Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 44 – Nov 1985
God’s Ultimatum
Sermon by Rev. A.I. De Graaf on Matthew 21:37a
Readings: Is. 5:1-4; Matt. 21:33-46.
Songs: Ps. H. 284; 94; 153; 330:1,2; 330:3
We have all heard of an ULTIMATUM.
Usually that is a word with a somewhat threatening sound.
– “This is your last chance to surrender.”
…says the strong one, says the conqueror.
– “These are my last offers of peace.
If you do not accept this ‘ULTIMATUM’
the consequences are on your head.
And these will be bitter…!
The word ultimatum is Latin.
Literally it means: the last one, the final one.
And yes, THAT’s what we find in our text:
Last of all He sent His Son to them..!
But that was last of a long, long line of other attempts.
This parable of Jesus puts the Christmas story
the story of the coming of the Son of God
into the frame of God’s tremendous patience.
But also into the frame indeed of God’s ultimatum.
ULTIMATUM: the last chance,
the final opportunity before Judgement Day comes.
(1) So the Lord God wants to see fruits
We say: Jesus came to save sinners.
And yes that’s what the Bible says, too:
1Tim.1:15:
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance:
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners!
But that is only part of the story.
He saved them FROM sin,
FROM useless and selfish death,
and He saved them FOR service,
that they might bear fruit.
Jesus says in this parable,
(and you could say: that is a Christmas sermon by Jesus Himself
– Christmas-sermon and Good-Friday sermon rolled into one.)
This…
that as the last one in a long row of messengers from God
the Son came to ask the tenants of God’s world for God’s due,
the fruits of His world.
That is why God placed man in the world in the first place,
to look after the place and make it flourish and bring forth fruit for Him.
He is not unreasonable in asking for that fruit.
The parable says:
He comes asking for it when harvest time is there, when it is time for it…!
And after man fell into sin and it all seemed hopeless,
then it is with His own covenant people set free from tyranny,
redeemed and loved and cared-for,
that God went into partnership,
to look at least after the proof-patch of peace
in the world that God’s holy land was to be:
The beginning of the new creation.
He did so much to that vineyard of His:
He fed and watered it,
He poured into it the lavish care of His wealth,
milk and honey, security and the sweet aroma of created life.
He put around it the wall of His protective laws,
and sent to it leaders, first the Judger
then the kings,
men of talent and dedication,
so that as His special people they could bring forth fruit.
Fruit of love and faithfulness,
fruit of justice and fairness,
fruit of intellect, knowledge and wisdom,
the fruit of beauty and delight
All for the Landlord, but all shared with the tenant,
and together they would have a good life.
God created the world good. He wants it good again.
Can you blame Him?
Is that unreasonable?
However…
(2) The Lord God has been robbed systematically
Man acts as if the world is HIS…
and even man-in-the-covenant, the Israelite…
the church member, runs the show as if God were an afterthought
or worse… a bothersome intruder.
“Fancy HIM poking His nose into MY affairs ..!”
while all the time it is His bread we eat,
and His air we breathe,
His care that keeps us alive
His life we are called to live.
As he ignores God.
Man also ends up mistreating and short-changing his fellow man.
The Israelite did that,
who oppressed the poor
(as the law-abiding Pharisees did all the time)
ans who perverted justice.
But have Christian churches fared so much better?
As soon as the church became a Big Institution,
has it not always sided with the Status Quo,
excused the injustices of the Power that paid its ministers’ salaries,
and told the poor that their turn would come later, in heaven?
Somehow, God was no longer taken seriously…
and then, when someone does come
and lift a prophetic voice against these things,
how often did we not carefully look and see
if we could stick a label on him,
“liberal” or “red”.
Or maybe we could put it down to a suspicion about his view of Scripture.
(now that’s a nice way to make people stop listening to him…..)
and then the mouth of the prophet is stopped.
You don’t even have to put him in prison
(as Ahab did with that awkward witness Micah) or kill him
(as Israel did with so many prophets
and Rome with the Reformers
and Hitler with men like Bonhoeffer…!)
But God – the Landlord – has this way of calling His people
right from the time of Adam in the garden…
“Where are you?”
This way He spoke to Israel, His covenant people of old..!
But it seemed to do Him little good…!
But – says Jesus….
3) Isn’t it amazing what long patience the Lord showed with His people?
The one servant after the other
sought to stir the conscience of His wayward nation.
The one prophet after the other,
until it became an almost unbearable burden.
Jeremiah saw it coming and said:
Lord can’t you – please send somebody else?
Yet… generation after generation got away with it:
killing the prophets or ignoring their message at least.
No thunderbolt from heaven…!
Ah no, but the Lord DID punish His people.
In the day of the Judges
there were the enemies overrunning the people
until they cried to the Lord…!
In the days of the Kings
there were famine and drought,
like when Elijah was prophet.
