Mat 21;23-32 Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?” 24 But Jesus answered and said to them, “I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things: 25 The baptism of John—where was it from? From heaven or from men?”And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude, for all count John as a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus and said, “We do not know.” And He said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.28 “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ 29 He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he regretted it and went. 30 Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?”They said to Him, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.
We are looking at the amazing last week of our Lord’s life before He dies on the cross for us, called Passion Week. We already seen Him coming into Jerusalem in a triumphal entry, cleansing the temple, and cursing the fig tree as a sign of judgement to the nation of Israel. After seeing all this, the Jewish Sanhedrin come and challenge His authority, asking Him a question: “Who gave you authority to do these things?” The Sanhedrin were the highest authority in Israel. They come and challenge Him. We saw they wanted to trap Him into saying He comes in Messianic authority given to Him by the Father, so they could accuse Him of blasphemy of calling God as Father as they previously did. But our Lord answered in great wisdom, not just to escape from their trap—His time has already come—but to expose their hypocrisy from their own mouths. He asked whether John’s ministry was from heaven or men. Instead of Him being trapped, they were actually trapped in a situation where shamefully, all of the great Sanhedrin, with whom wisdom was born, had to confess before Him, “We don’t know.” Then He refused to answer their question because they didn’t answer His question.
The whole passage was a question about challenging Jesus’ authority. The Gospel of Matthew repeatedly emphasizes the authority of Christ. He repeatedly mentioned Christ preached with authority. The authority of Christ was repeatedly demonstrated over all diseases, demons, nature, Satan, sin, even death. As the gospel ends, He declared all authority is given to Him on heaven and earth. Jesus Christ has supreme authority over everything and everyone. Greater the authority, greater will be the crime and punishment when you rebel against that authority. If you reject the supreme authority of Christ, there are terrible temporal and eternal consequences. These leaders and people wanted to be willfully blind to the authority of Christ, so they don’t have to submit to Jesus’ authority. You know what God did. God cursed them with judicial blindness. John 12:37: “But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him.” God in judgement blinded their spiritual eyes and hardened their heart, blinding them so they will never be able to see the truth of Christ and repent from the heart to come to Him. What a terrible consequence to challenge or reject Christ’s authority.
That authority of Christ comes to us through the scriptures today. Today, people don’t recognize that rejecting the authority of the scriptures brings all kinds of terrible spiritual and eternal consequences. That is the cursed state of our churches and times. You can sit here and debate, and refuse to submit your life to the authority of Christ in the scriptures. You are today doing the same sin that those leaders did. The greatest sin and folly has consequences of eternal proportions.
If your life is not under the authority of the scriptures, your great need is not more and more answers to doubts, and superficial questions. The great need of your heart is repentance and to turn and submit to His authority. Repentance alone can save you from terrible judicial blinding. Have you wondered why cannot you submit to the authority of Scripture? When a scripture attacks your sin, instead of saying, “Search me Lord and mould me, crush me,” you argue, debate over scripture, and try to justify your sin and state. “Oh, we cannot follow the Bible in everything, no one can be perfect.” Outwardly you sit here as if you will hear and obey, but in your heart you know you are fighting against that truth. If that is your heart, your great need is repentance.
In a way to demonstrate that to those religious leaders, Jesus, after refusing to answer the leaders who failed to recognize His authority, He gives 3 parables: the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked vinedressers, and the wedding banquet. Remember all these parables were primarily given to religious leaders who refused to recognize His authority.
We will look at the first parable today under 3 Headings: Parable (vv. 28-30), Connection of the Parable to those Leaders (vv. 31-32), and Application to Us.
Parable of the Two Sons
Imagine already they have were shamed before the crowd in His question about John the Baptist. I wonder if the chief priests and elders thought they could quietly sneak away before things got worse. But they couldn’t. Jesus goes on now to ask them a question—one that exposes the condition of their hearts even more.
Verse 28: “But what do you think?” “Analyze this and ponder it for a while,” He tells them, “then understand what I’m getting across to you.” “You said you don’t know about John the Baptist ministry, okay. Let me give you a simple example and ask you a simple question, like children.” “A father has two sons. The first son he came to and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’”
A father has two sons. As the authority of the house, he has the right to command, and children have the duty to obey. Built into that relationship you have a responsibility for obedience. The father runs a vineyard. He came to the first and said, “Son, go, work today in my vineyard.”
