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.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he spoke about them.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv38, 41, 42, 43, 44 Word for word, let us hold it fast.
Word for word, let us hold it fast.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv38–45 38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they…
38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
Ver. 38. This is the heir; come, &c.] So that these husbandmen the Pharisees knew, and yet crucified the Lord of glory; and all this out of desperate malice, which had debauched their reason, and even satanized or transformed them into so many breathing devils; they fell into that unpardonable sin, Mat 12:31.
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Let us seize on his inheritance] Covetousness is bloody, Eze 22:13; Pro 1:11; Pro 1:13 1Ki 21:10. Ahab longed for a salad out of Naboth’s vineyard, and must have it, though Naboth die for it, Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames! Judas selleth his Master for thirty pence.
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 vv38, 40, 42, 45 Mark and Luke have the same with no considerable…
Mark and Luke have the same with no considerable alteration. Our Lord here prophesieth his own death by the means of these wicked priests, and so both lets them know that he was not ignorant of what was in their hearts, and they had been already (as we heard before) taking counsel about, by which they might again have concluded that he was the Son of God, and one who knew their hearts; and he also lets them know, that they should not surprise him, and that he was not afraid of them.
But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said, This is the heir. These words let the Pharisees (to whom, together with the people, he at that time spake) know that themselves knew he was the Son of God, and were convicted in their own consciences that he was the true Lord of the church. Though this was not true of all that had a hand in crucifying Christ; for Paul saith of some of them, that if they had known him, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; yet it was doubtless true of many of them, and those the most knowing men amongst them. But herein did their most prodigious blindness and madness appear, that when they knew this, they should think it possible to prevent his being set as King upon the Lord’s holy hill of Zion. One would think this were impossible to rational creatures. But why should we think so? How many are there in the world at this day, that are convicted in their own consciences, and do believe that the ways and people whom they prosecute to their ruin, yea, to death itself, are the truths, the ways, the people of God, yet they will be kicking against the pricks! And though God makes many of them perish in their enterprises, and suffers them not to come with hoary heads to the grave in peace, yet there ariseth another instead of this hydra, a posterity approving their doings and thinking, though their fathers failed in this or that little policy, yet they shall prevail against God, and his inheritance shall be theirs. Wise Providence thus fitteth the saints for their crown, and suffers sinners to prepare themselves for the day of wrath.
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 vv40, 42, 44, 45 Observe here, At the first mentioning of the parable,…
Observe here, At the first mentioning of the parable, the Pharisees express a bitter indignation against such wicked servants, not considering what a dreadful sentence they passed upon themselves and their own nation. Little did they think, that thereby they condemned their temple to be burnt, their city to be destroyed, their country to be ruined; but in these words they vindicate God, they condemn themselves, and own the justice of God, in inflicting the severest punishments on them.
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 vv38–45 But when the husbandmen saw the son,.... Whom many…
But when the husbandmen saw the son,.... Whom many of them knew, though some did not: some were entirely ignorant of him; some knew him, but durst not confess him, yet were not injurious to him; others acted against light and conscience, with spite and malice, as did these men. They expected the Messiah about this time; they knew, by prophecy, it could not be long ere he appeared: when they saw Jesus of Nazareth, they knew by various circumstances, by all the characters of the Messiah meeting in him, and by his miracles, that he must be the same,
They said among themselves; privately, not openly to the people,
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this is the heir; as indeed he is of all things, as the Son of God, and as the mediator of the new covenant: he is heir of all that his Father has, as he is his natural, essential, and only begotten Son; and as mediator, he is heir of all things, natural, spiritual, and eternal, for the use and benefit of his church and people, who are also his portion and inheritance: but here it seems to denote, his being heir to the throne of Israel, the government of the Jewish nation, as he was the son of David; and the Jews confess (y), that because it was said that Jesus of Nazareth was , "near to the kingdom", therefore they put him to death:
come let us kill him, and seize on his inheritance: concluding, that could they be rid of him, their nation would be in peace, their temple would stand, and temple worship and service continue, and they remain in their office and authority undisturbed; the contrary of which they feared, should he be suffered to live; though what they feared from his life, befell them upon, and in consequence of his death, quite beyond all their counsels and expectations,
(y) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 43. 1.
