Mark 11:27-12:12
Date: April 30th 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Mark 11:27-12:12
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea of Text: Jesus defies the authority of the religious leaders and passes judgment on them through parable.
11:27-11:33: The Jewish leaders challenge the authority of Jesus and Jesus proves that they have rejected God’s authority.
12:1-12: Jesus tells the parable of the tenants to pass judgment on the religious leaders.
12:1-9: The tenants reject every messenger and ultimately kill the son of the owner of the vineyard and the owner gives the vineyard to others.
12:10-12: Jesus quotes Psalm 118 and passes a judgment on the religious leaders.
Homiletical Outline
Main Idea of Sermon: Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews and give the kingdom to the Gentiles.
11:27-33: Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews.
12:1-12: Jesus has the authority to give the kingdom to the Gentiles.
Introduction
We have been a church for a very short time. Which means, I have been your pastor for a very short time. As such, we are not as familiar with each other’s pasts as we might be if we were an older church. The subject of our sermon this week is authority and as I was preparing it made me wonder: what has been your experience throughout your life with authority?
As you contemplate that question, I bet that your first thought is not positive. You didn’t think of the benevolent coach that showed you tough love or the grandparent that lovingly corrected and disciplined you. Most likely, what came to your mind was a negative thought.
My assumption is that the majority of people in this room have a predisposition to distrust people in authority. We live in a society that inherently distrusts authority. Part of the reason we distrust authority is that we live in a digital age where people in authority are more visible than they have ever been. In a good way, it is have become increasingly difficult for leaders to abuse their authority and get away with it.
Another reason we distrust authority is because the ground of authority has shifted. For the majority of human history, the justification for authority was external. It was just understood that there were things out there in the world that had the right to tell you what to do. This has changed in the last 200 years. Our society is built upon the idea that authority is derived from the individual. We cede our authority to the government, but the origin of that authority is found in the will of the governed. Individualism is inherently distrusting of external authority.
But our distrust of authority goes even deeper. We distrust authority because every one of us has experienced the sinful abuse of authority. We have been the victims or seen other people be victimized by authority unchecked. When authority is abused, the pain experienced is directly proportional to the level of trust you have put in that person. So what do we do? We protect ourselves by always assuming that authority is bad. Anyone that has power is corrupt. We are always on guard so we can never be hurt by those that are in positions of authority.
This is particularly true in the Church. I am acutely aware that many of you have been abused by other pastors. Men that were supposed to be your spiritual leaders and caretakers that took advantage of you. Many of you might have been thinking of those men this whole time.
What we all need to hear in our sermon today is that authority is a gift from God to his people, and those men that abuse the authority that God has given to them for his people will not go unpunished. Let’s read our sermon text and see what our God does to spiritual leaders that abuse that God given authority.
Mark 11:27-12:12
27 And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28 and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” 29 Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” 31 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32 But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. 33 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“ ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
The main idea of our sermon this week is this: Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews and give the kingdom to the Gentiles.
Our sermon will have two points. First, Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews. Last week, we saw that Jesus made some startling proclamations in the temple. He quoted Isaiah and Jeremiah, condemning the temple and beginning the process of ending the fruitless worship taking place there. This week, when Jesus arrives at the temple, the most authoritative and powerful leaders in the temple, the chief priests and scribes, and the political leaders of the Jews, the elders, meet him at the door. They immediately challenge his authority to teach the things that he has been teaching. Now, the first time you read this text, you might think that Jesus’s authority is being tested, but he actually turns the table on the Jewish leaders. Who has more authority, the Jewish leaders that challenge Jesus, or Jesus who refuses to answer them? Jesus demonstrates he is the greater authority by refusing to acknowledge the challenge of the religious leaders.
The second point in our sermon is that Jesus has the authority to give the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. After defying the Jewish leaders, Jesus turns to the crowd and teaches them a parable. The point of the parable is to judge and condemn the gardeners that were supposed to be caring for God’s vineyard. Once the Jewish leaders murder the Son, the kingdom of God will pass to others, namely Gentiles. It is the Son that has the authority to commission his followers to go to all the nations, making disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to obey all of his commands.
Last week, we saw that Jesus was the king. This week, we are going to see that Jesus is the authoritative Son that has come to defy the religious leaders and give the kingdom of God to the Gentiles.
Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews.
Our sermon text opens this week by questioning the authority of Jesus. As we read our sermon text, I want you to pay special attention to who is challenging Jesus and how this challenge might relate to what we saw about Jesus’s teaching on the temple last week. Let’s reread Mark 11:27-33.
Mark 11:27-33
27 And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28 and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” 29 Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” 31 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32 But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. 33 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
In verse 27, we see that Jesus is challenged by the chief priests and the scribes, and the elders. They meet him the moment that he enters the temple to challenge him. We are going to see that not only do they fail to challenge him, but they also prove the first point of our sermon, which is: Jesus has the authority to defy the religious leaders of the Jews. The authority in this confrontation is not the Jewish leadership, but the true king that has come from the Father to do his will.
To see this confrontation correctly, we must understand who these Jewish leaders are. I have tried to be careful to call them Jewish leaders, because they are made up of both religious leaders and political leaders of the Jews. Now, the political power dynamic in Jerusalem is complicated. The region that the Romans considered Judaea, which included Judea, Samaria, and Idumea became a semi-independent vasal of the Roman Empire in 63 BC. After the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, his son Herod Archelaus became king of Judaea. He was a cruel king that was eventually deposed by Caesar Augustus in 6 AD after the people of Judaea had petitioned to become an actual Roman province. They became a satellite of the Syrian province under the rule of a prefect appointed by the governor of Syria. From that point on, Judaea had both a Roman governor and pseudo-king from the Herodian dynasty.
Judaea was allowed some autonomy to govern itself by its own laws. So Jerusalem had both Roman and native leadership. The native leadership was comprised of the religious leaders and the judicial leaders. The religious leaders were led by the chief priest while the judicial leadership was made up of 72 elders, known as the Sanhedrin. So the men that oppose Jesus and his disciples the moment that he walks into the temple are not just your normal priests. It says that they are the chief priests and elders. They represent the highest authority, both religious and judicial, in Jewish society.
Which leads us to ask the question, why? What justifies such a serious challenge to Christ’s authority? Last week, we saw that when Jesus was teaching in the courtyard of the Gentiles that he quoted Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7.
In Isaiah 56, Jesus taught that the Jewish leaders had abandoned the true purpose of the temple. According to Isaiah, God said that the temple was supposed to evangelize the nations. It was meant to be the place where all the peoples of the world could come to worship God and offer sacrifices for their sins. It was to be called a house of prayer because it was the place where all the people of the world could come to commune with God.
Instead, Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7, says that the Jewish leaders had made it into a den of robbers. They had turned the temple away from its original purpose to serve their own selfish ends as they worshipped false gods. So God promised through the prophet Jeremiah to destroy the temple. He said that he would make the “house that is called by his name” as desolate as Shiloh, the original resting place of the tabernacle.
Jesus didn’t teach this in private. He taught this in the main courtyard of the temple known as the courtyard of the Gentiles. This was the most public place of the temple where anyone could come to hear teaching, even Gentiles and the ritually unclean. Jesus is challenged the moment that he enters the temple by the highest authority of the religious and judicial leaders because the day before he taught that the temple was going to be destroyed by God. This is going to be a consistent theme of Jesus’s teaching ministry in Jerusalem. It is ultimately part of the official reason why he is going to be sentenced to death.
So, the Jewish leaders think that they are going to show Jesus to be the fraud that he is by challenging his authority to teach what they consider to be treasonous lies. However, instead of actually challenging Jesus’s authority, they actually help him prove that he has an authority that supersedes their authority.
Jesus turns their challenge back on them by agreeing to answer their questions if they answer his question first. In verse 29, he says,
Mark 11:29-30
29 Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.”
Now, this traps the Jewish leaders in a pickle. Let’s think back for a second to John’s ministry. In Mark, we have seen that John’s ministry was one of preparation. He preached a message of repentance in order to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah. John’s baptism was not the believer’s baptism that is practiced by the New Testament church, rather it was ritualistic washing consistent with the Mosaic law. Ritualistic washings were a major component of the cultic practice of Israel as they prepared to be ritually clean for the purpose of participating in Jewish worship.
