Matthew 25:1-13 - Ten virgins

25:1

In this chapter there are three of the most well known parables of Jesus. We should remember that all this teaching is occurring in the days between Palm Sunday and Easter. It is amazing that Jesus gave so much deep teaching in this most critical of weeks. “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like...”. When we think of the end times we tend to focus on the teaching of chapter 24, but what Jesus says in this chapter is part of the “end times” teaching, and at the end of chapter 24 He has said how good it will be for the servant whose master returns to find him serving faithfully. So these three parables show us something of what serving faithfully means.

25:2

So in this parable we have ten virgins. The virgins would be something like bridesmaids at a wedding. Now note that all of them were waiting for the bridegroom. Five were wise and five were foolish. Outwardly they were all the same, all waiting for the groom, but inwardly there was a great difference between them. All these three parables contain a severe warning, and the one here is that following the outward form of being a Christian is not enough, or can be misleading. Christianity is a matter of the heart, a matter of our deepest being.

25:3-5

At the end of chapter 24 we have been warned that Christ will return suddenly, at a time we do not expect. Here we are told to be ready for the long haul. The foolish versions had taken a lamp but no oil, it was like taking a torch with no spare batteries. The wise virgins had lamps and “spare batteries”, i.e. extra oil. So outwardly there would be no immediately obvious difference between the wise and foolish virgins. The groom was a long time in coming and they all fell asleep.

25:6-9

Though he was a long time in coming, he did eventually arrive, at midnight. Likewise, it has been two thousand years since Christ ascended, but one day He will return. All the virgins awoke and got their lamps ready, but the foolish virgins had a problem, they had no oil. So they asked the wise virgins for some of theirs. The wise virgins refused for there was not enough to share. Now we might think this was rather selfish of the wise virgins, but there are some things that we can only do for ourselves, and we cannot borrow from others. Too often when we talk about Jesus and Christianity it is all “too nice”, but if we look at the gospels (and the whole of the Bible) we see that there are many places where Jesus makes it clear that decisions and actions have consequences.

25:10-13

Realising they needed oil, the foolish virgins went off to try and get some (though how successful they would be at midnight is doubtful). However, the bridegroom arrived while they were away. The wise virgins went into the wedding banquet with the groom and the door was shut. When the foolish virgins got back they asked to be let in, but He replied “Truly, I tell you, I don’t know you”. We should take on board the severity and harshness of these words. If your picture of Jesus does not allow Him to say such things then your picture is a false picture. 

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour”. We are to be ready at all times. If we look back at the teaching in chapters 24 and 25 then we are to be ready for the long haul, and ready for Jesus coming back at any moment.

Matt 24:45-50 - Get on with the job

24:45,46

So what are we to do instead of musing about when Jesus will return? We are to get on with the tasks assigned to us. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?” Notice “faithful and wise”. If we do what Jesus tells us we are being faithful to Him and we are acting wisely. There are no kudos in knowing the date or hour (which we cannot do anyway). It does not please Jesus, and it does not help us live our lives. Jesus has “put us in charge of the servants”. We all have responsibilities of various kinds. We need to get on with doing them! We are to love those around us, we are to preach and teach the gospel. We are to do the work of the kingdom. If we are serving God, then whenever He returns we will be ready. It will be good for us when He returns. The best preparation for tomorrow is to trust and serve Christ today.

24:47-50

The price of not following Jesus’ advice is really high. Jesus is not mincing His words here. The person who says “He is not coming back for a long time”. Such a person has forgotten that God sees all that we do anyway. Note that while utterly disobedient he is still referred to as a servant. We have a God given duty to be servants of the Lord. While obsessing about the day and hour is futile, so thinking that Jesus is never going to come back is a wrong attitude to have. Conversely, the good servant who does about his daily task of serving the Lord will be greatly rewarded.

Matthew 21:37-44 - As in the days of Noah

24:37-41

Earlier Jesus spoke about wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes and famines, and said that this does not signify the end, but they are the beginning of birth pangs (Matt 24:6-8). Now He tells us that people will be going about their normal daily lives just before Jesus returns. Note that this is the complete opposite of the approach taken by the prediction merchants. They look at the frequency of earthquakes or other events and claim that this means the return is soon. Jesus takes the opposite approach. In the days of Noah it was not as though people did not have the chance to learn, but they chose to ignore the message of Noah. 

