The Parable of the Vineyard Workers

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  Have you ever felt like your hard work is hardly working? When I first started to date Jordan, it was my junior year in high school, and my English class voted for me to be a lead role of a play.

Now mind you, this wasn’t a drama class. I took that freshman year. This was English lit, but we are studying Shakespeare and our teacher. Thought it was a great way to apply what we were learning by actually doing a play. And so obviously at the beginning it was all volunteer based, who wants to be the main role?

Nobody raised their hands. It was like 90% of the play was by one person’s memorization. So we wound up doing a class vote, and I was voluntold that I would be the star. This immediately presented two problems like legitimately. One, there was a fake kissing scene and, uh, my lash, my, my life flashed before my eyes.

I did not wanna lose my new girlfriend to a stupid play. Um, and thankfully she did not want to do that either. So it was, we prob anyways, we did not even hug each other, let alone kiss. So, praise God. But number two. I had like a thousand lines to memorize and it was a 20 minute play and I spoke about 15 minutes of it.

So for four weeks I did everything I could to memorize these lines. Right after football practice, I’d go home and study. While eating dinner, I canceled hangouts with my brand new girlfriend Jordan, because I didn’t wanna fail this class. And I even, I learned the British accent ’cause I really wanted an A plus.

To this day, I kid you not, I still dream that I am, like I’m waking up and that play is before me and I have to hurry and memorize it ’cause I’m about to go to my class and do this play. So the day comes. And I forget about a quarter of my lines, like the people were helping me. I was looking at like, tell me the line.

It was miserable, but I figured my accent at least got me to the A minus. ’cause I was pretty darn proud of it. Instead, and you’re not gonna like me for this. This was my first C plus ever in my life. I was destroyed. I was like, are you kidding me? Here’s what made it worse. There’s this girl, I know her name, but she still lives in Queen Creek and I don’t, you know, whatever.

She got an A plus and she had one line. She had one line folks got an a plus. I spent my life trying to memorize these lines and got a c plus. Anyways. 📍 Have you ever felt like your hard work is hardly working? It’s one thing to accept failure because you lack the discipline. It makes sense. Yo, I got a C ’cause I forgot to memorize those lines.

It’s a punch to the soul when you have the discipline and it still didn’t work out. And it’s even worse when someone is rewarded. For doing just about nothing. And that sense of injustice, of watching someone do less and yet get more, doesn’t stop in high school, does it? It continues on through adulthood.

Some of you, you’re pouring into your marriage right now, and yet you are still growing further apart. And yet some of the people in the room that you know, they barely care for their marriage and they get along so easily. Some of you have taken steps to finally tithe, and now you have overdue bills and you have other friends who, you know, they don’t give sacrificially and yet they have no lack and they’re going on yet another vacation.

You, you as a parent, you sacrificed your dreams so that your children would have a present father or mother at the home. But now as they have grown old and gone out of the house, they’re living in rebellion and they don’t even answer your calls. But your friends, their kids are thriving. And the father was never even at home.

Today, I want us to talk about comparison, but not just any kind of comparison. I think we’re in a cultural moment that addresses what to do. When you and I compare ourselves to people who are better than us, we have these mantras that encourage us to keep going. Things like believe in yourself. Just work a little harder.

Don’t give up. Hope is on the way. The best is yet to come, but 📍 what do you do when those you are better than are somehow better off? I think that actually gets to the heart of today’s parable from Jesus. This is the 11th parable that we’re studying this fall. Together at Passion Creek, about a third of Jesus’ teachings are parables.

So I think it’s really important for us to study and figure them out. Earlier this year, pastor Caleb defined parables as surprising and subversive stories that confront us with the reality of the kingdom. And so we’ve been looking at these parables like a piece of art, and we’ve been saying the longer we linger, what the more we.

