The Heart of Hebron Grace-Exhibiting

Good morning, my friends. Our King desires to speak with

his servants, our father with his children.

Let us listen to the word of the Lord.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went away

early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for denarius today, he sent them

on into his vineyard. And going out about the third

hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace.

And he said to them, You go into the vineyard too, and whatever

is right I will give to you. So they went going out again

about the 6th hour and the 9th hour he did the same.

And about the 11th hour he went out and found others standing.

And he said to them, Why do you stand here idle all day?

And they said to him, because no one has hired us.

He said to them, You go into my vineyard.

Then, too, when evening 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.

When those hired about the 11th hour came, each of them received

a denarius. Now when those hired came first,

when those hired first came, they thought they would receive

more. But each of them also received a

denarius, and upon receiving it, they grumbled at the master of

the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you

gave made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day

in 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 the last worker as I give to you.

Am I not allowed to do what I chose with what belongs to me?

And do you begrudge my generosity?

And so the last will be first and the first will be last.

This is the word of the Lord. Dear God, we do give you thanks

for your word as always, and we pray that you would use it to

transform our lives. Lord, make us receptables of

your grace and make us distributors of your grace.

We pray through Christ our Lord, we ask, Amen.

Please be feeding. If you would grab your Bibles

and turn to Matthew chapter 20. Matthew chapter 20.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention Matthew 20 · chapter mention

How do you measure spiritual growth?

How do we measure our spiritual growth?

My father had a wall, a particular wall in a closet

there. As we grew up as kids, every

year he had US against the wall there and he marked our

measurement. That was very easy to measure

and and keep track of how we were growing as children.

How did we grow up physically? That was easy to see.

Well, how do you measure spiritual growth?

In particular, how do you measure spiritual growth of a

whole congregation? How do we measure the spiritual

growth of Hebron Church? Over the past couple of months

we've been looking at a certain phrase in which we kind of

articulate both what we think we are as a church.

This describes us as a church right now, but also it describes

our aspiration, where we want to be, who we want to become more

and more clearly like this. The phrase goes like this.

Hebron is a biblically based, Christ centered community of

disciples, A Reformed classically evangelical church

in the Presbyterian tradition, worshipping, growing and serving

Christ in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh and beyond.

This is kind of a description, I think and I hope, of who we are

as a church. And I hope is we read that if

you've been a fellowship, part of our fellowship for some time,

you can kind of chart and say, yeah, that's kind of who we are.

But I hope you also see that we're not fulfilling nearly that

kind of characteristic as we want to.

We want to be more biblically based.

We want to be more Christ centered.

We want to reflect more of the Reformed tradition.

We want to reflect more what it means to be classically

evangelical. We want to reflect more what it

means to be Presbyterian. All of these desires hold

forward to us what we want to grow towards.

Well, how do you measure that? How do you measure growth

spiritually? Now, there's lots of different

ways, I assume we could keep track of how many people are in

Bible studies. We could keep track of how many

people are serving in different areas.

We could talk about our prayer life together.

We could share talk about the way in which we share the gospel

with other folks. We could talk about our maturity

in Christ individually. All of that is relevant, I'm

sure. What I want to do is I want to

highlight one particular characteristic, 1 trait that I

think is woven through all of these character traits in which

we're talking about as a church, and try to identify it as the

character trait that we can measure, that we can see in

terms of are we developing, growing the way that we should

as a congregation. And of course, the challenge is,

are you growing individually in this way as well?

That character trait that I'm talking about is grace.

If we are going to be a biblically based church, we are

going to be a church, a community of disciples that is

grounded in grace for the message of redemption.

The message of the Bible is a message of grace and God's

grace. If we're going to be a reformed

community, we are going to be a community that prioritizes

grace, and the grace covers all kinds of things.

If we're going to be Presbyterian in the way in which

we act and function, our grace is not just going to direct the

way in which we understand our faith, but it's going to direct

the way in which we live out our faith.

