But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and said, ‘Son, go work today in my vineyard.’ He answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind, and went. He came to the second, and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I’m going, sir,’ but he didn’t go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said to him, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Most certainly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into God’s Kingdom before you.
For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn’t even repent afterward, that you might believe him.
“Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household, who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country. When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the farmers, to receive his fruit. The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they treated them the same way. But afterward he sent to them his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the farmers, when they saw the son, said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”
They told him, “He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will lease out the vineyard to other farmers, who will give him the fruit in its season.”
Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord. It is marvelous in our eyes?’
“Therefore I tell you, God’s Kingdom will be taken away from you, and will be given to a nation producing its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it will fall, it will scatter him as dust.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv28, 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44 It is no new thing to see them to…
It is no new thing to see them to be the worst of all men, which ought to show the way of godliness to others.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv28–44 28 But what think ye? A certain man had…
28 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.
Ver. 28. But what think you?] Christ reporteth himself to their own consciences, while he proveth John Baptist’s ministry to be from heaven, by the happy success he had in converting the vilest sinners. See Jer 23:22; 1Co 9:2. The people’s fruitfulness is the minister’s testimonial, 2Co 3:2. If but one of a city, or two of a family be gained to God, it is a sign that the pastors are according to God’s own heart, Jer 3:14-15.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv28, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40, 42 Matthew alone mentions this parable. The scope of it…
Matthew alone mentions this parable. The scope of it is taught us Mat 21:31,
The publicans and the harlots go (that is, shall go)
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into the kingdom of God before you, that is, you Pharisees. Who these Pharisees and who the publicans were, we showed before, Mat 3:7. The publicans were very odious to the Jews: see Mar 2:16. Harlots are great sinners. By the kingdom of God, here, is meant that of glory. Our Lord’s saying that publicans and harlots should go in before the Pharisees, doth not imply that they should follow. It only signifieth that some who had been publicans (as Matthew and Zacchaeus) and harlots were in a better condition than these Pharisees. He proves it because they had done the will of God, which the Pharisees, notwithstanding all their fair profession, had not, but resisted it, and particularly in the ministry of John the Baptist, who came to them in the way of righteousness, preaching the true doctrine of righteousness, and living a holy and righteous life; upon the hearing of whose doctrine, some of the publicans and other great sinners had believed in Christ; but the Pharisees, though they heard his doctrine, saw his conversation, and saw others repent and own Christ, yet were so far from believing, that they would not repent, that they might believe; they would not be awakened to any sense of their sinful courses, nor amend any thing of their former ways, that they might receive Christ and embrace his righteousness and salvation. For although evangelical repentance is the fruit of faith, yet that repentance which lieth in a previous sense of sin, and a resolution to leave sinful courses, goeth before it. Now to illustrate and press this home upon the consciences of these Pharisees, our Saviour brings this parable, (as Nathan did to David, 2Sa 12:1,11) that they might, being convicted, condemn themselves. Hence the parable is easily understood: The man mentioned is God. The two sons were the Pharisees, a people highly pretending obedience to the law of God, and making a great show of religion. And the publicans and harlots, great sinners, bad and vile people, making no pretence to religion. God saith to the one and the other, Go, work in my vineyard, that is, do my will, do the work I command you to do. The Pharisees, so hypocrites and formalists, by their outward pretence and profession, say, I go, sir; but yet go not; all their religion is a vain show, a mere outside appearance. Others by their lives declare that they will not go; but yet upon second thoughts, having their hearts touched by the finger of God, they do God’s work.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. This is plain; for what was the will of the father, but that they should do the work he set them to do? This the latter did not. The father’s will was not only that the son should give him a cap and a knee, and compliment him, but that he should go to work in the vineyard. It is the least part of God’s will that men should give him good words, be a little complemental and ceremonious toward him; but that they should repent and believe, and obey his gospel. This some publicans and harlots did; the generality of the Pharisees refused. It is a hard thing to convince a moral, righteous, civil man, that he lacks any thing to salvation; and hence it is that profane persons many times repent, believe, and are saved, when others perish in their impenitency and unbelief, because they think they have no need of repentance, or any further righteousness than they are possessed of.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv28, 33, 40, 42, 44 The design and scope of this parable is to…
The design and scope of this parable is to show, That publicans and harlots, that is, the vilest, the profanes, and worst of sinners, who, upon the hearing of Christ’s doctrine and miracles, did repent and believe, were in a much better condition than the proud Pharisees, who, though they pretended to great measures of knowledge, and high degrees of holiness, yet did obstinately oppose Christ, disobey his doctrine, deny his miracles, and set at nought his person.
Learn hence, That the greatest, the vilest, and the worst of sinners, upon their repentance and faith in Christ, shall much sooner find acceptance with God, than proud pharisaical justiciaries, who confidently rely upon their own righteousness: Publicans and harlots, says Christ here to the Pharisees, shall go into the kingdom of God before you. Publicans were the worst sort of men and harlots the worst kind of women; yet did these repent sooner, and believed in Christ before the proud Phariesees. The reason was, because their hearts lay more open to the strokes of conviction, than those that were blinded by vain hopes and presumptuous confidence. Security frustrates all means of recovery.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv28–44 But what think you?.... See Gill on Mat 18:12.
But what think you?.... See Gill on Mat 18:12.
a certain man had two sons. This is a parable; the design of which is to show the hypocrisy and deceit of the Scribes and Pharisees, in pretending to works of righteousness, and not doing them; and to reprove them for their disbelief and rejection of John's ministry; and to make it appear, that the worst of sinners in the Jewish nation were preferable to them; and that many of them were, and would be, happy, when they would be miserable. By the "certain man", in the parable, God is designed; who, though he is not a man, nor to be represented by any human form; yet, as man is the image of God, he is therefore, in an improper and figurative sense, compared to man, and set forth by him; which may be allowed in a metaphorical and parabolical way: and though the Son of God only assumed human nature, and really became man; yet God, the Father, seems rather to be here intended, who is sometimes compared to a husbandman and a vinedresser; see Joh 15:1 and as appears from the relation of the "two sons" unto him; by whom are meant not Jews and Gentiles; for the latter can never be intended by the first son; for these were not sons in such sense as the Jews were, nor were upon an equal foot of sonship with them, as the parable supposes; much less were they called first, and bid to work in the vineyard: but, on the contrary John the Baptist, Christ, and his apostles, were first, and only sent to the Jews; and God, as yet, was not come even in the external ministry of the word to the Gentiles; nor were they brought to repentance and obedience: but by them are meant two sorts of people, among the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees, and publicans and sinners; as the application of the parable, by our Lord himself, most clearly shows: these were both the sons of God; not only by creation, as all men are, all having, in this sense, but one common father, whose offspring they be; but also by national adoption; for to all, who were Israelites, according to the flesh, whether good men, or bad men, alike belonged the general privilege of adoption, Rom 9:4. This publicans and sinners had an equal right to, as well as the Scribes and Pharisees, though they were not all the sons of God by special grace, or spiritual adoption:
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and he came to the first; the publicans and sinners among the Jews, by the ministry of John the Baptist, Christ, and his disciples, who first and chiefly preached to such sort of persons,
and said, son, go work today in my vineyard: by the "vineyard", is meant the kingdom of God, or of heaven, the Gospel church state, the then present dispensation of things, which was set up, and which men were called to embrace and enter into; the doors of which the Pharisees, who pretended to have the key of knowledge, did all they could to shut up, and hinder persons going in, as they refused to do themselves: this is called it a "vineyard"; See Gill on Mat 20:1. To work in it signifies to hear the word preached, to believe in the Messiah, embrace his doctrines, and submit to his ordinances, particularly the ordinance of baptism, which was the then principal ordinance of that dispensation. The time of working in it is "today"; directly, immediately, and whilst it is day; for the hour cometh when no man can work, and when all these means and ordinances will be at an end, and attending on them will be over: the argument used to engage hereunto, is taken from the relation the person stood in as a "son", highly favoured by God, with the blessing of national adoption, besides that of natural sonship common to all mankind.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv30, 32, 33, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44 He answered, I go, sir: but went not -…
He answered, I go, sir: but went not - Just so did the scribes and Pharisees: they professed the greatest readiness and zeal in the service of God: but it was bare profession, contradicted by all their actions.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44 Verse 28. A certain man had two sons] Under…
Verse 28. A certain man had two sons] Under the emblem of these two sons, one of whom was a libertine, disobedient, and insolent, but who afterwards thought on his ways, and returned to his duty; and the second, a hypocrite, who promised all, and did nothing; our Lord points out, on the one hand, the tax-gatherers and sinners of all descriptions, who, convicted by the preaching of John and that of Christ, turned away from their iniquities and embraced the Gospel; and, on the other hand, the scribes, Pharisees, and self-righteous people, who, pretending a zeal for the law, would not receive the salvation of the Gospel.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv28, 33, 34, 40, 42, 44 Mat 21:28-32. But what think ye — As if…
Mat 21:28-32. But what think ye — As if he had said, You have evaded a direct answer to my question concerning the baptism of John, and have acknowledged your ignorance whence it was; but what think you of your own conduct in these circumstances? and of all the high professions you make of an extraordinary reverence for God, and zeal in his service? I will plainly tell you my judgment of it, which is very naturally connected with the present subject. This our Lord does in two parables, in the former of which, by a question which he puts to them, he makes them condemn themselves. A certain man had two sons — Signifying two sorts of persons: some that prove better than they promise, represented by the former of these sons; others that promise better than they prove, represented by the latter. And he came to the first — Exhibiting the disobedient, profligate, and wicked Jews, and open sinners of all descriptions, who, though they neither professed nor promised to do the will of God, nor gave any reason to hope well concerning them, yet afterward being convinced of sin, and brought to repentance by the preaching of John the Baptist and Christ, turned from their sins, and sincerely embraced the gospel. The spirit and conduct of the second son was an exact picture of the temper and behaviour of the Pharisees; for in their prayers and praises they gave God the most honourable titles, and professed the greatest readiness and zeal in his service: but it was a bare profession, contradicted by all their actions. They said, I go, sir, to work in thy vineyard, but went not. Jesus having finished his parable, asked, Whether of them twain did the will of his Father? — Without hesitation, they replied, The first — Not perceiving that by this answer they condemned themselves, till Jesus, making a direct application of the parable, gave them that sharp but just rebuke; Verily I say unto you — Even the most abandoned sinners of the age, such as the publicans and harlots, go into the kingdom of God before you — Are much more open to conviction, and more readily obey the gospel than you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness — Walking in it as well as teaching it, and gave evident proofs of his mission from God; and ye believed him not — Gave no credit to the testimony which he bare to me, nor received his doctrine, and consequently would not enter the vineyard: but the publicans and harlots — The most notorious sinners; believed him — Were reformed, and obeyed the gospel, though at first they said, I will not. And ye, when ye had seen it — And could not deny that an amazing change had been wrought in them, and that persons of the most abandoned characters had been reformed by his sermons, which doubtless was a strong proof of his mission from God; yet repented not afterward — Of your opposition to that holy man, nor of your disobedience to his instructions; That ye might believe him — And therefore I solemnly warn you, (for so his words imply,) that your condition will hereafter be worse than theirs; and that you shall see those whom you now despise and abhor, entering into the glory from which you shall be excluded.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv28, 33 But what think ye? - A way of speaking…
But what think ye? - A way of speaking designed to direct them particularly to what he was saying, that they might be self-convicted.
Two sons - By those two sons our Lord intends to represent the conduct of the Jews, and that of the publicans and sinners.
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In my vineyard - See the notes at Mat 21:33. To work in the vineyard here represents the work which God requires man to do.
I will not - This had been the language of the publicans and wicked men. They refused at first, and did not “profess” to be willing to go.
Repented - Changed his mind. Afterward, at the preaching of John and Christ, the publicans - the wicked - repented and obeyed.
The second ...said, I go sir; and went not - This represented the conduct of the scribes and Pharisees - “professing” to obey God, observing the external rites of religion, but opposed really to the kingdom of God, and about to put his Son to death.
Whether of them twain ... - Which of the two. “They say unto him, The first.” This answer was correct; but it is strange that they did not perceive that it condemned themselves.
Go into the kingdom of God - Become Christians, or more readily follow the Saviour. See the notes at Mat 3:2.
Before you - Rather than you. They are more likely to do it than you. You are self-righteous, self-willed, and obstinate.
John came in the way of righteousness - Many of them have believed, but you have not. That is, in the right way, or teaching the way to be righteous; to wit, by repentance. Publicans and harlots heard him and became righteous, but they did not. They saw it, but, as in one thousand other cases, it did not produce the proper effect on them, and they would not repent.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv28, 33, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43 A certain man had two sons, &c. The ancient…
A certain man had two sons, &c. The ancient interpreters, by the first son generally understand the Gentiles, as also publicans and scandalous sinners; and by the second, the Jewish people. The Gentiles, &c. who at the first did not, would not worship and serve God; yet afterwards they, as also publicans, and many sinners, received the faith, and being converted, became faithful servants of God, and saints: the Jews, or the greatest part of them, who pretended to be God’s servants, and his people, rejected the gospel and their Messias; therefore this commination follows, the publicans, &c. shall go before you into the kingdom of God. (Witham) --- By these two sons are to be understood, says St. John Chrysostom, the Gentiles and the Jewish people; the latter our Redeemer wishes to make sensible of their own great ingratitude, and of the ready obedience of the cast-off Gentiles. For they having never heard the law, nor promised obedience have still shewn their submission by their works; whereas the Jews after promising to obey the voice of God, had neglected the performance. (Hom. lxviii.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv28–44 But what think ye? A certain man had two…
But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard--for true religion is a practical thing, a "bringing forth fruit unto God."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 § 114. — PARABLE OF TWO SONS, Mat_21:28-32.
§ 114. — PARABLE OF TWO SONS, Mat_21:28-32.
It was by the conscience of the common people (who were so deeply by them despised as a mass of sinners) that the hierarchy were held in check; and our Lord now in this parable shows his questioners how much superior that unsophisticated common people is in comparison with themselves. The people, having no mock piety to sustain as a substitute for the true, are far more ready to feel their sins and repent than their leaders.
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28. What think ye? — Inasmuch as ye cannot tell what ye think of my last question, what think ye of the following case? Two sons — The former representing common people, the latter representing the hierarchy.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44 28. two sons] representing the sinners who first refused…
28. two sons] representing the sinners who first refused to do God’s will, but repented at the preaching of John; and the Pharisees who, having “the righteousness which is of the law” (Php_3:9), professed to do God’s will but did it not. Both are sons. God still cares for both. The Pharisees may follow the sinners into the kingdom of God (Mat_21:31). Paul was still a Pharisee; Nicodemus the Pharisee was still a secret follower of Christ.