Learn. Thanks wife. The rest of you, you get a c plus like I did in English Lit. Uh, our hope is for this series to honestly form our hearts to help us understand reality as our reality because continues to kind of feel like it’s stepping into more chaos. We hope that these parables really give you an anchor, but also we hope that these parables are empowering you to be a witness.

We are still in this practice of witnessing, bearing witness of God’s goodness in our lives and telling other people about it. Today is a great parable for us to empower us to be witnesses. The problem is this parable like many. Is often misinterpreted. We’ve done a, I’ve done a lot of work this week to make sure what is the actual meaning of this parable, and I think it’s because we don’t linger long enough and learn the context to truly understand what the point was that Jesus was getting at.

And so for us to avoid misinterpretation, let’s study the context. So for us to understand Matthew 20, it’s probably helpful to look at Matthew 19. In Matthew 19. Jesus encounters a rich young ruler. We talked about this in our generosity practice. In fact, I think we’ve taught this story multiple times in the history of our church.

But if you haven’t been before, that’s fine. If you haven’t read this, essentially it’s this rich, young ruler. And for us, when we see this story modern day, we meet this man with suspicion. We don’t trust rich people. Generally speaking, we don’t trust young people, generally speaking, and we certainly don’t trust rulers.

But in this day. It was all a sign of God’s favor. If there was a rich young ruler, you did whatever he said, because they believed in this understanding of the cultural moment. They believed if you were rich, God’s favor was completely on your life. And this person was worthy of trust. And so Jesus challenges everyone’s assumptions because when he comes up and is like, Hey, what’s it gonna take to follow you?

Peter, James, John, they’re probably pumped. This guy’s rich. We can finally, you know, eat some good food along this journey and let, let’s take ’em in. And Jesus is startling ’cause he says, look, you can only follow me if you just give up everything you have and give it to the poor. And so we see in that story, the rich young ruler, he walks away sad, implying he loves money more than the Messiah.

He wasn’t willing to give everything up for Jesus. So he’s not following Jesus. And so now though Peter is calculating, he’s figuring out, okay, what is happening? And he starts to ask this honest question in verse 27. Then Peter responded to him, see, we have left everything and followed you. So what will there be for us?

Okay if, if he didn’t give up everything, but we did. What’s the reward? If you continue on to read? At first, Jesus warms Peter’s heart. Peter has sacrificed a lot. He’s given up his job, his family, he’s following Jesus. And so he’s about to give up even more as the story goes on. And so Jesus honors him and says, you’re gonna be rewarded a hundred times.

Anybody who gives up everything for the kingdom will be restored, tenfold, a hundredfold, and you’re gonna inherit eternal life. But then Jesus not only warms Peter’s heart, but then he warns Peter’s heart in the form of a story. And as we read this story line by line again, I want you to think through who is Peter in this story?

And who are you? Verse one again, for the Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with workers on one Denarius, he sent them into his vineyard for the day. Now, this was a common way for people to get hired in this day.

Anybody else grow up like in Queen Creek? Anybody else like, like locals, like I am, okay, so we know where this was, right? The Circle K in downtown Queen Creek was when it was the daily workers, right? This is what happened. So this is kind of that context. Somebody needed their backyard fixed or whatever.

They go up. There’s always this place where, you know, people are looking to get hired, and these workers, they put together a contract. They’re saying, okay, we will work for you, but you need to pay us one denarius. One denarius. In this day, again, this is, we’re so separated from this, it was exactly what you needed for one day.

And so people in this day lived day by day. There was no savings. It was just day by day. So this was in, in some senses, the daily bread maybe, or manna from God. This is just what you need to make the day happen. It’s not just what you need, but it’s typically what provides for your family to eat dinner that night.

So the contract is there. They agree, we’re rolling. I’m gonna go now. Work all day. Verse three, when he went out at about nine in the morning, so the first one was six. Now he went about nine. He saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. So he said to them, you also go into my vineyard and I’ll give you whatever is right.

