Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.
In the parable of the vineyard the owner, after his first servants were abused when sent to collect fruit, sent another larger group who were treated in the same way. Those servants are God's prophets, teachers and messengers, sent at His appointed time to call Israel to account and receive what was due to Him. Their repeated rejection with beating, stoning and killing, met with still more determined hatred, exposed Israel's breach of trust and selfish use of entrusted goods while returning no fruit to God. The repeated sending reveals God's unwearied care, long-suffering mercy and patience in giving further calls to return and render fruit. That continued rebellion prepared the way for the killing of the son and brought just judgment in taking the vineyard from the Jewish nation to give it to others, a warning to the church today not to follow the wicked husbandmen lest the sacred trust be taken away.
Vineyard Parable Setting
Matthew 21:36 belongs to the parable of the vineyard, in which God chose Israel out of the world, richly blessed and trained the people, and expected them to bear fruit that would honor Him by revealing the principles and character of His kingdom in a wicked world. The parable shows the rich blessings He gave and His claim upon them to obey Him, for His purpose for Israel could have been fulfilled through obedience, but failure to fulfill it meant forfeiting His blessing and bringing ruin upon itself.
The owner dealt with the husbandmen as stewards under definite terms, having made an agreement with them to return to Him a certain amount of fruit in its season at a specified time, because the whole vineyard belongs to Him and He has a right to expect revenue from it. The vineyard also represents the world as God's field for practical cultivation and care, and the parables using this figure, in which the Saviour sends servants and more servants who are treated alike, are worth studying for that lesson. Faithful cultivation of the land and disinterested care of buildings applies the parable, and such practical labor drives out the love of sports and amusements.
The Jewish people had greater privileges as children of God's covenant, and they were to return the vineyard's fruit to God and represent His kingdom, a duty belonging not only to their leaders and teachers. The gift of Canaan tested their obedience, for they were to cultivate the land for the Lord, and obedience to His conditions would have brought spiritual and temporal prosperity. The verse belongs to Jesus' final warning to the people, given with evidence of His divine mission even though He knew efforts to reform the corrupt priesthood would be in vain.
The repeated sending of servants belongs to a picture holding up the Jews' past history and showing their future as the result of their actions. It portrays a people long forging the fetters of their own bondage, a bondage no human power could break.
Second Group Sent Rejected
After the first servants sent to collect fruit were abused, the householder sent other servants, more numerous than the first, and the husbandmen treated them in the same way. The owner sent more servants than before to seek fruit from his vineyard, but the tenants treated them as they had treated the earlier servants, illustrating the responsibility of those entrusted with God's work and their failure to respond faithfully to His messengers. The verse belongs to the account of God entrusting His work to human agents and testing them, where using what He has entrusted for self-gratification hinders His work.
The servants represent God's prophets, teachers, messengers and ambassadors, sent at His appointed time to call Israel to account and to receive what was due to Him from His husbandmen. These were God's prophets and messengers sent to remind Israel's leaders of God's claim, yet the leaders persecuted them instead of receiving their message, and the servants in the parables represent God's ambassadors whom the nation rejected. Their repeated abuse represents Israel's continued rejection of God's messengers and failure to meet its responsibility for the stewardship entrusted to it.
The later servants suffered the same violence as the first: they were beaten, killed, and stoned, treated as enemies and impostors, and sent away empty despite warnings and appeals. God sent many messengers to Israel after earlier servants had been rejected, whose warnings, reproofs, and appeals were rejected and whose lives were taken by the people they were sent to warn. The repeated sending displays the many messengers God sent to Israel and the rulers' continuing rejection of them, with the tenants treating them in the same shameful and cruel way — beating, stoning, or killing them. The second group was met with the same shameful and cruel treatment, only with still more determined hatred. Instead of being welcomed they were treated as enemies, persecuted and killed, and they received the same treatment as the first, only with still more determined hatred from the husbandmen, showing God's continued patience amid repeated rejection, ingratitude, neglect of blessings, and selfish use of what God gave.
