03.09. THE TWO SONS

THE TWO SONS Matthew 21:28-32 The three parables of which this is the first were spoken at one time, and that the most critical of our Lord’s life. He had come to Jerusalem knowing the danger of doing so, but also persuaded that it was now high time to bring matters to an issue. He saw that things were now ripe for a public manifestation of Himself as the Christ. A career of obscure philanthropy in Galilee could no longer be pursued. The time was past for His laying His hand on the mouth of those who would have published His majesty and proclaimed their conviction that He was the Son of God. He goes to Jerusalem, that in the temple itself and before the chief priests and constituted authorities, He may again proclaim His own dignity, and be explicitly and finally received or rejected. Accordingly He makes it impossible for the authorities any longer to overlook His actions. They are compelled by the growing excitement of the people to appoint a deputation of their best men to wait upon Him. This deputation challenge His right to teach in this unlicensed way, and put to Him the testing question, “By what authority doest thou these things,” no doubt with the expectation that He would claim Divine authority, and so give them a handle against Him. But our Lord declines to give any account of His authority further than what was manifest in His words and deeds themselves. If they could not see divine authority in the things themselves, if they did not feel that in His presence they were in the presence of God, they were not likely to see or to feel the Divine presence merely because He said it was there.

It is astonishing with what persistency numbers of persons continue to make the demand of these priests, and put themselves in the condition our Lord condemns. They will not accept a thing as Divine because it has the attributes of Divinity attaching to it, but they ask for further evidence. They will not accept a teacher as inspired, because of the truth he utters, but ask for an authority external to himself, and over and above his teaching, which shall guarantee it to them. They will not bow before Christ Himself, because their whole nature finds in Him the highest and best they know; but, like these ignorantly dishonest priests, they ask for His authority. They ask for a guarantee outside of Himself which shall warrant them in trusting Him, as if there could be any possible guarantee so perfect as the actual moral supremacy they feel Him to possess. That man’s faith is resting on a very precarious foundation who believes not because the truth itself has laid hold upon his conscience, but because he is yielding to authority; who accepts Christ, not because he finds in Christ the true Lord of His spirit, but because the claims of Christ are established by what is external to His person.

Jesus, however, is not content merely to evade their entangling question. He turns their assault against themselves, and so leads the conversation that they are compelled to utter their own condemnation in presence of the multitude. The parable is too plain-spoken to be evaded. They cannot deny that the satisfactory Son is not the one who professes great respect for His father’s authority, while he does only what pleases himself, but the one who does his father’s bidding, even though he has at first disowned His authority. They are compelled, that is, to own that a mere bowing to God’s authority and professing that they attach great weight to it is of no account in God’s sight unless it be accompanied by an actual doing of the things He enjoins. John came to you, our Lord says to the priests and elders, in the way of righteousness, enjoining the works that belong to the kingdom of God, setting clear before your conscience the duties actually incumbent on you. You felt he was God’s messenger, the words he spoke proved him to be so; the holy conduct he enforced compelled you inwardly to own him a messenger of God to you you dare not now in the presence of these people deny that he was from God. Why then did you not do his bidding? He was God’s messenger, he told you plainly who the Christ was, and yet you believed him not. You refused to work the work of God peculiar to your time and office, the work of acknowledging and believing in the Son of God, witnessed by John whom ye yourselves know to be a true witness. You come now and ask Me for my authority as if, were you convinced it was Divine, you would gladly yield to it; as if you were anxious to know God’s will, as if there were on your lips constantly the “I go, sir,” of this Son, whereas already it has been made clear to your own conscience what God would have you do regarding Me, and yet you obey Him not. These publicans and harlots whom you despise and loathe are in the kingdom of God while you are outside; for bad as they were and daringly as they had disowned God’s authority, and little profession of belief in God as they made, they yet repented when John proclaimed the coming kingdom, and have believed in and submitted to the King.

