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THE RULE OF GOD IS ACCORDING TO HIS SOVEREIGN PLEASURE Matthew 20: 1-16INTRODUCTION The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most shocking and profoundly disturbing reality in the universe. The gospel of Jesus Christ shows that God’s kingdom is run by principles exactly opposite to those by which the world of human beings is run. God’s kingdom is upside down from the way we do things. There are many ways this is true but I want you to consider this one example and see if you don’t agree with me. How would you feel if you knew for certain that Ted Bundy, the mass murderer who was executed in a Florida electric chair about 10 years ago, was in heaven, right now, enjoying God’s love and Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Indian civil rights leader who suffered greatly for the good of others was right now in hell, suffering eternal torment? I don’t know this for certain, but it is a possibility based on reports I’ve read about what each man believed prior to their death. In other words, God, because of the death and resurrection of Christ is right now pouring out infinite kindness on a man who spent most of his life hating and lusting and plotting and carrying out heinous acts of murder while another man, who spent his entire life trying to bring hope and freedom to millions of others at the cost of great suffering to himself is suffering in hell because he refused to trust in Christ. If the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, then things like this are going on right now and will be going on for all of eternity. In other words, men and women who committed horrible crimes are going to be in heaven and other men and women who lived lives of service to others out of religious motives are going to suffer forever in hell. Those in heaven will be there simply because Christ died for their sins and rose from the dead and they believed that Christ did this for them. Those in hell will be there because they trusted in their own goodness to be sufficient cause for God to accept them. How does that make you feel? I think most of us, if we really stop to think about it are offended by this state of affairs. I have had many people; over the years, make this exact complaint to me as I’ve explained the gospel. They are offended that Jesus Christ promises that a murderer who repents and trusts in him can go to heaven while their kind, atheist grandmother is suffering in hell. All of us have a very profound sense of justice. We all experience outrage when we discover that the innocent are being punished and the guilty are being rewarded. We all believe that bad people ought to be punished and good people ought to be protected and rewarded for their goodness. In fact, we all believe that God has an obligation to reward those who do good and to punish those who do wrong. If God is God, then he must be just. He must punish the wicked and reward the righteous. The Bible is clear from beginning to end that this is indeed who God is and how he will act. In Genesis 19, God tells Abraham that he is going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because they are wicked cities and he will not tolerate their evil any longer. Abraham tells God he can’t do that, he can’t punish the righteous right along with the wicked. He says, "Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The vast majority of humans believe that God is going to welcome them into heaven because they are among the righteous. God will do right, in fact, he must do right, by them because they deserve God’s favor. Most people cannot think of any reason why God would turn them away from heaven and would be able to give you many reasons as to why God would be happy to accept them. We naturally believe that we deserve a break today. It is correct for us to be convinced that God is going to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. We are wrong when we believe that we are righteous in and of ourselves. The reason we are so offended by the thought of a Ted Bundy enjoying heaven and Mahatma Gandhi suffering in hell is that we truly do not understand ourselves or how it is that God saves people. If Ted Bundy is in heaven it is because he came to know who he really was and who God is. The reason that Mahatma Gandhi is in hell is that he never came to terms with who he was and who God truly is. Jesus wants to rescue you from this error. His entire ministry is aimed at persuading us of our inability to save ourselves and God’s ability to save us. He is aiming at convincing us that God does not save those who think they are righteous but he only saves those who know they are sinners. This entire section of Matthew’s gospel, from 19:13 to the end of chapter 20 is designed to shock us and to destroy our pride and lift up God’s grace. God does not save the strong, the competent, the deserving. He only saves the weak, the incompetent, the undeserving. I struggled for several hours to come up with an outline for 20:1-16 but all my efforts proved fruitless. What I’m going to do is to help us identify the main point of the parable that Jesus tells and then show how it connects to 19: 13-30, the passage we looked at last week. Then I’m going to make some applications to how we think and live. THE POINT OF THE PARABLE The first thing to note is that this parable is an explanation for what Jesus just said. Note the word "for" that begins the chapter. Now specifically it is an explanation of the principle he stated in v. 30, "But many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first." The reason we know this is because he ends this parable by restating the principle in reverse order and using the conjunction "so". "So the last will be first and the first last." As we look at the parable we are trying to see how this story explains the meaning of the principle. As I’m going to make clear in a moment, the principle is strongly connected to what precedes it, but the parable is mainly a description of this principle. The kingdom of heaven is built on a great reversal. Those whom the world views as first will be treated as last in God’s kingdom and those who are viewed as last, will be treated as first. A second clue from the context pointing us to the meaning of the parable is the time reference. When will the first be last and when will the last be first? If we look back at 19:27-29 we see that when Peter asks what benefit he and the other disciples will receive from leaving their life behind Jesus points ahead to his 2nd coming, to the resurrection from the dead, to the final judgment. So, in the parable, the day for working is