When Jesus Speaks Against You

The text this morning comes from Matthew’s Gospel, first book in the New Testament, Matthew chapter 21, looking at verses 33 through 46 as we continue with this series leading up to Easter and these parables that Jesus tells during Holy Week. These conflicts in and around the temple on this one Tuesday, as He teaches and tells various stories and as we’ll see, another parable that is meant to expose the sin and the presumption of the religious leaders. Matthew chapter 21, beginning at verse 33. Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word.

Heavenly Father, we know that often in the Scriptures, we read that the religious people, and it seems that their leaders, in particular, did not have ears to hear what Jesus had to say. They were there, they had the words enter their heads, but they did not really hear. Hearing, they did not understand and perceiving, yet they did not truly perceive and take it to heart. Oh Lord, we do not want to be among those sorts of hearers. So, send your Spirit that you would make our hearts good soil to receive the Word and to hear what Jesus has to say. In His name we pray. Amen.

Here, another parable. “There was a master of the house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit, and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son. Mark’s telling of this story has the word, “His beloved son.” He sent his son to them saying, “They will respect my son,” but when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir. Come let us kill him and have his inheritance,” and they took him, threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” Jeus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes; therefore, I tell you the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits and the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard this, His parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them, and although they were seeking to arrest Him, they feared the crowds because they held Him to be a prophet.”

I wonder if you’ve ever been in a crowd, maybe a classroom, maybe a team, and someone in authority, the coach, the teacher, the boss, someone is speaking to the whole crowd, and you distinctly get the impression that the person is speaking about you. I was, I think, if I remember correctly, I was mostly a good kid in school and so, I usually quite liked it when a teacher went off on a rant about something that the whole classroom was doing wrong and how poorly they had done and they hadn’t studied or they weren’t paying attention, and I usually liked that. Sat there and thought, “You give it to them. This is not about me,” and that’s true, even when you grow up, as an adult, who doesn’t like to hear someone else get yelled at? Sometimes people can get churches to grow on that very simple model. Get a lot of people together and the pastor yells at not any of you, but other people that altogether we know are wrong.

In fact, people sometimes compliment that sort of ministry and say, “Oh, you’re very prophetic because you rebuke other people who aren’t your friends and aren’t listening to you and aren’t right here, but sometimes I have to admit, I was the kid doing dumb things. I remember on a school trip; my friend and I were having a grand old time in the hotel. It was an overnight trip, and everyone was gathering in the buses to go onto the next spot and my friend and I were wonderfully oblivious of any destination or time to be on the said bus, not quite sure what we were doing. We would sometimes have triple jump competitions in the hotel room, maybe we had brought Nerf guns and were having a battle royale somewhere, but we got to the buses a half hour late. This prompted a very stern talking to for the whole bus about commitments, listening to instructions, how the entire group and our purpose would be put at jeopardy if any person here was not listening to instructions, and let me tell you, it felt very different to listen to a speech like that, knowing this is really about me, not about everybody else, but me and my friend. The teacher was angry and probably rightfully so and suddenly I did not like to hear a sermonette where I was the point.

Now, this parable and the one like it we saw last week, Jesus is directing has focus squarely on the Jewish leaders, on the chief priests and the elders or on the chief priests and the Pharisees, the religious leaders among them. And look at verse 45. Verse 45 is tragic and it’s almost comical when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they stroked their chins, they scratched their heads and they perceived, “Is He talking about us, really?” You think. They’re talking about you. Both of these parables with the son in the one who said, “I will go,” and he didn’t, the one who said, “I won’t,” but then he went, and in this about the tenants who drive out the servants and finally kill the son and want the inheritance, at least there’s a little mini lightbulb going off above their heads, though it doesn’t bring them to faith and repentance, but enough of the lightbulb that they look at each other and maybe whisper and say, “Psst, Levi, I think He’s talking to us!”

