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In this Sunday's sermon entitled The Sending of the Sun, Reverend Daniel leads us to explore God's patience, humanity's rebellion, and the beloved son whom many reject. Listener, how will you respond today?

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Today's scripture reading is taken from Mark chapter 12, 1 to 12. The parable of the tenants. Mark chapter 12, verse 1. And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, and dug a pit for the wine press and buried a tower, and listed to the tenants, and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed, and saw with many others. Some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, They will respect my son. But those tenants said to one another, This is the hare. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. Verse 9. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it's a marvelous in our eyes. Verse 12. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parables against them. So they left him and went away. This is the word of the Lord.

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Thanks be to God. Today we will continue our series on the gospel of Mark. We'll be looking at Mark chapter 12, and we'll be exploring together some of the themes that is revealed within this passage. Firstly, it's about God's indomitable providence. Secondly, his persistent and enduring love. And we see also the rejection of Jesus. So in the time of Jesus, landowners were often absent from supervision of the land they owned. It was very common in the time of Jesus to employ what we call middlemen to supervise the farmers who were then who supervised the farmers who were tenants of the land. So Jesus brings the familiar situation of the absentee landlord, which is the landlord gives off the land to middleman to supervise the works. So Jesus used this very familiar context in his time and used it to allude to a number of themes in the Old Testament, such as the theme of conspiracy. We see this in the story of Joseph in Genesis 37, verse 18 to 20, in which Joseph and his brothers conspired to kill him and to throw him into one of the pits. And we also see a recurring theme in the Old Testament of God sending the prophets as servants. We see that in Amos 3:7, Ezekariah 1, verse 4 to 6. God constantly sent servants who were his prophets to bring the word. And also we see the theme of Israel as God's inheritance. Psalm 2 verse 8. It says, Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance. However, the dominant biblical allusion here is actually Isaiah's famous metaphor of Israel as the vineyard of God, taken from Isaiah chapter 5, verse 1 to 2. Isaiah chapter 5, 1 to 2 reads, Let me sing for my beloved my love's song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vot in it. And he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. So it's very similar, Isaiah chapter 5, verse 1 to 2, to the passage that begins to get today, the parable that Jesus speaks. So he begins in Mark chapter 12, verse 1. He says, A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, and duck a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country. Verse 2 to 5 continues, When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed. Mark chapter 2, 12, verse 2 informs us that the focus of the landowner actually lies in calling the tenants of the vineyard to accountability. In other words, they are to bring the fruit of the vineyard. Instead, each servant that was sent by the master, by the owner of the vineyard, was either beaten up, treated shamefully, or killed. Finally, the climax of the parable lies in verse 6. Mark 12, verse 6 is a turning point of the parable. It says, He still had one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, They will respect my son. I mean, if you think along with me, after having so many bad experiences, sending all his servants, uh, and they were all either beaten up, treated shamefully, or killed, time and time again, and finally, what do you do? You send your beloved son. Does it make sense? Probably not. If I'm the landowner, I won't do that, right? Why would I put my son at risk? But precisely, this is what happened. The landowner sent his beloved son. And as he sent them to them, he said, They will respect my son. In fact, this idea of Jesus or the landowner sending his beloved son points to the persistent and tireless love of God that continues to pursue his people despite their sins and rejection of him. The landowner continues to send servants again and again, and finally he sends his son. According to Jewish law, a son as the heir possessed legal rights that a slave did not. A slave or the servant do not have legal rights to the land. So in sending the servants to demand fruit from the land, the owner appealed to the integrity of the tenants. I've rented the land to you, now I want the produce of the fruit of the land. So produce the fruit. So it appealed to the integrity of the tenants. Were they doing their work to harvest fruits? But in sending his son, the owner appeals to the right of law. For the son was the only person, save himself as a landowner, who possessed legal claims over the vineyard. This is why the owner said, Yes, they will respect my son. He's the legal owner, he's the has a legal right. Surely they will respect him. So the son, in other words, goes as the father's representative with the father's authority to the father's property to claim the father's due. However, the son, the beloved son, represents not only the father's legal claim but also his compassion. This is observed in the father's sending of his beloved son. The word for send in in uh in the New Testament carries the sense of a divine commission. God sends his son. And it differs from sending servants in many aspects. He sends many servants, but the son is unique. They are hirlings, being employed as servants. Perhaps in the time of the New Testament, uh servants and slaves were seen as a property. Because not a good way to look at human beings, but that was the sense. I hire a servant, uh uh uh uh they are my property. So um, yeah, but the son is the heir, they are forerunners, the servants are sent to prepare the way, but the son is the last and final word of the father, and above all, the son is beloved, it's not just any ordinary son, it's the beloved son of the father. The word beloved recalls Abraham's love for Isaac in the Old Testament, Jacob's love for Joseph, God's love for Israel, as we read in Isaiah chapter 5, verse 1, about the love song of the vineyard, and especially in the New Testament, as we look in the New Testament, it speaks of the Father's love for the beloved son, and this is revealed in Mark's