The Son of Man’s Jerusalem Ministry (19:28-21:38)

The Authority of Jesus Questioned (1-8)

Some religious leaders, likely Sanhedrin members, wanted to challenge Jesus' authority in the Temple, hoping to stump and humiliate Him in front of His crowd. They asked Him by what or whose authority He was acting (1-2). The Sanhedrin was made up of three groups of people—chief priests, teachers of the law, and scribes. They totaled 71 men who formed a governing body like a Jewish parliament or congress. They were all mentioned here as seeking to get Jesus to say something that would seem to blaspheme God and contradict Scripture. 

Jesus, not wanting to get into their little debate, simply asked them about one who was loosely considered their own, John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a son of a priest, from the line of Aaron, who had been executed by Herod and was held by the Jews in great honor. Jesus asked who gave John the authority (3-4). 

The religious leaders were trapped. If they were to deny John had been given authority by God, then they feared the crowd would become riotous. If they answered that John was from God, then they feared being asked by Jesus why they did not submit to John's baptism. They left Jesus' question unanswered by saying, “We don't know”—a pitiful response for those considered the theological elites. Jesus, in turn, refused to answer their question (5-8).

The whole ordeal revealed the true heart of the religious leaders. They were not interested in the truth about authority; they were seeking to trap Jesus through their questions, hoping He would make a theological mistake publicly that they could accuse Him of later. Luke was making a case for Jesus' full and complete rejection of the religious system.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (9-19)

Jesus then told a parable of a man who planted a vineyard. Jesus used this parable to uncover the hearts of those seeking to trip Him up, to find an excuse to carry out their real desire—murder. Jesus used the opening words of Isaiah 5:1-7 to grab the religious leaders' attention. 

In the parable, a man planted a vineyard and then traveled for a season (9). At long last, the man sent a servant to the vineyard he had planted, seeking some of the fruit from the vineyard. The tenants with whom he had left the vineyard took the owner's servant, beat him, and sent him off with nothing (10). The owner sent two more servants to collect fruit, assuming there had been a misunderstanding, and they were both driven from the property with the same rejection (11-12).  

The owner eventually sent his son, assuming they would at least respect him, but the tenants wanted the vineyard for themselves and went and murdered the son, thinking the owner would, at long last, just leave them alone (13-15).

Jesus posed the question to those religious leaders: what did they suppose would happen to those tenants who wanted the vineyard for themselves and were willing to kill the son to get it when the owner arrived? Jesus then told the religious leaders the owner would come and destroy the tenants and give his vineyard to others. 

The religious leaders were outraged and protested. They knew Jesus was pointing at them in the parable as the tenants and declared they would never do such a thing—they would never kill the true Son, nor would they ever steal the vineyard from God (15).  

Jesus then introduced Scripture (using Psalm 118, the same Psalm the people had been singing over Him when He entered the city of Jerusalem), stating that indeed the builders of the house were prophetically told that they would reject the stone around which the house should be built. The cornerstone was set to give place, size, and shape to the whole building.

In essence, Jesus was saying the builders did not like God's design as presented to them in Jesus and were rejecting it out of hand by seeking to destroy the Son of God, who was determining the size and shape of the new Temple God was building in Jesus (16-17). Jesus also told them that, while the builder might reject the stone, the stone they stumbled over in rejection would be used by God to come and crush those who had rejected it (18).  

They knew they were the wicked tenants Jesus was speaking of, but oddly could not help themselves in wanting to fulfill the truth of the parable, wishing they could arrest and kill Jesus once and for all. All that was stopping the religious leaders from taking Jesus right there was the high esteem the people had for Jesus and the fear of displeasing them (19).  

On Paying Taxes to Caesar (20-26)

The religious leaders did not give up; they tried all kinds of trickery and pretentious honesty to trap Jesus. They sent some guys who appeared to honestly be struggling with a moral dilemma of paying taxes to Caesar. Of course, all they were seeking to do was to get Jesus to say something that would get Him in trouble with the Romans. They assumed a troubling conflict between the Roman tax codes would do the trick: can someone obey the law of God and at the same time pay tribute to a pagan king through taxes? (20-21) They wanted to know if it was right for a people devoted to the worship of Yahweh to pay homage in the form of taxes to the foreign government. The government of Caesar was not only wicked but endorsed idolatry by putting his own image on the coins with which he was forcing Jews to pay taxes (22).  

Jesus was not deceived by their trickery and asked for a Roman coin. By His answer, they wished to paint Him as a revolutionary or irrelevant—His Kingdom’s having no power and reality in this life (23). Jesus had them produce a coin with Tiberius' blasphemous image on it and the inscription “son of god.” He asked them whose image was on the coin, to which Jesus made an amazing statement. 

If the coin bore the image of Tiberius, then the coin belonged to him; without complaint those coins should be given back to Caesar. The main point he made, however, was that anything God's image is stamped on (the human soul) should also be given back to God (24-25). They were obviously stumped, being unable to trick him, instead marveling at His answer (26).