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Matthew 21:23-46
00:30:01
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber, professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into 21:23-46.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to form. Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute. And Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, professor of Scripture at the Augusta Institute. And we're going to continue our ongoing Bible study through the Gospel of Matthew. So last time we left off about halfway through Matthew chapter 21. So we're going to pick up in verse 23, and we just covered Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem and all the events and the significance of that, the cursing of the fig tree. And now he comes, comes back and enters the temple. And of course, now, you know, he's really. The crowds, the disciples, there's a lot of enthusiasm, There's a lot of expectation and hope. And yet the leadership of Jerusalem is not so excited. And so they've been preparing how they're going to deal with this. And so they've got a big question for our Lord, don't they?
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B
Right. Well, the question is, by what authority are you doing these things and specifically acting in the temple, Right? Who do you think you are? You're not a Levite, you're not a.
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A
Priest, you're not part of the Sanhedrin here, right?
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B
Who do you think you are? And so Jesus turns tables on them and says, well, I'll ask you. He says, I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. And then he asks them whether John the Baptist's baptism came from heaven or whether it was of men, as he.
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A
Puts it, which means basically, was John the Baptist really commissioned by God? Is he an official prophet of God or was he just trying to be a holy man bigger than his britches, and he wasn't really sent by God.
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B
That's right. And they are now in a bind and they recognize this. They say if we say it's from heaven, he will say, well, why didn't you not believe him? But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd because they all think that John was a prophet. And so they.
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A
And you know, the beautiful thing about this is they didn't recognize John the Baptist. They didn't get behind him, they didn't acknowledge him. And as they position themselves here, they kind of try to stay neutral, right?
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B
That's right.
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A
But it's exactly the example that Jesus needs to show them by what authority he does these things.
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B
That's right.
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A
Because by even bringing up John the Baptist, who is a prophet sent by God, right? He is saying, basically, you know, where did I get my authority? From heaven.
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B
That's right.
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A
I didn't get it from you. I didn't get it from the Sanhedrin. I got it the same place John the Baptist did, because John the Baptist just summoned all of Israel, and he wasn't given licensing and privileges from the temple or from the Sanhedrin. So it's an interesting. Jesus is answering their question by the very example and the question he poses with John.
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B
Now, let this stay in the background. We're going to come back to this. I want to. Tim, if it's okay, go ahead. I'd like to move forward and, like, talk briefly about this short parable, but I'd like to spend the bulk of our time on the parable of the wicked tenants, which is one of the most important parables, in my opinion, in all of the Gospels. So after this, Jesus says, what do you think? A man had two sons, and he went to the first and he said, go work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward, he changed his mind and went and he went to the other son and said the same. And he said, I go, sir. But he didn't go. Which of the two did the will of his father? And they said the first. Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. So the idea is that the temple leaders are saying, oh, yeah, we do the will of God. Sure.
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We are obedient, but they're not actually doing the things of God. And Jesus sort of has them because they have not acknowledged John the Baptist. The crowd who's watching this all unfold knows they didn't do what John the Baptist said that they're supposed to do.
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A
And Jesus then comes in and confirms John the Baptist's authority, because in the very next verse, he says, for John came to you in the way of righteousness.
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B
That's right.
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In other words, John was a holy man, which meant he was doing the will of God.
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B
That's right.
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So Jesus is saying, you know, John the Baptist was legit.
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B
That's right. And you didn't believe him. So that's the key problem is that the crowd actually agrees with Jesus that John the Baptist was a prophet. Right. And this is where the temple establishment is really in a bind. And the tax collectors and the prostitutes, they believed him, and they went out and they confessed their sins and they were baptized for the repentance of their sins or as a sign of their repentance. And so here Jesus is basically explaining that just because they may be the priests, just because they may be the ones in charge of the temple. They can't rest on that. They can't say, oh, obviously everybody should listen to us. We have divine authority and we have God's approval.
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A
Yeah, a holy office doesn't excuse you from doing God's holy will.
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B
That's right.
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A
And that's really. And so what's astonishing here is that Jesus finds the greatest unbelief amongst the most religious and amongst Israel's religious leaders. And so sometimes I think people in the church get shocked or scandalized when they find maybe a cleric or a church leader who's behaving in such a way that it doesn't seem that they're living, that they have living faith in them. Right. And the question I always say, look, we have found that throughout salvation history, I mean Jesus is encountering that here. We're going to see that with Judas, one of Jesus own 12, hand picked, who's going to fail to believe Jesus. And then we saw this all the way through the story of Israel, even with Aaron, the first high priest and his two sons, his sons are going to, to misabuse their office and be punished. And so disbelief and arrogance amongst the religious leadership of God's people is nothing new under the sun.