now and the end of the day, when wages are paid out, is the final judgment. There are two categories of people right now on planet earth, the first and the last. At the final judgment those who have been first on planet earth will be last in regards to God’s eternal kingdom and those who have been last on planet earth will be first in God’s kingdom. I’m presuming that you would like to be first when it really matters, in God’s eternal kingdom, and so you will be eager to be last, here on planet earth. This parable will tell you how to be last. Before we look at the details of the parable I want to remind you of the cardinal rule of interpreting parables. Not every detail of the story means something. In fact, most of the time, the details are there simply as part of the story. There is basically one point to every parable. Some of the details point to other spiritual realities but we must be careful to aim at finding the big idea that Jesus is trying to make. A landowner goes out in the early morning, at sunrise, around 6 am, to hire some men to come and harvest his grapes. The first men he hires agree to work for the day for a denarius. At about 9am the landowner goes into the marketplace and sees some other men standing there and commands them to go join in the harvest. He simply tells them he will pay them whatever is fair. He does the same thing at noon and 3pm. Then, at 5pm, an hour before quitting time, he goes into the marketplace and when he discovers men still standing there not working, he commands them to join in the harvest as well. At quitting time, about 6pm, the master commands his foreman to call in the workers and to pay them their wages. However, he tells him to begin by paying those who were hired last and then pay those hired first, last of all. Before we look at what happened let me put the denarius into a modern wage. Let’s assume that the base wage for agricultural workers is $8 per hour for 8 hours and then time and half for anything over 8 hours. That means that the guys hired first would get paid $112 for the days work. So, in the parable, the guys who worked for just one hour were paid $112. We are not told what happened to those hired at other times because they are not part of the point. Remember, the point Jesus is making is what it means for the last on planet earth to become first in his kingdom and for the first on planet earth to become last in God’s kingdom. You can picture the scene can’t you? The men are all standing in line to get paid. Now those who worked all day would be very interested in knowing what those hired for an hour got paid. So they are craning their necks to see what’s going on. Maybe they even send a representative to the front of the line to see what’s up. However it happens, they see that the men hired for just one hour are paid $112 and so they are pretty excited. They’re busily multiplying what they deserve given those rates and are expecting to be paid over $1000 for their day’s labor. When they get to the paymaster, they are sorely disappointed as they are given $112, the amount they agreed to work for but the same amount that those who only worked 1 hour were paid. This does not sit well with them. They cry out, "That’s not fair." Actually what they do is grumble against the landowner by complaining that he had made the men who only worked one hour, and that in the coolest part of the day, equal to them who worked all day, even through the scorching mid-day heat. What do you think, does this seem unfair to you? It should seem unfair to you, because it is. This is grace and grace is the opposite of justice. You can bet that if this kind of behavior became known in your place of employment, there would be some serious complaining going on. In fact, most union contracts are written to make sure this kind of unfair payment cannot go on. People deserve to be paid in proportion to their hours and skill. If you only work an hour while your fellow employees work eight, it’s not fair for you to be paid for eight hours. How does the master respond to this accusation? First, he reminds them that they agreed to work for $112 and so he is not dealing with them unjustly. He is being fair with them. He is doing exactly what he promised to do. They worked for 12 hours for $112, just like he said. Then he explains why he paid those who only worked an hour, $112. He wanted to do so. He paid those who worked an hour so much, not because of anything they did, but because he wanted to be generous. He was kind to them out of the freedom of his own good pleasure and not for any reason in them. In fact, he did not treat them as they deserved. They only deserved to be paid $8, but he out of the abundance of his kindness paid them $112. But then he asks two questions that probe a little deeper into what is actually going on in their hearts. First, he asks, "Don’t I have a right to do with my money as I please?" He is challenging their view of him and of his relationship to what he owns. They do not get to tell him what to do, how to handle his money, how to run his vineyard. They are workers only and have no right to question his freedom. Do you like that answer? This kind of reason is offensive to human beings. God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy. Second, he challenges their view of themselves. He exposes their real problem. They are envious of his generosity. It isn’t so much that they want more but they cannot handle others getting more than they deserve. They know they are being treated justly, they cannot handle the landowner being kind to someone else. They would be happy if the master took away his generous gift so that they could maintain their superiority. He exposes their selfish, wicked hearts. The point of the parable is to show that God who owns everything and is sovereign over all things is free to be gracious to whom he wants. He is never unjust in his dealings with men but he is often gracious. Because God delights to give people what they don’t deserve, the kingdom of heaven operates on a different principle than the kingdom of man. The world operates on the principle that you get what you deserve and so the strong, the competent, the righteous are the only ones who are rewarded. But in God’s kingdom it is exactly the opposite. Only the incompetent, the unrighteous, the undeserving are rewarded. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE LAST/FIRST ON PLANET EARTH? What does it mean to be last on planet earth? How do you know if you are among those who are last on planet earth and who will then be first in heaven? The men hired at the 11th hour are the last on planet earth. The surprise in the parable is that they were hired at all and that they were paid what those hired first were paid. They should not have been hired and they should not have been paid what they were paid. All they have, the work and the reward is a gift. The "last" on planet earth are all those who know that everything is a gift. They know that they deserve nothing from God. They are debtors to God, God is not indebted to them. These are the people who know they have nothing to offer to God in order to gain his favor. They mourn over their sinfulness and yearn to be made right with God. They are those who believe that it is infinite gain to lose everything on planet earth but to be loved by God, to belong to Jesus Christ. Those who are last on planet earth know that they deserve to go to hell. They know that they have no ability to please God. They are stunned and amazed that God sent his only Son to die on the cross for their sins. They are astonished that God sent his Holy Spirit to them to convict them of their sinfulness and to show them the greatness of Christ and give them faith in him. They daily die to finding pleasure in this world in order to find their pleasure in Christ and his kingdom. They daily leave behind their right to be treated well, to not be inconvenienced in order to love others. They are grateful and hope filled people because they know that the glories that await them in heaven are infinitely greater than the suffering they have endured as a follower of Christ. The are meek and humble people who do not demand to be treated well because they know that they do not deserve anything. What does it mean to be first on planet earth? How do you know if you are among the first on planet earth who will be last in heaven? The first on planet earth are all those who are sure that God will deal well with them because they have been obedient. They believe that God only pays attention to those who have something to offer him, some way to help him out. The rich ruler is among the first because he believes he is able to do some good thing to gain God’s favor. There are several indications in the parable of the characteristics of those who are the first on planet earth. Jesus didn’t use the word, "grumble" by accident in this story. This is the same word that is used in the OT to describe how Israel continually grumbled against the Lord. It is a word describing the behavior of people who are filled with unbelief regarding the goodness of God and the ability of God to fulfill his promises. The nation Israel continually complained that God was not taking good care of them and that in fact God was doing them harm. They did this in spite of all the evidences of God’s gracious care through the Exodus and their travels through the wilderness. God repeatedly showed his love for them and yet they grumbled against his dealings with them. They believed they deserved better. So it is with those who are "first" on planet earth. They have a right to a good life here and demand that God give them what they so deserve. These are people who are full of condemnation towards others. They are full of envy and jealousy because they deserve to be treated better. Others have not done as they have done and so they do not deserve to be treated so well. They are proud people who make sure that people pay for what they do to them. They are offended by grace. It is an offense to them that a mass murderer could go to heaven because of Christ’s death and resurrection while a religious humanitarian suffers in hell. When you are offended that wicked people like Ted Bundy go to heaven, then you do not understand how offensive you are to God. These are people who think that the death and resurrection of Christ are nice and the promise of heaven is OK but they want justice now. They want their reward here. To give up any comfort on planet earth based on the hope of overwhelming joy in heaven makes no sense to those who are first on earth. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE LAST/FIRST IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN? I know that in the parable the last and the first are both paid the same amount of money. Some take that to mean that the distinction that Jesus is making is simply that every Christian, regardless of how much work they do for God, is going to gain an equal reward. The warning is that we should not be envious because of Christians who get in without any sacrifice. That explanation makes no sense out of the first/last comparison or the context of the parable. The central issue throughout 19:13-30 has been how to gain eternal life. Those who are like children are members of God’s kingdom. The rich ruler is excluded from heaven because he loves money and the pleasures that money can buy, not Jesus and all he promises to be for us. Jesus tells the disciples that it is impossible for any human being to do anything to be saved. Then, in response to Peter’s assertion and question, Jesus talks about what will happen at the final judgment. So it seems obvious to me that to be first in the kingdom of heaven is to be treated as one of God’s own children. It is to be a citizen of God’s eternal kingdom. It is to be saved. To be last in God’s kingdom is to go to hell. It is to be excluded from that kingdom. God is no man’s debtor and if you think that you have put God in your debt by anything you have ever done you show that you do not belong to his kingdom. The only people who are in heaven are those who are rejoicing in God’s salvation, not in who they are or what they have done. Those who want God to be just, will get exactly what they are looking for, God’s just condemnation, because no man living is righteous in themselves. APPLICATION
How do you think that the men hired last felt when they were given $112 for one hour of labor? They were giddy with joy and astounded by such generosity. Do you think they thanked the landowner for his generosity? Of course they did. Unlike the men hired first who merely got what they deserved, these men knew they were the recipients of amazing kindness and so they were thankful and grateful. These men would never think to boast in what they did. You’d never catch them talking about all their hard work. They would be talking much about the kindness of the landowner to hire them at the last hour and to pay them so much money. Every Christian is to think of themselves as having been hired at 5pm and yet receiving a full day’s wage. We should think much of all the benefits that are ours because of the Lord Jesus Christ and give thanks to God for them. God’s gifts are infinitely greater than any cost we have ever suffered as followers of Christ.
