SPEAKER_00: I invite you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 21.
SPEAKER_00: We're picking up right where we left off.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us as we get into God's word together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are grateful for your word because it conforms us to the image of your Son.
SPEAKER_00: Your word is alive because your spirit is behind it.
SPEAKER_00: We know the letter of the law brings death.
SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit brings life.
SPEAKER_00: As believers, we have the Spirit in us.
SPEAKER_00: He generates life and helps us behold wonderful things from your word.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that He would do that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you heard the story on Thursday night.
SPEAKER_00: A plane was preparing to fly from Victoria, British Columbia to Toronto.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was on board.
SPEAKER_00: They were ready to go, but there was one problem.
SPEAKER_00: A two or three-year-old, reports very, uh, would not sit down.
SPEAKER_00: So the plane was taxiing the runaway, and the flight attendant from her jump seat sees the head of the three-year-old peering over the top of the seat, as three-year-olds are prone to do.
SPEAKER_00: And so they stop the taxi, and the flight attendant comes over and tells the kid to sit down.
SPEAKER_00: And the kid, you know, argues and eventually the kid says that he will buckle up, and the flight attendant goes away and sits down, but click, kid back up again.
SPEAKER_00: They repeat this like three or four times, both the parents and the flight attendant talking to the three-year-olds who insists that he will indeed buckle up when he's required to, and then refuses to do so.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually they take the plane back to the gate, the crew times out, and the flight is canceled.
SPEAKER_00: I know, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you can't trust a three-year-old, who can you trust?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to know.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a parent in this room, you're probably thinking, how, like, first of all, if you're a parent, you're wrecking, you have a little bit of sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: The non-parents are like, straight to jail for those parents.
SPEAKER_00: But the parents are like, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I understand how one could find themselves in that situation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand the end of it, though.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you eventually just overpower the three-year-old in a room.
SPEAKER_00: Um you don't reason with a three-year-old, you don't bring them through the history of the Federal Aviation Administration and you know, why it is actually dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: You just get the job done.
SPEAKER_00: And the point of that, as it connects to our parable this morning, is that the same thing is true with our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: God gives us commands, and we're required to obey those commands, whether or not we want to, or whether or not we understand them, whether or not it would be our preference to.
SPEAKER_00: That is what God demands of us.
SPEAKER_00: God tells us to sit and we sit and we don't argue.
SPEAKER_00: That's the uncomfortable part of this parable.
SPEAKER_00: When we are slow or delay in obeying God's commands, we are often like that three-year-old on the plane.
SPEAKER_00: It's not even whether or not we say we're going to obey his commands, it's whether or not we actually do.
SPEAKER_00: That's what matters.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to one of the shortest parables that Jesus ever told.
SPEAKER_00: We find it this morning in verse 28 of Matthew chapter 21.
SPEAKER_00: It's a story about the father who gave the exact same commands to two sons.
SPEAKER_00: And the parable begins in verse 28 with Jesus asking, What do you think?
SPEAKER_00: And I love it when Jesus starts parables with what do you think?
SPEAKER_00: Because whenever you see Jesus say that, you know that something unexpected is coming.
SPEAKER_00: You know that the story that's about to take off is going to be turning everything upside down.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
SPEAKER_00: The parable goes on.
SPEAKER_00: A man had two sons, and he went to the first and said, Son, go work in the vineyard today.
SPEAKER_00: And that son answered and said, I will not.
SPEAKER_00: But afterwards he changed his mind and went.
SPEAKER_00: He went to the other son and said the same.
SPEAKER_00: And that second son answered, I will go, sir.
SPEAKER_00: But he did not go.
SPEAKER_00: That son, that villain's son.
SPEAKER_00: This can be a faraway parable, of course, from our perspective, because we don't live in an agrarian society.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not a command that a parent today would be familiar with you go out and work in the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: So let me give an Americanized version of this parable that every parent of two teenagers or more can relate to.
SPEAKER_00: You're the dad, and you're on your way out your door to work, and you notice that the dishwasher is clean.
SPEAKER_00: And so you turn to one of your teenage, I'm gonna keep them sons, because this is not about my family at all.
SPEAKER_00: How dare you?
SPEAKER_00: So you say to one of your sons, Would you empty the dishwasher?
