Bulletins - First Baptist Church Litchfield

- - Lamentations 3:21–26ESV
Let Your Kingdom Come
Christ Our Hope In Life And Death
Goodness Of God
- - 2 Timothy 2:11–13ESV
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
Turn Your Eyes
That is Not Fair!
“That’s not fair.” Those words are as common out of our mouth as “I love you.”
You said it as a child, and if you are like me, you’ve never really stop saying it. Someone else gets the promotion we thought we deserved. Someone receives recognition for doing less work. One child gets something the other child did not get. And immediately, we begin calculating the score. We take what we have done. We compare it with what someone else has done. Then determine what we think each person deserves according to our personal interests. And unfortunately, we can bring that same way of thinking into our relationship with God.
We are to religiously aware to say it out loud, but we can begin to think, “Lord, I have followed You. I have served You. I have sacrificed for You. I have been faithful for years. Surely that ought to count for something.” And that is exactly where Peter was at the end of Matthew 19:27-30.
After watching the rich young ruler walk away, Peter says to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” In other words, “Jesus, we have done what he would not do. So what are we going to get?” Peter has begun to think about the kingdom in terms of services rendered and rewards deserved.
And so Jesus tells a story about a landowner, a vineyard, a group of workers, and their wages that seems completely unfair. But the tension is going to be between our sense of fairness and God’e generous grace. Do you we know the difference between wages and grace?
Our fallen hearts instinctively turn grace into wages. We serve in the kingdom, only to leverage our time, talent, and treasure to get what we want. We are prone to look at someone else’s blessing as evidence that God has somehow shortchanged us. But Jesus is going to remind us that nobody enters the kingdom because God owes them something.
Because God’s kingdom runs on grace, not merit, rejoice that the King gives His people far better than any of us deserve.
And sometimes, brothers and sisters, grace only seems unfair because we have forgotten how desperately we need it ourselves.
So, this morning I want our church family to consider how the King justly gives what He promised us, gives generously more than what we earn, and the King remains good when His grace offends our sense of fairness.
I. The King Justly Gives What He Promised Matthew 20:1–7
Remember, this parable is Jesus’ response to Peter’s question at the end of Matthew 19. Peter says, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matthew 19:27).
Now, Peter is not entirely wrong. The disciples really had sacrificed to follow Jesus, and Jesus assures them that their sacrifice will not be forgotten. In fact, Jesus promises them, “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” (Matthew 19:28). He goes on to promise that everyone who has sacrificed for His name’s sake “will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).
So Jesus is not rebuking Peter for believing that God rewards faithfulness. Scripture repeatedly teaches that God sees and rewards the faithful service of His people. The problem is when we begin to think that God’s reward means we have placed God in our debt.
That is why Jesus ends His answer to Peter with this warning: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Matthew 19:30). Then He immediately tells this parable, and when the parable ends, Jesus repeats the warning: “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16). Those two statements form the bookends around this parable.
So this is not primarily a lesson about labor economics or inept business practices. Jesus is correcting our fallen tendency to think about the kingdom in terms of merit. We like to calculate what we have done for God and then determine what we think God owes us.
Paul draws an important distinction in Romans 4:4: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.” That is how wages work. You perform the labor; your employer owes you the paycheck. You earned it. But that is not how salvation works. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Brothers and sisters, if God gave us the wages we had earned, none of us would want that paycheck. We deserve God’s wrath for the wages of our sin. But God offers us something else, so much so he is eager to take the initiative to give it to us. Furthermore, not only does he give it to us, he maintains his righteous justice. Let’s walk through the first few verses to see how God justly gives us not what we deserve but what he promises.
The Master Goes Looking for Workers
Jesus says in verse 1, “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.”
Notice immediately who takes the initiative. The workers do not go looking for the master. The master goes looking for the workers. He goes out early in the morning and finds some workers. Verse 2 says, “After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.”
Then the master goes out again about the third hour, roughly nine in the morning, and finds others standing idle in the marketplace. He tells them, “You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.”