The servants warned the husbandmen that they were appropriating everything to a wrong use and misappropriating the Lord's portion; though convicted of their unrighteous course the people would not yield but became more stubborn and hated reproof, revealing centuries of God's patience and forbearance toward cruel treatment of His ambassadors. The repeated sending shows God's unwearied care, continued patience, and long-suffering mercy and compassion in giving further calls to return to Him and to render fruit and obedience. God sent repeated messengers to Israel, giving the people further calls to return to Him and calls for the fruit and obedience due from Israel, and His continued sending shows His long-suffering mercy and compassion despite their rejection and mistreatment.
The repeated sending represents God's repeated sending of prophets to correct Israel's wrongs, who were met with the same suspicion, scorn, contempt, injustice and cruelty. The servants were despised and their counsel mocked as Israel resisted grace, neglected privileges, failed to heed warnings and invitations, and left the vineyard wasted, and after the exile the people repeated the sins of earlier generations so that each generation's rejection added to its guilt. Prophet after prophet was beaten and killed to look after His vineyard, including Jeremiah suffering the severest persecution from his own countrymen for his faithful message and Isaiah, who was permitted to see wonderful things, being sawn asunder for faithfully reproving sin. Their being stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, cruelly treated and banished shows men of whom the world was not worthy, while behind the rejection Satan strove to gain control over the human mind that he might wreak his hatred and revenge on the only-begotten Son of God.
Israel's Unfaithfulness Exposed
The repeated sending of a larger second group who were treated just as the first had been exposes a sinful breach of trust by the chosen people entrusted with the vineyard and its goods. Their mistreatment of the messengers sent to receive what was due shows continuing unfaithfulness and selfish appropriation and enjoyment of what God had entrusted to them while returning Him no fruit. Disobedience to His commandments forfeits blessing and sustaining favor, so persistent sin, self-exaltation, and mingling the sacred with the common may cause Him to withdraw His favor.
The husbandmen are Israel's religious leaders, who withheld from God the service He claimed, turned the people away from Christ, and rejected His warnings. By that course they became responsible for the nation's rejection of Christ and the ruin that followed. Yet responsibility for yielding fruit does not rest on religious leaders alone but on everyone entrusted with abilities, whose faithful or unfaithful use of talents great or small determines whether God receives what He expects from His vineyard.
God planted Israel as a vine taken from Egypt and set in Canaan, nourished and cared for it, and looked for fruit, but it brought forth wild grapes. From age to age the people abused privileges, forgot God, went into rebellion, and turned religion into hollow formalism marked by Pharisaical pride and cruelty, while He kept sending prophets to warn of the result of their evil course and kept the one great Sacrifice before them in the sacrificial system. Through ingratitude, resisted grace, and refusal of the opportunities and privileges of a compassionate God the vineyard was spoiled by cruel husbandmen and left fruitless, with national apostasy issuing in cruel persecution ending in the killing of the very messengers sent in mercy. For a thousand years they multiplied transgression upon transgression, even to rejecting the Son of God and standing ready to put Him to death, bringing the cloud of retributive judgment to burst upon them.
The prophets sent to correct Israel's wrongs were repeatedly met with suspicion and scorn, and after the exile the people repeated the sins of earlier generations. Each generation's rejection of God's messengers added to its guilt. The Jewish leaders pursued their ambitious desires until the love and fear of God departed from them.
Rejection of Son Judged
The repeated refusal of the later servants laid bare open rebellion and prepared the way for the sending and murder of the householder's son, Jesus, as the last act of the tragedy. That killing was the height of the husbandmen's corrupting power, the same corrupt spirit still working in the children of disobedience to their ruin. The servants were the prophets, sent with warnings, reproofs and appeals to call for the faithful life that privilege required, yet their counsel was rejected and their lives were taken by the very people they were sent to warn. Prophet after prophet was beaten and killed, Jeremiah suffering the severest persecution from his own countrymen for bearing a faithful message, and Isaiah, who was permitted to see wonderful things, sawn asunder for faithfully reproving the sins of the nation. They were stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, cruelly treated and banished, men of whom the world was not worthy. Behind that rejection Satan strove to gain control of the human mind that he might wreak his hatred and revenge upon the only-begotten Son of God.
