Life's Not Fair - Pastor Preston Whiteman - September 20, 2026

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It was the summer of 1976 and 1977.

New York itself was terrorized in fear of a man who referred to himself as the son of Sam.

And now this is no relation to Colin or Pastor Sam.

I need to throw that up now.

He was Colin sometimes can terrorize some other people, but this was not him in New York.

Son of Sam was a notorious serial killer, and he he did a lot of horrible things.

He injured a lot of people, he killed a lot of people, he set a lot of fires to places in New York, and people in New York were just in terror of him.

They didn't want to go out at night.

They didn't want to be alone.

They didn't want to be with another person because oftentimes the son of Sam would kill people in pairs, and it was oftentimes people ages about 19 to 23 were his targets.

And this guy really was unsettling to people who came across him.

He would laugh while committing these acts.

He would take a revolver and oftentimes shoot couples in their cars.

He'd be laughing, and he even left some cryptic notes to the police that had some horrendous things written within them.

He was later convicted of multiple different crimes, mostly murder and attempted murder.

He was never convicted for any of his arson charges.

But the thing is, I fully believe this man will be in heaven because this guy has truly professed that he believes Jesus is Lord.

And he is chasing after the Lord and trying to help people in prison find Jesus.

Now, oftentimes I have a lot of skepticism when it comes to these serial killers and these people who are in prison who convert to Christianity because a lot of the times I think in my head, and I know this isn't something I should be doing, but I judge them two things.

Sometimes they're doing it as a power play to get control over people and to be more liked.

The two examples that I came across when researching people who were in prison for a mass amount of crimes was both, well, it was Son of Sam is one of them, which is the one I went with because I truly believe his conviction in his heart.

I've watched multiple documentaries on him.

And then Ted Bundy, which he was known to be a mass manipulator.

He said he converted to Christianity, but I have a hard time believing that myself.

And then the last would be uh he he was a cannibal who was here in Ohio.

I can't remember his name.

Oh, Jeffrey Dahmer, he was here in Ohio, and he he was professing that he was a Christian, he got baptized, but the thing is, the guy who killed him in the and in prison, he said Jeffrey Dahmer would mess with the food to make it look like a mutilated body constantly, even after he professed to be a Christian and baptized.

So, son of Sam, he's different in my mind.

When you watch his documentary, or documentaries based on him after he'd been incarcerated, he has a huge air of repentance.

And he's been incarcerated for quite a while now because he got caught in seven 1977, so he's been incarcerated ever since.

And even today, he's alive still today.

Even today, he's professing again and again that Lord, I hated what I'd done.

I don't enjoy what I did.

I think I I have a lot of grief over what I did, and I'm continuing to beat myself up over it.

And he he says that directly in a documentary, and as you watch him become older in these documentaries, responding to the people who are interviewing him, he oftentimes becomes more and more jovial and spiritual about things.

And whereas he just kind of opened it up sorrowful in the first interview, the most recent interview, he's opening up with, God bless you.

So I believe he's a changed man.

The thing is, it feels weird sometimes to look at a serial killer or look at somebody and say, they're going to be in heaven with me.

It doesn't feel fair at some points.

And I'm sure many people, when they were young, if anybody could try to finish this sentence, learn that life is not life is not fair.

You learn that from a you learn that from a young age.

I learned that uh really well because anytime I'd be upset that my brother got something and I didn't, or there's something I wanted and I didn't get it when I was really young, as most kids get upset about not having the things that they really, really want.

My dad would remind me, life is not fair.

And so my dad grew up, and he he would always bring out this line.

Uh he grew up on a farm in the eastern pain handle of West Virginia, uh, and he'd like to always remind me, you know, I got oranges in my stocking for Christmas, that were that was my Christmas present.

Which is probably true because if you if you look at Eastern Payne Handle, West Virginia, uh farming is not the best choice of um career for his parents because if you know anything about farming, you prefer to have flat land over a hilly land.

Um, because you can't quite use heavy machinery as well, because it can flip over more easily.

Uh it's harder to keep the soil irrigated well because it runs down the hill.

Uh so they were not the most profitable farmers, but they they were still in the farming business.

And so one of the times that I learned life is not fair when I was younger is when me and my well, not my brother yet, but I was at my grandma's.

We had brought a wagon that I could ride in or roll around with to my grandma's, and now she was this is my mother's grandma, not my father's grandma.

