Septuagesima
Mt
20:1-16
2/9/20
Recently I watched on Netflix the
2019 move, “The Irishman.” It tells us the story of how Frank Sheeran, who though
he was Irish, became a hit man and loyal member of the Italian Bufalino crime
family. Frank drove trucks and so
through his involvement with the Teamsters union and because of his connections
with the mob, became a friend and confidant of the Teamsters’ president Jimmy
Hoffa.
Having known killing during his
service in Italy during World War II, Sheeran finds it easy to begin committing
murders for the mob as he goes on to kill many people during his career. He rises in the organization, but learns the
true cost of his job in 1975 when in order to show his loyalty and save his own
life he must lure his friend Hoffa to a house and kill him because the mob now
sees Hoffa as a threat. Eventually Sheeran spends time in prison because of his
activities with the Teamsters.
The movie ends with Sheeran in a
nursing home after all of other mob figures are now dead. He finds himself looking back on his life as
he tries to reconcile with his alienated daughters. One of them, Peggy, will have nothing to do
with him because she suspects he was involved in Hoffa’s disappearance. Sheeran
is troubled by what he did to Hoffa, and contemplates his own mortality and
what will happen when he dies.
At the very end of the movie,
Sheeran meets with a Roman Catholic priest because of these concerns. Though Sheeran says that he does not feel remorse
about what he has done, the priest urges him to think about confession as an
act of the will – the decision to confess before God that he has sinned – and
they pray together.
In the very last scene of the movie
we hear the priest speaking absolution to Sheeran in his room. He has evidently arrived at the point where
he can confess the sins of his life, and the priest can now speak the
forgiveness of absolution.
Frank Sheeran in “The Irishman” is
the perfect illustration of what Jesus is talking about today in our text. We may ask: Can a person really live a life of terrible sin, and then at the very end repent
and receive forgiveness and eternal life? That doesn’t seem fair, not when you
compare it to the person who bears the cross as a Christian all through life –
suffering for the sake of Christ and striving to live in ways that please God.
We learn in our text and in the one that immediately proceeds it, that God is
entirely fair and at the same time he is graciously unfair.
The setting for our text begins in
the previous chapter when a rich young man comes to Jesus and says, “Teacher,
what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. And when the man confidently asserts that he
has, Jesus replies, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you
possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and
come, follow me.” Then we learn that when the young man heard this he went away
sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
In response to this, Jesus said to
his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich
person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God.” This was shocking to
the disciples. First century Judaism generally assumed that wealth was a sign
of God’s approval and favor. Yet Jesus
said instead, that wealth was a hindrance in spiritual matters since it called
attention away from God to itself.
Now wealth was not a problem for the
disciples! So Peter
said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then
will we have?” Our Lord acknowledged their sacrifice and the unique role of the
apostles as he said, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of
Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also
sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Next
he went on to add: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or
father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a
hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who
are first will be last, and the last first.” Jesus makes it clear that God is fair in
rewarding those who have sacrificed for the Gospel. What we do in this life
actually matters to God. It doesn’t earn eternal life for us, but it is
rewarded by him in the midst of eternal life.
Those who look like they are last in this life as they sacrifice and
suffer for Christ’s name are the ones who will turn out to be first on the Last
Day in the way God deals with them. God is fair as he deals with those who
sacrifice for him.
Talk
about reward could easily cause a Christian to focus on ideas about earning
something better, instead of on Christ and God’s grace that makes salvation
possible. So in our text, Jesus tells a parable. He says, “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. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent
them into his vineyard.”
A
denarius was a typical day’s wage. This
was a fair arrangement for all. The
master went out again at the third, sixth and ninth hours – at 9:00 a.m., 12:00
and 3:00 p.m. Each time he found other men standing around in the marketplace
who had not found work, and each time he sent them to work in his vineyard. Finally,
he went out at the eleventh hour – 5:00 p.m. – one hour before the end of the
work day. He found still more men whom
no one had hired. And so he sent them to work in his vineyard too.
When
the work day was done, the master told the foreman to pay the workers in the
reverse order that they had been hired. Those who had been hired at the
eleventh hour – those who had done only one hour of work – received a
denarius. Those hired at the beginning
of the day were excited because they now thought they would receive more than a
denarius. But in fact, they too received the denarius they had been promised.
And so they grumbled against the master saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have
made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the
scorching heat.”
However
the master replied, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me
for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to
this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose
with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” And then in words that were very reminiscent
of what he had just said, Jesus added, “So the last will be first, and the
first last.”
In the parable, Jesus teaches us
about God’s grace. He gives us what we don’t deserve. He gives us what we haven’t earned. As fallen people we are trapped in sin. We
are conceived as sinful people. And then from the moment of our birth we show
this in our actions as we sin all the time in thought, word and deed.
The holy God judges us according to
his law – that’s the standard. And the apostle Paul in Romans cites a basic
biblical truth when says about God: “He will render to each one according to
his works.” When it comes to judgment
Scripture also says again and again that God shows now partiality. A person will get what they deserve. And the
only thing we can deserve is hell – God’s eternal judgment and punishment.
We were never going to be able to
have eternal life with God based on what we do.
And so in his grace and mercy, God sent his Son into the world in the
incarnation to take our place and receive the judgment against sin that we
deserved. Jesus came to give his live as
a ransom for us as he died on the cross. And then on the third day God raised
Jesus from the dead as the second Adam in whom a humanity that can never die
has begun.
This was pure grace. But God’s grace
didn’t stop there because this forgiveness won by Christ can only be received
through faith. As fallen sinners, we
could not by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus. And so by the work of
the Holy Spirit God called us to faith through the Gospel. Forgiveness in Jesus is a gift that we could
never earn. Faith that receives this
forgiveness is something we could never obtain.
Yet God has given it all to us by grace. We who were last, have become
first, and we had nothing to do with it.
When we recognize this about
ourselves, it must then impact the way we view and treat other people. If I am a forgiven child of God purely
because of his grace, then I must view every other person as being exactly
equal with me. All of us need God’s grace and forgiveness. None of us can do anything about it on our
own. The timing of that grace matters
not at all – life long Christian or death bed conversion – we are all saved for
the exact same reason. And for those who stand outside the faith, it is our
prayer that they will yet be saved for this same reason.
We are forgiven by God’s grace on
account of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for us. Because God has done this for us,
how can we do anything else than be gracious towards others? Because Christ has
done this for us, how can we do anything else except to sacrifice for
others? Through his Spirit, God has made
us a new creation in Christ. So this
gracious and sacrificial life is a matter of being what God has made us to be.
And then we learn that when it comes
to the way God deals with us, there is simply grace upon grace! It is only God’s grace that enabled us to be
his children who can live in Christ in ways that please him. Yet, as we saw
earlier in this sermon, God turns around and promises that he rewards in
eternity the faithful life. He rewards the thing that only he could make
possible in the first place!
It should be an encouragement to
know that God actually cares about what we do – that he really does take note
of faithful living and that he promises to reward it. But our focus cannot be there. Instead it is Jesus Christ through whom we
have received this grace. For only through him do we have forgiveness. Only through his Spirit do we have faith.
Only through him have we received what we never could deserve. When we keep
this as the focus of our life, we live by faith in ways that share Jesus’ love
in word and deed. And our response to those rewards in eternity will be: “I
never realized that I did anything.”
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