Good morning, my friends. Our King desires to speak with
his servants, our father with his children.
Let us listen to the word of the Lord.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went away
early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with the laborers for denarius today, he sent them
on into his vineyard. And going out about the third
hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace.
And he said to them, You go into the vineyard too, and whatever
is right I will give to you. So they went going out again
about the 6th hour and the 9th hour he did the same.
And about the 11th hour he went out and found others standing.
And he said to them, Why do you stand here idle all day?
And they said to him, because no one has hired us.
He said to them, You go into my vineyard.
Then, too, when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said
to his foreman, Call the laborers and pay them their
wages, beginning with the last up to the first.
When those hired about the 11th hour came, each of them received
a denarius. Now when those hired came first,
when those hired first came, they thought they would receive
more. But each of them also received a
denarius, and upon receiving it, they grumbled at the master of
the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you
gave made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day
in the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them.
Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a
denarius? Take what belongs to you and go.
I choose to give to the last worker as I give to you.
Am I not allowed to do what I chose with what belongs to me?
And do you begrudge my generosity?
And so the last will be first and the first will be last.
This is the word of the Lord. Dear God, we do give you thanks
for your word as always, and we pray that you would use it to
transform our lives. Lord, make us receptables of
your grace and make us distributors of your grace.
We pray through Christ our Lord, we ask, Amen.
Please be feeding. If you would grab your Bibles
and turn to Matthew chapter 20. Matthew chapter 20.
How do you measure spiritual growth?
How do we measure our spiritual growth?
My father had a wall, a particular wall in a closet
there. As we grew up as kids, every
year he had US against the wall there and he marked our
measurement. That was very easy to measure
and and keep track of how we were growing as children.
How did we grow up physically? That was easy to see.
Well, how do you measure spiritual growth?
In particular, how do you measure spiritual growth of a
whole congregation? How do we measure the spiritual
growth of Hebron Church? Over the past couple of months
we've been looking at a certain phrase in which we kind of
articulate both what we think we are as a church.
This describes us as a church right now, but also it describes
our aspiration, where we want to be, who we want to become more
and more clearly like this. The phrase goes like this.
Hebron is a biblically based, Christ centered community of
disciples, A Reformed classically evangelical church
in the Presbyterian tradition, worshipping, growing and serving
Christ in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh and beyond.
This is kind of a description, I think and I hope, of who we are
as a church. And I hope is we read that if
you've been a fellowship, part of our fellowship for some time,
you can kind of chart and say, yeah, that's kind of who we are.
But I hope you also see that we're not fulfilling nearly that
kind of characteristic as we want to.
We want to be more biblically based.
We want to be more Christ centered.
We want to reflect more of the Reformed tradition.
We want to reflect more what it means to be classically
evangelical. We want to reflect more what it
means to be Presbyterian. All of these desires hold
forward to us what we want to grow towards.
Well, how do you measure that? How do you measure growth
spiritually? Now, there's lots of different
ways, I assume we could keep track of how many people are in
Bible studies. We could keep track of how many
people are serving in different areas.
We could talk about our prayer life together.
We could share talk about the way in which we share the gospel
with other folks. We could talk about our maturity
in Christ individually. All of that is relevant, I'm
sure. What I want to do is I want to
highlight one particular characteristic, 1 trait that I
think is woven through all of these character traits in which
we're talking about as a church, and try to identify it as the
character trait that we can measure, that we can see in
terms of are we developing, growing the way that we should
as a congregation. And of course, the challenge is,
are you growing individually in this way as well?
That character trait that I'm talking about is grace.
If we are going to be a biblically based church, we are
going to be a church, a community of disciples that is
grounded in grace for the message of redemption.
The message of the Bible is a message of grace and God's
grace. If we're going to be a reformed
community, we are going to be a community that prioritizes
grace, and the grace covers all kinds of things.
If we're going to be Presbyterian in the way in which
we act and function, our grace is not just going to direct the
way in which we understand our faith, but it's going to direct
the way in which we live out our faith.
