Life of Christ 153
It is Tuesday morning.
Jesus will die tomorrow afternoon. Today is the longest day of His or any man's
life. Confrontation began in Jerusalem before He even arrived at the Temple and
it will continue almost without interruption until His death on Wednesday
afternoon.
A moment ago He
dispatched the Sanhedrin's attack on His credibility (see Jesus 1, Sanhedrin 0), and began an
immediate counterattack on the Pharisees. He does this with three parables and
today's post is the second of those three parables. (Matthew 21.33-41)
A vineyard in Judea, 2005 |
Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a
vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a
tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. Jehovah
carefully planted Israel in the land of Canaan. He then turned it over to
husbandmen (the leaders of Israel).
And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the
husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took
his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he
sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. Jesus
is here referring to the many prophets and messengers Jehovah had sent unto
Israel. These men, such as Jeremiah for instance, or John the Baptist more
recently, were trying to get Israel to produce fruit and they were roundly
rejected.
But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence
my son. With this statement Jesus is clearly referring to Himself, and the
crowd around Him knows that. They know that He claimed to be, not only Israel's
Messiah, but the very Son of God Himself. He is saying here that He has been
sent straight from Jehovah to a disobedient Israel in order to give her one last
opportunity to straighten up.
But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This
is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize the inheritance. You
would almost think, reading that sentence, that Jesus had been privy to the
private discussions of the Sanhedrin in John 11 after the resurrection of
Lazarus. They were very concerned that Jesus would cause them to lose their
positions as Israel's religious leadership and thus formally voted to conspire
His assassination. (see One Man Should Die for the People)
And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. Jesus'
death is still completely unknown to the crowd around Him in the Temple that
day, but it was well known to Himself, and to the Sanhedrin. In the middle of a
Temple thronging with Passover pilgrims Jesus is calmly telling the Sanhedrin
that He knows they will kill Him soon.
One of the things that
is absolutely amazing about Jesus is how He conducts Himself on this, the last
week of His life. He is staring death right in the face. Even worse, He is
staring the agonizing separation from His Father right in the face. All the horror
of hell is about to be poured out on His head. His own people are rejecting
Him. And yet He has the unmitigated gall to inform His enemies repeatedly that
judgment will come down upon them as a result and that He will win in the end.
Harvesting grapes in Judea, 2007 |
When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto
those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked
men, and will let his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him
the fruits in their season. We have already seen the appalling judgment
coming to a Christ-rejecting Jerusalem and Israel. (see The Lament Over Jerusalem) The Sanhedrin did
not see it. The crowd around Jesus in the Temple that day did not see it. But Jesus
did, and looking right down the gun barrel, so to speak, he calmly informs His
executioners that they will lose in the end.
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