Friends, let me encourage you to turn your copy of the Bible to Matthew chapter 21. We are rapidly coming towards the cross. It is quick, quick, quick. And yet it's still just day two of Holy Week. Still just day two of Holy Week, the last week of the life of Christ. We've seen him enter into Jerusalem. on a donkey. We've seen him clear the temple of the money changers. We've seen him curse the fig tree. Last week, we saw him teach in the temple courts on day two. He taught with much opposition from the chief priest. He gave him the parable of two sons. And today, tonight, we're going to finish out what is really two pictures, two parables, one big one, one small one, a parable of a vineyard and a parable of stone. We're going to see how Christ and his word really unveils the sword of his word through the stone that the builders rejected. But let's come to the text this evening. We'll read Matthew 21, verse 33 through verse 46. Again, this is not just Pastor John's favorite story hour. This is not simply old history time. These are the very words of life that you and I need to live well. So let's treat them as what they are. The very word of God from Matthew and from the Lord. Jesus says, hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press 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. They did the same to them. Finally, 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's kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to these tenants? And 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. Jesus said to them, have you never read the scripture? The stone 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 given or taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls in the stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard 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. Grass withers and the flower fades. This word does neither, but it endures forever. Let's pray that God would help it endure in our lives this week. Lord, explain these words to us. Illuminate our hearts by your Holy Spirit, who might behold marvelous things. Father, openly show us the stone and the son. We pray in his name, the name of Christ. Amen. Well, so like I said, we've had this question pop up. It's day two of the last week the life of Christ before his crucifixion, we have this question that's popped up. We thought last week, who has authority to teach? Who has authority to teach in the temple? Only the temple people do, right? Who has authority to teach in the temple? Do the chief priests, the big shots in Israel, the Pharisees, do they have the authority, or does Jesus? He claims to, and he starts talking. He starts teaching, and all of a sudden, the gatekeepers, the religious gatekeepers are pushed aside. And the large crowds listened to the one who teaches with authority, not like the scribes. It is a direct assault by Jesus on the authority of these guys. What kind of authority did they say? They said, we know who is saved. We can determine who is saved. We can determine who can read the Bible. We can determine who can talk with God or not. Jesus is taking their authority on their home turf. and this week will end at the cross. What's very interesting, what's important to know, since we're in the middle of the last week, is that the cross is not an accident. The cross was never a random happenstance. It wasn't some sort of cosmic mismanagement on the part of God. Jesus doesn't just kind of fall oopsies into the cross. The push to the cross has been the mission of Jesus from the very get-go. All of the imperative does not come. We kind of read this. We think it seems like the push to get Jesus to the cross comes from the priest. It comes from the plotters. It comes from Judas. But really, it doesn't. It comes from Jesus. He pushes to the cross. He deliberately antagonizes. He deliberately not offends, but well, he offends them. But he deliberately teaches in the temple courts. Here he is exposing them publicly. Here he is courting their anger deliberately. Here he is showing what's in their hearts. Clearly, their hatred for God is exposed. And what they had back in those days is what everybody, every human heart has today. They had the idea they could call the shots. These are authority figures. These are the ones who can judge God and who can find him not quite up to their measure. and help him get better. You see, it's never a neutral question, this question of authority. We all want to be gods. I mean, if you could, you would be self-sufficient. This morning in Sunday school. We were told, really, that there are only two points in our lives where we are dependent upon people at the very beginning, at the very end. But in the middle, in that long middle stretch, we have a fantasy that we can be self-sufficient and we can maintain that fantasy very well in our modern day. You can maintain. Yeah, you got to go to the store. Yeah, you got to get gas. Yeah, you have to get food. You can't farm all your own food, I suppose. None of us are trying, I don't think. But besides that, we believe that we can order our time the way we want to. We can order our schedule. We can be autonomous. We can be our own bosses. And if you ever don't think that way, do you know why you