Reading Assignment: Matthew 19:27-20:16
Truth: Salvation is by grace.
Key Verse: Matthew 20:15
Overview:
1. Discussion about eternal life
2. Parable of the landowner
Prayer:
1. Thank God for His generosity in giving us the gift of eternal life.
2. Ask God for strength and courage to live the Christian life faithfully.
Transcript
We'll pray and begin our time together.
Lord, thank You for the forgiveness of sins that we have through Christ. Thank You that we can come to You day after day and approach You the Holy God because of Jesus who gave Himself up for us, that our sins would be paid for and we may be cleansed and holy and acceptable in Your eyes. Thank You that we can commune with You, draw near to You, call out to You in prayer, and earnestly hear Your word. We pray that as we continue to study Your word, that You would mature us in the faith and conform us more and more to Christ. Allow our faith to deepen and our character to grow. May our lives bear much fruit for Your glory. That is our prayer this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The next passage to be read is Matthew 19:27-20:16. This is an odd cut off, but that's because there's a continuity of thought from the end of Chapter 19 and the first half of Chapter 20. The central truth found here is this: Salvation is by grace. That's the truth. The key verse is found in 20:15, which says, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?” That captures the generosity of God that gives salvation by grace, and you'll see how this works out as we work through the passage. In terms of the flow of thought, there is first a discussion about eternal life, then a parable about a particular landowner.
First, the discussion. Let me rewind and review a little of what we covered last time. As you will recall, in Chapter 19, we saw the story of the rich young ruler whom Jesus challenged to exercise faith and repentance. He called him to sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and come follow after Jesus. And of course, this man owned much property and wealth, and he was unwilling to part ways with his possessions to follow Christ. The disciples were then bewildered and asked, “Who can be saved?” Jesus then explained that although humans by themselves could never exercise this sort of faith, but with God all things are possible. This is to say, those whom God draws to Himself, He gives them the ability to believe and exercise faith, even faith enough to forsake everything and follow Christ and pursue obedience to the Lord. Well, it is on the heels of that statement that we come to the beginning of this passage where Peter says to Jesus in 19:27, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?” Peter and the rest of the disciples did in fact leave everything they had to follow Jesus. This was a legitimate question. Now, you might imagine Jesus would have rebuked Peter, but He doesn't. Instead, Jesus actually affirms what Peter says. He says, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration (that is, in the restoration of all things, when the kingdom of God comes) when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Then Jesus generalizes this claim. He says in verse 29, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.” Now, this at first pass almost sounds as if everyone must literally forsake everything in order to have eternal life. It almost sounds that way. But then Jesus concludes with this cryptical statement: “But many who are first will be last; and the last, first.” What does this mean? Jesus explains it with a story, a parable, and this is what we come to in Chapter 20.
This brings us now to the parable. Jesus tells a story about a man who owns a piece of land, a vineyard. And he needs workers. So, he goes out looking for laborers. Now, when you read the story, you'll notice that the hours are kind of described in a strange way. Jesus talks about the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour and the eleventh hour. These are not the hours on our clocks today. In the ancient world, they told time from sunrise to sunset and broke up the hours of the day into twelve parts. So then, dawn (or roughly 6am) is the first hour, and 9am the third hour, noon the sixth hour, 3pm the nineth hour, and sundown or 6pm the twelfth hour. So the landowner goes out seeking laborers. He first goes out looking for workers at the crack of dawn. This is like 6am. He finds some potential hires and he tells them, “I'll hire you for the day for one denarius.” A denarius was a day's wage. This was a fair wage, and those men agree to work the day for that wage. They come to the field and begin to work. Then comes the third hour of the day, which would be 9am our time. The landowner goes out again, looking for more laborers because there's more work to do. He finds some more men and tells them, “whatever is right, I'll give you. Come and work on my field.” And so he hires them also. Then comes the sixth hour, and he does the same thing again as well as at the nineth hour and the eleventh hour, at 5pm just one hour before sunset. Then the sun sets and now it's time to pay all the laborers. So, the landlord calls the foreman and directs him to pay the workers. The foreman begins with the last hires first. He pays them a full denarius. When time came to give the wages to those who were hired at first at the crack of dawn, those men thought that they will receive more than the denarius they agreed on. But it turns out that they were paid one denarius. So these men grumbled, saying “it's unfair,” because they bore the burden and the scorching heat of the day. Then the owner turns around and says to them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you.” Oh, interesting. So then this actually wasn't a matter of unfairness but the issue of generosity. Then the landowner declares in verse 15 the words we read earlier, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what I what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?” Then Jesus repeats what He said right before the parables, “the last shall be first and the first last.”
