it's noticeable, but generally it's not doing anything.

Nouns only get exciting when verbs are attached to them.

The bike is the object that we're focusing on.

Now, when it's in motion, it becomes more than a bike.

It becomes the joy of a boy or a girl on a spring, summer, fall, afternoon, after school, the homework is done.

It becomes the means of getting to know the kids in the neighborhood, it sends wind through the hair, it takes them on adventures never dreamed, they've never dreamed of going on, it's their mode of transportation.

When his bike is doing, when a child's bike is doing, when it's being used and going somewhere, it's meeting the object for which it was made.

It's better that the bike is in motion than stationary, waiting to fulfill its destiny.

When we come to the Bible, when we come to the Bible, we discover it's also very concerned about what a person does.

Interestingly, it's not so concerned with what a person merely says but what a person actually does and it's not far-fetched to suggest that the Bible can lead a person to believe that it's far more important for what a person does not what he or says they're going to do or that they will do.

My favorite author in the book, Christ Object Lessons, page 272, we'll put that up on the screen, says the test of sincerity is not in words, but in what, friends?

Words are of no less value unless they are accompanied with appropriate deeds.

And if there is, what does it mean for me?

And what impact should that make on me, a Christian, a Seventh-day Adventist Christian or a Christian, what impact would that have on my experience, especially as we live here in these final days of Earth's history.

Now, firstly, we want to notice what Jesus has to say about it.

Matthew chapter 7 verse 21, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

But who gets into the kingdom of heaven, according to verse 21?

He who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, you see.

So not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, makes a profession, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those that do the will of the Father.

Over in Matthew chapter 5 And verse 47, Jesus does not say, what say you more than others?

Instead, He says, what do you more than others?

And then in John chapter 13, verse 17, Jesus said, happy are you if you know these things, happy are you if you know them, if you speak them, no, no, no, if you do them, that's right.

So Jesus tells us a very intriguing parable along the same lines, and I want to spend time answering the question here this morning, what role does doing have in a Christian life?

What role does doing have in the Christian life?

So turn with me to Matthew 21, that's where the parable is found.

Matthew 21, we're getting very close to finishing our parables here, and I told you that there are about 40 parables Jesus wrote that are recorded in the Gospels, and we're only gonna be looking at 25 of them, just 25, But there are others, there are about 40 that are recorded, and I would imagine that there were many other stories Jesus taught that were not recorded.

But Matthew chapter 21, and we're looking at verse 28 through 32, talking about doing.

Matthew 21 verse 28, Jesus said, but what do you think?

A man had 2 sons and he came to the first and said, son, go work today in my vineyard.

Then he came to the second and said likewise, and he answered and said, I go sir.

Which of the 2 did the will of the Father.

They said to Him, the first Jesus said to them, as surely I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of heaven before you.

For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but tax collectors and harlots believed Him.

And when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe Him." Now most of us can probably relate to the Father's provicament.

The second son says, sure I'll go, but doesn't end up going.

Having children makes me sympathize with this father.

How many times you've asked, perhaps, your children to do something and they respond like 1 of these 2 boys?

Have you ever asked someone to do something for you and you receive 1 of these 2 responses, whether it be child or not, maybe an employee, fellow worker perhaps.

Now this parable was spoken by Jesus, it was His last visit to Jerusalem just before His death.

He'd also, previous to this, had driven out the buyers and the sellers in the temple the second time.

And they were amazed and they were terrified, and they obeyed his command to leave the temple precincts.

However, when their terror had died down, the priests and the elders returning to the temple had found Christ healing the sick and healing the dying, and they heard the voice of children singing songs of praise.

Yet this didn't alter or affect their cold hearts.

The next day as Jesus is in the temple and He's teaching, the chief priests and the leaders come to Him, and you can see the question in verse 23 in Matthew chapter 21, and they come to Him and they challenge Him and they say, by what authority are you doing these things?

By What authority are you doing these things?

Now it's pretty surprising that after they've just witnessed heaven's power flash from Jesus' face, the masses healed and his authority that goes unchallenged, that they would be asking this, that they would have the audacity to be asking this.

But it wasn't evidence they were looking for, but simply a way to misapply the words Jesus spoke and to stir up the people against Him.

