In this weeks’ parable, Jesus continued with his second blow against the credibility of Israel’s leaders. Although they fancied themselves to be big-time leaders and rulers of Israel, he charged, they were actually only custodians of God’s vineyard. Let us read our parable found in Matthew 21:33-44.
33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
Listen to another parable was Jesus’ way of tying this second parable into the series of three. As in earlier parables, he used the image of a landowner, a man responsible for his land, its crops, and the workers who worked it. The language of this verse makes a direct connection with the “Song of the Vineyard” in Isaiah 5:1-7. The details of the construction of the vineyard (the wall, the winepress, and the watchtower) are drawn from this Old Testament passage. Any Jewish listener would clearly see the connection.
In the Isaiah passage, Yahweh is “my loved one,” and the vineyard is Israel. Although Yahweh had provided everything necessary for Israel to obey him and produce good spiritual fruit, Israel had produced only bad fruit, going its own way time after time. The song served as the Lord’s case against Israel, bringing the evidence before the world and inviting us to conclude for ourselves who was right and who deserved punishment. He would announce that punishment at the end of Matthew 23.
Jesus’ parable provided the sequel to Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard. This was the same vineyard and the same landowner. But the new focus was on those to whom the vineyard had been rented, the custodians. In Jesus’ parable, the vineyard was assumed to produce well, but the stewards of the vineyard were the problem.
The farmers (or tenants) represented Israel’s first-century leaders, who had been entrusted by God with the task of shepherding his people. Ezekiel 34 provided a job description for a shepherd as well as God’s indictment of that generation’s leaders for neglecting their responsibilities and abusing the sheep. The landowner’s journey represented the time until Christ’s return at the end times. This was a period of stewardship, and a reckoning would come.
At harvest time (literally, “the fruit season”), the tenants were expected to send a portion of the harvest to the landowner as rent payment. This part of the parable represented the accountability of Israel’s leaders before God, not only at the end of time but throughout their period of responsibility.
The landowner sent his servants (apparently three of them) as representatives to collect his portion of the harvest, the land and all it produced were his, and he had every right to collect. God also has the right to call his stewards to account at any time—to determine whether they have fulfilled their covenant commitment.
But the tenants failed to fulfill their agreement and refused to pay the rent. They mistreated the master’s representatives; this was the same as mistreating the master himself. The servants represented God’s prophets sent to Israel, whose job was to call Israel (especially its leaders) to account for their disobedience. The beating, killing, and stoning of the three messengers represented Israel’s rejection of God’s messengers (and God himself) over the centuries. One of the most recent examples of this rejection was their treatment of John the Baptizer (Matthew 17:12-13).
The landowner persisted, sending an even larger group of servants, but with the same results. The tenants persisted in their rebellion, in spite of the landowner’s repeated opportunities for them to respond as they should. God had provided multiple opportunities through many representatives to Israel, but Israel’s leaders continued in rebellion.
Then the landowner sent his closest and best representative, his son. The mistreatment of his servants had been a slap in the face, which deserved punishment. But this final gesture by the landowner was a measure of the landowner’s patience and grace toward the tenants. The thought that they might mistreat his own son was inconceivable.
But the tenants were so conceited that they fooled themselves into believing they could obtain the son’s inheritance by killing him. Their mistreatment of the son was emphasized by the detail with which it is described (took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him).
The gravity of mistreating God’s Son, his ultimate messenger, heightened the foolishness and evil of the Jewish leaders. Jesus was deserving of highest respect, but the Jewish leaders took the art of self-deception to new heights. They thought they could get away with killing the Messiah to maintain their power and influence.
Implied here was another prediction of Jesus’ sacrificial death. For months Jesus had been telling his disciples about his coming suffering at the hands of Israel’s leaders. This was much closer than they realized, and Jesus was on a course with his mission.
Finally, the landowner himself decided he would go to his tenants. At this point, Jesus invited his critics to finish the story, asking what a landowner under these circumstances would do to those tenants. In their answer, the critics pronounced their own sentence—execution and replacement. Jesus’ opponents were guilty of the worst kind of sin—leading God’s flock astray and abusing them for personal gain and then killing God’s messengers, his prophets, including his Son.
