Matt 21:33–43 — A Fruitful People

The People of God as a Vine

So as I mentioned last week, we looked at this parable of the tenants and we focused primarily on verse 42. In verse 42, Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This is a quotation from Psalm 118, which, incidentally, I do not recall if I mentioned this last week, but it is interesting that Psalm 118 is part of a section of the Psalter called the Hillel Psalms, and that psalm was sung during Passover. Remember, this is the beginning of Passover.

If you go back to Matthew chapter 21 at the beginning, you have the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. The king is coming into Jerusalem and he is beginning this whole process of Holy Week that will culminate in his death and resurrection. the crowds who were accompanying Jesus from Galilee, they were singing Psalm 118, and within Psalm 118, there are some verses that are clearly messianic, clearly referring to Jesus as the one who is coming in the name of the Lord. For example, in Matthew 21 verse 19, the crowds were shouting, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. That is a quotation as well from Psalm 118. You will not see Hosanna if you turn back to Psalm 118 because it is translated back in Psalm 118 as Lord save. But the idea is there, the thought is there.

The point of all of this is that this passage where Jesus is quoting from Psalm 118 and saying that he is the stone that the builders rejected that has now become the cornerstone, he is speaking in this context. He is speaking in this context of he is about to go to the cross and die. And he is already mentioned that there in the parable itself. In the parable of the tenants, he said that when the tenants saw the sun, which of course is himself, they said, this is the heir, come let us kill him and take his inheritance. Jesus is applying this directly to the scribes. and the chief priests and the elders of the people, which we could all summarize as the Jewish authorities who are in charge of the temple, who are the leaders of God’s people. He is applying it to them and saying, you know that this passage applies to you. In fact, they themselves got the message. I did not read it, but in verse 45 it says, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.

Now the main point of the sermon last week was to understand this image, this analogy that Jesus is using, which of course he is getting from the Old Testament, from Psalm 118, this analogy of the people of God being described as a temple. It is an architectural analogy.

And we argue that there is only one temple because there is only one cornerstone. The temple is a symbol for the people of God. Now it was a literal piece of architecture, a literal building that God had his people build for him. Solomon built the temple, and then after they came back from the exile, under Zerubbabel, they restored the temple and rebuilt it. But this temple that God commanded them to build, even though it was a physical, literal temple made out of stones, was a metaphor. It was an analogy. It was a symbol to describe the people of God.

Because what does a temple mean? A temple means this is the place where God dwells, right? It is God’s house. It is even called the house of God. It is where God dwells. But where does God dwell? He does not dwell in a temple made out of stones. Even the Old Testament saints knew that, right? He dwells in the midst of his people.

And so the temple was a picture, an analogy, a metaphor for describing the people of God. The old people of God are in a terrible place right now, apart from the crowd of Galileans who love the Lord Jesus Christ. The majority, and especially the Jewish leadership, and those who are living in the city of Jerusalem, which houses the temple, they are in rebellion against God. They are rejecting Jesus Christ.

And that temple, that earthly temple of stone, is about to be destroyed. Jesus himself implies that by going into the temple and cleansing the temple and casting out the money changers and saying that this is my house, it is supposed to be a house of prayer. It is not supposed to be turned into a place of commerce and corruption. But Jesus is saying that not only is the old temple about to be destroyed, that he is beginning to create a new temple. He even says that explicitly back in Matthew 12, verse six, where he says, something greater than the temple The physical temple is here. He is referring not just to himself as the temple, he is referring to himself and to his people. The people of Christ who are beginning to form this glorious new temple that will stand in place of the old.

Jesus himself even says that. He says, therefore I tell you, verse 43, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a people producing its fruits. At first, you are kind of tempted to say, well, what are these people here, this new people? You are tempted to just immediately think, well, this is saying that he is taking the kingdom from the Jews, and he is going to give it to the Gentiles.

But that is not correct, because the people of Christ are all who believe in him, whether Jews or Gentiles. And so this new people that is forming is not simply the Gentiles. Obviously, there are some Gentiles that do not believe in Jesus. And conversely, not all the Jews are excluded because there are some Jews that do believe in Jesus.

This whole crowd of people that are coming with Jesus from Galilee, who are going down to Jerusalem for the Passover, they acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They said, He is the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, quoting that Messianic Psalm and applying it to Christ. They believe in Jesus.