don't think that way? The only reason you don't think you're self-sufficient is Jesus Christ has redeemed you to that amount, to that degree. The only way you don't think you're self-sufficient is God has shown you grace. But of course, even as Christians, we might face that recurring desire to be gatekeepers, to assert ourselves against anybody who has a claim on us, anybody who claims to rule us. I mean, this is why one of the most challenging vows every member of this church has taken is the final vow, which says, I submit. It uses the S word. I submit to the government and discipline of the church. That is the real naughty word in our world today. Submission to anybody else, any other authority. And so we can't just laugh at the folly of these guys. We can't just laugh at the folly of these chief priests and say how dumb they are, how they're going up against Jesus. Don't they know how foolish that is? We have to actually ask how much of their mindset, how much of their way of pushing against Jesus, how much of their way of bucking the trend is in our own hearts, how much of their desire for autonomy, for self-sufficiency is still swirling in our lives. And so Jesus gives another parable. He told one last time, two sons, and which is the best son, not the one who was respectful and polite and did yes sirs all the time, but the one who said, I won't and yet did, the one who repented. And now he gives a second parable, the parable of the tenants. What's a tenant? For those who don't know, it's simply a renter, someone who was tasked with being on station in the vineyard and they were supposed to do the work and they get quite a bit of the wine, quite a bit of the grapes, quite a bit of the produce back. and yet Christ will tell this parable of the tenants and by the end of it, the chief priest will realize he's talking about us. We're talking about us, but this is a parable. I'll tell you from the very start, we're not, well, we're very into it, but I'll tell you from now on, this is a parable of good news if you trust in Christ. If you don't, you are like the chief priest and it will be a bad news parable. So if you go out of here and you're not feeling so great, Maybe that's the reason why. Don't say I didn't warn you. But here's the parable, Christ says, let's get the cast down first, okay? Let's get the dramatis persona, let's get who's who, and then we'll get to the meaning very quickly. First, there's the landowner. In this parable, there's the master of the house. Who's the master of the house? Who's the landowner? It's the father. It's God. Jesus' father. And the landowner plants, the master of the house, look at verse 33, he plants a vineyard. What's the vineyard? Who's the vineyard? It's the people of Israel. And then Jesus outlines the process of planting a vineyard. You put a fence around it, there's a wine press, there's a tower. And that's the way you made the vineyard. You had the fence up there. You didn't want the wolves to come in. You had a tower so you could see all the if there's a hog coming at you. You don't want the hogs to trample in the vineyard. And you also want to watch the workers, see what they're doing, make sure they're doing their jobs. But Jesus is not just giving us an engineering lesson. He's not just giving us an architectural design. Here's how you build a vineyard, guys. They knew that he is talking to Jews. Remember his audience. He's talking to Jews whose minds are chock full of the Old Testament. So for example, you can turn or you can listen to Isaiah chapter five. In Isaiah chapter five, starting in verse one, we hear these words. I don't usually quote this much of other texts in scripture, it's a little longer reading, but I think it's very relevant for what Christ is drawing on here, so try to follow. Isaiah says this, 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 middle of it and he had a wine vat in it. He looked for it to yield. Good grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. Judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I look for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And I will tell you now what I will do to my vineyard. This is God talking. I will tell you now what I will do to my vineyard. I'll remove its hedge. It will be devoured. I'll break its wall down. It shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed. I am briars and thorns shall grow up. And then verse seven, here's the key. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting, and he look for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, an outcry. Now that song in Isaiah five had a particular point when it was written, judgment on Israel, they failed. They failed to keep the vineyard. And what was that judgment going to be? It was going to be Babylon coming in and taking the God's people into exile. But that setting, that picture, that image, the vineyard and God's judgment and God planning and God caring for it. Jesus transports that from the days of the prophet into his day, the first century. And so as soon as Jesus talks about a master vineyard, a master planting a vineyard, everybody knows he is referring to Isaiah five. He's talking about this song and they know judgment's in the air. And then he takes the parable a bit further. Look at verse 33 in Matthew. The master goes into another country. Now again, this is not, don't push every detail in every parable. This is not saying God went off on a journey somewhere. It's simply saying that God sends, God far away in heaven sends his servants. We read that in verse 34. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants, the tenants, to get his fruit. Well, the vineyard is the people, the owner is the father. Who are these tenants? Who are these renters? Well, they are the leaders who serve God. They're the chief priest. They're the elders. They're the ones who are supposed to bring fruit out of the people. And God has sent his servants across the centuries to inspect the fruit. To make sure there's fruit. His servants, the prophets like Elijah, the King Ahab, like John the Baptist and the Pharisees to, as John says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, the prophets have gone to the people and they taught justice. They taught that the people should reflect the God who loved them. But what happened? Well, the tenants, we'd read in the parable, the tenants take his servants and they beat one, they kill one, they stone another. That's what Jesus is tying into what happens to the prophets. Now, he knows not every individual prophet gets killed or stoned or beaten to death. He's making a general point here. Don't read too much into it. The point is the servants, the prophets that God has sent to his people have been rejected. They didn't want the authority. They didn't want to bear the fruit of repentance. They wanted to enjoy what God had given them, the blessings of a vineyard. I mean, it's fine to have a vineyard. I've been in one. There was a ruling elder out in California in San Diego at the church where I served once. And he took us out for a elder retreat to his vineyard. And he gave us some of his, he just had his first batch of wine come out. He gave us some. I didn't like it then. I still probably wouldn't like it now, but he had it. It was a huge process. And yet he had borne fruit. But what happens here? Well, they don't give the fruit. Any fruit that the people have borne, the leaders wanna keep for themselves. Any power the people have developed, any abilities, any gifts, the tenants, the leaders of Israel want to keep all the blessings of God for themselves. They want to be autonomous. They want to be self-sufficient. They want to be self-serving. And then the owner says, verse 37, okay, finally, I'm gonna send my son, they'll respect him. But of course they don't. They see the son, they say, this is the heir, it's just like Joseph and his brothers. Let's kill him, let's take his inheritance, so they kill him. Now look, the common rule back in those days for renting a vineyard is that you would send 25%, you send a quarter back to the owner, but the owner could let you keep 75% of the profits. In other words, God let you keep three quarters of it, the vast majority of it. That was the way it worked in those days. It's not a bad deal, but these guys wanted 100%. They wanted all the fruit, all the money, all of it to be always theirs. I mean, what has God given to his people? He gave his word. We've seen it in Exodus. He gave them salvation. He saved them from Pharaoh. He gave them a hope for the future, a Messiah's gonna come. He gave them a promise for a kingdom. But the Pharisees said, no, that's not enough. I wanna be in charge. I want to be the law. And so when they see the son, when they see Jesus Christ coming among them, they say, if we get rid of this guy, Here is our chance to rule forever. And so they murder the son. That's the parable. And so what will happen? Christ asked a question. He's a good rabbi. He likes to ask questions. Verse 40. What's his question? Easy question. It's a Sunday school question in a sense. Here's his Sunday school question. When the owner comes. What are they going to do to these renters, to these tenants? They say to him, They give the right answer, of course. It's a Sunday school answer. They know the answer. They say judgment, a miserable death, and he will give the vineyard to other people who will give him their fruits in the season. Judgment day and giving the kingdom to others. And then Christ presses it with this what you might call a third parable, or you might just call a different image. He shifts the picture. Verse 42, he says, he's quoting here from Psalm 118, have you never read in the scriptures the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, the capstone? Engineering degree people might know the difference, but the basic point is this was the keystone in building an arch. It could be in the middle, it could be kind of the starting, it would just depend. It's the keystone, that's all that matters. That's what the Lord's doing. And it was marvelous in our eyes. What Jesus does here is so profound. First, he shifts the image from a vineyard to a construction site. Something's getting built. And the key thing is that you need to get the cornerstone, the capstone, the keystone in the right place. And if you're looking for the most important stone, you want good quality stone. I mean, this is the case when you build houses. You want good quality. You want