What's the lesson here? This whole passage is about eternal life. And Jesus's point is this: God gives eternal life according to His grace, according to His generosity. He gives to all who truly believe eternal life generously. Now, for some believers, their exercise of true faith will mean risking their lives and they end up forsaking all earthly comforts. Just think about the disciples. Simon Peter said it, “we left everything to follow You.” And that's true. That’s not an exaggeration. The twelve really did leave everything, their job, their home, their assets, their family. And all but one were martyred for Christ. And it's not just the disciples. We also read in book of Acts that Christians fled for their lives when persecution broke out in Jerusalem. And it's not just in the biblical times either, because even in the centuries afterwards, we read in history of men who were martyred for Christ. Men like Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin (also nicknamed “Martyr;” we know him as Justin Martyr) all died for their faith in Christ. They paid the ultimate price of faith. Then you move forward to the time of the protestant Reformation, and you have martyrs like the Czech reformer John Huss. Then in the 16th century, in the thick of the Reformation period, you have William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, and many others who gave up their lives for their faith in Christ. Others were arrested and imprisoned like John Bunyan. There were others like Martin Luther who went into hiding because there was a warrant for his life. By the way, there's a man by the name of John Foxe who wrote in the 16th century an entire book on all those who had suffered for Christ. He initially entitled it “Acts and Monuments,” and the book was later known as “Foxe's Book of Martyrs.” It's still available today. The point is this: clearly, some believers pay an enormous price to exercise their faith in Christ. And then there are others, not due to compromise, but because of different circumstances, they pay a far lesser price of faith. Think about many of us today. To follow Christ, we may lose a little money for the sake of living righteously and honestly in the sight of God. We refuse to lie and cheat, because we fear the Lord. We don’t lie on our tax returns, and we pay the full admission fees at the theme parks and museums because we refuse to lie about the age of our children. Why? Because we know the character of the God who created us, and we seek to live righteously in His sight. We may also give up some comforts to serve Christ and to live as a disciple of Christ. Serving Christ will always mean expending of ourselves and sacrifice. We may even sometimes face insults and rejection because we stand up for God and for His truth. Stories like this are not hard to find even today. Not too long ago, there was a Colorado Baker named Jack Phillips who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because he was a Christian and would not endorse or celebrate a so-called same sex wedding. He was then sued and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court. There was recently another man, Michael Cassidy, a devout Christian, who at the end of last year decapitated a Satan statue that was set up at the Iowa State Capitol. He did what Gideon did in the Book of Judges because this object was such an offense to God. The Satanic Temple sponsored this statue and they sought to charge Cassidy with a hate crime. Cassidy's case is still pending. But you see, there are real consequences to living the Christian life. But the point that I am making is that regardless of our circumstances, all believers live out their faith in one way or another. And depending on our circumstances, we may suffer a great deal or sacrifice much for the cause of Christ, or it may be less in proportion. But it's faith nonetheless. It is faith which comes from God and eternal life is given to each one who believes, not based on how much they have suffered or how much they have sacrificed, but because they're a believer, a child of God, because God has given to them the gift of faith, and they truly believe. And again, this doesn't mean that some believers can just compromise and exercise a lesser degree of faith. It doesn't mean that. It means that God places each person in a different circumstance, and therefore, the degree to which they suffer or sacrifice is different. And that degree does not effectively gauge whether one has true saving faith or not. Having said all that, everyone who refuses to suffer and sacrifice for Christ is not a true believer, because Jesus said, “whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38). Jesus also said, “everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33). Every true believer will stand up for Christ and His words. Anyone who refuses to suffer and sacrifice for his faith in Christ is not a genuine believer. But again, this is a far cry from saying that every true believer will suffer and sacrifice the same.
But the point that the Lord makes here is this: God gives eternal life not based on how much a person has suffered or sacrificed. God gives eternal life according to the abundance of His generosity to all who believe. He gives eternal life according to His grace. Faith, by the way, is the first sign of divine election. If in your heart there is faith— you trust in Christ, you follow Him, you honor Him, you believe Him as your Savior, He is your Lord— that is God's mark of salvation on your life. And God's will for you is that you would then earnestly follow Christ, serve Him, learn from Him, obey Him, and worship Him. And when we walk with the Lord in this way and that faithfully, we will often have to pay a price for that faith. Some may end up paying the ultimate price of martyrdom. Others may give up all their possessions. But the degree of suffering and sacrifice is not what earns them eternal life. All who truly believe are saved. All to whom God has given the seed of faith belong to Him, and He gives eternal life to each one the same. What this shows us is the deep generosity of our God.
In light of all this, what can we pray for? First, we can pray, thanking God for the gift of eternal life, thanking God for His generosity.
Secondly, we can pray and ask God for strength and courage to live the Christian life faithfully as we should. We can pray that we would stand firmly for the word of God and for Christ. This is my heart's desire and I trust this is also your heart’s desire, and we can certainly call out to the Lord and seek His help toward this end.
Let's pray together and we will wrap it up for today. God, thank You for the wonderful gift of eternal life. You're a God who abounds with goodness and generosity. You are not miserly and You're not stingy with us. You give abundantly to all those who are Your children. And we thank You that eternal life comes to us this way. Thank You for the seed of faith You've planted in our hearts. And I pray for each one here, that You would allow that faith to grow and blossom and become a strong and sturdy oak tree and that their faith will bear much fruit for Your glory. God, we ask of You that You would grant to us the strength, the focus, and the courage to stand firmly in the faith. Even as You empowered all the men and women of faith in history who stood up for Christ and even suffered death, we pray that You would grant to us the same power to endure all the challenges against faith that comes upon our lives. We depend on You and the power of Your Spirit to sustain us. Thank You for Your rich care for us. We thank You for Your holy word this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Lord bless you all. Good bye.