When the Heart's Door Shuts Matthew 21: 28-46

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Sometimes, as I go through my days, I think about people whom
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I've known who have died over the years. It is a great reminder that this life is passing.
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We were reminded of it this week with the passing of beloved longtime member of Eureka Baptist, Elvin Mattson.
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As I think about those people whom I've known and lost, what I remembered are the experiences that we had and the conversations that we shared.
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The deaths that stick out to me the most, however, are the ones that happened when
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I was the youngest. When you're a child, you don't really know what to do with death.
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It's an unwelcome visitor that brings heartache, that interrupts lives.
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I remember one man in particular who went to my church growing up. He was a super kind man and he was great with children.
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He was one of the kindest men that anyone could ever meet. He was a coach that touched the lives of many students.
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He lived down the street from our house and he was my brother's baseball coach.
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At the end of the season, we had a banquet where all the players received a baseball. And he saw me in the back and he said,
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Seth, you want one? And he threw one to me. And I still have that memory 25 years later.
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One summer morning in June, I woke up and I could hear my parents talking downstairs. I got out of bed and walked down to see what was going on.
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It didn't seem normal. My parents informed me that the night before, this man who lived down the street, this man in our church and this baseball coach died suddenly of a heart attack.
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My world as a 12 -year -old was shaken. I didn't know much about death at this time, but I learned about it here.
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A man whom I and many loved was taken from this world and for the rest of the summer,
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I had this sadness that hung over me. At the age of 12, I learned that someone you love can be taken from this world at any moment.
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But even though people die every day, most people don't want to face this fact.
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I remember seeing a stat one time that said about 100 to 150 ,000 people in the world die every single day.
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Most people don't live as if this very day their life will be taken from them.
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Most people think they have time. People think they have decades more and at some point, they will start taking life more seriously.
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Most people's lives are very shallow. They don't talk about what really matters.
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Most people don't seriously consider the question, where will I spend eternity?
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Where will I be a million years from now? Most people who live in superficiality well into their adult lives stay in superficiality to the very end.
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Another way to put it is this, most of the people who don't follow God throughout their lives will not follow
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God toward the end of their lives. We think that people in the nursing homes, their hearts must just be ready to receive
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Christ. More times than not, that's not the case. Their hearts are set on what they chose years ago.
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Ecclesiastes 12 .1 tells us to remember your
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Creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say,
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I have no pleasure in them. Most of those who follow
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God in their later years of life are those who followed Him when they were young.
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The clear plea of Scripture is to follow God today and not to wait until some later time as if having a good time is better than following the living
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God who is the author of all pleasure. What most people find is the longer one goes without following the
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Lord, the easier it is to resist the call from Scripture to follow
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Him. What happens is that over time, people's hearts get hard and harder and harder.
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People get set in their ways and people are so in love with their idols that they cannot imagine living without them.
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This is why Scripture calls people to believe and follow the Lord while there's still time. As Hebrews 3 .15
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says, Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.
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To the one who continues to harden his or her heart, the door may shut on one's opportunity to follow the
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Lord. And what results is that this person's life is truly a tragedy.
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This morning, as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we will see Jesus describe a people who miss out on the blessing of God's promises because of their continued rejection of Him.
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At this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 21. We'll be looking at verses 28 through 46.
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And if you're using one of those red Bibles, it's on page 983. This sermon is titled,
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When the Heart's Door Shuts. When the Heart's Door Shuts.
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And I'm not going to read the text to start. We're going to read as we go through it because it's a longer text. But let me give you the big idea here.
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This is what this sermon is calling everyone here to do. Everyone here to understand.
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And that is this. Understand that those who seek the kingdom the wrong way will be rejected.
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Those who seek the kingdom the wrong way will be rejected. And we're going to see two reasons why as we go through this.
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But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago. We looked at the narrative where Jesus was challenged by the
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Jewish leadership concerning His authority. They challenged His authority because Jesus went against the establishment.
