(13)  Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him. 

Luke 20:13

Explanation:

The landowner must decide.  All his representatives are being mistreated and he is not given what he has been owed.  So, he sends the greatest representative he can.  “I’ll send my loved son”, he reasons.  The logic is that there should be a difference in thinking when the landowners beloved son shows up, compared to the hired representatives.  The more beloved the messenger, the more respect should be given to the messenger and the message.

Remember that Jesus is crafting this story.  In the story, this landowner is using the kind of thinking that those who are hearing the story would recognize as logical.  Since the landowner is representative of God the Father, we should understand that God knew what would happen to Jesus.  He is not saying something about God’s planning process.  He is not saying that God didn’t know what would happen to Jesus.  What Jesus wants is for the scribes and pharisees to take a moment to think about what side of history they are on.  They certainly would have admitted that there were prophets in the past that were persecuted and rejected.  But they would not have seen themselves as the kind of people that would have been persecuting God’s messengers. 

Application:

Our thinking is often representative on a large scale by the culture in which we live.  It is the air we breathe.  Everything in our lives is preaching a sermon.  Theology is everywhere.  We must make sure that our theology and worldview is shaped by the Bible and not by the culture.  These pharisees thought that they were God’s representative at the precise time that they were literally fighting God.

Response:

Take a moment to think about your worldview.  Is it shaped by the culture, or your own desires, more than by the Word of God?