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B
Right.
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A
And as tragic as it is, I think it's worth highlighting because it gives us perspective on today. Right, because when people encounter a scandal today in a religious leader, they're like, well, if there's a priest who's not believing, or even a bishop or a cardinal or, or some church prelate, they get so scandalized, they're like, well that can't be the church. No, it can be the Church of God. It's just that the church of God is going to have wheat and tares sown together until the final judgment.
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B
That's right. Great point. All right, so then we go on. Now Jesus says here another parable. Now notice Jesus is telling parables within the context of him being identified as the son of David. And if you go back to the Old Testament, you'll find Solomon was well known for his parable. So here's yet another way Jesus is indicating his Davidic messianic identity. There was a householder who planted a vineyard and he set a hedge around it and he dug a wine press in it and he built a tower and he let it out to tenants. So here we have the owner doing so much work, obviously working hard, putting all the right thought and care into his vineyard and he let it out to tenants. And we actually have papyrus, we have Letters from the first century. We know this was a common practice of owners lending out their, their farms to others who would manage it for them. And when the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants.
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A
And now. Yeah, hold up, hold up there. Because there's so much to cover.
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B
Let's. Okay, great. Let's stop there. Great.
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A
Because this reminds me, and you know, there's a great echo that Jesus is retelling a story from Isaiah, chapter five.
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B
That's right.
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A
And it's the story of the vineyard. And that story of the vineyard, I remember in a graduate class reading through that text in Hebrew in a very detailed way. And I love that the Hebrew what happens is there's going to be bad fruit. But the fruit in Isaiah 5, well, the same description. You have an owner, you have a vineyard on a very fertile hill, which probably signifies Mount Zion. And he builds a wall around it to protect the vineyard from wild beasts and robbers. He has a tower, he has a vat to store the wine. And all that is here that Jesus has in Isaiah, the problem is going to be the fruit itself. It's wild grapes. Literally in the Hebrew, stinking grapes. I remember that was an eye opener for me when I read in the Hebrew, because none of the English translations quite did a literal job on that. So it was stinking grapes. In other words, just putrid bad fruit. But here the fruit is good, but the tenants have absconded the fruit. And that's what we're gonna see happening in this next section.
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B
Right. And there's so many parallels here between Jesus parable and Isaiah 5. So there really can be no doubt that Isaiah 5 is in the backdrop. We have a hedge that is set around the vineyard. Both in the Greek version of this, it's the same word. We have builders who dug a winepress in both places. And then the last thing I just wanna highlight is they built a tower or a watchtower. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, that's seen as the image of the temple. So there's a lot going on in Jesus's parable. There's also likely an allusion to 2 Chronicles. At the end of 2 Chronicles, we read that the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, the prophets, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no Remedy. So the idea of a vineyard, all right, they understand this is an allusion to Isaiah 5. Stinking grapes. Right? Stinking fruit, bad fruit. This relates to some of the imagery we've already been seeing in the Gospel of the Fig Tree episode. Right. Where the fruit wasn't there, that the owner of the vineyard, so to speak, God is looking for. But what's also significant is the messengers. The messengers represent the prophets. And so in the parable of the vineyard, what happens is.
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God sends his messengers to his people, he sends his prophets and. And they are rejected, they are abused, until finally.
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A
He sends his son. And so the echoes with Isaiah 5, then, you know, and of course, as you mentioned, and there's also the Targum, Isaiah, which clearly identifies the vineyard in Isaiah 5 as the temple.
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B
Yeah.
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And the hill that the vineyard's on is Mount Zion. And so it's clear that Isaiah is making an allusion to Mount Zion and the temple.
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And by the way, the temple had a huge golden vine.
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I was just going to say that. Yeah, no, no, good, though. Yep.
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So, yeah. So you think of.
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Talk about that registration that Josephus describes.
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The.
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The plating around the sanctuary, right, in gold, was of a vineyard. And so you had these gold, these grape clusters. And Josephus talks about how when the sun shone on that gold, it was almost blinding.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so here Jesus is in the temple talking about a vineyard, and you have the visual aid of the temple as Herod the Great built it. You also have this tradition from Isaiah. So all these traditions, it's all coming together.
