The rejection of the cornerstone; Luke 20:9-18

As I’m sure you realize by now, it is imperative that as we study each passage in Luke’s gospel, we must always consider the context in which it is found in first of all.  And so today we must remember that this parable comes as a result of the religious leaders of Jerusalem indignantly demanding to know what authority Jesus was coming into the temple and throwing out the vendors and money changers, and teaching and preaching to the people.  They wanted to know who or what was His authority.

But instead of answering them directly, Jesus asked them a question.  He said, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?”  And of course, the religious leaders decided that they couldn’t publicly answer that question because the people rightly believed that John was a prophet, in fact he was the prophet foretold of in Malachi that would prepare the way for the Messiah.  So if they said that John was a prophet of God, then the obvious rebuttal would be “then why didn’t you believe him?”  And if they said he wasn’t a prophet, the people might rise up and stone them.  So they said, “we cannot say”, or “we don’t know.”  They pled the fifth.  And so Jesus says, “neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Now that is the context in which Jesus gives this parable.  It is an indirect way of answering them.  He won’t answer them directly, but in the course of the parable, the answer will become clear where He gets His authority.  But there is another context to this passage that is not quite so apparent, yet just as important.

The greater context of this parable is found in the Old Testament.  The prophet Isaiah and Jeremiah as well as the Psalmist David spoke of Israel as a vineyard.  It was a well known allegory that especially the religious leaders would be familiar with.  And Isaiah in particular seems to be the one that Jesus is drawing inspiration from in this parable.  Let’s look at it for a moment.

Isaiah 5: 1 “Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. 2 He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. ... 4 "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? 5 "So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. 6 "I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it." 7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel And the men of Judah His delightful plant.”

So in Isaiah 5 you have a song about the land of Judah in Israel.  And God speaks allegorically how he protected and provided for and nurtured Israel.  How He did everything He could do to provide for her and protect her.  And that as a result of His providence He expected to see Judah produce good fruit.  But instead, the song says that Judah produced nothing but worthless sour berries.  So God pronounces a curse upon them and says that He will remove His protection from them and let the animals and the thieves and whatever else may come in and ravage the land.

Israel’s defining characteristic  was that it did not worship a pantheon of idols, but worshipped the only true God, Jehovah. God had revealed Himself to them, through Abraham and then Moses and the prophets.  God had given them His word, His promises and His law. God’s word told them that they were to be different from all the other nations of the world not only in customs and diet and ceremonies, but in every facet of society, they were to be a holy people, set apart by God to be His people exclusively, to be a testimony and a witness to the world.

But though God kept His promise and providentially drove out all their enemies and blessed them with every conceivable blessing, the people took advantage of His providence to indulge their own greediness and corruption.  Furthermore, they lusted after the things that the rest of the world had. The prophets often used the analogy of a wife that turned  to whoredom and prostitution, going after every gross desire of the flesh to describe how Israel repeatedly went after the false gods of other nations and worshipped them.  They constantly wanted to be like the other pagan countries that surrounded them.

So God reminds them through this song in Isaiah that He had done everything for them that He could possibly do, taken away their enemies, protected them, provided for them in every way, but they had failed to produce fruit. And God warns them that because of their rebellion the day will come when He will turn away from them and His protective presence will be withdrawn.  One day they will wake up and find themselves like Samson, who the Bible says did not realize that God’s strength had left him and shook himself and went out to face his attackers and was captured and tortured.  So it will be with Israel.

Isaiah’s song goes on to say that even God’s favor is removed His anger is not yet spent. It says that He will call “a distant nation, and will whistle for it from the ends of the earth; and behold, it will come with speed swiftly.”  This nation of warriors will be relentless, untiring, and bring devastation and destruction like a ravaging lion.

Now that is the historical, prophetic context to this parable that the hearers would have immediately recognized as pertaining to Israel. But now let’s look at the parable as Jesus tells it.  And by the way, there is a parallel version of this parable in Matthew 21.  Matthew  adds some interesting factors to the story that Luke does not, such as He dug around the vineyard and put a tower in it which makes it almost identical to Isaiah 5.

