In Between Worlds

My head walking up here was saying, don't say it,

don't say it, but don't say it. But if you

know me, you know I'm just gonna go ahead and

say it. Anyways. I give announcements to like ten of

you on Sundays, just saying, so maybe you haven't seen

me up here before. I absolutely love that we get

to spend time in the word together this morning. I

have lived in San Antonio. You ready, students, I've lived

here since the twentieth century. All right, yeah, uh huh,

let's here for the twentieth century. Yeah, I've lived here

long enough to know that where I'm standing right now

I think was racquetball court number two, right, okay, of

the Racquetball and Fitness Club. Yeah, before golds Children's area

was swimming pool. Yeah, crazy, right. We moved here in

the eighties. We were transferred, well, my dad was transferred here,

but we lived in Georgia previously. Now, if you don't

know Georgia very well, I'm assuming that you know Texas

very well. They're not the same. They're like two different

countries really, you know, moving here as a child, I thought, well,

Texas is technically in the south. I'm from the Deep South.

It's going to be pretty similar. No, you all know

Texas is not in the Deep South. Texas is Texas

to his own country or can be, should be whatever.

I'm officially a Texan by now, but then transition had

a learning curve. That transition had a learning curve. I'll

never forget. I still use it quite often. I'll never forget.

My grand father told me, well, you know, Josh, in

Texas they have barbecue. In Georgia, we have bobyque, all

right now. I didn't really understand what that meant other

than the fact that I had never heard of brisket before, right,

So to him, barbecue was like a four letter word

in Texas, and barbecue is the real thing. It was pork,

and I kid you not. We spent time in a

restaurant when we first had our taste of what we

thought was Mexican food, which now I'm like, so San

Antonio that I know that tex mex is not Mexican food,

and Mexican food is not Mexican food unless it's from

the right region and they make their tortillas a specific way.

Like we all know how picky we can get with

our Mexican food. We sat at a tex Mex restaurant

and kid you not, we ordered the tortillas. Never forget that.

But I also never forget that same grandfather. One day

we were at a restaurant, and this is before San

Antonio had sweet tea, all right, because tea and Georgia

is sweet tea in Texas was something ungodly and we

were sitting in the restaurant and my grandfather asked for

tea and he said, I want sweet tea, and she goes, well,

I could make it sweet. And he said, hold up,

are you gonna put the sugar in this tea after

it's already cooled off? Or are you gonna put the

sugar in while it's still hot? He was being dead serious,

and like what was she going to do? Like do

you want me to go check with the t chef

see how he's gonna prepare this tea? Or so she

did because he was dead serious. She comes back and says, well,

it's after it's already cooled off, and he said, I'll

have a coke. So this is how particular this learning

curve is. There are two cultural realities that are at

play between these two seemingly similar places. But we all

know that even in Texas, not everything's the same. Just

an hour and a half of the road, we've got

this fake Texas city that is basically California, and not

even the good part of California. Right, let's just be real,

gig them. So we have these different worlds that we

live in. For me, we're still getting used to this

dynamic of being in a new place, and all throughout

our Christian lives we live in this tension. We live

in this tension of being here and now, knowing that

there's a there and then, But we're supposed to live

here and now as if we're there and then, we're

now citizens of this new kingdom. This new kingdom is

not something that's out in the future. It's something that

Scripture tells us. Jesus tells us, and the Gospel of

Luke is in our midst And so how do we

live in the in between? And this is a struggle

that we see all throughout Scripture with this struggle of

living in the in between. And the disciples never really

get it right. They have lots of questions, questions like

I had moving from Georgia. Are we going to ride

horses to school? Real? Question I asked my parents as

we moved from a rural town in Georgia to the

suburbs of Sanity. It was crazy, like everything actually got

nicer and bigger here, no horses. The disciples constantly were

asking questions. They were constantly trying to get a feel

for the new life that Jesus was leading them into.

And these questions, I'm not going to call them dumb questions.

