God’s Ways are Past Finding Out!
Matthew 20
Jesus had so much to teach his disciples and so little
time. He reminded his disciples that time
was getting short – that soon they would be traveling to Jerusalem
All this talk about Jesus dying made no sense. The disciples did not want to hear what Jesus
was telling them. They were still
arguing about which one of them would be the greatest when Jesus comes into his
kingdom. ((Matthew 20: 20-21) So Jesus
tells them that the greatest among them will be the servant – the one who
serves. And the one who desires to be
first will be a slave to the others. (Matthew 20: 26-27) And He tells the disciples that He will be
their example. That He has come to serve
them (and us) and He has come to give his life a “ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)
Jesus sat down and told a story to the disciples and to the
crowds. Maybe this story could help them
to understand that God sees and judges things differently than we do. Jesus tells them the Parable of the Workers
in the Vineyard. Jesus starts out this
way: “The kingdom of heaven is like a
vineyard owner who goes out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agrees with the workers to pay them a
denarius for the day’s work and then he sends them out into his vineyard to
pick the grapes. (Matthew 20: 1-2)
The vineyard owner wonders if he has enough workers to bring
in all the grapes so he goes out again in the middle of the morning and finds more
people standing around in the marketplace looking for work. He hires these people also and sends them off
to his vineyard telling them that he will pay them what is right. A few hours later the vineyard owner goes out
again and hires even more workers to pick grapes and yet again in the middle of
the afternoon, promising to pay them all whatever is right. And then just as the sun is going down the
vineyard owner rushes out and hires even more workers for that last hour of
work. He wants to get the job done! (Matthew 20: 3-7)
The work day was about twelve hours and ends when the sun
goes down. They can’t pick grapes in the
dark. Remember they didn’t have electric
lighting back then! Jesus continues his
story: “The owner of the vineyard asks
his steward to call the workers and give all of them their wages beginning with
the last group and on to the first. And
when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour and received a whole denarius,
the first group who had worked all day supposed that they would receive even more
money. But then when the steward gave
them their wages they were given a denarius also, like they had been
promised. It didn’t seem fair and they
complained to the owner of the vineyard.”
(Matthew 20: 8-11)
And this is what the workers who worked all day said to the
owner of the vineyard: “These men who
came and worked only one hour got the same pay as we did! Don’t you see that we worked all day and bore
the burden and the heat of the whole day?
It isn’t fair!” (Matthew 20:
12) And the owner of the vineyard
answered the workers that he just wanted to be generous and give the same
amount to the men who only worked one hour.
Didn’t he have that right? And anyway,
he had given them what they had all agreed on at the beginning of the day. Jesus’ story or parable ends with these
words: “So the last will be first, and
the first last. For many are called, but
few are chosen.” (Matthew 20:16)
What do we learn from Jesus’ parable about the workers
getting the same amount of pay even though some work long hours and some hardly
work at all? What is He trying to teach
us? One of the lessons here is that God
is absolutely sovereign and gracious in granting rewards. And rewards will be given by heaven’s
standards and not earths. The disciples had been arguing about who would
receive the grandest reward in heaven for their services. Perhaps Jesus is trying to rebuke the spirit
of serving for the reward itself rather than serving out of love.
And I suppose that
Jesus is telling the disciples and all his followers that things will be judged
very differently in God’s kingdom than we are used to here on earth. Jesus starts out by saying that the kingdom
of heaven is like this parable. (Matthew
20:1) It may seem to us that the kingdom
of heaven is an upside down kingdom!
We may think that we have never been in a situation where
the person who worked twelve hours got the same amount of pay as the person who
worked only one hour! Even God would
see this work situation as unfair, we think. But would He? We have all been that person at one time or
another - the person who worked twelve hours and got the same amount of pay as
the person who worked only one! We have
all had chances in our lives to ask why God acted or didn’t act to make things
“fair” to our way of thinking.
Have you ever been mad at God because He didn’t do things
the way you thought He should have? He
didn’t stop you from that big mistake?
Or from the accident that took your loved ones’ life when others were
spared? Your beloved child died when
other children laugh and play and grow to adulthood? And the disease that is taking over your body
isn’t getting better even after you have prayed and prayed about it? Where is God anyway? Why is
He silent? It doesn’t seem fair.
Job asked these questions when he had sores all over his
body and God had allowed all of his children to die and all of his wealth to
disappear. God had called Job a
“righteous” man. And since Job was so
righteous, where were his rewards for being so good? Job wondered about that and didn’t think it
was fair! He wanted God to come down and
explain it to him. He wanted to argue
his point! A human arguing with God!
But then God did show
up and answer Job. But God’s answers to
Job were really questions. Job got a
glimpse of God’s mighty sovereignty and total power and overwhelming love. Job could visualize God’s great loved for him
and how God plan was working only good things into his life. Job fell on his face and worshipped his God
accepting the fact that he could not understand how God worked by rational
thinking but only by faith alone. Job’s
faith finally rested in the fact that God’s will toward him was good and that
God’s ways are past finding out.
Scripture says that: “Humans judge by outward appearances but
God judges the heart.” (1 Samuel
16:7) We judge a person by the number of
hours worked or by how much physical strength or beauty he or she has. We judge by how many games a sports team can
win and how much money a person can make.
We can only judge what we can see on the outside and on the surface and
we don’t ever see the whole picture!
Our judgments are
influenced by the opinions of others around us and clouded with prejudices. We often join a crowd in believing something
because at the moment it is the “in” thing to believe and we want to fit
in. We often believe what is in vogue
and what we are “supposed” to believe! And
even though we think that we are judging “fairly”, in truth we humans are
fickle and as Scripture puts it: “Now (on this earth) we see through the glass
darkly…” (1 Cor.13:12) .
But God can adequately assess how faithful we are, how much
we love and obey, and what we are all made of.
God can see it all. We are to let
God judge because He is “faithful and just” and He is always fair. He is the One who created the whole world and
keeps it moving and He sees the whole picture.
God is holy and merciful and full of love. We need to trust God in all of his judgments
and rest in his unfailing grace. He sees
the beginning from the end and His will for us is good. (John 10:10)
“Oh the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways are past finding out.” (Romans 11:33)
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