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 vv41–44 They say - Perhaps some of the by-standers, not…
They say - Perhaps some of the by-standers, not the chief priests or Pharisees; who, as St. Luke relates, said, God forbid, Luke xx, 16.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 Verse 38. Said among themselves] Alluding to the conspiracies…
Verse 38. Said among themselves] Alluding to the conspiracies which were then forming against the life of our blessed Lord, in the councils of the Jewish elders and chief priests. See Mt 27:1.
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 vv40, 42, 44 Mat 21:40-41. When the Lord cometh — Armed with…
Mat 21:40-41. When the Lord cometh — Armed with a power which they will be utterly unable to resist, What will he do unto these husbandmen — Who had been so treacherous and cruel? With a view to their stronger conviction, he refers it to themselves to judge in this case. For God’s proceedings are so unexceptionable, there needs only an appeal to sinners themselves concerning the equity of them. They say, (for how could they with any decency say otherwise?) He will miserably destroy these wicked men — Κακους κακως απολεσει αυτους, he will put those wretches to a wretched death: (So Campbell:) and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen. Thus, before they were aware, they condemned themselves, and signified that their privileges and blessings would be taken from them, the governors of their church and commonwealth destroyed, and the Gentiles taken to be God’s people in their stead: an interpretation of the parable which our Lord immediately confirmed, Luk 20:16; when they replied with apparent seriousness, God forbid.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv38, 41, 42, 43, 45 Heir. From this text, it appears that the princes…
Heir. From this text, it appears that the princes of the Jews knew Jesus to be the Messias, and that it was only through envy and malice they were so blinded as not to acknowledge him for the Son of God. When, therefore, the apostle says, (1 Corinthians ii. 8,) If they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; this, it is probable, must be understood of the common people, since we can hardly believe that the princes of the people were ignorant of it, as Christ had so repeatedly inculcated this truth, that he even says himself they had no excuse, and were only actuated by hatred against him and his Father. (St. John xv. 22.) (Tirinus) --- Inheritance, &c. It appears from St. John xi. that one of the motives why the Jews killed our Saviour was, lest if they let him live, all men should believe, and the Romans should come and destroy their nation. But the very means they took to secure their kingdom to themselves, hastened their downfall, and eventually caused their ruin; since in punishment of their crucifying Jesus Christ, their city and state were completely ruined under the Roman emperors Titus and Vespasian. (Nicholas de Lyra.)
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 vv38–45 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said…
But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves--Compare Gen 37:18-20; Joh 11:47-53.
This is the heir--Sublime expression this of the great truth, that God's inheritance was destined for, and in due time is to come into the possession of, His own Son in our nature (Heb 1:2).
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come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance--that so, from mere servants, we may become lords. This is the deep aim of the depraved heart; this is emphatically "the root of all evil."
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 vv38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 38. This is the heir — They confess his…
38. This is the heir — They confess his being the heir, among themselves; but they utter no such confession to him. Externally they hold him as an intruder, and treat him as a burglar and a robber. Thus with a masterly pencil does our Lord paint these rulers to themselves. In their own hearts they confess this is the heir; in their language and dealing with him they deny his authority, and crucify him as a blasphemer and traitor. By this we are not to understand that God does not foreknow the future wickedness of probationary men; but that he permits yet punishes their withholding what he has a right to expect. Seize on his inheritance — These rulers determined to retain the power over Israel. They rejected our Lord as a false claimant of authority, because he would remove the old dispensation and establish the kingdom of God. This would overthrow their own hierarchy. The words expressing the violence of the husbandmen are numerous and graphic: kill, seize, caught, cast, slew. They might nearly all occur in the narrative of Christ’s own apprehension and crucifixion.