Now, you should see that in the text. It’s obvious that it’s about the Pharisees and the chief priests, but here’s what I want you to consider. What if this parable was about you. We don’t think of Jesus speaking against us. I mean, Jesus blows up other people. Yay, Jesus! He goes after other people, not people like me. You know who Jesus is frustrated with? Jesus goes after liberals and, and I’m not a crazy progressive. Or on the other hand, people say, “Well, Jesus, you know who Jesus can’t stand? Those intolerant, right wing fundamentalists, not inclusive people like me.” Or “Jesus, He speaks against worldly people,” and you know what your definition of worldly is? Anyone who’s a little more worldly than you. You, not worldly, people who say words a little worse than you, watch things a little worse than you, aren’t quite as good in the home, they’re worldly, not you.

Jesus rebukes people who don’t believe in God and don’t go to church, but look at, notice you’re in church. Not about you, right? A lot of people go to church, week after week, year after year. Sometimes a lifetime, assuming that every sermon was for someone else. “Great pastor, sermon. I gotta send that to some of my friends.” Now that’s okay, it’s all right. It can be for other people too and I want to be clear. I don’t think that this sermon is saying that everyone in this room, you are like the chief priests and the Pharisees, and you are soon to face judgment. That would not be accurate. In fact, I hope that that doesn’t fit most the people in this room, but this is a big room and there’s a lot of people here and we all ought to consider what if Jesus spoke this parable against me? How would I know? How would I know, like verse 45, the chief priests and the Pharisees perceived, you know what, He is speaking about them, and the “them” is me. Everyone can learn from this story. All Scripture is profitable, but this is not spoken against every one of you here, but perhaps it is spoken against someone or somebodys here. How do you know if Jesus is speaking this parable against you?

Four questions. Number one, here’s the first question to ask yourself. Have you forgotten that you are a steward of God’s gifts and not the owner? Have you forgotten you are a steward of God’s gifts and not the owner? Plainly, these tenants here leased out the vineyard and they thought that once the master went away that they really owned the place. It was up to them; they could do what they want with the servant. They could do what they want with the son. They didn’t have to produce the fruit when the owner or the master returned and in fact, if they killed the son, maybe they could accrue the inheritance. Begins by saying, “There was a master of the house who planted a vineyard,” you see verse 33. A vineyard was a common picture of Israel in the Old Testament. Isaiah chapter 5 says, “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hued out a wine vat in it and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.” That’s Isaiah 5. You can hear, it’s some of the exact same language that Jesus pulls from here in this story in Matthew chapter 21.

Vineyard is a common image for the people of Israel, and you can understand the metaphor. It’s not hard to understand that Israel was like this vineyard that God graciously planted, and He tended and He dug a winepress and He built a tower and He built a fence around it to protect it. He was lovingly caring for this vineyard and when it came time to see fruit in the vineyard, and what is fruit? We’ve seen from John the Baptist’s ministry and last week, fruit is faith and repentance. Faith and repentance that shows itself in good works. Christian living. When he came to take some of the fruit of the vineyard, there were only wild grapes. The pictures God graciously forming, tending to Israel so that it might bear fruit, and then in the end there’s nothing to show for all of his tender loving care.

Jesus tells a story that would have been familiar to them that a vineyard owner would go off. He’s an absentee landlord. Perhaps when he’s first starting the vineyard it might take a year or two, as many as four years before you finally get some grapes, some harvest, and so it would be farmed by local tenants. In fact, there probably were some people in that crowd who had this. They may have owned land somewhere far away from Jerusalem and they leased it out to other people and then the idea is you come back. “Thank you for taking care of the vineyard. I am here to get my fruits, and you have worked very hard, and you’ll get some portion of them, but the crop belongs to me.” Notice the great care that the owner takes in creating this vineyard.

When you read Jesus’ parable sometimes, pay attention to the information that seems extraneous. Why is this here? Why does Jesus bother to talk about all that the owner does for the vineyard in verse 33? And I think it’s to underscore just how exacting the master is. He planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower, so a tower is to watch out for any enemies, and there’s a winepress and there’s a fence that animals might not come and devour it. This is a picture of a master who has done everything necessary that it would bear fruit. It’s not up to the tenants. They just have to maintain what the master has taken care of, that when he returns, there would be a crop. He has carefully and skillfully constructed the vineyard. That’s why we have all of these ands, and he did this and that and that and that, so that he might return and get a crop.