So off they went about noon and about three he went out again and did the same thing. Then about 5:00 PM he went and found others standing around and said to them, why have you been standing here all day doing nothing? Because nobody hired us. They said to him, you also go into my vineyard. He told them when evening came, the owner of the vineyard told his foreman, call the workers and give them their pay.

Starting with the last and ending with the first. I want us to see this landowner here is really kind. He’s thinking about these impoverished people and their families, and he’s thinking, if there’s anybody else out there who needs more work, I’m gonna keep bringing them in. It is not common for a landowner to come at noon at three and still try to hire somebody, but this shows how kind he is.

I think Jesus really wants us to zero in on that. But verse nine, when those who were hired about five came, they each received one Denarius notice. By the way, let’s look at verse eight again. Call the workers and give ’em their pay. Starting with the last and ending with the first. That’s not normal. Can you imagine how frustrated you’d be?

I’ve been here all day. These guys just came an hour ago, and now they’re getting paid first, but they start to get encouraged because of verse 10. When the first ones came, they assume they would get more, but they also received the denarius each ’cause. They’re thinking, wait, they worked one hour and they got one denarius.

Now I’m doing math. Now all of a sudden, I worked a whole lot more than they did. I might be walking away with 12 denarius instead. That is not what happens at all. Verse 11, when they received it, they began to complain to the landowner. These last men put in one hour and you made them equal to us, who bore the burden of the day’s work and the burning heat, and everyone from Arizona said, amen.

Right? They’re complaining thinking this isn’t fair. Even though at the beginning of the day they said That was absolutely fair. Before we go any further, so far. What do you think the main point of this parable is? Well, write this down. 📍 Some argue this parable is about Gentile inclusion. If you know the story of scripture, it’s the Jewish people who are first called the people of God.

But now, as we get into the New Testament, Jesus comes and brings a new covenant, and now Gentiles are included, which by the way, in the Old Testament, gentiles are included as well, but it’s required for them to come to Jerusalem. Now, Jesus is about to change the framework where you leave Jerusalem and the presence of God goes all throughout the world.

And this is a helpful way to look at this parable, because this was a huge problem for the Jewish people. And Matthew is primary. His primary audience is the Jewish audience, and they really struggled embracing Gentiles, which means anyone who’s not Jewish into the family of God, they’re totally different culturally.

They have pagan backgrounds, they eat barbecue to the glory of God, and they cannot figure that out, right. And so what they were learning is the, the Gentiles weren’t required to follow kosher. They weren’t required to do all these Jewish laws. So it created this descent, it created this division that we read a lot about in the Book of Acts.

And so as the early church fathers interpreted this parable, they were thinking this was about including the Gentiles in. And so these five different hours, six, nine, noon, three, and five, they believe represents the five different eras of the people of God. Now, let me be clear. I don’t think this is the right interpretation, but I think it’s so fun.

You have to learn about it. Okay, so here’s how they interpret it. The early hours, 6:00 AM is the Adam and NOIC Covenant, the very beginning, Genesis one through 11. These are people who’ve been following God since day one. So that’s them. They’ve had to follow God through all sorts of hard things. 9:00 AM they believe was Abraham and that covenant.

Noon is the Mosaic law and his covenant. 3:00 PM is the prophets who are calling people to repent and look forward to the Messiah. 5:00 PM is you and me, the new covenant, which includes Gentile believers. This is interesting, but I think it’s a stretch. It’s this idea that man, the Jewish people who you know, came in at 9:00 AM it was harder to follow God ’cause you had no Holy Spirit.

Us we’re lucky, we come in at five o’clock, we barely do anything and we get the kingdom of heaven. That’s how a lot of people interpret this. I don’t think that’s the primary meaning, but I think you can certainly learn. Yes, Gentiles are included in the kingdom. Secondly, most, or 📍 some argue this parable is about salvation.

