"Grumbling at Grace" Matthew 20:1-16 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, we would all agree, generally speaking, that fairness is a good thing.

If you were to be asked, just in the abstract, is fairness good or bad, you would all choose good.

We want Lady Justice to be blindfolded.

We want if something's right, it's to be rewarded, and if something's wrong, it's to be punished.

And if one person gets a reward, the other person should get a reward.

And if one person breaks the law and is punished, then the other person who breaks that law should also be punished.

And there should be some sense of fairness and equity in how laws and justice are enacted in this world.

We would all agree with that, I believe.

But you also understand that once you move from the abstract to the more concrete, the idea of fairness gets much more difficult.

Every parent, I'm sure, is familiar with this.

You learn this in parent boot camp.

You know, before you have your first child, all the parents go away to boot camp and they're taught the basics of parenting.

And one of the first things you learn there is that when your children say, That is not fair, you respond with, Life is not fair.

I mean, you all you all know this.

Nevertheless, in our minds, we wish life was fair, and we understand that fairness is probably a virtue, but like I said, once it gets more concrete rather than abstract, it does become trickier.

To keep with the parenting analogy, here's a very basic parenting scenario that's played out.

It is mealtime and you're serving up the plates.

And does the older kid get more on his plates than the youngest kid?

You know, and if you were to ask your kids that, they would want some follow-up questions first.

Like, what's for dinner, for example?

Are we talking about vegetables?

Because then the younger kid is like, yes, the older kid needs more vegetables.

I need less.

It's only fair.

When she was my age, she had less vegetables, and so now she's older, she needs more, she can even have mine.

But then afterwards, if you're like dividing up the Chick-fil-A milkshake into three different cups, you know, the is it should it still be the oldest kid should still get more?

I mean, in this hypothetical scenario, you're dividing up the Chick-fil-A milkshakes into three different cups.

The youngest in hypothetically named Geneva might say, how is it fair that that oldest hypothetical one, five years older than me, gets so much more in her milkshake cup?

Well, she had more vegetables.

That's not fair.

We understand that.

To make it even trickier, in our world, not just do we have to navigate fairness, but we also have to navigate concepts of grace.

We believe in a God who shows grace.

Grace is giving somebody something that they don't deserve.

So, by definition, if you are a proponent of grace, you're gonna have some problems with your concept of fairness.

Grace is getting something you don't deserve.

Fairness is getting somewhat of equitable treatment about what you deserve.

Those two are often enemies with one another.

I think of back in California, I taught at a high school, a Christian high school, a village Christian high school is up in the suburbs, and to get into the high school, there was an entrance from the bottom of the school, there was an exit from the top of the school, and so there'd be backup through the neighborhoods.

There'd be a line of cars through the neighborhood to get into school in the morning as parents were going to drop off, the line would stretch out, you know, to give you some kind of analogy you might be familiar with.

It'd be like dropping off at ICS, the line would stretch down back lick into the neighborhood there as parents would queue up to drop their kids off.

And so some parents would come in from the top of the school and cut in the line, saving themselves 10 minutes.

That's not fair.

There's even a sign-up that says, don't enter.

And so parents complain to the principal, and the principal talks to one of his friends at the uh police station, and the next day after the complaints, there's a motorcycle police officer there right at the sign.

And man, everybody's stopping, looking way long at the stop sign.

But some people tried to dodge in that wrong entrance.

It'd be like, you know, dodging in the off the Braddock entrance, the cut in line down there.

You know what I'm talking about?

Some of you ICS parents know what I'm talking about.

Now a motorcycle cop there.

But the people who got pulled over on that one-day experiment were teachers.

It was teachers who were cutting in the line.

And you can think of all the high school students to see their English teacher pulled over by the motorcycle cop at the entrance to school.

They're like, yes.

That is grace.

I didn't deserve to see that, but the Lord showed me grace, and I got to see that.

And that little experiment with the police officer lasted one day.

That guy was never to be seen again.

Teachers are like, no way, that's not fair.

You add on top of that a concept of mercy.

You know, if grace is getting something you don't deserve, mercy is having something you deserve withheld, something negative that you deserve.

You deserve judgment, you deserve wrath from God, you deserve punishment for your sin.

Mercy is having that withheld from you.

You think of getting pulled over by a police officer.

You want mercy.

You know your neighbor who's a total criminal and causes all kinds of problems in your neighborhood.

