You are listening to the Sunday Morning Sermon from Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia. You can find podcasts and other resources at www.faithbiblechurch.us. With us moving back to Georgia, we live about a mile away from grandpa and grandma now. And so paying jobs at my house do not seem as attractive as they do at grandpa and grandma's house, because the going rate with papa and grandma is about 5 to 1 what it is with mom and dad. So a bucket of pinecone at grandpa and grandma's house, it's like $10. But my kids are growing in that understanding that if I do this work, what will be the transaction that plays out between the two of us when the work is done? Well, coming to this parable this morning in Matthew 20, that the wage structure of God's kingdom is not built on the basis of what we earn and deserve, but on the basis of God's grace in Christ alone. The coinage, you know, this question of, if you have your Bibles open in Matthew 19, Jesus is telling, teaming up to Jesus, and he asks the question in verse 16, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus walks through the commandments with him, and Jesus tells him, hey, only God is good. And then he walks through the commandments, and then the rich young ruler goes, well, I'm good too. And Jesus is like, only God is good. And Jesus challenges him to give up his possessions to then follow him. In verse 22, when the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. There was a cost to following Jesus that he did not want to pay. So then, Jesus has this interaction at the end of chapter 19 with his disciples. And he says, truly I say to you, verse 23, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. And here it is, verse 27. Then Peter said in reply, see, we have left everything and followed you. We've done a great work. What then will we have? Verse 28, Jesus said to them, truly I say to you in the new world, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last. and the last first. So in other words, Jesus is teaching here that when someone comes to hear the message of the gospel and comes to follow Christ, in the end, in the end, The payment will be the same for each of us. The last will be first and the first last. So there's really two major things that this parable does that I hope will be true in our hearts this morning. Number one, there is the inner conflict the inner conflict that the parable draws out, the inner conflict that is at work in each of us, wrestling, wrestling, wrestling in the quietness of our own heart. Is it possible? Is it really true that God deals with me on the basis of grace and grace alone? Is that really true? Or, Structure of the wage between us, one of earning and deserving. This is inner conflict. So the parable is intended to draw that out. Then the second thing though, and this comes through in the three questions that Jesus asks at the end of the parable, the parable is intended to bring about a change in perspective for each of us. Our perspective of who we think God is, how we look at ourselves, and how we look at other people. So first, the inner conflict, the parable draws out. The inner conflict that the parable draws out. The parable is set up for us to see all things through the first hour worker's eyes. But the character that we're introduced to right from the get-go is what verse 1 calls the master of a house. The master of a house so this is probably a wealthy land owner the owner of a vineyard and it's harvest time and so the vineyard owner is going out and he's looking for laborers to help him with his harvest and so it says early in the morning he goes out and we learn later on that it's in the marketplace to hire laborers for his vineyard And so he's going to this marketplace, probably a place where people who were unskilled laborers would go, hoping that someone would come along and hire them so that they could make some money to buy sustenance for their daily need for their family. And so you can picture just a whole group of unskilled laborers gathering together in the same place, hoping that someone will come along and hire them. And so we read that this master of the house comes and he makes a contract with the first group of people that he hires. You see in verse 2. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them out into his vineyard. And so for the next few verses, what we see is the master of the house coming back. It says he comes back at the third hour, probably about 9 a.m. He comes back at the sixth hour, which is probably high noon, and the ninth hour, verse 5. Verse five, he comes back at noon and 3 p.m., and then verse six, shockingly, he comes back at the 11th hour. The 11th hour, so this is about 5 p.m. So the workday is just about done. Got about an hour left of work. And the master of the house comes and he hires in the 11th hour about 5 p.m. Others who are standing idle. And he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? Verse 7, they said to him, because no one has hired us. And he said to them, you go into the vineyard too. And so here's the setup of the parable. You have this wealthy landowner in harvest time who's looking for workers in his vineyard. He's going to a gathering place in the marketplace looking for laborers for his harvest. And these people have gathered together because they are in need of work. They're in need of daily sustenance. And so you can just imagine when the