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B
Jesus is saying, as you said, this takes place in the temple. So the illusions are not accidental, the connections are not accidental. And so he sends his son, and they said, they will respect my son. When the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. I can't resist. So in Mark's version of this parable, it says he sent his beloved son, which is a really nice allusion to the story of Abraham and Isaac. We've already mentioned that in the Gospel of Matthew, that imagery is very important. Right. Jesus is the son of David, the son of Abraham, and yet Matthew doesn't mention the beloved son, which is really important. It shows us that the Gospel writers aren't always just sort of like doing things for Old Testament significance. But there are some historical details that shape them anyway, the narrative. But they took him. They cast him out of the vineyard and they killed him. When, therefore, the owner. Now this is fascinating. They took him, they Cast him out of the vineyard and they killed him. Notice that.
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They cast him out of the vineyard. They kill him outside of the vineyard. This is going to mirror what happens to Jesus. Jesus is taken out of the city, right. And he's crucified outside of the city. It is interesting. There's no mention of a burial of the Son. Now, some scholars say, well, this story was invented after the time of Jesus as a way of explaining Jesus's death and his resurrection. But if they invented this story, you would have expected some mention of them burying him because the empty tomb is so important to the story. So there's a little detail there I think is significant historically. When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And they said, he will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants and who will give him the fruits in their season. So the key element of the story is that the vineyard is going to be led out to others. Now, there have been people who have misinterpreted this parable, right?
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No, there's no doubt about it. And I think, you know, to start back to what Jesus is first answering. And we'll come back to that.
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B
Yeah.
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Jesus, you know, was asked, by what authority Jesus, do you do these things?
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B
Right.
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A
First he goes to John the Baptist. And then that's case, you know, parable one and example of, I'm getting this from heaven, like John the Baptist. But secondly tells this parable of a vineyard that's rented out to tenants. And basically what he's saying is, to the chief priests and to the scribes and the leaders, you're tenants. This is not your vineyard.
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B
That's right.
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A
It's my father's vineyard. Who's the owner? You're the tenants. It's your authority that's tenuous. I'm the Son that was sent on behalf of the Father, right? So I'm the heir and the owner. So what he has done in this parable is he's displaced where they think, this is our temple, we're the authority over it. And he's reminding them that they're just simply stewards. And that's so important, you know, for us to think about, but also for clergy to think about that the clergy and the bishops, they are the stewards. And so they have the authority of a diocese of a church, but they're stewards. And the one who owns the church, the one who owns the vineyard, is the Father in Heaven and Jesus is the Son who's The heir and ultimately the church is Jesus Church.
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B
That's right. That's right. And the key figures here are. Well, let's just finish the parable. So one thing I do want to say is a lot of people have misinterpreted this parable as if it is about God rejecting Israel and now choosing Gentiles. But that's not the point. The vineyard doesn't change. Right. It's the tenants who change. And the tenants are, as we'll see, clearly identified with the chief priests and the temple establishment. Right. What this parable is about is that Jesus is going to establish new leaders. He's going to establish new priests. And we know who those people are. It's the disciples. They're the ones that Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom too, which is a priestly image.
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Peter is the rock that he's going to build his church on.
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B
And Matthew tells us that the 12 apostles are going to judge the 12 tribes of Israel, which is another priestly image. So the old priests are going to be replaced with new priests. And just to make sure that the temple imagery is clearly there, Jesus then quotes from from a passage that talks about temple building. He says he's quoting now from Psalm 118. He says, have you never read in the Scriptures, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Now it seems weird, he was talking about a son, and now all of a sudden he's talking about a stone. So why does he move there?
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A
That's a great question. And I think in the Hebrew there's a play between Ben Son and Eben stone.
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B
And.
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And you have this idea of Jesus who comes in with his triumphal procession. Earlier in the chapter with Psalm 118, this line is again from Psalm 118.
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B
That's right.
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A
And that's going to be important. And Psalm 118 here is celebrating that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And this is the Lord's doing it. In other words, it was the Lord's work. It's marvelous in our eyes. And I think this is part of a reference back to the story of Ezra and nehemiah in Ezra 3, where Ezra comes back with the exiles. Ezra sets up the altar and starts the foundation of the temple. And the elders who saw the former temple in its glory and splendor, the temple of Solomon, they weep and wail. And the younger generation that grew up in Babylon and doesn't know the old liturgy, right. They only know the Novus Ordo here. They only know the new temple. They are shouting for excitement and joy that they're getting a new altar and the foundation of the temple is now being laid. And so Ezra says that you couldn't tell the wailing from the joy. It was all taken up in the crowd. But what then happens is the older generations despairs of these small beginnings. As the prophet Haggai will say, you who despise the day of small beginnings. And they stop building the temple and investing in it. And God has to send prophets to tell them to continue to build the temple. And eventually the temple is built and it's glorious and it's. And it's grand. And so the idea here is Jesus is the stone which the builders rejected.
