Matthew 21.23-32
A married couple was celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.
At the party everybody wanted to know how they managed to stay married so long in this day and age.
The husband responded, “When we were first married, we came to an agreement. I would make all the major decisions, and my wife would make all the minor decisions.”
At which point the wife took up the tale, “And in 60 years of marriage we have never needed to make a major decision.”
Every single day, from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we close our eyes, we are making decisions.
Think about how many decisions you make at the beginning of your day.
Here are a few of the decisions you have to make:
You have to decide if you are going to get out of bed or hit the snooze alarm in the morning.
You have to decide what you are going to wear.
You have to decide how you are going to style your hair (that’s an easy decision for me!).
You have to decide what you are going to have for breakfast.
If you are a parent of young children, you also have to decide what time to wake your kids up, what you are going to make them for breakfast, and what they are going to wear.
You have to decide what you are going to have for dinner in case you have to defrost meat or make a list of things to pick up while you are out and about.
And, you have to decide what time you are going to leave the house.
The amount of decisions we have to make, if you really think about it, is almost endless.
Columbia researcher Sheena Iyengar has found that the average person makes about 70 decisions every day. That’s 25,500 decisions a year. Over 70 years, that’s 1,788,500 decisions.
The 20th century philosopher Albert Camus said, “Life is a sum of all your choices.” You put all of those 1,788,500 choices together, and that’s who you are.
In our Biblical text for this morning, we encounter a group of people who are facing one of life’s decisions, this one being the most important decision of their lifetime.
This one single decision, a choice that every human being also has to make, will sum up who they are when they meet God face-to-face.
Let’s hear from our Biblical text now.
Matthew 21:23–32 tells us this:
[23] And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” [24] Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. [25] The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ [26] But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” [27] So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
[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 will, 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. (ESV)
In this encounter, Jesus presents two scenarios to further his case that the Chief Priests and Elders of the temple (the Jewish leaders of His day), in their current state of rejecting Him as God the Savior, were not members of the Kingdom of God.
The first scenario has a son starting out by disobeying his Father but ultimately repenting of his wrong doing and then correcting his course by following the will of the Father.
The second scenario has a son starting out by agreeing to obey his Father but ultimately turning his back and disobeying the Father’s will.
After telling these two similar yet also different stories, Jesus asks the Jewish leaders which son did the will of his Father.
The Jewish leaders correctly point out that the first son, the one who eventually repented of his disobedience and went out to work in the Father’s vineyard, did the will of the Father.
Even though the beginning of this first son’s story was one of rejection and disobedience, the first son came to see his wrong and changed his life’s course to be aligned with his Father’s will.
Jesus’ then confronts the Jewish leaders. He tells the truth that they have the knowledge of what is right yet they refuse to do what is right. Even though they witnessed the non-Jewish population, including those considered the bottom of the barrel in society—the prostitutes and tax collectors—change the course of their lives through repenting of their rejection, denial, and disobeying of God, the Jewish Priests and Elders do not celebrate God’s grace and do the same.
The Jewish leaders knew the Old Testament Scriptures. The Jewish leaders knew the promises of God to send a Savior to rescue them and bring them into God’s Kingdom of Heaven. The Jewish leaders started out saying, “Yes! We are all-in on listening to the Father in Heaven and doing His will!” However, when God’s plan for their life was not how they envisioned God’s plan for their life should be, they proved their initial promise was nothing more than lip service. Jesus, God’s sent Savior, did not act like, or look like, or speak like someone who could and would save humanity from their Sin. So, they refused to move forward with their promise to do the will of God, by trusting in His plan for their life.
Author Peter Killingly writes, “…the Christian life is about more than knowledge, information and facts. God calls us to grow more like Christ. And that involves searching the Scriptures, reading the word and praying, asking the Spirit to produce his fruit in us.”
Knowing the truth that we are all born with original sin inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve, we all start out as the first son. We are born with a heart predisposed to disobeying God while believing we are the center of the created universe and our wants and desires rule the day.
That means, each of us, has to come to a point in our lives where we can honestly look in the mirror and say, “I am not king of the hill and the things I want, the things I spend my time chasing after to possess, and the things I do, have not and do not bring me lasting satisfaction and peace.”
However, we are sometimes also the second son. We get excited about God and his promises. However, when God fulfills His promises in ways that we weren’t expecting, or in ways that we don’t like, our initial response of “I will do your will!,” turns into, “I don’t want to be part of Your will if this is how it is going to go.”
Here is the warning in today’s text.
You cannot keep kicking the can of deciding who Jesus is down the road forever.
If you have not already made a decision about Jesus having the authority from God to lead you to salvation by forgiving of your Sin through His death on the cross for your days of rejecting Him, denying His God given authority, and living in disobedience to to His will, a day is coming for you when you will still have to call Jesus the Lord and Savior, admitting that He is the One whom you rejected, denied, and disobeyed to the very end.
Philippians 2:5–11 says:
[5] Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [8] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. [9] Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, [10] so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (ESV)
In this verses the apostle Paul clearly states that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord.
However, in this text, the apostle Paul doesn’t say that every confession of “Jesus Christ is Lord” is made by someone who will live eternally in the Kingdom of God.
When God closes up shop for this current world, as I spoke about a few weeks ago, and Jesus returns, every person will know Jesus is in fact Lord and Savior. Those who did not repent of their disobedience to God’s will and place their trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior in their lifetime will be tearfully be cast away from the Kingdom of God. Those who repented of their Sin and placed their trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior during their lifetime will be joyously ushered into the Kingdom of God.
Our text this morning shares the good news that:
It doesn’t matter how you start.
It matters how you finish.
It doesn’t matter how you begin.
It matters how you end.
It doesn’t matter what the opening to you life was like.
It matters how your life closes.
The introduction to your story doesn’t matter.
The conclusion of your story matters.
With Jesus, all sins, past, present and future are forgiven for you through faith in Jesus’ authority to grant that forgiveness through His death on the cross.
We all have a before Jesus chapter in our lives. Your before Jesus chapter is either complete disobedience to God and His will, or giving lip service to God without a heart of faith that will lead you to follow through in the end.
Sadly, we don’t all have an after Jesus chapter in our lives. But, we all can!
For those of you that are like the first son, your after Jesus life of repentance and faith leads you to righteousness and abundant eternal life. This righteous and abundant life gives you peace, hope, and love that surpasses all finite human understanding. In that place, you can rest from the burdens of attempting to follow God’s Law in your own broken strength which only leads to failure after failure and insecurity after insecurity in your relationship with your Creator.
When the apostle Paul writes a letter to his mentee Timothy, we hear this:
[1] … I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, [2] for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. [3] This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, [4] who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. [5] For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, [6] who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Timothy 2:1–6 ESV)
Faith in Christ Jesus is the Only way that you live a life in the will of God.
In some of the very early days of the Contemporary Christian Music movement, Christ Tomlin wrote a song that went like this:
You are my supply, my breath of life
And still more awesome than I know
You are my reward worth living for
And still more awesome than I know
You’re my sacrifice of greatest price
And still more awesome than I know
You’re the coming King, You are everything
And still more awesome than I know
And all of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough
Jesus is enough.
Jesus is enough for you to be in the Father’s will so that you go into the Kingdom of God.
Repent of your sin this morning and let the end of your story be the same as the apostle Paul’s who said this:
[7] I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. [8] Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7–8, ESV)
This is the Word of God for you today.
This is the Grace of God for you today.
Amen.
Reverend Fred Scragg V.
October 4, 2026
