Well, very good afternoon to you if you're a visitor and I know there are one or two visitors. These Thursday lunches, in distinction from our Wednesday lunches, our series of talks, as you'll see from the back of the little bulletin, is entitled, The Sting in His Tail, where the His is a reference to Jesus, and the Tail is a reference to the parables that Jesus told, and we've been seeing in different parables, as we've gone through a number of them, in Matthew's Gospel, the way in which in the parables Jesus tells there's always a punchline somewhere and so if you don't feel slightly shocked in your solar plexus, you may well have missed the point of the tale that Jesus was saying. And we're turning to what I have found for years and years to be one of the most intriguing of the parables in Matthew chapter 20 verses 1 through 16. And the title of the talk is, A Disturbing Wage Structure, A Disturbing Wage Structure. For the kingdom of heaven, says Jesus, is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with his laborers for a denarius, a day, a kind of average day's salary really, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour, I think we've mentioned before that in antiquity the day was divided into twelve hours of the day and twelve hours of the night. The day began at six o'clock in the morning, ended at six at night, and was divided into four sections of three hours each. So obviously the man had arrived at six in the morning, And now, in verse 3, going out at about the third hour, nine o'clock in the morning, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And to them he said, you go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you. So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour, so we're at five o'clock in the late afternoon now, he went out and found others standing and he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? They said to him, because no one has hired us. And so if their answer has been an honest answer, you can imagine the hope of these men has been on a sliding, diminishing scale. At noon, perhaps they hoped they would be hired, but they're still hanging on. Five o'clock at night, in a desperate hope, because they're paid daily, they live on what they get paid daily. So these are in a way desperate men, hoping that they might be able to get some income for the day, that would give them something for the next day. So the master said, you go into the vineyard too. And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, call the laborers and pay them their wages beginning with the last up to the first. Now you thought it was whoever runs Miss Universe that thought of this idea begin with the last and move up to the first. No, it's a very old idea to begin with the last and move up to the first. So When those hired about the eleventh hour came, so this is the crew that worked from five until six probably, when they came, each of them received a denarius. And then fast forward, now when those hired first came, those who'd been out there in the fields twelve hours, they thought they would receive more. 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've made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day of the scorching heat but he replied to one of them friend Now that was a soft answer turning away wrath, wasn't it? Friend, he said, I'm doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give 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. I'm not sure how to begin this first sentence, that was not the first sentence. I had a friend. You need to understand in brackets, it's not that we ever fell out, it's just that we eventually lived in different places, so I don't think of him as no longer being a friend, he's just somebody I knew pretty well when I was in my early twenties and we've hardly seen one another since, but it so happened that about eight years ago we bumped into one another, almost literally, at a Christian exhibition, if you can imagine what that might mean, a Christian exhibition, where both of us had been invited to do seminars. Now, the interesting thing was, we had both, I was a minister when I met him, but he later on became a minister, and we'd really been good friends, we were about the same age, but there were certain differences that would not take you by surprise. One of the differences was, he was the lead singer in a band. I don't mean when I met him, although that was true. I mean, when I bumped into him eight years ago, he was still the lead singer in the band. They were like the Rolling Stones, you know. They had made it through, I guess, about 30 years of being together. He was a very effervescent kind of individual. You know how you meet these people and, you know, you haven't seen them for 20 years but they're only three minutes into the conversation and they're telling you what they're doing. And I kind of casually said, still got the band. Oh, he said, wait a minute. And he rushed off to his car and he came back with the CDs that the band had made. They're really a pretty good band. Not that I'm the greatest judge of good bands and bad bands. They were a pretty good band. Oh, he says, listen to me, it's so great to see you. So I go away and I put the windows up in the car and I quietly slide one of the CDs in. And one of the songs was called Vagabond Shoes. And it had a chorus that ran through it. It was actually a song about Jesus. It was about Jesus as a wandering creature in Palestine. And there was a chorus that ran through it. It was the same until you got to the last verse. The chorus that ran through it