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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
All right, we're going to be in Matthew 21 this morning.
So if you would turn to Matthew chapter 21.
We're going to begin in verse number 23.
In the context we've seen our Lord in our study of Matthew,
we've seen Him go into the temple and cleanse the temple
and cast out those that bought and sold and carried vessels
and made merchandise of God's people.
And then we've seen the parable of the fig tree,
or really the example of the fig tree
in which the Lord cursed it because it had no fruit,
only leaves.
And so lastly, before we get to verse 23,
we've seen how that the Lord encourages us to pray in faith
and to pray for that which is utterly impossible
and to pray believing.
He says in verse 22, in all things whatsoever,
ye shall ask in prayer, believing ye shall receive.
So the context of where we are now
in the narrative of the life of Christ, of course,
this is the final week of the life of the Lord Jesus.
And He is going into the temple, and He's living out
His final days teaching, healing, helping,
and those kinds of things.
And so we pick up in verse number 23, the Bible says,
and when He was come into the temple,
the chief priests and the elders of the people
came unto Him as He was teaching, and said,
by what authority doest thou these things?
And who gave thee this authority?
No doubt referring to the Lord's throwing the people out
of the temple and expelling them,
but might also include the fact that He
was teaching in the temple.
Verse 24, and Jesus answered and said unto them,
I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me,
I in likewise will tell you by what authority
I do these things.
The baptism of John, whence was it, from heaven or of men?
And they reasoned with themselves, saying,
if we shall say from heaven, He will say unto us,
why did ye not then believe Him?
And if we shall say of men, we fear the people,
for all hold John as a prophet.
And they answered Jesus and said, we cannot tell.
And He said unto them, neither tell I you,
by what authority I do these things.
Now verse 28 through verse number 32
are directly connected in no way separate
from what we've just read.
So you have to keep that in mind, this question about John
and their reception of Him.
Verse 28 comes right on the heels of that.
Verse 28 says, but what think ye?
A certain man had two sons, and he came to the first
and said, son, go work today in my vineyard.
He answered and said, I will not.
But afterward, he repented and went.
And he came to the second and said likewise.
And he answered and said, I go, sir, and went not.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father.
They say unto him, the first, Jesus saith unto them,
verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots
go into the kingdom of God before you.
For John came unto you in the way of righteousness,
and you believed him not.
But the publicans and the harlots believed him.
And ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward
that ye might believe him.
Would you pray with me this morning?
Our Lord, as we come to your word, Lord,
we want to by, to the best of our ability,
humble ourselves and ask you to open our hearts
and help us to be receptive to what you have said.
Lord, this is not just some book that some guy wrote
of good moral precepts or some story,
some tall tales that have been told,
but this is the word of the living God.
This is the true account of what you did
when you were upon the earth.
And Lord, we want to receive it as it is in truth,
the word of God, with all gravity and seriousness,
with the hearts that are inclined
and on the edge of our seat as it were,
ready to hear, ready to listen.
Would you help me, Lord, to say the things
that you want to be spoken, the truths that you want
to be shown to your people and to everyone that's here.
And I pray, Lord, that you would also work
in the hearts of each and every one of us,
that we would receive it in the right way
and that you would speak to us and teach us
and revive us and stir us up.
Lord, help us to not be lukewarm,
help us to be quick, to be lively,
to be energetic, to be hot.
And Lord, help us to go away from our meeting this morning,
Lord, having grown closer to you.
So Lord, we commit the service to you.
Lord, we ask that your will be done in all things,
in Jesus' name, amen.
So as you can see in this conversation
the Lord had with the chief priests and elders,
now Mark and Luke include another group
that's not mentioned here, which is the scribes.
And so there's only a few groups
that you can really mention.
You have the elders, you have the chief priests,
you have the Sadducees, you have the Pharisees,
and you have the scribes.
And that's the sum total of the religious groups
of that day, at least the ones that Christ interacted with.
And now the chief priests in verse number 23
were related to the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were the group
that was related to the priesthood.
And so you have them and you also have the elders.
Now the elders was a very specific group.
It dealt with the council of the civil leaders
and religious leaders of Israel.
Like Joseph of Arimathea was an elder.
