God is NOT Fair!
Matthew 20:1-16
Harry Stoliker
January 31, 2010 EBC
God is NOT Fair!
How many times have you said or heard someone else say "God isn't
fair!" What they mean by that is that God has done something that doesn't
match their system of justice; their perception
of what fairness, equality, evenhandedness should look like. For
instance, it has been said: "Why should people of other religions be sent
to Hell because they happened to be born into a non-Christian home?
Or "How can God judge people when He predestines everything that happens?
That's unfair!" Or "Why are some very evil people blessed with
riches while other godly people are suffering in poverty?" Or
"The God of the Bible arbitrarily ordered the destruction of entire cities, such
as Jericho, just to allow the Jews to have a homeland in the Middle East. How could
a loving God command the destruction of all those "innocent" people?" Or
"God allowed a 7.0 earthquake to kill over 200K people in the poorest country
in the Western Hemisphere, how can that be fair?" (Some dispute
this and say Nicaragua is the poorest).
Men are constantly impugning God as an unfair dictator,
as though they are the ultimate judges of what constitutes
fairness. Turn with me to Ezekiel 18:23-32. V.25 "Yet you say, 'The way of
the Lord is not just.' Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not
your ways that are not just?"Men have a propensity for telling
God who ought to be saved and why they ought to be saved.
God exposes the unfairness of man's value system. So, the bottom line
is God determines what is fair; He is the standard of fairness and
rightness. Whatever He does is fair and right because of who He is.
Our text in Mt. 20 deals with this important question. In this parable we
find ourselves really prone to agree with the complaining workers
that they got a bit shafted by the wealthy landowner. We "instinctively
sympathize" (France) with them because we normally think
that harder work deserves greater payment from the boss. But what
we find here we have found before in this gospel: the Kingdom of God doesn't always
operate on human norms and expectations. The point
of the parable is that God delights to give his servants far more
than they deserve from Him. Our thoughts are still governed
to a large degree by human ideas of deserving rather
than by the uncalculating generosity of the King. We often try to
hoist upon God our idea of what is fair and unfair, as though He
should operate His Kingdom by our standards. We forget what is ultimately
fair and we complain about what we think is unfair.
The question at issue is do you love grace? Do you love or hate
how generous God is toward people? Do you get jealous of how God treats
some people who seem blessed beyond what you think
they deserve? Can you rejoice in the blessings God gives
to other people? Do you live under grace or under a works and performance
system? I was praying with another minister this week and he prayed:
"Lord, enable us to applaud other peoples' victories!" That really applies
to this parable. Let's enjoy the details and then work some more on
application.
V.1 "The Kingdom of heaven is like…" Jesus is using another parable
to give us general principles of how the kingdom of heaven functions. We should
be ready by now for some surprising reversals, some unexpected
surprises, some deep challenges from Jesus' parable.
The landowner is God Himself. He hires workers to do the work of bringing in the
grape harvest from his vineyard. The agricultural motif
is common fare in 1st century Palestine. The audience
was familiar with the OT imagery of Israel being God's vineyard
from Isaiah and Jeremiah's writings. Jesus is telling us how God rules
His household and property.
The landowner goes out early to hire workers. The day began at 6:00
a.m.
V.2 The first group of workers agrees without bickering
to work for the normal day laborer's wage of one denarius.
They head out into the vineyard as the sun is rising and the temperature
climbs.
V.3 Three hours later, at 9:00 a.m. the landowner returns to
the marketplace for more workers. Perhaps he couldn't find enough
workers the first time or perhaps he wanted more men to get the
job done more quickly. We don't know. He found workers standing there
doing nothing, so he hires a second group.
V.4 No specific wage is mentioned for this group. The landowner's
personal integrity is what seals the deal. He says "I will pay you
whatever is right." That was enough for these workers who knew that they were
clocking in late. They accept the terms and are happy to have a job.
V.5 Two more times, at 12 noon and 3:00 p.m.
the landowner went back to the marketplace for more workers. He must have wanted
to get the entire grape harvest in that one day. Now we are wondering
what's going on here. Is this good business or bad business. Spurgeon
says: "Had it been altogether and alone a business transaction, the
landowner would have waited to begin a new day, and would not have given a whole
day's wage for a fraction of a day's work." We are suspicious
at this point in the story of what the landowner is up to.
V.6-7 More surprise here! At the 11th hour – 5:00
p.m. – one hour left until quitting time, the landowner goes
back again for more workers?! What's interesting here is his conversation
with them. He says "Why have you been standing here all day long dong nothing?"
They respond: "Because no one has hired us." They wanted to work, they
were desperate for work. They had stayed there in the
marketplace all day hoping to get hired. One commentator
points out that it is likely that these were the workers that all the other employers
passed over. They must have been rejected by the employers
as unworthy for some reason.
This is where V.16 is going to come in. "But many who are first will be last
and many who are last will be first." These "bottom of the barrel"
guys are in for a pleasant surprise!
V.8 One hour later, the foreman is instructed to pay all the workers.
Lev. 19:13 was followed by the landowner: "You shall not oppress your neighbor
or rob him. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until
the morning."
