A Supper Parable
The parable I have chosen today is best known as The Parable of the Two Sons. I’m not thinking of the Prodigal Son and his Elder Brother. That is undoubtedly Jesus’ most famous story; the parable I want to talk about may be His least known. The Prodigal was Jesus’ longest parable; this is one of the shortest.
However, the story I want us to examine today also has some striking similarities to the longer and more famous parable. Both brothers in both of these stories have major flaws. In both stories the brother who starts off well ends up poorly and the one who starts off poorly ends up well. And in both stories Jesus’ purpose is to send a strong message to the religious community that God’s evaluation of our status with Him can be quite different from our own.
Please turn with me to Matthew 21:28-32 for the reading of God’s Word. (By the way, if you are using a New American Standard Version, the order of this story will be a little different, due to some textual changes introduced by some ancient scribe, but the essential content is the same, but you should have no problem following along in whatever version you are using).
Jesus starts this parable by asking His listeners to put on their thinking caps.
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
” ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
Jesus never told a story out of the clear blue, so let’s think together about…
The background and context of this parable
It was Holy Week, as is evident from the first half of the chapter. On Palm Sunday Jesus made His Triumphal Entry into the city of Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple of the merchandisers and money changers. That night He went to Bethany to spend the night at the home of His dear friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. For the next few days Jesus would get up early, go back to the city and enter the Court of the Gentiles, the one place in the Temple where non-Jews and women could join the Jewish men to hear Him teach.
According to the paragraph immediately preceding this parable, the religious elite of the day, called chief priests and elders, approach Him while He is speaking there in the Temple. These would probably include a wide variety of religious leaders, including Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and even some Zealots and Essenes. Though these groups were usually fighting among themselves, they found common ground in opposing Jesus. You know the old saying that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They believe Jesus is threatening the authority of the entire religious establishment, and so they marshal their forces against Him.
They angrily challenge Him about His teaching, His healings, and especially His utterly presumptuous action of closing down the lucrative stock exchange they had set up in the Temple. While that was happening, they seemed powerless to stop Him, but now that they have recovered from the initial shock and awe, they demand an explanation. Thus their two questions in verse 23: “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?”
Jesus replies with one question of His own. Look at verse 24:
Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or from men?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”
So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
Usually we find the Pharisees and religious leaders trying to impale Jesus on the horns of a dilemma; this time He returns the favor. The reason they feel boxed in is not simply that they had rejected John’s baptism; they had also rejected John’s clear testimony about Jesus, whom John had openly proclaimed to be “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and the very “Son of God”(John 1:29, 34). To accept John as a prophet from heaven would require accepting Jesus as the Messiah; and that they simply would not do.
But they can’t openly reject John as a prophet either for political reasons–he was quite a popular celebrity. So they claim agnosticism; they say they don’t know the answer to His question. But in turn Jesus refuses to answer their questions. Instead He tells them a story, a very simple story that almost anyone in that day could relate to.
The parable itself
I love the way Presbyterian pastor Earl Palmer paints a picturesque scene of a farm family sitting down to breakfast. The father is planning out his day and turns to one of his sons and says, “Son, I would like for you to go and work in the south forty today.” The boy responds, “I will not.” We aren’t told how the father reacts, but he can’t be too happy. Perhaps the veins stand out in his neck and he gets red in the face because of the blatant disrespect his son shows for his authority, but he chooses not to escalate the confrontation. The father has made his will known and the son has expressed his defiance; he will let it go for now.
Then the father turns to his other son and asks, “Will you go and work in the south forty?” and the second son responds, “I will, sir!” He not only agrees, but also goes out of his way to show respect. And I suspect, knowing the rest of the story, that this son may even have added, “I will be happy to work in your vineyard, father. I’m not like some other members of this family who like to freeload. When I was having my devotions just this morning I was praying that God would give me another opportunity to show my gratitude for all you have provided. Dad, you’ve made my day! When can I get started?”[i]
Do any of you parents relate to this story so far? I have two sons. One was a world-class compliant child the entire time he was growing up. He was never defiant, always easy to manage, always agreeable, easy to travel with, a delight at the breakfast table. I have often said that if you put all the trouble he ever gave us growing up into one day, it wouldn’t go past noon. It’s no surprise to me that he is today a successful business executive and a great father of four. And, of course, all the time he was growing up I thought I was a world-class parent. I had little patience with people who allowed their children to be incorrigible.
