Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. (Matthew 21:33)
The parable of Matthew 21:33 addressed the Jewish religious leaders, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in the supernatural and in the resurrection of the dead; the Sadducees did not. Therefore, some preachers say, “That is why they were sad, you see.” The scribes were like modern lawyers. They were highly educated, and their full-time occupation was to study the Old Testament Law, copy it, and write commentaries on it.
Regardless of the difference in their belief about the supernatural, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes took pride in their important positions within Judaism. Jesus told them the parable of the householder because it was about God’s chosen people.
The householder in this parable is God the Father. He is the Creator, who on days one, two, three, four, and five of creation, looked at the sky, the oceans, the plants, and the animals and said, “It is good.” Then, on day six, God created man and on the seventh day, He looked back again and said, “Everything I’ve made is good.” God the Father is the householder because He is what we might call the proprietor of the earth.
The husbandman (or farmer) represents the Jewish race. Several verses in the Old Testament refer to Israel as a vineyard. Isaiah 5:1-2 bears a close resemblance to the opening of this parable. It reads: “Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.”
Practical Application
The Jews are God’s chosen people. Most of them rejected Messiah at His first coming, but most will accept Him at His second!