V.9 The bottom of the barrel crew stepped up first and was
shocked went the foreman dished out one denarius into
each of their hands. We are not told how they reacted, whether they shrunk away
in embarrassment or leaped with joy and shouting. It is
not their response that is the focus of the parable. What a jolt
this verse provides for the parable! This isn't the real world, we are tempted to
say.
V.10 The only other group mentioned is the first group, the
6:00 a.m. boys. They saw what the 11th hr. crew
got so they immediately did some mental math and expected
considerably more for themselves. We are so often plagued by human
expectations that are self-centered demands upon God. We expect God to
meet our expectations and think He's unfair if he doesn't.
V.11-12 UNFAIR! UNFAIR! The whining and murmuring begin.
Grumbling against God as though we got a raw deal in life
is not a pretty thing. They worked one 12th as much and
in cooler temperatures than we did, how can they get the same pay? The grumblers
point out that the time and conditions were radically different and
the landowner knows that. All he'd have to do is look at the latecomers
and see they barely broke a sweat, then look at the 6:00 a.m. boys
who were drenched with sweat from the blazing sun all day. UNFAIR!
UNFAIR!
V.13 The landowner isn't impressed with their case. Yet he is friendly
toward them. He speaks directly to the ring-leader and calls him "Friend" – no malice
or hard feelings. He straightens out his grasp of what is fair and
just. "I am not being unfair to you." The landowner made a solemn agreement
and kept it. He paid them just what he contracted to pay them. He
was not a law breaker. He didn't take advantage of them.
They got what they deserved and agreed to. The landowner
kept his side of the bargain perfectly. Where's the injustice? They
weren't cheated or defrauded. Leon Morris says it well:
"The fact that he chose to be generous to other people gave these men no new rights.
Their discontent was due to envy, not to the overlooking
of any of their rights."
V.14 15 "Take your pay and off with you." Now we see the landowner's
heart: "I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you."
The landowner "just wanted to" bless the 11th hour men! God's generosity
flows out of his own prerogative, not out of any obligation.
God owes no man anything, but wants to be generous because
His heart if full of love and compassion. The landowner was not
compelled or forced or coerced to give that amount of money. He had
the right to do with his money whatever he wanted. Just as God has the sovereign
right to save and bless whomever he wills.
The grumblers were envious. Normally, all cries of UNFAIR,
UNFAIR are really envy and jealousy at their root! This is where we
need to dig a little deeper into application. Let's list some conclusions
and applications from this parable.
1. The one effective way to keep yourself from thinking God has been unfair in
any way to you, is to remember that YOU are the 11th hour worker!
I'm the one who couldn't get a job to feed myself. I'm the one who was desperate
until the Master Landowner came to rescue me. I'm the
one who was standing helplessly in the market place all day long.
I'm the one who has been blessed beyond belief with every spiritual
blessing in heaven and earth.We are the recipients of enormous, out of
proportion grace. How can I say "You've been unfair to me,
God!" I'm the one who was bound for hell because of
my own sin and rebellion, yet Jesus died for me. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
"The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the
grace of God.
Corissa and I were memorizing Rom. 5:8 this week: "But God demonstrates
his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
The next time you are tempted to think God is being
unfair to you, remember who you are by nature;
by nature you are under the wrath of God, deservedly so. But now in Christ
you are the object of God's avalanche of spiritual and physical generosity!
That is what will cure you of thinking God has done something unfair
to you.
As a believer in Jesus, you have already received infinitely more
than you could ever deserve! All men deserve only hell for their sin
against a holy God. Yet God in Christ has given us all we need for life and godliness
through his magnificent promises.
2. John Calvin:"However many blessings we expect from God, His
infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes
and our thoughts." Our wishes should be focused on
spiritual realities. Through prayer, tap into God's infinite
liberality by asking Him for enormous spiritual blessings.
3. We should rejoice when God riches blesses someone else. The Kingdom of
God is all about Grace. We rejoice when God floods
people's lives with grace, even if we don't think they deserve it.
We love grace so much we are able to "applaud at someone else's
victories and blessings." (Jerry Scott) How can we be hard-hearted?
How can we be stingy and miserly? How can we be jealous
if God blesses someone else in great and mighty ways! How can we be
anything less than joyous at all He has showered upon our miserable,
bankrupt souls!
Sinclair B. Ferguson Grow in Grace said:
"The way to open our hearts to others is by receiving afresh the grace
of God and appreciating what it means: seeing our own need of Christ;
coming to receive His mercy; sensing how undeserved
His love for us is; remembering how He has also opened His heart to those
whose hearts are closed against us. Then we will see that the heart which is too
narrow to receive a fellow Christian is too narrow to enthrone the Lord
Jesus Christ. But the heart that is opened to receive the
grace of Christ will learn to welcome all those whom Christ
Himself has welcomed.
Jonathan Edwards made a set of sincere resolutions for his
life. #30 was this:
"Resolved, to strive to my utmost every week to be brought to a higher exercise
of grace, than I was the week before." May the Spirit of God give us this same resolve
this week.
Let's pray.