Consider these questions as we dwell in Mark 12:1-12:

1. How does the parable of the vineyard illustrate Jesus' judgment against the Pharisees, religious rulers, and the people of Israel? What key elements of the story symbolize the prophets and Jesus himself?

2. In the parable, why do the workers in the vineyard ultimately decide to kill the owner's son? What is the significance of this action in the context of the larger message Jesus is conveying?

3. What is the central message Jesus is trying to communicate through the parable and his quotation of the scripture, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone"? How does this message challenge the expectations and understanding of the religious leaders and the disciples?

Transcript:

This is another one of the parables that is a judgment against the Pharisees and against the religious rulers and against the people of Israel who have rejected the prophets and now are rejecting the Christ. And so, what is Jesus talking about here? What is this parable? Well, we just read it, but let's review it just a little bit. The idea here is that this man got this vineyard and this wine press and did everything to this property to prepare it to yield the harvest. He sends servants to do the harvest, and the people that work there keep killing them or beating them. And so, the idea here is that this is the prophets that were sent as messengers to the people of God. And so, finally, in the parable, we read that this owner of the vineyard decides, Hey, they're not going to mess with my son, so I'm going to send him. But that was the exact opposite of what the people who were in the vineyard, the workers in the vineyard did. They saw an opportunity to make the property of the vineyard owner their own. They said, Look, this is the heir.

Let us kill him. Then the inheritance will be ours. They were trying to take what was not theirs, and they took a life to do it. Well, Jesus asks a question, What will the owner of the vineyard do? You think he's going to give them an inheritance? What were they thinking? If this were to happen, the owner of the vineyard would come, and he would come with a vengeance. As it says, he will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. The inheritance will be the inheritance of someone else. And so, Jesus quotes some scripture. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The idea here is that Jesus is the one who is coming. He is the son, but they are going to reject him. They are going to kill him. And this doesn't mean that suddenly, now the Pharisees and the religious leaders are going to have their way. No, it means that the inheritance will go to someone else. This is foreshadowing the gospel going out into all the world, not just to the Jewish people, but to Gentiles also.

And so, the story here is that the Messiah is being rejected. Remember, we've seen this throughout the book so far, but the disciples, they fail to understand this that the Christ will suffer. And so, Jesus tells this story, and we would guess they're listening and they're maybe not understanding. And even we see that even the religious leaders, they seek to arrest Jesus, but they're wondering about the story. Are they talking about us? Will this cause the people to rise up against us? Well, we know the story. We know that this is what happens to the Lord Jesus. We know that he is killed by the Pharisees and the religious leaders. And what happens? Instead of the gospel going only to the people of God, the gospel goes out into the whole world because Jesus, he is the capstone. He is the cornerstone. He is the one that is the power of God and the salvation. This is what the church is built upon. It was rejected by these people at this time. And so, we see that this is the Lord's doing. He is sending out the gospel into the whole world. So what happened?

Why did these religious leaders reject Jesus? Well, they misunderstood who he was. They misunderstood who he was supposed to be in being the Messiah. They were looking for something else. They were looking for not a religious leader who would save them from their sins, as we've talked about so many times before. They were looking for a conqueror, someone who would take over as a military leader or as a political leader. But they didn't see who the Messiah was to be, and that this was about the message of the gospel, the message of God's salvation going out into the whole world. And so, for us, what is our application? Well, first off, we are the beneficiaries of this. We are the ones that the message has gone out to. Christ is our cornerstone because we have been made God's people as the church. Well, the second thing is, we need to think about what is it in our hearts that we are missing about who Jesus is? What are we misunderstanding? What are we trying to build up Jesus as something in our minds or something that our hearts desire, and we're missing who scripture clearly says he is?

We want to make sure that we can form our view of who God is and who Jesus is to holy scripture, so that we might understand the true Jesus and worship him in spirit and in truth. May we rejoice in the fact that we are God's people, and may we seek out the true Jesus of his holy word, understanding what he has come to do and who he truly is.