4. Who gave John the right to baptize? Was it God in heaven or merely some human being?”
5. They talked this over and said to each other, “We can't say that God gave John this right. Jesus will ask us why we didn't believe John.
6. And we can't say that it was merely some human who gave John the right to baptize. The crowd will stone us to death, because they think John was a prophet.”
7. So they told Jesus, “We don't know who gave John the right to baptize.”
8. Jesus replied, “Then I won't tell you who gave me the right to do what I do.”
9. Jesus told the people this story:A man once planted a vineyard and let it. Then he left the country for a long time.
10. When it was time to harvest the crop, he sent a servant to ask the tenants for his share of the grapes. But they beat up the servant and sent him away without anything.
11. So the owner sent another servant. The tenants also beat him up. They insulted him terribly and sent him away without a thing.
12. The owner sent a third servant. He was also beaten terribly and thrown out of the vineyard.
13. The owner then said to himself, “What am I going to do? I know what. I'll send my son, the one I love so much. They will surely respect him!”
14. When the tenants saw the owner's son, they said to one another, “Some day he will own the vineyard. Let's kill him! Then we can have it all for ourselves.”
15. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.Jesus asked, “What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do?
16. I'll tell you what. He will come and kill those tenants and let someone else have his vineyard.”When the people heard this, they said, “This must never happen!”
17. But Jesus looked straight at them and said, “Then what do the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘The stone that the builders tossed aside is now the most important stone of all’?
18. Anyone who stumbles over this stone will get hurt, and anyone it falls on will be smashed to pieces.”
19. The chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses knew that Jesus was talking about them when he was telling this story. They wanted to arrest him at once, but they were afraid of the people.
20. Jesus' enemies kept watching him closely, because they wanted to hand him over to the Roman governor. So they sent some men who pretended to be good. But they were really spies trying to catch Jesus saying something wrong.
21. The spies said to him, “Teacher, we know that you teach the truth about what God wants people to do. And you treat everyone with the same respect, no matter who they are.