Matthew 21:23-46: “The Chief Priests And Elders Put Jesus To A
Test / Jesus Teaches Two Parables Condemning
by
Jim Bomkamp
1.
INTRO
1.1.
We are in the last week of Jesus’ life, the week
called, ‘The Passion Week’, and in our last couple of studies in the book of Matthew,
we have studied the following incidents, each of which have made the Jewish
leaders infuriated at Christ:
1.1.1.
Jesus orchestrated and completed His own Triumphal
Entry into
1.1.2.
After entering into Jerusalem, probably the day after
he entered actually, Jesus then proceeded to cleanse out of the temple all of
the ones who were selling animals for sacrifice and making money exchanges, as
He was telling them that His father’s house was to be a house of prayer, but they
had made it into a robber’s den
1.1.3.
We have seen how that the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem had
already decided that they will kill Jesus, and they have been considering many
different plots for accomplishing that feat, and we might expect that they
might have already made contact with the disciple Judas, who eventually will
betray Jesus to be crucified
1.1.4.
We will see now that the chief priests, scribes, and
elders of the people make several attempts to put Jesus into some sort of a
test so that they can use something that He says against Him as a basis for
having Him crucified and done away with
1.2.
In our study today, we will see that the chief priests
and elders of the people put Jesus to one test, and then after this Jesus
teaches two parables which are condemning judgments placed over the nation of
Israel for rejecting her Messiah
2.
VS 21:23-27 -
“23 And when He had come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders
of the people came to Him as He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are
You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?” 24 And Jesus answered
and said to them, “I will ask you one thing too, which if you tell Me, I will
also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 “The baptism of John was
from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among
themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did
you not believe him?’ 26 “But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude; for
they all hold John to be a prophet.” 27 And answering Jesus, they said, “We do
not know.” He also said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I
do these things.” - The chief
priests and elders of the people came to Jesus asking Him by what authority He
was doing the things that He was doing?
2.1.
Jesus had now gone over the top in ruffling up the religious authorities
in Jerusalem, for He had orchestrated a Triumphal Entry into the city being
hailed as the Jewish Messiah on Sunday (or possibly Monday), and then the next
day He came into the temple and drove out all of the people selling animals for
sacrifice and exchanging money for the worshippers.
2.1.1.
These actions meant that Jesus did not have one iota of respect for the
religious authorities who were using their positions of authority only for
personal gain.
2.1.2.
Jesus had offended the leaders to the maximum by not recognizing their
authority and coming up through the ranks of their chain of command, so to
speak.
2.1.3.
Now, the anger of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem against Jesus has
reached its peak, and they are planning and plotting almost around the clock
for ways to trick Him into making some sort of a statement that they can use
against Him to put Him to death.
2.2.
In these tests that the Jewish leaders put Jesus into, they did not for
one minute really want to know the truth to the questions that they put before
Jesus, for they were seeking only one result, finding some way for accusing Him
of blasphemy or enciting the multitudes against Him so that they could have Him
killed.
2.3.
Here we see that it is the ‘chief priests and elders of the people’ who
come to Him and ask Him by what authority it is that He is doing the things
that He is doing?
2.3.1.
Before we look more closely at this question of these Jewish leaders to
Jesus, I think that I could say that it was actually an appropriate question,
were it not conceived in hypocrisy and duplicity, for if Jesus were not God the
Son in saying and doing many of the things that He said and did, then He truly
was guilty of blasphemy in the highest sense, for He actually claimed to be God
and He acted out according to that claim.
2.3.1.1.Jesus forgave sins
(something which only God could do; see John 9)
2.3.1.2.He claimed equality with God
when He told the Jews, ‘Before Abraham was I Am’ (John 8:58)
2.3.1.3.He claimed equality with God
when He said, ‘I and the Father are One’ (John 10:30)
2.3.1.4.He accepted worship from
men, as in the instance of the man born blind whom He had healed (John 9:38).
