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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/murray-mccandless/work-today/
Matthew chapter 21 and verse number 28. But what think ye, a certain man had two sons. And he came to the first and said, son, go work today in my vineyard. And he answered and said, I will not. But afterward, he repented and went.
And he came to the second and said, likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir. And went not. Whether of them Twain did the will of his father, they say unto him, the first. Jesus saith unto them, 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. And of course, he goes into the next parable of a vineyard again.
Now, I realize that this passage has a prophetical truth to it relative to the nation. We've been hearing about the coming of the Lord this afternoon. Indeed, a truth that should be on the heart of all of us.
And I'm sure with just conditions, not that we interpret the scriptures by what we see out there today, but just with what is happening, we sometimes say, how long, O Lord? So I want to just speak for a little while on what we should be doing in anticipation of his coming.
In other words, the occupation of our heart till he come. The only way that I can measure in any way how much I'm really expecting him to come is by what I'm doing now. My brother Tim and I, when Dad would leave, and of course, he'd leave a number of tasks to do, and we would have to know.
We'd say, when are you coming back? He says, oh, it'll be a little later. Know what time? Oh, you get your jobs done. Well, what we wanted to do basically was goof off for the first couple of hours. Then we'd get into a real panic-stricken mode.
We'd think he's coming. Only what happened one day was he forgot something. And we had the, I think we had the .22 rifle up for some target practice. That was a lot better than shoveling. And he'd come back.
He said, what are you guys doing? Well, so what are you back here for? So you see, there's that side of it in a very practical way. Two sons. I would suggest to you there was a word in here that terrorized these boys.
They just didn't think of it. It is the word work. Work. You know, we sing it. It's easy to sing, isn't it? Work, brethren, work. This vineyard of the Lord. Constant labor doth afford. But we should understand that in Christian experience, there are things that are work, OK?
It's not some drudgery we go through. You know, nobody comes home from, these men don't come home from an auction sales. That was a really tough day today. It's a big job. And we're ready to fight the weather to get there.
You fight the weather to get there, don't you? And I'm the same way. I have to confess this. One of the brethren would squeal on me. I said, it doesn't happen to be some local auctions around, is there?
I don't ever, I'm saying that for, it's not busier now than I should, than it could ever be. But it's amazing. Certain things in our lives, we allow time for them. And time just goes. The clock doesn't even matter.
Other things, it's time moves on lead feet. But there are two words that these boys picked up, and we should understand. One was the work, the word work. And the other word was today. That's what he said.
He said, go work today in my vineyard. My vineyard. Notice it's not somebody else's vineyard. It is my vineyard. Remember the Song of Songs? They made me keepers of other vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept.
So this vineyard of the Lord, it does. Constant labor doth afford. It'll take all the activity, all the exercise that you or I possibly ever want to do, we can find it in this vineyard. Plenty to do. No need to go out and be finding something else that you think, oh, this is too humdrum.
This is too routine. You know, Bible reading Wednesday or Thursday at 7 .30. You know, we want something different. We got to have this, we got to have that. That never stops. That's really outside of the vineyard.
I want to think just particularly of what goes on in the vineyard. The vineyard obviously is for the production of grapes. There's care that's necessary in that vineyard. As we've been hearing in the opening part of the meeting today, shepherds that care within the vineyard that are doing that work.
There's growth that's got to be watched for as well. But I want to think just for a minute on these two sons. The first son, there's just an outright defiance, full disobedience. He said, no, I'm not going.
Well, give him credit, he was honest. He's honest. Just don't want to go. Just be honest. He was transparent. He's very clear. I'm not going. This is one of the few times in your Bible when the word afterward comes with a blessing because he starts to think about it.
You know, brothers and sisters, that doesn't do us any harm to just think about what the Lord really is asking us to do. Remember the night we were saved? He could never ask us, of course, to do too much.
But there was something else. It was the word today. Maybe he thought it was just a little too pushy. God's program, God's work, whether it's salvation, whether it's serving, is always today. It's not what we can do tomorrow.
It's what I can do today, what I can accomplish for him today. Everybody's going to do great things when it comes, of course, to tomorrow. But he also learned that that word work involved authority, and it does.
Somebody was actually going to tell him what he had to do. Isn't that a terrible thing? Somebody's going to tell him what you have to do. And you know, overseers have absolute right to allow a preacher what he should do.
The overseeing brethren in this assembly are responsible for this platform. What is done on it, what is said on it, and who is on it. It's their work. Sometimes we can get in our minds, even believers, that the preacher's kind of the untouchable.
It's not so. Not so. I appreciate brethren that have the courage and will come up and they're there to help you. They're not there to tear you down. They're there to help you. But some, of course, can take it maybe in a wrong spirit, but we just won't go there.