Christ used the parable to make the Pharisees condemn themselves out of their own mouths when they answered what the lord of the vineyard would do, thereby admitting the justice of the punishment soon to fall upon them. It faithfully illustrates the past and future history of the Jews and presents their true religious character, methods and practices. It shows the justice of taking away their national privileges, a work already commenced that would end not only in the destruction of their temple and city but in the dispersion of the nation. The picture held up to show their sinful course did not lead them to repent, for their hearts were filled with hatred and murder and they were ready to fill out the parable by killing the heir. They were restrained only by God's power and by the multitude who believed Christ's words were truth and held Him to be a prophet sent from God.
Because of contempt, injustice and cruelty to His messengers, the vineyard would be taken from the Jewish nation and entrusted to other tenants who would give its fruit in season. Those blessings and privileges, abused year after year while God looked in vain for fruit and His messengers were shamefully treated, would be transferred from the Jewish people to the Gentiles. Christ warned the rulers that their resistance of righteousness had ended their day. Claiming to have the only true religion in the world, they turned from the truth itself and crucified One who was the truth because He bore witness against their evil works. Light shone amid moral darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.
The priests and elders afterward recalled the parable and recognized that their own rejection of God's messengers and killing of His Son matched the tenants' course and brought upon them the judgment they themselves had pronounced. They knew it pointed to them as the very ones whose sentence they had pronounced, and the verse exposes the deceptions of the scribes and Pharisees as the wicked husbandmen. They were filled with anger against Christ and wanted to lay hands on Him to silence His voice, but they feared the people. In the parable's outcome the tenants' punishment describes the leaders' own course and doom. The treatment of the servants, followed by the killing of the son, revealed their own guilt and just doom.
Jesus' life among the Jewish people exposed their selfishness, and they hated His example of truth and godliness. When faced with the final test of obedience leading to eternal life or disobedience leading to eternal death, they rejected the Holy One of Israel and became responsible for His crucifixion. The owner's claim to what was his was Christ coming to His own people, whom the priests and rulers resisted despite the evidence of His divine authority. He could have saved Himself from all the ignominy, shame and disgrace poured upon Him by men who were dependent upon Him for life, yet He suffered it. The sending of the Son followed these appeals as heaven's supreme gift, while the continued sending showed long-suffering mercy and compassion toward continuing rejection of warnings. The Jewish nation had received great light, blessings and prosperity but proved unfaithful in caring for God's vineyard and giving Him its fruits, and desolation came upon it.
Warning and Fruit Today
The lesson of the vineyard parable applies not only to the Jewish nation but also to the church in the present generation, which has received great privileges and blessings from God with the expectation of corresponding returns. It warns the church today not to follow the wicked husbandmen by separating from God, being stirred to anger when the claims of God's law are presented, hating the light of pure doctrine, and continuing warfare against God and truth. Those who do so under Satan's converting power reject God by rejecting truth, and the sacred trust committed to them will be taken from them and given to others, just as blessings and privileges abused by the Jewish church occupying His vineyard year after year were transferred to the Gentiles after His messengers were shamefully treated, His goods selfishly appropriated and enjoyed with no fruit returned, and His beloved Son crucified. Religious teachers who turn people from God's law and resist those who call for obedience act like those unfaithful husbandmen who treated the additional servants as they had treated the first.
The parable warns all who receive light that disobedience to God's commandments forfeits His blessing and sustaining favor. God may withdraw His favor from those who persist in sin, exalt themselves, and mingle the sacred with the common, for the repeated abuse of the more numerous second group of servants illustrates the chosen people's breach of trust and rejection of His messengers. The fruit God requires is good works, especially distributing to the poor and relieving the oppressed and suffering. Possessions, abilities, and means are entrusted, not owned, and the Lord's portion must be faithfully returned through tithes and offerings to sustain every good work, support the ministry, aid the church, and relieve need. Outward advantages do not secure covenant blessings, but obedience and faithful return of what is entrusted do, while robbing God, worshiping self, giving Him only abuse, and withholding His due with avarice and strife lay up wrath against the day of wrath when every man will be rewarded according as his works shall be. Appreciation of God's rich gifts leads to great benevolence, and liberality expressed in tangible deeds of love counterworking selfishness and self-indulgence is the best evidence of sincerity of faith and is necessary to complete Christian character.
