Daily Devotional For Sunday, January 25, 2026
Good morning Southside. I pray you all are making it through this winter blast. As we all are doing this, we also are making our way through the Gospel of Matthew. Today, we pick up with the same passage we left off with yesterday – Matthew 21:33-46. Because this is a longer parable by Jesus about evil farmers, we will take several days to work our way through it. Here is the passage below:
“Now listen to another story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. (34) At the time of the grape harvest, he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. (35) But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. (36) So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same. (37) “Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, ‘Surely they will respect my son.’ (38) “But when the tenant farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, ‘Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let’s kill him and get the estate for ourselves!’ 39 So they grabbed him, dragged him out of the vineyard, and murdered him. (40) “When the owner of the vineyard returns,” Jesus asked, “what do you think he will do to those farmers?” (41) The religious leaders replied, “He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest.” (42) Then Jesus asked them, “Didn’t you ever read this in the Scriptures? ‘The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful to see.’ (43) I tell you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. (44) Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.” (45) When the leading priests and Pharisees heard this parable, they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. (46) They wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowds, who considered Jesus to be a prophet” (NLT).
This parable by Jesus takes a dark turn when a landowner sent his son to collect what was rightfully the landowner’s. This greedy and selfish tenant farmers killed his son thinking with the heir dead, the land would become their land. In verse 41, Jesus asked, “When the owner of the vineyard returns,” Jesus asked, “What do you think he will do to those farmers?” Look at the religious leaders’ answer in verse 42, The religious leaders replied, “He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest.” Jesus is making a comparison here how God had entrusted to the religious leaders His law and will, but they had rejected it and used it to profit themselves. And worse, Jesus foretold how they would kill Him. In this parable, the landowner is God, the tenet farmers are the religious leaders and the son, well, the Son represents Jesus.
Today, we are seeing anti-Christian attacks all throughout our nation. There are those who want to silence us by bullying us into submission by bulldozing their way into our worship services as just happened at the Cities Church in St. Paul, MN. So, as Christians, do we just sit back and keep our mouths shut and stay out of political topics or do we engage? When it comes to biblical truth, we stand, not in a condemning way, but we stand and speak up. “Turning the other cheek” does not mean we are passive when anti-Bible proponents are spreading heresy. When anyone misspeaks on the character and work of Christ, we must take a stand.
We are not called nor saved to be spectators of the Gospel, but speakers of it. This is the point of Jude 3, “Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people” (NLT). As our culture becomes more hostile towards Christians, we must be hospitable towards them. New Testament scholar Daniel M. Dorianit writes this:
“The owner’s well-provisioned vineyard represents God’s provision while the rest of the story describes Israel’s response. The land, hedge-wall, winepress, and tower amount to everything a farm needs. In the real world, the Lord gave Israel land, gave them his love and his law, and ordained kings and prophets to protect the people. Everything was in place” (Source: Daniel M. Doriani, Reformed Expository Commentary, “Matthew Vols. 1 & 2,” p. 273).
Meaning God, Israel’s landowner, had given them, His tenant farmers everything they needed to be His light and voice in this world. But they rejected God and then killed His Son. In those days, landowners would lease out their land to tenant farmers. At harvest time, the landowner’s pay was a percentage of the crops. Once the tenant farmers paid this, the rest of the crops were theirs to sell. So, at harvest season landowners would go to collect. These tenant farmers have come to convince themselves that the land is their land. In the same way, the religious leaders felt their lives, the law, their culture and calling was theirs.
After hearing what the religious leaders said should be the proper response of the landowner to these tenant farmers, Jesus quoted Psalm 118:22-23. In those days, stone masons would go through a pile of stones searching for the best stones and discarding the bad ones. Since the religious leaders have rejected Jesus as the Cornerstone, God’s judgment will come upon them. The kingdom of God will be taken from them and given to the Apostles and to us today (vs. 43). Our God has unlimited resources to take evil and turn it into good.
Verse 44 and following is Jesus’ pointing out Daniel’s prophecy about this in Daniel 2:44, “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever” (NLT). The rejection of Jesus inaugurates the eternal kingdom of God through Jesus Christ all the way down to us today. I conclude with this from James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man:
“The main character, young Stephen Dedalus, has been dropped off at boarding school. There Stephen encountered some of his classmates. One of the boys, Wells, asked Stephen: “Tell us Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?” Stephen answered: “I do.” Wells turned to the other fellows and said: “O, I say, here’s a fellow who says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed.” The other fellows stopped their game and turned around, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said: “I do not.” Wells said: “O, I say, here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.” They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question?… Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother?” (Source: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, pp. 8,-9).
So, you have to decide for yourself: Is it right to take a stand for the Lord when others present the wrong image of Him? Is it right to take a stand to share the Gospel? Is it right to present Jesus and the Gospel as the only way, truth and life? I remind you of Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:32-33, “Jesus said, ‘Everyone who acknowledges Me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before My Father in heaven. (33) But everyone who denies Me here on earth, I will also deny before My Father in heaven” (NLT).
Reflection Assignment: Is your “kiss” to the Lord one of affection, love, loyalty and obedience or is it one of betrayal and denial? Would the Lord say you live your life as if it is yours to live as you choose, or as one who “has been bought with a price” to serve the Lord and fulfill His will in your life? Our sins killed Jesus and today we can continue to do that with the attitude that says, “This is my life and I am going to live it my way.” Do you “kiss” the Lord in devotion and when around others, you kiss HIm with denial?
Scripture To Meditate On: 2 Timothy 2:12, “If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us” (ESV).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord, I never want to be found guilty of denying You. I never want to be wishy-washy in my walk with You. You have entrusted me with my life, Your will and purpose to share the Gospel and to take a stand for You when I am being pressed not to do this. I will stand for You. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly