MATTHEW 21: 23-46
NEAR THE BEGINNING OF James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the main character, young Stephen Dedalus, has been dropped off at boarding school. There Stephen encountered some of his classmates. One of the boys, Wells, asked Stephen:
“Tell, us Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?” Stephen answered: “I do.” Wells turned to the other fellows and said: “O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed.” The other fellows stopped their game and turned around, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said: “I do not.” Wells said: “O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.” They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question?... Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother?
I’d hate to compare our Lord and Savior to a trickster schoolboy, but I must say that Jesus here traps the chief priests and the elders of the people as cleverly as Wells did Stephen. He asks them a simple question about John the Baptist that will have them blushing, hot, and confused, looking to each other and saying, “What’s the right answer to the question?”
The Matchup: In This Corner...
As we begin our study, let me set the stage for you. In 21:12 Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem. There he cleanses (curses) it. He overturns the tables, drives out the racketeers, and lets in the needy to him and receives the children’s praise of him. Next he leaves the temple and stays the night in Bethany. In the morning, as he is returning to the city, in a symbolic gesture he withers the fruitless fig tree. Then we come to our text. In 21:23 Jesus enters the temple again. And from 21:23 until 24:1 (where we read “Jesus left the temple”), there, in the temple, is a clash of authorities—the chief priests, the elders, the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the scribes versus Jesus.
My friend Nick Perrin has written a book called Jesus the Temple. That book’s front cover features Giotto’s painting, Expulsion of the Money-changers from the Temple. (It’s a depiction of the previous chapter’s text.) On the left it shows the apostles shocked and confused. One is covering his face; another is raising his hands as if to say, “There must be a good explanation for this.” On the right the merchants are cowering, the animals escaping, and then in the far background are the temple authorities, whispering to each other. At the center is Jesus. Behind him is the temple, and in front of him is an overturned table. Over his right shoulder Jesus holds a whip in his clenched right hand. The whip, because of its fight coloring, is barely noticeable, so it looks like he is about to punch one of the merchants. (Nice cover, Nick. How very seeker-sensitive.)
I have nothing bad to say about the cover. I love it. It’s about time Brethren got that picture of Jesus into their heads. There are a lot of different pictures of Jesus in the Gospels. That’s not the only one, but that’s one of them.
If I were to paint a picture of today’s text, it would have that same Jesus at the center with his fist still clenched, but this time paired against him would be the temple authorities, in their proper boxing stance. You see, our text is a clash of authorities. Of course, there is nothing physical or violent here (Jesus, in the greatest act of nonviolence, is about to give his life even for his enemies), but I want you to feel with disturbing angst that our Lord Jesus was in a real battle here. Punches are being thrown by them and by him.
The religious authorities’ punches will come in the form of questions. In 21:23—22:46, four questions are thrown at Jesus from at least four different groups of truth squads. Jesus’ defenses (that’s a nicer term than “punches”) will come in parables. There are three total (three in a row), and we will examine two of them now.
Their First Question
Come with me to 21:23-27. We’ll start with verse 23:
And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
This question itself is not improper. Let’s lace it, Jesus just walked into their holy place (the chief priests had ruled the temple for centuries) and started rearranging the furniture. A touch of table-turning here and a little dusting over there as the change falls to the ground. Ah, that looks much better. Then the next day he’s back. Now he is teaching in the temple. This nobody from Nazareth—not a scribe, not a Pharisee, not a Sadducee, not a priest, not an elder, not a rabbi—is teaching. And he is likely teaching stuff like “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (5:1 1, 12a). Or worse, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). So do you see where the Jewish leaders are coming from? What’s this Jesus up to—tossing things out of the temple one day and teaching in the temple the next? Who does he think he is? By what authority is he doing these things?
