Today during Pastor’s sermon he talked about Mathew 20:1-16. It’s a whole big story that, to tell you the truth I don’t really like. The story goes basically like this: there was a man, a master of his house, who took on workers to work in his vineyard. He agreed with them that he would pay each of them a denarius (a denarius is just a day’s pay; it was how much a master would pay a worker that worked for a day. It’s not enough to put aside and save up and it won’t pay for the mortgage but it will keep you fed and alive). So these men begin their day and work in the vineyard and the master goes into the market. As he was strolling down this market he notices a couple of guys just standing around and he asks them why ( I mean wouldn’t you like to know too?) and they say to him that they don’t have a job. Well, why do you think they don’t have a job? Well their answer to the master was that simply no one had hired them. So being a generous guy and all he tells them that they could go and work in his vineyard and he’d pay them. So they go and begin their work in the vineyard with the other workers. The master kept walking and he find more men just standing around and asks them what they’re doing (needless to say he keeps doing this).
On the final hour on the work day, at the 11 hour he finds a couple of guys again and he asks them what they’re doing and they of course answer nothing because no one had hired them. Well the master does what he’s done before and hires them to work in his vineyard even though there’s only an hour left to work. But they go and they begin their work in the vineyard.
So finally the day ends and the master tells his foreman to bring each man in according to the hour he began his work from the last to the first in to get paid. So the foreman does as he’s told and brings in the men who were hired the eleventh hour to get paid and he pays them a denarius. Then the next he pays a denarius and so on and so forth. When the men who began their day at the wee hours of the morning heard what the others were getting paid they got so excited. I mean I would too if I heard that the guys that worked for an hour got paid an entire days worth! That would mean I’d get paid 12X more!!! But of course when has the bible ever been predictable? So the first guys come in and await their money and when the master drops one denarius in their hands they just kind of stand there perplexed. They got pretty upset to say the least and they even asked the master why they were getting paid so little. The master told them that is exactly what they had agreed on at the beginning of the day and that is what he was giving them. He says “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I chose with what belongs to me? or do you begrudge my generosity?”
So as I’m sitting in the pew I know that there is some great moral to learn, probably the fact that Jesus puts the last first and the first last (I’d heard that saying before) but I kind of didn’t care because I was also a little upset. For one, the master guy was pretty generous; he must have hired many guys to work in his vineyard. All of didn’t have a job and he gave it to them and then he paid the last guys a pretty good deal, but he didn’t treat the first guys with what I thought he should have. They worked the very hottest and the longest why shouldn’t they be paid at least a little more? Nowadays you wouldn’t see that happening, the workers wouldn’t allow it and they could really do something about it. But then because it’s in the bible we have to look for what God wants to teach us and what he’s asking. So the question is: if someone accepts Me at their deathbed do they have any less right to all the splendors in my kingdom? What makes you any better than them just because you were saved before them? We were created equal; each of us born into this world from our mother’s womb, into different rooms but the general birth is there. And as we’ve grown older there become a division that passes us, some are more athletic, smarter, strong, happier, nicer, meaner, prettier, etc. But to God there is not division we were all created equal forever and ever more. To God we are all his children and there is no line drawn in the sand no matter how invisible it may seem, he punishes us by our one fault and that is ALL of our sinful hearts and we all have disobeyed God. So when you think you have the right to something then someone else, remember that God doesn’t think so and his opinion is law.
Like I said I don’t really like this story but it made be think about the fact that in the end it won’t matter if we are old Christians or new, deep in spirit or not, god sees us as his children and pays us the same wage for which we were given when Jesus dies on the cross for ALL of our sins.
“So the last will be first, and the first last.”
Mathew 20:16
