Obedience in Deeds
By Paul Bubna
Jesus, a marvelous story teller He is! The story He told in the middle of Matthew 21 is brief, its plot is simple, but its impact on the audience and its teaching for you and me are nothing less than powerful.Matthew 21:28-32 There are two sons. The father goes to and asks both of them to go out to the vineyard and work. The first son answers, "No, I won't go." He says the wrong thing. But after having thought it over, he changes his mind and goes out working. The second says, "Yes, father, I will go. I'll be glad to." He says the right things. But he does not really go out and do the work.
To catch the full impact of the story we need to know to whom is Jesus telling it and why. The circumstances in which the story is told are described earlier on in Chapter 21.
On the first day of the week, the Lord Jesus made His triumphal entry into the City of Jerusalem, sitting upon a donkey. The crowds thronged the way, spreading garments and tree branches on the streets and cheering and praising Him.
Temple cleaning. The Lord went straight to the temple and cleaned it, accusing the religious leaders for having made His house of prayer into a den of thieves. He went out of the city that evening and spent the night in Bethany.
The next morning, He entered the temple courts and began to teach there. The chief priests and the elders of the people came and challenged His authority. It is at this point that he tells them this story. When He later
asks them which of the two sons did what their father had told them to do, those Jewish leaders answer, "The first." He then makes this hard-hitting application of the story to them, saying:Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.In other words, you people are saying all the right things to and about God, but you don't have an obedient heart. In contrast, while the tax collectors and prostitutes do not say the right things, they will enter the Kingdom of God because they repent, believe and obey.The religious leaders had long been looking for a reason to kill Him. It is little wonder that they decided to nail Him to a tree just a few days later.
Today's application. Think for a moment how our Lord's story applies to the people in the church today. There are churchgoers who say all the right things about God and pray all the right things to God, but who nevertheless never really get around to being obedient to God. On the other hand, there are people who flounder and struggle with sins in their lives, who cannot pray eloquently, whose mannerism appears irreligious, but who in the end are obedient and are therefore citizens of the Kingdom of God.
The truly obedient child of God has three commitmentsor, as someone once put it, three conversions, because each of them demand a distinct response in the believer's life. As we look into these three, let's ask ourselves if we are like the first son or the second.
I. Commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ
If the Creator of the universe, the infinite, eternal God did become flesh and live for a while among us in the person of Jesus Christwhich in fact He didand if the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, indeed died on the cross for the sins of His peoplewhich in fact He also didthen the most crucial issue in the life of every child of God is the way he relates to his Savior.Scripture declares that all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. The Bible further warns that the wages of sin is death and by death God is talking about eternal punishment in hell. Since none of us can come into the presence of the holy God without being consumed, perfect righteousness is afforded us only by the saving work of Christ. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (II. Cor. 5:21).
Yet, I am convinced that there are millions of people today who go to church, perform religious rituals, and even say they believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died for them on the cross, but who, like the second son, have never made any commitment to serve, obey and glorify Him.
Saving faith. A sincere commit
ment to the Lord Jesus Christ involves a thorough recognition that I am a sinner deserved to be punished eternally in hell and that I have become saved only because Jesus Christ died for my sins and has given me the faith to believe in Him. Such a recognition should result in me a truly grateful heart so that I instinctively love and adore this gracious Savior and want to express my love for Him by being obedient to Him.Saving faith, as you see, is not merely an intellectual exercise. It is a life commitment! Saving faith involves not only recognizing who Jesus is and what God has done for us, but making a commitment to trust and obey Christ. We do not always succeed in walking closely with Him inasmuch as we still have our sinful nature, but at least there is always a want-to deep in our heart.
II. Commitment to the Body of Christ, the Church
You cannot read the New Testament honestly without understanding that through the church Christ is still active in human history. The body of believers is the body of Christ in this world. It follows then that the person who says, "Jesus is my Lord, and I am committed to follow Him," is a person that is also committed to the local church.I have a hard time understanding people who claim to be Christians but who do not belong to any local church. "I am part of the church at large," they would say, or "I am a part of all churches." When you examine their lives, though, you'll find they are really not committed to any church anywhere. There is no local body of believers to which they devote their time, energy and resources to serve the Lord.
