This little story that Jesus tells to illustrate some truth and we kind of think of them as like these gems that you pick up the parable and you look at it and you see the truth from some different angles. They kind of tie it up in a nice little package and hand it to us. And sometimes that's true, but I think more often the parables are wrecking balls, right? They come in and they smash through our assumptions because stories get around our assumptions in ways that just specific teaching doesn't. And then we need our assumptions knocked down because we think that we have it all figured out. We think that we know how the world works and how God is and how grace works. And in reality, what we need is for Jesus to disrupt us and unsettle us. As Flannery O'Connor said, grace must wound before it can heal. But then what Jesus does in those parables is he rebuilds them so that we think of them in ways that are true, right? He needs to knock down our assumptions about God so that he can show us what he's actually like. He needs to knock down our assumptions about ourselves so he can teach us who we actually are. Our parable this morning is one of those disruptive ones, and it's a familiar one. It's in Matthew chapter 20, starting in verse 1. 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. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. 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? And he said to them, Because no one has hired us. He said to them, You, go into the vineyards 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 eleventh 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 heat. But he replied to one of 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 give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first and the first last. Let's pray and we'll talk about what that means. Father, we're thankful for your word and the truth that it reveals to us about who you are, who we are, and what you've done to bring us back to yourself. As we look at this story about grace this morning, I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Send your spirit to help us understand your word that it might change our lives. Through this we pray, for we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. To start off, I just want to retell the story a little bit, maybe cast it in some modern terms so that maybe we have a better idea of what's going on here. A denarius is a day's wage. For ease of math's sake, I'm going to say that's $100. It's a little low for a day's wage these days, but we're just going to call it $100. Here's the story. A man has a big field that he needs worked. It says the owner of a vineyard, we don't know if he needs harvesting work, or planting work, or composting work, or picking off bugs work, but he needs help. And so he goes down to Home Depot at six in the morning, and he sees the group of unemployed day laborers there. He pulls out the truck and says, $100 for a day's work, anybody wants to hop in the truck. They all hop in the truck, he drives them back to the field. Where it goes along, the landowner decides that maybe some more help would be good, so he heads back to Home Depot at nine and sees another group of unemployed workers. Maybe they had an earlier job, maybe they had to get kids to school, maybe they just overslept, but whatever the case, he says, hey, fair pay for a day's work, and everybody hops in the truck. This new group, when they get there, they ask around, what's this landowner like? He said, fair pay, what are you guys getting? And they say, he said, 100 bucks, right? A day's wage for a day's work. And they do a little mental math, all right? 9 twelfths is 3 fourths, and 3 fourths of 100 is 75 bucks, right? It's not the full 100, but that's not bad, so they get to work. At the lunch break at noon, the sixth hour, the landowner goes out again, again at three in the afternoon. And the day's winding down, there's only an hour left in the workday, and the landowner makes one last trip. picks up one last load of helpers and he takes them back to the farm. And they barely have time to get their work gloves on and sharpen their tools before the bell rings for quitting time. And so the owner tells his number two, the foreman, to get everybody together and start paying people and pay the last group first. Everybody lines up to get their pay for the day and the foreman starts handing out envelopes. The first person takes their envelope, he's only been there for an hour, but he looks inside and is astonished to see $100. Because surely it's a mistake, that can't be right. The next man though, another one-hour worker, has gotten $100 as well. And the next, and the next, and then the three-hour workers come, $100 for them too. It seems like everybody's getting $100. And the early birds are watching this, right? The guys who have been there since 6 in the morning, and they have been doing the math. If those guys that came in at the 11th hour got $100, are we going to get $1,200? No, no, that's ridiculous. But I'm sure we'll at least get $300, $400, right? We'll get recognized for the fact that we have worked all day. And the first man of the all-day workers gets there, eager, and he receives his envelope and he opens it and is crestfallen to see $100. The second, $100. The third and fourth, on and on, $100. Everyone has gotten paid the same amount. And this is where the story starts to get under our sin and upset us. The wrecking ball starts pounding a little bit because the all-day workers are frustrated. And their view and injustice has been done. It's easy to paraphrase what they say. Look, boss, we've been working all day. We got up early, we were out, we were ready to work at the crack of dawn, and how do we get repaid? You have treated us no better than those who overslept, those who couldn't be bothered to be ready until midday, those who barely got their hands dirty. We've sweated through the heat of the day, so don't bother calling again. If this is how you treat your workers, we don't want anything to do with you. And don't you kind of agree with them? Isn't it easy for