Luke 20:16 He shall come and destroy these farmers, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. We may regard - I. THE FORCE OF THESE WORDS AS ORIGINALLY APPLIED. The people who listened to this parable: 1. Deprecated a guilt in which they were to be partakers. "God forbid," said they, "that we should do such shameful things as these, that we should be in any way involved in such crimes as these! Whosesoever hands may be dyed with the blood of the Husbandman's Son, ours shall be stainless." Yet were they moving on to the last and worst enormity, and already were they doing their best to bring about the guilty consummation. 2. Deprecated a doom to which they were descending. "God forbid," said they," that we should be subjected to the Divine wrath, and that we should lose that place of privilege we have so long enjoyed! May Heaven avert from us the calamity of having to yield to another nation or kingdom the post of honor, the place of privilege, which our fathers handed down to us!" But they were then pursuing the course which led inevitably to this very doom. If they only walked on in the path along which they were then hurrying, they were bound to reach that "miserable" end. II. ITS APPLICATION TO OUR OWN HEARTS AND LIVES. 1. We may be supposing ourselves incapable of wrong-doing the seeds of which are already sown in our heart. Hazael proved to have "dog" enough in him to do the worst things he shuddered at when he spoke (2 Kings 8:13). David discovered that he was capable of a selfishness which he was condemning to death in another (2 Samuel 12:5-7). These Jews shrank from an action which was described to them, as a thing too base for them to commit; and yet they were in the very act of committing it. We little know what possibilities of evil are within us; we cannot estimate aright our own capacity for wrong-doing. Probably every man has in his heart something of which sin may lay hold in some dark hour, and by which he may conceivably be led down to guilt and shame. The declension and fall of those who once stood among the worthiest and the most honored speaks to us in earnest tones of the possible wandering of our own souls from God and goodness. Even Paul realized this stern possibility, and acted upon it (1 Corinthians 9:27). The histories of the erring and ruined souls of men who once seemed beyond the reach of wrong and crime, but who became entangled in their meshes and were slain by them, call upon us to be (1) watchful with a constant vigilance, and (2) prayerful with an unflagging earnestness, lest we too fall under the power of temptation (Matthew 26:41). 2. We may be supposing ourselves safe from a doom which lies straight in front of us. How many a youth imagines himself secure from a degradation and a darkness toward which he has, in the sight of God, already set his foot! How many a man considers himself safe from a low and dishonorable level, when he is already on the slope that leads down to it I What if we could see the goal to which the path we tread is tending! "God forbid," we say, "that this should be our destiny!" and all the while our face is turned in that direction. There is "an earnest need for prayer" that God would show us what is the way in which we are walking; that, if we are in the wrong road, he would "apprehend" us even as he apprehended his chosen messenger (Philippians 3:12), and turn our feet into the way of his testimonies (Psalm 139:23, 24). - C. Parallel Verses KJV: He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. |
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