28–32. The Parable of the Two Sons, and the Explanation of it Peculiar to St Matthew
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St Luke omits the parable, perhaps as referring especially to Israel. The parable follows in close connection with the question as to the teaching of John.
The parables and discourses that follow deal no longer with the distant future of the Church, but with an immediate present. The subjects illustrated are—(1) The rejection of the Messiah. (2) The rejection of the Jews as a nation. (3) The Judgment, (a) which has already begun; (b) which will be enacted terribly at the siege of Jerusalem; and (c) finally fulfilled at the end of the world.
Observe throughout the separation which is implied in the Judgment—the dividing sword which Christ brings—the Jewish race and the world, each parted into two great divisions—the two sons—the two parties of husbandmen or of guests—the wise and foolish virgins—the sheep and the goats—the talents used and misused.
It is the last act in a divine drama of surpassing interest and full of contrasts. The nation, and especially the Pharisees, who are the leaders of thought, triumphant to external sight, are hurrying to destruction, impelled by a hidden fate in the face of clear warnings; while Christ the King, Who seems to be vanquished and done to death, is really winning an eternal victory.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44 (28) But what think ye?—The question serves to connect…
(28) But what think ye?—The question serves to connect the parable with the foregoing incident, and so gives point to its special primary application. In many MSS. the answers of the two sons are inverted, and it is accordingly the “second,” and not the first, who is said, in Mat_21:31, to have done the will of his Father.
Go work to day in my vineyard.—The parable rests on the same imagery as that of the Labourers, with some special variations. Both of those who are called to work are “sons,” and not hired labourers—i.e., there is a recognition of both Pharisees and publicans, the outwardly religious and the conspicuously irreligious, as being alike, in a sense, children of God.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv28–44 Vers. 28-32. The parable of the two sons. (Peculiar…
Vers. 28-32. The parable of the two sons. (Peculiar to St. Matthew)
But what think ye? A formula connecting what follows with what has preceded, and making the hearers themselves the judges. By this and the succeeding parables, Jesus shows his interlocutors their true guilty position and the punishment that awaited them. He himself explains the present parable in reference to his hearers, though, of course, it has, and is meant to have, a much wider application. A certain man (anyrwpov , a man) had two sons. The man represents God; the two sons symbolize two classes of Jews the Pharisees, with their followers and imitators; and the lawless and sinful, who made no pretence of religion. The former are those who profess to keep the Law strictly, to the very letter, though they care nothing for its spirit, and virtually divorce religion from morality The latter are careless and profane persons, whom the Lord calls "publicans and harlots" (ver. 31). The first. Westcott and Hort, relying on no very weighty authority, reverse the order of the sons" answers, altering ver. 31 in agreement with this arrangement. Christ"s reply countenances the received text, setting the repentant before the professing son. It is a matter of small importance (see Tischendorf, in loc.). "The first son "here typifies the evil and immoral among the Jewish people. Go, work today. Two emphatic imperatives. Immediate obedience is required. "Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts". (Psa_95:7, Psa_95:8) God called his sons to serve in his vineyard the Church. He called them by the prophets, and more especially by John the Baptist, to turn from evil ways, and to do works meet for repentance. (Mat_3:8) Christ gives two examples, showing how this call was received.
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Vers. 28-32. The two sons.
In this parable our Lord illustrates the great principle which he more than once enunciated that "many shall be last that are first; and first that are last." It has a special reference to the Pharisees and publicans of Christ"s time. But there are publicans and Pharisees in our own day. Let us consider the parable in its bearing on ourselves and the present conduct of people.
I THE SON WHO REFUSED AND REPENTED.
1. His hasty refusal. Doubtless he spoke in impatience. His temper was hot, and the call to work amazed him. Thus he began the day badly, as many people begin life badly. This is altogether deplorable, because no subsequent amendment can obliterate the fact that the beginning was spoilt.
2. His later repentance. We need not be the slaves of our own past. If we started wrong, we are not forced to continue in the path of evil. "It is never too late to mend." There is a pride of consistency which only comes of folly; and there is a noble inconsistency, a sublime inconsequence. The change in the son showed
a. reflectiveness;
b. humility;
c. a willingness to own himself wrong;
d. a desire to do better in future. These are all hopeful qualities.
3. His obedient action. He "went." That was everything. He may not have said another word; but he obeyed his father, though in silence. The one thing God looks for is obedience. The way to make amends for past negligence is not to promise better things for the future, but just to do them.
4. His improving conduct. We see this son in two stages, and the second is better than the first. He was evidently moving in the right direction. The most important question is not To what have we attained hitherto? but Which way are we moving? towards the light or from it?
5. His accepted obedience. This was the obedient son. His insolent words were forgiven when his subsequent conduct was penitent and obedient. God forgives the bad past in his penitent children. If they are now in the right path, he accepts them, although they were once far from it.
II THE SON WHO CONSENTED AND DISOBEYED.
1. His ready assent. This was good in its way. But, being only verbal, or at best an intention not yet executed, it was of slight worth. God does not value religious professions as men prize them.
2. His courtesy. The second son was courteous to his father, addressing him as "sir," while his brother was rude and insolent. Now, it is our duty to be courteous to all men, and to be especially respectful to parents. Yet there is a hypocritical tone about good manners when they are not accompanied by good actions. God prefers rude obedience to polite disobedience.
3. His subsequent disobedience. We need not suppose that this second son had lied to his father, promising in smooth words what he never intended to perform. It is more probable that our Lord would have us think of him as honest in his profession. He really intended to obey. But he did not count the cost, or the good mood of acquiescence passed away, or some other more fascinating attraction led him to forget, or at least to neglect, his promise. There is an enormous step to be taken from good resolutions to good actions. Many a hindrance, many a temptation, comes between.
4. His just condemnation. Jesus appealed to the bystanders for their verdict. He wished to convince their conscience; he desires now to make us see and feel the truth of what he says. Could there be a question as to the verdict? Good promises count for nothing, or rather they count against the man who disobeys in conduct. God judges by conduct alone. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John A. Broadus 1886 · Public Domain On v33 Mat 21:33-46.
Mat 21:33-46.
Parable Of The Wicked Husbandmen
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Found also in Mar 12:1-12 Luk 20:9 to Luk 19:33 f. Hear another parable. Jesus addresses the Jewish rulers. (Mat 21:23) Many of the people also were listening. (Luk 20:9) He had not called Luk 20:28-30 a parable, but all perceived that it was such. As to the term, and the general principles upon which our Lord’s parabolic discourses must be interpreted, see on "Mat 13:3". In explaining certain points of the story itself, we may sometimes for convenience anticipate the application. The imagery here recalls Psa 80:8-16, and especially Isa 5:1-7. Bruce: "Our parable is but an old theme worked up with new variations. Every one who heard it knew what the vineyard with its hedge, winepress, and tower signified, and who the vine-dressers were, and who the servants sent for the fruits. These phrases belonged to the established religious dialect of Israel." A certain householder, see on "Mat 10:25". A tower, in which guards stay to protect the vineyard against robbery. Pulpit interpretation should beware of separately "spiritualizing" the hedge, winepress, tower, etc. Origen here especially cautions against "torturing the parable," and then does it. These details simply show that the owner made all necessary arrangements, so that the vineyard ought to have yielded a good return. (compare Isa 5:4) Let it out to husbandmen, the general term ’agriculturists,’ here applied to one particular department of agriculture. Went into a far country, literally (in our colloquial) moved away. Luke adds, ’for a long time.’ The time; season of the fruits (as in Mat 21:41), not ’time,’ see on "Mat 11:21". His servants, ’bond-servants’ (Rev. Ver. margin), doulos see on "Mat 8:6"; here they act as the master’s agents. Mark and Luke mention only a single servant each time, but Mark adds ’and many others.’ To receive the fruits of it, or, his fruits. The Greek may mean either; the connection favours the latter, and so Mark and Luke. The rent was sometimes paid in money (Edersheim), but in this case in a certain portion of the crop, (see Mar 12:2) which the agents might then sell to the tenants or any one else, or might carry away with them. This is largely practised at the present day in India and in Italy, and to a considerable extent in this country.
Mat 21:35. And beat one, more exactly, scourged, literally, ’flayed.’ Goebel: "For the bodily ill-treatment of the prophets, the example of Jeremiah may be compared (Jer 20:1-18; Jer 37:15; Jer 38:6), and of Micah; (1Ki 22:24) for the killing, the murder of the prophets in the time of Elijah, (1Ki 18:4, 1Ki 19:10) and of Urijah by Jehoiakim; (Jer 26:20 ff.) and for the stoning, the example of Zechariah. (2Ch 24:12 f.) The killing of the prophets collectively is mentioned in Old Testament, (Jer 2:30 Neh 9:26) and referred to by Jesus in Mat 23:31, Mat 23:35, Mat 23:37 Luk 13:34; also in Act 7:52 Heb 11:36." And stoned another may well follow ’killed,’ since it denotes a very wrathful and cruel way of killing. Stoning did not necessarily kill, (Act 14:19) but was apt to do so.(Act 7:59) However it is not necessary to find regular progression in a series of terms in a style so familiar as that of the Gospels.
Mat 21:36 f. Renewed and more urgent calls. Goebel urges that the word translated more (pleionas) here means more excellent (as in Heb 11:4), of higher dignity; but that use is quite rare, and does not seem to be here called for. His son. Mark and Luke add ’beloved.’ They will reverence my son. Luke prefixes ’it may be.’ This indicates a hope that was doomed to disappointment. Such a detail could be applied to God only by anthropomorphism, as when it is said that God repented. And we may add that although God’s Son was slain, his mission did ultimately bring fruits from "other husbandmen."
Mat 21:38. Let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. This was something not likely to occur in such a case, but entirely possible, and that is enough for an illustration; the conduct to be illustrated was itself extraordinary. The owner in the story had been long absent, and seems to have had no other son; he might not return for years, might die in a distant land, and leave the vineyard permanently in their possession.
The property of a continuous absentee is often very freely handled by the occupiers. The story shows serious defects in local government and outbreaks of popular violence, such as we know to have been not uncommon in Palestine at that period. Alexander: "It is incongruous to press the correspondence of the sign and the thing signified, although this proposition bears an evident analogy to the ambitious and absurd attempt of the Jewish rulers in the time of Christ to oust him from his heritage and make their own provisional authority perpetual. In every effort to continue the Mosaic institutions beyond the time prescribed for their duration, the Jews have been guilty of the usurpation here projected by the husbandmen."
Mat 21:39. And cast him out of the vineyard. Alexander: "The act of casting out denotes the whole rejection of our Lord, but perhaps with an allusion to the literal fact of his suffering without the holy city, (Heb 13:11-13) which must not however be regarded as the whole sense."For six months past Jesus has been telling the disciples that the rulers at Jerusalem would kill him, (Mat 16:21, Mat 17:23, Mat 20:18) and now to the rulers themselves he intimates the same through a "parabolic veil" so transparent that they do not fail to see. (Mat 21:45 f.) Doubtless some of those who heard these sayings were reminded of them a few weeks later by Peter’s words on the Day of Pentecost, and all the more were pricked in their heart. (Act 2:23, Act 2:37, Act 3:14)
Mat 21:41. He will miserably destroy those wicked men. The Rev. Version preserves the verbal assonance of the Greek; but the Greek describes them as wicked—evil they are and evil shall be their fate. Instead of drawing out this reply from the rulers, so as to condemn them out of their own mouth (compare Nathan and David), our Lord in Mark and Luke makes the statement himself. We may perhaps suppose (Mald.) that he repeated their statement, so solemnly and pointedly as already to indicate that it meant them; thus leading them to say "be it not so." (Luk 20:16, Rev, Ver., margin.) At any rate there is no substantial difference (compare on Mat 3:17). Goebe: "On one side the rhetorical question (in Mark and Luke) is still an appeal to the assent of the hearers to the statement introduced by the question; and on the other, the acceptance of the answer of the Sanhedrists by the Lord (in Matthew)is equivalent in substance to a statement of his own of the same purport." In destroying the husbandmen, the owner acts as also a sovereign. (compare Mat 22:7)
Mat 21:42. Our Lord now pointedly and severely applies his illustration to the Jewish rulers, whom he has been addressing ever since Mat 21:23, and to the nation in general. (Mat 21:42-44.) The nation of Israel, after being established by special divine act in the land of promise, and provided with everything necessary for righteous living, failed to render to God the fruits of righteousness, when called on by providential dealings and by inspired messages; they have insulted and sometimes killed his messengers the prophets, and are now on the point of slaying his Son (compare Act 7:52) Yet this will not end the matter. The rejected one is God’s chief corner-stone for the temple of human salvation.
Did ye never read in the Scriptures? as in Mat 12:3, Mat 19:4, Mat 21:16. Mark’s phrase (Mar 12:10, Rev. Ver.) makes still more pointed the rebuke of their ignorance, ’Have ye not read even this Scripture’? The term ’Scriptures’ or ’Scripture’ (Mat 22:29, Mat 26:54, Mat 26:56, and throughout the New Testament) had a technical sense among the Jews of our Lord’s time, (just as among us), denoting a certain well-known group of sacred books. We learn from Josephus and the Talmud, from Melito and Origen (see works on The Canon), that this group comprised exactly our Old Testament, neither more nor less, and was recognized as definite and fixed. The Talmud states, it is true, that in what must have been the latter part of our first century, some Rabbis questioned, on internal grounds, whether Ecclesiastes was sacred, and some others as to Solomon’s Song; but the final decision supported those books, and there is no hint of any question as to the other books—so that the exception proves the rule. When therefore Jesus and the apostles spoke of ’the Scriptures’ or ’Scripture’ as sacred and authoritative, they knew that their hearers would understand them to mean that well-known group of books; and they have thus stamped their seal upon the entire Old Testament
Our Lord’s quotation is from Psa 118:22 f., just preceding the words borrowed in the hosannas of the multitude during the triumphal entry (see on "Mat 21:9"). The quotation follows the Hebrew and the Sept. without any noticeable difference. Mark has the same. The second couplet, ’This was from the Lord,’ etc., is omitted by Luke, and also by Peter, who quotes the passage both in addressing the Sanhedrin, (Act 4:11) and in his first Epistle. (1Pe 2:7) Compare in general Isa 28:16. The stone which the builders rejected. A few miles northwest of Jerusalem, on the Roman road to Gibeon, may now be seen in an old quarry a stone set on end, say 8 x 3 x 2 feet. As observed from the road it is a good stone, but on riding around you find a great flaw that destroys its value. This stone was quarried and offered, but when lifted up for inspection was rejected by the builders, and there it stands. Imagine such a rejected stone to become the chief corner stone in some grand building. The tradition sometimes repeated that such a thing actually occurred in building the temple, doubtless grew out of this passage and is worthless. The corner stones of ancient buildings were often of enormous size, and therefore very costly, ’precious.’ (1Pe 2:6) Thus even now at the southeast corner of what was the temple area is seen above ground a stone nearly 24 x 5 x 3 feet, and at the southwest corner one about 32 x 3 x 2 feet (compare on Mat 24:1). The same is become, or simply became.[1] The head of the corner does not show clearly whether it stands as the foundation, or as the topmost stone, or elsewhere. It seems to be called ’head’ simply from its prominence and importance. This was[2] from the Lord, is the literal translation. Tyndale’s paraphrase, ’This is the Lord’s doing,’ is very pleasing. In the Psalm, the date of which is uncertain, but probably after the captivity, Israel seems to be the stone, conquered, carried away, and flung aside as of no use, but divinely destined to a future of importance and grandeur. But there is atypical relation between the history of Israel and the Messiah (see on "Mat 2:15"), and our Lord shows us in this passage a prophecy at the same time of himself.
