Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16
Today’s parable tells us a lot about the nature of God’s grace… the meaning of grace. I want to talk about it in three points—Number One: Grace Means God Never Owes Us Anything… Number Two: Grace Means God Works Through Us… Number Three: Grace Means Joyful Service.
Every Saturday morning, when possible, I make a pot of coffee, I grab a lap desk, and I sit on my bed and have a quiet time—which always involves writing notes, thoughts, and prayers in the margins of my journaling Bible… which is why I need the lap desk. Ringo, of course, joins me on the bed… he scrunches up next to me. But here’s the funny thing… This is literally the only time during the week that my cat Wally wants anything to do with me… The only time he shows me any affection is when I’m sitting on the bed having a quiet time. So he scrunches up even closer to me than Ringo—to the point that the cat is practically sitting on top of my Bible, saying through his meows and body language, “Pet me! Pet me! Pet me! Pet me!” And so I can’t ignore him! And I pet him.
And Ringo, as you might imagine, is having none of this! He does not like it at all. If the dog could put into words the way he feels, he would sound something like this: “No way, Wally! I am Brent’s favorite. I show him nothing but love and affection all week long… while you do nothing but annoy him and demand food constantly. You do not deserve to have his attention! I do. Therefore get out of his way… Or get out of my way because I’m about to run you off the bed!”
This happens every Saturday. Ringo knows all about what’s fair and what’s not fair…
And so do we…
It’s not hard 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!
So 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. A perfectly fairwage. 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 notice this: the first workers are the only ones who have a specific agreement about what they’ll be paid. Beginning with the workers hired at nine, they simply have to trust the landowner when he says, “Whatever is right I will give you.”
Keep that in mind.
Because at 6:00 p.m.—end of the workday—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 to 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 for one hour, then surely we’ll get $120 times 12 hours… which is $1,440!”
Yippee!
Except… when it was their turn… to their disappointment and indignation, these all-day workers also received the same $120… the same denarius, just like everyone else.
That’s not fair!
The landowner disagrees. 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?”
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?”
But the all-day workers weren’t completely wrong: the eleventh-hour workers did not deserve the vineyard owner’s generous and completely free gift.
But this parable challenges us to ask, What does “deserving” have to do with generosity?
Or… What does “deserving” have to do… with grace?
Because that’s what Jesus is teaching us about. Grace.
And grace is not payment for services rendered.
Paul makes this distinction perfectly clear in Romans 4:4: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.”
If I work forty hours for you at an agreed-upon wage, and Friday afternoon you hand me my paycheck, I don’t fall on my knees and say, “Oh, thank you! Thank you! How incredibly generous of you!”
No! You owed me that money!
I earned it.
That’s what wages are.
And one of the greatest dangers in the Christian life is that we begin relating to God that way.
“Lord, look what I’ve done for you. Look how faithfully I’ve served you. Look at the sacrifices I’ve made. Look at the money I’ve given. Look at the prayers I’ve prayed. Look at the temptations I’ve resisted. Look at the suffering I’ve endured. Look at how many years I’ve been faithful to you.”
And then, somewhere beneath all those words, is this dangerous little thought: “God owes me!”
In fact, Jesus likely tells this parable in the first place because he sensed that same note of pride… of entitlement… in Peter’s words in verse 27 of the previous chapter. There, Jesus has just sent the Rich Young Ruler away—because he’s unwilling to give up all of his possessions. And Peter says, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Peter isn’t speaking from a place of grace, but of wages: “Lord, you owe us something!”
And I just want to remind Peter and everyone else: it’s true that God owes us something: death, judgment, and hell… which is eternal separation from God. As Paul says in Romans 3, “the wages of sin is death.” And each of us would be paid those wages had God not loved us so much that he sent his Son to suffer and die on the cross… in our place!
God can never owe us the good things he gives us—including every breath and every heartbeat. Each of us is alive this morning, able to enjoy this day, our family, and our church family by God’s grace alone.
On an episode of the comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David visits a high rise office building in Los Angeles. And Larry is talking to the secretary. Outside her window is this breathtaking panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean and its beaches. And Larry asks, “How long did it take before you took this view for granted? If I worked here, it would take less than a day—and I wouldn’t even notice it anymore.”
One reason we show up for worship on Sunday mornings is so we can remind ourselves that we can’t take for granted God’s many gifts of grace… none of which we’re entitled to… And to show God how grateful we are for them…
Because Point Number One: Grace means God never owes us…
Even when we work hard to serve God. Because, when you’re a disciple of Jesus, what matters isn’t so much the work wedo as the work that God does through us.
And this brings us to Point Number Two: Grace means God works through us…
The apostle Paul has the classic statement of this point in 1 Corinthians 15:10:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
But do we really believe that living a Christian life isn’t so much about the work we do but the work that God graciously does through us?
Do I believe it…?
