If you would turn in your Bibles to the gospel of Luke, chapter 20. You’ll find that on page 879 in the pew Bibles. Towards the end of the last chapter, we read that as Jesus approached or drew near to Jerusalem, He saw the city and He wept over it. Now we probably don’t think enough about the emotions that Jesus experienced throughout His life. That word for “weep” has been described by some as “unrestrained wailing” or “as tears shed from a ruptured heart in agony over unrequited grief.” I think too often we picture Jesus as stoically absorbing the hostility that came His way as if He took it all in stride as He pressed on towards His purpose that He came to accomplish. But Jesus hurt. And back in 1912, the theologian B.B. Warfield wrote an essay called, “The Emotional Life of our Lord.” And in it, he wrote that “Jesus was subject to all sinless human emotions and His heart was open and readily responded to the delights of human association and bound itself to others in a happy fellowship.”
So how do you think it felt when people rejected Him because rejection was a prominent part of Jesus’ life from the cradle to the grave. From Herod the king to His own hometown, from the Pharisees and even from His own disciples, Jesus experienced rejection. And that would have been painful. In this part of Luke’s gospel and this chapter in particular, the rejection of Jesus is at the forefront of everything that takes place. You can’t miss it. You can’t miss it as we read Luke chapter 20. But rejection also is not the final word. Redemption is. And because of that redemption, there is hope for everyone who has either experienced the pain of rejection or who experiences the fear of being rejected. In other words, because of the redemption we find in this passage, there is hope for every one of us here tonight.
So our outline for these verses as we read Luke chapter 20 will be three things – reputation, rejection and redemption. Reputation, rejection and redemption. Before we read, let’s pray and ask God’s help and blessing.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for this account of the life and ministry, the suffering and exaltation of Jesus Christ our Savior. We thank You that we have a great High Priest who sympathizes with us in our weakness, who was made like us in every way yet without sin. So we pray that You would help us to see Him and to see what He has done to accomplish salvation and redemption for us and to give us this great hope that we have in the Gospel. And I pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 20:
“One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, ‘Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.’ He answered them, ‘I also will ask you a question. Now tell me, was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?’ And they discussed it with one another, saying, ‘If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.’ So they answered that they did not know where it came from. And Jesus said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’
And he began to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When they heard this, they said, ‘Surely not!’ But he looked directly at them and said, ‘What then is this that is written:
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?
Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.’
The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. So they asked him, ‘Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?’ But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, ‘Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?’ They said, ‘Caesar’s.’ He said to them, ‘Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent.
There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.’
And Jesus said to them, ‘The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.’ Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’ For they no longer dared to ask him any question.
But he said to them, ‘How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,
‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’
David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?’
And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
Reputation
I don’t think I have to say it, how absurd it is as Jesus comments in this passage, to like to walk around in long robes and to love the greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at the feast. And it’s inexcusable really to devour widows’ houses and for a pretense to make long prayers. But those are the things that Jesus is pointing out that are terrible about the scribes. Except I’m not so sure, because after all there are plenty of Sundays that I walk around here dressed up in a long robe. And Molly will tell you it’s a dangerous thing to take a preacher with her to the grocery store because he talks to all of the parishioners there. Jesus’ warnings in verses 46 and 47 hit a little bit close to home and that’s because His warnings strike at an impulse or maybe even a need that is basic to every one of us. That is the need, the desire for acceptance, for connection. “It is not good that man should be alone,” we read in the second chapter of Genesis. And you’re probably somewhat familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. I’m not going to endorse or promote any of the details of his theory, but wouldn’t we all agree that at the foundation of our most basic needs are our physical health and a feeling of security and a feeling of belonging or of being loved. And isn’t that at least in part what is behind the scribes’ lifestyle? They wanted to feel like they fit. They wanted to feel like they were valued and appreciated.