He was on that board, that council
of people that made decisions.
And then you have the scribes.
Now the scribes were related to the Pharisees
because of their emphasis on the scripture.
But in any case, this is the group
that the Lord is talking to.
These people are not friends of Christ.
These people have from the beginning,
we're talking about John the Baptist here,
from the beginning, even from the ministry
of John the Baptist have revealed
their spiritual temperature.
They are not friends with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we have covered a lot of ground
in Matthew dealing with these people.
We've seen, and this is not the end,
we're gonna be in Matthew 23 here in a little bit.
And that's a scathing rebuke of these people.
But they come to the Lord Jesus and in verse 23,
they ask him this, by what authority
doest thou these things?
And who gave thee this authority?
Now the very fact that they're asking that question
kind of indicates they're calling him on the floor.
They want him to report to them.
And it's implied in here that the Lord needed
their permission to do the things that he was doing.
And I don't know, there's something in me
that's deeply gratified by the fact
that he didn't ask permission from the religious leaders,
but of course his authority came from his father.
And in a way, throughout history,
people, civil leaders, religious leaders
have always tried to force the people of God
to pass their plans through them
before they obeyed what the Lord told them to do
in the scripture.
It's always been that way.
Who gave you the authority?
You know, you think of John Bunyan.
Anybody heard of John Bunyan?
He wrote Pilgrim's Progress from a prison cell in England.
You know why he was in that prison cell?
He was in that prison cell because he refused
to go through the religious authorities
to get a license to preach in his church.
He refused that.
He just did it without asking permission
and what is in prison for years as a result of that.
And I think I like to be numbered with believers like that.
Don't you people that are gonna obey what God said,
regardless of who demands that they have authority.
Our Lord set the example here.
Our Lord set the example.
And so they ask him this,
by what authority doest thou these things?
Which is to say, are you a priest?
What jurisdiction do you have over the temple
and what goes on here?
Because of course the priest had jurisdiction
over the temple.
And which is to say as well,
you're not a member of the Council of Elders.
You're not a member of the Council, the Sanhedrin.
You're not a member of anybody
that would have power to do this.
So you have no business doing it.
They ask him who gave thee this authority?
Which is to say, if you're not a priest
and you're not an elder and you're not a scribe
who would have authority,
who said, who gave you permission to do it?
And to enact these kinds of changes in the temple.
And the Lord just ignores them
as far as their demand for an account for his authority.
They considered themselves the gatekeepers of the temple.
What they didn't understand,
what they refused to acknowledge is that
God was the gatekeeper of the temple.
That was God's temple.
The Lord Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.
Come to cleanse his temple as we've already seen.
But think about this.
These men thought that not even God could do something
without their permission.
Boy, that's true in our day, is it not?
God has to ask permission before he does anything
on my watch.
Yeah, that's not how it works at all.
Verse number 24.
And Jesus answered and said unto them,
I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell me,
I and likewise will tell you by what authority
I do these things.
Verse 25, the baptism of John, whence was it?
From heaven or of men?
Now let me ask you a question.
Based upon verse 25 and verse number 26,
did Jesus already know the answer to this question?
Well, obviously the Lord's omniscient.
But we know from the context that he already knew
what the chief priests and the elders view
of John the Baptist was.
He already knew that very well.
He knew that they had rejected John the Baptist.
He knew that they did not receive his message.
And in fact, if you look at verse number, verse 26,
if we say of men, we fear the people
for all hold John as a prophet,
that indicates it.
But also the end of verse 25 says,
why did ye not then believe him?
So they knew that Jesus knew
that they had rejected John the Baptist.
Now the question I have for you,
and I wanna go to the book of Luke and ask you
and examine this question.
Why did the chief priests and elders
reject the message of John the Baptist?
Let's go to Luke chapter number seven
and just look at that for a second.
Luke chapter seven.
And this kind of gets us into what I think
is the core question in this whole discussion
the Lord has with them.
Luke seven,
verse 28,
says this, for I say unto you,
among those that are born of women,
there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist,
but he that is least in the kingdom of heaven
is greater than he.
And all the people that heard him and the publicans
justified God being baptized with the baptism of John.