Verse 29: “He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ spoke harshly; but afterward he regretted it and went.” Wow, shocking! Outright disobedience. Notice verse 30, the other son says “Sir,” but here no respect, no obedience. But afterward he regretted it and went.
The word that is used is one that refers to a change of one’s mind concerning a past action. The first son realized that he was wrong in what he did; and following that change of mind, and sorrow for his past actions, he rose up and did what he should have done. Repentance is metanoia. When he repented he went; that was the fruit meet for repentance. The fruit of repentance is obedience. The only evidence of our repentance for our former resistance, is, immediately to comply, and set to work.
Verse 30: “Then Father came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go.” Wonderful! He not only said, “I will go,” but also addressed his father respectfully. “Honor your parents.” But he didn’t do what he was commanded to do.
Now the great leaders, this is a simple story, and I have a simple question for you. Verse 31: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” Which one recognized the Father’s authority? What is your judgement? He asks them, “Is it the son who said he will and didn’t do, or the son who said will not do, but did? Who obeyed the Father’s will?” Keep in mind that these men comprised the Supreme Court of Israel. They regularly declared judgments on those who resisted authority. They settled family matters. None of the religious leaders would have disagreed with their responsibility to recognize the father’s authority and obey. Anyone of them would have judged the second son as a rebel and worthy of punishment for spurning his father’s authority. But they could not or would not see how they had spurned God’s authority in Christ.
Okay, one said he will do, but didn’t. One said he will not, but did. We kind of wonder, is there no son, who said he will do, and did it? But not in this story. You know why? This is the state of fallen humanity before God, because like this Father, God has no righteous children. All have fallen and rebelled against God.
“‘What do you think?’ He says.” And He says, in verse 31, “Which of the two did the will of his father?” They both had their faults; one was rude and the other was false. But the question is, “Which was the better of the two, and the less faulty?” “And they say unto Him, ‘The first.’” And it was soon resolved: the first, because his actions were better than his words, and his latter end than his beginning. This they had learned from the common sense of mankind, who would much rather deal with one that will be better than his word, than with one that will be false to his word.
And they’re so excited to be able to answer a question, thinking that at last they’ve got one that won’t incriminate them. Little did they know how nakedly this simple parable exposes their heart fully. “The first, the first. I mean the guy who did it was the guy who said he wouldn’t, but repented and did.” Well, they were right. That was the characterization, the parable.
Connection of the Parable to the Leaders
How does He connect that with them? How does He apply that? This is devastating. When they hurriedly answered, “The first,” they put themselves in a dire situation for a great rebuke.
Verse 31B: “Jesus said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.’”
Why? How?
Verse 32: “For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.”
You see, this is the religious elite, folks. These people are so moral; in their self-righteousness they are living under the illusion that God is thrilled with them because of their Bible knowledge and outward purity. And “tax collectors and harlots” is a proverbial statement for the scum of society. Tax collectors were treasonists, traitors—Jews who sold themselves to Rome to exact unfair taxes from the people. They were traitors. And harlots were those who sort of symbolize all of the gross, God-defying immorality. Tax collectors and harlots were outcasts, the scum of society.
The primary scope of the parable is to show how the tax collectors and harlots—like the first son, who never talked of the Messiah and His kingdom, who never promised any religious show, who rebelled against God’s law and dishonored God—yet when John preached a message of righteousness and repentance, they repented and submitted to his ministry and baptism as the forerunner of the Messiah. But when the priests and elders—the second son—outwardly respected God, who were big with expectations of the Messiah, and seemed very ready to accept and do this work, they rejected John the Baptist and his ministry.
And Jesus says, “You”—in effect—“are like that second son. God, as creator and Father of humanity, commands you through His authoritative word and you say, ‘We will, by all our outward religion,’ and you never obey God from your heart. You feign to obey God, but you never do go in His vineyard, which is His place of reign and kingdom, and live under His terms and obey His commands. You call His Father ‘Lord’; they claim to obey God, but it is all outward lip confession, nothing in the heart. If they really obeyed God, they would have believed the Son sent by the Father, and yielded themselves to Him as they should. They will do the work of God, which is “This is the work of God,” Jesus said elsewhere, “that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:29)—a ‘work’ which they would not do. Their rejection of the Messiah is a great exposure of their only outward hypocritical religion.