[1] It is very doubtful whether the aorist passive of this verb is anywhere perceptibly different in force from the aorist middle.—’The stone’ in Greek is an accusative, by an unusual, but not unnatural nor wholly unexampled form of attraction.
[2] ’This’ and ’marvellous’ are feminine in the Greek, and might grammatically refer to kephale, ’head’ (Origen, Meyer); but Matt. only follows the Sept., and the feminine seems there a mere literal rendering of the Hebrew, which having no neuter, uses the feminine for general ideas, so that ’this’ means this thing or this occurrence, as it would naturally be taken in English. There are other examples in Sept., as Psa 26:4, Psa 102:9, Psa 119:36 Jdg 15:7. So our passage is understood by Buttm., Jelf, most commentators; Win. and Alex. hesitate.
Mat 21:43. This is given by Matt. only, being of special moment to his Jewish readers. The kingdom of God, the Messianic reign (see on "Mat 8:2"), with its privileges and benefits. Shall be taken away from you. This was fulfilled partly in the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish State, and partly in the fact that most Jews through their unbelief failed of the Messianic salvation. And given to a nation shows distinctly that it was to be taken away not merely from the Jewish rulers, whom our Lord has been principally addressing, but from the Jewish people in general—though, as we learn otherwise, with many individual exceptions, and with a prospect in the far future, (Romans 11) which our Lord does not here indicate. This other nation will be the spiritual Israel, called by Peter "a holy nation." (1Pe 2:9) Compare Act 13:46, Act 18:5. Bringing forth the fruits thereof, (compare Mat 3:8, Mat 7:16 ff.) living as is required of Messiah’s subjects. The image changes from that of paying the owner’s share of the fruits, to the more familiar one of producing the fruits. Or perhaps it is meant that the husbandmen were not only unwilling to pay the owner’s share, but had failed to make the vineyard duly productive.
Mat 21:44 is here of doubtful genuineness,[1] as it is wanting in some documents, and might easily have been brought in from Luk 20:18, where there is no variation at all, while, on the other hand, we can see no reason for its omission here if originally present. It is at any rate a real saying of our Lord on this occasion, as we know from Luke. The passage evidently refers to Isa 8:14 f., which is borrowed in 1Pe 2:8, along with the quotation from Psalms 118, which has here just preceded. Broken, Rev. Ver., broken to pieces, the Greek being stronger than the mere ’broken.’ Will grind him to powder. So Tyndale, Gen., and K. James. This would strike any one at first sight as being what the image calls for. But the Greek word nowhere has that meaning. By etymology and general use, it signifies to ’winnow,’ to separate the chaff from the wheat; and derivatively to ’scatter,’ like chaff or dust. Memph. and Peshitta both here render ’scatter.’ There is doubtless an allusion to Dan 2:35, "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them" (Rev. Ver.), in reference to which passage a little later (Dan 2:44) the Sept. (Theodotion) uses the Greek word here employed by Matt. and Luke. The idea then is not simply that of crushing, but of scattering into nothingness. What then is the thought of our passage? He who in unbelief finds this stone an obstacle, smites against it and falls (compare on Mat 11:6, Mat 5:29), will not only be bruised by the fall, but broken to pieces. (Isa 8:14, 1Pe 2:8.) If he stumbles over Jesus as unfit to be a Saviour, all his religious hopes will be utterly destroyed. In the second clause the image is somewhat changed. The stone is here conceived not as the foundation stone, but as placed higher up in the corner, perhaps at the top, and some one tries to pull it down from its place; but it falls upon him, and scatters him like a puff of dust. Jesus came to be the Messiah; the Jews reject him, and thereby utterly lose the Messianic felicity. He is notwithstanding placed by God as the corner stone of salvation; the Jews try to pull him down, to defeat the divine plan by putting him to death, but in falling he will scatter like chaff their schemes and themselves. They will have not only the loss which comes from stumbling at him, but the terrible destruction which comes from pulling him down on their heads; while he, divinely replaced, will forever remain the corner-stone of human salvation.
[1] Wanting in D, 33, several copies of the old Latin, and passed without mention in Origen’s copious ’commentary on this passage. Eusebius and Irenaeus copy v. 33-43, and would hardly have failed to add so striking a concluding sentence. Yet as the authorities for omission are few, and represent mainly the, "Western", group, which has so much arbitrary alteration of the text, the question must be left doubtful. The sentence is only bracketed In Lachm., Treg. (margin), and Westcott Hort, and see margin of Rev. Ver.
Mat 21:45 f. he chief priests and Pharisees, correspond to the chief priests and the elders of Mat 21:23. The chief priests, certainly at this period, were for the most part Sadducees, compare on Mat 26:57, Mat 27:62. As to the Pharisees, see on "Mat 3:7". Had heard his parables, this and that of Mat 21:28 ff., and perhaps others not recorded. Mark and Luke, having only given this one, say ’parable.’ That he spake of them, not of them as distinguished from the people at large, but especially of them as being the leaders. (Compare on Mat 21:43.) When they sought. This would cover not merely actual efforts, but plans and wishes. The Sanhedrin had some weeks before formed the purpose to kill Jesus. (Joh 11:47-53) They feared the multitudes, just as with reference to John the Baptist. (Mat 21:26, Mat 14:5) Took him for a prophet, the expression being, in the correct text, a little different from that of Mat 21:26.
Homiletical And Practical
Mat 21:37. Reverencing the Son of God. (1) He deserves to be reverenced by all mankind. (2) He came to men, and his own chosen people (Joh 1:11) rejected and killed him,
Mat 21:39. (3) He is now rejected and dishonoured by many who ought most to admire and revere him. (4) He is crucified afresh (Heb 6:6) by some who have professed to show him reverence. (5) Yet, though rejected and slain, he is risen and ascended and reigning, and multitudes do reverence and serve him. (6) In the great day every tongue will confess that he is Lord. (Php 2:9-11)
Mat 21:41. Henry: "Many can easily prognosticate the dismal consequences of other people’s sins, that see not what will be the end of their own."
Mat 21:42."Did ye never read in the Scriptures’?" (1) If we had read the Scriptures aright, they would solve for us many a now perplexing question of truth and duty. (2) If we had read the Scriptures aright, we should clearly perceive that they condemn us. (3) If we had read the Scriptures aright, we should see in them Jesus Christ the corner-stone of human salvation.
Mat 21:43. Origen: "The kingdom of God is not given to any one that is reigned over by sin."
Mat 21:44. Use and misuse of the corner-stone. (1) God gave his Son to be the corner-stone of salvation to all who will accept him. (Isa 28:16, 1Pe 2:6 Eph 2:20) (2) Many stumble against that stone instead of building upon it, (Isa 8:14 Rom 9:31, 1Pe 2:8) and are broken to pieces by the fall. (a) Some believe nothing in the Bible. (b) Others do not believe that Christ is the foundation of salvation by his atonement. (c) Others think the vicious may build on Christ, but they can build on themselves. (3) On many that stone will fall and utterly destroy them. (a) He will destroy by his providence their plans of opposition to his kingdom. (b) He will destroy themselves to all eternity. (Mat 25:46 Heb 6:2, 2Th 1:9) Calvin: "This teaching partly instructs us that with tender and flexible heart we may gently yield ourselves to be ruled over by Christ; partly also confirms us against the contumacy and furious assaults of the ungodly, for whom at last a fearful end is waiting."
Mat 21:45. Henry: "A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and sometimes will save a minister the labour of saying ’Thou art the man.’ When those who hear the reproofs of the word perceive that it speaks of them, if it do not do them good it will certainly do them hurt."
Mat 21:45 f. Calvin: "The Evangelists show us how little Christ accomplished, in order that we may not wonder if to-day the gospel does not constrain all to obey God."
John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (American Baptist Publication Society, 1886) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv28, 33, 42 A certain man had two sons; and he came…
Mat_21:28-32
A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day.
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Christian sonship and service
I. Christian sonship furnishes the best possible motives for Christian service.
II. It furnishes the best possible facilities for Christian service.
III. It makes Christian service imperative. (A. H. Stoate.)
A bad promise well broken; a good promise sacrificed
I. Those who openly and above board reject the Christian religion, I like a positive man, and not one half and half. If he turns he will be positive in the other direction. Break the infatuation now. Repent and go.
II. Those who have been promising to become Christians, but all the time breaking their promises. When did you first promise? In sickness; in time of religious awakening. (Dr. Talmage.)
Determined sinners have repented
Let it be recorded of you as was recorded of this young man in the text. He said: I will not, but afterward he repented and went. Let me tell you, my brothers, that there have been men just as much set against religion as you are, and yet they surrendered to Christ. Do you know the story of John Bunyan, declaring that he would not go into the kingdom of God with an oath so horrid that even the abandoned people in the street tried to hush him up, and yet, in a little while dreaming a dream of heaven so sweet that the mere recital of it has enchanted all Christendom? Mr. Madden went to scoff at John Wesley while he preached, and the mere announcement of the text: Prepare to meet thy God, converted him. Only a few months ago, in New York City, a man in indignation leaped with both feet upon the Bible, so did he hate it; yet in a few weeks after, he held that very Bible on his lap reading with tearful eyes the glorious promises. Some time ago, when we were worshipping in the Academy of Music, there came in three young men and three young ladies, evidently to make sport of the religious solemnities. In the early part of the services, they wrote notes, and laughed, and jeered. In the midst of the sermon, they bowed their heads. At the close of the services, all six rose up with tearful eyes, begging for the prayers of Gods people. Oh, it is a mighty gospel, charged with the invitations and the condemnations of hell. (Dr. Talmage.)
Address to young men
I. What God looks for in all of us-work.
1. Inward.
2. Outward.
II. The danger of a fallacious promise is greater than the danger of a hasty refusal. The son who said, I go, sir, was the one who went not. (Dean Vaughan.)
The two sons
1. Our Lord does not intend to approve of the conduct of the first son in every respect, I will not. True there was no hypocrisy about him; still he was disobedient with all his frankness. Some seem to imagine they will be forgiven for being sinners because they have never pretended to be saints. Is a man less the enemy of God because he is outspoken?
2. That our Lord does not approve of this sons conduct as a whole, as if it were the only proper way of meeting Gods commune! It was well that he repented; but would have been better if he had not refused. It is best to save the reflection of a wasted past.
3. Our Lord does not design to condemn the making of a promise to God when that is done sincerely and performed earnestly.
I. The nature of the command which God makes on every one to whom the gospel calls. Go work, etc.
1. The test of sincerity is in deeds. Words are valuable only as the expression of an inward spirit. Works are the manifestation of our love to God; not the means of procuring His love for us.
2. The peculiar nature of the work by which our love and life are to be manifested, Go work in my vineyard. Cultivate all the fruits of the Spirit.
3. The promptitude of the obedience which is required-to-day.
4. The tender nature of the appeal which God makes son. Sonship is not incompatible with service. It only transmutes that service into joy.
II. The danger of making an insincere confession of God. To the chief priests and scribes our Lord said, The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom before you. Their difficulties were subjective. The insincere state of soul makes it harder for priests to enter the kingdom of heaven than for harlots to repent of their sins. Besides self-complacency which is produced by insincerity, there is also a hardening influence connected with it. It dims the moral perceptions.
III. In this parable Christ meant to encourage sinners of the vilest description to repent and believe the gospel. The publicans and harlots enter the kingdom. Let the wicked forsake his way, etc. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Swift tongue; slow foot
I. The first characteristic of the swift tongue and slow foot is unbelief. I go, sir. Notions constitute their religion; there is no operative faith. No mere notion will ever affect a character.
II. Another characteristic of the swift tongue and slow foot is indifference. Truth must be interesting to us to be impressive.
III. Another impediment is in the manifoldness of intellectual objects-wit, learning, and imagination may impede the man who says, I go, sir. His attention may be diverted from the main object; he is wise, but not unto salvation.
IV. Every man has one load to carry which retards him in his journey. One besetting sin.
V. Religion will only become the law of life when it too becomes a ruling passion. Oh, how love I Thy law, etc. This will unite our connections to our actions. (E. Paxton Hood.)
Occasional goodness
Some people seem to take out their religion once a week to give it an airing; or, it is like a ticket taken at a station, put into the pocket until the end of the journey. Visit Versailles, near Paris; all its magnificent fountains on the week day are dry and repulsive, grass-grown, weed-covered. Visit them on the Sabbath day (on which day I beg to say I have never seen them) and they are tossing all their glorious waters high in the air; every Neptune, triton, or nymph flashing forth in the splendour of the magnificent water shower-a fair sad picture of Sabbath religion. How different from the flowing river, always pouring its musical, fertile, and irrigating stream! Some faiths are technical, temporary, and occasional; they are like the waterworks, or the fountain on a fete day; then the bolts are turned, and the fountains cease to play. On certain great occasions, or in certain public forms, we are saying, I go, sir, and the largest portion of other times is showing that we go not. We enter not, because of unbelief. (E. Paxton Hood.)
A hasty refusal and a wise retractation
I. The important command issued. The nature of the work to which the gospel calls. It is extensive, important, arduous, delightful, profitable. It may be divided into-
1. That which respects God.
2. That which regards ourselves.
3. That which concerns others.
II. The hasty refusal given. I will not.
1. The natural aversion of the heart.
2. The sinful love of ease.
3. Their occupation in other pursuits.
III. The wise retraction made.
1. The change stated
(1) Its nature, He repented.