I told you last week that, as part of my Bible reading plan, I’ve been reading about King Saul, Israel’s first king, from the Book of 1 Samuel. Saul had some early success as king… but both his pride and his stubborn unwillingness to trust in God would lead to his downfall. Chapter 13 describes one important example of these failures…
Saul and his army are facing a Philistine army of 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, and troops “like the sand on the seashore in multitude.”[1] Meanwhile, Saul’s own soldiers are described as “trembling” in fear.[2]
To make matters worse, Israel’s spiritual leader, the priest Samuel, has told Saul to wait for him to come and offer a sacrifice to God—as a way of securing God’s blessing and favor in their fight against the Philistines. And Saul waits… and waits… and waits… He waits so long that the soldiers in his army begin deserting him.
Uh-oh… Saul thinks, “Yesterday I had this many soldiers. Now I only have this many. If I wait another hour, how many will I have? I need to act fast!”
And he does: He stops waiting for Samuel to show up and, instead, offers the sacrifice himself—even though God’s Word prohibited him from doing so. It was if Saul were saying to God: “God, I’m going to disobey your Word in order to ask you for help in winning this fight.” Not a good plan!
And when Samuel shows up moments later, Samuel tells him so.
And listen to the way Saul answers him: “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered [this large army]…”[3]
Notice those words: “When I saw…” With my eyes…
Because for Saul, that’s what reality is… what he could see with his eyes. “I saw my soldiers leaving. I saw you were nowhere to be found. I saw the Philistine threat.”
In a way, Saul’s behavior makes perfect sense… if God isn’t real… or if God isn’t an active participant in the situation.
Saul’s definition of reality only included everything he could see: Philistines. Chariots. Horses. Soldiers. Weapons. Numbers. And he saw himself in this reality and thought, “It’s all up to me.”
The problem with Saul’s definition of reality is that it didn’t leave room for God!
And I’m not so different from Saul. I often define “reality” as the things I can see, touch, measure, count, control, manipulate, plan for, worry about—and things that I and other human beings can accomplish. And then, after I’ve accounted for all those things, somewhere off in a corner of my life somewhere, I say, “Oh, yeah—and of course there’s also God. Maybe I should pray.”
But this is completely wrong: God isn’t one fact among others that make up our reality. God is the most important fact about reality!
And Saul should have known this better than anyone!
Because Israel’s history repeatedly teaches that God doesn’t need impressive numbers. Gideon’s army is the obvious example: God deliberately reduces Gideon’s army from 32,000 to 300 precisely so Israel cannot say, “My own hand has saved me.”[4]
And Saul himself is about to get an object lesson in this from his own son! In the very next chapter, Jonathan tells his armor-bearer: “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.”[5]
Saul, by contrast, only believes that the Lord can save “by many,” not by few.
What about us?
We work. We plan. We prepare. We pray. We give. We serve. We obey. We work hard… As Paul even says, “I worked harder than any of them.”
But then he immediately adds: “though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
I lost my Bible at the “Behold” conference two weeks ago… It’s the journaling Bible I’ve been reading every day in 2026 and take notes in. It’s no exaggeration to say that this Bible is nearly the most precious thing I own… And I lost it. So I prayed that God would please return it to me. And he did. I got an email from the conference secretary, “Brent, we found your Bible. Send me your address, so I can return it.”
I immediately felt so happy and relieved and grateful! Not mostly to the conference secretary… but to God. He answered my prayers! I thought, “It was almost worth losing the Bible in order to experience this elation about getting it back!”
Actually, it is worth it! Or it should be… From God’s perspective, it is certainly is! Because God wants us to praise and magnify and glorify him more than he wants anything else from us! We exist to glorify him. And guess what? Nothing makes us happier… than when we truly glorify God!
Some of y’all don’t believe me, but in a couple of weeks you might be heading to Memorial Stadium… “Death Valley”… or Williams-Brice Stadium… “Willy B”… “the Cockpit.” I’ll be somewhere else, but I know as well as any of you that practically nothing brings us more joy than offering praise and glory to our favorite sports team.
Some of the most intensely happy moments of my life have taken place watching my Yellow Jackets win improbable victories.
And that is just human glory. Imagine how great God’s glory is…
And we would glorify God even more if we came to understand the meaning of grace: God is always working through us and others… God is doing it, not us. God deserves the praise and glory!
Pastor Steve Brown shared the following in a sermon he preached on today’s parable:
An elderly man lived alone and wanted to plant his annual potato garden. But he’d grown too old, too infirm to do it himself. And the person who would ordinarily help him—his son—was in prison.
When the son called his dad—during the prison’s appointed phone time—his father said, “I’m just not able to plant potatoes this year—I’ve got a bad back and bad knees and arthritis. And the ground is hard… Son, if only you were still here, you’d be able to dig that garden for me.”
