"IT'S NOT FAIR!" (part four)
We looked at Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden for one act of disobedience. We looked at the story of Job losing everything despite being upright and blameless. We saw how the prophet suffered death even though he was tricked by a lying prophet. We saw how Moses was not allowed to go to the promised land because he struck the rock instead of speaking to it as he was commanded.
And last week we looked at Uzzah being struck dead for touching the ark of the covenant when it started to topple. These scenarios seem unfair on the surface but when we examined them we realized that God was not being unfair. As we close out the series, we'll look at Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard.
1) "No fair, I was here all day!"
Matt. 20:1-16, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. “About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ “ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ “
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ “The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.
When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Talk about 'no fair'! I'm sure any of us would feel the same way if we were in this situation. "I worked 12 hours and got paid the same as the guy who worked only one hour? Are you serious? No fair! This is an outrage! I'm calling the labor board. Hoffa's gonna hear about this."
"I am not being unfair to you." How is he not being unfair? He paid the worker what he agreed to work for. There was nothing underhanded going on. He offered the worker a fair wage and the worker accepted. He didn't have to agree to the terms but he did. He wasn't taken advantage of.
Some employers take advantage of people when they're desperate and pay them less-cheap labor. But that's not what's going on here. A denarius was the typical wage for a day's work. "Those other guys didn't work a full day but they still got a full day's pay. That's not fair to the ones who worked all day!" Again, the employer is allowed to do what he wants with his money; he wasn't being unfair to anyone. Granted, he was being more generous to the ones hired later but he has the right to do that.
And notice we don't see the employer explaining himself to the first workers. He doesn't go on to explain why he chose to do what he did; he just states that he wasn't being unfair. God doesn't owe us an explanation for why he does what he does. We owe him the refusal to cry 'unfair' and charge him with wrongdoing. We owe him the humility to conclude that he is wise and loving and that he has a perfect reason for everything he does.
The main problem with the workers is seen in vs. 10-they expected to be paid more. Their expectation wasn't based in a promise but an assumption. That can get us in trouble too. When we have unwarranted expectations we will feel cheated when they're unmet. When we expect people to act a certain way based on what we think they should do, we are setting ourselves up for a potential letdown.
And our resulting anger will be unjustified because we shouldn't have had the expectation in the first place because it was not based in some contract or agreement but in an assumption. For the workers, it's understandable why they would think they would get more, but when they expected it they put themselves in a mindset to cry foul when it didn't happen. And the landowner needed to counter their wrong attitude.
"Are you envious because I'm generous?" The answer is, 'yes, if that generosity isn't shown to me'. We have to admit there are times we're not too thrilled when someone is blessed if we didn't get some of it sent our way. It's harder to be happy for someone else's blessing if you feel you've been shortchanged somehow.
Or what about when God blesses someone you don't care for too much. Not much celebrating going on in your camp, is there? Jonah had this problem. When he eventually did go preach to the Ninevites, they repented and God had compassion on them. But that didn't sit too well with Jonah.
Jonah 4:1-4, "But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”
Jonah was so upset that God was compassionate towards his enemies that he didn't even want to go on living. The Ninevites were violent and cruel and had not been very kind to the Israelites, to say the least. So there was bitterness and resentment toward them. But God sent Jonah to preach to his enemies to show that God loved those who hated him.
Jonah didn't have a problem with God being loving and compassionate towards him when he was rescued from the giant fish, he only had a problem when it was towards people he didn't think deserved it. It's interesting how deserving we think we are sometimes. I deserve special treatment but you don't.
Jonah didn't want the Ninevites to repent; he wanted to see God's wrath come down on them. We can be like that sometimes. Have you ever prayed that God would really do a number on the ones that hurt you? We pray for God to carry out our vengeance. It's a good thing God's not like us!
"For the kingdom of heaven is like..." Jesus starts his parable by making this comparison. We can see the applications that pertain to the literal situation that Jesus gives. But how does this parable relate to the kingdom of heaven? It's understood that one way it relates is to God's generosity regarding the offer of salvation to gentiles. The Jews would be envious of God's generosity of salvation by grace when they've had to obey the law all these years.
But we gentiles can be guilty of the same thing. Those who come to Christ later in life or even on their death bed will get the same reward of eternal life as those who served Jesus for 60 years. That doesn't seem fair. But are we envious because God is generous?
But the kingdom of heaven isn't just futuristic; it doesn't just pertain to the literal heaven, it applies to us in the here and now. Believers are part of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said in Luke 17:21 that the kingdom of God is within us. That's because Jesus is within us, making the church part of the kingdom. So this is applicable to our lives today.
