Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 21. After the young children greeted Jesus in the wake of the triumphal entry with one of the lines from Psalm 118, Hosanna to the Son of David, we come to Jesus' cursing of the fig tree in verse 18. In the morning, he was returning to the city and became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, how did the fig tree wither at once? And Jesus answered them, truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, But even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen. Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. And then after the religious leaders questioned and challenged the authority of Jesus, we come to the two parables we'll be focusing on here this morning. Beginning at verse 28, what do you think? A man had two sons and he went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward, he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, I go, sir, but did not go. Which of the two did the will of the father? They said the first. Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him. Here another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And they said to him, well, he'll put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give them the fruits of their seasons. Jesus said to them, have you never read the scriptures? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard this parable, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet. As we think about our mission in this time and place in history, It's interesting to go back to the parables of the kingdom. You know, a lot of people imagine that parables are great stories that are told in order to make something very difficult to understand more accessible. That's why Jesus told parables. But that's not exactly the reason Jesus gives for his parables. He tells us in Mark 4, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, But for those outside, everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. Not exactly for the purpose of making it easier to understand and to accept. The parables were a device that Jesus used really to make the insiders outsiders. And to make the outsiders insiders. And that's a prominent theme of these parables. Parables really have a way of worming their way into you and exploding. We think of the example of David and Nathan. Remember, after David has committed adultery with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, and then has indirectly had Uriah killed, Nathan tells him the parable of a rich man and a poor man. A poor man had only one sheep, one lamb. A rich man had lots of sheep. Guests came to the rich man to stay with him. And instead of killing one of his thousands of sheep, he went over to the rich man's flock and he took his one lamb and slaughtered him. And what would you do? Oh, great, wise visitor of Israel. And David says, why, by the name of the Lord, I would have that man killed. And Nathan says, David, you are the man. That's what the parables do. Before you know it, you're following the parable. You say, oh, this is interesting. I wonder where it's going to lead. I wonder what the punchline is. Before you know it, it's got a finger pointing at you. You realize you are the man. Another thing about parables that's interesting is that when Jesus is telling parables, he's not just teaching, he's not just giving an explanation of the kingdom. When Jesus is giving these parables, he's actually bringing the kingdom to pass. The very action that Jesus describes in every parable is happening by his teaching that parable. We see that in all the parables, but especially in these two that we'll be looking at here. The context, too, is important. This follows the triumphal entry of Jesus. Everything now is picking up at a very fast clip. This is Holy Week. It begins on Sunday with a triumphal entry and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Monday, the cleansing of the temple and receiving that messianic acclamation from the children. Hosanna to the son of David, which the religious leaders were trying to get him to quell. Then you have Jesus cursing the fig tree and the judgment of the temple. All of this is occurring on the Temple Mount itself. It's significant that it is happening right there. Not just that Jesus is teaching it right there, but everything that he's teaching is making it happen right there on the Temple Mount. Everything that Jesus does takes place on the Temple Mount. And each day, he goes back with his disciples to Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem for the night, and he comes back the next morning and walks directly to the temple and starts all over again. On Tuesday, he comes back and explains his cursing of the fig tree to the twelve. On Wednesday, he continues teaching in the temple, and the Sanhedrin begins to plot his death. You see how it all then leads up to Good Friday and Easter. And the disciples and the Jewish leaders are the audience for these parables. Even as Jesus is talking about the division within Israel between the two sons, between the two seeds, between the two covenants, it's actually happening right there with his audience, the disciples and the religious leaders representing the opposing parties. And so now we look first very briefly at the parable of the two sons because it's a brief parable. and very straightforward and then the owner and his tenants because they both really are tied together and illumine each other. At verse 28 we read, What do you think? A man had two sons and he went to the first son and said, Go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But after he changed his mind and went, and he went to the other son and said the same, and he answered, I go, sir, but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? And Jesus makes it plain what he's talking about here. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom. They are repenting, changing their mind. While those who are part of the covenant, those who were given the oracles of God, Those who had the covenants and promises nevertheless say they will, but they don't. Basically, the question that Jesus is putting here to his disciples and the religious leaders is which is the real problem here? Being the ungodly whom God justifies or being the godly who apostatize? And, of course, they say, well, it's the one who said he would do it, but he didn't. And that's linked up with Jesus' cursing of the fig tree. May no one ever eat from your fruit again. It's all leaves, Matthew says. There's no fruit on it. It's just full of leaves, but no fruit. The religious leaders were trying to make the outward appearance of Israel and Jerusalem and the temple look as though it were flourishing. Look at the pinnacles of the temple. Isn't it beautiful, the disciples say, as they make their first entry into Jerusalem. Oh, isn't it lovely. Look at all the beautiful pinnacles of the temple when the true temple was standing before them. On the outside, Jesus says, you look like you're clean. On the outside, you look like you're prepared for the coming of the Messiah. But inside you're full of hypocrisy and death. And so everything that Jesus performs now, he performs on the Temple Mount. And the cursing of the fig tree would be like burning the American flag in Washington, D.C. It was very clear what Jesus was doing. The fig tree being the symbol of Israel and its prosperity and its flourishing because it was obedient to the law that God gave at Mount Sinai. As long as you obey me and do all these things that you have sworn to do, I will give you prosperity. Every man will have his own vine and fig tree. But disobey me and it will be like the Garden of Eden. It will surrender to thorns and thistles. It will become a wasteland, a haunt for jackals. And then we come to the parable of the tenants, which is another way of saying the same thing. First of all, in Leviticus, it's interesting that God tells Israel, you are but tenants in my land. Now, it's very important that we distinguish the two covenants that are in play here. There's the Sinai covenant, which pertains to the land, and it's completely conditional on national obedience. And then the Abrahamic promise that came before that is based on God's unilateral plan that no matter what, in spite of human sin, in spite of human rebellion, in spite of the fact that he will send Israel into exile for her sin, even there, even in Babylon, he will send his spirit and his gospel and the covenant community will flourish clinging not to its promise at Mount Sinai but to God's promise to Abraham that in him and his seed all the families of the earth will be blessed but Israel's tenure in the land was the relationship of a landlord to a tenant it wasn't Israel's land it never has been Israel's land it was God's land and Israel could occupy that land as long as Israel was obedient to that covenant. And Israel swore, all this we will do. That goes to the point of Jesus with the Son who said, oh yes, we'll do this, all this we will do. And they didn't. Versus those who never said that, never swore at Mount Sinai, all this we will do. And yet they did. The parable clearly evokes this covenantal relationship between a suzerain, a great king, and a vassal, a lesser king, in the relationship of a landlord to a tenant, which is very close to that covenantal relationship that I've mentioned. So the owner is the one who built the vineyard. The owner leased the vineyard to caretakers and then went into another country with his servant commissioned to bring the annual tribute, once again, to acknowledge that it wasn't his vineyard but he was renting it out, as it were. He was a tenant in God's land. That's the treaty that we find in this parable. Now, sadly, the treason. This treason is already announced in the prophets. Here, Jesus is bringing that prophetic judgment to its climax. Calling Judah to repentance before destruction, Jeremiah brought God's word. Be warned, O Jerusalem, lest I turn from you in disgust, lest I make you a desolation, an uninhabitable land. So too the Lord laments the devastation of his land from a foreign army. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it down. Their branches are made white. All of this, of course, prefiguring the last day. The judgment that comes to Israel that John the Baptist announced when he says his winnowing fork is in his hand. Whatever tree that doesn't bear fruit, he's going to cut it down. Oh, but we're children of Abraham. John the Baptist says, well, he can make children of Abraham out of rocks. Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil, we read in Joel 1. Wail, O vine dressers! The vine dries up, the fig tree languishes, and gladness dries up from the children of man. They've been unfaithful tenants. Bad renters, they need to be thrown out by the owner. Tragically, as Hosea 6-7 reminds us, like Adam, they broke my covenant, although I was faithful to them. And so Jesus says, interpreting all of this, When the season came, the servants arrived to receive his master's due, but the tenants beat his servants, killed one, and stoned another. And he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did just the same to them. So finally, he sends a beloved son. For God so loved the world that he gave his own son, only begotten, only beloved son, thinking that they would finally respect him. Well, this is the son of the owner. But quite the contrary. He's the heir. If we kill him, we're the next in line. Because according to the law of Israel, if there were no more heirs, then the servant would get. Remember, that was Abram's worry that Eliezer of Damascus would get all of his property because he didn't have an heir. And so they're thinking, ah, what a great idea. If we kill him, then we're the next in line. We're the heir apparent. And so they plot. And as Jesus is saying this, as Jesus is telling this parable, they're plotting his death. He's bringing it about by saying things like this. Right now, the action being described in the parable is actually taking place right there on that temple mount. And the parable reaches its climax in verses 38 and 39. They killed the beloved son and threw him out of the vineyard. They killed him outside of the vineyard and threw his body out. We think of Christ being crucified outside the city, outside the city gates. And then Jesus shifts from the metaphor of the vineyard to that of the temple. At first, it seems kind of odd that Jesus mixes metaphors from a vineyard to a temple. You kind of get whiplash going from the vineyard analogy to the temple analogy. But in Israel, they're all interconnected. The temple is a vineyard. The vineyard is a temple. The place is a people. The people are a place. And it's all related to his temple action. Remember, Jesus is not just giving timeless principles. This isn't Aesop's fables. This isn't a riddle of timeless truth. This has to do with what Jesus is doing right then and there on the Temple Mount. What will the owner of the vineyard do? They say, sort of like David did to Nathan, well, he'll come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Jesus nods. Have you not read this 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 Pharisees knew Psalm 118. They knew it very well. They knew what Jesus was claiming for himself, just as they knew what the children were claiming for Jesus and what Jesus refused to tell them to stop attributing to him when they hailed him as the son of David. Now, initially, in Psalm 118, it referred to Israel, The nation of Israel was the cornerstone of the nations. The ungodly nations thought that Israel was small. Comparatively, it was. Of no account. Menial. And yet, Israel was actually the cornerstone. But now the tragedy is that the religious leaders who were ordained by God to care for the vineyard, to be keepers of the temple, were the marauders, were the invaders, were the destroyers of the sanctuary of God. But they won't have this last word concerning the beloved son. Sort of like Jacob's brothers in Genesis 50, where they come to, Joseph's brothers rather, when they come to Joseph during the famine, and they're terrified what he will do, And Joseph said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. The intention of the religious leaders was evil as they plot the death of Christ. But even there, the intention of the Father and of the Son is gracious and merciful. The temple is now rejected and Jesus is the cornerstone. That's what's not just being said and described here, but actually happening as Jesus says it. And that's why Jesus tells the disciples if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mount, the temple mount here, with all of its religious apparatus, go take a flying leap. I don't need you anymore. You're done. Because I'm the temple dispensing forgiveness in my own name, directly without going through the machinery of the temple. They're trying to keep all the riffraff out of the temple sanctuary, out of the precincts of the temple. Put police tape around the temple so that nobody with any kind of injury or sickness, because that's a sign of God's disfavor, any kind of corruption, moral or otherwise, trying to keep them out of the temple precincts, and Jesus is welcoming them and forgiving them directly without telling them what they have to do to go through the temple machinery. And that's when they're absolutely enraged. Who does this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins. In all of Jesus' parables, there's a division. Those who come to the feast in the wedding garment and those who don't. Those who inherit the vineyard and those who plunder it, killing the owner's son. Even as the religious leaders were plotting Jesus' death. Two sons, heirs of the covenant who apostatize and strangers to the covenant who were adopted into God's households. So do we go back to Sinai? Or do we receive Zion who stands before us, the true mountain of God, who has now replaced this temple mount? This temple now is ready to be thrown into the sea. It is of no consequence in human history anymore. That