Now, Matthew chapter 20. We're
going to read the first 16 verses which make up a very well-known
parable. 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 in again about the sixth
hour, and as I understand it, that's noon. He went out about
noon and the ninth hour, which had been mid-afternoon, about
three o'clock, and he 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 11th hour came and each received a denarius. So when those who
were hired first, or 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 in the heat of the
day. But he answered one of them,
friend, I'm 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. Now, whenever we look at a parable
and seek to interpret it, that is, to gain the meaning from
it that the Lord intended us to gain from it, we must be careful. The tendency is to find some
spiritual lesson in every little detail. We like to do that, and
I think one of the reasons we like to do that is if we can
find some detail that we think nobody else has found, then it
proves we're more perceptive than other people. But parables
were never intended to give detailed explanations of a doctrine. They are stories designed primarily
to show or illustrate one broad principle concerning the truth
of God. Worse yet, is the tendency to
use parables as a foundation for doctrine. Several heresies
that have troubled the church throughout the centuries have
arisen because someone took a parable and used that as a foundation
for a new doctrine. Parables are not foundations,
they are illustrations. No parable teaches anything which
cannot be found in plain language somewhere else in the Bible.
So we're never gonna teach anything out of a parable that we couldn't
go somewhere like maybe in one of Paul's letters or something
and find the same doctrine being taught there. So parables are
illustrations and the singular point of this parable is very
simply this. Salvation. We might say all of
God's blessings, and of course all of God's blessings are wrapped
up in that word salvation. There's no blessing given apart
from salvation. You realize that? Yes, God sometimes
does things that look like blessings for those who will be condemned. But it will be found in the end
that those things which look like blessings in this life were
actually cursings and became nothing more than a trap and
a snare to them to keep them from Christ. If a man, if a person's
given wealth, we normally think that's a blessing. Do you realize
it's more often a curse than it is a blessing? Health. Everybody said, well, if you've
got your health, you know, that's what counts. Well, yeah, and I understand
exactly what they mean. And I don't want to be sick.
I remember Brother Spurgeon once said these words. He said, there
is no blessing greater than wealth, except maybe poverty. No greater
blessing than health, except maybe sickness. No better blessing
than popularity, other than possibly being cast out. Why is that? Because when we
are blessed with earthly blessings, it generally speaking distracts
us from heavenly blessings. Praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessings in Christ in the heavenly places. So the singular point of this
parable is that all God's blessings, all his salvation is by sovereign
grace from very beginning to end. And there is nothing that
a man gains of any eternal value whatever that he does not gain
purely by God's free and sovereign grace. Now that's what the meaning
of this parable is. Now it can be applied in different
categories. For example, I'll give you one
that I think is rather interesting and I think is revealed here
in the scriptures in the history there. This was a lesson to the
Jews with regard to the Gentiles. The Jews saw themselves as the
ones who were called early out to the vineyard and they did
all the work And they expected the denarius, because that's
what they agreed to. They agreed to it there on Mount Sinai. They
said to Moses, you go talk to God. Whatever he says to do,
we'll do it. And so they got sent out into
the vineyard, and they did bear a lot of the burden and the heat
of the day. For roughly 1,500 years, they were the off-scouring
of the world. Of course, they acted like the off-scouring,
too. But they were punished. They were hated by men, punished
by God. And then here comes the Lord
Jesus Christ and all at once the Gentiles come in on the same
footing. We come in on the tail end of
the story and most of us are Gentiles here, maybe all of us.
But we come in on the tail end of the story and we get everything
that the Jews got. And you know something? It was
even difficult for the apostles to grasp that. Do you remember how the Lord
gave that vision to Peter? Sheep comes down from heaven,
all kinds of unclean animals on it, pigs and such. And the
Lord said to Peter in the vision, arise, eat. And Peter said, I
will not. I've never eaten anything unclean.
