“Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” – Matthew 21:31

Ouch! This is a message the chief priests and religious leaders certainly didn’t want to hear. To learn that despised sinners would enter God’s Kingdom before the holiest men of the land must have been shocking and offensive. But they needed to hear this message because entrance into God’s Kingdom isn’t based on genealogy, power, prestige, title, or appearances. Entrance into God’s Kingdom is a matter of grace, faith, and the heart.

God’s Kingdom is wide open for people with shameful, disgusting, vile, or evil backgrounds. They simply need to recognize their sin, genuinely repent of it, and embrace Jesus. In God’s Kingdom there is love, embrace, healing, and restoration for everyone who has messed up badly, done terrible things, and asked God’s forgiveness in the name of Jesus.

However, God’s Kingdom is shut tight for everyone who likes to look holy and religious without humbling themselves to accept God’s grace. The gates are shut for those planning to enter based on their public practice of religion, their Bible knowledge, their power, or their position in the church. Nobody can enter God’s Kingdom on their own because God’s Kingdom is a place of perfection and none of us are perfect. The only way into God’s Kingdom is through faith in Jesus, the Son of God, Who was perfect on our behalf.

It doesn’t matter if the first few acts of your story have been full of sin, shame, selfishness, cruelty, greed, or guilt. It doesn’t matter if the first few acts have been full of self-righteous, arrogant, harsh, proud legalism and hypocritical displays of visible holiness. What matters is whether you have turned from all that and embraced Jesus as your Savior and Lord. Have you? #FollowJesus

“In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.”
– Psalm 18:6

This is David’s story but it’s true for all of God’s people. If you’re in Christ, this is your story! God hears you when you call to Him. When you’re in distress, call upon the Lord and know that He’s listening. Cry out for help. He absolutely hears you, you don’t need to wonder or doubt. Your voice is heard and your cries touch the heart of your loving Father in Heaven.

That doesn’t mean you’ll get instant relief. David certainly didn’t. He wrote this psalm when everything finally came together and he was safe, at last, from all his enemies. That relief from his distress was years in coming. Before that day, there was a great deal of danger, running away, living like an outlaw, and hiding in caves. Nonetheless, God always heard David’s cries. God always cared for the man after His own heart. God was always with David, guiding, protecting, and strengthening him. Likewise, God will be with you and sustain you in your distress, however long it may last. You aren’t alone, your prayers aren’t bouncing off the ceiling, God loves you.

Then why did David’s relief take so long to arrive? Why did God wait so long to set His anointed one free from his distress? Because David’s time in the wilderness, in the caves, and in distress made him who he needed to be. That time forged his character and solidified his faith. That time taught David to completely rely on God and to recognize His presence even in the darkest seasons of life. David wouldn’t have been the king he became if he hadn’t spent so much time in the wilderness crying out to God. God left David there because He loved him and had great things prepared for him. Nonetheless, God was with him every step of the way, he was never abandoned or ignored.

This is also true for you. You may well be going through a long season in the wilderness. That doesn’t mean God is deaf, distant, or uncaring. It means He’s forging your character in Christ, strengthening and ripening your faith, and giving you opportunity to know Him better. Keep praying, keep trusting, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. #FollowJesus

“I need someone to mediate between God and me,
as a person mediates between friends.”
– Job 16:21

Job is off the mark in his understanding of himself and God. However, he isn’t wrong in crying out for a mediator. He really does need someone to stand between God the Father and us, representing Him to us and us to Him. Thankfully, we have that mediator and it’s Jesus the Christ (see Hebrews 9:15 and 12:24)!

In His sinless perfection, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for our sin. Fully human, He understands and represents us before God Almighty. He stands in our place having resisted every temptation. Fully God, Jesus established and mediates God’s new covenant of grace through His precious, holy blood shed on the cross. Jesus reveals and represents God to us and He represents us to God. He prays and intercedes on our behalf, having made the acceptable and sufficient offering of Himself for our sins. He is our great high priest in heaven!

