Matthew 20v1-16 – Grace

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 a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace.

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

And whatever is right, I will give you.

So they went.

Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.

And about the eleventh hour, he went out and found others standing.

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

They said to him, Because no one has hired us.

He said to them, You go into the vineyard too.

And when 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 11th hour came, each of them received a denarius.

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

But each of them also received a denarius.

And on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching eat.

But he replied to 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 gave to you.

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

Or do you begrudge me my generosity?

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

And so reads God's word.

And it's a passage about grace.

It's a passage about grace.

Grace is so foundational to us, right?

It's so important to us as we look into these other topics.

Grace informs how we think about the church.

Grace informs how we understand the Holy Spirit.

Grace is the only way that broken and sinful people like us can relate to a holy God.

So it really is really foundational to how we do everything in the Christian life.

So we'll take a look at this this morning and we'll see what we think about it here.

But I'll start off with a story.

Love a good story from my history.

This is this is from 20-some years ago.

My first job out of college, right?

And I was working in the transportation office of a large multinational company.

There were three of us in this kind of supervisory role, and we were busy all the time.

It was a really intense job.

The phone never stopped ringing.

It was either, you know, a frustrated driver or an angry customer or a job that needed done right away, a plan that needed to be changed.

It was just constant, relentless, from the time you walked in the door until you walked out at the end of the day.

And sometimes you were on call, so it didn't even end then.

But it was a great job in a lot of ways.

Really, really prepared me for the world of work.

And I'm going to tell you, without trying to make myself look too good, guys, I was great at this job.

I was great at this job.

This is not just kind of rose-colored glasses looking back.

This particular year that I'm talking about here, I got a performance review that was just almost embarrassing.

They were gushing over me about how my, you know, my professionalism, my problem solving, my dedication, all of this stuff.

One line that sticks out to me to this day, 20 some years later, was they said, if promotion comes up, we would not hesitate to recommend you wholeheartedly.

Ah, that's beautiful.

Right?

Feel really good coming out of a review like that.

I probably only still got the minimum increase, but it was fine.

It was fine.

Well, wouldn't you know?

That year, in the aftermath of that beautiful performance review, there was an opportunity for promotion.

Something came up, it was a couple of pay grades higher, but very much within my reach.

So I threw my hat, my name in the hat, and I uh I applied for it.

A bunch of other people did, but it was it was it was very clear.

I was the heir apparent, right?

I was the I was the guy who was gonna get this job.

And again, this isn't just me kind of putting my own, you know, rosy tint on it years later.

I found out after the fact that, you know, senior management had already written my name on the org chart in the new role.

So I was I was a lock.

Until the last day of the job posting, the last day that anyone could apply for this promotion, there was one more applicant who came into the picture.

And she put her name in for it.

And I knew her.

We worked together, we were in that same role in that same transportation office, doing that same intense job day after day.

And I wouldn't want to run this woman down, but we were not the same.

Her uh performance review was embarrassing for other reasons, okay?

And I only knew that because she had no filter, right?

She told us everything that went on.

She was paranoid, she was gossipy, she was she was on her last straw, honestly.

She told us that uh management had made it very clear that if you know she messed up one more time, she would be let go.

But she had more time within company than I did, right?

So she was senior to me.

And she had a master's degree.

I only had a bachelor's degree at that time.

And so I remember getting the call to go up and talk to the operations manager, the guy who would have been my boss in the new role.

This is the same place that I had sat and had this interview that was just so beautiful a few days earlier, where it was practically feeling like my coronation ceremony.

It was a little different vibe in the room.

He didn't beam or smile.

He was just kind of like, yeah, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to give it to this other lady.

When I read this parable, when I read Matthew 20, that's the kind of thing that comes to mind for me, right?

The injustice, the pain, the sorrow.

Maybe you have similar stories that you could share from your experience, ways that you've been passed over or hard done by.

And I'm gonna tell you right now, that's not what this parable is about.

This is not a parable about work.

It's not about salary and promotions, it's not a handbook for labor relations.

It's certainly not a manifesto, you know, kind of vineyard workers of the world unite.

It's an illustration that shows us just how different God's kingdom is from the world that we live in.

And I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you the punchline right here at the beginning.

If we bring our indignation into God's kingdom, the same indignation that I had back in the middle of 2002, we're gonna miss what grace is really about.

This parable really, really cuts in two different directions.

It's got two dimensions to it.

On one side, yeah, it's teaching us something about grace.

But on the other side, it's teaching us something about ourselves just by the way that we might respond to it, the way the way our hearts might feel.

So, we'll take a look here.

Let me let me let me just explain, give you an overview here, because this is a parable.

If you're not familiar with the genre of parables, it's just a story about earthly things, familiar things that help to explain, you know, truths that are maybe harder to grasp.

So let's try and work out what's actually going on with this and what it might have meant to the people who heard it originally.

You've got this guy who's the master of the house, you know, he's the owner of the vineyard.

And he goes out early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his vineyard.

In fact, he goes out five different times during the day, brings out people five different times.

The ancient world, they had this 12-hour day.

So if you think about it from 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m., he goes out at 6 a.m., you know, right at the first part of the day, hires some workers, but then he goes back at 9 a.m., goes back at noon, goes back at 3 in the afternoon, and again at 5.

So just looking at the maths there, right?

Group one, the first group that was hired, they worked for 12 hours.

And group five, the last one that got hired, they worked for one.

And at the end of the day, he pays them all the same wage.

Everybody gets a denarius.

He doesn't pay in proportion to how long they worked or how productive they were.

Everyone gets the same.

When we hear group one kind of grumbling about this as they were expecting, you know, they'd they'd earn more because, like verse 12 says, it says they they they had borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

Now, none of the other groups kind of pipe in here.

Presumably, Group Five thought this arrangement was pretty good.

But the fact that we only hear from Group One on this tells us that's really who it's directed at.

So we got to kind of work out in our minds who is group one, who's who's who's the analogy there pointing to?

Who did they represent in the real world?

And we can take a look at the context, right?

This this whole kind of interchange here starts at the beginning of chapter 19.

Chapter 19, verse 3 says Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, you know, some questions and then they get into some discussions there.

But they were testing him.

But not just the context, right?

Not just the immediate things that are going on in the passage, it's thematic as well.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Pharisees, if you've read the Gospels, the stories of Jesus' life.

It's very easy to kind of put the Pharisees as the kind of mustache twirling villains.

But really, if you take a look at these guys, they were really the guys who were working the hardest.

They were really trusting in their ability to do things right.

Did they always get it right?

No.

Did they, you know, prioritize the wrong things sometimes?

Sure.

But they were working hard.

That's what they're that's what they're known for.

And that's how they saw themselves.

They're working hard for the Lord.

And so that's a pretty easy parallel to draw there, right?

Group one in our parable, they're the ones who did the most work.

They're the ones who worked the hardest.

Pharisees, right?

They would see themselves as those who work the hardest.

But I think there's also a link, if you look at the end of chapter 19, just as we come into it here, there's a question from the disciples, right?

And the Apostle Peter is asking, he says, See, we've left everything and followed you.

What then will we have?

Now Jesus does say, yes, for those who've who've left family and home and all these things, there will be rewards.

But he gives them this little kind of funny sideways verse here that I think he's explaining in verse 20, or in chapter 20.

He says, Many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Probably not what uh Peter or the other disciples were expecting.

So it seems very clear that as we come to chapter 20 here, the Pharisees and the disciples both are about to get a little debunking.

So what is what is this uh parallel here?

Let's take a look at the first point.

The first point is grace levels the field.

All right, makes sense?

Grace levels the field.

Jesus repeats what he's just said.

He says that in verse 16 of our of our chapter, he says, So the last will be first and the first last.

And if we're honest, this doesn't add up for us, right?

In our world, we tend to think that the first should be first and the last should be last.

The people who are working the hardest should get the most, and the people who are working the least should get the least, and that's the way of the world, right?

But Jesus is pointing to a different way.

He's pointing to the way of his kingdom.

