Chapter 28 - Judgment on Christ’s Rejecters (21:33-46)

28 Judgment on Christ’s Rejecters (21:33-46)

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers, and went on a journey. And when the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. And the vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.^, And they took him, and threw him out the vineyard, and killed him. Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?” They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them. And when they sought to seize Him, they feared the multitudes, because they held Him to be a prophet. (21:33-46)

Jesus continued to respond to hostile retaliation by the hypocritical, threatened chief priests and elders, who had demanded that He tell them by what authority He carried on His ministry, and especially by what authority He had driven the merchants and moneychangers out of the Temple. After they had refused to say whether John the Baptist’s ministry was from God or men, Jesus indicted them by means of the parable of the two sons and explained it by declaring that tax-gatherers and harlots would enter the kingdom before those religionists. He then threatened them further with another parable, the second in a trilogy of judgment parables (see also 22:1-14), which even more graphically illustrated their willful rejection of God.

THE ILLUSTRATION

As always in parabolic teaching, Jesus told a simple and understandable story, often including a shocking element, to explain a profound truth that was unknown or generally misunderstood. The situation involved in the parable of the landowner who planted a vineyard was commonplace in that agrarian society and was easy for His hearers to identify with. In New Testament times, the hillsides of Palestine were covered with grape vineyards, which were a mainstay of the economy. It was not unusual for a wealthy man to buy a piece of land and develop it for a vineyard. He would first put a wall of stone or a hedge of briars around it to protect it from wild animals and thieves. He would then make a wine press, sometimes having to cut it out of bedrock. In the wide, shallow, upper basin, the grapes would be squeezed, and the juice would run down through a trough into a lower basin. From there the grape juice would be poured into wineskins or clay jars for storage. Often the owner would build a tower, which would be used as a lookout post against marauders, as shelter for the workers, and as a storage place for seed and implements.

Those details emphasized the owner’s great care in developing the vineyard. And when everything was in order, he rented it out to vine-growers he thought were reliable caretakers, making an agreement with them to pay a certain percentage of the proceeds to him as rent. The rest would belong to them, as payment for their work in cultivating the vineyard. Satisfied that his business venture was in good hands, the owner went on a journey.

Some months later, when the harvest time approached, the owner sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his agreed-upon percentage of produce. But instead of paying what they owed the owner, the vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. As he did with the story of the fig tree (21:18-21; cf. Mark 11:12-14, 20-21), Matthew, under Holy Spirit inspiration, here condensed several episodes into one. From Mark’s account we learn that Jesus said the first three slaves came separately, one after another (Mark 12:2-5). The wicked growers beat, or scourged, the first slave, leaving him bruised and bloody. The second slave they killed outright and then stoned a third. If the stoning referred to the kind used in Jewish executions, that slave was probably killed as well. After that, the owner sent another group of slaves larger than the first, and they did the same thing to them, “beating some and killing others” (Mark 12:5).

The tenant growers had a marvelous opportunity to develop a good living. They had an excellent vineyard to cultivate and were given the complete trust of the owner to operate it. But they were not content with merely a good living; they wanted the whole harvest for themselves and were merciless in achieving that end.

After the brutal rejection of his servants, the owner sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” To the contrary, however, that act simply drove the growers to greater greed and more heinous treachery. When the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.” And they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Originally, they had plotted simply to keep all the profits from the vineyard; now they planned to expropriate the entire vineyard.

The murder of the son was coldly premeditated. The growers did not mistake him for another slave but knew exactly who he was. It was for the very reason that he was the son that they planned his murder in order to seize his inheritance.

By the end of this startling and dramatic parable, the interest of the Jewish leaders and the many bystanders was thoroughly piqued. The story generated great pity for the betrayed, grieving owner and resentful rage at the heartless, brutal growers.

In fact, the patience of the owner and the brutality of the growers are so absolutely astounding, so unrealistic and abnormal, that some critics say Jesus overdrew the story or that the gospel writers exaggerated His original version. But those extremes are essential to the parable’s point. It was the very uncommonness of the owner’s patience and of the growers’ wickedness that Jesus’ wanted His hearers to notice.

THE CONCLUSION

Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?” They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” (21:40-41)

In typical rabbinical fashion, Jesus led His hearers to finish the story themselves, asking, “What will he do to those vine-growers?” The chief priests and elders readily replied with moral indignation, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” They no doubt were highly pleased with this unusual opportunity to parade their self-righteousness before Jesus. They rightly assessed the proper ending of the parable, that the irate owner would first severely punish the wicked growers and then replace them with others who were reliable. They were completely unaware that, as they fed their pride on Jesus’ baited question, they sprang the trap of their own condemnation.

THE EXPLANATION

Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? (21:42)

At first glance, this comment seems irrelevant to the parable. But the Lord was using a familiar passage from the Old Testament to reinforce the parable’s point, and in doing so He changed metaphors. In a sarcastic query He asked the self-appointed authorities on the Old Testament, “Did you never read in the Scriptures?” and then cited the well-known words of Psalm 118:22.