2.3.1.5.He claimed to be the way,
the truth, and the life, and that no man could come to God but through Him
(John 14:6)
2.3.1.6.He claimed to be the good
shepherd of God’s sheep (John 10:11,14).
2.3.1.7.He claimed to be the ‘bread
of life’ and that whoever came to Him would never hunger and that whoever
believed in Him would never thirst (John 6:35)
2.3.1.8.Jesus even said that if
anyone ate His flesh and drank His blood that He would have everlasting life
(John 6:54).
2.3.2.
We can see after looking at the claims that Christ made how that Josh
McDowell came to the conclusion that Christ had to be either a liar, a total
and complete lunatic, or He was the Lord.
2.3.3.
These highest of Jewish leaders are trying to snare Jesus in this
question, because if He says that He is doing the things that He is doing by
the authority of God, then they can charge Him with blasphemy since He is not
going through their spiritual chain of command.
Yet, if He says that He is doing the things by His own authority, then
they can accuse Him again of blasphemy for going against the God of Israel and
His Laws by doing these things in the temple by His own authority.
2.3.4.
The gospels show us time after time that Jesus knew what was in men as
revelation from God, and thus nothing people ever did took Him by surprise, and
in this testing we see that Jesus knew all along that this was merely a trap
that was being set for Him.
2.3.5.
In the manner in which Jesus rebuffed so many of the other tests by which
the Pharisees tested Him, Jesus asked them a question in return, and He told
them that if they answered His question, then He would answer their’s: ‘The baptism of John was from what source,
from heaven or from men?’
2.3.5.1.By saying, ‘The baptism of
John’, they were really referring to John the Baptist’s whole ministry, his
preaching of repentence and his baptizing those who would repent of their sins.
2.3.5.2.These Jewish leaders did not
in any sense accept John the Baptist as a true prophet of God, nor had they
heeded his message to repent, and yet I believe that inside they knew they were
wrong for not listening to a message that was so clearly from God. They were also guilty for not believing in
Jesus since His works and teachings were well known by now and they are
evidence in and of themselves that He is who He claimed to be, God the Son from
all eternity, The Messiah.
2.3.5.3.In this question, Jesus laid
His own trap for them. If these chief
priests and elders of the people answered Jesus saying that the baptism of John
the Baptist was from men, then the common people all believed that John the
Baptist was a prophet sent from God, and they would lose favor with all the people and potentially have a riot on
their hands. On the other hand, if they
answered that John’s baptism was from heaven, then Jesus had them in this
answer because He could just simply say, “John spoke of me and taught the
people to look to Me as the One sent from God, why didn’t you believe Him?”
2.3.5.3.1.In Luke’s account of this
incident, He records that these Jewish leaders were afraid that the people
might stone them if they said that John the Baptist’s baptism was not from
heaven (Luke 20:6).
2.3.5.4.Being once again dumbfounded
by Jesus, the only reply that the chief priests and elders of the people could
make to Jesus’ question was that they did not know whether John the Baptist’s
baptism was from heaven or from men.
2.3.5.5.Jesus told them, that if
they would answer His question, then He wouldn’t answer their’s.
2.4.
Everytime that we see how that Jesus dealt with those who came to test
Him we see how that Jesus really was in control of every situation that He
found Himself in, and that leads us to the inevitable conclusion that it was
only in God’s perfect timing that Jesus went to the cross, and that He was
voluntarily laying His life down in going to the cross, for no men could take
it away from Him.
2.4.1.
In our own lives, these incidents in the gospels should encourage us that
we can trust our lives to Jesus, for He is in control, and He is able to keep
us from all harm and temptation.
3.
VS 21:28-32 -
“28 “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and
said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ 29 “And he answered and said, ‘I
will, sir’; and he did not go. 30 “And he came to the second and said the same
thing. But he answered and said, ‘I will not’; yet he afterward regretted it
and went. 31 “Which of the two did the will of his father?” They *said, “The
latter.” Jesus *said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax-gatherers and
harlots will get into the
3.1.
