Hit 'Em!

Ouch! That's all I can say about Christ's interaction with the chief priests and elders in the temple in Matt 21.31-32. What a slap in the face it is to them when Christ says that tax-collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God before them!?! It would be roughly similar to Christ coming to our church and standing up and saying that Democrats and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God before the people in the church. We would be outraged! I assume the chief priests and the elders were outraged. So outraged that they never asked themselves if what Christ said was true; never wondered if perhaps their own hearts were not right. The essence of what Christ is saying here is that "you religious leaders (he emphasizes "you" again and again in these verses) think that you are the most religious, the most faithful, but in reality you are furthest from the kingdom of God.

A couple of lessons here for us. First, we always have to be assessing the state of our hearts so that we do not end up in the place that the chief priests ended in. Second, the message of the gospel is always and ever meant to be applied to our own hearts first. If we are sitting in the pew thinking, "I hope that Mr. X is listening to this message," then we've missed the point because always! the gospel applies to us first.