And the Lord said to Peter, don't you call unclean what I have
made clean. Who is he talking about? The
Gentiles. And Peter was sent to Cornelius, a Gentile, to preach
the gospel. And when Peter came back from
that and began to speak to the Jews, because they were kind
of a little upset about this. I mean, Peter went into a Gentile's
house. Jews aren't supposed to do that.
Probably ate with a Gentile. They're not supposed to do that
either. And he spoke to a Gentile on the same footing that he would
have spoken to a Jew. And so the Jewish believers are
upset about this and they gather together. Tell us what's going
on here, Peter. This has kind of got us confused
here. And he ends with this. He says, we must be saved just
like them. I want you to notice something.
He did not say to them that the Gentiles have been made like
us. He said, we Jews have to become
like them, unworthy. We must be saved on exactly the
same foundation as these unclean, uncircumcised Gentiles. You see, by the gospel, it's
not so much that the Gentiles were brought up to the level
of the Jews as the Jews were brought down to the level of
Gentiles. Unclean, unworthy. And that was very hard. And you
know that can be very hard for us, can't it? I mean, it can
be very hard for us not looking back, but right now. Because
over the years as we have worshipped together, we have set forward
what we believe to be the truth. And we have been forceful in
it. We have drawn a line which we
believe is the proper line that the scriptures draw, and we said
this is the line. And we should, we're supposed
to do that. But here's what we got to remember as we're doing
that. It is not because of anything to be found in us that we're
on the proper side of that line. And that there is no essential
difference between us and those on the other side of the line.
And the salvation that's been given to us is the same kind of salvation
that will be given to many on the other side of the line, God
just hadn't called them yet. In other words, we, by our supposed
purity and orthodoxy, have not made ourselves more worthy of
the blessings of God than anybody who is at the present time outside
of the true faith. Apart from what God has done
to us through his pure, free, sovereign grace, we are still
by nature children of wrath. We are still nothing but unprofitable
servants, unworthy, none of us actually, and there is no one
really who fits into the category of that one, those who went out
and earned their denarius. Nobody ever has. but that the
Jews thought they had. And let us remember, we haven't
earned our denarius because we got on the right side of the
line and have held faithful to it for these years. And that
for two reasons. Salvation never was based upon
our faithfulness. And number two, we haven't been
all that faithful. We've had our waverings too,
haven't we? But anyway, it could be applied there to the Jew and
the Gentile. It could be applied to those saved early in life
as opposed to those saved late in life. It could be applied in many ways,
but the lesson is still the same. God's blessings, God's salvation,
always come to people by nothing more and nothing less than God's
pure, free, sovereign grace. When they sing in heaven, when
they sing praises of this, you can be sure there will not be
one discordant note of human merit. Not one of all the host
of glory will say, worthy am I, for I perceived the truth,
and I repented, and I believed, and I got baptized. Nobody's
going to be singing that. They're going to be singing with
one voice, worthy art thou, for thou has redeemed us by thy blood
out of every kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation, and you have
made us priests unto our God into a kingdom. God did it. I tell you, you've heard the phrase when
they're wanting to tell people. Young people usually in school,
you know, they join a basketball team or whatever, maybe they're
kind of a hot dog and they like to get the ball and then it's
all about them, you know. And the coach will say, hey,
there's no I in the word team. There's no I in the word grace
either. None at all. Grace has nothing
to do with what we do. There's nothing that anyone can
do to make God bless them more and nothing that anyone can do
that'll make God bless them less. Because God blesses people out
of the goodness of his own heart, driven and directed by his wise
purpose. He did not look across the world
to find somebody worthy to bless. Because there wasn't anybody,
was there? All of its grace We must resist the urge to make
this story about ministry, because it's not. It is about grace and salvation. And the previous verses bear
this out, for it's the story of that young fella that came
and asked the Lord, what good thing must I do to obtain eternal
life? And the Lord said, well, you
gotta obey the law. If you're gonna get eternal life by doing,
here's what you must do. And this fellow proved he had
no real understanding of the essential demands of the law
because he said, I have done all these things from my youth,
from early in the day. See, he was one of these six
o'clock in the morning guys that worked all the way up to late
afternoon. And that's what he just told the Lord of the vineyard. I've done all these things. And the Lord said to him, okay,
you only lack one thing now. You go sell all you have, and
the money you get from what you have, you go distribute it to
the poor, and then you come follow me. And it says this young fellow,
and I don't know how old he was, because they considered you young
much later than we do. The Jews did not think a guy
was really a man until he was 30. So I don't know exactly how
old this guy was. But he's young enough to fall
into their idea of young. And it says, he went away sad. Now here, this is so funny. He
went away sad because he had much. So wait a minute. He went away
sad because he had much? Shouldn't that make you glad? Not when you meet Christ. Because
Christ, if you want Him, we often say, if you want Christ, it'll
cost you nothing. And I know what people mean when they say
that, but in all reality, if you want Christ, it's going to
cost you everything you got. That doesn't mean the Lord will
not let you use it, but it's not going to be yours anymore.
