Matt 21:33–46 — The Rejected Stone

Context

This text could be called “The Rejected but Vindicated Stone.” But since the focus of this passage is on the fact that it is a rejected stone, I have chosen “The Rejected Stone.” This is a very significant text. It illustrates how our Lord Jesus interpreted the Old Testament, and in particular, the Psalms.

It lays out for us this fundamental reality that Jesus interprets the Old Testament as pointing to him. And of course, that is where the apostles got their hermeneutic from, their way of interpreting the Bible. They learned it from Jesus. It was Jesus himself who taught them to read the Old Testament this way. Before we look at that in more detail, though, we need to just remind ourselves of the context.

The context is that beginning in Matthew 21, at the beginning of the passage there, it says that they drew near to the Mount of Olives. They are coming up to the city of Jerusalem. This is the story of the triumphal entry, when Jesus, the King, enters Jerusalem as the King of Israel.

Of course, he is coming with the crowd from Galilee. The crowd from Galilee has been accompanying him from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem in the south. And this crowd of Galileans, they are a mixed crowd. I am sure there are some in there that have no idea what is going on. They are just swept up in the fervor. But nevertheless, many of them, the majority of them seem to have been convinced that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. And you can see this from how they respond. They shout before this king as he is coming into the city. They shout, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. They recognize that he is the king.

Just as Matthew the narrator points out, he says that this took place, the coming of Jesus into the city, riding upon a donkey, this took place to fulfill the messianic prophecy in Zechariah chapter 9. Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.

And so the king, the Messianic king is entering into the city, but the purpose of his entry into the city is Ultimately, it is to go to the cross, but before we get to that point, the purpose of his entrance into the city as the king, in fulfillment of prophecy, is in order to cleanse the temple. So we have this interesting section here, beginning in verse 12, where it says that Jesus entered the temple, and he drove out all who sold and bought in the temple.

Jesus is cleansing the temple from its corruption, just as the Old Testament kings, for example, King Hezekiah, King Josiah, some of the good and godly kings of Israel, they also engaged in this process of cleansing the temple. It had become defiled, especially in the days of Josiah. The king before him was King Manasseh, who was, I think he was the king twice before him, there was another king in between, but the main trouble had been caused by King Manasseh, who was the most wicked king of all, because he not only promoted the worship of the false gods, of the Canaanites, but he also brought those idols into the very temple of God. And so the temple had become corrupt. And Josiah was a good king who came to cleanse the temple, to restore the true worship of God, to remove the corruption and the idolatry that had defiled the temple. Jesus here is coming into the temple in order to cleanse it.

Now, from one perspective, you could say, well, this also seems to be a hint that Jesus is going to destroy the temple. There is a sign of judgment here, right? He is casting out the money changers, overturning the tables. But there is also, that is true, and Jesus will talk about that in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, about how the temple will be destroyed. But he is looking beyond that to something greater. He is not simply coming to judge the temple and destroy it and say it is over.

He is coming to bring about a new temple, a glorious new resurrection temple that is going to be formed through his death and resurrection and through all of this, all these people, the crowd from Galilee, and the disciples who are honoring Jesus as the Messiah.

It is significant, I believe, that after Jesus cleanses the temple, it says in verse 15, when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant. And so you see that verse there in verse 15, it is tying back to the triumphal entry. So this crowd that was welcoming Jesus and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, has continued with him even to the temple courts, and they are continuing to cry out, Hosanna to the Son of David, even as he is cleansing the temple. And this then is a picture already showing us, it is not quite yet fulfilled, we have not yet gotten to the resurrection, ascension of Jesus and the great commission and the calling of the church, but we are already seeing the beginnings of the church, are not we?

We are seeing God’s people gathered around the Messiah in the temple praising Christ. And Jesus even, when the chief priests and the scribes were indignant that they were worshiping Christ, Jesus does not say, look, I am just a human prophet, I am just a man, so I agree, they should not be worshiping me. He actually quotes from Psalm 8 and says, have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise. which is only for God. So he is acknowledging his own divinity as the Son of God and saying that they are right to worship me. So here we see this key idea that Christ is forming a new people that will become the new temple that will produce the true worship that God desires, which is the worship of Christ himself. Then after the cleansing of the temple, Jesus leaves there.

