The renowned 19th century Bible expositor J. C. Ryle said, “The rulers of this world are seldom friendly to the cause of God.”

How true!  And nowhere is that truth more evident than in Matthew 2 when King Herod tried to kill God’s greatest cause, the infant Jesus. This is the original story of the real Grinch who didn’t just try to steal Christmas, he tried to kill Christmas.

It’s a bizarre story when you think about it; it doesn’t seem to belong in the Christmas account. I’ll bet you won’t get a card next Christmas depicting Herod killing the babies of Bethlehem. While you might see the “Nutcracker Suite”, you’re not likely to attend the “Slaughter of the Innocents”. Your music director will likely lead the congregation to sing “Away In A Manger”, but not “Away With the Baby Jesus!”

It is a part of the story we would just as soon forget, but there it is, tucked into the Christmas story by God’s design for our benefit and encouragement. I think it’s there, in part, because Herod was just the first of a long line of Grinches right up to this day that are always trying to kill our Christmas and steal our joy and destroy the incarnational plan of God in our lives.  Jesus, who was obviously and personally familiar with “the Grinch”, said in John 10:10,

“The thief’s  purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”

Here is one of the things I believe the Holy Spirit, who inspired at Mathew’s account, wanted you to know from this story: Back then, Herod couldn’t destroy Jesus, and right now, no ruler, no person, no force, no circumstance, no disappointment can stop the cause that God has birthed in you! God is committed to giving you “a rich and satisfying life”, both now and for all eternity!

What cause has God birthed in you?  Has some real life Grinch in the form of a person or a circumstance tried to steal it from you?  Take your concern to God and trust.  Memorize and pray back Psalm 138:8 to God all week long:

“The Lord will perfect that which concerns me!”

Something To Think About

“Walk boldly and wisely…There is a hand above that will help you on.” ~Philip James Bailey

Does Christ’s call to discipleship seem a little extreme in comparison to the “easy believism” that passes for discipleship today? You will likely hear a lot more about “God’s promise” of a life of comfort, security and success these days from spiritual leaders than straight talk on self-denial and cross bearing.

Jesus made no of promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who would follow him. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” (John 6:53-55) if they wanted a part in him. He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues. And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out.

Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. They left everything they had and everything they knew for a life that promised nothing except a chance to advance God’s kingdom in a resistant, hostile world. They fully understood that the overwhelming bulk of their rewards would come only afterwards, in the afterlife.

And, despite Christ’s less than appealing recruitment campaign, these first disciples, followed in the years to come by countless thousands of other hungry seekers, flocked to this self-denying, cross-bearing brand of Christianity. Jesus was a tough act to follow, literally, but these first disciples eagerly signed up—and they changed the world.

How? Simply by doing what Jesus had asked: They denied themselves, took up their crosses, and laid down their lives for his sake. Without a political voice, financial resources, social standing, and military might, this unlikely ragtag band of followers conquered the Roman Empire in less than three hundred years.

Such was this brand of fully committed discipleship’s radical power!

Do you worry, as I do, that Christ’s call to costly discipleship would empty most churches in our day not only if it were demanded, but even if it were merely taught? Though most believers give mental assent to cross-bearing and self-denial, in reality there is very little evidence of it in their lives, or in their churches of this kind of full-throttle discipleship.

If Jesus rebuked Peter (Matthew 16:23) — “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” — for suggesting Christianity without a cross (Matthew 16:24), what do you suppose he would say to we who have suggested Christian discipleship without cross-bearing?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once remarked, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” We need to remind ourselves of that truth, because you likely won’t hear it from too many pulpits today. A.W. Tozer commented that “it has become popular to preach a painless Christianity and automatic saintliness. It has become part of our ‘instant’ culture. ‘Just pour a little water on it, stir mildly, pick up a gospel tract, and you are on your Christian way.’”