And most of all, what it's going to cost you is your righteousness. You know, the Bible says your
sins have separated you from your God. And that's true. That's
what made a breach between us and God. But you know what keeps
us from God? Our righteousness. We go about
to establish our own righteousness and we think we have a little
bit and we stow it away and it builds up in our minds and we
think we've got this great treasury of righteousness. And then we
say to the Lord, what must I do to obtain eternal life? And he
says, we'll do this, that, and the other. And he said, we've
done that. We did that. And he said, all
right, you take all those riches and you get rid of them and come
follow me. Oh, wait a minute. It is easy, relatively easy anyway,
to get people to give up particular sinful activity in order to have
Christ. But it takes a miracle of grace
to get a man to give up his righteousness and follow Christ. And that's why it doesn't matter
whether it's a gutter drunk or somebody at the top of his
denomination, it takes the free, sovereign grace of God to save
a man. And I know how we perceive it.
We see someone whose life has been so miserable and so self-destructive
and others destructive, and they've done sins which have more evil
effects on those around them. And we say, oh boy, it's going
to take a work of grace to save them. They're such a rebel against
God. Friend, it took the same work of grace to save you. I
grew up in church. Everybody thought I was a good
boy. Most of them still do. It took God's grace to save me. And while the outward expressions
of sinfulness in my life has not been as destructive as others,
they've been every bit as wicked. They may not have been as public.
but they're every bit as evil. God must save us by his grace
or we shall not be saved. This young man went away sad.
The Lord said that it was only through great difficulty that
the rich would enter the kingdom of God. And it does not matter
what sort of coin your riches is in. Whether it be the coin
of money or the coin of self-righteousness, the coin of reputation, the coin of position, whatever
it is, it's going to cost you that to have Christ. And if we do not do that, That
is, surrender all our claims. That's really what this giving
up means. Surrender our claims. Surrender our right to blessing
because of what we've done. If we do not do that, then like
this rich young man, we will go away sad. Not because we had
too little, but because we had too much. That's why the Bible can say,
blessed are the poor. And it does not matter what form
that poverty takes. If you have this poverty, poor
in spirit, then you are blessed. For one who is poor in spirit
shall be made the recipient, the beneficiary of the unsearchable
riches of Christ. But he who is rich in spirit
shall be impoverished of all that he has and never will receive
any good from the Lord. We must be emptied of all that
which we have gathered for ourselves, or we shall never be given that
which God gives freely. Henry used to say, God can't
fill anything but an empty hand. If my hands are already full
when I lift them up, what's God going to be able to put in them?
