THE LOST VINEYARD
‘The will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.’
Mark 12:9
Palestine was a land of vineyards (especially Judæa; Deuteronomy 8:8). The slopes of the hills even now show traces of vine cultivation; on some old coins the vine is the emblem of the country.
It was natural, therefore, for our Lord to allude to them in His teaching. See in this parable a picture of God’s dealings with the Jewish nation.
I. God’s special kindness to the Jewish Church and nation.—He dealt with them as a man deals with a piece of land which he separates and hedges in for ‘a vineyard.’ He planted them in a goodly land, and cast out seven nations before them.
II. God’s patience and longsuffering towards the Jewish nation.—What is their whole history as recorded in the Old Testament but a long record of repeated provocations and repeated pardons? They mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and misused His prophets ( 2 Chronicles 36:16). Yet hundreds of years passed away before ‘the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy.’ Never was there a people so patiently dealt with as Israel.
III. The hardness and wickedness of human nature, as exemplified in the history of the Jewish people.—It is difficult to imagine a more striking proof of this truth than the summary of Israel’s dealings with God’s messengers, which our Lord sketches in this parable. The Son of God Himself, the well-beloved, at last came down to them, and was not believed. God Himself was manifest in the flesh, dwelling among them, and ‘they took Him and killed Him.’
IV. The lost vineyard.—Such ingratitude and unkindness could not go unpunished. The hearers of the parable admit this, when the Lord asked, ‘What shall the lord of the vineyard do?’ Our text was the answer given by those whose conduct was described. It showed they would be (1) destroyed. This was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem when, after famine, etc., about one million Jews perished; and (2) the vineyard given to others. Our Lord made this quite clear ( Matthew 21:43). They had forfeited their privileges, and the Gentiles (whom they hated) would take their place.
V. And what is the application to ourselves?
( a) The vineyard is given to us Gentiles. ‘Ye are God’s husbandry’ ( 1 Corinthians 3:9); grafted into the True Vine ( John 15:5). The privileges given to the Jews have passed on to us. Do we value them?
( b) God expects fruit. Any one who has fruit trees looks for fruit. God expects fruit from us ( Romans 6:22; John 15:8). Ought we not to make some return?
( c) Punishment and forfeiture follow upon refusal to yield fruit. The fruitless are ‘cast forth’ and ‘withered’ ( John 15:6). Let us take warning by this parable.
Illustrations
(1) ‘Edersheim shows that there were three modes of dealing with land: (1) where the labourers received a third or fourth of the produce; (2) where a money rent was paid; and (3) where the tenant agreed to give the owner a definite amount of produce, whether the harvest had been good or bad.’
(2) ‘Not many years ago an English bishop met a martyr’s death in Southern seas: and when a British cruiser sought some explanation of the ruthless deed, the native islanders shot some arrows at the boat with fatal aim. Swift and terrible was the vengeance following this insult on the British flag. At once the principle in Matthew 22:7 was acted on, the murderers were almost literally destroyed and their city burnt, for firearms wrought sad havoc in their midst. So men deal with men. But, oh, the depths of the riches of the mercy of God!’

THE SADDUCEES CONFUTED
‘Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?’
Mark 12:24
The Sadducees, like the Pharisees, thought to entangle and perplex our Lord with hard questions. The Church must not expect to fare better than its Master, and to-day questions are raised which it is not always easy to answer.
I. The unfairness of the question.—The question propounded by the Sadducees is a striking illustration of unfairness. The case was a supposed and not a real one. On the face of it there is the strongest appearance of improbability. The chances against such a case occurring in reality are almost infinite. When we are assailed in argument we must endeavour, as far as we can, to make our discussion turn on the great plain facts and evidences of Christianity, and be on our guard against unfairness and dishonesty in argument.
II. Ignorance of the Scriptures.—Much of religious error may be traced to ignorance of the Bible. Our Lord’s words in reply to the Sadducees declare this plainly. The truth of the principle here laid down is proved by facts in almost every age of Church history. The parishes in our land where there is most true religion are those in which the Bible is most studied. The godliest families are Bible-reading families. The holiest men and women are Bible-reading people.