But 13 years later we had another son, who was, well, a lot different from his brother, right out of the starting gate. He was defiant, difficult to manage, disagreeable, a bear to travel with, and frankly a pain at the breakfast table.
Now I probably wouldn’t be telling you these things about my second son if things hadn’t changed a lot over the years so that he has become a fine young man in whom I take great delight. He is married to a delightful young Christian lady, the father of three exceptional children, a successful engineer, the drummer at our church, a Trustee (now that I am retired), and we work together whenever we get the opportunity. But if the truth be told, I heard a lot of “I will not’s” from him as he was growing up. I relate very well to the scene at the breakfast table in this parable.
By the way, one of our sons is adopted, the other is natural. Can you guess which one is which? Well, you guessed wrong. The compliant son is the adopted one, while the difficult one is the natural son. Go figure! Actually, my mother would tell you she understands quite well.
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Now let’s recap. What we have in this story is one boy who is a pain at breakfast and another who is a joy at breakfast. There’s not a one of us who wouldn’t gravitate toward the second boy. But the problem is that this is not a breakfast parable; it is a supper parable. And the picture that is painted at the supper table is very different.
The boy who said “I will not”, we are told, later changed his mind and went. The Greek word for “changed his mind” is the same word often translated “repent.” He thought about what he had said, he realized he was wrong, and so he went out to the vineyard to work.
The other boy had a change of heart as well. Despite his eager and respectful response to his father, “I will, sir,” he did not go. He got busy. Or some friends called and asked him to go to a party. Or once his brother left the table he realized he couldn’t get any further mileage by comparing his own behavior with that of his brother. We’re not told why; we are simply told he did not do what he said he would do.
Please recognize that both boys are flawed. The one is defiant; the other disobedient. Neither is a paragon of virtue, nor is Jesus presenting either as an example of how people ought to respond to the heavenly Father. What the Father desires is for His children to say, “I will,” and then do it.
It is important, however, for us to see that while both responses are flawed,
they are not equivalent. And this is demonstrated as Jesus asks the religious leaders…
A very specific question based upon the parable
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?” Maybe they don’t realize they are being set up, but they respond quickly, “the first.” Jesus does not confirm or deny their answer directly (though surely they are correct as far as they go). He is more interested in driving home the point that the second boy represents them in the story. He says, in effect, “I tell you the truth, the most heinous sinners you can imagine are entering the Kingdom instead of you, because though they messed up big time at first, they repented and believed. And you proud religious types did not.”
Let’s think about Jesus’ answer. He says that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God. Why does He pick these two classes of people? Because to the Pharisees they represented the worst of the worst, the very scum of the earth.
Tax collectors were traitors who worked for Rome. They had a very lucrative business because Rome specified the minimum tax they must collect but not the maximum. So long as the tax collectors gave Rome what it wanted, it didn’t matter how much more they collected, and they could pocket the difference. The result is that they were usually very rich, and they were hated for the extortion they practiced.
Prostitutes were generally poor and vulnerable; they had no one, not even the Roman government, protecting them, so it was safe to abuse them as paradigms of evil (and sadly, many of the same religious leaders who abused them verbally also used them physically on the side).
I wonder what terms Jesus might use if he were speaking to us today. Instead of tax collectors and prostitutes he might speak of “potheads” or “gays and lesbians” or “porn addicts” or “meth heads” –the kind of people who are held in low esteem by many religious people today.
Now surely Jesus is not saying that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God because they are tax collectors and prostitutes, but rather in spite of who they are. He is trying to shock the religious elite into realizing that some individuals who are very low on the moral pecking order have recognized and admitted their desperate condition, have repented, and have turned in faith to Jesus. And as a result, they have been gloriously saved.
Jesus says that those who know they are sinners are nearer the Kingdom of God than even the cream of the crop of these conservative, judgmental, legalistic, self-righteous religious leaders. Why? “For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did.”
When John first appeared on the scene, the religious leaders were quite intrigued with him and went out of their way to hear this charismatic and eccentric country preacher, much like the Hollywood elites and the politically powerful who flocked to Billy Graham’s early crusades in the 1950’s.
In John 5:35 Jesus says to these same leaders, “John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.” But light always produces heat, and the heat became uncomfortable, and soon they walked away. John was not politically correct, nor was he culturally sensitive; he talked too much about sin and hellfire.