vineyard owner shows up at first, those first workers that are picked are like, yes, we're going to make money today. And as the day goes on, another group goes and another group goes. And you can imagine the joy of those 5 p.m. workers to see the vineyard owner's old farm truck coming around the bend again. looking for a few more workers and coming up and he says, hey, even you, you who are still standing here idle, you come. How joyful they were just to have a thing. The basis of His grace alone is we remember We remember, when the gospel first came to us, the way that our father in heaven first found us, I am. When we were followers, one of the who have been like God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God Story. These different people are hired at different times and they come into the vineyard. Great. Wonderful. Then the conflict of the parable comes up and it reveals the inner conflict of the human heart that we all have grace alone, or is he a God of earning and deserving? So the conflict of the parable, uh, raises up our own inner conflict and he does it through, uh, the way in which the master of the house deals with these two different group of people, the workers who are hired first, and the 11th hour workers. The owner's generous treatment of the 11th hour workers with a radical generosity. About a day's wage. You can probably see that if you have a study Bible. Denarius is about a day's wage. And it was a healthy day's wage. Most people think that that was a day's wage for a Roman soldier. And so, you know, the going rate, the median wage of our society was probably about what a denarius a day was worth. And so you can imagine, at pay time, when the foreman steps up, he's like, all right, everybody get in the line, and here's how we're going to do this. You who were hired at 5 p.m., come to the front of the line. You're going to get paid first. Okay, that's kind of weird. It's a little strange, but no big deal. And you who are hired first, you go to the back of the line. So here come these people who got hired at 5 p.m. They worked for one hour. They worked for probably the best hour of the day as well. I mean, the sun is going down, probably watching the sunset, you know, probably a cool breeze coming through. Just sitting there working in the harvest, no big deal. 60 minutes. They come to the front of the line, and the foreman starts paying out, and he hands them an entire day's wage. They were sitting in idleness in the marketplace, slowly vanquishing. 4.30, 4.40. Even if I get a twelfth of a denarius, that'll still be better than nothing. So they work, not under the heat of the sun, but in the cool of the evening for an hour. Then they step up to the foreman, and he hands them an entire day's wage. If you're that person in that moment, you're sitting there looking at them, hold it out, and you're like looking behind yourself, thinking like, you know, are you getting me mixed up with somebody else? Like, a full day's wage, don't you know what I just did? Like, I don't deserve a full day's wage, what are you doing? And here he is. No, no, no. It's for you. It's like, oh my goodness. Imagine you take it and run because you think maybe you made a mistake. Just take it. Just get out of there real quick. Thank you. Now imagine if you are a first hour worker and you're in the back of the line. You're kind of peeking around, looking at the foreman. Seeing these people hired at 5 p.m. getting an entire day's wage. So then you start doing some third grade math. Okay. One hour. One day's wage. Okay. Twelve hours. Already thinking about, man, I'm going to go home. Tell my wife, pack your bags. We're going to Tahiti. I'm taking next week off. Just got two and a half weeks worth of wages for working 12 hours. Doing some solid math. was thinking about in our own modern context, you know, it'd be like getting hired for a job that would require, you know, some kind of college degree or master's level education. So maybe you're making, you know, 30 to $40 an hour, 60 to 70 grand a year, very respectable wage, very respectable. Now all of a sudden you're doing math 12 times. What you thought you were going to get paid, talking $700, $800,000. Pretty big difference. Pretty big difference. But then the shock of the parable comes, and all of a sudden this misunderstanding of the gospel of grace is put on full display through these first hour workers. Verse 10, now when those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more. And who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? But each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it, they grumbled. It's what the word in the Greek literally means. It's like... Friends, almost every time that we as humans get angry at each other, when we get envious, when we find our hearts grumbling in life, what's happening in our hearts is a cry that just wants to burst out and literally come out of our mouth. I don't deserve this. This situation. I just want to grumble. I don't deserve what's happening to me. Or I deserve so much better than this. So much better. Friends, none of us are immune to the grumbling of our hearts. But what this parable is doing for us this morning, and thank God for His word, is it's showing us that beneath the grumbling, beneath the grumbling, is a misunderstanding of the gospel that our Heavenly Father relates to us on the basis of earning and deserving and not on the basis of grace alone. I deserve better. I don't deserve this. Of course, one of the great remedies to deserving and not deserving and the grumbling that follows in our own hearts is to consider Christ. Consider Christ. Remember what the prophet Isaiah in that famous chapter on the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 wrote about Jesus? In the least deserving moment in all of human history, the cross. This is what Isaiah has to say about Jesus, Isaiah 53 7. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. If ever there was a moment in human history where someone could justly grumble about not deserving the situation they were in, it was our Savior as He went to the cross. What a grace. What a grace. Well, why did they grumble? Why did they grumble? You see in verse 12, these last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us. The first hour workers were floored. How can 12 equal 1? It doesn't make sense mathematically, which by the way, Jesus is not teaching business owners how to run their business here, okay? You would go out of business pretty quick. Not doing that. He's teaching us about the nature of His kingdom. Twelve to one. How does that math add up? You know, I took third grade math, second grade, first grade math. I know that twelve doesn't equal One, it would be like a teacher. I don't know if any of you ever had this experience, but being in a really hard class that you find really difficult, and final exam time comes. And there's always one or two students in the class who are really good at the subject, and they always get the good grade. And so if the teacher curves the test at the end, you're always like, listen, please, will you just mark a few more questions wrong for the rest of us so that our curve can slide up? But it would be like a teacher coming in after you take the final exam, knowing that it's not your strongest subject. And they walk in and they say, guess what? Here's what we're doing for class this semester. Whatever it was that you got on that final, everybody's getting an A. Everybody's getting an A. And of course, the people who knew that they didn't get an A are going, yeah! Woo-hoo! Praise God. God taught me how to pray. He was faithful. No, you should study. You should study. But the smartest people in the class who studied the most are going, what? This is crazy. You're gonna make me, Mrs. Brilliant, equal with him, Mr. Dumb? It's crazy. What Jesus is doing in this parable, can you feel it? What Jesus is doing in this parable is he's taking us to this moment where our own inner conflict of wrestling with the nature of the gospel of grace is being exposed. What he's asking us is, hey, in your heart of hearts, what is it that you really want? What is it that you really want? Do you want to not be equal with other believers? Are you holding out hope that there's actually like a VIP room in heaven? You know, faithful to Christ for 40 years, this way please. Faithful to Christ for 50 years, this way please. It's like, you know, move the barrier, you get to go in. What is it that we really expect to get in following and serving Christ? What is it that we really want? Do we want the eternal life that God has promised to us in Christ? Or do we want that and, and to be elevated over and above those that we count as less deserving than ourselves. Twelve doesn't equal one! Twelve doesn't equal one! Come on! Notice how they make their case, too. Do you see this in verse 12? 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." This is what the human heart does, friends. This is what it always does. In the face of a perceived injustice, I don't deserve this, or I deserve better, there's always going to be some basis of justification that we can point to. It's like, well, of course I don't deserve this because of, Well, of course I deserve better because of. And so Jesus is teaching in this parable too, like, hey, anytime the grumbling's coming, anytime it's bubbling to the surface, you will always have a reason to justify yourself for your grumbling. But what the Lord is really trying to get after, what he's really trying to break through is to draw out that inner conflict. Does God really deal with me on the basis of grace alone, or is he a God of earning and deserving? bringing that to the surface, to expose it so that we might be humbled before Him and say, I have no ground for justification for my grumbling. The problem is not with God and what He has given to me. The problem is that I'm misunderstanding the gospel of grace. What we need in those moments to help us out as God's people is to rediscover the joy of serving Him and life with Him. And this is exactly what the Lord Jesus gives us in the end of the parable. So not only has He shown us the inner conflict that the parable draws out, but finally He brings to us the change in perspective that we all need. He asks three questions in verses 13 through 15. Jesus challenges the first hour workers with three questions from the vineyard owner, calling them to change their perspective on God, themselves, and others. Verse 13, the first question. But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for Denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. In this first question, God is essentially asking, have I broken the terms of agreement with you? And the answer, of course, is an emphatic no, of course he hasn't. God is always just and always faithful to his promises. This