The question that Jesus asks the Jewish leaders is if this baptism that John taught was from man or from God. Now this question traps the Jewish leader’s authority in multiple ways. First, the Jewish leadership is the authority that killed John the Baptist. It was Herod, the boss of these men, attempting to please his new wife, that killed John the Baptist in Mark 6. If they cannot answer the question, it shows that John’s death was the abuse of authority at the highest level. He was murdered by these very leaders that seek to challenge the authority of Jesus.
Second, that they cannot answer the question undermines their authority because it is an act of blasphemy. You can see this, because when the leaders get into their “holy huddle” they know that if they say that John’s baptism was from God that they would be duty bound to believe John’s message. If John’s baptism was truly from God, then to reject it is to reject God himself, making them blasphemous rebels against the God that they say they serve.
Third, Jesus demonstrates that he supersedes their authority, because he can refuse to answer their question without consequence. The real authority for these Jewish leaders is not God, but the crowd. They are so afraid of losing their political and social influence that they do not have the backbone to answer Jesus’s question honestly. The honest answer would have been no. Of course they did not believe that John’s baptism was from God, but if they would have told the truth it would have enraged the crowd. Jesus undermines their authority by forcing them to show that their true loyalties are earthly. Jesus’s authority, on the other hand, does not have to be vindicated. It is self-vindicating, because it comes from God, himself. He does not have to answer to their authority, because he supersedes their authority. In one expert maneuver, Jesus both humbles those that sought to humble him, and demonstrates that he truly does have the authority to ignore them and teach whatever he desires.
It would be a mistake for us to look at what is happening here in Mark 11 and conclude that if authority figures in our lives are abusing their authority, then we can just ignore them like Jesus did. Jesus does not ignore the Jewish leaders out of rebellion, but because his authority is a higher authority than theirs. God has put positions of authority in your life that you are bound to honor and obey whether you think they are executing that authority rightly or not.
Turn with me to Romans 13:1. Paul is going to discuss why we are to obey governing authorities in our life, but as we read this passage, notice what he says about authority in general. Let’s read beginning in Romans 13, verse 1:
Romans 13:1-7
13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.
I want to observe a couple things about authority from this passage.
First, all authority is from God. Verse 1 makes it clear. Paul commands us to obey governing authorities, but why? What is underneath the command to obey the government? The reality that all authority in the world finds its ultimate origin in God, both the good and the bad. God is the source of all authority. That means that he has consciously given all those in positions of authority the authority that they wield. It also means that all authority is ultimately accountable to him, because if he is the only one that can give authority, he is the only one that can take it away.
This should make those that are in positions of authority think very soberly about using their authority. In this room, we have husbands, elders, business leaders, dads, moms, grandmas and grandpas, civic leaders, disciplers, simply being an adult…every one of those positions is a position of authority. They are not all created equal, but they all find their origin in God.
Second, since all authority comes from God, we are duty bound to obey those that have been placed in authority over us. In verse 2, Paul says that if you resist authorities in your life, you will incur judgment. For all authority to be delegated means that all authority comes from God with limits. God is the only absolute authority. Every other authority that he has placed over us with limitations appropriate to the specific for which it has been deputized. For example, parents are only authoritative over their children’s lives until they reach adulthood. Parents should always be honored, but the authority to require your children to obey only lasts as long the children are adolescents. So, as long as the children are children, it is the parent’s job to make them obey. To require their children to submit to their authority, and it is right for the parents to discipline the children when they do not obey.
This is true of all authorities in our lives. When an authority is rightly acting in the capacity for which God has deputized it, consequences for disobedience are sanctioned by God. If you disobey an authority, you ultimately are disobeying God, and there will be consequences.
Which ties into our third point, it should be our joy to obey the authorities in our life. If all authority comes from God and God is good, then when God has put an authority in our life, he has done it for our good. We see this in verse 4. The governing authorities have been established in your life for your good. We all know this. Putting aside our bad experiences with authority in our life, we have all also experienced moments when the authorities in our life have done us good. When it was a joy to please the teacher that we loved, or when we willingly submitted to a husband that put your needs above his own, or how about when we humbly obeyed the commands of our Savior who gave his life to pay the penalty for our sins. There is a childlike peace, a divine simplicity that comes from obeying the authorities that God has placed in your life. A reward from God that you lose when you rebel.