Verse 34. “When the season for fruit drew near, well that’s the whole point, it’s not just an experiment in horticultural science, he wants to get some fruit. So, when the season drew near, he comes back, and he expects that he would get a share of the produce. After all, it is his vineyard. And look at what they say in verse 38. “When the son comes, this is the heir, let us kill him and have his inheritance.” Now, this is such a, in one level it’s a ridiculous story because it is so beyond the scope of what would normally happen. I mean, this would be a once in a century sort of crime that these tenants would kill three servants and then more servants, and they kill them and then the son, and then they murder the son, but Jesus is making a point. We’ll draw this connection in just a moment. They are so disregarding of the servants and the son and so greedy to have all of that blessing for themselves that they say, “Well, maybe if we get rid of the son, he’s the one who will inherit this and maybe if we kill him, then all the vineyard can become ours.” See, they thought of themselves no longer as stewards, that this belongs to someone else and I am here to tend it, to take care of it. They did not know their place in God’s economy.

It’s easy for each of us to forget our place in God’s economy with spiritual gifts He’s given you. With the financial resources, with money in your bank account, with a house, with opportunities, perhaps with time on your hands. All of these, with the education you’ve received, a steward. God say, “I did that for you. I gave you that.” Just like we saw in, at the end of Joshua in his farewell sermon and he says, “You’re living in the land. You didn’t plant these vineyards. You didn’t construct these homes. I did this for you. I gave you these things. This is my grace.” Don’t forget your place in God’s economy. You are not owners. We are not owners, we are stewards. God is the one who created it. God is the one who made it, and He has every right to come and say, “What have you done with what I have given to you?“

If now we don’t have a dog because we’re sane people, we have children and cats and chickens just like normal people do. (laughter) But, from time to time a child might dog sit for someone, maybe you’ve dog sat for someone. I don’t want to make this a traumatic illustration. We wouldn’t do this if we were dog sitting for you, but Jesus tells a shocking story. A shocking, even, you know, less shocking is you go and all right, you’re watching somebody’s house They’re gone on spring break, you got to dog sit, just feed the dog, take the dog out, clean up after the dog, and they come back and you killed the dog, killed the chickens, you killed the cats, you killed the pets and in fact you broke into the safety deposit box and you scratched out the will and you made yourself the inheritor of all of the household goods and blessings. No one would think that that was a particularly good dog sitter. (laughter) You would say, and it’s an outrageous example, because you say, “You don’t,” now, no offense to the dog sitting people among us, it’s an honest living, but you’re a dog sitter, “you don’t have a right to get rid of the dogs. You don’t have a right to paint the house, to put up the wallpaper.” “Hey, while you were gone, I tore down the bedroom, I’m working on something else. I rewrote the will. I found your credit card. I got your bank account.” You are a dog sitter. It’s not yours. You’re there to make sure that everything happens the way it should so that when they come back from spring break, they can give you some modest payment to say, “Thank you. This is ours. We appreciate you watching it for us.”

Beloved, in God’s economy we’re dog sitters. It’s God’s. He owns it and He says, “Here, I’m entrusting it to you.” And they thought that they ran the place, that they owned it, and they had forgotten they were stewards.

Here’s a second question to consider. Do you have a long history of ignoring God and attacking His messengers? A long history of ignoring God and attacking His messengers. You notice what happens in the parable, the master sends three servants. They beat one, kill one, stone one. Then he sends more servants, they mistreat them and then finally he’s going to send the son. Jesus is retelling in miniature, the history of God’s people with the prophets. There was a long history of abusing the prophets, of shooting the messenger.

Jeremiah 26 tells the story of a Urijah, the prophet, who prophesied against Judah and then he had to flee to Egypt for his life. King Jehoiakim found him, killed him with a sword, dumped his body in a common grave.

