SPEAKER_00: Our reading today is Matthew chapter twenty, verse one to sixteen.
SPEAKER_00: For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: After agreeing with the laborers for denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00: And to them he said, You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.
SPEAKER_00: So they went.
SPEAKER_00: Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.
SPEAKER_00: And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, Why do you stand here idle all day?
SPEAKER_00: They said to him, Because no one has hired us, he said to them, You go into the vineyard too.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.
SPEAKER_00: Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius.
SPEAKER_00: And on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
SPEAKER_00: But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Did you not agree with me for denarius?
SPEAKER_00: Take what belongs to you and go.
SPEAKER_00: I choose to give to this last walk worker as I give to you.
SPEAKER_00: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
SPEAKER_00: Or you do you begrudge my generosity?
SPEAKER_00: So the last will be first, and the first last.
SPEAKER_00: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: I was enjoy a good illusion.
SPEAKER_02: But um we're gonna be talking this morning about the passage that Lisa read for us just a minute ago.
SPEAKER_02: And um I gotta say, I as as a Christian, I've been a Christian for a good long while.
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I know what what my reaction to this parable is supposed to be, right?
SPEAKER_02: You're supposed to think, oh gosh, yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_02: The first will be last, and the last will be first.
SPEAKER_02: And that's that's that's very easy to say, but you want to know what in in in my heart of hearts, in in the deep parts of me that I don't talk about.
SPEAKER_02: It's great to be in that situation if you're the last.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you're the last and you're you get to come up and be first, that's great.
SPEAKER_02: But if you're the first, that doesn't always feel all that great.
SPEAKER_02: I can tell you a story.
SPEAKER_02: You want a story?
SPEAKER_02: Great stories here.
SPEAKER_02: Um, 20 years ago or so, I was working for a company, and um it was really a high pressure kind of job.
SPEAKER_02: Really had to had to keep on top of a lot of different things, a lot of planning, a lot of replanning, a lot of on-call hours where you're solving problems in the middle of the night out of a dead sleep, and just just a really demanding job in a lot of different ways.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I was really good at it.
SPEAKER_02: I really liked it, right?
SPEAKER_02: It I didn't always like it, but but I really, I really excelled at it.
SPEAKER_02: I really felt like I was knowing what I was doing.
SPEAKER_02: I was a credit to the company.
SPEAKER_02: And um a little bit embarrassing here, the uh performance review that I got about 20 years ago was like a love letter from the company.
SPEAKER_02: They're just like, you know, talking about my my critical thinking and my outside of the box and problem solving, all of this great stuff, right?
SPEAKER_02: And it said, I remember this clearly.
SPEAKER_02: It said, if the it, you know, the next time a promotion opportunity comes up, we would not hesitate to, you know, recommend you, to, to, to heartily recommend you for promotion.
SPEAKER_02: I was just like, this is great.
SPEAKER_02: This is great.
SPEAKER_02: So as luck would have it, or as God would would have designed it there, um, a promotion opportunity did come up.
SPEAKER_02: And I applied for it.
SPEAKER_02: I went up and talked to the department manager, and it was a great interview.
SPEAKER_02: It went really well.
SPEAKER_02: He was practically gushing on me, and he says, you know, we have to finish the process here, but stay by your phone.
SPEAKER_02: I think we'll have some good news for you in a few days.
SPEAKER_02: And sure enough, a few days later, I get a call to go back upstairs and sit with this manager and talk with him.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to give the job to someone else.
SPEAKER_02: And that was bad enough.
SPEAKER_02: That was bad enough.
SPEAKER_02: But the person that he gave the job to was nowhere near as good as I was.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: I hate to speak badly of people, but she was she was in a completely different spot.
SPEAKER_02: She was she was very difficult to work with.
SPEAKER_02: Um, she didn't trust upper management, she was paranoid, she was burnt out.
SPEAKER_02: Her last performance review was not a love letter from the company.
SPEAKER_02: It was basically a get your act together or you're gonna be sent packing.
SPEAKER_02: And they gave her the job.
SPEAKER_02: They gave her the job.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't give me the job.
SPEAKER_02: They said she has more experience with the company, she's been here longer, and she has a higher level of education.
