Overview

In the last episode we learned Jesus’ lesson of the withered fig tree. That Old Covenant Israel was not bearing fruit in accordance with repentance, and that they would be cursed, and that the Apostles would bring the gospel of Mount Zion into the heart of the Gentile sea, the nations. This reading is supplemented at every turn in the gospels, in my view. And today we will look at another parable Jesus teaches following the withered fig tree event. It is known as the Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers.

The Parable of the Wicked Farmers

In Mark 11, after Jesus teaches the lesson of the withered fig tree, He teaches on forgiveness and prayer, which is an elaboration of how Mount Zion is thrown into the sea. Then He has a confrontation with the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders. The leaders of Israel are at odds with Jesus here. They question his authority. “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority to do these things?” (Mark 11:28)

This is the question often asked by those who are in rebellion to God and want to stamp out the move of the Holy Spirit in His Church. Those who want the goodies of the kingdom to themselves. Wicked rulers in the Church challenged the authority of God incarnate. And they continue to challenge the authority of those who follow God incarnate. Notice this question is asked often. By whose authority do you do these things?

Jesus stumps them in his response. And then He teaches a parable of wicked vineyard owners, similar to Jesus’ parable of the fig tree in the vineyard of Luke 13. The parable is about the leaders of Israel. It’s about the men who are challenging his authority. It is as if Jesus says, “You, who are merely tenants of my vineyard Israel, think you are the owners of vineyard Israel. But I am the owner of vineyard of Israel. How dare you question the authority of the owner?”

In the parable, there is a man who plants a vineyard, and rents it to farmers, to tillers of soil or vinedressers. The word there can mean all of these things. They are men like Adam, tending a garden. The owner of the vineyard sends servants at harvest time to collect fruit from the farmers, the tenants. But when they arrive they are met with beatings and ultimately murder. They are sent one at a time and every time they are treated more shamefully and dealt with more violently. Some they beat, and others they killed. (Mark 12:5) Then we read this, “He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’” (Mark 12:6) But the farmers conspired to kill the son, in order to have the inheritance of the vineyard for themselves.

It should be obvious to us what this parable is about. But Mark relieves us the burden of actually doing the hard work, and just explicitly tells us. “Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them.” (Mark 12:12) They knew the parable was about them. They knew Jesus was speaking about the wicked rulers in Israel who were already rejecting the Son of God. The vineyard owner is the Father. The vineyard is Israel. The servants sent were the prophets before Christ. The son sent is Jesus. All of these were treated shamefully and rejected by Israel, particularly the leadership of Israel. They wanted the kingdom without the king. The same problem we have the farmers of Israel now.

And Jesus tells us the consequences of this. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” (Mark 12:9)

And so Jesus is saying that judgment is coming. That the Jews who rejected Christ will be killed, and they were in 70 AD. Jesus is saying the kingdom of the vineyard of God will be given to others. And it was. It was given to the Israelites who believed as well as the Gentiles who believed. In other words it was given to the Christian Church.

I can’t count the number of times people have simply rejected this understanding of the kingdom by simply saying, “Well, that’s replacement theology.” I don’t like that term. I prefer covenant theology. And I prefer to view this as an expansion of the kingdom which grew out of Old Covenant Israel into New Covenant Israel. And this isn’t even really specific to covenant theology. Lutherans, Papists, Anglicans view it this way, too. As did most of the Church throughout history. But, at the same time there is some element of replacement here. There is what we might call kingdom transfer. Taken from people who weren’t interested in bearing fruits, to a people who will bear fruit.

The Kingdom Transfer

This kingdom transfer is made more explicit in the Matthean parallel passage. Jesus says the same thing, except switches from the metaphor of the parable, to speaking bluntly about what the parable represents. “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” (Matthew 21:43-44) He switches from talking about the vineyard to talking about the kingdom. The vineyard is the kingdom, and it is going to be given to a different nation.

Here, again, Jesus is putting this in terms of bearing fruit. Just repeated horticultural language. Language of the Garden. These men are unfaithful Adams who, like Adam, are going to lose the Garden given to them. The unbelieving Jews, especially their leaders, did not cultivate good fruit. They did not repent. They did not believe. And so the kingdom is going to be given to a different nation, and that nation, as Peter tells us is the Church.