Second Chronicles 24 tells about Joash, who after being treated kindly by the Priest Jehoiada, then turned around and had his son, Zechariah, stoned to death when he dared to rebuke the people. Jeremiah most of all, he’s the weeping Prophet. Jeremiah had the unfortunate responsibility to prophesy against Judah, to say that Babylon is coming, and you are going to be taken into captivity. And you know how many of God’s people liked that message of judgment? Not very many. You know what God’s people appreciated were the false prophets who said, “This is gonna be a little thing, just a couple of years. It’s gonna be fine. Don’t listen to Jeremiah.” It often is the case when you have one Prophet who says to God’s people, “God is angry with sin,” and another Prophet who says, “It’s not a big deal. Everything will be fine.” Which one do they like? Well, in Israel’s history, they had a long history of liking that Prophet who said, “Everything would be fine.” They hated Jeremiah. They beat him, they put him in stocks, they threatened him with death, they burned his scroll, and he was cast in a giant cistern and left to die.

We read in Jeremiah 7, “From the day your fathers came out of the land of Egypt, to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants, the prophets to them.” Day after day, yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.’” They stiffened their neck like an animal that stiffens its neck, and you can’t put a yoke on it. Or if you’ve ever had a small child and you try to, you want to get them in a car seat or a stroller and suddenly their spine is like adamantium and you’re trying to bend them in half, and they have stiffened their neck. “You will not put me where I don’t want to go.” Jesus had the same view of the history of Israel in Matthew 23. Just a couple chapters after this. He says, He looks around He says, “Wow, I can see you build tombs for the prophets, monuments for the righteous ones.” It was like going to Washington, D.C., or going to some, any major city and you see that they have heroes, they have statues. And so, they had these monuments to the prophets, and they were very proud to the righteous ones, to all the great heroes in the past and Jesus says, “Yeah, you know who killed them? You did, from A to Z, from Abel to Zechariah, you killed the righteous ones. You persecuted the servants of the Lord. That’s what your fathers did,” Jesus says, “and you’re no different.”

When they stiffen their neck against Jesus, He said, “I understand what’s going on because this is what you have done for almost your whole history. You think that you are the good guys, and so often you’re the bad guys.” Israel’s history was one long attempt to stiffen their necks, to harden their hearts against the Word of God, and this is where you need to do the uncomfortable work to consider if you might have a similar history. Maybe you grew up in the church. Maybe you’re here right now and you’re barely paying attention to what I’m saying. We’ll just listen for the next minute or so. You don’t even want to be here. Your parents make you here or your husband or wife or somebody has dragged you here. You don’t want anything to do with what, God’s Word. So, you’re fine to call yourself a Christian, you’re fine to be a member of a church, but when it really comes to it, somebody telling you how you ought to live your life, to repent of your sin, in your heart, whatever your actions show, in your heart, you have raged against God. You’re embarrassed to call yourself His follower. You have put Him on the shelf, far away. Some of you, in fact, are running from God. You are running from accountability. You don’t want to talk to your parents who might hold you accountable. You don’t want to be with a friend. You don’t want to be among any people who might discern that you are running far away from God and His Word. Some of you have secret sins. You’ve not confessed them before God. You’ve not dealt with them. You’re hoping that because you have cleared the browser, because you have deleted things off your phone, that no one will know what you have done, and you are ignoring the voice of God and the work of the Spirit, plying your conscience.

Some of you have people in your life who love you. Maybe it’s a pastor or an elder, maybe it’s a friend, maybe it’s a mom, maybe it’s a grandfather, maybe it’s a child. It’s hard to hear truth from a child, telling you, trying to tell you things that you don’t want to hear, and you refuse to listen. You won’t believe that you might be the one with the problem, when if you’re honest, the common denominator in all of the problems in your life is that you are in the middle of it. You won’t believe that the issues in your marriage have more than 5% to do with you. “Yeah, yeah, I’m not perfect, but really, it’s 95% someone else.” You won’t believe that you might be the reason that your friends have left you or that no one in your family gets along with you or that you’re hardness of heart is what makes you so suspicious of Christians and why you have left off genuine Christian friends and find yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear, because people have been trying to tell you something and you’ve driven out those servants. You would kill them if you could.

