Parable of the Tenants – Who Is the Owner of Your Life?
Pastor Tan Thai · Oct 5, 2022
This sermon on the Parable of the Tenants explores the deeply repressed human hostility toward God that most people refuse to acknowledge. The pastor argues that we all live as tenants pretending to be owners, and that only the cross of Christ can slay that enmity and reconcile us to God.
The sermon opens with an observation about modern psychology, particularly the concept of repression. The pastor argues that the Bible reveals something deeper than any secular psychology has discovered: a suppressed hatred of God that resides in every human heart. Romans 8:4 is cited to affirm that the natural mind is enmity against God and cannot submit to His law.
Through three key relationships in the Parable of the Tenants, the sermon develops three major theological points. First, the tenants' relationship with the owner reveals that all people know they are tenants yet live as owners, refusing to acknowledge that their talents, intelligence, possessions, and life itself are gifts from God. Second, the tenants' relationship with the messengers shows that God never gives only one chance but continuously sends messengers—including through hardship, frustration, and the failures of life—to shatter humanity's illusion of independence and self-sufficiency. Third, the tenants' relationship with the son reveals the climax of hidden enmity: when God made Himself physically vulnerable in Jesus Christ, humanity crucified Him.
The sermon identifies two expressions of this enmity: intellectual skepticism and proud religiosity. Both are ways people attempt to maintain control of their lives and avoid submitting to God's grace. The pastor draws on a quote from Aldous Huxley and a Flannery O'Connor character to illustrate that whether one is a skeptic or a devoutly religious person, both can be running from God in different ways.
The application and conclusion focus on the glory of the gospel: the very death of Jesus Christ, which arose from human enmity, is the instrument God used to slay that enmity. Ephesians 2:16 and 2 Corinthians 5 are cited to affirm that on the cross, God made Jesus to be sin for us so that we could be reconciled to Him. Psalm 118's image of the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone is used to present the binary choice before every listener.
The pastor concludes with an urgent call: either build your life upon the stone that is Christ, or be crushed by it—there is no middle ground. He appeals to the love demonstrated at the cross as the supreme reason to surrender control of one's life to God, asking the congregation to listen to the messengers God has been sending into their lives.