"Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vinedressers, and give the vineyard to others." (v.9)
Here in chapter 12 we find our Lord speaking to the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders with a parable. The parable concerns an absentee landlord (a common figure in those days) who had leased his vineyard to a tenant farmer, a vinedresser. At harvest time landlord sent his servants (multiple times) to collect some of the fruit, and each time they were met with violence, either beaten, stoned, or killed. Finally, the landowner sent his only beloved son to collect some of the harvest. Surely they would honor him. But the son was killed just like those before Him.
In this parable the religious leaders are the vinedressers, Israel is the vineyard and God is the absentee landlord. So we have God sending prophet after prophet to check on the progress of His tenant farmer, only to see each one of them beaten or killed. Finally, out of incomparable love, God sends His only Son to check on the harvest, but they rejected Him as well, nailing Him to a cross.
So, what will the landowner of the vineyard do? He will destroy the vinedressers (the religious leaders) and give the vineyard (the fruit of His promise) to others. The late Pastor Chuck Smith put it this way:
“The nation of Israel had failed to fulfill the purposes for which God had established them as a special people unto the Lord. They failed to bring forth that fruit that God was desiring the nation to produce. So, what will the Lord do? He will take away the privileges, the opportunities, and he will give them to others. And so, we see the door opened to the Gentiles, and Jesus here is prophesying and predicting that God is going to do His work, not among the Jews in this age, but more among the Gentiles. And thus, we see the work of God’s Spirit in a powerful way among those Gentile believers in Jesus Christ.”
But, make no mistake, judgment will fall upon those who did not reverence His Son.
The Truth: “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me.” (John 16:8-9)