Having had the chief priests and elders of the people come and try to trap
Him in His sayings in order that they might find an excuse for putting Him to
death, Jesus decides to teach a couple of parables that are aimed at exposing
and condemning those very religious leaders in Israel.
3.2.
In this first parable, we see that the first son initially said that he
would go and work in the vineyard, however for whatever reason ‘he did not go’.
3.2.1.
This son symbolized the religious leaders in
3.3.
We see that the second son initially declined to go and to work in His
father’s vineyard, however he later repented and went and served his father
faithfully working in his vineyard.
3.3.1.
This son symbolized the common person in Israel, especially those whom we
could chatogorize as the notorious sinners of the land, the tax-gatherers, harlots,
and such, for though at one point in their lives they had turned away from the
Lord and were living in riotous living just as the Prodigal Son did, they later
repented and came to live their lives for the Lord and His will, becoming
disciples of John the Baptist and then later of Jesus’, having heard the gospel
message and believed in Jesus.
3.4.
These chief priests and elders of the people are so spiritually blind to
the things that Jesus was speaking that Jesus was able here to easily entrap
them by asking them which of the sons did his father’s will?
3.4.1.
These leaders fell right into Jesus’ hand by answering Him, ‘The latter’.
3.4.2.
These men had no excuse for their sin and spiritual blindness, for the truth
was always right in front of them if ever they valued it enough to investigate
it and see if indeed Jesus were whom He claimed to be.
3.5.
Jesus pronounces bitter and profound judgment against the Jewish leaders
3.5.1.
Jesus tells them that the tax-gatherers and sinners would get into heaven
before they would
3.5.2.
They were guilty before God for not believing in John the Baptist for he
‘came in the way of righteousness’ (in other words he was a truly righteous man
in God’s sight)
3.5.3.
They were further condemned because after the tax-gatherers and sinners
did come to John the Baptist to repent and be baptized by him, these leaders
should have seen the error in their judgment and way, felt remorse for their
hardness of heart in not believing in him and his ministry, and come to him.
3.6.
The Lord is patient with us as people, and it is the case with most
people that the Lord tried in many ways to reach them with the gospel before
they finally gave in to the hound from heaven and listened and believed the
message. What matters then, is not that
we might have in the past rejected the message when people shared the gospel
with us, but rather that finally we have believed the message and come to
follow Jesus with our life.
4.
VS 21:33-39 -
“33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard
and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and
rented it out to vine-growers, and went on a journey. 34 “And when the harvest
time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce.
35 “And the vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and
stoned a third. 36 “Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the
first; and they did the same thing to them. 37 “But afterward he sent his son
to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 “But when the vine-growers saw
the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him,
and seize his inheritance.’ 39 “And they took him, and threw him out of the
vineyard, and killed him.” - Jesus teaches
the parable of the landowner
4.1.
Here in this story we we a landowner who is a business man who decides to
turn some land that he owns into a profitable vineyard business. He planted the vineyard, put a wall of
protection around it, dug a wine press deep into the rock, and built a tower as
a lookout. Then, he rented out his
business to some vine-growers intending to return during the harvest and
receive a return of profit from this business he set up.
4.2.
Finally, when the harvest time had come, this landowner sent some of his
slaves to the vineyard in order that he might receive his produce from the
vineyard, however the renters of that vineyard killed the one slave, and
another they stoned to death. Then, he
sent another group of slaves that was larger in number than the first group,
however these men did the same with them.
4.3.
After this, he decided that surely these vinegrowers would respect his
son, so he sent him to them to receive the produce from the vineyard. However, these wicked men decided that they
could kill the son and then they would seize the vineyard as their own, so they
killed the son.
4.4.
In this parable, the landowner was God, and the vineyard which He built
was the
4.4.1.