Jesus quoted the same psalm from which were taken the acclamations of the multitude in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when He was hailed by the messianic title, Son of David (Matt. 21:9). And it was, in fact, for His accepting that messianic praise that Jesus was rebuked by the Pharisees (Luke 19:39). Now, from the same section of the psalm, Jesus reminded the religious leaders of the stone which the builders rejected that became the chief cornerstone.

A cornerstone was the most basic and essential part of a building, from which the proper placement and alignment of every other part was determined. If the cornerstone was imperfectly cut or placed, the symmetry and stability of the entire building would be adversely affected. Sometimes the builders rejected a number of stones before the right one was selected. In this account, one such rejected stone eventually became the chief corner stone.

For many centuries, Israel had been the stone which the empire builders of the world had rejected as insignificant and despised, fit only for exploiting and then discarding. But in the Lord’s divine plan, Israel was chosen to be the chief corner stone in the redemptive history of the world, the nation through which salvation would come.

But the figure has an even greater significance than that. Peter declared in Jerusalem before the religious rulers shortly after Pentecost, “Let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead . . . He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the very corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10-12). The greater stone than Israel is Jesus Christ, and the builders who rejected Him were the Jewish leaders, representing all Israel, and in a fuller sense the entire unbelieving world. The stone . . . rejected was the crucified Christ, and the restored chief corner stone is the resurrected Christ.

Jesus thereby tied the messianic psalm to the parable in order to reinforce His point. The rejected Son and the rejected stone both refer to Christ. The verse from Psalm 118 goes beyond the parable to allude also to the resurrection of the Son, something the parable could not cover and still maintain its simple naturalness.

Peter reiterated the same truth in his first letter: “Behold I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, and he who believes in Him shall not be disappointed. This precious value, then, is for you who believe. But for those who disbelieve, ‘the stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone,’ and, ‘a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense’; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed” (1 Pet. 2:6-8). Paul declared to the Ephesian believers, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone” (Eph. 2:19-20).

When they told Jesus that the wretched vine-growers would be brought to a wretched end (v. 41), the Temple rulers judged themselves in the same way David had judged himself before Nathan. After hearing the prophet’s touching parable about the rich man who took the poor man’s only pet lamb to feed a visiting traveler, “David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. And he must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.’ Nathan then said to David, ‘You are the man!’” (2 Sam. 12:5-7).

Jesus, in effect, had said to the chief priests and elders, “You are the men! You are the wretched vine-growers who, by your own declaration, deserve a wretched end for beating and killing the vineyard owner’s servants and then killing his son. Don’t you realize that the owner is God, the vineyard is His kingdom, the servants were His prophets, and I am His Son? You have just judged yourselves guilty of condemning to death not only the prophets but even God’s own Son.”

With regard to killing the prophets, later the same day Jesus said to the unbelieving Jewish leaders, in particular the scribes and Pharisees, “You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Consequently you bear witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers” (Matt. 23:29-31).

God had prepared a place of great beauty and blessing and then graciously given stewardship of it to His people Israel. It was a place of promise, hope, deliverance, salvation, and security. But Israel misappropriated all those blessings for herself, robbing God of the gratitude, glory, and honor due Him. She persecuted the prophets He patiently and lovingly sent to call her to repentance and forgiveness. Jewish tradition held that Isaiah had been sawed in two with a wooden saw (cf. Heb. 11:37). From Scripture we know that Jeremiah was thrown into a pit of slime, and tradition held that he was eventually stoned to death. Ezekiel was rejected, Elijah and Amos had to run for their lives, Micah was smashed in the face by those who refused to hear his message (1 Kings 22:24), and Zechariah was actually murdered in God’s own Temple (2 Chron. 24:20-22; cf. Matt. 23:35). Old Testament history bore witness to their murderous hearts, whose wickedness would culminate in killing the Son of God.

Through this parable and its explanation Jesus presented one of His clearest claims to divinity. The parable even alludes to the detail of His being crucified outside the city of Jerusalem (cf. Heb. 13:12), just as the vineyard owner’s son was cast out of the vineyard before being murdered.

Jesus also made it clear that the Jewish leaders who rejected Him were without excuse, that, like the evil vine-growers, they knew He was God’s Son but refused to accept and honor Him as such. They wanted Him dead not because He was evil and ungodly but because He threatened their evil and ungodly control of the Temple and of the entire Jewish religious system.

Throughout history, and still today, many people refuse to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord not because of lack of evidence but because they refuse to believe the evidence. They do not believe simply because they do not want to believe.

THE APPLICATION

Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” (21:43-44)

With those straightforward, unambiguous words, Jesus removed whatever uncertainty may have remained in the minds of the chief priests and elders about what He was saying to them. In the first half of verse 43 and in verse 44, the Lord reiterated the judgment on unbelieving Israel and her ungodly leaders; in the second half of verse 43 He reiterated their replacement by believing Gentiles.

“Therefore I say to you,” the Lord declared, no doubt looking intently into the eyes of His adversaries, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you.” In their stead the kingdom would be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.

