***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: Well, I think we probably ought to get started. People will be gripping in, probably, and they’ll be planning to quit, so who does let them drift and we’ll start. This morning I got a verse came to me that expresses what we’ve been talking about so well, I think. A very important song. Some verses here. Genesis, she’s right there. We’re going to try to speak about Jesus’ teachings concerning the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. And a very important song. It’s a picture of the provision of love to begin with the vision of God for those who have learned to live in his kingdom. And I won’t read the whole thing. I’ll begin with the fourth verse and just read it to you.
I sought the Lord, and he heard me, the king and subject, subject powers, the king here, and delivered me from all my fears. They, that is, the king’s subjects, looked under him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord, the messenger of the Lord encamped him round about them that feared him and delivered him, who takes and sees that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusted him. O fear the Lord, respect the Lord, be awestruck before the Lord, ye his saints, for there is no warrant to then that feared him. Young lions go without, and they go hungry, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.
This goes on down to verses. It gives you a recipe for a good life. What man can see that desired life? In love of many days that he may see good. Okay, here’s the way. Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. Now that’s your part. That’s your part of a good life. Okay, here’s the Lord’s part. The eyes of the Lord are open to the righteous. They are on the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. The righteous cry and the Lord hearth and delivered them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as beeth the transparent. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. You want to say amen to that? Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Amen. But the Lord deliver him out of them all. Amen. All. Amen.
My righteousness still doesn’t say anything. Praise the Lord. So it doesn’t have to be righteous. Well, that’s it. All right. Very good. The Lord doesn’t reverse, according to our marriage. You’re leading right with the lesson. I planted her. I heard her say this. No, I didn’t at all. Well, I don’t know that she is, but you probably better not start an examination on that point this morning. I’m afraid we’d all have a hard time fighting to get ahead of the line. But I understand what you mean, and what you mean is something extremely important. Extremely important. He has not rewarded us, according to our inequalities.
It’s not so good. I just want to go right into the lesson for today on that. Because today is a study of how you get an equal reward, or equal reward for equal labor. It’s a study of how the human sense of fairness or justice is tripped up by God’s righteousness. Let’s look at the 20th chapter of Matthew, the parable of the Albert. We are studying, as I say, how this works.
Now, David, or whoever wrote that psalm, knew perfectly how the king was going to work because he lived in it. Well, I shouldn’t say knew perfectly. Probably no one knows perfectly, but he knew that it worked. And he at least had this down that when he cried, the Lord answered. When he was in trouble, the Lord delivered. And I’m sure he found out like you and I have, but he doesn’t always deliver us exactly in the way we had in mind. But he was looking back, and as he looked back, he realized, Well, I always give in. The Lord raised me up. One way or another. And very often, in a better way than I could possibly have imagined, and where I couldn’t have imagined at all.
So, Jesus comes, and what does he preach? What does Jesus preach? One thing. The king looked up. He preached that people should stop going their way, and turn with him, and walk into the kingdom of God. And he said, Repent, the king of the heavens in handy. Why does he say it’s about to come? He was saying, It is here. It’s right there. Turn and walk into it. And Paul said, We don’t need to send someone to heaven. Turn down the earth. We don’t need to go over the sea. What is the word? Where is it? The word is nigh thee. It is in your heart. It is the word of faith. So, Jesus preached the kingdom of God. That’s everything Jesus preached. Everything is tied up in him now. But of course, he broke it down, each by peace. And he not only showed forth the power of the kingdom of God through his life, and through the life of his followers in conquered situations, but he taught different aspects of the kingdom of heaven. So we’ve been looking for it.
Now this one, this morning, has been peculiarly offensive because, as I say, it offends the sense of justice that many people have. I’d like to just, of course, just read this parable, the first 16 verses of the 20th chapter of Matthew.