So, when Jesus refuses to answer the enquiries of the Jewish leaders, he is not rebelling. He is demonstrating that their authority is below his authority. He is a higher than the chief priests because he does not come for the priesthood of Aaron, but the kingly priesthood of Melchizedek. The priesthood that even Abraham submitted to and gave a tenth of his spoils from war.
He is a higher authority than the scribes because he is the true prophet of God that Moses promised would come, the very Word of God from eternity past, with no beginning and no end, that is the exact imprint of the Father’s nature.
He is a higher authority than the Sanhedrin because he is the true Son of David, the seed of Abraham, the true inheritor of the promises and the covenants.
Jesus has the authority to defy these earthly authorities, because they are merely stewards of the house and he is the true Son, able to do with the house as he pleases.
Jesus has the authority to give the kingdom of God to the Gentiles.
Which brings us to our second point: Jesus has the authority to give the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. Let’s reread Mark 12:1-12:
Mark 12:1-12
12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“ ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
The conversation with the Jewish leaders does not end with Jesus refusing to answer their questions. He continues the conversation with a parable. He tells the story of a master that built and planted a vineyard. The man leased the vineyard out to tenants to run the vineyard and went into a far country. He sends a series of servants to the vineyard to collect the fruit that he rightly deserves. Each time the tenants abuse and even kill the master’s servants. Finally, the master sends his beloved son, and these villains see their real opportunity. If they kill the son, the master will have no recourse but to give the vineyard to them. So they kill the son and throw him out of the vineyard. Jesus turns to the Jewish leaders and asks, “What should the master do to these tenants?” The answer is clear. He won’t give them the inheritance. He will come and destroy these tenants and give the vineyard to someone else.
What is interesting about this parable is that it seems to not be like the parables that Jesus has told so far. All the parables that Jesus has told to this point have been meant to obscure the truth about the kingdom of God from those that do not have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. That is not the case with this parable. Jesus means for the Jewish leaders to understand that he is talking about them. We see this in verse 12.
Jesus is picking up exactly where he left off the day before. He is passing judgment on the Jewish leaders for using the temple for their own gain. They are the tenants that have used the property of God for their own selfish gain. He is doubling down on Jeremiah 7 from last week. These men have made the house of God a den of robbers, and Jesus is here to bring that to an end. He will end the fruitless worship going on at the temple and the full weight of the judgment of God is going to fall on these men.
This should not be a surprise to them. Just like last week, Psalm 118 plays a pivotal role in understanding what is taking place in the passage. Turn to Psalm 118:19 quickly. Last week, we saw that Psalm 118 was the psalm that the crowd was singing to Jesus as he rode the donkey into Jerusalem. This week, Christ, himself, quotes Psalm 118, proving that the Jewish leaders should have understood what was taking place. Read with me in Psalm 118, beginning in verse 19:
Psalm 118:19-24
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the LORD.
20 This is the gate of the LORD;
the righteous shall enter through it.
21 I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
22 The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
23 This is the LORD’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
The Messiah was always going to be rejected by the Jewish leaders. It could not have gone another way. God decreed from all the way back in Psalm 118 that the builders would reject a stone that would become the cornerstone. The cornerstone of what? The cornerstone of a new temple. God was bringing an end to the fruitless temple in order to make way for something new and better. The Messiah came to give the vineyard to others, namely, the Gentiles.
This week, I was meeting with Josh Sofaer, the head of training for Jews for Jesus. We were discussing how to evangelize Jews, and after our conversation, he asked me what I was preaching on this week. After giving him a brief outline of my sermon, he said, “You have it exactly right, but think of how horrible that must sound to Jews.” Their entire identity is wrapped up in being God’s special, chosen people. He said, it would be like someone taking your house that you own outright and giving it to someone else. I thought about this as we were riding around on Carl’s mule last night. Carl and Gwen have a beautiful property that they have spent the last 15 years slowly transforming from an uninhabitable jungle into a beautiful place for their friends and family to enjoy. It would be like God just took that property that they have worked so hard to improve and gave it away. And not just gave it away to me or you, people that kind of like. It would be like he gave it away to their worst enemy, with no restitution or compensation. This is a brutal reality for Jews to even contemplate being true. It is a massive barrier to their ability to accept Jesus as the Messiah.