If we're going to be Christ centered, we are going to be
Christ like, and that means we are going to reflect that
character that is central to Christ's own character, which is
His grace. This grace is something that I
want us to use as a measuring stick to try to evaluate how are
we doing as far as we're going in these directions.
Do we understand grace? Have we received grace and are
we showing grace? Do we understand grace now?
We talk about grace a lot at this church, as every church
must if we're going to be faithful to the Scriptures.
We're going to talk about the fact that God gives us good
things. And to a lot of people, that's
what grace is, God giving us good things.
God gives us wonderful things every day.
You woke up this morning and you were overwhelmed with good
things that the Lord gave us. That's not grace.
Those are blessings, and it's great to have blessings pour out
upon us. That's wonderful.
But when the Scriptures identify grace, they're not talking about
the good things that God gives us.
They're talking about the good things that God gives us,
specifically to those who are undeserving.
If we're going to be a gracious community, we can't just speak
of the goodness of God's grace, the goodness of God's blessings.
We have to specify that those good blessings come to those who
are undeserving. That's what identifies a
community of grace, a community of believers at what's
identifies an individual who is embraced and understood grace
that they are receiving this from God.
Not simply it's because it's a good things that God's pouring
out upon us, but it's good things that God's pours out upon
us that we do not deserve. Now we talked a lot about that,
but there's a measuring stick. I think at least one has worked
in my life, all all my life as a Christian about to the extent to
which I understand grace, I understand it.
I can preach it, I can read the definition, I can read books
about it. I understand what grace is, but
how well do I receive Grace has been measured through ages by my
reception, by my understanding of the parable of the vineyard
workers, the parable that I just read for us.
How I responded, how I have responded to that parable
through my Christian life has done a wonderful job of
measuring for me, not my intellectual understanding of
grace, but my reception of grace into my own life.
I would like to think that it might do the same for you.
The the parable is really quite understandable.
It's a straightforward parable. Here we have a master of the
house, which again we're supposed to identify very
clearly is representative of God himself.
The master of a house has this massive vineyard and through a
vineyard, in order to care for a vineyard at different times
throughout a vineyard's life cycle needs more workers.
So you need a lot more workers at the beginning of a vineyard
when you're first planting and preparing the vineyard and then
towards the end, particularly at the time, you need a lot of
extra workers. And So what the vineyard owner
does is he goes and he hires day laborers.
He hires people that will work that particular day.
And we see this in verse 2 that he goes to the marketplace and
most most likely we're not told where he's finding these
laborers, but most likely they gathered at the marketplace, the
local marketplace. The vineyard owner would go and
say, hey, I'm looking for X number of workers, and the
people would line up and then he would negotiate with them a pay
scale and he negotiates with them a denarius.
Now, a denarius is a normal day's wage for a professional.
That's what the Roman Legion soldiers would get for a day's
labor. So by paying a day laborer or a
manual labor denarius a day, that's actually a good wage.
So right off the bat, the owner is, it's not outrageous, but
it's a good wage. He's demonstrating his
generosity by giving the workers a denarius a day.
So he sends those workers into the vineyard and they start
working. About 3 hours later he goes back
to the marketplace and he rounds up some more guys.
And you notice this in verses 3 and 4 where he doesn't identify
how much he's going to pay them. He just says I will do what is
right by you. And evidently this vineyard
worker has a kind of reputation around town, etcetera, that
people say, fine, we'll take a take, take it on that those
terms. And they go into the and begin
to work. So the guys start working in the
third hour, that's about 9:00. So the first hour is at six or
the beginning time is at 6:00 in the morning, 6:00 AM and then
the third hour is 9:00 AM. He goes back and does the same
thing at noon and at 3:00 PM he does this planning on stopping
working at 6:00. In the 11th hour, 5:00 he goes
out and rounds up some more workers and he sends them into
the into the vineyard as well. OK, so far so good.
The whistle blows, the day is over.
All the workers come gather around the foreman and the owner
of the owner says, now here's what I want you to pay.
