DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY WHO IS REALLY BOSS?

Mark 12:1-5

¹ Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a wall around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenant farmers and went to another country. ² When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenant farmers to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. ³ But they arrested him, and flogged[1] him, and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ And again he sent another slave to them; this one they knocked on the head and insulted. ⁵ Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they flogged, but others they killed.

don’t shoot the messenger

There’s a kind of holy bluntness in this parable that still speaks with force today. It’s as if the people of God stand at the edge of the world and say, “Look—we’re made of the same dust as you. We bleed like you. We get misunderstood like you. If something we say offends you, don’t imagine we invented it. We’re only repeating what the Owner of the vineyard has entrusted to us.” There’s no arrogance in that posture, only the sober awareness that the message isn’t ours to edit or soften. The vineyard doesn’t belong to the tenants, and the tenants don’t get to rewrite the lease.

Jesus aimed this story straight at the religious leaders of His day. They were the caretakers of God’s vineyard, the ones entrusted with shepherding His people. Yet their history was littered with the graves of prophets—men who had brought God’s word faithfully and paid for it with their lives. The parable exposed a truth they didn’t want to face: their hostility toward Jesus wasn’t new. It was part of a long pattern of rejecting the God who kept reaching out to them.

And our generation has its own version of hostile tenants. Many have abandoned belief in a sovereign God altogether, yet their reactions mirror those first‑century leaders. Speak of accountability to God, and they scoff. Demonstrate the truth with clarity, and they grow angry. Suggest that the vineyard has an Owner, and they treat it as an insult. The hostility isn’t really toward us—it’s toward the One who sent us.

But the parable also reminds us that faithfulness matters more than safety. The servants in the story didn’t survive every assignment, but they were faithful. The Son Himself was killed, yet His death became the cornerstone of God’s redeeming work. The vineyard still belongs to God, and He will reclaim it in His time.

LORD, give us courage to stand in Your name, to speak truth with humility and conviction, and to defend Your rightful ownership of the vineyard entrusted to this generation—even when the cost is great.

[1] δέρω (12:3, 5; 13:9)