So the first son says, bring it on as you like. I'm not going. But then there's repentance. You know, repentance, the truth of repentance is something that should follow us, has to follow us, always in our Christian experience.
Without salvation, without repentance, rather, there's no such thing as salvation. When he will write to the last days, to the churches, and the revelation, what is it? It is repent, repent, repent. And you know, there's nothing wrong with repentance taking place.
The only place you don't repent is in a Bible reading when they tell you something and you're wrong. You don't tell them. You change your mind after you get home, but you're too proud to tell them. I'm changing my mind here.
You've got a better way, but we just let that go. That's just for Scott's help here. But anyhow, repentance. Are you a big enough man to change your mind? Just say, well, I've changed my mind. Nothing wrong with that.
And that's exactly what this first son did. Afterward, he thought it through. While it was today, while there's still opportunity to go, he's going to go to the vineyard. I don't know what the father must have thought.
Wow, that's, boy, a boy that just turned me down so flat and yet there's repentance. Let me ask you as a believer, when last did you repent in something of the things of God? Really, really? You took some attitude and maybe against your brother, against fellow believers, something, whatever happened.
You're not going to change your mind. Nobody's going to change your mind. Is that really your thinking? Surely you're not that hard. Nothing wrong with admitting I changed my mind. I was reminding my wife what Brandon said in the gospel meeting the other night, how it delights him when his wife will say to him, you know, dear, you are right.
He said he wanted to get a pat up and say, could you just sign this here and date it that this actually happened? Well, I think it comes back to us men just as much. But anyhow, here's a man and notice he changes his mind.
Nice to be with men that are capable of changing their mind. Some brethren can become very stubborn on things. We're stubborn by nature. But this man, he says, he changed his mind. Suddenly the word work wasn't a problem anymore.
Suddenly today didn't matter. You know, we have a brother, a good brother in our assembly. His name is Lucas McKnight. And brother Mike here knows Lucas. Lucas is a terrific worker, terrific carpenter, just a powerful boy physically in every way.
And so we're actually out visiting the other day. We're having, this is back earlier in the winter. And he's just finishing his ticket as a carpenter. So he's working for one of our largest Canadian industrial construction companies, Bird Construction.
So I said, so give me the, how's the pay go? So he's listing it down and he came down on electricians and then he said, no, no, sorry, the laborer and then the electrician. No, you got the reverse. Electrician makes more than labor.
Now, excuse me, I got enough electricians or electrical contractors in this room here that can rewire this hall where we're having supper. Will you excuse me just for a minute? Okay. You know what he said?
Anybody can pull wires. But he says, put a shovel in a fellow's hand and go out and say, dig that ditch there around the, oh, what? Oh, no, don't do that. That's a laborer. The laborers for Bird Construction across the nation are paid higher than electricians.
Do you wanna change job? We'll talk about that later. But I said, no, serious. He said, that's right. He says, to get a man to work today. To get him to go and say, let's see that pile of lumber that's tipped over.
I want this. Really? Really? Think of what the disciples must have felt when the Lord, here they are, they're teamed together. They've been taught. They've been under his tutoring, his teaching. And he says, oh, go get me a colt.
I said, what? Did we hear this right? A colt? Yeah, a colt. An unclean animal. And that's what this has been for. How about when it comes to what you think are menial tasks? There's no such thing when it comes to this work as a menial task.
No such thing. When you're doing it out of heart and devotion for the Savior. That this man, he is prepared to go to work. Now we come to the second son. And by the way, I'm leaving room for another this afternoon.
So, and I do know how to divide time. The second son, I go, sir, and he went not. But you know, he's so courteous. It's sir, so congenial. Like, sure, happy to do it. It's like he scoops his hat up off the rack and he's on his way up before the father's done speaking.
This is great. Can't you see the father pushed back in his lazy boy and says, whew, wish I had two sons like that. And the boy didn't go. Oh, oh, ever seen believers like that? You've seen anybody like that?
Need to look in the mirror? They say we do it eight times a day. Look again. You're gonna do it. You're going to do it. You're going to speak to that person. You're gonna go and help that believer. And you're gonna go and make that visit to the hospital.
When? When? This man wasn't going. Here's a man and it all sounded so good, but as he thinks it over, the advert afterward in his thinking was a total disappointment. So now the Lord comes back and he asked the question, well, hey, second son, same family.
He asked the question, which did the will of his father? Good question that he asked as he would speak to them. You know, the world has really many nationalities, but it has one race and it happens to be called the human race.
And there isn't a lot of difference in this, really, when it comes to attitude and thinking. I know there's culture in there, but we all are in the same family. What made the difference in these boys was not the family, both were in the same family.
Not the environment, both were in the same environment. One word made the difference, repent. We talk about conferences making a change in our lives and certainly in the gospel, a person must repent to be saved.