This is mostly what I’ve seen. People, as I’ve grown up, people have said this is about salvation, how, what it means to be saved. Um, in other words, 6:00 AM. Are those of us who grew up in church, anybody else like grow up in church your whole life? Um, my, uh, my mom loves to make the joke that, um, what, how does she say it?

Something about drugs. ’cause it’s like, yeah, we drug you to Wednesday night and we drug you to Sunday morning and we drug or whatever, you know? So like it’s the people your whole life. Like I was in church before I was in church ’cause I was in the womb. So a lot of people read this story. Some of you have been following Jesus your whole life.

You’re the 6:00 AM worker and some people are the 5:00 PM worker. They receive Jesus on their death bed. And guess what? They both go to the same place. And typically and that’s true. Typically when we present this story, I dunno about you, but the way I hear it, we almost are like, the deathbed conversions are the lucky ones.

The thinking goes like these workers hold on. They got to live a sinful lifestyle. They got to do whatever they wanted their entire life. One hour left and now they’re praying to receive Jesus, and now we’re going the same place. I’ve been following Jesus my whole life, and yet we’re even what I believe.

Though this type of thinking perpetuates the poor theology that kingdom living is true, but it’s not beautiful. Here’s what I mean by that. As I watch sinner sin, their misery multiplies. I’m not jealous for them. For me, when I watch saints follow the way of Jesus, their joy increases all the more We need to stop perpetuating this narrative that sinners, they have the good life, but at least we’re forgiven and saved.

No those who follow Jesus Today, Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So I suggest to you if your plan is that I’m not gonna get saved to the very last moment and live my life how I want, that is not wise. It’s foolish, it’s evil, and it’s actually a lie. So get saved today. It’s better now and for eternity.

And I wanna be clear though, theologically, it’s true. A decades long saint and a days long Saint have the same exact destination, but I’m just not convinced that’s the purpose of this story. Warren Weby, he’s a pastor or bible teacher and commentator of the 20th century. He also disagrees that this parable is salvific.

Look at the quote. He says, this parable has nothing to do with salvation. The penny or what we, you know, denarius a day’s wage in that time does not represent salvation for nobody. Works for his salvation. Have you thought about that? We’re thinking it’s about salvation, but the whole implication is that we all were working and got saved.

No, no, no, no. It’s not by our works that we are saved. That to me was a huge sign. Maybe this text is not primarily about salvation. So if this story is not primarily about including the Gentiles, although there’s overtones to that, and that is true, and it’s not about salvation, although it is true. Someone could live their whole life as a Christian and someone could die at the very last second belief, and they’re both gonna be in heaven.

That’s not what this parable’s about. So what is it about? Does it have any significance for us today? Let’s keep reading. Matthew 20, now, verse 13. So Jesus replied to, oh, sorry. He replied to one of them, friend, I’m doing you. No wrong. Didn’t you agree with me on a denarius? The problem is they were saying this was unjust.

You’re a bad landowner because look what you gave them and you gave me the same. And he’s saying, hold on, we had a contract at 6:00 AM You thought this was great. What changed? So verse 14, take what’s yours and go. I wanna give this last man the same as I give you. What is Jesus trying to teach Peter? And thus you and me, 📍 this parable is a warning.

That comparison, crucifies contentment. Imagine if the 6:00 AM workers got paid first. They got paid one Denarius. That’s what they agreed to, and they went home with joy. They didn’t stick around and see what anybody else made and they went home with joy. They probably would’ve gone home and said, Hey wife, this landowner is fair.

In fact, he is generous and I really hope that he hires me again tomorrow. But instead, because of comparison, they left there with bitterness. They left there without any joy. Comparison, stole their contentment. Instead of gratitude, they felt grievance. Instead of joy, they now felt anger instead of privilege.

They felt resentment, all because they fell into the trap of comparison. Remember Jesus, he’s telling this story because of Peter’s question in Matthew 19. So by the time we are here in this story of Peter’s life, Peter has sacrificed a lot for the mission. And so his question in verse 27, Hey, we left everything to follow you.

