Septuagesima January 28, 2018

Matthew 20:1-16 
WORKING IN THE VINEYARD

To meditate on the gospel that is preached to you is, as St. Peter says, to consider “things which angels long to look into” (1 Peter 1:12).  Think about that!  Thinking about God’s word is a very rewarding thing to do – and what a privilege! – not least of which because God blesses the one who sets his mind on things above (Colossians 3:2), as St. Paul tells us to do. 

But how high above do we set our minds.  St. Paul also warns us not to think of lofty things but to associate with the humble: “Do not be wise in your own opinion,” he says (Romans 12:16).  Well, we set our minds on things above by keeping our minds focused on what is revealed here below.  We study Holy Scripture.  We do so as lowly beggars.  We do not let our minds try and delve into the mind of God by any other means than through his self-revealing word.  And where our minds can delve no further, we stop, lest the old adage prove true: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”  

When God doesn’t tell us the answer we’re looking for, we stop.  Only a fool presumes to learn something about God which God himself has not disclosed.  We fear God, knowing that his thoughts are higher than ours and that he has revealed all that is needful and sufficient for our salvation right there in the Bible.  The Bible speaks to sinners in need of a Savior, not to skeptics who have put God on trial.  Whoever approaches the word of God as anything other than a student in need of instruction will lead himself into error.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  The same godly fear that compels us to meditate on God’s word to begin with is the holy fear that considers our own limits and is content with what God says. 

Everything we need for salvation is taught in God’s word.  God’s word alone satisfies our deepest need.  Some reject God’s word and so reject salvation.  Some receive God’s word, but then nagging questions lead them to be dissatisfied with it, and so they want to figure out what God in his wisdom has chosen to keep hidden from human eyes.  This is dangerous.  It puts God to the test.  Since God does not reveal the answers that many seek, where do you suppose people look for the answers?  Of course.  They look inside their own minds.  They figure out what makes sense to them, and then they claim that God revealed it to them somehow or that it’s their own interpretation of the Bible. 

Why some and not others?  There’s a question people ask, and one I’d like to respond to today.  Why are many called, but only few chosen?  Who does God think he is?  Well, he thinks he’s God.  He knows the answer.  But he won’t answer the question, because we don’t need to know.  He simply says, as he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion” (Romans 9:15, Exodus 33:19).

But this raises an objection in many minds.  If God saves us by grace alone, why doesn’t he save everyone?  Does he choose to damn some?  And if God only chooses some to save, what is it about us that made God choose us?  Against these thoughts, we must affirm and defend two truths:

1)   Whoever is lost is not destined by God to hell, but is lost by his own fault alone; and

2)   Whoever is saved is not saved by some sort of merit on his part but out of pure grace alone. 

“Many are called but few are chosen.”  So says Jesus.  God chooses only few to be saved.  From eternity, before creation itself, God chose for himself those who would be finally saved.  This is what we call the doctrine of election.  To make sense of this, many have supposed that God must therefore also choose from eternity those he will damn.  But this is not true.  All fall short.  God does not select anyone to condemn.  He chooses from those who are already condemned whom he will save.  Though few are chosen, the Bible tells us that God desires to save all. 

“As I live,” says the Lord God, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)

And St. Peter writes,

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) 

And St. Paul writes to St. Timothy,

[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.
(1 Timothy 2:4-6) 

And speaking of this Mediator, Jesus reminds us of the image of the serpent on the cross and says,

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16-17)

God desires to save all.  The reason some do not believe is not God’s fault.  God does not elect, or choose, anyone to be damned.  He is not the author of evil.  The devil is.  The devil is the father of lies.  The reason people do not believe is because they reject God’s grace, not because God’s grace was not for them.  Jesus said shortly before he died on the cross, as he wept over Jerusalem:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37)

And as the Bible says also,

“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:7, Psalm 95:7, 8) 

God hardens hearts that have already hardened themselves.  This is what he did to Pharaoh.  It was punishment for his stubborn resistance.  But Pharaoh’s resistance was his own.  God does not choose any beforehand to reject his mercy.  That blame falls on the one who is condemned. 

