Tag Archives: spiritual maturity

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Grace Is Not Fair

Sermon on the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard

https://vimeo.com/460307749

It is human nature to grumble and complain. We see this as a consistent problem among the people of God throughout redemptive history. When a person has been liberated from sin and called by God into the process of sanctification, there is a range of the sins of the flesh that Christians generally don’t struggle with as much as secular people do – Prodigal son-type sins. These are the ones to first work their way out of our lifestyles after we have been saved by Jesus. The sins that Christians tend to struggle with more are the sins of disposition, of attitude, of the heart. This is why Paul says in Romans 12 that we need to make a break from the pattern of the world and renew our minds.

This is what happens for the Israelites after they have left Egypt. They need to shift from a slave mindset, subservient to both the people and gods of Egypt, to a God-only mindset.

In Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20, this is the very mindset he is addressing. One of the most pesky sins that plagues the faithful is that we struggle with grace. We gravitate more toward self-righteousness and dependence on the law – the legalism of the Pharisees that requires fairness according to our own understanding.

In this parable, the landowner hires more workers all throughout the day, and a problem comes at the end of the day when he is paying his workers. What we do in our modern culture is keep secret how much each person is being paid to avoid jealousy or a sense of unfairness among workers who are being paid different amounts. But Jesus isn’t giving business advice here; he’s teaching a lesson about grace and generosity.

“That’s not fair!” It’s a common phrase heard among parents of siblings, who are striving to make sure they are being given equal treatment from their parents. It’s the charge that’s being leveled against the landowner in this parable, and it is very frequently a charge that we level against God. We accuse him of not being fair in the way he distributes his beneficence.

We say, “God is being better to them than he is to me.” “Why are they so happy when I struggle with this?” This is a very dangerous game to play against our brothers and sisters in Christ. We claim that others don’t have to bear the burdens we bear, and we resent God for not being kind to us.

We see the same principle in the parable of the Prodigal Son. I believe this parable is misnamed, because it’s really about the older brother, who resented the kindness of his father and grumbled against what he perceived to be unfairness. How very often we see this attitude in the church. We need to be careful with this, because it implies that we believe working for the kingdom of God to be drudgery, that being faithful to the Lord feels like slavery.

We also see this among the Israelites in Exodus. God displays his incredible, mighty acts in setting them free from slavery in Egypt, and then when they get out into the wilderness, they grumble and complain because of food. They accuse God of being cruel and uncaring. They claim that slavery in Egypt is in any way better than following God through the wilderness. Their nostalgia for the old, familiar ways had them believing that somehow those who are faithful to the Lord receive less blessing than those who are not. This is a common deception that the enemy uses against God’s people. We see it all through Scripture and even today.

A common misperception in our culture is, as my wife says, that we compare other people’s outsides with our insides. We assume that what we see on the outside is what is actually true on the inside, and that is very rarely true. In the parable, it’s interesting to see the attitude of the first vineyard workers toward the ones who were hired last. They did not show compassion for the workers hired last or an awareness for the need they might be experiencing.

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?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

Matthew 20:6-7

In verses 6-7, we see the motivation of those hired last – they wanted to work! They would have been glad to have worked all day, but no one hired them. In the same way, we have no idea the motivations and circumstances of the people around us who don’t yet follow the Lord. One of the things about grace is that it is a great equalizer – we all stand in the same need of it, regardless of how or when we come to receive it.

The last attitude that Jesus challenges in this parable is our bad attitude toward the generosity of God. God’s kingdom doesn’t work according to our plans, our timetables, or our methods. The landowner makes the point to the workers: It’s my prerogative to pay my workers what I want to. If I want to show them generosity, that is up to me.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?

Matthew 20:15

The landowner made an effort to go out all through the day and seek out all those who needed work, and to make sure they had what they needed. The first workers failed to see this because they were focused only on themselves. So they begrudged his generosity. In the same way, God intentionally seeks out the lost to save them on his own timeline, and it is up to him to give mercy as he sees fit.

