Matthew 20:1-16: But That's Not Fair...

I’m sure we’ve all heard those words at some point. Your brother or sister gets more time to play on the Nintendo Switch than you, you do all the work in a group project but someone else gets the credit, the refs are constantly giving your team penalties but never catch the other team when they do something wrong.

I don’t know how many times I heard growing up, “Life isn’t fair, get used to it.” And the thing is, guys, all those people are right. Life really isn’t fair sometimes. You won’t always get the reward you deserve, and people will get away with doing bad things that they should never have been able to get away with.

But what if I told you that life not being fair might actually be a good thing? I mean, maybe not all the time, but we all have one big reason why we should be thankful that life isn’t always fair.

To help us understand why, I want to tell you a story. It’s not my story, though – Jesus told it first. I remember when I first heard this story, it kind of bothered me. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t seem fair. But hopefully by the time we’re done here today, we can make more sense of what Jesus was trying to teach us in this story.

Jesus starts by saying that being part of the kingdom of heaven – the place where anyone who believes in Jesus gets to go to after he or she dies – is like a person who owned some land. Weird, I know, but it will make sense soon. Specifically, this man owned something called a vineyard. Vineyards, in case you don’t know, are places where people grow grapes and then squish them into wine.

Anyways, Jesus tells us that the vineyard owner had a lot of grapes that he needed to have picked. And he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to pick all those grapes on his own. Plus, he had other stuff he needed to do that day. So the vineyard owner went into town around 9:00 that morning and found two people. The owner told these two guys that if they worked for him all day, then he’d pay them each $100.

Now these guys didn’t have anything better to do that day, so they agreed. So off to the vineyard they went, ready to pick some grapes. How bad can it be? they thought. We’ll pick grapes for a few hours and be out of there in no time.

At least, that’s what they thought on the way to the vineyard. But when they walked through the gates, their eyes went wide. Before them was this massive field! And this field was filled with row after row after row of vines, all of them filled with grapes.

“This might take longer than we thought,” the guys said to each other… But after a few seconds, they looked at each other, nodded, and then set off to work.

“At least this work isn’t too hard,” the first guy said after a few minutes. “Pick some grapes, put them in the basket, repeat. And who knows? Maybe if we don’t get this done today, we can come back tomorrow and make some more money!”

This wasn’t what the vineyard owner had in mind though. He wanted to have all of those grapes picked today. And when he went outside just before lunch, he realized that these two guys weren’t going to be able to finish the job on their own.

“I wonder where he’s off to,” the second guy said to his friend as he saw the vineyard owner head towards town.

“Hey, as long as he’s back here at the end of the day to pay me, I’ll be happy!” the first guy called back. 

The owner was back way before the end of the day. In fact, just as the two guys were getting ready to eat their lunch, they saw the vineyard owner return with two more people.

This made the first two workers a little worried. These new people looked pretty tough. So just before the vineyard owner went back into his house, the two guy asked him, “Did we do something wrong? We’re not fired, are we?”

The vineyard owner just laughed. “No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “I’m just really hoping that all my grapes will get picked today.”

The two guys smiled, thinking to themselves, Oh man! If we work really hard and get all these grapes picked, maybe this guy will give us a bonus! And with that, they quickly polished off their lunches and went scrambling back into the fields. Those 12:00 workers weren’t going to pick as many grapes as the 9:00 workers!

The 9:00 workers didn’t keep up their fast pace long, however. They were already kind of tired after working for a few hours, and now the sun was out and it was getting hot! But they still kept up a good pace – they were working at least as fast as the new guys.

Around 3:00, the owner came back with two more workers. Probably smart, the first two workers thought. The four of us were doing well, but having six people will help us pick those last grapes even faster!

“What are you going to do with all your money?” the first guy called back to his friend.

“All our money?” the second guy said back. “What do you mean? $100 isn’t that much!

“Are you kidding?” the first guy responded. “We’ve been working hard all day, and we’ve picked way more grapes than the other guys! Look at those 3:00 workers. They’ve barely even filled one basket yet! The owner’s probably going to be so impressed with us that he’s gonna give us double, maybe even triple what he gives the other people!”

The second guy simply smiled, imagining all the candy he could buy with that much money. “Outta my way!” he shouted as he started picking faster than he’d picked all day.

________________________

It was 5:00 now. There were only a few rows of grapes left, so the six workers were kind of surprised when the owner returned with two more people. “There,” he said to the new workers, “work for you.” And the two new workers, really grateful for this chance to make a bit of money, went off into the fields to help with the last batch of grapes.

