Lucas 20:17

By looking at His hearers Jesus captivated their attention for a very important statement. Jesus’ response corrected the crowd’s resistance to the idea that God would judge Israel’s present leaders and would allow Israel to fall under other presumably Gentile leadership. He now changed the figure from a vineyard to a building. Luke recorded Him quoting only Psalms 118:22, not Luke 20:23, which the other evangelists included (cf. Luke 19:38; Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7). This has the effect of highlighting the stone, namely, Jesus, without reference to God.

An apparently insignificant stone that builders discarded as being unfit would become the most important stone of all. Jesus would become the most important feature in what God was building. Luke’s original readers would have understood this as a reference to Jesus being the head of the church. The statement was a further indictment against the current builders, Israel’s leaders.