Are you living according to the Will of God?

「神の望みどおりに生きているか」 九月第二主日礼拝 宣教 2024年9月8日

 マタイによる福音書 Matthew 21章28〜32節     牧師 河野信一郎

Good morning, and welcome to the second week of September. We thank the Lord for inviting us to worship in this chapel this morning, and for the opportunity to worship with you. We welcome those who attend online and those who will join us later via video.

Okubo Church live-streams its morning service and evening service on YouTube and Facebook, and also video-streams them on YouTube for later viewing. The morning service is watched 60 times at most and 43 times on average. The evening service has been viewed 50 times at most, with an average of 35. We don’t know if people are watching the entire service or just a few minutes and then stop. We have no idea who is watching, from where, or when. However, we hope that we can continue to stream live as much as possible.

However, from next April, we will be able to sing hymns live, but we will no longer be able to record them on video due to copyright restrictions. Since the video recording will need to be edited after the service, we need to recruit volunteers to work on the video and learn how to edit it. Currently, we are in a situation where we have several people serving in different capacities. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance and provision.

Well, at Okubo Church, an outside group, the handbell choir, which meets every Saturday to practice, began practicing Christmas carols in late August. Personally, I would be happy if they could start around October, but about 10 people eagerly practice for about 2 hours every week. They spend four months in practice and in December they are played in various places. When Christmas carols have been heard from the next room since August, it sometimes feels like pressure to the pastor who is frantically preparing for the next day’s service. However, I feel as if God is saying to me, “It’s time for you to start praying for Christmas, too”. A much needed reminder, indeed.

Christmas is a time to spread the good news of the birth of our Savior Jesus to our neighbors. Christmas is also the only chance for people to soften their hearts toward the Gospel and the Church. Rather than inviting people you have never met to church, this is the perfect time to invite your immediate family, friends, and neighbors to church. We believe that this is the true Christmas, a chance to share with these people the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ birth, God’s love and mercy, and that the time has come for salvation through Jesus, to have them encounter Jesus, and to believe and follow Jesus as their Savior.

Since June, I have been sharing the Word from the New Testament under the theme “Searching and Living for God’s Will,” and we have been asking together “What is God’s Will?” but another important question is “What is not God’s Will?”

There is only one passage in the New Testament in which “it is not the will of God” is mentioned. In Matthew 18:10-14, we find the parable of the sheep that wandered from the flock. The same “parable of the lost sheep” is found in Luke 15, which could be mixed up, but only Matthew says, “For I tell you the truth, if you find it [the lost sheep], you will be more glad about it than about the ninety-nine that have not gone astray”. Thus it is clearly written, “It is not the will of your heavenly Father that any one of these little ones should perish”.

Christmas this year is still four months away, but it will probably come very quickly. This Christmas will be the first Christmas that I will be the only pastor, after 13 years of multiple pastorates. We need your prayers, cooperation, and especially your great ideas. I hope to have opportunities to share such ideas and pray together, but first of all, I hope that each of you will trust in the Lord, pray and ask for His will and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and work together on what the Holy Spirit shows you and leads you to do.

This morning, using Matthew 21:28-32 as our text, we will consider together whether we are living according to God’s desire, and if there is anything we need to repent of, we will honestly repent and be transformed into people who listen to and obey the Word of the Lord. Before going into the next section, there is something important that I need to explain to you.

There are many different translations of the Bible that you are familiar with and read on a daily basis. The Bible used at Okubo Church is the New Common Translation Bible published 36 years ago, but my mother church, GT Japanese Church in the U.S., which has been listening to the message of Okubo Church, uses a colloquial translation of the Bible that was revised in 1955, 69 years ago. The Bible you are reading on a daily basis may be the New Revised Bible published 43 years ago in 1981, or the Living Bible published 46 years ago in 1978. Another might be the Bible Society’s Joint Translation of the Bible published in 2018, or the New Revised 2017 Bible. However, different translations have different contents of verses 28-30.

Let’s start with the New Common Translation Bible. “A certain man had two sons, and he went to his elder and said, ‘Son, go to the vineyard today and work. The elder said, ‘No,’ but later reconsidered and went. He went to his brother and said the same thing, to which the brother replied, ‘Yes, father, I will,’ but he did not go.”

