Essentials: Mercy

The grace of God can look unfair until we realize where we actually stand in line. In this message from Matthew 20, we discover the generosity of a God who gives us far more than we could ever earn.

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20, the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 20. And just to remind you of two things. One, we're in year A of a three year cycle, year A, B and C. And of course, year A deals primarily with the Gospel of Matthew, year B, Mark, year C, Luke, with the Gospel of John interspersed throughout all three years.

And this is one of my favorite passages in the Gospel of Matthew, and it's also one of my favorite parables because years ago I wrestled with this parable and I really felt it, that something was just really off. And I knew I was missing something because Jesus is saying something specific here and I was kind of landing on the wrong side of that thing. Okay. And I don't know if you're gonna land on what side you're gonna land on here, but I imagine you might join me initially with a little pushback on this parable until we see what it is Jesus is trying to disrupt in us. And remember, the parables are meant to disrupt us.

That's, that's the whole purpose of giving a story that's in the reverse sometimes or just oddly landing in us. And I want to show you that I hope today, as we read from this scripture here, when you found Matthew, chapter 20, go ahead and stand for the Gospel reading this morning.

And by the way, the second thing I meant to say was number one, that year A. But then number two is our sermon series we're in, which is called the Essentials. And this is, trust me, an essential understanding and belief of our faith today. So notice these words as found in Matthew, chapter 20, verse 1. Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about 9 o', clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And he said to them, you also go into the vineyard and I will pay you whatever is right. So they went. When he went out again about noon and three o', clock, he did the same.

And about five o' clock, he went out and found others standing around. And he said to them, why are you standing here idle all day? They said to him, because no one has hired us. He said to them, you also go into the vineyard. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.

When those hired about five o' clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now, when the first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received the usual daily wage. And then when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 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. And he replied to one of them, friend, am I doing you no wrong?

Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage, take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

Jesus, thank you for this parable you gave. And you gave it not only for those. Those first hearers 2,000 years ago, but for us. Because in your divine providence and mercy, you saw us as well as them. Lord, whatever may be opposed to your generosity in us, would you forgive us and would you change our mind?

Today we pray in your name. Amen. And you can be seated.

Well, I'll go ahead and tell you right up front the hermeneutical key here that unlocks this passage. All right? Now, hermeneutic just means interpretation, okay? Not trying to be fancy, that's just the only word I could think of at the top. But the hermeneutical key here to understanding this, let's put it this way, the interpretive key is right here in the middle, kind of of what Jesus is saying, but also at the very end and at the beginning.

So anytime you run on a passage that is difficult to understand, always check what comes before it and what comes after it. That's. That's kind of the first thing you want to do, all right? Don't take it in isolation, but rather look what's before it and after it to find it in its property context, right? And when we look at 20 verse one, I would just want to direct your attention to the verse right before it in chapter 19, verse 30.

And just bear. Bear in mind that in the original, when Matthew's writing this, there are no chapters or verses. These were added later. And notice what 1930 says. But many that are first will be last and the last first.

And then I would remind you again just of. So the last will be first and the first will be. Do you see the inversion there? It's the exact reverse of it on both ends. So that that's what we call an inclusio, where you have bookends, right?

You have one statement that's made Here, then a story given and then another statement that bookends the pericope or the passage of scripture. Right. And that's what we have here. Okay? And I'm saying to you that that is the hermeneutical key that we're supposed to read this in is this statement about the first being last and the last.

First, last, first, first, last. Everybody with me so far. Now that sounds like a slogan that should go on a T shirt. And. And we should be like, yeah, Harvest point.

First, last, last, first, rah, rah, rah. Right. Until I would submit to you that it really is meant to not sit with us. Well, that's actually the reason it said twice, I think. And a story that should upset us just a little bit.

Just a little bit. Does this story kind of, you know, grind your gears perhaps, Right? I don't know. I mean, you know, if you had. When it says scorching heat here, don't we know a little bit about what that is here recently?

Yeah. So you've been laboring all day long and you're now at the back of that, you're thinking, I've been out here all day, we should have probably gotten paid first, you know, but here we are at the back of the line now and, oh, boy, they got as much as we were promised for a whole day. This guy, he's going to really hook us up, right? Only to find out you got the same amount as the guy who showed up at quitting time. 5 o'.

Clock. Are you kidding me? That's like somebody wandering into the office. Five o', clock. And they get the same salary as you.

No. Something about that shouldn't sit with us, right? That's not fair. We would say, right, hey, what? And they make their, you know, they voice their concern, don't they, to the landowner?

They start grumbling. And we're pretty good at that, right? You know, most of us are expert complainers. You know, we get out here on the road and we start complaining. We go to a restaurant, we start complaining.

We get home and we start complaining. We walk outside and it's hot. And what? We start grumbling. I get it.