SPEAKER_02: So no matter how hard you may have worked, no matter how much you may have gotten done, no matter how much we may appreciate what you've done for the company here, we can't give you this.
SPEAKER_02: And so if I if I have the proper Christian response that you should have after reading a parable like this, I would have said, Oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_02: Because the first will be last, and the last will be first.
SPEAKER_02: My actual reaction, my actual response to it was was slightly less um gracious.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't say anything untoward, but I did wind up moving on and finding a new job in a new company.
SPEAKER_02: Um and so that really reveals a lot about how we think of work.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe, maybe some of you have been in similar situations there.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've uh found yourself in those places.
SPEAKER_02: But this parable works on two levels, I think.
SPEAKER_02: I think first of all, it tells us about what it's about, but I think it also reveals who we are.
SPEAKER_02: It it opens up our heart and lets us uh lets us be made aware of how we respond to this.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a parable about work.
SPEAKER_02: It's not, you know, a manifesto for labor relations or some kind of Marxist thing or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: But it's a tale of grace, right?
SPEAKER_02: And this tells us a lot about the grace of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And like I said, we can see a lot by what's in it, and we can see a lot by what's in us as we approach it.
SPEAKER_02: So a tall order for the morning.
SPEAKER_02: I hope you're properly caffeinated and ready to uh begin here.
SPEAKER_02: But uh let's let's go to our Lord and ask his help as we as we dig into it.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word, and we thank you that we have the opportunity to get into it here, and I thank you that we can see so much from this parable, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Help to uh reveal in our own hearts and in our own minds how we might need to be changed as we study this, as we read this.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, let your spirit be at work within us all.
SPEAKER_02: Pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: So before we before we get into the deeper spiritual meaning, because this is a parable, parable is a a mundane story, a story of normal things that we could relate to, but it's it's set over the top of spiritual truths, and so it helps to explain that.
SPEAKER_02: But before we can really get a sense of the spiritual truths that this is communicating, let's just let's recap what's gone on here.
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, you've got a landowner, guy owns a vineyard, and he goes out early in the morning.
SPEAKER_02: The the ancient world they had this 12-hour workday.
SPEAKER_02: So next time you're complaining about how long your day is.
SPEAKER_02: But they had this 12-hour workday.
SPEAKER_02: And so if we think about it as, you know, kind of six in the morning until six in the evening, uh, that's what we have in mind.
SPEAKER_02: So he goes out, say, at six a.m.
SPEAKER_02: and he goes down to the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02: This is where all the people who are going to be looking for work for the day are are hanging about and looking for somebody to take them on.
SPEAKER_02: And he finds a group of people and says, Come on, work for me, I'll I'll give you denarius.
SPEAKER_02: And he goes back again at nine, at noon, at three, and at five.
SPEAKER_02: So he's there five different times and he brings back five different groups of people.
SPEAKER_02: We'll call them groups one, two, three, four, and five.
SPEAKER_02: Group one, they've worked 12 hours.
SPEAKER_02: Group five, they've worked one hour, right?
SPEAKER_02: But the twist at the end there is of course that they all wind up with the same wages at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't he doesn't give them any kind of consideration for who's worked longer or who's achieved more.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody gets the same.
SPEAKER_02: And we hear group one grumbling about this because they were expecting, you know, if group five is getting a full denarius, a denarius was about a day's wages.
SPEAKER_02: So if group five, who worked one day, are getting a full day's work, what are we gonna get?
SPEAKER_02: That's so exciting.
SPEAKER_02: But he doesn't do that, he doesn't pay in proportion to how long they worked or any of those kind of things.
SPEAKER_02: And it says that uh verse 12 says that the uh uh group one were grumbling about it because they themselves had borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
SPEAKER_02: Now, we don't hear from groups two, three, four, or five.
SPEAKER_02: Presumably, group five thought this was a pretty good deal.
SPEAKER_02: But the fact that we only see the reaction of group one tells us that's who this parable is about.
SPEAKER_02: That's that's the focus of this parable.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's important to us before we dig into what the parable is is pointing to spiritually, we need to understand who does group one point to?
SPEAKER_02: Who do who can we map onto that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, we know there's there's a couple of couple of things we can look at here.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus was in the middle of a conversation with the scribes and Pharisees, kind of the religious elite of the society there.