You see him pulled over and you're like, finally, justice.

You get pulled over by the same cop ten minutes later, and you're like, Grace, mercy, please.

It's not fair.

Rest in our hearts is rested, is nested in our hearts, this concept of fairness.

This is what the parable is about in Matthew chapter 20.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

This is a unique parable.

It's not recorded in Mark or Luke.

Um, much of Matthew's gospel is recorded in other places, but Matthew does have some parallels that are, uh some parables that are unique to him.

This is one of them.

It's a very well-known parable.

It fits with the context of what's happening.

Uh, and so let me bring you up to speed where we are.

We've went through Matthew 18 a few weeks ago and Matthew 19 a few weeks ago, and so some of this will be familiar, but Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for the last week of his life.

He's walking up from Galilee up towards Jerusalem.

It's south, but they call it up.

He's walking along the Jordan River towards Jericho.

He's gonna turn in Jericho, he's gonna heal the blind person in Jericho and walk into Jerusalem for the final week of his life.

In that final week of his life, there will be uh Gentiles that come to faith.

There will be the Roman centurion who has his sins forgiven.

Meanwhile, the Pharisees are gonna be driven away from Jesus.

He's gonna turn over the tables in the temple, and already he's got a motley crew with him.

This is long before he even gets to Jericho, days before he gets to Jericho.

The disciples wish that the rich and powerful were following Jesus, but instead, there's a rich young ruler that just came to Jesus in Matthew 19, and Jesus basically shooed him away.

The rich young ruler loved his own wealth and possessions more than he loved Christ, and so he wasn't able to follow Jesus, and he went away, and Jesus was sad.

Peter responds with if you remember, Lord, we've left everything to follow you.

I left my house, that guy didn't.

The rich young ruler, he didn't leave his house, I left mine.

What do I get?

Jesus tells him, Many are who are the first, this is Matthew 19, verse 30, many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Matthew 19:30

In Matthew 18, Jesus received the children to him.

In Matthew 19, the rich young ruler goes away.

Peter and the other disciples are confused.

Are they in the category of children?

Are they in the category of the rich and the powerful?

What would you rather be?

I mean, there's genuine confusion here about what is the Lord up to.

And so Jesus says, the first will be last, the last will be first.

He's now going to tell a parable and it's going to make this point.

Many of Jesus' parables, well, all of Jesus' parables, are about salvation.

When the Lord uses parables, he's crafting a fictional story.

They're not true.

They're a fictional story designed in his mind.

They all have the same point.

The same point of all of his parables is about the nature of salvation.

So you err if you make one of the parables of Jesus about morals or about ethics or about, you know, virtue.

That's not what the parables are for.

The parables are designed to show you the nature of salvation.

Also, really cool, most of Jesus' parables, not all of them, but many of them at least, always start the way this one starts, with a very familiar story that everybody would understand, something very common.

Jesus took the very common and accessible, would use that to illustrate salvation with a dramatic turn.

And that's what happens in this story.

And so he says, after saying the first will be last, the last verse, he tells the story.

So again, this is a very common occurrence.

All of the listeners would be familiar with this kind of scenario.

If you have a vineyard, if you're a master of a house, you have a lot of property, you have a vineyard on that property.

You don't have somebody who works for you year round.

You might have you don't have an army of workers year round.

It's a very seasonal operation.

You need workers just for the harvest.

You might need more workers just on a day or two.

If there's a big harvest, you have to make wine.

It's a very narrow window here when you want the grapes off the vines.

And so you need extra workers just for a couple days or maybe a week.

So you wouldn't hire somebody year-round.

You would go to the marketplace and you would find day labors.

And lots of people did this for a job.

The closest American analogy might be the parking lot at Home Depot.

There's a lot of people in the parking lot there looking for a job for that day.

If you have a house or even a business, or even if you're a contractor, you wouldn't hire necessarily, you know, a mason or somebody who specializes in fences or painting to be a full-time employee.

You would hire him just the days that you need him.

That's this scenario.

So again, very common occurrence.

The guy goes to the marketplace early in the morning, so the sun is just coming up to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, so they have a discussion.

There's a bit of a back and forth.

This word agreement implies some kind of dispute with the resolution.

They settle on a denarius a day.

This is the standard rate for a day laborer.

In fact, the way the Roman currency worked, a denarius was the fixed rate for a day laborer.