And on the other hand, there are the rebels of society, the tax collectors and the harlots, who start out rebelling, living a sinful life, and don’t profess any obedience, but repent and do go into His vineyard and obey Him.” The point here is you have people who claim hypocritical obedience and don’t obey, and people who deny obedience but ultimately do, and that’s the difference.
Tax collectors and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. I mean that is a strong statement, and boy, have they lost face in front of the crowd. He’s not saying, “You’re going to go in after them.” That’s not the implication. The idea is, “They’re going to go in, and you’re not.” Religion doesn’t get you in the kingdom. It is only repentance and obedience that will take you into the kingdom. They were the very worst of humanity, but realized the need for repentance and repented and will enter God’s kingdom.
That is what happened during John’s ministry. But the Gospels tell us, so beautifully, that in the ministry of John, many harlots believed on Him. It was the people who were overwhelmed with their sin. And they came down to John, and they said, “We got to get ready for the kingdom. If the Messiah’s coming, we got to get ready. We want to confess. We want to repent of our sins.”
But when the Pharisees—you remember in Matthew 3?—came down, and John was baptizing, John says, “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’” Verse 12: “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
He gave a judgement message to these unrepenting Pharisees. He was taking the sinners in, and they were confessing and repenting and being baptized in a baptism of repentance to get ready for the Messiah.
And He says, “Because of that, you’re like son number two who says, ‘Oh, yes, God, we will obey you,’ and you never do. And on the other hand, these who rebel have turned to repent and obey.” That’s why, in chapter 23, verse 3, the Lord said: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, [for] they give you God’s word, so do. But do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.” They say they obey God. They don’t.
Verse 32: “For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him.”
Then verse 32, “For John came unto you in the way of righteousness,”—and here He answers His question, “Was John’s ministry from heaven or earth?”—“He came in the way of righteousness.” Not just with a message of righteousness; no, in the way of righteousness.
His way was a way of righteousness; it was a way of godliness. He was a righteous man. And he had a righteous message. In his ministry, he taught people to repent, and to work the works of righteousness. After repentance, he taught people to live a righteous life. Christ Himself submitted to the baptism of John, because it “became Him to fulfil all righteousness.” Now, if John thus came in the way of righteousness, how could they be ignorant that his baptism was from heaven, or make any doubt of it? “You believed him not. You heard a righteous man speak a righteous word, and you refused to believe it.” What does that tell about you? You are hypocritical and unrighteousness. That’s indictment enough.
And then He gives them another indictment, (2.) By the success of his ministry: “But the tax collectors and the harlots”—prostitutes, the worst sort of people—“believed him.” They believed him. They heard John. They accepted his message. They repented.
St. Paul proves his apostleship by the seals of his ministry, such as how people’s lives were changed (1 Corinthians 9:2). If God had not sent John the Baptist, He would not have crowned his labours with such wonderful success, nor have made him so instrumental as he was for the conversion of souls. If tax collectors and harlots believe his report, surely the arm of the Lord is with him. The people’s profiting is the minister’s best testimonial.
“And when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe.”
That’s a double indictment. To shame them for it, he sets before them the faith, repentance, and obedience, of the tax collectors and harlots, which aggravated their unbelief and impenitence.
Listen very carefully. He says, “You saw a man with a righteous life preach a righteous message, and you didn’t believe that. That John was such an excellent person, that he came, and came to them, in the way of righteousness. The better the means are, the greater will the account be, if not improved. And then, when you saw tax collectors and harlots repent and have their lives transformed, you didn’t even believe after seeing that.” In other words, “You rejected the message, and you rejected even the divine transforming power that even changed the worst in society.” Doubly indicted.
We will never be able to feel the impact this had on them, unless we are in their shoes. This is the first of the three parables the Lord will speak to these leaders which angers them to such an extent that they cannot tolerate Him anymore and will in the next 2-3 days, they are going to kill him. The first parable, He accuses them of religious hypocrisy. We will look at other 2 parables in the next week.
So we have seen the parable and its connection to the Jewish leaders, now what is the connect of this parable to us? How does this apply to us?