We were in the middle of Fairmont, West Virginia, and so if you have a backyard in West Virginia, you're just bound to have a difference in elevation.

It's just how it is in West Virginia, and so she had this awesome hill in her front yard, in which I would bring this wagon up the hill, I'd turn around with it, sit in it in the front, and I grabbed the arm of it that you could steer with, and I'd steered myself all the way down the hill.

And this was an awesome thing, and I'd go over and over again because it's like a roller coaster, right?

So you keep on going over and over again, and I would just have the time of my life, just steering myself all the way down the hill and going back up.

And my parents were at the time of their life because they didn't have to really watch me too much.

And so I kept on doing it over and over again, and I was like, I really want my brother to join me.

And then I was like four at the time, and I still remember this well because I thought it was awesome.

Uh, and then I realized it's not awesome today as much.

But my brother was about two at the time, and so I thought this would be awesome to bring him along with me.

And so I gave him the privilege of steering on the way down.

And so I, because I, you know, it's a larger wagon, and so I would oftentimes at the top of the hill sit in it, you know, just kind of scooch forward to get down the hill after the top of it.

And so I was like, Nick, sit in front and steer.

I'll push us off and we'll get going.

And much like a roller coaster built like children, there weren't many safety regulations to it.

So, as we were going down fast on the hill, I was really excited because of how fast we were going.

It was faster than what I normally did from scooting.

And so, as we were both grabbing onto the sides of the wagon, I realized there was nobody steering us.

And then the wagon turned into a lever because the bar of the wagon fell forward, planting itself into the ground, and then us as children were no longer planted in the wagon.

And so my brother did not enjoy it.

Like a two-year-old being flung really quickly into the ground from the wagon did not have a great time.

However, I got launched further and tumbled a little bit, but I was fine, so I was having a blast.

And that's when I really realized life was unfair, is when my parents said, you cannot be doing this anymore, considering my brother got hurt.

Uh now, in all reality, it was fair because my parents didn't want us to have concussions and broken limbs.

But it was one of the first times I realized, man, this is unfair.

I can't do whatever I want.

And so, we have oftentimes an incorrect perception of what is fair and unfair, and children oftentimes do.

As I thought it was unfair that I was no longer allowed to ride this wagon down the hill constantly anymore, you know.

Which it was fair that I wasn't allowed to, but adults sometimes have that as well, on unregulated, unincorrect perceptions of reality and what is fair.

Because emotions and feelings can come into it.

And we can say that's not fair, but sometimes in all reality, we're just viewing it from such a different place where it is fair, but in our hearts we don't believe it.

And so I think one of the best examples we can look to with that is actually in Matthew itself, Matthew 20.

I'll give you a second to flip to it, Matthew 21 through 16.

So, Matthew, the gospel writer himself, uh, this parable itself is just a standalone parable, whereas other parables themselves can be a response to a question, uh, or it can be in groupings with other parables.

This parable is a standalone parable within the chapter itself at the beginning of the chapter.

This parable is about vineyard workers and a vineyard owner who owns the land for the vineyard, and he searches out and collects these men from a marketplace to help him tend to the vineyard, offering each man that he comes across one denary.

A denary itself is a day's worth of work, worth of wages, pretty much.

And so let's go ahead and hop into the story itself.

I'm reading from the New Living Translation.

For the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

He agreed to pay the normal daily wage, and they sent them out to work.

At nine o'clock in the morning, he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around doing nothing.

So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day.

So they went to work in the vineyard at noon and again at three o'clock.

He did the same thing.

At five o'clock that afternoon, he was in town again and saw some people standing around.

Asked them, why haven't you been working today?

They replied, Because no one hired us.

The landowner told them, then go out and join the others in the vineyard.

That evening, he told the four men to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first.

When those hired at five o'clock were paid, each received a full day's wage.

When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more.

But they too were paid a day's wage.

When they received their pay, they protested to the owner.

Those people worked only one hour, and yet you've paid them as much as you've paid us who've worked all day in the scorching heat.

He answered one of them, Friend, I haven't been unfair.

Didn't you agree to work and go?

Or work for all day for a usual wage?

Take your money and go.

I wanted to pay the last worker the same as you.

Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money?

Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?

So those who were last now will be first, then.

Those who are first will be last.

So this is a really interesting story because oftentimes you'd expect what would be fair.

You know, you'd expect somebody in today's age, if they were work all day, they'd be compensated for all day.