SPEAKER_02: So we know that he was talking to them.
SPEAKER_02: Um so that right there would give you a clue that maybe that's who he's who he's addressing here.
SPEAKER_02: But think about what we know about scribes and Pharisees.
SPEAKER_02: If you've if you've read the Gospels, if you're familiar with the gospel accounts there, it's easy to kind of cast them as the you know pantomime villains and they're you know sneering and twisting the mustaches.
SPEAKER_02: But uh in reality, these guys to their own to their own perspective would have been really the ones who were working hard.
SPEAKER_02: They really wanted to please God.
SPEAKER_02: Did they get it wrong?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Did they have some of the wrong thinking and the wrong mindset?
SPEAKER_02: Were they more about how they looked to other people than what God thought about them sometimes?
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: But really, that was what drove them, this this desire to please God.
SPEAKER_02: And so you can see there's there's a pretty strong parallel there between group one, where they're complaining that they've worked harder than everybody else, and you know, scribes and Pharisees who work harder than anyone else to please God.
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's easy to map the map the Pharisees onto group one, but we can also see Jesus is answering a question from his disciples.
SPEAKER_02: So uh in the previous chapter, uh the Apostle Peter is saying, Hey, uh, see, we've left everything and followed you.
SPEAKER_02: What then will he what what then will we have?
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like he's saying, Hey, Jesus, we're in on the ground floor with you on this whole, you know, new kingdom thing that you've got going.
SPEAKER_02: What's what's our what's our what's our stock options on this?
SPEAKER_02: How much how much do we get of the of the kingdom?
SPEAKER_02: And they might have expected that Jesus was going to say, Yeah, you guys have been here the longest.
SPEAKER_02: You guys are the best, you're the cream of the crop.
SPEAKER_02: You get the you get the most stock options, you get the most property, you get whatever, you're you're you're top of it.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, he gives us, you know, the last verse of of the prior chapter.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Many who are first will be last, and the last first.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine you go to your boss and you're like, okay, so I've worked hard this year and I think I'm really up for a pay rise, and your boss says, uh, many first will be last, and many last will be first.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: So maybe not what they were, what they were thinking of, but again, this is where Jesus is going to turn it upside down on them a little bit and give them a better idea about grace.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna see three things about grace.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna see grace, number one, levels the field.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna see that grace is better than a transaction, and we're gonna see that grace is uh just more amazing than we can possibly understand.
SPEAKER_02: So we'll start off with grace levels the field.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus has already said, many first will be last, and the last first.
SPEAKER_02: He says this at the end of our passage as well, in verse 16.
SPEAKER_02: And this again, this just doesn't feel right to us.
SPEAKER_02: I was I was talking with with a friend about, you know, preaching on this this passage earlier in the week, and I said, Yeah, yeah, the laborers in the vineyard.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Yeah, injustice.
SPEAKER_02: So he knows.
SPEAKER_02: But um but we we we see that Jesus is pointing to a different way.
SPEAKER_02: Take a look in in verse 11.
SPEAKER_02: If you've got the passage, I'm sorry, if you've got it open in front of you, um, it's gonna help because we're gonna be referring back to it a lot.
SPEAKER_02: Group one sees that they've got the same wages as groups two to five.
SPEAKER_02: It says, and on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house.
SPEAKER_02: They're saying, This isn't right.
SPEAKER_02: This doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_02: But the vineyard owner is not having it.
SPEAKER_02: He's he's not uh he's not taking it on for them there.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying, You've not been shortchanged.
SPEAKER_02: I gave you what I agreed to give you, you've not been swindled.
SPEAKER_02: The only reason it's a concern to you is because you saw what everyone else got.
SPEAKER_02: You know, in verse 15, he says, Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
SPEAKER_02: And that's a legitimate question.
SPEAKER_02: But going deeper, he says, or do you begrudge my generosity?
SPEAKER_02: In other words, I lived up to my commitment to you.
SPEAKER_02: So if I show generosity to these others, what does that have to do with you?
SPEAKER_02: I can remember, I I I try not to use my kids as an example too much, but I'm gonna do it today.
SPEAKER_02: When when they were small, um we we might have one of them in the in the living room and say, Oh, I'm really proud of you for doing this right, or you remembered to do this, or you you you did this well, or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you'd hear from the other room somebody else was listening, hey, what about me?