SPEAKER_00: And that teenage son says, No, I will not.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, they're not my dishes.
SPEAKER_00: It's my brother that had the ice cream last night, and he's the one who ran it.
SPEAKER_00: I am always emptying it, rah, rah, rah rah.
SPEAKER_00: Plus I'm late and I've got to do this, and you already asked me to take out the trash.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: And so you recognize as the dad that activates the part of your brain that's like, this is war.
SPEAKER_00: But then you also recognize, like, I'm on the way out to work.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna fight World War III over the dishwasher right now.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna save this conversation for dinner.
SPEAKER_00: And so you look at the second son.
SPEAKER_00: Will you empty the dishwasher?
SPEAKER_00: And the second son says, Oh, father, of course I will.
SPEAKER_00: My only regret is that you did not ask me first.
SPEAKER_00: So you're like, great, and you leave.
SPEAKER_00: And you come home from work, and lo and behold, the dishwasher is indeed empty.
SPEAKER_00: But you would be wrong as the dad to think it is it was the second son that did it.
SPEAKER_00: The second son, yes, father, of course I will.
SPEAKER_00: That son, as soon as you left the house, totally forgot about the entire conversation.
SPEAKER_00: Went on to read Dragon Masters or something, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But the first son also blew you off, but then later in the afternoon saw that you were leaving work on Find My Friends and saw you driving home, and looked and saw the dishwasher still clean, and remembered that this conversation is probably gonna go down at dinner, and so it would behoove him for the dishwasher not to be clean when you get home, and so frantically unloads the dishes in the five minutes it takes you to drive home from church.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about my family, though.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you would be surprised, is the dad.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've learned it's 50-50, which of the two kids empty the dishwasher.
SPEAKER_00: The one who said yes or the one who said no?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: But it got done.
SPEAKER_00: That's the parable that Jesus tells.
SPEAKER_00: And he follows it with a very interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: Which of the two kids actually did the will of their dad?
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the crowd says the first, the one who said no but then did it.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, I'm telling you that this parable is about the tax collectors and the prostitutes getting into heaven before you, he says.
SPEAKER_00: So, well, that thing got out of control really fast, didn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I thought we were talking about the dishwasher.
SPEAKER_00: No, prostitutes are going to be in heaven before religious leaders.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: The context, this is one of three parables in a row.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at the first one in our last study in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at the next one next week.
SPEAKER_00: The three parables are all images of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: All three parables are about Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And the first parable, Israel is compared to a fig tree that should be bearing fruit, but lo and behold, it is not.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus curses the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what will happen.
SPEAKER_00: The fig tree will get uprooted, it'll get torn down, chopped down.
SPEAKER_00: The second parable, he tells it right here, Israel is the son that, of course, says they believe in God and then doesn't do what God actually tells them to do.
SPEAKER_00: And then the and they're not going to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And the third parable, which we'll look at next week, is that of the vineyard owner who leases out his vineyard and goes to collect rent, and the tenants in the vineyard murder the messengers.
SPEAKER_00: So again, they're elevating.
SPEAKER_00: Israel's a fig tree, they're a son, now they're a bunch of murderers.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is fruitless, their words are faithless, and they will soon be without a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: That's the progression.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is not only isolated, it's actually somewhat profound.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at it one person at a time.
SPEAKER_00: First son, number one.
SPEAKER_00: The son who said no.
SPEAKER_00: And at first glance, he's obviously the villain.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell your dad no, especially in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: This is a patriarchal society.
SPEAKER_00: The commands from a dad are not considered optional.
SPEAKER_00: You have to obey what dad asks you to say.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the world where the Torah says a disobedient son can be taken to the city gates and stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, you're not going to stone someone to death for not emptying the dishwasher or not working in the vineyard when they said they will, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: But that's just the milieu in which this is happening.
SPEAKER_00: There's just a world where you listen to dad.
SPEAKER_00: But he says no.
SPEAKER_00: He's openly rebellious.
SPEAKER_00: And as a parent, there's a little bit of you.
SPEAKER_00: This might be more American than Jewish, I'm not really sure.
SPEAKER_00: But at least there's a little bit of me as a parent that would think for a second, at least he's being honest, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like I'd almost rather have the no right now than the yes and find the dishwasher so clean when I get home.