And there WAS that thunderbolt
that kindled the fire on the Carmel mountain altar.
And eventually there were the Assyrians
who dragged the ten tribes away, never to be heard from again.
And when Judah did not listen, there was Nebucadnezzar.
the king blinded and his sons killed,
and seventy years of bitter exile when the harps hung on the willows.
But did they learn?
No sir!
When God had heard their prayers
and brought them back to Palestine,
the nation again ignored Him
and refused to give the Lord the fruit of righteousness and peace.
They lived and did as if it all were their own.
Then at last – says Jesus – the Land-LORD,
the LORD of the land decided to do the ultimate thing,
to send the ULTIMATUM
and that was His Only-begotten Son.
God so loved the world…!
God so loved His people..!
That’s how Jesus puts it.
It was the Father’s last resort….!
This, by the way, teaches us
something remarkable about God’s ways with people.
It is like that of a doctor.
When you go to your doctor with a pain in the stomach,
he does not immediately order an operation.
He starts off with mild medicine, hoping it will cure the complaint.
Only when the mild stuff does not give results,
does he order in the more radical measures.
Don’t blame him for that…!
Operations are awesome things.
God’s way with His people was one of going further and further in,
…deeper and deeper down, until at last He did the ultimate,
after 2,000 years or more
…thus was His way:
the last thing was sending His Son.
The Manger of Bethlehem does not stand in the rosy glow of idyllic sweetness.
It is a stark thing, a bitter degradation:
The unwanted son of the boss stuck in a stable
soon on the run for his life to Egypt,
and finally staked out on a stake
outside the gate of God’s own city, Jerusalem…
unwanted, a nuisance, a bother
with his request for fruits,
His awkward asking for a holy life.
No more could the LORD of the land do.
To send His Son was the ultimate, the last.
Will He now see fruits?
Don’t come with easy answers too quickly, my glib, church- going friend…!
Sure, the Son of God HAS come –
and all this bitterness is now history.
The cross is…. and so is the open grave.
The wood of the manger has been burnt up somewhere in Palestine
but the Child of the manger is now on the very throne of the Universe.
You nor I can reverse the irrevocable course of history
and it doesn’t help to try and explain it away
as today’s agnostics or atheists
or disobedient covenant children still try to do.
At last – last of all – He sent His Son.
That later on He sent His Spirit was a consequence of that…
was fruit of the work of the Son.
But where are YOUR fruits, my friend?
John the Baptist was right you know…
You who know that the Son has come,
are you prepared to give Him the fruits worthy of faith and repentance?
That is the question.
Are you prepared to give Him your heart,
your love, your life, your grief and your joy,
your money and your time,
your children, your wife, your husband?
Give him, not in death – but in life?
The Son agrees with the Father who is the Land-LORD,
the LORD of the land,
that the earth is His, and its fullness.
Are you giving HIM the fruits
or are you sitting on them, selfishly?
The fact that you own a larger house, or a holiday property,
a better car or a boat,
does that now interfere with the work
that you before were able and gifted to do for Him?
Are you NOW beginning to run out of time?
But that is only a small matter.
What the prophets were after was love and praise
but above all JUSTICE FOR THE OPPRESSED.
The least of Jesus’ brethren asking for a square deal,
not only cold charity.
Asking for a place under your roof
before they can afford a roof over their own head,
and yes, the possibility to afford that too.
Last of all… He sent His Son to them.
Men said: a stable is good enough for you.
They sure were not themselves living in stables.
Men today have a way of relegating Jesus to half-dark church buildings
but outside in the glaring sunlight they live their own selfish lives,
preparing for holidays with all stops pulled out
and not a penny spared,
while God is let off with a tip.
But God is still asking for the fruits:
What are my tenants doing with all I gave them?
My tenants who now even call themselves My children?
The Ultimatum of Him whose voice thundered from Sinai
that Ultimatum was the soft cry of a child’s voice in the night.
But make no mistake: it is your last chance.
This child will come again as Judge
and don’t think you can tell him any fancy stories, either.
When there are no fruits, then for the barren branch there will be the fire.
Israel found that out… and so will you and I.
God wants His world back,
filled with peace and justice and love.
He will make sure of that, too.
What He did at last is not done in vain.
When He at last did send His Son
His Name was called the Wonderful, the Counsellor,
the Mighty Lord, the Everlasting Father,
the very Prince of Peace.
All that was opened up by Him.
But He wants His people to share in it all,
and so the vineyard was given to new tenants.
These new tenants are from Israel and from the Gentiles, both.
Co-labourers with God.
And the question will be the same right down to the last Day of Judgement.
The question is not:
Will YOU make your own salvation?
That is what the Son did.
The question, however, is:
Do you trust the work of that Son as done for you?
Then where, my friend, are the fruits?
Amen.