has been central to the Christian life ever since the days of Abraham, when God shows up and he makes a promise to Abraham, and Abraham is to receive it by faith, and God, over the course of his lifetime, shows himself to be faithful and just to his promises. Now, the world that you and I live in is a world of lawyers, and the reason why we have lawyers in our society is that even when two people come and make a contract between one another, there is still always this need for a third party to mediate and hold each other to the contract and make sure that it gets carried out. But could you imagine Abraham hearing the promise that God had made to him, and then he's waiting and waiting and waiting for God to deliver, And in his waiting, he starts to have this lawyer hiring mentality rising up in his own heart. And he thinks to himself, okay, is God going to be faithful to his promises or not? Well, if not, then I better get a lawyer so that I can sue God for not giving me what I deserve. And the very idea of that sounds crazy. It sounds insane. But friends, that's exactly what begins to rise up in our hearts when we think that God is not giving to us what we think we deserve. But praise God that he is not like us. Friends, the promise that God has made to you and I is the promise of eternal life through faith in Christ, all of which is by his grace. Hear this word, hear this word. Your level or length of service in his kingdom does not and will not alter the terms of the agreement because the agreement was all by grace to begin with. Praise God. We are not God's waiter or waitress, thinking that if we can just get the food out fast enough to the table, then maybe he'll leave us a bigger tip. The payment wage structure of God's kingdom is not one of earning and deserving. The coinage of the kingdom is grace, and God will always and forever be faithful to his promise. The second question that he asks is in verse 15. In verse 15. Did you not agree with me for Denarius? Verse 13, second question. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? In other words, does anyone else have any right to tell God what He is to do with what belongs to Him? And again, the answer is an emphatic no. I was thinking about this this past week, and Chick-fil-A is known for hiring a lot of high school students, which I think is great. A lot of really quality people, even in this church, work at Chick-fil-A. It's wonderful. But could you imagine A high school student being hired at Chick-fil-A, and after working there for a little bit, they begin to kind of look around and think, yeah, I think I know what the owners of this company ought to be doing with the things of Chick-fil-A. So they get in their car, and they drive down to corporate, and they ask to speak with a Kathy, because they want to have a private meeting. and just share with a member of the Cathy family a little bit how they think they should be running the operations of Chick-fil-A. I mean, the very thought of that sounds ridiculous. Now, the Cathy family is a very gracious family, so they probably wouldn't be too harsh with them, but you'd be looking at that situation, you'd be going, are you nuts? Are you crazy? Sit down for just a second. Who do you think you are? None of this belongs to you, doesn't belong to you. Can't stroll in and say, you know, do this and do that and do the other. And the vineyard owner says to this first hour worker, anything that you have received is something that I have given to you by my grace. You have no right to demand anything that you've received because everything belongs to the Lord anyway. We have no right to tell or even demand He who is sovereign what He needs to do with what rightfully belongs to Him. So friends, the gospel of grace says, hey, God is faithful, God is just, He will be faithful to His promise to give us eternal life in Christ. Anything that we receive from Him is a measure of His grace toward us anyway. And then finally, the third question in the second half of verse 15, and perhaps the most piercing question of all. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? Do you begrudge? Is your eye full of envy as you look at how radically generous I am towards other people? I was listening to a podcast recently, and the podcast was by a pastor named Ray Ortlin up in Tennessee. And Ray has just recently written a book on pornography, and he was talking about that book. And he said something in that podcast that really caught me off guard. He said, you know, I've written this book. I hope it'll be helpful for God's people. But he said, you know what I'm praying? I'm praying that God would actually save many people out of the porn industry. Okay, so he's written this book, not just for Christians who are already following Christ. He says, as I was writing this book, I was praying, I was praying that God would save many who are actively involved in the porn industry right now, save them, and do such a radical work in their life that he actually raises them up to be the next wave in this coming generation of church leaders and missionaries. You wanna know what I thought when I first heard that? Well, they can't be church leaders and missionaries. That sounds crazy. Preposterous. And then I remembered the gospel of grace. And I thought, that's it. That's it. Friend, would it bother you to know that you might serve Christ for decades laboring hard in the kingdom of gospel