We're. We're complaining complainers, just like so my point is this. We really do find ourselves, don't we, in this parable? And that's kind of the point, Jesus, Giving a story that we're meant to find ourselves in and say, hey, what in the world is going on here? To maybe put it in modern context, I thought about, man, if you Were at Disney World.

Anybody ever been to Disney World? If you were at Disney World and you waited an hour and a half in the scorching heat for this two minute ride, okay, and you're up there at the front and they say, hey, guys, good news. The first will be last. And the last. First.

Yeah. Ra. Are you going to receive that as good news? That's another hour and a half of your life. No, if you're at the front of the line, if you've waited the longest, if you've worked the hardest, that's not really good news for you, is it?

Let me put it in another one that we're probably all familiar with as well. The doctor's office. Anybody know any doctor's offices? I don't know what those doctors are back there doing. Kicked up in their desk, perhaps, but I'm out here waiting and I've got another appointment.

And I was supposed to be. I got here early, you know anybody else? And then all of a sudden, now I've been on the receiving end of getting first because I know a couple doctors, like, personally, and I've actually walked into my brother's place and I sat down just like everybody else because I didn't want to presume that I was going to get the front of the line. All of a sudden somebody came out and said, are you Marshall, Justin's brother? Come on back and listen, when I got up, everybody in there looked at me like, you sneak.

Are you kidding me? This guy comes in, he just got sat down and pulled out his phone. And now he's welcome back. And I've been here for who knows how long they've been there. I don't know, you know, but now it's gonna be longer.

Cause I just got bumped up, right? I mean. And the same thing has happened to me, actually, on my trip to India, where I was the last person to get on this flight because this other flight was late. It's a long story. I ran, I didn't feel great.

I got there last. And they upgraded me to actual first class at Lufthansa, right? So I don't even know how to say that, but something like that, you know what I mean? And I got first class as I'm going on a mission trip to India. And I thought, this is great to be bumped up when you're at the back of the line, right?

And I think that's kind of the point here with this parable. It really matters where you place yourself in line here. And many of us, perhaps by Mistake, but probably because we're used to putting ourselves first, we put ourself in this story as the one who worked the hardest. I've been at this a long time, God. Haven't you seen what I've done for you?

Why is this happening to me? Anybody? We place ourselves with those who've worked the longest, but probably, if we're looking at reality properly and looking at God and what he's done for us, in comparison of what we've done for him, we haven't even gotten in a half day's work. We showed up last. And if you're last and work the least and get paid the most, the top amount, well, then you would see this landowner as generous rather than being envious of his generosity.

So I'd ask you, brothers and sisters, where do you see yourself in the line of God's grace as earning the most? And God owes you something? No, brothers and sisters, we know we can't go down that road. Let's get real. He has given his all for us.

All is due of us and how many of us, we would be able to honestly stand and say, oh, I've given my all from birth to death. I've matched it. No. Most weeks would show a different story.

Most days, perhaps, are given to other things that are maybe idle things. You notice the terminology here is that they were standing around idle. It actually isn't that they're lazy. They are in the marketplace to get hired here. You know, back in the day, there was a couple spots in Birmingham I would go visit Justin.

There were a couple of spots where people would just gather, truck would pull up and people would get in there and they would shoot off to work. That's what I imagine here. The landowner shows up, he's like, hey, anybody want to work, jump in, I only have room for three. And you think, oh, man, maybe next time. Maybe next.

Because these people wanted to be working. That's what's interesting here. They wanted to belong on a field, getting paid to do the work. But they had not been called yet. Their number hadn't been called.

And sometimes we get in a place like that, right? Sometimes it's by our own doing. Some of us, you know, are just plain lazy. Let's just be real. I mean, we are.

We live in a society that allows us for a lot of leisure and that the big temptation then is to be lazy, you know, to misuse our gifts and our abilities and so on and so forth. But that's not really what this parable is about. It's about God's generosity for those who want to know the truth, if you will, that want to be in the vineyard, that want to have a place to work and work we must do. That's kind of the given here, is all of us are called to work in his vineyard. What is his vineyard?

It's the whole world. Let's just be real. It's the whole thing. It's everything that we've got, okay? It's everything that's created.

So, so our work is not limited to this or that. You know, we immediately start, start, you know. Oh, yeah, no, no, I'm going to have to do something here on Sunday or whatever. But no, it's, it's Monday, Tuesday. Listen, it's all over the place.

He wants to be highest on Tuesdays. Even when you've got a lot of. I know you got a lot of work to do. I know you've got this and that and things are crazy. I get it.

Totally. And yet there's a way to do it to please him and to point others to Christ and not for us to be self interested so much that we don't even recognize his generosity. You know, our, our scripture today actually has given to us in the story of Jonah the best sort of illustration I could ever, you know, conjure up here, right? I mean, everybody knows the story of Jonah. It's only four chapters.