You’re like Jonah, running from God, a one-way ticket away from Ninevah, tired of hearing from God. Tired of hearing about God. Tired of hearing sermons in church. Tired of having Christians trying to tell you anything about God’s Word and you have no longer patience for God’s kindness and the love that He has shown you repeatedly to speak to you, the truth. It is not a loving parent who lets a child do whatever he or she wishes to do. “Toasters in the bathtub, I love you. Play in the middle of the road, that’s fine, I just love you. Who am I, I wouldn’t tell you what to do. I wouldn’t tell you what’s wrong.” No one would dare say that that’s a good parent. And you’re only finding people in your life who will tell you that toasters in the bathtub is a good idea.

What owner would show such kindness, undeserved mercy as the owner of this vineyard. He sent servants and he sent more servants and finally he sends His son. That’s God in your life. Your pushing them all away, spurning His kindness, turning your back on His patience and His mercy that time and time again, He has given to you, the truth about you, about His Word, about the Lord Jesus, and you have a long history of ignoring Him and attacking the messengers who dare to speak what is true.

Here’s a third question to consider. Do you presume that God is indifferent to the way you live your life? Indifferent? Think about these tenants. The brazen rebellion of the tenants is remarkable. They must have figured as some of you figure, that God is far away. They thought this master’s gone off into a far away land. What does he know? He’s not going to return. Surely, he wouldn’t care. Surely, he wouldn’t know. Surely, he’s never actually going to come back. And Jesus asks the question, much like Bruce read in the story about David and Nathan, where Nathan says, “You are the man.” Jesus asks a similar question, “Well, what should the master do with these tenants?” And they know, verse 41, “Well, he ought to put those wretches to a miserable death.” Everyone can see that. It’s an absolutely outrageous hyperbolic story, everyone can see, “Well, what kind of tenants, what kind of employees, what kind of dog sitter would do this? Oh, they ought to be punished. Give the vineyard to another people.” You see that in verse 43? “I tell you; the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

I need to take about a three-minute detour here, because this is an important point for how we think about some things in our world. That word translated, a people, and that’s a fine translation, it’s a Greek word, ethnos. You can hear our English word “ethnicity”. Here’s how the leading New Testament Lexicon defines ethnos. A body of persons united by kinship, culture and common traditions, nation or people. The Great Commission says, “Go make disciples Ta Ethne, of the nations. This is singular. I will give the Kingdom to a people or to a nation. Now some might think He means I’m gonna take the Kingdom away from the Jews and I’m gonna give it to the Gentiles, but when He talks about the Gentiles, He talks about the nations, because Gentiles, not just a nation, Gentile are all the nations that are not Jews and that doesn’t fit what we see in the rest of the New Testament where the preaching of the Gospel is first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. And the leaders in the church are first of all, Jews and on the missionary voyages throughout Acts, they usually start, and they go to a synagogue, and they see if they have a hearing among the Jews, so this is not saying that the Jewish people no longer have a Savior. No, they have one in Jesus. They, too, can inherit the Kingdom. So, it’s not strictly Jew, Gentile. What it’s saying is, “I will take this away if you, religious leaders, cannot accept this. I will make now a new nation, a new ethnos, a new people.

Now, here’s why I say this is important. When we stand before God one day, you will stand before God with an ethnicity. We know that from Revelation. He calls people out from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. When you become a Christian, it doesn’t remove the nation you’re from, your ethnic background. I will stand before God as an American. You stand before God as an American, Canadian, Ukrainian, Cameroonian, you don’t leave that. You don’t have to pretend that you don’t have a nation. I didn’t pretend to root for Canada when they had the whole hockey thing. We got some Canadians here. Just behave, all right, it was, it’s your sport anyways. You have a nation.

We saw in Joshua it’s important that all of those land allotments had boundaries. Nations have a right to have boundaries. Nations have a right to, even in the Old Testament, we see there’s a designation between those of the land and then there are aliens and there are sojourners. A nation, your right to have, have a, a proper patriotism and pride in your nation. It’s right for a nation to have boundaries and, and have rules about who is in that nation. All of that is true, and you need to hear this in verse 43.