us to see things from their point of view? They did more work. Shouldn't they get more reward? But the landowner responds. Says, buddy, simmer down. I'm not in the wrong here. You and I agreed that you would work all day for $100. You worked all day. I've given you $100. Do you really think that I can't do whatever I want with the money that belongs to me? I could set it on fire. I could use it for tissues or toilet paper, and you would have no case against me. I only give out hundreds here. Take yours and go. The end. Isn't that an unsatisfying ending to this story? It doesn't tie a little bow on truth and make it look pretty. Where's the resolution? What do the all-day workers do next? What is Jesus trying to show us here? I think Jesus's point here is this. that for those of us who are familiar with him, those of us who are following him, that we can grow to hate grace. At least I can at times. We say we like the idea of it. We sing songs like Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, but when we see it in practice, it can frustrate us and undo us. I want to look at three characters, three groups in this story to help us to see that and to help us reconstruct what grace actually is and what a God-honoring response to it looks like. First, a quick kind of fundamental look at the landowner. And just a question really, why does he keep going back? Right, he goes at the beginning of the day at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour. Five times during the day he has to go to find help. Is he really that bad at estimating how much help he needs? How much labor the day requires? No. I think the only thing that makes sense of his repeated visits to the market, to Home Depot, to wherever he's going, is that he's being generous. He's being compassionate. Because think for a second, who are the workers that he's bringing in? They're not other landowners. They're not people that have a craft or a trade. They're not people that have a regular source of income. Otherwise, they would be at that job. These are people in need. These are people who, if they don't get work for the day, they don't feed their families that night. And this is true not just of the 11th hour workers who say, no one has hired us. This is true of the all day workers too. If no one hires them, they have nothing. So the mere fact that they are picked up at all is an act of grace and compassion on the part of the landowner. How do they respond? How do we respond? Well, let's look first at the all-day workers. The all-day workers respond with frustration, anger, indignation. Their assumption, I think we see in this story, is that people's importance and value is marked by their productivity. They believe that people's importance is marked by their productivity, and two things result from this. First, they keep score, and that causes them to then get angry. They keep score. Look again at verse 12. They say, these last worked only one hour, and you've made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. They worked one, we worked 12, they're lazy, we're industrious, they're bad, and we're good. We're the ones who have done the hard work, we've put in the hours, we've sweated. They've not. They're not worth your generosity. They're playing the comparison game. And we do this too. We, by default, given our cultural context, are often inundated with this base assumption that productivity equals value. That output equals worth. Those who contribute, those who get things done are worth our praise and our admiration, and those who don't, aren't. This is why some of you likely are so very busy. We desire praise and admiration and think that our productivity will get it for us. even as it kills us. When I talk to college freshmen who come in and ask them what high school was like, they say it was so busy, right? They describe their normal high school studies, but then all the extracurriculars that they do, right? The sports and the debate team and music and then all the community service that they do and then all their involvement with their church because how do you get into college? You prove that you can be productive. You prove that you're involved. You prove that you're a contributing member of society. Test scores might factor into it a little bit, but it's really the extracurriculars they believe. And so these college freshmen show up exhausted, and they haven't even done college yet. They're 18 years old and burnt out. This is why some of my friends are so very busy with their kids. They love and hate the fact that their kids' schedules of dance and softball and everything else that little kids do fills up their schedule, but it makes them feel like they're being good parents because their kids are busy. This is why our culture moves closer and closer to finding things like euthanasia morally palatable. Because in this economy, in this frame of thought, what do old people produce? Of what good are they? If they don't produce, they're not valuable. This is why I face the constant temptation to measure the success of RUF through numbers. How many people were at large group? How many students showed up at church this morning? Did we have any conversions? Are people going to fall conference? And I regularly have to check myself to say, am I encouraging people to do things and become connected to the community of RUF because I want them to find community, because I want them to grow in their faith, or because I will feel better about myself when I come to churches and I can report there were X amount of students at large group. I'll be able to prove to my supporters that I'm not wasting their generosity. We are very, very good at keeping score. We do it almost instinctively. I mean, don't you know immediately how many times you've had to cover for that person in the nursery? Don't you know, without thinking about it, how many times you've had to do that thing that your spouse promised they were going to do? Don't you know how you measure up to the people around you, kind of without thinking about it? We are very good at keeping score. But what happens when