If we're going to be Christ centered, we are going to be

Christ like, and that means we are going to reflect that

character that is central to Christ's own character, which is

His grace. This grace is something that I

want us to use as a measuring stick to try to evaluate how are

we doing as far as we're going in these directions.

Do we understand grace? Have we received grace and are

we showing grace? Do we understand grace now?

We talk about grace a lot at this church, as every church

must if we're going to be faithful to the Scriptures.

We're going to talk about the fact that God gives us good

things. And to a lot of people, that's

what grace is, God giving us good things.

God gives us wonderful things every day.

You woke up this morning and you were overwhelmed with good

things that the Lord gave us. That's not grace.

Those are blessings, and it's great to have blessings pour out

upon us. That's wonderful.

But when the Scriptures identify grace, they're not talking about

the good things that God gives us.

They're talking about the good things that God gives us,

specifically to those who are undeserving.

If we're going to be a gracious community, we can't just speak

of the goodness of God's grace, the goodness of God's blessings.

We have to specify that those good blessings come to those who

are undeserving. That's what identifies a

community of grace, a community of believers at what's

identifies an individual who is embraced and understood grace

that they are receiving this from God.

Not simply it's because it's a good things that God's pouring

out upon us, but it's good things that God's pours out upon

us that we do not deserve. Now we talked a lot about that,

but there's a measuring stick. I think at least one has worked

in my life, all all my life as a Christian about to the extent to

which I understand grace, I understand it.

I can preach it, I can read the definition, I can read books

about it. I understand what grace is, but

how well do I receive Grace has been measured through ages by my

reception, by my understanding of the parable of the vineyard

workers, the parable that I just read for us.

How I responded, how I have responded to that parable

through my Christian life has done a wonderful job of

measuring for me, not my intellectual understanding of

grace, but my reception of grace into my own life.

I would like to think that it might do the same for you.

The the parable is really quite understandable.

It's a straightforward parable. Here we have a master of the

house, which again we're supposed to identify very

clearly is representative of God himself.

The master of a house has this massive vineyard and through a

vineyard, in order to care for a vineyard at different times

throughout a vineyard's life cycle needs more workers.

So you need a lot more workers at the beginning of a vineyard

when you're first planting and preparing the vineyard and then

towards the end, particularly at the time, you need a lot of

extra workers. And So what the vineyard owner

does is he goes and he hires day laborers.

He hires people that will work that particular day.

And we see this in verse 2 that he goes to the marketplace and

most most likely we're not told where he's finding these

laborers, but most likely they gathered at the marketplace, the

local marketplace. The vineyard owner would go and

say, hey, I'm looking for X number of workers, and the

people would line up and then he would negotiate with them a pay

scale and he negotiates with them a denarius.

Now, a denarius is a normal day's wage for a professional.

That's what the Roman Legion soldiers would get for a day's

labor. So by paying a day laborer or a

manual labor denarius a day, that's actually a good wage.

So right off the bat, the owner is, it's not outrageous, but

it's a good wage. He's demonstrating his

generosity by giving the workers a denarius a day.

So he sends those workers into the vineyard and they start

working. About 3 hours later he goes back

to the marketplace and he rounds up some more guys.

And you notice this in verses 3 and 4 where he doesn't identify

how much he's going to pay them. He just says I will do what is

right by you. And evidently this vineyard

worker has a kind of reputation around town, etcetera, that

people say, fine, we'll take a take, take it on that those

terms. And they go into the and begin

to work. So the guys start working in the

third hour, that's about 9:00. So the first hour is at six or

the beginning time is at 6:00 in the morning, 6:00 AM and then

the third hour is 9:00 AM. He goes back and does the same

thing at noon and at 3:00 PM he does this planning on stopping

working at 6:00. In the 11th hour, 5:00 he goes

out and rounds up some more workers and he sends them into

the into the vineyard as well. OK, so far so good.

The whistle blows, the day is over.

All the workers come gather around the foreman and the owner

of the owner says, now here's what I want you to pay.

I want you to pay the guys that came and worked only one hour.