I want you to pay the guys that came and worked only one hour.
So the 11th hour guys, the 5:00 guys, I want you to pay them a
denarius. So they pay the denarius and all
the other workers are standing around watching this happen.
The guys that have in the vineyard working for 12 hours
naturally think to themselves, hey, we're going to get paid
more. Maybe it's unrealistic to think
that we get 12 denarius that he'd multiply our time by 12,
but certainly we're going to get a lot more money when it comes
to here, to us. And so when they show up to get
their pay, they get a denarius and they grumble.
Now I have to say that when I first became a Christian, I read
this passage. I read through the scriptures.
I knew that I was supposed to read the scriptures.
I read the scriptures. There were lots of the parts of
the scriptures that I didn't understand.
I understood this. I didn't like it.
I completely associated with the workers.
That is, this is a monstrous, unfair situation.
This is unjust. How can you do that?
How can you give the the workers that have been working all day
long the same amount that you only paid those that are working
just one hour? Now, I was a young believer.
I was willing to follow the Lord.
I was willing to follow the scriptures.
And so the scriptures say that this is the way God functions.
So I say, OK, I understand it. I mean, I accept it, but I
didn't accept it. I didn't understand it.
I, I was really struggling and I was really offended that that
God would work this way, that he would handle things so unfairly.
And let me tell you, commentators fall all over
themselves trying to explain this kind of situation.
So just earlier this week, I read to 1 commentator that says,
look, what happened is that the workers that he hired at the
beginning of the day were so bad.
That's why he had to keep coming at the third hour, the 6th hour
and the 9th hour. They were so bad so that they
had. And the guys that came at the
11th hour were such good workers that they did as much work
during the one hour that they did during the 12 hours.
And that makes perfect sense. And it completely robs the
parable of everything. The parable makes exactly the
opposite point. And the parable is supposed to
rub you wrong. And if it doesn't rub you wrong,
then I need to talk with you across the board.
OK. And so then, and then I read
this other guy said, no, it was the coins, the people that got
the the the 11th hour folks that only worked one hour, they got
copper coins, which weren't as worth as much as the gold coins
that the workers at the end got. Again, completely robbing the
parable of its meaning. Because you're supposed to sit
there and say, wait a minute, why is it that the guys who only
work an hour get paid the same thing?
The guys at work 12 hours? How is this fair?
Now, as I grew in my understanding of God, and as I
grew up mostly in my understanding of my own sin and
depravity, and as I understood God's salvation in my own life,
I began to understand grace. I began to look at this
perspective not from a question of fairness, but a question of
goodness, goodness being poured out upon those who do not
deserve it. And after a couple years of
being a young believer, I started to read this parable.
And I said, yeah, but do you know what Yeah, Bud is?
Yeah. But yeah, I kind of understood.
You're in a discussion with somebody.
You're disagreeing with them, and they make a really good
point. And you kind of go, yeah, but
you're still unwilling to hold to, to let go of your own
position. So it's.
Yeah, but yeah. But yeah.
And so. OK, so I tell you, look, this
parable is about grace. This parable is about God doing
good things to his people. And you read it and then you
kind of go, OK, sounds monstrously unfair when you
first read it. It just sounds just wrong that
God would do such a thing. So unjust.
And then I say, no, it's about grace.
It's about God giving to those who don't deserve it.
They don't deserve it. And still God's pouring out
grace. And you kind of go, yeah, but
yeah, but. And as I grew older in my faith
and became more aware of my own sinfulness and more aware of
God's goodness and his love and more aware of what grace is, the
yeah, but became dimmer and dimmer and dimmer in my mind.
And I want to get to that spot where I can't hear it at all
because all I hear is the goodness of God and all I see
and I all I can, all I can do is rejoice mightily that those 11th
hour people got a full denarius. Now, if you're like me, you
probably think of yourself as one of the first group of
workers. OK, maybe not.
There are those super Christians out there that are working in
God's laboring in God's fields all the time, Jerry, like, you
know, I so I just caught him in my you know, there are those,
there are those guys who have been working in the day all all
day long. OK, I understand.
