THE KING’S BUSINESS
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could not answer that question, if they were lacking in power to' discern what was really of God, there was no reason why Jesus should seek to justify His mission to them. They were immediately filled with con fusion. They did not dare answer His question frankly. So in confusion they re plied, “We know not.” Our Lord at once exposes their subterfuge and says in effect, though He says it in much briefer and more telling words, “It is not that you don’t know, you won’t tell and so neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.” What a marvelous teacher our Lord was and how utterly helpless were His enemies in His hands. Monday, March 29. Matt. 21:28-32. The parable contained in these verses is a further answer to the question of the chief priests and elders, “By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority?” It was another searching exposure of their claim to authority to ques tion Him. They are represented by the son who said, “I go, sir, and went not.” The other son who said, “I will not, but afterwards repented and went,” represents the publicans and harlots who shall go into the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders of the people. In our own day, we may apply the parable to the outcast and depraved and thoroughly vicious, who afterwards repent and turn to the Lord Jesus and love Him and serve Him with all their heart (these corresponding to the son who said, “I will not, but afterwards repented and went”) and to the moral and religious people who set great store by their external morality and ecclesiastical position but who do not really repent of their less obvious, but none the less real sins, and believe in the Lord and Him alone as their Saviour. God is willing to accept a man who at first positively refuses to do His bidding but afterwards repents and obeys (Acts 2 :37, 38; Isa. 55:7; Deut. 4: 28-31; 2 Chron. 23:10-13; Ezek. 18:27, 28; Jonah 3:8-10; Luke 15:17, 18, 29). No mat
ter how great a sinner one may have been, God is willing to accept and pardon if he repents (2 Peter 3:9; Isa. 1:16, 19; 55:7; Acts 10:43). But God will not receive the one who makes a mere profession of words and says very promptly, “I go,” but goes not. It is not the one who cries, “Lord, Lord,” who enters into the kingdom of heaven. No amount of mere profession will do. It is the one who does the will of the Father who is in heaven (Matt. 7:21). Many an outcast today, as in our Lord’s day, is more ready to believe God’s Word as spoken by. His messengers than the moral and religious people are. And they “go into the kingdom of God before” the emi nently respectable, religious professor. Tuesday, March 30. Matt. 21:33-39. Jesus emphasized the importance of the parable by the first word (v. 33). The form of the parable was suggested by Old Testament imagery (Ps. 80:8-11; Isa. 5:1, 2; Jer. 2:21). In the Old Testament the vineyard is Israel; here the vineyard is the kingdom of God, which is no longer identified with Israel but taken away from Israel and given to the Gentiles (v. 43). The householder represents God. By his . digging, the wine press, etc., is set forth the truth that he has done for his vineyard everything that needed to be done or could be done (Isa. 5:4). Every detail is sig nificant, but we cannot go into it here. The husbandmen did not own the vineyard, neither do we, though we sometimes act as though we thought we did. Having put the vineyard into the hands of the husband men, the proprietor withdrew from it, and so God withdraws in a sense from direct activity in His kingdom and works through men. But the absence of the proprietor did not in any sense lessen his ownership of the vineyard nor the responsibility of the husbandmen, and Christ’s responsibil ity does not in any wise lessen our respon sibility to Him. When the time for fruit came, the proprietor justly sent to receive the fruits of His vineyard, and so God will
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