ministry, dealing with the messiness of church life and work, giving up Friday evenings to host a family that has some need, or being financially generous to see the work of the gospel move forward, maybe even sacrificing a family vacation or two so that you could give more. Would it bother you, would it bother you that someone else whom God chose before the foundations of the earth and is currently living a godless, worldly, hedonistic lifestyle to the uttermost and rejects Christ for six or seven decades of life on the earth? And then as the sun begins to set on his or her life in their final days, God shows up in the 11th hour and says, you have been swimming in worldly vanity all your days. You have been eternally idle in the gospel of the harvest of my kingdom. And yet in this final hour of your life, hear the invitation of the gospel. Come, come into my vineyard. Come work in the harvest. In the dusk of your life, and I will be radically generous to you. Would that bother you? Would that bother you? Think about the context of how this parable is told. Peter left everything to follow you. And then he does, right? Peter goes through all kinds of messy church stuff for the next several decades. And he's humiliated, has a moment of humiliation, a couple of them, right? Denying Christ three times. And then the whole episode with Paul in Galatians 2. It's tough. Ministry's messy. Church life is messy. It's not always easy. Could you imagine Peter at the end of his life going, okay, like Paul, I finished my race, ran the course, I fought the good fight. And then all of a sudden, here comes the rich young ruler again. The one who heard the same call of the gospel decades before and rejected Christ He took all of his wealth and possessions and lived a hedonistic life full of pleasure. He got to do it all. And in the dusk of his life, he gets convicted by the Spirit of God to believe the gospel. And they both step forward. They go into the kingdom. And shockingly, shockingly, they're equal. They're equal. Well, it isn't fair. It's not fair. 12 doesn't equal one. Of course it isn't fair. And it never has been. Friend, it never has been. we could live 10,000 lifetimes. 10,000 lifetimes serving as a missionary every single time to unreached people groups. And if at the end of those 10,000 lifetimes, the only thing that we receive is Christ, then friends, we would be the recipients of a radically generous deal. Do you believe that this morning? Do you believe that? Course 12 doesn't equal one. That's the point. That's the point. The ground is the level. God's people are equal at the foot of the cross. So how could we not long to see other people get in on this deal? I think about all the pagans living among us right now. How could we not long to see them get in on this deal? How could we ever have a self-righteous posture towards a lost and dying world? How could we not want to woo with the offer of God's free grace in Christ, a sin-enslaved world that is currently rejecting Him? Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a flood of 11th hour workers coming into the doors of Faith Bible Church and Christ Church in Tyrone? I can come. Well, don't I need to clean myself up a little bit or do this or that? Or what about that person? They've been following Jesus for much longer. Or my friend from high school, you know, I kind of went off the rails, but they stayed faithful to Christ through the high school and college years. Like, I'm not really sure that I can come back in. Say, no, friend. Just come. Or how could we ever lord our hours of service in the church over our fellow believers? You who serve more than someone else, what is the reward of your service? Is it to be elevated over your brothers and sisters in Christ so that they are no longer equal with you? Or is the joy of your master and the joy of your salvation reward enough? It has to be. It has to be. Otherwise, the heart of pride, I deserve better. I don't deserve this. Grumbling, grumbling, envy, bitterness, anger. It's a prison of a life. It's a prison of a life. What will free God's people up to be filled with joy? to work hard in the gospel harvest and not become proud about it. Friends, it's remembering that the coinage of the kingdom always has been and always will be grace and grace alone. And we thank God for that. There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea. There's a kindness in God's justice, which is more than liberty. For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind. And the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. Amen. Amen. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for the gospel of grace. God, I pray that every heart in this room would walk out of this facility this morning singing in awe that you have not dealt with us, God, on the basis of what we deserve. Father, we acknowledge Christ and him crucified as the expression of your grace toward us. And so God, we rejoice in the eternal life that you have given to us. God, I pray for Faith Bible Church that this would be a church filled with people, filled with people who love the gospel of grace, who serve you with all their might and never become proud about it. God, I pray that you would fill this church with joy. God, that you would bring many more 11th hour people through the doors of this church God, we pray that you alone would get the glory. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.