WWUTT 2473 The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Luke 20:9-18)

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Jesus is referred to in scripture as the chief cornerstone. You are either going to be built on the rock that is

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Christ or you're going to be crushed under that rock when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ. For he is before all things and in him, all things hold together.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel of Luke, we're in chapter 20, where Jesus is teaching in the temple.

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And here he tells the parable of the wicked tenants. I'm going to read verses nine to 19.

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Here, the word of the Lord. And Jesus began to tell the people this parable.

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A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while.

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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.

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And he sent another servant, but they also beat and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty handed.

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And he sent yet a third, this one they also wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, what shall

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I do? I will send my beloved son, perhaps they will respect him. 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.

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And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?

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He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. When they heard this, they said, surely not.

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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.

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

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The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

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And the scribes and the chief priests and the Pharisees were exactly right. He did tell this parable against them, but there's also a promise that is in this parable.

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To whom was the vineyard given? Because not only did the servants have the vineyard taken away from them, but the vineyard was passed on to others.

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Who are the others that received it? There's also another

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Old Testament reference in this parable that connects with everything that we've been reading this week, starting with the triumphal entry.

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So we'll consider that too as we go through this text. Starting again in verse nine, Jesus began to tell the people this parable.

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A man planted a vineyard and led it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while.

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Okay, once again, as I've said before about parables, there's always one meaning to the parable. So we gotta be careful not to piece apart the parable and try to find all the different symbolism.

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And it's almost like we dissect it and then reassemble it into our own thing. Be careful about doing that with a parable.

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So what the Pharisees perceived about this parable is correct. Jesus was talking about them, but as mentioned, there's also a promise that is contained within this parable as well.

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Now, the man that planted a vineyard and then went away, that's not Jesus that's being referred to there.

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So remember when we read last week the parable of the 10 minas, Jesus told that parable to his disciples because they had supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

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So Jesus starts that parable saying, a nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return.

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So you have another rich guy who has gone away expecting to return.

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Now we know that's the picture of Christ, but what we're seeing here in this parable with a rich man who plants a vineyard and he lends it out to tenants and then goes into a long country, that's not referring to Jesus.

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That would actually be God the Father, of course, because later on in the parable, he says, I will send my son and they will surely accept him.

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So this could be a picture of God who has sent promises to this people, like the various covenants that we see that are made with Israel throughout the

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Old Testament. And God means to fulfill those things at a later time. So hence why he goes into another country for a long while.

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It's not like God was taking a vacation here, but this is simply the illustration, or this is what is meant in the illustration that Jesus is using, that God had made promises and he would fulfill them at another time.

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So when the time came, then in verse 10, 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.

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Now, again, this is not even really the picture of, well, now the time had come for Jesus to arrive.

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That's not necessarily what's being hinted at, but simply that the harvest was producing fruit.

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And so the master, the owner of the vineyard means to claim some of that fruit. So he sends servants to those tenants to receive some of the fruit.

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This would be a picture of the prophets when God sent prophets to the people and how did the people respond to the prophets?

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If you've been listening to the Old Testament study that we've been doing on Thursday through Jeremiah, well, you know,

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Jeremiah is one of them. When he would come with the word of the Lord and the people would hate him, they would even beat him, they would throw him in prison, they threatened to kill him.

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This is exactly that picture here with the owner of the vineyard sending servants that the tenants beat and send away empty -handed.

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He sent another servant, but they also beat and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty -handed.

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Verse 12, he sent yet a third, this one also they wounded and cast out. And there's nothing that's meant to be read into the different ways that the servants are treated.

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They're really all treated the same way. Every one of them shows up, every one of them in obedience to the owner of the field, asking for the fruit of the vineyard, the tenants beat them and send them away empty -handed.

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So that's the case with all three. There's three of them to show that no matter what is being done, the tenants are that hard -hearted.

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They are not really servants to the owner of the field. They won't acknowledge to whom this field really belongs.

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And that's the case with the Pharisees, the scribes, everyone else. These men believe that they are entitled to an inheritance simply by virtue of being descendants from Abraham.

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Again, this goes all the way back to Luke 3 with John the Baptist saying that God will raise up from these stones, children of Abraham, he doesn't need you.

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You know what Jesus said to the Jews in John 8? You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

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So if they were really of Abraham, then they would have known who Jesus was, but instead they sought to kill

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Abraham. So they were actually of Satan. No matter what they thought of themselves as descendants of Abraham or what they may have believed they were entitled to, they were gonna get nothing.

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They were going to get destruction. That's what they would receive. So just because a person is a

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Jew, that doesn't mean they are automatically favored by God. There is much benefit to being a

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Jew. As Paul talks about in Romans 3, they are the first to receive the oracles of God. To them belong the promises, the covenants, the patriarchs.