“That the work that God is doing in the world is not mainly about something in America,” or Russia or Ukraine or China or Cameroon or Canada, “it is about making a new nation,” so yes, in one sense, I will stand before God and I will be an American, and I am proud to be an American. I won’t sing the song, but I am. At the same time, I must realize that God’s great work in the world is not with any one particular nation, but it is to pull out of all of those nations, some of which are represented in this room, a new nation. That’s the word here, a new ethnos, and I say that because we have to have our loves in their proper order. It’s good to love your ethnic background, your, your nation. There’s a proper way to do that. Above that, however, must be the love for this new nation that God is building, that He is calling people out to a new ethnos, a new people. Think of this definition. A body of persons united by kinship. We’re brothers and sisters in Christ, culture and common traditions. That’s what He’s doing. People from every part of the globe into this one, new nation and that’s the work that God is doing in the world, and that’s what is most important, and that’s what the Gospel is about, is this nation, this people that He’s forming.

The point in Jesus telling this parable against the Pharisees is to puncture their presumption, to remind them that God knows, God sees, and God will not be silent. After so many warnings and so many prophets, after even turning away the Son, He sees. He is not indifferent to what the tenants have done. Do not think, friend, that God is indifferent to your life of rebellion against Him, especially people in this room, to be in a place like Christ Covenant, is to have some of the greatest privileges in the whole world. All of the resources we have and the preaching and the teaching and this place and the freedoms, it’s an immense privilege and it means it’s a danger.

As Jesus says, He will judge more strictly, those for the light that they have and the people in this room, most of you have received a lot, a lot, of light. Some of you grew up in a Christian home. You went to Sunday school. You went to Christian school, maybe you went to a Christian college, and you have all of this information. You are like these tenants. Do not think that God is indifferent to you. He has been patient. He has been gracious. He has given to the people in this room more Gospel light than almost anyone in the history of the world, and God knows your heart. He knows where you have been. He knows if you are presuming upon His favor, just as these tenants did. It’s a short road sometimes, from assurance to presumption, to apathy, to rebellion. Some of you are on that trip. Far down that road. They thought God was indifferent. They were His people. They were the tenants. They were in the vineyard. What could He possibly have against them?

And here’s the final question. Do you think of Jesus as someone to worship as Lord or someone who gets in the way of your own personal ambition? Do you think of Jesus as someone to worship or someone who gets in the way? Look at verse 46. This is such a sad, pathetic statement. May it not be true of any of you. Look at verse 46. “And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet.” These chief priests and Pharisees, they thought themselves pretty tough folks, serious about God and His Word. They were the courageous ones. They’re nothing of the sort. They’re weak, small little men. They want to arrest Jesus, but they don’t even have the courage of that conviction because they fear the crowd. Their whole life was lived for their own personal ambition. Jesus got in the way of their personal ambition, so they don’t want Jesus, but, hmm, if they really show their true colors about Jesus, then that’s not gonna look good because a lot of people around them do like Jesus.
That may be exactly where some of you are. You don’t want Jesus, but you don’t want to not, not have Jesus, because the people around you do like Jesus. So, you’re just in this sad spot, verse 46. You’d really like to get rid of Jesus in your life but you fear your parents, you fear the crowds, you fear the people around you, you fear what your friends will think because they hold them to be more than a prophet, a Savior, a Messiah and so you just keep on ignoring this Christ.

Make no mistake, you may think in your heart you’re simply indifferent and you don’t really care, but that’s not an option because these people didn’t just kind of be indifferent to Jesus. They may have took themselves to be that, but Jesus exposes, “No, you really want to get rid of Jesus. You don’t want Him to be calling the shots in your life. You want to get rid of the owner’s Son, the master’s Son. You would kill him.” Just why Jesus says in verse 42, “Have you never read in the Scriptures, don’t you know your Bibles, you religious leaders? The stone that the builders rejected,” here in quotes from Psalm 118,” has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” This is quoted often in the New Testament as an explanation for Israel’s rejection of the Messiah, because that’s one of the, the apologetic concerns. You can imagine a lot of the Jews saying, “Well, if this was really the Christ, this is the Messiah, why did He die? Why was He put to death? How come so few people actually worshipped Him,” and they went to this text and others like it and said, “Well, our own prophets told us that the stone that is the cornerstone, that one is the very stone that the builders rejected. The cornerstone, whether it’s the very center of some kind of arch or maybe in Solomon’s Temple, was the final squaring off of the two walls and right there in the corner, whatever it is, this is the important stone, the final stone.