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 vv38, 39, 41, 42, 44 38. let us seize on his inheritance] This would…
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.
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 vv38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45 (38) This is the heir.—What we learn elsewhere enables…
(38) This is the heir.—What we learn elsewhere enables us to understand the feelings with which the priests and scribes must have heard these words. Already had Caiaphas given the counsel that one man should die for the people (Joh_11:49), while among those who knew it, and did not protest, were many who believed on Him, and yet, through fear of the Pharisees, were not confessed disciples (Joh_12:42). The words of the parable showed that they stood face to face with One who knew the secrets of their hearts, and had not deceived Himself as to the issue of the conflict in which He was now engaged.
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 vv38–45 When the husbandmen saw the Son. As soon as…
When the husbandmen saw the Son. As soon as they recognized this new and important messenger. This is the great element in the guilt of his rejection. They might have had the same consciousness of Christ"s Divine mission as Nicodemus, (Joh_3:2) having possessed the same opportunities of judging. Ancient prophecy, the signs of the times, the miracles and teaching of Christ, the testimony of the Baptist, pointed to one evident conclusion; evidence had been accumulating on all sides. A latent feeling had grown up that he was the Messiah, (see Joh_11:49-52) and it was obstinate prejudice and perversity alone that prevented his open acknowledgment. "If I had not come and spoken unto them," said Christ, "they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin". (Joh_15:22; comp. Joh_9:41) They said among themselves. They plotted his destruction. (see Joh_11:53) We are reminded of the conspiracy against Joseph, his father"s well beloved son. (Gen_37:20) Let us seize on (katascwmen , take possession of, keep as our own) his inheritance. It would have been a wild and ignorant scheme of the husbandmen to consider that by murdering the heir they could obtain and hold possession of the vineyard. Here the parable bursts from the allegorical form, and becomes history and prophecy. In fact, the possession which the rulers coveted was supremacy over the minds and consciences of men; they wished to lord it over God"s heritage; to retain their rights and prerogatives in the present system. This ambition Christ"s teaching and action entirely overthrew. They felt no security in their possession of authority while he was present and working in their midst. Were he removed, their position would be safe, their claims undisputed. Hence their conspiracy and its result a result very far from what they expected. They had their own way, but their gain was ruin. Says St. Augustine, "Ut possiderent, occiderunt; et quia occiderunt, perdiderunt."
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv42, 45 The stone which the builders rejected.
Mat_21:42
The stone which the builders rejected.
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Redemption a marvellous work
I. It is Gods work.
1. Contrary to intentions or acts of the builders.
2. No one else competent to perform it.
II. It is a marvellous work.
1. From extent of agency employed.
2. Divine attributes displayed.
3. Demerit of its objects.
4. Number and extent of its benefits-
(a) wrath removed;
(b) reconciliation and peace;
(c) access to God;
(d) adoption;
(e) sanctified nature;
(f) eternal life. Learn-
(1) this work challenges our trust;
(2) requires thought;
(3) Demands unceasing praise. (Preachers Portfolio.)
It will grind him to powder:-Penalty of unbelief
I remember, away up in a lonely Highland valley, where beneath a tall black cliff, all weather-worn and cracked and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the green sward that creeps round its base, a huge rock that has fallen from the face of the precipice. A shepherd was passing beneath it, and suddenly, when the finger of Gods will touched it, and rent it from its bed in the everlasting rock, it came down, leaping and bounding from pinnacle to pinnacle, and it fell; and the man who was beneath it is there now! It will grind him to powder.… Therefore I say to you, since all that stand against Him shall become as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and be swept utterly away, make Him the foundation on which you build, and when the storm sweeps away every refuge of lies you will be safe and serene, builded upon the Rock of Ages. (Dr. McLaren)
Judgment and mercy
I. The greatest judgment which can ever befall a people is taking the kingdom of God from them. The kingdom of God was taken by the Jews themselves for some peculiar and temporal blessings which those who enjoyed it had above all other people. It was taken by our Saviour for a clearer manifestation of the will of God to the world, and the consequence of that in the hearts of good men, and all the spiritual blessings which do attend it. So that the taking away the kingdom of God from them must needs be the heaviest judgment which could befall a people, since it implies in it the taking away all the greatest temporal and spiritual blessings. Jews make the kingdom of God to consist
(1) in deliverance of them from their enemies;
(2) in the flourishing of their state, or that polity which God established among them;
(3) in the solemn worship of Him at the temple.
