“And He began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country.
When the time 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 wounded him in 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.
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 heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. 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 very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” And they tried to arrest him, but feared the multitude, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them; so they left him and went away. Mark 12:1-12
Today, Tuesday of the Passover Week we see Jesus back at the Temple in Jerusalem ending the day at the Mount of Olives.
Tuesday morning Jesus and His disciples were on their way back to Jerusalem when they passed by the withered fig tree that Jesus had earlier cursed, and Jesus taught them about faith.
At the Temple, the religious leaders began to challenge the authority of Jesus, attempting to ambush Him and create an opportunity for His arrest, but Jesus evades them and then begins to pronounce seriously harsh judgment upon them. Matthew in Chapter 23 quotes Jesus in His attack on the Pharisees and Sadducees present: “Blind guides! …..you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead mans bones and all sorts of impurity, outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness…… Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?”
That afternoon Jesus leaves Jerusalem and takes His disciples to the Mount of Olives, which is East of the Temple, overlooking Jerusalem. While here, Jesus begins to give what would be known as the Olivet Discourse. He would prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem, and the End of The Age. Jesus would teach them in parables about End Time Events, including His Second Coming, and the Final Judgment. Interesting that this would also be the day that Judas Iscariot would meet secretly with the Sandhedrin to betray Jesus. (Matthew 26:14-16) When the day was finished, Jesus; with a day full of confrontation, and teaching warnings about the future returns back to Bethany for the night.
Jesus teaches the Parable Fig tree
With all the activities of this day, and what was yet to come; I thought it interesting that Jesus would set aside the time in between all of this to spend with His disciples and friends. He taught the disciples a valuable lesson on faith, using the illustration of the fig tree. the vineyard owner, and the gardener who took care of the vineyard.
The lesson for the individual is that borrowed time is not permanent. God’s patience has a limit. In the parable, the vineyard owner grants another year of life to the tree.
In the same way, God in His mercy grants us another day, another hour, another breath. Jesus Christ stands at the door of each man’s heart knocking and seeking to gain entrance and requiring repentance from sin. But if there is no fruit, no repentance, His patience will come to an end, and the fruitless, unrepentant individual will be cut down.
We all live on borrowed time; judgment is near. That is why the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon” ( Isaiah 55:6-7)
As a church, we need to be looking for the return of the Lord. When we do, it instills the hope that we desperately need day to day. As non-believers, there is not time to waste. Only God knows the day of the return of His Son, and as far as time itself; you don’t know when time will be up for you.
Jesus gave His all down to the final days of the Holy Week of Passover. When He does return, there will be no excuses, He has given us every piece of the puzzle. It’s all up to us. As a church, will we be ready when He returns, as non-believers, will you continue to gamble with your eternity? Time was running out in the day of Jesus’ earthly ministry and many of them didn’t believe that the destruction of the Temple would ever happen, and time ran out….it was destroyed just as Jesus prophesied. To this day, there is nothing there except a Muslim dome of worship. Jesus came, Israel rejected Him, and things have never gone back to the way things were.
Here’s today’s video…
Walking the Berean Road 