III. After the Resurrection.—This incident tells us how different will be the state of things after the resurrection from the state in which we live now. The risen saint will be completely freed from everything which is now an evidence of weakness and infirmity. There shall be nothing like Mahomet’s gross and sensual Paradise in the Christian’s future existence. Hunger and thirst being no more, there shall be no need of food. Enjoying the full presence of God and His Christ, men and women shall no more need the marriage union in order to help one another. Clothed in a glorious body, they shall be ‘as the angels which are in heaven.’
Illustration
‘As to the text, “I am the God of Abraham,” etc., being a convincing proof of the resurrection of the body, there is a passage in Bishop Pearson which is worth reading. He says of this text, as quoted by our Lord, “With the force of this argument the multitude was astonished, and the Sadducees silenced. For under the name of God was understood a great benefactor, a God of promise; and to be ‘ their God,’ was to bless them and reward them; as in them to be ‘His servants,’ and ‘His people’ was to believe in Him and obey Him. Now Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had not received the promise which they expected: and therefore God, after their death, desiring still to be called ‘their God,’ He thereby acknowledgeth that he had a blessing and a reward for them still, and consequently that He will raise them to another life, in which they may receive it. So that the argument of our Saviour is the same which the Jews have drawn from another place of Moses ( Exodus 6:3-4), ‘I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty: but by My name Jehovah was I not made known to them. Nevertheless I have established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan.’ It is not said ‘to give their sons,’ ‘but to give them the land;’ and, therefore, because while they lived here they enjoyed it not, they must rise again that they may receive the promise.” ’

A GREAT QUESTION ANSWERED
‘Which is the first commandment of all?’
Mark 12:28
There can be but one, which to us is the first commandment of all. Open what part of the New Testament you please, and you find it, in one way or another, speaking of the love of God.
I. What is meant by the love of God?—The Bible does not use words at random. When it uses a word, it means by it what that word stands for among men. When the Bible speaks of our being able to love God, of our duty and blessedness consisting in the love of God, it means not outward conduct only, but the feelings and affections of our hearts which God expects us to give Him. To believe in God, to obey Him, is necessary, but it is imperfect Gospel religion till the heart has learnt to love Him.
II. How can this be?—These things you say seem above us. But was not the Gospel first preached to the poor? And do you suppose that the poor among whom Christ lived, out of whom He chose His Apostles, and to whom He sent them preaching, were so different from poor, hard-working men and women now? If any one should think it is of no use for them to think of loving God, I ask, ‘How can you tell till you have tried?’ ‘Have you ever really taken any trouble about it?’ Only God’s Holy Spirit can change your heart and teach you to love God. But He will not come and do His great work in your heart, if He sees that you do not care whether He comes to you or not.
III. Simple hints.—If, then, you wish to come to love God, keep in mind these simple points:—
( a) You must not have idols in your hearts.
( b) The way to fight against sin is in every one’s power.
( c) We cannot hope to love God without knowing Him. We cannot hope to know Him without communing with Him in the only possible way—in prayer. As long as we do not try to pray, it is hopeless for us to learn to love God.
( d) Lastly, there is that one great means of blessing which is open to the poorest—the Holy Communion. If we loved God, how little we should be tempted by the sins that ruin men’s souls, and make them miserable. If we loved God, how light would be the sufferings of this present time.
—Dean Church.

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SOUL
‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all … thy soul.’
Mark 12:30
Let me speak of the discipline of the soul as tending to perfection here, and also as an indispensable condition of the higher energies of the spirit.
I. The soul contains the affections, passions, desires of the man, under the rule of the will and conscience. It is to a great extent what in popular language we often speak of as the heart. It is an organ of vast power. The soul is the form which determines and indeed contains the body. Sometimes the body is spoken of as a sort of case or vessel, as containing the soul. But it is more proper to say that the soul, which is the living principle—the soul contains the body. The soul is the ruler of the body. Whenever the body appears to rule the soul, well then it is, self-evidently, rebellion, revolt against the right and sovereignty of the superior soul. Hence it comes to pass that there is no method of releasing man from the degradation of the body except by working upon his soul.