This question itself is not improper, but their demeanor is. They weren't asking sincerely. (I think their tone here is more accusatory—“By what authority... !" That is, “You have no right!”) They weren’t open to the truth. They didn’t come in faith. So Jesus turns the tables on them again, saying in essence, “If you’re not capable enough to judge John the Baptist as Heaven-sent, then you are certainly not capable to judge me.” Look now at verses 24-27:
Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven’ [from God], he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man’ [not from God], we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, "We do not know.” [We take the Fifth.] And he said to them, “[Me too] Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
Notice a few details here. First notice (quite obviously) that authority is the issue. Some scholars think that now in Matthew the issue of authority becomes a fundamental issue. I think it has been, is now, and will continue to be the fundamental issue of the whole Gospel. This theme of authority I take to be part one of the three-part harmony of Matthew’s melodic line: all authority, all nations, all allegiance. Jesus has been given all authority over all the nations and thus demands total allegiance from everyone. I’ll return to this authority issue at the end of this chapter, with a small punch of my own.
Second, notice how worried these leaders are about the people. The polls have such a hold over their political and theological decisions. In verse 26 we read that they were “afraid of the crowd.” Later in verse 46 there’s an echo: “They feared the crowds.” Contrast them with Jesus, of whom the Pharisees rightly say in 22:16, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion.” Sometimes godly leadership demands godly decisions even if those decisions aren’t popular with the populace.
Third, notice that in Jesus’ seemingly elusive or evasive answer he actually answers their question and then, with the two forthcoming parables, illustrates his answer. While these leaders didn't believe John’s message (v. 32), our Lord doubted that they would say publicly that John’s baptism for repentance was merely “from man” (i.e., the opposite of the idiom “from heaven”). They may have thought that John’s ministry was not from God, but they would be hard-pressed to say (even to themselves) that his ministry was completely unauthorized or evil.
You see, what John said about Jesus was the answer to their question. (That’s what Jesus is getting at here.) And what did John say? In Matthew’s Gospel his testimony was this:
I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to cany. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (3:11, 12)
In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist’s testimony is even more Christologically bold:
I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord." (John 1:23)
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, "After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me!’ (John 1:29, 30; cp. John 3:31-35)
In 21:24—27 Jesus replies to the Jewish leaders (and let us listen in carefully) that the only right response to him is to heed John’s authoritative. Heaven-sent message about him—which is to repent and believe, to call Jesus the Lord, the Lamb, the before-Abraham-was I AM.
Here is where the parables come in. Again there are three parables, two of which we will examine here. All three parables share two themes—faith and judgment.
Parable “Punch" Number One
Let’s look at the first parable. I’ll explain it briefly and apply it forthrightly. With great authority Jesus teaches these authorities about his authority.
“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,’ [“Yes, sir, I will,” is the sense, it] but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them [the point of the parable], “Truly, I say to you [Jesus’ favorite personal authority expression], 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 [those repentant sinners modeled what you should do], you did not afterward change your minds [repent] and believe him.” (vv. 28-32)
Needless to say, this parable is a jab at them. It’s parable punch number one.
Here the father represents the Father. The first son—the I-won’t- but-did boy—symbolizes the tax collectors and prostitutes who, in the end, believed John’s message (about repentance of sin and faith in Jesus). Tax collectors and prostitutes! The shock here is intentional. But it is not merely a literary shock; it is a reality shock. Both tax collectors (rightly condemned for their traitorous collaboration with Rome and greed for gain) and prostitutes (rightly condemned for their sexual immorality)—those who defiantly said to God, “We will not obey your Word”—when they heard John preaching the way of righteousness listened, thought it through, and changed their minds and actions.
The second son—the I-will-but-didn’t boy—symbolizes Israel’s leaders, who were so verbally zealous in their obedience to God, yet failed to heed God’s two highest authorized emissaries, John and Jesus. They professed allegiance to God. They called themselves his sons and servants. But when called upon by John (and later by Jesus) to repent of their pride in position and their inward gross immoralities, they refused. The “bad” sons prove to be good and the “good” to be bad.
That’s my brief explanation of the parable. Here are my two lessons from it for us.
First, the gates to God’s kingdom open wide to the bluntly ungodly if they repent, but not a crack for the precisely orthodox if they do not. That’s the ironic reality here. God’s kingdom is compromised of some pretty bad cats or dogs (Gentile dogs) or pigs (unclean swine). Jesus didn’t come for the healthy. He came to cure the sick. So we shouldn’t be surprised if the Ecclesia is comprised of a bunch of once seemingly terminal spiritual cases.