(2) Its fruit, And went.
(3) Its period. Afterward.
2. The wisdom it evinces. It is wise to retract: refusal is
(1) Against your best interests.
(2) Betrays the greatest ingratitude to God.
(3) Issues in eternal ruin.
Address-
1. Those who have complied with the command.
2. Those who are refusing.
3. Those who have complied only in profession. (E. Temple)
Truth to rule the life must awaken personal interest
All truth is true, but what if it be uninteresting? it becomes unimpressive and useless. Truth we apprehend to be necessary to our well-being; what a difference if I should strike a man on the shoulder, and say, The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; or if I should say to him, Your house is on fire! Your child has just been run over and killed! Truth is truth; but if men are not interested in it, it will not influence the life. What a difference there is between furniture in the lumber-room, or auctioneers shop, and furniture in the household room! It is not enough that we apprehend truth to be good and valuable, if it do not influence the will and the affections. (E. Temple.)
Man organized with a principle of instantaneity
We have received, happily, a constitution which is adapted to the exigencies of human life. Mens minds do not act as printers types do, every letter being selected, and every sentence being spelt out, and, when it is stamped, being stamped complete. Men, on the other hand, are so organized that they have in every part of their nature an element of what may be called instantaneity-the instantaneous effusion of feeling; the immediate perception of what is best or not best; a recognition of what is good or what is bad, what is right or what is wrong, what is safe or what is dangerous-instantaneousness of purpose. This element or principle of instantaneity of course varies. The dull and lethargic are slow; the intermediate are faster than this extreme, and less rapid than the other extreme; and the more finely organized, the higher, natures have it so that it flashes and plays without any perceptible pause between the impulses and the result. But all have it; without it life would be impossible. When men walk the very body has it. If a man should be obliged, as one that is just getting out from an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, or as one who is in the last stages of lumbago (and I speak feelingly), to pick his way as he walks, and think, That brick is set a little sidewise, and to calculate and say, How many inches must I lift my foot, to step over it? how long do you think it would take him to walk from Brooklyn to New York? Going and coming back would consume almost the whole day, and the errands of life would be neglected. But a man in health is not obliged to do this. The foot itself does the calculating. The foot sees without your thinking or seeing. It rises and lowers of its own accord. You instinctively avoid the slough. You leap the little gulfs. You know the best way to accommodate your whole body to the ten thousand varying conditions of matter. The law of gravitation, of light, of heat, of magnetism, of liquidity or solidity, of things sharp or blunt-all these the body, without any care on your part, attends to. No man walks into a mortar-bed. No man stumbles over a sand-heap. Men jump, not on iron fences, but on featherbeds; and having jumped, they never get up and say, Ah! what if we had not thought of that! How lucky it was! Suppose a man were obliged, for all the operations of the body, to have a little monitor in his mind that should be on the look-out for him, and he should say, If I lift my hand so and so, or do so and so with it, I shall have rheumatism in the shoulder, and therefore I wont do it? What if such calculation as that had to be made before every movement of the body? (H. W. Beecher.)
The benefit of momentary illumination
When, after long, long days of sailing during which no reckoning has been taken by the lost mariner, there opens, for half an hour, a rift in the cloud, he gets a view of the sun, and instantly he takes an observation; and then the cloud shuts again. Ah! but he has had an observation. The days are dark, and the storm continues; but he has had an observation, and that is of great advantage. But how much better it would have been if the storm had cleared away and given him a calm sea and an unobscured sky! Yet a momentary observation was better than nothing. (H. W. Beecher.)
Culture the faint impulse to a nobler life
Therefore I say to every man in my presence: Do not neglect the impulses to a nobler life. Do not put them away from you. Do not prove dishonest and tricky with any of those movements in yourself which indicate that the germ of Divine life is in you. A child is drowned! a child is drowned! this is the cry that goes through the whole village; and the mother, well-nigh bereft of reason, dashes wildly out as they are bearing the limp, helpless body, with long streaming hair, by her door. The physician is sped for, and the neighbours are there. Shes dead! shes dead! shes dead i cries the mother, shes dead! shes dead! shes dead! My only child! my only child! my only child! They would comfort her, and they say, Oh, do not be so despondent do not be so despondent. Dead! dead! Those eyes will never see me again. Shes dead! shes dead! And still the workers will not give over. But at last they say, Yes, she is dead. Then, with a strange fantasy of opposition, the mother cries again, She is not dead; she cannot be dead; she shall not be dead. And she lays hands upon her, and says, I know she is not dead. And she gazes in anguish, until a little quiver is seen upon the lip, Oh, my God! she is not dead. The eyes do not see, the ears do not hear, the hands do not move, the heart cannot be felt; but there is that little quiver of the lip. Theres life there! theres life there! theres life there! Yes, there is life there; and now they come again, and remedies are applied, and the still form quickens, and the mothers faith is rewarded, and she takes the living child back to her bosom. O thou that hast in thee but the quiver of the lip, but the trembling of the eye, but the faintest pulsation of the heart, God, thine Everlasting Father, beholds it; and He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, till He bring forth judgment unto victory. There is victory for you; there is hope for you; there is salvation for you. Oh, despise not the striving of the Spirit. Begin, accept, hold fast, and thou shalt be saved. (H. W. Beecher.)
Say well and do well
Work of God in world not done ver. His vineyard still needs digging and tending, pruning and cultivating.
I. Every man has a mission from God. Cannot discharge himself of responsibility by openly professing not to obey. Gods claim proportionate to our ability and opportunity.
II. This mission is work. God says, Come, before He says, Go; Love Me, before Work for Me. He seeks not enforced toil of slaves, but cheerful obedience of sons. Gods vineyard is not a playground in which to take our ease.
III. The scene of this work is Gods vineyard. We are to make our own lives, and those of our fellows, as faithful as we can. For what spiritual sphere then does this figure stand?
1. Our own hearts.
2. Our own households.
3. Scenes of daily life.
4. Church and its institutions.
Wherever you can labour for God, that is the part of the vineyard to which He calls you. And whatever you can do for Him, that is the work He bids you do.
IV. The work is pressing and urgent-to be done to-day.
V. How men treat the command.
1. Some profess to obey, but really disobey. Still call themselves Christians. Would shrink from renouncing their profession. Not hypocrites. When they said they would go, they meant it. But imperceptibly religion has dwindled down with them from its grand and beautiful reality to a mere soul-saving apparatus.
2. Others refuse at first, but afterwards obey. No justification here of first refusal. The son who repented and went is approved, not wholly, but by contrast with his brother. Nor could even he do all his father bade. For already the sun had climbed high into the heavens, and part of the precious day was gone. We cannot recall misused past. Waste no longer the golden hours. (J. R. Bailey.)
Work for God
We are all ready to say that work for God is a noble thing. What we need is to see that we ourselves may all do work for God if we try. There are some who complain that they can do nothing. I am wearing away my life in business; I have to toil for my family; my life is frittered away in such trifling every-day tasks. I, at least, shall have nothing to show in the end for my life. Nay, but that very commonplace work of yours is work for God. It must be clone; you have to do it; and, therefore, God Himself, who placed you where you are, gave you that work to do.
I. Offer each days week to God. Ask Him to help you to do it well and diligently, because it is His. Make your daily act of self-dedication.
II. Be on the watch for opportunities. Make it your aim and desire to be gathering with God, rooting up evil where you can, fostering the growth of good where possible; shedding the light around you which may win souls to safety.
III. Be content to do little things well Your work for God may consist wholly in very little things. The poor lone woman whose home was on the cliff in the dangerous coast, knew of bat one good thing she could do. She could keep her little candle burning in her window to warn off those who came near the danger. It was but a little thing; it may have cheered a few, it may even have saved one or two. Who doubts but that her little loving effort was a glorious brightness in the Masters sight? (N. H. Parr, M. A.)
Promptness in work
We should aim at being too active to stagnate, too busy to freeze. We should endeavour to be like Cromwell, who not only struck while the iron was hot, but made it hot by striking-like the missionary who said, If there be happiness on earth, it is in labouring in the service of Christ-like the blessed Redeemer Himself, whose meat and drink it was to do the will of God. The vineyard must be cultivated; and the command is that we enter it and work. (Christian Treasury.)
He repented: change of mind for the better unusual
There are but few who turn and do their duty after having once refused. Men will be as big as their words, though they die for it, lest they should be accounted inconsistent. These are niggardly of their reputation, but prodigal of their souls. (John Trapp.)
The two sons; a contrast
I. The rude but obedient son:
1. What he said, I will not. This very rude, very unfilial. A reasonable request unreasonably rejected.
2. What he did, repented. Thought of his fathers kindness, and his duty. Did not go and tell his father he was sorry for what lie had said, but by his conduct proved his sorrow. This is true repentance.
II. The polite but inobedient son.
1. What he said, I go, sir. This right, pleasing to the father, becoming in a son.
2. What he did, went not. His obedience mere profession and words, not real. Leaves, but not fruit. Learn: Many, like rude, son, have said they would not serve God, but afterwards have repented. You have said the former; have you done the latter? Many, like the polite son, have shown the promise of goodness that you have never kept. Will you keep it now, by working to-day in the vineyard? (The Hive.)
Profession and practice.
I. Dissect the characters here contrasted. The second well-meaning, good-intentioned, emotional, shallow, flippant, great in promising. The first, rude, dissolute, hardened, profligate.
II. Review their conduct. The second saying, not doing; the fathers disappointment; men by action seem to say, I go, but remain where they are. The first became thoughtful, wondered that such a son as he should be asked by the father to do anything: repented and went.
III. Enforce the inquiry. Obeying God lies in doing His will, not in mere empty promises of amendment. (Anon.)
The parable of the two sons
I. As holding forth the command of God to his creatures. His command is distinguished by three characters.
1. It is affectionate, My son.
2. It is practical, Work.
3. It is urgent, To-day.
II. the manner in which it is regarded.
1. One proves better than he promises.
2. One promises better than he proves. Are you saying, I will not ? What nonsense, what madness! Are you saying, I go, sir. Beware of insincerity. (W. Jay.)
I. The manner of the address.
1. It denotes authority.
2. It is the voice of affection.
II. The general requisition which is made-Go work.
1. There are difficulties which must be conquered.
2. There are duties which must be performed.
3. The great design of heaven cannot be accomplished without labour.
III. The scene allotted for labour.
1. You are to be regulated in all your labours by your Fathers revealed will.
2. Cultivation is suggested by the text.
IV. The promptitude of attention is required.
1. GO work today.
2. To-morrow may be too late.
3. The responsibility which is attached to the use of present advantages.
4. There is a great danger of losing religious impressions.
5. What effect has the command in the text produced upon you?
6. Encouragement to labour.
7. You will not be left to yourselves. (R. Winter, D. D.)
The two sons
I. Who promised not, and went not. Did not promise, but rudely refused. This wrong. He repented. How many refuse who never repent! To be inconsistent with rash vows and wicked resolutions is the highest consistency-what many call consistency is often only stubbornness and hardness of heart. What induced this repentance? The great goodness of his father; his own ingratitude; the importance of the work. Have we ever thought of these things? Without repenting.
II. Who promised, and went not. Very ready with words-right words too. Spoken to obtain present rest-to put the father off, a c. How many patronize religion, and speak fair! How many intend to be religious! How long and how often have we promised thus! Do we ever intend to keep our word? When?
III. Who obeyed. The first. To one of the two classes represented by these sons we very likely belong. We have all been called to work. We have met the call either by a bold refusal, or by a fair promise. How have we ended? May God give us grace to do His will. (J. C. Gray.)
Our work
I. The vineyard.
1. This vineyard is the property of God.
2. The cultivation of this vineyard is committed to the Church.
3. The Church has neglected her duty in reference to this vineyard.
II. The work.
III. The workmen. Their qualifications:
1. Ardent piety.
2. Fixed religious principles.
3. Accurate information.
4. A liberal spirit.
5. Prayer. (T. Raffles, D. D.)
The two sons
1. The argument of the appeal lay upon the sonship.
2. A call to grace is a call to work.
3. There is the instantaneousness of the obedience, To-day.
The reception, I will not. Why that son will not work in his fathers vineyard.
1. He did not really know or love his father.
2. He liked the imaginary independence which he felt in being his own master outside.
3. Doubtless the labour inside contrasted unfavourably in his mind with the gaiety outside.
4. The urgency of the demand little suited his desultory and procrastinating mind.
5. Perhaps some foolish windings of entangled thought had got into his mind, I cant command my will. But he changed and went. His Fathers will was still echoing in his heart. The vineyard appeared in happier aspect. His sentiments towards His Father changed.
When he went he probably proved himself a better worker than if he went at first. This parable teaches-
1. That there is a free will in you for which you are responsible.
2. Gods patience is perfectly marvellous.
3. The garden of the Lord, His Church, is ready for you.
4. God and angels are working there.
5. Many are now working there in liberty and gladness who once said, I will not. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The moral nature injured by the stimulation of unfulfilled, impulse
Then what was the matter with them? Why did they act so? It was because they were under the influence of an exterior pressure. While there was a mind interpreting there the truth to them, they accepted it; but, the moment that influence ceased to be exerted upon them, they fell back into themselves. There was no root of that thing in them. At the first opportunity, all their under-nature worked again, just as it had worked before. That is the reason why so many persons listen, resolve, feebly try, and fail miserably. So that I sometimes think going to church hurts people. I know that going to church hurts some people. There are persons who go into church, and are stimulated and lifted up, and then they go out again, and fall back into their own old nature, and act just as if they had not been stimulated; and they go in again, and are stimulated and lifted up again, and then they go out, and fall back again. Their nature accommodates itself to the different circumstances, and they get used to them. Being lifted up and lowered, lifted up and lowered, the operative capacity of their sensibilities is lost out, and they get into sort of medium condition, in which they remain all the rest of their lives, no longer competent to carry out any generous impulse which they may have. A moral enamel comes over them; so that, though they feel somewhat, there is a disconnection between feeling and willing-between feeling as a moral emotion, and willing organized as a power of action-between transient feeling and the embodiment of feeling into character, which is the great end and drift of education in human life. This power of turning a momentary emotion to a permanent benefit they have lost; and when they have lost that, they have lost all nerve. (H. W. Beecher.)
