The Parable of the Tenants
God planted a nation (vineyard) and dressed it well, setting judges (tenants) over the people to maintain the nation. When the nation began to transgress God’s ways, He sent servants (prophets) to point them back to God in righteousness. However, the nation persecuted these prophets even to the point of death, one after the other. Finally, God determined that He’d send His only Son, for He thought that they would revere Him. However, they brutally murdered Him. Jesus told this parable about the priests, religious scholars and leaders, who sought to kill Him.
Paying Taxes to Caesar
The Pharisees and religious elite try to make Him fail at every turn, but they don’t realize that they are proving the point of the parable He told about the parable of the tenants. Whose image was on the coin? That of Cesar. So Jesus said give to Cesar what belongs to him and to God what belongs to Him. Don’t allow the image of Cesar to overtake your heart, but rather, let the image of God be upon your heart.
A Question about Marriage
The Sadducees were another of the prominent religious groups of Jesus’ time which did not believe that there was a resurrection of the dead. They twisted one of the laws of Moses found in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 to support their religious doctrine. This particular law required a man to marry his brother’s widow in order to bear children for his deceased brother’s name. The Sadducees tried to undermine the reality of a resurrection of the dead by coming up with a scenario in which the wife was wed to several brothers who never gave her an heir. They thought it was silly to think that she would be the wife of all those men at the resurrection, so they, in their delusion, wrote off the concept of resurrection completely. Jesus said to the Sadducees that they were in utter error because they didn’t know the scriptures or the power of God. The spiritual reality is that there is a resurrection and once resurrected, such earthly things as marriage and espousal ownership are meaningless in that realm.
The Greatest Commandment
Deuteronomy 6:3-5 says:
3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Jesus, Son of David – Lord of David
David prophesied of the promised Christ many years before He came in Psalm 22 and Psalm 110:1. He peered into the future and saw the Messiah sitting on the right hand of God the Father. Jesus was telling the religious elite that He was both the descendant of David and the Lord of David.
Jesus Warns Against the Religious Scholars
The religious scholars were harped on the superficial and did not embrace the standards of mercy and truth. They loved accolades from men and to be recognized by men. Because they were tasked with the weighty and significant responsibility of being leaders of the people, to call them back to God, they will be stripped of their supposed honor and experience a greater damnation at the time of judgement.
Summary
- Whose image is on your heart, 17
- Be found doing the work not stealing the will, 2-7
- Don’t be a hypocrite, 15
- It doesn’t matter how much you cast in, its about the heart there in, 44
- Beware of the Scribes who love to proclamate in your face, 38
- Don’t play while the Lord’s away, 1
- Don’t let Satan still or kill God’s will for you, 7
- You can’t interpret the word of God with carnal understanding, 10-11, 24, 26, 29-31, 36-37
- Love the Lord with all you’ve got, 30
- There’s going to be a resurrection, 25-26
