Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Don't Waste God's Patience | The Gospels | Mark 12:1-12

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

How have you experienced God’s patience? Could his kindness be something you’ve begun to assume rather than receive with gratitude? What sins do you need to repent of today? In today’s episode, Keith explores how Mark 12:1–12 reveals a patient God who repeatedly sends messengers, warns us of coming judgment, and ultimately calls us to repent before we reject the Son himself.  Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Mark 12:1-12

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. On the first day of teaching his class of 250 college freshmen, R.C. Sprole carefully explained the assignment of three term papers. Each paper was due on the last day of September, October, and November. The professor clearly stated there would be no exceptions. That's when the papers are due. So at the end of September, about 225 students turned in their papers, while 25 students, remorseful students quaked in fear.

We're so sorry, they told the professor, we didn't make the proper adjustments from high school to college, but we promise we'll do better next time. So Professor Sproll relented to their pleas for mercy, and he let them have an extension. But he said, be careful because I'm not going to do this again next month. Well, the end of October rolled around, and this time about 175 students turned their paper in on time,

and about 50 showed up empty-handed. Oh, please, they begged. It was homecoming weekend. We ran out of time. So Sprole relented once more, and he said, okay, this is it. No more excuses. Next time you get an F. The end of November came around. This time only 100 students turned in their papers. The rest told the professor, we'll get it in soon. Sorry, the professor replied. It's too late. You get an F. The students howled in protest. That's not fair. Okay, Sproo said, you want fair? You want justice? Here's justice. You'll get an F for all the papers that were late. That was the rule, right? Professor Sprole later reflected and said the students, had quickly taken my mercy for granted. They just assumed it. So when justice suddenly fell, they were unprepared for it.

It came as a shock, and they were outraged. I think that story parallels our relationship with God. God is merciful and patient with us, but we take it for granted. We begin to presume upon His grace. And when judgment comes, we're shocked. It's almost like we misinterpret God's patience to mean that he's a pushover, or that sin isn't a big deal, or that all the warnings in scripture are a bit exaggerated.

Today in Mark 12, we'll see that it is dangerous for sinners like us to presume on God's patience. Verse 1, and he began to speak to them and parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. There are only a few parables in the Gospel of Mark, which highlights this parable's importance. Jesus tells this parable when he's in Jerusalem celebrating Passover. It's the last week of his life.

Every single person who heard him knew exactly what he was saying. That's partly because Jesus' parables were drawn from everyday life. The arrangement of an absentee landlord and tenant farmers was quite common in the early part of the first century. A landlord would rent out his land with expectation he'd receive a portion of of the harvest it produced. But the people also understood this parable because Jesus was retelling a famous parable found in the prophet Isaiah. They knew the owner of the vineyard represented God. They knew the tenant farmers represented the Jewish leadership. We learned that the owner had been

very generous. Again, verse one, a man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. God had called Israel as a nation, and given them leadership, and delivered them from Egypt, and parted the Red Sea, and given them the promised land, and given them the law. There seemed to be no end of how God had been to Israel. And I bet you can tell stories of how God has been good to you. God hears your prayers. He meets your needs. God has blessed you with family and friends. He has provided education and jobs and house and food. In fact, every good thing you have in your life, no matter how big or how small, is an undeserved gift from the Father who loves you.

Jesus says that God sends reign on the righteous and the unrighteous. God is kind even to those who hate him and despise him, who reject him and curse him. When the harvest was over, the owner sent one of his servants to the tenant farmers to get his rightful portion of the crop, which was usually anywhere from a third to half of the harvest. The owner is only asking for what is rightfully his, but the farmers give the owner's servant a rude welcome. Here's verse three. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and they killed him. And so with many others, some they beat and some they

killed. God sent the prophets to warn Israel to repent of their sin and to turn to him. But Israel refused to listen. They put the prophet Jeremiah in stocks. The prophet Elijah was driven into the wilderness. The prophet Uriah was killed by the sword. The prophet Zechariah was stoned to death near the altar. The prophet John the Baptist was beheaded. Every prophet is mistreated, but God is patient with sinners. Why? Well, 2. Peter 3.9 says the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understands slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Oh, God is patient with me. I know far more truth than I obey. I know I should read the Bible, and yet my heart is cold. I know I should pray, and yet I'm self-sufficient. I get distracted by

temporal things. I know God is in control, but I worry. How has God been patient with you? Do you ever ask yourself, why does God put up with me? He gives all of us every opportunity to repent of a sin and to turn back to him. But it's easy to misinterpret his patience to mean that he doesn't care about sin or that sin isn't a big deal or that there won't be any consequences for a sin. But again, why? Why is God so patient and kind toward us? Romans 2 says, do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, his patience, and his forbearance? Not realizing that God's patience and kindness should lead us to repent of sin. indulge in it? Back to the parable in Mark, verse 6. He had still one other, a beloved son.