Now if you remember in Matthew chapter 21,
he mentions two groups of sinners,
the publicans and the harlots, prostitutes.
Here he mentions the publicans.
So in the ministry of John,
if you went to a baptismal service,
if you would in the wilderness,
in the desert of John the Baptist at the River Jordan,
what you would find is you would find
a lot of people around him,
because the Bible says that all of Jerusalem and Judea
went out to see John.
So if you went out there,
you would see a horde of people.
And all around John, maybe he's in the river,
maybe he's baptizing people,
all around John you would see, if you will,
the riff raff of society.
You would see people, and I don't mean just like beggars,
I don't mean like that.
What I mean is you would see the people
that society at large viewed as immoral,
and unrighteous, and unworthy,
and kind of outcast, morally impure.
That's the people that surrounded John the Baptist,
that's what it says here.
All the people that heard him and the publicans
justified God being baptized in the baptism of John.
So those publicans and like sinners
were the ones that were around John the Baptist.
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say,
because sometimes people get offended about sinners,
those kinds of sinners, they were sinners.
The publicans were sinners.
The tax collectors were known for being extortioners.
They were liars in their assessment of people's property.
That's extortion, right?
And prostitution, sexual immorality, they were sinners.
You will never see the Lord Jesus say,
even though you see the Lord around people
that are involved in that kind of sin,
even though you see those people coming
to John the Baptist's baptism,
you will never see an excuse made for the way they lived.
The Lord didn't do that.
But what you always see is you see those people
associated with the word repentance.
And this touches exactly what we're talking about.
All these people that came to see John the Baptist,
yes, it was some of the down and out,
some of the people that had been involved in serious sin
that were at the baptism of John the Baptist,
but you know what they were doing,
which we've already studied,
is they would go to that baptismal service
with John at the River Jordan,
and they would openly confess their sin.
I have been involved in X and Y and Z,
and I have the scars and the marks to prove it.
But I here and now in acknowledging
that that's evil and sinful,
and I'm being baptized as a token of that repentance.
And then they would get baptized.
And then so you had the crowd,
and then on the fringes, no offense,
but on the back row,
you would have the chief priests and the elders
and the scribes and the Pharisees sitting,
all of you back row people are mad at the preacher now.
It's fine.
I happen to know the people on the back row are saved.
But on the back row, kind of off from the crowd,
you would see this group of people
that the Lord is speaking to.
Kind of, I'm just envisioning kind of like this,
observing, not participating, observing,
and being highly cynical of the fact that prostitutes
and drug addicts and drunkards
and publicans and extortioners were getting baptized.
Highly cynical, the associations here,
the associations here.
But they were repenting.
They were repenting, right?
They were acknowledging their sin.
What do you want them to do?
What do you want them to do?
You just want them to go to hell?
No, they were doing the very thing
that God wanted them to do.
They were coming to John,
and in preparation for the coming Messiah,
they were repenting and preparing their heart to receive
the one that was to come after.
They were preparing their heart symbolically
in this baptism.
That's what they should be doing.
But the crowd in the back is just kind of watching cynically,
looking at it.
Yeah.
They never got baptized.
They never repented.
They never acknowledged any kind of sin.
Look at verse number 30.
This is the back row crowd.
But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected
the counsel of God against themselves.
Notice, how did they reject it?
How do we know they refused the counsel of God?
Now, let me ask you this.
John the Baptist, his message, his ministry came from where?
To answer the question in Matthew 21,
it came from heaven.
John, there was a man sent from God whose name was John.
That's what the Bible says.
John the Baptist was sent from God.
His message was sent from God.
The message of repentance and baptism,
that was sent from God, and they refused it in verse 30.
Why did they refuse it?
How do we know they refused it?
Because they refused to be baptized of him.
So they sat back outside of the crowd and watched,
criticized, but never were baptized.
They rejected his message.
Now, if you would go back to Matthew 21,
why did these people reject the message of John?
The Bible says they rejected the counsel of God
against themselves.
You see, they rejected John's message,
not because they did a personal examination
of John's message and compared it with scripture
and tried to find out is what he's saying true or not.
And this is, I'm telling you,
this is where I believe most people in this world are.
