Jesus tells a story about wicked farmers
1 Then Jesus began to speak again to the important Jews. He told them stories. He said, ‘There was a man who planted vines to grow grapes. He built a wall around the vineyard. He dug a hole in the ground for a winepress to make wine. He also built a tower to watch over the garden. He found some farmers who would work in the vineyard for him. Then he went away to another country.
2 At the time for the harvest, the man sent a servant to speak to the farmers. He wanted them to give him his fruit from the vineyard. 3 But the farmers took hold of the servant and they hit him with sticks. They sent him away with nothing. 4 So the man sent another servant to the farmers. They also hit this servant on the head, and they did other bad things to him. 5 The man then sent another servant, but the farmers killed this servant. He sent many other servants to them. The farmers hit some of these servants with sticks and they killed other servants.
6 The man had only one person that he could still send. This was his own son. The man loved him very much. So, last of all, he sent his son to the farmers. He thought, “The farmers will surely respect my son.”
7 But those farmers said to each other, “This is the master's own son. The farm will belong to him when his father dies. We should kill the son and then the farm will belong to us.” 8 So the farmers took the son and they killed him. Then they threw his dead body out of the vineyard.’
12:8The farmers were a picture of the people who had not obeyed God's prophets in the past. Now they were ready to kill God's own Son.
9 Jesus then asked, ‘What will the master of the garden do then? I tell you, he will come and he will kill those farmers. Then he will give the vineyard to other people to take care of it. 10 I am sure that you have read these words in the Bible:
“The builders refused to use a certain stone.
They thought that it had no value.
But now that stone has become the most important stone at the corner of the building.
11 The Lord God did this.
And we can see that he did something great.” ’
12:11See Psalm 118:22-23. God had chosen Jesus to do his work. But the Jewish leaders would not agree with that. 12 The Jewish leaders knew that Jesus had told this story about them. They were the wicked farmers in the story. So they wanted to take hold of Jesus. But they were afraid of the crowd. So they left him and they went away.
