Mark 12:9

“What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenant farmers and will give the vineyard to others.”

‘The lord of the vineyard’ here is the owner and the outcome is exactly what anyone would expect. He would come and destroy them. What else could the owner do? (The tenants had clearly hoped he would not think it worth the trouble).

Strictly the meaning here is simply that those responsible for God’s people will be judged and replaced. It is not the vineyard that is to be destroyed but the tenant farmers. Jesus’ point was that it was necessary that these be replaced. God would not leave them still in control.

This was a stark warning to the Jewish authorities. Did they really think that God would stand by and do nothing when they continually rejected His prophets and finally His Son?

And although they did not yet realise it He was already making provision for their replacement with the training of His disciples. He knew that they would shortly take over the responsibilities of the Jewish religious leadership, for that was why He had trained them. Then, for those who responded to Jesus, the authority of those Jewish leaders would be destroyed. It was they who would be ‘cast out’.

But this would also later be seen as fulfilled in a much more powerful way in the cessation of the priesthood because of the destruction of the Temple (although that had not happened when Mark was writing). The main idea, however, was of the passing over of the authority to the Apostles. That was the whole purpose of training them (see also John 13-16).