“And the chief priests and the scribes that very hours sought to lay hands on Him, but they feared the people— for they knew He had spoken this parable against them” (Luke 20:19).
The parable of the vineyard left the multitude astonished. They easily identified the characters in the parable as themselves. The owner was God, the vineyard was Israel, the servants were the prophets, the son of the owner was Jesus, and the evil workers were the religious leaders. Jesus answered indirectly the question they had asked about His authority in Luke 20:1, 2, showing that He knew the plan that they had to kill Him. The rulers saw their own future revealed in the words of Jesus, “He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others” (verse 16). Nonetheless, Jesus looked at them with compassion, and wanted to show them the truth (see The Desire of Ages, ch. 65, p. 594).
Don’t let your conscience fall asleep so that you no longer hear the loving words of your Redeemed. The Israelites were disobedient (see Hebrews 3:18); in the original Greek the word apeitheō is used, meaning “apathetic”: they refused to be persuaded. They committed the unpardonable sin. Keep your ears open to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Having rejected Jesus, all they wanted to do now was to trap Him in some comment or action that they could condemn Him for and make Him worthy of the death penalty. They harassed Him constantly with insidious questions. One of these questions was about taxes, but they cou1dn’t trap Him into saying anything they could accuse Him of because He answered, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:23). Jesus turned their capricious question into a powerful lesson: we have both church and civil obligations.
The next question was about marriage and the resurrection. It was a question that had been ingeniously designed by the Sadducees, a religious group that only considered the books of the Pentateuch to be sacred, that is, from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Since those books did not mention the resurrection, they did not believe in it. Jesus based His answer on the writings of Moses, the only Biblical authority they respected: God is not a God of the dead. When Moses exclaimed, “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,” he affirmed that the dead rise again (Luke 20:37, 38). “The wisdom by which He escaped the snares set for His feet, being a new evidence of His divinity, added fuel to their wrath. In His contest with the rabbis, it was not Christ’s purpose to humiliate His opponents. He was not glad to see them in a hard place. He had an important lesson to teach.”—The Desire of Ages, ch. 65, p. 360.
Do not respond to provocations. If someone throws stones at you, use them to build monuments, formulate principles, raise altars. Be like a tree: in the storm, grow your roots even deeper.
www.meditacionesdiarias.com
https://twitter.com/meditacionesdi1
http://www.instagram.com/meditacionesdiarias7
Taken from: Devotional Thoughts for Women 2023
“DAUGHTER OF MINE” Do Not Be Afraid
From: Arsenia Fernandez-Uckele
Collaborators: Xiomara Perdomo & Esteban Cortes
