On Tuesday of the week Jesus was going to die, he was teaching in the temple courts. Religious leaders tried to trap Jesus with various questions, though he evaded their traps with his superior wisdom. In one scene he told a parable followed by a quotation from a psalm, and we should see this parable and psalm together.
Jesus said that a vineyard owner leased the vineyard to tenants while he went to another country (Mark 12:1). During the season for fruit, the owner sent a servant to the tenants to get fruit, but the tenants beat the servant (12:2–3). Another servant arrived, but they treated him the same way, striking him on the head (12:4). More servants came, and some of them were even killed (12:5). Finally, the vineyard owner sent his “beloved son” (12:6). The wicked tenants saw an opportunity to take out the heir, so “they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard” (12:8).
The parable was about the rejection of those who should have been received. The tenants should not have shamefully treated the vineyard owner’s servants. The treatment of the servants revealed the wickedness of the tenants. And since the tenants mistreated the servants, the momentum of the parable prepares us for the hostile way they will treat the vineyard owner’s son. In the shocking narration of the parable, the vineyard owner’s son dies at the hands of the wicked tenants.
In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was like a vineyard that God planted. The servants whom the owner sent to the vineyard were like the prophets who faced opposition and mistreatment from people in the land. The “beloved son” is, of course, the Lord Jesus—the one telling the parable.
After telling this parable, Jesus quotes a psalm. He says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mark 12:10–11, citing Ps. 118:22–23). In the parable the beloved son is rejected, and in the psalm the stone is rejected.
Jesus cites the psalm after telling the parable because he is the rejected son, and the rejected son is the rejected stone. The religious leaders are like the builders who looked at a perfectly cut stone and deemed it unfit. They rejected their Messiah. Yet in God’s marvelous plan, the rejected stone becomes the cornerstone—the most important stone of all.
By rejecting the Lord Jesus, the leaders were rejecting the cornerstone of the new temple. By rejecting the Lord Jesus, the leaders were rejecting the beloved son who had come to their vineyard, a vineyard being stewarded by unfaithful tenants.
The parable Jesus told was about his death yet was also before his death. In this sense, the parable was prophetic. The vineyard owner’s son died in the story, and Jesus will soon die as a result of the conspiracy of the wicked “tenants.”
The end of the beloved son’s life in the parable is discouraging because the wicked tenants seem to prevail by removing the heir of the vineyard. But Jesus promises judgment upon the wicked (Mark 12:9). And despite the intent of the wicked leaders, the death of the son is not the end of the son. Reading the psalm after the parable, we see that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Mark 12:10; Ps. 118:22).
How does the rejected stone become the cornerstone? The plan of the tenants would ultimately fail because the vineyard owner’s son would be raised from the dead. Reading the parable alongside the psalm, we see that rejection will lead to vindication.