For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is in heaven. I’d love to see it. Like unto him. Remember, he teaches by liking each. He’s going to tell us a story, and then there’s going to be some one or two or a few points in which the king of heaven is like that story. The king of heaven is like a man. Now be sure to get that, will you? He’s like a man. What kind of man is a household? That is, if he’s a man with a farm, he runs a plantation or a farm or a ranch or whatever. He’s a man who has a household. So you want to be watching to see how the kingdom of heaven is like this man.
Now this man, what did he do? Well, one day he went out early in the morning to hire laborers unto his vineyard. Now if you go into agricultural areas, you can still find places, usually run by the United States government or the state, where people who want to work that day in the fields, the tables, whatever, they go to those places early in the morning and then come pick up a truckload and take all the people. Still done. And this man, early in the morning, drove his truck down, hired laborers, and he agreed with them for a penny a day, which doesn’t look like much to us, but that is very important. I think we can all understand that we might save, what, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty dollars a day today. So he took them and he sent them into his vineyard.
Now he wasn’t able, apparently, to get enough men to do the work at that hour, and so he went out at the third hour. Do you want to know what time of the day that would be? Nine o’clock in the morning, roughly, the third hour of the day, and saw others standing in the marketplace and said, and will you also enter the vineyard? And now get this line, please. Whatsoever is right, I will give you. Now the first group was unique in that he agreed with them for a fixed wage. But you see, he was dealing now with people who have sort of, in their own minds, fluffed their day anyway because they had gotten up late, instead of watching the Late Show or something, and they didn’t get down there in time, to get a day’s work. So he doesn’t say, I’ll give you a penny. He just says, I wonder what’s right with me. He says, you go work and I’ll make sure that you get a just wage. It was also that he didn’t go to the same place, apparently. Maybe he did, but it’s not clear. This time he says he goes down in the marketplace. Now the marketplace was a place to mow, among other things. It was a place where he figured David’s shop, sort of walked along, looked into the stalls, swiped an apple and ate it, that sort of thing. He went down to the marketplace and says this to those.
Again, he did likewise. Went down to the marketplace at the sixth hour. That was 12 months. Now half the day is gone. Now if you’re a day laborer, if you’ve never been a day laborer, it’s hard to understand what this means to those people. It really is. If you’ve never been a man who’s proved for the evening upon what you made that day, it’s hard to appreciate what this meant, what these men were going through. I’m sure that at 12 o’clock you could depend on it. They had sort of given up for the day. They just figured well. They were going to think how they were going to feed their kids on the scrap of bread, feed the trees and play at home without getting anything else. Or how they were going to explain to their wife or whatever.
And at the ninth hour, now that was three o’clock in the afternoon. Three o’clock, this man is still hiring. He’s hiring because he has work to be done. He may also be hiring because he knows the people need work. Now if he didn’t have work to be done, of course he couldn’t hire people to work, but he had work to be done. So this is an unusual man. Remember the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that is a householder. So we have to focus on this man, right? We have to watch him. What is he doing? What is he doing? He’s doing something quite unusual. He’s going out and hiring all the way home.
How much at the eleventh hour? Okay, what time of day is it? Five o’clock in the evening. It’s the eleventh hour and oh, how many of us? How many of us have been hired at the eleventh hour? God only knows that. A lot of us have been hired at the eleventh hour. And he goes out and he says, why are you standing here hiding? Now this is the answer to this question. Why are you standing here all day and night? Because no man can hire us. We’re not one. Nobody wants us.
You know why I’m important? That’s what it does to people. It’s because they don’t have money. It’s because it sinks into their soul. They don’t have a place in their soul. Do you know that? Find someone who’s suffering with a problem. You want to deal with them very carefully. If they act abnormally, you want to understand they’re in a very abnormal and strange situation. We forget that sometimes when we have been well employed for the last twenty years. We forget what we feel sometimes. I confess that I won’t. That’s a terrible mistake. Because when you have someone like this, they are essentially the people who are pro-life. Mankind was grown in the late system of this world that said we don’t need you. This answer is touchless. No man can hire us. Nobody wants us.