He goes to the city of Bethany, which is back on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a mountain just to the east of Jerusalem, and that is where he initially came down. He came down that mountain, crossed over the Brook Kidron, and then went into the city in the triumphal entry. Now he is going back the same way he came, crossing back over to the Mount of Olives and lodging in the town, the village of Bethany on the Mount of Olives.

But then in the morning, he returns back to the city, and on his way, he is hungry, and he sees a fig tree by the way, and he found nothing on it but only leaves. And this becomes a symbol in the eyes of Jesus for the way in which the people of God, not the crowd from Galilee, but the Jerusalem leadership, the scribes, the priests who have control of the temple, The Jerusalem leadership has an outward show of piety, a lot of green leaves, but no genuine fruit. And so Jesus pronounces a curse upon the fig tree, foreshadowing again the death of national Israel, but also implying that there is going to be a new shoot coming out, a new resurrected Israel that is being formed around the Messiah. Then the scribes and the Pharisees come to Jesus. They challenge him. They challenge, by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority? And Jesus says, I will ask you one question. And if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, where did it come from? Was it from God or was it from man? And so Jesus puts them on the horns of a dilemma where if they say it was from heaven, then Why did not you believe in John, who was pointing to Jesus as the Messiah? That was John’s whole ministry, was to say, one is coming after me, who is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to unloose, who is going to be the Messiah, who is going to be the one who is going to bring about this new Israel. Why did not you believe in him? But if you say for man, well, you cannot do that because the whole crowd thinks that John was a prophet. And so their non-answer, we do not know, convicts them of their own sin, convicts them of their unbelief as well as their cowardice in not being willing to acknowledge what everyone knows, that John was indeed a prophet from God.

The Parable of the Tenants

And so Jesus says, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Now in our Egnlish Bibles we have a major heading there, “The Parable of the Two Sons,” and it seems like a completely separate block of teaching, but really it is just continuing. Jesus is still speaking. He says, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. What do you think?

And now Jesus parables to show that He is indeed the Messiah, and that their rejection, that the scribes and the elders of the people, in their rejecting of Jesus, they are fulfilling prophecy. The first parable is the parable of the two sons, and today’s parable is the parable of the tenants. And they both show the same reality, which is that the majority of Israel, national Israel, has rejected Jesus. But the children, the crowd from Galilee, the lame, the blind, the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, they accept Jesus, they welcome him. And so, therefore, they are the beginnings of this new Israel that God is creating around the nucleus, which is Jesus himself.

So let us look then at this parable, the parable of the tenants. He says, here 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. In saying this, Jesus is alluding to a passage in the Old Testament.

Actually, there are a number of passages in the Old Testament that speak of Israel as a vine that God planted, but the main one is in Isaiah chapter five. This is called the Song of the Vineyard. In Isaiah five, it 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 hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And this parable in Isaiah is following the same pattern. It is talking about God, Yahweh, and his people, Israel, as being this vine that he planted in the land. When it says that he cleared the land, he cleared the stones, that is referring to the conquest of the land of Israel under Joshua, how he cleared out the land so that God’s people could be planted there as a choice vine in the land. He also built a watchtower in the midst of it. Jesus refers to something similar, a tower in Matthew 21, 33. He built a tower in the midst of it. That is probably referring to the temple in the center of the land.

But the key is that this is a parable, this is an analogy, or maybe even you could say it is like an allegory in a sense, because God is picturing his people as a vineyard. In Isaiah, in Isaiah 5, the application to Israel is directly spelled out. In Isaiah 5, verse 7, it says, the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. And the men of Judah are his pleasant planting.

And the fruit that God was looking for from his people was the fruit of righteousness, the fruit of obedience to God, love for God and love for neighbor. He was looking for a people that were obedient to him and keeping his commandments, focused upon the proper worship of God in the temple, worshiping God alone and not the idols of the nations, but also on the application of that in their lives. He looked for righteousness, but instead he found nothing but disobedience. Jesus continues on, he says, when the season for fruit drew near, verse 34, 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.

This is an interesting way of looking back upon the whole story of the Old Testament. You have the master is Yahweh. You have the vineyard is God’s people being planted in the land. But who are these servants whom God sends? Well, these servants are the prophets.