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He did not teach what they taught. They questioned the origin of His miracles. And most recently,
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He drove the money changers and those buying and selling out of the temple. The Jewish leaders approved what was taking place in the temple, so their frustration with Him reached a boiling point when
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He drove everyone out. They came up to Him asking, by what authority was
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He doing these things? They thought they were the ones in authority. They were the ones running the show in Jerusalem and all of Israel.
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But Jesus did not answer them the way they wanted. They wanted Him to claim that He was
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God and Messiah so they could arrest Him on the spot. But instead,
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Jesus humiliated them. He asked them a question. He asked them if they thought
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John was from God or He did this on His own authority. This put them in a pickle.
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If they said He was from God, then they would be saying that the religion of the
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Jewish establishment was illegitimate. So they weren't going to do that.
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But on the other hand, they were not going to say He was from man because they feared it may cause an uproar from the people which would threaten their ability to keep things in line under their authority.
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So they told Jesus they didn't know whether John's ministry was legitimate or not.
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But what this showed is how illegitimate their authority was. On a question this simple, they of all people should be able to give an answer.
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Their response of I don't know showed that they could not make a judgment about Jesus either.
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In this narrative, the Jewish leaders were exposed and Jesus showed where the true authority lies.
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It lies with Him. Now this leads us once again to the text we're going to be looking at today.
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And I'm going to begin by looking at verses 28 -30 where Jesus shares a parable with the same ones here who just challenged
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His authority and were humiliated. Verses 28 -30 Jesus says,
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What do you think? A man had two sons and he went to the first and said,
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Son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not.
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But afterward, he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same and he answered,
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I go, sir, but did not go. What we see is that Jesus tells a parable to those present.
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And as I mentioned, it is the same group present here who were present when the question of Jesus authority was brought up.
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So the Jewish leaders are present and the crowd who was watching the whole thing is present as well.
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And the crowd is largely common Jews who just want to hear what they're saying. At this time,
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Jesus finds it fitting to tell a parable. In this parable,
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He tells the story of a man who has two sons. He tells the first to go into the vineyard to work.
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At first, the son is resistant to go work in the field. But after thinking about it, the son changes his mind and goes to the vineyard to work.
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As the first son goes to work in the field, he goes to the other son and tells him the same thing. But the response he gets from this son is different.
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At first, the son gives him lip service that he would go to the vineyard to work, but he has no intention of carrying out what he said he would do.
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The second son tells him he is going to work, but never goes to the field. Never works.
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Once Jesus finishes telling the parable, He asks His disciples a question in the first half of verse 31. He says, which of the two did the will of His Father?
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So Jesus asks them the question, and this is how they answer in the second half of verse 31. They said the first.
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And this response is correct. The worker goes to the field to work. The one who goes to the field to work is better than the one who never works.
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The response given at first is not what is important, but rather, who actually does what his father tells him.
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That's what's important. The first son, even though he did not want to go to the field at first, does go to the vineyard to work.
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While the second son, who pays the father lip service, never does what his father tells him.
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Once Jesus asks His disciples this question and gets the answer from them, we then learn what
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Jesus is getting after with this parable, as He gives a stern rebuke to the
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Jewish leaders who listened to what He just said. We see this in the remainder of verse 31 and verse 32.
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Jesus said to them, Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.
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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.
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And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.
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So Jesus tells them the meaning of the parable. He tells them plainly that the chief of sinners in society, the people who wear sin on their sleeves, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, these are the ones who have a better opportunity to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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You might be wondering why are tax collectors put next to prostitutes? We talked about this earlier in Matthew.
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Tax collectors worked on behalf of the Romans as those who collected taxes from the citizens.
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What the tax collectors did was charge people excessively and the people universally had a negative view of them.
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And we have those jobs in society that are kind of taboo. To be a tax collector was taboo, especially among the
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Jewish people. If a Jew was a tax collector, it was bad because they were going against their own people, taking advantage of their own
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Israelites on behalf of the Romans as they collected these taxes. What's interesting is that Matthew, the author of this gospel, is a tax collector.
