Matthew 21:33-36

33 “Now listen to another story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. 34 At the time of the grape harvest, he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. 35 But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 36 So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same.

This parable in Matthew 21:33-46 is leading close to Jesus being betrayed, arrested , flogged and crucifixion. The Old Testament is full of servants  of the Lord who was sent to give prophetic messages to God’s people . Each time  these Old Testament prophets were not accepted very well, and were persecuted somehow. The prophet Jeremiah, he was hated so much for telling the Hebrew kings and priests, stop sinning against God, or the Lord will allow Israel to be invaded and all of you people will take to a land to be slaves.  In response the leaders of Israel put Jeremiah in a deep mud pit.

Jeremiah 38:6  So the officials took Jeremiah from his cell and lowered him by ropes into an empty cistern in the prison yard. It belonged to Malkijah, a member of the royal family. There was no water in the cistern, but there was a thick layer of mud at the bottom, and Jeremiah sank down into it.

Isaiah said in his book (Isaiah 6:1) he saw God seated on His throne, but an unbelievable king of Israel named  Manasseh. The Prophet Isaiah was on the run from Manasseh and hid himself in a tree . So Manasseh ordered the tree be sawed and so Isaiah was killed by a King of Israel. The death of Isaiah is not in our scripture and I am not sure why but God’s word does say that Manasseh shed a lot of blood in Israel.

2 Kings 21:16  Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the Lord. 17 Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh—all that he did, and the sin that he committed—are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

The Jewish leaders  of the Old Testament were so prideful and thought they were good enough without the word of God being delivered by a prophet that they abused and  hurt them. Don’t  feel sorry for these servants of God, these prophets they knew the world would not accept their message and they suffer. That way several times they would  ask God to select another person to be a prophet, but He says I want you to do it.  God bless you all, the Lord loves you and so do I. Samuel Jerry Head

Hebrews 11:36  Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. 37 Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. 38 They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. 39 All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. 40 For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.