Matthew 21:34, commentary and pictures

When the appointed harvest season arrived, the owner sent his messengers to collect what was due, which portrays God sending His prophets at set times to the leaders of Israel entrusted with His vineyard to call for the return He had specified. The owner is God, the tenants are His chosen people and especially their priests, rulers and teachers, and the vineyard is Israel favored with His covenant, land and church. The fruit He rightfully claims as His own is a life honoring Him by obedience to His law, revelation of His character and kingdom, and unselfish love and service shown in tangible deeds including faithful stewardship of means. Instead of yielding it, the husbandmen treated the servants as enemies with contempt, beating, stoning and killing them, portraying Israel's age-after-age rejection of God's messengers that prepared the way for rejecting and crucifying His Son. For that unfaithfulness the vineyard would be taken from them and given to others who render fruit in season, a warning that applies also to professing Christians and the church in every generation who withhold what is His.

Parable Setting and Symbols

Matthew 21:34 belongs to the parable of the vineyard told about the Jewish nation, which stands for God's chosen people Israel entrusted with His covenant, land, and church. The vineyard is Israel, given great temporal and spiritual privileges to yield fruit that would honor God and reveal the principles and character of His kingdom to the world. When the time came to receive that fruit, the owner sent servants to the husbandmen to collect what faithful stewardship should have produced. In the Jewish economy the vineyard is God's people, the fruit is God's due portion, and the sending sets forth both His claim for the fruit of blessings given and the nation's spiritual condition in resisting correction.

In the parable the householder or owner is God, the husbandmen or tenants are the Jewish nation and especially its priests, teachers, rulers and leaders entrusted with God's work, and the servants sent are His prophets, teachers and messengers. The husbandmen are those appointed to cultivate His vineyard, and the servants come through whom He calls Israel to render Him His dues. They are sent at appointed times in His name with warnings, reproof, appeals and invitations, to remind the stewards of responsibility, warn of unfaithfulness and misappropriation of the Lord's portion, and call them to a sense of accountability for resources placed in their trust. The sending was needed because His professed people were not heeding Him but had become selfish and covetous, systematically appropriating means and facilities entrusted for His work to a wrong use.

The time of fruit is the appointed harvest season when a specified return is due, when the owner seeks fruit from His vineyard at the proper season. The Lord made terms with the stewards of His vineyard to return to Him the fruits at a specified time, a certain amount of fruit in its season, for the whole vineyard belongs to Him as owner with right to expect revenue. In every work entrusted to men He leaves room for character to develop, and when the time for fruit comes He sends servants to oversee His vineyard, sending message after message as He did to ancient Israel, watching every institution to see how it will trade upon His goods and to receive what belongs to Him. That sending faithfully illustrates the nation's past and future history and true religious character.

God gave Israel exceptional covenant blessings, many temporal and spiritual advantages, great light, rich blessings and wonderful prosperity, requiring faithful care of the vineyard and return of its fruits in obedience and service owed by the whole people and not by leaders and teachers only. He took Israel as a vine from Egypt and planted it in Canaan in the Holy Land, where He nourished and cared for it, and He instituted the sacrificial system to keep the one great coming Sacrifice before their minds. The time of fruit means the opportunities and privileges provided in compassion and love which He looked to receive back as grapes. The union that should exist between Christ and the church is that He is the vine and they are the branches, so that by cultivating the land for God and obeying His law and conditions they would show the nations its goodness, bring spiritual and temporal prosperity, and magnify His name to the world.

The vineyard is also described as the world which God appointed Israel to cultivate. The Saviour represents the world as a vineyard, and the verse's vineyard setting belongs to that picture. The vineyard now entrusted to faithful husbandmen is God's church, through whom His purposes are carried out and from all nations the precious fruit long waited for is gathered. The people of the world at large have been given the use of the Lord's vineyard, though bringing Him little fruit in return.

God's Claim to Fruit

The sending of the servants declares rightful ownership, for the whole vineyard and all its produce belong to the owner, and when the season arrives He has the right to expect revenue and to send to collect what is His. The householder is God, the husbandmen are the Jewish nation and especially its priests, teachers, rulers and leaders entrusted with His work, and the servants are His prophets, teachers and messengers sent to call for what is due. Those entrusted are therefore accountable for the resources, responsibilities, abilities and opportunities placed in their trust, and for the blessings and religious privileges given them. Their selfishness and unwillingness to honor that claim were exposed, for instead of honoring the owner they sought their own glory and appropriated the fruits and the means entrusted to them for His work.