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And earlier in Matthew, Jesus called him to follow him. Matthew leaves his booth and follows
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Jesus. What Jesus communicates is that the people with the worst of reputations in the society followed
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God. Jesus explained how this played out during John's ministry, John the
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Baptist, that is. In the middle of verse 32, Jesus explains that some of the people
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John baptized were tax collectors and prostitutes. In the previous section, we saw
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Jesus ask the Jewish leaders where John's authority came from. And what we saw is that they told
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Jesus they didn't know. But we know what they really thought. They did not believe
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John's ministry was legitimate because if John's ministry is legitimate, then theirs isn't.
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And that's something that they would never admit in their pride and their love for their own self -righteous religious system that they established.
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What Jesus is saying is that John's ministry is legitimate. And in this ministry, the worst of the worst of society followed
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God. In this parable, the tax collectors and prostitutes and others are those who at first did not go to the field, but later on they did.
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On the other hand, the Jewish leaders are those who said they would go to the field, but never did.
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In other words, the tax collectors and sinners are doing what they're supposed to do, to enter the kingdom of God.
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While the Jewish leaders, the ones who have close access to the truth through the scripture, have rejected the kingdom.
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This is so because they completely misunderstand how one enters the kingdom.
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In Matthew 9, 12, Jesus said that those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
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When we look at that verse, we can easily misinterpret it. Those who are well are in quotation marks.
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Those who think they are well have no need of a physician.
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They think they're good enough. They think they don't need someone to save them. It is those who are sick who understand how much they need help.
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It is those who understand their spiritual helplessness, who are qualified to enter
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God's kingdom. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 5, 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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It's those who humble themselves who enter the kingdom. The bar is low to enter heaven.
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You just need to understand, I can't earn my own way to heaven, but only
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Jesus earns it for me. As we're going through Matthew, Jesus is about to do that.
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He is going to the cross to die for sinners and then rise from the dead, showing that God approves of his sacrifice.
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What qualifies one for the kingdom is believing that you are a sinner and you can save yourself, but only
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God can through Christ. And I want everyone here to understand this.
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When you die, where will you go? This week, death is on our minds.
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Because our beloved friend and fellow church member, Elvin Matson, passed away.
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We lost a member of our family. Elvin died just short of his 93rd birthday.
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And while we are sad that Elvin is gone, his passing is a time to celebrate.
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One who is in this church for 93 years is now in the presence of the Lord. Every day, saints enter the presence of God.
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Our beloved Elvin was one of those this past Monday. Elvin is not in heaven on his own merit.
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And he'd be the first to tell you that. Elvin is in heaven because he believed in the
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Savior, Jesus Christ. He understood that he was a sinner who needed
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Christ. And then his whole life was one of bearing fruit. That fruit that the people in this church over the years were blessed to see as he faithfully followed the
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Lord all these years. And on Friday, when Brian gave the eulogy, he was saying a lot of people in this room know my dad as an old man.
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But Brian was saying, I know my dad from when he was in his 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, all the way up to his old age.
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And he was able to see, and many people over the years, were able to see how much he did.
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How fruitful his life was. And at the end of his life, he could only do so much.
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His body would only let him do so much. But even then, he gave it everything he had. And this is also the truth.
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This future, this future promise, this future of heaven is for everyone who has a saving relationship with Christ.
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And my prayer is that everyone in this room would have that. And if you don't believe in him today, do not harden your heart.
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Believe in the Lord Jesus today. But entering the kingdom the right way is not the story of the
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Jewish leaders. They had access to the truth of God's word, but they didn't want it.
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Instead, they put their own religious system in place of the truth of God's word.
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So this book here, they said they believed in it, but their traditions completely took away what this book said.
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Instead, them and their forefathers before them established a religious system that glorified themselves, not
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God. This is what Jesus says to them at the end of verse 32. Even when you saw it, that is when they saw the truth, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.