And if they only worked a little bit, they'd only be compensated for a little bit.

But this parable itself is not a lesson on class economics itself.

That's not what it's going for.

If you were to interpret it for that, uh everybody would be getting paid equally all the time for whatever work they did, no matter if they were doing an hour work or all the work.

That's not what we're going for.

I don't believe that's what it wants.

It's much more of a commentary on the idea of salvation.

For it's showing an arching story in which time is passing on, different events happen, different things happen in which people are coming to the vineyard, work in the vineyard, and they are at the vineyard.

If you view the people who have been there since the morning, you could view them as people who have been Christians all their life.

If you view the people who join on at noon, at three, at five, you could see them as Christians who join on, you know, in their twenties, forties, fifties, eighties, whatever age, age ranges, you could view it as that, as their salvation.

They've received it at these ages.

And the commentary itself isn't exactly, well, this person deserves to be better in Kingdom of Heaven or deserves more in the kingdom of heaven because they were a Christian when they were born.

They don't deserve any better than one other person.

There is no divine favoritism within the Bible when you look at it.

There's no divine favoritism when it comes to salvation.

The divine favoritism is for every person individually.

So at that point, it doesn't become favoritism.

Rather, much more, it becomes inequality, it becomes fairness for all.

Because if you are to look at the definition of fairness itself, uh Marion Webster defines it as marked by impartiality and honesty, free from self-interest, prejudice, and favoritism.

So there's a divine fairness to this aspect that is also marked by a divine grace.

This grace that covers all that we need to be covered, it covers the sin that we have, it covers the actions that we've committed, it covers everything.

This divine grace gaps whatever we could do as a Christian and whatever we can do as a non-Christian.

It covers it all in love, it covers it all in a grace that saves us from our own sins.

If we look at Romans itself, the wages of sin is what?

Death.

In a parallel to real life with a criminal who has killed somebody, we are, and it's not exactly a one-to-one parallel, but we are marked for death because of our sins.

We are directly involved with sin.

We should be put to death.

But God's grace saves us.

This divine grace, this immeasurable grace, that covers everything.

The love that is shown to us through his actions on the cross is what covers that gap.

And if you want to look at a biblical example of somebody who, in all reality, if we put it to humanly standards, worldly standards, should be condemned in prison to a degree, is if you look at Saul who turns into Paul within the Bible.

Because if you he was doing everything legally to a degree for the faith, but he was going around condemning Christians to death, to prison, to torture, pretty much, within the Roman world.

And if you read the Damascus road story, he was breathing out murderous threats.

His intent wasn't just, I need to correct these people, it's I need to wipe these people out.

There was much more of a malicious intent to it.

It wasn't just a conviction, it was a rage within him.

And so on the Damascus Road, as he's traveling with some partners, of course, most people know the story, he is blinded by Jesus.

Jesus appears to him and tells him to turn from his ways and to repent.

And he, of course, repents.

And he goes to a house and he has the scales fall from his eyes.

He repents, he is forgiven, and then he goes on and becomes one of the prolific writers of the New Testament.

Technically, he's not the biggest writer in the New Testament by word count, but he has written the most books within the New Testament because he's written letters to different churches and he was a huge advocate of missions.

He was the missionary, the big missionary of the early church.

And so Saul turns into Paul, he himself has had this divine grace upon him.

He's had this fairness upon him that is divine.

Because if we were to judge it by humanly standards, he should be in jail.

He should not be a Christian to a degree.

Because it wouldn't be fair, like I have thought multiple times, why is it fair if that person shows up and does something amazing with God when I've been doing this work this whole time?

I can be jealous to that degree.

I will admit.

I work on it all the time with myself because I want to be where somebody else is, but I realize that's jealousy.

Much like the story, Paul receives the life's wage of loving Jesus, even when he shows up later in his life to loving Jesus.

Even some of the disciples, you know, they weren't Christians at birth.

They were either Jewish or non-Jewish.

So they received it a little bit later, obviously, than some, but this design, divine grace, this divine fairness, forgives both equally of their sins.

Jesus isn't coming with an itemized list with the prices of what each sin had been later on.

He equally forgives all of everything, no matter what.

And that can be hard to swallow for some people.

It's always been hard for me to swallow.

That belief, that idea, that divine grace.

But as I was doing my research, I think it was well said by a pastor of, he's uh at Cornerstone Chapel.