And we all do. I mean there’s a reason why one of the greatest TV theme songs of all time talks about how we want to go “where everybody knows our name,” right? Sure, the scribes were way off base, but aren’t so many of our own desires way off base? And that’s why we often, in a desire to establish our place or to stake our place, we value those things and we do those things that look good in the eyes of others. And that’s why we care so much about other people’s opinions. That’s why we care so much about popularity and trends and social status. That’s why we put so much effort into making sure that our children have every advantage that we can give to them, even if it may sometimes come at the expense of other people. Reputation matters, and the chief priests, the scribes, the elders, they were those who loved to boost their reputation. But Jesus was a threat to all that. Jesus was a threat to their established order and rank.
I read an article recently about Bono. Bono recently published a new memoir. And in the memoir he’s talking about how he grew up, in his teenage years, he grew up as a punk rocker as well as a Christian. And he said that he and his friends liked how Jesus took on the establishment and they liked the idea of living as first century Christians and they thought to themselves, “That’s actually pretty punk.” Now I know that’s not a Presbyterian thing to say, but wouldn’t we say that Jesus was a threat to the establishment? He was a threat to the established order of the religious leaders of His day. How? It was because He called people to follow Him and not them. It was because He welcomed the outsider. He welcomed those who had a bad name and reputation. He exposed the hypocrisy of formal religion, of dead orthodoxy, and He taught that the way of God’s kingdom was nothing like the way they wanted it to be. Jesus was a problem to them, do you see? And so their main plan was to destroy Jesus. Their goal was to discredit His authority and to deliver Him up to be killed. In other words, they rejected Him. And these verses are all about Jesus’ rejection. So there’s reputation and then there’s rejection here.
Rejection
Have you ever heard about the Viking clap? The Viking clap may be something you’ve seen with the Minnesota Vikings or the Iceland soccer team. It’s where the fans start to clap their hands above their heads and they clap every few seconds, kind of a steady beat. It starts off slow, maybe one clap every few seconds, and then the claps start to come closer together and then it’s faster and it’s faster and it’s faster and then the whole crowd erupts into this frenzy and they let out a loud shout. There’s something like that happening in the gospel of Luke, and the occasions of opposition to Jesus have been steady and persistent the whole way throughout the Gospel. There is this regular beat all throughout Jesus’ life and ministry of opposition to Him, of those who were offended by Him, of those who mocked and ridiculed Him, they wanted to get rid of Him. And so this Gospel, it’s – clap, clap, clap, clap – a steady beat of opposition. But here, but now, everything speeds up and it all starts to come at Jesus faster and faster and faster until it culminates with full force of their opposition at His execution on the cross. And in this chapter, it’s one thing after another trying to discredit Him and to entrap Jesus.
We see the questioning of His authority in verse 2. “Tell us by what authority you do these things or who it is that gave you this authority?” And then there’s the parable that Jesus tells in verses 9 to 18 and there’s the anger of the scribes and the chief priests when they were provoked by His parable. In fact, verse 19 says, “They sought to lay hands on him at that very hour.” Why didn’t they? They didn’t do it because they feared the people. But they wanted to. And then they sent spies to Jesus. They sent spies to be around Jesus to test and to try to catch Him in something that He had said. If they could get Him to say something blasphemous or something seditious, if they could get Him to say something either against the power of Rome or against the Law of Moses, then they could deliver Him up to the authority and the jurisdiction of the governor.
And so what did they do? First they asked Him if it was lawful for them to give tribute to Caesar. But then they challenged Him in another way. The Sadducees concocted this absurd, hypothetical scenario about a widow and multiple marriages and the resurrection. Ralph Davis says, “You can tell that it’s an absurd scenario because they said that this woman survived seven marriages!” No woman could survive seven husbands. Maybe three or maybe even four, but she’d be long gone before she got to number seven. I could probably get an “Amen” if I asked for one on that one, but I won’t. It was an absurd scenario. It was made up and it was a trap. It was the kind of question that they felt like could only be answered by Jesus in a way that would put Him at odds with either the Pharisees or the Sadducees, the two main ruling groups in the governing council in Jerusalem.