So you would think there wouldn't be much negotiation, but of course there is.

They agree.

A denarius.

Today, you know, in the US, what is that?

150 bucks, 200 bucks to hire a day laborer for the day.

That's well, that's the value of this denarius at this at this time.

So they settle for it.

And he sends them into the vineyard.

And going out around the third hour, so now it's like, you know, three hours later, the sun's been up for a little while, still in the morning, but he goes out a few hours into work, and the owner comes back and he sees others standing idle in the marketplace.

There's still people who haven't been hired yet.

So he says to them, You go into the vineyard too.

And whatever is right, I will give you.

And so now the conversation is different.

These new workers are gonna work a few hours less than the other workers, but they don't have the negotiation.

They don't go back and forth there.

The owner just says, Whatever is appropriate, I'll pay you.

They're bypassing all that because the workday is going here.

They're not gonna get paid more than a denarius, that's obvious, because the people who've been working longer settled for a denarius.

They're not gonna get paid half that, because they're working more than half the day.

They'll sort out those little details later, and the guys are fine.

They get to work.

Oh, going out around the sixth hour.

You know, this is after lunchtime now.

And then the ninth hour, he does the same thing.

There's still lunchtime, he hires more people.

Two in the afternoon, he hires more people.

Then around the 11th hour, so now we're talking like right before closing time.

This is not a nine to five job, by the way.

This is not a unionized job here.

These people are working from the morning as soon as the sun comes up until the sun goes down.

It's like a half hour, an hour before closing time.

The guy goes back to the marketplace again, and there are still workers there.

He finds them standing around, verse 6 says.

And so the owner says, Why are you standing here idle all day?

And that's kind of a silly question.

And why are they standing there idle?

Because they want a job, is why they're standing there.

Nobody's hired them, and so you think, well, why wouldn't you just go home?

And you know, and you see the same thing today.

There might be workers in the Home Depot parking lot late in the afternoon.

They're not gonna get hired that day.

Maybe they might get a job for the next day, or maybe they just don't want to go home.

They're holding out for work.

They don't want to go home with, they're not gonna show up at lunchtime without a job.

They're at least gonna stay in the parking lot hoping that something comes, even if it's not very reasonable.

They'd rather do that than go back home as an unemployed guy to their family.

When you think about it, it makes sense.

But the owner is not thinking about it like that.

The owner's thinking about it, why are you still here?

What's wrong with you?

And they're like, well, nobody hired us.

So the owner, you're right before quitting time.

Says, all right, you go in the vineyard too, verse seven.

Fine, hired, go.

Well, finally the sun sets in verse eight.

And the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, so the foreman is not the owner, the foreman represents the owner, he's the one managing all of the workers.

He's, you could say it this way: the foreman is the will of the owner manifest, the will of the owner incarnate.

The owner has a will and a purpose, but the owner is not going to go and be the one who pays out the workers.

He's going to send the foreman who represents him.

So the foreman goes, but the foreman has the will of the owner.

I think it's a key point.

The foreman's acting in accordance with the will of the owner.

And the owner tells the foreman, call the laborers, this is the middle of verse 8, pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first.

So here's where Jesus is now using the language that you see if you draw your eyes back up to Matthew 19, verse 30.

Matthew 19:30

What Jesus in Matthew 20, verse 8, is using the same language for Matthew 19, verse 30.

Matthew 20:8 Matthew 19:30

The first will be last, the last will be first.

The listeners would understand that this parable, here's the main point, this parable is encapsulating the language Jesus already used to introduce it.

So what the foreman is doing is how Jesus responded to Peter, who had left his house for gospel work.

The foreman uses that language.

He's going to pay everybody, beginning with the last.

The person who is hired at 4.30 will get paid first.

The person hired at 2 o'clock next at noon, and so forth, all the way back down to those who are hired in the morning.

When those hired at the 11th hour came, each of them received a denarius.

So the dudes that got hired, you know, 445 or whatever, they get the 150 bucks.

They get the denarius.

Now everybody, this is happening publicly.

All the workers are watching this happen.

So they see these guys who've just been there for a few minutes get cashed out like that, and everybody else is thinking, this is going to be great.

Because if those guys roll in at quit in time and get what we were paid, then certainly we're going to get twice that.

Three times that.

Who knows?

We won the lottery with this job.

