In Robert Bosley's sermon on the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, he explores the contrast between those who accept Jesus and those who reject him. The parable, taken from Matthew 21:33-46, illustrates the relationship between God, symbolized by the vineyard owner, and the people of Israel, represented by the tenants. The tenants, who are the religious leaders, consistently reject and harm the messengers sent by the owner, including ultimately his son, which symbolizes the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus Christ by the Jewish leaders. Bosley emphasizes that this parable not only addresses the immediate context of Jesus' time but also foreshadows the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as a judgment for the rejection of God's messengers. The sermon also describes how the kingdom of God was taken from the religious leaders and given to a new nation, the Christian Church, characterized by faith in Christ. Bosley warns against the dangers of rejecting Christ and emphasizes the call to repentance, urging listeners to trust in God's promises for salvation. He also addresses modern attitudes towards the Jewish people, stressing the need for Christians to affirm the value of every human while opposing false religious beliefs.

Amen. What a perfect song for this afternoon. The contrast that we'll see in this parable between Those who bow before the feet of Jesus where none can perish Contrasted with those who reject him and how they will perish Open up to the gospel of Matthew will be in chapter 21 So open up to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 21. And we're continuing the series on the parables taught by our Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry. We're going to be looking at the parable from verses 33 to 46 Matthew 21 33 through 46 This is the Lord Jesus speaking Here another parable There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower.

And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now, when vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit. And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them. Then last of all, he sent his son to them, saying, they will respect my son.

But when the vine dressers saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir, come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance. And so they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine dressers? They said to him, they being the Pharisees primarily, he will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vine dressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons and 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.

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." Now, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking of them. But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitudes because they took him for a prophet. Let's pray. Oh, Father, we come to you this afternoon, so thankful for your many gifts.

Lord, you have fed us well today, body and soul, and we pray, God, that you would do so again this afternoon. Open up your word to us. Help us to understand it, to believe it and be made more like Christ by what we look at and see this afternoon. Help me Lord to speak as I ought to speak and open up the ears of all who are here that they may hear and understand your word in Jesus name amen so this parable is often called the parable of the tenants the parable of the tenant farmers sometimes called the parable the vineyard of the vineyard workers the vine dressers but those those names of the the vineyard vine dressers that's also applied to the parable that we saw in Matthew chapter 20. So I'm gonna stick with calling it the parable of the tenants.

So even though we don't see Tenet in our New King James translation, understand I'm talking about this parable. But this parable follows immediately on the last parable that we looked at, the parable of the two sons. It takes the same idea that our Lord was communicating there and expands on it. In the parable of the two sons, the religious leaders of the Jewish people are presented as the son who says he will obey his father's commands, but instead disobeys and does not go and do the work that he was commanded to do. On the other hand, you have the outcasts of society, the sinners and rebels against God's law who lived a life of disobedience, but then repented at the preaching of John and repented at the preaching of Jesus.

These are pictured as the son who at first says I will not go and then goes into his father's vineyard. They are those who had a change of heart and do their father's will. And this was a picture of the conversion of sinners on the one hand, and a picture of the self-righteous pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees, the priests, and the leaders of the people, on the other hand. But, unlike the parable of the two sons, this parable goes further and instructs not only about what is happening at the time that Jesus is speaking but what will happen very soon. He's not simply talking about their current disobedience but what will be the end result of their rebellion.

And so this parable, like the parable of the two sons, is primarily addressed to the religious leaders, the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees. However, When we read this and we see there is an application to it even at the very end, the chief priests and Pharisees, they perceive that he's talking about them. And that's true. But there is a broader application to the nation as a whole because it's not just the religious leaders that suffer punishment, it's the whole people. And this is often the case.

God will often put evil leaders over an already rebellious people. As Calvin put it, when God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers. Those rulers themselves are the judgment of God, and then what damage and destruction they bring is a further judgment from God. And so with that in mind, that's what we see here in this parable. And so what we see in the parable of the tenets is a picture of a people and its leaders who have utterly rebelled against their God.

And not just once, not twice, but on and on continually over decades, over centuries. A stubborn and hard-hearted people that God is finally going to bring judgment on. And why? Because they've done the ultimate crime. They've committed the ultimate transgress against God's law.