So what does he say? He says go into the victory at five o’clock. An hour to work. Go into the vineyard and whatever is right, that ye shall receive. So an evening must come. That wasn’t a long coming. It was about an hour away. They didn’t have the box that we had. But their judgments were quite accurate. Nonetheless, they didn’t talk to you all very much. Six o’clock was the beginning. Even. Even to get in work.
So when the evening comes, he calls the laborers and gave them their hire. Beginning, note the order please. Beginning from the last. Unfirst. Now the order is significant. I’ll tell you why. If you hadn’t done it in that order, the rest of the story wouldn’t have been there. Because he would pay the people who came first. They’d walk up on down the trail, get in the pub or whatever, you know, and get home and see their kids and their wives. And they wouldn’t have no money paid the others, right? So the order is significant. So you watch that now. It’s so important when we read the parables of Jesus that we pay attention to these little things like the orders. We pay the orders.
So the people who came in at the 11th hour at five o’clock walked up. They didn’t know what to expect, you know. All they had was to promise whatever was right on me. Okay? So he might have handed them a bunch of grapes and said goodbye, I’ll see you tomorrow. Here’s your wage. Take that home with you. But notice they received every man in pain. And you can see the temperature can rise down the line and people waiting for their pain and blood pressure starting to go up. Half of them say, what’s he doing? Others say, well, he must be really going to pay us something more. You know, he’s going to give us more. Because our problem here is maybe he dies in full pain. He’s certainly going to give us more. So their expectations are up obviously. Wow.
And when the first came, they supposed that they should receive more. Isn’t that funny? It’s funny, you know. Really, I mean, you sympathize a little bit because you might have done the same thing. But it’s so human. You can just see those people looking at that pain and their expectations going up and saying, well, we’re just going to hit it tonight. I’ll have an extra penny to do something with. And they supposed that they should have received more.
Now, why did they suppose that? Because their brains were hooked into a human system of justice which said, you don’t give equal pay for unequal work. Okay? You don’t give equal pay for unequal work. So that was in there. See, that part of the program is in there and their little computers begin to spin and they fed the penny being given to the guys that came in at five o’clock and the conclusion came out, wow, I’m going to get more. And then, they likewise received every penny.
Now you want to remember that at the beginning of the day this appeared to them to be an acceptable wage. It wasn’t as if it was an unacceptable wage at the beginning of the day. There’s no absolute injustice in that penny. As far as we know, it was the standard wage for that kind of work. It was a wage away from whose man could live with his family. Probably not live well, but at least it did. Nothing wrong with that penny wage until the comparison ended.
And when they had received it, they murmured. Murmuring goes on. You’ve got people who are really satisfied. It started as they walked down the way. Looking at the penny, murmuring about it. Probably cussing that penny, you know. You can just hear it. You know how human beings are. Why are that? You know how they all do. And there’s not always a penny. But they started laying it on the good man of the house, as it says.
Well, that’s… Look, they said, these people came in the field at five o’clock and they worked one hour. And you have made us equal to them, which have borne the burden and the heat of the day. Now you know you can’t be all together unsympathetic. Twelve hours of work. Twelve hours of work. Backbreaking work. Heat of the day. And then to the point you have made us equal.
The answer, friend, I’m not going to an intern. I’m not being hurt by this. You agreed with me for a thing. This was an agreeable way. So now, take what is yours and go your way. I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. A very beautiful book by Tom Ruskin called, and it’s his last take on this parable. It deals with the very issues that are stated in the parable. It’s one of those beautiful, penetrating critiques of what has sometimes been called political economy that was written in the 19th century. I commend it to you. Under this last, I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
And now, since a human sense of justice was appealed to by the people, the good man appeals this human justice. Notice what he says. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with thine own? And then this penetrating question, is thine eye evil because I am good? In other words, the goodness, the generosity which is in me, did it create the evil which is in you, which comes out now on this occasion?
So the last shall be first, and the first shall be nice. Jesus, this was a favorite setting up here. He uses it on a number of occasions. That’s a general way of saying there is going to be an inversion, an inversion of certain things in the kingdom of heaven. Now the last part of that verse, for many are called, and few are chosen, is omitted in the best manuscripts. But again, that is another favorite passage or verse saying, Jesus, which shows up elsewhere.