We must aggressively and boldly reject that brand of faith, because that is not the discipleship to which Jesus has called us. And that is not the discipleship that I want for my life.

How about you?

Something To Consider
“Salvation is free … but discipleship will cost you your life.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a nice little sidebar to the Easter story, it is central and essential to authentic Christian faith.  That is why skeptics, scoffers and Satanic forces have tried to explain it away for two thousand years.  However, you and I can be confident that the resurrection is not just some myth perpetuated by fanatical followers, it is the truth. How do we know that?  There is proof of life!

To begin with, there is an amazing amount of physical proof.  In Matthew’s resurrection account, the Jewish leaders went to great lengths to prevent a story about this dead Messiah magically rising from the grave, so they sealed the tomb and posted a guard unit. The initial evidence that a resurrection occurred was the broken seal, which, if tampered with, carried severe consequences under Roman law. So frightened by this broken seal and the empty tomb was the battled-hardened Roman guard unit that they deserted their post—an act punishable by death.

In Mark’s Gospel, the evidence shows the large stone over the tomb’s entrance had been moved. Mark 16 says the three women who came to anoint Jesus’ body were concerned about how the stone—typically weighing between three to four thousand pounds according to archaeologists—would get rolled back from the tomb. The wording of the Greek text in Mark suggests that this stone wasn’t just rolled to one side, it was literally picked up and carried away—amazing proof that something supernatural had happened.

In Luke’s account, another physical proof is the empty tomb itself.  All anyone had to do to disprove this story was show a body in a tomb. Produce a dead body and the story dies.

Finally, in John’s Gospel, we find physical evidence of the grave-clothes, but no body:  These linen burial cloths, soaked with almost one hundred pounds of spices and myrrh, were wrapped around the body. When this process was done the myrrh became like gum, making the clothes very hard to remove. A hastily removed body was not such an easy thing.

Not only was there physical evidence, there were visual proofs.  In the accounts of five different writers, the risen Christ made thirteen separate appearances to a total of 557 witnesses who saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes.  In I Corinthians 15:6, the Apostle Paul said most of the 500 plus eye-witnesses were still alive at the time of his writing who could verify what had happened.

As amazing as the physical evidence and the eye-witness proof is, the most amazing evidence, however, is the transformational proof in the changed lives of Christ’s followers.  What else could account for eleven cowardly disciples becoming bold proclaimers of the resurrection and ultimately giving their lives for this cause. What else could account for a brilliant Jewish scholar and anti-Christian fanatic named Paul being converted and becoming the most effective evangelist ever—and ultimately getting beheaded for his belief in the One whom he had formerly persecuted.

Time and space do not permit listing the many other proofs of the resurrection here, but Acts 1:3 says, “During the forty days after his crucifixion, Jesus appeared to these people many times with convincing proofs that he was actually alive.” When you consider the historical, verifiable evidence—convincing physical, visual and the transformational proof of the resurrection—you are forced to decide about Jesus: He is either the risen Lord, or this is the most incredible hoax ever foisted upon humanity. Either Christianity is a body of truth worthy of ordering your life by, or it ought to be swept into the dustbin of history.

Dr. William F. Albright, the famous Johns Hopkins archaeologist, said, “For a mere legend [or lie or the psychological fabrications of lunatics] about Christ…to have gained circulation and to have had the impact it had [in the 1st century], without one shred of basis in fact, is [unbelievable].”

In other words, to deny the resurrection would be harder to swallow than the truth.

“Thousands and tens of thousands have gone through the evidence which attests the resurrection of Christ, piece by piece, as carefully as ever a judge summed up on the most important case. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others, but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fitter evidence and every kind.” ~Thomas Arnold

What If God Took Over?

The Bible says if you choose to follow the One who is alive, you will experience resurrection power.  Follow the proof and you will find the power.  Accept the resurrection as truth, accept the Risen Christ as Savior and Lord, and you will experience true Easter power.