And so you have this question about Caesar, you have this question about marriage in the resurrection, and Jesus answers them both beautifully; He answers them shrewdly with remarkable wisdom. And verse 26 says, “They were not able to catch Him in what He said.” They were silenced. There was nothing that they could do, for now. For now. But remember, this is the intensifying of the opposition against Jesus and it just keeps coming and coming and it will not stop until Jesus is condemned and nailed to the cross. But even then it doesn’t really stop, does it? In fact, it never really has. And we don’t have to get very far into the book of Acts to find out that the priests and the elders and the Sadducees, they were annoyed that Jesus’ disciples were teaching about the resurrection of Jesus. And so what did they do? They threw His disciples, Peter and John, into jail. And then it was Stephen that they stoned to death. And as the book of Acts comes to an end, where do we find Paul? He is in chains under house arrest in Rome. Why? Because he preached Jesus and His resurrection as the hope of Israel. You see, Jesus is synonymous with rejection. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians that this message of Jesus and Him crucified, it’s a stumbling block to the Jews and it’s folly to the Gentiles.
And you know what, it still is. We don’t need a bunch of examples from news stories. We don’t need a bunch of surveys and studies to tell us that faith in Jesus is unpopular. And if we follow Jesus in our culture, then it’s going to come with either the fear of rejection or the actual rejection itself. And that hurts. That hurts. Like in a real, tangible way. In fact, there are studies that show that rejection is so unsettling that it affects intelligence and reason and that the experience of rejection can register in the brain in the same way that physical pain does, so much so that researchers believe that if you give someone a Tylenol before you ask them to recall a painful experience of rejection, that it will actually help ease the emotional pain. I read a Christian counselor who said that “rejection sticks to our souls.” It cannot easily be dislodged from our hearts. There’s no wonder that we avoid standing out because of our faith in Jesus. There’s no wonder that we shrink back from telling others about Him. We don’t want to experience rejection.
Redemption
But these verses show us that in the midst of unrelenting rejection there is hope. They show us that there is a great reversal taking place and that great reversal is the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Verse 17 says this, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” And by the way, I don’t think – let me say it this way – I think these verses can also point us to the way of hope in times of rejection even when it’s not particularly for the sake of Christ, even when it’s something like maybe a broken home. Maybe it’s rejection about not making the cut, not being picked for the group. Maybe it’s a sharp insult or a harsh criticism, but there’s hope even in rejection. And so what we find here in Luke chapter 20 is we find redemption. There’s reputation, rejection and redemption. Redemption starts with the fact that Jesus Himself was rejected. Verse 2 says, “Tell us by what authority you do these things?” Jesus didn’t have any position of authority. He had authority, but He wasn’t one of the chief priests or the scribes. Jesus did not have a long robe and He didn’t have one of the best seats in the synagogues. Jesus wasn’t a ruling elder. Jesus didn’t have a Master of Divinity, which by the way – could there be a more pompous sounding graduate degree than a Master of Divinity? I don’t think so. Anyway. Jesus didn’t have a position of authority.
I saw a bumper sticker one time that said, “I vote for Jesus.” You know what, Jesus wasn’t on the ballot, and if He was, He would have lost. Jesus didn’t have a think tank, He didn’t have a coalition, He didn’t have a task force. Jesus was rejected. He was rejected and He stood in a long line of those who were rejected. Just like how God had sent prophet after prophet after prophet to His people to see if they had been faithful, like these servants in the parable, the servants that the tenants in the vineyard had beaten and sent away empty-handed, the people had refused them. The people refused the prophets and they even refused the son. Except with the son, they threw him out of the vineyard and they killed Him. You see, Jesus was rejected in the worst imaginable way – with death on the cross and with its shame and its agony and its pain and its scorn. No one knows rejection like Jesus knows rejection. He knows it and He’s able to sympathize with us. He can sympathize with us in our weakness. He is a friend of sinners. He is strength in weakness, a help in sorrow.
