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Your Daily Bible Verse - How Will You Respond to Jesus? (Matthew 21:31) · GodLife On Demand

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  Speaker 1: Life Audio Thank you for listening to your daily Bible verse.
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  Speaker 1: The podcast that examines one verse each day to learn
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  Speaker 1: more about God and His will for our lives. I'm
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  Speaker 1: your host, Kyle Norman. After a brief message from one
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  Speaker 1: of our sponsors, we will continue with today's verse. Today's
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  Speaker 1: verse can be found in Matthew chapter 21, verse 31.
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  Speaker 1: Which of the two sons did what the father wanted?
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  Speaker 1: The first, they answered. Jesus said to them, Truly I
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  Speaker 1: tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering
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  Speaker 1: the kingdom of God ahead of you. The parable of
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  Speaker 1: the two sons, told in Matthew 21, is quite relatable.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure we can all relate in some way. Two
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  Speaker 1: children are told to perform a chore. One child defiantly
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  Speaker 1: says no, but then somewhere along the way does the
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  Speaker 1: action that was asked of him. One child agrees to
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  Speaker 1: the chore, but later you find out that they shirk
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  Speaker 1: their responsibility and simply did their own thing. Growing up,
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  Speaker 1: I can say that I have been on both sides
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  Speaker 1: of that scenario. Who among us hasn't? This parable is
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  Speaker 1: a fairly straightforward story, to which Jesus puts forward the
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  Speaker 1: easiest question to answer in all of Scripture. Which of
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  Speaker 1: the two children did what the father wanted? If you're
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  Speaker 1: looking for a twist, it doesn't come. Because the answer
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  Speaker 1: is plain. Well, the first one. The one who went
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  Speaker 1: to work in the vineyard. It can be tempting to
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  Speaker 1: interpret this parable in a way that suggests that doing
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  Speaker 1: the right things are what is most important in our
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  Speaker 1: spiritual life. To believe that, in the end, if we
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  Speaker 1: do the things that God approves of, well, this amounts
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  Speaker 1: to a life of God's kingdom. It doesn't actually matter
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  Speaker 1: what we say or what we believe. It's what I
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  Speaker 1: call good person theology. Well, as long as we are, quote,
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  Speaker 1: good people— Nice people, pleasant people, that's what God ultimately
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  Speaker 1: cares about. Good people go to heaven, bad people do not.
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  Speaker 1: And this parable seemingly suggests this. Except, there's actually more
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  Speaker 1: going on. Standing in the temple courts, Jesus tells the
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  Speaker 1: story about a father with a vineyard calling to his children.
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  Speaker 1: This image of a vineyard was a popular image for Israel,
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  Speaker 1: and more specifically, Jerusalem. So when Jesus starts talking about
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  Speaker 1: a father who had a vineyard and called to his sons,
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  Speaker 1: the scribes and the teachers of the law would recognize
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  Speaker 1: that this rabbi was telling a story about them and
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  Speaker 1: their relationship with God Almighty. Israel was that first son,
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  Speaker 1: that heir of the vineyard, the son who could say
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  Speaker 1: the right things, but actually rejected the father's vineyard and
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  Speaker 1: the call to be a part of it. And then
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  Speaker 1: there's a second child. The second child seemingly rejects the
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  Speaker 1: word of the father, the invitation to join in the
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  Speaker 1: work of the vineyard, but eventually returns. Jesus says, but
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  Speaker 1: later he changed his mind and he went. Importantly, the
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  Speaker 1: word that Jesus uses for changed his mind is the
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  Speaker 1: word metemalethes, and it means to repent. This is the
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  Speaker 1: exact same word that Jesus says at the end of
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  Speaker 1: the parable when he says that the scribes and the
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  Speaker 1: elders failed to repent and believe. Now, repentance simply means
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  Speaker 1: to change direction, to respond in a different way, to
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  Speaker 1: turn into something particular. This was the message that Jesus preached. Repent,
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  Speaker 1: for the kingdom of God is at hand. So, within
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  Speaker 1: the parable, the indication is that the invitation of the father,
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  Speaker 1: originally rejected, stuck with this second child, and eventually this
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  Speaker 1: child turned their life into the vineyard and began to
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  Speaker 1: join into the father's work. This was a complete acceptance
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  Speaker 1: of the father's invitation, and Jesus says that this is
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  Speaker 1: what the tax collectors and the prostitutes were doing. Even
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  Speaker 1: though they had seemingly rejected the one who made them,
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  Speaker 1: and chose to live apart from God's ways, God's word
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  Speaker 1: stuck with them, and they responded to it. They changed
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  Speaker 1: their life. They responded to God and turned into God's kingdom. So,
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  Speaker 1: this parable isn't just about working in the vineyard. It's
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  Speaker 1: about the willingness to respond to the goodness of God
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  Speaker 1: that has come to us. It is about accepting ourselves
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  Speaker 1: as God's children made to join in God's work in
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  Speaker 1: this world. So the question that we have to ask
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  Speaker 1: ourselves is, how do we respond to Jesus? I remember
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  Speaker 1: a friend of mine who would always talk about needing
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  Speaker 1: to know more before making any faith decision. He would say,
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  Speaker 1: I need to know more about Jesus. I need to
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  Speaker 1: know more about God. I need to know more about
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  Speaker 1: the Bible or more about life. And then I need
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  Speaker 1: to know more about other religions. I need to know
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  Speaker 1: more about what I want to do with my life.
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  Speaker 1: And what it ended up being was simply excuse after
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  Speaker 1: excuse after excuse to keep himself closed to any sort
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  Speaker 1: of response. But here's the thing. At some point, to
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  Speaker 1: go deeper in our life with God, we have to
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  Speaker 1: respond to what God has done. and there is simply
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  Speaker 1: no work of God greater than the life, death, and
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  Speaker 1: resurrection of Jesus. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas said, The attempt
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  Speaker 1: to establish grounds more determinative than Jesus' life, death, and
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  Speaker 1: resurrection for why we should believe in him results in idolatry.
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  Speaker 1: If one needs a standard of truth to ensure that
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  Speaker 1: Jesus is the Messiah— then one ought to worship that
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  Speaker 1: standard of truth and not Jesus. So, what does that mean?
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  Speaker 1: It means that in Jesus, God has acted. In Jesus,
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  Speaker 1: God has called out to us. In Jesus, God has
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  Speaker 1: invited us to enter his kingdom of grace and love.
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  Speaker 1: The question isn't, what else can God do to prove
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  Speaker 1: God's self? The question is, How will we respond to Jesus?