Jesus states here in Matthew 21:32 that even after the religious big-shots saw the tax collectors and prostitutes repenting, and the drunks getting sober, the soldiers stop swearing, and the womanizers becoming faithful husbands, still they refused to follow suit; after all, what did they need to repent of?
Chuck Colson was a hatchet man for the Nixon White House and was hated by his political enemies. Eventually he was convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors and was sent to prison. But there God invaded his life and he surrendered his heart to Jesus Christ. At first his political enemies scoffed at the thought of Colson getting religion.
But he hadn’t gotten religion; he had received Jesus Christ, and there’s a world of difference between those two things. For the next forty years he lived for Christ, writing solid theology, serving as President of Prison Fellowship, and being a prophet to our culture. After several decades his enemies didn’t scoff at him anymore, but neither did they follow him in repentance. I fully believe Colson, who died nearly a year ago, has entered God’s eternal kingdom ahead of them, or instead of them.
The application of the parable
What are the chief lessons we should take home from this story? I would like to mention three.
1. Obedience is best judged not by what we say, but by what we do. This is a common theme of Scripture. Words are slippery things. Words are cheap. Anyone can utter them. But deeds are costly. You are all familiar with James 2:14ff: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?” The expected answer to this rhetorical question is clearly “No!” for James goes on to say that “faith by itself, if it not accompanied by action, is dead.”
Interestingly James also uses a prostitute as a positive illustration of his point. “Was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?” Rahab was not righteous in regard to her chosen profession–a pagan harlot in Jericho. But God proclaimed her righteous because when two Israelite spies asked for sanctuary in her home and confronted her with the claims of the one true God, she welcomed them,
believed in their God, and demonstrated her faith through hiding them until they could escape. Rahab could have talked a good line, but if she had not hidden them on her roof under stalks of flax, her words would have been worthless.
Obedience is best judged not by what we say, but by what we do.
2. One’s initial response to God (or to the Gospel) is not always final.
This is a glorious truth for some. I suspect if we had time to share our faith stories here this morning, we would hear of some who resisted the Gospel the first time they heard it; perhaps even the first 100 times! I never cease to be amazed at the patience and long-suffering nature of God in that He will pursue a person again and again, sometimes for years.
There were five children in my birth family. My dad was a pastor and a Christian educator, and four of his five children entered the ministry after him. There was no pressure to do so; it was just that he and mom made ministry so attractive. However, I have a little sister named Mary who walked away from the Lord when she was about 15. She demonstrated her rebellion by taking up smoking, dating unbelievers, marrying one of them, and for over forty years showed little or no interest in spiritual things or church or the faith of her family. When we had a family reunion it was always uncomfortable because the rest of us liked to talk about church or theology, but we couldn’t do it around Mary.
Ten years ago Mary and her husband Rob moved from their long-term home in Atlanta to Memphis. One day she asked my dad, who was 89 at the time, and with whom she had always maintained a loving relationship, what she could do for him. He responded, “I wish you would find a church in Memphis.” That isn’t what she had in mind, but she knew it would mean a lot to him, so one day they attended the church nearest their home. It happened to be Collierville Bible Church. When I heard they had gone there, I emailed the pastor and asked him to be on the lookout for my sister and brother-in-law should they come back. They did, and the pastor made a connection. They began to ask lots of questions, so my parents sent them things to read and they asked more questions.
Several months later Mary and Rob asked my older brother, who is a retired pastor in Iowa, to meet them halfway between their home and his, and he spent many hours responding to their spiritual questions and sharing the Gospel with them. On Easter Sunday, 2005, Rob professed faith in Christ and my sister returned to the faith of her childhood. The result has been nothing short of amazing. They were baptized, are today active church members, involved in Bible study, reading solid theology books. My sister is now on the board of a mission in India and has taken three mission trips there.
My parents, who prayed for Mary and Rob virtually every day for over 40 years, were overwhelmed with gratitude to God. My dad, who died 18 months later at age 91, said he felt like the old prophet Simeon in Luke 2, who after holding the baby Jesus in the Temple praised God saying, “Now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.”
What is even more amazing is that God sometimes accepts sinners on their deathbed, even though they have wasted every opportunity He has given them over their entire lifetime. Even though He can get nothing out of them, He still accepts them when they sincerely repent and turn in faith to Jesus. The thief on the Cross, of course, is the paradigm example. He had only a few hours, perhaps less, to serve Christ from the time he repented until he entered eternity. There’s not much service you can do with your hands and feet nailed to a cross, but Jesus nevertheless told him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Praise God that one’s initial response to the Gospel is not always final.