God as Owner continually sends messengers to men in responsible positions and to institutions entrusted as His stewards with means and truth. That sending opens the way for neglected parts of His vineyard to be cultivated and calls for means to carry the work and the worldwide message of salvation to cities, countries, and destitute fields that have never heard the warning. Returning fruit means unselfishly responding to His messengers, cultivating barren wastes, sowing seeds of truth, planting the standard of truth, and magnifying His name in all parts of the world rather than centering all advantages and facilities in a few places. In every work entrusted to men He leaves room for development of character and watches every institution to see how it will trade upon His goods, but words spoken against His servants largely make their message of no effect, and selfish, covetous appropriation of means mingles selfishness with His service and dishonors Him. If stewards refuse through selfishness, close the doors He has opened, and by covetous centering leave fields desolate, bare, unplanted and unworked with His way unprepared so He cannot gather fruit from the trees of His planting, He removes His gifts and resources and gives the trust and work to other agencies who will honor it and accomplish His purpose.
Faithfulness is proved by a well-cultivated vineyard worked in every part, with blessings and facilities shared and the Lord's money used to best advantage for improvement and for carrying the message to every kindred, tongue, and people. Unfaithfulness binds up all blessings and facilities in one supervised portion while leaving other parts barren, unworked, and unable to bear the good fruit they could bear with proper advantages. The parable teaches the need for solemn waiting and vigilant work in preparation for Christ's second coming, with earnest labor to lead people in darkness toward Christian character, prayerful effort to awaken churches to responsibility, and messages that rouse the world from worldliness in order to render God the fruits of the vineyard. Those who have received light are accountable for it and must reflect it by precept and example to draw fellow men from the pit of destruction, while those who never had light will not answer for light they never had.
The work in the vineyard requires varied hard labor and different kinds of ploughing to produce a harvest of different kinds of fruit, reaching even those in high honor who know not God and keep not His commandments, and through discipline of work in Christ His people learn true riches and may perfect a complete Christlike character after the divine likeness that alone can be taken into the heavenly courts. God entrusts His work to human agents and tests them, and using what He has entrusted for self-gratification hinders His work, as shown when the additional servants were treated as the first had been treated. The people of the world have had the use of the Lord's vineyard and have brought little in return for it.
In the parable of the vineyard the owner, after his first servants were abused when sent to collect fruit, sent another larger group who were treated in the same way. Those servants are God's prophets, teachers and messengers, sent at His appointed time to call Israel to account and receive what was due to Him. Their repeated rejection with beating, stoning and killing, met with still more determined hatred, exposed Israel's breach of trust and selfish use of entrusted goods while returning no fruit to God. The repeated sending reveals God's unwearied care, long-suffering mercy and patience in giving further calls to return and render fruit. That continued rebellion prepared the way for the killing of the son and brought just judgment in taking the vineyard from the Jewish nation to give it to others, a warning to the church today not to follow the wicked husbandmen lest the sacred trust be taken away.
Vineyard Parable Setting
Matthew 21:36 belongs to the parable of the vineyard, in which God chose Israel out of the world, richly blessed and trained the people, and expected them to bear fruit that would honor Him by revealing the principles and character of His kingdom in a wicked world. The parable shows the rich blessings He gave and His claim upon them to obey Him, for His purpose for Israel could have been fulfilled through obedience, but failure to fulfill it meant forfeiting His blessing and bringing ruin upon itself.
The owner dealt with the husbandmen as stewards under definite terms, having made an agreement with them to return to Him a certain amount of fruit in its season at a specified time, because the whole vineyard belongs to Him and He has a right to expect revenue from it. The vineyard also represents the world as God's field for practical cultivation and care, and the parables using this figure, in which the Saviour sends servants and more servants who are treated alike, are worth studying for that lesson. Faithful cultivation of the land and disinterested care of buildings applies the parable, and such practical labor drives out the love of sports and amusements.
The Jewish people had greater privileges as children of God's covenant, and they were to return the vineyard's fruit to God and represent His kingdom, a duty belonging not only to their leaders and teachers. The gift of Canaan tested their obedience, for they were to cultivate the land for the Lord, and obedience to His conditions would have brought spiritual and temporal prosperity. The verse belongs to Jesus' final warning to the people, given with evidence of His divine mission even though He knew efforts to reform the corrupt priesthood would be in vain.