All these were taken away. Take the kingdom of God in the sense our Saviour meant-the power of the gospel-and the judgment is yet more evident.
1. It is acknowledged by the Jews themselves that these great calamities have happened to them for some extraordinary sins.
2. The sin ought to be looked on as so much greater by how much heavier and longer this punishment hath been than any inflicted on them before.
3. The Jews have not suffered these calamities for the same sins for which they suffered before.
4. It must be some sin which their fathers committed, and which continues yet unrepented of by them to this day.
There were these remarkable forerunners of desolation in the Jewish state which I am afraid we are too much concerned in.
1. A strange degeneracy of all sorts of men from the virtues of their ancestors.
2. A general stupidity and inapprehensiveness of common danger.
3. An atheistical contempt of religion.
4. Spiritual pride.
II. The greatest mercy that can ever be vouchsafed to a nation is Gods giving His kingdom to it. (Bishop Stilligfleet.)
The head stone of the corner
The Jews were the first builders to whom God gave the privilege to build His Church. Three things the corner-stone is to the builders work-
1. The structure ranges up to the corner-stone. All else is below, that it may be high; all ministers to it. Abase yourself that Christ may be exalted.
2. The whole fabric holds up the head of the corner to the view of men that it may be admired. Take care that the aspect which your religion wears to every man is not yourself, but Christ.
3. Let Christ, as the stone does the corner, bind everything. He is the one cementing all that is true. Whatever is in Christ, though it be repugnant to your feelings, do not send it away from you. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The stone of stumbling
The two clauses of the text figuratively point to two different classes of operation-in the one case the stone is represented as passive, lying quiet; in the other, it has got motion. In the one case, it is a self-inflicted, remedial injury; in the other, it is total and judicial.
I. Every man has some kind of connection with Christ. The gospel must influence every man somehow; it is an element in our present civilization. Christ does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on which I build or a stone of stumbling.
II. The immediate issue of rejection of him is loss and maiming-Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken. The positive harm. No man ever yet passively rejected Christ; there is always a slight struggle with right before living away. So that every man who rejects Christ wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man. By the natural result of his unbelief his nature shall be broken. I need not dwell on the negative evil results of unbelief; we fail to possess the great Jove of God by which only we are made what we ought to be. Not only by the act of rejection of Christ do we maim ourselves, but also all attempts of opposition to the gospel as a system stand self-convicted-Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken.
III. The ultimate issue of unbelief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move. The former clause has spoken about the passive operation of unbelief whilst the gospel is being preached; this about the active agency of Christ, It shall grind him to powder. (A. McLaren, D. D.)
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 vv38–45 38. This is the heir. He for whom the…
38. This is the heir. He for whom the inheritance is meant, and to whom it will in due course rightfully arrive. Christ is “heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2). Come, let us kill him. The very words of Genesis (37:20), where Joseph's brethren express a similar resolution. This resolution had actually been taken (John 11:53). Let us seize on his inheritance. If Christ prevailed, Judaism must fall; if they could destroy Christ they could maintain their hold on the vineyard; or, in other words, seize the inheritance. Such was their hope.
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv44–45
Matthew
THE VINEYARD AND ITS KEEPERS
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THE STONE OF STUMBLING
Mat 21:44.