the best material. This is the case when you build anything. You don't want the leftover pieces of wood for your nice table. You want something that's amazing, high quality, expensive these days, I'm told. And so the construction workers, they're looking for the best stone. They're looking. for the best portion of the grapes, of the fruit, just like the chief priests, the Pharisees, they look for the best places, the best seats in the house, the great names, they look for the best, they deserve the best. And so they're looking around and they see a stone and they just throw it away. That's a terrible stone, never use that one. Because they're the gatekeepers, they say who's in, they say who's good, they say who's bad. And they want to build the temple. That's what we're building here, by the way. Surprise. They want to build God's house in their way, in their time. They want the church to be built the way they see it. They should build it. And the irony, the great irony of promise in Psalm 118 is that the stone the builders rejected, the stone they threw away, it has become the most important, the perfect stone, the cornerstone. Who did that? Who chose it? Who could overrule their authority? Only the Lord. This was the Lord's doing. He said, use this stone. And the people say, it's marvelous in our eyes. The people, the crowds, they see Jesus and they say marvelous and the builders say awful, terrible. And of course, if they're building God's temple, what does that mean? What was God's temple? It was the place where sins were forgiven. It's the place where atonement was made. It's the place where God would come in and all his glory and the holy of holies be present among his sinful people and they would live They wouldn't be burned. They wouldn't die. They wouldn't be judged. They would live. This is the building where the glory of the fullness of God would come down. The temple was the place of reconciliation. The temple was the place of redemption. The temple was the focal point of Israel's life. It was the place where heaven met earth. And who is Jesus saying the temple is now? He is saying I am that temple. I am the new building. I am the new place where sin is dealt with by the shedding of blood to cover human guilt. I am the building where sinners can meet God. I am the place where all the glory of God can dwell with us. That is why the chief priest hated it. He said over in John's gospel, look, I can tear down that temple and I will build it up again in three days. because here is the cornerstone, here is the capstone, and yet he is rejected. And in rejecting him, these guys have rejected the authority of the Lord who has done this marvelous work. You see, you have two options. You can either come to Jesus and bend the knee and marvel at him, or you can reject him. You can reject him and hate him. Those are the only two options he gives you. And then, of course, verse 43, he presses at home once more. He says, therefore, here's the here's what's going to happen. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. The landowner is going to rent the vineyard to other tenants. He's going to graft in wild vines. That's what's happening. That's why you're here, do you know that? That's why the only reason you are here is because Matthew 21 has happened. The only reason any of us is here, to my knowledge, none of us is Jewish. You can tell me afterwards if you have some secret Jewish blood in you. But I think by and large, we don't. So what does that mean? What that means is that this has been proven to be true. The kingdom of God has been taken away. It's been taken away from people who thought they had it made, and it's been given to a people who will produce, notice that right there, produce its fruits, not produce their fruits. That is, the call of every Christian is not to just produce good stuff for yourself. The call of every Christian is produce the fruits that God tells you I want in my vineyard. I want wine. The call of the Christian life is to build the temple the way God says, according to his blueprint, not according to your own blueprint. And that's why Christ gives this last little summary in verse 44. Whoever falls in the stone, You'll be broken to pieces. And if it falls on anybody, it will crush him. What is he saying? Well, he's talking about one way they executed people back in the day. One way among many. They were very ingenious, clever in making capital punishments. Sometimes you may know that when they were to stone somebody, that each person would pick up a small to medium-sized rock, and they'd just hurl them all at the person. They'd keep picking them and hurling at them. until the person would die, and that's one way that they executed people by stoning. But another way, and we have record of this a little later in the first century, another way that they would execute someone is they would take one humongous stone, lift it up a ramp to a high ledge, and the criminal would be underneath it like Wile E. Coyote, and you can imagine what would happen. It will lift off and they crush the person. That's what we're talking about. That's what Christ is saying. When it falls on anyone, it will crush him. And if you fall on the stone, you'll be broken to pieces saying