With 8 people working now, it didn’t take them that long to finish. They were done around 6:00. One of the first workers knocked on the door of the vineyard owner’s house to tell him the good news.

“Great,” the vineyard owner said, “just give me a minute to gather up the money I owe all of you.”

This was it! Time to get paid! And hoo boy were the two 9:00 workers excited. But they got even more excited when they saw how much money the owner paid the last two workers. He paid them $100, even though they’d only worked for an hour!

“Man,” the first guy whispered to the second, “if that’s how much they get, imagine how much we’re going to get!”

“We’ll be rich!” the second guy whispered back.

They didn’t pay attention to how much the vineyard owner paid the 12:00 or 3:00 workers. The 9:00 workers were too busy daydreaming what they could buy with all their money.

Finally, it was their turn. They looked at the vineyard owner with grins as big as their faces. “Thank you, you two,” the vineyard owner said as he handed them the envelopes with their money. “These grapes couldn’t have been harvested without you!”

The two early workers eagerly ripped open their envelopes, looked inside… and then their grins turned into confused faces. And after a few seconds, they got mad.

“Hey, what gives!?!” the first guy called out, looking right at the vineyard owner.

“Yeah!” the second guy said, “you paid us the same as you paid the last guys!”

The first guy looked over at the other workers and then realized the truth. “He paid us all the same!” the first guy yelled. “Are you kidding me!?! How is that fair? We worked way longer and way harder than anyone else here! Why do they get $100 too?”

The owner’s smile disappeared, but he didn’t look angry. If anything, he looked disappointed. “Friend,” the owner said to the first worker, “I’m being fair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for the usual day’s pay? Take your money and go. I want to give the one I hired last the same pay I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Do you feel cheated because I gave so freely to the others?” (Matthew 20:13-15, NIrV)

Now we don’t know what happened next because Jesus’ story ends right there. We don’t know if the first two workers stormed off angrily or if they realized the owner was right. But given who Jesus was speaking to, we can guess that they probably reacted a bit like I did. And like the first two workers did.

You see, Jesus was telling this story to a large group of people. But he was really focused on talking to this group of people called the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders in Israel. All of the Jews (what they called the people of Israel at that time) saw the Pharisees as the example of how to live properly and obey God’s law. The Jews thought that the Pharisees were the best, the smartest, and the most religious people out there. If there was anyone who deserved to be rewarded for keeping God’s law, it was the Pharisees!

But Jesus was trying to get the people to realize something else. Jesus wanted the people to see that the first two workers were kind of like the Pharisees. They were people who had worked hard and believed in God for a long time. And the 5:00 workers – these were people who were only just coming to believe in God now because of Jesus.

You would think that the Pharisees, like the first workers, deserved to be treated better because they had acted better and believed longer, but that’s not how God works. God wants as many people as possible to have a relationship with Him, and He is willing to accept us whether we’ve believed in Him for a day or for 100 years. He doesn’t treat any of us differently, and He wants us to see new believers this way too! Anyone who believes that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to wipe away all those bad things we’ve done can have a relationship with God and will get to join Him in heaven after they die.

Maybe that doesn’t sound fair to you. Maybe you think you should get something more if you’ve been a Christian longer. But the fact is that none of us even deserve to have a relationship with God in the first place. So instead of focusing on what’s fair or what’s not, I think what Jesus wants us to see in this story is how generous the vineyard owner (who represents God) is being. The vineyard owner didn’t have to pay those guys anything, just like God doesn’t have to save us. But because of how much He loves us, God chooses to save us anyways. And when we believe in Him, we get to receive this amazing generosity!

In fact, that’s what should be our takeaway for today. God is generous to ALL who believe in Him. God wants all of us to have a relationship with Him, and that relationship is more valuable than any amount of money or any reward we could ever receive in life. It’s the greatest gift that any of us could ever get, and it’s available to anyone who believes in Jesus.

So just like our first two worker friends, don’t worry about how long you’ve been working in the vineyard – how long you’ve believed in Jesus or whether you’re being rewarded fairly. Instead, focus on the fact that God has been generous to you and that you get to experience His love forever.

And if you aren’t a Christian yet – if you haven’t made the decision to believe in Jesus – then I hope you’ll think about today’s story. Not all the grapes have been collected yet. There’s still time to say yes to Jesus and have a relationship with Him.  

~Brentagious