SPEAKER_02: It's like it has nothing to do with you.
SPEAKER_02: I can I can I can give praise to your sibling, and it doesn't mean that I'm not praising you.
SPEAKER_02: So there's there's certainly an element of of rivalry, of jealousy when it comes to ver to group one.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you gave these others more than they were expecting, but you didn't give me more than I was expecting.
SPEAKER_02: But there's also just again this sense of injustice.
SPEAKER_02: We worked harder, we fought out through the heat of the day, we provided more value and benefit to your business.
SPEAKER_02: We should get more.
SPEAKER_02: And you can imagine how this would apply to Pharisees, right?
SPEAKER_02: People who who really tried really hard to work and earn their way in with God in the way that they lived.
SPEAKER_02: These guys would have would have seen themselves as much better, much higher, much, much further along in terms of their relationship with the Lord than, say, a tax collector, right?
SPEAKER_02: Tax collectors, just to give you a little bit of uh of background in the area there, nobody likes paying taxes.
SPEAKER_02: I will I will I will give you that.
SPEAKER_02: But um but tax collectors of this day were were a special breed.
SPEAKER_02: They were they were representatives of the Roman government, but they got to charge basically what they wanted to charge.
SPEAKER_02: And so they they would frequently um take more from people than they were required to, and so then they could send off what needed to go to Rome and keep the difference to lie in their own pockets.
SPEAKER_02: And this is people from within the community, you know, siding with the occupying government.
SPEAKER_02: So these guys were were outcasts.
SPEAKER_02: These guys were the worst of the worst.
SPEAKER_02: They were getting rich off of the backs of their own people and lining up with the oppressors, right?
SPEAKER_02: But we we do see in Luke's gospel, there's a there's a story of a tax collector, a guy called Zacchaeus.
SPEAKER_02: If you're familiar with this story at all, this man, he's a short guy, he had to climb up in a tree, but but um he encountered Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And he responded to Jesus, what Jesus was was saying in faith and repentance.
SPEAKER_02: So he was he was turning away from his wicked ways, and he even committed to restoring what he had defrauded other people of.
SPEAKER_02: And lest we think this is some kind of, you know, just lip service, yeah, he's he's just saying this so that he looks good, Jesus himself, who sees hearts and minds and knows what people are thinking, Jesus himself says, Today salvation has come to this house.
SPEAKER_02: Now, maybe a generous and charitable uh Pharisee might look at it and say, okay, it's probably good that this tax collector is changing his ways.
SPEAKER_02: It's probably good that he's coming under grace, that's good.
SPEAKER_02: But no way is this tax collector gonna be as high in the kingdom as me.
SPEAKER_02: Look how hard I've worked, look how long I've worked.
SPEAKER_02: This guy is just coming around for the first time, and before this, he's been doing terrible stuff on his own people.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus' parable here tells a very different story.
SPEAKER_02: We say it here at City Church a lot, but the ground before the foot of the cross of Jesus is flat, right?
SPEAKER_02: There's no there's no higher and lower Christians, there's no better or worse.
SPEAKER_02: It's not like not like a Pharisee is gonna be kicking back in some mansion in glory and the tax collector's gonna be there, you know, shining his shoes.
SPEAKER_02: So grace levels the field.
SPEAKER_02: So I I could look at myself and I could tell you some unflattering, uh, some unflattering things too, because I mean, look at me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm up here in front, I'm teaching all of you, look how great I am, right?
SPEAKER_02: But the minute I start to think that I'm better or further along than somebody who's just come to faith, I'm not getting it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not understanding it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't have a good picture of grace, the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: I can I can very easily justify myself and make other people seem worse.
SPEAKER_02: I can say, you know, you've done maybe some good things, but I've done more, or you you you've you've got a lot of sin in your life, and I don't I've only got a little.
SPEAKER_02: But but that's not what this is about here.
SPEAKER_02: We're all of us, each of us on the same scheme, so to speak.
SPEAKER_02: We're all working based on grace, not working on our own merits or figuring it out for ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: And the thing about this parable is if we come to it and we're not okay with it, what does that reveal about our hearts?
SPEAKER_02: What does that show about how we really feel about grace?
