Click here for the Matthew 21:33-39 PODCAST
33 Now listen to another story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. 34 At the time of the grape harvest, he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. 35 But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 36 So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same. 37 Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, "Surely they will respect my son." 38 But when the tenant farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, "Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let’s kill him and get the estate for ourselves!" 39 So they grabbed him, dragged him out of the vineyard, and murdered him. ~ Matthew 21:33-39
Today, we return to our study of Matthew 21 where the Lord Jesus is engaged in a conversation with the religious leaders of Israel in Jerusalem. As we come back to the narrative of the Lord Jesus' last week on earth, it is still Wednesday. In just two days, Friday, He will be crucified. It is the Passover week and the reason for which the Lord Jesus came to this earth in the first place. He came to lay down His life for the sins of mankind as the Passover Lamb. Over and over throughout the Old Testament God told us that His Son would come to this earth to remedy our sin problem. Through the teachings of the Passover He foretold us that His Son would come as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
In our text today, the Lord Jesus tells a story of a man who owned a vineyard and entered into a contract with some tenant farmers to run his vineyard. After a while, the man who had moved away sent three different individuals to the tenant farmers to collect his portion of the fruit. In response the tenant farmers treated his servants badly, beating one and killing the others. Then he sent his son who the tenant farmers murdered. Yet again, the Lord Jesus told a story explaining why He came to this earth. We had all been deceived by the evil one and without knowing it, we were controlled by Him. We were born seeing life through his worldview. The Lord Jesus came to pull the blinders off our eyes so that we could see the deceptive tactics of the enemy. Even with those who hated Him, the Lord Jesus used stories to help them to grasp the concepts that He came to reveal. Illustrations, especially real life illustrations, are useful at bridging the gap between the theoretical and the practical.
The practice in biblical days for imparting knowledge was largely done through oral means. The teacher would speak and his audience would listen. In fact, they listened more than they read. Even though most people read back then, it was an oral culture. Since the people learned most by listening, the rabbis became adept at telling stories. This is mainly why the Lord Jesus employed this dynamic form of teaching called story-telling. The word "parable" means "to cast alongside of." The Lord Jesus cast alongside His teaching a story that illustrated His message. When He did this, the people were aided to understand the message better. In fact, illustrations bridge the gap between the message and the application of that message.
Interestingly, although we are told the Lord Jesus used stories to teach the people, He was answering the question that the religious leaders had just asked previously. Whereas it looked like the Lord Jesus had shut down the truth to the religious leaders, He continued to subtly offer them truth, even though He knew that the religious leaders were constructing a plan to have Him crucified.
The Lord Jesus used this story to illustrate Himself as the owner and the heir of the vineyard. He was the Son sent by the Father. The vineyard illustrated the nation of Israel, and, the landowner represented God. And, the servants were the prophets. Through all of the teaching of the Lord Jesus, He made it abundantly clear that the religious leaders "religion" was a false approach to life. And, their authority was selfish rather than selfless which always presented them with a losing proposition. The Lord Jesus identified the religious leaders as guilty for rejecting the prophets who came from God. And, in the end of the story He was saying that the religious leaders would kill Him.
In the Law of Moses, it was required that the Jews carefully examine the Passover lambs from the tenth day to the fourteenth day to make sure the lambs had no blemishes. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, was watched and tested by His enemies during that final week, and yet, in spite of what they saw and learned, they rejected Him. In response, the Jewish religious leaders responded in a senseless way. Instead of nustling up to God with a heart full of gratitude, the Jews rejected their Savior.
God displayed great patience with Israel. He sent them one messenger after another, yet they refused to allow their hearts to be vulnerable with Him. Finally, when He sent His Son, they killed Him. In telling this story, the Lord Jesus gave His own death announcement. What an act of grace! The lengths God has gone to rescue us and to earn our trust. The gospel only sounds good to those who are convinced that they need a savior. Those who think they’re good, grace is frustrating. For people who know they’re not, grace is exhilarating. The religious leaders of Israel had full knowledge of who the Son represented, yet, they chose to have Him murdered.
I sometimes run into people who try to establish God is not fair. This normally happens when we get to talking about why people go to Hell. They seem to think God sends people to Hell, not realizing they made that choice for themselves. There are no "good" people. In fact, God is the only one who is good. Because God is good, He will see to it that justice is done on the Day of Judgment. If He gave each of us justice right now, every one of us would end up in Hell. God is the standard of righteousness, and all of us have fallen short of that standard, so there really aren't "good" people that "bad" things happen to.
It is God's nature to love infinitely. Since this is so, He demonstrated His own love for us "while we were still sinners." In spite of our evil, wicked nature, God still loves us. He loved us enough to die on our behalf in order to take the penalty for our sins. Instead of believing God is not good, we do well to stop believing the lies of the devil and trust that God loves us with an infinite love. God's love for us is like the ocean which we can see its beginning but we cannot see its end.