Applications for Us 🪞
What is the Holy Spirit telling us through this parable in Matthew’s gospel? Do we just read a passage like this in our study, “Oh, some parable the Lord used and rebuked those leaders,” and just move on? This parable not only exposes the leaders, but exposes even our own hearts like a mirror that will show our disgusting hypocrisy in each of our hearts. Before I talk about that, I want to ask you what will we do with that. Leaders when exposed got angry, rejected, and plotted to kill the Lord. What will we do? We may just see and go. Last week, there was a powerful lesson in the Women’s meeting from James 1.
All of you who are listening to God’s word being preached today, James divides you into those who will deceive themselves by being just hearers and those will be blessed by doing what they hear. Turn to James 1:22: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” He characterizes the man who is deceiving himself. He just takes a quick glance. The Word of God like a mirror exposes our deepest heart, our spiritual condition.
Verse 23: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.” Verse 24: “for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.” But this man is like a man who gets up at 9:50 to go to the office at 10. How long will he see the mirror? He is in a hurry, fast, see and run off. He cannot observe the dirt under his mouth, and his hair is not combed. He quickly sees and forgets because of his hurry. Secondly, He forgets what he heard. James is not describing a man with a poor memory, but rather a man with wrong priorities. He doesn’t remember what he saw in the mirror because he doesn’t regard it as very important. God, heaven, eternal life, truths in the Bible are interesting and nice, but this guy has so many things in the world—pleasures, worries, work, family, a career to pursue. This doesn’t stick. He hears and forgets what he hears. If you are like that, James says sadly, by hearing God’s word preached you are deceiving yourself. There is an inherent danger in attending a church where God’s word is proclaimed week to week: If you hear the word often, but do not put it into practice, you delude yourself. He says the word doesn’t even help him to control his tongue; that man’s religion is worthless.
How do we change that? The solution, he says: To be doers of the word, we’ve got to give it more than passing attention. It requires deliberate focus and hard work to apply it personally. Verse 25: “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”
A. The Blessed Hearer and Doer Looks Intently at the Word. If we have not to be blessed, that is what you and I should do. Not a casual look, “Lord said to leaders, it’s over,” no. Look intently so even small spots, flaws, or things becomes clear. “You can see a lot just by looking.” Take time, deep focus.
B. The Blessed Hearer and Doer Applies the Word Not Just to His Outward Behavior, But to His Heart. Not just outwardly, but application to my heart. “The law of liberty,” law, law generally enslaves, but here law becomes the law of liberty. It does not enslave. It is not enforced by external compulsion. Instead, it frees, meaning “the new covenant promise of the law written on the heart, accompanied by a work of the Spirit enabling obedience to that law, with joy, accepted and fulfilled with glad devotion under the enablement of the Spirit of God (Gal. 5:22-23).” Not compulsion.
C. The Blessed Hearer and Doer Continues Meditating on the Word to His Heart. This man is not coming to the word for a quick fix for his immediate problem. It is continually applied to our hearts over our entire lifetimes. It’s a long-term approach that requires discipline and diligence to reap the benefits.
So the Holy Spirit through Matthew when he recorded this was not very concerned about the error of leaders who lived in the earlier generation. He is teaching us and warning us not to make the same mistake.
What was the terrible problem with the second son characterized by the leaders? It was the subtle, disgusting religious hypocrisy! It is the sin of promising, “I will do,” but never doing it. Pretending rather than being, of saying rather than doing, of promising rather than performing. The religious leaders styled themselves as the servants of God, but in their hearts, they were not, and they disobeyed God. On the other hand, the least religious—the dregs of society who made no pretense of being righteous and pious—at the last they obeyed God. The chief criteria by which this obedience or disobedience is detected, as He says in verse 32, are faith and repentance.
This parable teaches us the danger of religious hypocrisy, of promising, but not performing. This appearance without reality, this promise without performance, this feigning holiness. John Bunyan called Christian hypocrisy—the pretense without the reality, the promise without the performance—“the back way to hell.”
We have to examine and identify this in our own hearts, mourn, and regularly repent for this. No one can escape from this. Though made in God’s image, but fallen and with a rebellious heart against God, putting up a moral religious pose is the instinct of all human beings. But this hypocrisy is particularly excessive in religious church-going people like us. Hypocrisy is such a problem. It is a pandemic disease every church suffers from. It is an insult to the honor of Christ, and it defeats the purpose for which we have been redeemed by His precious blood.
