Matthew 21:3 I. Our Lord's words illustrate, first of all, the deliberateness with which He moved forward to His agony and death. When He sent the two disciples for the ass and the foal which were tied up in the street of Bethphage, He was, as He knew, taking the first step in a series which would... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:5 I. Not the Law only, but the Prophets also, did our Lord with the greatest carefulness fulfil, that no one mark or tittle of the letter should fail of the Word of God. "All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, B... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:10 What think we of Christ? I. The merely humanitarian view of the person of Christ involves in it: (1) the gravest intellectual difficulties. There was something peculiar in His intellectual solitude: the difference between Him and other thinkers was not such as, for example, between Sh... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:22 These words are said to us as God's children. This is the one condition of our asking and having. "Ask," our good Lord would say, "your Father as His children, believing in Him, trusting in Him, hoping in Him, trusting yourselves with Him." I. It is not, then, said to those who will... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:23 Why Christ could not make His Authority known to the Pharisees. I. John had said to the Pharisees, "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and think not to say unto yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children t... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:28 I. There are two spheres of human duty, the individual and the social. Individually, it is our duty to "work out our own salvation with fear and trembling;" to listen to the voice of God, and hearing, to obey it; to "keep our bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity;" to keep our... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:28 Promising without Doing. We promise to serve God; we do not perform; and that not from deliberate faithlessness in the particular case, but because it is our nature, our way not to obey, and we do not know this; we do not know ourselves or what we are promising. Note several instance... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:28 We must not lose sight of the fact that in this parable both the persons who were addressed were _sons._And this is exactly our position. In a sense in a high and true sense we are all God's children, not by creation only, but by baptism, and we cannot escape. The weight of life lies... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:28 The Two Sons. In this parable there are two distinct warnings to two distinct classes, with corresponding encouragements attached, as shadows follow solid bodies in the sunlight; to the publicans and harlots first, and next to the Pharisees of the day. I. There is a class amongst us... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:30 Swift Tongue, Slow Foot. I. The first characteristic of the swift tongue and slow foot is unbelief. "I go, sir." How admirably this expresses the acknowledgment of that character which gives a general assent to the fact of God's Being and Providence, but without power of disposition... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:31 I. The command, "Son, go work today in My vineyard," is given to us at all times. It was given us at our baptism; it was given to us at the first dawnings of our understanding, when the still, small voice of conscience warned us that we must not be selfish, or false, or disobedient, b... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 21:44 I. Every man has some kind of connection with Christ. II. The immediate issue of rejection of Christ is loss and maiming. III. The ultimate issue of unbelief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move. A. Maclaren, _Sermons preached in Manchester,_p. 1. References: Mat... [ Continue Reading ]