This past winter Jordan and I were out shoveling our driveway after one of our few snowstorms. Our neighbor pulled up in front of the house and asked Jordan if he’d be willing to shovel his driveway at that time and whenever it snowed. He then handed Jordan a $20 bill. The next time he paid him $30. It takes about 10 minutes to shovel the driveway. You can bet that the minute it snowed Jordan was over their shoveling the neighbor’s driveway. He did it with great joy. Why was he willing to suffer the inconvenience and the cold and the exertion of shoveling? He was willing to give up the comfort of sitting in the warm house because the reward for shoveling was so much better than the cost he incurred. That is what it means to live by faith. Every command that God gives us comes with a promise of reward attached to it. So the way we obey God’s commands is by believing the promise that all that God promises to be for us in Jesus is infinitely greater than any cost we will incur. For example, let’s say that a co-worker talked behind your back to your boss. Now, 1 Peter 3:9 says, "Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult but with blessing because to this you were called so that you might inherit a blessing." Living by faith in God’s grace means that you decide to lose your right to be vindicated before your boss or to pay back your co-worker because you believe living like Jesus is better and more certain to make you happy than getting even. So you tell you boss about something that your co-worker did right and even compliment the co-worker directly. Back in 19:29, this is what it means to leave mother, father, etc. Whenever you decide to forego an earthly or sinful pleasure in order to gain more of Christ, because you believe he is a better treasure, you are leaving mother, father, etc. and therefore you can be sure that you will experience an infinitely greater joy in heaven as a result. This is what it means to live by faith.
One of the things that comes out very clear in this passage is that the fullness of God’s promises are future. There will be tastes of the blessings of heaven here in the fellowship of the church, in God’s provision of earthly needs, in the joy of fellowship with him in prayer and in his word but our ultimate hope lies beyond this world in the kingdom of heaven. We are to do what Paul commands in 2 Cor. 4: 18, "Therefore we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen because what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."
Look back at 19:27. When Peter declares that he and the others have left everything and then demands to know what will they get in return he is showing that he still does not get how God’s kingdom works. He thinks that the reason he and the other disciples left everything is because of some native ability in themselves. He thinks that they, therefore, deserve to get a reward. Jesus by his answer and this parable shows Peter that v. 26 is true. Men can do nothing to gain salvation. The entire thing, including our faith, is a gift from God. Therefore, like those hired at the last hour, the last on planet earth live humbly—receiving all things as a gift from God. Jesus is trying to get the disciples and us to see that the gifts of grace are infinitely greater than the costs of faith. Therefore, we are to be meek and non-demanding people.
When we complain about God’s dealings with us we are exhibiting a heart that loves this world and is indifferent to the amazing grace of God towards us. When we grumble we are declaring that we are good people and that God owes us. We are demanding that God obey us. We are being idolaters and revealing that we love something or someone other than God himself. Grumbling treats the death and resurrection of Christ as if it was nothing. If you are not familiar with the wanderings of Israel in the desert I would recommend that you read Exodus 1-32 and Numbers. Pay careful attention to how they treated God’s gracious dealings with them by grumbling whenever they encountered any difficulty. Notice how similar you are in your grumbling about the conditions of your life. Those who are amazed at God’s grace in Christ never say "It’s not fair" or "I deserve better than this". We are debtors to God’s grace. He is never in our debt.
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