Nevertheless, it is exactly what happened, and it is exactly what the Jewish people deserved. It is right for God to do this. Israel rejected God’s lovingkindness generation after generation, and they eventually rejected their Messiah. This story is going to end with them crucifying the savior, their savior. He was not our Messiah. He is their Messiah. The reject him and rightly incur the wrath of God because it is a sin to reject and murder the Son of the living God. God is 100% justified in taking the vineyard away from the ruthless villains and giving it to a different people, and he does. We are the living embodiment of this reality. Jesus came to pass the kingdom of God to the Gentiles.
Now, I do not believe that this means that there is no hope for Jewish people. There are those that would ascribe to something called replacement theology. Essentially, it is the idea that God has divorced the people of Israel and has replaced them with people from every tribe tongue and nation. I do not believe that this is what happened.
Paul devotes three chapters of the letter to the Romans to this very issue. All of Romans 9-11 seeks to answer this question: if Israel has rejected the Messiah, has God failed to keep his promises? The answer to that question is no. It takes Paul three chapters, however, turn with me to Romans 11:25 which is really the climax of his argument. He reveals what is really going on with Israel.
Romans 11:25-36
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
27 “and this will be my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
28 As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. 29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
God has caused a partial hardening to come upon Israel. A hardening that forces them to reject the Messiah and the Gospel that he preaches. Observe a couple things about this hardening. First, the hardening has a purpose. It creates the opportunity for the Gospel to go to the Gentiles. We would not have access to the Messiah if the Messiah’s people had not rejected him. It is through their disobedience and mismanagement of the vineyard that we have the opportunity for access to God’s kingdom.
Second, the hardening is partial, not total. This means that it is possible for Jewish people to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Paul uses himself as an example of this at the beginning of Romans 11, but this reality is even true today. Some of the most influential pastors in my life have been Jewish. The teaching pastor at Sagemont Church, the lead pastor at Harvest Church, and some of my best friends from Seminary are Messianic Jews.
The sad reality is not that Jews cannot accept the Gospel; the sad reality is that the Church does not evangelize Jews like the evangelize every other nation. Historically speaking, Jews have been seen as the enemy of Christianity, not the origin of Christianity. We need a renewed passion in the Church to reach God’s original people, because we are the beneficiaries of their promises.
The third thing to observe is that ultimate end of the partial hardening for the Jews is salvation. Verse 26 does not mean that every Jew will be saved whether they believe in the Messiah or not. It means that, at some point in the future, Israel will be saved through Gentiles that are now a part of God’s kingdom. At some point in the future, this partial hardening will be removed and God will turn the heart of Israel back to the Messiah through the Gospel. We see this in verses 30 and 31:
Romans 11:30-31
30 For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy.
It is through the mercy that has been shown to the Gentiles that Israel will be shown mercy. This is not a prohibition to the evangelization of the Jews; it is a call for Gentiles to evangelize Jews. The Gospel is the only way that they will truly become his people.
Lastly, the partial hardening is temporary, because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. It is impossible for God to go against his word. He has made promises to Israel. He cannot go back on those promises. The Messiah will eventually come to them and banish wickedness from Jacob, because that is what God has promised them.
This is good news to you and me. The idea that the Church has replaced Israel creates a false dichotomy between the Church and Israel. There are not two peoples of God. There is only one people of God. We are the wild branches that have been grafted into their promises. If God has kept his promises to them then we know that he will keep his promises to us.
Conclusion
So, when Christ refuses to comply with the Jewish leadership it is because he is a higher authority than them in every way. He then demonstrates this authority by teaching a parable that says he will remove these evil men from his vineyard.
That is good news for us. Our Messiah has the authority to give the kingdom to whomever he pleases, and he is not idle. Revelation 2 says that he walks among the Churches, caring for his people and removing those Churches that have abandoned the Gospel. God was not going to let the fruitless ministry of the temple continue indefinitely. He sent his Son to bring it to an end and rebuild a new and better temple.
As we close, consider Ephesians 2:19-22:
Ephesians 2:19-22
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Jesus was rejected by the Jewish leaders so that he could become the cornerstone of something far greater. The temple is no longer a physical reality, it is a spiritual reality. We, the church, are the temple of God. We are each a small part of this greater whole that is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets that is the body of Christ. The Spirit of God no longer dwells in a physical building segregated from his people. God is with us. Jesus Christ gave the kingdom of God to us so that we could become the very dwelling place of God on earth.
Let’s pray.