The repeated sending of servants belongs to a picture holding up the Jews' past history and showing their future as the result of their actions. It portrays a people long forging the fetters of their own bondage, a bondage no human power could break.
Second Group Sent Rejected
After the first servants sent to collect fruit were abused, the householder sent other servants, more numerous than the first, and the husbandmen treated them in the same way. The owner sent more servants than before to seek fruit from his vineyard, but the tenants treated them as they had treated the earlier servants, illustrating the responsibility of those entrusted with God's work and their failure to respond faithfully to His messengers. The verse belongs to the account of God entrusting His work to human agents and testing them, where using what He has entrusted for self-gratification hinders His work.
The servants represent God's prophets, teachers, messengers and ambassadors, sent at His appointed time to call Israel to account and to receive what was due to Him from His husbandmen. These were God's prophets and messengers sent to remind Israel's leaders of God's claim, yet the leaders persecuted them instead of receiving their message, and the servants in the parables represent God's ambassadors whom the nation rejected. Their repeated abuse represents Israel's continued rejection of God's messengers and failure to meet its responsibility for the stewardship entrusted to it.
The later servants suffered the same violence as the first: they were beaten, killed, and stoned, treated as enemies and impostors, and sent away empty despite warnings and appeals. God sent many messengers to Israel after earlier servants had been rejected, whose warnings, reproofs, and appeals were rejected and whose lives were taken by the people they were sent to warn. The repeated sending displays the many messengers God sent to Israel and the rulers' continuing rejection of them, with the tenants treating them in the same shameful and cruel way — beating, stoning, or killing them. The second group was met with the same shameful and cruel treatment, only with still more determined hatred. Instead of being welcomed they were treated as enemies, persecuted and killed, and they received the same treatment as the first, only with still more determined hatred from the husbandmen, showing God's continued patience amid repeated rejection, ingratitude, neglect of blessings, and selfish use of what God gave.
The servants warned the husbandmen that they were appropriating everything to a wrong use and misappropriating the Lord's portion; though convicted of their unrighteous course the people would not yield but became more stubborn and hated reproof, revealing centuries of God's patience and forbearance toward cruel treatment of His ambassadors. The repeated sending shows God's unwearied care, continued patience, and long-suffering mercy and compassion in giving further calls to return to Him and to render fruit and obedience. God sent repeated messengers to Israel, giving the people further calls to return to Him and calls for the fruit and obedience due from Israel, and His continued sending shows His long-suffering mercy and compassion despite their rejection and mistreatment.
The repeated sending represents God's repeated sending of prophets to correct Israel's wrongs, who were met with the same suspicion, scorn, contempt, injustice and cruelty. The servants were despised and their counsel mocked as Israel resisted grace, neglected privileges, failed to heed warnings and invitations, and left the vineyard wasted, and after the exile the people repeated the sins of earlier generations so that each generation's rejection added to its guilt. Prophet after prophet was beaten and killed to look after His vineyard, including Jeremiah suffering the severest persecution from his own countrymen for his faithful message and Isaiah, who was permitted to see wonderful things, being sawn asunder for faithfully reproving sin. Their being stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, cruelly treated and banished shows men of whom the world was not worthy, while behind the rejection Satan strove to gain control over the human mind that he might wreak his hatred and revenge on the only-begotten Son of God.
Israel's Unfaithfulness Exposed
The repeated sending of a larger second group who were treated just as the first had been exposes a sinful breach of trust by the chosen people entrusted with the vineyard and its goods. Their mistreatment of the messengers sent to receive what was due shows continuing unfaithfulness and selfish appropriation and enjoyment of what God had entrusted to them while returning Him no fruit. Disobedience to His commandments forfeits blessing and sustaining favor, so persistent sin, self-exaltation, and mingling the sacred with the common may cause Him to withdraw His favor.
The husbandmen are Israel's religious leaders, who withheld from God the service He claimed, turned the people away from Christ, and rejected His warnings. By that course they became responsible for the nation's rejection of Christ and the ruin that followed. Yet responsibility for yielding fruit does not rest on religious leaders alone but on everyone entrusted with abilities, whose faithful or unfaithful use of talents great or small determines whether God receives what He expects from His vineyard.