These men were thus unceremoniously dealt with by our Lord because they were false. They may not have clearly seen that they were false, but they were so. They were false because they professed to be anxious for additional evidence regarding Christ, while already they had sufficient evidence. They were resisting the light already shed into their conscience, and yet professed a desire for further light. And probably in no age of the world’s history have there been so many in their state of mind as in our own. There is a very general misapprehension as to the amount and kind of evidence that may reasonably be demanded in favor of Christ’s claims, and also as to the manner in which the evidence may be expected to find entrance into the mind and produce conviction. And it is certain that unless we use the light we have and follow it, we are not likely to reach fuller light. If we are at present sure that at any rate the moral teaching of Christ is healthy, let us practise that teaching; for, if we do not, we reject the aid which more than any other is likely to bring us to Christ’s own point of view, and to open our sympathies with His purpose and to enlighten us regarding His whole position. The application of the parable, then, to those to whom our Lord was speaking could not be misunderstood. The first son — the man who at first said he would not go but afterwards repented and went — was the representative of the publicans and harlots. They had openly asserted their unwillingness to work for God: they had made no professions of obedience, they had decidedly turned their backs on everything good. They had lived in open sin, and were not surprised that men should denounce them as hopelessly corrupt. The lad that plainly told his father he was not going to the vineyard but meant to have a holiday with his boon companions would not have been more astonished to he called a dutiful and obedient son, than these publicans and harlots would have been had any one addressed them as good and godly people. They knew they were doing wrong: they were conscious of their wickedness. But John’s preaching went to their hearts, because he assured them that even for them there was an open gate into the kingdom of God. They repented because they were assured that for them there was a place for repentance and a way back to purity of conscience, to holiness of life, to God. The priests and elders, the men who represented all that was respectable and religious in the country, were depicted in the second son who promptly said he would go and work for his father, but did not do so. This son gives his answer in the one word “I,” as if he meant, “Oh! you need have no doubt about me. I am ready. I am at your service. My brother is a shameless fellow, but as for me you have only to command me.” This son takes it for granted he is the dutiful son; he puts no pressure on himself to secure obedience; he is conscious of no necessity to guard against temptations to forgetfulness, to indolence, to selfishness. He takes for granted that no deficiency will be found in him, and his complacency is his ruin. We all know this kind of man: the tradesman to whom you give elaborate instructions, and who assures you he will send you an article precisely to your mind, but actually sends you what is quite useless for your purposes; the friend who bids you leave the matter to him, but who has no sooner turned the corner of the street than he meets some one whose conversation puts you and your affairs clean out of his mind. If promising had been all that was wanted, no community could have been more godly than Jerusalem. These priests and elders spent their lives in professing to be God’s people. Their day was filled with religious services. They had no secular business at all; they were identified with religion; their whole life was a proclamation that they were God’s servants, and a profession of their willingness to obey. And yet they failed to do the one thing they were there to do. They heard John’s teaching, they knew it was the voice of God, but they refused to prepare their hearts and understandings, as he taught them, that they might recognize Christ. The one thing that John commanded them to do, to prepare for and receive the King, they failed to do. Their whole profession collapsed like a burst bubble; they were proved to be shams, to be dealing in mere words with no idea of realities.

It is natural to suppose that the religious world will in every generation present similar phenomena. It requires no exceptional discernment to see that in our own day the spiritual condition of these priests and elders is abundantly reproduced. There are many now whose life is in great part devoted to various ways of declaring a willingness to serve God, but whose life is also marked by disobedience. If you listen to what these persons say you would fancy they were God’s most industrious servants; if you look at what they do you find nothing done for God at all, or that their own peculiar and chief duty is neglected. Every person, therefore, who is conscious that he resembles this son in professing a willingness to do God’s will, should consider whether he does not also resemble him in leaving that will undone. We seem to be anxious to discover what God would have us do. We read His word — we go where we hear it explained and enforced — we are rather proud of our exceptional knowledge of its meaning — we seem to set great value on any hand that will point out the way, on any voice that will say to us: There, that is the work for you. But does not this forwardness in hearing what God’s will is sometimes take the place of our doing it? Do we not sometimes mistake our zeal in hearing good counsel about spiritual things for a zeal in God’s service? Is not our knowledge, or our pious feeling, or our known sympathy with religion, allowed to stand for actual work done? Are we not sometimes as satisfied with ourselves when we have seen clearly the reasonableness and desirableness of serving God, and when we have felt some desire to serve Him, as if we had, in fact, made a sacrifice in our business for the sake of righteousness? We congratulate ourselves on feeling well-disposed, we complacently number ourselves among God’s people, we think with satisfaction of our clear and moving views of Christ’s work; and when all these clear views and pious feelings have passed away without any result in the shape of work done, we still congratulate ourselves on having cherished them. There may be some doubt about our morality, but there can be none about our religion. Men may not be quite sure how far they can trust us in a business transaction; our influence at home may not be of the best kind; but no one can have any doubt that if the religious men of the city were convened our name would appear among the invited.