24:42-44

“Therefore keep watch”. This does not mean keeping watch to see if we can work out when Jesus will return. The whole point is that we do not and cannot know when He will return. Moreover, we do not need to know when He will return. In fact we have the explicit statement that Jesus will return when we do not expect Him. So to spend our time trying to work out when He will return is the most idiotic, disobedient , utterly stupid thing to do.

Knowing the Father

Knowing the Father, a sermon preached at Gate Church International 

Matthew 24:26-36 - The return

24:26-29

When times are troubling we can become vulnerable, willing to believe anything that seems to offer hope. This is why the Nazis gained power in Germany. So we need to be very wary of people who say the Messiah is here, we are not to believe them. When the Son of Man returns there will be no doubt about it, no special knowledge or insight needed for it will be like lightning flashing from east to west. The carcass of v28 is the whole world system, there will be “vultures” who seek to take advantage of its demise. The end of the world will be marked by cosmic events.

This quote comes from Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4, but similar figurative language can be found elsewhere in the prophets. It is important to realise that the language is figurative. Now it might be that cosmic events do occur, but the focus is on God’s judgement upon the earth. It is the judgement, and the return of Christ that are the key messages of what Jesus is saying. Things will change!

24:30-33

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. The people of the earth will mourn, for the foolishness of their ways will be evident, those who trust in the Lord will be saved. Soon Jesus will tell us that no one knows the day or the hour, but this does not mean we are not to be unaware of the signs or what is going on. “When you see all these things ...” I think we should take this as applying to all that has gone before in this chapter. So when various things happen to a fig tree it indicates that summer is near, when the things talked about here it indicates that the return of Christ is near, “right at the door”. So what are we to make of this? There was a temporal application. The fall of Jerusalem also coincided with a time of turmoil in the Roman Empire, there was one year when there were four emperors. The realisation of what is going on does not mean we will know the date! It is a matter of understanding where the world is going, and how we should act and respond in that world.

24:34,35

“This generation ...” causes great problems to some. I think we should take it in two ways. One is that the immediate generation would indeed see the events that happened in AD 66-70. The second is that the whole of mankind will see the events spoken of, the “wars and rumours of wars”, the persecutions, and the return of Christ. In Isaiah we have specific prophecies about Cyrus, the defeat of Babylon and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Those things happened and were real, but we also know that the words of Isaiah are looking forward to a much greater fulfilment, the fulfilment in Christ. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away”. We can and we must put our trust in God’s word.

24:36

This is the very clear teaching of Jesus that no, except the Father, knows the day or hour. There are two great mistakes we can make about the end-time stuff in the Bible. One is to dive into all sorts of speculations. Speculations about when, speculations about who is the antiChrist. This is almost uniformly unfruitful and a distraction. The other error is to ignore it, and the idiots who indulge in the former error are part of the reason many ignore the end time teaching. God has chosen to include endtime teaching in His word, and this must have been a very wise decision. So what are we to do with it? There are two very important lessons. One is that there is an end, this world will not carry on as it is forever, Jesus will return. If you like, we know the final result! The second is that it prepares us and teaches us how to act. If we look at this chapter there are instructions on how to live, particularly under persecution. The lessons about the end times are not just for the end times.

Matthew 24:17-25 - Time to flee

24:17-21

At this time there was to be no hesitation in fleeing, no time to put things in order.

There was only one imperative, and that was “get out!”.

They are also told to pray to God that this does not happen on a Sabbath,

when it would be far harder to get out.

Note that even with events that are decreed by God that we should still pray.

In verse 21 Jesus says the events would be absolutely terrible,

far worse than anything that had ever happened before, or would happen again.

The Jewish historian, Josephus, described the events in similar terms.

So how are we to interpret this?

Are we to take this as an absolutely literal description,

or as a graphic description meant to impress the horror of the events,

but not meant to be taken absolutely literally?

Utterly terrible events did happen in AD 70.

Does that mean these events are the complete fulfilment of the words of Jesus?

I.e. supporting a preterist view point? The problem with this is that it is hard to say that these events have never been equalled again in history. What about the holocaust?

24:22-25

These would be bad, but they could have been much worse.

Jesus says they were cut short for the sake of the elect.

This seems to have two important implications.

One is that there is an “elect”, a people elected by God for salvation.