I'm not going to call them stupid questions. Will be

gracious and call them ignorant questions. Ignorant, right, Like, that's

a nice way of saying dumb. Or is in Georgia

we say bless your heart. Yeah. And they kept talking

about these questions about this new kingdom, and so Jesus

had to constantly be explaining to his disciples what the

kingdom was so that they would know how to live

in the here and now. And we have this parable

that we see in Matthew chapter twenty, and this parable

is explaining for the disciples a proverb, and that proverb

comes Jesus says it right after this experience that they have,

and we'll get into that, but right now I'd like

to read for us the parable, which is our text

for today, and this is in Matthew chapter twenty, verses

one through sixteen. If you'll look there with me God's

word and Jesus says, for the Kingdom 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 day, he sent

them into his vineyard, and going about out of 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'll 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 idol all day?

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

He said to them, you go into the vineyard. Two.

And when the 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.

And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each

of them received a denarius. And 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 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. We looked

just a few paragraphs before we see this story in

Matthew nineteen where the disciples are walking with Jesus and

they encounter this rich young man. This rich young man

comes up to Jesus and ask him, I think a

great question to ask the son of God, how can

I get eternal life? Great question, right source, tough answer

because he says, well, you obey the commandments. He's like,

I've kept all of them. I've kept them all perfectly,

you know. I haven't stolen, envied, committed adultery, murdered, like

I'm good, my rap sheet is clean, my resume looks great.

And Jesus says, okay, go and sell all of your

possessions and then come and follow me. And the rich

young man he doesn't even respond, just turns around and

walks away, bitterly weeping. This kind of shakes the disciples.

They're like, whoa Jesus, If not him, who then can

be saved? And Jesus answers in typical Jesus way and says,

with man, this is impossible, but with God, all things

are possible. Okay, don't really know what to do with that,

other than it's not up to him. It's up to God. Right.

But then Peter, we can always count on Peter to

be real and be one of us. And he says, wait, wait, wait,

we've left our homes. I've left my home, I've left

everything behind, and I've followed you. Okay, that's what the

rich young man wasn't willing to do, wasn't able to do.

We've done that, so what do we get? What do

we get? Now? Before we judge Peter too harshly, let's

acknowledge the fact that we do this a lot with God.

We feel it, at least in our hearts and in

our owns. We feel we've done this God, what do

we get? What what do I get in return? And

Jesus answered Peter, disciples, you're going to get one hundredfold

what you've given up. You're going to get eternal life

in the kingdom. You're going to get eternal life. Here's

where Jesus turns it on them, because Jesus, I believe,

senses the question behind the question if you're married in

this room, you know what I'm talking about. The question

that wasn't really verbalized, but you know was the real question. Right.

Jesus sees into the heart of his disciples and he

sees something that leads him to say this proverb though

last will be first, the first last, So you're gonna

get one hundred fold eternal life, but the last will

be first in the first last. Then he shares this

parable of the workers in the vineyard to explain the

proverb and proverbs are much like analogies. We can take

these parables and we can think, we need to assign

where am I in this parable, and we can assign

every little detail to any little thing, and we can

turn it into something that it's really not. So the

question that we have today is how is God laying

this out for us so that we know what it means,

not just for the disciples then, but for us right now,

as we like them, live in this in between. So

we see five principles. We see five principles that come

out of this parable. Let's recount real quick what happens

in the parable. There's a vineyard, there's this owner. He

goes into the marketplace. Oh, let's not miss the fact

that the workers that he picks up and offers wages

to and work to, they were unemployed. Says here in

the parable that he finds them standing idle. They've got

nothing to do. He comes and talks to one of

them and says, why are you still saying her one.

No one's hired us. We don't have a job. They're

all unemployed. They all were not chosen to go work. However,

the owner of the field calls them at six am,

start of the shift, nine am, twelve pm, three pm,

and the shift ends at six o'clock, okay, six o'clock.

At five o'clock, he goes back into the marketplace, and

he still grabs workers and brings them out to the field.

And then at the end of this parable, the manager

comes out and pays the people hired at five o'clock,

and then went down the line all the way back

to the ones that were paid at six am, and

he pays them at denarius. Which let's not get too

nerdy about this, but let's acknowledge the fact that denarius

was not a typical day's wage for a worker in

a field. It was the typical daily wage for a

professional in a workplace. So what he's paying them is

not like, well, you know, they could go work at

Bill Miller for fifteen an hour, so I guess I'll

pay him fifteen an hour. No, it wasn't like that.

It was like, hey, I'm gonna pay him a professional,

like a professional will be paid during the day a denarius.