Verse 10, when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more.

Of course they did.

But each of them also received a denarius.

On receiving it, they grumbled to the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour.

And you've made them equal to us who have worn the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

You've made him equal.

This isn't right.

Now, for you to really appreciate what comes next in this parable, you need to, in your hearts, resonate with their complaint.

You have to have sympathy for them.

For most of you, I'm sure this is a familiar parable.

You know where Jesus is going with this, you know how it ends.

So it almost short circuits it.

If you know the ending, it short circuits the effectiveness.

Because the people listening to it for the first time, they don't know how this ends.

So to get the most out of this, you need to have sympathy for those who feel like they're being cheated.

This is often true with Jesus' parables, of course.

He structures them in such a way that those who are familiar with the gospel are gonna likely be siding with the wrong people.

The most obvious example of this is the good the prodigal son parable.

You know, by the end of the prodigal son parable, you see the older brother and you have sympathy for him, right?

He stayed around.

He did work the whole time.

He worked hard, and he doesn't get a party, and the slacker, loser, villain brother, he comes back and they slaughter the fat and calf.

Not cool.

So you want to have a little sympathy for these guys because that's the point of the story.

You don't really feel the weight of the conclusion unless you are sympathizing with the people who feel victimized at this point.

Like this is, these guys work for an hour and they get paid what we've been out here all day.

Not cool.

I'm sure you all have illustrations from your own life about this.

Think of like the science fair, middle school science fair kind of thing.

Where some kids like bust it out and they make an incredible display, and there's like uh LED screens up there and rotating graphics and you know they're creating new elements from a you know nuclear fission conveyor belt right at their thing.

And the person next to them is like a paper mache volcano.

You know, it doesn't even work.

This jelly, it's obviously jelly.

Doesn't even work.

You know, and the judges come by and they're like, everybody gets the participation prize.

And you're like, my LED graphics, you have to wear safety goggles, it'll blow up.

The cat's got jelly dripping off of newspaper.

We do not get the same award.

You probably have examples of this from your own life.

I have a very specific example when I was in high school.

My high school soccer team to pay our fees, a business owner hired us to paint over graffiti in an arroyo.

Arroyo is like a wash or a creek that's concreted in, they're all over Albuquerque.

This one had graffiti all over it, and this business owner hired my high school soccer team to come and paint over the graffiti in the arroyo.

This is an all-day job for us in long arroyo, lots of graffiti.

So we're out there and we're working under the sun, and there's like a big road that goes by us, and uh, cars are honking at us and yelling at us, and it was like we're high school.

This is so embarrassing, right?

It looks like we're doing community service out here, like we're criminals or something, painting over the arroy, and you know, but this is gonna pay our soccer fees and all this.

And at the end of the day, like 30 minutes left, we're almost done, we're out of paint, one of uh one of our teammates shows up and just works for like 20 minutes with us.

And then the yearbook photographer rolls in and takes a picture of all of us together.

Like the guy, if you get our Del Radio High School yearbook, he's got his picture in it with the graffiti cleanup team.

He was there for like 20 minutes, drank our soda, took our picture, and went home.

And his fees for the soccer team got paid the same way that mine did.

Not cool.

This is what's going through the mind of the listeners of the story.

It's not right.

This guy rolls in right before quitting time, gets his picture in the paper, does the grapes, you'll have his name on the little wine bottle, he gets everything, and he was there for a minute.

Now, before we see how Jesus responds, I want to give you an outline.

It's interesting that Jesus responds to this in the form of questions.

I'll use that as an outline, three questions that reveal your attitude towards grace.

Jesus is gonna now insert himself into the story, and Jesus is going to be speaking to the disciples and to the Pharisees who are gathered, and he's gonna be speaking to them through the mouth of the owner.

So these are Jesus' words.

The owner here is representing truth and the attitude of the Lord towards the workers in the vineyard.

These are all gospel oriented questions.

As I said, all of the parables of Jesus are revealing gospel truths.

This is not an exception to that.

It's revealing gospel truth.

As in uh Jesus' parables, Israel often stands for the vineyard.

The vineyard, Israel is God's vineyard.

The workers there are the religious leaders of Israel, they're the ones that have been left there.

So the same, all these principles are true here as well.

So the first question, first question.

Did you eagerly receive the gospel?

Did you eagerly receive the gospel?