SPEAKER_02: If I'm smug, then I'm not getting it.
SPEAKER_02: If I'm indignant, then I'm not getting it.
SPEAKER_02: God is generous to other people, and he's generous to me.
SPEAKER_02: Grace levels the field.
SPEAKER_02: So the second thing that we see, grace is better than a transaction.
SPEAKER_02: To put it another way, hey, you know, Pharisee guy, disciple guy, whatever, you're not earning your way.
SPEAKER_02: You didn't earn it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not about earning it.
SPEAKER_02: It would be easy to look at this story and say, well, you know, the first group, group one, they worked all day long and they got a day's wages.
SPEAKER_02: That that seems fair.
SPEAKER_02: Seems like they were able to earn their way to it.
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, you could, you could, you could nitpick and say, well, they're unskilled laborers, and well, they they didn't have a uh a steady gig, so maybe they were they would only do, you know, a portion of a denarius.
SPEAKER_02: But but think about it.
SPEAKER_02: The workers in the parable, from from group one all the way through group five, where do they where do they start off?
SPEAKER_02: They start out their day idling in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02: They're not uh they they don't have a gig of their own, they don't have a job, they don't have a prospect.
SPEAKER_02: It's not even like they're kind of going around from vineyard to vineyard and knocking on doors, hey, we're here, we're laborers, we'd like to, we'd like to do some harvesting for you today.
SPEAKER_02: They're just sitting in the marketplace, they're waiting.
SPEAKER_02: They have no hope of being able to provide for themselves.
SPEAKER_02: And if it's not for this vineyard owner, that's where they're where they're gonna end up at the end of the day as well.
SPEAKER_02: But compare their work to that of the vineyard owner.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 1, it says that the vineyard owner is in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02: He's back again in verse 3, he's there twice in verse 5, and he's there again in verse 6.
SPEAKER_02: Now, you know what's funny about this, what's interesting, is we see, I think it's verse 8, that he has a foreman.
SPEAKER_02: He has somebody working for him whose job it would have been to go and hire workers and bring them on and settle wages and stuff like that, but he's going himself.
SPEAKER_02: We can also see how the discussion of the wages progresses, right?
SPEAKER_02: Group one is the only one that's that's promised any particular amount.
SPEAKER_02: It says, you know, come work for me, I'll give you a denarius.
SPEAKER_02: Groups two to four are promised, you know, whatever is right.
SPEAKER_02: That's in verse four.
SPEAKER_02: And the last group, he doesn't even talk about wages.
SPEAKER_02: He just says, Hey, why do you stand here idle all day?
SPEAKER_02: And they say, Well, because no one has hired us.
SPEAKER_02: So group five, it's not like they had another job earlier in the day and they got finished early and now they're just seeing if they can supplement it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not like they, you know, slept through their alarm and uh are only coming in now.
SPEAKER_02: He says they've been waiting there all day long for someone to hire them.
SPEAKER_02: So he says, You've been here all day.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You've been You've been idling, you've been waiting, let me put you to work.
SPEAKER_02: And the thing that we see there is that everyone is given the opportunity to work.
SPEAKER_02: There isn't a sense in which the work isn't even really the point at that stage.
SPEAKER_02: It's not really what it's about.
SPEAKER_02: It's a sense of the vineyard owner is out looking for people in need, people who need to need to make money, need to have food to money to buy food and to live on.
SPEAKER_02: And he's going to, he's going to meet their need regardless of their situation or what time of day they they signed on.
SPEAKER_02: And this really points us to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: This points us to Jesus and his ministry because Luke 19, Jesus says he came to seek and save the lost, much like this vineyard owner.
SPEAKER_02: He came down from heaven himself.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we we talk about Jesus being God himself.
SPEAKER_02: God himself came down to earth to call people to himself.
SPEAKER_02: We know that in previous times there were, you know, God spoke through prophets and other things, but Jesus himself came down just like this landowner came to the marketplace seeking people.
SPEAKER_02: He entered our broken world to show us this upside-down kingdom where the last are first and the first are last.
SPEAKER_02: All the distinctions that we have in the world, whether it's how hard we work or how skilled we are, or even things like race and class and everything like that, they're all undone.