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Talking about John the Baptist. John the
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Baptist preached repentance. They didn't want that. Just like the son who said he would go into the field to work, but never worked.
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The Jewish leaders talked about the kingdom a lot and said they would be in the kingdom, but they did not do the father's will.
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This is why the prostitutes and tax collectors and others are going into the kingdom. They did the father's will.
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The father's will is believing first and then bearing the fruit of that belief by following God's will.
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God's plan is repentance. The only way true righteousness is achieved is first through repentance.
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When you believe in Christ, Christ's righteousness becomes your righteousness, so that when
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God looks at you, he doesn't see your sinful state. He sees the alien righteousness of Christ.
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This is what John the Baptist preached and Christ preached and accomplished. Once one believes in Jesus, that person receives the
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Holy Spirit. Once you have the Holy Spirit, you can obey God's commands.
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VBS, we just had it a week or two ago. The kids learned the Ten Commandments and they know them better than we do as adults.
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I was amazed. Jordan and Sierra had a game going outside where it was hopscotch and there was 10 spaces and whatever space they landed on, whatever number they landed on, they had to tell that commandment and they're just like riling them up.
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And I'm like, slowly, I think I know that number. And I graduated from seminary and I was amazed.
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But what the kids learned all week is you can't keep the Ten Commandments. You need to be rescued before you can to truly keep it.
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And that rescue is the blood of Jesus. It's the ability to keep the commandments in a
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God -glorifying way. It can only be done by a saved person. Now, what we see here in our text is that Jesus is going after the
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Jewish leaders, a theme we've seen throughout Matthew, and we're going to see more. And what
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Jesus is doing is calling them out through a parable. What we've already seen in Matthew is that parables are illustrations or pictures that communicate spiritual truths.
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What is interesting is that parables were not done because Jesus suddenly wanted to become creative, like a literary thing.
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Let's just start becoming creative. That's not why he did it. Jesus already explained the reason he spoke in parables in Matthew 13, 13.
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There he said, this is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
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What Jesus is saying is that parables are spoken to the hard -hearted Jews who continued in their idolatry.
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Idolatry is when you worship something other than God. How many idols are there?
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Too many to count. Whatever you love more than God. These are spoken, these parables are spoken to those in idolatry.
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But the figurative nature of the parables often left the hard -hearted not understanding what he was saying.
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But as he said these parables, his followers, the ones who had faith, would understand them, even if at first it was hard to understand them.
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But it was not always that the hard -hearted did not understand what he was saying. For the first part of Jesus' ministry, he always spoke in clear black and white language, like at the
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Sermon on the Mounts. But he reached a point where much of the way he spoke when the hard -hearted were around was in parables.
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What Jesus is communicating is judgment as he speaks in parables. They heard the truth and they didn't want it.
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And so instead of receiving an invitation to believe, now the invitation is gone.
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There's no death by conversion coming. So what Jesus does instead is he pronounces judgment on most of the
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Jewish nation and no people symbolized the idolatry of the
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Jewish people more than its leadership. The chief priests, the teachers of the law, the
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Pharisees. That's who Jesus is talking about here. These words of judgment from Jesus fulfilled the prophecy from Isaiah 6, verses 9 and 10.
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That passage predicted the hard -heartedness that Jesus was surrounded by.
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Israel was stone at this time. John the Baptist was there. Jesus was there.
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There were hard hearts everywhere. Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet because he preached and he saw very little fruit.
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He was preaching to a brick wall. So when
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Jesus tells a parable, he wants his people to understand it. But he designed it to be confusing to those on whom judgment had come.
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But what is interesting is that as Jesus gets to the end of his ministry, he starts telling them the meaning of the parable.
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So they're not confused anymore. He just tells them. He tells them the parable and then he explains to them what he's talking about.
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He makes it clear to them what he thinks about them. They rejected the only way to receive entrance into the kingdom.
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And Jesus is telling them they are going to miss out on this future glorious kingdom.
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They did not want to humble themselves, repent and believe. They would rather hold on to their own man -made religion that did them no good.