gospel in two passages. One is from Mark 1, verse 11, where at the baptism of Jesus a voice came from heaven and it resounded, You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. So it's a public declaration of the Father's love for the Son. You are my beloved son, with you I'm well pleased. Again, in the transfiguration account in Mark chapter 9, verse 7. Uh, a voice came out of the cloud in the transfiguration episode that says, This is my beloved son. Listen to him. So the son is really the beloved of the father. So, what did the tenants do? Verse 7 to 8 tells us, but those tenants said to one another, This is the heir. Let us just kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. And they took him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. So, no longer content with just managing the owner's produce, the farmers go for his property as well. Come, let us kill him. Interestingly, these were the same words spoken by Jacob's sons when they conspired to kill Joseph in Genesis 37, verse 20, who was also the beloved son of Jacob. Moreover, if the farmers kill the heir, if they kill the beloved son, they would become the heirs and would take over the owner's property. So they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. The action of the tenants reminds us of the words of Jesus in Matthew 23, verse 34 to 35. Matthew 23, verse 34 to 35 reads, Therefore I will send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you'll flock in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. In other words, these were words spoken against the Pharisees and scribes. It leads us to one question. And the question is this What is the history of Israel if not rebellion against God? What is the history of Israel if not rebellion against God? So what will the owners of the vineyard do? Interestingly, the Greek word for the word owner here, the owner of the vineyard, is the word used for Lord or Kyrios. The Lord of the vineyard. We can translate it as the Kyrgios, the Lord of the vineyard. So God, who is the owner of the vineyard, is also the Lord over the vineyard. So he will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. The parable then concludes with a quotation from Psalm 118, verse 22 to 23, reflected in Mark 12, verse 10 to 11. Have you not read this scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. The reference to a stone here that was rejected in Solomon's temple. Uh he was rejected, the stone was rejected in Solomon's temple, but only to become a cornerstone, the head of the porch. We see here that the human rejection of God's cornerstone is actually the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. The parable concludes with words from Mark 12, verse 12 to 13. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. Verse 13 says, They sent to him some Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk. We see here that the Jewish leaders who recognized that the parable was spoken against them, they were now acting like the tenants in the parable, plotting to incriminate Jesus, and eventually we know sending him. So what can we learn from this parable? I think the parable of the tenants in Mark chapter 12 is permanent permeated with a sense of God's indomitable providence. Though it looks like the schemes of the rebel tenants will wreck the owner's vineyard, they do not prevail, nor can they. The father's vineyard is not disposed or destroyed, but rather the wicked tenants are judged, and others more worthy are found to continue the vineyard. So God is working out his purposes even through the rejection of Jesus, and this is marvelous in our eyes. However, the central trust, the central theme of the parable is actually the rejection of Jesus. The rejection of Jesus, who is the beloved son of the owner, the curios of the vineyard. So the application uh point for us, I like to share with us today is this. The question is this in differing ways, in different ways, do we also reject Jesus in our lives? Oftentimes we reject Jesus as Christians when we resist the work of his spirit in our lives. Listen to the words of Stephen, the first martyr of the early church as he spoke against the Jewish council in Acts 7, verse 51. He said, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, so do you. There's a familiar chorus of a song that goes like this, but it goes against the way I am to put my human nature down and let the spirit take control of all I do cause when those tries come my human nature shouts the thing to do, and God's soft prompting can be easily ignored. So the song reminds us that our human nature is such that we will always want to take control rather than to give the spirit control. I think this is one of our greatest struggles as Christians. We may be here today, you know, putting on our Sunday best, but we know all we know that deep within us we do struggle in terms of obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5, 16 to 17, Paul reminds us, strong words, he says, but it's a good reminder. Galatians 5, verse 16 to 17. He says, But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. So the question I ask us today is is there a struggle in our Christian life to uh wrestle and to walk by the spirit? If there's a struggle, it's a good thing. If there's no struggle, it's a bad thing. Those of you who may have uh in younger days swam in a stream, uh would know that at certain points of a river, the current can be very strong. So if you don't peddle or tread water, very soon you'll be swept away uh by the current, you know, at a very fast pace. So similarly, if our Christian life, if we do not struggle, if there's no uh desire to walk by the spirit, there's no earnestness to do that, then we will always live by the flesh. Because Paul says there's only two ways to live. It's either we are walking by the spirit or we are walking by our fleshly desires. And there's a struggle. Paul admits that there is a struggle. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. They are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. So, Paul, in other words, is saying there is a struggle in the Christian life. There must be a struggle, there must be a tension. If not, then we are probably uh, as I say, just swimming with the tide and just be being uh happy Sunday Christians that put on our best. And then live our own lives. So there's a struggle within each of us. We either walk by the Spirit and follow his promptings, or we yield to the desires of the flesh. Both are in opposition to each other. Both lead to different consequences. And then Paul goes on in Galatians 5, 19 to 25 to speak, in my view, is one of the most revealing words of scripture. I know it may seem like a hard word, but this is what Paul says. And listen to this Galatians 5, verse 19 to 25. Verse 19, Paul says, Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, the worship of sex, the self, sexual gratification, sensual images, pornography, things that bind us. Then it goes on to say idolatry. If you do not worship uh God and the Spirit, we will serve ourselves. Idolatry, the worship of self, which probably includes things like uh the worship of the devil, sorcery. And then it leads to all sorts of communal sins. Paul says enmity, strife, jealousy, and all this we all can find if we be honest in our community, in the Christian community, right? Strife against one another, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, you know, just living our lives as if only we ourselves matter. Worshiping pleasure, orgies, uh wow parties, worshiping the self, getting into strife, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envying one another. And Paul has very, very strong words again in this, in verse 21. He says, I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, if our lifestyle, our bend is really towards the works of the flesh, that if we live in such a way that uh all these uh things that I've highlighted are the predominant traits of our life, then Paul says that we cannot say that we belong to the kingdom of God. If our whole orientation of our lives is towards self-idolatry, communal sins, uh, sexual immorality. Um we cannot say that we are walking in the spirit if we live in such a way. But the good news is Paul tells us in verse 22 there's something called the fruit of the spirit. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And these are what the Holy Spirit will birth in us. As we yield and walk by the Spirit, we discover that life is filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Paul goes on to say that those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So if we live by the Spirit, let us keep instead with the Spirit. So isn't this one of our greatest struggles in following Jesus today? Uh we are on the team, Mark's Gospel, we are looking at how we can follow Jesus better this year. And I think one of the greatest struggles is how we walk with God daily. And often we walk by the works of the flesh rather than bear the fruit of the spirit in our lives. On one hand, we know that what Jesus requires and calls us to do is to live out our lives in the spirit, but yet on the other hand, we resist his work by giving in to our fleshly desires. And often we use the excuse: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak as a way to uh kind of escape uh the demands of following Jesus. However, God is looking for the fruit of our lives, just as how the parable tells us the landowner look for fruit from the tenants of the land. So, does the fruit of our lives measure up to the worship we profess with our lips? Or do we resist the work of the Spirit in our lives? So, church, we have to look at the fruit that God requires in our lives in light of his persistent and enduring love, which is one of the other key themes in this parable in Mark 12. God's persistent and enduring love that does not give up on us. Just as in the parable of the tenants, the landowner sends his servants time and again and again and again to look for fruit which culminates or climax at the sending of his beloved son, whom they killed and threw out of the vineyard. God's love for us is as such that he will keep calling us, he will keep drawing us to embrace his love and to walk by the spirit. So he will not give up on us, he continues knocking at the door of our hearts, seeking and calling. Again and again he will send his spirit to lead us, guide us, and convict us. But the question is, how would we respond to him? How would we respond to him? Hebrews chapter 3, verse 7 to 14 reminds us. The author of Hebrews says, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. On the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to test and saw my works for 40 years, yet they grumbled, they complained, they were faithless. Therefore, the Lord says, I was provoked with that generation and said, They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So the author of Hebrews exhorts the believers of their time, and I believe for us today too. It says, Take care, brothers, lest there be any of you having an evil and unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. So, in other words, falling away is very much possible for us if we choose a lifestyle of rejecting Jesus and a lifestyle that is oriented towards self, uh sexual glory, uh sexual gratification and communal sins. The author of Hebrews tells us exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, every day we are to encourage and exalt one another. So later, when we go to the eye zone, please encourage one another to walk by the Spirit, right? To not harden our ears when we hear the voice of God in our hearts. And the author of Hebrews tells us that for we have come to share in Christ, verse 14, if we indeed hold our original confidence firm to the end. Is there an area in your life that God is challenging you today to walk by the Spirit and not yield to the desires of the flesh? Remember, those who belong to Christ Jesus, Galatians tells us, have crucified the flesh with his passion and desires. In other words, those of us who are in Christ Jesus, we have gone through the waters of baptism, we have at some point in our life professed to follow Jesus. Paul says this is indicative, it's something that has already taken place. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passion and desires. And we need to continue to walk in that crucifixion. So let's walk in this reality of having crucified our flesh with his passions and desires. And let's commit ourselves fully to God. Let us pray. Father, we want to thank you this morning for your word uh resounds in our hearts. Lord, even as we look at Mark chapter 12, the parable of the tenants, we are reminded that the key theme uh amidst the whole story, the whole parable, is the rejection of Jesus. The rejection of the beloved son that the father sent, despite the risks, despite you know uh the it being so absurd. Why would you send your son after you see all the servants one after the other being killed or um killed or insulted? Yet the father's love today is revealed in his sending of his beloved son to us, and he is looking for the fruit in our lives, and brothers and sisters, at the end of the day, Jesus is coming, he's coming again, and when he comes again, he will call us to accountability, he will say, Where's the fruit in your life? Where's the fruit that professes the worship that you bring to me every day?

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