So here, then, we have the parable of the albums. The parable of the albums. And it shows how the kingdom of heaven dispenses goods generously, not because people deserve it. It doesn’t neglect the desert, but it doesn’t give things just because people deserve it. It gives them also because they need it. Now you know what that man knew, the person who came to work at five o’clock. He had the children at home to feed just as much as the person who came to work at six o’clock. But notice that the people whose sense of justice was infringed upon as it was heard, they were quite willing to neglect such consideration. And as far as they were concerned, they would have been happier if the kids had gone hungry or had to eat that bunch of grapes. They would have been happier if the kids had gone hungry that evening in order that their sense of justice and fairness could have been met. That’s a tragic thing, you know. That’s a tragic thing.
And it’s so common in life to see real generosity on the part of God and on the part of men, of ten and a third of other people because they have a sense of fairness and justice which is liberal enough that it comes with the love that God has. The kingdom of heaven is like a household, like a man’s household.
A lot of people get mad at God because he doesn’t wear the people who are mean. And this is an old, old problem. Some people don’t have to wrestle with it. People in this room would wrestle with it. People continue to wrestle with it. Why doesn’t God really let on those honorary so-and-so’s? They deserve smashing. Why doesn’t God wipe them out? Well, John James came to Jesus one day and asked permission to call down a little fire on the Samaritan. He just said, you don’t fully understand what spirit is moving. You don’t understand what strategy. But you see these Samaritans have offended the one they love and the one they believe to be something very special in people. And then, this meant it would be just if those people were in this block, burned up.
We have to be very careful with justice. You know, you should occasionally hear people stand up and say, I want my rights. Well, I… We got our right in a bad way. We got our right in a bad way. I don’t want my rights. I need mercy. I need help. I need generosity. I need love. I need a mercy which is everlasting, which doesn’t stop. That’s how long God’s mercy is. You know how long it is. Everlasting. Everlasting. Everlasting. Everlasting. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop.
Now, God has the power to do that. We have to learn more and more as we go along to receive that power to give out everlasting mercy. Everlasting. Ours doesn’t last very long. You know, there’s that word I’ve often spoken of in this meeting. It’s long suffering. It goes along with everlasting mercy. Now, long suffering isn’t everlasting suffering, and consequently, perhaps it’s more appropriate for us to talk about our long suffering. The man in the passage of St. Nicholas concentrating on that fourth chapter of Ephesians. We’re to forbear one another. Long be long suffering.
The mercy of God is everlasting. Do you know when the mercy of God, everlasting, breaks upon the human scene and disconfuge rates everyone? Doesn’t really look like much to do with that. And we set out trying to hedge it in a little bit here, bottle it up over there, cut it off there, confine it, refine it, define it, until it will be manageable in turn so that it will get dispensed to the right people. But it’s just indiscriminating. As far as we’re concerned, it’s indiscriminating.
Now, he discriminates. He takes care of that. Okay. There is a time. There is a time when in the order of the economy of God, the consequences of a person’s actions fall upon them. But God’s mercy is relaxing. I have a feeling that most of God ever does for any person. We’ve talked about this some before. I think the most that God does for any person that could be called that, as he finally has to say to the people of the world. Like he said, leave them alone. They’re wedded. They’re items. Just leave them alone. That’s hell. And it comes here. It comes here. Leave them alone. Out of darkness.
I think that’s wrong here. That’s right. Let’s see now. He just gave them up to something which was already in them. And now we’re going to see this coming on in one of the parables, in the last parable we were studying today, so perhaps we ought to put that off now. But that first chapter of Romans is a very important passage to study when you want to see how this works. See, the thing is God has created things in such a way and in his wisdom that when there is a time that some kind of punishment or whatever you might want to call it is needed, it just takes care of itself. All he has to do is stop intervening, stop saving. And it takes care of itself. All of a sudden it’s the wages that he worked for at this time.
