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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our 22nd week of Studying
Through Matthew, Matthew chapter 20 this week. And as we start day one of this
week, we start by talking again about the Kingdom of Heaven. You've probably
noticed all through the book of Matthew, Jesus talks about and teaches about the
Kingdom of Heaven and then what it is to be in our lives.

We spend a lot of time talking about what the Kingdom is. Jesus just sort of
took that for granted. It's where God is King.

It's where God is doing what only God can do both now and all the way into
eternity. What Jesus did spend a lot of time talking about was not what the
Kingdom is but how the Kingdom works. He gives us a sense of what the Kingdom
does in our lives.

Eleven times specifically in Matthew, Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like
and then tells us what it's like. We looked at seven of them already. Most of
them in chapter 13, six of them there and then one in chapter 18.

When you walk through these, you see Jesus teaching that to understand the
Kingdom you have to understand. What's it like? Well, there's a battle between
good and evil.

You have to understand that. It's about what God is growing. It's about what you
must value.

It's about God's justice and God's judgment. That's what God's Kingdom is all
about. And then at the beginning of chapter 20, Jesus gives an eighth picture of
what the Kingdom of God is like.

It's a long story in verses 1 to 16, one of Jesus' parables. Listen to what he
had to teach us beginning in verse 1. "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 in 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'll pay
you whatever's right.

' And they went. And he went out again about the sixth hour. And the ninth hour
and did the same thing.

About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. And
he asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing? '
'Because no one 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 to the first. The workers
who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.

" So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But
each 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've
made them equal to us who've 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 to 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. " Jesus takes this long story to teach us about what the
kingdom of heaven is like and how it works.

Now, I want you to remember last week. The last thing we looked at last week was
Peter asking a question of Jesus. Peter asked to remember, "Well, Jesus, because
we've served you so well, not like that rich young ruler who wasn't willing to
give up things, but we as your disciples, we've given up a lot of things.

So won't there be great rewards for us? " And Jesus talks about the rewards at
the end of the last chapter we looked at that. But in this parable, he talks
about God's kingdom and he talks about the motivation for the rewards.

He talks about what's going on in our hearts. Jesus tells this parable to
describe in many ways to his disciples and to us as his disciples the true heart
of a servant. As he talks about these workers, you can contrast the first
workers and the last workers.

The first workers, the ones who ended up grumbling because they didn't get what
they thought they deserved, they had a contract. You might notice in this
parable when they came in, they made a contract with the owner. This is how much
I'm going to work for.

That's how much they got. They had a contract. They got exactly what they
deserved.

The last workers, they depended solely on the owner and they got more than they
deserved. And there's a question in this when it comes to you and I and the way
we serve God. Is your relationship with God, in the attitude of your heart, is
it a legal contract relationship or is it a loving grace relationship?

Now, when it comes to beginning our relationship with Jesus and living a life in
his love, many, many people know the right answer is grace when it comes to the
love of Christ in my life. That I can't make a contract with God and get into
heaven or get into salvation. What kind of contract could I make?

I don't have anything to offer him. I'm a sinner. So it's only by grace that we
can be saved.

There's a lot of people who get the answer right on that one, but they miss it
when it comes to the service, when it comes to the actions, when it comes to
what we do for God. So the question then is, is your service for God a legal
contract relationship or is it a loving grace relationship? You see, under a
legal contract, as a servant of God, you serve God in the church, you serve God
in ministries, you give up things to serve God.

You begin to think a lot about what you deserve. And that's what Peter had been
thinking about. Lord, we gave up a lot for you.

What do we deserve? You begin to think a lot about what is fair. You think a lot
about making things even with others.

If I do this for you, God, then you will do this for me. One of the greatest
examples of this legal contract relationship with God is Jacob in the Old
Testament, who you know was the schemer before God got a hold of his life. And
when he first met with God, he made this legal contract with God.