When it comes to their interaction to
and response to the gospel of Christ,
it is not a matter of, you know, you think of,
as an example, you think of an atheist or an agnostic.
Of course, what is put out often are arguments about,
you know, evolution and the origin of the universe
and all of the contradictions in the Bible.
Whatever the outward facade of the argument is put forth,
but there's a lot more to that rejection of God
than just the arguments.
You're telling me that they have sincerely
and conscientiously examined the evidence,
the claims of the resurrection of Christ,
the claims of the biblical truth and accuracy
and historical truth and all, you know,
no, most people that are atheists have no idea about that.
No idea whatsoever.
So why then have they rejected it?
You know what it is?
It's something else.
It's a personal consideration.
It has nothing to do with the truth of the matter
before them, but of some other personal consideration
of the heart that they're not willing to touch or look at.
And that is exactly what was happening
with these chief priests and scribes and Pharisees,
is they looked at what John said
and they didn't want that to touch their self-righteousness.
It wasn't, is John from heaven or of men?
That wasn't the question.
The question was really a question
of whether they would humble themselves.
It was a question of if they did acknowledge what John said,
it might threaten the honor that they had
among the society that revered them
and thought of them as holy rollers,
because that was a big deal to them.
So back in Matthew 21,
notice the two answers they provide say this.
So Jesus' question, the baptism of John,
whence was it, from heaven or of men?
And they reason with themselves saying,
here's answer number one,
if we shall say from heaven, he will say unto us,
why did ye not then believe him?
Now, just as an exercise,
did they believe John's message?
Did they believe John's ministry was from heaven?
No.
Why then would they consider saying it?
Why then would they consider saying something
that they did not believe was true?
They're weighing this answer.
Should we say this or should we say that?
You see, this proves that they did not believe John's message
and the fact of their unbelief of John's message
was public information,
because if they received John's message,
then that would mean they had to accept
what John said of them
and he called out this group repeatedly.
And of course, they didn't wanna do that.
And not only that, but think about it,
if they had received what John said,
that also would indicate that they need to receive Christ,
because John bore testimony to Christ
and Jesus Christ, he related and gave approval constantly
to John's message.
So he attached himself to John and rightly so.
So that means they would have had to receive Christ.
It would have messed up their whole theology.
And then in the second answer, verse number 26,
"'But if we shall say of men,'
now we know that this is what they believed,
"'we fear the people, for all hold John as a prophet.'"
So in the second option for answering this question,
it reveals their true thought
that John the Baptist was of men,
his message was not from God at all, after all,
that he didn't get permission from them to be preaching.
You see, no one would say that John's ministry was of men
if he truly believed it was from the Lord.
But here they are.
Here they are.
Do you see in their two answers?
The question I have for you is,
are they concerned at all with the truth?
Are they concerned at all with,
now follow me because you might miss it, right?
Are they concerned at all with the core question
that Jesus asks, is John's ministry from heaven or of men?
Are they concerned with whether that is true or false?
Not at all.
The only thing they're concerned with
is the way they sound to the crowd.
If they say, yes, it was from heaven,
then that's gonna make them look bad.
If they say, no, they're afraid of the multitude.
You see, the chief priests and the elders are revealing
that they are dishonest people.
They just will not say what they believe about John.
Look at verse number 27, it gets worse.
They say, and they answered Jesus and said,
we cannot tell.
Liars, you can tell, you won't.
At every, whether it's answer number one,
answer number two,
they're concerned at all with the truth.
Answer number two, or the actual answer they provided.
In all three of those answers, you know what you see?
You see someone who was not willing
to handle the truth honestly.
You see someone who is seeking to manipulate the truth,
someone who is trying to avoid the truth,
or just directly contradicting it.
I wanna tell you something, brothers and sisters,
this method of handling the truth
is very offensive to God.
It is very, very offensive to God.
Now here's why.
Look, if you would, at John chapter 14,
and then we'll go to John chapter eight as well.
John 14,
here is why the way that we respond
to the truth is so important.
John 14, you know this verse, verse six.
Jesus sayeth unto him, I am the way,
the truth, and the life.
You see that?
You know why it's so important?
Because that is our relationship to the truth,
because that is our relationship to Christ himself,
for he is the truth.