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate at least that this kid, although he's disobedient and sinning against me and God both, I at least appreciate that he is not being a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: I admire the clarity of nothing else.
SPEAKER_00: There's no pretending with this first kid.
SPEAKER_00: There's no religious mask with him.
SPEAKER_00: He is simply a disobedient but honest sinner.
SPEAKER_00: And now here's the twist.
SPEAKER_00: Afterwards, he changes his mind.
SPEAKER_00: Afterwards, he decides, I will, in fact, go out into the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't see that coming.
SPEAKER_00: This is a kid that looked fruitless, but became fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: It looked like a lost cause.
SPEAKER_00: But lo and behold, he comes home with a bushel of fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The people who originally said no to God, but then were converted by God are those that are captured with this first son.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the context here, this is what is often missed with this parable.
SPEAKER_00: I know this is a pretty well-known parable, but we often miss the context.
SPEAKER_00: It is bracketed with teaching about John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is talking about John the Baptist here.
SPEAKER_00: This first son is the one that was leading a rebellious life against God, a life of sexual immorality and money grubbing and betraying your own kinsman kind of life.
SPEAKER_00: The worst of the sins.
SPEAKER_00: And yet John came and this son repented at John's preaching.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: So you misunderstand this parable if you take it as being about bad people becoming good.
SPEAKER_00: The context of John means it's not about bad people becoming good, it's about bad people repenting and placing their faith in the Savior that John was preaching.
SPEAKER_00: The distinguishing feature is not if you're good, remember it's the good son here that ultimately is rebuked.
SPEAKER_00: The issue is whether or not you trust the Savior to whom John pointed.
SPEAKER_00: This is a savior who was promised in the Old Testament, arrived in the New Testament, was disregarded by the Jewish leaders, disregarded by Israel at large.
SPEAKER_00: But then when John comes, some repent.
SPEAKER_00: They had their opportunity to be rescued from the clutches of sin.
SPEAKER_00: These people did.
SPEAKER_00: They had been leading immoral lives.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the Jews had thrown themselves into sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word here, it's translated prostitutes in the SV here.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the Greek word is pornea, which we get our word pornography from.
SPEAKER_00: It's just sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's a word that was used for prostitutes, of course.
SPEAKER_00: It's a broader word than that.
SPEAKER_00: This is describing somebody who's thrown their life into sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: That's who this first son is.
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, when dad says do something, he says no, because he's leading a sexually immoral life.
SPEAKER_00: The other word here is that for a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not the kind of tax collector Zacchaeus was, not like the chief tax collector, but that that word is the archetypos there, the architolos, which is someone who charges a toll over everything.
SPEAKER_00: This is just a normal tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: He's just shaking down people that are businesses.
SPEAKER_00: He's betraying the Israelites, working for Rome.
SPEAKER_00: So he's in love with money.
SPEAKER_00: And these are not exclusive categories here.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying that all the first son is both a tax collector and a prostitute.
SPEAKER_00: This is the broad category for people that love money and they're greedy, and the category of people that are sexually immoral.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the way so many people were living before Jesus came.
SPEAKER_00: They had thrown themselves and they found themselves in the clutches of sin with no way of escape.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's a life that's fruitless and it wrecks your heart and it wrecks your soul.
SPEAKER_00: You realize money doesn't actually satisfy, or you realize that your sexual promiscuity does not actually satisfy and give you meaning in life.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a vacant hole that sucks your soul out of you, but then you're stuck in it and you don't know how to get out.
SPEAKER_00: And then John the Baptist comes.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You can turn and be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And some of them do.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going, they're baptized.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that the water removes the love of money or sexual immorality from them, it's that their faith has made them well.
SPEAKER_00: They come up a new creation through the waters of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: They come up changed.
SPEAKER_00: That's John's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: John was sent by God to make straight paths for the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And he made straight paths by making a culture of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: A whole culture of people that had turned from their sins, repented from their sins because of faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what John was cultivating.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus comes and he walks into a field that's already been turned over through John's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And so he has a crowd of people welcoming him into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That crowd of people was not the religious leaders, it was the tax collectors and the sexually immoral.
SPEAKER_00: That's who they were.
SPEAKER_00: Such were some of them.