“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11)

Jesus died on Good Friday, but rose again on Easter Sunday, so that you and I can live with hope on Monday—and every other day of the week throughout life and for all eternity.  That is what Peter calls living hope:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (I Peter 1:3)

When you fully embrace this living hope, you will quit living like Jesus is still dead! That is our problem, I think: We embrace Good Friday and rejoice in Resurrection Sunday, but go back to work or school on Monday and live as if the Lord’s body is still in the tomb.

The story is told of Martin Luther, who once spent three days in a deep depression over something that had gone wrong.  On the third day his wife, Katie, came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes. Luther asked, “Who’s dead?” She replied, “God!” Luther was offended, “What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die.” Kate replied, “Well, the way you’ve been acting I was sure He had!”

Peter calls to us today, to snap out of post-Easter funk, because Jesus lives! We have a living hope that really matters beyond Easter!”  I love how historian Jaroslav Pelikan said it, “If Christ is risen—nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

What difference does an Easter resurrection make on a back-to-work Monday?

First, Christ’s death and resurrection are the foundation of your faith.  The fact is, without the resurrection, your faith (and life) is meaningless.  I Corinthians 15:14 says, “If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.”

Second, Christ’s death and resurrection are the basis of your hope.  I Corinthians 15:19-20 says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone else in the world. But Christ has been raised to life! And this makes us certain that we will also be raised to life.” Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor of the soul, firm and secure.” Romans 5:5 say this “hope does not disappoint us!”

Third, Christ’s death and resurrection are the guarantee of your resurrection.  Jesus said in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” If you do—believe, that is—the cross and the empty tomb become God’s signature on the Divine contract with you assuring you of eternal life after you die.

Fourth, Christ’s death and resurrection are the fountainhead of God’s love for you. John 3:16 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.” Yes, God loves “the world”, according to that verse, but you are the “whoever” the Apostle John had in mind when he penned those famous words.

Do you want to radically change your Monday mornings from here on out? Embrace God’s eternal, inexhaustible love for you that was on display when Jesus forgave your sins by dying on the cross and rising from the tomb on the third day.

Begin to live Easter every day of the year…especially come Monday morning!

“Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.” ~Count Otto von Bismarck

What If God Took Over?

The fact remains, even though Jesus died, he rose again. The stone was moved—the tomb is still empty!  That is why your faith is a living hope!  So take Easter with you into Monday…and Tuesday…and…well, you get the idea.  When you live Easter every day of the week, you will find stones still get moved and tombs still get emptied when you make Christ’s death and resurrection the foundation of your faith.

Sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but everybody gets a Judas in life.  At one point or another, you will bear the pain of someone you trusted thrusting a knife in your back.  It is simply, and sadly, the awful reality of living in a broken world alongside fallen human beings.

Among the 60 conspirators who assassinated the Roman leader on March 15, 44 BC was Marcus Junius Brutus. Caesar not only trusted Brutus, he favored him as a son.  According to Roman historians, Caesar first resisted his assassins, but when he saw Brutus among them with his dagger drawn, he gave up. He pulled the top part of his robe over his face, and uttered those heartrending words immortalized by Shakespeare, “Et tu Brutus”, or as the historians have recorded, “You, too, my child?”

Julius Caesar was not the only one to know such treachery. The passionate Scottish patriot William Wallace experienced it when Earl Robert de Bruce betrayed him. Not even the brightest theological mind who ever lived—the Apostle Paul—or the most perfect human being ever—Jesus Christ—was spared. No one gets a pass on betrayal.

So here’s the thing: Are you willing to consider the possibility that God has a far deeper work to do in you that can only come through the betrayer’s knife?  Charles Spurgeon said,

“I bear willing witness that I owe more to the fire, the hammer and the file than to anything else in the Lord’s workshop.  I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod.  When my schoolroom is darkened, I see the most.”

