Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16
Did you hear that the penny is going out of production next year? You’ve probably heard that each penny is more expensive to manufacture than its actual value. Speaking only for myself, I stopped caring about pennies around 1980—when I could no longer buy a gumball from a gumball machine for only one penny. After that, they went up to a nickel! Inflation! Now they’re, what? 25 cents? So good riddance, I say.
But you know a coin that was never popular with the American public?
The dollar coin—whether the Susan B. Anthony—which came out in the ’70s and looked, confusingly, a lot like a quarter—or the Sacagawea dollar coin that came out in 2000.
They’re both long gone, of course. But it’s not because our government didn’t try to get Americans interested in these coins! In fact, the U.S. Mint introduced a program in 2008 to increase the circulation of the Sacagawea coin. They had a program in which you could purchase a nearly unlimited amount of dollar coins, and the U.S. Postal Service would ship them for free to your house… That’s quite a deal when you consider how heavy a box of coins might be!
But… guess what some clever consumers started doing… People who had frequent flier-branded credit cards—like a SkyMiles American Express—which awarded frequent flier miles proportional to the money you spent on your card… These people would purchase large quantities of these dollar coins—much more than they could otherwise afford. But it didn’t matter whether they could afford these purchases. Because, with free shipping, the coins would arrive at their house, and they would turn around and drive them to their bank, deposit them, and immediately pay off the large debt on their credit card balance. And then… “rinse and repeat”… Until they had racked up an incredibly large number of frequent flier miles! And the only thing it cost them was the time and gas necessary to deposit the coins in their local bank account!
Very clever!
I read that at least one person purchased, like, a million dollars worth of dollar coins over time—and racked up however many SkyMiles a million dollars would buy!
Of course the airlines eventually closed this loophole. And why did they close it? Because it was—essentially—money for nothing.
And you know who doesn’t like money for nothing? Literally every single one of us! We hate money for nothing… unless we’re the recipients of money for nothing.
So it’s easy to understand, in today’s scripture, why these workers who labored twelve hours in the heat of the day were so angry at the ones who labored only one hour, just before dusk! From the perspective of the all-day workers, these eleventh-hour workers were getting money for nothing!
Now let me preface everything I’m about to say with this caution: This is not a parable about capitalism or free enterprise or the economy or anything like that. Jesus isn’t recommending that entrepreneurs and corporate executives and small-business owners and CEOs run their businesses like this. The parable’s sole purpose is to teach us something important about—see verse 1…the kingdom of heaven: “For the kingdom of heaven is like… dot, dot, dot.”
And what’s going on in the parable? A wealthy vineyard owner needs laborers to pick grapes. It’s harvest season. And the landowner needs the grapes to make Welch’s Grape Juice… Just kidding… That’s what the Baptists think!
So the landowner goes to the first-century equivalent of a Home Depot parking lot to hire day laborers. It’s first thing in the morning: 6:00 a.m. That’s when the workday started—at sunrise. So the laborers would gather together in a labor pool to be hired out for work. And the landowner agrees to pay them the accepted daily wage of one denarius. That’s what an average laborer was paid back then for working from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. A perfectly fair wage. Everyone agreed on it—including these workers hired at 6:00 a.m.
And that’s all well and good… But the landowner realizes he has more work than he has laborers. So he went back at 9:00 a.m. to hire more. And again at noon and again at 3:00. Finally, he went back again—even at 5:00 p.m. to hire more! Five o’clock was considered the eleventh hour. The workday ended at 6:00. And literally this is where we get the expression, “At the eleventh hour”… It comes from this story in Matthew’s gospel. If you do something at the eleventh hour, that means, as a figure of speech, you’re doing something at “the last minute.” It means you’re cutting it close.
But in its original context it meant you only had one hour of daylight remaining to get work done!
In verse 2 the landowner promises the men he hires at 6:00 a.m. that they’ll be paid a denarius. For everyone else, however, he merely promises to pay “whatever is right.” Which these workers interpret to mean that they’ll receive some fraction of the one denarius he’s paying the all-day workers. If one denarius is equal to $120, let’s say, then the men hired at 9:00 a.m. will receive ninety bucks. The men hired as late as 5:00 will receive only ten. But even ten dollars is a completely fair wage for one hour’s work. And all the workers gladly accept these terms.
And they all work until when? Until it’s Miller Time… Remember that commercial? They work until quitting time…which for them is 6:00 p.m. By the way when I was an engineer, I worked at a lot of Coca-Cola bottling plants alongside mechanics, and when it was five o’clock these mechanics would say, “It’s beer o’clock. Let’s pack up and leave.” And then if we were really working late, they’d say, “It’s beer-thirty!” No one wanted to work past beer-thirty!
But when it turned beer o’clock in the parable, something very unusual happens: The men lined up to get paid, as usual, except the landowner has the one-hour workers line up first. And to their surprise and the surprise of everyone watching, he pays them a full denarius… a full day’s wage, even though they only worked an hour!
“Oh, boy,” the all-day workers must have thought, “If these eleventh-hour workers are getting a full $120, then surely we’ll get $120 times 12 hours… which is $1,440!” Yippee!
Except… when it was their turn… to their great disappointment and anger, the all-day workers also received the same $120… the same denarius, just like everyone else.
So let’s get the picture: By the reckoning of the people who showed up early to work, these no-good, lazy eleventh-hour workers made $120 an hour. Meanwhile, the industrious, hard-working, early-to-bed-early-to-rise workers who showed up at 6:00 a.m. were making only what? A measly ten dollars an hour! Yes, that’s what they agreed to twelve hours ago, but in comparison to the one-hour workers, who could possibly argue that that’s fair!
Well… the landowner, for one. Look at verse 13: “Friend,” he says to these early risers, “I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?” By the way, that word “friend” is sarcastic: Like, “Hey, pal!” “Look here, buddy.” “Look here, friend-o. I’ve done you no wrong.”But the landowner’s point is, “I’m giving you exactly what we agreed to when you took the job! How is that not fair?”
See, from the perspective of the landowner, he was not paying one group ten dollars an hour and the other group 120 dollars an hour. He was instead giving the second group of workers a generous gift… a gift of 110 dollars. Which he’s perfectly entitled to do. It’s his money, after all. As he says in verse 15, “do you begrudge my generosity?” Or literally he says, “Is your eye bad because I am good.” Having a “bad eye” was a figure of speech in that culture that meant you were stingy.
But to their small credit… the all-day workers weren’t wrong about one thing: the eleventh-hour workers did not deserve the vineyard owner’s generous and completely free gift.
But they were entirely wrong in failing to ask themselves this question: What does deserving have to do with generosity? What does deserving have to do… with grace?
This parable isn’t nearly as popular as the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, but it touches on similar themes, doesn’t it? In fact, don’t these all-day workers sound a lot like the older son in that parable? The younger son comes home and receives an extravagant banquet in his honor—the father says, “Kill the fatted calf!” 1—remember? Meanwhile, the older son, like these all-day workers, has been toiling away in the heat of the sun. He hears the sound of a big party in the distance, asks a servant what’s going one… and he is livid.
He confronts his father. In verses 29 and 30 of Luke 15, he complains,
Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!
I’m sad for the older son. Genuinely… His father is sad for him. Because the older son thought that all these years he was working for his father… for nothing other than worldly treasure. You see that? In the case of the all-day workers, the treasure happened to be money. In the case of the older son it wasn’t money… although he clearly resents that his younger brother wasted so much of it. But the older son has been working for… what? For recognition: “you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends”!
Recognition, applause, awards, trophies, glory for oneself… whatever… that’s a worldly treasure of course. Gosh, remember Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount? He talks about tithing, praying, and fasting in a public way, which others could see and appreciate—rather than doing these things privately, to be seen only by one’s Father in heaven. And Jesus tells us that people who do these public acts of piety—not for money, in this case, but for recognition—that’s the only reward they get.
And Jesus implies that that reward—like literally every other worldly treasure—ain’t worth it!
Not when one’s relationship with our heavenly Father is at stake! What would you rather have? A relationship with God through Jesus Christ—which is the greatest treasure imaginable—or mere worldly treasure. At its best, worldly treasure will be gone sooner or later anyway… and even at its best, worldly treasure can’t satisfy the deepest longings of one’s heart!
And we say, “Yeah, but we can have both.” Yes, but be careful… Because worldly treasure so easily becomes an idol!
I notice on social media that Lou Gramm, the legendary former lead singer of the band Foreigner… You know how these old bands like Journey, Styx, Kansas, and many others often replace their old lead singers for ones who are younger and better-looking… But Lou Gramm—who still possesses one of the great voices in rock, despite his age… Lou Gramm will be playing some concerts with his old band, Foreigner.
When I was coming of age—I’ve told you before and y’all laugh, I know—I dreamed of being a rock star. Sadly, I nearly made it, too… except for one small thing: talent… Well, two things: talent… and the motivation to practice for hours on end every day! But music is still my main hobby, I love it so much.
And even today—if I’m not careful—I fall into this trap of daydreaming about the worldly treasure that rock stars like Lou Gramm enjoy—or at least, used to enjoy. And I think, “Didn’t they have it all? All that praise and adoration, all that love, all that money… Didn’t they have everything a human being could ever want… And yes, by all means… like Lou Gramm and so many others… they also had drug addiction, alcoholism, plenty of marriages and divorces, grown children who won’t speak to them, STDs, poor health… But that’s nitpicking… I would avoid all those bad things… those temptations… I would be different.”
These are things I tell myself in my worst moments!
So Lou Gramm had it all at one time, yet he said in an interview not too long ago, recounting an experience back in 1992,
One particular day, I had a nightmarish night and just knew that I didn’t want that to be part of my life anymore. I just fell on my knees and asked the Lord to get me out of this hell. … I gave my heart to the Lord and called a good friend… who escorted me to Minneapolis and spent thirty days at Hazelden… I’ve got over twenty years of sobriety.
And over thirty years now, praise God. He goes on…
All that stuff… number‑one records, multi‑platinum stuff; if I could compare any of my memories to the moment I accepted the Lord, they pale. … It kind of put everything in perspective for me and what I’m here for.