He knew these types of things would happen, and that they didn't recognize Him as sent from God.

And he knew that there would be no way that they would believe his testimony if he answered their question.

So he leaves the issue alone, and he allows them to experience what it's like to have the shoe on the other foot, to know what they are putting Him through.

When Jesus answered and said to them, I also will ask you 1 thing, which of you tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things.

Verse 25, the baptism of John, Where was it from?

And they reasoned among themselves saying, if we say from heaven, he'll say to us, well why didn't you believe then?

But if we say from men, we fear the multitude for all count John as a prophet.

So they answered Jesus and said, we don't know.

And he said to them, well, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

Now it's within this context that Jesus shares this parable about the 2 sons.

In the parable, the father represents God and the vineyard that the father asks his boys to go work in represents the kingdom, the church, to go work in the church.

The Parable of Jesus: Kingdom Always First

Now I have a philosophical question for you here this morning and I need your help.

I heard the sad story, the sad tale of a man who went on an ocean voyage.

And he took with him a large bag of gold coins.

And according to the story, that was his net worth.

That was everything that he owned in that bag.

Now it wasn't long before a terrible storm blew up and the passengers on that ship were at risk of losing their life.

And then the call came out for everyone to abandon ship.

Now the man strapped the gold around his waist and he did so hoping to save it along with himself and he jumped overboard and he sank to the bottom.

As he was sinking, did he have the gold or did the gold have him?

Did he have the gold or did the gold have him?

You know, over half the parables that Jesus told had to do with money and had to do with material possessions.

1 out of every 6 verses in Matthew, Mark, and Luke deal with the same topic.

Now, all of these references appear to make money the second most popular subject in the entire Bible.

Well, according to the experts, 2 of the greatest causes of stress in life are issues related to time management, number 1, and finances, money, number 2.

This isn't surprising considering how people are doing these days.

In 2013, consumer bankruptcy filings were over 1 million here in the United States.

That means today close to 20, 000 Americans declare bankruptcy each week.

SMR research asserts that 43.7 million households in the United States, that's 15% of the households in the US, have less than $1, 000 in liquid assets.

And 5% of the households have a net worth of 0 or less.

So how do people react to such situations?

Consumer debt has risen to $1.7 trillion and it continues to rise.

In a recent survey, 27% of people surveyed by the Los Angeles Times described their personal finances as shaky at best.

40% said they had trouble paying insurance premiums, car payments, and other installments on a monthly basis.

O'Donald Olsen quipped, the average American is busy buying things he doesn't want with money he doesn't have to impress people he doesn't even like.

There isn't an aspect of life that financial matters don't touch.

And that's why Jesus spent so much time talking about money and material possessions.

1 of those times is found in the gospel according to Luke, and I'd like to invite you to turn there with me to Luke chapter 16, and we're gonna read verses 1 through 9.

1 of those times where he talked about finances is here in this particular parable of the unjust steward.

The unjust steward or the shrewd, astute, sharp, smart manager.

So Here it is, Luke chapter 16, and we'll start with verse 1.

There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was squandering or wasting his goods.

So he called him and said to him, what is this I hear about you?

Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.

Then the steward said within himself, what shall I do?

For my master is taking the stewardship away from me.

I've resolved what to do, that when I'm put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.' So he called every 1 of his master's debtors to him and said to the first, how much do you owe my master?

So he said to him, take your bill, sit down quickly and write 50.

And then he said to another, and how much do you owe?

And he said to him, take your bill and write 80.

So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly.

For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light, and I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when they fail, you may receive you into everlasting home." That's the story, the story of the unjust steward or the shrewd manager.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

The Parables of Jesus: When Jesus Finds No Fruit

28m

The Parables of Jesus: Noun or Verb Christian?

28m

The Parable of Jesus: Kingdom Always First

28m

The Man Who Was Inconvenienced

28m

The Man Who Wouldn’t Change a Word

26m

Too Smart

11m

A Song in My Heart

27m

Investments Planning

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The Parable of Jesus: The Company You Keep

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The Parable of Jesus: Disappointed Expectations

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The Busy Angel

27m

Death by Religion

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