temple over in Israel that people are talking about rebuilding is of absolutely no consequence in God's redemptive plan. Jesus Christ is the temple. He's the cornerstone, and we are the living stones being built into his temple. Ezekiel prophesied this. A temple in the end times that is made without hands. It causes a division. But now the religious leaders of Israel are cast in the role of the nations, destroying the vineyard planted by the Lord and the temple built by the Lord. Jesus, whom they will charge with blasphemy and crucify, is the owner's son. The fruitful vine, the living temple, the cornerstone, who though destroyed will be rebuilt by God after three days. Here Jesus brings to a point everything that he has done since arriving on Palm Sunday. He is the temple. He forgives sins directly. He cleanses the lepers and the lame. They dance for joy. All those who were excluded are included, and those who were included at the very heart of Israel's religious life are now excluded. He curses the fig tree and, as it were, throws the temple into the Mediterranean. Their plot comes to nothing. The vineyard is the master's, and the murder of the beloved son will not issue in their inheriting the estate, but in those they were trying to keep out of the vineyard, inheriting the estate with the beloved son. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So he didn't even have to say, you are the man. They got it. They realized it. And the more they realized it, the more angry they became and the more determined they became to kill him. It's interesting to read this parable with the seven woes that Jesus gives in chapter 23. You witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. See, those are the servants who came one after another in the parable that you beat, that you stoned. You think that you are the defenders of Messiah, preparing the way for Messiah. You're actually servants of Antichrist. Fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you going to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets and stones those who were sent to it, how often I would have gathered you and your children as a hen gathers her chicks to her nest. But you would not. Just look. Your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But don't put one past God on the table turning. God has broken off branches of this fig tree that do not produce fruit in order to attach us. But we ought not to become cocky about that. He's still bringing many Jews to a saving knowledge of Christ. Many of you know David Zadig, graduated from a seminary in Israel, translating scriptures and the Heidelberg Catechism into Hebrew and planting churches. You think of many people who are in the work of ministering and missions to ethnic Jews. It's a wonderful thing to see. There's a greater promise, a greater expectation that Paul reminds us of in Romans chapter 11. And I'll close with this passage. Romans 11, beginning at verse 17. And as I read this, remember, there may be some here this morning who have grown up in the church all their life, never known a day when they weren't surrounded by the covenant blessings, Christian schools, Christian home. You're an insider. But are you a living stone? Do you really belong to Christ? Is your faith in Him? Or are you trusting in your covenantal pedigree? Are you trusting that we're the children of Abraham? We're the insiders. We're the keepers of all the treasures. Or do you really see yourselves as you really are? As I really am. We are the outsiders. All of us are the outsiders. Who get in on the coattails of the insiders. Who didn't bear fruit. the fruit of repentance. But God isn't finished. Romans 11, verses 17 through 36. Here is how Paul interprets everything, indirectly at least, that Jesus has said here, beginning at verse 17. So I ask, did they stumble, the Jews, in order that they might fall? By no means. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now I'm speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I'm an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the doe offered as firstfruits is holy, so the whole lump. And if the root is holy, so are all the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, don't be arrogant toward the branches that were broken off. If you are, remember, it's not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has ever given a gift to him that he should repay him? For from him and to him and through him are all things to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. O great, patient, and merciful Master of the house who sent your prophets to execute your covenant purposes and then even sent your beloved Son. We confess our hardness of heart. We would have been no different. We are no different in ourselves. It was our crimes against you that brought him to his death, but your love for us that sent him there. And it was your love and power that raised him from the dead, making us co-heirs with him of your lush vineyard. And since you have given us eyes to see and ears to hear the meaning of this parable, we pray that you would also give us a heart to feel your love for other outsiders whom you have chosen so that together with us, they too may become part of that holy vineyard and glorious house that you are building for your majesty. Hear us, for we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.