There may be some of a nuance here. The first workers have an agreed wage. But these workers simply have the master’s word: “Whatever is right I will give you.” In other words, they must trust the character of the master. And he keeps going.
He goes out at the sixth hour, around noon. He goes out again at the ninth hour, around three in the afternoon. Then, remarkably, he goes out at the eleventh hour, about five o’clock, when only one hour remains in the workday. And he is still looking for workers.
God’s Generous Grace Takes the Initiative
We are in the fall harvest season here in Litchfield. Farmers are out in the fields, and some are looking for help to bring in the harvest.
Imagine that at sunrise several men arrive ready to work for a farmer. They labor through the heat of the day. But then, one hour before quitting time, the farmer drives back into town and finds another man standing there.
He asks him, “Why aren’t you working?”
The man responds, “No one hired me.”
The farmer says, “Come work for me.”
At that point you might wonder, Why bother? What can this man possibly accomplish in one hour? From a business perspective, that is a reasonable question. But that misses the point of God’s surprising grace.
By the eleventh hour, the hiring is no longer primarily about how much labor the master can get out of these men. Jesus is drawing our attention to the generosity of the master who continues to go out and bring people into his vineyard. And that gives us a beautiful picture of grace.
The kingdom does not begin with workers looking for a generous Master. It begins with a generous Master going out looking for workers. That is the pattern of salvation throughout Scripture.
Jesus says in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Paul says in Ephesians 2:8–9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” And Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” God owes no sinner salvation. Yet God graciously seeks, calls, saves, and brings undeserving sinners into His kingdom.
John Calvin beautifully explains the relationship between God’s promise and His mercy: “Nothing but mere mercy induces God to promise.” And Calvin continues, “Whatever God has mercifully promised he faithfully performs.”
That is exactly what we need to see here. God’s grace does not make Him less just or less faithful. His grace flows from His character, and once God makes a promise, His own faithfulness guarantees that He will keep it.
Christ Makes the Promise Certain
But there is an even deeper reason God can justly keep His promise of eternal life to sinners. He sent His Son.
God does not simply overlook our sin and pretend that justice does not matter. At the cross, Jesus Christ received the judgment our sins deserved so that sinners united to Him could receive the righteousness they could never earn.
Romans 3:23–24 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Christ earned what we could never earn. Christ satisfied the justice we could never satisfy. Christ bore the judgment we deserved. So eternal life is not a wage God owes us for services rendered. It is an inheritance secured for us by Christ and freely given to us by grace.
Calvin put it this way: “The merit of Christ is inconsiderately opposed to the mercy of God.” What he means is, Christ’s merit and God’s mercy are not enemies; Christ earned what God graciously gives.
And if you want to see just how generous our King is, look at the thief on the cross. He came to Christ at the eleventh hour with nothing to offer and no time left to serve. He simply trusted Jesus, and Jesus promised him, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). There is God’s generous grace: the thief had no merit of his own, but Christ had more than enough merit for him.
Christian, never forget who initiated your relationship with God. You did not hire yourself into His kingdom, nor did you did negotiate your salvation as if it were a business deal. God does not demand that you make yourself useful enough so that He is finally convinced He needs you.
God came looking for you. And when He found you, He did not promise to give you what your sins had earned, which is His wrath. In Christ, He promised to give you what His Son had earned, generous and just grace. That should humble every person standing in the vineyard.
The generosity of the landowner becomes even more surprising when the workday ends and payday begins, and oddly enough, not everyone his humble or happy.
II. The King Generously Gives More Than Was Earned Matthew 20:8–12
First, notice God’s generous grace becomes offensive when we begin comparing God’s generosity toward others with our own service.
At the end of the day, the landowner calls the workers together to receive their wages. But notice the order. He tells his foreman, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first” (Matthew 20:8).
An interesting point of notice is how Jesus shows the men who worked all day are going to stand there and watch what the others receive the wages for their labor. Verse 9 says, “And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.”