went, I think, like this. Just get my keys and strings right here. It went like this. If all the things he said were written down, the whole world could not contain the books. Now, some of you will make the connection between that statement and the very last words of the gospel according to John. That's how John ends his gospel. He says, I've selected some of the wonderful things that Jesus did, but if I was to try and write down everything that Jesus did, the whole world would not be able to contain the books. It was his way of saying, you know, what I've given you is just an insight into the marvellous things that the Lord Jesus did. So I'm, of course, I'm bouncing along as you do in the car, you know, I do that very catchy tune and I'm getting the chorus, if all the things he said were written down in books. But then came to the last verse, and the chorus changes. Just when I've learned the chorus, they go and change the chorus. And after the last verse, the chorus went like this. If all the jokes he told were written down in words, the whole world could not contain the laughter. If all the jokes he told were written down in words, the whole world could not contain the laughter. And I thought to myself, I wonder if you know just how clever that chorus is. Because, of course, I thought, I'll bet there are people sitting who would listen to this chorus and who would say, but Jesus didn't tell any jokes. And they would have missed the joke. What's he singing about here? If all the words, I can understand that, I know the end of John, but Jesus didn't tell any jokes. Now, those of you who are joke tellers, I mean, who don't mess it up by putting the punchline far too early, but if you're a joke teller, you've met people like that, haven't you? They kind of stand when you're telling the joke, and it's outrageously funny. But then they'll come to you afterwards and say, help me to What was that joke? Why were people laughing at that? They just don't get it. Now where are Jesus' jokes? Why do we laugh at jokes? I suppose there are whole PhD dissertations written on that subject, the reasons people laugh at jokes. And I suppose the simplest explanation is the thing that makes you laugh is that you're being led along and your mind is expecting one conclusion and the actual conclusion kind of turns you over in an unexpected way and there's a kind of explosion of emotion takes place and it comes out in laughter which is a cue for me to tell you all the best jokes I know but since they're about Scottish lawyers mainly I probably better not tell any of them And you see, that's exactly what the parables are. I know some of us have been brought up by well-meaning Sunday school teachers who have said, now parables are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. But they're not really. They're earthly stories with a profoundly earthly meaning to trip us up sometimes and to say to us, I never thought God was like that, or I never thought I was like that. And it's so interesting actually when we listen to the parables, how often the thing that might excite somebody about a parable is as off mark as somebody standing there saying, I don't get the joke here. We often think the reason Jesus told parables was to make things clear, but remember those of us who are here for our discussion of the very first parable, he makes it crystal clear in his first parable that not everybody will get it. That you need to understand something before you get the joke. Now, here's a parable. I wonder if you get the joke. I think this is one of those parables to which almost everybody says. So let me make it clear that this parable is not here to teach us how to run our business. You're certainly free to run your business this way. But this is not one of those parables that's been written for extreme political leftists who want the kind of supreme egalitarianism. Although, if my judgment's anything, when they begin to get near to supreme egalitarianism, there are some of them who want to rise to the top and it never works. It's not a story about how to run your business. But what is it a story about? It's a story about a man who was in harvest time. He needed daily workers. He went to the work today, pay today. He went there five times all through the day. When six o'clock came, his foreman carried his bag of denarii down to where the workmen were. They apparently came in groups maybe. You know, maybe it was one ethnic group at 6 o'clock in the morning and it was another ethnic group at 12 o'clock. And there's a sense here, they're still in their groups. If they didn't know each other, they've got to know each other and they come in their groups in order to be paid. And here's the joke. It's really funny. They all get paid exactly the same. That's hilariously funny. except most of the people didn't see the joke. Most of the people didn't see that the humor lay in the fact that all that was being given out here was being given out by a figure who obviously at the end of the day represented the Heavenly Father. Now If that's the case, there are three things for us to notice, and really the punchline in this story of Jesus comes in verses 13 through 15. He replied to one of them, Friend, I'm doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Isn't that what I promised you? 