either way, either way, you're going to be broken. You're going to be crushed, you're in for judgment, you're finished. Woe to you. Your fitness is a gatekeeper. That means your fitness is someone who thinks that you are so amazing as a Christian that you can just see and judge everybody else. I mean, you know who's in, you know who's out. Fitness is somebody who thinks you're smarter than God. Finish as people who fancy ourselves righteous in his kingdom because of what we do. Finish as people whose pride, God will have others he will bring in and they will produce good fruit. And of course, in one sense, it is the Gentiles. And yet, in another sense, it's true for all of us. We read, I mentioned it previously, we read in Revelation that Jesus Christ tends the lampstands of his church. And that fire, that fire can be quenched. Which is one reason among many why we need to pray. But we need to have a prayer conference, but we need to learn to pray. When you see the value of prayer, because a church that does not pray has no fuel for the fire. A Christian that does not pray has no fuel for her fire, her own soul. And it's in danger of Well, being revealed as actually not having ever been a Christian. In danger of this right here, having all the signs, all the Christian outfits, all the Christian paraphernalia, all the nice family, all the good jobs, all the achievements, all the high places, all the high seats, all the knowledge, and yet crushed because there's no fruit. But what does this text give to us? Well, I've already told you one thing it gives to us. Among these people, among the chief priest, there should have been fruit. They should have been giving the fruit of the vineyard to God. Among those who are here, it's evening church. What fruit ought we to bear? You may have many blessings from sitting in church. You may have many blessings from the prayers of your parents. You may have many blessings from singing songs you like at church and the joy you get. Well, what fruit are you bearing with those blessings? What fruit are we bearing? But secondly, I don't wanna close on that. Secondly, of course, we have here a picture of the gospel. Jesus Christ will say, I have other sheep, not of this sheep fold. That's why the Jews will come to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, to Passover, to a holiday that speaks about all their blessings and all their history and all their past. And in the middle of that festival, Jesus stands up and says, I am the cornerstone. And then at Pentecost, Jews come from all nations to celebrate God again. But this time their hearts are cut to the quick and they say, Peter, what must we do to be saved? And the answer is bear fruit in keeping with repentance. It's not quite what he said, of course. But in essence, it's the same thing. Repent and believe. Same exact fruit God's been looking for. They came for some Judaism, they left with some Jesus. And the gospel goes out further and further to the very ends of the world in the book of Acts. That's by the time Paul begins his missionary journeys, his first trip, his second stop, Antioch, Pisidia, after day one of teaching to the Jews, they come to him and they say, Paul, we don't want any more of this. And in what is such a foundational statement, Acts 13, 42, he says this, fine, he doesn't say fine. Now we will turn to the Gentiles. And by the second century, 80% of the church is Gentile. And that reality, this parable, this teaching is why we are here, because God looked for other tenants in his vineyard. God looked to another people who were a wild vine, not a fresh grape. But the beauty is that God looked for Grapes, he didn't see any. All he saw were wild people. All he saw were you and your wildness. All he saw were wild people who just wanted to live for themselves. And God says, I will gentle you. I will make you mine. And that is what he has done in the gospel. That is what Christ does. Because he gives us all that we wild folks could ever want in himself. Are you amazed at the generosity of God that he gives you so much? He says, come into my home. Come into my family. I give you my spirit. I give you assurance that you're a Christian. I give you the joy of the Holy Spirit. I give you its fruit. I give you Christians from all across history, from every tongue and nation, and language and tribe. It's interesting here, of course, that Christ does this when he's being hated. When the opposition is at the highest, Christ lifts up the cross. He lifts up himself, the son being killed, and yet he lifts up the gospel. Many will come in who are not of this vineyard. You and I sitting here in Georgia are part of what he meant even then. Praise God. Let's pray. Father, we come and we come with those who are renters and yet not just renters, but you're very, you're very sons, you're very daughters, you're very family. We come now with those who have so much more than the Pharisees could have had. We have so much more and yet we've not done, we've not done anything to earn it. It's been of your gift and your grace. Help us, therefore, to see to see all that you have done. To marvel at the cornerstone. Christ chosen. Chosen to save us and chosen to show us. The father. We come to you in his name. Amen.