The truth is, the fire, the hammer and the file of a betrayal may result in some of God’s finest craftsmanship—if you keep your heart soft and your eye on him. If you are going through the pain of a betrayer’s wound right now, remember, you are walking where great people have walked before. Their greatness came because they didn’t allow betrayal to ruin them; they learned how to turn their pain into greater usefulness for the Lord.

Jesus responded to Judas’ money-making treachery with obedient submission to God—and transformed the world.  Perhaps God wants to use your pain to form you, and transform your world.

Only a friend can betray a friend, a stranger has nothing to gain
Only a friend comes close enough to ever cause so much pain.
~Michael Card

What If God Took Over?

If you are going through the pain of betrayal, memorize and pray this psalm of David, who knew a little about betrayal:

“But I call to God, and the LORD saves me.  Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice…Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.” ~Psalm 55:16-17, 22

Is hell for real…and forever?  Once again, that has become a hot topic in evangelical circles. A certain well-known pastor of one of America’s so-called “mega-churches” has seemed to indicate that possibly, just maybe, perhaps there is an escape clause in the whole “eternal” part of the doctrine of hell.

On what does he base this departure from orthodox theology?  The love of God.  The thought behind this is that God’s love will ultimately triumph over man’s sinfulness, and in the end (even after death), every human being will come to the faith Christians have expressed in this life that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.  The general term for those who hold such a belief is “universalism.” Theologian J. I. Packer says this of universalism:

A universalist is someone who believes that every human being whom God has created or will create will finally come to enjoy the everlasting salvation into which Christians enter here and now…it appears as an extreme optimism of grace, or perhaps of nature, and sometimes, it seems, of both. But in itself it is a revisionist challenge to orthodoxy, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant evangelical; for the church has officially rated universalism a heresy ever since the second Council of Constantinople (the fifth ecumenical council, A.D. 553), when the doctrine of apokatastasis (the universal return to God and restoration of all souls) that Origen taught was anathematized.

According to Jesus, who knows more about heaven and hell than anyone, and according to other Scripture, hell is not a temporary place to pay for sins, it is a place of eternal hopelessness where sooner or later those who are there will realize there is no second chance. Leighton Ford said,

“The fire, outer darkness, the thirst [of hell] depict spiritual separation from God, moral remorse, the consciousness that one deserves what he’s getting.  Hell is disintegration—the eternal loss of being a real person. In hell the mathematician who lived for his science can’t add two and two.  The concert pianist who worshipped himself through his art can’t play a simple scale.  The man who lived for sex goes on in eternal lust, with nobody to exploit.  The woman who made a god out of fashion has a thousand dresses but no mirror!  Hell is eternal desire— eternally unfulfilled.”

Hell is an awful reality, and that is why we must to do everything we can to make it really hard for people to go there. Love requires that from us, and God’s love sent Jesus to give people every chance on this side of eternity to escape it. He, himself, paid the price to get you out of hell and into heaven!

The great preacher Henry Ironside told the story of pioneers who were making their way across the country to a place that had been opened up for homesteading.  They traveled in covered wagons, and progress was very slow.  One day they were horrified to see a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie.  It was evident that the dried grass was burning toward them rapidly.  They faced certain death. But one man knew what do, and he set fire to the grass behind them, then had them move back on it once it had burned.

As the flames roared on toward them, a little girl began to scream in terror, “Are you sure we’ll not all be burned up?” The man replied, “Child, the flames can’t reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!”

What a picture of being safe in Christ!  The fires of God’s judgment burned themselves out on Jesus, and those who are in Christ are safe forever.

Hallelujah!  We are standing where the fire has been.

“No one who is ever in hell will be able to say to God, ‘You put me here,’ and no one who is in heaven will ever be able to say, ‘I put myself here.’” ~John Hannah

What If God Took Over?

Do you know someone who has not received eternal life by placing saving faith in Jesus Christ?  What would God’s love have you to do for them?  For starters, you can pray!

