This is part of a series of meditations on what Scripture teaches about each day of Holy Week, which goes from Palm Sunday until Easter, in which Christians everywhere mark the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead.

You can find the previous posts here, here, and here.

“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.  What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?  And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.”

-Isaiah 5:3-5, ESV

“I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that was not called by my name.  I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices”

-Isaiah 65:1-2, ESV

Tuesday of Holy Week saw the conclusion of Jesus’ public ministry and the Olivet Discourse to the disciples.  I’ll address the former here and the latter later today.  The Jewish leaders were intent on killing Jesus, but they needed the Roman governor’s approval to execute anyone.  The Romans cared little for Jewish controversies until they threatened the peace, so if the Jewish leaders could whip the crow into a frenzy against Jesus, the Romans would consent to executing Him in order to keep the peace.  Therefore, it was imperative that the Jewish leaders win over the crowds.  But since the crowd was “hanging on His words” (Luke 19:48), they needed to provoke Jesus into saying something incriminating in order to turn the crowd against Him. They started by questioning His authority, which He turned against them by asking them a question they could not answer about the nature of John’s baptism.  He then spoke three parables centered on the Parable of the Tenants.  His description of the vineyard in that parable should have reminded them of Isaiah 5, which explicitly said that the vineyard represented the Jews (v. 7) which means the master in the parable is God and the messengers were the prophets.  Jesus then expands on the Isaiah parable by adding the son killed by the tenants, which clearly points to Himself.  Then just as Isaiah promised judgment, so did Jesus: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43).  Just as foreshadowed by the Cleansing of the Temple, this parable predicted that the Jews would no longer be the people of God. 

The Debate

Rather than see this connection and repent, Jews then doubled down.  The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians all tried to rhetorically trip Jesus up, but to no avail.  The Pharisees and Herodians, who were intensely opposed to one another, both saw Jesus as a threat to them, leading them to conspire together and ask Him about paying taxes.  As the most devoted adherents to the Jewish Law, the Pharisees would have claimed that paying taxes and tribute to Caesar violated the laws about firstfruits belonging to God, which I discussed here and here.  Conversely, the Herodians who were in favor of Rome would have viewed not paying taxes to Caesar as treasonous.  After pointing out that the likeness of Caesar on the denarius meant it belonged to him, Jesus told them to give to God what belongs to Him.  Since people are made in the image of God, this means that we owe ourselves to God just as we owe taxes to the government.  This answer silenced them both.

The Sadducees then asked Him about the resurrection by posing a seemingly-irreconcilable scenario.  They were religious liberals who denied the resurrection, all things supernatural, and all Scripture except the Pentateuch.  By taking the law of levirate marriage to its extreme, they created a situation in which the only possible answer was that there could be no resurrection.  If all seven fictitious brothers were at one point married to this equally fictitious woman, the only safe answer to whose wife she would be in the resurrection was to say that there would be no resurrection.  As I understand it, the Sadducees frequently used this argument, so I wonder how many Pharisees could not answer it and merely responded with “that’s stupid”.  Instead, Jesus invalidates their assumption by saying that there is no marriage in the resurrection, so their impossible scenario was irrelevant.  In the process, he took a jab at their disbelief in angels as well before proving the resurrection from the Pentateuch, which silenced them as well.

A lawyer then came and asked about which of the over six hundred Mosaic laws was the most important.  This too should have been impossible to answer, since all of those laws came straight from God.  But Jesus actually answers this question directly by combining the command to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Deuteronomy 6:5) with the command to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18), stating that they sum up the entire Law.  Jesus then poses a question of His own by asking how the Messiah can be both the descendant of David and Lord of David from Psalm 110:1.  The Jewish leaders were unable to answer Him, so they were unable to turn the crowd against Him, which would require them to adopt a stealthier strategy in order to bring Him down.

The Fate of the Vineyard

This rejection of Jesus was so egregious that in pronouncing woes against them, Jesus said God would hold them responsible for all of the innocent blood shed in history up to that point (Matthew 23:35).  The Olivet Discourse that followed was in the context of that judgment.  At least some (and I would contend all) of the prophecies therein were fulfilled by the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., which signaled the transfer of the Kingdom from the Jews to the Church that would produce the fruit that Israel failed to produce.  (For more on this, check out this series of blog posts from The Shepherd’s Church on eschatology.) Ever since, the Church comprised of both Jews and Gentiles has been the chosen people of God.  We Gentiles must respond to this not with pride or disdain over the Jews but humble fear, since the same God who removed them will likewise remove us if we fail to bear fruit (Romans 11:17-22).  God has removed the lampstand (influence) of even the most prominent regions of the church when they failed to bear fruit for the Kingdom, meaning the church in America must repent and return to the work of the Gospel that we did at first (such as during the Great Awakenings) or we are at risk of God removing our lampstand too (Revelation 2:5).  So we must pray that God would bring about a third Great Awakening, not as a mere emotional experience of God but an intense and widespread wave of repentance that leads to long-lasting devotion to God. 

Finally, it is important to note that while God is finished with the Jews as His uniquely chosen people, God is not yet done with Israel in His plan of salvation.  The God who cut the Jews off from Him is capable of grafting them back in (Romans 11:23-24).  Paul talks of the Jews’ overall rejection of Jesus as a partial hardening “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.  And in this way all of Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25b).  In Romans 11, Paul talks of God using the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as a way to open up salvation to the Gentiles while resting on the hope that God will similarly use the faith of the Gentiles to bring about salvation among the Jews.  Ultimately, God tends His vineyard and is sovereign to make it bear the fruit He intends. 

“For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy.  For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.  Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’  For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

-Romans 11:30-36, ESV