someone comes along that doesn't treat us according to our score? What happens when the bossman, the landowner, disregards all of our hard work? Well, we get angry. Look at verse 11. on receiving it, it being their promised wages, on receiving their promised wages they grumbled at the master of the house. Grumbled is this great Greek word, It's used in the Old Testament to describe Israel in chapter 15 of Exodus when they have no water, right? They've been freed from Egypt and they're walking through the desert on the way to Sinai. They're starting to get thirsty and they gongudzo against Moses and against God. It's used of them in Exodus 16 when they have no bread, right? They gongudzo, they grumble, they complain. But what happened in Exodus 12? The Passover. Freedom. What happened in Exodus 14? Crossing the Red Sea, seeing this miracle happen, walking through a miracle of deliverance. And on the other side, Gongudzo. Look again at verse 11. On receiving it, their promised wages, they grumbled at the master of the house. Remember, when the landowner showed up at Home Depot that morning, these guys had nothing. They're getting hired as an act of grace, of compassion, of redemption, and they respond with grumbling. If you live your life by scorekeeping, anger with God will be the result when he doesn't seem to be treating you in accordance with the score you've given yourself. Blessings that come to others, especially those that don't measure up to you, will cause frustration and envy. God, I know I read the Bible more than them. Why did they get a raise and not me? God, I know they don't work nearly as hard as I do. Why did they get the promotion and not me? Blessings that come to others cause envy and difficulties that come to us cause frustration. God, I'm on call for my church. Why can't I make ends meet? God, I do so much for you. Why am I still single? Why are we still childless? Why did that person die? When you live your life like the all-day workers, you live a life of scorekeeping, of comparison, which leads to envy and frustration and anger. And there's a very simple theological term for this, right? Works righteousness, right? I'm okay with God because I work hard. I deserve good things from God because I am good. But if Jesus came out and said, these guys believe in works righteousness, we wouldn't identify with them at all, because we believe in grace, right? We don't believe in works righteousness, but this wrecking ball of a story gets behind our defenses, and Christ shows us the all-day worker in our hearts, that when we play the comparison game, we, like them, get frustrated at blessings that come to others, and we get angry at the giver. Again, grace must wound before it can heal. All right, that's the all day workers. What about the 11th hour workers? We don't get much about them, but it's not hard to guess what their reaction is, right? All we're told is that at the end of the day, they're paid $100 and they leave, right? But is there any question really about what their reaction is, right? If this landowner had paid by the hour, all they could have expected was $8.33. Maybe he'd save himself the trouble and just give them a tenner. But instead, they receive the full blessing of the day. A crisp new $100 bill. At 5 o'clock, they're dreading having to go home with nothing. At 6 o'clock, it's as if they worked all day. What's your reaction to something like that? Some lavish gift, some generous, unexpected blessing. Overwhelming joy, right? Every single time, right? Aren't these guys in love with the landowner? Aren't these guys going to tell others about this generous man? Aren't they going to come back? One of my favorite stories, movies, musicals, it's all three, is Les Miserables. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm sorry. I'm going to spoil it. It's been out for a long time. You should have seen it already. It opens with a man, Jean Valjean, who's in prison. He's been in prison for almost two decades because he stole a loaf of bread and then escaped a couple times, but he's finally let out of prison, right? And he doesn't know how to function in the world, really. He's destitute. He's wandering around town and he's looked at with suspicion, and a bishop of a church welcomes him in, feeds him a meal, and gives him a bed for the night. And Valjean responds by stealing all this man's silverware. The dinner settings, everything, the plates, silverware, all that is actually silver. Throws it in his sack and takes off into the night. Later on in the night, early hours of the morning, there's a knock at the door of the church and the bishop is awakened by Jean Valjean, flanked by two, I think they're called gendarmes in French, policemen, who have caught him, found this bag of silver that this scruffy felon is carrying. And they say, Monsieur Bishop, we believe that this belongs to you. And the bishop looks Valjean in the face and says, my friend, welcome back. You forgot the candlesticks. And he walks to the table, and he picks up the candlesticks that are also silver, and he hands them to Valjean. And he says to the police officers, go. This is my friend. This was a gift to him. Jean Valjean, this hardened criminal, receives lavish grace. and it transforms him. Through the rest of the story, he is a protector, he's a benefactor, he's a hard worker, he's a generous and kind and compassionate man. He receives grace, and because he knows that it didn't come because of anything he did, but actually in spite of what he did, it transforms his life. He's an 11th hour worker. That's that response that we have to this lavish gift But to rewind the tape a little bit, there's an all-day worker in Les Miserables as well. If you know the story, you know that Valjean's nemesis is a policeman named Javert. And their lives kind of run in parallel. They end up in the same cities throughout the story. And Jean Valjean in the story can never rest because the officer of the law, the manifestation of the law, really, Javert, hounds him. And Javert lives his life by exact scorekeeping. He is the all-day worker. He knows the law and