I imagine these guys were stoked. They worked one hour and received an entire day’s wage. And when the men who had worked all day saw that, they immediately began doing the math. Verse 10 says, “Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more.” If the one hour guys got one denarius for their work, maybe we get eight, or at least four denarius for our work. Do you see their problem? They felt entitled to receive more.
Nothing had changed about the agreement they made with the landowner. He had promised them a denarius, and he gave them a denarius. But after seeing his generosity toward someone else, suddenly what had seemed fair that morning seemed unfair that evening. So they grumbled: “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” (vv. 11–12).
Grumbling is alway a sign of ingratitude toward God. It tells God is he not good or wise enough to know what you need. The people of Israel grumbled against God in the wilderness after he saved them from slavery in Egypt, so much so they had a skewed sense of what slavery was like in Egypt. Their grumbling was so bold as to say that life was even good as slaves in Egypt. Grumbling does that to your heart. It sees God’s generous grace through the lens of fallen fairness.
I don’t blame these men too much. I see myself in them. There is something inside us that sympathizes with them. We think, “They have a point. That doesn’t seem fair.” Why?
Because the fall has distorted our understanding of fairness. Sin bends our will away from God. It clouds our thinking with my own interests. It turns our hearts inward away from loving our neighbor. We naturally measure fairness by what we have done, what someone else has done, and what we think each person deserves, which opposes the way Christ lived for us (Philippians 2:5-10).
But these workers were not victims of injustice. They received exactly what the landowner promised. Their problem was that his generosity toward someone else made his justice toward them seem unfair.
Brothers and sisters, we can do exactly the same thing with God.
We begin comparing. “I have served Christ for forty years. I have sacrificed. I have given. I have endured suffering. I have remained faithful. And that person comes to Christ at the eleventh hour and receives the same forgiveness, the same justification, the same adoption, and the same eternal life?”
It is insane to think that God’s generous grace can actually offend us who have recieved such generous grace. But it does. Thankfully, God does not conform His justice to our fallen definition of fairness. God Himself is the standard of righteousness. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “All his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.”
D. A. Carson puts the issue rather candidly:
“Do you really want nothing but totally effective, instantaneous justice? Then go to hell.” D. A. Carson (How Long, Oh Lord, 161)
That is shocking, but he makes the point.
If God gave sinners nothing but what we had earned, none of us would want justice. “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
Grace is not unjust. Grace is God giving guilty sinners infinitely better than they deserve because Christ received the judgment they deserved.
Think about two men standing before a judge, both unquestionably guilty of the same crime. One stole ten thousand dollars. The other stole hundred thousand dollars. Both are sentence to prison, but someone steps in and pays their debt and serves their time. Ironically, the first man looks across the courtroom and complains because the other man has been shown the same mercy as he was shown. That’s not fair! I only stole ten thousand dollars. He stole one hundred thousand dollars. He shouldn’t get off Scott free. But before he complains too loudly, he had better remember something: he is guilty too.
That is how comparison deceives us. We look across the vineyard at the eleventh-hour worker and ask, “Why did he get so much?” God’s generous grace teaches us to look at ourselves and ask, “Why did I receive anything at all?”
Christian, guard your heart from such a fallen view of fairness in light of the kingdom God.
Do not measure God’s goodness to you by comparing His grace toward someone else. When the prodigal comes home, rejoice. When the thief on the cross is promised paradise, rejoice. When someone comes to Christ after wasting most of his life in sin, rejoice, just as heaven rejoices, and rejoiced when you came to Christ. Because you are not standing in God’s vineyard because you earned your place there.
Grace only seems unfair when we forget how desperately we need it ourselves. And that brings us to the real problem Jesus exposes in these workers. The problem is not in the hand of the generous landowner. The problem is in the eye of the grumbling worker.
III. The King Remains Good When His Grace Offends Our Sense of Fairness Matthew 20:13–16
God’s generosity never compromises His justice; our resentment of His grace exposes our own self-righteousness.
The landowner responds to the grumbling worker:
“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?” (Matthew 20:13–15).
Notice what Jesus brings together here: the landowner is just, sovereign, and good.
He is just: “I am doing you no wrong.” The first workers received exactly what they were promised.
