What Will God Do?

It's surprising the lengths to which God goes to save you from your sin and hostility to Him.

[This is a sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025. Congregations without pastors or whose pastors are ill, pastors who are “tapped out,” and Bible study leaders may feel free to use it. Others may want to use it for your private Bible study. Just let me know if you’ve found the sermon helpful in any of these ways.]

Luke 20:9-20
“What shall I do?” (Luke 20:13)

This is the question that the owner of the vineyard asks himself in the parable that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 20:9-20.

“What shall I do?” is also the question that God might have asked Himself when He realized that the human race would be lost to sin, death, and futility forever if He didn’t act to save us.

The story that Jesus tells us today is a parabolic representation of the story of God’s mission to save us.

The owner of the vineyard in Jesus’ parable is God. In the Old Testament, Israel itself was often referred to as God’s vineyard. But it can also mean every good and perfect gift God has given to us human beings.

The tenants are the people of the world.

In Jesus’ parable, a “man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time.” (Luke 20:9)

When harvest time comes, the owner is entitled to some of the fruit produced by his land and sends a servant to collect. But you know what happens. A first servant is beaten by the tenants and sent away empty-handed. A second servant is subjected to the same treatment. A third was wounded and also sent away.

Long after humanity fell into sin, God established His own people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, meant to be God’s light to all nations. But even after God adopted this people as His own, delivered them from slavery in Egypt, revealed His Law and His gracious love to them, and gave them a promised land, the Hebrews (and the entire human race) kept up their brazen rejection of God and life with God. They kept wanting to be gods themselves, kept on murdering, dishonoring parents and others in authority, cheating on their spouses, robbing God of the gift of sexual intimacy outside of marriage, denigrating and gossiping about others, stealing, and coveting. We’re still doing all those things today.

God asked Himself, “What shall I do?” and, first, sent the prophets right up to John the Baptist. Their messages boiled down to this: “Repent, turn away from sin and death and turn to God and life. Repent and be prepared for when the owner of the vineyard returns.”

The human race has never loved being reminded that we’re not the owners of our world or of our lives and that we’re completely dependent on God for all that we have and all that we are.

And we’ve never been keen on hearing God’s call to repentance.

That’s why, as with the servants in Jesus’ parable, rather than bearing the fruit of repentance, we want to ignore God, or drown Him out of consideration or consciousness, or send Him away, or kill Him off.

I know that whenever I read or hear God’s Word condemning some sin of which I’m especially fond, my first inclination is to close my Bible, rattle off a string of rationalizations, or imply that God doesn’t understand what it’s like to be human, or claim that life in the twenty-first century is different from life in the ancient past.

It’s all nonsense, of course, and the more we try to ignore God’s Word, the more we wall ourselves off from the grace, forgiveness, life, and wholeness God gives to those who repent and trust in Him.

Jesus says that “every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31) We blaspheme against the Holy Spirit whenever we ignore the Spirit-sent Word of God that convicts us of our sin and convinces us of the charitable grace God bears for those who daily turn with repentant faith in Jesus.

After his servants are treated badly, the owner in Jesus’ parable says, “I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.” (Luke 20:13)

Our ears should perk up at these words because they echo what God the Son says about Jesus. At Jesus’ baptism, in Luke 3:22, we hear God the Father say, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” And in Luke 9:35, God the Father says at Jesus’ transfiguration, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”

And so, the beloved son sent by the owner of the vineyard in Jesus’ parable, represents Jesus Himself. Sending Jesus is the second thing God decided to do when He asked Himself, "What shall I do?"

Jesus told this parable on Tuesday of the first Holy Week. Two days before telling it, He was welcomed to Jerusalem as a King. But opposition to Jesus was rising. Especially opposed to Him were the teachers of the Law and the chief priests. Like the tenant farmers in Jesus’ parable, they would soon seek the death of God’s Son in a bid to drown out His call to repent and believe in Him as their God and Savior. They crucified the Son of the living God. And we continue to crucify Him today, refusing to worship Him as our God and King.

After telling His parable, Jesus asks, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” (Luke 20:15-16)

The teachers of the Law and the chief priests were horrified. They understand what Jesus is saying: There is no life with God, no peace with God in this life nor life beyond the grave apart from repentant faith in Him. Not in the impossible pursuit of perfect obedience of God’s Law, not in being descendants of Abraham, not in being a member of a particular church, not in good works. God will give His kingdom to all, whether Jew or Gentile, who repent–that is, turn from sin and death–and believe in Jesus Christ.

God asked Himself, “What shall I do to save my children from sin, death, and darkness?”

He sent His prophets to call us to repent and trust in Him before we meet His Son.

Then He sent His beloved Son so that we might have life with God through repentant faith in Him.

On the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, He said of Judas, who betrayed Jesus so that, like the vineyard owner’s son in His parable, He might bear our sin and death: “The Son of Man [Jesus Himself] goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” (Matthew 26:24)

Jesus wasn’t only betrayed by Judas.

He wasn’t only denied and abandoned by Peter and the other disciples.

He wasn’t only attacked and spat upon by the Jewish religious leaders.

He wasn’t only killed by the spineless Roman governor trying to show he was tough.

He was betrayed, denied, abandoned, attacked, and killed by you and me. It was our sin that necessitated Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus, God the Son, went to that cross at a time and place of Jesus’ choosing. But woe to us for our sin that meant He had to go to the cross.

Yet He did so willingly so that He could erase the condemnation to hell under which we stand from the moment we are conceived. He did so to become, in the words of John the Baptizer, “The Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of world.” He went to the cross to take away your sin too, to free you from an eternal death sentence, to make you God’s child for all eternity!

Ungrateful tenants of this amazing cosmos though we are, God sent His Son for us and to save us from ourselves.

Jesus says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

As the apostle John, who was present when Jesus told today’s parable, writes: “​​And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12)

Friends, each day, turn from sin and turn to Christ. That’s where life in His vineyard–His eternal kingdom–is found. Amen