Our entire Christian life is a promise made to Christ and to others. Do we not perform, when we say we will go, as we do every Sunday, and then do not go? We find this hypocrisy of saying one will go and not going everywhere we look and, worst of all, in our own hearts.
It takes many forms.
1. People who claim to believe the Bible but never submit to the authority of the Bible. The Bible doesn’t reign in every part of our lives. Many modern liberal Christians nowadays who deny the authority of the Bible and the supremacy of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world call themselves Christians. The Lord Himself asks in Luke, “Why do you call me ‘Lord,’ when you don’t do what I tell you?”
2. The confession of Christian faith while living in open defiance to Christ’s word and example. That had been the case with the ancient Israelites too often through their history. They confessed Yahweh’s name but also consorted with idols, indulged sinful sexual lusts, suborned justice, and mistreated the poor. Time and time again the prophets excoriated their contemporaries for this huge, galactic hypocrisy. Claiming to revere God, they had nothing but open disdain for His will. Claiming to love His covenant, they trampled on its stipulations. Are we like that today? It is the same sin when people who profess Christ live openly unchristian lives. It is promising and not doing.
Let me paint your picture and mine. We regularly come to church, the deceptively submissive. We will never miss a single Sunday. Outwardly, we say to God, “I go.” We take up the song book, stand up and sing with our lips, but do not sing with our heart. When we say, “Let us pray,” you close your eyes, but you do not pray with real prayer. You utter a polite, respectful “I go, sir,” but you do not go.
You give a notional assent to the Gospel. You do not believe the Gospel in the core of your nature, for if you did, it would have an effect upon you. A man may say, “I believe my house is on fire,” but if he goes to the bedroom in the house and falls to sleep, it does not look as if he believed it, for when a man’s house is on fire he tries to escape. If some of you really believed that there is a hell, and that there is a heaven, as you believe other things, you would act very differently from what you do now.
If I were to preach any doctrine, you would say, “Yes, that is true.” E.g., if I say the sovereignty and providence of God, “I believe that.” But your heart does not believe. You don’t live trusting the providence of God, shown by all kinds of worries and self-efforts.
Oh, you hear the sermon, and are impressed by it. You say, “I go, sir,” in a very solemn sense, for when we preach earnestly, sometimes you are touched by the sermon, the tears run down your cheeks, and you go home to your bedrooms, and you pray a little, but “like the morning cloud and the early dew. It all ends.” It is like snow on a dung hill. Again, the old bird opens the door. You never will get beyond mere transient impressions. You promise, “I go, sir,” but you never go. Life never changes. You are learning, learning, feeling, feeling, but yet your sins, your self-righteousness, your carelessness, disorderly life, poor prayer life, Bible reading, or your willful wickedness cause you, after having said, “I go, sir,” to forget the promise and lie unto God. I must add that many of you sin, come to worship, and tremble under His word, and again go and sin. You feel the power of the Gospel after a fashion, and yet you revolt against it more and more.
You have been telling lies to God all these years, by saying, “I go, sir,” while you have not gone. You know that to be saved you must believe in Jesus, but you have not believed. You need to repent, but you have not repented. And wonder of wonders, that you, some of you, know it to be true, and yet do not feel alarmed thereby!
There are others who say, “I go, sir,” and yet they go not, because they attend to all the externals of religion, but their heart is not right with God. I mingle with the worshipers within the house of prayer, but do I worship God in spirit and in truth? I talk of Christ and hear of Him, but do I truly trust Him? Do I love Him? Is my heart really His? For if not, I am only offering to God the external service which He abhors.
Why do people do this? If you are doing it, why? You know, it is the subtle, hypocritical way fallen hearts manage when they hear regular Bible preaching. They not fully, but partly yield to the claims of the Gospel, because it quiets their conscience. “Conscience, be quiet. I believe it half, but by and by will believe.” Or another way to handle it, they assume that the promise is enough. But do not, I beseech you, think to mock God. Do you reckon with your debtors that when they promise to pay you, it is enough though they never meet your demands? Another way is “I go, sir,” but he has not gone, because he would not give up some sin, a “sweet sin-hold.”