SPEAKER_00: They were that way, but they were saved and changed.
SPEAKER_00: But the surprising part of this parable, when you understand the vineyard represents Israel here, the surprising part of the parable isn't that sinners and tax collectors get saved, although that is surprising.
SPEAKER_00: But the most offensive part of the parable is that they get saved and then they're put to work in the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that are laboring producing spiritual fruit that the religious leaders are not producing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be crystal clear in next week's text, when Jesus straight up says the kingdom is going to be taken from Son 1 and given, sorry, taken from the religious leaders of Israel and given to others who will bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The shocking thing is that the sinners and the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sexually immoral can be saved by God and then used by God in a fruitful way.
SPEAKER_00: And this is offensive to people, of course.
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to Matthew 9 when Jesus was confronted.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he called Levi, Matthew, who wrote this book, was a tax collector himself who was called by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls him and then leads him.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew leads him to a house where there's a great feast with other tax collectors, and the other phrase that places phrase is seen the sexually immoral and the tax collectors.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has a banquet with them, and this frustrates the Pharisees who says, Why are you eating with such immoral people?
SPEAKER_00: They're shocked by it.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine a doctor who is afraid of sick people.
SPEAKER_00: A police officer who's afraid of crime.
SPEAKER_00: A veterinarian who does not like animals.
SPEAKER_00: A mechanic who doesn't like cars.
SPEAKER_00: You know what all those illustrations have in common is there are all people that are supposed to be fixing something.
SPEAKER_00: But they're afraid of what they're fixing.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine somebody being used by the Lord, a follower of Christ, who's afraid of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you're supposed to like hanging around sinful people, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: But because you recognize you're sent into the world to call people to repentance and then to be made useful in God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't hang out with sinners and tax collectors because he liked them.
SPEAKER_00: He hung out with sinners and tax collectors because he was making them useful.
SPEAKER_00: Grace delights in surprising religious people.
SPEAKER_00: That's the most succinct way to describe Son 1.
SPEAKER_00: God's grace delights in surprising religious people.
SPEAKER_00: These kids were disobedient and rebellious, and they had an encounter with God's grace through John the Baptist, and their hearts were changed.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to the second son.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: He probably even salutes, and the yes, sir, is not my addition.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus puts it there in verse 30.
SPEAKER_00: I go, sir.
SPEAKER_00: What an earnest kid.
SPEAKER_00: What a good kid.
SPEAKER_00: I bet this kid is handsome.
SPEAKER_00: Shirt tucked in.
SPEAKER_00: Bed made.
SPEAKER_00: This bed is totally made, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir, I shall.
SPEAKER_00: He's on his way.
SPEAKER_00: Respectful, polite, obedient.
SPEAKER_00: He sounds like every parent's dream, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: Except one teensy, weency, itsy, bitsy, tiny.
SPEAKER_00: No problem.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't actually obey.
SPEAKER_00: He loves to talk about obeying.
SPEAKER_00: He loves to be the good kid.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he does.
SPEAKER_00: He will always do his father's will.
SPEAKER_00: Just ask him.
SPEAKER_00: He would never dream of disobeying mommy and daddy.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: Except he doesn't actually obey.
SPEAKER_00: He never goes.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth you contemplating as a parent.
SPEAKER_00: Because of course this interacts with parenting here.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you navigate a kid like this?
SPEAKER_00: He looks respectful.
SPEAKER_00: He's just not doing anything.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the hard truth of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: That's the hard truth of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: The kid looked fruitful, but he became fruitless.
SPEAKER_00: He was like the fig tree in the earlier parable that had leaves everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: The agrarian term here is that this kid is blossoming.
SPEAKER_00: Most fruit trees will blossom before they produce fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And you can tell there's going to be a lot of fruit if there are a lot of blossoms like almond trees and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you would expect to be happening here.
SPEAKER_00: This kid is blossoming.
SPEAKER_00: We even have that expression in English, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the Jews have the expression, but we do.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how's your son doing at his new school?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's really blossoming.
SPEAKER_00: That's a phrase we use.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good phrase, too.
SPEAKER_00: It anticipates fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But the hard truth of this passage is that not every blossoming child produces fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Their profession is empty, their religion is empty, their words are empty, their obedience is empty.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is describing here people whose mouths belong to God, but their hearts are far from Him.