But this is a tragic truth for others. There are some who accept the Gospel glibly, profess faith openly, eagerly join a church, and begin to serve with great enthusiasm, but after a few years they fade into the woodwork, quit producing fruit, and seem to die on the vine. They may still attend church, may even be respected leaders, but they are only going through the motions.
Many professing Christians are, I fear, guilty of the Judas syndrome. Judas was a well-respected member of the Twelve Apostles–so respected that they entrusted their limited funds to his oversight. He preached, he healed the sick, he cast out demons. And on the last night of Jesus’ earthly life, when the Twelve were warned that one of them was a traitor, not one of them said, “I’ll bet I know who it is–that Judas has been acting pretty suspiciously lately.” Instead each suspected himself before suspecting Judas. “Is it I?” they asked Jesus, “Is it I?” Was Judas ever saved? I don’t think so. But did he convince others that he was? Certainly he did. And did he convince himself? Perhaps.
My purpose here is not to generate paranoia and fear in the heart of the true believer but to call all of us to honest self-examination. If you have said “Yes” to Jesus, are you living out that commitment? Is it real? Can your friends and neighbors and fellow-workers see it? Has it made any difference in your lifestyle and priorities?
My third and final application is this:
3. Where we end up in life is a lot more important than where we start. Friends, the qualifications for the Kingdom have nothing to do with one’s past and everything to do with one’s present and future. I don’t say to you that your past is unimportant, or that the mistakes of your past will not impact you in serious ways. But your history is not determinative of your future. Where you are spiritually today is more important than where you have been.
I think much confusion has come to the church through too strong an emphasis on the time of conversion–the notion that one’s eternal destiny rests completely on a decision made at a point in the past. When people are asked, “How do you know you’re saved and going to heaven?” too often they respond, “Because I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 5,” or “Because I walked forward in a Billy Graham Crusade when I was 24,” or “Because I was baptized when I was 12.”
Those aren’t necessarily heretical answers, but I’ll tell you a far better one:
“I know I’m saved because I am right now trusting Jesus and His death on the cross as the full payment for my sins. I acknowledge that I am more flawed and sinful than I ever dared believe, but I also realize that I am even more loved and accepted than I ever dared to hope. I know I have nothing in my record to merit God’s approval, but I am right now resting in what Jesus did for me.”
Conclusion: In conclusion this morning, allow me to ask: What should we do with a Savior who admits dirty, rotten, gross sinners into His Heaven but rejects upstanding religious leaders with impeccable credentials? We should marvel and stand in awe. And we should join with Paul, a one-time Pharisee, who said in 1 Tim 1:
“How thankful I am to Christ Jesus our Lord for considering me trustworthy and appointing me to serve him, even though I used to scoff at the name of Christ. I hunted down his people, harming them in every way I could. But God had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and unbelief. Oh, how kind and gracious the Lord was! . . .
This is a true saying, and everyone should believe it: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–and I was the worst of them all. But that is why God had mercy on me, so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life. Glory and honor to God forever and ever. He is the eternal King, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God. Amen.” (The Message)
At the breakfast table Paul said to God, “I will not,” but at the supper table he served God faithfully, and he the Father had wonderful fellowship. What about you? Remember, religious claims and credentials do not qualify a person to enter the kingdom, and even gross sin, when truly repented of, will not keep a person out!
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for sending your one and only Son to be our Savior. Thank you, Lord, that entry into your heaven is not based on intelligence or hard work or credentials, for that would favor the brilliant, the industrious and the well-connected. Instead, it is based on a willingness to acknowledge our sin and to put our faith in Jesus, who is still inviting people to go work in His vineyard, in His kingdom.
Pause. If you have never surrendered your heart and will to Jesus, I want to suggest a simple sinner’s prayer. If this expresses the desire of your heart, I invite you to say it silently after me. Father, I know that I have sinned. I have not even lived up to my own standards, to say nothing of Yours. I have broken Your law and offended Your character. I humbly ask you to forgive me on the basis that Jesus died for me–died in my place. I place my faith and trust in Him today. Thank you, Father, for your promise that if we believe in Jesus Christ, we will be saved for all eternity. I believe. Amen.
Tags:
Pharisees
Repentance
John the Baptizer
Obedience
Judas syndrome
[i]. Earl Palmer, sermon at Beeson Pastors School 2004.