When he first began preaching the kingdom, John the Baptist demanded that the Pharisees and Sadducees who wanted to be baptized first “bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:8). The fruit of the kingdom is the demonstrated righteousness produced out of a life turned from sin (see Phil 1:11; Col. 1:10). The unbelieving religious leaders would not turn from their sin and repent, and therefore they could not produce kingdom fruit (genuinely righteous behavior). They were spiritually barren, and because of that willful barrenness they were cursed, like the fig tree that had leaves but no figs (21:18-19).

By grace through God’s unconditional promise, Israel will one day return to God and bear fruit for His kingdom. “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew,” Paul assured his fellow Jews. And when “the fulness of the Gentiles has come, . . . all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob’” (Rom. 11:2, 25-26).

But in the meanwhile God has chosen another people to be His own witness. He had long ago declared “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ and her who was not beloved, ‘Beloved.’ And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called sons of the living God” (Rom. 9:25-26).

Ethnos (nation) has the basic meaning of “people” and seems best translated that way in this verse, as in Acts 8:9. The nation, or people, who produce the fruit of the kingdom is the church, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9). As the only citizens of God’s kingdom, only believers are equipped by the Holy Spirit to bear kingdom fruit. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jesus said; “he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

And he who falls on this rejected stone, that is, Jesus Himself, will be broken to pieces. The Jewish leaders who, as it were, fell on Jesus and put Him to death would themselves be broken to pieces. And on whomever it, Jesus the stone, falls, it will scatter him like dust. For those who will not have Jesus as Deliverer, He becomes Destroyer. Just as the Father has given all salvation to the Son (John 14:6), He has also “given all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22).

“If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed,” Paul declared (1 Cor. 16:22). To put that truth in the language of this text, let such a person be broken to pieces, crushed into powder and scattered like dust, just as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself had warned. God’s enemies are destined to be pulverized into nothingness. To try to destroy Christ is to assure one’s own destruction. Through Daniel the Lord predicted Christ’s ultimate coming in judgment against the unbelieving peoples and nations of the world, represented by the magnificent and seemingly invulnerable statue of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay. As the “stone . . . cut out without hands,” Jesus will one day strike the statue of unbelieving mankind, and “then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold [will be] crushed all at the same time, and [become] like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind [will carry] them away so that not a trace of them [will be] found” (Dan. 2:32-35).

THE REACTION

And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them. And when they sought to seize Him, they feared the multitudes, because they held Him to be a prophet. (21:45-46)

There was no mistaking that these wicked religious leaders, typified by the chief priests and Pharisees, were the objects of Jesus’ denunciation and condemnation. Beyond any doubt, they understood that He was speaking about them. They knew they were the son who falsely told his father he would work in the field but then did not go and that they were the wretched vine-growers who despised the vineyard owner and beat and killed his servants and eventually killed his son. They knew they were the builders who had rejected the stone that would become the chief corner stone and that, because of that rejection they themselves would be rejected by God and forbidden entrance into His kingdom.

But as always, in spite of what they understood, the Jewish leaders took nothing Jesus said to heart. They heard but refused to heed. They knew he spoke of their ungodliness and their condemnation, but they did not take even a moment to consider whether His charge against them was true. They would not be convinced, and hence could not be convicted. They would not repent, and therefore could not be forgiven. They knew the gracious truth about Jesus but would not follow Him, and they knew the damning truth about their own sin but would not turn from it.

Their only thoughts were of self-justification and revenge, so their reaction was to seize Jesus and put Him to death, just as they had been plotting since the beginning of His ministry. The hindrance to that happening was that they feared the multitude, because they held Jesus to be a prophet. The leaders had contempt for God but no fear of Him. They also had contempt for the multitude but did fear what they might do. They were not God-pleasers but men-pleasers. Consequently, they held off arresting Jesus until they were convinced they could turn the people against Him, which a few days later they succeeded in doing. Finally disillusioned with the Messiah who would not be their kind of savior and with the King who would not be their kind of lord, the multitude gave the rulers no more cause to fear them. When given the choice of releasing Jesus or the insurrectionist Barabbas, they chose Barabbas. And when Pilate asked what he should “do with Jesus who is called Christ,” they cried, “Let Him be crucified!” (Matt. 27:21-22).

This amazing passage portrays God’s gracious provision for men, His patience with their unbelief and rejection, and His love in sending even His only Son for their redemption. But it also displays His righteous judgment that will be executed when His divine patience has run its course.

The passage also portrays Jesus’ deity as the Son of God, His obedience to His Father’s will, His willingness to come to earth and die for man’s redemption, and His resurrection. But it also displays His coming one day as the instrument of divine judgment, to destroy and break in pieces those who have rejected Him.

And the passage portrays sinful mankind, its great blessings and privileges from God, its opportunity to receive truth from His prophets and eternal life from the Son. It portrays their responsibility and their accountability before a loving but just God, before whom they will be either redeemed because of faith or condemned because of unbelief.