You see, there isn’t the Indian religion, it’s what’s called the law of karma. The law of karma, do you know what that is? It’s the law that your deeds always have inevitable consequences and if they’re good deeds they’ll have good consequences, if they’re bad deeds they’ll have bad consequences. Now, the religion which was taught in the Bible and taught by Jesus, the way of Christ, is not the religion which involves the law of karma. It has the law of karma, but with this difference of God into beings, the person of God into beings, and makes a difference. The person of God into beings. Paul says, be not deceived, God is not the law, whatsoever amends, so that shall He also redeem us, and He makes a difference. That’s the point of this parable, is that there is a giving of good things to people who don’t deserve it, they just need it, that’s all.
The parable of two disobedient sons, I have, by the way, you can see in the sheet, I put a few words here under each one of these parables, but I won’t read those, you can read those over in the Argy rhythm and think about them or whatever, but I’m trying to state under each parable, the main points that I take to be taught here about the kingdom of God. Remember that each one is teaching about the kingdom of God, and each one has some particular point to make about that kingdom.
The parable of two disobedient sons is also a parable of justice. And in this case, though, Jesus uses the sense of human justice to point out something about the kingdom of God, because in this case, He knows His ground well enough to be able to get the people He’s talking to, to, as it were, condemn themselves out of their own minds. Let’s look at this parable, let’s look at the chapter of it. I view it isn’t a long one like the other one, but it is a shocking one, to many people at least. What thinking, twenty-eight verse.
The same man had two sons, and he came to the church and said, Son, go work today in my vineyard. Now, we’ve got a vineyard in the three parables here, and that’s simply because it was a familiar kind of thing, everyone knew what it was to have a vineyard in Hollywood.
Go work today in my vineyard, Dad. The son said, I’m not going, Dad, I’m going to go to the beach. Father didn’t say it that nicely, he made it. Do you think I am, slave, you little hitter! They said it like that, I don’t know how he said it. And then he got the message over, I ain’t going, Dad. And then he got that way to the beach. About to think about it, pretty soon, down there in the vineyard, taking care of those grapes, pulling those weeds out, putting that water around. There’s the old boy that said, I ain’t going. There he is. He didn’t even intend to be there when he left. He was intended to go somewhere else altogether. There he is, down there in the vineyard. Notice it says he repented. Now that doesn’t mean he got up on the hill, found a tree, and got under and sat down and fell sorry for crying. He means he was going down the road, he got to think about it, he said, well, I better turn around and go back. So he turned. That’s what repent means, it means turn. He just turned around and came back. You turned the middle of the street, probably. Took off back down the hill. He repented and went.
Now he came to his second son. And he said, likewise. He said, yes, Father. Oh, Father, I’m so eager to release you. I’m so glad I had a chance to be of service to you. He went out the front door, slipped around the back, got up. He was haunted. He took off in the other direction. That’s what he did. That’s what he did. He was gone all day and way into the night.
Well, Jesus said to the people standing around, they were mainly, they were some very dignified people. He said to them, which of them did the will of his Father? Which of them did the will of his Father? Now the answer is obvious, isn’t it? But the point needs to be made so that… And they said, I’m sorry, the first. I got it mixed up. The first. The one who said, I ain’t gone. Look here.
And then Jesus said unto him, said unto these people down at the front, said something very strong, very strange. This is the verse which goes down hard for many people. Jesus said, very truly I say unto you that the crooked politicians, the publicans, extortioners, extortioners on places of their position, and the streetwalkers, the whores, the harps, the hookers, go into the kingdom of God before you. And then he said this awful word, you, to these people, so good, so respectable leaders in their religion before you, before you. Because John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and you believed him not, but the publicans and the hookers believed him. And ye, when ye had seen it, did turn afterwards that ye might believe him.
Now it wasn’t, you see, there was no great advantage in being cruel. That wasn’t what made them right, was it? It was that there was something in the initial set of these people which made it possible for them to hear and to enter the kingdom of God, but made it impossible for the others to do. And I want to try to say very quickly what this is.