Oswald Chambers said, “True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing [people] to one’s service, but by giving up oneself in selfless service to them.”

If that be true, then our greatest leadership is wherever we practice authentic servant-leadership. Our greatest influence occurs when we serve from a Christ-centered heart of love. And we are most bless-able before God when we humble ourselves in selfless service to those God has placed within our reach.

Do you want to be a great leader, have influence over people’s lives and be positioned for Divine favor?  Develop your servant-leader quotient. The late Dr. Earnest J. Campbell, Senior Minister at the historic Riverside Church in new York City from 1968-1976, gave a powerful commencement address at Princeton Seminary in 1978, and the title of his message was, “They Also Serve Who Lead.”

That title is a sermon in itself.  In his address, Campbell gave some characteristics of servant leaders that I have found personally challenging—and definitely worth emulating.  Give some thought to these as you think about your own call to servanthood and influence:

1. The servant-leader is willing to assume whatever role necessary.

2. The servant-leader understands that there is no job beneath his dignity.

3. The servant-leader is willing to pay whatever price for stability, peace, and health [in his home, business or church].

4. The servant-leader measures his success not in how submissive people are to him, but in how much they respond to his Christ-like example.

5. The servant-leader takes responsibility for and watches closely the spiritual, emotional, financial and physical well-being of those in his care.

6. The servant-leader is never too busy to or too important for interruptions to meet whatever need people may have at the moment.

7. The servant-leader is quick to forgive, slow to judge.

8. The servant-leader is ridiculously generous.

9. The servant-leader is willing to pay a high price, whatever the cost, to obey God.

10. The servant-leader willingly puts his life on the line for God, his family, and his people.

Something to really think about, isn’t it?  Have a great weekend!

Pastor Ray

Like the old E.F. Hutton commercial, when Jesus spoke, people listened. They were often left with the same reaction that Matthew 22:22 & 33 recorded: They were mesmerized. There was just something about this rabbi they had never encountered before among Israel’s many notable religious teachers.

What was it that the crowds were so amazed and astonished at whenever they heard Jesus teach? Was it Jesus’ winsome personality and his engaging speaking ability that awed them?  For sure, Jesus’ charisma and confidence were of a caliber that would impress even the most discriminating audience.  Was it the miracles that often attended his exposition of the Scripture? Certainly that would have impressed the people listening, since no other religious authority had been able to pull off signs and wonders in their sessions.

For sure, those were factors in the public’s attraction to Jesus, but what really touched them at the core was how Jesus brought the long-awaited Kingdom of God easily within their grasp. Furthermore, the incredible profundity of the absolute simplicity of Jesus’ summary of the entire law of God into two simple, doable commands was music to their ears:

“‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Amazingly, the people in Jesus’ day had never heard God’s Word explained that way before. Instead, they had been led to believe that the law of God was comprised of a list of rules and regulations that had to be religiously followed in exacting detail in order for anyone to be pleasing to God.  Unfortunately, this list of rules had become an ever-expanding playbook, and the goalpost of obedience kept getting moved further and further away from the worshiper’s ability to score.

But then Jesus came along and said that the entire law of God, rather than being a complex list of rules and unending regulations, could be simply obeyed by one important thing: Love for God!  Loving God—to joyfully reverence him, to gratefully obey him, to gladly concern yourself with the things that concern him, and to authenticate that love for God by treating other people as you, yourself, expect to be treated—that was what it meant to fulfill the entire law of God!

That, Jesus said, was the whole law, the greatest obligation, the best and most satisfying use of life; that was the only thing people really needed to worry about; that was the one important thing in life that they needed to get right: Simply love the Lord God with all of your heart!  Really, what Jesus was saying was summed up quite nicely a few centuries later by St. Augustine, who put it this way,

“Love God, and do what you want.”

Come to think of it, the complete profundity of the absolute simplicity of that one important thing amazes and astonishes me, too. Count me in with the crowd of the impressed!