As Christ’s ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class to whom it was always severe, and its gentleness to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side, through all His manifestation of Himself, there were the two aspects: ‘He showed Himself froward’ {if I may quote the word} to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman’s tenderness of yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a divine deliverer. Here, in my text, there are only words of severity and awful foreboding. Christ has been telling those Pharisees and priests that the kingdom is to be taken from them, and given to a nation that brings forth the fruits thereof. He interprets for them an Old Testament figure, often recurring, which we read in the Psa 118:1 - Psa 118:29 {and I may just say, in passing, that we get here His interpretation of that psalm, and the vindication of our application of it, and other similar ones, to Him and His office}; ‘The stone which the builders rejected,’ said He, ‘is become the head of the corner’; and then, falling back on other Old Testament uses of the same figure, He weaves into one the whole of them-that in Isaiah about the ‘sure foundation,’ and that in Daniel about ‘the stone cut out without hands, which became a great mountain,’ crushing down all opposition,-and centres them all in Himself; as fulfilled in Himself, in His person and His work.
The two clauses of my text figuratively point to two different classes of operation on the rejecters of the Gospel. What are these two classes? ‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.’ In the one case, the stone is represented as passive, lying quiet; in the other, it has acquired motion. In the one case, the man stumbles and hurts himself; a remediable injury, a self-inflicted injury, a natural injury, without the active operation of Christ to produce it at all; in the other case the injury is worse than remediable, it is utter, absolute, grinding destruction, and it comes from the active operation of the ‘stone of stumbling.’ That is to say, the one class represents the present hurts and harms which, by the natural operation of things, without the action of Christ judicially at all, every man receives in the very act of rejecting the Gospel; and the other represents the ultimate issue of that rejection, which rejection is darkened into opposition and fixed hostility, when the stone that was laid ‘for a foundation’ has got wings {if I may so say}, and comes down in judgment, crushing and destroying the antagonist utterly. ‘Whosoever falls on this stone is broken,’ here and now; and ‘on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder,’ hereafter and yonder.
Taking, then, into account the weaving together in this passage of the three figures from the Old Testament to which I have already referred,-the rejected stone, the foundation, and the mountain-stone of Daniel, and looking in the light of these, at the twofold issues, one present and one future, which the text distinctly brings before us,-we have just three points to which I ask your attention now. First, Every man has some kind of contact with Christ. Secondly, Rejection of Him, here and now, is harm and maiming. And, lastly, Rejection of Him, hereafter and yonder, is hopeless, endless, utter destruction.
I. In the first place, every man has some kind of connection with Christ.
I am not going to enter at all now upon any question about the condition of the ‘dark places of the earth’ where the Gospel has not come as a well-known preached message; we have nothing to do with that; the principles on which they are judged is not the question before us now. I am speaking exclusively about persons who have heard the word of salvation, and are dwelling in the midst of what we call a Christian land. Christ is offered to each of us, in good faith on God’s part, as a means of salvation, a foundation on which we may build. A man is free to accept or to reject that offer. If he reject it, he has not thereby cut himself off from all contact and connection with that rejected Saviour, but he still sustains a relation to Him; and the message that he has refused to believe, is exercising an influence upon his character and his destiny.
Christ comes, I say, offered to us all in good faith on the part of God, as a foundation upon which we may build. And then comes in that strange mystery, that a man, consciously free, turns away from the offered mercy, and makes Him that was intended to be the basis of his life, the foundation of his hope, the rock on which, steadfast and serene, he should build up a temple-home for his soul to dwell in,-makes Him a stumbling-stone against which, by rejection and unbelief, he breaks himself!