Now that doesn't mean God can't empty the hand. He can do that. But if you lift your hands to
him in fullness, then he will first empty your hands that he
might fill them with his good things of grace. If he doesn't
empty your hands, if he doesn't put you down, then that is the worst thing
God could do. I've heard people say, or heard
of people say, why doesn't God just leave me alone? Well, don't
ever pray that. If God leaves you alone, then
you are on your way to eternal condemnation. Pray that God will
disturb you, that God will do whatever it takes to break you.
Some, when they are broken, it is a more remarkable event than others.
For example, Paul. He was broken in a very visible
and dramatic way. But Timothy, who grew up hearing
the Scriptures which were able to make him wise in the salvation,
and whose mother and grandmother both believed and were saved,
and evidently Timothy was a very sweet and gentle spirit, yet
he was every bit as broken as Paul was. It just wasn't so dramatic
a thing, but it's just as real and just as deep. Now, salvation is by sovereign grace
alone from the very beginning to the end. None shall receive
more because of the greatness of their labors, nor anyone receive
less because of the smallness of them. Salvation and all of
its associated blessings are given as the Lord sees fit. And he sees fit to give every
one of his children the full measure of blessings in Christ,
as though they had fully worked and fully earned every one of
them. Now understand that those in
this parable who began and worked throughout the day and earned
their denarius, they are a fiction. They don't exist. But there are people who think
they fall in that category. And you know, Peter thought that. You say, yeah, no believer ever
thinks that. Just a minute now. You see, it's
fleshly to think that what you do earns you some blessings.
And child of God, you are not done with your flesh yet and
your flesh is not done with you. It's all in there. If you honestly
believed that every blessing that you got or shall get from
God were entirely the free gift of His grace, you would never
cast doubt upon the salvation of any of your brethren because
of what they do, you'd never have doubts about your own salvation
because of your failures. But the flesh began this world
as a legal or came into this world as a legalist and our flesh
is still a legalist. Our flesh still thinks we're
living by this do and live. It's only from the Spirit which
has been made new by the Spirit of God. It's only from that Spirit
that we understand that all that we receive is from the generous,
gracious hand of God, without us earning the very least piece
of it. And the warfare between flesh
and spirit, while it may look like it's on many fronts, it's
really on only that one. That's the issue. How can a man
be righteous with God? That is the all-encompassing
issue of the Scriptures. And everything else flows from
that. And all those works of the flesh that Paul speaks of
in Galatians, they flow from legalistic religion. You look
at them. Legalistic religion promotes
every one of those works of the flesh. And that fruit of the
spirit is the product of that spiritual truth called the gospel. And we are in constant conflict
over those things within us. Now, getting back to the parable
and knowing that it is simply a declaration of the truth that
all of our blessings from beginning to end come to us by the hand
of God's grace, let us note two things. First of all, I want
to look at how these early morning laborers perceived God's grace. And remember, they were in a
bad mood. This whole situation here made them upset. Even though they got what they
bargained for, they were not satisfied with what they got.
So we're going to look at how they perceived God's sovereign
grace in the dispensation of His blessings. And then we're
going to look what God has to say about how He is going to
bless people. Okay, looking here down at verse
12, these men who were hired last, now this is what these
early hirers The early morning guys, this is what they're saying.
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. Now, first of all, I want
you to notice that this spirit, this grumbling spirit arises
from taking note of what you yourself have done. Notice what
they said here. We who have borne the burden
of the work and the heat of the day. That means that the whole time
they were out there, they probably didn't say it out loud, but this
was going in their hearts. Okay, I keep working, I keep
earning. And look how good I'm doing.
I started early today. And look at all the grapes that
I have gathered. Well, I've had to empty my basket
five times already. I'm doing better than this guy
over here. He's only emptied his four times. I mean, you know,
let's face it. I'm the best grape picker out
there today. And he gets to be about noon,
and he says, oh, look at the sweat that I'm sweating. I tell
you, I'm a good worker, a responsible man. At the end of the day, this
man's gonna be glad he hired me. And he gets to be mid-afternoon,
and he notices that other guys are getting hired, and he starts
thinking, yeah, they're only gonna get half a denarius, because
I mean, let's face it, they weren't out here. when it was so hard. They're paying attention to what
they were doing. I remember one time, this was many years ago,
and we say that whenever we're going to tell a bad story on
ourselves because we think if we can get enough years between
us and our sins that maybe they aren't attached to us anymore.
