Our Inheritance In God

Our Inheritance In God

By Apostle Felix

33  “Pay close attention to this parable,” Jesus said. “There once was an honorable man who planted a vineyard. He built a fence around it, dug out a pit for pressing the grapes, and erected a watchtower. Afterward he leased the land to tenant farmers and then went a distance away.
Matthew 21: 33

Jesus told the parable of the tenants to the people, specifically to the Pharisees who were challenging the source of His authority. Every time Jesus was confronted by religious people with evil intentions, He responded to them in parables. The Pharisees had problems with accepting Jesus as the Messiah promised in Torah and the prophets. He did not just fit the Messiah they expected. The behavior of the Pharisees and other religious groups was just like their forefathers who rejected and killed the prophets whom God had sent to prophesy the coming of the Christ. So, their behavior was not so strange at all. Their fathers did the same to the prophets. The prophets were like Jesus’ forerunners. They had the message of Christ concealed in types and shadows. They prophesied about the coming Son, who was to be born of a virgin woman.

14  Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7: 14

The message of all the prophets was about the birth and death of the Son of God. The Messiah who was to come and deliver Israel from it’s enemies. So, Israel was looking forward to a Messiah who would come and emancipate them from the Roman colonial rule. They were expecting a warrior like Messiah. Israel was looking at the land as their inheritance, while God had a better inheritance for them, which was the Son, Jesus Christ. For them, the land which was occupied by the Romans was their inheritance and the Messiah was supposed to come and push out the Romans.

Therefore Jesus gave a parable that involved land, which the land owner had rented out to the tenants. The land owner traveled into a far country and lived there. And he was only sending his servants to receive the fruits from his land, but the tenants killed the land owners’ servants. Then last of all, the land owner sent his son, saying the tenants will respect his son. But to his disappointment, they killed his son too.

37  Finally, he sent his own son to them, and he said to himself, ‘Perhaps with my own son standing before them they will be ashamed of what they’ve done.’ 
38  But when the tenants saw the son, they said, ‘This is the heir! Let’s kill him and then we can have his inheritance!’ 

Matthew 21: 37, 38

Those tenants were a gullible bunch who were interested in temporary pleasure that eternal security. There were called evil tenants because of their greediness for temporary pleasure. Jesus called the religious people as an evil generation.

39  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 

Matthew 12: 39

An evil generation is one that is gullible because of greediness. A generation, whose mind is blinded from seeing Christ because of gullibleness. The tenants killed the son in their quest to get the inheritance of the son they killed. What they did not was that their inheritance was the son. They rejected and killed the son in order to possess the perishable.

The lessons we can draw from the parable are that:

1. Remember, we are stewards of all the Lord has given us. We  have to be faithful in stewarding what the Lord has entrusted in our care.

2. Our inheritance is Christ. The inheritance is not the material but Christ Himself.

3. Beware of the danger of greediness. It causes men to lose all that was meant for them.

4. Are we only interested in the material things God can give or His relationship with us. If the reason of serving is for things, then you need to evaluate your ways.