Aids to weak impulses
Where persons have good impulses, but are feeble in carrying them out, we see the wisdom of the Divine ordination of business, of society, of the family, and of the Church; for there are persons who are like pea-vines that need to be staked, in order that they may stand up. They have not strength enough to support themselves. If they had not something to lean upon they would be beaten to the ground by every rain. Many and many feeble nature has power to stand in alliance with a stronger nature, and to climb on a stronger nature, and so to be saved instead of being lost. Even the household does that for the individual which he could not do for himself. So it comes to pass that persons are not only virtuous, but high-minded when at home, who, when public duty takes them to Washington or Albany, sink into the mire. About nine men in every ten cannot afford to leave home. Their coarseness, their temper, their passions, which at home are restrained by duty, by love, by various influences, spring forth when they are abroad. The restraints from vice and the inspiration of excellence being taken away, having no root in themselves, they fall. (H. W. Beecher.)
Impulsive goodness may conceal craft
When a farmer wants to catch wild turkeys, building his pen in the woods, and digging his trench, he strews corn along. He must be a miser who would grudge enough corn to catch a dozen turkeys; and crafty men must be mean and selfish indeed if they cannot spare enough disinterestedness to catch you with. And so they bait themselves with good nature, with jollity, and with wit; and people say of them, oftentimes, Now that man has a great deal that is good about him. Yes, it is about him. There are men of whom it is said, Oh, well, a man had better look out for him in the end, but still he has ver? good qualities. He is a pleasant fellow; but under all his pleasantness there is craft. I have seen mosquitoes. They are very delicately organized creatures. They have beautiful wings, looked at through the microscope; they sing a very sweet tenor; and if you notice how they sit down on you nothing is more graceful. Lighting, they hush their song; and it is not until they have found the right place that they commence sucking your blood. And there are men in the world that are just like them. Blood is what they want. That is the reason of their gauzy flight and their singing about you. Since it is blood they want they take the way to get it. (H. W. Beecher.)
A resurrection of dead resolutions
If men are afraid to go by graveyards, for fear that here and there some sheeted ghost will peer over the wall and chatter at them, what would they think if, out of every sepulchre, there should come up a peering, gibbering ghost, and the yard should be full of pallid spectres? Who would go past it under such circumstances? And if God Almighty should give resurrection to all the times in which you have most solemnly entertained and enfranchised noble resolutions, and then buried them ignominiously; if He should call up to your memory all the virtues, all the soul-fruits, which have been drawn out of you by the Sun of Righteousness, and which you have trampled under foot, who of you could stand in your own presence, or in the presence of any congregation. (H. W. Beecher.)
The two sons
I. The case which is here presented.
1. An important command.
(1) What is required-work.
(2) The sphere of labour.
(3) The period specified.
2. The manner in which it was treated.
(1) A rude refusal, followed by an agreeable change.
(2) A ready and respectful assent, but the promise so promptly made was shamefully broken.
II. The application which is here made.
1. The question proposed, Whether of them twain, etc. Far preferable to be a late penitent than a confirmed formalist.
2. The startling truth declared, Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you. How fearless and faithful his address.
3. The solemn charge substantiated, For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, etc. (Expository Outlines.)
The parable of the two sons
I. Show you whence it is that some persons do make present promises touching future faith and holiness. They make these present promises from these common convictions and illuminations of the Word and Spirit of God.
1. These may be convinced by the law of God that sin is a great evil.
2. They may see that if they die in this condition they are undone for ever.
3. They may make these promises from the nature of an accusing conscience.
4. They may be the effect of sin, affliction, or judgment.
II. Why do these promises seldom end in real performances?
1. It is from the grand agent that stirs them up to make these promises, which is the devil. Satan cares not what promises sinners make to become good, if he can hinder them from closing in with Christ at present.
2. Present promises and resolutions touching future faith seldom end in real performance.
(1) Because it is they design to be wicked at the present.
(2) Because they have but a partial work upon their hearts, their hearts are divided, though their judgments be enlightened their wills are not bowed.
(3) Because they are made in opposition to the Divine command, To-day. God will not assist a man to perform such promises that are made in contempt of His authority.
(4) Because such promises are made only in the strength of the creatures. (B. Keach.)
Immediate obedience wise
Because moral indisposition to close with Christ may be more increased to-morrow than it is to-day; sin is of a hardening nature; if a man, as soon as taken sick, looks out for, or sends for a physician, there may be more hopes he may be cured, than if he should neglect any means until this distemper hath got greater power, and his natural strength is wasted. It is easier to break a colt and bring him to the saddle, than it is an old horse that runs wild in the wilderness; a young plant is sooner plucked up than an old tree. To speak after the manner of men, all know that these things are so, though it is true God can as soon subject the rebellious will of an old sinner as one that is young; yet since this is the Lords time, viz., even to-day, from what I have said, you may learn wisdom. (B. Keach.)
Christian diligence
An eminent divine was suffering under chronic disease, and consulted three physicians. They declared, on being questioned by the sick man, that his disease would be followed by death in a shorter or longer time, according to the manner in which he lived; but they unanimously advised him to give up his office, because, in his situation, mental agitation would be fatal to him. If, inquired the divine, I give myself up to repose, how long, gentlemen, will you guarantee my life? Probably six years, answered the doctors. And if I continue in office? Three years at most. Your servant, gentlemen, he replied, I should prefer living two or three years in doing some good, to living six years in idleness.
Work for Jesus
I. The character under which it calls us.
II. The service to which the Lord calls us, Go work.
III. The time, To-day.
IV. The place where the Lord calls us to work, In my vineyard. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Lost opportunities
A dying soldier, who had enlisted as a Christian, but had for three years, though a man of uprightness and integrity, done nothing to make known the name of Christ, said, I die as a Christian; and I die contented; but oh, if I could have died as Christian worker! … I am peaceful and assured in view of death, he said again, but I am not joyful and glad; those three lost years keep coming back upon me. Then, lying a moment quiet with closed eyes, he added, Chaplain, do you suppose we shall be able to forget anything after death? If so, I should like to forget those three years!
Opportunities neglected
A prisoner is under sentence of death. The fatal hour of execution is concealed from him, but he is told that if before it strikes he petitions the governor, his life will be spared. He says, Ill send to-morrow, and when to-morrow comes he says again, Oh, theres time enough yet; Ill wait a little longer. Suddenly his dungeon doors open, and behold the sheriff and the executioners! Oh, wait, and Ill sign the petition. No, they say, the clock has struck; its too late-you must die. The opportunity has been lost. You are almost through this world, said a chaplain to a soldier, once a Sabbath scholar, who was in the last stages of disease. Am I? said he. Yes, and I hope you are ready for the next. No, I am not-not ready, not ready. Well, my dear friend, Jesus is all ready, and waiting right here. Come, now. Shall I pray? … Oh, no, no; it is too late, too late! I ought to have come long ago. And then he told the chaplain, as calmly as he could, of the time when he was almost a Christian, and decided to let it pass till another winter. That was the time, I might have come then, why didnt I? why didnt I? and, pulling the blanket over his face, he sobbed aloud. It was in vain that the visitor sought to reason him out of his horrid despair, he only motioned him away, crying, Dont talk to me any more-its too late, I cant bear it.
General drift of the parable
As a whole, this parable shows us how God is served by men, and shows us especially that though there are greater and less degrees of disobedience and impenitence, there is no such thing as consistent uniform obedience. The best that God gets from earth is the obedience of repentance. Men must still, each for himself, try their own way, and only when this is found to be quite foolish and hurtful and hopeless, do they try Gods way. No one can take Gods word for it that such and such are the things to be done; such and such others to be avoided. We must for ourselves know good and evil, we must be as gods making choice between the good that sin brings and its evil, and if then Gods judgment about sin tallies with our own we accept it. Such a thing as simple, perpetual acceptance of Gods commands from first to last is not to be found; and repentance, though certainly to be rejoiced over, is, after all, only the second-best thing. Apology, however sincere, is at all times a very poor substitute for conduct that needs none. And yet you will often see that a man considers that a graceful apology, whether to God or men, more than repairs the wrong he has done. It is, no doubt, right to be convinced we have been wrong; it is right to turn in to Gods vineyard, even though it be after refusing to do so; but that complacency should mingle with our repentance is surely a triumph of duplicity. To make our very confession of total unprofitableness matter of self-gratulation is surely the extreme of even religious self-deception. (Marcus Dods. D.D.)
The necessity of work
The vineyard yields us spontaneous fruit. Man must work, and he must work in the line of Gods laws-observing the demands of the plant, supplying the conditions of atmosphere and soil-or else no rich vintage will gladden the hills or reward his toil. And so in the culture of the soul. It is not through rest, but through action-not in seclusion, but by brave labour ant in the open field, under the noontide and under the dew-that its powers are to be developed and its highest possibilities attained. You must not suppose, however, that in insisting upon the great truth that the proper issue and the proof of a real Christianity are in action and work, in the doing by each one of us of his Fathers business in the world, I would put dishonour upon the subjective side of the religious life. This, too, with its seasons of retirement, of quiet meditation, of self-recollection, of communion with God who is the Fountain of all power, is necessary. Nay, more than this: it is the condition precedent and absolutely essential to the highest life and best action of the soul. It is here in the life of the soul as in the life of the material universe. Nature has her seasons of apparent rest when she gathers her energies in secret chambers and in silent ways. But these gathered energies only reveal their value and reach their proper end when they pass out into action and clothe the world with bloom and fruit and beauty for the use and service of men. And this great truth, like every other great moral and spiritual truth, finds illustration in the life of Christ. He retires again and again from the multitude to the secret oratories of the desert and the mountain-top. ]But the full meaning and purpose of His retirement are made manifest when He comes forth again, with all His spiritual energies refreshed, to labour and suffer more devotedly for men, and so to do His Fathers work in the world. The danger against which I would warn you is the belief that Christianity is simply a doctrine or a sentiment. It is these; but above all it is, as the fruition of these, a life and a work. What the world needs to-day, but what, alas! our saintliness not seldom fails to give, is this living, loving, labouring piety. What in this hour our religion lacks especially is red blood. It wants, in place of its too often sickly complexion-the paleness, as it were, of the cloisters-the rich tan of a vigorous health, which comes only from brave and devoted labour under all the changing skies. And so the command comes to you and to me, Son, daughter, go out and work. It bids us leave our shaded hermit-caves in the valley, come down from our high peaks of mere religious sentiment or rhapsody, and go, each one of us, to his own proper field along the hot and stony hillsides of our life, toiling there with energy and patience and devotion until the whole landscape shall hang thick with the burdened vines. (W. Rudder, D. D.)
Gods vineyard everywhere
Am I wrong in saying that when this command reaches us, the common interpretation of it is that we are thus bidden to enter upon distinctly religious exercises and observances, and that the command goes no further? Church, prayers, sacraments, spiritual exercises-these cover and limit the vineyard of God. And then the assumption is that as this enclosure is Gods vineyard, so, on the other hand, the so-called world and the life in the world are each mans personal property, to do with as seems to him best. When, e.g., you go to-morrow from the services of to-day, or from the devotions of your closets, to your evils or to your pleasures, you leave one territory and enter upon another. But there is no such separation or distinction in the command. God, be assured, does not limit His vineyard by the boundaries of Church or sacrament or prayer. He sends out His voice into the very thick of the crowd to-morrow, and that voice follows you wherever you may be, in the street or the office or the study, in the counting-house or the workshop, on the large and public arena or in any narrowest corner where some poor woman endures and labours patiently for love and Gods dear sake. Here is my vineyard; here work out your salvation; here, amid these seemingly most unfavourable conditions, gather sweetness and beauty, strength and glory into your souls; here prove yourselves true sons and daughters of God, and know that in all your ways, the hardest and darkest, your steps are directed by a Fathers care, and over all is His unsleeping love. How this truth brightens and ennobles all our life-lightening labour and sorrow by love and the consciousness of being loved, and changing the meanest drudgeries to worship and praise! (W. Rudder, D. D.)
To-day
To-day! It is our privilege, our opportunity, our responsibility. To-day! It is the flower of all the past, it contains within itself all the possibilities of the future. And this priceless treasure is in the hands of every one of us, the poorest and the humblest. But, tomorrow! It stands behind the curtain of the midnight, under the seal of all the stars. The richest man in all this rich England, who owns vast landed estates, who owns rich ships coming homeward across all the tossing seas, owns not one second of to-morrow. (W. Rudder, D. D.)
Religious profession
The second son gives his answer in the one word I, as if he meant, Oh! you need have no doubt about me. I am ready. I am at your service. My brother is a shameless fellow, but as for me you have only to command me. This son takes it for granted he is the dutiful son; he puts no pressure on himself to secure obedience; he is conscious of no necessity to guard against temptations to forgetfulness, indolence, selfishness. He takes for granted that no deficiency will be found in him, and his complacency is his ruin. We all know this kind of man: the tradesman to whom you give elaborate instructions, and who assures you he will send an article precisely to your mind, but actually sends you what is quite useless for your purposes; the friend who bids you leave the matter to him, but who has no sooner turned the corner of the street than he meets some one whose conversation puts you and your affairs quite out of his mind. If promising had been all that was wanted no community could have been more godly than Jerusalem. These priests and elders spent their lives in professing to be Gods people. Their day was filled with religious services. They had no secular business at all; they were identified with religion; their whole life was a proclamation that they were Gods servants, and a profession of their willingness to obey. And yet they failed to do the one thing they were there to do-to prepare for and receive the Messiah. Their whole profession collapsed like a burst bubble; they were proved to be shams, to be dealing in mere words with no idea of realities. (Marcus Doris, D. D.)
Ready to promise, but slow to perform
Hypocrites purpose oft, and promise fair to do better, but drive off and fail in the performance; their morning cloud is soon dispersed, their early dew is quickly dried up, their heartless essays come to nothing. The philosopher liked not such as are always about to live better, but never begin. A divine complains that the goodness of many is like the softness of a plum, soon crushed; but their wickedness is like the stone in the plum, hard and inflexible. (John Trapp.)
Doing Gods will
This is plain; for what was the will of the father, but that they should do the work He had set them to do? This the latter did not. The fathers will was not only that the son should give him a cap and a knee and compliment him, but that he should go to work in the vineyard. It is the least part of Gods will that men should give Him good words, be a little complimental and ceremonious toward Him; but that they should repent and believe and obey His Gospel. This some publicans and harlots did; the generality of the Pharisees refused. It is a hard thing to convince a moral, righteous, civil man, that he lacks anything to salvation; and hence it is that profane persons many times repent, believe, and are saved, when others perish in their impentitency and unbelief because they think they have no need of repentance, or any further righteousness than they are possessed of. (Matthew Pool.)
Go, work to-day
Work and give, for the night cometh:-A missionary in the West Indies having called on the people for a little help in spreading the gospel, a negro came forward, and putting his hand in one pocket pulled out some silver, saying, That for me, massa; and another parcel from another pocket, Thats for my wife, massa; and another still, making in all upwards of twelve dollars, Thats for my child, masse. When asked if he was not giving too much, he said, Gods work must be done, masse, and I may be dead. Let us do and let us give what we can. Gods work must be done, and we may be dead!