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B
Right. Because he's just announced that the temple is going to be destroyed. He's cited Jeremiah's prophecy that the earthly temple, this is not the eschatological temple. So what is the eschatological temple? Jesus then goes on to tell the story of the Son, who's the stone. And in Psalm 118, the building that is being built, it's not the library, you know, it's not an in and out hamburger joint. It is as glorious as that would be. I love in n out. But what they're building is a temple. And so Jesus talks, begins talking about a new temple project because the question's been hung in the air, right, if the Jerusalem temple is going to be destroyed. But Isaiah announced that there'd be a future temple, what is it? Jesus is identifying it with himself. And what's remarkable is he's just a cornerstone.
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A
Yeah.
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In other words, the temple, it's going to be more than just Jesus. And first Peter will explain exactly that.
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We're all living stones built upon the foundation of Jesus.
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B
That's right.
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A
And so it's such a beautiful thing. And I also wonder, Michael, if there's not an illusion here with moving from sun to stone, if there's not an illusion here to Daniel. Daniel talks about the kingdom. And you've got a stone that comes in and destroys the idol and the nations and brings about the kingdom of God. And then the other image for that kingdom of God is the Son of man. So you have stone and son in Daniel. And I think that's exactly what Jesus is doing. If you have ears to hear the prophet Daniel, Jesus is just given the most extraordinary interpretation of the book of Daniel.
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B
So what's fascinating is he goes on to say, it'll be taken away from you. And then he says, and he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. Now, there's a textual issue here whether or not this verse actually was originally in Matthew. We know it's in the Luke inversion. So either way, the Gospel writers attest that Jesus says this. But what is this idea of a stone that's gonna be broken? If it falls on anyone, it'll crush him. You're right. It's from Daniel 2, where we read about a stone that's cut from no human hand and it strikes this image. And the stone that struck image, it goes on to say, became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Now, the idea of a mountain that grows, a mountain that fills the whole earth, that's from Isaiah 2. It's from Micah 4. It's an image of Zion in the temple. So here we have another image of.
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A
Which means the faith of Israel is spreading throughout the world, right?
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B
But also that there is a new temple, right? The stone becomes a great mountain that grows. That's the temple mountain. And Jesus is going to establish that new temple. And that new temple is not just going to be him. He's only the cornerstone, or he is the cornerstone, but he's already told Peter, on this rock, I will build my church in the church as identified in Matthew as that temple.
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A
So for everybody out there, I think it's just to reflect on the fact that this stone, the cornerstone that was rejected, but the Lord will vindicate it and make it great. And then in Daniel, the stone becomes a mountain that grows and fills the whole world. You, wherever you live, you are one of those living stones. You are part of exactly what starts right here with Jesus. And you are part of that temple that's all over the world. Whether you're in Canada, Singapore, we've got people watching us from form that are really all over the world. Africa, you name it. We've got people everywhere. And you're part of that extended temple that's covering the globe.
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B
And we are all united. And these living stones, when he's Peter, who. We could also reflect on what we just read in Matthew, right? The living stones are the ones who ultimately recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Ones who recognize Jesus as the Messiah are not the cultural elite. They're not the ones who are wise in their own understanding. It's the infants. So if we want to be part of this new temple, we're going to need to remain holy, of course, and remain humble. I should say in verse 45, the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables and they perceived that he was speaking about them, right? So they are the ones that are going to have the vineyard taken from them. They are the ones that are going to lose, in a sense, the kingdom, the governance of the kingdom, who's going to receive it? It's going to be the priests of the new Covenant, especially the apostles. And so we are that new temple. And by virtue of our baptism, we're all priests, we're all part of this temple. What do you do in a temple? You offer sacrifice, right? And so we make sacrifices. We make sacrifices by giving alms. We make sacrifices by carrying, picking up our cross and following after Jesus. And all of these things, we are exhibiting the way we are part of the new temple.
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A
You know, one of the great tragedies in this story, Michael, is that the leadership couldn't recognize the day of the Lord. And they despised the builders rejected. And of course, the builders rejected in Ezra 3, which was the priests and the elder Levites who rejected this day of small beginnings. And you know what Jesus is doing here? He's starting small. You know, he's not coming with the elites and with the power of Jerusalem and the city. He's coming as a Galilean and son of David humbly riding in as a donkey. But they just can't see this as significant enough. And I think.
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B
Or like in Ezra and Nehemiah's day, with the temple.
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A
Exactly.
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B
They couldn't recognize that this would be a great temple because of its humble beginnings.
