Amen, and please be seated. And if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 20, this morning verses 1 through 16. We resume our study in the Gospel of Matthew after a couple of months of break, and in God's providence, we're picking back up where we left off, and it's a good passage, I think, for an installation of a minister of the gospel. It's a parable about the kingdom of God.
God is portrayed here as the master of a house, a landowner with a great vineyard, and here his servants are called by him, and employed by him, and compensated by him, but in a very unexpected way. Many who are last shall be first, says Jesus, and many who are first shall be last. We'll hear that at the end of verse 16 in our reading, but it's actually also at the end of chapter 19 right before this reading, a nearly identical expression. It ties then what we're about to hear to what we had been looking at in chapter 19, and I understand we weren't all in the room, and even if we were, we've long forgotten.
So let me just remind you that back in that chapter, Jesus invited a rich young ruler to follow him, to give up all that he had to follow Jesus, and Jesus said, you will have treasures in heaven, and sadly the man turned away. But Peter responded, having heard Jesus, well, Jesus, verse 27, you know, what about us? We've given up everything to follow you, and Jesus replied to him, and of course the concern is, as it probably is for many, you know, do I really lose by following Jesus? Is there anything I gain by following Jesus?
And Jesus replies, you don't lose, but you do gain when you follow me. Verse 28, really I say to you, in the new world, this is 1928, that is in the regeneration, in the new heavens and the new earth. He says, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12th thrones, judging the 12th tribes of Israel. Now that's a very specific promise, certainly to the apostles, though you may remember that the Bible says all of us who are united to Christ will co-rain with Christ over all things.
We have a final promise here, verse 29, and everyone who left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my namesake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. So you see, following Jesus means, well, you may leave a home and land, even one that you love to go to a new place. You may even leave family. And at times, because you follow Jesus, family and friends may leave you, says Jesus, but no believer ultimately loses anything of eternal value.
He promises you a hundredfold here and in the life to come. That is, God gives you back way beyond what you've ever given up. And so Jesus concluded with his strange expression, verse 30, but many of our first will be last and many who are last first. And that statement begs an explanation, hence the parable before us.
What does he mean by that? Well, let's hear. Jesus tell us the parable and consider it together in Matthew, chapter 20, verses 1 to 16. This is the Word of God.
For the King of Heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about the third hour, he saw other standing idle in the marketplace and to them he said, you go into the vineyard too and whatever is right, I will give you. So they went going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour he did the same and about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing and he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day?
They said to him, because no one has hired us. He said to them, you go into the vineyard too. And when he even came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, call the laborers and pay them their wages beginning with the last up to the first. And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.
Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarius and on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house saying, these last worked only an hour. And you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong.
Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 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? So the last will be first and the first. Last. Amen.
This is God's Word. He write it on our hearts, let's do it in prayer. Father, in heaven, what we know not, teach us and what we have not, give us and what we are not, make us for the glory of Christ in our own good. In Jesus' name.
Amen. The parable divides into three sections. The call to labor verses 1 to 7. The payment of wages verses 8 to 12.
And then the character of the landowner verses 13 to 16. Let's just take it in three parts. The first, well, it's the story. And it's the call to labor in verses 1 to 7.
The story is simply told, God is a great vineyard and employs laborers to serve him in it. He may pick them up early in the morning in the marketplaces, early as the first hour of the day, 6 a.m. And they'll serve all day. Or he may get them at the third hour, that's 9 a.m., or the sixth hour, that's noon, or the ninth hour, that's three, and quite unusually actually.
Even at the 11th hour, he goes to the market at five o'clock with just an hour to go before it's time to go home. And what are they doing? Well, perhaps they're plowing ground. Maybe some are planting new vines or pruning the old or harvesting the grapes.
We're really not entirely sure the story doesn't say, but obviously there's a lot of work to do in the kingdom of heaven. God's kingdom is like a vineyard, and he's employing laborers to serve him in the work. And it is meaningful and important and necessary work, and he needs laborers for it. You know, after the great fire, the story is told in 1666 that leveled London.
The world's most famous architect, Christopher Wren, was commissioned to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral. One day a man came along observing three brick layers, and to each of them he asked a question to the first one. He asked, what are you doing?
And the man replied, I'm a bricklayer. I'm laying bricks to feed my family. And the second responded, I'm a builder, and I'm building a wall. And the third replied, I'm helping, Sir Christopher Wren build a cathedral for the worship of Almighty God.
That's a very different perspective on his work. I wonder if you think about your God-given responsibilities like that third man. You know, the call to salvation is also a call to service. It's a call to be part of the kingdom of God, and a call to labor in the kingdom of God.