Look how Jesus words it, and then we'll transition to the way I've worded it on the screen.

The owner replies to them in verse 13.

The owner replies in a very friendly way.

These aren't his enemies.

These landowners, the landowner and the workers who are upset, they're not enemies with each other.

The landowner speaks to them cordially, friends.

I am doing you no wrong.

It's a statement of fact.

They have not been wronged.

And then you see this in the question.

Did you not agree with me for Daenerys?

Isn't this what you signed up for?

At the beginning of the day, you were happy to get hired for denarius.

You were happy for it.

So your attitude right now is not based on any wrong towards you.

It is based entirely on jealousy, not on actual injustice.

There's no injustice that's happening here.

The people agreed to a certain amount.

They're going to get what they agreed to.

And so that's the question from the landowner.

Didn't you agree to exactly this?

This is what you wanted.

Their discontent is due to envy, not due to the overlooking of any of their rights.

Clearly, this is a gospel story.

There can be an attitude among people that is antagonistic towards those who show up late.

You know, you think of the person you're witnessing to, and they say, I'm not gonna come to faith in Christ.

Now I'm gonna live for myself for my whole life.

And at the end of my life, I'm going to get saved then.

And you would tell that person, please don't.

You'd be wasting your life.

It's harder for an old person to get saved than for a young person, because an old person has built his whole life now on meaninglessness, on materialism, and on arrogance and works righteousness.

It's harder to repent when you've lived your whole life a certain way than it is before you lived your whole life a certain way.

So don't waste your life just to live for yourself and then give it to the Lord, because then when you do get saved, if you do get saved, you'll recognize that you wasted your life.

It'll be more sorrowful than if you just get saved at a younger age and live your life with eternal purpose and meaning.

So that's what I would tell a person that says that.

Somebody says, I'm going to live for myself and get saved on my deathbed.

I'll say you're not in control of God's grace, and you know, you can't tell your, you can't pre-plan, you can't pre- this is not an orthodontist appointment.

You can't pre-schedule your conversion.

The wind blows where it wills.

But what if that happens?

What if the guy does come to the end of his life and does get saved?

Do you have the attitude then of like, well, that's not fair.

He lived for himself and now is going to heaven.

Whereas I have lived for the Lord all these decades.

It's not fair.

So the question then is to remind you of what was your attitude about grace when you first got saved.

So go back in your mind to when you first had an encounter with the gospel.

You first heard the good news about how your sin can be forgiven.

That God has a way to take your sin away from you and not punish you for your sin by taking it from you and giving it to Christ.

And Jesus can suffer and die on the cross in your place, and you can put your faith in that, and then your sins can be taken away from you, and you don't deserve that.

You can't work for it, you can't earn it.

It's just going to happen to you based upon your faith in Christ, and you believe that, and God shows you mercy and removes your sins, God shows you grace and changes your heart, and you're stoked for it.

Like this is incredible.

I can't believe God designed it this way so that I can be saved, and you're so filled with joy that if somebody else gets saved later in their life and you have any tendency towards bitterness, you have to remind yourself.

I eagerly received the gospel.

I wanted this.

You can't complain later when God shows grace to other people.

I mean, if God is known for one thing, he's known for showing grace.

So if you're going to come to faith in a God who's known for showing grace, you can't then turn around 20 years later or 30 or 40 years later and be upset that he's showing grace to other people.

I mean, that's the one thing we know about God is that he shows grace.

Like God, all I know about you is that you show grace.

But I'm so upset that you're showing grace right now.

But that eagerness should mark your whole life.

Romans 8, 28 says we eagerly await the adoption that is ours through being God's sons in Christ.

Galatians 5.5 says we eagerly await the righteousness that is found in our hope in Christ.

Hebrews 9.28 says that Jesus will return to earth to bring with him those who eagerly are awaiting for his coming.

I mean, is that you?

Are you eagerly longing for Jesus to come get you?

Are you eager to have your salvation?

Are you eager to receive what you were promised?

If you can't answer yes to those questions, the rest of this parable won't make any sense.

So if you've never given your life to Christ, the rest of this parable will just be incomprehensible to you.

This is like one of those diversion charts here.

Do you eagerly receive the gospel of grace?

If the answer is no, then go back to the start of the parable.

If the answer is yes, you can go forward.

And so you should ask yourself this morning: do you eagerly receive the gospel of grace?

Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?