Let us then deal honestly with ourselves, and wipe off the reproach of promising without performing, and of staying among the mere preliminaries of obedience. God has desired us not only to think right, to cherish certain feelings, to maintain certain observances, but He has enjoined all those things as helps and incentives to the doing of His will. He has said to each of us, “Go, work.” His call comes to us in this form. If you have any connection with God at all, He has said to you, “Go, work.” And it is a poor reason, surely, to offer for our not working, that we have seen most clearly the reasons for working, and that no one has been more ready to promise obedience. Which of you, being a parent, would not stand amazed, if, when you challenged your child for not doing what you had told him, he were to say in excuse, “But I promised to do it; I know that I ought to have done it.” Would you not fear that some strange obliquity of moral vision had affected your child; and would you not fear lest a child who could offer so utterly unreasonable an excuse might fall into the most flagrant and enormous vices? The question, then, is, What have you done? The passer-by who saw the one son stripped and hard at work under the sun among the vines, while the other lounged simperingly on the road telling people what an admirable man his father was, and what a pleasure it was to work for him, and how much he hoped the vintage would be abundant — I say, the passer-by would have not the slightest difficulty in forming a judgment of the two sons. Would he that has noted your habits — and many have noted your habits — feel quite sure you were God’s obedient son? Would he think it absurd to ask whether you had said you would obey, having the far better proof of an obedient spirit, that you were actually obeying? So judge yourself. Do not believe in your purpose to serve God better until you do serve Him better. Give no credit to yourself for anything which is not actually accomplished. Do not let us be always speaking of endeavors, and hopes, and intentions, and struggles, and convictions of what is right, but let us at last do God’s will. The other son bluntly refused at first to go and do his father’s bidding. His father had addressed to him a most reasonable request, and applied to him an epithet much more endearing than our word “Son;” but he is answered with a harsh, surly refusal. There is no attempt made by the son to excuse himself or soften the refusal; no mention of previous engagements, private business of his own, or necessary duties elsewhere. He is unfeeling and wantonly rude, as well as disobedient. He represents, therefore, those who are rather forward in their repudiation of God’s authority. So far from desiring to be considered godly, they rather affect a deeper, more resolute ungodliness than they feel, a more vicious wickedness than belongs to them. They flaunt their opposition to all that is Christian.

Such persons are frequently the subjects of a peculiar delusion. Being themselves quite honest and open in their ungodliness, they profess and cultivate a special abhorrence of hypocrisy. No character is so contemptible in their eyes as that which pretends to grace, and thus loses the pleasure both of sin and of holiness; and amidst all their enjoyments there are few greater than that which proceeds from the unmasking of some professed Christian. They seem to think hypocrisy the crowning sin; and so zealously do they cultivate their skill in detecting it that they become blind to every other. Like well-trained hounds, they know no game but that they are trained to hunt. And thus they actually glide into the belief that because they are not hypocrites, they are not in a dangerous position. But if a man is going to destruction, it is, after all, a poor consolation that he is doing so with his eyes open. Is it not time for a man to bethink himself, when he finds matter for self-gratulation in the fact that he does not make the smallest profession of serving God or of seeking to be saved? You are honest in refusing to assume a character you do not possess, but are you wise to refuse the real attainment of that character? You are honest in seeking to be known for what you are, but are you wise to be what you are? Could you not be equally honest were you nearer to God and liker Him? It will not stand you in the day when God takes account of His servants to say that you never professed to serve Him. But the whole history of this first son is not that he refused to labor for his father; he afterwards repented and went. Perhaps the hurt look of his father had shot some compunction into his soul. Perhaps the very roughness of his own voice had startled him, and suddenly revealed to him how far he had gone in sin, and how fast his heart was hardening. Perhaps the weary gait of his aged and unassisted father, his feeble efforts to accomplish tasks that required younger sinews than his, his evidently heart-broken and listless and mechanical way of setting about the work — perhaps this smote the young man’s heart as he lay sunning himself in indolence, and recalled old days when he was happy with his father, and went to carry the tools he was too young to use; and the old feelings of filial affection rose again within him, — he repented and went to the vineyard. Are there none who know that it is time for them to follow this youth’s example; none who are conscious they have not done their duty towards God; who have made no pretense even of doing God’s will, but have persistently shut their eyes to His love, denied His claims, and despised His commandment? Do you feel no compunction? Are you. worse than even those publicans and harlots who no sooner learned there was forgiveness and a clean life for them than they eagerly sought God? Do you prefer a life every hour of which pains and grieves your heavenly Father, and a life which in itself is condemned by God and man; do you prefer a life which in your sober moments you cannot yourself approve, and which lacks all tenderness towards God and all [truth and purity, to a life which God Himself calls you to as worthy of you and as the beginning of never-ending blessedness? Were it possible for God to call you by name and from His unseen dwelling this moment to break silence and call you to work for Him, were He to tell you of His love for you and to invite you to turn to Him, would you refuse Him, could you refuse Him? Does He not then summon you now? Does He not do even more than this? Does He not speak within your own heart, and cause you to feel it were well and wise to meet with humble welcome all His overtures? Can you rest under the stigma of a hard-heartedness that cannot be moved by infinite tenderness? Can you rest content to turn away to your own private employments and ways while God offers you that which will make your whole work and your whole life true? As a whole, this parable shows us how God is served by men, and shows us especially that though there are greater and less degrees of disobedience and impenitence, there is no such thing as consistent uniform obedience. The best that God gets from earth is the obedience of repentance. Men must still, each for himself, try their own way, and only when this is found to be quite foolish and hurtful and hopeless, do they try God’s way. No one can take God’s word for it that such and such are the things to be done; such and such others to be avoided. We must for ourselves know good and evil, we must be as gods making choice between the good that sin brings and its evil, and if then God’s judgment about sin tallies with our own, we accept it. Such a thing as simple, perpetual acceptance of God’s commands from first to last is not to be found; and repentance, though certainly to be rejoiced over, is, after all, only the second best thing. Apology, however sincere, is at all times a very poor substitute for conduct that needs none.* And yet you will often see that a man considers that a graceful apology, whether to God or men, more than repairs the wrong he has done.