SPEAKER_00: They say the right things, they have the right creed, but they don't have the right actions.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, I think evangelical Christians, our church, is very susceptible to this second son syndrome here.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because we rightly teach in stress.
SPEAKER_00: I rightly teach in stress.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make this anybody else's fault.
SPEAKER_00: I rightly teach in stress that salvation comes by faith alone, not by works.
SPEAKER_00: You can't merit salvation, you can't earn salvation.
SPEAKER_00: But an overemphasis on that can lead to a decoupling of salvation from works.
SPEAKER_00: It can lead to this idea that profession is what makes somebody saved, which is not true.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is filled with warnings against people who make empty professions, words that are detached from the heart.
SPEAKER_00: People that have been led even in a prayer, like, close your eyes, repeat after me, and really, really mean it.
SPEAKER_00: And so they say the right words, but they never turn from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Even the, you know, if you prayed this prayer, write the date down, you are saved, guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00: If you really meant it kind of language, it becomes disconnected from a change in the person's life.
SPEAKER_00: It's very dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus warns about these people in Matthew chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Many of them will die and open their eyes in the next world, and they'll say, Lord, Lord, didn't I know you?
SPEAKER_00: I did this in that.
SPEAKER_00: I cast out demons.
SPEAKER_00: I went on this short term mission trip.
SPEAKER_00: I did all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus will say, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity.
SPEAKER_00: I never even knew you.
SPEAKER_00: They called him Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't know them.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 1 6.
SPEAKER_00: If we say we have fellowship with Him, but we walk in darkness, we lie.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an Old Testament reality as well.
SPEAKER_00: This is the third commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Third Commandment says, do not take the Lord's name in vain.
SPEAKER_00: That word that's translated take in the ESV, it's the word for lift up or display.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for a flag in battle.
SPEAKER_00: Do not go to war with the Lord's banner over your life if you don't have the faith to back it up.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be waving Yahweh's banner this way and that if you don't have his army behind it.
SPEAKER_00: That's taking the Lord's name in vain.
SPEAKER_00: Proclaiming yourself to be a follower of Christ with no changed life behind it.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not talking about the moment somebody's converted from darkness to light, you're not going to expect to see spiritual fruit in their life, you know, at the moment of their conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: But saving faith always produces works.
SPEAKER_00: Always.
SPEAKER_00: This is exactly why false religions always focus on words.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're in a false religion, if you're in the religion of works righteousness, you understand that the law, the letter of the law brings death, the spirit brings life, but in a false religion, you don't have the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're left to navigate a religious environment that does not have the capacity to have a changed heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so you become very focused on what people say.
SPEAKER_00: False religion has a vocabulary, it has songs, it has traditions, it has right answers.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't have love for Jesus, and that's the one thing that's necessary.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus tells Martha.
SPEAKER_00: Martha, Martha, there's only one thing that you need.
SPEAKER_00: And that is devotion, love for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: So this second son here, you would make a mistake if you thought this second son was describing atheists or the sexually immoral of the world, all the bad people of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That is not the second son.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a rebuke to atheists.
SPEAKER_00: This is a rebuke to people who associate themselves with God, associate themselves with the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: They fill church pews, they sing the songs, they have the right words, but they have never turned from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Their life does not back up their profession.
SPEAKER_00: They have the right words, but Jesus knows their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of profession has never saved anyone.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody is saved through faith in Christ, genuine faith that results in a love towards Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That love results in a changed life.
SPEAKER_00: That is certainly what happened in the first son's life, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: He went from living for himself to living for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to the third person who's mostly overlooked in this parable, but the father.
SPEAKER_00: The father wanted workers, not words.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine the dad in this story.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he didn't honestly care what the kid said.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't the point.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the kid who said no bugs him, and yes, the kid who's like, yes, sir, daddy, of course.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna bug you after a while, too.
SPEAKER_00: All you want is the fruit picked.
SPEAKER_00: The vineyard is the point.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the father cared about.
SPEAKER_00: He was not looking for promises, he was looking for obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Not because obedience earns salvation, but because repentance changes people and genuine faith always produces fruit.
SPEAKER_00: False religion can't accomplish that, rules can't accomplish that.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus Christ, through the transforming power of his word and spirit, can produce genuine holiness.
