Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 4:05pm

Of Vineyards, God and Abraham Lincoln

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people:
“Hear another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
another they killed, and a third they stoned.
Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
but they treated them in the same way.
Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking,
‘They will respect my son.’
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,
‘This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’
They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”
They answered him,
“He will put those wretched men to a wretched death
and lease his vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the proper times.”
Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?

Therefore, I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
Matthew 21: 33-44
Our Lord references Isaiah in this parable.  Seven centuries before Christ Isaiah had warned Judah that the wrath of the Lord was kindled against them, a Vineyard that failed to produce fruit.  This warning was ignored, as the lamentable history of the Jews ended in repeated foreign conquest, punctuated by the heroic revolt of the Maccabees that ended in civil war, tyranny and the Rule of Rome.  Small wonder that the Jews of the time of Jesus were ever on the watch for a Messiah from the House of David who would free Israel from foreign chains and bring the pure worship of God.  However, as Abraham Lincoln would note eighteen centuries after Christ, “The Almighty has His own purposes”.   The Messiah came, largely unrecognized by the Jews, and did bring about the pure worship of God, but mostly by the despised gentiles, including the hated foreign occupiers of Rome.
We Men do our best with our wits to understand the ways of God, but as the Bible truly notes, His ways are not our ways.  What we perceive as disasters He may well perceive as building blocks to carry out a vast divine plan that we simply cannot discern in our brief lives and with our fallen intellects.   Our task in our lives is to carry out His will, as best as we can discern it, but to always recall that God may be intending something entirely contrary to what we wish and hope for.  This is a fact that is often hard to accept, but, as Lincoln also noted,  “as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Monday, October 9, AD 2017 2:05am

With God things do not turn out well for the disobedient. Our job is to obey, God’s to dispose.

Guy McClung
Admin
Monday, October 9, AD 2017 7:56am

Isaiah’s version includes a wall. The outsiders come in, have no respect for anybody, the wall fails, and people are killed. The landowners son ends up dead. Wonder if they beheaded him. Prophetic? Europe today? USA tomorrow? Guy McClung, Texas

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