So Jesus here is using this Old Testament passage from Psalm 118, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, to describe what he is about to do. He is about to go to the cross, and then he is going to be raised again, and through that work, he is forming a new people, which is a new temple. And he is the cornerstone of that temple. And all who are built upon that temple, the living stones, the individual Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus as the Messiah, are being built up into this new glorious architectural edifice, which is the new people of God, viewed from this analogy of the people as the temple.

Now there is another analogy in our text. The people of God are not only viewed as a temple, they are also viewed as a vine. So we have an architectural analogy, and we also have an agricultural analogy or image. And that is actually the primary metaphor of the text. I was focusing last week just on verse 42, which brings out the architectural metaphor of the people as a temple and Christ the cornerstone. But the primary metaphor is this parable of the tenants in which the people are described as a vine. Verse 33, 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, the tower is probably referring to the temple, and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. And when the season for fruit draw near, he sent his servants to the tenants, that is to the Jewish leadership, the Jewish authorities, who were in charge of running this vineyard, to get his fruit. And so this analogy, people of God as temple, now being viewed through this other lens of people of God as a vine or a vineyard, is crucial because it tells us something very significant about what God is desiring in doing all this wonderful work of building this people. What God desires is fruit.

He desires his people to be a fruitful people. We see that not only in the text in verse 34, he is desiring to get the fruit, but also we see it if you go back to Isaiah chapter five. Isaiah chapter five is a crucial Old Testament passage that is also in the background. Jesus is not only looking at Psalm 118 and showing how the stone applies to himself, but he is also looking at Isaiah chapter five. Isaiah chapter five is the song of the vineyard. What does this song say?

The Fruit God Desires

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones. That is, he cleared out the Canaanites so that the people of Israel could dwell there. And he planted it with choice vines. And he built a watchtower in the midst of it. Again, that is the temple. And he hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked for it to yield grapes. That is what God wanted from this vine. He wanted those delicious grapes, that wonderful harvest of fruitfulness from the vine.

But of course, we know that the people of God did not produce that wonderful fruit. Instead, it yielded wild grapes. If you keep reading in Isaiah chapter five, verse seven, it clearly tells us the significance of the parable. I am talking about Isaiah’s parable now. Isaiah 5, seven, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is? The house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. He looked for justice, but behold bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but behold an outcry. He is looking for good fruit, but instead he found wild grapes. He found sin and disobedience and bloodshed.

This is another analogy for the people of God. And it is very interesting how the Bible just combines these two metaphors and just sort of puts them in a blender and mixes them up together. Temple and vine. But they are both very significant. I think one of the reasons for that is because each metaphor, each picture, brings out a different facet of the truth. A different facet of this important concept of the people of God.

The architectural metaphor for the people of God is significant because of that metaphor of the cornerstone, which is the basis for the temple, right? It is the foundation that sets the orientation for the whole building and all the other stones are built and put upon the cornerstone in relation to the cornerstone. And of course, that cornerstone is Christ. Christ is the cornerstone of this new temple. Without Christ, without the rejected stone, who is then also vindicated and raised from the dead, there is no temple. The temple is founded upon Christ.

The people of God are founded upon Christ, and we are living stones being built up upon Christ, the cornerstone, as Peter says in 1 Peter 2. But the agricultural metaphor brings out another facet, which is stones are not living things. Stones are not organic, right? Stones are just these blocks of inanimate material. But the vine metaphor shows us that this The temple that God is building on Christ the cornerstone is a organic reality that is rooted in Christ that receives joy and strength and the beautiful sap from the roots of Christ in order to bring forth fruit.

And that is what God desires from his people. Back in Isaiah 5 verse 3, he looked for it to yield grapes. He was looking for something. He planted the vineyard and he is looking for something from it. He is looking for the fruit. He is looking for the result of his work of grace in the lives of his people. And so the agricultural metaphor ties in with the architectural metaphor and brings out another facet of this important truth that the reason why God is building this glorious temple upon Christ the cornerstone is because he desires fruit. What is that fruit that he is looking for?

It is not just simply external obedience to the law. It is not just simply what the Pharisees are good at, checking off all of the 613 commandments and washing their hands before meals, which, remember, we know is not a matter of hygiene. It is a matter of purity, to keep the Levitical principles about purity. They are good at all those external things of keeping those rules and laws and commandments.

But when we talk about fruit as a metaphor for obedience, That is a different idea, is not it? It brings out a different feel. God is seeking fruit that is, yes, obedience to God’s law, obedience to God’s commandments, to love God with all of our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, but it is obedience that has this living reality to it, that is organically connected to Christ, the vine, that comes out of a heart that has been renewed by grace. God seeks fruit not just simply in the sense of external obedience to the law. He seeks fruit in the sense of obedience that flows from a heart that has been renewed by God’s grace.