But this was a good while ago, probably 25 or more years ago.
But I was in a really down mood. I was upset. I don't remember
about what. things about church or something.
I was also feeling guilty about my sins and everything. I went
to talk to one of the brothers. And I started to moan and bellyache.
And I said these words. It's hard for me to admit to
you that I said it, but this is exactly what I said. I have borne the
heat of the day. Now I said it that way because
in my mind I remembered that was a scriptural phrase. I wish
I'd have known what scripture it came from before I said that
about me. I have borne the heat of the
day. Well, la dee da. God doesn't let me forget when
I do things like that. I feel pretty stupid about them. But I tell them to you because
I'll bet that in your memory is similar things that you've
done. Maybe you never said it out loud. but you've thought
it. I have never borne anything. The heat of the day, give me
a break. You wanna see somebody carrying
the heavy load and bearing the heat of the day? Go to Mount
Calvary and watch our Lord as he pours out his soul unto death. There's the only one that started
work early in the morning, worked all day and deserved the denarius.
And you know what? He didn't even get that. We have our troubles, and I know
some of you got your struggles, you got your hardships, and we're
not denying that, but none of us, none of us is bearing the
work and the load of redeeming our souls. None of us. Nothing
that we do, nothing that we endure has anything to do with the cleansing
of our souls and the washing away of our sins. That all came
by somebody else's labor. The things that we bear in this
life are just the things of this life. Everybody bears them. The
lost bear them, the saved bear them, the non-elect bear them,
the elect bear them. Paul, I guess he was in some
of the, I believe it's the Corinthians, but anyway, they were probably
complaining and fussing about some of the things they'd suffered.
He says, you aren't suffering anything everybody else doesn't
suffer, or everybody else suffers. There's nothing new to your suffering.
Life's tough, life's hard, it has been ever since Adam sinned.
And none of the burdens that we bear are born as a payment
for sin. They're born as a result of sin,
but not in payment of it. Born in the heat of the day,
they were absorbed with what they had done. Secondly, they
took notice of what other people did. Now this spirit, this grumbling
spirit, always takes note of these things, takes note of what
self has done, and takes note of what others do. The whole
time this guy is picking grapes, he's looking to see how full
this guy's basket is, or how many times he's been able to
empty it. He looks how far down the road he is compared to the
guys behind him. He takes note of he started at
six, but this guy didn't start till three in the afternoon,
and this guy here is 11th hour. Good grief, the day was almost
over. But you know something? He was
not upset. These people did not get upset
until payday. And if the master of the house,
the landowner, If he had made a distinction in payments, they
wouldn't have got upset. It was not the heat of the day
that bothered them. It was not that others didn't bear the heat
of the day that bothered them. What bothered them was that the
landowner treated the short timers the same as the long timers.
He paid the 11th hour guys the same as the first hour guys and
everybody in between. And you know that legalistic
spirit that rules in our flesh and rules in most of religion,
even that which comes under the banner of Christianity. All of
it takes notice of what self does, compares it to what others
do, and is perfectly happy so long as the message that is preached
makes a distinction between the hard workers and the slackers.
As long as there's some difference in the dispensation of God's
blessings between the hard workers and the easy goers, they're good
with the easy goers, so long as they get more. In fact, legalists kind of like
the slackers because it gives them something to boast about.
