THE REJECTED SON

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“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. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.”

“Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.”

“Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.”

“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.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

“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.”

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’?”

“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. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew He was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest Him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that He was a prophet.

Matthew 21:33-46

This ends our reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Today is the third in a series of messages centered on what is known as Passion (or Holy) Week, the final week of Jesus’ earthly life, the week that spans from Palm Sunday to Easter.

First, we looked at Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, an arrival marked with a pomp and circumstance reserved for royalty. Indeed, the King of all kings had arrived in the holy city but when the people were asked who Jesus was, you’ll recall they said He was just a prophet from Nazareth, prompting the question, “Did they really know who He was?”

Then, we moved onto Jesus’ second day in Jerusalem, a day that saw Him cause a stir in the courtyard of the Gentiles after finding illicit money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals crowding a place intended to be a place of prayer. Through His actions, we were shown the absolute necessity of taking a stand for God the Father when the need presents itself.

And that brings us to today and the third message in this series. As we move to the third day Jesus is in Jerusalem, we find Him going back to His ministry roots and teaching those who had gathered to listen. Of course, that teaching took the form of parables and as we see in one of them, Jesus specifically targeted a certain audience while providing a glimpse into what would happen in just a few short days. Look again at this passage as we continue to look at the 21st chapter of Matthew’s Gospel:

“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. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.”

“Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.”

“Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.”

“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.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

“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.”

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’?”

“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. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew He was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest Him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that He was a prophet. Vv.33-46

Before we probe deep into the depths of what Jesus was conveying, we need to first define the parable’s key components to help us in our understanding.

To begin, we must understand what the landowner and his vineyard represent in the parable.

The landowner Jesus is talking about here is none other than God, His Father and ours. Note the vineyard would never exist had it not been for the landowner creating it first. The landowner planted the vineyard and put things in place to make sure the vineyard was protected and able to be productive.

So if the landowner was God, who or what did the vineyard represent?

We go to the Old Testament and the Book of Isaiah for the answer:

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. Isaiah 5:7

The word of God makes things easy for us. The nation of Israel is the vineyard, planted by God the landowner to be productive for Him. His people, the Israelites, are the tenants, the vines through which God intended to bear fruit.

With these points in hand, we now have the base with which to look at the rest of the parable. Let's return to that and answer some questions while adding additional meaning to Jesus' teaching.

What did the landowner do?

The scriptures tell us that he left the vineyard in the hands of his tenants who had an obligation to produce for the landowner. In other words, God’s people, the tenants, were not just living in the land for free. There was a rent to be paid to the landowner, in this case, the fruit that Jesus mentions.

The landowner allowed the tenants to live in the vineyard and, in return, they were to pay him at the appointed time. We read that the landowner did not go directly to the tenants to collect what they owed him but rather sent a succession of messengers to collect what was due with each being mistreated in some way with at least one killed.

So, who did the messengers represent?

They were none other than the prophets that God had sent to His people and if you know anything about the Old Testament, you know the Israelites mistreated God’s prophets over and over and over again as they rejected God’s word and will to follow their own desires. We should note here that God was very patient with the tenants just as He was with His people before Jesus came. He could have sent immediate judgment on them for the way they disregarded Him and those He sent but He didn’t. He gave His people every possible chance to try and correct their ways before taking action and such was the case with the landlord in the parable Jesus was telling.

Unfortunately, there came a juncture when the landowner realized that sending mere messengers was not achieving the desired result and so he came up with another idea. He would send his son because he felt that the tenants would surely respect him, the very flesh and blood of the landowner who was the rightful owner of the land.

Of course, the son in the parable represented none other than Jesus Himself, the very flesh and blood of God the Father.

Sadly, the end outcome wasn’t any different.

For when the tenants saw that the landowner had sent his son, they saw the opportunity to capitalize on the situation thinking that if they killed the landowner’s heir (the son) then they could take his inheritance.

And so that’s what they did, they took the son, “threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”

Hopefully by now you’re starting to get the big picture of what Jesus was getting at. For if the vineyard’s tenants were representative of the Israelites and the landowner’s son was representative of Jesus, then we know Jesus was foretelling what was about to happen to Him while in Jerusalem.

For in three days, Jesus would be put to death, a death carried out by the Romans but instigated by the very chief priests and Pharisees who stood in the company of those listening to Jesus deliver this parable. As the scriptures tell us, the Jewish religious authorities certainly understood Jesus was talking about them but instead of repenting and turning their hearts away from making the parable come true, we read where they immediately began to ponder ways to arrest Jesus with the intent of eliminating Him altogether before week's end.

So what’s our takeaway?

Well, God had sent His Son Jesus to try and get His people to produce the fruit He expected them to provide. But as we know, the Israelites were going to reject Jesus and kill Him just as readily as the tenants killed the landowner’s son in the parable, an act that would bring God’s judgment upon them, a judgment that would soon fall on the Jewish religious leaders that Jesus was teaching.

Ironically, they would be the very “wretches” who would be brought “to a wretched end” and such will be the case for anyone who chooses to reject Jesus today. For a time is coming when the once rejected Son, who was crucified, died, and resurrected from the dead before ascending into Heaven to sit at His Father’s right hand, will return as the victorious Judge of the world. And when He does, He will take those who placed their belief, faith, and trust in Him as Savior to the new Heaven and earth while vanquishing everyone else into the lake of fire where they will be utterly destroyed with the earth and heavens as we know them now (Revelation 20:14-15).

Until then, we are still God’s people, placed in His “creation vineyard” to bear the fruits of the Spirit, make disciples, and lead them to salvation through Christ Jesus, the once rejected Son who now serves as the blessed Savior, the precious Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world (John 1:29, 1 Corinthians 5:7).

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.