Sermon Application Questions

Read over Luke 19.45-20.48

• Why do the chief priests and the teachers of the law reject Jesus? How does the parable or the tenants explain that rejection? What does Jesus think lies at the root of our unwillingness to receive him?
• Think about the irony of this attempt to force Jesus though ‘being in very nature God’ to justify his presence in his own temple. Think about ways we do the same thing in the temples of our lives.

Read over Isaiah 5.1-7

• What is Jesus doing in his ‘director’s cut’ of Isaiah’s ‘Song of the Vineyard’? What is the impact of broadening the scope of the lesson from national Israel in Isaiah 5 to the whole world in Luke 20?

Read over Psalm 2 and Gen 22.1-2.

• What do these texts tell us about who the tenants are resisting? How should this inform our thoughts as we head into advent? How will we pray differently in the coming weeks in the light of these allusions?

Read over Psalm 118, thinking carefully about the way it anticipates Jesus' own experience.

• Why is it so striking that Jesus quotes this psalm in Luke 20 after telling us that the tenants will kill the Son? Is it a contradiction to say that the King of Psalm 2 is killed in the parable? If not, why not?
• What does it mean for us to follow this kind of King? What does it mean for us to live in a world as tenants knowing that everything we have is God’s possession? How can we give him the fruit of the vineyard that he deserves?
• Why should our thinking about Christ’s first coming always be linked to his second coming? How should that impact our praying, our speaking, our living in the coming week?