It was so the wrong answer.

In Matthew 21, Jesus told a parable about a farmer who repeatedly sent servants and finally his own son to collect fruit from his vineyard, only to have them all rejected and killed by the tenants. When Jesus asked the Pharisees what the owner would do to those tenants, they answered confidently that he would bring those wretches to a wretched end. It sounded logical, but it was the wrong answer. The farmer in the parable is God, and nothing about His character up to that point suggested wrath was His defining response. The right answer was a plea for mercy, because God's defining impulse toward His people is not destruction but relentless pursuit. This is not just Israel's story. It is our story too, and the good news is that the Father's character has not changed.