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Paul would even go on about that later on in the book of Romans. So there's benefits to being a Jew, but just because one is a

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Jew doesn't mean that someone is automatically saved. This is a belief that continues even to this very day.

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There are many, many people, especially within Christianity, those of more of a

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Zionist persuasion that are convinced that Jews are automatically going to get heaven.

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After all, as Paul said in Romans 9, all Israel will be saved. So everyone who is a

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Jew is automatically getting into heaven. There was a woman that was in my church, this was a number of years ago, but she was a

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Jew by heritage. And I guess by looking at her, you could just know that. I don't really remember that specifically about her physical features, but there were people that knew looking at her that she was a

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Jew, that she was a descendant of Jews. Though she was a Christian, she wasn't an Orthodox Jew or anything like that, not even a

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Messianic Jew. But she was in the grocery store one time, and there was a woman who walked up behind her and pricked the back of her arm with a needle.

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And she turned around real fast and saw the woman standing there with a needle. And she was smiling delightfully and saying that she had gotten the blood of a

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Jew. And so therefore carrying this blood around, she was going to be blessed by God. Well, the woman ran off before this member of my congregation had an opportunity to do anything.

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There are people that are that superstitious about Jews. They're like good luck charms.

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If I bless a Jew, then God is going to bless me. That's the way they feel about it. But if a person, even though they be a

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Jew, does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they're as hell bound as any unbeliever. A person being a

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Jew doesn't automatically make them favored by God. There are teachers out there though that will say this kind of stuff, that the

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Jews are all going to heaven. John Hagee is one of them. There's a video that you can find of him saying that when

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Jesus came to die, he wasn't even coming for the Jews to die for the Jews. So therefore they did not reject a gift that was never offered to them.

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And they're still looking for their Messiah. And they still are going to receive all the promises that God had given to the

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Jews. But this is a kind of heresy. There's a universalism about Jews.

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As if everyone who is a Jew is automatically going to be saved. That's certainly the way the

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Jews thought in Jesus' time. We are already the recipients of the promises that God had given to our fathers.

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And so there's no way, no way that God would ever cut us out of this. We know what the scriptures say.

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I mean, as long as there is day, as long as there is night, I will never cut off this covenant as God said to the

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Jews. So he's never going to cut us out of that. And so when Jesus makes mention of this later on in verse 16, he's going to take away the vineyard and give it to others.

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What's their response at the end of that verse? Surely not. No way.

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God would never ever go against his covenants. But of course the covenants are always conditional.

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If you do this, then I'll keep my covenant till the end of time. But if you don't do this,

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I will take the land away from you. That's said in Deuteronomy. I will drive you back to Egypt in ships, which

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I said that I would never do. That's what God says to the children of Israel.

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If they do not keep his statutes and obey his rules, if they worship other gods, then he was indeed going to cut them off.

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That was all built into the covenants that were made with them. And so here you've got the, you've got the tenants that are kicking out all the servants that come.

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And the owner of the vineyard said, what shall I do? Verse 13 now. I will send my beloved son.

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Perhaps they will respect him. Now I've heard some people take this parable and they'll take that line in particular and they will interpret it as God expecting, the father expecting that the son would be received.

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Almost kind of like an open theist view. As if the father didn't really know how this was going to play out.

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So they'll take this line as the father thought, maybe they'll receive my son, but then they reject the son.

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As if the father didn't know that that was going to happen. Or here's another way that I have,

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I've heard this interpreted. That line has been interpreted this way. That the father was just fed up with all of this and he was just going to kill the entire human race.

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But the son steps forward and says, hey dad, let me take a shot at it.

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And so the father says, okay, I've talked before about the worst sermon

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I have ever heard in my life. In person, I should qualify that.

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It's the worst sermon that I've ever heard in person. I've talked about it on this podcast before. In fact, the night

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I heard it, I went back to my hotel room and recorded a podcast episode.

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I can't even remember where that is now. I was still living in Kansas at the time. I'd have to go back and try to figure out which number that was.

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But the person who delivered this awful, awful sermon happened to be the president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention in the state of Kansas at the time. And I'm listening to this dreadful, dreadful presentation of the gospel.

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And the ironic thing about this is that the speaker's whole appeal, this pastor's whole appeal in the sermon that he was giving was that we need to stop complicating the gospel and we need to just simply lay it out for people.

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And then the way he laid it out was just so bad. He also had this awful visual aid that just made the sermon all the worse.

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So here he is saying, no more gimmicks, no more anything else. We just need to give them raw gospel.

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And yet he's got this board, he has this big wooden plank of some kind down on the floor and he's holding this big pipe.

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And as he's sharing the gospel, he keeps this pipe down on this board.

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So it sounds like it has the sound of a metal hammer striking wood.