He can remove God's wrath from you.

You won't receive the penalty for your sins because of your faith in Christ.

That Jesus was your substitute, and that God has given you salvation through Christ.

That's the denarius in this analogy.

That God has given you salvation through faith in Christ.

That's what you signed up for.

And God is the God of grace.

And that's the question here in verse 13.

Didn't you agree to this?

And if you say no in your mind, then I would appeal to you this morning to see your own sin and recognize your need.

That you're the day laborer who's still in the marketplace and no one's hired yet.

And place your faith in Christ and eagerly receive the gospel.

Go to work for the Lord.

He's hiring.

Go to work for the Lord.

That leads to the second question.

Is God allowed to save others?

This is what the owner says in verse 14.

Take what belongs to you and go.

Take your denarius.

Get out of here.

I chose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

I'm going to pay him also.

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

That's the second question.

The landowner says, Can't I do whatever I want to with what is mine?

This is the grace of the gospel.

Now, the gospel brings grace to the world, but grace to the world always comes through covenant.

Let me say that one more time because I think it's an important sentence.

God shows grace to people always through covenant.

For example, Adam and Eve sin, God kills the animal, covers them, kills, you know, takes the life of the animal, sheds blood, covers them with animal skin.

That's how God covers their skin, to the death of an animal.

We see this throughout the Old Testament.

Grace comes to the world through the Abrahamic covenant, for example, that through the descendant of Abraham, he will be a blessing to the nations.

The nations will receive the blessing through the Abrahamic covenant, which leads to Christ.

Jesus comes bringing the new covenant.

He inaugurates a new covenant in his blood.

Those who come to faith in Christ can have their sins forgiven through faith in the new covenant.

So grace comes to the earth through covenant.

One of the best examples of this in the Old Testament, I think, is Jonathan and his conversation with David that culminates in Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan, receiving grace and mercy from David.

I want to put Jonathan's last conversation with David on the screen for you.

It's 1 Samuel chapter 20.

1 Samuel 20 · chapter mention

Remember, Jonathan was David's best friend.

They were on opposite sides of a war with each other.

They were fighting the war against each other, but they were best friends and they had a shared love for the Lord.

And Jonathan recognized that God's covenant was going through David.

David was the promised Messiah.

This is before the Davidic covenant was made.

2 Samuel 7 is after this.

So Jonathan doesn't even live to see the Davidic covenant formalized in 2 Samuel 7, but he understands enough of it to know that it's coming.

He knows if there's any hope for him or his family, it is through God's covenant with David.

He says this, 1 Samuel 20, this is Jonathan's kind of deathbed speech to David, and he dies in Babel, but you get the point.

If I'm still alive, David, show me the steadfast love of Yahweh that I may not die.

Steadfast love is said.

It's the word for covenant love.

Do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever.

When Yahweh cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.

So Jonathan is dividing the earth up right now to those that are on David's side and the rest of the nations.

And they're all going down, and those who are in the Davidic covenant will have life.

Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, May Yahweh take vengeance on David's enemies.

Jonathan made David swear.

There's that covenantal language again.

And you know how the story goes.

Jonathan dies in battle.

Jonathan's family rebels against David.

They're all crushed, they're all put to death, except for one, the Mephibosheth, the cripple guy.

And David has Mephibosheth carried to the king's room and seated at the king's table, and he can feast with the kings as if he were a general.

The guy's lame.

He can't use his legs, and yet he's sitting at the table as if he's a military general.

That's God's covenantal grace through David.

That's such a picture of grace.

Mel deserved to be put to death.

Instead, he gets to feast at the king's table.

That's the picture of grace.

It's from the Old Testament.

That's God's covenantal love.

God is going to show covenantal love to the world through his covenant.

You can go back in your mind to Matthew chapter 20 again.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

This goes to the question: Is God allowed to save others?

Is God allowed to seat Mophibosheth at the table?

Is God allowed to choose whom he's going to save?

Is God allowed to save people from outside of the Pharisees, from outside of Israel?

That's the question.

And the answer is yes, but only through his covenantal love.

That's not a constraint on God.

That's the way God's revealed himself.

God can save other people through his covenant, through the new covenant.

Do you understand why the Jews would be upset about this?

Think of their history.

They started with Abraham.

They wandered around back and forth, Egypt, and Sodom and Gomorrah burned to the ground.