You read it once and it's kind of embedded, right? He's like the worst prophet ever, worst preacher ever, worst pastor priest ever, okay? God tells him, hey, go to the Ninevites. And what does he do? He goes the very opposite way.

And then he throws a little tantrum, just throw me in, you know, you ever dealt with like a two year old tantrum? You know, it's like they act like they would rather die than have to do whatever it is you're asking to do. And all you ask them to do is just pick up their cup, you know, it's just this ridiculous amount of theatrics, right? That's what we get in Jonah, don't we? Multiple times throughout the book he says, just let me die, just throw me overboard.

You know, God doesn't care about me. And you have these foul mouthed, I'm sure, sailors who are crying out to Yahweh on the boat. And what is Jonah doing, huh? He's mad as a hornet. And they throw him over.

Of course, he gets swallowed by the fish, burped up later, after he finally prays after three days, this guy just can't get it or doesn't want to get it right inside the fish, it finally throws him up where he needs to be. So he took a submarine, you know, in a way, to exactly where he needed to be. And then he preaches the worst message ever. He's like, hey, God's going to destroy you people. And he's walking through, he's going to bring it into this place, right?

And they wholesale convert. I mean, they even make their animals fast and pray, we're told. It's interesting how the animals here is almost like a joke that's embedded in the text. And of course, after they repent, you would think that here's this sorry prophet with a sorry message. But now he's got a bunch of converts.

I would like that. I think, you know, I would love to be overwhelmed with converts. Okay, not this guy. In fact, what he says and what we read is this, God, I told you this is exactly what you would do. You're a dirty forgiver.

And I knew you were going to do it. I knew you were going to show mercy on these people instead of burn them up. Now, truth be told, the Ninevites, I mean, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and the Assyrians are nasty people, long before the Romans. You know, the Romans were kind of discipled by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Persians. And so they're just sort of the culmination of all these nasty, you know, horrible kingdoms.

And so, you know, in a real way, let's just assume that Jonah probably had some of his family members murdered by these Assyrians. And now he's being asked to go and preach good news to them and offer them mercy. He doesn't want mercy. He wants justice. And, you know, I get it all.

Listen, there's nothing wrong with justice. We all want justice. And in fact, our culture today is sort of obsessed with justice. Now, what they're not obsessed with is mercy. And the two should not be opposed to one another.

In fact, if we kind of see it in its right way, God expresses his goodness in two maybe fundamental ways. The first is with justice. When something's been done wrong, we cry out justice. That needs to be. They need to get their due.

A life for a life, an eye for an eye. That's justice. That's straight up justice, okay? Plato talks about it in the Republic. It's getting what you deserve.

That's a simple definition of justice. And you know what? Here's what the Old Testament majors in. It says, yeah, God is just you better watch out. You will give an account for everything you do and think and say.

Now, that should make us shaking our boots, quite frankly. We often think, oh, yeah, you know, I'm not arrested, so I'm doing pretty good. You know, what's going on in that mind of yours? What are the thoughts of your heart?

Because Jesus specifically says that's a problem. If it's still in your heart and in your mind and you play with that and you, you, you try to keep that for yourself while not doing the act, that's still a big issue.

Yes, we cry for justice, and in this parable, we cry for justice, right? It's like we feel the older brother who says of the prodigal son, don't we? We say, yeah, that's not fair. This dude, he gets a meal when that old boy's been working day and night, never left the father's house. But, you know, the older brother doesn't love the father any more than the younger brother.

He just followed the rules. How many of us dare say, if we're honest, we followed the rules because we don't want to get in trouble, but we really don't love God like we actually don't love his ways. You say, how could that be? Pastor Mark? Well, I found it in my own life.

I used to long to be like sinners when I was young. I really did. I thought to myself, here I am, saved myself from marriage, doing this, doing that, try not to say bad things, all this stuff. And yet I wanted to be what they had. There's this pool to be like the world.

That's a problem. I didn't even recognize it as a problem. I thought, hey, as long as I still, you know, don't do this and don't do that, then God will. God will love me and accept me. That's not the point here.

Our love for him should push out all of this other stuff because we know it does not bring about happiness and joy.

Always lustful, ever looking, never getting. That's hell and not happiness.

Bitterness toward others. Here in our text today, envy. Isn't it interesting? The green monster of envy. It's the fact that, that they look around at what other people are getting.

That's actually the problem here. And brothers and sisters, what is social media done to us? It's all about looking at other. We're all voyeuristic, looking in on other people's lives, wishing we had that house and that car and that marriage and that family. And bump, bump goes down the list.