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And the point being like where he was going with this, which I knew where he was going with this when he started doing it, but eventually you get to the point of the gospel of the nails being driven into Jesus' hand.

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And so this thing that he's been doing with this pole and this board this entire time is supposed to be imitating the sound of a hammer driving nails into Jesus as he's being nailed to the cross.

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I saw that coming from a mile away. I knew why he was doing this, but he kept banging that pole on the block the whole time he's doing this awful presentation of the gospel.

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It just made it more, it just made it worse. It offended the senses in every way.

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But I remember a line that he said in that presentation of the gospel where he said,

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Jesus went to the father when the father was going to wipe out everybody. And Jesus said, hey dad, let me take a shot.

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Let me see what I can do. Let me do it. I'll go down and I'll give myself and I'll save them.

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And that is not what this means at all. Again, this comes into that tendency of picking apart a parable and then reassembling it into your own thing.

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And this line, that is not what we are to understand by this line.

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It's not that the father didn't know what was going to happen. Jesus is just speaking in terms that we can understand.

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We're not supposed to read into this some absolute divine insight into the father's mind with the line that comes from the owner of this vineyard, this fictional owner of the vineyard.

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So in verse 14, when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, this is the heir.

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Let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours. Now, of course, the owner of the field sending his son, that's the father sending

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Jesus. It's not supposed to be a perfect connection. By perfect connection, meaning that the line that comes from the owner is not supposed to be transmitted into the mind of the father.

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So when the tenants put to death the son, they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

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So Jesus asks, what then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

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Now, I don't know that the Pharisees are necessarily feeling called out in their plot to want to execute

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Jesus, because then right after this, they go from this to plot even further. How can we get rid of this guy?

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So it's not like they felt exposed here in any way. What really offends them is

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Jesus saying, the vineyard is going to be taken away from you. It's going to be given to someone else. And I kind of wonder if the conversation among the

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Pharisees after this was, look, he's just trying to scare us, trying to keep us from doing what it is that we're about to do.

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He doesn't have any authority to say that the vineyard will be taken from us and given to somebody else.

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We just questioned his authority. Remember, that was the passage we looked at yesterday.

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Where does this authority come from that you have? So they don't think he really has the authority to fulfill this.

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But Jesus goes on to point to the scriptures, the authority of God's word. Verse 17, he looked directly at them and said, what then is this that is written?

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The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Now that is from Psalm 118.

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Let me start reading in verse 19. Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the

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Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

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The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the

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Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the

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Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we pray, oh

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Lord. Oh Lord, we pray, give us success. Listen to this next verse.

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Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the

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Lord. The Lord is God and he has made his light to shine upon us. Where have we heard that?

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That was what the people were singing when Jesus came into Jerusalem in the triumphal entry.

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They were singing lines from Psalm 118. Jesus quotes that same

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Psalm to the Pharisees when he says the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

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Oh, that had to just make them seethe. You're saying that all of that was prophetically stated in Psalm 118 is about you?

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That's what the people were singing about you? Now here is Jesus saying that Psalm 118 verse 22 is about him?

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They had to be infuriated by that. So Jesus goes on to say in verse 18, everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces.

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And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. You are either going to be built on the rock of Christ or the rock of Christ is going to crush you.

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As also said in 1 Peter chapter two, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

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They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Now going back up to verse 16, he will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

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Who are the others that God has given the vineyard to the church?

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And not that anyone who was a descendant from Abraham will never have that vineyard.

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No, it's Jew and Gentile reconciled together in Christ Jesus, the cultivated olive tree that we see in Romans chapter 11.

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In Christ Jesus, Jew and Gentile are forgiven their sins and reconciled to God.

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We are one people of God. We are not two. And this is the expansion of God's people.

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There are even more people in God's kingdom now than there ever was in history, than there ever was with the nation of Israel.

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There are more people of God in his kingdom now, Jew and Gentile.

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And that's only through Jesus Christ. We are the recipients of the vineyard. Ephesians 3 .6,

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this mystery is that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

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And friends, anyone else that we bring into a knowledge of Jesus Christ who puts their faith and trust in Jesus, they too will be made fellow heirs of the kingdom of God.

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So let us go out with the gospel that the kingdom may grow and we'll make heaven crowded.

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Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read here today. And I pray that it would indeed be an assurance to us of the promises that have been given to us in Christ Jesus.

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But we should not get big and mighty on ourselves. We should remember that we've been called to holiness.

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And so therefore let us pursue holiness, living in those ways that Jesus has commanded us to live.

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Lest we find ourselves self -deceived and have what we thought were the promises given to us taken away from us and given to somebody else.

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Keep us secure in Christ Jesus. If we are truly in Christ, built on the rock that is Christ, we will endure to the end.

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Keep us to the end, Lord Jesus. In his name we pray, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

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Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an