So it's actually more scandalous, not just for the one

hired at five pm, but really for the one hired

at six am as well. And then of course the

people hired at six as we can sympathize with him,

they're like, wait a minute, how in the world does

that guy who hasn't even broken a sweat get paid

the same as me when I can't even stand up

without grunting. I'm sunburn, I need to hydrate, need some electrolytes.

I am worn out. And then he's gonna get paid

the same exact as me. Maybe in his mind he's thinking,

I should have just hung out until five o'clock. It's risky.

So what do we see? What is Jesus communicating in

this parable that answers the proverb that addresses the experience

in this in between world. He answers this question that

was not really asked. He says, the Kingdom of Heaven

is like and then he shares the parable. The first

principle that we see is that God calls us, regardless

of our life, resume. God calls us, regardless of our

life resume. Now some of us we know how the

rat race works. It's not like Jesus was on zip

recruiter or indeed dot com. He's like, oook, need some

workers in the field, Need some workers in the field. Yep,

that one looks good. Oh he's got experience. Oh why

was he fired from that field over there? He's not

going through resumes. He's going and finding people that desperate

for work, and he's calling them to come work. It's

the same with us today, by the way, and praise

God for that, because if we were called into the

Kingdom of God based on our life, resume some of us.

If we be honest with ourselves, look deep into the

recesses of our heart, we could say, Yeah, I think

I'm the type of person that God should call I'm good.

I help people across the street. I've given food to

the homeless, I've helped people. I'm nice to people. I

don't yell at people as much. I don't do any

of these, you know, worldly bad things. But as we

think in the economy of the world, we miss the

reality of the economy of heaven. None of us, not

a single one, has been called into the family of

God because of anything that we have qualified our lives

to be, not a single good thing. Scripture says that

our best works are no better than filthy racks. That's

the best, the best you got worthless. Now you can think, man,

that's not right. So can it be a good person?

Being good? I guess is okay, except for the fact

that the very definition of good is God. So there

is no good that is not God. There is no

good that does not come from God. There is no

good that does not reflect God. And so everything else

is just a mere shadow that somehow points to or

resembles something that might be good. But there is no

good unless it's God. What do we do with this

as we live in this in between? We're in the

here and now, but we're called to live in the

there and then here and now. I know that sounds

kind of like a tongue twister and a riddle, but

bear with me for a minute. What this does or

should do for us is lead us to live our

life with a position and a posture of humility. What

does humility look like in this life? We certainly doesn't

look like. Look at how much of the field I cleared,

Look at all the works I've done. The reality of

a heavenly economy is that our works, even now, even today,

they don't produce anything in us or for us. You

don't get extra credit in heaven if you live as

a good Christian today. Quite frankly, because the Bible never

points to any qualifier of Christianity that's good, bad, or whatever.

In the middle, Christian is Christian. We have all been

called not based on our works, not based on our resumes,

but based on His loving kindness, on his general And

that leads us into the second principle that we see,

and that is that God is gracious and generous. God

is gracious, and he's generous in all things, and specifically

in particularly to us. He's not just generous in the reward,

he's generous in the calling. He's generous in the work.

You could think, wait, isn't the result of the fall?

That work is gonna be painful by the sweat of

your brow. Are you going to get your food from

the dirt. There's gonna be thorns and thistles, and you're

gonna cut yourself and it's gonna you're gonna get bruised,

You're gonna get tired and sweaty. Yes, But then we

also see with Jesus inaugurating this Kingdom of Heaven here

on earth, he says, my yoke is easy, my burden

is light. You're still gonna sweat. Many of us in

the room today are thinking about the past week of

work and we're like, yeah, I got a little exhausted

by that. That was a little tough wasn't the best.

But God is gracious and generous with us, even in

the midst of the chaos. His generosity and his graciousness,

it calls us to something that is more powerful than

the circumstances of our experience in this world. Paul writes

about it in Philippians. He says, all the game that

I've had, and I'm paraphrasing, all the game that I've

had in this life, my title, my power, my position,

my wealth. I consider it all loss for the sake

of knowing Jesus Christ. Like it's all gone. None of

that matters. It counts for nothing. Even if the world

tells me it is everything, I see it as nothing,

because in the economy of Heaven, I know that I

have everything, and that is knowing Christ in Him crucified.

And here's the result that it produces. In Paul, it

produces a result of him saying, I have learned to

be content in any season and circumstance, no matter what's happening.