I'm not like these other guys who didn't get busy at all way
late in the afternoon. and who didn't pick very many
grapes. But then that spirit comes face
to face with the Sovereign Lord who says that the one who came
in late is going to get every bit as much as the one who's
been here from the beginning. Then they got upset. They said to Him, and You have
made them equal to us. Now, we can probably think of
some people like that. And we can probably look at such
people with a certain amount of disgust. Brethren, we're looking
at us. Do you really believe that? You
say, well, I'm not like that. Well, maybe grace. You've got
the principles of grace written upon your spirit and they grapple
with this other attitude so that it doesn't express itself much.
Maybe God restrained you in the expression of them, but count
on it. This principle is at work in you just as it is in the most
upright and disgustingly self-righteous religionist you've ever run into.
God's got to save us from this. You've made them equal to us. Well, that's because they are.
And we're equal to them. God demonstrates that, as Paul
says in Romans 3.22, there is no difference. He demonstrates
that because there is no difference in how eternal punishment is
carried out, and there's no difference among them who receive eternal
blessing. It's either punishment or blessing. There's no degrees in either
one. Because it is an infinite holy and just God that punishes
and it is a sovereignly gracious God that blesses. That's how the natural man perceives
grace, excuse me, perceives acquiring God's blessings. Get there early,
work hard, suffer long, get a lot. Come in late, work a little,
kind of slack off, get a little. And they're perfectly fine with
that program. Because there's hardly a person
in the world that doesn't think that they're one of the early
morning guys who worked hard, bore the burden, and bore the
heat of the day. Well, notice how the Lord then
views the dispensation of His grace, His blessings. Verse 13,
he answered one of them, friend, I'm not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for
Denarius? Now, one thing to notice in this
whole parable, the only ones who made an agreement with the
landowner were the early morning people. They agreed to his terms
and he paid them according to what they agreed to. You ever have that inclination
to bargain with God? I tell you, you bargain with
God, you're always going to get less than if you just throw yourself
at his feet and beg for mercy. You bargain for God, you'll get
what you bargained for. Lord, if you'll just heal me
of this. I'll serve you all the days of my life. And so you get
healed and you think you got to serve him. So you start going
to church and you give a lot of money and you spend your life
doing that. You know what your reward is? You already got it.
You got healed. You bargained for it. That's
what you got. Our Lord said of the religious people of this
day who gave and they would sound a trumpet before them. So everybody
take notice and say, Ooh, did you see how much he gave? And he says they have their,
they already got their reward. Here's the bargain they worked
for, and they're getting it. The esteem of men. Advancement in the human religious
world. They got what they worked for.
And this man says, you're upset that I paid the guy at the ends
one denarius. He said, but isn't that what
you agreed to this morning? And why are you finding fault
with me? Because I gave you exactly what we agreed to. I'm not being
unfair, didn't you agree to work for Denarius? Verse 14, take
your pay and go. Now notice this next line. I
want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave
you. What's that the sound of? That's
the sound of authority. That's the sound of sovereignty.
Why did I give the last guy as much as I gave you? Because that's
what I want to do. And it's none of your business. Isn't that wonderful? Aren't
you glad the Lord wants to give the tailenders the same thing
as the early morning ones? Because if he didn't, where would
that leave us? Friends, we haven't even woken up yet, let alone
got out to the fields to work. I want. I will. The gospel is not a message of,
if you are willing, it's a message of God saying, I will. I will have this people for my
own. And I will redeem them by my
Son. And I will call them by my Spirit. I will preserve them by my power. I will present them to myself
holy and without spot and full of joy. And it will happen because
I will it. Now, does that mean that people
are saved against their will? No, because so powerful is God
saying, I will, it makes us will it. It does. But friends, our will wasn't
the first one. Our will didn't get this started. God did not
say, I want to save everybody and here's how much I'm going
to do and then we'll lay it out there and see what men do with
it. Well, that had been just an absolutely useless salvation.