Envy and what it ends up doing, Jesus says through this parable, is it ends up making us begrudge his generosity because we think we deserve more. Look what I did. No, brothers and sisters, we must have a self forgetting love toward God. Not I love my wife because what she can do for me, or I love my children because what they. Or I love you as a congregation because of what you can do.

No, it's a self forgetting. I love you because you're you.

That's what real love looks like. And that's hard, that's difficult. We always are getting in our own way, tripping our own self up, aren't we? But there's a remedy and it's only in Jesus Christ. And Paul talks about it.

Living to Christ means dying to ourself.

When he bids a person come and follow, he bids them come and die if you want to follow me. Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me to death so that you can have resurrection life. And you know, if you really think about it, I really try to picture, like what does self forgetting moment look like? And it looks like when your team has a breakout run and it's the fourth quarter and you're going to win, you're. Yeah, let's go, let's go.

I mean, you don't even in that moment, you don't think, now what do I look like when I say, yeah, go, go, go. You know, you don't do that. You're just going nuts, right? Like, you just go, you're making a fool of yourself in fact, because you're, you're not even thinking about yourself anymore, right? In sexual intimacy, it's supposed to be that you're thinking of the other person so much that you forget yourself.

Because as soon as you start turning upon yourself, then you start analyzing. Same thing with speaking. If you think of yourself, what do I look like when I do my hands like this or when I say that? What do I sound like? People always, if you're going to do that when you're speaking, you might as well stop speaking.

You must forget yourself and live into that moment best you can. And that's difficult to do. Again, we always are tripping ourself up. We always are rising to the top, putting ourself first. And the scripture calls us to the exact opposite.

Consider others better than yourself. To me, that's probably one of the hardest commandments that I know in the New Testament to do. Because you know, you know the same people I know, right? They're tough, right? Am I Alone in it.

When I get on the road, I don't always consider others as than myself.

I think, what a numbskull, you know, that guy, that gal, right? And we need to watch ourselves. We really do. At work, at home, thinking these things. Because these thoughts become a reality and the reality will slip out and all of a sudden we'll be putting ourselves first.

Angry that God would give somebody like that his grace.

We would actually call God to the carpet that he's unjust. Can you imagine that? The very definition of justice itself. We would try to say, you're not being fair. You know what I say?

Thank God he's not fair, but he's gracious. Because if he's fair, I'm still going to hell for what I've been in my life.

No, he's gracious. And unlike Jonah, who's mad. Just kill me already, God, you know, throwing a two year old tantrum as an adult. We too must wrestle with that final question in Jonah. And it's the only book to end with a question that's not answered.

And the question's meant for us. You care so much about this stupid little plant that I brought into existence and this little worm that I also brought into existence to both comfort you and, and to torment you out of your own selfishness, Jonah, because I'm trying to save your stinking life and you're going to be mad about it. And we don't know what happened to Jonah. We have no clue.

But it's our time to make sure that it doesn't happen to us. Let's not begrudge his generosity.

Thank God he's not fair. Thank God his goodness doesn't just stop at justice because I'm toast at that point, but it moves on to mercy, which is actually higher than justice. Now it's interesting and I want to get too philosophical here, but. But it's, it's higher. But it doesn't mean that justice is less.

It just means that mercy is greater. And it also doesn't mean that justice gets small, snubbed, but it means that mercy still is the higher good. Think about my kids, right? If one of them does something, I say, I told you, I'm going to take your phone away if you do that again. But then it comes down to it and I say, you know what?

I'm going to let you, I'm going to let you do this anyway. I'm going to let you go over your friend's house even though I threatened you not to. That's mercy. And. And it doesn't mean that there's not an aspect of justice, but it means that I've now gone beyond that.

And thank God he's not just a just God, but He's gracious, he's merciful. Abounding with steadfast love for those who love him for thousands of generations.

Yes, thank God. The first, our last and the last first because I'm the last one to get picked. I've done the least amount of work and yet he calls me into his vineyard. Come on, let's go work. Come on, let's go work.

The day is late, brothers and sisters. Do you hear his call today? He's in the truck. Are you in the marketplace? Will you get in and start?

Don't give him your excuses. I'm not this or that. He already knows and he's calling you anyway. Can you believe that? That's what I always think about myself.

He calls me anyway, even though he knows how dumb and stupid I am at times.

He calls me anyway. Can you believe that? Thank God he's merciful. All right. Last thing here is this.

Let him turn any envy or comparison in us into pure joy. So let you know. Envy is all about comparing yourself to others. Which again is just a plague on our society today. It really is.

We have access to people used to not have a clue what was going on in other people's lives. We don't anymore. And I'm telling you, it can eat us up. Don't let that do that. Don't do that.

That doesn't lead to happiness or holiness. No, let him instill joy and a self forgetting love.

May it be so. In the name of the father, son and holy spirit, amen.