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.