They not only killed his messengers but they have killed his son. And this is I believe fulfilled clearly in the destruction of Jerusalem, destruction of the temple in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans which we'll talk about a little bit more in a few minutes but I want us to see that this this parable this passage this is one of these amazing parts of scripture that we can point to and we can point others to and say look this is proof that this is the word of God. This is a judgment, a proclamation in this parable made by the Lord Jesus and written by the evangelists decades before it happened. And it was fulfilled exactly as they said it would What other book has such similarly fulfilled scriptures? This is totally unique what God has given us in his word As for the elements of the parable, it's not that hard to figure out.

The vineyard owner is God, who by mere grace chose the children of Abraham to be his special people under the old covenant. He planted them in the land of Canaan. The parable set a wall around his vineyard. He made a winepress and he built a tower. What was God doing?

He brought Israel out of their slavery and planted them in a new land, and he promised them peace and productivity and security if they would keep his covenant, if they would obey his law. How good God was to his chosen people. What more could he have done for them? He blessed them beyond anything they could have dreamed of. He gave them everything they needed.

And they responded with hard hearts and stiff necks. He said, judges, kings, rulers over them, these are the tenants in the parable. God planted his vineyard and he let it out to tenant farmers or the vine dressers as the New King James says. These are the rulers of Israel from its first days until Jesus's time here from the judges the kings now to the Pharisees and the scribes the rulers that God had put over them who had failed throughout all of Israel's history to lead God's people to bear fruit. They were given every grace and every gift imaginable, but they did not bear the fruit God required.

Largely because of the sins of their leaders. We see that over and over when we read the historical books of the Old Testament. And to these wayward rulers and this hard-hearted people, God sent messengers over and over. He sent the prophets calling the people, calling the kings, calling the rulers to bear that fruit keeping with repentance. Beginning with the Old Testament prophets culminating with John the Baptist as the last real old covenant prophet.

They came to call Israel to repentance, but the nation's leaders consistently ignored, mistreated, abused, and killed the God's messengers. And finally the ultimate messenger comes. As the book of Hebrews says, God spoke to our forefathers in many ways, but now at the end he has spoken to us in his son. God sent messenger after messenger and finally he sent the preeminent messenger, the Lord Jesus Christ, the very son of the landowner. Surely the people will listen to and obey and respect my son.

But no, rather than welcoming him and giving him his dew and giving him the fruit of his vineyard. They drug him out and killed him. That's why the book of Hebrews says that it was necessary that he would be killed and die outside the gates, outside the walls of the city. Rather than respecting him and listening to him, they crucified the Lord of glory. And this this language of Israel as a vineyard, as Israel as a vine, the Lord is drawing from Old Testament references over and over.

God uses this imagery in the Old Testament to describe his people, primarily Isaiah 5. However, there is a significant development when the Lord uses this imagery. In Isaiah 5, this vineyard that God had planted brings forth wild, inedible, sour grapes, which are a picture of the sins of the people and their continued disobedience to God's law. And of course that culminated ultimately in exile and the destruction of the city and the temple the first time at the hand of Babylon in 586 BC. In this parable, when the Lord Jesus tells this story, using that same imagery, the rebellion is centered around the tenant farmers, the rulers that God has put in charge of his people, Who are refusing to receive his messengers refusing to receive his servants?

This is a picture of Israel's rejection Particularly through their proud self-righteous leaders who will not listen to God's prophets who want all these things only for themselves, they will not allow in many ways God's people, even if they wanted to serve God, the leaders will say, no, we're going to go after other gods, oftentimes setting up idols and turning to things that are not God. Now of course these two images, the wild inedible grapes, a picture of sin and rebellion and in the parable the tenant farmers who will not allow the messengers to receive the fruit and really the the two images go hand in hand the inedible inedible grapes of sin and the wicked tenants who murder God's messengers compliment one another because what greater sin could there be? What other, what greater disobedience to God's law could there be than to murder God's own son? And so the question is raised, what is going to happen? Look at verse 40, Jesus asks in Matthew's version of the parable, Jesus asks them, when the owner of the vineyard comes.

What will he do? This can't go unanswered this can't go on forever. It has to come to an end. What is going to be the end And the Pharisees and the leaders effectively prophesy against themselves, he will destroy those wicked men and lease the vineyard to others. The tenants will be put to death as they slaughtered the messengers of the landowner.

They will suffer the same judgment. They will be put to death. And the vineyard will be given to others who will give the master the fruit that he requires. And this Death of the tenants and the leasing out of the vineyard to others is a description of the then coming judgments and destruction of the city and the temple in 8070. I want to touch on a few points about that event.