Look at uh verse 11.

Right, group one sees they got the same the same wage as groups two through five, and it says, on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house.

Right, this isn't right.

This doesn't make sense.

This is counter to what we've experienced.

But the vineyard owner isn't having it.

In verse 13, you know, he says, I I gave you what I agreed to.

I told you I'd give you a denarius.

Here's your denarius.

You've not been swindled, you've not been shortchanged.

The only reason it's even a concern is because you saw what I gave the other people.

All right, there's a there's a saying, something out there, that uh comparison is is the thief of joy, right?

Verse 15, he says, Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?

And going on, he says, Or do you begrudge my generosity?

In other words, I lived up to my commitment to you.

If I show generosity to these others, how does that hurt you?

We were driving in this morning and I saw uh uh one of those art signs where they take the take rubbish bins and make them look like works of art.

Um but it had a it had a saying on it there, and it says, you know, uh, young people, be proud of who you are, kind of thing.

And I'm like, well, what about old people?

Shouldn't we be proud of who we are?

And Doreen pointed out, she says, you know, just because it talks to the one group doesn't mean that the other group is is excluded there.

So there's definitely some sense here of why did you do this for them and not for me?

But I think there's more to it than there.

You you you can imagine how this might apply to the Pharisees, right?

These were the ones who worked so hard all their lives to please God.

You know, much more than like kind of the opposite side of society, there would have been a tax collector.

Right?

You can see tax collectors, nobody likes paying their taxes, so don't so don't think it's just about that.

Tax collectors in the ancient in the Roman Empire, they were from the community that was being taxed.

And they were allowed to tax whatever they wanted.

They had a certain obligation that they had to pay back to the empire.

But if they could get extra beyond that, well, they could keep that.

So tax collectors could often be some of the wealthiest people in the community.

And so, you know, you've got the Pharisees who are devoted to doing things right, and you've got the tax collectors over here who are kind of a little corrupt and self-seeking.

But in the Gospel of Luke, we read about a tax collector named Zacchaeus, right?

It says he encountered the Lord Jesus, he responded in faith and repentance, he turned from his wicked ways, he promised to restore whatever he cheated anybody else out of.

It was an amazing moment, and we know that it was a sincere change of heart, work of the Lord, because Jesus himself even said, Today salvation has come to this house.

Now, maybe, maybe a Pharisee would say, okay, it's great, you're turning from your evil ways and you're doing something good, so I maybe a Pharisee would be happy enough that somebody like this Zacchaeus fella would be following Jesus.

But no way would this rotten tax collector, this, this, this dirty turncoat trader guy, no way is he gonna be as high up in the kingdom as the Pharisee, right?

You'd expect that.

Pharisee's been busting his hump the whole life.

And this guy's just coming along now, and he's done all this bad stuff on his own people.

But Jesus' parable here, what he's what he's telling us in chapter 20, gives us a completely different story.

Fact of the matter is, the ground before the cross is flat.

Right?

There's no higher or lower position.

It's not that the Pharisee has been working hard, so he's gonna be kicking back in a mansion in glory, and the tax collector's gonna be there scrubbing the toilets.

Right?

Grace levels the field.

We can apply it to ourselves, right?

I can apply it to myself.

I serve in the church just about every week.

I came to Christ as a small child.

I have a seminary degree.

But the minute I start thinking that I'm further up or better or superior to somebody who came to Christ last week, I'm missing it.

I'm not seeing it right.

Right?

This is this goes for good works and bad.

I might think, you know, you might have some good works, but mine are better.

I might say, you know, I have some sin in my life, but yours is worse, right?

All of this comparison.

The cross of Jesus, though, is is enough for all of our sins.

Whether they're real noticeable or completely hidden.

And the cross of Jesus doesn't lack anything that my good works need to make up for.

We're all working on the same scheme here.

This parable calls us to be okay with that.

If I'm if I'm smug in my Christian walk, I'm showing that I'm not okay with that.

And if I'm if I'm indignant, I'm not okay with it.

God is generous to other people and he's generous to me.

Grace levels the field.

