Life Ministries

Parables “Workers in the Field”
Matthew 20:1-16

     It’s important, before we begin, to take a quick look back at what’s just happened. The chapter starts with the word “for.” This means that the story hinges upon what just happened or what was just discussed. At the end of chapter 19, we have the story of the rich young man. He has just walked away from Jesus after Christ commanded him to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. The point being, not that money is bad or that wealth is evil, but that nothing should stand in the way of or take higher priority in life than God or the call of Christ. Jesus cut right to the heart and asked the man to give up that which was most important to him, his wealth. He was promised treasure in heaven but the rich young man could only walk away sadly, unwilling to follow Christ at so great a cost.
   This exchange sparks a conversation with the disciples and reveals how far Peter still needs to go in his understanding of the Kingdom that he has pledged his life to. The disciples ask about salvation and rewards and Peter says this: ( Matthew 19:27 ) Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?"
    He sounds like a little kid! Peter wants to know that he is going to be well compensated, taken care of, for the sacrifices that he and the other disciples have made. After seeing the rich man leave, he says, what about us? We’ve made the ultimate sacrifices. We’ve given up everything, we’ve left jobs and family, what will there be for us? It looks like Peter is in it for the rewards and at that point that may be what he is thinking. But, instead of reprimanding him and lecturing him on the finer points of sacrifice, service, and selflessness, Jesus tells him that he will indeed be rewarded. I’m sure the disciples liked that they would indeed be rewarded but it had to chafe a little that everyone else, people who had not given nearly as much as them, would be rewarded in like manner. To drive home his point, Jesus tells this Parable.
I. The Players.
This would have been a typical work situation in Israel. The marketplace was like a primitive employment agency. Unskilled laborers would hang around the marketplace and wait for someone with a job to show up and hire them. These workers were not very high up on the social totem pole and often the jobs they did only lasted a short time so there was never any guarantee of money coming in on a regular basis. We have places like this in our cities today. If you needed someone to work, you could stop and say I need 6 guys, point six of them out, and drive away with them in the back of the truck. This is what we see happening here.
    The first group of workers that the owner calls to work agree to work for a denarius. Now, you need to keep this in mind as we continue on. A denarius was the daily wage of a Roman soldier…So, they are not working for (X) amount an hour, but for a days wage. The owner repeats this process several times. The Jewish workday began at 6AM, this would be the first hour. So the third hour and the sixth hour and the ninth hour would be 9 AM, 12 noon and 3 PM. The last group that he hires (because obviously the work had not yet been completed) is hired at the 11th hour, or 5 PM, an hour before quitting time. This group of workers probably had given up any hope of being called to work, but the owner sends them into the fields as well. The owner does not agree to a price with these last 4 groups of men, agreeing only to pay them what is right and they trust him and willingly join the first group in the fields. What each one represents:
The landowner is God; The workers are those He calls-or Christians; The field is the earth that God created and the work is the work of the Kingdom which is those good works that God prepared in advance for us to do as Ephesians 2:10 teaches us. The wage in the parable, represented by a denarius, is our “reward.” So, there you have the basics of the parable up to this point. Now, it takes a twist.

II. The Problem.
    This is where the passage gets rough for many people. This deals with the wonderful, and impossible to comprehend subject of grace, freely given forgiveness, and love given to all who ask no matter what they’ve done or what they may deserve.
    We are born with a sense of what is and isn’t fair. We all want life to be fair. Most of us, by now, understand that life is not fair but that does not change the fact that we think it should be. For many people, this carries over into their relationship with God.
    Now, this part of the parable translates into any culture. We can certainly understand why the workers who had been hired first would be upset. The temperature during the grape harvest would have been well over 100 degrees and they had slaved in the hot sun for 12 hours, a good honest day’s work. Here were these men that had worked a fraction of the time, and they were being paid the same! And (note) the owner made sure that those hired first were paid last so that they could see exactly what the others had received.
    In Jewish culture, workers were paid on a daily basis so that they could buy food and provide for their families. It was a first come, first served system. If you were hired first, you were paid first, that’s the way it always worked. But not here, here the first were to be the last. The original workers must have gotten very excited to see that even those hired at the 11th hour received a denarius, surely they would be paid accordingly. It didn’t matter at that point what they had agreed on, they were thinking only in terms of fairness. But remember, a denarius was far above what they deserved or would have normally earned for their work, just like heaven is far above what we deserve. But they were paid the same and that wage, which once looked so good, now seems like an insult and they complain to the owner. The owner replies simply that they received what they had agreed to and it was his prerogative to be generous and to dispense his wealth in any way that he saw fit. What they saw as unfairness, the owner describes as generosity, as grace.
    So, the problem in this parable is that our sense of fairness, that all of us have, tells us that those who work harder and longer deserve more. So, what can we take from this passage? There are certain principles that we need to draw from this story that I will post tomorrow…