Well-wishing not well-doing
The second son appears the more amiable at first than the other, though he was worse. The first son seems to have been one of those men who are rough externally, with a good heart inwardly, who speak rudely, but make it up in activity afterwards. Their tongue is hard, hasty, perverse; but their heart rebukes the hardness of the tongue, and rises up to repair by kindness the rude utterance. The second son was one of those compliant creatures who promise everything and perform nothing. They are subjects of universal impressibility. They feel the slightest influence, and yield to it a certain way, but only in a certain degree, and that this side of any profit. They never convert impressions to ideas. They never ripen impulses to purposes. They never change emotions to principles, nor principles to fixed habits. They cry easily, they love easily, they give up easily, they fall back easily, but like an aspen leaf that is moving the whole day, they are at the same place at night as in the morning. They quiver but do not change, and for ever moving, and for ever stationary. A large class of men, in every community, are drawn to the church who are of this kind, and may be called well-wishers to religion, but not well-doers in religion. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Wishing and willing
To wish and to will are very different things. There are a thousand men who wish where there is one who wills. Wishing is but a faint state of desire. Willing is a state of the reason, and of the affections, and of the will, in activity, to secure what one desires. A man may wish and yet reject all the steps and instruments by which that wish can be carried into effect. No man wills until he has made up his mind not only to have the end, but to have all the steps intermediately by which that end is to be secured. Doing requires concentration of purpose. Doing has both hands and feet, and uses them. Wishing has neither, or else, having them, puts neither of them to use. (H. Ward Beecher.)
A mist of well- wishing
As a cloud of silvery mist drops down over a ship and shuts it in, so that it cannot go any further, but casts anchor and waits, so conscience, when it begins to be troublous, is shut down in the midst of this silvery mist of well-wishing. So that a well-wisher is one of those persons who bid fair to wear out the influence of appeals of the gospel in the sanctuary. His temperament is one that lasts better and longer than any other. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Self-conceit in morals
The corruptions of the passions are more likely to be healed than is spiritual conceit. The passage teaches, not the safety of passional corruption, but the danger of self-righteousness. A man in the almost hopeless state of passional corruption may recover; but for the recovery of a man that is in the hopeless state of spiritual corruption and conceit, there is scarcely a chance. The value and excellence of the photographers plate which is hidden within the camera does not consist in what it is, but upon its susceptibility when the object-glass of the camera is open to that light which streams upon it. If it is unprepared, and is like the common glass, all beauty might sit before it, and no change would be produced by the streaming of light. The glass might be as good in the first case as in the second, with the exception that, when it is prepared, the photographers glass reveals the impression of beauty made upon it by the light. The criterion of hopefulness in a man, then, is not that he has gone so high in moral excellence. A mans hopefulness consists in the fact that eternal life is the gift of God. It consists in the mixing, as it were, the Divine nature with ours, and the breathing into us of the spirit of Gods love. The criterion of hopefulness is the openness of a mans soul to the Divine influence, and its susceptibility under the Divine shining. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Basilar and coronal corruption
Corruptions through the passions, or through the moral sentiments. At the recent great flood at Albany, where those warehouses were undermined and thrown down, one man was in the base and the other in the attic. The man at the base, being right where the danger was, saw the pressure and the wearing, and heard the grinding. He saw brick after brick, and stone after stone ground out by the sawing ice. And seeing and knowing these things, as the danger came on he could flee; but the man in his office in the attic neither saw the danger nor believed that there was any danger, and went on summing up his profits, and laying out his plans. Which of these men had the best chance of escape, the man at the bottom who saw the danger, or the man at the top who saw nothing and heard nothing? (H. Ward Beecher.)
Our most real danger
Do not think that your danger lies in outbreaking sin. In some cases the danger lies there; but in some cases the danger lies in an intense spiritual conceit; in an arrogant morality, in an overweening estimate of your own goodness and safety. You do not feel that you need a physician, and therefore you will die in your sins. You do not feel that you need a Deliverer, and therefore Christ is nothing to you. You are not conscious that you need bread, and therefore the bread of life is not brought to you. You say, I am not blind-I see; I am not naked-I am clothed; I am not hungry-I am fed; and yet you are blind, and naked, and hungry; and so you will perish, though there is salvation proffered to such as you are. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Obedience forced and natural
Compel yourself to all duties now, and soon you will like the duties that are now distasteful. The man that is drawn out of the water hall-drowned can only be restored by artificial respiration, but if this is persevered in the natural breathing at last begins, and the functions of healthy unforced respiration super-cedes the artificial means. And thus God educates us to ease and naturalness in all duty. Under cover of the outward conduct the new spirit grows and grows to such strength, that at last it maintains the outward conduct as its natural fruit. (Marcus Dods.)
Small value of promises
Says Socrates to his friends, in the Phaedo, If you take care of yourselves everything will go well with you, whether you make me any promises about the matter or not: but if hereafter you shall neglect, and be unwilling to govern yourselves by the rules I have laid down, though you make me ever so many promises, you will be never the better for them.
Doing is obedience
The question is, What have you done The passer-by, who saw the one son stripped and hard at work under the sun among the vines, while the other lounged whimperingly on the road, telling people what an admirable man his father was, and what a pleasure it was to work for him, and how much he hoped the vintage would be abundant-I say, the passer-by would not have the slightest difficulty in forming a judgment of the two sons. Do not believe in)our purpose to serve God better until you do serve Him better. Give no credit to yourself for anything which is not actually accomplished. (Marcus Dods.)
Two sons
It is important to observe the historical connections of our Lords teachings, because all His words had immediate applications, and through, and by means of the first references, the deeper and the more general are found. This parable was spoken during the last visit to Jerusalem, when Scribes and Pharisees were seeking to find accusation against Him. He baffled them, and even humiliated them by putting searching questions to them. Here the son who refused and repented represents the Publican class; and the son who promised and neglected represents the Pharisee class. Whatever mens professions may be, the test of what they will do presently comes to them. Profession alone is without moral value; profession may indeed lout a man at disadvantage in entering Gods kingdom. The openly ungodly man may be more readily humbled than the man who is fenced about with self-righteousness. The general truth suggested may be thus stated:
I. This is a world of change. That seems to be a sad thing. It really is a most hopeful, a most merciful thing. The unchangeable will never do for us while we are sinners.
II. We may change for the worse, as one of these sons did. Illustrate from David, Judas, Demas, etc.
III. We may change for the better, as the other son did. Very sad is young manhood stained with vice; but there may be a change. Very sad is manhood disgraced with self-indulgence; but there may be a change. The most wilful may repent and obey. There is no security in mere profession. There is no hopelessness in present refusal. We can turn, repent, and live. This, for us, Almighty Grace can do. (R. Tuck.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 28–31. A man had two sons. The two sons…
28–31. A man had two sons. The two sons represent (verse 31) the priests, elders and scribes on the one hand, and the publicans and harlots, “the sinners,” on the other. Both classes were bidden to work in the Lord's vineyard. The publicans and sinners had refused, but repented at the preaching of John. The others professed to obey, but did not. The design of the parable is to show that the publicans and harlots, whom they so much despised, were morally superior to his questioners.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v33 Mat_21:33. A vineyard.—Was regarded as the most valuable plantation,…
CRITICAL NOTES
Mat_21:33. A vineyard.—Was regarded as the most valuable plantation, which yielded the largest harvest, but required also the most constant labour and care (Schaff). A winepress.—The winepress was often dug or hewn out of the limestone rock in Palestine. There were two receptacles or vats. The upper one was strictly the press or ληνός (Matthew), the lower one the winefat or ὑπολήνιον (Mark) into which the expressed juice of the grape passed. The two vats are mentioned together only in Joe_3:13, “The press (gath) is full, the fats (yekabim) overflow” (Carr). A tower.—Which would serve partly as a watch-tower, and partly as a storage for the wine, and partly, also, as a residence for the workmen, in the season when their attendance would be required (Morison). Let it out to husbandmen.—This kind of tenancy prevails in many parts of Europe. It is known as the metayer system, the arrangement being that the occupier of the land should pay to the landlord a portion—originally half—of the produce (Carr).
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Mat_21:38. Let us seize on his inheritance.—This would be impossible in real life, but not more impossible than the thought of the Pharisees that by the death of Jesus they would gain the spiritual supremacy (ibid.).
Mat_21:44. Grind him to powder.—Scatter him as dust (R.V.). Literally, it will winnow him. The Saviour’s idea is compressed and pregnant. If the stone fall on anyone, it will pound him into atoms, and thus dissipate him as effectually as if he were the dust of the threshing-floor that needed to be driven away (Morison).
Mat_21:46. When they sought to lay hands on Him.—The Sanhedrin aimed at two things:
1. To seize Jesus quickly, for the Passover (during which no hostile measures could be taken) was close at hand; and because Jesus might be expected to quit Jerusalem after the feast.
2. To seize Him apart from the people; for the Galilæans would suffer no one to lay hands on their King and Prophet. Treachery alone enabled the Jews to secure their end (Carr).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_21:33-46
Further answers.—It is one mark of a well-equipped teacher to exhibit variety in his teaching. So this Greatest of teachers had previously taught His disciples (Mat_13:52). So He exemplifies here. In dealing further with those who had just questioned His authority (Mat_21:23), He first tells them of that which is “new”—“hear another parable.” In the prophecy which He afterwards quotes as being one with which His hearers ought long ago to have been acquainted (Mat_21:42), He tells them of that which is “old.” But in both we shall find He refers to the same subject as that of which He had been previously speaking, viz., the character and destiny of that body of teachers and religious leaders of whom His present opponents were representatives and samples.
I. The parable.—This, although here spoken of as “another,” was not fresh in every respect. In its general character, on the contrary, and in some of its leading features, there was much that was “old.” Long before, e.g. the church and people of Israel had been compared, as here, to a “vino” (Mat_21:33; Psalms 80; Isa_5:1; Isa_5:7, etc.). Something had been said also before of the measures taken for their separation and protection under the figure of a “hedge” (Mat_21:33; Isa_5:2; Isa_5:5). And something also, of an expectation on the owner’s part of finding “fruit” on this vine (Isa_5:2; Isa_5:4). On the other hand, in this “version” of the similitude, there was much that was new. Such was the idea of “letting out” this vineyard to certain of the owner’s servants and leaving it in their charge. Also, the idea of a certain proportion of its “fruits” being his clearly recognised due (end of Mat_21:34, R.V.). Also, the refusal of those in charge to pay this, and their subsequent ill-treatment in various ways, and to the extremest lengths and that several times over, of those commissioned to ask it (Mat_21:35-36). Also, and above all, the introduction of the owner’s son on the scene (Mat_21:37), of the hopes that that introduction seemed fitted to encourage (ibid.), and of the robber-like conspiracy, with its murderous sequel, which it led to instead. Nor was there less, finally, of the previously unheard of in that which we may speak of as the verdict of this parable. In the quarter, first, from which it was elicited; those who heard the parable and of whom it was speaking, being just those, through the question asked of them, to declare its result. In the tone of certainty, next, with which they speak of it. To the question asked there is but one answer to give (Mat_21:41). In the manifest equity, lastly, which they recognise in it. In was only right that such “miserable” men should be thus “miserably” destroyed (R.V.). It was only right that there should be others to “render” what had been “withheld” by themselves.
II. The prophecy quoted.—How this is connected with what has gone before may be seen by considering, first, in what respects the prophecy tallies with the parable and its verdict. It does so, e.g. in the prominence given by it to the same persons as before, the “builders” and “stone” of the one corresponding closely with the “husbandmen” and the “heir” of the other. Also, in the kind of action attributed to the persons so named; the “rejection” of the “stone” in the one case corresponding exactly to the “killing and casting out” of the “heir” in the other. Also, once more, to a certain extent, in regard to the punishment inflicted, and the reason given for it, in the two cases referred to (cf. Mat_21:41; Mat_21:43). The connection in question may be seen next, by observing in what respects the teaching of the prophecy follows up that of the parable. How it tells, on the one side, of the wonderful subsequent glorification of that which had been “rejected” by the builders and cast out by the “husbandmen,” the once despised “stone” becoming nothing less, in the end, than “the head of the corner,” and that in so “marvellous” a way, as only to be accounted for by the direct operation of God (Mat_21:42). How it tells on the other, of a singularly discriminating and so confirmatory fate as being reserved for these rejecters thereof—those who merely “stumble” at that Divine stone being “broken” thereby, but not necessarily (so it appears) in an irrecoverable manner, whilst those who go further and wilfully cause others besides to stumble at it, are broken thereby beyond hope (Mat_21:44). And how this brings us, therefore, to that final catastrophe which the Lord then had in His mind, even the utter approaching destruction of those persons who were opposing Him then. Something of all this, indeed, with all their blindness, they appear to have understood at this time (Mat_21:45).
The words thus addressed to them may teach us in our turn:—
1. The true nature of the sin of the world.—It is opposing God’s will. It is doing so, more especially, in regard to His Son. Casting out and killing the appointed “Heir.” Rejecting the “chosen Stone.” (See Psalms 2 passim; Joh_16:9; Joh_15:22-23; Joh_6:29; 1Jn_3:23, also Mat_25:40; Mat_25:45).
2. The true secret of the life of the church.—Recognising the “Only begotten” as at once the foundation and consummation of all, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last. Had these men “known this they would not have crucified, the Lord of glory” (1Co_2:7-8; Act_3:17; see also Joh_17:3; Joh_1:1, etc.; Heb_1:1, etc.; Col_2:3).
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Mat_21:33-46. The vineyard and its keepers.—This parable was apparently spoken on the Tuesday of the Passion week. It was a day of hand-to-hand conflict with the Jewish authorities and of exhausting toil, as the bare enumeration of its incidents shows. It included all that Matthew records between Mat_21:20 of this chapter and the end of the twenty-fifth chapter. What a day! What a fountain of wisdom and love which poured out all this! The pungent severity of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the listeners. They had struck at Him with their question of His authority, and He parries the blow. Now it is His turn, and the sharp point goes home.
I. The first stage is the preparation of the vineyard, in which three steps are marked.—
1. It is planted and furnished with all appliances needful for making wine, which is its great end. The direct Divine origin of the religious ideas and observances of “Judaism” is thus asserted by Christ. The only explanation of them is that God enclosed that bit of the wilderness, and, with His own hands, set growing there these exotics. Neither the theology nor the ritual is of man’s establishing.