I find it very interesting that this passage that we are in, in Matthew 21, not just the parable of the tenants, which is the last part of Matthew 21, but this entire passage, beginning with the triumphal entry, then the cleansing of the temple, then the cursing of the fig tree, right? Because that is another agricultural metaphor. Israel’s like a fig tree, but their problem is that all they have is leaves, right? It says in verse 19, he saw a fig tree and he found nothing on it but only leaves. He was looking for fruit, but it was only leaves.

This whole passage in Matthew 21, which deals with the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple, the cursing of the fig tree, and then this parable about the vineyard, which is then also put into the blender and mixed into this other metaphor of the church’s temple.

This whole chapter is really a significant chapter because of the way that it weaves together so many themes from the rest of the Gospel of Matthew up to this point. Matthew chapter 1 through 20 contains so many themes that are all coalescing here into this one chapter. And one of the themes that I would like to bring out is the theme of the heart.

Now the heart is not used here. There is no reference to the heart in Matthew 21, and specifically not in our parable here of the tenants. But is not that the key? to what makes fruit fruit and not just simply external obedience is obedience that comes from a heart that has been renewed by God’s grace. And Jesus talks a lot about the heart. If you just go back in your mind and just run through some of the passages in Matthew where Jesus talks about the heart.

Remember in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus emphasizes that, right? He says your righteousness has to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. Well, if we are just talking about obedience to the commandments as a checklist, they have got us beat on that, right?

But if we are talking about this obedience that comes from a heart that has been renewed by grace, now we see what Jesus is talking about. And immediately after saying that, that is Matthew 5, verse 20. What does he do immediately after that verse? He gives two examples, two illustrations of this.

He says, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit murder. But I say unto you, even if you are angry with your brother in your heart, that you are guilty of murder. And then he gives a second illustration. You shall not murder, the sixth commandment, and then the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery.

And he says the same thing there, that it is a matter of the heart. God is concerned about our hearts. Blessed are the pure in heart, Jesus says. You could keep the commandments to not murder and to not commit adultery in some external way, but yet you are breaking them in your heart.

Fruit and Righteousness

What the Lord wants is that we love him and love our neighbor from our heart, even to the point if he says in Matthew 5 to 44, he says to love our enemies. That is unheard of. How can anybody do that? How can you love your enemy and pray for your enemy? Only if you have been redeemed by grace. Only if your heart has been changed, right? Over and over again, Jesus speaks about the importance of the heart. Matthew 12 verse 34 is another example where he mentions the heart.

This is the passage where he is condemning the Pharisees because they have rejected Jesus, they are seeking to kill him, and he says that they are guilty of the sin against the Holy Spirit, that is, of rejecting the Messiah. And what does he say there in that context? Matthew 12, 34, he says, well, verse 33, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And he is referring specifically to their speech, because what was their sin? Their sin was their speech of saying that Jesus is casting out demons by the prince of demons. They are implying that Jesus himself is demonic, that he is satanic. That is the ultimate sin against the Holy Spirit that can never be forgiven. They have completely turned against Christ and rejected him. And he is saying the reason why you have used these sinful words against me is because your heart is not right with God.

There is something wrong with your heart. Or again, in Matthew chapter 15, the heart comes up again, where Jesus says, he is quoting from Isaiah, but he says, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you people when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They go to the temple, they seem to follow all the rules about how to worship God properly, but it is all external. Their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me. They are just so preoccupied with all their rabbinical rules and teachings and hand washing and purity and all these things that they do not love the Lord.

Their heart is far from me. That is why Jesus says in the next section there in Matthew 15, that what really defiles you is not doing external things like not washing your hands and getting the purity before you eat a meal, but what really defiles you is your heart.

Matthew 5.18, what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and defiles a person.

So what is this fruit then, going back to our passage, what is this fruit that God was looking for from the tenants and did not find, but he is going to find by creating this new people of God composed of Jews and Gentiles founded upon Christ the cornerstone, this fruit that he desires is obedience from the heart. Now it is important to point out that this obedience, this fruit that comes from the heart that has been renewed by God’s grace, is not the basis of our acceptance before God. It is not the basis of our righteousness before God. Only Christ is. We know that because what was the passage just before Matthew 21, just before the triumphal entry and all this story about leading to the final showdown between Jesus and the Jewish leaders?