Some are called to plow the ground, some to sow the seed, or plant the vine, some to stake posts and train it up, some to prune it and train its branches, some to harvest its fruit, others will press the graves, others will fill the wine skins and so on and so forth. It's a metaphor, of course, for the varied and yet important and meaningful work we have all been given in the kingdom of heaven. You may not be called to be a pastor, Zach is, but every believer has a spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit to be used for the building up of the body of Christ. The Spirit of God is in you, and He has really chosen to give you at least one gift to be a benefit and help in the edification of the body of Christ.
And every aspect of your life is an opportunity to serve this King. You can serve Jesus doing your homework instead of well merely serving your own ambition or honor or glory. You can serve Jesus mowing the lawn or washing the dishes or walking the dog. You can serve Jesus whether you're single or married, whether you're a husband or a wife, whether you're a parent or a child.
You can build others up with the love of Christ and share the truth of His love with your family and friends. It's a great privilege to serve the vine maker in His vineyard. Let me gently remind you here at Redeemer, the session hasn't called Zach then to do all the work we ourselves ought to be doing, but to do the kind of work that only a qualified called and faithful pastor can do. And so He has to help the rest of us fulfill our callings.
And so we're all going to need to resist the urge to be idle and well maybe me most of all and to expect Zach to do what God has called us to do. Notice also that this work in this vineyard, well it isn't done. The master of the house, he keeps adding laborers all day long. Even as the hour draw nears for the day to be over, he keeps adding laborers.
He calls people at the last moment and his attitude isn't, well you know they can't do much for me. You saw their promise, nobody else wanted them. They're so little time, they're so little they can do. Y'all just run along.
That's not his attitude at all. He's actually compassionate here. These are people who have been waiting around all day long to labor to make money, to feed themselves and probably their families. And he goes to the market and he brings them in and he provides meaningful work.
Now it is that today perhaps some of you have yet to respond to this invitation and I would simply say to you that the day is not over. It is not too late to get in his truck, to be driven to his vineyard and to begin to labor in his kingdom for his glory. It is called a labor. But did you notice secondly that there's payment of wages here versus 8 through 12.
When evening came the owner of the vineyard said to this foreman, call the laborers and pay them their wages beginning with the last up to the first. Well let's just pause there and recognize that God is the best employer. He's never late with his payments. The check is never lost in the mail.
He never tells day laborers who need that day's wages for that day's shelter and food. Y'all come back in a week and maybe I'll have some money for you. I've got debts to pay elsewhere you know. There's just nothing in the payroll for you.
God isn't like that at all. Now he pays his wages at the proper time. And notice how he pays his wages here. Well this is where the story becomes I think very unusual.
First in verse 9 when those hired about the 11th hour came each of them received a denarius. So the last hired were the first paid and then the first hired were the last paid. That's very unusual. You can imagine those who worked the longest were surprised to be kept waiting in line.
Of course it serves the lesson of the parable because they needed to see well the character of the land owner and so have their own heart motives exposed and changed by the gospel. Briefly note what this parable is not about. Well it's not a pattern for commercial practice. Jesus isn't suggesting equal pay for unequal work should rule all companies.
That would be disastrous for most businesses certainly in a fallen world. The man who operated his business that way would probably be bankrupt very quickly. Who would show up at 6 a.m. or 9 or noon.
But it's also not a pattern for labor relations. Men and women being fallen creatures would greatly object to one man being paid the same as another who did one-twelfth the amount of work day after day after day. But it is teaching us primarily that the kingdom of heaven is a world of grace and not merit. It's a world of God's unmerited generosity not the repayment of what is due.
It's the basic truth of this parable. The kingdom of heaven is a world of grace where grace reigns not people working for what they're owed but people receiving what is unmerited through the generosity of God. And notice verse 10 how these last take that. Well the first anyway but last page.
Now when those hired first came they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house saying these last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day in the scorching heat. I mean they are shocked, irritated, certainly envious we know from the end.
I wonder if we wouldn't have felt the same thing. There you are thinking all right sure I mean I agreed to a denarius at 6 a.m. But I mean who knew. And well that denarius was a typical day's wage for both soldiers and day laborers.
So it was reasonable that they had agreed to it and that is in fact what they were paid. In their hearts and heads they're thinking you know I worked 12 times as long. Surely perhaps anyway my wage will be 12 times more than what those bombs over there got who just showed up. I mean wouldn't you have felt like somehow this just isn't fair?