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? This story is a test of how I really think about God. This is a test of how I really think about God. And it's telling me three things about Him. First of all, he always acts with complete integrity even when he doesn't do what you want him to do. Isn't that the first lesson? He always acts with complete integrity even when he doesn't do what you want him to do. He gave to those who would come at six in the morning everything he promised. Absolutely everything he promised. But then you notice something happens to them. Their eyes were diverted from the master to their fellow workers. And what they did was to take their eyes away from everything the master had promised to give to them and do for them that would provide for them and for their families for the next day. And they began to look out of the corner of their eyes to compare themselves with other people. Now, where's the problem spiritually? The problem spiritually is as soon as you do that, you are a spiritual goner. Because God does not deal with individuals on the basis of grading us on some kind of curve, does he? As soon as I think that my relationship to God depends on where I'm placed on the curve, then I have lost all my spiritual moorings. My relationship to God is based entirely on what God has promised to be and what God has promised to do for me. I can't remember the exact statistic, but I think it's somewhere over 90% of people in the United States of America believe that they are better than average car drivers. And probably most of us in this room, that's not some kind of disposition that people out there have, but in the church we don't have that disposition. I bet most of us in this room think that we're better than average car drivers. I mean, we may not be as good as our wife, but we're certainly a better than average. I mean, it's inconceivable that you're not a better than average car driver. But you see, only fifty 50 point something of, well, 49 point something of the people, isn't it? Can be better than average car drivers. And we do exactly the same spiritually, don't we? It's endemic in us. Well, I'm not as bad as, or I'm better than, and you see it manifested in our lives in a million ways. We're always falling into this trap of saying to God, yes, but how do I compare with him? How do I compare with her? On the basis of my ability to compare myself with him or her, this is what you should be doing in relationship to me. And you see what we are really saying, if we would just stand outside ourselves and see from afar what we're really doing, we're really saying to God, now listen God, this is the way you should be God. You be God my way. Now there's a very interesting illustration of this in the Gospels. Very interesting illustration. Remember after Jesus had been raised and he had that picnic on the shore with the disciples and then he said to Simon Peter, blinked eyes and said, come on Peter, you and I need to talk. And they talked. And Jesus said, you know, Peter, you're young, you're strong, you do things your own way. The day is going to come when people will take you and they will bind you and he was obviously referring to Simon Peter's coming crucifixion I wonder if you remember what Peter said because there was somebody behind them 15 yards behind them the very man who would write down the story John was togging along behind makes you wonder why but he was togging along behind and Peter kind of glanced backwards and said well what about him And Jesus said, Peter, you need to keep your eyes fixed on me, because I'm not going to work in your life by some kind of comparative evaluation of your life with John's life. And Peter, who had almost lost it completely the night Jesus was betrayed, arrested, before he was crucified, almost lost it again. If Jesus had not just grabbed him at that point, he would have been a goner again. Because he was always saying, indeed just before this passage he was saying, so what's in it for us because of the way we have done things? And one of the hardest things for the Christian to learn sometimes is that God deals with each of us with complete integrity. And that's not a matter, it's never a matter, dear friends, it's never a matter of us being able to say, but I did this and they did that, therefore you should treat me differently. And we only need a little self-knowledge to realize just how true that is of us. There are layers of that kind of spirit in our hearts and the Lord is constantly, I think, chipping away at them. There's a second thing we learn about God. His complete integrity second, His absolute sovereignty. His absolute sovereignty. You remember He says in this kindly way to the complainer. He replied to one of them, friend, I'm doing no wrong. I gave you what I promised you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? That's an innocuous enough statement, isn't it, from an employer? If you were an employer, you would have the right to say that to people. This business is my business. I have complete sovereign control over my business. I can do as I please. And of course, the better the character of the business owner, the better is going to be what he pleases to do in his sovereign will, or for that matter, her sovereign will. But you see, the issue of this parable is, do you allow God to be God? Do you allow God to be God and to say, I do, my good pleasure and you should know me well enough to know that I can be trusted but you do need to learn to trust me because living with me means inevitably you are no longer in control now that's another lifelong lesson if I'm not mistaken that's a lesson I find myself learning or trying to learn again and again and again and again that my native tendency is to say, just let me do this, Lord. And he says here, you can't say these words, that's an oxymoron, just let me do this, Lord. What