So the 11th hour guys, the 5:00 guys, I want you to pay them a

denarius. So they pay the denarius and all

the other workers are standing around watching this happen.

The guys that have in the vineyard working for 12 hours

naturally think to themselves, hey, we're going to get paid

more. Maybe it's unrealistic to think

that we get 12 denarius that he'd multiply our time by 12,

but certainly we're going to get a lot more money when it comes

to here, to us. And so when they show up to get

their pay, they get a denarius and they grumble.

Now I have to say that when I first became a Christian, I read

this passage. I read through the scriptures.

I knew that I was supposed to read the scriptures.

I read the scriptures. There were lots of the parts of

the scriptures that I didn't understand.

I understood this. I didn't like it.

I completely associated with the workers.

That is, this is a monstrous, unfair situation.

This is unjust. How can you do that?

How can you give the the workers that have been working all day

long the same amount that you only paid those that are working

just one hour? Now, I was a young believer.

I was willing to follow the Lord.

I was willing to follow the scriptures.

And so the scriptures say that this is the way God functions.

So I say, OK, I understand it. I mean, I accept it, but I

didn't accept it. I didn't understand it.

I, I was really struggling and I was really offended that that

God would work this way, that he would handle things so unfairly.

And let me tell you, commentators fall all over

themselves trying to explain this kind of situation.

So just earlier this week, I read to 1 commentator that says,

look, what happened is that the workers that he hired at the

beginning of the day were so bad.

That's why he had to keep coming at the third hour, the 6th hour

and the 9th hour. They were so bad so that they

had. And the guys that came at the

11th hour were such good workers that they did as much work

during the one hour that they did during the 12 hours.

And that makes perfect sense. And it completely robs the

parable of everything. The parable makes exactly the

opposite point. And the parable is supposed to

rub you wrong. And if it doesn't rub you wrong,

then I need to talk with you across the board.

OK. And so then, and then I read

this other guy said, no, it was the coins, the people that got

the the the 11th hour folks that only worked one hour, they got

copper coins, which weren't as worth as much as the gold coins

that the workers at the end got. Again, completely robbing the

parable of its meaning. Because you're supposed to sit

there and say, wait a minute, why is it that the guys who only

work an hour get paid the same thing?

The guys at work 12 hours? How is this fair?

Now, as I grew in my understanding of God, and as I

grew up mostly in my understanding of my own sin and

depravity, and as I understood God's salvation in my own life,

I began to understand grace. I began to look at this

perspective not from a question of fairness, but a question of

goodness, goodness being poured out upon those who do not

deserve it. And after a couple years of

being a young believer, I started to read this parable.

And I said, yeah, but do you know what Yeah, Bud is?

Yeah. But yeah, I kind of understood.

You're in a discussion with somebody.

You're disagreeing with them, and they make a really good

point. And you kind of go, yeah, but

you're still unwilling to hold to, to let go of your own

position. So it's.

Yeah, but yeah. But yeah.

And so. OK, so I tell you, look, this

parable is about grace. This parable is about God doing

good things to his people. And you read it and then you

kind of go, OK, sounds monstrously unfair when you

first read it. It just sounds just wrong that

God would do such a thing. So unjust.

And then I say, no, it's about grace.

It's about God giving to those who don't deserve it.

They don't deserve it. And still God's pouring out

grace. And you kind of go, yeah, but

yeah, but. And as I grew older in my faith

and became more aware of my own sinfulness and more aware of

God's goodness and his love and more aware of what grace is, the

yeah, but became dimmer and dimmer and dimmer in my mind.

And I want to get to that spot where I can't hear it at all

because all I hear is the goodness of God and all I see

and I all I can, all I can do is rejoice mightily that those 11th

hour people got a full denarius. Now, if you're like me, you

probably think of yourself as one of the first group of

workers. OK, maybe not.

There are those super Christians out there that are working in

God's laboring in God's fields all the time, Jerry, like, you

know, I so I just caught him in my you know, there are those,

there are those guys who have been working in the day all all

day long. OK, I understand.