At my last Ecclesia a young couple learned of my background—what I did and got caught doing before my conversion to Christ—and they left the Ecclesia because of it. They thought, A leader should not have any kind of sin like that in his past. I was devastated by that. Not personally devastated (in this case and with this couple I honestly could care less what they thought of me), but devastated that these professing Brethren didn’t get grace. Listen, prostitutes who repent of their sins and trust in Christ get into the kingdom, just as do Pharisees who repent of their sins and trust in Christ. That’s the beauty of the gospel, and that’s our first big lesson from the little parable. Don’t ever forget it.
The second lesson is, “show me your faith.” Of course that is how James puts it in 2:18 of his letter. In Romans, Paul calls it “the obedience of faith” (1:5; 16:26). Jesus’ slogan (you’re all familiar with it) is, Just do it. To Jesus, one is not saved by talk alone—“Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord (cp. 7:21-23; 25:11, 12); yes, sir, I’ll do that right away”—but by faith alone (see the word “believe” three times in verse 32), a faith that is never alone (a faith that obeys the word/will/voice of God). To Jesus, verbal faith is not saving faith; a doing faith is saving faith.
Those are the two lessons.
Parable “Punch" Number Two
Now as the chief priests and the elders are staggering after being hit with parable punch number one, without pause parable punch number two strikes them. “Hear another parable,” Jesus says.
There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress 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? They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” (vv. 33-41)
In this parable Jesus gives a condensed, symbolic (or allegorical) version of salvation history. The master of the house is the Father. The vineyard is God’s people, Israel. The tenants are Israel’s leaders—past and present in our text. The fruit (a key term here—vv. 34b, 41b, 43) represents, to borrow from John the Baptist’s language, the fruit of repentance (3:8, 10), or more broadly, a righteously obedient life (7:16-20). The two sets of servants are the Old Testament prophets, perhaps the former and the latter prophets. The beatings and stonings and killings represent their persecutions.
The son is the Son of God, our Lord Jesus, a veiled reference to himself, but also to the first public unveiling of his true identity. The killing of the son is the cross. The “other tenants” (v. 41) mentioned in the leaders’ reply (while technically not part of the parable, they are very much part of the story Jesus is telling) symbolize “a people producing its fruits” (v. 43), that is, a new people, a “third race,” as one commentator calls them, the elect of Christ’s kingdom, a rightly ruled community that is not defined ethnically—as Jewish or Gentile—but spiritually, as those whose faith is fruitful.
The story is simply and sadly that God so deeply loved the world he chose Israel from among the nations to bless the nations. He tenderly brought them to life and then cared and nurtured them to health—he rescued them out of Egypt, gave them the Law, set up his city, built a temple, and prepared an altar. There are eight verbs in verse 33, showing how much God worked on their behalf. Then he sent his prophets to reap what he had sown. But the leaders of his people persecuted and killed the prophets. Then, in his great patience, God sent more prophets, and the same fate met them. Finally, he so loved Israel that he sent his own son, Jesus. And yet Israel’s leaders plotted (v. 38), arrested (v. 46), and killed (v. 39) even the Son of God. This beloved son was killed outside the vineyard, or as Hebrews puts it “outside the gate” (13:12, 13).
Then... the story is not over. Look at verse 40 and following. Here comes the punch of the parable. Jesus ends his parable with a question: “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The leaders reply, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (v. 41). Here, without knowing it, they have hung themselves. They have rightly discerned the judgment coming to them. The coming of the owner of the vineyard is the coming judgment upon Israel’s leaders and all who follow their lead. This coming of God in judgment could refer to the final judgment (and in part I suppose it must) but also and likely to the destruction of the temple spiritually in AD 33 (or thereabouts) and physically in AD 70.
And in place of that temple (then as now) is Jesus. Jesus is the temple? “Jesus said to them, 'Have you never read in 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”?”’ (v. 42).
