Matthew 20 - 21 (1st November) - Kelvin

These 2 chapters contain really interesting accounts that Jesus had and also the parables that were told to his disciples. Jesus started by telling us the parable of the workers in the vineyard. He showed us a glimpse of how the Kingdom of heaven works. That, God will keep inviting people into it till the eleventh hour and He will treat everyone equally regardless of how early we came into His kingdom. Jesus also highlighted that some of us would feel unfair that though we may have started working much longer than those who came in at the eleventh hour and we are warned not to be having such feelings because God did not say that we would be paid more if we started from the beginning.My understanding here would be God himself did not considered us any better even if we came to know Him much longer than others. Sad to say, maybe some of us think that the number of years that we came to know the Lord determines how close we are with Him. Point to note here, Everyone is equal in God’s Kingdom.

Next, the Zebedee’s sons’ mother came to ask Jesus to let her sons to sit on the left and right of His throne in heaven but Jesus said no because it will be decided by the Father in Heaven. Then He came to the conclusion that struck all His disciples that whoever wants to be first has to be the last and who ever wants to be great must be a servant to someone else. Over here, giving is the clue to being successful. Giving not just in terms of money but efforts, time, care, concern and many more.

Jesus talked about the parable of the two sons and He compared His disciples with tax collectors (despised during their time) and prostitutes. He wanted to demonstrate that saying about what we believe without alignment in the heart to what we actually said is actually useless. Many times all of us say we believe in the Lord but our actions say otherwise of what we believe. Thus, Jesus is trying to tell us that it is better not to believe in God than to say you believe but actually you do not believe in your own heart.

Lastly, Jesus talked about the parable of the tenants where He was referring to the pharisees and priests of His times. Well, it can be applied to us as modern days christians as well. God says that whoever that is not fruitful and not doing the right things consistently would cause him/her to lose ownerships of what were given in the first place. Meaning, whatever God entrusted us would be taken away from us. As in parable, the evil doing tenants were given a couple of chances to redeem themselves but they choose not to do so. Life is all about choosing. God did not put to us a specific path that each of us are going to take but rather He offers us choices to make so that He can know who are the ones that are after His heart and who are after the world. Choose God today because He can never be wrong.