A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on September 13, 2026.
And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Surely not!” But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone’?
Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (Luke 20:9–18).[1]
You will recall, in the preceding passage, the chief priests, scribes, and elders confronted Jesus in the temple demanding, “Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority” (20:2). It sounded straight-forward, as if they were finally interested in the truth. But really, they were bent on Jesus’ destruction, which he knew and so responded, “I also will ask you a question. Now tell me, was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” (20:3). They were stumped. If they said John’s baptism was from heaven, Jesus would ask why they had not believed him. If they said it was from man, they feared the people’s response. So, they answered, “We do not know where it came from” (20:7). To which Jesus replied, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things” (20:8).
But that’s not all he said. While he wouldn’t answer their question, he would tell a parable about them. It’s a parable about God’s patience and their rejection, about their murderous hearts and God’s beloved Son. It’s a parable about rebellion but also vindication: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (20:17). It’s also a parable taken from another parable, from the poetry of Isaiah, a song sung of the Lord’s beloved who “had a vineyard on a very fertile hill” (Isa. 5:1). In the original parable, the vineyard was dug, cleared, planted, and given to yield the finest of wines. Sadly, despite such careful cultivation, the vineyard yielded not fine wine but wild grapes.
In response, the Lord pronounced his judgment upon the vineyard: its hedge would be removed and walls torn down; its land would be grazed over and trampled down; it would be neither pruned nor hoed but left to the briars and thorns, without a drop of rain from heaven. The once beautiful vineyard became a barren wasteland.
It’s a sad song, to be sure, but tragic too, because at the end the vineyard is revealed: “The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel” (Isa. 5:7). Not the pagan nations, not the enemies of Israel, but “the house of Israel” is the vineyard whose unfaithfulness awaits devastating judgment. So, when Jesus began with these words, “A man planted a vineyard,” you can imagine the attention his parable was given. They did not need to guess the reference or the inference. It was a parable about them.
Divine Patience and Persistent Rebellion (9-12)
To be clear, Jesus’ parable is not a precise retelling of Isaiah’s parable, and it differs on several points. It’s the parable per se that is telling but the context: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while” (20:9). The tenants were entrusted with a vineyard they neither planted nor provided but served as stewards of its bounty. This is the pleasant part of the parable, echoing perhaps the story of a favored people settling a land flowing with milk and honey.
Implied in the parable, the owner would expect his share of the produce, and so “he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard” (20:10). As any real investor knows, a return on investment is expected. And so, the owner sends his servant to collect. But almost immediately, the parable takes a dark turn, when the servant was not welcomed but humiliated: “the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed” (20:10).
Now, let us pause here and think about something Jesus says five verses later: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” (20:15). It would seem to me that this is where you would ask that question. I’m thinking like Martin Luther, who purportedly said, “If I were God and the world treated me the way it has treated Him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces.”[2] Wouldn’t you? But we learn something about the owner in this. He did not send a band of enforcers to sweep the vineyard clean; he sent another servant. And they beat him too, treating him shamefully, sending him too away empty-handed” (20:11). So, the owner sent another, whom they wounded and cast out” (20:12).
Now, I ask you: What kind of owner keeps sending his servants to a people who consistently and violently reject them? Answer: The same kind who repeatedly sent his prophets to his people. Jeremiah was persecuted; Zechariah was murdered; John the Baptist was beheaded, just to name a few. Shortly before he was stoned to death, I think Stephen summed it perfectly with this question: “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52).
But Israel’s history is not only the story of persistent human rebellion; it is the story of astonishing divine patience. Generation after generation, God spoke. Generation after generation, God warned. Generation after generation, God called his people to repentance. Generation after generation, God revealed that he “is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps. 103:8). And as he was with ancient Israel, so he is with us. The apostle Peter says the Lord is “patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).
But God’s patience does not grant a license to sin. Peter reminds us, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). We sin and nothing immediately happens, no lightning bolt of judgment from heaven. We resist the Word of God and life continues. We ignore conviction and the sun rises the next morning. We grow comfortable with some cherished sin, and because judgment does not immediately fall, we begin to presume upon God’s grace. But the patience of God is not meant to reassure our rebellion but to lead us to repentance.
Divine Love and Sinful Rejection (13-15)
Verse thirteen is clearly a transition point in Jesus’ parable. Up to this point, the owner has sent only his servants, but now he proposes the unthinkable: “I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him” (20:13). It’s almost hard to read the words: “perhaps they will respect him.” You know it, I know it, and everyone listening on that day knew it: They won’t respect the son. But the beloved son is sent. Will he be beaten, shamefully treated, wounded, cast out, and sent away empty-handed like the others? No, he is taken outside the vineyard and executed. What kind of monsters were these tenants? Who would execute an innocent man over a vineyard?
In the third chapter of his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul tells us something about the universal depravity of mankind: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10-12, 23). Such depravity belongs to us all. Who would execute an innocent man over a vineyard? They would, you would, I would, we all would.
