This is a story Jesus told to convict the religious leadership of time, of their hypocrisy, and tell them also, that they were going to kill Him.
“Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.
“When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?”
They say unto him, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.”
Matthew 21:33-41
These people soon realized that Jesus was talking about them and their wicked hearts, and that He knew they, and their fathers had hated the prophets, and they hated him too. Jesus knew what they were about to do to Him; and that is hang Him on a cross.