Beware of being a promising hearer of the Word and nothing more. Take heed! Take heed, I pray you, while you are yet in the land of hope. This is how millions of people are being deceived. All this while, as the thirty-second verse reminds me, while you have remained unsaved, you have seen tax collectors and harlots saved by the very Gospel which has had no power upon you. You know you are not saved, but you see people worse than you, less knowledge of the truth than you, maybe drunk, adulterers, wonderfully transformed. O dear brethren, beware of being Gospel-hardened.
The danger of being like this is that firstly, they are sinning against the light. Some of you cannot say that you do not know the Gospel, because you know it so well that you have promised to yield to its claims. God doesn’t need witnesses to condemn. All that light which you resisted witnesses against you, as well as adds to your responsibility and condemnation. Because the judgement of God will be based on how much light you had. Your knowledge of truth itself will condemn you. Secondly, danger, it is always a most dangerous thing to lie to God. What does God warn by killing Ananias and Sapphira? Isn’t this a sin that He hates more? They were not bound to give any money to the apostles when they did give. But they said, “I will go,” but never went. Thirdly, while you continue to live like this, there is going on in your heart, all the while, a hardening effect of conscience. When a man has said to God, once or twice, “I go, sir,” and he does not go, he does not, by and by, feel inclined even to say, “I go,” and he feels easier in not going. Your conscience will be so hardened like the leaders. You will live in utter hypocrisy, not even realizing it, like the Iceland snowing effect on a road. A light film, by and by, so hard, even a car can run. You may very soon cover your conscience with a fatal tarmac, even a bulldozer can run. When you reach that stage, that is judicial blindness. You want to say, “I go,” and never go. It is at this point that God may say, “I will never again bid that man go work in My vineyard.”
See church history. The church was full of such people in history and is full of church people today. Are you like that today?
Not talking to you, I preach to myself. This text bites all of us, by how it lays us bare. We know, we know all too well, how often we have promised and not gone, to what a terrible extent our life is more promise than performance, more appearance than reality. When we hear how much Christ has done, what righteousness He purchased, we have not repented and lived gratefully for Him. Our life has not been the consistent working out of our loyalty to Jesus Christ, our reverence for His Word, and our commitment to His Name and His cause.
What we give back is hypocrisy. And how subtle its ways! How easily we find ourselves slipping into this habit of promising but not performing. We take comfort in our right beliefs and we are in the right Bible believing church and fellowship with such churches, but are we what we believe and confess? We scarcely give a thought to the vast chasm that separates what we are from what we know we ought to be. In other words, too often we rejoice that we made the promise of going, and forget that we never went.
Even when we do the right thing, we do it for the wrong reason or, at least, for more of the wrong reason than the right. We come to worship out of habit rather than that we can’t wait to raise our voices in the praise of Christ our Savior. We give our money out of a sense of duty rather than out of cheerful delight in serving the Lord and His kingdom in a meaningful way. We give attention to others dutifully or even to meet the expectations of others rather than for the sake of compassion, affection, and love. We know how often we have an eye to our reputation when we do what we do as Christians. We know full well that what the Lord found in the hearts of those hypocritical priests and the elders we can find in our own hearts today.
If God rejected those leaders, why should God accept us? If you remember, Paul writing to the Rome church tells the fact that the Lord had rejected so many of the Jews—who were so sure that they were on God’s side—should humble them and make them properly cautious. “For,” Paul wrote in Romans 11:20, “if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either, wild branch.”
If you look intently at this passage, it exposes us as hypocrites who have promised Christ we will go in many areas and have not gone, promised to do, but not done. This passage exposes us and calls us to repent and seek God’s grace to avoid hypocrisy and live truthfully. Not just the leaders, the great need of even our heart is not more and more sermons, answers to doubts, and questions. Before we proceed, the great need is repentance. It will be good to hear a sermon on repentance. But remember the short meaning of the catechism:
“Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience.”
See how true obedience can come in our lives as a fruit of repentance.
I know this may seem like a harsh application; it may cause us dismay and despair about our condition. But let me conclude with a positive encouragement. I believe the Holy Spirit’s intention of this passage is to cause a dismay about ourselves, where we spread our hands and fall prostrate before God. Why?