But I'm an, I'm 1/3 hour. I'm a 9:00 guy or a noon guy.

Maybe I'm a three o'clock guy, man.

I'm an 1159 guy and I know that I am, and so are you and so are

you. And God's grace is US seeing

God's goodness given to people who are 1159 folk and rejoicing

in that. Not sitting there grumbling that

that person has received grace, but being overwhelmed by that

and saying, wow, this is God's grace to us.

This is God's goodness to us. And interacting with a lot of

you and knowing some of you as I do, I know that you're fighting

to get there. You're trying to to tune out the

yeah, but the yeah, but is getting smaller and smaller as

God's grace gets bigger and bigger.

When you realize who you are and you realize that you're on the

11:59 or then you're grateful when God shows his mercy to that

Islamic terrorist. Where to that perverted person

that preaches the culture, this horrific message, or this person

that really aggravates you from the other side of the political

spectrum? And when God reaches them and

touches them with grace, wait a minute.

Not changes them and makes them perfect?

Not changes them and makes them perfect.

That that's an easy person to love, but in the midst of their

sinfulness, in the midst of their horror, in the midst of

their brokenness, nevertheless, God loves them.

You know that God loves them. You see God love them and that

makes you go yes God, great, wonderful.

It'll be wonderful if you change them too, Lord, but great for

how far you've got them so far. Because that's what grace is.

That's what God has done in your life.

He's given you good, wonderful things.

That's great. Those are God's blessings.

Luckily, God pours those out upon the world, but

specifically, He's given to us the grace and the blessings that

we do not deserve until you can read the parable of the vineyard

workers and get to the end of it and go.

That's great. I'm so glad God did that.

You haven't yet understood grace.

You haven't yet embraced grace. And when I talk with people

about God's grace, when I talk with myself about God's grace, I

still hear yeah. But all too often, if you're

saying yeah, but in your head, you've got to think again.

You got to read more. You got to understand more.

You got to pray more, you got to talk to me more, you got to talk

to somebody else more because there's going to be a time where

the yeah, but disappears and all you see is the beauty of God's

grace. But having received grace is

only half of the issue. I believe if we are community

here that truly understands God giving good things to people who

don't deserve it, and when we see it happen in this world, we

rejoice. We don't think, yeah, but all we

do is rejoice. When we become that kind of a

church, we are growing. We are maturing into what we

think the Bible calls us to be. But more than that, Grace is

also a measuring stick, not in terms of how much we receive or

how we understand what we receive, but what we share with

other people. This is the parable that Jerry

read for us, the parable of the unmerciful servant.

Many of you know this parable. It's a pretty straightforward as

well. Once again, you've got a king

that wants to settle debts. We're supposed to understand the

king here in terms of in terms of God himself wants to settle

those who owe him a debt. And he calls before him a

servant who owes him 10,000 talents.

Now 10,000 talents translates up into 4000 lifetimes worth of

salary, 4000 lifetimes worth of salary.

That's how much 10,000 talents is.

That's how much the servant owes.

He owes this and, and it's it's intended to be ridiculous.

The amount that Jesus uses in this parable is intended to be

it's not billions, it's gazillions.

It's intended to be a number that is so outrageous that you

just look at it and go, OK, I get the point.

There's this horrific amount of money somehow that God owes.

OK, so God is owed this horrific amount of money, this

overwhelming, this 10,004 thousand lifetime's worth of

money. And the and the servant falls on

his knees before the king, and says, Be merciful with me,

pleased with him, would not forgive me my debts.

He pleads with him and says let me have time and I'll pay it

off, which is ludicrous. It's stupid on its face.

You know, that's not, that's not, that's impossible.

And the king knows that and so doesn't say, OK, fine, go live

your 4000 lifetimes and pay me my money back.

He just says, forget it. I'll just forgive you your debt.