Maybe the celebratory stone that the work is completed and now we have but to put in place the cornerstone and that was a stone that the builders long ago said, “We’ll, get rid of that one, that one’s nothing. We’re not gonna give that stone the place of honor. That’s not gonna be the final celebratory cornerstone,” and so Jesus says, “Don’t you see, you’re embodying the warning of your own prophets?” And Jesus wants them to see, “You’re not gonna win. Jesus is going to die and He’s going to be raised on the third day, and any of you running in rebellion against Christ, need to know Christ always wins.” The worse that they can do to Him, what’s the worse they could do? If they plotted together, what’s the worst? “Well, we can arrest him, we could betray him, we could kill Him. No, let’s not kill Him, let’s even worse, let’s crucify Him.” Absolute worst thing they could have imagined to do to Jesus and we know it was the moment that led to the greatest victory of Jesus. They think that they will kill Him, but He will live. They will shame Him, but within days He will receive all glory and honor. They will mock Him, but in the end, He will be exalted and praised for all eternity.

Might Jesus have something against you? Might Jesus have something to say in this parable to you, not just to other people, to you? You ever have it when you’re driving, I’ve, it’s amazing, all the other, there’s so many bad drivers, not like us, but there’s so many bad drivers. You ever have this where you’re driving and somebody next to you is, you know, they’re really pointing at something and you, what are you doing? And you, and then somebody else is pointing at you and, what are you doing? And you just, you drive off and you think, well there’s such terrible drivers everywhere, just mind your own business and then you pull in and you realize your trunk was up, open the whole time (laughter) and stuff was flying out, your dog was jumping out the window, you’re a bad dog sitter, your, your lights weren’t on. I’ve, all those things happen at once, but I’ve had some of them and you go through with a self-righteous indignation. These are terrible drivers, everyone out there. What’s gotten wrong with people, until you finally park. You realize, oh, I had the problem. Everyone was trying to tell me something. Might this parable be Jesus trying to tell you something? If you’re in a tug of war with Jesus, you’re not gonna win. You do not win in a tug of war with Jesus.

One commentator says this, “What is the sum total of human history, if not the attempt to rid the universe of God?” He’s still here. He cannot be gotten rid of. You may ignore Him, you may run against Him, but it will not work. It cannot be done. The ending, the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief of the corner and at the end of the age it will be revealed that the cynics and the scoffers were not so clever. They were not so impressive. Christ will be seen more glorious, more powerful, more exalted, more worthy of praise, more worthy of worship and obedience than we ever could have imagined.

The message of the Bible in some ways is incredibly simple. The Bible says in the Gospel, here’s what happened. Here’s what’s going to happen. Do you believe it? Do you cherish it? Here’s what happened with Jesus. Here’s what’s going to happen with Jesus, now do you believe it? I mean, do you really believe it? Because in the end there are only two responses to that message, just like there are only two responses to this parable. One response to this parable, you feel threatened, you feel exposed, you hate the message and actually, you hate the messenger. That’s one response. But there’s a second response. As you hear this parable, you hear a story of a beloved Son being sent from a far country and you hear how He was mistreated by those who should have honored Him and how He suffered a shameful death for sinners like you, and you hear of His resurrection, His ascension, His exaltation and His coming again. You hear of all of this. You hear that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and as verse 42 says, “It is marvelous in your eyes.” Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, may the story be a story of great wonder and marvel for us, that if there are hard hearts, you should send not only your servants, but your beloved Son, that in His name, we might have forgiveness of sins and grace and a kingdom and be made into one new people, a new nation to live for Your glory. In Jesus, we pray. Amen.