The second is that the elect will be around at the time of tribulation.

People will be so desperate that they will long for some sort of Messiah,

so they will be ready to grasp at any straw.

It is at times of desperation that dictators tend to arise in nations,

for people long for order to be restored and think “things cannot be any worse than they are now”.

We need to watch out for false messiahs and not be taken in.

Some of these false prophets and messiahs will perform “great signs and wonders”.

We must not be deceived, the truth of God’s word is what matters.

Then again we have mention of the elect, and Jesus tells us that He has pointed these things out ahead of time.

Note that while we are the “elect” this does not mean that we do not have any responsibility.

We do have responsibility, and part of that is to be on our guard.

Sermon on Ecclesiastes

A sermon on Ecclesiastes, preached at Gate Church International 

Matthew 24:13-16 - Better news

24:13

We do then get some better news! “Whoever stands firm to the end will be saved”. What are we to do in such times? We are to stick to Christ and the gospel. There will be many forces seeking to make us abandon the faith, or at least to compromise it. We must not do so, for if we do we will be lost. Instead we must stand firm. Note that the lesson is not “pray that these things don’t happen”, instead it is stand firm in the midst of such circumstances.

24:14

And then we are told that the gospel will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to the whole world. “Then the end will come”. The Bible teaching on the end times is not given to tickle our ears, or to induce idle speculation. Rather, it is given to instruct and strengthen us, and the two key lessons so far are about standing firm and continuing to proclaim the gospel. The enemy will try to stop this happening, but will not succeed. The lessons of Matthew 24 and Revelation are for the church in all ages.

24:15,16

“The abomination that causes desolation” comes from Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11. The first “fulfilment “ of this was when Antiochus of Epiphanes put up an altar to Zeus in the temple. The Romans desecrated the temple in AD 70. Jesus is alluding to this latter incident and follows it with a very practical instruction, “run for the hills!”. There was a cultural instinct to believe that Jerusalem was the safest place they could be, that God would defend the temple. This had proved to be misplaced in the time of the Babylonian conquest, and would prove equally misplaced in AD 66-70. 

A sermon on Psalm 93

A sermon on Psalm 93, Spiritual Arythmia

Matthew 24:9-12 -Persecution

24:9

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me”. These are very serious and sober words. We need to do two things with them. The first is that they are part of the truth, not the whole truth. The church is not perpetually persecuted. In Acts 9:31 speaks of the church enjoying a time of peace. In history there are times when the church is not actively persecuted. In the West the church has enjoyed favour for a long time, but this period has now come to an end. So we need a balanced view. The second thing is that it is part of the truth and one we must not ignore. There are many parts of the world today where they know the full reality of this. Also, it is not our job to be loved by the nations. We are to speak and live the truth of God’s word. Sometimes this will be welcomed, sometimes it will not. Whatever the case, we continue to speak the truth, we must not go along with the lies of the world. Sadly, many seem to think that going along with the lies of the world is a good idea.

24:10-12

A clear message from throughout the New Testament is that there will be false prophets and false teachers, and they can have devastating results. Here we read that in the time of persecution many will turn away from the faith. They will harm not only themselves, but others, for they will betray and hate each other. This is not a comfortable picture. False prophets will deceive many. 

“Because of the increase in wickedness the love of most will grow cold”. The picture does not get any easier. In times of great evil there can be some who respond with great virtue, but this is not the dominant effect. In general it brings out the worst in people. In Nazi Germany ordinary people went along with the worst aspects of the regime, the same happens in communist countries. This is a harsh reality of life. 

Matthew 24:4-8 - Do not be deceived

24:4

“Watch out that no one deceives you”. These are words which every Christian should take note of, and remember they were first given to the apostles. There is no topic other than the return of Christ about which so much rubbish has been written and spoken over the years. There are various people or groups that have “predicted” the date, always to look utter fools at the end of it. One of the most serious false teachings is pre-tribulation rapture nonsense which has an enormous grip, especially in America. There are many otherwise good Bible teachers who hold to this view, and it’s popularity was fostered by Hal Linday’s book, the Late, Great Planet Earth, and the Left Behind series. You will have gathered that I do not hold to this view! Indeed, I think the tide is turning against it. Whether or not that is the case, there is no Biblical support for it, and it only arose in the 1800’s. Anyway, let’s get to the positive reason for my rejection of pre-trib rapture. Every New Testament writer, and Jesus Himself, warns us that we need to be prepared for persecution. In my opinion pre-trib rapture is utterly defeatist. There comes a time when Satan will throw everything he has at God’s people, but there will be some, maybe many, who refuse to bow the knee, refuse to deny Christ. By the grace of God may we be among that number.

