Knowing The Word in Luke 20:9-18

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants

20:9 And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. 10 When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. 12 And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. 13 Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ 14 But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ 15 And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Surely not!” 17 But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

Comments

Jesus told this allegorical parable in Jerusalem to expose plainly his relationship with the Jewish leaders. Israel was called the vineyard of the Lord in Isaiah. This time in the vineyard, however, it was not a prophet—a messenger from God—who was speaking but the son of the landlord, the Son of God himself in their midst in the temple, making God’s last appeal to the leaders.

The vineyard tenants were farmers. The farmers behaved with outrageous and unreasonable enmity, dishonesty, and selfishness. They treated each servant worse than the previous. The repeated sending of representatives illustrated God’s patience and compassion with a stiff-necked people. God loved beyond measure even though he had the right to act severely toward them. In New Testament times, tenants could claim ownership of an absentee landlord. If they killed the son, and the (absentee) father was already dead, then the vineyard was theirs.

This parable exposed the fact that Jesus knew exactly what awaited him: death by the hands of the Jewish leaders. The body was buried outside the vineyard so that the land would not be corrupted with a corpse, which alluded to the crucifixion and burial of Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem. Those who received the vineyard were the Gentiles, even though Jesus’ enemies thought it unthinkable the vineyard would be given to those outside of the Jewish race. Jesus pointed them to prophetic scriptures in Psalm 118:22 (the rejected stone) and Isaiah 8:14-15 (the crushing stone). They rejected Jesus, but God would not!

Application

When people reject Jesus, it is they who will ultimately suffer, not he. There is a future judgment of final destruction that Jesus communicated derived from Isaiah 8:14-15. When we see the totality of Jesus’ message, it is interwoven with Old Testament scriptures. That is just one of the reasons we need to know the Old Testament. Doing so helps us to understand the message of Jesus better.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you are a precious stone. You are everything. You are my all in all. Help me today to keep this in the forefront of my mind.