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Man -made religion will never lead anyone to heaven. Only the beggars who rely on the righteousness of another will receive entrance.
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Understand that those who seek the kingdom the wrong way will be rejected. The first reason why is that kingdom residents receive entrance only through repentance and faith.
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Kingdom residents receive entrance only through repentance and faith.
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The second reason why you are to understand that those who seek the kingdom the wrong way will be rejected is that kingdom residents show true
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God -given fruit in their lives. We'll see this in verses 33 through 46.
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So after Jesus tells the parable, he tells the Jewish leaders plainly in verse 32 that the prostitutes and tax collectors are going in and they're not.
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But Jesus is not done going after them. He tells them another parable in verses 33 through 39.
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He says here another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.
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When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.
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And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first, and they did the same to them.
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Finally, he sent his son to them saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir.
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Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
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In this parable, Jesus explains that there's a master of a house who also has a vineyard.
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This vineyard has a fence around it, a wine press and a tower. This master of the house leases this field to tenants and he lets the tenants run the show as he goes into another country.
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Once the time of year came for the fruit to be fully grown, he sends his servants to the tenants to collect the fruit that was planted earlier in the season.
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But what happens to the owner of the vineyard is tragic. As the servants show up one by one to collect the fruit, the tenants take the servants and kill them.
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But the master of the house does not give up on collecting his fruit. He sends more servants, but the tenants do the same to them.
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They kill all the servants sent to them. But the master of the house is not done trying.
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He wants to get his fruit. This is his vineyard. He doesn't want this all to go to waste.
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He doesn't want it to go to someone else, the people that he hired, the people that he trusted. So he sends his son and says, they will listen to my son and I will get my fruit.
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But they don't listen. The son comes and they do to him the same as they did to the servants.
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Now, once Jesus tells the parable, then he says this in verse 40 to the Jewish leaders who just listened to the story that he told.
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He says, when therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?
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Not knowing that they are the tenants in the story, the
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Jewish leaders respond in this way in verse 41. They say, he will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.
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This kind of reminds you of David with Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet comes to him and tells him the story.
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And David is like, this person needs to be brought to justice. This person needs to be put to death.
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And David did not know that Nathan was talking about him.
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In the same way, Jesus is talking about the Jewish leaders. The Jewish leaders are the tenants who kill the servants who come to them, who killed the son who comes to them.
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So Jesus says this in verse 42. Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures?
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The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing. And it is marvelous in our eyes.
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What Jesus does in verse 42 is quote from Psalm 118 verses 22 and 23.
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The Psalm predicted that Israel would largely reject their Messiah. And what that prophecy proclaims is that Israel would reject the cornerstone.
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The cornerstone, which is sometimes called the capstone, was the most important stone in the foundation.
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I remember talking to Sean one time and Sean was saying the most important part of a house is the foundation.
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The rest of the house could look great. You got a bad foundation, you don't have a house. The cornerstone represents the
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Messiah. This stone in this prophecy that symbolizes the
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Messiah is rejected. Everything is built on Jesus Christ.
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Everything is built on the Messiah. The whole faith is built on the Messiah.
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He is the King. He is the Savior. He is the foundation of it all.
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He is the center of truth. He is the most important name that anyone can know. The truth of God's word is built on him.
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But Jesus continues by saying that the leaders of Israel rejected this cornerstone.
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Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit.
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And the one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.
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By rejecting the cornerstone, one rejects God's Messiah. God's plan.
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And in effect, one forfeits any opportunity to enter the kingdom.
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What Jesus is communicating in this parable is that every messenger that God sent to preach about how one enters the kingdom,
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Israel rejected. And they didn't just reject the messengers, they persecuted.
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They didn't just reject the message, they persecuted the messengers. They not only hurled insults at them, they killed them.
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And this is why Jesus grieves in Matthew 23, 37. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stole those sent to you.
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How long have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks?
