God Sent His Son and We Killed Him

269SERVANTS

SON

Many

Unique

Hirelings

Heir

Forerunners

The last One

If verses 1-5 convey the hope of God for His people, verse 6 conveys the faithful love of God for His people. The Father sent His Son as an act of grace.

In the parable, seeing the son may have led the tenants to wrongly conclude that the landowner was dead. They surmised that if they assassinate the son, then they could claim his property as their own. The phrase “Come, let’s kill him” is used by Joseph’s brothers in Genesis 37:20.

I appreciate David Garland’s insight:

Covetousness makes humans want what they should not have. It makes them think that this desire should be fulfilled at all cost. Other persons become things to exploit, and our desires become our gods. ... Do humans think that by erasing God from their lives they can take control of their earthly and eternal destinies? Apparently so ... [Here] is the utter foolishness of sinful rebellion against God. (Garland, Mark, 456, 459)

Three days later we would see all of this unfold in what the religious leaders of Israel did to God’s Son. Throwing the landlord’s son out may allude to Jesus’ crucifixion outside the city walls. They would murder Him, an astonishing offense. In God’s sending His Son we are reminded of Christmas, the incarnation, the gift of God, and His amazing love. In the killing of the Son, we are reminded of Easter, the crucifixion, the grace of God, and His amazing sacrifice. John 1:11 rings in our ears: “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”

Charles Spurgeon said, “If you reject Him, He answers you with tears. If you wound Him, He bleeds out cleansing. If you kill Him, He dies to redeem. If you bury Him, He rises again to bring us resurrection. Jesus is love manifest.” But he then adds:

Let us see for a minute who this Messenger is. He is one greatly beloved of His Father and in Himself He is of surpassing excellence. The Lord270 Jesus Christ is so inconceivably glorious that I tremble at any attempt to describe His Glory. Assuredly, He is very God of very God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and yet He deigned to take upon Himself a human form! He was born an infant into our weakness and He lived as a carpenter to share our toil.... He took upon Himself the form of a Servant and yet in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily! He is the Prince of the kings of the earth and yet He took a towel and washed His disciples’ feet! ...

Because of His Godhead you must not dare to harden your hearts. He is God’s Well-Beloved and if you are wise, He will be yours. Do not turn your back on Him whom all the angels worship! Beware, lest you reject One whom God loves so well, for He will take it as an insult to Himself—He that despises the Anointed of God has blasphemed God Himself! You put your finger into the very eye of God when you slight His Son! In grieving the Christ you vex the very heart of God—therefore do not do it. I beseech you, then, by the love which God bears to His Son, to listen to this matchless Messenger of mercy who would persuade you to repent. (Spurgeon, “The Pleading”; emphasis in original)

To reject the Son is to reject the One who sent Him. It is nothing less than an act of spiritual insanity.

Mark 12:9-12

Romans 11:22 says, “Note then the kindness and the severity of God.” To slight and reject the Son is to invite the “wrath of the Lamb” into your life (Rev 6:16). Again the great London preacher Charles Spurgeon says it so well:

Remember, once more, that if you do not hear the well-beloved Son of God, you have refused your last hope. He is God’s ultimatum. Nothing remains when Christ is refused. No one else can be sent. Heaven, itself, contains no further messenger. If Christ is rejected, hope is rejected! ... I should like every person here that is unconverted to remember that there is no other Gospel and no more Sacrifice for sin. I have heard talk of “a larger hope” than the Gospel sets before us—it is a fable, with nothing in Scripture to warrant it! Rejecting Christ, you have rejected all—you have shut against yourself the one door of hope! Christ, who knows better than all pretenders, declares that “He that believes not shall be damned.” There remains nothing but damnation for those who believe not in Jesus! (Spurgeon, “The Pleading”; emphasis in original)

271The One rejected and murdered will be vindicated, and how we now respond to this radical change of events could not be more important.

Jesus provides the answer to His parable, one the religious leaders would be forced to concede. In the process they condemned themselves, and they condemn us as well. The owner will destroy those who refuse his son!

Historically, God judged Israel for their rejection of His Son. In ad 70 Jerusalem was destroyed, and the nation was brought to ruins. Today that same judgment falls on all who have “trampled on the Son of God, regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace” (Heb 10:29). It is indeed “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31).

Jesus quotes from Psalm 118:22-23, changing the metaphor to a building. It is the same psalm shouted by the people at His triumphal entry. It is clearly messianic. He knows who He is and why He has come!

The stone rejected would become a symbol for the Messiah and an explanation for how the Jewish people rejected Jesus (Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; 1 Pet 2:6-8). They cast the stone aside as worthless. God, however, in a marvelous reversal, takes what man rejects and makes it the cornerstone (lit. “the head of the corner”), the stone most important to the whole structure, ensuring its stability and symmetry. It refers to the capstone atop a column, keystone in an arch, or cornerstone of a foundation.

The rejection, humiliation, and crucifixion of Jesus is an apparent tragedy, but God will use it all for a greater purpose that can only be described as, “This came from the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes.”

Sadly, the religious leaders are blind to all of this. Knowing He told the parable against them, they were conniving to seize Him. They move ahead with their plan to murder the Son sent by God. Like the demons who recognize Jesus as a threat to their very existence (Mark 1:24), they refuse to submit to His lordship and plot how they might destroy Him. Mark 12:12 is a disappointing summation of their response: “Because they knew He had said this parable against them, they were looking for a way to arrest Him, but they were afraid of the crowd. So they left Him and went away.” As Paul272 would later explain, all of this is foolishness and a stumbling block to them; for us, however, it is the power of God unto salvation (1 Cor 1:18-25).

Calvin was right: “Whatever may be the contrivances of men, God has at the same time declared, that in setting up the kingdom of Christ, His power will be victorious” (Calvin’s Commentaries, 17:34). God will win even when, for a fleeting moment, it seems He has lost. An empty tomb proves it is so. Redemptive history reaches a glorious climactic victory in this beloved Son, this rejected stone.

In The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis, Queen Lucy says to Lord Digory, “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world” (Lewis, The Last Battle, 161). To this we might add, “In our world there was also a cross, and hanging on it was someone greater and more wonderful than our whole world.” It was the Lord’s doing. And it is marvelous in our eyes!