The fruit due to God is a life that honors Him and matches sacred privileges, revealing the principles and character of His kingdom to the world. It is obedience to His law and commandments and using possessions and temporal and spiritual advantages for His glory to show the nations its goodness. It is faithful stewardship that returns what is His, including tithes and offerings, and love, humility, and self-sacrificing service and benevolence shown in tangible deeds. The prophets were sent with warnings, reproof, appeals and invitations in His name to receive that fruit and to call the people to repentance and obedience to His word. Religious teachers who lead people to disregard His commandments withhold those fruits and prove unfaithful stewards of what belongs to God.

The sending was needed because His professed people were not heeding Him but had become selfish and covetous, systematically robbing Him of the means and facilities entrusted to them and appropriating everything to a wrong use. So at appointed times through the whole Jewish economy He sent servants to remind them and call them to a sense of responsibility, to warn of unfaithfulness and misappropriation, to correct evil, and to nurture them to faithfulness. He patiently pleaded and sought the fruit through blessings and their withdrawal, yet they resisted correction, and though convicted of their unrighteous course would not yield but grew more stubborn and hated reproof until entreaties were of no avail. The gifts were found misused and the messengers were treated as enemies with suspicion, scorn, persecution and killing, continuing the sins of earlier generations and adding to guilt, and this rejection prepared the way for rejection of the Son.

Rejection of the Messengers

When the season came the owner sent to collect what was due, but the tenants treated the messengers as enemies with contempt, injustice and cruelty, shamefully abusing them, beating and stoning them, persecuting and killing them while misusing the gifts entrusted to them. That refusal to render fruit and abuse of the servants portrays Israel's age-after-age rejection and killing of the prophets sent to call for the fruit of obedience and repentance. The rulers charged with honoring the claim rejected the appeals, and that rejection prepared the way for rejection of the Son.

Though convicted of unfaithfulness and misappropriation of the Lord's portion, the people would not yield but grew more stubborn, hating reproof so that entreaties and arguments were of no avail. They pursued ambitious desires until love and fear of God departed from them. Religion became hollow formalism full of Pharisaical pride, self-exaltation, bigotry, cruelty, falsehood and murder. They continued the sins of earlier generations and added to guilt through multiplied transgression lasting about a thousand years.

Jeremiah suffered the severest persecution from his own countrymen because he bore a faithful message, and Isaiah was sawn asunder because he faithfully reproved the sins of the nation. Others wandered destitute in sheepskins and goatskins, stoned, tempted, slain with the sword, afflicted and tormented as men of whom the world was not worthy. Behind this course Satan strove to gain control over the human mind to wreak his hatred and revenge on the only-begotten Son of God. Cruel, ungrateful and resistant to grace, the husbandmen abused privileges from age to age, refused mercy, persecuted and killed the messengers, and spoiled the vineyard until it became fruitless.

At last God sent His Son, and the later sending of the son represents the Father sending Christ with the message of divine love. They also rejected, condemned and killed Him, and their rejection of Jesus, the Holy One of Israel, was the final refusal of God's claim and made them responsible for His crucifixion. Christ as Son of the Householder came to receive fruit from His vineyard, and the husbandmen determined to kill Him because He came for that fruit, enduring ignominy, shame and disgrace from men dependent upon Him for life though He could have saved Himself. This exposes the corrupting power at work in the husbandmen, and the same corrupt sentiments of antichrist are working in the children of disobedience in this time, to their ruin.

The Pharisees hearing the parable condemned themselves without realizing it, admitting the justice of the punishment soon to fall upon them. The priests, elders, scribes and Pharisees knew the parable pointed to them as the very ones whose sentence they themselves had pronounced. They recognized their own actions in the refusal to render fruit, the abuse of the servants and the killing of the son, and saw its sentence of punishment as their just doom. They later remembered that the tenants' sin and deserved punishment described their own treatment of God's messengers and His Son and declared their just doom.

Judgment and Transfer of Trust

Failure to fulfill its purpose brought Israel loss of blessing and ruin, for the claim for fruit when due exposed its unfaithfulness and its true religious character. The punishment was the taking away of national privileges, already commenced in Christ's day, ending in destruction of temple and city and dispersion of the nation. The course of multiplied transgression over about a thousand years, spoiling the vineyard until fruitless through hollow formalism, pride, self-exaltation, cruelty and persecution of messengers unto rejection of the Son Himself ready to be put to death, brought the cloud of retributive judgment to burst in fearful severity, desolation and calamity for acting as though there were no God. The hearers condemned themselves, admitting the justice of that sentence which they themselves pronounced, knowing it pointed to them.