“We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love.” ~Francis de Sales

What If God Took Over?

The entire law, the greatest obligation, the best and most satisfying use of your life is simply love the Lord God with all of our heart!  Is that true of you?  Take a few moments to express your love to God—he loves to hear from you!

Jesus was talking to priests and elders about submitting to the work of God, but they were resisting, while unlikely tax collectors and prostitutes were embracing it.  The Jewish leaders were unwilling to open their hearts to God, and they were jealous of Jesus—the miracles he was performing, the crowds he was garnering, the authority with which he was preaching—so much so, that a few days later, they would have him crucified.

Jesus knew all of this, so to expose their hardness of heart and yet one more time, give them a chance to respond to the work of God, he told them a parable about two sons—one who was a problem at breakfast but a delight at dinner, and one who was compliant at breakfast but absent at supper.

Then Jesus makes a very clear application in verse 31. He asked which of the two sons did the will of his Father: The one who looked the right way and said the right things, but never really changed, or the one who seemed to be so way off track but at the end of the day responded to the Father’s will?

What Jesus was saying to the priest and leaders, and to you and me by extension, was that what matters is where you are when suppertime comes.  You see, this parable isn’t about your intentions at breakfast, it’s about your actions at dinner. This is a supper story, not a breakfast parable.  Jesus is talking about the invitation to enter God’s vineyard, which is a metaphorical way of talking about responding to the will of the Father. And the will of the Father is for people to be conformed to the image of Christ. That’s the work of God in the world today:  Transforming your heart and mine into the likeness of Jesus.

What about you—are you a breakfast boy or are you a suppertime son?  If you were to honestly apply this to your own life, are you saying “yes” to the vineyard—the work of God in your life—but never really following through on it?  Or are you, even if you have so very far to go in the process of transformation, submitting your life to the Lord’s vineyard?  In what ways are you looking more like Christ and in what areas do you still need to get into God’s vineyard?

Where are you unlike Christ?  That’s where the work of the vineyard is. Most of us have areas that need to be brought into the vineyard:  Our temper, our tongue, our thought life, our attitude…pieces of our lives that still don’t look like Jesus. We’ve set around the breakfast table and said, “you know, I better get into the vineyard in that area,” but we never really seem to make it there.

Jesus is inviting us to get into the vineyard, no matter what stage we’re at in the game, so that when suppertime comes, you and I will have submitted to what the Father wanted to do in our lives. There is a sense of urgency to this story; dinner is just about ready! So push back from the breakfast table and get into the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in those areas where you don’t look like Jesus.

“The process of being conformed to the image of Christ, doing the will of the father, takes place primarily at the point of our unlikeness to Christ’s image.” ~Robert Mulholland

What If God Took Over?

Changing to the image of Christ usually involves physical practices called spiritual disciplines—things we must do consistently over time that allows us to take on the character of Christ.  If the Holy Spirit is prompting you to say yes to God’s vineyard today, what does that mean?  What action do you need to take?  What spiritual practices do you need to begin? Write down that spiritual discipline you need to engage, share it with a friend, and get into the vineyard. Don’t be one who says, “I will go” but never gets there.

On its face, the Parable of the Vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16 has to be one of the most unfair stories in the Bible. Come on—people who come to work just before quitting time and get paid the same as those who’ve put in a full day! You’ve got to be kidding!  Since Jesus told parables to illustrate the Kingdom of God, how in the world does this story represent the Father’s righteous rule?

In this story, a landowner goes to the marketplace to hire temps at the beginning of the work day—a 12-hour day that began at 6:00 AM—and contracts with the most suitable looking workers: a day’s work for a day’s wage—one denarius. Then, still needing help, he goes back at 9:00 AM, again at noon and at 3:00 PM to get more workers.  Each additional time, however, there is no contract; he just says he’ll pay them whatever is right. Finally, at the 11^th hour—at 5:00 PM—he goes back and sees a few more workers hanging around. Now you’ve got to ask why haven’t they been hired yet…and how come they’re still here? Waiting to get hired with one hour left in the day is kind of like showing up at a Pumpkin Patch the day after Halloween looking for work. Obviously, these guys are not your Stanford MBA types; they’re not the most employable people at the temp service. But help is needed, so they’re hired.