I may well have offended some of you here, if that is the case, I still love you!

24:5

“For many will come in my name...” At the time there were various individuals or groups that claimed to be messianic, some of these sought to lead rebellions against the Roman occupation. “And will deceive many”. Some imposters are clearly complete idiots and fool no one but the most gullible, but there will also be others who are much more plausible and will “deceive many”. So we need to be careful, and should ensure that it is the whole word of God that guides us.

24:6-8

Many generations have been convinced, or had a strong suspicion, that Jesus may return in their lifetime. In one sense this is good as we should always be ready. However, we need to be careful not to be misled by events. Very serious things may be happening (as they are at present in the world), including wars, famines, earthquakes etc. But these things are always happening. It is not to say that they are not serious, of course they are, especially for those directly affected, but we need to keep a calm head. These things are the beginnings of birth pangs. Obviously, this has been a very long labour! They indicate that the world is in a bad way, but the end is still to come.

Matthew 24:1-3 The Olivet Discourse

24:1,2

Jesus now gives a clear warning that the present order is coming to an end, which it did in AD70.

This is the Olivet discourse. Similar accounts can be found in Mark 13 and Luke 21. It all starts after Jesus departed from the temple and the disciples came to show Him the buildings of the temple. Most Jews lived outside of Jerusalem, so seeing the temple itself would be quite an occasion for them. There were a small minority of Jews who held the temple and its leadership in disdain, believing that God would send a new temple. Given the things that Jesus had been saying and doing it is understandable if some thought His views were similar. However, most Jews held the temple in great honour and believed it was invincible. There was a similar view at the time of Jeremiah and the Babylonian conquest. Clearly, they had not learnt anything from that time. Righteousness was God’s prime concern, and He was quite prepared to destroy the temple. And Jesus tells them that the temple would be destroyed, as happened in AD 66-70. The events if AD 66-70 are very important in understanding this chapter, and Revelation. However, I do not go along with the preterist line of seeing a complete fulfillment in the events of AD 66-70. AD 66-70 makes sense of a lot of it, but not all of it, and to say that it does is simply nuts. Moreover, a common pattern with prophecy is that there is a partial fulfilment in immediate events, but the prophecy points forward to a much greater fulfilment, Isaiah perhaps being the prime example of this.

24:3

The disciples were intrigued, and probably deeply concerned, by this and wanted to know more. So Jesus taught them while sitting on the Mount of Olives (hence the name “Olivet discourse” for this passage). The disciples question shows that they associated this with the coming of Jesus and the end of the age, so it seems that they expected some sort of second coming. In the ensuing discourse Jesus does not give separate answers to the questions. We like to look at these things in clear linear fashion, A happens, then B, then C etc. However, the Bible is often more concerned with the nature of the events, rather than their chronology, and their implications for how we should act. Seeking to impose a strict chronological structure on events may well be a serious mistake, and lead to us missing the point.

Matthew 23:13-39 - Woes

23:13-39

Jesus was not a “soft touch”, and so told the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees the truth about themselves. They were hypocrites. They were (as are we) meant to be people who brought people into the kingdom of God, but instead they kept people out. They would not enter themselves.

They put great effort into keeping people out, even travelling far afield. Far from saving people, they made them worse off.

They claimed to be guides, but were in fact blind guides, having no idea where they were going. They introduced all sorts of rules, but the rules were nonsense. They strained “out a gnat but swallowed a camel”. I.e. They focused on minute details but completely missed the big picture. They cleaned the outside, without paying attention to the inside, i.e. the heart of man.They venerated the prophets of old but were about to kill the Messiah.

Jesus was angry, but also cared for Jerusalem. Indeed He was angry because they were just bringing more misery upon themselves and others.

