Transcription

1 Have you ever convinced yourself o that you were going to receive some reward, that you just knew that you deserved perhaps a promotion only to be let down when you discover that things o are not going to happen the way you thought they would? We build up our expectation o with the belief that something is owed to us, that we have earned it, o that our actions have merited it. However, sometimes o the merit exists only in our own eyes. This assumption that something is owed to us, o often sets us up for great disappointment. In Matthew 19:27 Peter asks Jesus a question o that reveals that he may be thinking along those lines: Matthew 19:27 27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? Peter says, Lord, we ve given up so much to follow you. o We ve forsaken all and followed you, at great sacrifice to ourselves. What, therefore, shall our reward be? It is obvious that Peter thinks o that the sacrifice of the original 12, the first followers of Jesus, o is worthy of a greater reward than those who came to follow Jesus later. I mean, come on, they were Jesus followers o before it was cool to follow Jesus. They were with Jesus before the miracles, before the crowds, before all the public attention.

2 They had followed him when no one else did. o Now that it has become popular, now that everyone is doing it, now that many have cast their lot with Jesus, perhaps now Peter feels like there should be some extra level of reward for them. This morning s parable o is part of Jesus answer to Peter s question. It begins with the iconic phrase, o that every parable we are studying in this series starts with: For the kingdom of heaven is like Matthew 20:1-16 First Scene 1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. 2 And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. 5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? 7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. 8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. 9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. 10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. 11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, 12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. 13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? 14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

3 16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. Lets look at the parable verse by verse: 1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. Jesus begins the parable talking about a householder o which is another word for a landowner. This particular landowner has a vineyard on his land o and that is how he supports himself. The parable is set during the season of the year o when the grapes had ripened on the vine and the moment had come to pick them at the height of their goodness. The grape harvest is an urgent thing. o It must be done in a very narrow window of time after the grapes have reached their peak and before they begin to decline. Because of this, o the harvest often required an influx of extra workers. Such is the case here, o the man goes out early, as the day is getting ready to break, and seeks out laborers. Those who needed work o would gather in the marketplace in the wee hours of the morning, o and those who needed to hire day-labor, would go to the marketplace and seek them out. Our landowner went early, o because the earlier one went, the more liberty they had to pick the very best workers. If he had waited until later, o then someone else would have already hired the best workers. The thing about these workers o is that none of them were gainfully employed. They have no regular job. o One might think of them as impoverished.

4 They had no other source of income except this. o Every day they went to the marketplace hoping to get hired for a day s wages. This was the only way they could feed their families. 2 And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. When the landowner got to the marketplace, o he quickly found and hired suitable laborers. He came to an agreement with them o that they would work for a penny a day. The penny here is the denarius o that we talked about last week. It is the standard wage for a days work. o So there is nothing extravagant about the initial deal, it was a full day s labor o for a full day s pay. 3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. The story now skips ahead three hours. o The landowner has decided that the task at hand is greater than the abilities o of the work crew he has hired. He goes back to the marketplace to hire more help. Jesus said that he went at about the third hour. o What that means is the third hour after sunrise. The day was generally divided into twelve parts, o each of those parts was called an hour. The day began it daylight, o which was the first hour. It was half over at midday, which was the sixth hour. And it was completely spent at nightfall, which was the twelfth hour. Assuming that the day began around 6 in the morning, o it ended twelve hours later around 6 in the evening.

5 The third hour would have been o halfway between daylight and noon, about 9:00 in the morning. So at mid morning, o the landowner returns to the marketplace to hire more workers. When he gets there he finds men o standing in the marketplace idle. Evidently they were looking for work o but had not been hired yet. Perhaps they came to the marketplace late o and missed the early landowners that came and hired workers for a full days work. o But they are here now and they are hoping against hope that they can find someone who will hire them o for a partial day s wage. Our landowner hired them. o He simply directed them to go into his vineyard and promised them that he would give them whatever is right. o In other words, he will pay them a fair wage. Though he didn t specify exactly what that meant, the workers probably expected him to pay them the right proportion of a denarius for the amount of work they would do, o which would be about ¾ of a denarius. 5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. As our story unfolds, o the landowner returns to the marketplace throughout the day to hire more workers. o These workers that he hired later in the day were the unfortunate workers who had been passed over, earlier in the day. But they were men o who desperately needed to work. If they did not find work, for even just a part of the day, o their families they might go hungry.

6 The employer strikes the same agreement o with the workers hired at noon and at 3:00 as that he struck with the ones o who were hired at 9:00. He would pay them whatever was right. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? This is the part of the story that is important to Jesus. o At about the eleventh hour of the day, which would have been around 5:00 in the evening, o when there was, roughly, one hour left to work, our landowner returns to the marketplace. The amazing thing is that, at that late hour o he is still seeking additional laborers to work in his vineyard. The grapes will not keep indefinitely. o The window for harvest is short. Apparently, he feels that it is imperative o to get them all out of the vineyard today and he needs this last influx of workers to make sure that the harvest is complete o before it is too late. By this time the working day was almost over, o and it is somewhat surprising that there should still be potential laborers seeking employment. The fact that they were still there, o perhaps, indicates that they desperately needed work. This time, however, before offering them a job, the landowner asks them o why they have been standing idle all day long. 7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. Their response is revelatory. o No one had hired them.

