Matthew 20:1–16 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. ² He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. ³ “About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴ He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ So they went. “He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. ⁶ About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ⁷ “ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ ⁸ “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 on to the first.’ ⁹ “The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ ¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I read a story about a man who was convicted and imprisoned for 16 years starting in 1940 for a crime two other men committed. The jailed man had been 1700 miles away when the crime was carried out, but when arrested he was friendless and penniless. He was quickly convicted and sentenced. “That’s not fair!”

Two people do the exact same wrong thing. One gets caught and punished. The other suffers no consequences.  “That’s not fair!”

You hear about it on the news and from your family. It may be the kids arguing about who gets to ride “shotgun” or a ref making a bad call during a ball game or someone getting a promotion who doesn’t deserve it. All of you have ample opportunities to cry out “That’s not fair!”

That was the attitude of the ones who worked all day in Matthew 20. They had done more work and borne the heat of the day, yet those workers hired for just the last hour received the same wages at the end of the day. They were all paid same regardless of when they started. To their and our way of thinking, “That’s not fair.” We want equal pay for equal work. At least we say we do. Actually we don’t mind too much if we get equal pay for less work, or more pay for less work, but we don’t want to be the ones who do more work and not get any more in return. This parable speaks of equal wages for all the workers no matter how long they toiled. The point being made is that God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness are His to give as He sees fit.

The ones who worked all day were envious because the landowner was generous. We often feel the same way when we see someone else being blessed by God. After all, haven’t we worked hard for Him? Don’t we try to do what He tells us? Shouldn’t we be rewarded? We operate under the old, mistaken notion that God owes us something based on our behavior or obedience, that we have somehow qualified ourselves for a prize.

To be deserving of some kind of reward from God, you have to be perfect, and none of us will ever come close to that. We all need to be reminded that if we receive anything from God, it is not something we have earned. It is a gracious gift.

You want to know what isn’t fair? Think about an innocent man being punished for the sins of the rest of the world. Jesus had done nothing worthy of any kind of punishment, yet was punished for the sins of everyone. Your guilt and shame were put on Jesus so that you would not have to get what you deserve. Now that is not fair. Yet that was God’s plan. God being generous to all of us, none of us deserving it.