Speaking to the believing Jews and believing Gentiles who have been united to Christ, he says, “you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10) A holy nation. The Church. The Church has always been from the beginning. Some Puritan, I can’t remember who, wrote about the first Church being the marriage of Adam and Eve in the garden. The Heidelberg catechism talks about the Church being from the beginning. Stephen talks about the Church coming out of Egypt and wandering in the wilderness. And Paul says the Exodus Israelites drank from the same rock that we drink from, which is Christ.

But this gigantic influx of Gentiles, and new covenant Church, serves to mark a kind of transfer of the kingdom from unbelieving Jews to believing Jews and Gentiles, where those barriers are done away with in Christ, and a new people of God are formed. A new covenant people of God, the True Israel of God who bears the good fruits of repentance and righteousness, as opposed to the stiff-necked, obstinate, unbelieving Jews of the flesh. Instead, God makes Jews who are circumcised in their hearts. As Paul says, “For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” (Philippians 3:3)

The Rock That Crushes

In his explanation of the wicked farmers parable, that the kingdom will be transferred to a nation of godly farmers, Jesus adds this curious statement. “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” (Matthew 21:44) As we surveyed last time, stone language, or mountain language, was used in conjunction with the the fig tree. Stones and mountains are employed frequently in conjunction with the horticultural language elsewhere. All of it has to do with King Jesus and His Kingdom.

John says to the Jewish leaders, bear fruits worthy of repentance. Horticultural language. The axe is laid at the root. Horticultural language. Don’t say to yourselves that we have Abraham as our father, for God can raise up sons of Abraham from these stones. Rock language. (Luke 3, Matthew 3) Which is exactly what happens. God starts swinging the axe at the root of Old Covenant Israel, and then He makes children of Abraham from the Gentile stones, building a new Temple of God with them on the chief cornerstone, who is Christ, and on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. Kingdom transfer. In Matthew 7, Jesus says false prophets are like bad types of trees, bramble, and thistle, and that you will know false prophets by their fruits. Horticultural language. And then he follows it up with a teaching about building on the rock and sand. Rock language. Jesus curses the fig tree. Horticultural image. Then he teaches the disciples to pray that this mountain would be thrown into the sea. Rock language. Mount Zion is taken to the Nations. Kingdom transfer.

Here, in the parable of the wicked farmers, Jesus is doing the same thing. Explicitly telling us that the wicked tenants are going to lose their vineyard, and it’s going to be given to someone else. Then we get this rock/stone language. The rock is Jesus, and Jesus breaks those who fall in him, and grinds to powder those on whom He falls. I’m not totally sure what is meant here. But I think it may mean that those who fall on Christ are broken, as in having a broken and contrite heart. (Psalm 51:17) And those on whom the rock of Christ falls upon are ground to powder like the idol at Sinai. (Exodus 32) Remember the golden calf idol was also ground to powder, and the idolators were made to drink the powder of their idolatry. All who worship idols become like them. (Psalm 115:8) All who worship idols are ground to powder. The Jews worshiped Caesar. We have no king, but Caesar, and they were made to drink their idolatry of Caesar in the storm of Vespasian’s and Titus armies which destroyed their house built on sand.

*I briefly checked the historical thought on this. And it’s a little different. Chrysostom views it as two ways of destruction. One of offense. The other of literal destruction. (Homilies, Matt. 21:33-34). Augustine interprets it the same way. “First, He lay low, and they stumbled against Him; He shall come from above, and He will “grind” them that have been shaken “to powder.” (Augustin: Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament: On the same words of the Gospel, Matt. xxii. 42) John Calvin and Matthew Henry gives a similar reading.

This crushing rock language also may be an allusion to Daniel 2, where the stone, who is Christ, destroys the statue figure which represents the rulers of the earth. The rulers of the earth are either ground to powder when they rage against Christ or they are broken in repentance if they submit to Christ. I think the allusion to Daniel 2 is likely because in the same passage of Matthew 21 and Mark 12 where Jesus is explaining the parable of the wicked tenants, he quotes Psalm 118:

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.
This was the Lord’s doing,
And it is marvelous in our eyes’?

