Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

I'm glad Drew introduced me, because it's awkward to do it for yourself. So, before we get into our passage this morning, I need you to imagine a scenario for me. And, like, the more you really get into it, the better it goes for all of us. It's been less boring, it all ends up being in the end. So, really just imagine it, y'all. So, what I need you to do is imagine that you have a job. But you don't think of it as a job, okay? You think of it as a career. Job something, you do a career, that's who you are. Okay? And so you have this career, and it's who you are, and you've been doing it for like 12 years now. You've been with this company, you've given them your hard work, your effort, and it's gone well for you. You've moved up the ladder, you've been rewarded, your company's treated you right, 12 long years. Today, you went into your boss's office and you thought it was for your annual performance

review. But when you walk in there, it's not just your boss who's there. It's your boss and your boss's bosses. As far up as you are in this company, I mean it's you, your boss, your boss's bosses, and then like the head boss guys. So your boss's boss being there kind of unsettles you. But it's okay. Big sigh of relief for everyone. Because what they come to tell you today is how your performance revealed like you thought it was. You are getting a promotion. The company's expanded once again. There's some positions available. You're moving up once more. And it's an increase in responsibilities and all that stuff. But it's also what you're really kind of excited about, it's an increase in money. Right, because really, that's what we want. So you have this thing, you've increased in money, you're excited about it, right? Like all your years of hard work have finally kind of paid off.

And so today, you're gonna treat yourself. You're gonna go out to lunch at a semi-fancy restaurant, and you're probably gonna order something expensive. It's gonna be a steak. And this restaurant you're going to go to makes good steaks. So that's even a bigger bonus there for you. So as you're there, you're in the lobby place, whatever they call those at restaurants, waiting to be seated. You notice two co-workers there as well. Now, one of them, her name is Linda. You know Linda. She's not on your team, but you've done some work with Linda. She's been there for like five years in the company. She's good people. like Linda. And then there's Todd. Todd's a new guy, fresh out of college, and he feels very much fresh out of college. Kind of awkward, has a dopey smile. Other than that, he seems harmless. He's Todd. So you're all sitting there chit-chatting while you wait to be seated, and Linda says, hey, you know, why don't we all get a

table together. Because you can't think of a reason not to and you try for a second to think of one that just didn't come. And so you say sure, sure why not, you don't want to look rude. So you all get there, sit down, you're chit chatting, your state comes, you're excited about that still. And somewhere in the conversation because you're with co-workers and that's what happens when you eat with co-workers, you talk about work way more than you should. You have nothing else in common really. And so you're there and just because you're excited you're not shared with anybody yet. You say hey y'all I just want to say it's been nice working with y'all in the office but hey if I wouldn't see me that much I got a promotion I'm moving on up. My 12 years of work has finally kind of rewarded me once again. Our company is awesome. And And Linda says, well, that is awesome.

What a coincidence. And then you look over, and you see she was short of stake too. Like what? And Linda says, hey, yeah, I also got promoted too. I have the same position you got offered. There was more than one position available. I was offered one too. It's actually gonna be awesome. I'm excited for you, I'm excited for me. It's gonna be fun working with you in the future. And then Todd goes, what a coincidence. And you look over, and Todd doesn't have steak. So, right, you don't know what Todd has. It looks like hipster food. There's some sprouts, like bean sprouts on top. You didn't know food could look pretentious, but his somehow does. And as you're contemplating this whole scenario, you don't get all the details. Like you do catch enough to understand, Todd wasn't promoted to that position as well.

Todd was hired on at that level. He joined the company at the level it took you 12 years to get to. How excited are you about your great new promotion today? How's that steak taste? What do you think about your company? What do you think about Todd? I don't know about you, like for me, Todd's gone from being some guy I don't know to a guy that's my mortal enemy instantly, And that dopey smile of his now infuriates me in the way he didn't before. And his name is now a curse word in my household that I use. That guy is such a Todd. That's how I throw that around. OK? Because why? Like, where does all that come from? Does Todd deserve it? I can get over Linda, but Todd? Am I excited anymore about my job position? Has it lost of its shine, of its appeal? Everyone else has it? What have my 12 years of hard work been for? Would it surprise you to know that Jesus tells a parable

and says the kingdom kind of works that way? And that maybe we're all just a bunch of tods? Okay, so if you would open up with me to Matthew chapter 20, I'm gonna be reading verses one through 16. I'll stall for a few seconds of non-Witty banter while y'all find it. Scanning, scanning, hopefully you're there. Okay, Jesus says, For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. And after agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, and that's like a day's wage, in case you don't deal in denarius on an everyday occasion,

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 Todemi said, you go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right, I will give you. And so they went out. And going out again, about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. About the 11th hour of what is like a 12 hour work day, by the way, that's the context you might wanna know too. But the 11th hour, he went out and found other standing. And he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? And they said to him, because no one has hired us. And he said to them, will you go into the vineyard too? When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foremen, call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first. When those hired about the 11th hour came, each of them received a denarius.

