Why do people reject Jesus as the Savior? There are a host of reasons why people reject Jesus. In the parable recorded in Luke 20, Jesus talks about the Jews rejecting Him. But, in Romans 11, Paul will also warn Christians about not rejecting Jesus.
THE PARABLE OF THE VINE-GROWERS – 20:9-16:
The landowner rented out his vineyard and went away for a long time. At the time of harvest, he sent a slave to receive the produce. The vine-growers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. The owner sent another servant and the vine-growers beat him as well, treating him shamefully, and sent him back to the owner, empty-handed. The owner tried yet again, with a third slave. But they wounded him and cast him out.
Beginning in verse 13, we see how the owner is going to respond to such insubordination. He decides to send his “beloved son.” Observe that he is not sure if they will even respect the son! As the son approaches, the vine-growers have a conference and decide that, since he is the heir, they can kill him and then the vineyard would be theirs. Consequently, the vine-growers throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him.
The foregoing was the parable proper but then Jesus asks the logical question: What will the owner of the vineyard do to them? And Jesus gives the reasonable answer – “He will come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others.
When the Sanhedrin heard this, they yelled out – “May it never be!” (“God forbid!”; the only occasion outside of Paul’s writings) They understood the vineyard to be a reference to themselves, to the Jewish nation, and could not fathom the God of heaven giving the vineyard to someone else.
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THE APPLICATION OF THE PARABLE – 20:17-18:
The vineyard would, then, be the people of God who follow Him by faith, embodied at that time as the nation of Israel which was pictured in the Old Testament as a vineyard in passages like Isaiah 5:1-7. The vine-growers would be the leaders in charge of the vineyard – the Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, elders and so forth. The initial slaves sent to receive the harvest would be the prophets God sent to receive the fruit of faith and obedience from this vineyard (11:47-51; 13:31-35). But, the vine-growers sent them away empty-handed. There would be no fruit of the Spirit to give them.
So, the owner of the vineyard – God Himself – sends His beloved Son – Jesus Christ (3:22; 9:35). But the vine-growers decide that if they can kill the heir, then the nation of people will belong to them, not to God anymore. So, they kill the Son. But the end result of that is that God – the owner – sends His armies to destroy the vine growers and then gives the nation to another people, in this case, to the non-Jewish nation.
Jesus is the great stumbling block for all of mankind. What will you do with Jesus, my friend? The apostle Paul, in Romans 9-11, talks about the Jews’ rejection of Jesus and how this led to the salvation of Gentiles in Christ. But, in his famous allegory of the wild olive tree in chapter 11, he points out that if Christians do not also produce the fruit of repentance, they can be cut off as well (see Romans 9:3-6; 10:16-21; 11:17-23).
Let us stay faithful to Christ and continually produce the fruit of obedience in our lives.