The same Psalm prophesies the destruction of the nations in the name of the Lord.

“All nations surrounded me,
But in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.” (Psalm 118:10)

So, again, all of this points to the destruction of Israel, and the establishment and expansion of Christ’s kingdom among the Gentiles and remnant believing Jews.

The Son is Coming!

Lastly, when the Romans had erected their catapults, or engines, as Josephus calls them, to start slinging giant rocks at Jersusalem. The watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem could see these stones coming from afar. They were large and white, Jospehus tells us. And here’s where it gets fascinating. The watchmen, to warn of the incoming giant stones would yell, “The son is coming!” “ὁ υἱὸς ἔρχεται” This has baffled some translators and so they have tried to correct by translating it as, “The Stone is Coming!” (The Wars of the Jews, Book V, Ch. VI, section 3) But this is wrong. The Greek says, “The Son is Coming!” There’s a whole bunch more we could get into with the nitty gritty of translation and manuscripts and all that, but we aren’t going to do that. There are other English translations that say, “The Son is Coming!” and this is the correct translation.

Why would the Jewish watchmen on the wall of Jerusalem say this? Why would they say the Son is coming with incoming catapult stones? I can’t think of any other possible explanation than the Jews blasphemously, mocking the Christians, and ultimately Christ’s warning that the Son was coming soon. They knew the Christians were saying this. The Son is coming soon. Jesus is coming back soon. This is all over the place in the New Testament, and we also have the testimony of James the Brother of Jesus, or James the Just, telling the Jews the same thing.

Eusibius (History of the Church, Book II, Chapter XXIII), Clement, and Hegesippus (who lived immediately after the apostles) tell us about the witness of James. James stood on the pinnacle of the Temple and he prophesied that the Son was coming soon. And because this wasn’t what the Jewish leaders wanted to hear, they threw him down from the pinnacle. That didn’t kill him, so they started stoning him. That didn’t kill him, so someone took a bat to his head, and he then became a martyr for his brother, The Christ. Hegesippus, after recording the martyrdom of James writes, “And immediately Vespasian besieged them.” Josephus also records the martyrdom of James, and acknowledges that he was wrongfully killed because he was a just man.

But the point is James says, “The Son is coming.” They kill him. And then immediately the Son came, and the Jews, while being decimated, continued in their blasphemous, scoffing, wickedness by saying, “The Son is coming!” whenever a giant, white, stone came and crushed them. By the way, the Josephus tells us that the Romans blacked out the white stones to make them more difficult to detect, and so the white stone of salvation becomes a black stone of death and grinds the Jews to powder. And thus the words of Christ were confirmed. “Whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”

Furthermore, Josephus tells us the stones weighed about a talent, which is around 70-100 lbs. They’ve been unearthed in an archeological dig. You can find it online. Josephus writes, “The stones they hurled weighed a talent and flew two furlongs or more (that’s about 5 football fields), striking through not only whoever stood first in the way, but people a long distance beyond them.” (5.6.3) This is prophesied in that one book of the Bible which tells us a bunch of times that things written in it would happen soon. Revelation 16:21 tells about the seventh cup of judgment poured out on the land of Israel and we read this. “Great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.” (Revelation 16:21)

Guys! Come on! This is the rock that crushes. The rock that crushes is Jesus. Jesus is Lord of Lord and King of Kings now. He is sovereign. Meaning the heart of the king is like water in the hand of the Lord. The Son came to Jerusalem through Vespasian and Titus, through the 100 lb. hail stones that rained down on the land. And the stone of Christ fell on Jerusalem, grinding it to powder because they would not fall in brokenness and repentance on the stone of Christ. And so the kingdom has been given to us, and we must be careful to be good farmers, and to live in a such a way that acknowledges we are not the owners of the vineyard of Christ’s Church. We are tenants. We are stewards. Christ is the owner of the vineyard.