SPEAKER_02: So I think we all of us sometimes get our own kind of inner Pharisee voice, and we we justify our own actions, we justify ourselves and try to make ourselves more significant than other people, you know, thinking I'm gonna earn my favor.
SPEAKER_02: I actually got a really nice compliment that I have to work hard not to make into my identity because somebody told me that I was a hard worker.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, that's so good for a workaholic like me.
SPEAKER_02: That's that's very, very comforting.
SPEAKER_02: But the moment I start to put my identity, my sense of significance in how hard someone else sees me working, then I'm losing it.
SPEAKER_02: Then I'm making it about me.
SPEAKER_02: My life is not rooted on my own efforts.
SPEAKER_02: It's rooted in the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: If I start thinking the wrong way, then all of a sudden I have reason to boast in myself.
SPEAKER_02: I remember we talked about the first point was grace levels the field.
SPEAKER_02: We're all kind of in the same boat here.
SPEAKER_02: And so if group one is there based on their works and groups two through five are there based on generosity, well, then group one could always boast on groups two to five.
SPEAKER_02: But we're not there.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what it is.
SPEAKER_02: We're all of us, once again, on the same scheme.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not entitled to more than somebody else because I'm not entitled to it in the first place.
SPEAKER_02: It's by his grace, by his generosity.
SPEAKER_02: No longer, no matter how long we've been Christians, no matter how much we've served in church or gone on mission trips or given to charity, we've all had our time of idling in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't our initiative or our ingenuity or our hard work that changed that.
SPEAKER_02: It's only by the grace of God He found us.
SPEAKER_02: I want to point us to a few verses in Ephesians chapter 2, because these really dovetail into this idea very well.
SPEAKER_02: It says that for by grace you've been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_02: By grace.
SPEAKER_02: And this is not your own doing, it's the gift of God.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a result of works, so that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
SPEAKER_02: So the grace comes before the works.
SPEAKER_02: By grace you've been saved, and we've been created in Christ Jesus for good works.
SPEAKER_02: Whenever I want to blow my own horn, whenever I want to congratulate myself, or more likely, whenever I want to throw a pity party because somebody didn't recognize how great I am.
SPEAKER_02: Whenever I want to be sad that I got overlooked in something, those are the moments I'm not understanding what grace is.
SPEAKER_02: I need it.
SPEAKER_02: You need it, we all need it.
SPEAKER_02: None of us are earning our way to salvation.
SPEAKER_02: That's really what this parable is showing us here.
SPEAKER_02: So, third and final, third and final point here, guys, is that grace is even more amazing than we recognize.
SPEAKER_02: Think about it.
SPEAKER_02: In the modern world, in the in the real world, why does a business have to manage its costs?
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: This this is not a manifesto for for labor relations, like I said.
SPEAKER_02: See, I used to work at my dad's machine shop.
SPEAKER_02: You can you can ask him about how good of a machinist I was.
SPEAKER_02: Um but if I was if I was running a job for him and I took too long, then that raises the cost basis for that job.
SPEAKER_02: If I scrap too many parts and and used more material than was budgeted, then that raises the cost basis.
SPEAKER_02: If I break a lot of tools or you know, any number of things, I can I can take a job that would have been profitable and sustainable and turn it into something that's going to just cost the business money.
SPEAKER_02: And why don't you do that?
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you continue running jobs at a loss?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because you run out of resources.
SPEAKER_02: You run out, your your bank account goes empty, and you can't continue to buy material, you can't continue to pay wages, you can't continue to keep the lights on.
SPEAKER_02: Because we live in a world of finite resources.
SPEAKER_02: But God's grace is not like that.
SPEAKER_02: It's not in limited supply.
SPEAKER_02: Think about the parable of the prodigal son.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: When the prodigal returns, the father doesn't say, Oh, well, you're back.
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
SPEAKER_02: But he runs to his son, he puts a robe on him, he puts a ring on his finger, and he butchers the fattened calf, and he throws a party.
SPEAKER_02: Not because the prodigal deserved it, but because he loves his child.
SPEAKER_02: So, what do we see in this passage about amazing grace?
SPEAKER_02: Well, we've talked about how the owner goes out himself to seek out the workers for his vineyard.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen how he gives beyond what they deserve.