Finally, he sent him to them saying, they will respect my son. Now, what farmer in his right mind would send his son to these tenants? Why would you send your son to people who have beaten and killed your previous messengers? Didn't the owner know what was going to happen? The owner sent his son because he was the only person who possessed legal claim over the vineyard. The son goes as the father's representative with the father's authority to the father's property to claim the father's due. But the son doesn't just represent the father's legal claim, but also his compassion. The inexhaustible love of God is on full display when he sends his son to people who had rejected him. The son differs from the servants, just like Jesus differs from the prophets that have come before him.

They were many, but he is an only son. They were servants, but he is the son, the heir. They were forerunners, but he is the last and final word of the father. But above all, the son is beloved. In the face of humanity's refusal to repent and receive God's love, God sent the prophets. And they were ignored and abused and killed. Martin Luther said, if I were God and the world had treated me as it treated him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces.

But instead of turning his back on the world, God sent his son. Charles Spurgeon said, If you reject Jesus, he answers with tears. If you wound him, he bleeds out cleansing for sin. If you kill him, he dies to redeem. If you bury him, he rises to bring resurrection. Jesus is love made manifest. Verse 7. But those tenants said to one another, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. And they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. The farmers reject the overture of love. No longer content with stealing the produce that belonged to the owner, the farmers reject his messengers and then conspire

to kill his son. Why do they kill him? Well, so the inheritance will be theirs. You see, if human beings can dispense with God, then we can become God. Why didn't they believe Jesus? Why does anyone reject him? Well, because they want to take God's place, because we want to be God. because we want to live for ourselves. They didn't want to submit to the authority of God, and neither do we. Verse 9, what would the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Maybe we think that God is a foolish landlord who will never hold us accountable.

Maybe we believe Satan's lie, that there will be no consequences for our sin. It's true that God is patient, but it's also true that judgment is coming. Verse 12. Then the chief priest, the teachers of the law and the elders, looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away. Maybe you remember one of the images that went viral in 2025. It was of a man and a woman at a Coldplay concert. The camera found them cuddling together listening to the music, and their image went up on the Jumbotron. When they saw themselves, it was clear that their conscience bothered them.

The man looked away, the woman, hid. Chris Martin, the lead singer for Coldplay, asked if they were having an affair. Can we treat that as kind of like a modern day parable? What could you and I learn from it? I'm not interested in judging that couple. I'm interested in learning for myself. Well, first, this wasn't the first time they were together, right? I mean, they had made a lot of little choices that led them up to that point where they were out in public together with someone who wasn't their spouse. And you could tell their conscience bothered them the way they hid their face. They had many chances to stop that relationship. They had many chances. They had many chances to repent and repair the damage that they had done. But I think it's safe to say they went to that concert in that huge stadium thinking they'd never get caught. And I understand why. I mean, there's a sold-out football stadium. What are the chances they're going to be on the jumbo screen? But there they were, on full display for their spouses, their children, their friends,

their parents to see. I thought of Luke 817, where Jesus says, for all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all. See, I make the same choices they make. I creep towards sin. I do things thinking that I'll never get caught, that there'll never really be any consequences. But the reality is that according to Jesus, one day my sins, one day all our sins will be on the jumbo-tron. And God promises that unless we repent of our sin, one day we will face judgment. What are you waiting for? Are there sins that you need to repent of?

Are there sins that you need to acknowledge and just come clean about to another friend? That you need to share with someone and ask them to pray for you. God is patient with us. He is so kind to us. He gives us every opportunity to turn away, to repent, to go a different direction, to run back to him, to seek forgiveness, to repair the damage that we've done. Let's pray. Father, I pray for all of our hearts.

I pray that we would not reject the messengers that you send us. Maybe it's a friend or a sermon or a Bible study or a podcast, or maybe it's just your work in our own conscience, but that we would listen, that we would take in what you have to say to us no matter how you say it, and that we would turn from our sin and put our hope in you, that we would seek forgiveness and grace and mercy, and that we would repent and turn back to Jesus.

we want to be on the road that leads to life. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.