Now when those who hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each Each of them also received a denariah, and on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denariah? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you, am I not allowed to do what I choose to do with what belongs to me?

Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first and the first last. Now I know I was kind of unfair, my scenario kind of forced you into the position of feeling wronged. But Jesus' parable assumes that you take that position. The whole parable works on the principle you identify with that early hired on worker and that you can see why he is outraged. Because let's be honest, if that happened to us in a real world work situation, we'd be outraged too. In fact, I was at a leadership workshop seminar thing, it has a title, I'm not sure what it was. And the guy speaking was talking about this very thing, he said, if you in the work world organization, if you treat your top 20% of performers, your driven people, the overachieving type of people, right, if you treat them the same way, you treat your bottom 20% of performers, your underperformers. And you can basically expect your top 20% won't be working at that level for your organization

for much longer. Because either they won't work at that level because there's no incentive to do it. They won't work at your organization. go somewhere else. And see, because we operate in this kind of world on a daily basis, that makes sense to us. That's the world that surrounds us. We're used to that. So we understand the upset workers accusation that it's not right to do basically 12 times the work for the same amount of pay. That dude worked one hour. I worked 12 and it was hot. That doesn't seem fair. But Jesus isn't trying to talk to us about how the business world operates or how it should operate. He's teaching us stuff about how the kingdom operates. And God's justice doesn't always make sense from a worldly perspective. The first thing I think we need to think about when we approach this parable. I mean, the tagline at the end is, the first will be last and the last will be first.

That's great if you're the last, right? If you're the first, you're not as happy about that. But look at the next couple of verses right after our passage, verses 17 through 19. Right after this parable, Jesus does what? He tells the pabe, by the way, I'm going to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priest and scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he'll be raised on the third day. So right after this, and Jesus says the kingdom works opposite the way we think it should work from just its perspective, oh, and by the way, I'm going to be crucified. What greater picture do we have of how the kingdom perspective subverts the worldly perspective? The cross. On one hand, it's anything but just for someone to bear all the burden of another person's

trespasses, especially to that level of death. And yes, Paul states in Romans 3, 26, it's the very way in which God is both just and the justifier. You see, Jesus took on what He didn't deserve so we could receive what we didn't. That's just the backwards way it works. And when we orient ourselves to this kind of perspective, the kingdom perspective, we may hopefully then start to change who we identify with in this parable. Perhaps we can have a little more sympathy for the guy who got hired last. Because really, that's kind of who we are. One is kind of who we are just from a salvation history perspective. I don't know if you're aware of this. We are Gentiles from a biblical perspective. That means nothing to you. It means you're not an Israelite,

which means you weren't a biological child of Abraham. You are not part of the original recipients of God's offer for a kingdom in the first place. Sorry, I don't know if that's new news to you. And this was a big struggle for the early church. I think it's a big part of why Jesus is sharing this parable to his people. the early church, even amongst the disciples, what was one of their big struggles. How can we lift the Gentiles in? When we do little man, how can we treat them as same as us? We've got this heritage, we've got this history, we've got this long relationship with God, obedience, there was a temple that we built, it was awesome, there's some sacrifices, and now we're just bringing these guys and saying, well Jesus took care of all that and you're good to go. Seems a little less than fair, right? But then again, I don't want you to think of it just on that level.

Think of the parable this way. Think of it as you're a day laborer. You have no job. Well, you have a job sometimes. Your job is a day-to-day reality or not. That puts you in a kind of a bad place, because you depend on that money to survive, to provide for yourself and possibly for your family. So that's your situation. And you're there at the start of the work day. I don't know where day laborers hang out in your community. When I worked construction, they hung out at gas stations. They'd all be there in the morning. And that was their life situation. I need a job today to get money to provide for today or tomorrow, however they were kind of set up. If I don't get a job today, that puts me in a bad spot.

And so imagine you're there in the morning and the first few trucks come by looking for workers and you're not chosen. And about another couple hours later, less trucks come by looking for less workers. And once again, you're not chosen. And then it happens again, maybe around lunch. And then weirdly enough, You know, here you are, sun's going down. And the question that I have is why are you still out there?

Have you ever thought about that, about this parable? These are day laborers. The day's done. Why are you still out there if not for a desperate need that you have? You need that job. And even if you get hired on the middle of the day or even the end of the day, you're out there taking that chance because you need that money that bad. One hour's, you don't, you have no expectations. one hour's worth of work, that's more money than you had going into today. And you'll take it if you have to. That's your desperate situation. And then somebody comes at the very end of the day and he hires you on. You go there and you have these low expectations of what you're going to get paid, and out of the blue the guy gives you a full day's wage. How grateful are you? That's kind of the picture of the gospel though, isn't it? That's the weird thing that we seem to forget.