Second, some suppose that if the cause of one’s damnation is not in God, but in man, which is true, then the cause of salvation must also be in man.  This is false.  If man’s decision causes him to reject grace freely offered, then man’s decision must also cause him to accept the grace freely offered.  This is not true.  All glory belongs to God.  Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15:16).  

This morning’s theme is the grace of God.  Nothing is so marvelous and wonderful and beyond our understanding as the grace of God.  And so, of all mysteries revealed in Holy Scripture, nothing stands to be more twisted either.  The grace of God separates God’s mind infinitely from our minds.  We live and operate in a system of merit and reward.  Our natural minds cannot escape this way of thinking.  We think in terms of what we can earn by our works.  God thinks in terms of freely giving to undeserving sinners the merit and worthiness of Christ whose work alone earns a thing. 

Those who came into the vineyard first worked for wages.  The wages were generous enough.  They accepted the terms.  But they had no thought that their calling was by grace.  So when those who came last received the same, they naturally assumed that their labor would be worth more.  But they did not understand grace.  They did not understand where they began and so they could not understand where they should finish.  They began as sinners in need.  And so they would finish.  

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”  So begins Ephesians chapter 2.  The call to work in the vineyard is a not the calling of fit and coveted laborers.  It is a call of pure grace.  It is the calling of lazy and even dead laborers to work with strength that they do not naturally have.  God did not call you to faith because he thought you’d make such a good Christian.  He called you to faith by pure mercy.  So, to attribute value to our work is to deny the calling of the gospel.  As St. Paul says in Galatians 3:

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? (Galatians 3:2-3)

So, having been called by pure grace, will you now expect your works to earn you salvation?  Or does God call you by grace so you may earn more grace?  No!  “[For] to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt,” as Paul says in Romans 4, “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.”  To him who does not work – not that he does not work, to be sure.  But he does not count his work as the cause of God’s grace.  Consider what St. Paul says just a few verses later in Ephesians 2, which I quoted a minute ago:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

We are his workmanship.  God created us in Christ.  He created us to rely on his grace even as we bear fruit.  He does not call us to work because there is something lacking or unwilling in his grace.  He does not call us to work so that we might produce something that earns our calling.  He calls us to good works because it is in doing good works that we both honor God and serve our neighbor whom God loves.  And so it is also that we learn to love that which is good. Good works are the fruit of faith, not the cause.  They please God because faith pleases God.  God rewards works by pure grace.

God calls us to work so that we might not be idle.  It is a sin to be idle.  To be idle is to not be pondering God’s word or invitation or mercy or grace.  It is to have no faith.  Apart from faith all works are nothing but idle thumb-twiddling before God and can give no peace.  Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, as they say.  Well, an idle mind is the devil’s home.  God calls us to be his workmanship – to labor in his vineyard – not so that we earn something, but so that we might be set free from dead works of darkness and rejoice in the works of God.  He who gives no thought to doing good gives equally little thought to the good that God has done for him.  But on the same note, he who puts his trust in the good he does do – even if he boasts of how God called him to do it, has rejected the good that God has done for him.  

This is what happened to those who were called first.  They became last.  They were working for wages.  They despised those who were called last because their work was easy.  The first did their work under a heavy burden and a hot sun.  They despised the work God called them to, but endured it for the reward they agreed to.  They thought that the master’s goodness to those who worked the easiest meant that they had earned more goodness.  But their despised him for his goodness.  Their burden was heavy because they were working for pay.  The sun was hot because they worked under the demands of the law and not under the shade of God’s mercy. 

The doctrine of election is a doctrine of the gospel, not the law.  Never does God speak of choosing anyone except by grace.  Never does God give his reason for choosing you as anything other than what Christ has done and completed.  If you lack good works, if you see sin and pride and laziness in yourself and if you are tempted to wonder whether God’s choice for you is sure, you are invited to ponder God’s word.  Consider his invitation.  Whom does he call to work?  He calls sinners.  You will not find God’s choice for you in your own work, but in the work of Jesus for you. 

“Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.” (Colossians 3:11-13)

The same power you have to know yourself as God’s elect is the power you have to live and work as God’s elect.  Christ forgave you.  What is in the mind of God?  God forgave you.  Am I good enough?  Christ forgave you.  Has God chosen me?  Christ forgave you. 

Lord's Supper – Lamb of God – given for you!