2. Thus furnished, the vineyard is next handed over to the husbandmen, who, in Matthew, are exclusively the rulers, while in Luke they are the people. No doubt it was “like people, like priest.”
3. Having installed the husbandmen, the owner goes into another country. Centuries of comparative Divine silence followed the planting of the vineyard. Having given us charge, God, as it were, steps aside to leave us room to work as we will, and so to display what we are made of. He is absent in so far as conspicuous oversight and retribution are concerned. He is present to help, love, and bless.
II. Then comes the habitual ill-treatment of the messengers.—
1. These are, of course, the prophets, whose office was not only to foretell, but to plead for obedience and trust, the fruits sought by God. There is no more remarkable historical fact than that of the uniform hostility of the Jews to the prophets. That a nation of such a sort as always to hate, and generally to murder, them should have had them in long succession throughout its history, is surely inexplicable on any naturalistic hypothesis. Such men were not the natural product of the race, nor of its circumstances, as their fate shows. No “philosophy of Jewish history” explains the anomaly except the one stated here, “he sent his servants.”
2. The hostility of the husbandmen grows with indulgence. From beating they go on to killing, and stoning is a specially savage form of killing. The more God pleads with men, the more self-conscious and bitter becomes their hatred; and the more bitter their hatred, the more does He plead, sending other messengers, more, perhaps, in number, or possibly of more weight, with larger commission and clearer light. Thus the antagonistic forces both grow, and the worse men become, the louder and more beseeching the call of God to them. That is always true; and it is also ever true that he who begins with “I go, sir,” and goes not, is in a fair way to end with stoning the prophets.
3. Christ treats the whole long series of violent rejections as the acts of the same set of husbandmen. The class or nation was one, as the stream is one, though all its particles were different; and the Pharisees and scribes, who stood with frowning hatred before Him as He spoke, were the living embodiment of the spirit which had animated all the past.
III. The mission of the Son and its fatal issue (Mat_21:37-39).—Three things are here prominent.
1. The unique position which Christ claims.
2. The owner’s vain hope in sending his son. Christ knew Himself to be God’s last appeal, as He is to all men, as well as to that generation. He is the last arrow in God’s quiver. When He has shot that bolt, the resources even of Divine love are exhausted, and no more can be done for the vineyard than He has done for it.
3. The vain calculation of the husbandmen. Christ puts hidden motives into plain words, and reveals to these rulers what they scarcely knew of their own hearts. With what sad calmness does Jesus tell the fate of the son, so certain that it is already as good as done! It was done in their counsels, and yet He does not cease to plead, if perchance some hearts may be touched, and withdraw themselves from the confederacy of murder.
IV. The self-condemnation from unwilling lips.—Our Lord turns to the rulers with startling and dramatic suddenness, which may have thrown them off their guard, so that their answer leaped out before they had time to think whom it hit.
V. Then comes the solemn application and naked truth of the parable.—Who can venture to speak of the awful doom set forth in the last words here? It has two stages: one a lesser misery, which is the lot of him who stumbles against the stone, while it lies passive, to be built on; one more dreadful, when it has acquired motion and comes down with irresistible impetus.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Mat_21:33-41. The efforts of mercy to redeem.—
I. Abundant.—Vineyard planted, fenced, guarded, tilled.
II. Outraged.—Messengers despised, ill-treated, slain.
III. Persevering.—One messenger after another, and last of all the greatest, wisest, best—“His Son.”—J. C. Gray.
Mat_21:37.Christ the Messenger of His own gospel.—
I. The dignity of the person whom God employed to preach the gospel. “His Son.”—
1. A superior person to Moses, the prophets, and infinitely superior to every other messenger of God.
2. The sublimest titles are bestowed on this person both in the Old and New Testaments.
II. That this is the final interposition of God in our favour.—“Last of all.”
1. As He is infinitely superior to all that were before Him, so it may well be presumed that none will come after Him; and that the message He brings seals and finishes God’s revelation to the children of men.
2. This is the reason why the predictions relating to the Messiah, refer His coming to the last days (Isa_2:2).
III. Our duty in relation to this sacred Messenger of heaven.—To reverence Him.
1. By attending to the proofs of His Divine mission. This He requires (Joh_5:31-38).
2. By receiving Him in that capacity with gratitude, love, hope, joy.
3. By embracing the holy errand on which He was sent, and complying with the practical purposes of His mission: “God raised up His Son to bless us.” How? “In turning us from our iniquities,” and teaching us “to deny ungodliness,” etc. (Tit_2:12).
4. By forming ourselves according to that sacred model He exhibited to mankind.
5. By receiving pardon and sanctification through that awful method which God has appointed, the blood of His Son (Col_1:14; 1Jn_1:7).
6. By daily acts of worship and adoration; honouring the Son as we honour the Father (Joh_5:23; Rom_14:11).—Anon.
Mat_21:42. Christ, rejected of men, exalted of God.—Biblical scholars and critics are of opinion that the words in Psa_118:22 refer to an historical event, a literal transaction. “There is every presumption,” says one of them, “that the Psalmist here refers to a stone that was rejected by the builders of the temple, and which was afterwards made the chief stone of the corner. The presumption is supported by what is stated in the fifth and sixth chapters of the first Book of Kings.” All the stones of the temple were prepared at a distance from the temple, and so prepared that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the building on Mount Moriah. Before the builders could say that their work was done they had to lift the stone which they had rejected and place it in the corner for which it had been designed. They then admitted that it was indeed the chief stone of the corner and the glory of their seven years’ labour. The truths suggested by the words of the text may be considered in at least four aspects:—
I. The metaphorical aspect.—A stone has a unity of substance, a solidity and durability of character, which give it incomparable renown as a foundation, or as a thing of strength and resistance. There are rocks and stones of which it may be said, Who hath declared their generation? Whatever mystery there may be connected with the stone which the builders rejected, it is most certain that Jesus Christ is the all-sufficient foundation of the church, the supreme reason of her continued existence and power in the world. He is to the church, past and present, visible and invisible, what the keystone is to the bridge, and the corner-stone to a building.
II. The doctrinal aspect.—The doctrine of the text is that of might against right in a stern and continuous struggle. We see the tiny beginnings of might against right in the histories of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and we see evidences of it all through the ages. But what are all these but the faint glimmerings of the more awful conflict referred to in the text? That conflict was not the result of mere ignorance or mental inertia. It was the outcome of direct repugnance to the Holy One of Israel.
III. The historical aspect.—There is nothing, perhaps, so remarkable in the history of nations as the difference made by the presence or the absence of Christianity. “Where is that place,” says a distinguished statesman (Russell Lowell), “where age is revered, infancy respected, womanhood honoured, and human life held in due regard; where is that place, ten miles square in this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundation?” We challenge the sceptical world to show us such a place. From the day that the Jews rejected Christ, Christianity has been to us Gentiles as life from the dead.
IV. The practical aspect of the text suggests the doctrine of man’s responsibility to Christ. All men are builders. Every building must rest on some foundation, or have some reason, good or bad, for its existence. That Jesus Christ is the only and all-sufficient foundation of the church is beyond dispute. The rulers of a nation are also builders, and are equally responsible to Him by whom all things consist. Of church and state He is emphatically the chief corner-stone.—Dr. J. Kerr Campbell.
Mat_21:43. Privileges forfeited.—
1. The gospel, or the means of grace in a visible face of a church, is God’s kingdom on earth, and the greatest benefit that can be bestowed on a land.
2. The nation which doth not bring forth the fruits of the gospel may justly be deprived of that privilege, as here is threatened, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you.”
3. The church may be flitted from one nation to another, but shall not cease to be among some people; for, “It shall be given to another,” saith Christ. Thus, He foretelleth them of the rejection of the Jews and the in bringing of the Gentiles.—David Dickson.
Mat_21:44. Neglecting and opposing Christ.—I. The first case is that in which Christ is a stone of stumbling to those to whom He is presented. God lays this stone everywhere in our way that we may build upon it or set it high in the place of honour, and we cannot simply walk on as if God had done no such thing. Whatever else Christ is, He is substantial, a reality as solid as the stone against which your foot is jarred. The gospel once heard is “henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer.” No man who has heard can be as if he had not. Though he may wish to pass on as if he had not seen Christ at all, he is not the same man as he was before, his spiritual condition is altered, possibilities have dawned upon his mind, openings into regions which are new and otherwise inaccessible; he is haunted by unsettled perplexities, doubts, anxieties, thoughts. This attitude of mind must have been very common in Christ’s own time, many persons must have shrunk from the responsibility of determining for themselves what they ought to think of Him. Many now do the same. They wish to overlook Him and pass on into life as if He were not in their path. But how foolish if He be the one foundation on whom a life can safely be built. Those who thus overlook Christ and try to pass on into life as if He were not, damage their own character because they know He is there, and until they make up their minds about Him, life a mere make-believe. It is thus they are bruised on this stone of stumbling. This bruised condition, however, is remediable.
II. The second action of the stone on the builder is described as final.—At once slain and buried, those who determinedly opposed Christ lie oppressed by that which might have been their joy. Their dwelling and refuge becomes their tomb. Every excellence of Christ they have leagued against themselves. It is their everlasting shame that they were ashamed of Him. The faithfulness, truth, and love of Christ, that is to say, the qualities whose existence is all that any saved man ever had to depend upon, the qualities in the knowledge and faith of which the weakest and most heartless sinner sets out boldly and hopefully to eternity, these all now torment with crushing remorse those who have despised them. Do not suppose this is an extravagant figure used by our Lord to awe His enemies, and that no man will ever suffer a doom which can be fairly represented in these terms. It is a statement of fact. Things are to move on eternally in fulfilment of the will of Christ. He is identified with all that is righteous, all that is wise, all that is ultimately successful. To oppose His course, to endeavour to defeat His object, to attempt to work out an eternal success apart from Him is as idle as to seek to stop the earth in its course, or to stand in the path of a stone avalanche in order to stem it.—M. Dods, D.D.
Mat_21:45-46. Understanding but not profiting.—
1. Threatenings profit not, but rather do irritate desperately wicked men, as here they desire to lay hands on Him.
2. Christ’s most malicious adversaries, though they be set for blood, yet can do no more than God will suffer them to do.
3. As long as the body of the people do favour Christ’s cause, persecutors will not vent all their designs against Christ and His followers.
4. The least good opinion of Christ will serve for some use; albeit not to the parties’ salvation, yet to the advantage of Christ’s cause, as here it served for some use, that they took Him for a prophet.—David Dickson.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv28, 33 Mat 21:28-32. “But what seems to you? A man…
THE TWO SONS
Mat 21:28-32. “But what seems to you? A man had two sons; and coming to the first, he said, Child, go today, labor in my vineyard. And responding, he said, I do not wish; and afterward, repenting, went. And coming to the second, he said likewise. And he, responding, said, I, Lord; and went not. Which one of the two did the will of the father? They say to him, The first. Jesus says to them, Truly I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots 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 publicans believed him. But you, seeing, did not afterward repent, in order to believe him.” The Lord called the whole Gentile world two thousand years before He called the Jews. Hence you see that the Gentiles are the elder son, who remained rebellious and alien from God four thousand years; meanwhile the Jews, in due time, received and responded to the call, saying, “O yes, Lord, we are Your people, and You are our God.” But finally becoming proud, vain, arrogant, and self-righteous, they even reject and slay their own Christ, for whom they had waited through the ages, and consequently the terrible castigations of destruction and dispersion overtake them, sending them, aliens and vagabonds, upon the face of the whole earth, till all the Gentiles come into the kingdom. Here we see, from the unmistakable utterances of the Infallible, that it is actually easier to save publicans and harlots, the worst of sinners, than proud, self-righteous Pharisaical professors of Christianity. Hence you see from this clear and unequivocal teaching that, of all the people in the world, the hardest to save and the surest of perdition are these bigoted, dead, formal Church members, and even preachers, who have the form without the power. Mat 3:7, tells us about these Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the ministry of John, and taking offense at his plain, straight, and awful appeals to them, calling them “generations of vipers,” and warning them to flee the wrath to come, his prophetic eye then contemplating their awful and speedy perdition. That was their good time to repent. They did not; but took umbrage, going away mad because the preacher called them rattle snakes, and demanded of them to repent in dust and ashes and get religion before he would baptize them. While they went away in a rage and abused the preacher for insulting them, the poor publicans and harlots got awfully convicted; saw hell open and the devil after them; wallowed on the ground, irrigating the dust with copious penitential tears, — they sweeping with shouts into the kingdom, while these big preachers and proud Church officers go down to hell. Our Savior here beautifully reveals the order of repentance and faith, the latter invariably preceded by the former, which constitutes our indispensable qualification for the exercise of justifying faith, repentance breaking the yoke of Satan, and faith receiving that of Christ. N. B. — It is still Wednesday, and yet in the morning, and Jesus is preaching in the temple, having cleansed it Tuesday afternoon. This is a wonderful day, in which He does an immense amount of preaching. His time is getting short, as to-morrow night His enemies will lay violent hands on Him, thus winding up the most wonderful evangelism the world ever saw.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv33, 44 Mat 21:33 - Mat 21:46.
Matthew
THE VINEYARD AND ITS KEEPERS
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Mat 21:33 - Mat 21:46.
This parable was apparently spoken on the Tuesday of the Passion Week. It was a day of hand-to-hand conflict with the Jewish authorities and of exhausting toil, as the bare enumeration of its incidents shows. It included all that Matthew records between Mat 21:20 of this chapter and the end of the twenty-fifth chapter-the answer to the deputation from the Sanhedrin; the three parables occasioned by it, namely, those of the two sons, this one, and that of the marriage of the king’s son; the three answers to the traps of the Pharisees and Herodians about the tribute, of the Sadducees about the resurrection, and of the ruler about the chief commandment; Christ’s question to His questioners about the Son and Lord of David; the stern woes hurled at the unmasked hypocrites; to which must be added, from other gospels, the sweet eulogium on the widow’s mite, and the deep saying to the Greeks about the corn of wheat, with, possibly, the incident of the woman taken in adultery; and then, following all these, the solemn prophecies of the end contained in Mat 24:1 - Mat 24:51 and Mat 25:1 - Mat 25:46, spoken on the way to Bethany, as the evening shadows were falling. What a day! What a fountain of wisdom and love which poured out such streams! The pungent severity of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the listeners. They had struck at Jesus with their question as to His authority, and He parries the blow. Now it is His turn, and the sharp point goes home.