Wouldn't you have felt like I should get more. I mean if you could at work an hour and get a day's wage what's 12 hours of work worth? Well a lot more right. I mean that's what we'd say to ourselves instead they grumble.
They murmur. They begin to lament the difficulty of the work. They reflect on the burden of the day and the scorching heat. And they think you know we started sooner we ended late.
We did all the hard stuff. We faced all the challenges. We suffered more difficulty and they looked at the Johnny come late leaves and began to resent them. And then they looked at the master of the house with not a little anger in their hearts.
Why have you given us only a day's wage when that's what you gave to those chumps. You see how this parable then exposes the temptation to pride and resentment and envy in God's people as we serve him. Have you been laboring long in the Lord's vineyard? There's always this infiltration to be resentful of others for God's treatment of others as you observe it.
There's a temptation to murmur with frustration or envy or anger at the Lord's providence, especially when he blesses others wildly. And you want to know what about me? You know it's classic among pastors you preach and teach and invite people to believe in Jesus and they well sometimes they don't seem to respond and then they go off to summer camp. Or they go away to college, they hear a retreat speaker, suddenly they're converted.
Sometimes they act like they've never heard the gospel before. Even though you have been preaching the gospel they responded to their entire lives. And you begin to wonder at the well the fruitfulness of others who haven't really done nearly as much as you in that vineyard. So you think.
Or well there's a temptation for other soldier people, you know, more mature believers to be sure. You know this young kid over here just got going. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't have probably a real calling for a God.
I doubt he can be any productive and certainly doesn't have much share in the master's compensations does he? Or the temptation to turn in our hearts to the master and simply be bitter or resentful that he pays such good wages to people who show up in the last hour of work. And so then to imagine if we see ourselves as longtime workers that the Lord isn't being good to us. And that by now I mean after all self-taught surely my expanding expectations are reasonable.
Surely I've become meritoriously due greater a greater piece of his goodness, greater honor and glory, more crowns in heaven, increased privileges on earth. Almost as if we ourselves have done more than what the master wanted. Forgetting the words of the Lord Jesus in Luke 17. So you also when you have done all that you were commanded say we are unworthy servants.
We have only done what was our duty? Well these first were like that. They'd agreed to the Daenerys. They wanted to change the terms of the agreement.
And they were acting as if God's care of them was unjust or as if he had no right to be generous with his blessings to others. Well that's the second thing, the wages he pays. But thirdly of course it leads to then a discussion through rhetorical questions by the landowner God about his own character. He replies to these resentful ones in verse 12 and notice he highlights his own integrity, his own freedom and his own generosity.
Notice the Lord's integrity verses 13 and 14. But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for Daenerys? Take what belongs to you.
Go. You agreed. I picked you up at six. I told you I'd give you a day's wage.
You said okay. I have fulfilled my promise to you. And to the folks of the third hour and sixth hour he had said to them, I will, I'll give you whatever is right. And in the passage then, God has done no one wrong.
He has been unjust to none of them. He's no cruel pharaoh and unjust taskmaster requiring his people to make bricks without straw, requiring his people to suffer long on his behalf with no benefit or blessing or care from their Lord. No, he is the judge of all the earth and he will do what is right. And he did right by these first ones.
Nobody in fact ever gets injustice from him. And that ought to quiet our grumbling. It's never true that God is treating us unjustly. The master here treats this first group in accordance with the principle of Romans chapter 4 verse 4.
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his do. And they received their wage, which was their do. And so we can say then even this, that you know at the very end of time those who are consigned to hell can never say to God, I have a just complaint for the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is eternal everlasting death.
In our first parents were warned that was the wage they would receive for their work of disobedience and they embraced that wage and they went their own way and they were saying go ahead and give us what our sin deserves. Pay us our wage. And you and I and all of us descended from Adam and Eve ever since have gone astray each to our own way and said likewise and if God gives us our wage, if he gives us what we deserve, well he has kept his integrity even as we have not and so earned that wage. But there is hope.
There is hope for every one of us. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord, through the perfect work of Christ on our behalf. What you see here, he highlights his own integrity. I have done nobody wrong.
But then also the second question shows the Lord's freedom verse 14 and 15. And verse 14, 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? Does God not have the freedom to give of his own to any he chooses?
Why yes he does. I mean what business owner doesn't have the right to do with his own profits? What he wants? If God wants to give a day's wage to those who have never worked a full day, who are we to say he can't?
He is free. He may withhold his riches or he may bestow them on others. He is the right to do with what he has, what he wants, because it all belongs to him. Of course we live in a world where people are obsessed with their own personal rights.