You see, much that comes in the name of respectability and religion is nothing, but a desire to please oneself. Now when that kid said, oh yes, Father, going, Father, as the one line says in the play, he wasn’t trying to please his father, was he? He was trying to please himself. Now the most insidious and harmful motive in religion is the desire to use God for one’s own purposes. And that is exactly what the nation of Israel has slipped into on a corporate, social, large-scale basis. Their leaders were concerned to enhance their own position, to use God for their own purposes.
The person who is sent in that way is engaged in the name of deceit. He is pretending to please God, but really pleasing himself. Well that’s right, but even what you do sometimes, you know, what you do sometimes, in this case it puts a great stress on what you say, but sometimes you can do things that are deceitful. But it’s true, the great professions, you know, are part of what this means. But you see, when you set yourself in this way, you have engaged in deceit. And in order to carry it off, that slips into self-deceit, because that’s all so much used in food, even if you’ve got yourself food. Because if you don’t have yourself food, then you’ve got to explain things to yourself all the time, you know. And if you just thoroughly food yourself, well you don’t have to bother with that person, you can just go and food. You know, you can be completely sincere, because you’ve got self-food. But now that’s why, that’s why when these people in Israel and people today or wherever, when they face the truth, they have to say, well, I’m right already. I don’t need anything. See, they are fools in themselves.
Now this guy that said, I ain’t got it, he wasn’t engaged in any deceit. He laid it on the line. He didn’t have to build into himself any structure of self-deceit about what he was doing. Consequently, the reflection about what he was doing could keep functioning in his mind and at a certain point could win him over and turn him around. Other people were involved in self-deceit at such a depth that they couldn’t recognize the truth if it ran over them in the middle of the street, and it did.
Now that’s why it’s so important to understand the difference between these two subjects, because they stand for two different ways of approaching life. One is to try to manipulate and manage people and God by pleasing them, being eager to please, you know, when in fact you’re not eager to please at all and you’re just eager to get your way and that’s the way you decided that you would do it.
Now, look, there’s no guarantee that if you become a perfect tax collector or a hooker that you’re going to get into the kingdom of heaven. Let’s have that simple, okay? It’s not recommending that as a way to the kingdom of God. It’s making a point of comparison, and it’s a vital point of comparison, because it brings us to look at what we do and, as Harry was stressing, what we say from this point of view of are we really what we say we are, are we really honest about our desire to please God? Or are we really the person who says, oh yes, I’ll go right now? But it doesn’t go. It doesn’t go.
You know the story of a prodigal son, the prodigal son of the exactly movement, is similar to this story. In this case, though it’s inverted somewhat, but it teaches a very similar point, a much more subtle story than this one, by the way. It’s got a lot more depth and a lot finer points that are made in it. But you remember the other case, the prodigal son, he really took off. He didn’t turn around enough. He’d already been to the beach and someplace beyond, right? But he too, remember that significant phrase that says, he came to himself. He came to himself.
Now one of the things that helped him come to himself was the fact that he was under no illusions about where he was. Hm? Did you hear the pigs grunting? The lice biting, the feeling, the scratching. He’d feel his stomach growling for something to eat so far that he ate while the hog ate. He was under no illusions about where he was, and consequently he could come to himself. But you see, the problem with a person who’s self-diseased is just that they can’t come to themselves. They can’t find their self. They wouldn’t know their self if it ran over them. They spent much of their life disowning their self.
Now, remember that when that boy got home, there was this interesting little scene out in front of the audience with the elder son. In this case, this man didn’t just say, yes father, I go, he went. While he went out there in the vineyard, he slayed. Oh, he slayed and he worked. And he came home and did the chores. He put up with everything. And inside there was this ball of bitterness and hatred and rebellion against his father. He was saying, when is this old man ever going to die? You know, when is he going to die? When am I going to get rid of this burden? See, that’s another way of saying, yes father, I go. Yes father, I go.