It was when Jesus said that he came in Matthew 20, 28. that He came as the Son of Man, not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many, to give His life as the payment price that ransoms us from sin and sets us free. That ransom price is not just simply his death on the cross, but it is his entire life of obedience to God culminating in the final act of obedience when he willingly laid down his life for us upon the cross. Christ himself is the ransom price. that sets us free. That is what it means, that is what a ransom is. There is a captive, whether it is in war or just an individual who is been enslaved. The ransom price is the price that you pay in order to set the captive free, to release them from their bondage. Christ is the one who sets us free.

We are not set free by our fruit. We are not redeemed by our fruit. Our fruit is not our righteousness before God, only Christ is. But if our fruit is not our righteousness before God, does that mean that obedience and fruit are optional? Absolutely not.

Jesus is clearly teaching here that fruit is the consequence of being forgiven and set free. And it is the necessary consequence. All those for whom Christ has paid that ransom price will produce good fruit. And that is why Jesus says those Scary words, right, that back in math, I already quoted this, but these are the words that Jesus says in Matthew 7 that are echoing the very words of John the Baptist, Matthew 7, 19. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. good fruit, which is this obedience from the heart, that a heart that has been redeemed by God’s grace is the necessary consequence of being forgiven and set free.

It is not the means by which we are set free. We are not set free by our fruit. We are set free by the blood of Christ. We are set free by the ransom price that he paid for us. But then, as the consequence of that, we do produce good fruit. And if that fruit is utterly lacking, then it demonstrates that we were never set free and redeemed in the first place. What is the means that God uses, though, to give us those new hearts that then produce that good fruit? It is the Spirit working faith in us by the preaching of the Holy Gospel.

And again, as I said, this chapter here, Matthew 21, is so crucial because of the way it weaves together so many old themes in the Gospel of Matthew up to this point. One of them is the parable of the sower and the seed. Remember that whole story where Jesus said, the sower went out to sow, he scattered the seed on the ground, and what did he say? He says, the seed is the word of the kingdom.

It is the word of the gospel that Jesus is preaching. Remember, Jesus was a preacher of the gospel too. We should not just think of Jesus as only the The one who goes to the cross and does the work of saving us. And then it is Paul and the others who come after that preach the gospel. No, Jesus himself preached the gospel.

He preached the gospel of the kingdom. And then, of course, his healing miracles were signs that illustrated the meaning of that gospel that he proclaimed just as a sinner who was, for example, paralyzed. was then set free from his paralysis or who is a leper and unclean was then cleansed. That is a visible picture of the gospel itself. So he was a preacher of the gospel. He is the sower who is going out preaching the seed and scattering the seed. And in that parable, what does it say?

It says that all the other soils were not good. Their hearts were not changed, they were not prepared. And so when the seed fell upon those other soils, there was no fruit. Only the last soil was good soil that had been prepared by the Holy Spirit. The heart was ready, the heart had been changed so that when the seed landed upon the good soil, what did it do?

Matthew 13, 23. As for it was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word, who hears the gospel and understands it. And he indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case 100 fold, in another case 60, in another case 30. Again, there is that word fruit. Just as the word heart is used throughout the Gospel of Matthew, and then brings us to this climactic point here in Matthew 21, so the word fruit is also used throughout the Gospel of Matthew, bringing us to this chapter here.

Becoming More Fruitful

I think the most helpful thing that we can conclude from all of this is, What makes the difference? What makes the difference between a barren fig tree that has no fruit but is full of showy leaves of outward righteousness, versus the true people of God who bring forth that good fruit that is pleasing to the Lord, that he is looking for, and that he is ensuring that he gets through the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of his elect. What is the difference? And I think we can see it so clearly if we just step back and look at Matthew 21 as a whole.

Matthew 21 has two groups of people in it. Two major groups, and just look at the contrast between these two groups. On the one hand, you have the Jewish leaders. They are called the chief priests, the elders of the people. They are the custodians of the temple. They are the teachers of God’s people, teaching them the law, teaching them how they are to be obedient to God. But look at them, look at these leaders. Look at these Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus. They are committed to their own righteousness.

And so they cannot humble themselves to admit their sinfulness and their need of Jesus as the Messiah. They have a very hard-hearted and critical stance towards this Jesus fellow. What is he doing here? Why is he coming into the temple and throwing things around? What authority does he have to do this? And this, of course, reflects their unbelief, their heart of unbelief that they reject Christ. They do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

And it is because they are so committed to their own righteousness that they have made their own righteousness an idol. And they are so clinging to that righteousness that they cannot open their hands to receive this new righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.