Here Jesus quotes from Psalm 118:22, 23, a text that originally spoke of the nation of Israel, and here, as Messiah, he appropriately and authoritatively applies it to himself. He continues:
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people [ethnos, “a people”—a collective singular] 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. (vv. 43, 44)"’
From the rubble of the temple—every stone of that temple will be laid to the ground—a new and everlasting stone is put in place. That stone is Jesus, in particular Christ and him crucified, risen, and exalted—what will indeed be “the Lord’s doing” and “marvelous” in the eyes of the apostles and still in our eyes today! The stone that the builders (or “tenants”) or Jewish leaders rejected has become the foundational stone of the new temple. And this stone either saves or crushes. The stone either stays in place as the cornerstone on which you build your fruitful life or that stone is pushed out of place and becomes a stumbling stone that rolls over and crushes to dust all who oppose it (see Isaiah 8:14, 15; cp. Daniel 2:34, 35).
So that’s it. That’s the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, or perhaps a better title is the Parable of the Patient but Just Master.
What are the lessons for us? I have two. Both are big-picture gospel lessons. First, God is patient. You could place 2 Peter 3:9 atop our text. “The Lord is... patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” That’s where Jesus starts here (vv. 33-37), and that’s where the gospel starts. The Lord (or “master”) is lovingly long-suffering. He plants his vineyard, cares for it, and sends servants to harvest it. And even after the first servants are hurt or destroyed, he holds back his anger and sends more servants," and finally, in the greatest act of loving long-suffering, he sends his own son. In parable form it all sounds crazy. What landowner would do such a thing? But that’s just the point. What defies historical realism really happened in and outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. God’s apparent gullibility is his intentional grace! At the “dramatic center of the story” is the sending of the son and the blessing extended to all who will accept him as such.
But that patience can be exhausted. This is the Parable of the Patient but Just Master. God is patient; God is just. The second lesson is this: God will judge those who don’t accept his Son. Here Jesus does not depict people as neutral. Verse 38 embodies the cry of all who reject God’s kindness and his King, Jesus. The scheming—“Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance”—is the cry of the natural rebellious heart. “We know better than God. We’d rule better than his son.” Even “We want to be God!”—squatter’s rights on his property. The rejection and crucifixion of the Son of God is not merely a tragedy. It’s the crime of the century. It’s the greatest crime of world history! And the guilt for it hangs over all our heads.
Those (Jesus is quite strong here) who won't joyfully accept his loving authority (the authority of the sacrificial son) will feel the weight of his judging authority (the authority of the stone). “The person who trips over this stone will be smashed to pieces, and the person on whom this stone falls will be ground to powder” is one translation of verse 44. That’s doesn’t sound nice. What a “miserable death” (v. 41) that would be. You don’t want that.
God is patient; God is just. Don’t try his patience; trust his Son.
What Authority!
As I was thinking over this theme of authority in Matthew’s Gospel, I skimmed through this Gospel looking for places where I could (in a sense, not in reality) insert the chief priests and elders’ question—“Jesus, by what authority... ?”
So, for example, after Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (5:17), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he teaches, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (5:43, 44), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he announces: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (7:21), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven” (9:2), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he claims, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (11:27, 28), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he says of himself, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (12:6-8), we insert, “By what authority?”
Or when he announced, “The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here” (12:42), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he replies, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (12:49b, 50), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he said, “To eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone” (15:20), we insert, “By what authority?” Or when he claims, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (16:18) or the sentence after that (to Peter and later the disciples, 18:18), “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (16:19b), we insert, "By what authority?”
Shall I go on? No need to.
You see, what is asked in 21:23 is the climactic question that every person alive then and there and every observant reader here and now should ask: “Jesus, by what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
And we are to hear loud and clear Jesus’ reply: “By what authority am I doing these things?
Answer: by God’s authority. I am the Son he sent. Who gave me this authority? Answer: God did. I am the stone he set in place. By God’s authority I am the Son, and I am the stone.” And to that we are to say, with bowed heads, soft hearts, and raised hands, “What authority!” Not what authority? but what authority! What Heaven-sent, God-given, sweet-to-be-under authority!
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)