Let us now read from the colloquial translation of the Bible. “A certain man had two sons, and he went to his brother and said, ‘Son, go to the vineyard today and work. And he said, ‘Father, I will come. But he did not go. And he came to his brother and said the same thing. He answered, ‘No,’ but later changed his mind and went”.

The table below shows the differences in the contents of the Bible depending on the age when it was translated into Japanese. In the colloquial translation, Living Bible, and New Revised Translation, it was the younger brother who went to the vineyard as his father told him to, and the older brother who did not. In the New Common Translation, New Revised 2017, and the Bible Society Common Translation, it was the elder brother who went to the vineyard and the younger brother who did not.

The question arises here as to why such discrepancies are found in the Bible. I would like to quote a biblical scholar named Toshiyuki Matsumoto, who explains in his sermon collection on the Gospel of Matthew as follows. “The fact that there are two different texts of the same Bible in terms of content is due to either a copying error or a change in the text by someone in a later period. As far as biblical scholarship is concerned, there is a principle that when there are two different manuscripts, ‘the harder the manuscript is to understand, the older (closer to the original) it is’. The easier the manuscript is to understand, the more likely it is that someone has changed it. Recently, most of the new translations of the Bible into various languages have begun to use the less obscure one as their manuscript.” The first time I read this article, I was surprised to find that it was not written in the original language”.

As to why it was rewritten for clarity, Toshiyuki Matsumoto writes I quote. “I suspect that there is another reason why the Bible was rewritten. There was a sense of superiority and anti-Semitism toward Judaism in the Christian church from a very early time. The Christians may have compared the older brother to the Jews and the younger brother to their own Christianity. In other words, the Jews were chosen and called by God, but their faith was only a formality (they responded well, but did not do His will). Christians, on the other hand, are not circumcised, but they believe in God.”

Now, at the beginning of verse 28, Jesus asks, “What do you think, by the way?” This “you” originally refers to the chief priests and elders who approached Jesus when He was teaching the people in the temple, but today, I believe it is His will that it be taken to mean us. In verse 31, Jesus asks, “Which of these two did what his father wanted?” Jesus is asking us, “Which of these two brothers, the one who went to the vineyard as his father wanted and the other who did not go to the vineyard because he disregarded his father’s wishes, is the ‘you’?” Is this a question of whether you are doing God’s desire and will, or are you just saying it?

In other words, elder brother and younger brother, elder sister and younger sister, older and younger, male and female, first and later, healthy and unhealthy, senior and junior in faith, and so on are completely irrelevant. But Lord Jesus is asking “Are you really living faithfully and sincerely according to God’s desire and will? But are you really living faithfully and sincerely according to God’s desire and will? But in reality, you are just saying that, but in reality, you are not doing anything”.

Jesus says in verse 31, “I tell you plainly.(Truly, truly I say to you)” This is an important phrase meaning, “I am about to tell you something very important, the will of God. Jesus says, “The tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God before you,” rather than you chief priests and elders. The reason for this is that Jesus said in verse 32, “For John [the Baptist] came and showed you the way of righteousness, but you did not believe in him, but the tax collectors and the harlots did. You saw it, but later you reconsidered and did not believe in him”.

In our study so far, we have heard together that “the Will” is God’s desire, hope, and joy, and that faithful doing of God’s and Jesus’ Word is what God is seeking from us. The Lord Jesus is not looking for disciples/Christians who only talk the talk, but faithful disciples/Christians who do His will with inner reality.

In verses 29 and 32, the word “reconsidered” is used. This word means to reflect on oneself. It seems to me that we are so busy in our daily lives that we are tempted to pretend that we are doing God’s will, when in fact we are putting our own thoughts, wishes, and convenience before God’s will.

What is important for us is to always reflect on who we are in the midst of our own business, suffering, and trials, and to always ask ourselves if we are not loved by God and kept alive in grace, not blaming ourselves for our weaknesses, but rejoicing that we are saved and kept alive by God’s mercy. Let us rejoice, pray and seek to be faithful followers of the Lord Jesus, receive the encouragement and help of the Holy Spirit continually, and be obedient to the Word of the Lord.