The prophets, for example, in the days of Elijah, many prophets were killed by wicked King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. There are several other prophets who were murdered. For example, Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, was stoned to death in 2 Chronicles 24. Uriah is another prophet mentioned in Jeremiah. There is a tradition that says that Isaiah was also martyred, even though that is not recorded in the Bible itself. There is that tradition that is referred to in Hebrews chapter 11 in the Hall of Faith. And Jeremiah himself was threatened with death. He was arrested and thrown into a cistern.

And of course, John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old Covenant, he was martyred by King Herod. The servants that God sent to get the fruit are the prophets. And the fact that God’s people, and especially the tenants who are the Jewish leadership, the fact that they treated the servants badly, and that they rejected them when they came and warned them that they needed to be more faithful to God, in particular, to the true worship of God. The fact that they treated them badly, that they mistreated them, is a sign and an indicator of their unbelief, of their rejection of God’s message sent through his messengers. Verse 37, finally he sent them his son saying they will respect my son. Notice how Jesus is described as being more than a prophet. He is not simply one of the many prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah.

He is something unique. He is the very son of the master of the house. He is full of authority. He is sent by the Father as the final emissary. He is God’s final word. We have already seen that in the Gospel of Matthew. Remember at the baptism of Jesus, the voice of God the Father said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. That was also at the transfiguration of Jesus. I think it is interesting, by the way, that in this parable, Jesus is clearly the one speaking the parable, and he is, by implication, calling himself the Son of God, even though in the parable it is only a human son of a human master. By analogy, by the allegory, he is identifying himself as the Son.

This is a rare but significant moment when Jesus actually calls himself the Son of God in the Gospel of Matthew. The other one would be in Matthew 11, verse 27, when he said, all things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son. that intimacy, that unique father-son relationship that no one else can enter into. We do not know the Father the way the Son knows the Father. Although, if the Son chooses to reveal Him to us, we can know the Father through the Son. But we do not know the Father the way the Son knows the Father, because He is the eternal Son of God, who is fully divine and equal with the Father in every way. So this statement here in verse 37 that Jesus says that the master sent his son to them is a significant claim, where Jesus is claiming a high Christology that he is the divine son of God.

But he comes as the final word. He is the final emissary of the father. And so it is very important how the people of God respond to this final emissary. If they reject him, there is no hope. If they accept him, then they are being constituted by that faith as the new people of God.

But of course, it says in verse 38, when the tenants saw the son, and the tenants here is not focusing on simply the entire people of God, the entire nation, but it is focusing really on the Jewish leadership more than anything else. Remember this challenge that had happened earlier in verse 23, where the chief priests and the elders challenged Jesus. And said, by what authority do you do these things?

The Rejected Stone

Reflecting and giving evidence to their unbelief, their lack of faith. They do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They are the tenants. They are the ones who are given responsibility to lead God’s people. They should have said to the people, no, listen to him. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of God.

But instead, in front of all the people, they challenged him. They questioned him. And by implication, they were saying that they did not think he had authority. They did not think that he really was the Son of God and the Messiah. And so in verse 38, it says that when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.

Interestingly, Jesus is already fully aware that this is what is going to happen, that he is going to be seized, arrested, put on trial, and killed and put to death by the Jewish leadership. Of course, they are not going to do the execution themselves. They are going to hand Jesus over to the Romans to do it, but they are the ones responsible for it. So even though it has not happened yet, we are still a few chapters away from the final concluding passion narrative in Matthew 26 and 27, Jesus is already fully aware of what is about to happen, and he accuses them of having murderous intent in their heart, showing their absolute irrevocable final rejection of Jesus.

I have often wondered, is there anything in the analogy? So we have in a parable, you have the story itself and the different figures and incidents in the story, and then you have what it refers to, right? Of course, we know that the vineyard is Israel, that the son is Christ, that the tenants are the Jewish leadership. But what about this detail here where they say, come, let us kill him, That part we get. That is going to lead to the cross in a few chapters.

But what about the second part, and have his inheritance? Is there anything in the analogy that fits there? And I think that it does not really make sense, does it? In what sense would they be able to seize Christ’s inheritance? What is Christ’s inheritance anyway? It is the church.