All of us need his mercy in the same way. Especially recently, the season of coronavirus and quarantine has been a challenging one, but some have struggled worse than others. We may be tempted to get angry and resentful at God over this, but the Lord’s desire is to redeem and sanctify us into mature believers. It is a privilege to fellowship in the sufferings of Christ, and that is a hard thing for us to grasp, but this is the maturity that God wishes to grow in us. May our mindsets change so that we accept that we get to bear the burden of each day in working for the kingdom of God as a reflection of the burden that Jesus bore for our salvation.

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You Will Receive Power

There are two major commissions that we find in Scripture that really stand out as Jesus’ commissions to his disciples and apostles, and therefore to us. The first one you probably thought of is The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), and I will be looking at that one in a few weeks.

The second one can be found in Acts 1:8:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

I’d like to focus on that word, “power.” It is translated from the Greek word δύναμις (dynamis), which we get words like “dynamite” from, and it represents the power of God. Spiritual power, Ascension Day power.

I know that during this time of quarantine and isolation, many of us feel weak and powerless. Many things have been taken out of our control – our health and safety, our finances, our relationships. Although I’ve heard that some introverts are thriving during this time, extroverts like myself can feel drained and powerless after being isolated so long. We have all lost so much that gives us energy and power.

However, we can intentionally claim this season as a time of spiritual power, a time to incubate the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Ephesians 1:15-23 (emphasis mine)

What Paul is praying for the church is for them to not only understand who they are in Christ, but also to understand what is available to them through him – the immeasurably great power.

I could tell many stories of how I have seen God’s power in my own experience, but I’ll just tell this one. When I was pastoring in Florida, there was a woman in our church named Lisa who became gravely ill. There was a risky surgery that may be able to help her, but it was so dangerous that they had her lawyer come to her hospital room and help her get her affairs in order before they would even attempt it. We had our entire church and the surrounding region praying for her and for God to work a miracle. On the day of the surgery, they again scanned her body and discovered that her veins had miraculously reattached, and her diseased organ was now healthy. God had healed her completely! I was told that the vascular surgeon exclaimed out loud in the room, “That’s impossible! That can’t happen!” And the operating surgeon explained to the observing interns, “This is something they won’t tell you in medical school. Sometimes God does powerful things in the lives of people.”

This is a wonderful and powerful story, but it upsets me sometimes that nobody teaches these things! We are raised in an educational system that teaches all sorts of skills to people who are going to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, businesspeople, but it robs them of the knowledge of the power that can come through knowing the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

That’s where Paul’s prayer above becomes so necessary. We must pray to know that power, and pray for others to know that power as well. How the way we live would be changed if we really KNEW the power of God available to us!

Paul says it in more than one place in Scripture – the same power that raised Jesus from the dead also raises us who believe up with him, and we are seated with him together in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:5-6, Colossians 2:12).

As the eyes of our hearts are being opened to this immeasurably great power, a natural question follows: How can we access this power? Paul explains this, too:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:14-21 (emphasis mine)

If you’re worried about the health of a sickly plant, you need to find out what’s going on with its roots. If you’re worried about your own weak spiritual health, you need to discern whether you are rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ. If you want to see the power of God in your life, you need to be rooted and established in his love.

When you are firmly rooted in Christ, two manifestations of spiritual power will result:

  1. Spiritual Gifts – God pours out spiritual gifts on his people, and you will see his gifts manifest in your life when you are experiencing God’s power.
  2. Spiritual Maturity – As the members of the body of Christ grow in God’s power, they all grow together in maturity, filled with life and the power of God, growing up into the head, which is Jesus Christ. This will become evident in the way we relate to our spouses, parent our children, administrate ourselves in the workplace, and exercise our professions.

The power of God is what is desperately needed in our society right now. I pray that this time of isolation will be an incubation period of the Holy Spirit, so that what is released back into our societies when Christians return to the public sphere is an unleashing of a mighty revival of the Spirit of God. We must use this time as a preparation to go to war against the enemy of God, armed with the spiritual weapons of God’s Spirit.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

May we know that power given to us by God, that same power that raised Jesus from the dead and ascended him to the right hand of God. May we embrace that power and allow God to use it to do mighty works in and through us.