But especially telling of the tenants’ depravity is their rationale. Listen carefully to their premeditation: “‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours’” (20:14). Their intent is to be the owner of the vineyard. Listen closely to this, and you will hear an echo from the serpent’s tongue in Eden: “You will not surely die. . . . you will be like God . . .” (Gen. 3:4-5). Just do it: You will not surely die! Just do it: You will be like God! Just do it, and you will own the vineyard! It was a lie spoken to our first parents, a lie told in Jesus’ parable, and a lie our sinful flesh tells us all the time.
What is surprising is not the lie but how effective it is. For example, consider the tenants’ argument: “This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours” (20:14). Sounds reasonable, right? No, it doesn’t. Were the tenants children of the owner? No. Did the tenants have a natural right to the vineyard? No. Would killing the heir give them title to the vineyard? No. So, their reason for killing the owner’s son is irrational. And that’s the point: Sin is irrational.
Thomas Aquinas said sin is contra rationem, an act contrary to reason.[3] Sin does not make logical sense when viewed through God’s truth. Yet, as Jesus’ parable reminds, our sinful flesh is remarkably convincing, leading us not only to sin but to justify it. And killing the heir of the vineyard made as much sense as crucifying “the Lord of glory.” But they did, the apostle Paul says, not understanding what they had done (1 Cor. 2:8). Sin makes fools of us all.
This should be a caution to us all. Beware of dismissing or justifying sin in your life. It makes you more stupid (than usual). Justifying your sin makes sense only to your sinful flesh. Instead, confess your sin; be done with it; and walk in obedience to Christ, which is the rational truth of God.
Of course, one could argue that the owner sending his beloved son after three rejected servants was irrational, too. But while the tenants received the son with murderous hatred, we know the true Owner sent his son in love:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV).
The cross does indeed reveal the wickedness of man, but Calvary is not the triumph of human wickedness; it is the triumph of divine love. What the murderous “tenants” of Israel meant for evil, God meant for good.[4] The Son was rejected for our salvation.
Divine Judgment and Sinners Redeemed (16-18)
Returning to Jesus’ parable, the question is asked: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” (20:15). Answer: “He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (20:16). And it is here that the crowd, surely transfixed by the story, cries out, “Surely not!” Surely not? Did they not expect the owner’s judgment? The tenants were murderers deserving swift justice. Surely not? Did they expect the tenants to continue in the owner’s favor?
And it is here that we realize that the crowd was not only fully engaged in listening to Jesus’ story; they understood it. They understood the implication of the owner and vineyard, but to imply that the vineyard they regarded as theirs would be given to others was too much. They could not accept even a simple story that implied that the vineyard would be given to someone other than old covenant Israel. “‘Surely not!’ they cry.”
And then, Luke tells us, Jesus “looked directly at them” (20:17), as if to emphasize the intent of his parable. And focused intently upon them, Jesus then asks, “What then is this that is written: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?” (20:17). It’s a verse from Psalm 118, ironically the very same psalm the multitude sang at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” (19:38). In the psalm, it turns out, the “King who comes in the name of the Lord” is the “stone that the builders rejected,” who becomes “the cornerstone,” the cornerstone of his kingdom. Surely not? Surely, yes!
In first-century architecture, a cornerstone was either “a stone laid at the base of two walls to shore up the foundation” or “a capstone that helped hold two walls together.”[5] Whatever the case, the cornerstone rejected by the house of Israel is “Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:20-21). In his first epistle, the apostle Peter says that those who come to Christ are themselves being built up “as living stones” into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. These “living stones” then are the “others” to whom the vineyard is given. God, who is faithful to his covenant promise, fulfills its purpose in Christ: The people of God then are not defined by the tribe, tongue, or nation but through faith in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike. In Christ, Paul says, we “are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:20-22).
But this, Jesus says, is not all the cornerstone will do: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (20:18). That which joins together and builds may also crush. To reject the Son therefore is to welcome eternal damnation.
Such a sobering truth requires a question of us all: What will we do with the Son? God has been patient with sinners and sent his beloved Son in love. And though men rejected him, cast him out, and crucified him, God raised him from the dead and made him the cornerstone of his kingdom. We cannot undo his authority by rejecting it, nor prevent his reign by refusing it. But the wonder of the gospel is that this same cornerstone who will crush all who persist in unbelief receives every sinner who comes to him in faith.
So, do not stumble over the Son. Do not presume upon the patience of God. Come to Christ, rest upon Christ, and find in the rejected Son the sure foundation of your forgiveness, your righteousness, indeed, your eternal salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is the LORD’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes (Ps. 118:22-23).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/l/luther/tabletalk/cache/tabletalk.pdf
[3] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-IIae Q. 71, A.6, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2071.htm#article6.
[4] Gen. 50:20
[5] “Crushed by the Cornerstone,” Tabletalk, October 4, 2023, 33.
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 