Matthew 23:1-12 - Hypocrisy

23:1-3

Having resisted the various attempts to trap Him, Jesus now launches an attack on the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. Offence and defence go together. There is a time to forensically highlight the glaring evil of the ways of society. Perhaps surprisingly, Jesus starts out by telling the people that they must obey the leaders. Respect for authority is an important characteristic, it is also a very difficult one. For what are we to do when authority is so clearly wrong? First, why does Jesus say they must obey the authorities? Because they sit in the seat of Moses, ie God had given the Law and the religious leaders were in the position where they were meant to implement the Law. Likewise, Paul in Romans 13 says we must respect the authorities because they are in a God appointed position. Now, this does not mean unquestioning blind compliance. Jesus will soon show that that is definitely not the case. In Acts Peter and John continued to preach the gospel. In history, the times when the church has gone along with tyrannical regimes (eg the church in Germany during the Nazi era, the Pope Francis and the Chinese regime), have not been glorious years. But we need to be so careful, for the root of human sinfulness is a rebellious spirit, our rebellion against God. We may start off with the best of intentions, but before long our sinful spirit will rise up to take advantage of the situation, and rebellion will be all that we have.

23:4

While Jesus told the people to obey their leaders, they were not to follow their example. For the leaders were not following the Law. Instead they laid heavy burdens on the people, and did nothing to help them carry those burdens. The religious leaders were acting directly against the Law. There is a lesson for us here in how we treat others. The religious leaders would claim that their myriad of rules were helping to ensure that the Law was observed, but they had totally lost sight of what the Law was about (love God, love your neighbour). This phenomenon occurs again and again in human affairs. We have a set of means put in place to achieve a certain end. However, the means soon become an end in themselves and everything and everyone ends up having to bow down to the means, and the original end becomes lost, or is at best paid lip-service.

23:5-7

All the actions of the religious leaders were designed to show how “good” they were. Phylacteries were boxes containing scriptures. They made a big show of wearing these, but they did not obey the word itself. It is like, before the days of online Bibles, someone carrying around a big Bible but hardly ever reading it. The leaders enjoyed having the place of honour, enjoyed being greeted by people with respect. This hypocrisy is also human nature, part of our fallen nature, so all of us need to be on our guard against it.

23:8

“You are not to be called rabbi..” Does this mean we must never have titles? I don’t think so, I think it is our attitude that matters. We are not to take delight in titles, we are not to consider ourselves better than others or superior to others. What is the foundation for this? It is that we have only one Master and we are all brothers. Christ is my master, and Christ is your master. So we both look first to Christ. And we are brothers, we are part of the same family. There may need to be a hierarchy for functional reasons, but never for relational reasons.

23:9-12

Jesus then extends the principle to other categories: father and teacher. We need to look first at the positive reasons. We all have our Father in Heaven. Any supposed human relationship looks rather paltry in the light of this (of course, I am not saying human relationships do not matter and that we should not delight in them). And each person’s greatest relational need is to appreciate more and more our relationship with God our Father.  Now in 1 Corinthians 4:15 Paul rebukes the Corinthians for not having many fathers, so again we must not take these words here in a legalistic sense. It is the heart that Christ is concerned with.  We need to know our Father in Heaven. And the same principles apply to teachers. Teachers are explicitly mentioned as a God given ministry in the New Testament, but Christ, the Messiah, is our primary teacher. Verses 11 and 12 get to the heart of the matter, the issue that Jesus is dealing with, and that is exalting ourselves. We are servants and are to see ourselves as servants. We are not to seek to exalt ourselves, but to build others up and to glorify Christ.

Matthew 22:33-46 - Questions

22:34-40

Having seen the Sadducees get no further, the Pharisees come back with another question, “which is the greatest commandment?”. Jesus gives them a reply that they cannot object to, for it comes from the Old Testament, love the Lord your God and your neighbour. Then He adds “all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two”. The Pharisees had got hung up with proving their own righteousness and condemning others, they had forgotten the heart of the matter.

22:41-46

Jesus then takes things further, explaining about the Messiah. The common teaching was that He was the Son of David. This was true, but did not go far enough, and Jrdud quotes from Psalm 110. The messiah is greater than just being the Son of David. For all of us, Jesus is greater than we imagine.Now no one else was prepared to ask Jesus any questions, knowing that all that would be shown up was the limits of their own understanding.