And what we tend to forget is that the only one who has the ultimate right is God, because he's the sovereign over all that he has made, and he made everything. And his absolute sovereignty implies his absolute right to do whatever he wills with what he owns, all of his riches. His freedom of God to bestow the riches of his blessing wherever he pleases on whomever he pleases is humbling to human pride. The freedom of God to do whatever he sovereignly wants to do rubs our pride the wrong way, because of our sinful hearts.
We want to say we're owed something. I should get more than them. I'm better than they are. I do more than others.
You owe me. And God says I am free to be generous with whomever I please. You want to be able to tell him you must do this or you must do that, or you can't do this or you can't do that. But he has the freedom to do all as he pleases.
I remember more than once complaining about car repairs early in marriage and then hearing my friend, a fellow pastor, told me that the way he looked at those unexpected expenses was to say that's a strange thing for God to do with his money. It's not all right. It's not yours, man. It's his.
The other day, some months ago now, I was at my mechanic again for probably the third or fourth time in this many months. And I said, you know, and I don't know where he is in terms of faith or anything like that. I just said, I wonder if you've been praying, Father, give me my daily bread. And God said, there's Ted again.
You know, God has every right to do that. All his, everything, belongs to him. And as it happens, this sovereign God who has the right to choose to do whatever he wants with, all that he has, chooses to be incredibly and immeasurably generous with his riches to people you would think could never deserve. And they don't.
He chooses to be gracious, his grace is sovereign grace. We have no right to expect the grace of God to be given to us. In fact, if you think God ought to be gracious, you haven't understood the gospel because ought is the language of justice. It's what justly ought to be done, but free generosity is the language of salvation.
So God is just and that quiets our complaining, but God is also free to do with his own what he wants and that humbles our pride. And the final question then highlights the Lord's generosity verse 15. Or do you use as Jesus begrudge my generosity? Or more literally, is your eye bad because I am good?
That is, do you have an evil eye? An envious eye is what it gets at towards those I choose to bless. And so do you begrudge my generosity? Do you see the master of the vineyard is large-hearted and giving.
He never treats any of his servants unjustly. Nobody ever gets a raw deal. And in fact, certain servants find such an abundance of good simply handed to them because not only is the master never unjust, but he's extremely generous. And so the parable proves the truth, that salvation, and all its benefits are a gift of grace.
And that the compensation God gives to those whom he saves, to those who give up their old life and follow him who may even give up lands and homes and relationships for the sake of Christ. That compensation always far exceeds the labor in his kingdom when you were saved by him. It's not like receiving a just-wage duty for your work, but in his kingdom, the rewarding compensation is all out of proportion to anything you could ever do to merit it. The wage of sin is death.
The free gift of God is eternal life, forgiveness of sins, acceptance as righteous, adoption into his family. The gift of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing your everlasting inheritance in the new heavens and new earth. You could never buy that from him. And so I ask do you delight in God's generosity or do you begrudge it?
Here's the truth. Nobody in hell can say God has been unjust to me. Their only complaint can be he has been generous and merciful to people who don't deserve it. So all deserve justice.
Some get justice and others receive what they do not deserve by grace as a gift. So let us serve God then with humility and gratefulness, not out of a mercenary desire to be paid the wage we think we're owed, but out of love and thankfulness that our God loves us deeply and provides for us generously and never does us any wrong. Somebody said this parable is the gospel for the penitent thief. You remember how he came into the kingdom, not even at the 11th hour, but at the, well, we might say, 23rd hour of his own life.
You were pented and cried to Jesus and Jesus said today you will be with me in paradise. So some are called to serve God from their earliest days like a Timothy who may have served for 40 or 50 or more years and others are called like the thief on the cross from a hard heart to a soft heart in the last breath of their life, yet both end up in paradise, both end up washed in the blood of Christ and clothed in his righteousness. So it matters not if we've been laboring for God from our earliest days or if we come to the faith of the last moment. The gospel is a gospel of grace and all are equal at the foot of the cross as others noted.
The only thing you contribute to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. That's why Jesus said many who are first will be last. Many who are last will be first. Jesus is telling us that the same riches are lavished upon the last and the least and the lowest as upon those we consider to be the first.
So the Lord's integrity, clients are grumbling and the Lord's freedom humbles are pride and the Lord's generosity provokes our gratitude. So then let me ask you, are you serving God in an effort to get something from Him based on your service? Or are you serving God because He's already given you in Christ everything and you're so thankful. Let's pray.