The vineyard would be taken from the unfaithful husbandmen and let to others who would render fruit in their seasons. Because blessings and privileges were abused they were taken from the Jewish people and given to the Gentiles. God's purposes are carried out through a faithful remnant, His church now entrusted to faithful husbandmen, and He is gathering from all nations the precious fruit for which He has long waited.

God still leaves barren those who refuse to respond, removing His gifts and resources from unfaithful stewards and finding another way to accomplish His purpose. This unfaithfulness is selfishness closing doors He has opened for blessing, centering every advantage in a few places while leaving other portions desolate, bare and unplanted, neglecting barren wastes, destitute fields and cities and countries that never heard the warning. He entrusts means to stewards and sends messengers to receive means for advancing the work, calling for unselfish cultivation of every part, sowing truth and planting the standard; and where stewards prove untrustworthy He takes the trust away and gives it to those who will honor it and do the good He purposed.

Application to Present Church

The parable of the vineyard belongs not only to the Jewish nation but to the church in every generation, for the owner seeking fruit is God expecting a corresponding return from those who have received great privileges and blessings. It represents both the past and the future history of His church, showing God as owner looking year after year for grapes while the husbandmen failed to fulfill His purpose. The warning reaches professing Christians today who follow in the steps of the wicked husbandmen, who are stirred to anger when the claims of the law of God are kept before them and hate the light of the pure doctrines Christ enforced. By rejecting His truth they reject God, and the sacred trust committed to them will be taken from them and given to others.

Standing as the beloved fold of God's sheep does not excuse unfaithfulness, for God blesses and sustains His people as they obey His commandments but withdraws His favor from those who persist in sin, exalt themselves, and treat sacred things as common. He will not bless and sustain persistent disobedience, and all who receive light from Him must keep His commandments. Those who misrepresent God by their example face judgment, for religious teachers who lead people to disregard His commandments withhold the fruits that belong to Him and prove unfaithful stewards. By misleading the people and turning them from Christ and God's law, the leaders represented by the husbandmen withheld the service and obedience He claimed and were guilty of rejecting their Lord's claim. When the fruit is due God sends messengers who call His people to obey His word and give Him the vineyard's fruits — love, humility, and self-sacrificing service.

As the fruitless fig tree, those who profess to serve God and are enrolled as church members yet bear no fruit in their lives to God's glory show the same breach of trust. The husbandmen were accountable to return fruit to the owner when harvest time came, and the servants sent are His messengers sent to remind them of responsibility. God's people must therefore render to Him the fruits of the vineyard through earnest work for souls and the preparation of Christian character, while waiting vigilantly for Christ's second coming. The churches must be aroused to recognize and fulfill this responsibility, for the day of the Lord is near.

Returning fruit means the results of faithfully using the abilities and opportunities God gives, and every believer, not only priests and rulers, is responsible for contributing, so that diligent service with even small talents brings returns for the Lord. Everyone who believes in Christ has work to do for Him, and no true Christian should be idle, for the fruit is the result God expects from the work of His laborers. In every work entrusted to men He leaves room for character to develop, sending servants to overlook His vineyard and sending message after message to this people as to ancient Israel, watching every institution to see how it will trade upon His goods and to receive what belongs to Him. Those messages are largely made of no effect by words spoken against them, while selfish, covetous appropriation of means mingles selfishness with His service and dishonors God. Those entrusted with resources are to devote their means and work to God's service rather than use them for self-gratification, for misusing what He has lent hinders His work. Returning fruit is unselfishly doing the entrusted work, cultivating barren wastes, sowing the seeds of truth, and planting the standard of truth in cities and countries that have never heard the message of warning. God continually opens the way for neglected parts of His vineyard to be cultivated, entrusts means to His stewards to advance the work, and sends forth His messengers to receive means from the stewards for carrying it forward. The vineyard must be cultivated in every part rather than facilities and blessings being concentrated in a few fields, because neglected portions can bear fruit when properly cared for, and faithful, unselfish work throughout it returns to the Lord its fruits in their season. If stewards refuse to respond and by selfishness close the doors He has opened for blessing, He leaves them barren of resources, removes His gifts from the unfaithful stewards, finds another way to accomplish His purpose, and gives the trust to those who will honor it.