Dominion Press

Tyler, Texas.

(PART 9)

Reading the Bible in terms of the Paradise theme can deepen our understanding of even the most familiar passages of Scripture. Suddenly we can understand why Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5, for example, describe the covenant people as "the Lord's vineyard." As we have seen, this was a reminder of man's original state of communion with God in the Garden. It was also a reminder that when God saves His people, He constitutes them a renewed Garden (or Vineyard), and thus the Biblical writers used the imagery of planting, trees, vines, and fruit again and again to describe salvation in its various aspects (John 15 is a well-known example). It is important to recognize also, however, that Garden-imagery can be used to describe apostasy and the Curse, for the very first breaking of the covenant took place in the Garden. God had given Adam a commission to cultivate and guard His "vineyard"; instead, Adam had rebelled against the Landowner, and was cursed and cast out, forfeiting his inheritance. This twin image of the vineyard, as the place of both blessing and cursing, is an important concept in the Bible, and became the setting for one of Jesus' most striking parables, the story of the Wicked Vinegrowers (Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5 should be read along with this).

In His grace, God had sent prophets to Israel throughout her history, and always the men of God had been treated viciously. "They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground" (Heb. 11:37-38). The fact is that Israel had consistently rejected God's word and mistreated the prophets, right from the beginning. As Stephen accused them (just before he was murdered by Jewish leaders): "You men who are stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become" (Acts 7:51-52).

Israel's wicked treatment of the prophets reached its zenith in the murder of God's Son, as Jesus foretold in His parable. He then asked his hearers, "When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinegrowers?"

The Jews had spoken their own sentence of condemnation. Indeed, the vineyard would be taken from them; the Lord would come and destroy them, and give the vineyard to obedient workmen who would render to Him the fruit He desired. The Kingdom was to be taken from the Jews and given to a new "nation." Who would this nation be? The Apostle Peter (after citing the same Old Testament text Jesus used) gave the definitive answer, writing to the Church: "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who were once not a people, but are now the people of God; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy" (1^st Pet. 2:9-10). The clincher is that God had used this identical language in speaking to the covenant people of Israel at Mount Sinai: "You shall be My own possession among all the peoples...and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. 19:5-6). What once had been true of Israel, Peter says, is now and forever true of the Church.

Israel was a garden, a vineyard, in rebellion against its owner; or, to change the metaphor, it was a tree without fruit, as Jesus said in another parable:

Jesus, the Lord of the Vineyard, spent the three years of His ministry traveling through Israel seeking fruit. Now it was time to "cut it down." John the Baptist had warned the Jews, even before Jesus began His office, that the vineyard of Israel was running out of time:

This was the problem with Israel. Even though the Jews welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem waving palm branches in recognition of His coming restoration of Eden (Matt. 21:8-9), the branches had no fruit. Interestingly, the same passage goes on to show what happened after Jesus left Jerusalem. As He walked, He came upon a fig tree and looked for fruit, but found none. So He cursed the fig tree, saying, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." And immediately the fig tree withered away (Matt. 21:18-19). The same would be true of barren, unrepentant Israel.

Primarily, of course, the fault lay with the leaders of Israel, the blind leaders of the blind, who were leading the entire nation into the ditch (Matt. 15:14). Thus Jesus particularly directed His wrathful denunciations toward them (cf. Matt. 23). Yet He included the people as a whole in His condemnation as well, as we can see from the closing words of His last public message:

The sins of Israel, its rebellions and apostasies, had been accumulating for centuries, filling up to overflowing. The point of crisis was reached when the Son came. Their rejection of Him sealed their fate, and they were in turn rejected by God. The generation that crucified the Lord and persecuted His apostles was the true "terminal generation." Israel, as the Covenant People, was to be destroyed, finally and irrevocably. They had received the final warning. Years later, shortly before the holocaust Of A.D. 70 descended upon Israel, the Apostle Paul wrote that "the Jews...killed both the Lord and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost" (1^st Thess. 2:14-16).

As a nation, Israel had become apostate, a spiritual harlot in rebellion against her Husband (cf. Ezek. 16). The fearful words of Hebrews 6:4-8 were literally applicable to the covenant nation, which had forfeited its birthright:

The same multitude which welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with hosannas was screaming for His blood in less than a week. Like all slaves, their attitude was fickle; but ultimately, their attitude was summed up in another of Jesus'parables: "We will not have this Man to reign over us!" (Luke 19:14). The chief priests revealed the faith of the nation when they vehemently denied the lordship of Christ and affirmed, "We have no king but Caesar!" (John 19:15).

So the covenant people inherited the Curse. They had waved their branches toward the Owner's Son when he entered their vineyard, seeming to welcome Him to His rightful property; but when He came closer and inspected the branches, He found no fruit?just leaves. In keeping with the pattern we have seen in our study of the Garden of Eden, Israel was ripe for becoming judged, disinherited, and cast out of the Vineyard.

But they had not only the examples of Eden, the Flood, Babel, and other historical judgments as warnings. God had specifically stated, through Moses, that the Curse would fall upon them if they apostatized from the true faith. We would do well to remind ourselves of the warnings of Deuteronomy 28, where God threatens the loss of family and possessions, becoming ravaged by numerous diseases, suffering from warfare and the oppression of a victorious pagan nation, turning to cannibalism on account of famine, being sold into slavery and scattered over the face of the earth:

Because Israel committed the supreme act of covenantbreaking when she rejected Christ, Israel herself was rejected by God. The awesome curses pronounced by Jesus, Moses, and the prophets were fulfilled in the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, with the desolation of the Temple and the obliteration of the covenant nation in A.D. 70. (See Appendix B for Josephus' description of this event, and compare the curses listed in Deuteronomy 28.) As God had promised, the Kingdom was indeed established when Christ came. But instead of embracing and assimilating old Israel into its structure, the Kingdom came and ground Israel to powder. God's new Temple, the Church, was established as the old Temple was torn down and reduced to rubble.

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