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But you were not willing. The Jewish leaders and most of the common people rejected
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God's message and messengers. They rejected
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God's will as to how to enter the kingdom. This is what
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Jesus communicated in the two parables. In the first parable, the second group.
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Who were not seen as with God are the ones who actually.
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They are actually in the kingdom because they do what he says. That is, they repent and believe in the second parable.
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One does the will of God by producing fruit. Those who rejected God's messengers do not produce the fruit that enables one to receive entrance into the kingdom.
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But the ones who do what the father says will produce that fruit. And that fruit is righteousness.
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True believers experience a transformation. True believers, believers live fruitful lives.
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Once again, look at the life of Elvin Matson. Elvin showed abundant fruit in his life.
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Elvin is not in heaven because of his fruit. The evidence of his salvation, the fruit in his life is the evidence of his faith.
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If you go through the fruit of the spirit, this describes Elvin well. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self -control.
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Every believer has this fruit in some measure. As the end of verse 43 says, the kingdom of God is given to a people producing its fruit.
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Those who have true faith produce kingdom fruit. Now, earlier
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I mentioned that Jesus told parables as a judgment. Where he did not tell them the meaning and they were left confused.
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But in both of these parables, at the very end of Jesus' ministry, he tells them exactly what he means.
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Jesus is making it very clear to the Jewish leaders how dark their future is. As those who are trying to enter
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God's kingdom the wrong way. He tells them plainly the meaning of them.
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And the Jewish leaders know he is talking about them in a negative light.
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They catch on to this. This is what they say in verse 45. When the chief priests and the
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Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.
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So Jesus tells them the meaning, and this is the meaning. The kingdom has been taken away from them and given to a new people.
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The people who will enter this kingdom don't need to be Jews. They can be
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Gentiles too. In this room, my guess is just about everybody in this room is a
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Gentile. God is glad to take anyone. It doesn't matter what you look like.
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What family you came from. How popular you are. How smart you are.
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How young or old you are. The one who has sincere faith, trusting
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God, and not oneself, God will gladly take. But the
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Jews didn't understand this. They thought they had an in with God. We are
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God's chosen people. We're good. God made covenants with them long ago.
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And yes, God will fulfill these covenants. But the only people who are going to experience these promises are the ones who do what he says to get into the kingdom.
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It doesn't matter if you're an ethnic Jew. If you do all these religious practices, these rituals, you're not going to get there.
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That's what Jesus is communicating. The Jewish people.
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Did not understand this. How one enters the kingdom. And most of the world doesn't understand it.
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I think sometimes we can become so insulated with church thinking that everyone thinks that we're saved by faith through grace alone.
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Most of the world does not understand this. Most people try to earn their own way to God and go to most funerals.
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Johnny was a good person. Susie was a good person. No, they weren't.
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They needed Jesus. And if they don't have him, they're without hope. I had a conversation with a
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Roman Catholic recently. And by the way, the Roman Catholicism is really a modern version of the pharisaic religion that Jesus is going after.
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I know it's not popular to say that, but it is a lot of parallels. It's just like the
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Jewish corrupt Jewish system was a works righteousness system. So too is Roman Catholicism.
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You got to do all these things, right? You got to go to mass. You got to go to confession.
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You got to do these good works. And if you don't do good enough, then you got to go to purgatory. And you have to earn your way out of purgatory.
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And people have to earn your way out by praying for you to get out of purgatory. There is no purgatory. It's appointed for man to die once and then comes judgment.
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And if there's purgatory, then
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Christ's work at the cross is not sufficient. Jesus paid it all.
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So I had a conversation with a Roman Catholic, a young guy who is going to college, studying theology.
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And I was amazed at how little of the Bible he knew. He knew
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Catholic tradition. Yes, but he knew very little about this book.
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Man -made tradition confuses the true, clear meaning of the
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Bible. It is not difficult to understand the Bible. There are some difficult practices, yes.
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But largely speaking, the Bible is clear. There's actually a theological term. It's called the perscipuity of Scripture.
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And what that means is that the Bible is meant to be understood. Common people can read it and understand it.