My friend, will you let me lay this one thing upon your heart,-you cannot hinder the Gospel from influencing you somehow. Taking it in its lowest aspects, it is one of the forces of modern society, an element in our present civilisation. It is everywhere, it obtrudes itself on you at every turn, the air is saturated with its influence. To be unaffected by such an all-pervading phenomenon is impossible. To no individual member of the great whole of a nation is it given to isolate himself utterly from the community. Whether he oppose or whether he acquiesce in current opinions, to denude himself of the possessions which belong in common to his age and state of society is in either case impracticable. ‘That which cometh into your mind,’ said one of the prophets to the Jews who were trying to cut themselves loose from their national faith and their ancestral prerogatives, ‘That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries to serve wood and stone.’ Vain dream! You can no more say, I will pass the Gospel by, and it shall be nothing to me, I will simply let it alone, than you can say, I will shut myself up from other influences proper to my time and nation. You cannot go back to the old naked barbarism, and you cannot reduce the influence of Christianity, even considered merely as one of the characteristics of the times, to zero. You may fancy you are letting it alone, but it does not let you alone; it is here, and you cannot shut yourself off from it.
But it is not merely as a subtle and diffused influence that the Gospel exercises a permanent effect upon us. It is presented to each of us here individually, in the definite form of an actual offer of salvation for each, and of an actual demand of trust from each. The words pass into our souls, and thenceforward we can never be the same as if they had not been there. The smallest ray of light falling on a sensitive plate produces a chemical change that can never be undone again, and the light of Christ’s love, once brought to the knowledge and presented for the acceptance of a soul, stamps on it an ineffaceable sign of its having been there. The Gospel once heard, is always the Gospel which has been heard. Nothing can alter that. Once heard, it is henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer.
Christ does something to every one of us. His Gospel will tell upon you, it is telling upon you. If you disbelieve it, you are not the same as if you had never heard it. Never is the box of ointment opened without some savour from it abiding in every nostril to which its odour is wafted. Only the alternative, the awful ‘either, or,’ is open for each-the ‘savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death.’ To come back to the illustration of the text, Christ is something, and does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on which I build, poor, weak, sinful creature as I am, getting security, and sanctity, and strength from Him, I being a living stone’ built upon ‘the living stone,’ and partaking of the vitality of the foundation; or else He is the other thing, ‘a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to them which stumble at the word.’ Christ stands for ever in some kind of relation to, and exercises for ever some kind of influence on, every man who has heard the Gospel.
II. The immediate issue of rejection of Him is loss and maiming.
‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken.’ Just think for a moment, by way of illustrating this principle, first of all, of the positive harm which you do to yourself in the act of turning away from the mercy offered you in Christ; and then think for a moment of the negative loss which you sustain by the same act.
Note the positive harm. Am I uncharitable when I say that no man ever yet passively neglected the message of love in God’s Son; but that always this is the rude outline of the experience of people who know what it is to have a Saviour offered to them, and know what it is to put Him away,-that there is a feeble and transitory movement of heart and will; that Conscience says, ‘Thou oughtest’; that Will says, ‘I would’; that the heart is touched by some sense of that great and gentle vision of light and love which passes before the eye; that the man, as it were, like some fever-ridden patient, lifts himself up for an instant from the bed on which he is lying, and puts out a hand, and then falls back again, the vacillating, fevered, paralysed will recoiling from the resolution, and the conscience having power to say, ‘Thou oughtest,’ but no power to enforce the execution of its decrees, and the heart turning away from the salvation that it would have found in the love of love, to the loss that it finds in the love of self and earth? Or in other words, is it not true that every man who rejects Christ does in simple verity reject Him, and not merely neglect Him; that there is always an effort, that there is a struggle, feeble, perhaps, but real, which ends in the turning away? It is not that you stand there, and simply let Him go past. That were bad enough; but the fact is worse than that. It is that you turn your back upon Him. It is not that His hand is laid on yours, and yours remains dead and cold, and does not open to clasp it; but it is that His hand being laid on yours, you clench yours the tighter, and will not have it. And so every man {I believe} who rejects Christ does these things thereby-wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man, just because he has had a glimpse, and has willingly, and almost consciously, ‘loved darkness rather than light.’ Oh, brethren, the message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection. I have nothing to do now with pursuing that process to its end; but the natural result-if there were no future Judgment at all, if there were no movement ever given to the stone that you ought to build on-the natural result of the simple rejection of the Gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, pass away; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, ‘I will not have Christ to rule over me,’ the whole being degenerates, until manhood becomes devil-hood, and the soul is lost by its own want of faith. Unbelief is its own judgment; unbelief is its own condemnation; unbelief, as sin, is punished, like all other sins, by the perpetuation of deeper and darker forms of itself. Every time that you stifle a conviction, fight down a conviction, or drive away a conviction; and every time that you feebly move towards the decision, ‘I will trust Him, and love Him, and be His,’ yet fail to realise it, you have harmed your soul, you have made yourself a worse man, you have lowered the tone of your conscience, you have enfeebled your will, you have made your heart harder against love, you have drawn another horny scale over the eye, that will prevent you from seeing the light that is yonder; you have, as much as in you is, withdrawn from God, and approximated to the other pole of the universe {if I may say that}, to the dark and deadly antagonist of mercy, and goodness, and truth, and grace. ‘Whosoever falls on this stone,’ by the natural result of his unbelief, ‘shall be broken’ and maimed, and shall mar his own nature.
I need not dwell on the negative evil results of unbelief; the loss of that which is the only guide for a man, the taking away, or rather the failing to possess, that great love above us, that divine Spirit in us, by which only we are ever made what we ought to be. This only I would leave with you, in this part of my subject, Whoever is not in Christ is maimed. Only he that is ‘a man in Christ’ has come ‘to the measure of the stature of a perfect man.’ There, and there alone, do we get the power which will make us full-grown. There alone is the soul planted in that good soil in which, growing, it becomes as a rounded, perfect tree, with leaves and fruits in their season. All other men are half-men, quarter-men, fragments of men, parts of humanity exaggerated and contorted and distorted from the reconciling whole which the Christian ought to be, and in proportion to his Christianity is on the road to be, and one day will assuredly and actually be, a ‘complete and entire man, wanting nothing’; nothing maimed, nothing broken, the realisation of the ideal of humanity, the renewed copy ‘of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.’
There is another consideration closely connected with this second part of my subject, that I just mention and pass on. Not only by the act of rejection of Christ do we harm and maim ourselves, but also all attempts at opposition-formal opposition-to the Gospel as a system, stand self-convicted and self-condemned to speedy decay. What a commentary upon that word, ‘Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken,’ is the whole history of the heresies of the Church and the assaults of unbelief! Man after man, rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and nobler faculties than the people who oppose him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr to his error, sets himself up against the truth that is sphered in Jesus Christ; and the great divine message simply goes on its way, and all the babblement and noise are like so many bats flying against a light, or like the sea-birds that come sweeping up in the tempest and the night, to the hospitable Pharos that is upon the rock, and smite themselves dead against it. Sceptics well known in their generation, who made people’s hearts tremble for the ark of God, what has become of them? Their books lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of libraries; whilst there the Bible stands, with all the scribblings wiped off the page, as though they had never been! Opponents fire their small shot against the great Rock of Ages, and the little pellets fall flattened, and only scale off a bit of the moss that has gathered there! My brother, let the history of the past teach you and me, with other deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant confidence about all that opponents say nowadays; for all the modern opposition to this Gospel will go as all the past has done, and the newest systems which cut and carve at Christianity, will go to the tomb where all the rest have gone; and dead old infidelities will rise up from their thrones, and say to the bran-new ones of this generation, when their day is worked out, ‘Are ye also become weak as we? art thou also become like one of us?’ ‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken’: personally, he will be harmed; and his opinions, and his books, and his talk, and all his argumentation, will come to nothing, like the waves that break into impotent foam against the rocky cliffs.