You cannot get the dead to accept anything. And that's what we
were. He came. He willed. He did. He accomplished. And we have all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Christ. No matter whether we've been
in the field for a long time, or like that thief on the cross,
got sent out at the 11th hour and the 59th minute. I will. Verse 15. Don't I have
the right to do what I want with my own? What's that tell us? Well, first of all, God's got
all the rights. We don't have any. Man lost all
his rights way back in the garden. He cannot demand anything good
from God. I remember listening to Henry Mayhem preach one time,
and he was getting pretty wound up. And he said, God doesn't
owe you anything. And he stopped me and said, well,
there's one thing God owes you. And you have every right to go
up and absolutely demand that He gives it to you. And that's
an eternity in hell. And if you want it, you can demand
it, because you've earned it. Is that what you want? He says,
can I not do with my own? Don't I have the rights? God
owns all the rights to everything and everyone. Can I do what I
want with my own money? Those blessings that we receive
belong to God. You realize that? Salvation belongs
to God, says the scripture. That's his, he owns it. And he
can do with it whatever he wants. He can give it to everyone, no
one, or just some. It's all His. All the blessings
come out of His treasury. Who can lay a demand on Him?
Nobody. He says now, or are you envious? Because I am generous. Did you notice that? I mean,
just look at that. Instead of the word generous there, just
say the word gracious, because that's what it means. I mean,
that's the point he's making. He was gracious to those guys
at the end. Now, it was all justice with the guys at the beginning.
They got what they agreed to. They did the work, they got to
pay. Guys at the end, whatever they got, pretty much, that's
just grace. Just the sheer generosity of the man. And that's what upset the early
morning guys. And you know what upsets the
religionist of this day? God's grace. And I don't mean
God's blessings. Nobody's upset by God's blessings.
People are upset by God's grace because grace by its very nature
is a sovereign thing. You cannot demand grace. And
he gives his blessings according to the determinations of his
grace. He does not give his blessings
according to the determination of your earning it. And that's
what upsets people. They want to be in control. They
actually get upset over the idea that God wouldn't give them something. What gives God the right to punish
me? I'll tell you what gives Him
the right. He's God. And you've certainly justified
Him in punishing you by your sin. So forget about denying
God the right of judgment. What about the right of blessing?
Who does that belong to? Certainly doesn't belong to us
because we lost our rights. We lost the ability to demand
and to claim. It all went out the window way
back there in Eden. Who has all the rights when it
comes to blessing? God. And He can bless all, He can
bless none, or He can bless some. It's His to do as He will. And I think you can pretty well
write it down. Well, why should you? God already did. If a man
has a problem with that, it's because he has a problem with
God being God, and he has a problem with grace being grace. Anytime somebody says salvation's
by grace, but you gotta, just say okay, he doesn't know what
grace is. Those but you gottas, they ruin grace. They make grace
not to be grace. They ungrace grace. It's salvations
by grace, period. Just stop right there. You've
said it, and that's as far as you need to go with it. Even though men will say salvations
by grace, they want to believe that they can direct the grace
of God by their will or by their repentings or by their decisions. or by their conformity to some
substitute form of righteousness like ceremonies or church rules. They're perfectly willing for
salvation to be by grace so long as they are in control of the
grace. But as our brother Tim James
once said, when they say that Jesus Christ is Lord, what they
mean is that he's out of control. He's out of control. I'm gonna tell you this, I'm
sure glad, I'm sure glad. I'm glad he's so out of control
that he saved me, contrary to what I would have done. I'm so
glad he's out of my control, he saved you. He's so out of control that you
couldn't control him, and that he invaded you. He didn't stand
at your heart's door and gently knock, Trying to get in. But picking up his cross like
a hammer, he beat down the door. He walked in and there you sat
on the throne of your disgusting house. And he said, get out. Get out of that throne. I'm taking
over. I'm gonna clean this place up.
I'm gonna take care of you. And I'm gonna rule here. And you said, thank God. Thank
God, you never would open that door for him. But when he knocked
it down, you thanked him for coming in. That's the miracle
of grace. Can he not do with his own what
he will? Eric, you closed me.