I. The first stage is the preparation of the vineyard, in which three steps are marked.
It is planted and furnished with all appliances needful for making wine, which is its great end. The direct divine origin of the religious ideas and observances of ‘Judaism’ is thus asserted by Christ. The only explanation of them is that God enclosed that bit of the wilderness, and with His own hands set growing there these exotics. Neither the theology nor the ritual is of man’s establishing. We need not seek for special meanings for wall, wine-press, and tower. They simply express the completeness of the equipment of the vineyard, as in Isaiah’s song, which lies at the foundation of the parable, and suggest his question, ‘What could have been done more?’ Thus furnished, the vineyard is next handed over to the husbandmen, who, in Matthew, are exclusively the rulers, while in Luke they are the people. No doubt it was ‘like people, like priest.’ The strange dominion of the Pharisees rested entirely on popular consent, and their temper accurately indexed that of the nation. The Sanhedrin was the chief object at which Christ aimed the parable. But it only gave form and voice to the national spirit, and ‘the people loved to have it so.’ National responsibilities are not to be slipped out of by being shifted on to the broad shoulders of governments or influential men. Who lets them be governments and influential?
‘Guv’ment ain’t to answer for it,
God will send the bill to you.’
Christ here teaches both rulers and ruled the ground and purpose of their privileges. They prided themselves on these as their own, but they were only tenants. They made their ‘boast of the law’; but they forgot that fruit was the end of the divine planting and equipment. Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought, and when He found them, He was refreshed as with ‘grapes in the wilderness.’
Having installed the husbandmen, the owner goes into another country. The cluster of miracles which inaugurate an epoch of revelation are not continued beyond its beginning. Centuries of comparative divine silence followed the planting of the vineyard. Having given us our charge, God, as it were, steps aside to leave us room to work as we will, and so to display what we are made of. He is absent in so far as conspicuous oversight and retribution are concerned. He is present to help, love, and bless. The faithful husbandman has Him always near, a joy and a strength, else no fruit would grow; but the sin and misery of the unfaithful are that they think of Him as far off.
II. Then comes the habitual ill-treatment of the messengers.
These are, of course, the prophets, whose office was not only to foretell, but to plead for obedience and trust, the fruits sought by God. The whole history of the nation is summed up in this dark picture. Generation after generation of princes, priests, and people had done the same thing. There is no more remarkable historical fact than that of the uniform hostility of the Jews to the prophets. That a nation of such a sort as always to hate and generally to murder them should have had them in long succession, throughout its history, is surely inexplicable on any naturalistic hypothesis. Such men were not the natural product of the race, nor of its circumstances, as their fate shows. How did they spring up? No ‘philosophy of Jewish history’ explains the anomaly except the one stated here,-’He sent His servants.’ We are told nowadays that the Jews had a natural genius for religion, just as the Greeks for art and thought, and the Romans for law and order, and that that explains the origin of the prophets. Does it explain their treatment?
The hostility of the husbandmen grows with indulgence. From beating they go on to killing, and stoning is a specially savage form of killing. The opposition which began, as the former parable tells us, with polite hypocrisy and lip obedience, changed, under the stimulus of prophetic appeals, to honest refusal, and from that to violence which did not hesitate to slay. The more God pleads with men, the more self-conscious and bitter becomes their hatred; and the more bitter their hatred, the more does He plead, sending other messengers, more perhaps in number, or possibly of more weight, with larger commission and clearer light. Thus both the antagonistic forces grow, and the worse men become, the louder and more beseeching is the call of God to them. That is always true; and it is also ever true that he who begins with ‘I go, sir, and goes not, is in a fair way to end with stoning the prophets.
Christ treats the whole long series of violent rejections as the acts of the same set of husbandmen. The class or nation was one, as a stream is one, though all its particles are different; and the Pharisees and scribes, who stood with frowning hatred before Him as He spoke, were the living embodiment of the spirit which had animated all the past. In so far as they inherited their taint, and repeated their conduct, the guilt of all the former generations was laid at their door. They declared themselves their predecessors’ heirs; and as they reproduced their actions, they would have to bear the accumulated weight of the consequences.
III. Mat 21:37 - Mat 21:39 tell of the mission of the Son and of its fatal issue.
Three points are prominent in them. The first is the unique position which Christ here claims, with unwonted openness and decisiveness, as apart from and far above all the prophets. They constitute one order, but He stands alone, sustaining a closer relation to God. They were faithful ‘as servants,’ but He ‘as a Son,’ or, as Mark has it, ‘the only and beloved Son.’ The listeners understood Him well enough. The assertion, which seemed audacious blasphemy to them, fitted in with all His acts in that last week, which was not only the crisis of His life, but of the nation’s fate. Rulers and people must decide whether they will own or reject their King, and they must do it with their eyes open. Jesus claimed to fill a unique position. Was He right or wrong in His claim? If He was wrong, what becomes of His wisdom, His meekness, His religion? Is a religious teacher, who made the mistake of thinking that He was the Son of God in a sense in which no other man is so, worthy of admiration? If He was right, what becomes of a Christianity which sees in Him only the foremost of the prophets?
The next point marked is the owner’s vain hope, in sending his Son. He thought that He would be welcomed, and He was disappointed. It was His last attempt. Christ knew Himself to be God’s last appeal, as He is to all men, as well as to that generation. He is the last arrow in God’s quiver. When it has shot that bolt, the resources even of divine love are exhausted, and no more can be done for the vineyard than He has done for it. We need not wonder at unfulfilled hopes being here ascribed to God. The startling thought only puts into language the great mystery which besets all His pleadings with men, which are carried on, though they often fail, and which must, therefore, in view of His foreknowledge, be regarded as carried on with the knowledge that they will fail. That is the long-suffering patience of God. The difficulty is common to the words of the parable and to the facts of God’s unwearied pleading with impenitent men. Its surface is a difficulty, its heart is an abyss of all-hoping charity.
The last point is the vain calculation of the husbandmen. Christ puts hidden motives into plain words, and reveals to these rulers what they scarcely knew of their own hearts. Did they, in their secret conclaves, look each other in the face, and confess that He was the Heir? Did He not Himself ground His prayer for their pardon on their ignorance? But their ignorance was not entire, else they had had no sin; neither was their knowledge complete, else they had had no pardon. Beneath many an obstinate denial of Him lies a secret confession, or misgiving, which more truly speaks the man than does the loud negation. And such strange contradictions are men, that the secret conviction is often the very thing which gives bitterness and eagerness to the hostility. So it was with some of those whose hidden suspicions are here set in the light. How was the rulers’ or the people’s wish to ‘seize on His inheritance’ their motive for killing Jesus? Their great sin was their desire to have their national prerogatives, and yet to give no true obedience. The ruling class clung to their privileges and forgot their responsibilities, while the people were proud of their standing as Jews, and careless of God’s service. Neither wished to be reminded of their debt to the Lord of the vineyard, and their hostility to Jesus was mainly because He would call on them for fruits. If they could get this unwelcome and persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness. It is an account, in vividly parabolic language, not only of their hostility, but of that of many men who are against Him. They wish to possess life and its good, without being for ever pestered with reminders of the terms on which they hold it, and of God’s desire for their love and obedience. They have a secret feeling that Christ has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they often turn from Him angrily, and sometimes hate Him.
With what sad calmness does Jesus tell the fate of the son, so certain that it is already as good as done! It was done in their counsels, and yet He does not cease to plead, if perchance some hearts may be touched and withdraw themselves from the confederacy of murder.
IV. We have next the self-condemnation from unwilling lips.
Our Lord turns to the rulers with startling and dramatic suddenness, which may have thrown them off their guard, so that their answer leaped out before they had time to think whom it hit. His solemn earnestness laid a spell on them, which drew their own condemnation from them, though they had penetrated the thin veil of the parable, and knew full well who the husbandmen were. Nor could they refuse to answer a question about legal punishments for dishonesty, which was put to them, the fountains of law, without incurring a second time the humiliation just inflicted when He had forced them to acknowledge that they, the fountains of knowledge, did not know where John came from. So from all these motives, and perhaps from a mingling of audacity, which would brazen it out and pretend not to see the bearing of the question, they answer. Like Caiaphas in his counsel, and Pilate with his writing on the Cross, and many another, they spoke deeper things than they knew, and confessed beforehand how just the judgments were, which followed the very lines marked out by their own words.
V. Then come the solemn application and naked truth of the parable.
We have no need to dwell on the cycle of prophecies concerning the corner-stone, nor on the original application of the psalm. We must be content with remarking that our Lord, in this last portion of His address, throws away even the thin veil of parable, and speaks the sternest truth in the nakedest words. He puts His own claim in the plainest fashion, as the corner-stone on which the true kingdom of God was to be built. He brands the men who stood before Him as incompetent builders, who did not know the stone needed for their edifice when they saw it. He declares, with triumphant confidence, the futility of opposition to Himself-even though it kill Him. He is sure that God will build on Him, and that His place in the building, which shall rise through the ages, will be, to even careless eyes, the crown of the manifest wonders of God’s hand. Strange words from a Man who knew that in three days He would be crucified! Stranger still that they have come true! He is the foundation of the best part of the best men; the basis of thought, the motive for action, the pattern of life, the ground of hope, for countless individuals; and on Him stands firm the society of His Church, and is hung all the glory of His Father’s house.
Christ confirms the sentence just spoken by the rulers on themselves, but with the inversion of its clauses. All disguise is at an end. The fatal ‘you’ is pronounced. The husbandmen’s calculation had been that killing the heir would make them lords of the vineyard; the grim fact was that they cast themselves out when they cast him out. He is the heir. If we desire the inheritance, we must get it through Him, and not kill or reject, but trust and obey Him. The sentence declares the two truths, that possession of the vineyard depends on honouring the Son, and on bringing forth the fruits. The kingdom has been taken from the churches of Asia Minor, Africa, and Syria, because they bore no fruit. It is not held by us on other conditions. Who can venture to speak of the awful doom set forth in the last words here? It has two stages: one a lesser misery, which is the lot of him who stumbles against the stone, while it lies passive to be built on; one more dreadful, when it has acquired motion and comes down with irresistible impetus. To stumble at Christ, or to refuse His grace, and not to base our lives and hopes on Him is maiming and damage, in many ways, here and now. But suppose the stone endowed with motion, what can stand against it? And suppose that the Christ, who is now offered for the rock on which we may pile our hopes and never be confounded, comes to judge, will He not crush the mightiest opponent as the dust of the summer threshing-floor?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv28, 33 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CVIII. B. Parable…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CVIII. B. Parable of the Two Sons].
CVIII. IN REPLY TO THE QUESTIONS AS TO HIS AUTHORITY, JESUS GIVES THE THIRD GREAT GROUP OF PARABLES. (In the Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, A. D. 30.) Subdivision B. PARABLE OF THE TWO SONS. aMATT. XXI. 28-32.
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a28 But what think ye? [By these words Jesus put them on notice that he was about to propound something which would require an answer, and therefore demanding the [588] strictest attention.] A man had two sons [the two sons stand for the Jewish rulers and the Jewish common people]; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in the vineyard. 29 And he answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented himself, and went. [The common people made no special pretension to religious excellence, and the rulers regarded them as very careless about the will or law of their Father, God, and made disparaging contrasts between their own conduct and that of the people ( Joh_7:48, Joh_7:49). But this very same common people repented and did the will of God when they heard the preaching of John the Baptist-- Mat_3:5, Mat_3:6.] 30 And he came to the second [the rulers], and said likewise. And he answered and said, I i go, sir: and went not. [The rulers, though all the while professing to be very zealous for the will of God, utterly refused to enter the kingdom or to work therein as God bade them to by the voice of John the Baptist-- Mat_3:7-9.] 31 Which of the two did the will of his father? They say, The first. [They gave the true answer and did not perceive that in so doing they confirmed a parable which condemned themselves.] Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots [the very worst representatives of the common people] go into the kingdom of God before you. [Rather than you.] 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness [The term "righteousness," as Plumptre observes, seems used in a half-technical sense, as expecting the aspect of righteousness which the Pharisees themselves recognized ( Mat_6:1), and which includes, as its three great elements, the almsgiving, fasting, and prayer that were so conspicuous both in the life and the teaching of the Baptist. Surely they could have presented its demands in a form more acceptable to the Jewish rulers], and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that ye might believe him. [The parable of this subdivision is [589] the outgrowth of the preceding subdivision. These rulers had demanded that Jesus show his authority for his assumption of right as teacher, prophet, etc. The parable is an indirect response to this demand, as if Jesus said, "It is in vain for me to tell you that I act under the authority of the Father, for despite all your great profession to the contrary, you really and actually, in your persistent rejection of another (the Baptist), who also acted under it, repudiate utterly his authority; though in so doing you see yourselves condemned by the conduct of even the publicans and harlots, who have felt the force of the Father's authority, and have repentantly obeyed it." The situation must have given great force to the parable; for the rulers in their private conversation had just admitted to each other that the people recognized and obeyed the divine authority of John, while they, the rulers, rejected it.]
[FFG 588-590]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv28, 29, 32, 42, 43, 44 See "vineyard," margin ref., Mat 20:1 (See Scofield "Mat…
vineyard
See "vineyard," margin ref., Mat 20:1 (See Scofield "Mat 20:1")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv28, 31, 33, 37, 42 The Parable of the Two Sons.
The Parable of the Two Sons.
v. 28. But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first and said, Son, go work today in my vineyard.
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v. 29. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented and went.
v. 30. And he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir; and went not.
v. 31 a. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto Him, The first.
The moral distinction made here by Christ was one which the Pharisees admitted themselves, and therefore the truth must have been all the bitterer for them. Both sons were approached in the same manner, with the same words. The one piously says that he will go and work, but, in spite of his apparent eagerness and politeness, sets aside both the fatherly authority and the filial obedience. The other is rude and unmannerly upon being approached, apparently full of sulky disobedience, and yet, upon second thought, he goes and works for the father. The answer of the scribes could, therefore, not have been different.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv28, 31, 33, 35, 38, 40, 42, 43 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Jesus tells a parable about two sons to rebuke the religious leaders and to illustrate their unbelief. (See: Parables)
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But what do you think?
Jesus uses a question to challenge the religious leaders to think deeply about the parable he will tell them. AT: "Tell me what you think about what I am about to tell you." (See: Rhetorical Question)
he changed his mind
This refers to the son reconsidering his thoughts and deciding to act differently from how he had said he would act. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
son
vineyard
mind
lord
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 21:28–22:14 Three parables expose the guilt of those who…
21:28–22:14 Three parables expose the guilt of those who had rejected the Messiah and forfeited their privilege as God’s chosen people. The new people of God are only those who embrace the Messiah.
21:28-32 This parable continues the point about John’s significance.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.