But I'm an, I'm 1/3 hour. I'm a 9:00 guy or a noon guy.
Maybe I'm a three o'clock guy, man.
I'm an 1159 guy and I know that I am, and so are you and so are
you. And God's grace is US seeing
God's goodness given to people who are 1159 folk and rejoicing
in that. Not sitting there grumbling that
that person has received grace, but being overwhelmed by that
and saying, wow, this is God's grace to us.
This is God's goodness to us. And interacting with a lot of
you and knowing some of you as I do, I know that you're fighting
to get there. You're trying to to tune out the
yeah, but the yeah, but is getting smaller and smaller as
God's grace gets bigger and bigger.
When you realize who you are and you realize that you're on the
11:59 or then you're grateful when God shows his mercy to that
Islamic terrorist. Where to that perverted person
that preaches the culture, this horrific message, or this person
that really aggravates you from the other side of the political
spectrum? And when God reaches them and
touches them with grace, wait a minute.
Not changes them and makes them perfect?
Not changes them and makes them perfect.
That that's an easy person to love, but in the midst of their
sinfulness, in the midst of their horror, in the midst of
their brokenness, nevertheless, God loves them.
You know that God loves them. You see God love them and that
makes you go yes God, great, wonderful.
It'll be wonderful if you change them too, Lord, but great for
how far you've got them so far. Because that's what grace is.
That's what God has done in your life.
He's given you good, wonderful things.
That's great. Those are God's blessings.
Luckily, God pours those out upon the world, but
specifically, He's given to us the grace and the blessings that
we do not deserve until you can read the parable of the vineyard
workers and get to the end of it and go.
That's great. I'm so glad God did that.
You haven't yet understood grace.
You haven't yet embraced grace. And when I talk with people
about God's grace, when I talk with myself about God's grace, I
still hear yeah. But all too often, if you're
saying yeah, but in your head, you've got to think again.
You got to read more. You got to understand more.
You got to pray more, you got to talk to me more, you got to talk
to somebody else more because there's going to be a time where
the yeah, but disappears and all you see is the beauty of God's
grace. But having received grace is
only half of the issue. I believe if we are community
here that truly understands God giving good things to people who
don't deserve it, and when we see it happen in this world, we
rejoice. We don't think, yeah, but all we
do is rejoice. When we become that kind of a
church, we are growing. We are maturing into what we
think the Bible calls us to be. But more than that, Grace is
also a measuring stick, not in terms of how much we receive or
how we understand what we receive, but what we share with
other people. This is the parable that Jerry
read for us, the parable of the unmerciful servant.
Many of you know this parable. It's a pretty straightforward as
well. Once again, you've got a king
that wants to settle debts. We're supposed to understand the
king here in terms of in terms of God himself wants to settle
those who owe him a debt. And he calls before him a
servant who owes him 10,000 talents.
Now 10,000 talents translates up into 4000 lifetimes worth of
salary, 4000 lifetimes worth of salary.
That's how much 10,000 talents is.
That's how much the servant owes.
He owes this and, and it's it's intended to be ridiculous.
The amount that Jesus uses in this parable is intended to be
it's not billions, it's gazillions.
It's intended to be a number that is so outrageous that you
just look at it and go, OK, I get the point.
There's this horrific amount of money somehow that God owes.
OK, so God is owed this horrific amount of money, this
overwhelming, this 10,004 thousand lifetime's worth of
money. And the and the servant falls on
his knees before the king, and says, Be merciful with me,
pleased with him, would not forgive me my debts.
He pleads with him and says let me have time and I'll pay it
off, which is ludicrous. It's stupid on its face.
You know, that's not, that's not, that's impossible.
And the king knows that and so doesn't say, OK, fine, go live
your 4000 lifetimes and pay me my money back.
He just says, forget it. I'll just forgive you your debt.