7 This may give us some insight o into what kind of people these were. They were probably social outcasts, o the kind of people that no one wants to hire to do a job. However, even at this late hour of the day, o the landowner is so ready to add extra labor that he is willing to hire o the ones that no one else wanted to hire, the ones who were rejected o by other employers as unworthy to work. o That s the class of individual that gets hired at the eleventh hour of the day. They were the undesirables. So he hires the men o and tells them to go work his vineyard with the promise, once again, that he will pay them whatever is right. They cannot have expected that to be very much, o at best they would hope to earn one twelfth of a days pay, because they would only work o one hour of the 12 hour workday. Now the action shifts to the workday s end o and the master is no longer hiring, instead he is paying. 8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. The landowner calls his steward over o and gives him an odd set of instructions. Gather the workers together and pay them, o but let those who came last be the ones that you pay first. We don t really get any indication o of why he chose to pay them in this order. We do know that he is about to be very generous o to those who were hired last,

8 and perhaps he wanted those who were hired earlier in the day o to see his generosity and to know what manner of man that he was. 9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. Those who were hired last, o were paid first. Can you imagine the shockwave o that goes through all of the laborers when these humble men, the outcasts, those who were unfit to be hired o in the prime hours of the day, receive a paycheck that is 12 times as large o as what they expected it to be. Immediately, the other workers o recognize that their boss for the day is a very generous man. And, no doubt, they begin o to calculate what their pay will be, based on this multiple of 12. o Those to whom a full days wage is owed, probably now expect to receive about 12 denarious o or 12 days wages. However, they had completely misinterpreted o what had transpired. The landowner is a generous man. o He understands that the impoverished men that he has hired last, those that no one wanted, desperately needed a days wages in order to adequately provide for their families. The payment is not evidence o of an extravagant wage, it is not evidence of a twelve fold bonus, which is how the others interpreted it. o Rather, it is evidence of the compassion of the landowner. He has determined

9 to give every man who labors in his field o a full days wages, no matter how short o their tenure may have been. 10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. The parable skips over the laborers o who were hired at 9:00, noon, and 3:00. However, we can surmise o that those who worked a quarter of the day and probably now expected 3 days wages, but they received a single days wages. This was not as big of a bonus o as they probably expected, but it was still a bonus. Likewise those who were hired at noon o were now expecting 6 days wages, and those hired at 9, were likely expecting 9 days wages, o but they also received a full day s wages. In each case the payment was a bonus. o But, even though they received a bonus, they were still a little disappointed because their bonus was not as large o as the bonus that the first group received. Finally he comes to the men who had worked all day. o They had agreed to work a full day, for a full day s wage. o However, after seeing everyone else receive a bonus of some kind with their pay, they have forgotten the formal agreement o that they made with their employer, and now expect to receive more than a days wage. After watching events unfold, o their expectations have probably changed several times. When the eleventh hour workers were paid 12 times what was owed them, o they probably expected to receive 12 days wages for their 12 hours of labor.

10 o However, by now they have seen the bonus diminish with each successive payment. It seems reasonable that they would o expect some kind of additional bonus pay. After all, everyone else has gotten a bonus, even if they have diminished in size o from beginning to end. These workers would have o reasoned within themselves, they have worked longer hours and done more work, o so they deserved more pay. But it did not work out like that. o They received only the single denarius they had agreed on. What a strange pay structure. o The longer a particular group worked, the smaller the percentage of a bonus they receive, and the first group gets no bonus at all. When you look at it as an hourly wage, o the pay scale seems to be going down with each successive group. However, when you look at it as an act of grace, o you see each laborer receiving the same amount, a full day s wages, regardless of how long they actually worked. It becomes obvious that the landowner o is genuinely concerned for the underprivileged in his society o and has determined that anyone who labors in his field, regardless of the amount of time they put in, o will receive a full days wages. o His generosity, though, yields some discontent among his workers. 11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, Instead of rejoicing o that they have received a full day s pay,

11 the workers begin to murmur because they feel like o they have not been treated fairly. o No doubt, the ones who murmured the loudest were the ones who had worked a full 12 hours but had received the same wages o as everyone else. 12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. Their complaint amounted to this: o they had not been treated fairly. The latecomers worked one hour, so their contribution o to the work in the vineyard was miniscule. But when it came to pay, o they were made equal to those who had done most of the work. They complained. o Not just about the time that they spent working but also the conditions under which they had worked. o They had worked through the heat of the day. While the laborers who were paid the most generously worked only a single hour, o in the coolest part of the day. Surely those who had done a full day s work o and had sweated under the blazing sun, deserved to be paid more than those who did not. o It simply wasn t fair. The whole parable boils down to the fact o that they were jealous of what had been given to these others. o They envied the generosity of the landowner to people who had no merit. o It is this sense of entitlement that is the point of the parable. It is what lies behind Peter s initial question. o Don t we, who have labored longer, deserve something extra?