III. Last of all, the issue, the ultimate issue, of unbelief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move.
The former clause has spoken about the harm that naturally follows unbelief whilst the Gospel is being preached; the latter clause speaks about the active agency of Christ when the end shall have come, and the preaching of the Gospel shall have merged into the act of judgment. I do not mean to dwell, brethren, upon that thought; it seems to me far too awful a one to be handled by my hands, at any rate. Let us leave it in the vagueness and dreadfulness of the words of Him who never spoke exaggerated words, and who, when He said, ‘It shall grind him to powder,’ meant {as it seems to me} nothing less than a destruction which, contrasted with the former remediable wounding and breaking, was a destruction utter, and hopeless, and everlasting, and without remedy. Ground-ground to powder! Any life left in that? any gathering up of that, and making a man of it again? All the humanity battered out of it, and the life clean gone from it! Does not that sound very much like ‘everlasting destruction from the presence of God and from the glory of His power’? Christ, silent now, will begin to speak; passive now, will begin to act. The stone comes down, and the fall of it will be awful. I remember, away up in a lonely Highland valley, where beneath a tall black cliff, all weather-worn, and cracked, and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the greensward that creeps round its base, a huge rock, that has fallen from the face of the precipice. A shepherd was passing beneath it; and suddenly, when the finger of God’s will touched it, and rent it from its ancient bed in the everlasting rock, it came down, leaping and bounding from pinnacle to pinnacle-and it fell; and the man that was beneath it is there now! ‘Ground to powder.’ Ah, my brethren, that is not my illustration-that is Christ’s. Therefore I say to you, since all that stand against Him shall become ‘as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor,’ and be swept utterly away, make Him the foundation on which you build; and when the storm sweeps away every ‘refuge of lies,’ you will be safe and serene, builded upon the Rock of Ages.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv42–44 Jehovah. Psa 118:23.
Lord’s
Jehovah. Psa 118:23.
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 vv42, 45 The application:
The application:
v. 42. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner; this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?
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v. 43. Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
v. 44. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
Christ does not mince words, but applies the parable with merciless power. He reminds the members of the Jewish council of the words of the prophet, Psa 118:22. The Jews were the chosen builders of the spiritual temple of God. But one condition of their continuing in the work was the acceptance of the stone which was selected by God to be the headstone of the corner. By the miracle of Christ’s resurrection their rejection of Him was judged. Christ has become the corner-stone of the New Testament Church, the foundation of the great spiritual structure which will be completed on the last day, Eph 2:20-22. Addressing Himself directly to them, Jesus tells them the doom they may expect: forfeiture of all their privileges in the Kingdom, which will be given to the heathen world. And there is still another word which applies here, that of the stone of stumbling and of the rock of offense, Isa 8:14. If any one takes offense at this Corner-stone and falls on Him, he will be shattered; but if the Stone should fall upon someone by the judgment of God, he will be crushed to powder and scattered to the winds, Luk 2:34-35. On the last day all those that refused obedience to the heavenly King and rejected His Son, thus despising the grace gained also for them, will find themselves ground to pieces by the inexorable justice of God. "But to be built on the Stone is to believe on Christ that He is our Savior. If, then, I am called to the Gospel, and accept it and believe it, then I am one of the stones laid upon Him and am considered saved, not for the sake of my merit and works, but that I am built and laid on the Cornerstone, which is done through the true Christian faith, as the children pray: I believe on Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of Mary, the virgin, suffered under Pilate; He is the polished and proved Corner-stone. If I believe in Him, then I am built upon Him and will be saved, as Isaiah says: He that trusts in Him will not be ashamed; there the prophet explains clearly that being built upon Him means to trust in Christ and believe in Him."
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 vv38, 40, 42, 43, 45 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Jesus continues telling a parable. (See: Parables)
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translationWords
heir
possess
inherit
vineyard
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 vv40–45 21:40 When the owner of the vineyard returns refers…
21:40 When the owner of the vineyard returns refers to the Lord’s coming in judgment (see 16:27; 24:1-36).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.