If you are struck by how much this parable that the Lord told against the chief priests and elders applies to you, and how unerringly the Lord has laid bare the truth about your own heart and your own life, remember this and take heart. True hypocrites do not worry about such things or take to heart such warnings. Such warning doesn’t affect them. They just hear it as another sermon, ignore, or it may anger them. Like these men, they didn’t take the Lord’s teaching to heart, but were angered by it, and that showed they were hypocrites.
The man or the woman who feels the burden of these criticisms, fears that they expose the inconsistency of his or her own life, who mourns to find the Lord’s words hitting home, that person is not really the hypocrite. He or she is the sinner saved by grace and by Jesus Christ. This makes him mourn for his sin, and run to God for more and more grace. At the same time, he or she is precisely the person who knows he will never get to heaven by his own performance—when he promises so much more than he performs—and so counts instead on Christ’s performance—His perfect performance—in his or her place.
So he falls prostrate and trusts Christ’s righteousness. And in true faith relies on Christ. Through means of that faith, he received more and more sanctifying grace through which he lives a truly and holy life and not like a Pharisee.
That is why you see repeatedly, in this gospel, from the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord has used His teaching to expose our hearts. Throughout the Gospel we are reminded that this honest self-appraisal, this facing of facts about ourselves, our behavior and our character, this painful acceptance of the hard truth about our sinful hearts and lives is the prerequisite of true faith in Christ and so of obtaining eternal life. If the Lord shall break your heart, you will be willing to take the Lord Jesus for your all in all. You will be willing to rest in the merit of Jesus.
The Lord began His Sermon on the Mount with this thought—“Blessed are the poor in spirit”—He invited sinners to come to Him with this thought—“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” and, “I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”—and now again He has returned to this fundamental reality. Facing one’s own sin and guilt, admitting one’s own impossibly great need, is what God requires of you and all that He requires of you. Come to Him for sanctifying grace. That is the gospel way, it makes us feel miserable about ourselves and our righteousness. No wonder then that Christ should make such a point of bearing down upon us all with the hard facts about ourselves. No wonder He should be at such pains to prove to us how sinful, how self-absorbed, how proud we are and how unwilling to acknowledge the truth about ourselves.
It is in this way that Jesus says the bad are those who do good. It is those who know themselves bad, and only those, who can see Jesus Christ as their hope both for peace with God and a better, purer, more loving life for themselves. So long as the priests and elders saw themselves as better than others, they were blind both to themselves and to Christ. It is the people who know they desperately need to change, that they cannot remain what they are, who will repent and believe in Jesus Christ. It is the person who, morally speaking, knows he must number himself among the tax collectors, knows she belongs with the prostitutes, who will see Jesus for who is He, appreciate why He had to die, and will believe in Him.
And at the last, that person coming to Christ in faith and repentance, and pleading for His grace, through faith, will become the truly good person: honest, pure, righteous, loving—the person the hypocrite imagined himself to be but was not.
“Let it be a settled principle in our Christianity, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is infinitely willing to receive penitent sinners.—It matters nothing what a man has been in time past. Does he repent, and come to Christ? Then old things are passed away, and all things are become new.—It matters nothing how high and self-confident a man’s profession of religion may be. Does he really give up his sins? If not, his profession is abominable in God’s sight, and he himself is still under the curse.—Let us take courage ourselves, if we have been great sinners hitherto. Only let us repent and believe in Christ, and there is hope. Let us encourage others to repent. Let us hold the door wide open to the very chief of sinners. Never will that word fail, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
2. Which of the 2 sons are you? Are you a religious, outwardly moral person like the leaders, or like the first son, do you realize you have been a terrible sinner and have repented and have entered God’s kingdom and are living under the authority and reign of Jesus Christ?
You also face the double indictment if you reject the authority of God’s message. You come regularly, listen to the gospel preached and put up a show as if you obey, but you really don’t believe. In the heart you say, “I will not believe it.” And that’s your first indictment.
But you see some new people come and maybe lived a terrible life, but hear the truth and believe from their heart, and the gospel transforms them. You see their lives are changed, transformed, but even after seeing that you still continue in unbelief. That is terrible hardness of heart. You won’t believe the message, and you won’t believe even when you see its transforming power. Then basically nothing can save you. That is when you reach a stage of judicial blindness where God will blind you eternally. He turns out the light. End of discussion. You will never be able to repent.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 