12 13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? The landowner simply points them back o to their original agreement. Friend, he says, I have done no wrong. o Weren t you paid exactly what we agreed on? We made a deal, o you upheld your end and I have upheld mine. The fact that he was more generous o with the other workers did not give these men any right to expect more o than they had initially agreed to. They have been treated fairly. 14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. It was his right to bless whomever he wanted to bless. o The latter half of this verse is important. The phrase in the Greek is, I WANT to give The landowner has chosen to be generous o to those who had no expectation of generosity. He wanted to bless those who were looked over o and rejected by everyone else. o This is what grace is. It is God expressing his goodness in my life by giving me more than I ever deserved. o I didn t earn this, and neither did you! We don t want to be held accountable for what we did not do right o but for some strange reason we want our good deeds to benefit us. We want to hold god to blessings we didn t earn, By citing the things that we have done o Or the years of service that we have given. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? The landowner finishes his argument with 2 questions. o Is it not my right

13 to spend my money however I see fit? He didn t shortchange anyone. o He simply exercised a little extra generosity on some. That is his right. God doesn t answer to us o for the blessings he pours out on others! Every good thing in our lives comes from Him, o every blessing in our lives is a result of his grace. How in the world could we ever sit in judgment o over the blessings of others when we, too, have received that which we did not deserve? This is the heartbeat of the parable! The second question, about an evil eye, o is pointed at their own envious greed. The landowner has been o both fair and generous but all they can see is that someone else has received o something in greater measure than them. o The generosity of the landowner has made them jealous. Jealousy is always ugly. o Particularly when you, who have received so much, o are jealous of someone simply because they received a little more. 16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. We often fall into the same trap o that Peter fell into, we want to think of things in terms of rank, as if we could somehow earn the blessings of God. o We want to point out our own faithfulness, while overlooking our failures, and insist that we have somehow o earned the blessings of God. That simply isn t the case. o Though God treats no one unfairly, he deals with many far more leniently than they deserve. God alone, in his sovereignty,

14 o freely chooses whom he will bless and in what ways he will bless them. The point is simple, o the last will be first, the first will be last. o Those who deserve it least will be elevated, and those who think they deserve it the most, will miss out on the greatest blessings of the kingdom. And he does it all out of his great grace. o He doesn t owe you any explanation. That rankles our feathers somewhat. o At the heart of the matter, we are all just like Peter, it doesn t seem fair to us o that those who deserve less would receive more. o However, our reasoning is flawed. When we begin to think that way we have convinced ourselves o that we have somehow earned God s blessings when we have not. Every good gift that he has given us o has been an act of his grace. And we, who have so richly received his grace, have no right to stand in judgment o over the one who has blessed us simply because we think o he has blessed another in a greater measure. The point of the parable is simple. o You made an agreement with the master. It is his vineyard and you have agreed to work in that vineyard. o Your contract is with him and it is between you and him. o It is none of your business what kind of agreement he makes with anyone else. Just like the landowner, o God has the right to bless whomever he chooses to bless

15 and, if he blesses everyone around you ten-fold o but doesn t bless you, you could never say that the owed you a blessing. o He owes you no more than what you initially agreed to when you came to work for him. The point of the parable is to abolish o that sense of entitlement that we all seem to have. o But what we forget, when we are felling entitled is that we don t really want to be treated fairly. Indeed, if God were to give us what we truly deserve, o each of us would be bound for hell. o No, we want God to be merciful and gracious, we just want him to be bless us as much as he blesses someone else. We count our blessings and theirs and we want to compare o the quantity o and or quality of those blessings. o But that s not the way it works! Those deemed unworthy, those rejected and passed over by others, o will receive the full measure of God s grace, just like we did. o And from our perspective it will seem as if they have received more, but in reality it only appears that way o because they started with less. In the end we all get the same reward. Everything else is extra! This parable teaches us several important lessons o in regards to Peter s question. Its biggest lesson though, is that rewards in the kingdom of God o are not given on the basis of merit, or time served, they are given on the grounds of grace alone. And the reward is often

16 o disproportionate to the works that were actually done. In other words, salvation is not an arithmetic problem, o where you add all of the good deeds you have done in one column and all of the bad deeds in another column, and hope that the value of the first is larger than the value of the second. That s the way we would measure it. o But that s not the way that God measures it! Our process would completely leave out the grace of God at work in our lives. And we all need his grace! Another point of the parable o is that God seeks out the undesirables. Even at the eleventh hour, o at the end of the day, he s still willing to take those that everyone else has passed over o and make them a part of his kingdom. As a matter of fact, o it may seem as if he s willing to bless them even more since they need more grace than we do to receive the full measure of his grace. The lesson we should learn here, o is not to prejudge those to whom we preach the gospel. This gospel is for everyone, o even those who are the least desirable. The salvation of God is grounded in the goodness of God, o not in anything that we, or anyone else, might do to earn it. CLOSE The problem is that where God is merciful to us, o sometimes we are just like Peter and we want God to be stingy with his blessings to others. We want to sit in judgment over the judge

17 o and tell the one who was merciful to us just how merciful he is allowed to be to others. But we forget that we are no different than they are.