Then Joseph sold into slavery.

Put in some Egyptian prison through famine.

Then a whole nation rises up of slaves in Egypt.

They're making temples out of sand and water and straw.

And then they have to make the pyramids without the straw.

And they're led through the Red Sea, and then they're led to the wilderness where they eat sand for 40 years and manna, and then God, the sand swallows them all up.

They all die out there.

Then they cross into Israel.

They have to fight to take the promised land back.

They finally capture it.

They have to then fight for Jerusalem.

They have to build Jerusalem up, establish David there, build the temple there.

That took work.

Generations go by.

They get exiled.

They're sent off to Babylon and Persia.

They're keeping the Sabbath in exile.

They're trying to hold on to the tattered remnants of God's law while they're in exile.

They're finally allowed to come back and they build the temple a second time.

Then the Greeks attack them and occupy them.

They have the whole Maccabean revolt as they stand against the Greeks and the, you know, the abomination of desolation in the temple, and they stand against that and fight against that.

Now the Romans rule them.

The Romans have occupied Israel and they're still holding on.

You know, they're still trying to hold on to the Torah and live according to God, how God called them amidst a sea of nations that are opposed to them.

They've been doing this their whole existence, and now the Savior comes, and what does he do?

He hires other people from the other nations to come in to the vineyard at the very last minute.

Some centurions are about to get saved.

Jesus goes off to Tyre and Sidon and up to Lebanon and goes up to the decapolis and the Roman cities.

Gentiles are getting saved, left and right, and Israel is left watching, going, What is this?

We've been with you, God, since the desert.

Mana, generations we have suffered because of our faith.

Generations we've been oppressed by the nations, and now the landowner comes and the foreman comes, representing the landowner's will.

The foreman comes and he starts paying out Roman centurions the same thing he's going to pay us.

Not cool, God.

Do you catch their attitude in this?

This is not acceptable.

Well, we were having the prophets in the temple, in the temple again, in exile.

What were the Gentile nations doing for the Lord?

Nothing.

They're standing around idle in the marketplace.

The Gentile nations weren't doing anything, zip, for the Lord.

And now at the last minute, they're going to walk with Jesus and to Jerusalem and they're going to get paid.

They're upset about it.

And so you go back to the question.

Verse 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose to what belongs to me?

This is not against God's revealed will.

If you go back to the Abrahamic covenant, which started the Jews as a people, in that covenant itself, it says that the descendant of Abraham would be a blessing to the nations.

So this is not like the fine print.

This is part of the initial contract.

But man, it feels unjust to people who have been following, holding on for generations.

Is God allowed to save other people?

And the answer is yes.

It's his own will.

It's his own will.

He can save them.

This has been his design.

There's that question, you know, can God save if Hitler were to have been converted on his deathbed?

Can God save Hitler?

And we always say, you know, his heart would be too hard by that point.

He's not getting saved.

He's been given over to his desires.

There's no way you could be that evil unless you were given over to your desires, so you can't be saved.

But that's kind of dodging the question.

Can somebody, even a remarkably evil person, get saved under deathbed?

Of course they can.

If God saves them.

And God can save whom he wants to.

He's allowed to do that.

He's allowed to invite other people into his covenantal promises.

Which leads to the third question.

Can God save whomever he wants?

This is an even more specific version of the second question.

The question the second question is Can God expand the gospel to the nations?

Yes.

But this third question, even more personal, can God save whomever he wants to?

Verse 15, this is how the landowner words it.

Do you begrudge my generosity?

Are you upset with me?

So the landowner is saying, This is Jesus talking to the Pharisees.

It's Jesus talking to the disciples who are with him through the mouth of a fictional landowner.

You just you have to marvel at the literary brilliance of our Lord who is creating this story.

I mean, you could get four PhDs in English and not come up with anything as remarkably intricate and powerful as this little short story that Jesus tells on a walk.

But he rebukes them through the landowner's speech.

Do you begrudge the landowner?

Are you angry at him?

Do you tell him, yes, you can save other people, but not those people.

Not that grace to those people.

I think if Romans 9 makes this point so well in Romans 9, Paul says, listen, God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

There was Pharaoh.

God hardened his heart.

God softens Moses' heart.

Moses was in Pharaoh's household.

Moses' heart softened.

Pharaoh's heart hardened.

Why?

Why?

Isn't God fair?

