What do you think of what God requires? What do you think of what God has done?

“Two Sons”

(Matthew 21:28-32, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 16, 2008)

Matthew 21:28-32 ²⁸ "What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' ²⁹ And he answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind and went. ³⁰ And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. ³¹ Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. ³² For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.

Introduction – What do you think?

I find myself amazed at the way that Jesus would engage the minds of those who would listen to Him. You are here today. It could be that for the first time in your life you are seriously considering what a life of faith might mean for you. It’s also possible that a life of faith is not at all new to you, but certain things have taken place in your own life over the last few days that are new, and you wonder what it all means for you as someone who believes that God is there and that he cares for you and knows you by name. In either case, the first few words of our passage are for you. “What do you think?”

It is amazing that when the Son of God came to earth, that the One who certainly had the right to just sit us down and tell us the non-negotiables engages our souls and challenge our minds by a question. I would want to follow the Lord’s lead on this, and honestly ask you that same question. What do you think about the life that God requires of the man who would follow Him? What kind of life pleases God? What do you think?

Son, go and work in the vineyard. (28)

A man had two sons. His command to both of them was the same. Go and work in the vineyard. We are told in Isaiah 5 that Israel is God’s vineyard. Jesus knows this. What did God look for from Israel, and what did he get. Isaiah tells us: “The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!” God expected justice and righteousness, but instead the oppressed cried out to Him for help from those in power, who were shedding the blood of the weak.

Israel did not give the Lord obedience. This was not only a matter of obvious things that everyone knew. It was also a matter of secret things that only God knew. Everyone knows when someone openly and publicly rebels against a parent. God knows what is going on in our hearts and minds before we actually do something that everyone else can know. In 2 Kings 21 we are told the story of a king named Manasseh. He not only did all kinds of idolatrous things, he did them right in God’s temple. As part of that he even burned one of his sons as an offering to God. He used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with wizards. We are told that he did “much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger.” We read in 2 Kings 21:16 that he “shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.” That is a lot of bloodshed. There must have been quite an outcry regarding this wicked king. What he did was something that everyone could see.

His sin was more than that. When Jesus talked about the law in the Sermon on the Mount, He told His listeners in Israel that violating God’s commandment against murder was not only a matter of the physical bloodshed that a man might perform. He said that it was a matter of the heart and of the tongue. Murder begins with sinful hatred. Hatred and envy are often private hidden offenses that people might not know about, but God knows, and He counts that as sin. The kind of life in the vineyard that God requires involves the heart. He demands obedience even there. “What do you think?” Is God right to demand that kind of obedience from the people in His vineyard? If the answer is “Yes” then have we ever sinned in our hearts with hatred? We are supposed to work in His vineyard and to bring forward good fruit from renewed hearts. What do you think? Have we done that?

I will not! (29)

Both sons had the same command to work in the vineyard, but their responses were different. The first son in the parable hears the command and immediately rejects it. He defies his father openly, and anyone within earshot of their conversation would have known this. This kind of response may not seem like a very serious thing, but I think that the Lord wants us to see it as significantly negative. Think about what He is doing with this little story. These simple words “I will not” stand for all the evil that the irreligious people were doing, even people like prostitutes and thieving tax-collectors. There are commandments that God has spoken clearly to His people, and it is very serious for people to openly defy Him, which is what these words, “I will not,” represent. They represent people who openly took the Lord’s name in vain, and never worshipped God, people who had defied their parents, left the protection of their homes, and sold their bodies to strangers, or made friends of well-placed government officials and through bribery and extortion made themselves rich by stealing other people’s money. These were not good people.

Jesus’ parable is about more than the simple example of defying a parent, although even this is more serious biblically than we may realize. The penalty for hardened rebellion against a parent in Deuteronomy 21 was stoning:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 ¹⁸ "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, ¹⁹ then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, ²⁰ and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' ²¹ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Don’t misunderstand this. The offending party here is not a little child who will not make her bed and then is taken outside the city and stoned to death. We are talking about a civil law in Israel that had to do with those who were young adults causing serious problems. Nonetheless, it seems to fit in well with the example from the parable. We need to realize that a young man defying a parent is a serious thing, perhaps more serious than we have realized because it has become so commonplace. The story that Jesus tells does not end with the stoning of the first son. Afterward, he changed his mind, and he went and worked in the vineyard. What a relief! Praise God!

I go, sir. (30)

Unfortunately, the story of the second son, though it starts out better, ends much worse. He seems to be perfectly compliant, at least based on his words. Remember again who this second son stands for. He is not the tax collector or the prostitute. He is the law-abiding Pharisee. He observes the Sabbath traditions. He does not even say the word “Yahweh” out loud for fear of dishonoring the Name of the Lord. He has tithed even his spices, and so on. But when God sent His Son preaching the Kingdom, this second boy, though He fancied himself one of God’s loyal supporters, rejected John the Baptist, and then rejected the Messiah.

With his mouth he claimed to love God, and maybe he did, but he was so caught up in a bad spiritual way, that he did not even make it to the real vineyard, where God looks to see the fruit of the Spirit giving a wonderful yield of spiritual life – things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He was not growing in these things. His situation was sad. He was probably more convinced than anyone that he was serving God the best, but he was actually far from the kingdom – far from the vineyard.

Which of the two did the will of his father? (31-32)

What do you think? Which of the two sons did the will of his father? The Pharisees knew the answer. It was the first son. Though he said that he would not go, he repented and he went.

God sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for His only-begotten Son. That Son was Jesus Christ. Jesus said He would go into the vineyard to do the will of His Father, and then He did what He said He would do. He is the perfect Son of God. He did this for us. We are very far from perfect. We have neither been right with our words, or faithful in our actions. Jesus’ coming into the vineyard to do what He promised has yielded tremendous fruit for us. We who repent and believe, join prostitutes and tax-collectors who have seen that the answer for us is in the Son of God, and not in ourselves. This is part of the essence of living in the vineyard, the appreciation of the Messiah, and the humble response of hearts touched by His mercy.

The prophet Jeremiah says that if Moses and Samuel were pleading for Israel, that God would not listen any more. He gives one name as the reason for this, the man who became the poster child for the rebellious kings of Judah, Manasseh. He says, “I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” Manasseh was not only a wicked king, he was the son of a great man, Hezekiah. He rejected His father’s example, and he did much evil, and brought much trouble upon the land.

Nonetheless, there is one other thing that can be said about Manasseh, and it is amazing. Manasseh changed his mind later in his life. He repented. No one repents unless he is given the gift of repentance by God. Acts 11:15 tells us that repentance is something that is granted by God, just like faith. Manasseh was given the gift of repentance (2 Chronicles 33:9-18). Because of Jesus Christ, His faithfulness and His death on the cross for the unworthy, Manasseh was forgiven. We know that no one is forgiven except by the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus died for Manasseh. If there is hope for Manasseh, and for tax collectors and prostitutes, then there is even hope for Pharisees who repent, and for you and for me through Jesus Christ. God requires the perfect heart, words, and life of Jesus. He gives this to us, and he gives us repentance and faith. What do you think of that?

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What are the four possible combinations of verbal reply to the father and later action in the parable?

2. Which two of these four are represented in the parable? What do they stand for?

3. Which two are not represented in the parable, and how might they be useful to consider?

4. Why did Jesus tell this parable on this occasion in the last week of His earthly ministry?