Today’s passage: Matthew 21:28–46, Mark 12:12, and Luke 20:9–19
Focus verse: When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. (Matthew 21:45)
Immediately after Jesus counters the religious leaders who challenge his authority, he shares some parables. With a crowd already gathered, it provides him with a perfect time to teach.
Matthew records three of these stories. We call them the parable of the two sons, the parable of the tenants, and the parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 21:28–22:14). Mark and Luke focus on the middle one of the three, the parable of the tenants.
In this parable, Jesus tells of a wealthy man who plants a vineyard and prepares it for use. He rents it to farmers and moves away. At harvest time, he sends his representatives to collect his share of the crop from the tenants.
The farmers mistreat the envoys. They beat one, kill a second, and stone a third. The landowner sends even more servants, but they receive the same ill treatment. At last, he sends his son, expecting the tenants to respect him. They don’t.
The evil farmers reason that if they kill the heir, they can seize his inheritance. So they murder him.
Jesus asks the crowd, “What will the landowner do?”
“He’ll bring those bad tenants to justice,” the people say, “and rent the vineyard to others, who will pay him what they owe.”
Jesus ties the parable into Scripture, which says that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and the people marveled that God did this (Psalm 118:22–23).
How do the parable and the psalm connect?
The landowner’s son represents Jesus, whom most of the people will reject and kill. Yet God has made him a cornerstone.
Though we typically think of a cornerstone as a commemorative part of a building, historically it serves a functional purpose.
It lies at the corner of two intersecting walls, establishing the basis for the two sides of the building. Without a properly set cornerstone, the structural integrity of the building is in doubt, leaving it unstable.
Though rejected by the tenants, God made Jesus the cornerstone of our faith.
The religious leaders and Pharisees realize Jesus’s parable is about them. They know they’re the evil tenants in his story. And if they take time to consider his teaching more fully, they’ll see it as a prediction that they’ll also kill him.
Instead, they’re offended and look for a way to arrest him without causing a riot.
Questions:
When have Jesus’s words offended us?
Have we made Jesus the cornerstone of our lives?
Prayer: Jesus, when the Bible tells us what we don’t want to hear, may we not take offense and instead respond as good tenants.
Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront a status quo faith and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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