* So John Foster in his “ Lectures.”

Let us then be on our guard lest even our repentance be sin, and our humiliation tainted with pride. When we come to God with apology for neglect of duty, we are often as proud of having insight enough to see deeply into the evil of our hearts as we are humbled by a sense of the wrong we have done in omitting whole years of service. We seem to be more worthy of praise for discovering the sinfulness of a past action than of blame for committing it. We are secretly flattered by finding that we are taking our place among those who have a fine discernment of the higher duties of the Christian life and of the secret and subtle iniquities of the human heart, and when we confess these, it is with less shame than complacency. Through all our confession there is running a silent, “I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as other men, who could not confess such sins as I am confessing, because they are still down among the glaring and immoral wickednesses, and have not so much as thought of those duties that I have been striving after.” It is, no doubt, right to be convinced we have been wrong, it is right to turn in to God’s vineyard, even though it be after refusing to do so, but that complacency should mingle with our repentance is surely a triumph of duplicity. To make our very confession of total unprofitableness matter of selfgratulation is surely the extreme of even religious self-deception. But if we carry anything at all with us from this parable, it must be this: How greatly our knowledge is in excess of our action. Our Lord easily elicited from these persons an unqualified condemnation of conduct which precisely represented their own. They held in their minds principles which, had they only been applied to their own conduct, would have made them very different men. This reproach never passes from the world: all of us know more than we practise. In the best of us there lies unused a large amount of instructive, stimulating, consolatory knowledge. The worst regulated life, the conduct which is most shameful and hurtful, is frequently that of a thoroughly intelligent and well-instructed person. In the mind of the most careless among us there is held truth enough to save the world, and principles which, if only applied, would form an unblemished character. And which of us, when we recount and condemn the faults of others, does not show an intelligence and a zeal for virtue of which there is small sign in some parts of our own life? The question which this parable suggests is not, what do you know? but, what are you doing? not, have you acknowledged the righteousness of God’s demands? have you seen that it is good for you to obey? do you own and constantly profess that you are His servants? but, have you done what God has given to you to do? God has commanded you to love Him with all your heart and strength; you know you ought, but have you done it? He has told you that this especially is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He hath sent; have you done it? He calls you to work for Him, to consider what you can do to forward what is good, to set before you as your aim in life not advantage of any kind to yourself, but righteousness in yourself and in others. Do not despair of doing something useful; there are ways in which you can be helpful. These publicans and harlots might well have thought there was no room for them to do good in the community, and that their tastes were such that they could never love purity and truth and unselfishness. You may feel the same. You may feel that if you do the external duty you yet have no love for it, and you cannot bear to look forward to a life in which at every step you will require to put compulsion on yourself to do so. But such will not be the case. Do the duty, and the spirit will come. Obey God, and you will learn to love Him. Compel yourself to all duties now, and soon you will like the duties that are now distasteful. The man that is drawn out of the water half-drowned can only be restored by artificial respiration, but, if this is persevered in, the natural breathing at last begins, and the functions of healthy, unforced respirations supersede the artificial means. And thus God educates us to ease and naturalness in all duty. Under cover of the outward conduct, the new spirit grows and grows to such strength that at last it maintains the outward conduct as its natural fruit.