He said, "God, if I do this, then you will do this. " The idea is there is, God,
if I do this and then you don't do this, then you've broken your contract. And
there are many people who are servants of God who have in the back of their mind
this legal contract in some way.

God, if I do this, you won't let anything bad happen to me. God, if I serve you,
you won't let anything bad happen to my children. God, if I do this, then you
will do this.

And there are many blessings to serving God. So if I serve him, obviously there
are many good things that come in my life, but there's no such thing as a legal
contract relationship. If the reason you're serving God, if you search deep in
your heart, if the reason you're serving God is so that you can get him to do
what you want, whatever that might be, then you know you have a legal contract
relationship with him, or you're trying to.

The truth is you're trying because it's not going to work. That's not the kind
of way God relates to us. The reason that these first servants got so upset is
because they saw their relationship with the owner as wrong.

They didn't understand it. It's the last workers who you and I can look to as
the model of the kind of relationship that we need. They just came and said,
"We'll work.

" There was no contract. The owner didn't say how much they're going to pay.
They just needed to work.

It was the end of the day. No one else was going to hire them. So they went and
they worked.

And under this grace relationship, you just trust the owner. I trust that owner.
They're going to pay me what I'm due.

And you can trust God as the owner. Let me tell you three ways, even in this
parable that you see, that you can trust him. You can trust the fact that God is
in control.

You trust God's sovereignty. You trust the right of God to do whatever he wants.
He is in control.

He is sovereign. In the end, it's going to all happen as he wants. On this
earth, he's allowed evil for a time, but in the end, it's going to be according
to his will.

And you trust that when you serve him. It may not be happening as you want it to
happen now, but you trust that in the end, God's sovereign choice is going to be
in control. Also, we see here the model of the owner who is modeling God,
obviously.

God is generous. So you also trust God's generosity. When you serve God, you
don't serve someone who's trying to hold things back from you.

God is a generous God. The Book of Romans says, "If he gave Jesus on the cross,
won't he also with him give us everything else? " The idea that somehow God is
trying to hold things back and not give them to you as a servant misses the very
idea of who we are in God's sight.

We are his children. We serve him as his children, and he is a generous God.
Sometimes we miss it because we give with the wrong expectations.

We expect God's generosity to come out in exactly this kind of way. The problem
with that is we don't know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. And if
God was generous and gave you exactly what you wanted, there would be times when
it would turn you to selfishness.

It would turn you to sin. It would turn you against others. It would turn you
away from the ministry that he wants you involved in.

God is generous. He's just not always generous in the way that we expect. So
instead of expecting a certain generosity, you're just grateful for the way that
God is generous.

God is in control. God is generous. You trust his sovereignty.

You trust his generosity. But then at the end, Jesus, this one line of teaching
says at the end of this parable, "So many who are first will be last, and last
will be first. " You're also trusting in God's justice.

It's not human justice. It's God's justice. You're trusting that God will make
everything right according to his justice in the end.

This is the justice of grace. It's the upside down working of the grace of God,
and the kingdom of God runs on grace, pure grace. If you're looking for some
kind of justice from God that runs on how well you do, how If that started to
creep into the back of your mind, just let that get tossed out right now because
the truth of the matter is it's only by grace that I find him, and it's only by
grace that I serve him.

And when you trust that justice of grace, when you trust that generosity of God,
when you trust that sovereignty of God in your life, you are not living in this
contract relationship. You're living in this grace-filled relationship with God.
That's how you serve.

That's where the joy is. Let's pray and let's ask God to put that into my heart,
your heart today. Lord, in a moment of prayer, we just say, "Let us serve you by
grace today.

" We're saved by grace, so let us serve you by grace today. Looking to you as
the one who's in control, looking to you as the one who generously gives at all
times, looking to you as the one we can trust, we trust you. And we pray, God,
that out of that trust, we would be able to see your blessings in a new way and
be grateful for all that you've given.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to take a look at what
this parable says to us about contentment.