SPEAKER_02: We see how he speaks with kindness to group one, who's grumbling at him.
SPEAKER_02: The funny thing is, and and we see this a lot of times in scripture, group one stumbles onto it.
SPEAKER_02: They they they they completely have it wrong, but they get it right in verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: It says, These last have only worked for one hour, and you've made them equal to us who've borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
SPEAKER_02: They don't say, You've brought us down to their level.
SPEAKER_02: He said, No, you've you've brought them up to our level.
SPEAKER_02: So if we go back to Ephesians 2, um, verses 6 and 7 talk about how God's grace has raised us up, and how we've been raised up to show the immeasurable riches of his grace.
SPEAKER_02: So this is this is the same idea right here.
SPEAKER_02: So if we if we think about it just in a purely modern day world standpoint, what do we do?
SPEAKER_02: We trade resources, one resource for another.
SPEAKER_02: If I'm a laborer, I'm trading my labor, my hard work, whatever, for a wage, right?
SPEAKER_02: I've got a resource, you've got a resource, we're gonna trade and mutually benefit one another.
SPEAKER_02: But it's not the way that it works in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: Because we start with no resources at all.
SPEAKER_02: We we don't have anything that we can offer to God in order to get what we need.
SPEAKER_02: And on the other side of the equation is God who has all the resources, who has limitless supply of grace.
SPEAKER_02: And since the work and the wage are no longer the point, we see that we're getting more than just gainful employment.
SPEAKER_02: We're getting purpose, we're getting belonging, we're getting fellowship with God Himself.
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, some pretty amazing grace there.
SPEAKER_02: We'll sum it up here.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus told this parable so that the Pharisees and his own disciples as well, um, would not get the wrong idea about grace and about salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Once again, we don't deserve more than other people just because we've worked harder or longer.
SPEAKER_02: And the reason for that is because we don't deserve it at all.
SPEAKER_02: It's strictly by his generosity, by his grace.
SPEAKER_02: Grace is God's unmerited favor towards us expressed at the cross of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And it's it's far more amazing than we realize.
SPEAKER_02: So the best application for us, for each of us, is to find out where we're not okay with this.
SPEAKER_02: Where does this cut across our grain?
SPEAKER_02: And where where do we need to let God change us, shape us differently?
SPEAKER_02: I can think of times in my own life when I felt hard done by the church or by other people in my life who overlooked me.
SPEAKER_02: And I I rationalize why I was better to do something than someone else.
SPEAKER_02: But again, if I think I'm deserving and someone else is not, am I really understanding grace?
SPEAKER_02: One more time.
SPEAKER_02: We're all on the same scheme here.
SPEAKER_02: Now, maybe you're here this morning and you haven't bought into this whole Christianity business, you've not uh followed Jesus as Lord, and if if that's you, I'm glad you're here.
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to talk to you, love to answer questions.
SPEAKER_02: But I would invite you to reflect on what this grace means, what this means to you.
SPEAKER_02: We have God who has all the resources, and he wants to share those resources out of his out of his generosity to raise us up and seat us in the heavenly places.
SPEAKER_02: Talk about people sometimes who who, you know, I I think maybe I'll I'll come to Jesus later in my life because I just want to enjoy myself now.
SPEAKER_02: I just want, I just want that that happiness now, and maybe later on when I'm older, tell you a secret, there's never a time.
SPEAKER_02: It's never gonna be like that.
SPEAKER_02: But it's because we're looking at what the kingdom of God is from the wrong perspective.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: It's not like the Christian life is some burdens, some restrictive, you know, terrible place to be, but it's God out of his limitless grace calling us to abundant life in the here and now.
SPEAKER_02: So if that's you, if you're not uh not yet following Jesus, I hope you won't wait too long in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, for the gathered church here and around the world, let's uh let this picture of grace turn us loose.
SPEAKER_02: There's a world of people who haven't yet heard it, haven't yet understood it.
SPEAKER_02: Let's bring this good news, this gospel, to those who desperately need to hear it.
SPEAKER_02: And let's pray that God will open eyes and ears to hear it.
SPEAKER_02: And let's pray that all of these things will happen.
SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll watch with expectancy to see what God does in our lives and in our world.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.
SPEAKER_01: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found at the link below.