Sunday, May 15, 2022 PM

Alright, let's open our Bible and turn to Matthew chapter 20.

Matthew chapter 20, we'll be reading verses 1 -16. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

Father, I thank you for the time you've given to us tonight. I pray that you would help us to make the most of it as we read your word together.

We ask that you would give us, by the grace of your Holy Spirit, understanding of your word, which reveals to us your

Son, Jesus Christ. For his sake we ask for your help and we give you praise,

Amen. Matthew chapter 20, begin reading for us in verse 1, we'll read through verse 16.

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard, and he went about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said to them,

You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right

I will give you. So they went out. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did likewise, and about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them,

Why have you been standing here idle all day? And they said to him,

Because no one hired us. And he said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.

So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward,

Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.

And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius.

But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more, and they likewise received each a denarius.

And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.

But he answered one of them and said, Friend, I am doing you no wrong.

Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way.

I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what

I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?

So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen.

So we've been studying the parables of the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is like.

And these parables are essential for us to understand what it is like to live with Christ as king.

To live in the new covenant, the better covenant. What is it like to be the people of God in Christ and to serve

Him? And what is the day -to -day like? And what should our values reflect?

What should we anticipate and hope for in the future? And it's critical to see that Jesus is explaining what the kingdom of heaven is like to His audience at a time in which the old covenant was still operating.

The temple still stood, priests were still killing animals, sacrifices still going on, and so on.

But Jesus had come and was saying things like, someone better than Solomon is here.

Saying of Himself, something greater than the temple is here. Getting them ready for a big transition.

What is it going to be like to live in the kingdom of heaven when the elements of the old covenant have been passed away?

And this is essentially the relationship of Matthew chapters 24 and 25.

Matthew 24 shows the end of the old covenant, a judgment in which the people of God are sifted and those who are in Christ are shown to be the true people of God.

And then in chapter 25, it says, now the kingdom of heaven is like. Now here's what it's like to live in worshiping

God and following God, following Christ. So we've looked at several kingdom parables in the gospel of Matthew.

And in this particular parable, we're told that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner.

Now what is Jesus trying to accomplish with this parable? So we go back and we look at the previous passage, the previous context, and we talked about the kingdom of heaven in terms of the parable of the unforgiving servant.

We saw that last time. And we see that just prior to this parable, that Jesus deals with a rich young ruler, a rich ruler, who says to him, good teacher, what must

I do to be saved? And Jesus deals with those presuppositions and shows him that according to the law of God, that no one is good enough to achieve righteousness on their own.

They have to have Christ in order to be saved. He tells his disciples, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into heaven.

This was extremely shocking to them because they viewed the wealthy in their society as closest to God.

And they said, well then who can be saved? I mean, if those who are closest to God can't get in, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

And Jesus says, with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

So salvation is by the power of God, not by the merits of men. And Peter reflects upon what

Jesus said to the rich young ruler in identifying the idolatry and covetousness of this ruler, saying you need to sell all that you have, give to the poor, come follow me.

It's me that you lack. Peter reflects upon this and says in verse 27 of chapter 19, see we have left all and followed you, therefore what shall we have?

Right, so okay, Peter always speaking up. Well, okay, if it's not wealth and having all of this prestige and power and merit that gets you into heaven, maybe it's giving everything away.

See we gave everything away, so what do we get? And you know, Jesus can tell that Peter is not getting the point.

So now he tells a parable to show Peter that it's not about what you have or what you gave away, not about the merits that you have inherently or the great acts of sacrifice that you can pull off.

It's not about Peter. And to make the point that salvation is all of grace, he tells a parable, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, like a landowner.

And we have to pay attention to how the landowner acts, how he operates, and then we are taught thereby about the kingdom of heaven.

The last thing he says before the parable is a theme that we see throughout the parable.

What does he say to Peter? He says, but many who are first will be last, and the last first.

He says that to Peter, to try to get the formula out of Peter's head, you know, here's what

I do to be saved, here's what I accomplish, here's what I impress God with, and he says, okay, take that out of your head,

Peter, and then he tells the parable. So, the landowner.