You may not realize or maybe you're totally unfamiliar with what happened in the Jewish-Roman War in around 70 AD, that ended in 70 AD, with the destruction of the city of Jerusalem. Now the war began a few years earlier than that, but the culmination, the final battle, not much of a battle, but the final event of the war was the siege of the city. It lasted about five months, And it's truly one of the most brutal events in human history. Outside the city, the Romans were merciless to the Jews, crucifying so many people that at the peak They were crucifying about 500 people a day. And the land was described as a forest of crosses.

It was said that there was lack of room for all the crosses and a lack of crosses for all the bodies. So great was the bloodshed. But that wasn't all the brutality. Inside the city there was madness and violence as well. The city, while besieged by an enemy army, split into three factions that were fighting each other in the streets.

There was a three-way civil war in the city during the siege with men following others who they thought were the messiah, leading these different factions, killing each other in the streets, burning one another's supplies, burning one another's homes, all while the Romans are outside the walls. Absolute madness. The destruction of supplies in the city and the cut off of supplies from the Roman siege made the famine so severe inside the city that Just like the first siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the people inside resorted to cannibalism to survive, which God threatened he would do to covenant breakers. These are the curses I will bring on you, God told them, through Moses. And God did it.

And then finally when the Romans did break through the walls of Jerusalem, they set fire to the temple and some 10, 000 people who were taking refuge in the temple died in a single day and The siege ended with the city being destroyed and the temple burned to the ground on August 6 of 8070 656 years to the day after Babylon destroyed the first temple. In total, between the siege, the civil war inside the city, and the famine, over a million people were killed and nearly another 100, 000 taken as slaves. Nearly another hundred thousand taken as slaves. Absolute atrocities on a level that we can't even really comprehend. Something that the world really never even saw until that point and we've really not seen again.

World War II might come close in some of those cities. But did you know the Christians survived? The Christians survived. How? Well, it's not because the Romans were nice.

The Romans At the time, they didn't know or care about any difference between Jews that still follow the old covenant and Jews who follow Jesus as the Messiah. Rather, the Christians had read this parable. The Christians had read The next parable in Matthew 22, the parable of the great banquet where those who reject God's messengers are told that their city is going to be burned. The Christians had read the word of God and had heard the message of Jesus. They had read what Jesus said was going to happen to that city and to that temple.

They had read the sermon preached by Jesus where he said, when you see the abomination that brings desolation, flee to the mountains. And then Luke interprets that for his Gentile audience as when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies flee, don't even bother to go in and get your coat run for the hills. And the Christians had read this and saw the Roman armies coming and knew that Jesus' words were coming true. And so the Christian church left Jerusalem and fled to the mountains and so they were spared. It's astonishing.

Exactly as Jesus said it would happen, it happened. Exactly as he had warned, it came to pass. And his enemies were crushed and his people rescued. Because God keeps his promises and he also keeps his threats. To those who believed, he kept the promise that they would escape and that they would be saved.

And to those who rejected him, he kept his threatened judgment and he brought it without mercy. And so the question is, where are you today? Are you trusting in the promises of God, which are all yes in him and in him amen? Or are you still sitting under the threat of God's judgment against you for your sinful rebellion against him? Have you welcomed your Savior or are you rejecting him like these people did?

Finally towards the the end verse 42 Jesus' response, 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 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 the stone will be broken But on whomever it falls it will be great here. He will be ground to powder Christ is set forth here as the cornerstone The one rejected by men But the one who has become the head of the corner. The chief cornerstone of the New Testament church. The Kingdom of God. Visibly seen in the old covenant people of the among the Jewish nation.

The kingdom of God is taken from them Both the religious leaders and the people as an apostate nation and given to a new nation a new people The kingdom is given to a nation which will produce the fruit that God's kingdom requires. That's what Jesus says. Now this new nation is not a nation in and of itself like Israel was, a distinct people group. Rather this new nation which will bear the kingdom of God throughout the world and bear the fruit of the kingdom of God is not a single nation but the expansive multi-ethnic nation of the Christian Church. A new nation not united by language or culture or ethnicity or anything like that, but united by faith in Christ as her risen savior and king.

As Peter said, speaking to Christians, you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession to proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once, you were not a people. And look around this room. We are not a people in that sense. We're two different.

But now, you are the people of God. All those barriers, all those divisions broken down, brought together by a common faith in our common Lord. And our Lord ends the parable with, and his interpretation of it, with this threat and a promise. Whoever falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him into powder. Christ is the cornerstone that holds up the church, But he is also the millstone that grinds his enemies to powder.