Then the owner blows them all away at the end of the workday by paying all the workers the same: One denarius—a full day’s wage!  Imagine the surprise of the 11^th hour workers when they realize they’ve just been paid the same as the all-day guys. I can imagine one of them saying, “We didn’t really deserve this. Let’s get out of here before the payroll people realize their mistake and ask for the money back.” And the all-day workers—man, are they mad at the ridiculous generosity of the owner!

So what is Jesus getting at in this parable?  To begin with, understand that this is not a story about how corporations should draft compensation policy, so don’t get hung up over that. As a general rule, people who work 12 hours should get paid more than people who work 1 hour.  Operate your HR department like this landowner and you’ll soon be out of business.

What Jesus is doing here is picturing the kingdom for us:  Undeserving, unlikely desperate people trusting in the generosity of God to include them in his vineyard. The vineyard is a metaphor about coming into God’s kingdom, through Jesus.  Who gets to be in God’s kingdom? Everyone—anyone who accepts Jesus’ offer, that’s who! And all kinds of sinful people are taking Jesus up on this offer:  Prostitutes, tax collectors and even Gentiles.  They’re coming in at the 11^th hour and still getting the whole denarius.

But the pious Jews who’ve been in the vineyard all day long aren’t happy about this.  They can’t grasp this thing called grace that Jesus is revealing; it’s nothing less than scandalous to them.

Now here is one of the things I’d like for you to consider in this story: You are an 11^th hour person—me, too—but the longer we’re in the kingdom, the more we become like the all-day people.  Every time someone new comes into the vineyard, they become the 11^th hour worker and we move back down the line to 9th hour workers, to noon people, to the nine o’clock crowd, until finally, we are sitting with the all-day folks. And the real danger we face is taking on the attitude of these all-day workers.

As we move along in our walk with Jesus, we are either moving into what we might call performance-based Christianity, or we’re moving toward grace-based faith. Performance-based people believe they deserve a full day’s pay based what they do. They act as if God is getting a good deal in getting them; that he couldn’t run his vineyard without them.  But grace-based believers understand they did nothing except to show up and accept God’s offer.  Their entire relationship with God is based on trust in his ridiculous generosity and gracious character.

Don’t slide into an all-day spirit.  Rather—perhaps you should do this on a regular basis—simply recount the gracious goodness of God that invited you into his vineyard when you did nothing to deserve it at all.  Take a moment to absorb what Philip Yancey wrote so insightfully about this in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace:

“Many Christians who study this parable identify with the employees who put in a full day’s work rather than with the add-ons at the end of the day.  We like to think of ourselves as responsible workers, and the employer’s strange behavior baffles us as it did the original hearers. But we risk missing the story’s point: that God dispenses gifts, not wages.  None of us gets paid according to merit like these early workers, none of us, for none of us comes close to satisfying God’s requirement for a perfect life.  If paid on the basis of merit, we would all end up in hell.”

Good point—none of us gets paid according to merit. And aren’t you glad for that?  If we did, we would all—all-day and 11^th hour workers alike—end up in a Christ-less eternity.

Listen, friend, you received the whole grace enchilada when you didn’t even deserve a nibble of the beans and rice.  So be grateful—be very grateful! And don’t ever stop!

What If God Took Over?

Quit trying to control how others come to God, or worship, or serve or grow in their faith. Just release them to God’s grace, because his grace will do a much better job conforming them to his image than your griping.  Memorize Acts 15:19,

“Don’t make it difficult for those who are turning to God.”