Matthew 21

Mt 21:1-9.

CHRIST'S

TRIUMPHAL

ENTRY INTO

JERUSALEM ON THE

FIRST

DAY OF THE

WEEK.

Mr 11:1-11;

Lu 19:29-40;

Joh 12:12-19).

For the exposition of this majestic scene--recorded, as will be seen,

Lu 19:29-40.

Mt 21:10-22.

STIR ABOUT

HIM IN THE

CITY--SECOND

CLEANSING OF THE

TEMPLE, AND

MIRACLES

THERE--GLORIOUS

VINDICATION OF THE

CHILDREN'S

TESTIMONY--THE

BARREN

FIG

TREE

CURSED, WITH

LESSONS FROM

IT.

Mr 11:11-26;

Lu 19:45-48).

For the exposition, see on

Lu 19:45-48;

and

Mr 11:12-26.

Mt 21:23-46.

THE

AUTHORITY OF

JESUS

QUESTIONED AND THE

REPLY--THE

PARABLES OF THE

TWO

SONS, AND OF THE

WICKED

HUSBANDMAN.

Mr 11:27-12:12;

Lu 20:1-19).

Now commences, as ALFORD remarks, that series of parables and discourses

of our Lord with His enemies, in which He develops, more completely than

ever before, His hostility to their hypocrisy and iniquity: and so they

are stirred up to compass His death.

The Authority of Jesus Questioned, and the Reply

(Mt 21:23-27).

23. By what authority doest thou these things!--referring particularly

to the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the temple,

and who gave thee this authority?

24. And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one

thing, &c.

25. The baptism of John--meaning his whole mission and ministry, of

which baptism was the proper character.

whence was it? from heaven, or of men?--What wisdom there was in

this way of meeting their question will best appear by their reply.

If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then

believe him?--"Why did ye not believe the testimony which he bore to

Me, as the promised and expected Messiah?" for that was the burden of

John's whole testimony.

26. But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people--rather, "the

multitude." In Luke

(Lu 20:6)

it is, "all the people will stone us"--"stone us to death."

for all hold John as a prophet--Crooked, cringing hypocrites! No

wonder Jesus gave you no answer.

27. And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell--Evidently their

difficulty was, how to answer, so as neither to shake their

determination to reject the claims of Christ nor damage their reputation

with the people. For the truth itself they cared nothing whatever.

Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things--What composure

and dignity of wisdom does our Lord here display, as He turns their

question upon themselves, and, while revealing His knowledge of their

hypocrisy, closes their mouths! Taking advantage of the surprise,

silence, and awe produced by this reply, our Lord followed it up

immediately by the two following parables.

Parable of the Two Sons

(Mt 21:28-32).

28. But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the

first and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard--for true religion

is a practical thing, a "bringing forth fruit unto God."

29. He answered and said, I will not--TRENCH notices the rudeness of

this answer, and the total absence of any attempt to excuse such

disobedience, both characteristic; representing careless, reckless

sinners resisting God to His face.

30. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and

said, I go, sir--"I, sir." The emphatic "I," here, denotes the

self-righteous complacency which says, "God, I thank thee that I am

not as other men"

(Lu 18:11).

and went not--He did not "afterward repent" and refuse to go; for

there was here no intention to go. It is the class that "say and do

not"

(Mt 23:3)

--a falseness more abominable to God, says STIER,

than any "I will not."

31. Whether of them twain did the will of his Father? They say unto

him, The first--Now comes the application.

Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and

the harlots go--or, "are going"; even now entering, while ye hold back.

into the kingdom of God before you--The publicans and the harlots were

the first son, who, when told to work in the Lord's vineyard, said, I

will not; but afterwards repented and went. Their early life was a flat

and flagrant refusal to do what they were commanded; it was one

continued rebellion against the authority of God. The chief priests and

the elders of the people, with whom our Lord was now speaking, were the

second son, who said, I go, sir, but went not. They were early called,

and all their life long professed obedience to God, but never rendered

it; their life was one of continued disobedience.

32. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness--that is,

calling you to repentance; as Noah is styled "a preacher of

righteousness"

(2Pe 2:5),

when like the Baptist he warned the old world to "flee from the wrath

to come."

and ye believed him not--They did not reject him; nay, they "were

willing for a season to rejoice in his light"

(Joh 5:35);

but they would not receive his testimony to Jesus.

but the publicans and the harlots believed him--Of the publicans this

is twice expressly recorded,

Lu 3:12; 7:29.

Of the harlots, then, the same may be taken for granted, though the

fact is not expressly recorded. These outcasts gladly believed the

testimony of John to the coming Saviour, and so hastened to Jesus when

He came. See

Lu 7:37; 15:1,

&c.

and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might

believe him--Instead of being "provoked to jealousy" by their example,

ye have seen them flocking to the Saviour and getting to heaven,

unmoved.

Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen

(Mt 21:33-46).

33. Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which

planted a vineyard--(See on

Lu 13:6).

and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a

tower--These details are taken, as is the basis of the parable itself,

from that beautiful parable of

Isa 5:1-7,

in order to fix down the application and sustain it by Old Testament

authority.

and let it out to husbandmen--These are just the ordinary spiritual

guides of the people, under whose care and culture the fruits of

righteousness are expected to spring up.

and went into a far country--"for a long time"

(Lu 20:9),

leaving the vineyard to the laws of the spiritual husbandry during the

whole time of the Jewish economy. On this phraseology, see on

Mr 4:26.

34. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants

to the husbandmen--By these "servants" are meant the prophets and

other extraordinary messengers, raised up from time to time. See on

Mt 23:37.

that they might receive the fruits of it--Again see on

Lu 13:6.

35. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one--see

Jer 37:15; 38:6.

and killed another--see

Jer 26:20-23.

and stoned another--see

2Ch 24:21.

Compare with this whole verse

Mt 23:37,

where our Lord reiterates these charges in the most melting strain.

36. Again, he sent other servants more than the first; and they did

unto them likewise--see

2Ki 17:13;

2Ch 36:16, 18;

Ne 9:26.

37. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will

reverence my son--In Mark

(Mr 12:6)

this is most touchingly expressed: "Having yet therefore one son, His

well-beloved, He sent Him also last unto them, saying, They will

reverence My Son." Luke's version of it too

(Lu 20:13)

is striking: "Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I

will send My beloved Son: it may be they will reverence Him when they

see Him." Who does not see that our Lord here severs Himself, by the

sharpest line of demarcation, from all merely human messengers,

and claims for Himself Sonship in its loftiest sense? (Compare

Heb 3:3-6).

The expression, "It may be they will reverence My Son," is

designed to teach the almost unimaginable guilt of not

reverentially welcoming God's Son.

38. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves--Compare

Ge 37:18-20;

Joh 11:47-53.

This is the heir--Sublime expression this of the great truth, that

God's inheritance was destined for, and in due time is to come into the

possession of, His own Son in our nature

(Heb 1:2).

come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance--that so,

from mere servants, we may become lords. This is the deep aim of

the depraved heart; this is emphatically "the root of all evil."

39. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard--compare

Heb 13:11-13

("without the gate--without the camp");

1Ki 21:13;

Joh 19:17.

and slew him.

40. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh--This represents

"the settling time," which, in the case of the Jewish ecclesiastics, was

that judicial trial of the nation and its leaders which issued in the

destruction of their whole state.

what will he do unto those husbandmen?

41. They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men--an

emphatic alliteration not easily conveyed in English: "He will badly

destroy those bad men," or "miserably destroy those miserable men," is

something like it.

and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render

him the fruits in their seasons--If this answer was given by the

Pharisees, to whom our Lord addressed the parable, they thus unwittingly

pronounced their own condemnation: as did David to Nathan the prophet

(2Sa 12:5-7),

and Simon the Pharisee to our Lord

(Lu 7:43,

&c.). But if it was given, as the two other Evangelists agree in

representing it, by our Lord Himself, and the explicitness of the

answer would seem to favor that supposition, then we can better explain

the exclamation of the Pharisees which followed it, in Luke's report

(Lu 20:16)

--"And when they heard it, they said, God forbid"--His whole meaning

now bursting upon them.

42. Jesus saith unto them. Did ye never read in the scriptures--

(Ps 118:22, 23).

The stone which the builders rejected, &c.--A bright Messianic

prophecy, which reappears in various forms

(Isa 28:16,

&c.), and was made glorious use of by Peter before the Sanhedrim

(Ac 4:11).

He recurs to it in his first epistle

(1Pe 2:4-6).

43. Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God--God's visible

Kingdom, or Church, upon earth, which up to this time stood in the seed

of Abraham.

shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the

fruits thereof--that is, the great evangelical community of the

faithful, which, after the extrusion of the Jewish nation, would consist

chiefly of Gentiles, until "all Israel should be saved"

(Ro 11:25, 26).

This vastly important statement is given by Matthew only.

44. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on

whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder--The Kingdom

of God is here a Temple, in the erection of which a certain

stone, rejected as unsuitable by the spiritual builders, is, by the

great Lord of the House, made the keystone of the whole. On that Stone

the builders were now "falling" and being "broken"

(Isa 8:15).

They were sustaining great spiritual hurt; but soon that Stone should

"fall upon them" and "grind them to powder"

(Da 2:34, 35;

Zec 12:2)

--in their corporate capacity, in the tremendous destruction of

Jerusalem, but personally, as unbelievers, in a more awful sense

still.

45. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his

parables--referring to that of the Two Sons and this one of the

Wicked Husbandmen.

they perceived that he spake of them.

46. But when they sought to lay hands on him--which Luke

(Lu 20:19)

says they did "the same hour," hardly able to restrain their rage.

they feared the multitude--rather, "the multitudes."

because they took him for a prophet--just as they feared to say

John's baptism was of men, because the masses took him for a prophet

(Mt 21:26).

Miserable creatures! So, for this time, "they left Him and went their

way"

(Mr 12:12).