It's probably early, mid -September. It's still pretty warm outside in the

Judean countryside. What a great place for growing grapes. Remember that the spies that got sent in originally to the promised land found grapes the size of a man's fist.

This has got to be the best place in the world for growing grapes. Everything from the seasons, to the soil, to the topography, everything is great for growing grapes, and grapes are what this landowner is growing.

And it's time, as they say, for crush, and we've got to get these grapes off the vine at just the right time.

If you delay three days one way or the other, these grapes are not going to taste their prime flavor.

So he needs to get these grapes harvested in a hurry. So he goes to the marketplace, and there's all these guys standing around, hoping to get hired that day.

They didn't have any steady employment, but they wanted to work. They didn't want to beg for their food.

They want to work. They're able -bodied, and they're waiting for someone to hire them. So he goes. He knows he needs a lot of workers today, so he goes to the marketplace, and the first group, they're bright and early.

The early bird gets the worm, or in this case, the denarius. A denarius is a day's wage.

That is the most accepted fair price that everybody expects, a day's wage.

So they say, certainly, they agree to the denarius, and they go out and they begin to work in his vineyard.

He doesn't have enough. He goes back to get some more workers. He's seeing how the work is progressing.

I need more laborers in the vineyard. We've got to get this harvested. So he goes again, and again, and again.

This is going to be a 12 -hour workday. Start 6 a .m. in the morning, and we're going to go until 6 in the evening.

We've got to get this done. A huge workday on this man's property. He keeps going to get more men as he's overseeing the work, making sure everything's going well, and he even goes out at the 11th hour.

That's where we get the expression from, from a parable of Jesus, the 11th hour. He goes out at the 11th hour, and he still finds men who are waiting to be hired.

Now each time he goes out after the first group, he simply says, come work for me in my vineyard.

I will pay you what is right. What is right. Now who knows what they expected, and I'm sure there was a nifty way to divide a denarius up into 12 pieces or 12 parts, but those who are hired for just one hour probably are not expecting a full day's wage.

But this is the surprise of the story. How often in Jesus' parables he tells something with a big surprise.

At the end of the day, it's time to pay all the workers. Now this is according to the law of Moses.

So when you read through Leviticus and Deuteronomy, it is stated there very clearly that if you hire somebody to work, that you do not withhold their pay until some other time.

That if you have it with you, you go ahead and you pay them at the end of the day. And there's a lot of other ancillary case law involved with that.

But this landowner is doing the right thing. He's paying his workers at the end of the day so they can go home, maybe on the way, buy some food at the market, maybe some of those loaves of bread, about that size, take them home and feed their family that night.

Now what's the offense that occurs? Who gets offended? Why are they offended?

The early birds were not satisfied with the distribution of the worms.

They are offended because, remember

Jesus' tagline, first will be last, last will be first. Right. So he starts, the landowner starts paying the workers from the last to the first, though he hired the first first.

Here's a big reversal. And of course, if the landowner wanted to avoid any controversy, any problems, he could have just paid the first first and off they go, and they would have never known how much the last were paid.

But the point is very blatantly in view of the first, that the last are being paid a full denarius.

When those who worked all 12 hours come for their payment and they only receive a denarius, they are upset.

The one man in particular that he speaks to is very upset. We worked during the heat of the day.

We were out here all day long. And did we not agree on that, the landowner asks? Didn't we just, didn't we agree

I was going to pay you denarius? How are you going to be upset? Isn't it right for me to do what

I wish with what I possess? Yes. Yeah, if he wants to, if he wants to pay people that way, that is entirely his prerogative.

So he says, is your eye evil? The evil eye, again, all of our expressions, good expressions.

They come from the parables of Jesus. Is your eye evil? Because I am good.

So what is the main point that Jesus makes about the kingdom?

First should be last, last should be first. Many are called, few chosen, it's all of grace.

His point is that it's of grace. The kingdom of heaven is like a land owner, like a land owner.

Think about how this impacts Jesus' audience. Peter just talked about how much he's given up, how much they've given up for Jesus.