And notice how Jesus faced His rejection. He faced it with His focus fixed on the kingdom of God. His sights were set on the reign of the Lord God Almighty and on the resurrection and on the life of the age to come. And there’s a lot in this chapter – if we had time we could look and see what it says about politics, about the role of government, what it says about marriage and what it says about heaven – those are some of the hot topics that were up for debate in these conversations with Jesus. We don’t have time for all of that, but on the most basic level, can’t you see that in the midst of such persistent rejection, Jesus viewed it all within the big picture and He looked at it within the framework of the kingdom and the plan of God. And so He says in verse 25, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” What belongs to Caesar? Maybe a few coins, some denarii, maybe an expanse of territory in a fleeting earthly dominion. What belongs to God? Everything. Everything for all time and for eternity. And what is Caesar’s power? What is his control compared to God’s power and control? Nothing. Nothing has power and control like God’s power and control. In fact, not even death has power and control over God’s people because those, as Jesus says in this passage, those who attain to the age to come, those who attain to the resurrection from the dead cannot die anymore, verse 36 says. God is not the God of the dead but He is the God of the living.
What does that do to fear? How does that speak to us in facing rejection or being helpless? It says to us that God controls all earthly powers and that nothing can happen to us unless God allows it and that nothing can ultimately harm the people of God because there’s resurrection life. There’s resurrection life for all those who trust in Jesus Christ and that is far better than anything that this world can offer.
And then one last thing to notice and it’s this – again, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Jesus is the cornerstone, and if Jesus is the cornerstone, then He is the cornerstone to the entire structure. Listen to what Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2. “As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves are living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house.” Peter goes on to say, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” You see, because Jesus is the cornerstone, all who come to Him are a part of the whole. All who come to Him fit together.
I was talking to someone recently who fancies himself as something of an antiquities thief because he made out of Peru with some stones from some ancient ruins and has them in his home now. I won’t reveal who it is. But we were talking about these stone walls that the Incas built that are incredible. They’re engineering marvels and there are some stones in these walls that are the most oddly shaped stones. There’s one that you will see in pictures that is a 12-sided stone. My mom, the geometry teacher, would tell you that’s a dodecagon. And all the stones fit around this oddly shaped stone and they’ve stood for 1,000 years. And they’re so tightly fit together that you can’t even slide a piece of paper between the seams. They fit. They fit. And some of us may be oddly shaped stones, but we fit. We fit around the cornerstone.
And we don’t want to miss the warnings of judgment that are here in this passage. Go back and read what it says about destroying the tenants and about being crushed by the cornerstone and about being made Christ’s footstool and receiving the greater condemnation. There’s judgment here and there’s a warning for us. But for those of us who trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, this passage is saying to us, “You belong. You are secure. Secure in the love of God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You are secure and you belong both now and forever.”
And isn’t that what this Table is all about? Isn’t that what this Table is meant to communicate to us – that whatever suffering, whatever ridicule, whatever rejection we may face in the world, here there is fellowship, there’s communion, there’s fellowship and belonging with God’s people, there’s fellowship and belonging with Father, Son and Holy Spirit forever. So let’s come to this Table. Let’s approach Jesus’ Table and be encouraged by God’s grace, and by God’s grace to have our faith and our hope strengthened in Jesus and in His suffering. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for the great redemption of Jesus, the great reversal that He accomplished by His death and resurrection and for the blessing and gift of Him giving us this Lord’s Table to remind us of His body and His blood, the blood shed for us, the body pierced for our transgressions, His victory over the grave, His coming again in victory at the end of all history, and for the fellowship that we now have in Him both now and forever. We pray that You would strengthen our faith, that You would work by Your Spirit. Help us to enjoy the blessing of Christ among us in Word and sacrament. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.