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Five -year -olds can understand truth from Scripture. And yet, learned people miss the whole point of the
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Bible all the time. The Bible says you need to repent and then
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God will enter your life. You must look to the Savior and then God will view you as righteous and then you will bear kingdom fruit.
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God lays it out clearly. This is God's message to the world. It is so simple.
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But what is incredible is that most of the world misses it. The Jewish leaders, think of these people.
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They were prestigious people. They were learned people. They didn't get it.
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And they're not an anomaly. Most people miss it. But my prayer is that no one in this room would miss it.
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Pursue the kingdom God's way and you will be there one day. Now, as you might imagine, what
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Jesus said was not popular. These people are going to kill him pretty soon. And he's going out swinging.
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He's saying, you guys need to know this. You're wrong. You're corrupt. You are evil.
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Jesus did not fear man. He always did what his father told him to do, aiming to please him.
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He always said what was right. And what he said caused him to experience enormous opposition.
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From the earliest stages of his ministry, they plotted to kill him. And we read that here.
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And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet.
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And the people, even though a lot of them don't really believe Jesus for who he really is, they still like him. This guy does miracles.
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This guy's special. Kind of like John. You know, they were afraid about what the people would do if they said
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John was not really from God. We saw that last week. They feel the same way. The people feel the same way about Jesus.
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And the Jewish leaders don't arrest him publicly because they don't want to turn the people completely against them.
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And so what we're going to see down the road here is that they're going to arrest him in private. Their hard hearts do not enable them to repent.
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And for the Jewish leaders, only judgment awaits them. They're dead men walking.
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So understand that those who seek the kingdom the wrong way will be rejected. And in this text, we've seen two reasons why.
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The first reason why is that kingdom residents receive entrance only through repentance and faith. And the second reason why is that kingdom residents show true
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God -given fruit in their lives. At the end of the book,
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The Pilgrim's Progress, a famous Christian book written by John Bunyan in the 17th century, it ends in a very sobering tone.
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The main character of the book is named Christian. The name describes what he is like.
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And all the names in the book describe what the people are like. Christian, like the name tells us, goes to heaven.
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He finishes his course. He starts in the city of destruction. And he finishes his course in the celestial city.
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But after him, after he enters the city, there's a character who arrives at the gate of the city, whose name is
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Ignorance. Ignorance, like the name says, is ignorant of how to receive entrance into the celestial kingdom.
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He arrives thinking he will receive entrance. But this is how the book closes.
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John Bunyan writes, When he came up to the gate, ignorance that is, he looked up to the writing that was above and then began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him.
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But he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate. From where did you come?
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And what do you have? He answered, I have ate and drank in the presence of the king and he has taught in our streets.
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Then they asked him for his certificate that they might go in and show it to the king.
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So he fumbled in his bosom for one and found none. Then they said, have you none?
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But the man answered, never a word. So they told the king, but he would not come down to see him, but commanded the two shining ones that conducted
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Christian and hopeful to the city to go out and take ignorance and bind him hand and foot and have him away.
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Then they took him up and carried him through the air to the door that I saw in the side of the hill and put him in there.
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Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction.
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Think about that. The people in the city of destruction, those are the worldly ones. Ignorance was religious.
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And he went to hell. And this story, the story of ignorance is the story of many.
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This is the story of the Jewish leaders. Many follow this way of thinking that they should be in heaven.
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And they think this because they have a wrong understanding of how one enters
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God's kingdom. Only the beggars whose trust is fully in God and produces his fruit will receive entrance.
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May everyone in this room be in that number. Next time, we will look at another parable.
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This parable is known as the parable of the wedding feast, where once again, Jesus will bring the proud low.
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At this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, only the beggars will receive entrance in this kingdom.
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That's the story. That's the story of life. Thank you for the
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Bible. We know how to live forever with our creator.
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And may we never travel down some demonic man -made plan that only leads one to hell.
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So Lord, apply this right where everyone is at this morning. Through your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.