It is all of the redeemed for whom he is going to lay down his life. He is going to give his life as a ransom for many. So this is just an example, then, of a thing that we have seen throughout our study of the Gospel of Matthew, that not every detail in the parable has a corresponding fulfillment in the application. This is just part of the fleshing out of the story itself. but it does not have any kind of theological or spiritual significance in the application. The point is, is that they are trying to kill him. That is the key issue, showing their heart of rejecting Christ.

Verse 39, they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Some commentators have suggested that maybe that detail does have a parallel, which is that they took Jesus out of the city of Jerusalem and they killed him outside of the city walls. Verse 40, when therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those wicked tenants? who rejected the son and killed him. And amazingly, the Pharisees and the scribes and the chief priests, they condemned themselves out of their own mouths. And they say, 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.

It is as if Jesus said, well, you yourself said it, right? Yes, indeed, that is what is going to happen. But Jesus, rather than applying it directly to them, initially he will in verse 43, but before he does that, he now comes to this glorious quotation from Psalm 118. which gives us an amazing window into Jesus’s own hermeneutic. That is, how does Jesus interpret the Old Testament? He interprets the Old Testament, and specifically the Psalms, as applying to himself, as being about him. Jesus 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. Jesus takes up these words from Psalm 118, which were originally spoken on the mouth of one of the kings of one of the sons of David. We do not know who exactly it was, but Psalm 118 has, it is in the first person.

“I” was surrounded by the nations like bees. “I” was almost destroyed. “I” almost died, but God delivered me. And then is the “I”? Who is this Davidic king in the line of David? We are not sure who it is, but historically it would have been one of the kings of David who was experiencing frustration, experiencing this challenge, perhaps maybe at the time of the exile when the nations were coming into Israel and were wiping out the nation and were about to take the king into captivity.

This “I” who is speaking is speaking though on behalf of the people. There is this important connection between the king and the people. The king is not just simply an officer of the nation of Israel, the Israelite theocracy. He is the representative of the people. As the king goes, so go the people. If the king is righteous, the people will generally be righteous. If the king is wicked, then that will cause the rest of the nation to turn in apostasy against God.

So there is this connection, this solidarity between the king and the people. You even see this back in the days of King David. Remember when King David, before he was publicly anointed and made the king of Israel, he was identified as the king to be, but he was being persecuted by King Saul. And during that time when he was designated to be the king, but not yet publicly made and installed as the king, and he was being persecuted by King Saul, you see this very interesting dynamic of the relationship between the king and his people.

Remember David’s mighty men? They were on David’s side, right? They loved David. They were his mighty men. They were supporting him in his wars. They were defending him against King Saul. And they were on his side, they were with him, they were gathered around King David as his mighty men.

And so when King David was vindicated by God, they too rejoiced because that was their vindication. As go the kings, so go the people. And so we see this same reality of the solidarity between the king and the people in Psalm 118. The nations have surrounded Israel and her king, but God has miraculously intervened on behalf of his people by vindicating the king. And the vindication of the king is the vindication of the people. And this stone here, the stone is referring to the king. The stone that the builders rejected has now been vindicated and become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Now perhaps we are not too unfamiliar with the idea that some of the Psalms can be messianic and be like prophecies that speak of Christ and his kingdom. Psalm 2 is the most famous one. Psalm 110, maybe even more famous, quoted 17 times in the New Testament. It is quoted all over the place in the New Testament. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, referring to the exaltation of Christ. So perhaps we might not be too uncomfortable with saying, well, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 are messianic Psalms that directly tell us about Christ and his vindication.

The Doctrines of the Text

But what about all the other Psalms? where you just have a lonely “I” speaking. “I” cried out to the Lord in my distress and he heard me and delivered me. Psalm 118 is more like that. It is more of an individual song of lament and crying out for deliverance and then thanking the Lord for his deliverance.

Psalm 118 is not an explicitly messianic psalm which points ahead to, in a prophetic way, to Christ himself. There is an original context in Psalm 118 of a literal royal offspring of David who is experiencing conflict and difficulty and who has been miraculously vindicated by God and the people in solidarity with him are rejoicing in that vindication. Well, notice how Jesus applies such a psalm, Psalm 118, He applies it to himself. Even though it may not be an explicitly messianic psalm, he reads the psalm as if it is speaking ultimately of himself, in his own rejection, in his own vindication.