But what Jesus does in this parable is He uses the analogy of Israel being a vineyard but then brings the focus upon those men that were put in place as vine growers, or caretakers.  This is where the story is focused, on the caretakers, those given the responsibility for the stewardship of the vineyard.  These were the ones who were responsible for the spiritual well being of Israel, for the good fruit of Israel.  They were the ones given responsibility for the stewardship of God’s word, for the administration of God’s kingdom.

Jesus says that eventually the owner of the vineyard sent a slave to receive some of the fruit that was supposed to be returned to the owner.  But the vine growers beat him up and sent him away empty handed.  So the owner sends a second slave and then a third, and these they beat up as well.  They refuse to give the owner his due.  He invested all the resources, he provided all the things necessary to expect good fruit, but they refuse to acknowledge their debt to him, and instead beat up his servants.

So finally, the owner of the vineyard decides to send his beloved son, in hope that they will certainly honor him.  But the vine growers seeing the son say amongst themselves, this is the heir, let us kill him and the vineyard will be ours.  And so they kill the son.

You can bet the religious leaders by now had figured out that this was a story about them.  They were the ones in charge of the administration of the vineyard.  They knew that Israel had mistreated or killed all the prophets that God had sent them in the past.  In fact, history tells us that Isaiah, who as I pointed out was one of  the originators of the vineyard analogy, was in fact sawn in two with a wooden saw.
But there were two groups of people there listening that day.  There were the disciples of Jesus that were in the temple that Jesus was preaching to, and there was the religious delegation made up of high priests and Pharisees and so forth.

So when Jesus asks the question, “What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to them?”  I believe the disciples are the ones that answer ““He will come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others.”  But the shocked religious leaders say “may it never be!”  They know that what the disciples and Jesus are saying is that God will remove them from their stewardship and give it to others who will administer their stewardship in such a way as to bring forth fruit. But they say “may it never be!  We will never allow it.”  See, the whole point of their delegation was to say that Jesus had no authority.  They considered themselves the authority in Israel, and Jesus threatened them.  He threatened their power, their position, and so they wanted to kill Him.  And they would in just 3 days time.

Vs. 17, “But Jesus looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:
‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”  I love how Jesus constantly quotes scripture.  He who was the Word made flesh, and speaks the word of God with authority.  He sets an example for us that endures today.  Especially in light of the way in which the word of God today is being discarded in favor of relativism in an attempt to not be offensive.

Jesus is quoting from Psalm 118 by the way, which most of the Pharisees would have known by heart.  Psalm 118 is what the people were quoting from when they called out “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” just a couple of days prior when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  And now Jesus uses that very same Psalm to say “I am the stone which you the builders rejected. I am the cornerstone spoken of in Psalm 118.  Isaiah added in Isaiah chapter 8 that He is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

Listen, why do people stumble over Jesus Christ?  Why is Jesus offensive?  The religious leaders stumbled over Him because first of all He told them they were sinners just like everyone else.  Maybe even worse sinners than everyone else.  They were worse because they refused to recognize that they were sinners.  The only sin that God cannot forgive is the sin of unrepentance.  Please understand something folks.  The gospel, if it is being handled accurately, is not supposed to seduce people into the kingdom by singing songs of love, love, love.  The gospel breaks people over the rock of offense; the rock of Jesus Christ who alone is righteous and holy.  The gospel seeks to first of all convict you of your sin, to break your will to self rule, to autonomy, to doing what is right in your own eyes, and recognizing and submitting to the word of God that declares what constitutes righteousness and sinfulness.  That is what it means to confess Jesus as both Lord and Savior.

That is what Jesus meant when He said, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”  Either you fall on the rock that is Jesus Christ in brokenness, bowing to His Lordship over your life, breaking your pride, breaking your selfishness, or the rock that is Christ will fall on you, scattering you like dust.  You will be destroyed.  God’s judgment will fall on you if you reject the Cornerstone.

But if you accept Christ as the cornerstone, then Eph 2:19-22 says “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household,  having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” A cornerstone was laid at the foundation of a building, by which the building is made true and all it’s lines are drawn from.   Christ as the cornerstone symbolizes that His truth is laid as the foundation for the church, upon which was laid the scriptures of the apostles.  The word of God then is the foundation that the church is built upon, which it must stay true to.  And as Christians, we are being built up into a holy temple, as we live our lives according to it’s blueprint.  When the Holy Spirit is living in our temple, then we will bear the fruit of the Spirit, having been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ laid down for us in His word.