Here the joy that I have and knowing Christ, the

joy that I have in treasuring Christ above all things.

It gives me a joy that gives me a peace,

that gives contentment in my spirit for any moment that

this world has to throw after me, every single moment.

And contentment's not like, well, it is what it is.

That's not contentment. Contentment is joy in the midst of

the storm, Joy in the midst of every circumstance. You know,

that's not from us. It's not something we can produce.

It's all based on the graciousness and generosity of our God.

Principal III shows us something that is very I don't know,

uncomfortable sometimes, and that is this God is calling his

sons and daughters even into the eleventh hour. When's the

eleventh hour? I'm so glad, Just like the first service,

everyone was silent at that. If you answered that, we

were gonna have some words, because reality is, we don't know.

I don't mean that as a threat, It's just like

I'd have questions. We don't know when the eleventh hour is.

We don't know when the shift of this temporary world

is over. We're not meant to know, are we? In

the eleventh hour? Paul thought he was and Corinthians he

writes about the other apostles, but then he says, and

I am the one, I am as one untimely born.

In other words, they've already lived so much of this life.

They were doing this while I was off persecuting the church.

I was off gambling on Stephen's clothes after he was killed.

I was there persecuting, killing, arresting, murdering. I was doing

all those things while they were risking everything for Christ.

And yet God called me here in the eleventh hour.

He almost saw it as unfair. And yet and yet

two thousand years later were like, uh, Paul, we don't

know hour we're in. Is it the eleventh hour? Well,

we don't know, so we might as well live like

it is. That was the attitude that all the disciples

and the apostles had. That's a attitude that everyone in

church history he ever had. Was an urgency of life

based on the imminence of the return of Jesus Christ.

Therefore we should live with that urgency. Now we have

issues of fairness, don't we? We have issues of fairness.

I think of my life, and if you know me

very well, you know I love to read biographies, especially

of saints that have gone before us, and see their

stories and see their lives born out. And I love

to see lives like Jim Elliott or Hudson Taylor or

Adoniram Judson at an Arms is one of my faiths. Like,

but that dude he got rejected by India, where he

wanted to serve with William Carey, got rejected wouldn't let

him in, so he ends up in Burma. On the

way over there, he loses two wives who died at

illness and sickness children, and he ends up arrested, and

he spends years hanging upside down in a wooden shack,

and his third wife would slip him food through the

slats of wood in the shack. I think he might

deserve a little more reward than me. I once had

to eat at a restaurant I really didn't want to

eat at. It's tough. We see these stories, and we

see these lives while living in a country where we

are so incredibly blessed with such security and freedom. Yeah,

even now where we see some of that eroding away.

Possibly even then, we live in such a free world

today where sometimes the worst that happens is we get

made fun of or get called up name. However, we

do look around and think that maybe we're better.

Than some of these people that hate Jesus, and sometimes,

if we're honest, we find ourselves wishing for other people's demise.

The urgency of the imminence of Jesus's return calls us

not just to be urgent in the way that we're

preparing for the kingdom for ourselves, but in the way

that we're living in such a way that is constantly

looking for the idol workers so that they would be

asked to come join the kingdom. Principle four, we see

something that is well to me everything, to be honest,

it gets into this fairness. But principle for is eternal

life in the Kingdom is the reward. That's the reward

of a question for you, because it's one that I've

asked myself so many times. When you think of heaven

and you look forward to heaven, what is it that

you're looking forward to? I'm sorry to all those that

have sung hymns about this, and well I'm not really sorry,

but I'm sorry that it's going to feel uncomfortable to you.

Like streets of gold, pearly gates. Who gives a rip?

Is that? I mean? Is that really what we're looking

forward to? Gold and pearls, we grow pearls and lab

Now that's it. Is it money? Is it the mansion

that we sing about, Is that it like a better

neighborhood with a bigger house and better jewelry and well

paved streets. No, that's not the reward at all. The

images that we get in scripture of Heaven are minted

show us that it's something so much greater and so

much better than anything we could have here on earth.

But it has nothing to do with the materials that

things are built with. It has nothing to do with

size of houses, has everything to do with the fact

that Jesus is there. Jesus is the treasure. Jesus is

the prize. If Jesus was literally building heaven in the

slums of India, it would be heaven because he's there.