John MacArthur writes about how the Jews killed their prophets, “Jewish
tradition held the Isaiah had been sawed in two with a wooden saw (Heb.
11:37). From Scripture we know that
Jeremiah was thrown into a pit of slime, and tradition held that he was
eventually stoned to death. Ezekiel was
rejected, Elijah and Amos had to run for their lives, Micah was smashed in the
face by those who refused to hear his message (1 Kings 22:24), and Zechariah
was actually murdered in God’s own
4.4.2.
In Matt. 23:37, Jesus wept over
4.5.
Notice also here in these verses that Jesus is proclaiming prophetically
the fact that He would be taken outside of Jerusalem to be crucified, and we
know from the gospels that this is what happened (see also Heb. 13:12).
4.6.
We see that the nation of Israel and the Jewish leaders were so like
apostate religious leaders of all eras of time, for this dead form of relition
had a form of godliness and claimed to have a corner on truth and
righteousness, yet they killed all that God was wanting to do and persecuted
His people.
4.6.1.
For the sake of perpetuating their own agendas and traditions, these type
of religious leaders are willing to break with any connection to real and
objective truth, and godliness.
5.
VS 21:40-44 -
“40 “Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to
those vine-growers?” 41 They *said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a
wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will
pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” 42 Jesus *said to them, “Did you
never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, This
became the chief corner stone; This
came about from the Lord, And it is marvelous in our eyes’? 43 “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of
God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit
of it. 44 “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on
whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”” - Jesus asks the chief priests and elders of
the people what the landowner will do to those vine-growers when he returns?
5.1.
It is amazing here to see that Jesus again calls upon these Jewish
leaders to interpret another parable for Him.
In their blind arrogance, when asked this they seem a bit outraged as if
it were obvious that the only matter of course that the landowner would follow
would be to ‘bring those wretches to a wretched end, and rent out the vineyard
to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper times.
5.1.1.
However, in saying this these Jewish leaders are pronouncing and
approving their own condemnation and future judgment from the Lord for not
managing God’s vineyard the way that they have been commissioned to do it.
5.1.2.
These Jewish leaders are also foretelling the fact that since they have
rejected their own Messiah that the Lord would call the Gentiles to salvation
through Him, and that now it would be primarily through converted Gentiles that
the Kingdom of Heaven would be built.
5.2.
Jesus quotes from the Old Testament (Psalm 118:22) about how that the
Jews would reject the very chief cornerstone, who was their own Messiah, Jesus
who stood before these Jewish leaders.
5.3.
Jesus tells these Jewish leaders that the
5.4.
In verse 44, there are a a couple of interesting little nuggets of truth
presented by Jesus.
5.4.1.
He says that the person who falls on this chief corner stone, which
symbolized Him as the Messiah, would be broken.
This implies that the coming to salvation through Christ involves a breaking
of a man’s or woman’s will and a complete trust in the righteousness of Jesus
for salvation.
5.4.2.
He says that the person on whom the chief corner stone fell, would be
pulverized and scattered like dust. This
illustrates the futility of rejecting the offer of salvation through Christ and
trusting instead in one’s own righteousness and works for favor with God. In the end, the rock of Christ will fall in
judgment upon that individual and their ruin will be complete and eternal in
scope.
6.
VS 21:45-46 -
“45 And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they
understood that He was speaking about them. 46 And when they sought to seize
Him, they feared the multitudes, because they held Him to be a prophet.”
- The chief priests and the Pharisees
finally understood that these two parables spoken by Jesus were judgments and
woes pronounced against them
6.1.
The chief priests and Pharisees have reached the height of their anger
and are probably glowing red in rage wanting to grab Jesus and tear Him apart
right now.
6.2.
These men wanted to have Jesus seized immediately and killed because of
the humiliation of these two parables of judgment and woes against them, and
yet they knew that they couldn’t do that just now since all of the common
people held Jesus to be a prophet at this time.