IT ill suits the thread of the narrative to be broken by the chapter division, for it is on “one of those days in which He taught the people in the temple” that “ the chief priests and scribes, with the elders, came upon Him,” with the object to damage His influence with the people, as they could not succeed in their more malevolent design. They raise the questions: “By what authority doest thou these things, and who is He who gave thee this authority?”—questions always raised by those who wish to escape from the edge of truth under such shelter, and not by them who earnestly desire to be instructed by it. The Lord in his reply recalls to them their reception of John the Baptist, when He asked them: “The baptism of John, was it from heaven or of men?” If they have not been able to declare openly the source of John’s ministry, neither will they of Him who was to come after him. Strange and faithless guides were they who feared to tell the people what they would have them believe, but they loved their own case better than the people’s benefit; (according to them) false doctrine must always be propagated privily. There is no innate strength and sustainment in it, as there is in truth to confirm and embolden the teacher of it. Oh! how self-convicted they must have been! Where was their authority? and of how much value was it? Hence, the Lord. delivers a parable, which declares the results of all God’s dealings with Israel. No matter how often He sent, or whom He sent, even His beloved Son. No recompense from this rebellious people; and not only this, but they despised the message and ill-treated the Messenger, and, to add to all, they would kill the beloved Son, that the inheritance might be their own, that they might do their own will. And we know how short a time they retained it after they had carried out their direfully ambitious views; and so it is foretold here: “He shall come and destroy these husbandman, and give the vineyard (not the vine) to others;” not at all to Christendom, I believe, for facts are against this. Professors of Christianity have been possessors of Palestine for very short periods, and the prediction merely states that the vineyard should be given to others; but, in connection with this, the present husbandman were to be destroyed, and this destruction was contingent on our Lord’s coming. “He shall come and destroy these husbandmen.” So that I am disposed to think that “others” mean the believing remnant; at all events, they cannot mean the Church, and thus favor the assertion of its present earthly standing. The hearers deprecate this dreaded catastrophe, but Jesus “beheld them,” and shows them that long since it was predicted that “ the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner; “ at one and the same time declaring their sin, the sin of their teachers, &c., as builders in rejecting Him, but yet that He had grace and power to rise above all and take His proper place as “head of the corner.” Let those who trembled at Israel’s apostasy take comfort from this.
The chief priests and scribes are now exasperated to the full purpose of their enmity, for “in the same hour they sought to lay hands on Him, but they feared the people; for they perceived that He had spoken this parable against them.” Every art and every device must now be resorted to. “They watched Him and sent forth spies who should feign themselves just men,” and all that they might deliver Him to the Gentiles, “unto the power and authority of the governor.” They act with all the meanness and cowardice which characterize bad designs. These just men tempt Jesus respecting the tribute money, as if they were truly anxious to be informed rightly. He had spoken of Israel’s territory as God’s vineyard; was it then lawful to give tribute to Cæsar, thus owning his title to it To be tributaries to Cæsar was a plain evidence of Israel’s apostasy. Whose image and superscription did their coins bear? Did they not own him and not God? True, they were compelled to pay tribute; but why did all the coins of the realm bear the image of Cæsar? Was this obligatory on them, or was it the adulation of the enslaved? If on all their money they own Cæsar, surely, to render unto him the portion he demanded of it was but reasonable. Let them “render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,” but that did not exonerate them from rendering “unto God the things that were God’s.” Nay, if they had done this latter, they would never have been compelled to do the former; but there was then, as there is now, a greater readiness to render allegiance to the power of the world than to Him who is head over all things, and who, being honored, would always make us superior to the power of the world. To advocate implicitly that the world and God should each get their very own, would create a marvel in this day, and put to silence the pretended men of justice, as it had in that day, “for they marvelled at His answer and held their peace.”
But for this blessed faithful servant of God to Israel there is no respite. When one opposer is silenced, another appears on the stage. “Many bulls (well might He say) have compassed me: they gaped on me with their mouths.” The Sadducees, who deny that there is any resurrection, now present themselves to entangle the Lord on the subject of the resurrection—a subject increasingly interesting to Himself, as about so soon to be the glorious manifester of it. Satan was beginning to array all his power against its display. Israel was allowing that to be called in question which was its best hope. Could they bear to have it questioned whether God would bid “the dry bones live?” Alas! for the nation, if there was no resurrection. The revelation from the burning bush, which encouraged and sustained Moses, was that God was the God of the living, and that though the fathers were not, yet shall they still live; and, therefore, as the God of resurrection, no power of death could obstruct His purposes. God is the God of the living; if death has power over you, God is your God, for unto Him life is always directed. What is not directed unto Him is not life. She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she liveth, for “all live unto Him.” And Jesus was now a living personification of the glories impressed on Moses by that wondrous vision in the desert—the great antitype of the glory of God in a bush, and the bush not consumed—God manifest in flesh—the resurrection itself, and prophet like unto Moses, to deliver them from the grinding rule of another Pharaoh. But He is not received, though even a scribe has to acknowledge that He has “answered well;” and so confounded and silenced are all His adversaries, that “after that, they durst not ask Him any question at all.” Yet Jesus knew that their malevolence was only smothered to break forth in another form with fresh violence, and, therefore, quotes from Scripture the prophecy which was then fulfilled. His mission here was about to close. He is about, according to the will of Jehovah, to take His seat at the right hand of the Father. “How say they that Christ is David’s Son?” Christ will depart and go unto Jehovah, as the Scriptures have said; let all understand this, and He will remain till His enemies are set for His footstool. Here we have unfolded Christ’s present heavenly position, and His future purpose toward Israel— “the citizens,” “His enemies.” Hence, with the program before Him of His return to the Father, and within hearing of Jehovah’s summons, does He now denounce the scribes, who were so called from their supposed knowledge of Scripture: they sought their own glory, “and the house of the Lord lieth waste,” and they “shall receive the greater damnation.”