We don’t have to plead our case with God. We can’t justify ourselves to Him through clever reasoning, hard work, religious rituals, or good deeds. We are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This is a gift of God made possible by the work of our mediator. Jesus is the fulfillment of Job’s heartfelt desire and the deepest need of every human being. It is Jesus Who reconciles us to our Triune God.

Believe in Jesus! Trust Him with your life. Trust in His atoning work on your behalf. When you sin and find yourself under God’s discipline, don’t defend yourself. Don’t try to excuse it away or rationalize it. Just repent. Confess your sin to God and ask for His help to walk in greater obedience to Jesus. God is faithful and He will forgive and cleanse you every time you ask. Why? Because YOU have a mediator! #FollowJesus

“Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” – Matthew 20:14-15

The Kingdom of God isn’t about fairness. Praise God for that!!! If it were about fairness, we’d never make it in. The accumulated weight of a lifetime of thoughts, words, actions, silences, and inactions that fall far short of God’s standard, expectation, design, and requirement would keep all of us out. Thankfully, God’s Kingdom isn’t about giving us what we deserve or have earned. It’s about giving us extravagantly, wondrously, and graciously beyond anything we could ever deserve.

God’s Kingdom is built on His overflowing, abundant grace. He’s gracious by nature and loves to give us far better than we deserve. This parable illustrates that grace as the master pays workers the same wage, regardless of how long they worked in his field that day. This is a parable of salvation – everyone who believes in Christ is equally saved regardless of when in our life we believed in the Lord Jesus and called on Him for salvation. We’re equally saved regardless of how awful, ugly, broken, messy, deprived, or depraved we were when we believed.

As the parable illustrates, God’s amazing grace doesn’t always sit well with everyone. In particular, those who’ve been religious for a very long time. As we spend years in church we can begin to forget just how much we needed grace when we were saved. We can begin to give ourselves a bit too much credit for the changes in our lives, the good that we’ve done, the people we’ve become. We start imagining that since we’ve worked really hard, we deserve something better in God’s Kingdom. We forget that we never deserved His Kingdom in the first place!

Take time to reflect on God’s grace in your life. Are you aware of how much God has blessed you beyond anything you deserved? Do you know how much He loves you despite the mistakes and rebellion in your life? Do you see how your salvation flows not from your good habits but from the blood of Jesus shed for you on the cross? Do you sometimes resent new believers who don’t yet know how to act amongst God’s people? Are you occasionally frustrated by God’s extravagant grace toward others? Renew your mind’s appreciation and awareness of grace. Celebrate grace for it’s part of God’s fundamental nature. Rejoice in His grace toward you and others who don’t deserve it. #FollowJesus

“You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
– Psalm 16:11

What a beautiful description of the joys of drawing ever nearer to God! God not only saves us by grace through faith in Jesus, He invites us to be in profound relationship with Him. He seals us with His Holy Spirit, unites us with His Son, and His Spirit lives within us. This is what we need to pursue deep fellowship with God. Are you pursuing that fellowship? Are you giving your joyous relationship with God your full attention?

Yes, we’re still saved if we don’t invest in our spiritual lives as we should, but we miss out on so much! As you learn to enjoy God’s presence in worship (public and private), in prayer, in the study and contemplation of God’s Word, it unlocks these treasures. These are the treasures and pleasures of quietly sitting at the feet of the Creator and enjoying Him. By His Word and His Spirit, God reveals the paths in your life that lead to a richer, fuller experience of the eternal life you already have. His joy fills your heart to overflowing. There is true peace and the deep pleasures of a contented life in Jesus Christ regardless of your outward circumstances.

We spend so much of our earthly lives exhausting and frustrating ourselves as we chase after earthly imitations of these things. We look for life, joy, and pleasure in the created rather than the Creator. We seek them in other people when they’re most fully available in our Heavenly Father. We try to buy them, build them, earn them, or take them when they’re freely available. Evaluate your time, your money, your energy, and your emotions. Is it time to slow down and draw nearer to God? Seek Him first and discover all the extraordinary things which can only be found in Him. #FollowJesus