And the reason why Jesus can do that is because the psalms have a royal orientation. It is a really important principle to keep in mind. The Psalms have a royal orientation. It is very easy for us as we are reading the Psalms to forget that, because we love the Psalms because they are so relevant to our own suffering and our own difficulty. We can use the words of the Psalms for great encouragement for us in our times of distress and lament, and that is completely legitimate to do. But the Psalms have a royal orientation.

We see this from the very fact that what is the very beginning of the Psalter all about? It is about the blessed man who keeps God’s law. That is Christ, right? And then Psalm 2 is the very next Psalm, which tells us that the blessed man who keeps God’s law is the Messiah, the anointed one. Psalm 2, which is an explicitly messianic psalm.

And so that sets the stage for the whole Psalter so that we can interpret the Psalter in a Christocentric way. And Jesus here shows us how to do that. He shows us that Jesus, by his own example, by his own example as an exegete, as an interpreter of scripture, is showing us how to interpret the psalms as being all about him.

Of course, the Apostle Peter learned this from Jesus, and that is why in 1 Peter 2, in verses 4-9, Peter also quotes this very psalm, as well as some others, the stone that the builders rejected, he quotes that in 1 Peter 2, and he applies it to Christ. But also, again, because of this key solidarity between the king and the people, he applies it not only to Christ, but to us as well. And in fact, we see that in the text.

Jesus said that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of what? The cornerstone of a new temple that God is building, going back to the cleansing of the temple, which was a sign not only of God’s judgment upon the old temple, but of the hope that a new temple, a new house of God would be emerging as all of God’s people look to Jesus in faith. The cornerstone is the head of the corner. It is the key structural element that provides orientation and structural stability to the rest of the structure. And as Peter says in 1 Peter 2, we are living stones being built up as a house, as a house of God, as a temple to God, and Christ himself is the cornerstone.

Jesus explicitly brings this out in verse 43. He says, Who is the you and who is the people? Well, the kingdom will be taken away from you, refers to these tenants, to the chief priests and the elders of the people, but also to all who follow their lead in rejecting Jesus. Because Jesus says in verse 44, anyone who falls on this stone, that is in unbelief, will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. But who is this people? I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, that is national Israel under its Jewish leadership, but also all the people that follow their leadership in rejecting Christ, it will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruits.

Now at first it may be tempting to say that this people here refers to the Gentiles, but there are two problems with that. Does it refer to all Gentiles? No, only to those who believe in Jesus. And does it refer only to Gentiles? No, because even those Jewish people who believe are also included, just as we saw with this crowd from Galilee that is worshiping Jesus in the temple and showing the beginnings of the church. This people then refers to the new covenant people of God composed of all who believe in Christ, whether Jews or Gentiles.

And we know this because Matthew has already told us all the way back in Matthew chapter 8 when he talked about the when he narrated the healing of the centurion’s servant. And the centurion, of course, is a Roman. He is a Gentile. And what does Jesus say in that context in Matthew 8, verse 10?

He says, from east and west, and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Both Jews and Gentiles in the kingdom of heaven. While, he says, the sons of the kingdom, that is the Jewish nation that rejects Christ, will be thrown into the outer darkness. This passage, then, is very significant for us. It tells us three important things.

First, that there is only one people of God, defined by those who believe in the Messiah. Israel and the Church are not two separate and distinct peoples of God. Rather, the Church is the new Israel. Or even better, we could say Christ himself is the new Israel and all who put their trust in him are incorporated into him.

He is the cornerstone and we as living stones are being built upon him. The second thing we learn from this is that the people of God is pictured as a temple. This explains why Jesus cleansed the temple earlier in the passage. And it explains also why the crowd from Galilee, who is worshiping Jesus as the Messiah, as the Son of David, why they are doing so in the temple, because it is showing the beginnings of this new temple, the temple that is made of living stones.

And then thirdly, there can be only one temple because there is only one cornerstone, which is Christ. There is no other temple. There is not one temple for the church and one temple for Israel. There is only one temple because there is only one cornerstone, which is Christ. No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid. The apostle Paul says that foundation is Jesus Christ. As Jesus himself said, going back to Matthew 16, verse 18, when he said, on this rock, I will build my church.