The rending of their garments, the tearing of their garments was a sign of tremendous emotional feelings, and all, that a person may have. They had rejected the last and greatest message from their Master. He postpones his reply to a question he desires to have answered by the rulers. It was the result of deliberation. xlvii. To express the peaceful and gentle character of Christ's Kingship. They worshipped with a vain parade of words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we; while harlots, publicans, and thieves wept under the ministry of John, and became his disciples, walking in the truth. (37) They will respect My Son - As if the Father said. (1.) But they are deaf and blind to the things of God; so the awful indictment must proceed to the bitter end. Christ asks his hearers, who are both rulers and people, what in their opinion will be the course taken by the lord when he visits his vineyard, knowing all that has transpired. His subsequent disobedience. And then they broke out in the glad shouts, quoting partly from the 118th Psalm “Hosanna to the Son of David! God's kingdom upon earth, and particularly the Jewish Church. John may almost be said, in fact, to have effaced himself in pointing to Jesus (Mat 3:11-12; Joh 1:19-27; Joh 1:29, etc.). In every Gospel there is a judgment, as in every offer of mercy there is the possibility of a development of obstinacy that will end in penalty. We are not promised that the Spirit of God shall dwell in our work, except in so far as He first dwells in our life. 13-27) in which: • Jesus warns against wide gates and broad roads that lead to destruction. Faith is not confidence in our own prayer, but trust in Christ. In it the leaders of the people, the religious authorities of the Temple (the chief priests) and the lay authorities of Jerusalem (the elders of the people), challenge Him about His authority, and as a result He demonstrates that they are not really suitable people to decide about such things, because their hearts are hardened and they are not willing to respond to the truth. The fruit He desires is yourself. Tax gatherers and harlots, though rebellious at first, could enter the kingdom of heaven because they repented; while these religious leaders of Israel remained outside because their promise to serve God was false. His Passion was his coronation. Because the Jewish leaders could not challenge Jesus' authority, they had to relinquish His right to teach in the Temple, a compound which they managed and controlled. i.e. Even his enemies were obliged to reply, "the first. It was the desire rather to bring men to their way of thinking than to bring them to the truth. 35. The entry into Jerusalem is the one gleam of light in tile dark days that closed our Lord's ministry. Legion is the name of the spirits that possess and pollute the fallen; but all the legion do not dwell in every man. Lastly, ye are the builders of the synagogue, who reject Me as a stone; but God will make Me the basis and foundation of His Church, because He will take it away from you, and transfer it to the Gentiles, who will eagerly receive and worship Me, and so will be endowed by Me with grace and glory. He combines in one severe sentence a passage from Isaiah 56:7 ("Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples"), and one from Jeremiah 7:11 ("Is this house, which is called by my Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"). (Ecclesiastes 1:9. Evidently the servants represent the prophets of ancient Israel, ending with John the Baptist, who was beheaded, though not by the Jews. When the multitude wished to "take him by force to make him a King, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." This gives the reason for Christ's assertion at the end of the last verse. 12-17. '", The second cleansing of the temple. Interrogation as to authority (Mark 11:27-33, Luke 20:1-8), wherewith suitably opens the inevitable final conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of the people. There is no reason to suppose that Jesus was really hungry, or expected to find figs. When, then, St. Matthew speaks of him as asking Jesus a question, "tempting Him," we are not to impute the same sinister motives as actuated those who sent him. When the ascended Lord is exalted to the judgment throne, utter destruction will overtake those hardened, impenitent sinners who reject his offers of mercy unto the end, and will not know him as a Saviour, but must at last see him, when every eye shall see him, upon the great white throne. Had they duly considered his miracles, and the power by which he wrought them, they needed not to have asked this question but they must have something to say for the shelter of an obstinate infidelity. How it has become true! But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir, come, let us kill him, and lay hold of his inheritance. The husbandmen are the children of Israel, who had to do their part in the Church, and show fruits of piety and devotion. And, when he was come, &c.