II. The influence of the soul on our own life.—There in your soul are the passions, instrumental for good and instrumental for evil. Take one—take resentment, as a noble quality, part of the equipment of all honourable men, if it be resentment against sin, vice, meanness, cruelty, injustice, and if it be under control as a war-horse is under its rider. But if that passion break into angry violence, revenge, hatred merely against those who offend us, or we sink down stupid, morose and sullen—where, I ask you, can you find an enemy more deadly to life, health, or happiness, or a poison more virulent even against the welfare of the body than this passion of the soul? Or take the kindly affections of the soul. Man lives by what he loves. Knowledge and power and ambition and pleasure and ease will not support you. The soul with its secret beatings longs for love, to love and to be loved. It is the constant pulse of the human heart, yea, and of the heart out of which are the issues of life and of death. To love nothing which God hates, to grow towards loving all that God loves, to love whom and what He will and as He will, and to love or fear nothing more than God—that is the discipline of the affections of the soul.
III. The discipline of the individual soul is an antecedent condition of the energy of the spirit. For ‘who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’ The soul which has been purified and perfected by the discipline of the Sermon on the Mount may take comfort in the encouragement of the words, ‘As we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.’ Were the climax of perfection in the Church on earth only the consummate symmetry and beauty of the human soul, we might well look down and say, ‘The well is deep, and we have nothing to draw with.’ But though the infinite depth we know not, we do know, thank God, that we have something to draw with. We have what was implanted within us by the Holy Spirit of God in the beginning, and has been renewed to us again and again, day by day, ever since. The discipline of the soul will prove to us to-day and to-morrow, and to the end of our days, that according to the Lord’s promise it should be even in us as ‘a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’
—Archdeacon Furse.

NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM
‘And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’
Mark 12:34
The deepest interest must ever attach to those utterances of Christ, in which He has pronounced upon the moral and spiritual state of those who came before Him, and fixed their true standing in the sight of God.
I. The Kingdom.—Our Lord speaks of that Kingdom as a definite reality. It is a distinct sphere or region with a frontier line marking it off from all else. Between the law which the scribe professed and the Gospel which Christ was offering, there was a sharp, intelligible boundary, which he must cross if he would pass from one to the other.
II. Near to the Kingdom.—Christ recognises, welcomes, and rewards every approach towards that Kingdom. He does not look on all as equally distant from God until they have obeyed His call and enrolled themselves as His disciples. That which attracted our Lord in the character of the scribe was the pure instinct of natural goodness. The man had risen out of mere legalism to a rare conception of spiritual truth. Nevertheless there was a higher state for him to reach; he was on the verge of the Kingdom; he was still outside it. Why? Because, though he understood the necessity of love, he had not yet learned to love; because, though he knew how he ought to walk and to please God, he did not know himself; he had as yet no sense of his own weakness, no real perception of the evil which taints all men’s service, no consciousness of that hopeless insufficiency which can be met only from without—by a Divine Deliverer. And, more than this, he had no idea as yet of his own relation to Christ.
III. Where are we?—The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you, and to every one of us. Christ has addressed to us that question of questions, of which no lapse of time abates the interest, and before which it has been truly said every other fades and shrinks away: What think ye of Christ? About many things we may safely remain in suspense; but about this we cannot. We must settle it with ourselves, what He is to us, whether He is only what He was to the scribe, a human Teacher of rare greatness, or whether we do accept Him for what He claims to be.
Rev. Canon Duckworth.
Illustration
‘Some seem beyond the possibility of moving to a decision. They are like an Indian who fell asleep in his canoe above the waters of the foaming cataract above Woodstock on the John River. Another saw him go by, shouted, but roused him not. The canoe touched a rock, and the onlooker said, “That will awaken him.” No; on he drifted, until he found his canoe leaping and tossing in the rapids; then he stood up and in vain sought to pull away from danger, but it was too late. He was swept over the falls. So some men sleep away their chance of heaven.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
WHY WAS HE NEAR?
