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CONNIE: Are deeds better than words? In the Christian life, is it important to “put your money where your mouth is?” Or does grace cover everything, making works worthless? Join us for Jesus’ answer today.

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Friend, we’re glad you’ve joined us today. Because today’s broadcast marks a very significant milestone in the ministry of this broadcast. It was exactly 75 years ago this week—on October 19, 1929 that H. M. S. Richards, the founder of the Voice of Prophecy ministry, first went on the radio to preach the gospel.

CONNIE: That means we’ve been sharing the good news about Jesus, and especially about the second coming of Jesus, on the radio for three-quarters of a century now.

LONNIE: And of course we’ve branched out into television and into the Internet, correspondence Bible courses, and many other forms of ministry as well. But all of them focus on the gospel—the good news that Jesus came to this earth 2,000 years ago, and that He’s going to come back again very soon.

CONNIE: The world has a savior and His name is Jesus.

LONNIE: And in today’s program we’re going to be looking at the very core of the gospel—the good news—that Jesus proclaimed. Connie, you began the broadcast with a question that it’s extremely essential for us to understand and answer correctly: when we accept the grace of God as manifested in the gift of His Son for our salvation, is there anything else we need to do? Or, is simply saying Yes, I accept Jesus as my Savior the first and last step in successful Christian living?

CONNIE: Some people would say that all you have to do is accept Jesus as your Savior—say a prayer of acceptance—and that’s it. You’ve become a Christian, your sins have been forgiven, and you’re on your way to heaven. But others would list a whole slew of things that you need to add to your confession of faith—things you need to do, things you need to not do, and things you need to quit doing in order to prepare for heaven. Sometimes it’s hard to know who to believe.

LONNIE: Well, you’re right about that Connie. Questions about how important behavior—doing good works and forsaking sin—is in the Christian experience have been with us since the very beginning. It was a hot topic of discussion in the years when the New Testament was being written. In fact, a major church council was held in Jerusalem in about the year AD 49 to discuss just what kind of behavior was acceptable for Christians. And from that council word went out all over the world about the grace of God and His willingness to accept all of us, not on the basis of where we come from or what we’ve done, but simply on the basis of His love for us.

CONNIE: Didn’t Jesus face the same sorts of questions about works and grace even while He was on earth?

Well, of course He did. In fact the issue of deeds versus words is the central theme of the parable we’re looking at today. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus touched on both sides of this question. For instance, we find in Matthew 7 that Jesus cautioned people against relying only on their words for their salvation. He speaks of those who will come to Him in the judgment and cry Lord! Lord! Only to be turned away. Here it is in verse 21: “ ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven’ ” (Matthew 7:21, NRSV). Obviously there’s something more to being a Christian than simply mouthing the right words. But in the same sermon, Jesus also pointed to the grace of God that makes His rain fall on both the just and the unjust.

CONNIE: I guess Jesus was trying to help people find the right balance in their lives. He didn’t want them relying on their works for salvation, as the Pharisees were inclined to do. But at the other extreme, He didn’t want them to join the libertines who said it didn’t matter what you did in your body because all that counted was the soul.

LONNIE: Yes, balance, is important. And when you study all of the teachings of Jesus, you find a remarkable sense of balance. And the parable we’re going to look at today, the one about the two sons, whom their father sent to work in the fields, helps to show where that balance point lies.

CONNIE: The message of the parable was actually directed at the Pharisees wasn’t it?

LONNIE: Yes, it’s actually the first in a series of three parables Jesus spoke in response to being challenged by the religious authorities in Jerusalem. All three parables focus attention on the question of how we respond when God calls us.

CONNIE: And the proper way to respond is with humility isn’t it?

LONNIE: It certainly is. And that was not a new concept in Jesus’ day. Clear back in the time of Solomon God had promised his people that if they would be humble before Him, He would hear their prayers and bless them.

CONNIE: As is pointed out in this song from the King’s Heralds, based on 2 Chronicles 7:14.

“If My People”, King’s Heralds, from The King’s Heralds Collection, vol. 11 CD.

CONNIE: Amen! Thank you King’s Heralds for that song, based on the wonderful passage in 2 Chronicles where the Lord told His people what they could do if they found themselves falling on hard times because of their sin.

