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In this parable Jesus sets forth the privileges, the sins, and the impending ruin of the Jewish people. It brings before us for our admonition -

I. WHAT THE LORD DID FOR HIS PEOPLE.

1. He became a Father to them.

(1) By virtue of creation he is the Father of the whole family of man.

(2) By the Sinai covenant he became especially the Head of the house of Israel.

(3) By the everlasting covenant of his gospel he is now the Father of all believers everywhere.

2. He gave them a rich inheritance.

(1) The land of promise was as "a vineyard" in distinction from the surrounding countries (cf. Isaiah 5:1-7). They were morally as well as physically distinguished.

(2) God himself "planted" them as "a vine from Egypt" (cf. Psalm 80:8-15; Isaiah 61:3; Jeremiah 2:21).

3. He made every provision for their benefit.

(1) "He set a hedge about it."

(a) By the "law of commandments contained in ordinances" he separated his people from the idolatrous nations surrounding.

(b) His providence was as a wall of fire for their defence (see Zechariah 2:5).

(2) "He digged a winepress," or vat for the reception of the wine. To conserve the purposes of their planting he gave them the services of the sanctuary - daily offerings, sabbaths, new moons, annual festivals.

(3) "He built a tower" whence to watch the approach of robbers. Jerusalem with its temple was the watch tower of the vineyard.

II. THE RETURN HE RECEIVED FOR HIS GOODNESS.

1. The husbandmen kept from him the fruits.

(1) The rent is paid in produce. The fruits are those of righteousness and love. When the people entered upon the inheritance they gave verbal and intellectual acknowledgment of their obligations. The practical acknowledgment is the test of principle.

(2) God does not require rent paid in advance. He is not unreasonable. There is a time in which he looks on in silence. In this interval he looks for preparatory labour.

(3) He does expect the fruit in its season, in "the time for gathering the fruit." God claims the firstfruits of all our increase.

(4) The husbandmen were here radically at fault. The righteousness of the priests and elders was selfishness and pride. Their goodness was hypocrisy.

2. They maltreated his messengers.

(1) After they demanded a king, and the Lord their God withdrew his Shechinah, he sent them his earlier prophets, down to the time of the Assyrian captivity which ended the kingdom of Israel.

(2) To the remaining two tribes "he sent other servants, more than the first." The later prophets were more in number and greater in the clearness of their predictions. These ended with John the Baptist.

(3) But these they beat, as Jeremiah, and killed, as Isaiah and John, and stoned, as Zechariah the son of Jehoiada (see 2 Chronicles 36:16; Nehemiah 9:26; Jeremiah 25:3-7; Hebrews 11:36, 37).

(4) The priests and rulers were the descendants of the race that had killed the prophets (see Matthew 5:12; Matthew 23:34-37; Acts 7:52; 1 Thessalonians 2:15).

3. They murdered the heir.

(1) "They will reverence my Son," armed with Divine credentials, and fully representing the Householder. The Son of David, and Heir to the kingdom. The Son of God, and "Heir of all things" (see Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; John 3:35; Hebrews 1:1, 2).

(2) "They cast him forth out of the vineyard." Christ was cast out of the synagogue as a profane person, and delivered to the Romans to be executed, and relegated to Calvary for that purpose, "outside the gate" of the city.

(3) There they "killed him." So they filled up the measure of their iniquity.

III. THE SEVERITY OF HIS RETRIBUTION.

1. God dooms the sinner to the judgment of his sin.

(1) The priests little suspected whither Jesus was leading them when he led them to say, "He will bring these wretches to a wretched death." The truth, unpractised, which we carry with us into the other world, will judge us to perdition. Jesus expressed this in those words, "I judge no man: the word that I have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day." So the clearer our light the darker our condemnation.

(2) The priests first pronounced their condemnation in the words cited; Jesus seems to have afterwards pronounced it in the same terms (see Luke 20:16). "Out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee."

2. He brings confusion upon his schemes.

(1) He excludes him from the inheritance. The inheritance was the very thing the priests sought to retain (ver. 38). Sin is the direct way to frustrate the sinner's designs.

(2) He puts another in his place. Nothing so angered the inveterate Jew as the proposal to carry the gospel to the Gentile. Little did the priests estimate the significance of their sentence, "And he will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons." Persecution may destroy the ministers, but cannot destroy the Church.

(3) They will exalt the stone which the builders rejected. The disciples fetched their hosannas from the context of the passage quoted from Psalm 118:22, 23, which carries conviction and terror to the enemies of Christ.

(4) The words of the psalm were first spoken of David, who, after suffering persecution from Saul and rejection from the chiefs of Israel, at length triumphed over his enemies, and rose to unexampled prosperity. David, that rejected stone which became the head of the corner (cf. 1 Samuel 14:38), was therein a type of Christ. In his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation as the Head of his Church, the temple of the living stones, the copestone was brought up with the shoutings of angels. What a confusion to the murderers of the Heir was his triumphant resurrection!

3. He brings judgment upon them to destruction.

(1) Falling upon the stumbling stone (Jesus in his humiliation), the offender is "broken" (see Isaiah 8:14, 15; 1 Peter 2:8). Jerusalem became a desolation. The nation was broken. The spiritual judgment of blindness and obduracy is more terrible than the temporal suffering (see Romans 11:8-10; 1 Thessalonians 2:15). Instead of being humbled, the sinner is exasperated when his sin is pointed out.

(2) The stone becoming active and falling upon the sinner, he is crushed into dust (see Isaiah 60:12; Daniel 2:44). The same stone, Christ, now however coming, not in humiliation, but in the glory of his majesty and power. "How shall we escape, if we neglect his great salvation?" - J.A.M.

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KJV: Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:

WEB: "Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household, who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country.