We can get upset with God for how he blesses people. We usually apply this personally. We don't like how God has blessed one person over us. We don't like how God has gifted one person more than us. Some of that is perspective. We think someone is more blessed or gifted but it's probably not as lopsided as we think; it's that we're failing to see how richly we're blessed. We fail to see that when we've grown accustomed to what we have, we fail to see those things as blessings anymore.
But even if someone else is more blessed or gifted than we are, what right do we have to complain? We accuse God of favoritism. But the bible says that God doesn't show favoritism so it must be due to something else. Sometimes when a person is more spiritually mature they will receive more blessings or gifts because they're ready for them. They've been responsible with what God has already given to them so they are given more.
That's usually the way it works in life. My boss will give me certain responsibilities and if I show myself capable he will eventually give me more. Your parents give you certain privileges and if you show yourself responsible you will be given more. Sometimes I'm not being blessed because I haven't shown myself to be responsible or maybe appreciative of what I currently have. So we pray to have God reveal if that's the case and we pray for the desire and strength to change that.
"So the last will be first and the first will be last ". In the previous chapter, Peter asks Jesus about the fact that they had left everything to follow him. Jesus responds by saying that anyone who has made such extreme sacrifices will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. Then Jesus says, but many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first.
This is understood to mean that those who were first to follow Christ ie: the Apostles, would be "last" in inheriting eternal life and those who were last to follow Christ before his return would be "first" to receive eternal life. As the employer paid those who were hired last, first and he finished with the first ones hired, so it will be for Jesus' followers.
At the end of time, on judgment day, the followers of Jesus will receive their "denarius". All will get the "equal pay" of eternal life. The Apostles will be the ones who will have to wait the longest for that to happen because they came to Christ first vs. those who came last having to wait the shortest amount of time. Right now, those who are dead in Christ are in Paradise, as Jesus told the thief on the cross, "today you will be with me in Paradise". But that's not heaven. It's a perfect place but it's not our final home.
There's another application of the first will be last phrase in regards to humility. We have this point illustrated when the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was the greatest. Mark 9:33-34, "They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
If anyone has the desire to be the most prominent one he must humble himself and do the things the least important person does. Jesus was all about that. He said in Matt. 20:28 that he did not come to be served but to serve. And Jesus showed this when he washed his disciples feet. He was first, the most important one, but he did what the least important servant would do. He set an example of humble servant hood for them to follow.
He provided another teachable moment in Luke 14:7-11, "When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.
But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Our nature is to want to be first, to want to have the most, to be recognized, to be honored; all that. But Jesus wants us to take the low road so the master of the house can lift us up. He who humbles himself will be exalted. A few chapters later in Luke Jesus talked about us being unworthy servants.
2) We are unworthy servants.
Luke 17:7-10, “Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ”
What? No thanks; no reward? That's not fair. " What does God owe us? Haven’t we already received eternal life? If we got what was fair and just we wouldn’t like it. The wages of sin is death. We earned spiritual death for what we’ve done. If we got what we deserved we would be destined for eternity in hell. No, instead we received mercy. We did not receive what our actions deserved.
God’s gift of grace is eternal life. Mercy is not getting the punishment we deserve. Grace is getting the blessing we don’t deserve. God rewards us with the blessing of heaven. But it's not like he doesn't give us more than that; we have blessing upon blessing. And it's not like he doesn't bless those who work hard for him because he does; it's the idea of having expectations like the parable of the workers. It's when we think we deserve or are entitled to more that our perspective is off.
The reality is that if once we are saved we receive nothing but hardships and persecution the rest of our lives God would not be unfair to us because we have already received his undeserved favor. We are the beneficiaries of his great love and grace. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son. It doesn’t say, “God was obligated to give his one and only son”. God sent his son because he loved us. Jesus sacrificed his life out of love not out of obligation.
Paul understood that he was an unworthy servant. 1st Cor. 15:9-10, "For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
We see Paul using the word grace three times so we know he wanted to emphasize it. Paul recognized how undeserving he was of God's grace. Even though he worked hard and suffered much he didn't think that earned him special favor. That's why he was content, that's why he could rejoice in his sufferings; that's why he understood the peace that transcended all understanding.
When we are humble and understand that God owes us nothing because he has already given us everything, we'll be able to handle life's difficulties while maintaining an attitude of gratitude toward God. Life wasn’t fair to Job but he didn’t blame God. So when we’re feeling like God isn’t being fair with us we need to remember the story of Job and how he responded to his situation and do likewise.
We need to consider what Moses said in Deut. 32:3-4, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”
Guess what? Moses said this after he was told he wasn't going to be allowed into the promised land when he disobeyed him by striking the rock instead of speaking to it. Sometimes life isn’t fair; but God always is.