When the disciples met the resurrected Christ by the Sea of Galilee, they had breakfast together. Jesus then communicated His forgiveness to Peter for having denied Him. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, and three times Peter answered, "Yes, Lord I love you." And the Lord's response to Peter's affirmation of love was: "Feed my lambs" and "Feed my sheep."
If we truly love our Savior and if we truly want to obey Him, then we must obey His commands to feed His flock. We need to strengthen the local church, of which each of us is a member of the same body. We need to help nurture our fellow members, we have to carry each other's burdens.
Earlier, I used the word conversion in connection with commitment. I think that having become a Christian, we need to be converted to become a part of the body of believers just as we are converted to be in Christ. We need to be converted from independence, from self-sufficiency, from a life style in which my pleasure and comfort are paramount. As a member of His body, we need to put the well-being of the church of Jesus Christ in the forefront.
It is easy to say all the right things, and never really make that commitment. On the other hand, there are people who struggle, who say: Lord, I don't want to do that, it takes too much of my time; it is too difficult and I won't be appreciated. Yet, these are the people who, when it comes down to it, make that commitment to serve the Lord through their local church.
III. Commitment to the Great Commission
When we follow Christ, we are called to no longer love the world system. No longer to make its values, its earth-bound goals the center of our affections. However, to follow Jesus Christ is in a sense to be converted to the worldconverted in the sense that I sincerely care about God's lost sheep that are scattered all over the world.It is inescapable. If I am serious about walking with Christ, I am bound to view the whole world in a totally different light. "For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son" It was Jesus who said that.
I can no longer view the world with disinterest, because what's happening in other lands affects God's people in those lands. Churches are being planted there. God's gospel is being sent there. Even the wrap up of history is being affected there for "this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come" (Matt. 24:14).
Before He ascended to heaven, Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations. We are all well familiar with that Great Commission, but I'm afraid there are many of us who do not want to get involved, who are not at all interested in sharing the gospel with others, in getting involved with missions, or in supporting missionaries and evangelistic ministries.
Thankfully, there are also those of us whose hearts are initially rebellious about it. We may give the wrong response at first. But when it comes down to it, we are going to do it. The Kingdom belongs to those kinds of people. Our Lord cares enough about us to bring circumstances into our lives to stretch us to the right choice.
True story. There is a story that comes out of the Second World War that is a bit haunting. The Nazi Army moved into a little Polish village, rounded up all the Jewish citizens, stripped them of their clothes, forced them to dig a long shallow grave, and then lined them up along the grave. They machine gunned them down, so their naked bodies fell into the shallow grave they had dug.
There was one ten-year-old boy among them who was not struck by any of the bullets, but who fell along with his family into the shallow grave, his naked body splattered with the blood of his parents. He pretended to be dead and somehow was able to breath, because only a thin covering
of dirt was spread over them. When darkness fell, this boy crawled out of the grave, blood and dirt caked to his little body. He made his way to the nearest home and begged for help. A woman answered the door, recognized him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death, and slammed the door.The little boy went to several homes and was rejected in each one. Finally as one woman opened the door he said to her, "Ma'm, don't you recognize me, I am the Jesus you claim to love." The woman stood transfixed for a long moment, then weeping she opened her arms and welcomed the survivor into her heart and home.
There are perhaps some here today that have been challenged about their need to believe Christ. How wonderful it would be if they repent from their old way of living, move from faith in their own good works and righteousness and from just saying religious words, and confess Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord and commit themselves to serve and obey Him.
And how wonderful if all the rest of us are so challenged as to move beyond words in our commitment to Christ's body, and begin to do the will of God by feeding and caring for our fellow sheep, and by serving diligently as Christ's ambassadors in sending forth the message of reconciliation. o
The late Rev. Paul Bubna was president of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, P.O. Box 35000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80935.