MELVIN NEWLAND, MINISTER
RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK
(Revised: 2014)
ILL. It’s Thanksgiving Day & the aroma of roast turkey fills Charlie Brown’s house. Snoopy, outside, lying on top of his doghouse, smells that aroma, & he is thinking, “It’s Thanksgiving Day. Everybody eats turkey on Thanksgiving Day.” So he lies there, watching the back door, eagerly awaiting his Thanksgiving dinner.
Finally, the door opens & here comes Charlie Brown with a bowl of dog food, & he puts the bowl on the ground. Snoopy stares at the dog food with a forlorn look on his face. And he thinks, “Just because I’m a dog, I have to eat dog food on Thanksgiving Day.”
Then the next square shows him looking at the dog food more intently, & he is thinking, “It could be worse. I could be the turkey.”
A. The Thanksgiving season fills us with all kinds of emotions. It’s a time when we count our blessings, & bow our heads in prayer. For many, it is a time of family & friends & food & football.
It’s also a time of sharing, of realizing that there are many in this world who are persecuted, destitute, starving, helpless in the hands of cruel & uncaring tyranny.
That’s one reason why groups such as IDES (International Disaster Emergency Services), are so essential in reaching out to those who are desperately in need of help. And in a smaller way, we here at Ridge Chapel also reach out to help some of those around us who are in need.
And I imagine that most of us, at Thanksgiving time, think about those who are less fortunate than we are. Then we count our blessings & we pray, “God, we have so much, & we’re thankful for everything You have given us.”
B. But this morning I’d like to turn things around & ask you to think about those who have more than we have, & instead of envying them, to challenge us to rejoice.
You see, I’m convinced that one of the most difficult things that Scripture asks us to do is found in Romans 12:15. That verse says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Now the mourning part is not so hard. If there are those who are having a difficult time in life, going through trials & tribulations, we can usually muster up enough sympathy & empathy to hold their hand & provide a shoulder for them to cry on, maybe even to cry with them, & to pray for them during their difficulties.
But to “rejoice with those who rejoice” may be harder.
Now, it is pretty easy to rejoice at the wedding of a friend if you’re happily married. But if you’re single, & you’d like to be married; if you’re lonely & feel rejected, then an invitation to someone else’s wedding may be a pretty difficult thing to handle.
You drive an old car that’s showing its age, & then your neighbor buys a brand new SUV. Someone else gets a promotion & a raise, & you don’t. It is kind of hard sometimes, isn’t it, to “rejoice with those who rejoice” ?
C. You see, one of the difficulties is that when something good happens to others, we often compare ourselves to them. “Well, I’m smarter than they are.” Or, “I work harder than they do.” Or, “They’re just lucky. They get all the breaks, & I don’t.”
ILL. The story is told of two writers who were very jealous of each other, & their animosity was apparent. Then one of them wrote a book that was quite success-ful. In fact, it was a best seller, & he was widely acclaimed.
The two came face to face at a party, & the second man said, “I bought your book the other day. It’s a good book. Who wrote it for you?”
Angered a bit by this insult, the first man nevertheless thanked him for the compliment about his book, & then asked, “Who read it to you?”
It’s not always easy to rejoice with those who rejoice. But that’s what I want to talk about this morning because when we start comparing ourselves with others, that can lead to discontent & envy, grumbling & broken relationships.
ILL. We see it happen in the sports world. Here is a player who is making millions of dollars – has 5 cars, 2 houses, & the list goes on. He has it made. He’s happy & contented, isn’t he?
Then he discovers that someone else who plays the same kind of position he does is making more money than he makes. What’s the result? - Discontent, envy, grumbling, & broken relationships.
So that’s the problem, & it begins when we start comparing ourselves with others.
I. THE PARABLE
A. Turn with me now to a parable that Jesus told, found in Matthew 20:1-16. Listen as I begin reading at vs. 1.
“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 & sent them into his vineyard.
“About the third hour he went out & saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go & work in my vineyard, & I will pay you whatever is right’” (Matthew 20:1-4).
Now here is what I want you to notice. With the first group there was a contract. Evidently, there was some negotiation between the owner & these men, & they agreed upon a Denarius a day, which was the going rate for a day’s work back at that time. So it was a fair wage, & they agreed together upon it.
The second group – The landowner comes to them 3 hours later, & offers them work, too. There is no pay scale mentioned. They are just going to trust the landowner to pay them whatever is right.
Three hours later he goes out again, & then 3 hours after that he does the same thing. And then at the 11th hour, just one hour before quitting time, he went out & found more.
He asks 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 & work in my vineyard’” (Matthew 20:6-7).
Now I should point out that this was not an unusual practice during harvest time, because the window of opportunity to harvest your crop is often a very small window. So the owner is out looking for as many workers as possible in order to get the grapes in before the bad weather arrives.
Continuing on, vs's 8-9 say, “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers & pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired & going on to the first.’
"The workers who were hired about the 11th hour came & each received a denarius.”
They were overjoyed. They had only worked one hour, & they had been thinking, ‘Well, we won’t get much, but at least it will be better than nothing.” But he gave them a full day’s pay. And they were thrilled with his generosity.
B. Now let me suggest something. I think most of us will be like this group on Judgment Day. We’re going to realize that what we have done for God is so small in comparison to what He is doing for us, that we’ll be overjoyed, too. Our God is generous.
Now look at vs. 10, “So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more.”
They evidently reasoned to themselves, “If those who only worked one hour received a denarius, then how much more will we, who have been working all day long, receive?” They were really expecting big bucks now because the other group had received so much.