You see, many, many people are hindered
from entering the kingdom of God
because of the way they handle the truth.
In other words, it's not a question of
whether this is actually true,
it's a question of how does it make me appear?
In what light will it put me?
What will I have to do if this is true?
It's some other kind of secondary consideration
rather than whether the truth is true,
whether this is the truth or whether it's not the truth.
It's some other thing.
If, well, if I receive, if I believe this,
if I believe the truth and I receive the truth
of the gospel, I might have to move out
from my girlfriend's house.
Or I might have to stop drinking.
Or I might have to quit my job and get a different one.
You see, and so that then determines
how we receive and handle the truth.
You know what that is?
That's dishonesty.
That is not handling the truth of God.
In fact, it's responding to Christ himself
in a way that will keep you,
keep me out of the kingdom of God entirely.
You see, Revelation 22, five, listen to this verse.
It says this, speaking of the new heaven
and the new earth and new Jerusalem.
He says, for without are dogs and sorcerers
and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters
and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie.
You know why some people love a lie?
It's because a lie suits them better than the truth.
It suits their lifestyle, it suits their practices,
it suits their position, it suits their station,
and so they love the lie more than the truth.
That is not something, that is not consistent
with the idea of loving the truth.
Look back at John chapter eight, since we're already here.
We know Jesus is the truth.
He calls himself, I am the way, the truth, I am the truth.
John eight, verse number 32,
says this, and Jesus said, verse 31 said,
and then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him,
if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed,
and you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
What is the truth?
Of course, Jesus is the truth, but more broadly,
what is the truth?
The truth is that which is real, right?
There is no my truth, your truth.
The truth is that which conforms to reality,
is the definition.
And the truth is like a, it's like an immovable object.
We can deny it, and it's still the truth.
We can fight against it, and it's still the truth.
We can throw ourselves against it, and it will destroy us.
But it is not moving for you or for me, for anyone, right?
In this way, it's related to our Sunday school,
which is the immutability of God, that which is true.
And that's why God himself refers to himself as the truth.
How do we react to the truth?
How do we react when the truth crosses our life?
How do we react when the truth contradicts our values,
and contradicts the way we live?
And that is then, that then determines
how we respond to the truth.
You know, listen, as a believer, if you're a child of God,
you should get what you do, where you go,
how you live, how you talk, everything about your life
should come from the standards found
in the pages of scripture, the truth.
Thy word is truth, the Lord said.
And if at any point in your life or my life,
we find ourselves not consistent with that truth,
the answer is never to do away with the truth.
But see, I want to tell you, it's deceptive and it's slippery,
because we make excuses, and we say,
well, you know, I just don't see it that way,
or we attempt to alter the Bible,
or look at it in a different way,
but it's all because we have some personal dog in the fight,
some personal thing that we're holding onto,
instead of letting the truth guide us,
the truth determine our course of action.
John 8, verse number 32 says this, or verse number 33.
They answered him, we be Abraham's seed,
and we're never in bondage to any man.
And how sayest thou, ye shall be free, be made free?
Jesus answered, verily I say unto you,
whosoever commiteth sin is the servant of sin,
and the servant abideth not in the house forever,
but the Son abideth ever.
If the Son therefore shall make you free,
ye shall be free indeed.
I know that ye are Abraham's seed,
but ye seek to kill me,
because my word hath no place in you.
I spake that which I have seen with my father,
and you do that which ye have seen with your father.
They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father.
Jesus saith unto them, if ye were Abraham's children,
ye would do the works of Abraham.
But now ye seek to kill me,
a man that hath told you the what?
Truth.
Which I have heard of God, this did not Abraham.
Ye did the deeds of your father.
Then said they unto him, we be not born of fornication,
we have one father, even God.
Jesus saith unto them, said unto them,
if God were your father, you would love me,
for I proceeded forth and came from God.
Neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Why do ye not understand my speech?
Even because ye cannot hear my word.
Verse 44, ye are of your father the devil,
and the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning,
and abode not in the truth,
because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own,
for he is a liar and the father of it.
So what does the lie come from?
The lie comes from first a rejection of the truth.
