It's not what you say, it's what you do
(Scott Higgins is the evangelist with the Tualatin Valley Church. Currently the church is meeting in the Tualatin Valley Heritage Center located at 8700 S.W. Sweek Drive. Service is Sundays from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. For more information, please call 503-536-5807 or visit www.tualatinvalleychurch.com.)
Lately I have been studying the parables of Jesus. I have arrived at the point where Jesus has entered Jerusalem and is about to be handed over to be crucified.
Several times, in his last days, Jesus had the opportunity to confront the religious leaders of his day. During this time he uses the parables to expose their hardened hearts and call on them to repent. In the Parable of the Two Sons found in Matthew 21:28-32, Jesus teaches a hard lesson to the religious teachers of that day. I want to share some thoughts about that parable today.
The parable is told of two sons, one who says he will not obey his father but changes his mind and does, and another who says he will obey but does not. Jesus then asks, “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” The religious teachers of the day knew the answer as do we. The actions of obedience were better than the many words with no deeds. Jesus then uses that family illustration to communicate a deep spiritual message. He told the religious leaders of the day that they had said they would be obedient to God but they weren’t. Regular dregs of society, the prostitutes, tax gatherers and such, who had never obeyed God were changing their hearts and following his instructions so they were now entering into the family of God.
The moral of the parable, really, is quite simple. The people who thought they were very religious were in fact missing out on the true implementation of God’s will. Not only were they not as religious as they thought, but pride prevented them from taking a look at themselves and asking hard questions. Instead, they walked around arrogantly claiming to be doing God’s will but were not.
What lesson can I learn from this? It is easy to self-deceive. It is easy to say all the right things. It is even possible to pretend to be following God.
This should be a warning to us. God doesn’t want people to just say they love him; God wants people who prove it with their actions. Their lives must bear fruit. It must be more than just words.
Do you say you love God? Do you prove it with your actions? This hypocrisy is what the religious teachers of Jesus’ day struggled with and we would be wise to listen to those teachings today.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says!” James 1:22.