LONNIE: The word is “repentance.” Turning back to God—getting back to the place where you were when you were walking with Him. That’s a key element in the story we are looking at today, and it’s a key element in our daily walk with God.

CONNIE: Speaking of walking with God, it’s been awhile since we offered and the little booked Steps to Christ on our broadcast. We’d like you to have a copy of this precious little guidebook to walking with Jesus. We have a free copy for you, and all you need to do is call us or write to us and ask for it. You can call our toll free number 1-800-872-0055, or drop us a line this week asking for a copy of Steps to Christ.

LONNIE: Our mailing address in the U. S. is Voice of Prophecy, Box 53055, Los Angeles, 90053. Again: Box 53055, Los Angeles, 90053, and from Canada you can write to us at Box 2127, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7V4.

CONNIE: We’ll have those addresses and phone numbers for you again in about a dozen minutes. But right now it’s time to listen to Pastor Lonnie’s message for today, “When Works Do Count.”

When Works Do Count

If you were with us for last week’s program, you heard our interview with Ron Rockey. Ron’s story is told in the book Chosen published in 2001 by Pacific Press, and when I think of the parable we are studying today—the story of the father who asks his two sons to go work in the vineyard—I can’t help but think of a man like Ron.

Coming from a rough background, Ron set out to live his life exactly as he pleased. In fact there came a time when he made a pact with God, telling Him that he wasn’t going to do God’s will, even if it meant he would end up in hell.

Kind of like the first son in Jesus’ parable. When his dad was handing out work assignments that morning, Son # 1 just said no. Here’s the story as Jesus told it: “‘what do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go’ ” (Matthew 21:28-30 NRSV).

Let me ask you right up front here, how do you respond to God’s call on your life? Have you sensed Him calling you to a special kind of ministry? Or perhaps just calling on you to surrender your life to Him?

How did you respond? Did you resist or go willingly?

And now the next question: how is your walk and work with God going? It’s possible to answer the call of God once in your life, but then to get off course. In fact that’s what had happened to the people Jesus addressed this parable to.

The priests and Pharisees get pretty bad press in much of the New Testament. (But remember that in the book of Acts it is revealed that many priests and Pharisees eventually became Christians.) Even though there were numerous conflicts between Jesus and these men who were supposed to be spiritual leaders, we shouldn’t assume that all those scribes and Pharisees and priests were in open rebellion against God.

In fact, in the parable they are represented by the second son—the one who agreed to go to work in his father’s vineyard. No doubt many of these men had good intentions and had started out to serve the Lord faithfully. But they’d gotten sidetracked along the way.

For them there had come a time—a watershed point in their lives—when they had chosen the wrong path.

And Jesus pointed to a specific time and place where they had failed to move forward in their walk with God. And what He said to them is still important today as we consider our own walk with God.

Just before He spoke this parable, Jesus had challenged the priests with a question about the ministry of John the Baptist. And the priests had questioned Jesus’ own authority. Jesus was minding His own business; teaching in the temple one day, when the priests came to came to Him and asked who had given Him the authority to teach.

Jesus responded with a question of his own: As long as we’re talking about authority to preach, what about John the Baptist? Was his authority from heaven or simply his own? It was a question Jesus knew his antagonists couldn’t answer easily. If they said John was a man with only human authority, it would cause them problems because most of the people in Jerusalem believed John had been a prophet sent from God. But if they confessed that John’s authority came from heaven, then Jesus would ask why they hadn’t accepted his authority and accepted baptism at his hands.

In the parable of the two sons, Jesus reminded the religious leaders once again of how they had responded to John’s call for repentance.

After telling the story of the two sons, Jesus asked the religious leaders which of the sons had actually done his father’s will. Well, of course the answer is obvious. The first one—the one who first said he wouldn’t work in the vineyard but then changed his mind and went.

The son who said he was going but then crawled back into bed didn’t do a thing for his father.

And the lesson Jesus draws from this points squarely at the heart of the religious leaders He was talking to. And friend, let me say this, it points that my heart as well.

Here’s the lesson, as found in Matthew 21:31, 32: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 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; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him’ ” (NRSV).

What is it that has qualified the tax collectors and prostitutes to move up in line for the kingdom of heaven? Notice Jesus doesn’t exclude the religious leaders, He just says that the people usually expected to be last in line—or out of the line all together—have gotten bumped up to the front of the line.