He is both. Because in the end, everyone is broken by Jesus. No one gets away with being neutral. There is no neutrality when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ. Either you will fall on Him and be broken into pieces, broken in humble repentance over your sin and your rebellion, or he will fall on you in wrath and judgment on that last day and you will be ground to powder under the full weight of God's wrath.

That is what he is saying here. And so do not think to yourselves that you haven't earned the wrath that Jerusalem faced and that the Pharisees received. Yes, it's clear there is a way in which they uniquely experienced the judgment of God as a covenant-breaking people. But it is also a picture, a type, a foreshadowing of what will happen to every sinner who rejects Jesus Christ. The same rebellion that led Israel to break their covenant with God is in the heart of every sinner who today is under a broken covenant of works.

And so if you reject this cornerstone, you will find him to be the millstone. You will receive the same wrath that first century Israel received. You will be ground to powder. You will face God's judgment. So come to him.

Come to him in the day of mercy. Come to him now. What more could he do for you than what he's already done? It is the time of mercy. The army is not surrounding the city.

It is still time to repent and trust him. Humble yourself at his feet that you would not perish there as we sang just before this message. I have one other point of application I would like to make. There is a growing trend that I've seen among conservatives and conservative Christians, especially online, to blame and scapegoat the Jews for everything. To blame them for everything that's wrong in the world and to hate them simply for sake of their ethnicity.

I don't really like the term racism. I would rather use the biblical idea of sinful partiality. But you get my point either way. There is a real and growing hatred for the Jews as a people group today. And often people who will wear our jersey, so to speak, will point to passages like this and say, well, see, There are wicked people, God destroyed them, we should despise them just as God did.

We have to resist that mentality. It is a wicked mentality. Now, I am not someone who will say that the Jews can do nothing wrong. I'm not a Zionist. But this attitude that I'm speaking of is the opposite.

That rather than the Jews can do no wrong, it's that by nature the Jews can do nothing right, nothing good, that they're worse than other men by nature. And this is often accompanied by a conflation of the modern Jewish religion and the Jewish people as a ethnicity or race, if you will. And I think as Christians, we have to affirm two things simultaneously that some people for whatever reason seem to have a really hard time holding onto both. And I want us to be careful that we don't let go of one and get pulled into a ditch on either side. So as Christians, we have to hold onto both of these things.

On the one hand, we absolutely, clearly must affirm and articulate that Judaism is a false religion. That it is a false religion based on a rejection of the true God and of his son Everyone who denies the son does not have the father either John tells us crystal clearly And some of the things that the Talmud which is really the basis of modern Judaism says about our Lord, is the worst blasphemy you will ever read. It is an evil religion and we must clearly affirm that. At the same time, we have to also affirm the Jewish people are human beings made in the image of God. Of equal dignity and value and worth as every other human being.

And we pray that many of them would be objects of God's mercy. And so we oppose their evil actions and evil beliefs, but We don't discard them, we don't relegate them off as the unclean who can never be saved. No, we go and we evangelize them, we preach the truth to them, knowing that no one, no individual, no race or ethnicity is ever too far gone that God's grace cannot reach them. The grace of Christ is greater than all our sin, no matter what people we may be from. And in fact, in my opinion, we look at Romans 11, I think we have an indication that we'll see a great ingathering of the Jewish people into the church one day.

That's my hope and my prayer and I hope that would be the hope and prayer of all of us as we consider this parable and we consider the historical context. So on the one hand let's marvel and be amazed at what God did, the clarity with which Jesus spoke, and the precision with how he brought his word to pass even through the hands of the evil Romans. Be amazed at how God has kept his promises, tremble at how he kept his threats. But at the same time, let's not just leave that in the past. It applies to us today.

Who are you? Where are you? Are you trusting in Christ? Or are you still rejecting Him? Because if you are rejecting him and you continue to reject him, the same judgment, the same wrath that they felt, you will feel it too.

And I pray to God that's not true of any of us here. May God have mercy on his people here. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this passage. We thank you Lord for your word and how you clearly have kept it.

You keep all your promises because you are a covenant keeping God and we thank you Lord that is who you are so father I pray that we would go from here reflecting on this thinking and considering and examining ourselves to see where we are what our what the state of our own souls are. God, if anyone is questioning or if anyone knows that they're still in their rebellion, in their sins, God I pray that you would open up their eyes, change their hearts, turn them around, grant them repentance, God. Save, Lord, we pray. Save your people and give new life to those who are dead and sins today. In Jesus name, Amen.