He forgives him his debt, and that servant, having received
that immense grace, that overwhelming gratitude, that
1159 hour grace that is poured out into this servant's life,
turns around and finds another servant that owes him 100
denarii. 100 denarii is about 6 months worth of wages.
So it's a lot of money. He owes him a lot of money.
It's six months worth of wages compared to 4000 lifetimes of
wages. And of course, what we know, the
servant refuses to give grace to this to his fellow servant,
instead throws him into prison until he pays back all his debt.
That was something that was a confusing about debtors prison
back then. You'd be thrown into prison and
you wouldn't get out until you paid off the money.
But you're in prison. So how can you work for the
money? You sell your kids, which might
sound like an attractive never mind you sell your kids, you do
something like that. That's what that's what debtors
prison was for this young man and that's what this unfaithful
servant does. And So what happens?
Of course the king goes ballistic and says, do you not
realize the grace that you have received?
Have you not been a person that has received this 11th hour
grace? Don't you realize who you are
and what you have received? Then how could you not?
My mouth runs away from me occasionally.
And some of you have been beneficiaries of that.
No, the non beneficiaries of that.
I have this utter fear that one of these days I'm going to be up
front here and I'm going to swear.
I'm not a big swear, but I do once in a while.
Something slips out occasionally and I'm terrified that one of
these days I'm going to do it. I'm terrified for a couple of
reasons. One, that would be a horrible
reflection upon my Lord. There's a reason why God calls
us to watch our tongue. There's a reason why our tongue
is so measure of of our standing before the Lord and all that
kind of stuff. So I have an appropriate fear
that I don't want to do that. It's something that's it would
be terrible witness as far as all that's concerned.
But you know why I'm really terrified of doing it?
Because five years from now, a number of you are going to
remember that I did it. Five years from now, you're
going to make jokes that I swore in the pulpit. 5 years from now,
that's still going to be a turn off to some of you people.
Because as loath as slow as we are to grasp, the Goddess poured
us out grace, so much slower are we to actually show that grace
to other people. And I know that to be true, and
you do too. How many of you think that you
would be wonderfully comfortable coming into this community with
your sins wide open, publicly exposed?
You get accused of something and it gets into the papers and
everybody knows it. Would you feel comfortable
walking into this group knowing that you were going to receive
that which you do not deserve? How do you respond to people
when you know that they're gossiping about you?
You just know they are because people do, and they're gossiping
about you and they're sitting right across the room from you.
How do you respond to them? You guys know what cancel
culture is. Cancer culture is the antithesis
of grace. Grace is exactly the opposite of
canceled culture. Grace is exactly the opposite of
unfriending somebody. Grace is exactly the opposite of
staying, of saying, have you ever thought in your head, you
know what? That's just it.
They've crossed the line there. Is there anything that the that
the parable has taught us other than that there is no line?
There is no line for you? How wonderful is that?
Then? How could there possibly be a
line for the person you're sitting next to until we become
a community of grace. I, by the way, I feel like I'm
wanging on you guys. I don't mean to do that.
And I don't even know what Wang means.
I, I, I, I feel like I am not saying that I, I, I don't have
in my mind these different scenarios.
Like while I remember when you were ungracious and I remember
when you were. I don't have particular things
in mind. I simply know this, that if we
were reflecting the grace that God gave us to our interactions
with one another, this place would be different.
I don't know how I, I don't, I can't say how, but we're getting
there. We're on the way there.
But the measure of, of this community's health, the measure
to which we are fulfilling what the, what our statement says
about us, that we're a Bible believing, a Christ centered
community of believers. The measure of that is how
gracious we are with each other. And gracious is not treating
each other nice. You're good at that.
We got a lot of nice people in this room.
Grace is treating like people like they don't deserve where
you know that person talks about you behind their back.
You know that person has betrayed you and yet you're
going to treat them like they don't deserve.
That's when we're going to know that we're a community the way
God wants us to be, that we're a community of grace.
When you learn, when you show that kind of grace to somebody
else, God, make it so in my life, make it so in our life,
make it so. Lord, we pray, let's.