That's the language in Romans 9.

Isn't God fair?

And Paul says, no, God does this to show you that God can soften whomever he wants to soften.

He can harden whomever he wants to harden.

God can make people for no other purpose than to reveal his grace and mercy in them.

Yes, he can save whomever he wants to save.

And some of you will say that's not fair.

And you know how Paul Jesus responds to that in Matthew 20 with the parable.

But how does Paul respond to that in Romans 9?

That's not fair, God.

And Paul says, Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?

Shall what is made say to the one who made it, Why did you make me like this?

Who are you?

You can't tell God, no, I you can't save whomever you want to.

I want like a pre-clearance list here.

God can save whomever he wants to.

I read one thing that critiqued the business ethics of Matthew 20, kind of an Americanized business version of this, saying it's not ethical for a landowner to take investors' money and use it in such a willy-nilly way.

Like it's unethical to take an investor's money and pay a guy who works for five minutes the same thing as a guy who worked all week.

It's not ethical.

It's other people's money and you're using it in an unethical way.

And I thought, you know, the best response to that is that God is not paying people with other people's money here.

This is his own money.

He's paying people with himself.

The cost in all this is the Lord Jesus.

God gives his son.

God goes to the marketplace of sin, chooses whom he will save, gives his own son as a ransom, purchases them back.

Can not God save whomever he wants to?

Yes, he can.

Yes, he can.

The gospel is from God's will, where he gives his own self to display his own goodness.

That's what's happening in this story.

This landowner is giving of himself to save whomever he wants to display his own goodness to them.

That's the point.

And there are those that begrudge it.

There are those that are upset.

No, it's not right that God can save whomever he wants to.

We recognize that salvation is of grace, but yeah, that's when it's about me.

But others should have to work a little bit.

You know, you think of the let me tell you where you see this often in the church.

You know, you think you meet somebody and you're like, how long have you gone to Emmanuel?

Oh, I've gone here 20 years.

I was here in the Michael Easley days.

Amen.

And then the person you're talking to says, oh yeah?

I've been here since Andy Christensen.

Oh.

And you got like all the McLean refugees sprinkled in.

They're still parking in the new visitor parking spot out there.

It's like you've been here four months, man.

Leave the spot alone.

There's a little bit in your heart though, that's like my grandparents remembers her.

There's a lot of work that went into making this church.

You know, my great-great-great-grandparents pastored the first church in wherever.

You know, my great-great, 300 years ago, my grandparents were on the 400 years ago, my grandparents were on the Mayflower.

I'm speaking hypothetically, it's not true of me.

400 years ago, my grandparents, the first Protestant church in the New World.

So there.

You know, if your great-great-grandfather was on the Mayflower, and then somebody immigrates to the U.S.

this second, and is the first person in their entire family history to ever even encounter a Bible and hear the gospel for, you know, then their entire family history and comes to faith in Christ, you recognize salvation is the same in both cases.

In both cases.

This is why Jesus ends the parable with this.

So the last will be first and the first will be last.

How do the first and last finish at the same time?

That doesn't make any sense.

Well, there is a way.

If you cross the finish line together.

Same prize for everybody.

It's not based on work or effort, except for the work of Christ, which he gives to us freely.

Now, in God's wisdom, he of course designs a way to reward people for their efforts.

This is back to what Peter says at the end of Matthew 19.

He left everything, and Jesus says, you'll be rewarded tenfold, a hundredfold for what you did for my name's sake.

This is the Bemis judgment where you die, everybody who comes to faith in Christ receives eternal life.

The eternal life is the same for everybody, and yet there is a judgment, 2 Corinthians 5, where we are rewarded for the deeds done in the flesh.

Jesus tells other parables about that, but this isn't that other parable.

This is this parable.

That everyone who comes to faith in Christ finishes their race in the same way.

If you're here today and you've never given your life to Christ, I pray that you would see yourself as standing in the marketplace and that you would see the Lord saying, I'm hiring people right now.

Right now.

Come to work for me.

Confess your sin.

Believe in the gospel, have your sins forgiven.

You can die in five minutes or in fifty years.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

Lord, we're grateful for this gospel of grace.

Keep us from grumbling about it.

Help us receive it with gladness and joy.

We're thankful that you save people according to your will and not ours.

Because your will is infinitely perfect, and ours is so selfish.

Lord, we're grateful for the gospel.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.