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A
Exactly. And so the danger is we could miss humble beginnings. And I think, you know, St. John Paul II talked about a new evangelization and a renewal of the church. And, you know, that renewal is starting out humbly and small. And I think a lot of people thought, well, gosh, John Paul said, there's going to be a new evangelization. And I thought, you know, in a few years, five years, 10 years, the church would be renewed and we would be evangelizing the world and things would be great. And, you know, I think people are looking big, and here's the lesson for us. We've got to not despise the day of small beginnings and let God slowly grow something. And I think that's what's happening with the rebuilding of the temple of God, which is the church in the work of the new evangelization. What do you think about that, Michael?
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B
I think that's a great. And I think that's a great Application of this passage. I think it's really important to recognize the idea of the stone rejected by the builders. You know, that same verb that Jesus uses for reject, the same verb that he uses in his Passion predictions, where he talks about how the Son of Man will be rejected. Right.
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A
By the leaders and the elders.
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B
By the leaders. And so. And who do they reject? It's the stone. It's nothing. Builders is a really interesting term there because it was the term that was used in other Jewish sources for the leadership. Right. So the ones who are the leaders, they look at the stone and say, this is no good. Right. And it ends up being the capstone. It ends up being the most important stone. And so in the eyes of the world, the things that we're doing in terms of the new evangelization may not make a lot of sense. You know, people ask me, I go get a haircut or something. What do you do? Or I'll say, I'm going to record a show with Tim Gray. I need to get a haircut.
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I got to get my hair, because I'm doing this video. And they'll say, oh, what is it for? And I'll start telling them about our work here at the Augustine Institute. People in the world will say, is that really all that significant? Is that really all that important? How many people watch.
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Those kinds of questions? We recognize the stone that's rejected by the world is the one that becomes the capstone. So I sort of like the fact that we at the Augusta Institute are small and that, you know, if I go get a haircut, people are like, oh, the Augusta is. Of course, I watch forums every week. You know, that has happened. But I also like being part of God's work, which is often rejected in the eyes of the world. That's how you really know that the true temple is being built, Right?
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A
Yeah. It's so important, and I think.
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It'S crucial for us to be patient with small beginnings. And I know at the Augusta Institute, we started with 29 students, most of them part time.
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B
We have almost 500 now. Yep.
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A
And so it's amazing to see how the graduate school has grown.
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B
Formed.
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A
We started it with duct tape and some wires, and it was pretty simplistic. And now it has, you know, 1.1 million plus people who are part of the formed family. And it's a small beginning. And again, we're still small, but we're going to be patient and let God build it, because he's got to be the builder. What is it? Psalm 127. It says, unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the laborers labor to build it. And so it's got to be God's work. But the beautiful thing in this. And I like how you brought out Peter's first letter. We're all called to be living stones. I mean, Jesus is the foundation we have to build on Jesus, no doubt about it, he's the foundation. And yet God invites you and I to be part of his work, to be part of his new temple. And what does it mean for us to be temple? It's just in the last minute here, Michael, what's the takeaway for people at home to see themselves as a temple, as part of this temple?
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B
Two things immediately come to mind when you think about the temple. Number one, it's the place where God dwells. And so as the church, God dwells with us. He's present in the world through us. That's a high calling. The second thing about the temple is it's places where sacrifices are offered and we are called to offer all that we have and all that we are to God. Those sacrifices often affected atonement, and Jesus brings atonement through his death. But he wants us to participate in that. And by our good deeds, by cooperating with him, we share in his work of redemption for the world.
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A
It's a great invitation to share in that mission.
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B
Amen.
- [28:46]
A
It is a great invitation indeed. Well, next time we're going to cover Matthew, chapter 22. And there's some incredible teaching Jesus gives again in the context of the temple. And we're going to see a great parable that I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding, the parable of the wedding feast. But there's some great things there we're going to open up. Whether or not you pay taxes to Caesar and what does that mean? And some other wonderful content. Basically, we're going to see Jesus put to the test three times. And that'll echo the beginning of the gospel, where Jesus is put to the test by the great Satan, the great enemy of humanity in Israel. So we're going to see all that. Well, you know, make sure you have your Bibles we love. If you want to know, if you haven't heard, if you're just joining us, we're using the English Standard version, the ESV Catholic Edition, the esvce, the August Institute has the privilege of publishing that. We have all kinds of versions. Paperback, hardcover, which is really gorgeous. I think it's the nicest produced hardcover Bible I've ever seen. I have to say what we did.
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B
It opens up and it stays flat.
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A
Which is really nice. That's pretty nice. And we have leather, too. And you can get it at Catholic market. You can get any of our Bibles at Catholic market. And it might make it easier for you to follow along with us, what we're reading. And we love it. Invite some other people to join next time you watch the Bible study. And we wish the Lord to bless and keep you.