Now that’s the interpretation of the parable.  Let’s look at the application.  If you remember we started with Isaiah 5.  That parable was a nationalistic allegory.  It was speaking of the nation of Israel that had rejected the reign of God over their lives, and though there were certainly a few individuals that had not bowed their knee to Baal, as a whole, the nation of Israel became apostate.  They became idolatrous. And so God brought a nation of warriors from Assyria who destroyed their cities, the temple and their palaces, destroying thousands of them and taking others into captivity.  By the time Jesus quotes Isaiah 5, almost 700 years have passed, and Israel has gone from 12 tribes to just three; Benjamin, Judah and Levi.  But their apostasy has resurfaced to the extent that they actually will crucify the Messiah, God’s only beloved Son.  So the warning of impending judgment is still appropriate.  Within the lifetime of many of those very leaders who call for Christ’s death, the Roman army under the General Titus would sack the city of Jerusalem and kill hundreds of thousands of Jews, and destroy the temple so that one stone wasn’t left upon another.  The stone that the builders rejected scattered them like dust.

I cannot help but see the parallels of Judah to the United States today.  We too were a nation that benefited from the presence of God in a very special way.  No other nation on earth had the blessings that America has had.  No other nation in the world was founded on Christian principles found in  God’s actual word other than America. God used religious persecution to bring a great nation of people together from many foreign countries, many of which had persecuted them for their religious views and for trying to be true to God’s word.  We have become the greatest nation on the face of the earth. In the beginning it was established on the word of God.  God’s word is written on our government buildings, its verses were inscribed on our monuments, even our currency stated our faith in God, and for almost 200 years our schools used the Holy Bible as it’s textbook.  Our country went on to export Christianity to the world through missionaries to every continent on the globe.  There were churches on every street corner.  Some of the greatest revivals known to man swept across this country, turning men’s hearts to God with great fervor.

Yet as time went on, we like Israel grew complacent, and we grew more and more materialistic.  We became consumed with possessions and the lusts of the flesh. Today America has become a nation that is not defined by their Christian values anymore, but rather defined by our decadence and rampant consumerism. And I am afraid that the time is coming soon, when God will whistle to a foreign army who will come against this nation with the same zeal that Babylon did against Israel.  And God will give our stewardship to a nation that will render to Him good fruit in due season.

But Jesus’ version of this parable is not just a nationalistic allegory, but also an ecclesiastical allegory.  Here in this version Christ added the element of the caretakers.  This was a veiled reference to the religious leaders.  The priesthood of Israel particularly had been entrusted with the oracles of God.  They had been entrusted with the worship, with the administration of the temple. They were to teach and to lead the people in righteousness and holiness.  But the fact that Jesus continually pointed out was that the religious leaders were actually hypocrites.  They had perverted the truth for their own purposes.  They had their positions by means of political appointment rather than divine appointment.  They had sold out to the Roman government for a measure of power.  They were in it for the money, they were in it for the acclaim of people, they were in it because they loved to appear righteous.  They were in it for the social standing.  And they were willing to kill the Messiah in order to keep their position and power.

Jesus is saying that their stewardship will be taken away.  Within their lifetime, the temple would be destroyed.  The ancestral records would be destroyed.  From what I understand today no Jew is able to know for certain if they are from a particular tribe.  So there can’t be priests anymore, because they had to be from the tribe of Levi. There can’t be sacrifices anymore, because they had to be done in the temple in Jerusalem. All that they relied upon, their power, their prestige, their position of reverence, was destroyed.   The cornerstone that they rejected fell on them and scattered them into pieces that could never be put back together.