So what do we get? That’s an honest question and that’s why Jesus warms his heart, but left unchecked. It’s a haunting question that can destroy your life if you begin after serving. The Lord always asking, okay, what do I get and what does that guy over there get? And you start playing this game of calculation the moment you start calculating what you deserve.

Comparison starts to creep in and crucify all your contentment in life. And I would argue, of course, this isn’t just Peter’s struggle, it’s the human condition, especially in our digital age. And when comparison takes root, it’s one thing to compare and realize it and, and walk away from it and not give in.

But when that, when you give into that comparison, it blinds you from all the blessings you already have. Ronald Roll Heiser. It’s not, honestly, it’s kind of rare that I quote the same person two weeks in a row. But this is also so good from his book, sacred Fire. He puts it this way. 📍 Jesus addresses this explicitly in his parable about the vineyard workers who came at different hours warning that we can end up having everything and enjoying nothing because we are watching what everyone else is getting.

I’m gonna say that one more time. The last part, we can end up having everything and enjoying nothing ’cause we are watching what everyone else is getting. This last spring, we addressed this when we learned about the deadly sin of envy. Envy is so deadly because you can end up having everything and yet enjoying nothing.

Thomas Aquinas says, envy is sadness over the good of another. It’s a poison that makes you mourn. When others rejoice and rejoice when others mourn, generosity, and grace says, why not them? Their family needs that. Why not? Yeah, that’s great. I’m glad you blessed them as well. Envy and jealousy says, why not me?

I need more. There’s not enough to go around envy. Jealousy has no concept of grace and thus has no place in the kingdom. To put another way, 📍 if the kingdom runs on grace. Then calculation has no place. This is hard because we live in a world that calculates. I actually think this is wonderful timing. I feel like every parable so far, it’s just for my own personal life.

I’m like, thank you Jesus. Like this is exactly what I needed. Holidays are coming up if you didn’t notice, and I think that is the time to calculate, right? We calculate which grandkid’s the favorite. Not me still. I’m still hoping. Looking at you, Jeremy, in the back. Alright. We calculate, uh, my cousin’s here.

Uh, we calculate how much people sacrifice when they bought you gifts. Hold on. You gave him that and me this. What does this say about you and me? We also calculate when we get or together with our relatives and we don’t understand how is that relative better off because I’m better than them. How are you doing better in life?

It creeps up and in a holiday season where it’s all about joy and contentment, so many of us leave exhausted and emptied and filled with envy. Because for us in the kingdom though, we don’t play this calculation game because in Jesus, you get what you don’t deserve

because of the cross On the resurrection, we don’t play the calculation game because you get joy when you deserve sorrow in Jesus, you get peace. When you deserve chaos in Christ Jesus, you get hope. When you deserved hell, you get life. When you deserve death, you get mercy when you deserve judgment. Lemme be clear here, I think major point Jesus is trying to make is, or not trying.

He’s perfect at it. Okay? But what I’m trying to make from what Jesus is saying, you deserve to be last, but you were made first because Jesus, who is first, overall things became last in our place, verse 15. He says, don’t I have the right to do what I want with what is mine? Are you jealous? Because I’m generous.

So the last will be first and the first, last live verse 15. He’s saying like, look, their family needs to eat tonight too, so I can give you what you deserve. We agreed, but I can also be generous to other people and that doesn’t take away what I’m doing for you, but I also love other people as well. I want us to understand this invitation.

📍 The invitation here is to trust in God and rejoice when he is generous to those who haven’t worked as hard as you.

We don’t need to calculate because we know the father knows what we need and every worker in this parable. Every single one of them needed one Denarius to survive the day. And that’s exactly what God gave them. Hear me loud and clear. Grace is not based on our merit. It’s based on his mercy and his mercy is what meets our needs.