Don’t you think the other fella too is thinking that he was the last thing he ever did? Sure enough. But you see, here again, this person said, yes father, I go. He didn’t approve of what his dad did. What do you mean? You never have given me anything. And you’re making a feast over this guy. See, it’s just like the guy standing there on the line while he paid out his pennies. And the same word, you know, does my generosity make your eye evil? It applies to the problem.
But it’s true even today that we tend to, human beings tend to punish people very severely for certain things and reward them latterly for other things. And very often rewards are handed out to people who really are the ones who have said, oh yes, I go. You know, I don’t think it’s any one of us here today who doesn’t have some area which would be living in this. I think that’s possible. And then I go to God, I’m encouraged because I had that way to go. So I can afford to be honest if I didn’t have that way to go. I can’t afford to be honest. That’s right. That’s where some knowledge of that everlasting mercy. That’s what really the Protestant said was. He didn’t have any idea how big his father’s mercy was, but he knew that it was something. Doesn’t everybody know what it is? I don’t know about the animals, but if I ain’t sleeping, there’s no one there.
Well, I think there are a lot of folks who believe that all of us do. Yes, there are. I would say that I think most of us who find our way into the kingdom of God would recognize ourselves in the private sun. The important thing about the private sun was he didn’t stay a prodigal. He paid a price. But when he got back, he knew his father better than his older son did and his older son lived there all of his life. And the prodigal knew his father.
Now we aren’t told what the prodigal was meaning to put on the easy street and fix up the rest of his life and all that sort of thing. We don’t know what happened to him. Probably didn’t. It’s quite certain that the father could not have given another workwright to him like he had initially. He just couldn’t do that. And as the man said, you know, the elder son said, everything I had is yours. That was a way of saying his prodigal was cut out on that. He’d already gotten his part. Everything the man had was going to go to the older son. And let me say that the father was not knocking the good things in that older son. There’s a lot to be said for the older son. There’s a lot to be said for him. But the point is, the prodigal came to himself and became himself. Then he was able to come to his father. The older son never came to himself and never came to his father.
We have five minutes for a final parable on justice and the kingdom of God. This is the parable. I call it the parable of the vineyard, but now you know that one seems to be the other two very well. Because they’re all parables of the vineyard. We could name this lesson what we learned in the great patch, something like that. Because they’re all parables of the vineyard. This is the parable, though, of how a vineyard was used. The vineyard plays essentially a more important role here. Because the vineyard here was given to some people to take care of.
Here’s another parable, the thirty-third version of the twenty-first chapter of Matthew. There was a certain householder who was planted at a vineyard and hedged it about to dig the winepress village tower and let it out to husband men and went into the fire. So he fixed that vineyard up perfectly. It was all ready for business. And he riveted, or leased it, to some people to take care of. And it was a kind of sharecropping sort of arrangement where they would get a certain percentage and he would get a certain percentage and so on.
Now, when the time of the fruit grew near, this householder sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits of the vineyard. The husband would marry his servants and beat one and kill another and stomp another. Again he sent other servants more than the first. They did unto them likewise. But last of all, he sent unto them his son. Saying, they will reverence my son.
Now there’s no question as to why Jesus, in using this listing of servants, was talking about the province and about himself. When the husband that saw his son, see, and the father thought about it in one way, the husband that thought about it in another, when they said, look what they think. Hey, this is the heir. This is the heir. Let’s kill him. We can have it. The father thought they were seeing the son in prayer. They said, here’s the son. Let’s kill him. God’s way was a little different from man’s way. God’s thoughts surrounded him a little bit in vain. So they called him, cast him out of the vineyard and slew him.
Now the question. He puts to the people around him, when the Lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what shall he do unto his husband? Why, they say, he will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbands, which shall render him the fruits of their seasons. Jesus said unto them, did you never read in the scriptures, the stone which the builders rejected, the same as when they had become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s, and it is marvelous. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a people, bringing forth fruits of their own. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken. And whosoever shall fall on the ground, proud of them.