Wonder if I'm gonna leave this conference today with an attitude of repentance. In other words, I've got to change my mind about something here. Believe it or not, brother, it likely won't kill you. Oh, it'll damage that ego beyond repair.
And the pride, it'll take a crack at it. There's nothing wrong with being a big enough man to say, I've changed my mind. That's who the Lord really wants in the service of his vineyard. But when I think of the labor in the vineyard, I want to think of some things that are involved.
And maybe the first boy had this assessed and maybe he didn't. Maybe the second one, as he thought it through and saw what the other did. There's risk, there's responsibility, there's requirements. Thank God there's rewards.
You know something else can be in the vineyard? A ruin, a ruin because of no labors. Just left to the slothful. But you know what else can be in the vineyard that can be a recovery? Now, I'm going to go through these very, very quickly.
And I know that you'll just stay with me while I go through these. The risk of the, there's always risk in rescue. There's always risks that are involved when we are working with people. The only way that I don't know, and I'm sure it's been said many, many times to this platform, how to avoid risk in anything is do nothing, say nothing, be nothing, just stay back.
You're going to move out and try and help and try this and try to do that. There's a risk that is involved in it. There's risk that is involved in the work that we do, gospel work. I know I go to these homes and I would have the, as if they're just waiting to see, and I know it well, they don't want to see me.
My brother said to me the other day, he said, have you ever been hit yet? I said, no. I said, it's always the first time. I said, a couple times I think I came pretty close, but there's risk, there's risk.
You know what, risk, really we can't take one of the hardest ones for us to make is rejection. We just can't take rejection. Well, I'll tell you, you have to get over it. Really you do. Do you know why?
Because my Lord was rejected. And if he was rejected, how much more there is for me. There's risks that are involved in it. Not only are there risks that are involved, but there's a responsibility. You and I have a responsibility to the vineyard.
There's no such things wringing our hands, stepping on us, not me, you know, nobody wants to get involved here. Nobody wants to be committed. And there is responsibility. You have as much responsibility to the vineyard as the most active person in it, the most active person involved.
And that responsibility is going to be, brings me to my next word, is going to be rewarded. There is going to be reward. That coming day, there will be reward. The extent of it, how much we are not told, but there will be graciously, we will be rewarded.
Having kept his word, that's a big one. Having been honorable to his name. You know, we talk about, very quickly, we come down, well, I do. I won't, I do not let men blaspheme his name in my presence, or within earshot.
I will rebuke them, no matter how big they are, how they look, or what. And I was thinking about, a man said to me one day, he says, well, hey, wait a minute, I didn't mean nothing by it, if it's any help to you, very snarly way, he said, I says, well, sir, that's what it means by taking it in vain, okay?
I said, I'll let you off easily. He didn't mean nothing by it. Do you know there's another way I can take his name in vain? I can bear it in vain. I can take on the name, the greatest name the universe has ever known, and I can carry it in vain.
That my testimony is such, that it has an adverse reflection on that precious name. Let me ask you today, how are you making out? Are you bearing that name in vain? Is there times when nobody else would know you're a Christian by your actions, by your behavior, the way you do business?
Or do people say, yeah, and I have to say that in the years that I have been in the work, I have to say, brother, none come to mind right now of somebody saying, oh, they say they're Christians and this, they do.
It's usually the opposite. It is, right where I'm working right now. I mentioned family names are in business. Yeah, I know the father, I know his boys. Yeah, good people. Yeah, they're honorable people.
Mention another, yeah, I know him. He's a very committed man down there at that hall in Ontario, isn't he? He's very dedicated. So isn't that right? You know what those men are doing? They're honoring that name.
They realize they have a name that is associated with it. And sometimes, you know, it'll cost something. Sometimes there's certain times where you just simply back away and don't do a thing because you know that that's going to, it's not going to go right.
And sometimes things that happen without you trying, they're going to affect that name. We bear that precious name. Don't take it in vain. The risk, the responsibility, the requirements, the rewards. What about the ruin?
Can a vineyard be ruined? Doesn't take long. I'm not preaching Josiah this afternoon. I have. Think of that mighty revival, bigger than the revival of Hezekiah. How long did it take to simply take it back to where it was, back to ruin?
17 years, 17 years. I don't wish to scare you, but I think that we forget how quickly a lampstand, a local vineyard, a local church can come to total ruin, total ruin. And you remember this. If the enemies of this vineyard had his way, it wouldn't be here.
You wouldn't be here this afternoon, neither would I. We are where we are because the Lord has been gracious. He has given to us men that have shepherded, that have guided, that have preserved, that have prayed for this vineyard.
Are you doing that? Or do you really care? How is your input? How is your, the requirements of the, the ruin of the vineyard? But then there's the recovery of the vineyard, a recovery. Oh, you say, well, I do good.
