The Scandal Of Grace Series

THE SCANDAL OF GRACE

November 24, 2024

Dr. Bradford Reaves

Crossway Christian Fellowship

Matthew 20:1-16

Today we're going to take a look at a parable that I rarely hear a sermon preached about. It's not one of the most popular parables because it strikes at the heart of our sense of fairness and justice. Many times we don’t know what to do with injustice, especially when it comes to our perceived injustice from God. Yet we know that God is fully just. When we say that God is just, we mean that He is perfectly righteous in His treatment of His creatures. God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34), He commands against the mistreatment of others (Zechariah 7:10), and He perfectly executes vengeance against the oppressors (2 Thessalonians 1:6; Romans 12:19).

For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. (Hebrews 6:10)

Watchman Nee, a Chinese evangelist, tells of a Christian he once knew in China. He was a rice farmer, and his fields lay high on a mountain. Every day he pumped water into the paddies of new rice. And every morning he returned to find that an unbelieving neighbor who lived down the hill had opened the dikes surrounding the Christian’s field to let the water fill his own. For a while the Christian ignored the injustice, but at last he became desperate. What should he do? His own rice would die if this continued. How long could it go on? The Christians met, prayed, and came up with this solution. The next day the Christian farmer rose early in the morning and first filled his neighbor’s fields; then he attended to his own. Watchman Nee tells how the neighbor became a Christian, his unbelief overcome by a genuine demonstration of a Christian’s love for others.

We sometimes struggle with God's justice is in understanding His grace. Not so much when we are the recipients of God's grace (after all we are very deserving of it); the problem comes when we observe someone whom we see as undeserving be the recipients of grace. Let's face it. We're Americans. We like the good guys to wins and the bad guys get what they deserve.

God's grace defies human expectations and standards of fairness. It emphasizes that grace is a gift, not earned, and God’s generosity is available to all, irrespective of how long they have served Him. This message is going to challenge you to appreciate the generosity of God’s grace. The grace of God is a radical and scandalous gift that levels the spiritual playing field. It reminds us that no one earns their place in the kingdom, but all are welcomed into it purely by His benevolence.

Today we're going to do things a little different. Rather than reading everything up front and unpacking the truths found in scripture, we are going to go through this parable verse by verse. With that, let’s read Matthew 20:1-2

1. The Generosity of the Owner

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. (Matthew 20:1-2).

What we just read would have been a typical scene in Jesus’s day. Just as we have employment agencies today, in Jesus’s time there were places where day laborers would have gathered to receive some work. Most of these people were unskilled laborers, living on whatever little work they could find.

Likewise, working in a vineyard was not easy and only available certain times of the year. Harvest time was often during hot temperatures, on rugged rocky soil, requiring heavy lifting without the use of modern machinery. Moreover, when it was harvesting time, the grapes had to be harvested quickly before bad weather set in. Because of that, when the work was available it became available suddenly and was a hectic time of year.

Notice that the workers were promised by the owner to be paid a denarius. This would have been a very generous wage; the same wage as a Roman soldier, about the equivalent of receiving $50. This underscores the extravagant generosity of the owner of the vineyard.

3 And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ 5 So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ (Matthew 20:3–7)