THE PARABLE OF THE TENANTS

Luke 20:1-19

Key Verse: 20:17

* THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS QUESTIONED (1-8)

1. What was Jesus doing in the temple courts? (What had he just done?) How and why did the chief priests and other religious leaders question his authority?

2. Why did he ask them about John's baptism? How did they calculate before answering? (Why was this question so hard for them to answer?) What does this show about their faith?

3. How did Jesus use their refusal to answer his question about John?

* THE PARABLE OF THE TENANTS (9-19)

4. To whom and about whom and in what context did Jesus speak this parable? (9,19)

5. In the parable, who is the man who planted the vineyard; who are the farmers or tenants? What is the relationship of these, respectively, to the vineyard? (What basic principle of ownership-stewardship can we learn here?)

6. When harvest time came, what happened? Who do the servants represent? Why did the tenants treat each of them progressively more harsh? Who were the servants?

7. Why did the owner finally send his son? What does this teach us about God? About Jesus?

8. What did the tenants do to the son? Why did they do it? What was Jesus predicting' about the events that lay immediately ahead of him?

9. What would happen to these tenants? To the vineyard? What does this teach about God and about his redemptive history? Who is the true Israel of God?

10. When the people found it hard to accept the fact that God would give the vineyard to other tenants, what did Jesus teach them from the Bible about God's sovereign way of working in history? What does the warning in verse 18 mean?

11. What can we learn in this parable about Jesus' personal faith? About his place in God's history, and his view of history? How does this parable answer the Jewish leaders' challenge to Jesus' authority?