Next thing we see is grace is better than a transaction.

To put it another way, hey, Pharisee, disciple, church guy, you're not earning your way to salvation.

Don't live like you are.

It'd be very easy to look at this parable and say, well, you know, groups two to five, they all got some measure of grace.

But, you know, at least, at least group one got what they earned, right?

They merited what they got there.

But this isn't the case in the parable.

It isn't the case in the lives of the Pharisees, and it's certainly not the case in the world today.

Let me explain.

Think about these workers.

Every one of them, from group one to five, they're all unemployed, they're all unskilled, they're all hanging out in the marketplace.

This is a day when there's no social welfare, there's no food bank, if they don't work, they don't eat.

And at the beginning of the day, where is everybody?

They're all of them in the marketplace.

They're all hoping that somebody comes along to give them work.

They had no prospects, right?

Not like they were hired onto some vineyard.

Not like they were even going, like, you know, vineyard to vineyard, knocking on the door, do you need any help with your harvest today?

They were just sat in the marketplace waiting to see.

And if not for this vineyard owner, that's where they'd be at the end of the day as well.

But take a look at this vineyard owner.

This is pretty remarkable.

He's in the marketplace in verse 1, in verse 3, in verse 5, twice in verse 5, actually, and then again in verse 6.

What's interesting, we see in verse 8, he has a foreman.

Wouldn't it be the foreman's job to go and find laborers and find employees?

But he's going himself again and again.

We can also see how the discussion of wages kind of progresses, right?

Group one says they get a denarius.

He offered that up right at the beginning.

Groups two to four are promised whatever's right.

And the last group, he doesn't even talk about wages.

He just he just says in verse six, why do you stand here idle all day?

And they say in verse seven, because no one has hired us.

It's not that they were working someplace else and finished early, or not that they, you know, slept late.

They've been here all day.

He says, Let me put you to work.

Everyone is given this opportunity.

Everybody is called to work here.

And so there's a sense in which the work isn't even the point.

That's why I say it's not a parable about work.

The vineyard owner is himself out looking for people in need, and he's gonna meet their need regardless of what time of day they signed on.

This is very, very comparable.

It points to Jesus and his ministry.

Right?

Luke 19, Jesus says that he came to seek and save the lost, just like this vineyard owner.

Think about that last group.

They've been standing around all day.

They've been hoping someone will hire them.

Maybe you know what it's like to be the last one picked.

Not gonna not gonna lie, when I was in primary school and we were lining up to play kickball, I was always the last one picked.

So group five really got grace, but so did every other group.

The key to the grace isn't what time of day it came, but that it came of all, came it all, right?

And you know what else?

Jesus came down from heaven himself.

Just like our uh vineyard owner didn't work through a foreman or an agent, he entered our broken world to show us this upside-down kingdom.

The last will be first and the first will be last.

The distinctions of class and race and experience are all leveled.

I don't know about you, but I know I certainly have an inner Pharisee voice.

One that wants to believe that I can earn God's favor by doing things that please him.

But when I start thinking that way, suddenly, you know, I have a reason to boast in my own works, in my Own righteousness.

And think about it.

If group one has it by earning it and groups two to five have it by grace, we're right back to our first point.

Thinking we deserve to be higher or greater than the others.

Once again, we're all on the same scheme.

I'm not entitled to more than the others, and this is because I'm not entitled to it at all.

It's because of his grace.

So no no matter how long we've been Christians, no matter how much we've served in the church, or no matter how much we've donated or done great things, we all had our time idling in the marketplace.

And it wasn't our initiative, it wasn't our ingenuity, it wasn't our hard work that changed that.

It's only by the grace of the Lord.

He found us, he saved us, he put us to work.

Ephesians 2, great passage about grace.

Starting with verse 8, it says, For by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It's the gift of God.

Not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Did you get that?

We're not saved by good works, we're saved for good works.

So when I want to toot my own horn, I want to congratulate myself, look at all I've done.

Or more likely when I want to throw my own little pity party because someone didn't recognize my brilliance.

Those are the moments I'm not recognizing what grace is.

I need it.