— The rulers, much alarmed at the proceedings of Jesus, were very desirous of putting him to death; but they wished to do it under the pretext of law. II. Israel yielded no fruit, therefore the barren tree was cut off and cast into the fire, while the root remains (Luke 13:1-35). The publicans and the harlots. Public opinion was too strong for them. Callings unto the holy ministry must either be from God, and so they are lawful, or from men only, and so they are unlawful. Ungodly men had taken advantage of this provision to turn the temple precincts into a den of thieves. They said to Jesus, "Tell us! They resisted these new envoys as they had resisted these first sent, treating them with equal cruelty and violence. The parable, like every other parable, was inadequate to express the whole spiritual truth. The lord of the vineyard had yet one son, his well beloved; he sent him last, saying, "They will reverence my son." There is no question here of Christ's omniscience being at fault. To receive the fruits of it ( του Ìς καρπου Ìς αὐτοῦ); or, his fruits, as rent. Those bitter enemies of all righteousness saw the sensation which the public entry into Jerusalem, and the cleansing of the temple, had produced. The city of God, seated on her hills, shone at the moment in the morning sun. “He answered… I go, sir: and went not.” This had been the history of the legalists in Israel from that day when at the base of Sinai they said, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7), but whose after-course was one of insubjection to God throughout (Romans 2:24). The King, no doubt, had Isaiah’s prophecy in mind, when He uttered this parable. 3. Ye have not because ye ask not, or because ye ask amiss. 25. What right had he to teach publicly in the temple courts without licence from the rabbis? What you do becomes more to you than what you are, and every time you do well, and the world tells you you do well, that illusive sense of ultimateness gains power over you, and your life-work overtops your life. Rabbi Salomo on Micah 5:1 said, 'It is the Messiah the Son of David, of whom it is written, The stone which the builders rejected,' etc. How widespreading and deep reaching this evil is those well know who have observed how dangerously near propagandism is to persecution. The most odious and despised sinners, repenting and believing in Jesus, do find grace and place both in the church and in heaven above; but such as confide in their own righteousness are debarred, for "harlots," saith Christ, "go into the kingdom of heaven before you. When he was come into the temple. The frank confession that they are not good seems to serve some men as a substitute for goodness. After the husbandmen had killed the heir to the estate, no more patience could be shown to them. Just so the chief priests and elders were deceiving themselves by their religious profession, while publicans and harlots repented and entered the kingdom. He will miserably destroy the wicked: namely, the wicked ones of the vineyard, i.e., the husbandmen of the Church, or the Scribes, with their followers, who killed the prophets and Christ. 5. He therefore placed the adversaries in a complete dilemma; they must either confess that John’s mission to baptize the contrite, and reform the nation was divine, or else expose at once their own malice against the truth. How will he answer men now? Eastern garments are brightly coloured. ] If Christ be already with you, labour more and more earnestly that your whole life may be devoted to God through Him. This, which Ewald calls the first Christian hymn, gave to Palm Sunday, in some parts of the Church, the name of the "day of Hosannas," and was incorporated into the liturgical service both in East and West. "The Lord hath need of them." 2. The idea that the leadership of Israel were in fact only a sham is now emphasised in this incident. It is a very thunderstorm of indignation, with flash after flash of scorn, peal after peal of woe. The Jews first questioned His authority to cleanse the Temple. III. Don’t you picture big light bulbs over each of their heads? The temptations of work.—Work has its temptations, more subtle than the temptations of idleness. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. Jesus sent to Caiaphas (John 18:24). The disciples willingly give Him their own clothing as a saddle. By what authority doest thou these things! The Christian Church, the spiritual Israel, formed chiefly from the Gentile peoples (Acts 15:14; 1 Peter 2:9). The single exception, if exception it may be called, makes this great fact stand out only the more impressively. The disciples, indeed, were to act at once, as executing the orders of the supreme Lord, and were to use the given answer only in case of any objection. Matthew 21:23.By what authority doest thou these things. The baptism of John ( το Ì βα ìπτισμα το Ì Ἰωα ìννου). And of course the main thing that God is seeking, is fruit. Before he satisfied their inquiry, he must have their opinion concerning one whom they had received as a prophet a few years ago, and whose memory was still held in the highest respect, John the Baptist. 2. But because they were not worthy to hear such mysteries, therefore He gives them no answer, but on the contrary put a question to them. They hailed the Lord as King, spreading their garments in the way, as men had done to welcome kings (2 Kings 9:13); they strewed his path with branches from the trees; they cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" Those privileges had been given them for a time; their priesthood was transitory. Let us pray that our teachers may be taught of God. But now Christ sets himself deliberately to put into practice an idea of Zechariah (see again John 19:28). of the Temple site. ] Into the temple, probably the ‘court of the Israelites.’. 2. Cultivating the Lord's vineyard.—I. He is enacting a parable where all the parts are in due keeping, and all have their twofold signification in the world of nature and the world of grace. The crowd issuing from Jerusalem joined the procession which came from Bethany; they swelled its numbers and increased the excitement. We shall no longer cherish them when he is by our side. Loose them, and bring them unto me. Those upon whom the stone fell, are those who did not suffer themselves to be recovered even by that miracle, and so were involved in the common destruction of the Jewish nation. There is no hope in this life or the next for the man who is consciously insincere.—R.T. There were outward demonstrations of joy; in some that joy was deep and true; in others it was. Even Herod, for the same reason, long hesitated to put the Baptist to death (Matthew 14:5); and many of the Jews believed that Herod's defeat by Aretas was a judgment upon him for this murder (Josephus,' Ant.,' 18.5. They dared not deny openly the prophetic character of the Baptist; they feared the people, for the belief in John's sanctity was universal and enthusiastic. Soon the enemies came also to oppose Him. God went into a far country, because, as Origen says, when He had given His law and covenants to the Jews, appearing to them on Mount Sinai, He did not afterwards appear to them, as though He had gone elsewhere. ad Spalatinum.) Illustration: Luther, or C. Kingsley. III. 37. Therefore here Christ asketh a question instead of giving an answer. Those who keep her laws shall prosper, those who break them must suffer. They could not deny his right to ask this; it was closely connected with their question. Into this scene of desecration He enters. Him the Lord will destroy with the brightness of His coming. Duty is the leading thought of the second parable, privilege of the third; in the one sin is brought home to Israel’s leaders by setting before them their treatment of the messengers of righteousness, in the other the sin lies in their rejection of the message of grace. While the evil day has not yet come, gladness and the assurance of victory may be the best preparation for it. The tower of the vineyard, i.e., of the synagogue was the temple of Jerusalem, and God"s worship there. St. Matthew alone mentions this commotion, though St. John (John 12:19) makes allusion to it, when he reports the vindictive exclamation of the Pharisees, "Behold, the world is gone after him!" God has used some of the most striking figures imaginable to warn us of the dire fate that awaits the one who spurns His grace and refuses the Savior. The way that leads to life is narrow (Matt. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p193. So when they answered Him, you know, "The one who went out". We fear the multitude, understand, lest they should stone us, as Luke adds ( Luke 20:5). It is obvious that such explanation is allowable, and coincides with the letter of the parable; but it does not satisfy the context, and fails in not answering to Christ's intention in uttering this similitude. The Saviour reaches the result He aimed at, in the next place, by explaining this parable and applying its moral. We ought to shrink from no inquiry into the principles of our holy religion, and to be ready at any time to defend and explain our practice. ", the chief priests and elders of the people came unto him, And said, by what authority dost thou these things, The Authority of Jesus' Testimony Challenged (, Jesus' authority is questioned and challenged by the Jewish leaders.