The Parable of the Vineyard

March 26

Jesus tells another parable in Mark 12:1-12. In this story, a man plants a vineyard and hires tenant farmers to tend it. Note that although tenant farmers were given the responsibility of tending the vineyard, it still belonged to the owner of the vineyard.

At harvest time, the owner of the vineyard sent a servant to gather the fruit from the tenant farmers. He sent one servant, then another, and another. Each time, the tenants treated the owner’s servants with contempt, beating some, sending them away empty-handed, then finally killing one and, ultimately, an entire slew of them.

At last, the vineyard owner sent his own son to retrieve the harvest, thinking that the tenant farmers would surely respect him as the son and heir. However, instead of just treating the son with contempt, they killed him and threw his body out of the vineyard, thinking that with no heir the vineyard would become theirs. But the vineyard had never been theirs; they were merely stewards.

Throughout Old Testament history, Israel is pictured as a vine. (Hosea 10:1) In fact, ancient Jewish coins frequently featured the image of a vine. The vine mentioned by name in the first part of Jeremiah 2:21 grew in the Wadi al-Sarar and produced the choicest grapes and yielded a highly prized red wine. However, Israel was not always the beautiful, fruitful vine God intended.

As Jeremiah continues, Israel degraded from a high-quality vine, producing exquisite grapes to a degenerate vine producing inferior grapes. Jesus said in John 15:1, “I am the true vine,” a direct indictment against the Jewish leaders of the day. God’s people, led by ungodly leaders, faded from their former and intended glory.

Jesus concluded this parable, saying that the vineyard owner would do away with the tenant farmers and give the vineyard to someone else. He then quoted Psalm 118:22 prophetically of Himself: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Though He was rejected by the religious leaders, Jesus was still the center of God’s plan for His people.

At this point, the Jewish leaders wanted to arrest Him because they knew He had spoken the parable against them. (v. 12) Of course, Jesus had spoken this parable against them! The Jewish leaders had long forgotten they were only stewards of God’s vineyard—His people. Instead, they had lorded their authority over them.

Application

How often do we think that everything revolves around us? How often do we begin drifting in the spiritual life and untethering from the people and relationships we desperately need to remain humble in heart, tender toward God, vigilant in prayer, and strong in His Word?

Pride is a fox that never announces his entrance into the vineyard of the heart. But, oh, how quickly he spoils the grapes! He saunters in quietly with a quick decision here, a passive one there, and those choices slowly add up to isolation, arrogance, lack of accountability, and a self-serving mindset. The final results are spiritual blindness, desensitization, and then a great fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

We are not the captains of our own fate. We never were. Adam was set over creation to replenish and subdue it, then placed in the Garden to tend and keep it. By design, the first man was a steward, and this parable reminds us that design has not changed.

Whatever God has given to you, remember: It isn’t yours. Hold whatever He gives you lightly. You are and always will be a steward—never the owner.

© Copyright 2026 Craig Beaman