I know for me as I was reflecting on this and thinking through and just making sure am I that first hour worker who gets so frustrated when God blesses other people and I feel like I deserve more and, and now kind of looking back, I’ve been really reflective and nostalgic. My wife says like, so when our, our kids were born, I didn’t cry.

Like I was just like, cool. Another one. Like I, I was happy, I promise, but I wasn’t like, oh my gosh, now I like cry watching the videos back. You know, like I just cried thinking about things like the day of their birth. Yeah, I’m a mess. And so I’m really nostalgic lately and I’m thinking a lot about our journey.

’cause I hope you guys come January 11th will be our 10 year anniversary at Passion Creek Church. And so I’ve been thinking about our story and let me just tell you, for so long I was stuck in this trap of comparison. I was the 6:00 AM worker just so mad when God would bless anybody else. Kind of now looking back in some seasons of my life, I now see I needed to work and struggle and sweat all day and God gave me just exactly what I needed.

And in other seasons of life, I, I needed to learn to not feel guilty that God just took care of me. There’s been times in our lives where me and Jordan are like, how come God gave us this? We don’t deserve this. And there’s been other times where I’m like, Lord, it’s about time. Anybody else? You know, like, but, but this is how God works.

And, and what I’m trying to invite our church into is to trust that he knows exactly what you need. And both are a grace. It is such a grace and a gift to work at 6:00 AM work all day and get what you need. And it’s such a grace and a gift to work at 5:00 PM and get exactly what you need. And in God’s grace economy, it never calculates.

It never really makes sense. So for some of us, we just need to let go of the calculation. Let go of the comparison and trust that God sees you. God cares deeply about you. And if he hasn’t given you something yet, it’s for a purpose. There’s a reason and he’s still being kind to you even when it doesn’t feel like it.

So what do we do about this? We are a practice-based church. We wanna make sure we, it’s one thing to like feel inspired by that, but how do we like put that into practice? This week in your groups, you’re gonna talk about this if you’re part of one. If not, just go to our website and look up this teaching.

What we want you to do is to 📍 put off the poison of comparison by practicing prayers of contentment. We believe strongly. It’s one thing to walk away thinking, yes, I need to be content. It’s another to build a life that honestly focuses, okay, I’m gonna choose contentment. I’m gonna choose joy. I’m gonna give grace this week.

And so what I want us to do, and I hope that you practice it with me in a few moments, is a breath prayer. Now, breath prayers are all throughout church history. It’s not some weird pagan eastern meditation thing. It’s a Jesus thing that a lot of his people have done biologically. When you breathe, it helps you focus, it takes away your anxiety, it gets you still.

And so for me, what I love to do is I breathe in for four seconds or so. I hold it for four seconds and then I breathe out. I don’t know if it’s four seconds. It’s just intuitive. You guys get what I’m saying. So don’t be like whatever. Breathe in and breathe out. And as you are breathing in, I want you to quote scripture.

The challenge this week is just to quote Psalm 23 verse one. So it goes like this. The Lord is my shepherd.

I have what I need and you’re gonna have to do it several times. Do it with me. Okay? Breathe in, think in your mind. The Lord is my shepherd. And then breathe. It’s so hard to do this while talking, so you’re lucky. Breathe out. Hurry. Breathe out. I have what I need and that’s my challenge to you this week.

When you think of someone getting ahead of you in life, pause. Whatever you’re doing. Breathe in. The Lord is my shepherd. Breathe out. I have what I need. When you feel like God is overlooking all your hard work and you’re not getting rewarded yet, breathe in the Lord is my shepherd. Breathe out. I have what I need.

When you’re worried about lack of provision and where will tomorrow’s bread come, breathe in. The Lord is my shepherd. Breathe out. I have what I need. When you’re tempted to compare. Your calling or your colleagues where you’re tempted to compare and think you deserve more than someone else. Breathe in.

The Lord is my shepherd and bring, breathe out. I have what I need because church, we don’t compare God’s grace. We receive it, we rejoice in it, and we give it away.