He is sovereign: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” The landowner has the right to be generous with what belongs to him.
And he is good: “Do you begrudge my generosity?”
Literally, Jesus asks, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” The problem is not in the hand of the landowner. The problem is in the eye of the worker. The master’s goodness has exposed the worker’s jealousy.
And that is the tension at the heart of this parable:
God’s generosity never makes Him less just, but our jealousy can make His goodness look unjust to us.
Do we not see the same thing in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15? The older brother had remained home and served his father, but when the father welcomed his rebellious younger brother with compassion, the older brother became angry. He could no longer rejoice in his father’s goodness because he was too busy comparing what his brother received with what he thought he deserved. That is what self-righteousness does. It turns another person’s grace into our grievance.
And that is why Jesus concludes, “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16).
No sinner enters the kingdom with a claim to preeminence. No redeemed sinner can stand before God and say, “I deserved more.” Whether you came into the vineyard early or late, salvation is still grace.
And if you want to test whether you really believe that, consider an example. What if you get to heaven and God sits you next to Jeffrey Dahmer.
Jeffery Dhamer lived in Milwaukee, WI. I was a boy living in Durand, WI when his name hit the news. Dahmer committed horrific crimes against 17 young men. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Yet while incarcerated, he began studying Scripture, professed faith in Jesus Christ, expressed remorse for his crimes, and was baptized. A minister named Roy Ratcliff met with him regularly until Dahmer was killed by another inmate.
Was his profession genuine? Only God knows the heart.
But suppose it was.
Suppose Jeffrey Dahmer truly repented of his sins and trusted in Jesus Christ before he died. Would Christ save him? That question tests whether we really believe the gospel of grace.
Dahmer could never undo what he had done. He could never restore the seventeen lives he had taken. He could never suffer enough to make himself worthy of eternal life. But neither can we.
His sins were horrifying, and nothing about the grace of God minimizes their horror or removes the earthly consequences of them. But if the blood of Jesus cannot cleanse a repentant murderer such as Jeffery Dahmer, then we have misunderstood the sufficiency of the cross.
Paul himself wrote that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).
So imagine entering the new heavens and the new earth and discovering that God had truly saved Jeffrey Dahmer. Imagine sitting with him at the marriage supper of the Lamb or eating with him from the tree of life.
Would something in you say, “He should not be here”?
Then you need to hear the question of the landowner: “Do you begrudge my generosity?”
Brothers and sisters, that is the shock of God’s generous grace. The glory of the gospel is not that God lowers His standard of justice for terrible sinners. The glory of the gospel is that Jesus Christ fully satisfies God’s justice for every sinner who trusts in Him.
At the cross, God remains perfectly just and astonishingly gracious. Christ receives what we guilty sinners deserve, and we guilty sinners receive what only Christ deserves. Oh, what a sweet exchange!
So when you see another sinner receiving the generosity of God, do not look at him with an evil eye. Look at your King and marvel that He is that good. Because in the end, the question is not, “Why would God give that sinner a denarius?” The question is, “Why would He give one to me?” So the last will be first, and the first last.
As I close, it is fitting that immediately after this parable, Jesus tells His disciples what God’s generous grace is going to cost.
Jesus says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death” (Matthew 20:18). There is the price of the denarius.
At the cross, Jesus received the judgment we deserved so that we could receive the eternal life He earned. God’s grace does not ignore justice; Christ satisfies it. And that grace is given to every sinner who comes to Christ, whether you have labored in the vineyard all day or come at the eleventh hour.
Brothers and sisters,
Our King is just. Our King is good. And our King is astonishingly generous in light of our fallen fairness. Amen
- - Matthew 20:1–16ESV
- - Matthew 20:13–16ESV
- - Matthew 20:13–15ESV
Great Are You Lord

Lamentations 3:21–26ESV

2 Timothy 2:11–13ESV

That is Not Fair!

Because God’s kingdom runs on grace, not merit, rejoice that the King gives His people far better than any of us deserve.

I. The King Justly Gives What He Promised Matthew 20:1–7

The Master Goes Looking for Workers

God’s Generous Grace Takes the Initiative

Christ Makes the Promise Certain

II. The King Generously Gives More Than Was Earned Matthew 20:8–12

III. The King Remains Good When His Grace Offends Our Sense of Fairness Matthew 20:13–16

Matthew 20:1–16ESV

Matthew 20:13–16ESV

Matthew 20:13–15ESV