SPEAKER_00: God is after spiritual fruit.
SPEAKER_00: He judges fruit, not foliage.
SPEAKER_00: He's not concerned in your leaves.
SPEAKER_00: He's not after leafy Christians, he's after fruitful Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Who aren't merely making professions, not merely appearing religious.
SPEAKER_00: He's about developing followers who love Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And here's where the language of fruit is so helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Fruit was an Old Testament imagery also.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was supposed to be a fruitful vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: The difference is that the law can't produce fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit of God does produce fruit by dwelling in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And so it makes sense that a Christian would have spiritual fruit because we have the Spirit who produces fruit in us.
SPEAKER_00: To grow fruit, it requires water and sunlight.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual fruit requires the Spirit of God dwelling in you, and then your actions living it out.
SPEAKER_00: You live out your salvation or you work out your salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who works in you and through you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
SPEAKER_00: It is God who works and you who work.
SPEAKER_00: This spiritual fruit is synergistic.
SPEAKER_00: It's called spiritual fruit because it is the Spirit of God who's making it, but he's making it through your actions.
SPEAKER_00: That's why profession without obedience is empty.
SPEAKER_00: Those who love Christ follow him and serve him.
SPEAKER_00: Those who don't, don't.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost axiomatic.
SPEAKER_00: Despite all the words they say.
SPEAKER_00: As a parent, which one of these two kids would you want?
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know parenting doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_00: I know you don't get to choose, like you're at the hospital and you're taking your son home, and the doctor says, okay, first though, would you rather have son one or son two in this parable?
SPEAKER_00: You don't get to choose.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of a ridiculous thought experiment, but nevertheless, as a parent, you can't help but read this and ask that question, can't you?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just speaking from my own heart here.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I pray for my three girls and I pray that they would be protected from the world.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want them leading a sexually immoral life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want them falling in love with money.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want them going off the rails.
SPEAKER_00: I pray against their friends, being bad influences on them.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that they would have good and godly friends and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I pray for.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a little bit in the back of my heart that is nagging, recognizing that God could answer all of those prayers, and I'd be stuck with son two here.
SPEAKER_00: Their bed would be made, they would refer to me as Sir.
SPEAKER_00: Say yes to all the right things, have the Nicene Creed memorized.
SPEAKER_00: And not actually love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you can think about it for a few seconds before you get to the next stop of the train, where you realize that oftentimes it is Son 1 here who ends up being most useful for the Lord, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Like just, I'm not talking my own family here.
SPEAKER_00: My kids are, the jury is still out, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about through history, like church history, 2,000 years of history of pastors and missionaries and faithful service to the Lord, isn't it often the first son that makes the best worker in the Lord's vineyard?
SPEAKER_00: The one who ran away, told his father, give me the inheritance, I'm out, runs away to a farland, leads a life of sexual immorality and debauchery, and then gets totally crushed by the world.
SPEAKER_00: And comes home broken and eager to be used by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's not a parable about parenting, so you don't get to choose.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: It's out of our hands.
SPEAKER_00: Job as parents is to point people, point our kids to Christ and tell them about godliness and repentance and pray for them and encourage them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're supposed to do as parents, and the rest is literally out of our hands.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not the point of the parable, but it is an application of it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 32 is the point of the parable.
SPEAKER_00: John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him.
SPEAKER_00: The tax collectors and the prostitutes, they believed him.
SPEAKER_00: So the scene here, John the Baptist out in the wilderness preaching about Jesus, the Savior's going to come, he's making straight paths for the Savior, the Lamb of God is coming, he's baptizing people for repentance from their sins, and you have the religious leaders that are not believing John.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a little bit in which Jesus says, I get why.
SPEAKER_00: I remember they came out to John, and John said, You brood of vipers, who told you to repent?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go curl up under a rock and die?
SPEAKER_00: So you can understand why the Pharisees initially did not submit themselves to John's baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And when he told them no.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the outcasts and the lowest of the low, the broken people, they heard John's message and they flooded to him because they were desperate.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, their lives are wrecked by sin, and they were looking for some way out.
SPEAKER_00: And here's a guy who's telling them that God loves them and will forgive them of their sin if they turn from their sin and repent.