His son said, “Dad, I’m glad you can’t dig around in that garden… whatever you do, please don’t dig in that garden! That’s where I buried the bodies!”
Early the next morning, FBI agents and local police descend on the old man’s property—shovels in hand—and they dig up the entire garden, searching for bodies…
… because of course they had been eavesdropping on the prisoner’s phone call…
And they found nothing. They apologize to the old man and leave.
Later, the next time the son talks to his father he says, “Dad, go ahead and plant those potatoes now. That’s the best I could do from here.”[6]
See the garden got dug… but let’s not misunderstand who ultimately did the digging… If these were Christian men, they could say, “Isn’t it awesome what God did for us! Praise God!”
And that’s Point Number Two: Grace means God works through us… and through other people.
And Point Number Three: Grace means joyful service. Emphasis on “joy.”
When I started in pastoral ministry, the UMC graciously appointed me to serve a little church in Forsyth, Georgia… just north of Macon. They gave my family and me a parsonage to live in and a modest salary for the three years I was in seminary in Atlanta. And let me tell you, between church work, school, and family responsibilities, I was really busy!
So much so that I wasn’t always prompt about cutting the grass… I would put it off and put it off… And one particular Saturday afternoon in the fall, I worried that neighbors—not to mention church members—would start to notice… And judge me for it. Like, “Why is Pastor Brent so lazy?”
So in spite of everything else I had going on that weekend, I was determined to cut the grass!
And I was not happy about it… at all.
So there I was, pushing my lawnmower, feeling sorry for myself…
Like one of those all-day vineyard workers, I was keeping score: “Look how much I’m doing. Look how hard I’m working. Nobody appreciates me!”
And in the midst of my pity party, I looked behind me… And little three-year-old Townshend, my second child, was pushing his toy lawnmower in the wake of my real lawnmower. I remember this toy would make a popping sound as you pushed it—to simulate the sound of a motor. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
So there Townshend was, pushing his little toy lawnmower… [mimic pushing]
pop, pop, pop.
Over grass that had already been cut… pop, pop, pop.
Because he loved his father so much… pop, pop, pop.
And he wanted more than anything to be like his dad… pop, pop, pop.
And he was so proud to be helping his dad… pop, pop, pop.
And I’ll never forget the big smile on his face as he did so… He was beaming with pride… full of joy: “Daddy, look! I’m helping.” Pop, pop, pop.
Listen: I didn’t really need Townshend’s help… I would make sure that the grass got cut with or without my son… But do you think, for even the tiniest fraction of a second, I thought, “Good grief! This kid is useless! Look at that ridiculous plastic lawnmower! He’s not cutting a single blade of grass!”
No… not even close. I was thinking, “You are my beloved son with whom I am well-pleased. You are the apple of my eye. Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter the joy of your father.”
Meanwhile, do you think Townshend thought, for even the tiniest fraction of a second: “What’s my hourly rate? How much of this lawn do I have to cut? Am I doing more than the kid next door? How long will this take? How much will I make? Will people judge me a success or a failure?”
No… Three-year-old Townshend was thinking: “I get to help my dad.” [mimic pushing] Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop… And it brought him great joy to do so.
Is it any wonder Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…” And “to such [a child] belongs the kingdom of heaven.”[7]
Make us like that, Lord!
Maybe that’s what those all-day workers had forgotten. They were so busy looking horizontally at their fellow workers… keeping score, counting their hours, comparing themselves with others, grumbling to others, complaining about others… keeping their records of wrong… judging others… that they’d forgotten to look vertically… and to remember whose vineyard they were working in…
To remember the One for whom they were doing the work…
What about us?
We are working always ultimately for our heavenly Father…
And grace means that while our Father doesn’t need our help… he lets us help him.
And he gives us great joy in doing so…
Listen: we at Five Forks Methodist have a a lot work to do in this year ahead. And I know I’m speaking to a bunch of people who showed up at 6:00 a.m. to do the work… in the heat of the day…
There easier churches out there… churches where you can show up at 5:00 p.m.… where most of the work is already done… But that’s not who we are, right?
But you know what? If we stick it out, and stick together, in spite of the hard work, there is greater joy for us all-day workers… there is strengthened and renewed faith… there are greater opportunities to encounter Jesus Christ and experience his love… greater opportunities to grow in our love for our Father…
Where we at Five Forks Methodist will say, “Father, look at me! I’m helping!”
Pop, pop, pop.
That’s what I’ll be doing this next year… Who’s with me?
[1] 1 Samuel 13:5 ESV
[2] 1 Samuel 13:7 ESV
[3] 1 Samuel 13:11 ESV
[4] Judges 7:2 ESV
[5] 1 Samuel 14:6
[6] Steve Brown, “The Unfairness of God,” youtube.com, 8 September 2023. Accessed 20 August 2026. I paraphrased Brown’s illustration for greater clarity.
[7] Matthew 18:3; 19:14