They cannot humble themselves. They are so full of pride in thinking that they are the ones that are right. They are the ones that have it all figured out. They are the ones that know how to do all this worship stuff in the temple. And they cannot see. They are just blind to their sin. They cannot even see that, you know, going back to the story of where Jesus cleanses the temple, how do you think those money changers got there? They did not just waltz into the temple themselves. They were put there.

They were given permission by the Jewish authorities. And so the real problem with what they are doing is that the authorities themselves have lost sight of the true reality of what the temple is all about. It is supposed to be a house of prayer for all peoples. It is supposed to be a place to worship God, the living God, have communion with him in the temple, right? But they have turned it into this place of exchanging money.

And of course they would justify that, right? Because why did they need that? Why did they need to have money changers and people who were selling pigeons in the temple? They needed it because of all these crowds of people coming for Passover from other parts of the Roman Empire. And they could not bring a lamb all the way to the temple to offer the Passover sacrifice. They had to go to the temple and buy one, right? And so they would have said, no, this is a good thing. We are actually worshiping God. We are providing for the people to be able to buy the Passover lamb so that they can worship God at Passover season.

But they do not realize how they have become so wedded to their own earthly righteousness and their own authority and their own roles as the custodians of the physical temple that they have completely lost sight of the true reality of what God desires from his people. the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus were unfruitful. Yes, they had an outward show of piety and religiosity, but it was just a fig tree full of leaves, but completely empty of genuine fruit.

That is one group, and that group is the group that Jesus is speaking against when he tells this parable of the tenants. And he says the kingdom of God’s going to be taken away from you and be given to a people that is to the church of Jesus Christ composed of Jews and Gentiles who believe in me.

But the other group, the other group in this passage in Matthew 21, is the crowd from Galilee. The crowd from Galilee, they are the ones who had been with Jesus up in Galilee to the north, who had seen all of his mighty works and miracles when he fed the 5,000, when he healed the sick, cleansed the lepers. and they loved him. This would even include the sinners, right? Even the prostitutes and the tax collectors that are referred to there in our text in verse 32, who ate and drank with Jesus. This crowd, this crowd, they are not outwardly righteous. They do not really seem like they have their act together. They seem like a bunch of misfits. Some of them have pretty bad pasts, a lot of baggage in their past lives.

But they have one thing that completely sets them apart from the Jewish authorities, and that is they love Jesus. They love him. They are just praising Jesus with all of their heart, right? They are crying out, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. They acknowledge that he is the Messiah.

They do not have their own righteousness to hang on to as this idol that prevents them and hardens their hearts from accepting Christ. They know that they are sinners. They know that they do not have their act together, and yet they are humbly and joyfully worshiping Christ. and acknowledging that he is the Messiah.

It is interesting that going back to the story where Jesus cleanses the temple, it mentions that the blind and the lame came into the temple. Matthew 21 14. The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. And that just reminds you, does not it, of all the previous healing stories earlier in the gospel of Matthew. And now it is culminating in another healing right there in the temple. And you get this picture that this crowd of Galileans are a mixed bunch of tax collectors and prostitutes and blind and lame and even children, it says.

But they are all together in this unified love for Christ, believing in him and welcoming him as the Messiah. And Jesus was challenged by the Jewish authorities. They are standing there indignant. Do you hear what these people are saying? They are actually worshiping you. You know that that is idolatry, right? And Jesus says, yes. Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies? You have prepared praise. That is verse 19, verse 16.

The infant and the nursing babies, do not just think of literal infants and nursing babies. This is another metaphor, another way of thinking about this crowd from Galilee. They are all like infants, spiritually. Or another way of thinking of it is that they are all like Gentiles, spiritually. They may actually be biological Jews, but they seem like Gentiles because they are outsiders. They are not the ones who are in control. They are not the ones who have all the righteousness. They are sinners. They are humble, like children, who love the Lord and rest in his grace.

How can we be more fruitful? If you want to ask, how can we as Christians be that fruitful people that God is looking for. Just look at these two groups. Do not be like the Pharisees. Be like the crowd of Galileans who believe Christ, who welcome him as the Messiah, who bask in his grace. As Jesus said, Matthew 11, come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden. Come to me all you sinners and tax collectors and infants and outsiders and misfits. Come to me. and I will give you rest. That is what it means to be a fruitful Christian, to be a fruitful member of this new glorious temple that is built upon Christ, the foundation.