"Which of the two did the will of his father?" (Matthew 21:31).

Jesus tells a parable about two sons. One refused to obey but then changed his mind and obeyed. The other promised to obey but then did nothing. The first is commended for actually doing his father's will.

Jesus relates this parable to the message of John the Baptist. The religious leaders, who had committed themselves to obeying God, did not follow through by believing God's message spoken through John. Yet tax collectors and prostitutes, who by their lifestyle had initially rejected God's will, now embraced it by believing John's message.

What is the lesson? Initial enthusiasm for God is not what matters. Making many sacrifices to the Lord is not what is most important. Doing miracles and performing signs in God's name is not what counts. What matters is obeying His Word.

When God commands us simply to believe (cf. John 6:29), we should not ask, "What else?" When God gives us His Word as the sufficient guide for all godliness (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16–17), we should not pursue things to add to it. Knowledge is more important than zeal (cf. Romans 10:1–3), for it is better to know and do what God actually desires than to spend all our energy and faith on something He does not want.

Friends, let us learn this lesson from the parable of the two sons. It is more important to obey than to promise obedience. It is more important to obey than to offer sacrifices to God. It is more important to obey than to go to great lengths to show our devotion. This is why it is absolutely critical that we know His Word. Only through His Word do we know what to obey. His Word serves as a boundary that keeps us from getting caught up in empty professions and practices. And through His Word we understand our total failure to keep His Law, and we are driven to trust simply in His grace.

Consider this dialogue between Jesus and the crowd who had followed Him, listening to His teaching, and who had experienced the spectacular miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. It was entirely appropriate for them to ask how they should obey God. They asked, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." So they said, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?" (a paraphrase of John 6:28–30).

Do you notice something odd here? They ask Jesus what they should do, and He tells them: believe in Him, the One God has sent — the One who had just fed all of them with a few loaves and fish, who had captivated them with His teaching, who had performed the signs of the Messiah. Yet now they ask for another sign? They are seeking something more from Jesus?

Jesus would go on to rebuke them. For all their show of devotion, they were not truly willing to do God's will. They were interested only in their own idea of what God is like and what He should want from them.

Friends, I hear people every week express their devotion to God, yet they are not daily and deeply in His Word. They are quick to take offense when their experience is challenged, even by something in God's Word. They use all kinds of spiritual-sounding words while taking verses out of context, running roughshod over Scripture to find an interesting turn of phrase and forgetting the purpose and message of both the divine and human authors. The result? God's will is not done. Often something heretical is declared, and with conviction. Only a few weeks ago, a woman declared in a Sunday school class, "I believe God can sin." Yet no one spoke up to correct her misguided words.

"Which of the two did the will of his father?" Jesus asked. Will we truly obey, or just give lip service?

AI-Expanded Reflection

The parable of the two sons (Matthew 21:28–32) is the first of three parables Jesus told in the temple courts in response to the chief priests' challenge to His authority. Its sting comes in Jesus' application: "the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you" (21:31). The key word in the first son's story is that "he changed his mind" — the same word used in verse 32, where the leaders "did not afterward change your minds and believe." Repentance, not initial profession, was what distinguished the two sons.

The comment's link to John 6:28–29 is illuminating. The crowd asked about "works" (plural), and Jesus answered with "the work" (singular) — believing in the One God sent. Faith is not one more work added to a list; it is the response God requires, and from it genuine obedience flows. That connects the two passages beautifully: the son who did the father's will is the one who, after first refusing, came to trust and obey. The comment's concern that professions of devotion be matched by knowledge and obedience echoes Jesus' own words: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?" (Luke 6:46).

Two of Jesus's disciples, James and John, want to sit at His right and left in His kingdom — a place of special importance at His side. Their mother comes to Jesus with them and asks this favor. Jesus answers that they don't know what they're asking, and asks whether they can drink the cup He is about to drink. They answer that they can. He tells them they will indeed drink from His cup, but that the places at His right and left are not His to grant — they belong to those for whom the Father has prepared them (a paraphrase of Matthew 20:20–23).

This is an interesting request, because the sons are not yet aware what sitting in Christ's kingdom would cost. When Christ speaks of the cup, He refers to the cup of God's wrath — He is asking whether they are prepared to suffer. Church tradition holds that most of the disciples died as martyrs.