We are prone to forget that that's our situation in life. We are people in desperate need of somebody to come by and meet our need of salvation. And so is everybody else in the existence of history. And yet when the other struggles of the early church, and I know it's not one that we have, is the people in the church getting upset with Jesus or hanging out with sinners. How could Jesus do that? They don't deserve that. What do they deserve? Condemnation. They deserve God's wrath if anything. They don't deserve Jesus to come by and minister to them and heal them and offer them salvation. Why? Because I'm better than them, right? I mean, that's the only other option. They don't deserve it. And why does that upset me so much? Because I think I do. like the Israelites, just like the Pharisees, just like the upset workers in the parable. If you really stop and think of it, at the start of the day, the worker hired first and

the worker hired last had the same standing and the same need. The only difference is that one got hired first. One was given the opportunity before the other. One had their needs met before the other, not because they deserved it more, but because they simply received the offer first. When our relationship with the Master started the very same way, and when we forget this, we forget that we originally were offered graciousness that we didn't deserve. That's a problem from a kingdom perspective. When we think that we deserve it, when that's our perspective, we fail to live in light of gratitude. We fail to share with those that we don't think are deserving. We fail to celebrate with those that we don't think are deserving. That's just the honesty of it all. When we think that our salvation is something that we deserve, we get a little self-righteous. When we get self-righteous, it changes how we act towards other people and how we view

other people around us. Think about this with one last kind of scenario to kind of picture of two opposites here. Picture yourself in heaven, and you're getting your house from Jesus, right? I'm not sure how it works in heaven, but he said it's building his house or room. So you're up there, you've got a house, it's a nice house, and you meet your neighbor. Now you've been a Christian since like the third grade. You grew up in church. That's how it was. It was awesome. It was faithful, stumbled a little bit in college maybe, but you know, you kind of put yourself back on track. God brought you back in life. I'm not speaking from experience, just from generalities people. So you're up there in heaven. You got your house, it's a nice house. Your family's there, you've met them. You meet your neighbor, his name's Steve. Steve's house looks exactly like your house.

When you start sharing your story of faith with Steve, you find out Steve has lived a life of sin pretty much. Just rampant sin. A lot of horrible things. And while you made a confession of faith and confession of faith and conversion in like third grade, Steve is a deathbed confession guy. You're going, what? Deathbed confession guy gets to the same house I get? And I think his gold floor is nicer than mine. Can you picture the foolishness of that whole picture? How about scenario in mine on one hand? On the other hand, have the picture of yourself at the deathbed of a loved one. What's your hope for them? At the funeral of a family member who you're just hoping made a deathbed for? That's different. And that's the shift in perspective that this parable wants you to have. When you have that shift in perspective, it changes how you operate in the world. It changes how you treat other people, how you go about your daily lives and relationships.

So it helps you just maybe, just maybe empathize with them just a little bit and maybe be moved enough to do something about it. Because the one person, the last person we haven't really identified with in the parable is the master. Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like this. It's like this master who has a vineyard. And then you get a picture of a guy just going out repeatedly throughout the day, hiring whoever he can find.

Whoever hasn't been hired. Whoever he finds whose daily need hasn't been met and then he meets their need. Not based upon when they started working, not holding out against them, but he just mercifully provides for them, sharing his abundance with them. Because just maybe he's judging them based upon their need. I think that's the picture of what the kingdom is like. That's a picture of who we we are called to be. If you would pray with me. Dear God, we ask you to forgive us Lord. To forgive us when we start to treat people other than us as less deserving than us of your love and your graciousness Lord. Forgive us of thinking of ourselves before others Lord. Forgive us for not sharing what we know you have to offer with other people who have need Lord. We ask you to forgive us Lord. We also ask Lord that you help us. Help us to be people who better reflect your kingdom, who better reflect your love, and

better reflect your mercy Lord. Who better reflect your kindness Lord. Help us to be people who can view other people the way that you view them Lord, and the way that you one day viewed us before bringing us to salvation. We pray that you would help us to live lives of gratitude, Lord, never taking for granted what it took for you to offer salvation, Lord. What it took for you to restore us, to heal us, to reshape us into people who better reflect Christ, better reflect your kingdom, Lord. We ask you all these things in the name of your son Jesus, who died to meet our ultimate need, Lord, that we could be restored to You, Lord. We thank You for that, Lord, and we acknowledge that we did not deserve it, Lord. You are a gracious and glorious God. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Josh. We are going to have a time of response. And for those of you, I'm sure some of you, the Holy Spirit was speaking to you in the midst of that.

Just, you got to do something about that. You got to make a decision, or maybe you made a decision. I would encourage you to reach out. During our time of response, I'm going to be asking everybody to stand, and I'm going to be over here just standing. And if you want to come up and receive prayer, if you want to come up and join our church, if you want to come up and if you're interested in being baptized, that's where that discussion starts. It starts with me right up here. So as we sing, as we stand, I just

I pray that you would take that next step wherever it needs to be. Let's stand. And holy there I beside you Open up my eyes in wonder And show me who you are and fill me With your high and real love To know every song we could ever sing Feel all the praise we could ever bring Every breath we could ever reach Live for you, live for you Jesus, the name above every other name He's just the only one I could ever say He should not trust Undecided lead me In your love to the Beside you Open up my eyes if you want Show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to...