God’s Authority and Rule

MEMORY SELECTION: “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” —Matthew 21:42

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Matthew 21:33-41; 13:44-46

THE Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen is, of course, directed toward the Jewish nation. When God first began to deal with them as his covenant people at Mount Sinai, he stated: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” (Exod. 19:5,6) God’s continued favorable relationship with them depended upon their obedience to his law.

The record is that they were often disobedient. In those instances God sent his prophets to the people to warn them and to plead with them to repent of their deeds and come back into harmony with him. But the messengers were ignored, abused, and often put to death. Jesus, after he had been rejected as their Messiah, summarized their long history of disobedience and hostility toward the servants of God and prophesied what the then current generation would do to the apostles and other messengers whom God would send. “Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city.” (Matt. 23:31-34) We know that this prophecy was accurately fulfilled in the case of the apostles.

At the time of the first advent the Jews were generally of the opinion that Messiah would be strong and a great general and that he, by force of arms if necessary, would establish the kingdom then and that the nation of Israel would be the center of the kingdom arrangement. When Jesus appeared he was the opposite from what they expected. He was meek and lowly of heart, and “we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isa. 53:3) The prophecies concerning his suffering and death were overlooked, and he was rejected.

In recounting the parable to the scribes and Pharisees, when the husbandmen slew the householder’s son (Matt. 21:39), Jesus asked the question, “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?” (vs. 40) The scribes and Pharisees, in answer, pronounced their own sentence. “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.”—vs. 41

Jesus, in Matthew 23:37,38, stated: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” The Apostle Paul expressed the final rejection of the Jewish nation as a favored nation thus: “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”—Acts 13:46

Jesus continued his discussion with the scribes and Pharisees saying: “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”—Matt. 21:42,43

The kingdom referred to by our Lord was the heavenly phase of the kingdom of God. Jesus was appointed by God to be “the Head of the body, the church.” (Col. 1:18) In Ephesians the apostle elaborates and explains that the corner stone, Christ Jesus, was the chief stone of many stones that would ultimately make up the holy temple in the Lord. “In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”—Eph. 2:19-22

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