The selfishness of the request contrasts with what Jesus says immediately afterward to the other disciples: whoever wants to become great among them must be their servant, and whoever wants to be first must be their slave — just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (a paraphrase of Matthew 20:26–28). So while the disciples squabble over their place in Christ's kingdom, Jesus redefines greatness.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The claim about the disciples' deaths is worth stating with appropriate caution: the martyrdom of James son of Zebedee is recorded in Acts 12:2, and early and reasonably strong tradition attests the deaths of Peter and Paul, but for most of the Twelve the accounts come from later sources of varying reliability, and the details differ between them. That the early church faced real and lethal persecution is beyond dispute; the specific fate of each individual apostle is less well established than the familiar summary suggests. The passage's force doesn't depend on it — Jesus's answer to James and John is not a prediction they could verify but a redefinition they had to accept, and the request itself is what the scene indicts.

Fresh figs are one of my favorite fruits — I saw them at the market last week but held back because of the price! Most people think of figs as a late summer or fall fruit, since that's when they usually appear in stores. But fig trees actually produce two crops: an early spring one from the previous year's shoots, and a larger main crop in late summer from the current year's. Solomon seems to reference the early spring crop in Song of Songs — winter is past, the fig tree is putting out its early fruit, the vines are blossoming (a paraphrase of Song of Songs 2:11–13). That matters for Matthew 21, since Jesus enters Jerusalem in early spring, just before Passover. He's hungry and sees a fig tree. Some commentaries suggest Jesus was being unreasonable to expect fruit in the "off season" — but this particular tree already had leaves, which normally signals that the early fruit should already be present, since a fig's leaves emerge around the same time as its early crop. This tree had leaves but no fruit — appearance without substance. Jesus approaches, finds nothing but leaves, and says "may you never bear fruit again," and the tree withers immediately (a paraphrase of Matthew 21:18–19). The tree pictures the spiritual condition of Israel's religious leaders — impressive from a distance, but revealing nothing on closer inspection. This echoes Jeremiah's warnings: the LORD would take away the harvest of those who refuse to repent, while blessing those who trust in Him (a paraphrase of Jeremiah 8:6, 13; 17:7–8).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The botanical detail this comment surfaces — that this particular tree's leaves were specifically signaling that fruit should already be present — is the actual key to a scene that otherwise reads as puzzling on a casual read. Jesus isn't demanding out-of-season fruit from an ordinary tree; He's confronting a tree whose outward appearance was actively advertising something it didn't actually have. That distinction matters for how the scene functions as an acted-out parable: the indictment against Israel's religious leaders isn't that they failed to produce something impossible under the circumstances, but that their outward display of religious health was specifically misleading — signaling a substance that, on closer inspection, simply wasn't there.

Jesus concludes the parable of the workers in the vineyard with these words: "so the last will be first, and the first last" (Matthew 20:16). The most direct meaning comes from within the parable itself: the employer tells the first-hired worker, "I want to give this last worker the same as I gave you" (a paraphrase of Matthew 20:14). One understanding of "the last will be first, and the first last" is simply that both groups receive the same reward, regardless of effort — suggesting that in some aspect of God's kingdom, the amount of work done has no bearing. God gives according to His own will. We're also given a commentary built into the parable: a pointed question: doesn't the employer have the right to do what he wants with his own money, and is the first worker being envious simply because the employer is generous (a paraphrase of Matthew 20:15)? (a paraphrase of Matthew 20:15). The complaining worker had the wrong perspective, viewing the employer as unfair — but he'd received exactly what he'd agreed to receive (see Matthew 20:13). There may also be a hint of grace: while the first worker negotiated a specific wage, the later workers were willing to work for whatever the employer thought was right (see Matthew 20:4, 7) — the first received what he'd earned (justice), the last received far more than bargained for (grace). Since no explanation is given by Jesus, I can't be dogmatic about the parable's full meaning — but it does seem to affirm God's sovereignty, justice, and grace in His sovereign acts. Some translations follow up "last shall be first" with "for many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew 20:16 NKJV), which may suggest the parable has a further connection to God's sovereign election.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The specific reading this comment builds toward — extending the parable's point about sovereign generosity into a statement about God's sovereign election for salvation — is one plausible interpretation among several; other readers connect "many are called, few are chosen" to the broader pattern of the gospel invitation going out widely while genuine, persevering discipleship proves rarer, without reading it as a statement about individual predestination. Both readings converge on the parable's undisputed center: that God's generosity operates by His own free choice rather than by any calculation of what's been earned — which is precisely what provoked the first worker's complaint, a complaint the parable treats as understandable but ultimately mistaken.