You need it.

We're none of us earning our way to salvation.

Grace is better than a transaction.

And the third thing we're going to see is that grace is more amazing than you realize, right?

This idea of amazing grace, it's really a thing, guys.

Think about it.

Why does a business have to manage costs?

If we were to take this vineyard out of the hypothetical and into the real world, why does a business in the real world have to manage costs?

Well, it's because we live in a world of limited resources.

Imagine if I stood up in a members' meeting and announced, we are increasing all staff salaries to a million euros a year.

You'd look at me like I was crazy.

Sure, it's gracious, it's generous, it's not sustainable.

Transactions of this world always have to balance between what we'd like and what's realistic.

But God's grace isn't like that.

God works out of limitless grace.

You think about the prodigal son from the Gospel of Luke.

When the prodigal son returns, the father doesn't say, Oh, great, you're home.

Get back to work.

No, he runs to the son.

He puts a robe on him, puts a ring on his finger, he butchers the fattened calf and throws a party.

Not because the prodigal deserves it, because he loves his child.

In our parable here, what do we see about amazing grace?

Well, we've talked about how the owner goes himself to seek out workers for his vineyard.

We've seen how he gives them more than they deserve.

We even see how he speaks with kindness in response to the grumbling of group one.

Funny thing is, group one actually accidentally seems to have stumbled onto what this grace is really about.

You look at verse 12, right?

It says, these last have worked only one hour, and you've made them equal to us, who've borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

They don't say, you've brought us down to their level.

Even these indignant laborers recognize that the grace of the vineyard owner does nothing but elevate.

Going back to Ephesians 2, verses 6 and 7 say that we've been raised up to show the immeasurable riches of his grace.

Ephesians 2:6

Same idea.

Think about it a different way.

Maybe, how does it work in the world?

We're always trading one resource for another.

If I'm working a job, I'm trading my labor, maybe my hard work, my intelligence, my skills, whatever, I'm giving that to my employer, and the employer is in turn giving me a wage, right?

We're trading one resource for another.

But in God's kingdom, the system just doesn't work that way.

We start with no resources.

We're just idling along in the marketplace.

And God, out of his limitless, immeasurable resources of grace, gives to us.

And since the work and the wage are no longer the point, we see that we get far more than just gainful employment.

We get purpose, we get belonging, and we get fellowship with God Himself.

Pretty amazing grace, all right.

So, summing it up, Jesus told this parable so that the Pharisees, not to mention his own disciples, didn't get the wrong idea about salvation.

We don't deserve more than others who haven't done as much as we have.

And that's because we don't deserve it at all.

Grace is God's unmerited favor towards us, expressed at the cross of Jesus.

And it's far more amazing than we even realize.

So the best application for us, any of us, is to figure out where am I not okay with this?

Where does this strike me the wrong way?

I can think of times in my life when I've felt hard done by because someone else got asked to do this and I didn't.

Find myself rationalizing why they were wrong for it and I was better for it.

There's me, joining up with group one in our parable.

If I think I'm deserving and someone else is not, how can I say I understand grace?

Maybe you're here this morning and you're not buying into the Christian worldview.

You're just looking in on the faith.

You wouldn't call Jesus Lord.

And if that's you, I'm glad you're here.

Glad you're getting to take a look at what this grace is like.

Love to chat with you after the service.

But if that's you, I'd I'd invite you to reflect on this idea of grace.

Take a look at it.

See this image of a God who does everything to bring us near when we're powerless to help ourselves.

You know, sometimes people will say things like, I'll follow Jesus later in my life.

I want to live it now.

But that makes it feel like the Christian life is some kind of burdensome, restrictive life.

That's not it at all.

God, in his limitless grace, calls us into abundant life here and now.

I hope you won't stay in the marketplace.

And finally, for the gathered church here and around the world, let's get this picture of God's grace and let it turn us loose.

There's a world full of people who haven't heard or understood it yet.

Let's bring this gospel, this good news to those around us.

Let's pray that God will open eyes and ears to hear it.

And let's watch with hope and expectancy to see what he does in our world.

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