kind of application that has in your life? I think one of the things that this feels its way into in our lives is the extent to which We so depend on all manner of things, our status, our material possessions, all kinds of things that are part and parcel of our lives and to an amazing extent we are not only dependent upon them, we are so addicted to them that we become, in our own little worlds, we become control freaks. Now you must have heard somebody say about somebody else, him he's a control freak. No one has ever said that who isn't him or herself a control freak. Every last one of us is by nature a control freak. And one of the great challenges of the coming of the kingdom is, in this kingdom you cease to be king and you become a citizen. And it's a huge challenge. It's not only an initial challenge. You can't give the whole of your life over to God in one single decision. Why? Because it's going to take the whole of your life to give the whole of your life to God. In a daily series of, Lord, I'm holding on again. I'm making myself God again. So there's God's integrity, there's God's sovereignty, and of course the third thing is God's wonderful mercy. Here come these stragglers at the end, they've been waiting all day. Apart from anything else, they don't know what they're going to say to their wives when they go home. The wives have been waiting for these men hour upon hour upon hour and they're going to go home and say, we didn't get any work today. And this master, with amazing generosity, Indeed, he uses the word generosity in verse 15. He says, do you begrudge my generosity? Now, what's he focusing on here? He's saying, is your God generous? Is your God generous? That is to say, if I can put it this way, because he's talking to somebody who's complaining they didn't get enough. Do you have a God who is generous to others, so much so that you rejoice in his generosity to others? It's easy-peasy, as we used to say at home in the streets of Glasgow, it's easy-peasy to think that you've got a generous God when things are going well for you. But this is a God who is generous to others. And Jesus is saying, That can be a real test, you know, that God is generous to somebody else. I wonder if you remember, because probably most of us in this room had to do it at some point or another, remember Shakespeare's play Merchant of Venice? Which is never my favorite play, but every Shakespeare play has got some absolutely fabulous lines in it. Do you remember when they're all hassling? If you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the movie. I never saw the movie, but I did read the book and memorized great chunks of it. And of course, that marvelous, marvelous statement that comes from the lips of Portia when Shylock the Jew is demanding his pound of flesh. And she says these magical words, the quality of mercy is not strained. Remember your mother with a strainer? You know what a strainer is? One of these mesh things with little holes, and what you did was you would put all the stuff in it, but it was what you really wanted that would strain through, like a coffee filter. You put the coffee in, but you don't want all that stuff in your mouth. What you want is the coffee in your mouth. The diluted version of all the stuff that you put into the coffee filter. It's a strainer. And that's the picture here. And she's saying, the quality of God's mercy, God doesn't put his mercy into a filter and say, I'll let just a little of it drip through to those who are worthy of it. No, the quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven. And then you remember those memorable words she says to Shiloh that are full of gospel. When Shiloh is saying, give me what I deserve, and she says, remember this, that in the way of justice, none of us would see salvation. We do pray for mercy. And that, at the end of the day, is what this is really all about. It's that this God is a merciful God, and as He shows that mercy, we're able to come to Him And actually it's only when we see that this is true that we can sing about a third of the hymns in most of our hymn books that are entirely about how we are utterly dependent upon the mercy of God. Now, I said weeks ago that I have a friend who is a Christian counsellor, a very distinguished Christian counsellor, and he told me once that one of the things he does when Christians come in, he'll give them a list of the parables and say, is there any one of these parables that really irritates you and gets up your noise? And I think this is one of them. I think this is one of them. There's something about this parable that's not right. No, there's something about the reader of this parable that's not right. And that's the joke. And it's possible to read it again and again and again and again and say, I didn't think Jesus told any jokes and sadly that would mean the joke was on me because I'd seen it and heard it but never seen Him and heard Him. The sting in the tail. Heavenly Father Thank you for the privilege of being together again, of the joy with which we greet friends and relatives and new friends, and for the loveliness and the quietness and the security and the pleasure of being in this room. And we thank you too for your word and for its undermining quality, because we know that you do not trip us up in order to harm us, but in order that we may in our need look up and call out to you and say, Heavenly Father, here I am in my need. Come and have mercy upon me, and help me, save me, and bless me, and use me for your glory. And we pray this with thanksgiving today in Jesus' name. Amen.