These lowly, sinful, despised people have made a lot of wrong choices in their lives. They’ve gone down the wrong path entirely. They’ve answered the world’s call instead of God’s call. When God first invited them to be laborers in His vineyard they rolled over in bed and said “No!” But then, along comes John, and these people do the right thing. Recognizing their need of repentance and cleansing, they respond to their Father’s call.

The religious leaders, on the other hand, seem to have responded to God’s call. But when John shows up and calls them to repentance, that’s the work they’re supposed to do today. And instead of doing it, these men who claim to have said Yes to God crawl back into bed! They make a show of being “in God’s work,” but really they do nothing but put on a show, exalting themselves. They feel no need of repentance, and they turn a deaf ear to John’s preaching.

Complacency.

Preserving the status quo.

It seems like such a good thing to do—to keep things on an even keel. Don’t rock the boat!

Then along comes a guy like John the Baptist. He doesn’t take a paycheck from anyone. He doesn’t dress like other people. He doesn’t mince words. He insists on telling it like it is, and calling people to repentance…. To change their ways.

The people at the bottom of the heap—those who have been treated as a spiritual outcasts—recognize this as the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s easy for them to accept John’s call to repentance, because they sense their need. They know they are sinful.

But for those who have made a profession of being religious, those who are at the top of the spiritual hierarchy, it’s not so easy.

How would you feel if you saw your pastor going forward at an altar call? Maybe at your church, it’s a normal occurrence. But in most churches, it’s the pastor who makes the call, and it’s the parishioners who are supposed to come forward in repentance. In many congregations, if the pastor were to go forward repenting of his sins, tongues would start to wag. After all, why should he be repenting? Isn’t he’s supposed to be holy?

And maybe that’s the way the scribes and Pharisees thought. Maybe they had become complacent in their walk with God, doing what seemed to be all the right things, but neglecting the genuine closeness with God that religion ought to be all about.

Perhaps John the Baptist’s call to repentance pricked their conscience a bit, but they didn’t respond—they just wrote him off as part of the religious fringe. Perhaps they responded, “I’m doing enough already. What more could God expect of me? Surely He doesn’t expect me to repent!”

But repentance is important -- even for righteous people. Remember Job for example. At the beginning of the story, he’s called a “blameless and upright.” But by the end of the story, we find him repenting in dust and ashes, and it’s only after he has done that, that God restores his fortune to him.
And what about Daniel? If anyone was ever blameless and faithful in God’s sight, surely it was Daniel! And yet in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel we find one of the most poignant prayers of repentance in the entire Bible. Notice how often Daniel uses the word we in his prayer, including himself among those who need to repent: “‘we have sinned, we have been evil, and we have done wrong. . . . We have not listened to your servants the prophets . . . we have always brought disgrace on ourselves. . . . We did not listen to you, O LORD our God, when you told us to live according to the laws which you gave us through your servants the prophets’ ” (Daniel 9:5-10, NRSV).

And think about the apostle Paul. He called himself the chief of sinners and thanked God for saving him by His grace.

There’s no room for pride in the Christian life. No room for thinking that “I’ve arrived.” And no room for giving lip service to holiness.

There were two things that made a difference between the two sons in this parable. One was their attitude. The other was their action. Son number one started out with bad attitude but changed his attitude and brought his actions into line with his new attitude. Son number two seemed to have good attitude at first, but his attitude turned bad, and his actions (or inaction) displayed his change of attitude as well.

Perhaps this parable is one of the best illustrations of the principal found in the book of James: “‘Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith’ ” (James 2:18, NRSV).

But keep one thing in mind here. It’s not so much the work that the first son does in the vineyard that is important. The point of the parable centers around his repentance. That’s what Jesus was looking for from the scribes and Pharisees. … An attitude of humility toward God…. A willingness to respond to God.

And that’s what he’s looking for in us as well. He calls on us to lay aside our pride, to quit taking confidence in the good things we have done, and simply to come to Him just as we are, accepting His grace and His love to cleanse us and restore a right relationship with Him.

He calls us today—you and me—just as He called to the scribes and Pharisees and the prostitutes and tax collectors in Jesus’ day—come to me. Repent. Turn back to me. And go into my vineyard and labor for me.

How will you respond?