Our Actions Speak!

He entered the backyard ready to help. His dad had already been there doing yard work, and now he would help him with his plastic shovel by scooping sand into an old gallon ice cream bucket. It took a long time with the little plastic scoop to fill that old ice cream bucket, and he felt good about himself when it was full, but it had done nothing to clean up the backyard or help his dad.

Gym memberships do nothing. A gym membership alone does not get anyone into shape. You can have a gym membership and remain out of shape because you do not go. You can also tell everyone that you have a gym membership, wear your gym’s swag, post videos about lifting on your social media and complain about the price hoping that will make your life better, but without entering the gym, you will remain out of shape. Or, you can have a gym membership, enter through the front doors with your key card and do the workouts to get into great shape, but still be effectively out of shape if your muscles are just for looks and you avoid using them to help a friend move, throw your kids up in the air or carry the elderly across the street. Your gym membership means something when you enter through the doors, workout and use your muscles to help others because people will ask where you work out so they can have that kind of life too.

People noticed when Jesus put his spiritual muscles to work. Jesus lifted many people up throughout his ministry through his healings, miracles and authoritative teaching and preaching that called people to repentance and turned them back to God. Only days before Jesus was put to death on the cross, he flexed his spiritual and physical muscles overturning tables in the temple courts in Jerusalem because God’s house of prayer had been turned into a marketplace. Afterwards, many came to him to be healed, and little children shouted his praise in the temple courts. These events caused the spiritual leaders to come and question Jesus as we read in our Gospel reading from Matthew 21,

23 Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 25 John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

Jesus’ response to the chief priests and elders was not an intellectual question or review of facts, but a spiritual question, as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel during heart surgery, cutting into their hardened rocky hearts exposing their love for themselves rather than God. They questioned Jesus out of arrogant unbelief, jealously and fear, and then exposed their own hypocrisy with their foolish answer to Jesus’ question.

The authority by which Jesus and John the Baptist carried out their ministry was from God. The chief priests and elders were threatened by Jesus because they claimed to be doing God’s will though their actions were shallow, selfish and sinful. On the contrary, in Mark 1, we read that John the Baptist was called by God to point people to Jesus and preach

4 … a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Repentance characterized John the Baptist’s life with his humble clothing of camel hair and faithful pointing people to Jesus. Far different were the chief priests and elders who loved the attention on themselves and trusted in their keeping of God’s law to make them righteous and worthy of heaven. Like John the Baptist, Jesus showed his authority through his actions and followed that pattern in Matthew 21 by using his words in a parable to further expose the sin of the chief priests and elders as we read,

28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ 29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. 30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

When they questioned Jesus’ authority, rather than sit at his feet with faith in him as the promised Messiah, their actions spoke to their unbelief.

Our actions speak to what is in our hearts. Like a gym membership does nothing good if we do not build up muscles to stay healthy and serve others, our claim to be Christians and members of God’s kingdom does nothing good when we turn away from God and a life of repentance back to sin. Our Old Testament reading warns us of the danger of sin as we read in Ezekiel 18,

30 “Therefore, you Israelites, I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. 31 Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? 32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!

There is a difference between struggling against sin and submitting to it. When we struggle against sin with muscles strengthened by the Word of God, the Lord’s Supper and baptism we agree that sin is bad, resist it and when we give into temptation and sin turn to God in repentance. On the other hand, when we submit to sin, we ignore the Word of God, Lord’s Supper and baptism minimizing our spiritual muscle mass and in fatty falsehood or scrawny selfishness call bad things good, edit God’s Word, listen to the devil’s lies and call our opinion of morality acceptable, we welcome our downfall, death and damnation. In the end, we will be judged by what our lives of repentance look like.

Jesus’ judgment is the basis for our repentance. Any regrets, fears, worries or questions about our lives of repentance and facing God’s judgment have been answered by Jesus. God convicts us of sin through his law and points us to the forgiveness in Jesus, that is repentance. So, repentance is something God does to us and for us. Repentance gives us what we need because it rests on what Jesus has given us as we read in our New Testament reading from Philippians 2, that tells us Jesus,

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Jesus faced judgment for us as God, perfect and without sin, and as man dying in our place for our sins and giving us the credit for his good and righteous life. Repentance is about what God has done for us to give us peace and to put our hearts at rest so that we can sit as his feet as holy, precious blood bought children of God who shout his praises like the children at the temple and also learn from him each day what his good will is for us.

God’s will for us is the way of righteousness. As John the Baptist and Jesus both preached repentance, the results were visible as we read again in Matthew 21,

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

God convicted the greedy tax collectors and promiscuous prostitutes turning them from sin, forgiving them and bringing them to walk in the way of righteousness. The transformation God worked in them was visible in their changed actions. At the same time, the stubborn chief priests and elders were like a patient in a doctor’s office denying the diagnosis of someone with a wall of medical degrees from credible schools, thus calling the doctor a fraud. Jesus modeled the way of righteousness for us as one that speaks the truth in love practically applying the law and the gospel with questions and parables pricking one another’s heart and mind bringing us to repentance and leading us back to the way of righteousness. When your pastor or a fellow Christian asks you questions after observing your behavior or listening to your words, and your conscience is pricked, repent. Carrying the name Christian but not doing God’s will does nothing good. We enter into the presence of God when we are in his Word, the Bible, Holy Scripture each day in our personal reading and devotions, and as we gather in worship and Bible study, and in his presence, we find forgiveness. God wants us to live in his forgiveness free from sin and faithful to him.

He entered the backyard ready to help. His dad had already been there doing yard work, and now he would help him with his plastic shovel by scooping sand into an old gallon ice cream bucket, but that did nothing to clean up or help his dad. When the chief priests and elders questioned Jesus’ authority to do ministry, he exposed their unbelief with a question and a parable. With the same questions and parables, God calls us to repentance by exposing our sins and turning us to Jesus for forgiveness. God transforms us as we walk in the way of righteousness and others will see the freedom we have in Jesus’s forgiveness because our actions speak. Amen.