He forgives him his debt, and that servant, having received

that immense grace, that overwhelming gratitude, that

1159 hour grace that is poured out into this servant's life,

turns around and finds another servant that owes him 100

denarii. 100 denarii is about 6 months worth of wages.

So it's a lot of money. He owes him a lot of money.

It's six months worth of wages compared to 4000 lifetimes of

wages. And of course, what we know, the

servant refuses to give grace to this to his fellow servant,

instead throws him into prison until he pays back all his debt.

That was something that was a confusing about debtors prison

back then. You'd be thrown into prison and

you wouldn't get out until you paid off the money.

But you're in prison. So how can you work for the

money? You sell your kids, which might

sound like an attractive never mind you sell your kids, you do

something like that. That's what that's what debtors

prison was for this young man and that's what this unfaithful

servant does. And So what happens?

Of course the king goes ballistic and says, do you not

realize the grace that you have received?

Have you not been a person that has received this 11th hour

grace? Don't you realize who you are

and what you have received? Then how could you not?

My mouth runs away from me occasionally.

And some of you have been beneficiaries of that.

No, the non beneficiaries of that.

I have this utter fear that one of these days I'm going to be up

front here and I'm going to swear.

I'm not a big swear, but I do once in a while.

Something slips out occasionally and I'm terrified that one of

these days I'm going to do it. I'm terrified for a couple of

reasons. One, that would be a horrible

reflection upon my Lord. There's a reason why God calls

us to watch our tongue. There's a reason why our tongue

is so measure of of our standing before the Lord and all that

kind of stuff. So I have an appropriate fear

that I don't want to do that. It's something that's it would

be terrible witness as far as all that's concerned.

But you know why I'm really terrified of doing it?

Because five years from now, a number of you are going to

remember that I did it. Five years from now, you're

going to make jokes that I swore in the pulpit. 5 years from now,

that's still going to be a turn off to some of you people.

Because as loath as slow as we are to grasp, the Goddess poured

us out grace, so much slower are we to actually show that grace

to other people. And I know that to be true, and

you do too. How many of you think that you

would be wonderfully comfortable coming into this community with

your sins wide open, publicly exposed?

You get accused of something and it gets into the papers and

everybody knows it. Would you feel comfortable

walking into this group knowing that you were going to receive

that which you do not deserve? How do you respond to people

when you know that they're gossiping about you?

You just know they are because people do, and they're gossiping

about you and they're sitting right across the room from you.

How do you respond to them? You guys know what cancel

culture is. Cancer culture is the antithesis

of grace. Grace is exactly the opposite of

canceled culture. Grace is exactly the opposite of

unfriending somebody. Grace is exactly the opposite of

staying, of saying, have you ever thought in your head, you

know what? That's just it.

They've crossed the line there. Is there anything that the that

the parable has taught us other than that there is no line?

There is no line for you? How wonderful is that?

Then? How could there possibly be a

line for the person you're sitting next to until we become

a community of grace. I, by the way, I feel like I'm

wanging on you guys. I don't mean to do that.

And I don't even know what Wang means.

I, I, I, I feel like I am not saying that I, I, I don't have

in my mind these different scenarios.

Like while I remember when you were ungracious and I remember

when you were. I don't have particular things

in mind. I simply know this, that if we

were reflecting the grace that God gave us to our interactions

with one another, this place would be different.

I don't know how I, I don't, I can't say how, but we're getting

there. We're on the way there.

But the measure of, of this community's health, the measure

to which we are fulfilling what the, what our statement says

about us, that we're a Bible believing, a Christ centered

community of believers. The measure of that is how

gracious we are with each other. And gracious is not treating

each other nice. You're good at that.

We got a lot of nice people in this room.

Grace is treating like people like they don't deserve where

you know that person talks about you behind their back.

You know that person has betrayed you and yet you're

going to treat them like they don't deserve.

That's when we're going to know that we're a community the way

God wants us to be, that we're a community of grace.

When you learn, when you show that kind of grace to somebody

else, God, make it so in my life, make it so in our life,

make it so. Lord, we pray, let's.