Matthew 22:23-33 - The Sadducees have a go

22:23-33

The Sadducees had seen the Pharisees fail to trap Jesus, and reckoned that they could do better. So they asked him a question about marriage. The Sadducees were sort of aristocratic and political, with limited interest in theology. They considered only the first five books of the Old Testament to be valid, and did not believe in angels nor the resurrection. They were somewhat like the liberal anglicans of today. So instead of believing the Scriptures they saw them as a tool and thought that in one of Moses’ instructions they had a logical contradiction with which they could trap Jesus. So they posed the question of what happened after the resurrection to a woman who had worked her way through seven brothers, her husbands having an alarming propensity to die. Their aim was to prove the illogicality of the resurrection.

22:29-33

Jesus goes right to the heart of the matter. The Sadducees knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. These two things lay at the root of the Sadducees' problems. Much the same could be said about most liberal “Christians”. They were assuming that at the resurrection things will just be a continuation of the present age. Many Christians today make the same mistake. Things will be radically different, we will be radically different. Paul majors on this in 1 Corinthians 15. So marriage as we know it will not exist in the age to come. Jesus then goes deeper by reminding the Sadducees that God describes Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He is the God of the living. The true nonsense would be to say that there is no resurrection. God creates life not death. The people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching.

Matthew 22:15-22 - Paying the poll tax?

22:15-22

The Pharisees now tried to trap Jesus with His words, an enterprise doomed to failure. They started with flattery saying they knew He was a man of integrity. The poll-tax was a contentious issue. People hated the Romans, but to offend the Romans was a dangerous path to follow. So they asked Jesus if it was right to pay the poll-tax or not, thinking that yes or no were the only possible answers, and that either would get Jesus in trouble. But Jesus knew what they were up to and he turned the matter around., with His now famous statement “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”. The Pharisees were not giving to God what was His.

Matthew 22:1-14 - Are you going to the wedding feast?

22:1-14

The Pharisees had this picture of only a few elite getting into the Kingdom of God, and they were part of the elite. Jesus tells them a parable that says things are rather different. Who prepared a banquet for His Son”, note the emphasis on the son, i.e. on Jesus. Rejecting Jesus is a fundamental error. Many were invited to the banquet. The Pharisees were invited, but they refused to come. They were even given another chance. \the \pharisees continued to go about their own business, and some even seized the king's messengers. The king reacted with anger, this is looking forward to AD70. The king then sent his messengers to invite anyone who would listen.

We then see that the invitation is both open and restrictive, repentance is necessary. We need to recognise our need for forgiveness, Coming with an attitude or pride or self- righteousness is wearing the wrong clothes.

Matthew 21:33-46 - Whose vineyard do you think it is?

21:33-46

Jesus continues His teaching with the parable of the tenants, this one is aimed squarely at the religious leaders. The religious leaders thought they owned the system, for getting that it actually belonged to God. So when the landowner sent messengers the tenants thought they could solve the problem by dealing with the messenger, they even thought that killing the owner’s son would solve the matter.. The religious leaders forgot that they were to run the place on God’s behalf, achieving God’s purposes. Remember that Jesus said He only did what He saw His Father do (John 5:19).  Jesus warns them that judgement would come upon them. The religious leaders reacted in their usual stupid way by seeking to arrest Jesus, but they were also afraid of the crowds.

Matthew 21:28-32 - Slow obedience?

21:28-32

There are some who say something like “slow obedience is no obedience, is disobedience”, this parable seems to give the lie to that statement. There are two sons, the first claims to not obey the father, but then does what the father asked, the second says he will obey the Father, but then does not do so. Jesus’ own explanation makes it clear that the point is that the religious types, the supposedly obedient are actually disobedient, for their actions do not measure up with their words, while the “sinners” (tax collectors and prostitutes, people despised by the religious leaders) are actually the obedient ones. The religious leaders refused to repent.

Matthew 21:23-27 - questions of authority

21:23-27

Jesus was causing them problems, so the religious leaders tried another tack, they questioned his authority. What it was and who gave it to Him. They had two problems, one was that God the Father had given him the authority, the other was their own duplicitous behaviour. So Jesus highlighted the second by asking them a question regarding John the baptist.  John was popular, and his message was pointing to Jesus, so if they accepted John the Baptist they had to accept Jesus, if they denied John the Baptist they could be in trouble with the crowds. The religious leaders were in a bind, so they refused to answer the question, and so Jesus refused to answer them.

Authoritarian leaders rarely have as much authority or power as they seem to have.