Surely this puts us in a great slot. The rich young ruler thought he was in a great position to inherit eternal life because after all he understood himself to have kept all the laws of Moses from his youth.

So he's saying, look at my adherence to the law. Peter's saying, look at the great sacrificial things

I've done for you. And Jesus is saying, you're looking in all the wrong directions. The kingdom of heaven is not like, is not like a resume.

The kingdom of heaven is like this land owner who is gracious, gracious.

Now following this parable, we get some extra information, a trajectory of what this parable is all about.

Now, Jesus talks in the very next passage about how we're going up to Jerusalem and the

Son of Man is going to be betrayed. And he's going to be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes.

They're going to condemn him to death. They're going to deliver him over to the Gentiles and discourage him to crucify him and the third day he will rise again.

So Jesus is going to go suffer and die and be raised from the dead to bring about this better covenant.

The new covenant to establish the kingdom of heaven. So he's going to go do this.

It's about him. It's about him dying upon the cross, not about the performance of those who are going to be a part of the kingdom, right?

When he goes and he dies on the cross and is raised from the dead, the salvation that he brings is a salvation that fully saves everybody who comes in, right?

And it's based on him, not them. You see the point? Following this, there is another argument among the disciples about who is going to be the greatest.

Apparently they weren't paying very close attention to the parable. Wherein the mother of Zebedee's sons come to him with her sons and she wants them to have the prime positions, you see.

When the ten hear it, they're ready to fight them and Jesus has to calm everybody down.

And he says in, he says in verse 25, Jesus called them to himself and said, You know that the rulers of the

Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them.

I mean, so the normal way, the normal way of man when it comes to authority is to lord it over others.

Again, lord it over, another classic expression. This is not the way you are to understand authority and leadership in the kingdom of heaven.

He says, whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave.

Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. In other words, the first will be last and the last will be first.

So he brings that lesson all over again and roots it in the gospel proper.

That Jesus Christ himself is the servant who suffered and died and did the dirtiest, lowliest, took upon the worst for us.

And if Peter was cringing at Jesus washing his feet, how much more that Christ takes the punishment of God upon him in our place and for our sake.

So thinking about the parable, thinking about the parable, the first will be last, the last will be first.

It's all of grace. Many are called, but few are chosen. What is going on here? Kingdom of heaven is like a land owner.

Later on, we're going to hear about the kingdom of heaven and we're going to talk about what is it like to work diligently and put our shoulder to the wheel and do everything we can for the glory of Christ and all of that, which is, that's great.

That's about what it's like living in the kingdom, trying to please the king. This is about how you enter the kingdom.

This is about how it is that you're even a part. It's because the land owner is free and just and right to do with what he possesses and to give it to whom he chooses.

It's about him, not about them. Now, given what happened with the rich young ruler and Peter and the following description of the chief priests and the scribes and the rulers of the

Gentiles lording it over them and so on, how then are we to read the parable and understand the kinds of folks that were the complainers?

The early birds who came later and said, hey, that's not fair. What kind of people should

Jesus' audience think of when they think about those complainers? Well, in some fashion they should be thinking about themselves.

Am I somebody who considers myself to have a better angle at eternal life than somebody else?

And, you know, the challenge is, here I am, I've served the

Lord all my life, and yet I'm classified in the same group as some tattooed, messed over numbskull who comes in at the last second.

Yes. That somebody who was raised in the faith, somebody like, for instance,

Timothy, is given the same eternal life as the thief on the cross.

Or put it even in a different perspective, the big controversy in the early church. That the

Jews who were given the promises of God and were raised with the scriptures being read to them and had circumcision and so on and so forth, that they should be in the same kingdom and in the same category of eternal life as these

Gentiles, even Cretans. Yes.

And what Jesus is pointing out is that even as the rich young ruler thought he had an angle and Peter thought he had an angle and the sons of Zebedee thought they had the angle and so on and so forth, that the way into the kingdom is by the grace of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who was generous and gave to whom he would.

So there's the parable of the generous landowner. Any questions or thoughts as we close? Grace alone.

Yeah, the older son was very jealous of the younger. Absolutely.