he lives it perfectly and he has no mercy for those who mess up in any way. And he pursues Jean Valjean over and over and over and just hounds him all of his life. And towards the end of the story, Javert, through some encounter, through some turn of plot, is in Jean Valjean's control. His life is in his hands. And they're in this back alley and Jean Valjean is sent out, actually he's sent out to kill Javert, a man that he's hunted all his life, a man who's made his life miserable. And what Valjean does is he fires his gun in the air and he says to Javert, go, I give you your life. The same thing the bishop said to him at the beginning of the story, he then blesses Javert with. But Javert can't handle it. His score keeping, his works righteousness life can't make sense of grace. It's too much for him and he kills himself. He receives grace and he shakes his fist at the giver. He gets mercy and he grumbles at it. What is it going to take for grace to actually amaze us? How do we get past our scorekeeping and anger and envy? And how do we rejoice like the 11th hour worker instead of sulk like the all day ones? What has to happen for us to live lives of joyful gratitude and be transformed by grace, not broken by it? Let's look back at the landowner, back to the boss. Remember, the only motivation that makes sense of why he keeps going back five times throughout the day is his compassion, his generosity. But there's one other little weird detail that a friend of mine pointed out in this story is that this landowner has a foreman, right? Look in verse eight. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, And what's a foreman, right? The foreman is your general contractor, right? If you've ever had work done on your house, you know that you don't want to deal with the tiling guy and the electrician guy and the framing guy. You want to deal with a general contractor and pay him to deal with all those people, right? The foreman is like the floor manager at a factory, right? And the landowner's the CEO, right? He's the one, the foreman's the one who handles hiring workers and making payments and arranging supplies. In other words, the landowner doesn't need to be doing anything. He's got a guy that takes care of hiring people and work and estimates and all of that. And at three o'clock in the afternoon, the landowner, he doesn't need to be running supply runs and picking up more workers. He should be in his office overseeing his investments. He doesn't need to be down in the nitty gritty of hiring and firing. And by five o'clock, He's not making another run to Home Depot, right? He should be waking up from his nap to have a little wine before he goes home for the evening. But this landowner wants to be involved. He chooses to bear the heat of the day, bringing people in. Those all-day workers who reference, you know, we have borne the heat of the day, they didn't have a choice. But the landowner did. Right? Work or starve. That's the worker's choice. But the landowner had a choice and he chose to bear the heat of the day so that he might be ridiculously generous to as many people as he could. And when you think about that, no surprise, right? This is a church. This is the Bible. We're reformed. This is about Jesus, right? He didn't have to come out. He didn't have to come down from heaven. He didn't need any one of us. But he wanted to show us grace. He wanted to shower us with his generosity and love, so he bears the heat of the day to bring us into the kingdom of God, not because he needs us, but because we are helpless without it. You see, those all-day workers are just as needy as the 11th hour ones. We are all in desperate need of his mercy. Because if there's anyone who would have been able to live their life by scorekeeping, it's Jesus. He lived perfectly and beautifully. And when he came to the cross, he doesn't say, this isn't fair, this isn't right. He says, forgive them. Take my perfect score and give it to them. He bore the heat of the day and the shame of the cross because he wanted to bring you in. Because without his grace, you had nothing. And with it, whether you've been working all day, a Christian your whole life, or whether you came in right before quitting time, you have everything. Doesn't keeping score seem silly in light of that? Doesn't arguing about all of the reasons we should be getting more seem petty in light of the fact that we brought nothing to the table and God already has given us all things in his Son? Why keep doing it? Jesus ends this parable, verse 16, with one of those upside-down phrases that's so common when he talks about the kingdom of God. The last shall be first, and the first last. The last shall be first. Those who realize that without grace they are destitute are the first to really rejoice at his grace. And the first shall be last. Those who insist on scorekeeping are the last to really get how needy they are. They're the last to really enjoy the lavish grace and ridiculous generosity of our God. Which are you? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the lavish grace and ridiculous generosity of you, of your Son, of your Spirit, to send Christ to die, to take our place, to live his life perfectly, that we, broken, bruised by the fall, might share in his victory. Father, it's unbelievable. It doesn't make sense. You've been so good to us, and we don't deserve it. I pray, Father, that that truth would sink deep into our hearts. Whether we've been at this church or whether we've been yours for a week or decades, Father, we would still be amazed at your grace. We would still marvel at your generosity that met us in our need. And help us to remember that no matter how long we've been working, the fact that we are working at all is your compassion on us. And Father, as we realize that, I pray that you would free us from the burden of scorekeeping, free us from the burden of envy and anger, and free us to rejoice. to fall in love with you, to tell others about you because of your ridiculous grace and your abundant goodness towards us. Do this, we pray, for we ask you in Christ's name. Amen.