Folks, once again I’m afraid that there is a direct analogy here to the church leadership in America today.  We have a greater privilege than Israel ever had.  We have the complete scriptures, Old and New Testaments, inspired by God, written down for our instruction.  Christ took away the stewardship from the priests and gave it to the lowly disciples.  The apostles who were unlearned, uncredentialed, didn’t graduate from an approved rabbinical school were given the stewardship of the gospel.  And these faithful men proclaimed it, protected it, and preserved it in the New Testament scriptures and then passed it on to preachers and evangelists. Eph 4:11-13 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,  for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

I wish I could unequivocally say that our generation of pastors and teachers had proved reliable in the stewardship of the gospel handed down from the apostles and prophets.  But I am afraid that even a cursory look at the state of the church today in America reveals that we have neglected our primary purpose - the protection, proclamation and presentation of the Word of God - because we have been too concerned about our position, our social status, and our little bit of power to really preach the full counsel of the word of God.  Even a cursory look at the majority of churches out there reveals that the clergy does not consider the preaching of God’s word a priority.  Today ministers are more like managers, overseeing programs and employees and property administration.  And the word of God is neglected.  People are starving for the truth and not getting it.  Instead we are building bigger buildings, adding bigger salaries, running coffee shops and bookstores and putting on concerts, but we have relinquished our number one priority; the preaching of the word of God.  I am afraid that in the very near future, this enterprise in America that we call the church will be done away with.  I heard Al Mohler and John McArthur speak on this subject last spring at a pastor’s conference.  Already legislation is in the works to take away tax exemption from churches, not only in contributions, but in property taxes.  If church contributions lost their tax exemption it would be harmful but not necessarily disastrous.  But if property taxes are one day levied against the church then most churches and church based institutions would be forced to close. And when that day comes I think we will see who was in it for the money.  When preaching the gospel may land you in jail then I wonder how many will want to preach at all.  I am afraid that day is coming soon in America, and it will be our own fault.  Church leadership has left it’s purpose which is proclaiming the whole gospel of Jesus Christ to the church.

One final application, this parable also has an individual analogy.  As the Jewish people were given a stewardship and that stewardship was taken away, so as Christians we are given a stewardship.  We are given the greatest gift of all, the gift of salvation.  God’s beloved Son willingly gave His life as a sacrifice for the sins of those who would confess Him as Lord. We are given the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ Himself to live within us to guide us, and strengthen us and teach us.  And we have been given the gift of God’s word, God’s very breath of life written down, easily available to everyone to carry with them.  Today the word of God has never been more accessible, more portable.  And yet what are we doing with our stewardship?  Oh, we may not literally beat up the pastor, but we can despise the preaching of the Word.  We may not literally crucify Christ, but we can insult the Spirit of grace by sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth.  Hebrews 10:29 says, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, ‘THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.’  It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

God grafted us Gentiles, people who were outside of the covenant, outside of the nation of Israel, without hope, God grafted us into His vineyard.  He made us part of His chosen people, the church.  He has freed us from the enslavement of sin and the fear of death.  He has given us an inheritance in heaven, given us a promise to reign on thrones with Christ for eternity.  Such things cannot be comprehended.  And yet I’m afraid that many Christians today are totally enslaved to this world.  They are totally enamored by the lusts of this world.  Like the Israelites, we lust after the leeks and garlic of Egypt.  We lust after the very things that God has delivered us from.  Rather than seeking righteousness and holiness by suffering with Christ, we seek friendship with the world, we seek social status and prestige and bigger and better material things, rather than laying up our treasures in heaven.

Listen, I will close by referring to what Matthew includes in his gospel’s account of this parable.  In Matthew 21:43 it records Jesus as saying, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it.”  I don’t think that this verse is teaching that you can lose your salvation, but I do think it teaches that God expects a return on your stewardship.  Grace is not the result of works, but grace should produce works. Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

I don’t know your heart today.  God knows your heart.  But if your heart is right, then your fruit should be evident.  If God is on the throne of your heart, then God has a right to expect fruit from His vine.  Jesus said in John 15:16 "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain.”

How do we bring forth good fruit?  By being found true to the cornerstone.  By establishing our lives upon the cornerstone of Christ’s word, being built up into a holy temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwells.  By crucifying the desires of the flesh daily so that Christ may live in our mortal bodies.  By submitting joyfully to the rule of Christ over our hearts.  When Christ is our cornerstone, then we will build our lives on His foundation and according to His plan.  That produces a building that brings glory to God.  That produces a fruit that will remain.  I pray that today you come to the cornerstone in brokenness, that you may be built up according to the truth of God’s word.