So the lie is invented, these are lies we tell ourselves
to get us out of the accountability of the truth.
Verse 45, and because I tell you the truth,
ye believe me not.
Which of you convinces me of sin?
And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
Now go back to Matthew 21.
If you would.
Listen, brethren, the way, the relationship
that you have with the truth, that which is real and true,
will determine your spiritual growth.
It will.
It will determine your spiritual growth.
Often the truth is not pleasant to us.
Often the truth is not consistent with what we want, right?
That will determine how you respond to the truth.
Will determine whether you grow as a believer or not.
It will determine how you walk with the Lord.
Because if you reject something that is unpleasant
or contrary to your will and what you want,
then it's gonna hinder, directly hinder,
your Christian growth.
And we can make, I can make, and you can make
any excuse that you want to try to kind of dodge the truth.
The best thing we can do though is to bow to it.
Because it's not moving.
And if ever we're going to get right,
if ever we're gonna get back in the will of God,
we're gonna have to come back to that anchor of the truth.
We're gonna have to come back to that pillar of the truth,
which has not moved.
We're gonna have to return there
and start there to go forward.
That's why it's so important for us to be
just dead level honest with the Lord.
Because remember, Jesus is the truth also.
This is the problem they had.
Verse 28.
What think ye, a certain man had two sons,
and he came to the first and said,
son, go work today in my vineyard.
And he answered and said, I will not.
But afterward he repented and went.
And he came to the second and said likewise,
and he answered and said, I go sir, and he went not.
Now here's the tendency that we have.
Is it not?
The tendency is we look at the first guy
and his kind of abrasive, rebellious words,
and we say, well that guy, that guy's just not a good guy.
He's just not a good guy.
And we look at the second guy and we say,
well the second guy's a little bit better than the first guy
because at least he said, I'll go.
And the Lord says exactly the opposite.
And this parable answers directly to what we just read
in the previous verses.
You see, the first son in verse 28,
the son that said, I will not,
represents the publicans and the harlots,
that is the sinners.
And the second son represents the one that said,
I go sir, and then went not.
The second son represents the chief priests,
the scribes, and the elders.
You can tell that because of verse 31,
he says, verily I say unto you,
that's the chief priests and elders,
that the publicans and harlots
go into the kingdom of God before you.
So the you is represented by the second son.
What I want you to see from this is this though.
In both cases, whether it is the son that said,
I will not go, or whether it is the son that said,
I go sir, in both cases,
neither did the will of the father.
Romans chapter three, verse 10 says this,
as it is written, there is none righteous, no not one.
And the Lord's only looking at the doing part.
He's not looking at the words.
Both of them, neither one of them was right.
Both of them were showing that they were not righteous.
They were both in rebellion, especially verse 29,
verse 29 is obvious, he says, I will not.
Verse 30 says, I go sir, and then the Lord says,
I go sir, and the temptation is for us to listen
to those words and say, well he's not in rebellion.
He's actually in the same rebellion as the first.
You see, the irony in this parable is that in both cases,
whether it's the first son who said, I will not,
or the second son who said, I go sir,
in both cases, both sons had the same attitude
toward the father's will.
Both of them, regardless of what they spoke,
both of them thought, I will not.
The difference was, one of them said, I will not,
the other said, I go, but thought, I will not.
And the assumption that the second son is somehow better
because he doesn't verbally rebel is a complete error.
You see, at least the first son is under no illusions,
self-righteous illusions of where he stands with the father.
And this in some way goes back to what we looked at
last Sunday morning, which is being cold
is better than being lukewarm.
You see, in the first son, what he said, I will not,
was the same as what he thought.
Whereas the second son said, what he said, I go sir,
was different than what he thought.
I wanna tell you something.
If you're a parent, be very careful with your kids.
You ought not be concerned
that they know how to talk right.
Kids are very, listen, kids in Christian homes
are very good at using the right words
when they're called upon to do so.
They're very good at the lingo.
They're very good at the jargon.
They know the thing you're asking.
They know the kind of answer you're looking for.
Be very careful.
If you're one of those kids, you're one of those teenagers,
you're one of those young people,
you have to remember that it's not what you say
that matters, and that was the whole thing.
This is the whole point.