SPEAKER_00: It was a baptism of repentance, and that's what he was doing, and people submitted themselves to that.
SPEAKER_00: So that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: But then look at this phrase in verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: When you saw it, you did not change your minds.
SPEAKER_00: That's the worst of their sins.
SPEAKER_00: The worst thing that son two did is not repent when he saw son one get radically changed.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost as Jesus is saying, listen, I understand why you Pharisees and religious leaders did not follow John, because he called you snakes and said terrible things about you.
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: But then when you saw all of the awful people get radically changed and saved and made useful for the kingdom, at that point you should have repented.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much evidence now in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus was just welcomed into the temple by a crowd of thousands, and it was not the religious leaders, it was not the scribes, it was not the Sadducees, it was not the lawyers, it was not the wealthy who welcomed Jesus into the temple, it was the saved tax collectors and the saved sexually immoral and the saved broken people and the destitute.
SPEAKER_00: That made up the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is saying is you should have, you righteous hypocrites, you should have seen what God can do in their lives and said, I want that too.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you should have done.
SPEAKER_00: The worst part of their sin was not even their hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: Although that was bad.
SPEAKER_00: And people who are, quote, worse than them.
SPEAKER_00: Not because prostitution is a virtue, of course not, but because repentance is, and they should have seen that lived out.
SPEAKER_00: And that has been the scandal of Jesus' ministry since day one, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees believed that those kind of sinners had no hope, and Jesus kept offering them hope.
SPEAKER_00: The respectful religious people could not bear to be in a religious community with all those sexually immoral and ridiculous people.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: And he, as a little kid, was brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: And his dad, who was a attorney general under President Lincoln, actually, his dad told William, listen, you were so bright.
SPEAKER_00: When you grow up, do not disgrace your family by becoming something like a politician.
SPEAKER_00: Or even worse, he said, do not sell out and become the president of the United States.
SPEAKER_00: When he did become president, if you know his story, you know it was not something he signed up for.
SPEAKER_00: When he did become president, he describes just like his dad was gone already, but saying how much he's like, Dad, don't hold this against me, please.
SPEAKER_00: I tried to honor the family name.
SPEAKER_00: It's not my fault I became president.
SPEAKER_00: I tried.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little bit of that in this, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: These religious people, they could not bear to see people so low in their own congregation.
SPEAKER_00: You know, first century Israel rejected Jesus because he forgave bad people.
SPEAKER_00: Modern America often rejects Jesus because he tells good people they're not good enough.
SPEAKER_00: I think we have enough in our bloods here.
SPEAKER_00: We recognize that the worst of the sinners, the sexually immoral, the homosexuals, the effeminate, the money grubbers, all that, when they get saved, we rejoice in that.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: When there's a testimony like that from the waters of baptism, we're like, praise God.
SPEAKER_00: What's offensive in our Christian world is Jesus telling good people, Jesus telling Son II, that they're not good enough.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus leaves every culture and every generation with exactly the same choice.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were so angry at Son 1 for getting saved.
SPEAKER_00: Americans can tend to be so angry at Son 2 for not being good enough.
SPEAKER_00: We're all left in that same category here.
SPEAKER_00: Such were some of us.
SPEAKER_00: We had the Sun 1 kind of life.
SPEAKER_00: We ran from God.
SPEAKER_00: We get the invitation to come to Saving Faith, and we can't believe it was addressed to us.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, man, my life was gonna go.
SPEAKER_00: It was in a car crash and the car was on fire.
SPEAKER_00: It was over for me, and the Lord reached in and saved me.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have been protected from that kind of life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's very easy to find ourselves in Sun Tu's shoes, sitting here and knowing the right words to say and the right answers.
SPEAKER_00: Understand this though, the kingdom does not belong to those with the best professions, but to those who truly repent.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you extend the gospel to all who would believe.
SPEAKER_00: You gave your life so that we might live.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for this congregation here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, first of all, there are people who are leading the sexually immoral lives, the living for money and self.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would convict them of their sin and help them see how fruitless that life is.
SPEAKER_00: Rescue them from it.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those here this morning that have been son two, they've been obedient.
SPEAKER_00: They said yes to everything except loving you.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that you would work in their hearts a true and genuine love this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.