Jesus is the prize. We said so many things up

in our lives that rob us of the joy of

what this reality is. That we have this treasure, and

here in the parable he lets us in on something

that happens in our own hearts and our own lives,

and that is that we are infatuated with comparison. The

first worker complains about it to Narius, and he's like,

you think I've not been generous with you? Do you

begrudge my generosity? We've heard it said so many times

in this world that comparison is the thief of joy.

Have you heard that before? Comparison is the thief of joy?

Guess what? In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is no comparison.

Therefore we live and they hear, and now in between

worlds where we seek to destroy these feelings and thoughts

of comparison. We don't post a story on our Instagram

and then check it every two minutes to see how

many likes it's gotten so that our self esteem changes.

We don't constantly try to build up our follower counts

so that we can feel something about ourselves. We don't

compare ourselves to people around us in our lives to

try and figure out am I doing okay? Young parents,

I want to focus on you just for a second,

because I know here at Crossway we've got so many

you want to know what the thief of your joy is.

It's constantly looking at other people's kids and other people's

marriages and thinking, why are my kids a wreck? And

theirs are so well put together? And you feel like

I'm failing at this. Can I let you in on

the not so secret secret. If it was a test,

we're all failing at y'all. You may see something that

looks put together. Who open the door, You'll see it.

You ever gotten compliments about your kids and then you're like, well,

let me tell you what they did this morning. It's

so easy to look and compare and think where do

I stand amongst humanity? Where do I stand? None of

it matters as long as you're standing in the presence

of Jesus. He is the standard. He is not the

comparison standard. He's the standard in which we're found. We

are found in Jesus. His righteousness is ours, his rap

sheet is ours. He took ours and threw it away.

He killed it at the cross, He killed it for good.

So we live today in this in between, not mistaking

the economy of the world. With this comparison and prizes

and status and things that are all fade away. We

think like Paul and say, I consider all things that

I have gained, I consider it all lost for the

sake of knowing Jesus Christ. Lastly, principal five, God gives

us more than we deserve. God gives us more than

we deserve. We look at this parable and we think fairness, faireness.

Is it fair? Is it fair? The God that came

at six, the God that came at five? Is it

fair that they all got the same pain? Is it

fair that I have to live life in these circumstances,

whereas they have to sacrifice and follow Christ in those

wonderful circumstances. Is it fair? You know what fair is?

It's justice. I know, we love that word. I mean,

it's America, right, it's America. We like justice not so

much when you find out that the price of being

an enemy of God is the fullness of the wrath

of God. And who dare I say or guess is

an enemy of God? Oh? That's right, it's all of us.

You want fair, you can find it at the cross.

That's fair. That's what we deserve. It's not that we

deserved like a toyota and he gives us a lexis.

It's we deserve death and he gives us not just life,

but eternal life. Is it fair? I praise God that

it's not. Fairness is such a human invention. It's so crazy.

He deserved everything, and yet he took on the fullness

of the wrath of God on that cross for me

and for you, And then we can sit back and

tell God, hey, is that fair? Then we see Jesus.

So what do we do with that? How do we

live in the in between knowing that God gives us

far more than we deserve? Well, I think it's pretty simple.

How do you react when someone brings you from death

to life based on nothing you did, based on nothing

you earned, based on nothing you deserved. He just gave

it freely, his life gave it freely. You respond very simply,

thank you, Jesus, Thank you. How often do you just

stop and say thank you Jesus. Life of thanksgiving Man,

It'll change a lot of things in you, changes a

lot of things in me when I actually take the

time to be thankful and grateful. God gives us here

a vivid picture of how our hearts need to be

transformed and remade for the economy of heaven, so that

we can live in the here and now as then

and there, because then in there it's here right now.

Pray with me, Father, We praise you and thank you

for your word. We praise you for all that you

have done, knowing we don't deserve it. We haven't earned it.

And yet and yet you have given us more than

we could ever fathom, and your generosity and your graciousness.

And so God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would

be with us right now, that you would be transforming

us more into the image of Christ, that you would

be bringing us closer to our true treasure, which is Jesus,

and Jesus alone you change all things for us. Father,

would your spirit bring that to remembrance to us, that

we all would see clearly the prize that is Jesus.

We pray these things in your Son's name. Amen.