Have You Never Read?

Matthew 21:33–46 CSB

“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away. When the time came to harvest fruit, he sent his servants to the farmers to collect his fruit. The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first group, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. “But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?” “He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him his fruit at the harvest.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is what the Lord has done and it is wonderful in our eyes? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit. Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will shatter him.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew he was speaking about them. Although they were looking for a way to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because the people regarded him as a prophet.

Barclay points out something here I had never considered. I have always looked at this verse as only a picture of the Christ.

The picture of the stone in 21:42 is first of a stumbling stone - a stone that will break anyone who stumbles upon it. Elsewhere Jesus is called a “scandalon” - a stumbling stone. The cross is described at a stumbling block to the Jews.

The story not only details how the people of Israel have treated God’s prophets, it foretells how they are about the treat God’s Son. But Jesus’ parable/story does something he has not done elsewhere in Matthew’s account. It makes the link between the purpose and ministry of Jesus to the foundational role of the Messiah as foretold in Psalm 118:22. Elsewhere he would avow that should they destroy “this temple” (his body) that he would rebuild it in three days. Humanly impossible but totally within the purview of his role as the cornerstone of God’s plans.