I don't know exactly where it is, but his name is Gary Hamrick, and I don't want to plagiarize, but I think he said it in such a wonderful way that uh I need to just quote him directly on it when he was talking about this scripture, uh, that we should not be holding God to promises that he didn't make.

He never promised us that we would get rewarded more for being a Christian earlier on in life compared to another person.

He never promised a different treatment.

And so when we get upset that God is treating somebody else differently, that he's showing a love to somebody else that we expect in our human terms not to be given love, when we put that expectation on God, we are failing ourselves.

We are putting a divine favoritism onto God that God had never had in the first place.

And so Paul is the one who says we are all guilty of sin.

And we are all guilty and condemned to death.

He says it in Romans 3.23, he's the writer of that.

And so oftentimes when we look at that, we see in our minds what should be just, what should be right.

But the thing is, our human condition itself does not give us the right worldview for what God sees.

A heavenly worldview.

For God sees all his children who have gone astray from him, who have not listened to him, who've not listened well, who've not invested back into him, and says, if you come now, you'll get my fullness.

Much as anybody who came and worked in the field of the vineyard got the fullness of the wage.

And when it talks about the first shall be last and the last shall be first, God isn't going to line everybody up in like a recess line of who got there first and put them in the back, and whoever got there last put them in the front.

Jesus isn't going to do that, I don't believe.

I think it has a much deeper meaning than that, in which it talks, I've I've online it talks about how everybody is equally where they are.

Nobody's in front of you in line, nobody's behind you in line.

God loves you where you're at.

And you don't need to be in this race against other people.

It's not a race to see who gets there first, it's not a race to be in the lead, it's not a race to be better than other people.

It's an endurance race in which we all run together.

So rather than competing against another person, instead of putting a judgment on another person, instead of looking at the plank in their eye, or plank in our eyes that speck in their eye, we need to self-reflect and see that God has equally loved us and given us grace, equally as they give them grace.

So going back to the son of Sam, again, not Colin, uh, but going back to the son of Sam, uh, he, when he was brought in, he was a whole doozy to say the least.

What he was professing was that he was a Satan worshiper.

He was professing that he was hearing his neighbor's dog talk to him and convince him to kill.

And I'll go ahead and read a letter that is a little disturbing to itself from him that he he sent to the police just to taunt them about his killings.

Dear Captain Joseph Brotley, I'm deeply hurt by calling me a woman hater.

I'm not, but I am a monster.

I am the son of Sam.

I'm a little brat.

Whenever Father Sam gets drunk, he gets mean.

He beats his family, sometimes he ties up to the back of the house, other times he locks me in the garage.

Sam loves to drink blood.

Go out and kill, commands father Sam.

Behind the house are mostly young, their blood drain, just bones now.

Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too.

I can't get out, but I look to the attic window and watch the world go by.

I feel like an outsider.

I'm on a different wavelength than everybody else.

Programmed the kill.

However, to stop me, you must kill me.

Attention, all police.

Shoot me first, shoot the kill, or else keep out of my way, or you will die.

Papa Sam is old now.

He needs some blood to preserve his youth.

He has had too many heart attacks.

Ah, mehoot, it hurts the sunny boy.

I miss my pretty princess most of all.

She's resting in our lady's house.

But I'll see her soon.

I am the monster, Bealzebub, the chubby behemoth.

I love to hunt, crowling the streets looking for fair game, tasty meat, the women of Queens are prettiest of all.

It must be water they drink.

I live for the hunt, my life, blood for papa.

Mr.

Barelli, sir, I don't want to kill any more.

No, sir, no more, but I must honor thy father.

I want to make love to the world.

I love people, I don't belong on earth.

Return me to the Yahoos.

To the people of Queens, I love you, and I want to wish you all a happy Easter.

May God bless you in the life in the next life.

He actively is mocking Christianity in this letter.

He's actively saying he's seeing demons.

He's actively saying that he's working for demons.

This man, to a degree, well, to a huge degree, is depraved at this point.

And funnily enough, it's a parking ticket that actually does them in, or does them in.

Because they were researching in the areas that he's done the killings.

They went to where he had done the killings and they saw somebody get angry over a parking ticket.

So they tracked him as they went back to his car, and they actually were outside of his apartment and apprehended him there.

And he wasn't ashamed to admit it.

He said, You got me.

You got your guy.

He was excited to be caught.

He was excited to get this attention.

He was excited to be known as the son of Sam, the serial killer.