The first day that I introduced this to you, I spoke about the stone cut out without hands. That is referred to in the third book, the second chapter of the book of Daniel. That is going to come and fill the world. This is the stone. And the people who fall on it, stumble on it, are broken. And those on whom it falls are broken too.
This parable is designed to apply to groups of people in my opinion. I’m sure you can get an application of it to individuals, but I think it is primarily designed to apply to groups of people who have received, have been entrusted with a particular part of God’s work. Notice he says, I’m going to take the kingdom of God from you and give it to someone who can prepare for the fruits. And it is very clear from history, from the Bible, from elsewhere, that when you find a group of people, no matter how effective they may have been, it doesn’t matter whether they’re called Quakers or Methodists or Catholics or what they’re called, it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever, whether they’re called Americans or Russians or Chinese or Jews or Englishmen or whatever, it doesn’t make any difference. This group of people has a vocation. In God’s kingdom you’ll see two things. One is the long-suffering of God with those people. Oh, I’m sorry. His judgment does not come hastily. He sends person after person after person after person. He sends the best he’s got.
But then, you see, with every overture that can be made, it is rejected. Judgment has come upon many denominations of Christians, many groups within denominations, many local churches. Judgment has come. And, of course, this is a graphic way of talking about a judgment. It’s talking about a man who’s going to come with an army in white canal. But I think we’re quite certain, we should be quite assured to say, we just look, that there’s not going to be an army sent over here to Woodlake Avenue because the prince is the wife of this fair town. And if you’ll look at church after church across the land, you’ll notice that there’s no links in the army. There’s just sort of this abuse. Denominations drive and blow away. There are many ways this can be done. The thing we want to be sure of simply is that God does not hasten his judgment, but yet his judgment is very sure. And if it’s dealing here especially with groups, then we can be sure that in some way there’s also a class of individuals.
The goodness of God, as Paul said, is designed to lead us to repentance. And it will. It will simply be. Fran? You know, when I said I was reading the Bible, and when I found it, it seemed to find me stupid. It’s a moment, isn’t it? And I now have to talk about this. Did they pay me to keep down the law apart from them? Because they had been established in the state of Virginia. They said, to stir it, you have to pay me back. That’s what Paul looked at. But if their tents were seen, they would have been ruined, and if they’d fallen off in the state of Virginia, how much more could it have been fixed? So it shows that even though they fell away, they still get it the same way. Well, actually Paul hoped to stir them up to jealousy so far that they would get with him. With him? Really. Yeah. Recommend that that was Paul’s hope. That was Paul, although he was a minister to the Gentiles. He never forgot the Jews. He never by any means thought that it was hopeless for them, and many people believe today there will still be a time coming when they will be brought back in as a people.
So I think also reading this parable, we want to keep that in mind, that the fact that a judgment falls doesn’t mean that’s the end of God’s mercy, does it? Doesn’t mean that at all. And very often, that is the place that provides the picked in sort of where we come to ourselves after the judgment falls. God’s mercy. Everlasting is everlasting.
Well, look, this other sheet I wanted to call your attention to because it hasn’t been a game that I’m not going to talk about, but I do hope you’ll read this. A continuation of my attempt to try to get you to understand what Jesus is talking about when we talk about self-denial, taking up the cross, and following, and so on. And Jane found a quotation in the book she was working on that’s very good, and I do hope you’ll read this and think about it because this is, I think, an accurate psychological reproduction of the main content of these verses that we’ve been studying. And also, I wanted to put in context the last verse on the page about giving and put that in a setting where you are connecting it with sacrifice and the cross and these sorts of things.
Let’s pray together. Lord Jesus, we would address you now and thank you for giving us these beautiful portrayals about the kingdom of heaven’s life. We’re so thankful to have these baskets, these vessels to carry the fruit in. We’re glad you gave them to us. We thank you for it. We pray for everyone here this morning. We especially pray at this time for one in particular. That is for Nancy. Nancy Harrison, we unite our hearts in asking you to heal her and to return her to health and to give her the knowledge that it is you who has done it. We ask that on your behalf. Amen. See you next week.