What was there in this man which made Christ speak of him as ‘near to the kingdom’ of His grace, to His true Church?—I say, ‘near,’ for I think we shall all agree that when Christ says, ‘not far,’ the negative conveys the strongest positive, and means ‘near.’ ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’
I. He spoke practically and sensibly, and without prejudice, as Christ expresses it, ‘discreetly.’ And the Evangelist gives this as the very reason for our Saviour’s judgment about him. The Gospel, is, indeed, the highest reason; and if a man will but cast away pre-conceived ideas, and come to the study of the subject with a free mind, and bring to bear upon it his best powers of sense and intellect, we believe that that man will always be approximating to the kingdom of truth.
II. He saw, before his age and generation, the true, relative value of the types of the Jewish church.—He recognised them as entirely inferior to the great principles of truth and love. It was a rising from the material to the spiritual. It was the seeing the invisible substances in the visible shadows. It was making way for the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a process towards the higher fields of faith.
III. His mind had travelled so far as to see that the sum and substance of all religion is love—first to God, and then, growing out of it, to man.
IV. He had been attracted to the Person of Christ.—‘The Kingdom of God’ is Christ, and Christ is ‘the Kingdom of God’; and we are all in or out of that Kingdom, or ‘near’ or ‘far’ from it, just according to what Christ is to us—absolutely in Himself, and personally to ourselves.
V. Shall we leave it an open question as to whether we are in the Kingdom or not? Did Christ leave it an open question as to whether He would save us? How did He treat the penitent thief? Had St. Paul reason to fear lest he should be a castaway, and have we none? Shall we be content to see others pass up to heaven’s gate, and pass within, while we have to stand outside? Shall we see the light of the celestial city streaming up from behind its battlemented walls, making our darkness, solitude, and despair more intense? Shall it be an open question still? If we knew we had only another month, week, day to live, would it be an open question? Decide it now—go in.
Illustration
‘Not far, not far from the Kingdom,
Yet in the shadow of sin;
How many are coming and going,
How few are entering in!
Not far from the golden gateway,
Where voices whisper and wait;
Fearing to enter in boldly,
So lingering still at the gate,
Catching the strains of the music
Floating so sweetly along;
Knowing the song they are singing,
Yet joining not in the song.
Seeing the warmth and the beauty,
The infinite love, and the light;
Yet weary, and lonely, and waiting
Out in the desolate night.
Out in the dark and the danger,
Out in the night, and the cold,
Though He is longing to lead them
Tenderly into the fold.
Not far, not far from the Kingdom,
’Tis only a little space;
But it may be at last, and for ever,
Out of the resting-place.
A ship came sailing and sailing
Over a murmuring sea,
And just in sight of the haven,
Down in the waves went she.
And the spars and the broken timbers
Were cast on a storm-beat strand,
And a cry went up in the darkness,
Not far, not far from the land!’

A GREAT GIFT
‘They did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had.’
Mark 12:44
I. Who was the giver?—She was a poor widow. Sorrow more often makes people selfish.
II. The gift.—Two mites. Wealth, commerce, religious custom reckoned it small; but in the judgment of God the gift was exceedingly great.
III. The scene of the gift.—It was bestowed in the Temple of God; it was deposited in one of thirteen boxes in the women’s court. It is meet and right that we give where we receive.
IV. The object of the gift.—These two mites were given as a freewill offering to the support of the Temple, its institutions and its services, and the offering them with this intent constituted this poor widow a contributor to all that the Temple yielded, to all it offered to heaven, and to all it gave to the children of men.
V. The spirit of the offering.—The spirit of true piety and of real godliness. It may be that in her worship she had been saying, ‘I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength,’ and that love gave all.
VI. Divine recognition of the gift.—The Lord Jesus Christ saw the gift, estimated it, approved it, and commended the giver.
Illustrations
(1) ‘The stinginess of professing Christians in all matters which concern God and religion is one of the crying sins of the day, and one of the worst signs of the times. The givers to Christ’s cause are but a small section of the visible Church. Not one baptized person in twenty, probably, knows anything of being “rich towards God” ( Luke 12:21). The vast majority spend pounds on themselves, and give not even pence to Christ.’
(2) ‘If the Church is going to overtake the world, certainly its scale of giving will have to be increased a hundredfold. On pleasure, on drink, on everything else, this nation spends its millions freely, while it grudges its “small sums” for the work of the Church.’