God planted Israel as a vine taken from Egypt and set in Canaan, nourished and cared for it, and looked for fruit, but it brought forth wild grapes. From age to age the people abused privileges, forgot God, went into rebellion, and turned religion into hollow formalism marked by Pharisaical pride and cruelty, while He kept sending prophets to warn of the result of their evil course and kept the one great Sacrifice before them in the sacrificial system. Through ingratitude, resisted grace, and refusal of the opportunities and privileges of a compassionate God the vineyard was spoiled by cruel husbandmen and left fruitless, with national apostasy issuing in cruel persecution ending in the killing of the very messengers sent in mercy. For a thousand years they multiplied transgression upon transgression, even to rejecting the Son of God and standing ready to put Him to death, bringing the cloud of retributive judgment to burst upon them.
The prophets sent to correct Israel's wrongs were repeatedly met with suspicion and scorn, and after the exile the people repeated the sins of earlier generations. Each generation's rejection of God's messengers added to its guilt. The Jewish leaders pursued their ambitious desires until the love and fear of God departed from them.
Rejection of Son Judged
The repeated refusal of the later servants laid bare open rebellion and prepared the way for the sending and murder of the householder's son, Jesus, as the last act of the tragedy. That killing was the height of the husbandmen's corrupting power, the same corrupt spirit still working in the children of disobedience to their ruin. The servants were the prophets, sent with warnings, reproofs and appeals to call for the faithful life that privilege required, yet their counsel was rejected and their lives were taken by the very people they were sent to warn. Prophet after prophet was beaten and killed, Jeremiah suffering the severest persecution from his own countrymen for bearing a faithful message, and Isaiah, who was permitted to see wonderful things, sawn asunder for faithfully reproving the sins of the nation. They were stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, cruelly treated and banished, men of whom the world was not worthy. Behind that rejection Satan strove to gain control of the human mind that he might wreak his hatred and revenge upon the only-begotten Son of God.
Christ used the parable to make the Pharisees condemn themselves out of their own mouths when they answered what the lord of the vineyard would do, thereby admitting the justice of the punishment soon to fall upon them. It faithfully illustrates the past and future history of the Jews and presents their true religious character, methods and practices. It shows the justice of taking away their national privileges, a work already commenced that would end not only in the destruction of their temple and city but in the dispersion of the nation. The picture held up to show their sinful course did not lead them to repent, for their hearts were filled with hatred and murder and they were ready to fill out the parable by killing the heir. They were restrained only by God's power and by the multitude who believed Christ's words were truth and held Him to be a prophet sent from God.
Because of contempt, injustice and cruelty to His messengers, the vineyard would be taken from the Jewish nation and entrusted to other tenants who would give its fruit in season. Those blessings and privileges, abused year after year while God looked in vain for fruit and His messengers were shamefully treated, would be transferred from the Jewish people to the Gentiles. Christ warned the rulers that their resistance of righteousness had ended their day. Claiming to have the only true religion in the world, they turned from the truth itself and crucified One who was the truth because He bore witness against their evil works. Light shone amid moral darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.
The priests and elders afterward recalled the parable and recognized that their own rejection of God's messengers and killing of His Son matched the tenants' course and brought upon them the judgment they themselves had pronounced. They knew it pointed to them as the very ones whose sentence they had pronounced, and the verse exposes the deceptions of the scribes and Pharisees as the wicked husbandmen. They were filled with anger against Christ and wanted to lay hands on Him to silence His voice, but they feared the people. In the parable's outcome the tenants' punishment describes the leaders' own course and doom. The treatment of the servants, followed by the killing of the son, revealed their own guilt and just doom.
Jesus' life among the Jewish people exposed their selfishness, and they hated His example of truth and godliness. When faced with the final test of obedience leading to eternal life or disobedience leading to eternal death, they rejected the Holy One of Israel and became responsible for His crucifixion. The owner's claim to what was his was Christ coming to His own people, whom the priests and rulers resisted despite the evidence of His divine authority. He could have saved Himself from all the ignominy, shame and disgrace poured upon Him by men who were dependent upon Him for life, yet He suffered it. The sending of the Son followed these appeals as heaven's supreme gift, while the continued sending showed long-suffering mercy and compassion toward continuing rejection of warnings. The Jewish nation had received great light, blessings and prosperity but proved unfaithful in caring for God's vineyard and giving Him its fruits, and desolation came upon it.