In their place, God would raise up stewards of his kingdom who would reap fruit and bring it to him; namely, his church. In their greed, the hypocrites had thrown away the riches belonging to a faithful steward. They tried to play God and lost.
The leaders’ response included a play on words by the use of wretches and wretched. A literal translation of the passage would be, “The bad ones, he will destroy them badly.” Destroy here is an amplified verb meaning “to destroy utterly.” The Jewish leaders were passing judgment on the tenants in the parable, stating that their evil character deserved severe punishment.
Jesus pointed out to the Jewish leaders that they had just pronounced judgment on themselves. Have you never read in the Scriptures was Jesus’ way of telling the teachers of Israel that they should have known better. Jesus quoted Psalm 118:22-23. Although he changed metaphors, he continued to speak to the same topic—rejection of the Messiah by Israel’s leaders.
Psalm 118:22 makes a surprising statement. The stone that the experts considered unusable ended up as the most important stone in the whole building plan: The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The phrase “the Lord had done this” emphasized the foolishness of the Jewish leaders. They had changed the blueprint that had been drawn up by the perfect, almighty architect. The way that God would carry out his plan would be awesome and surprising. God would allow observers to believe, for a time, that Jesus was successfully rejected by the Jewish leaders. But then the greatest of all reversals—the Resurrection and the founding of the church, the body of Christ—would provide the grounds for even greater amazement.
Jesus then confirmed the hypocrites’ own unwitting self-condemnation (21:41). The kingdom would be taken from them and given to faithful stewards. In this statement, with the mention of fruit, Jesus returned briefly to the agricultural word picture, before turning again to the picture of a stone in 21:44.
These leaders would forfeit the kingdom, and the stewardship would be handed over to a people (literally, “a nation”) who will produce its fruit. The Jewish leaders were attempting to keep what was not theirs (power and control of the people, self-elevation, ill-gained wealth) instead of leading Israel according to the will of its master. Therefore, the kingdom would be taken away from them. Soon the church would take over operations (as announced in Matthew16:18-19; 18:18-20), giving glory and service to God and producing spiritual fruit for him. Two thousand years of church history have proven that even the church does not do this perfectly. But the new covenant, sealed by Jesus’ blood, allows God to work through the imperfect church to accomplish his perfect plan. His Spirit now lives in believers, planting his law directly in their hearts and unifying them in a way that was impossible before.
The stewardship would reside in the hands of the church. But God was not finished with Israel. He grafted the church into Israel’s roots, but he will see to it that his covenant with Israel and his calling of the nation will be fully realized upon a day yet future (following Daniel’s seventieth week and its tribulation). This is the Holy Spirit’s argument in Romans 9-11.
Jesus then returned to the “stone” imagery of 21:42, using language from Isaiah 8:14-15. He had described himself as a potential “stumbling block” for those who did not believe in him. Such a skeptic who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And if the skeptic’s resistance is so deeply entrenched that God takes the initiative in bringing judgment and the stone falls on him, the judgment will be horrendous.
The chief priests and Pharisees were the same as “the chief priests and the elders of the people” who had challenged Jesus’ authority in 21:23. Jesus had completed his second of three blows against their credibility and authority. Not only had the leaders neglected their mission, but they had also rejected God, killing his prophets and even God’s own Son.
The hypocrites could take a hint. They knew Jesus was accusing them of mismanaging God’s kingdom and that he was pronouncing judgment on them. They should have repented in the face of the truth, but instead they decided to remove the truth and continue in their denial. They were still thinking that if they could kill Jesus, they would win. They were tragically mistaken. How blind is the insanity of unbelief, especially when marked by hatred and bitterness.
They wanted to arrest Jesus, but the local farm hands were smarter than the “enlightened” Jewish leaders. The crowds recognized Jesus as the prophet whom he was. Jesus’ popularity prevented the leaders from arresting him at that time because they were afraid of the crowd. Even though the Jewish leaders feared the crowds and decided to wait until after Passover to deal with Jesus, Jesus was still the king. He was the one who insisted that the leaders’ evil work be done during Passover. In this way, the king himself guaranteed the actual fulfillment of the Passover. His death took place on the Passover since he was the true Passover Lamb of God.