And he admitted to all these arsons, all these horrible acts.

And when he was awaiting trial, a pastor had actually come up to him.

And this pastor went into a sort of a confessional area.

It wasn't exactly a Catholic confessional, but they made it into a confessional area.

And so Sam was admitting before this that he was hearing these demons, he was doing the evil things because he wanted to kill.

And so they, his lawyers were begging him, please plead insanity.

You'll get off better.

Please, please listen to us.

And so he goes into this confessional with the pastor.

About an hour later, he comes out saying that he did not hear any demons.

He was just being evil.

He just said he was committing these evil acts because he wanted to.

And he realized they were bad.

And his lawyers again pleaded with him to please plead insanity.

But he said decided he wasn't going to.

He immediately went to court and pleaded guilty and admitted to all these crimes.

So it was just sentencing after that.

So rather than fighting and trying to dismiss what he had and trying to get lesser crimes, instead of getting five, twenty five to life sentences, he said, I deserve all of this.

It wasn't insanity that made me do it.

It was my own actions.

I was worshiping Satan, but the thing is, I was doing it all of my own free will.

He didn't want to blame it on anything else.

He wanted to take what he had done, own up to it, and admit I'm wrong.

Now this isn't the time that he was convicted, but the thing is, or not convicted, converted, he had a conviction on his heart that was obviously put there by God through the pastor, that he needed to repent of what he was doing.

But when he was in prison, he oftentimes would say, I don't think God wants me.

I don't think God really desires for me to come to him.

I don't think God can use me.

And he kept on telling his friend, who kept on saying, Hey, let's work out.

And then he would talk to him about God while working out.

Let's go out into the yard and talk about God.

And he would just kept on saying, I don't, I don't think God wants me.

I don't think God wants me.

I don't think God wants me.

And finally, his friend sits him down one day and looks at him and tells him, Jesus wants you.

And his name, son of Sam, is really known as David Berkowitz.

And he says, David, God wants you, he can use you.

He can flip your story around.

Because this guy was a Christian and he'd been converted in jail.

And so he kept on talking to David.

And he had finally gotten to David and saying, God wants you, Jesus wants you, he can use you.

He can use what you have done.

Not exactly turn an end to good, but use it for his glory.

Because of such a sharp change.

And so David finally gave his life to Christ and has become a little bit of a minister in the prison itself.

He's not licensed or anything, but he wants other people to convert to Christ and wants other people to know that they can turn their lives around.

That can be an example.

And when we look at fairness in God's terms, fairness doesn't mean an absence of consequences.

It's absent of the consequences of death, but we still will sin.

We'll still have the consequences of sin.

We'll still make choices that don't benefit us, that don't benefit God.

But God still has that divine fairness to say, okay, you messed up, but I want to give you my fullness.

I want to give you everything that I am, and you can use that to then preach the word.

So I don't know how many people he's officially converted, but he is a joyous man in a prison that he'll never get out of.

He's stuck in that place, he will never get out of that place.

But he still loves others.

He seeks out the Lord in that place, and he seeks out to bring out new life and a place where there is no hope.

This brings up a harsh reality about God.

Of all harsh and inhuman terms.

Everybody is accepted into the kingdom of God, no matter what.

Everybody is accepted no matter when.

And if you have a hard time with that, there's a lot of self-introspective or retrospective that you need to do on yourself.

Inspect your heart, because if you don't want a God that wants everybody to be joyous and renewed and loved and cared for and desired, then that's not a divine fairness that you see in God.

That's a divine favoritism, in which you see God picking and choosing his people.

I'm gonna go ahead and have the band come on up real quick.

So when we look at ourselves, when we think in ourselves, and we see what God is doing, help us and help yourself to reflect and say, is this divine favoritism that we think are thinking in our brain, or is it divine fairness?

Because when we think of us versus them in society, when we think of we're on different sides, divine fairness says we have love and joy and peace for both sides.

So please come to me, come to the Father, and come to the altar, lay it down, and we can all get the wages of life from Jesus.

We can all benefit from it and be able to speak of his glory and his joy.

Thank you.

As it is known in our community, Northwest Church is committed to discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, with inspired worship and intentional ministry.

People from all walks of life are welcome and received as family members.

Our family is diverse, multicultural, and also not perfect in love with Jesus.

Join us online at nwnac.org or by visiting us at Walkers Ohio.

God bless you.