Warning and Fruit Today
The lesson of the vineyard parable applies not only to the Jewish nation but also to the church in the present generation, which has received great privileges and blessings from God with the expectation of corresponding returns. It warns the church today not to follow the wicked husbandmen by separating from God, being stirred to anger when the claims of God's law are presented, hating the light of pure doctrine, and continuing warfare against God and truth. Those who do so under Satan's converting power reject God by rejecting truth, and the sacred trust committed to them will be taken from them and given to others, just as blessings and privileges abused by the Jewish church occupying His vineyard year after year were transferred to the Gentiles after His messengers were shamefully treated, His goods selfishly appropriated and enjoyed with no fruit returned, and His beloved Son crucified. Religious teachers who turn people from God's law and resist those who call for obedience act like those unfaithful husbandmen who treated the additional servants as they had treated the first.
The parable warns all who receive light that disobedience to God's commandments forfeits His blessing and sustaining favor. God may withdraw His favor from those who persist in sin, exalt themselves, and mingle the sacred with the common, for the repeated abuse of the more numerous second group of servants illustrates the chosen people's breach of trust and rejection of His messengers. The fruit God requires is good works, especially distributing to the poor and relieving the oppressed and suffering. Possessions, abilities, and means are entrusted, not owned, and the Lord's portion must be faithfully returned through tithes and offerings to sustain every good work, support the ministry, aid the church, and relieve need. Outward advantages do not secure covenant blessings, but obedience and faithful return of what is entrusted do, while robbing God, worshiping self, giving Him only abuse, and withholding His due with avarice and strife lay up wrath against the day of wrath when every man will be rewarded according as his works shall be. Appreciation of God's rich gifts leads to great benevolence, and liberality expressed in tangible deeds of love counterworking selfishness and self-indulgence is the best evidence of sincerity of faith and is necessary to complete Christian character.
God as Owner continually sends messengers to men in responsible positions and to institutions entrusted as His stewards with means and truth. That sending opens the way for neglected parts of His vineyard to be cultivated and calls for means to carry the work and the worldwide message of salvation to cities, countries, and destitute fields that have never heard the warning. Returning fruit means unselfishly responding to His messengers, cultivating barren wastes, sowing seeds of truth, planting the standard of truth, and magnifying His name in all parts of the world rather than centering all advantages and facilities in a few places. In every work entrusted to men He leaves room for development of character and watches every institution to see how it will trade upon His goods, but words spoken against His servants largely make their message of no effect, and selfish, covetous appropriation of means mingles selfishness with His service and dishonors Him. If stewards refuse through selfishness, close the doors He has opened, and by covetous centering leave fields desolate, bare, unplanted and unworked with His way unprepared so He cannot gather fruit from the trees of His planting, He removes His gifts and resources and gives the trust and work to other agencies who will honor it and accomplish His purpose.
Faithfulness is proved by a well-cultivated vineyard worked in every part, with blessings and facilities shared and the Lord's money used to best advantage for improvement and for carrying the message to every kindred, tongue, and people. Unfaithfulness binds up all blessings and facilities in one supervised portion while leaving other parts barren, unworked, and unable to bear the good fruit they could bear with proper advantages. The parable teaches the need for solemn waiting and vigilant work in preparation for Christ's second coming, with earnest labor to lead people in darkness toward Christian character, prayerful effort to awaken churches to responsibility, and messages that rouse the world from worldliness in order to render God the fruits of the vineyard. Those who have received light are accountable for it and must reflect it by precept and example to draw fellow men from the pit of destruction, while those who never had light will not answer for light they never had.
The work in the vineyard requires varied hard labor and different kinds of ploughing to produce a harvest of different kinds of fruit, reaching even those in high honor who know not God and keep not His commandments, and through discipline of work in Christ His people learn true riches and may perfect a complete Christlike character after the divine likeness that alone can be taken into the heavenly courts. God entrusts His work to human agents and tests them, and using what He has entrusted for self-gratification hinders His work, as shown when the additional servants were treated as the first had been treated. The people of the world have had the use of the Lord's vineyard and have brought little in return for it.