Pastor Shaun Marksbury

The chief priests, scribes, and elders have challenged Jesus regarding His authority.   He turns the challenge back on them with this parable, the parable of the two sons (cf. Mt 21:28–32), and the prophecy chief cornerstone.   Here, He depicts their stunning wickedness and contrasts it with the intentions of God. First, consider the patience of the landowner.   Unlike some landowners, he provided them everything they needed for the work and left them alone until harvest time.   When they violently refused to pay, he tried again and again.   His patience might even be considered foolish , but he gives the farmers every opportunity to make it right. Second, consider the impenitence of the farmers.   They escalate their violence, beating the first slave, mortally wounding the second, and killing the third.   They then contrive a plan to kill the landowner’s son to take the vineyard.   As their commitment to sin grows, so does their rebel...

If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face. (Martin Luther quoted by Roland Bainton in Here I Stand , pp. 49-50).