Matthew 21:30

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 to make that faith the rule of life, like those Israelites of whom it was said by St. Paul, "So then we see they could not enter in because of unbelief."

II. Another characteristic of the swift tongue and slow foot is indifference. Truth is truth; but if men are not interested in it, it will not influence the life. There is truth like useless furniture in the head, and there is much that may be called the useless furniture of religion. Men are rather puzzled than profited by it. They are certainly not interested by it. They bow their heads in assent; they give their acknowledgment to it; but they never live in the light of it.

III. Another impediment is in the manifoldness of intellectual objects; hence it is that wit, learning, and imagination may be they need not be, they ought not to be, but they may be hindrances to religion.

IV. And then there is another cause in the burden: "And he went not." For, usually, every man has oneload to carry which retards him in his journey. Men have usually only one besetting sin; but they have one strong predominant energy in their nature which may become a vice, a sin that easily besets them. But their whole character is in that one;the conflict hangs upon that.

V. Religion will only become the light, law, and rule of our lives when it, too, becomes a ruling passion. It is the presence of an idea, like the presence of a person, which gives to it its power; we must hunger and thirst after righteousness; we must live in the very life of the holy Law, and count ourselves "not to have already attained, but to be still following after."

E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 241.

Reference: Matthew 21:30. H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1st series, p. 414.