No, there's no need for recovery here. Are you sure? If there's no need for recovery, then that means there's no need for repentance. I think it would be a great conference, brother, not just because I'm suggesting it or it's in my ministry.
If we left the stout conference with a repentant, humble attitude, to confess in His presence that really, at the best, we have failed. We have, we fail Him, yet we're still in that vineyard. So there was the command for the sons, but there was the conduct of the sons.
I want to think of the warrant of the command, the warrant. The certain men that he had two sons, these are boys. He loved them. He had a care, he had an interest in them. They were just somebody he hired off the street.
We're not in that other passage where he finds laborers, he sends them down and they were just coming, then the ones complained that are hired earlier and the ones that are hired later. These are sons, there's relationship.
Do you understand that when I'm involved and what I'm doing here today, there is relationship. There's relationship. I mean, simply because of my father maybe would ask me to do something would be a lot different than if the neighbor did.
The only one difference was the neighbor paid, my father didn't. I tell him, first job I ever had. I was thinking the other day when I was seven, I didn't bring it up to you, old man. And the neighbor called up and now listen, don't you think I'm old man, because I tell you this.
He wanted his lawn cut and his daughter Blanche was too lazy to cut it. And he said, Alan, one of the boys down there want to come and cut our grass. Tell you, I was lifted off the chair before he hung up the phone.
I was ready to go. And I knew what he had, an old iron horse mower that you put one hand down, lower one up. That was gas motor, believe it or not. We just had graduated out of the real job. And I pushed that thing and the sweat and drip and I got that job done.
I'll never forget it. Clarence Jones came out and he gave me a crisp, this is canon, okay, $2 bill. Wait a minute now, that wasn't yesterday. I got home, my dad said it was too much. Oh, you know, I was so thankful he didn't give me two ones.
I'd be heading down the road with the other half. I was just glad he gave me that $2 bill. I should have saved it. Need to remind those boys of mine what their father worked for. But you worked, but there was reward for it.
But there was a warrant for the command. There's not only a warrant for the command, but there was a work in the command. In fact, the word translated work means labor, okay? That's Thayer gives actually that word.
It means actually to labor. This is not easy work. There's perspiration that's gonna be involved. God's commands are not always easy to do. It involved industry, it involved labor. If you are looking for an easy road in life without difficult things, you're not gonna be a laborer.
He's gonna say, except I wanna get out of here with something left. I might as well say you have to be an electrician, but no, you can stride an electrician for a car. There's a laborer. Laborer is gonna go to work.
So there was a warrant of the command. There was a work in the command, but there was the when of the command. The when, the when. You know, remember that person you were gonna speak to, something you were gonna do, some little task, whatever, but you haven't done it.
Procrastination. You know, it's interesting that that's one time the devil preaches what he doesn't practice. The devil preaches procrastination, but he never practices it. Notice when the seed is sown, it's immediately is taken away.
That's how the devil works, but he tells everybody else, put it off. The center doesn't matter, just put it off. You're all right, put it off. So there was a warrant of the command. There was work in the command.
There was the when of the command, but you know something? There was a worth of the command. The worth of it. Not that they were doing it just simply for what they could get out of it or for reward. I think there are certain things that we do, and you know, it's not so much that we're doing them, well, I wanna look good up there, so I'm gonna do this down there.
Here, I wanna be over many cities up there, so I'll do this down here. But no, there is a worth, of course, in the command. But most of all, there was a will in the command. It involved the will. When it comes to salvation, it involved the will.
If you're willing. David said really to those people, they remember with a willing heart, they joined under David. They're willing, they're willing. It's nice to come to the conference here, see the willingness of the believers.
See those sisters there, the younger working with the older down. They're willing to do it. You just tell the way they're moving and serving you at the tables. We don't deserve that, brethren and sisters.
Don't ever take it for granted. Some of us that put conferences on and are involved in the work of conferences, know a little bit about it. There's work, there's a lot of work that happens, especially when you're doing it in school and you're across other side of town, you're hauling this over and hauling it back.
There's a work that is involved, but it's delightful to see the willingness in it. The willingness in it. So there was the command of the sons. Let me just give you the conduct of the sons. That really was the telling story.
It was the conduct. You know how this conduct was really, really decided? By the attitude. By the attitude. With a wrong attitude. With a wrong attitude. There's nothing that I can do for him. He knows my attitude.
So brethren and sisters, God help us. You remember, somebody could have stood back and said to the second son, huh, what are you doing here? Or the first son, rather, what are you doing here? Thought you weren't going.
You ever heard that before? Well, you just say, I repented. I just repented. Just be truthful. Don't go the way of the second son. Go the way of the first son. And let us, from this conference, change our minds.
All of us, preachers included. Nothing wrong with that. And serve him. The very best. And serve him in this vineyard. There's a worth to it, but there must be a willingness for it.