But vs. 10 tells us that, “Each one of them also received a denarius.” They received the exact amount that had been agreed upon. But they were unhappy. Why? Because now they were comparing themselves with others.
Vs's 11-12 tell us, “They began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘& you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work & the heat of the day.’”
“It’s unfair,” they’re saying. But notice the owner’s answer in vs's 13-15, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?” In other words, “I fulfilled my part of the contract. I paid you what we both agreed upon.”
So “Take your pay & go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave to you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
He is saying, “Don’t worry about how much someone else is getting. Just be thankful that you have more than enough to feed your family, & now so do they.”
So here’s the question, “How do we learn to be unselfish, to rejoice with those who get more than we?”
II. THE PRESCRIPTION
Well, here’s the prescription.
A. #1. Stop comparing. If these guys had never compared themselves with those who only worked one hour, there would have been no problem. They would have been satisfied. But the moment they started looking at others they began grumbling.
As long as you’re looking at the grass on the other side of the fence, guess what? It’s always going to look greener. You’ll always find someone who has more than you have. So stop comparing & just trust God.
God has said, “I’ll take care of you. I’ll give you what you need.” And as I look out over our congregation I come to the conclusion that you all look pretty well fed. You all look pretty well cared for. God is taking good care of you.
ILL. I came across an article that was entitled, “Is it better to be a jock or a nerd?”
The article was about Michael Jordan, written one year before he retired from professional basketball, playing for the Chicago Bulls. It pointed out that Michael Jordan received about $300,000 for every game he played for the Bulls.
That means that if he played 30 minutes in every game, he received $10,000 a minute for every minute he played. Adding in the fact that he received about 40 million dollars a year for his endorsements, Michael Jordan’s total income was $178,000 per day, whether he played or not.
Assuming that he slept 7 hours a night, he received $52,000 while sugar plums were dancing in his head. If he went to a movie, it cost him $8 to see the movie. But while he watched the movie he was making another $18,550.
If he had a 5-minute egg, he made $618 while the egg boiled. And if he decided to buy a new Acura NSX, a $90,000 automobile, he had to save up for a whole 12 hours to get it.
The final year of his contract Michael Jordan made 2 times more than all the combined salaries of all the Presidents who have ever served our country.
So how do you feel about your income this morning? But listen to this: As highly paid as he was, Michael Jordan would have to keep on earning as much as he did that last year for the next 270 years & save it all to have a net worth equal to that of Bill Gates of Microsoft. Maybe it is better to be a nerd!
Don’t start comparing, “Did I get as much as they? Did I get more or did they get more?” Be thankful for what God has given you, & rejoice with those who rejoice.
B. Secondly, pray for God to bless the ones you envy. You know, it’s hard to be jealous of someone you’re praying for. And if you’re praying for them, pretty soon you’ll begin caring about them. So pray that God will bless the one that you envy.
ILL. F.B. Meyer preached in London, England, while Charles Spurgeon & G. Campbell Morgan were preaching there, too. They were all great preachers, but Spurgeon’s church & Morgan’s church were each bigger than Meyer’s church. And he admitted to being a bit envious of them.
So he prayed, asking God to tell him what to do because he was jealous of them, & he didn’t want to be jealous. And somehow God instructed him to pray for both Spurgeon & Morgan, that their churches would prosper, & that more & more people would go to them.
Well, Meyer said that he didn’t want to do that. But he thought that he had better obey the Lord. So he prayed diligently that Spurgeon’s & Morgan’s churches would grow & grow.
He later said, “Their churches grew so much in answer to my prayers that they overflowed. And,” he said, “the overflow came to my church.”
So pray for the ones you envy.
C. Thirdly, find ways to encourage them. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us encourage one another.” Now we recognize that the down & out need encouragement. But do you realize that others also need encouragement?
The writer of Hebrews also tells us, “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” (Hebrews 3:13)
ILL. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, they went through his personal things & discovered in his wallet an old newspaper clipping of a British writer who wrote that he thought Abraham Lincoln would become one of America’s great presidents, that he would be remembered in history as one of the greatest presidents of all.
Lincoln had carried that clipping in his wallet all during the Civil War. And it had been folded & unfolded so many times that it was literally falling apart.
Can you picture Abraham Lincoln sitting by a kerosene lamp in some corner of the White House, after a day of rebuke & criticism, reaching into his wallet & taking out that newspaper clipping & reading it again, knowing that somebody in England thought that he would be remembered as one of the great presidents in the history of our country?
I really do believe that it helps when we encourage one another.
D. Finally, Be thankful. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:14, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” And in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 he tells us, ”Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you…”
ILL. Lou Gehrig died in 1941 at 37 years of age. He had contracted a disease called ALS, which came to be known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” For 14 years in the 1920’s & 30’s he was 1st baseman for the legendary NY Yankees. That team was perhaps one of the best teams that ever played baseball.
On June 2nd, 1941, Lou called up Bob Considine, his friend. A few days before he died he said, “Bob, I’ve got good news for you. The boys in the lab have discovered a new serum, & it is really working for 9 out of 10.” “What about you?” asked Bob Considine. “Is it working for you, Lou?”
“Well, no, it hasn’t worked for me yet, but how about those odds – 9 out of 10?” he said. That’s rejoicing with those who rejoice.
Two years earlier, Lou Gehrig stood before a jam-packed crowd in Yankee Stadium to receive their applause as he left his career & the game he loved. Knowing that he was dying, he said, “Today I’m the luckiest man in the world.” His biography is entitled, “The Luckiest Man in the World.”
If you take some time this Holiday Season to reflect on who you are & where you are in life, chances are pretty good you’ll say, “Today I’m truly blessed. God has given me everything I really need.”
INVITATION