Okay, listen up—dear Brent—to what this rock star is saying: He’s saying, in so many words, that the treasure he found in the rock and roll lifestyle, which—at the band’s peak in the early ’80s was as great a treasure as any rock star ever enjoyed… a treasure which you—dear Brent—in your worst, most sinful moments—are often tempted to covet… Lou Gramm says that that treasure “pales” in comparison to the treasure that he currently enjoys in his relationship with Jesus Christ!
And this, of course, is what Jesus tells us: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then, in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” 2
It’s what Paul was talking about when, reflecting on the things that he’s lost in life, says, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
It’s what the psalmist, in Psalm 73, was talking about when he prays to God: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” One’s “portion” is another word for “treasure.”
And speaking of portion, it’s what Mary, the sister Martha and Lazarus, found when Jesus scolded her sister, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
And speaking of Mary, it’s the treasure she happily traded for the opportunity to pour it out on the feet of her Lord, not long before Jesus gave himself up for us. Judas said, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” 3 Those words would have been incomprehensible to Mary. She would have thought, “Giving our very best to Jesus—including our most precious gifts—that’s never a waste. It’s totally worth it.”
It’s what Paul, nearing the end of his life, was talking about when he said, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.”4 These words are not sad; they reflect contentment, peace, satisfaction, and joy. Because Paul found the greatest treasure imaginable in Christ. He gave up everything for Christ. He dedicated his life to pursuing Christ wherever the Lord led him. And now, finally, when his days on earth are growing short, when evil people will soon kill him, he can say, in so many words, “They’re not taking my life from me, I’m offering my life… I get to offer my life… to the Lord… because he’s worth all the worldly treasure I possess, even my life!”
In modern terms we can understand, this is Paul offering the equivalent of a very costly standing ovation to Jesus at the end of his life. That’s what a drink offering is: a way of telling God, “Thank you.” He’s saying, “Thank you, Jesus, for letting me live this life of trouble, trial, suffering, and sacrifice. You are worth it. You have been, you are, and you will continue to be my greatest treasure. And these naive people who will soon kill me don’t know it yet, but what they’re really doing is allowing me to enjoy more of the treasure I find in you… So at the end of my life I’m giving you this standing ovation. You have more than earned it.”
So… it’s been my pleasure and my responsibility for the past six years to convince you to find this treasure for yourself, to devote your life to enjoying this treasure in Christ, and learning to treasure him more and more.
It’s been my job to convince you, in the words of today’s parable, to learn to treasure what the Master in this parable is offering to give the servants in this parable—to learn to be satisfied with it and nothing else…
Indeed, there’s no other kind of lasting happiness available in the universe than the happiness that God offers his children through faith in his Son…
Do you want that happiness? Have you found it?
It’s been my task convince you not to settle for less than what God is paying because God’s “denarius” is worth literally everything… And good new… unlike every other form of temporary happiness that the world offers, it costs nothing at all.
Treasure Christ above all and help others do the same!
That’s all I want for you!
Don’t be like the older brother in the parable: He didn’t find this treasure. He missed it. He was willing to settle for mere recognition.” And don’t be like these grumbling twelve-hour workers. They didn’t find it either. They missed it. They were willing to settle for mere money.
Don’t be like too many people in Stephens County and elsewhere who, although they identify as Christian, have failed to find this treasure… who’ve missed it… who, instead of embracing Christianity, are willing to settle for mere Churchianity… who mostly view their relationship with Christ mostly in the past tense… It’s that moment when they walked down an aisle at age 10 and made a profession of faith… or when they got baptized… or when they got confirmed… It’s like a driver’s license, or a graduation from high school… It’s like being initiated into a fraternal organization or a social club… It’s like buying a house… It’s rite of passage… It’s something we accomplish and then we’re like, “Okay… I’ve got that taken care of… What’s next?”
They’ve settled for less…
When all along, they could have had an infinitely greater treasure!
And listen, I’m preaching to myself, too… After all, as you know, I’m going to be pastoring a new church soon, with new and different opportunities, in a new location… a new state… for me, at least. I’ve never lived outside of Georgia!
Please know—at least one of you asked—I’m leaving Toccoa for one reason only: the Lord is telling me to.
To be sure, I look forward to being in a big city. That’s not for everyone, I know. But my best friend Mike messaged me after I told him about the new job. He said, with excitement, “Just think: You’ve got an Aldi, a Trader Joe’s, and a Publix on the same street with your new church!” It’s got all the shops and restaurants, you know? Lisa and I went to the Peace Center to see a play a couple of years ago. The city is beautiful, with the riverwalk. It has greenway—a paved trail—on which I can run and skateboard. Love it!
Greenville has a lot to offer!
But you know what it doesn’t offer? Lasting happiness… Satisfaction in life… Deep, inward healing… Contentment… Peace… Joy.
Only Jesus offers these things. And I already have him here. And you do, too… Or at least you can…
And I say to you, and I say to myself, “Don’t settle for any lesser treasure! Don’t settle for less than Jesus!”