Because those scribes and Pharisees
and those chief priests and elders,
they knew the right words.
They said, I go sir, they love God, all that.
It was all talk.
But they were like the people, the son that said, I go sir,
and then they didn't do it.
And the problem is that those people,
and sometimes this kind of attitude
infects church people, right?
And we see people who have been marked by sin,
and we look at them and we say, well,
what's going on with them?
Who are they?
And we have that attitude toward
the same attitude that these people have,
but the Lord says they repented,
and we switch out right words for what is the real deal.
And we deceive ourselves.
In the preacher world, of course,
I guess I'm in that world, like it or not.
Preachers have learned to say things like,
well, praise the Lord, God bless you.
Preachers have learned how to say,
preacher talk, and it sounds spiritual.
I just want to tell you, brothers and sisters,
it doesn't matter if we know how to talk.
What matters is that what comes out of your mouth
and my mouth is the same as what's in your heart,
that it's consistent.
The Lord says it is better
to have the wrong thing come out of your mouth
and it be consistent with your heart,
so long as you repent,
than it is to have the right talk, but not the goods.
To have the right talk,
but not actually doing the thing that we're saying.
And as a parent, going back to this, as a parent,
if we're gonna be faithful parents,
it's got to be more than just we hear the words.
You have to be a little more cynical than that.
You have to be paying attention not to just what they say,
but are the kids following through with the attitude
that is consistent with the words.
I know you've seen it too.
Children absolutely pull the wool over their pants.
They pull the wool over their parent's eyes.
How is that possible?
It absolutely happens.
So as a parent, your job,
if you're gonna pastor and shepherd your family,
you're gonna have to be paying attention like the Lord does,
not just to the outward, but also to the inward,
not just to the words, but to the deeds.
Is the child actually yielded and submitted
to what mom and dad are saying,
or are they just saying the words and ignoring you?
Teenagers are really good at that.
Clean your room, okay, I will.
Two weeks later, still dirty.
But this also infects Christians.
When you speak of the Lord,
when you use words, notice verse 30 says,
"'He answered and said, "'I go, sir,' words."
When you use words talking about the Lord,
speaking of God, speaking of God's will,
do those match what's in your heart?
Are they the same?
Are they consistent?
You see, the Lord wants and the Lord prefers
the people of verse number 29 that said,
"'I will not, but afterward repented.'"
You know what's amazing is the mercy of God,
the mercy of Christ is so abundant.
I think people misrepresent the Lord
when they talk about the harlots and the sinners
and all of that that surrounded Him,
and they make it seem like He was okay with it all.
He certainly was not okay with it all.
But He was absolutely, He absolutely was okay with it all.
He absolutely was open to any and everyone
associating with Him if they repented,
if they came to Him humbled,
acknowledging their evil and their sin.
He was okay with all of those people.
In the church, you know how the people think of the church
is supposed to be for the people that have it all together
and people that came through Christian homes
and all of that, I wanna tell you something.
And I'm for that, my kids came from a Christian home,
I hope that those of you that are getting married,
I hope you raise your kids in a Christian home,
but we are deceived to think that just because
it looks that way on the outside
that that is the way it is, number one.
And number two, we are deceived to think
that it is somehow substandard to have people
among the people of God who have the marks of sin
in their life, it is not substandard.
With a God we had a church full of people
that were just like the people that surrounded our Lord.
Right?
Not people who have it all together,
people who have no evidence that sin has touched their lives,
no, no, but people who can show that they have repented.
Listen to verse 31 and we're finished.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father,
they say unto him the first, Jesus saith unto them.
This is shocking, this is shocking,
but it is shocking to the ears of the society
to which Jesus is speaking, yes,
but it is totally consistent with every other thing
that we've seen in the book of Matthew.
He says, to the religious leaders,
verily I say unto you that the publicans and the harlots
go into the kingdom of God before you.
They go into the kingdom of God before you.
These people who were known as the forefront leaders
in the religious society of this day,
the Lord says that the dregs of society
will go to heaven before they do.
I mean, what a statement of God's mercy.
What a statement of the open arms
with which the Lord receives sinners.
And what an indictment on people who know what to say,
but have no repentance at all.
Let's pray together.