What will the Owner Do? Mark 12:9-11
Mark 12:9-11: What will the owner do?
Daniel Amari
9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.
What will the owner do? The tenants lived as though the owner did not exist. To them, his legacy consisted of annoying messengers who had to be silenced at any cost and an heir who had to be dealt with. Once they had silenced the messengers and dealt with the heir, they believed the owner’s legacy had come to an end. Now, they imagined, they could celebrate their freedom and enjoy the vineyard without further disturbance, annoyance, or inconvenience.
They could not imagine that the owner might respond. At this point, their worldview collides with reality. Remarkably, some people believe that silencing their critics is all it takes to vindicate their worldview. In their minds, its credibility depends on suppressing every opposing voice. They may not resort to violence, but they pursue the same end through intimidation, imprisonment, personal attacks, and other tactics.
In this parable, greed is one of the clearest motives behind the tenants’ actions. They were not driven by conviction or by a sincere belief that their worldview was correct. Their worldview was rooted in greed, which is why they regarded the owner’s perspective as a threat.
Yet silencing other worldviews does not make their own worldview correct. More importantly, it does not shield them from the consequences that will follow.
What will the owner do?
First, He will come and destroy the tenants. If the owner has one unmistakable trait, it is extraordinary patience. His patience surpasses human patience because the owner represents God. Certain statements and actions in this parable can therefore be attributed only to God. Only God could display such patience. This is precisely the problem. In the tenants’ worldview, kindness and patience are signs of weakness. They cannot imagine that an owner they consider weak would return and destroy them. Sadly, this reflects a common worldview: might makes right. The tenants believed they were indestructible because they mistook the owner’s patience for weakness. They regarded fear of the owner as a prison because they were convinced that he would never return or destroy them. Yet that very conviction enslaved them. The owner did return, and he did destroy them. The warning that the owner would return was therefore true. Rejecting that warning was not freedom. It was the height of irresponsibility and the path to utter destruction.
The truth or falsehood of a worldview may not become evident immediately. One cannot cry out to heaven and demand that every false worldview be exposed at once. God is intentionally patient, and the purpose of His patience is love. He desires to give each of us an opportunity to return to Him in repentance. We must not interpret God’s delay as confirmation of a worldview built on the assumption that He is weak.
Second, the owner will give the vineyard to others. The tenants never imagined that they could be replaced. They considered themselves indispensable, assuming that their position proved they were the best people for the work and that no one else could do it as well.
In the ministry of God, everyone is replaceable, and we must continually remind ourselves of that fact. We should never mistake God’s patience for evidence that we are indispensable. Instead, we must walk in humility, recognizing that God has the right to replace us without notice.
10 Have you not read this Scripture: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
Third, the tenants never imagined that the vineyard could flourish without them. It is not merely that we can be replaced; the ministry can flourish without us. God is the one who brings growth and success, so we must never attribute the ministry’s success to ourselves. The growth comes from God, not from us.
Copyright 2017 by Daniel Amari. All Rights Reserved.
“Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”