Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] I'm going to talk quietly at first. No, I'm good. I think it's good now. Is it good now? Yeah, it's working now. Yeah.
[00:00:12] It was my fault. I hadn't turned it on right this time. It wasn't. I was about to. Everyone, everyone, don't. Whenever the mics stop working, don't turn and look at the sound guy. He's panicked enough as it is without you.
[00:00:27] It is terrifying to be running the screens here, be running the sound. Those are things that no one notices that you're doing until you mess up. It's the offensive lineman of churches.
[00:00:46] You just.
[00:00:47] But I am so thankful we have a good group of guys. Howard mentioned he's back there a lot. We have a good group of guys who run that for us and all aspects of it. And we.
[00:00:58] Whenever Covid hit churches quit being churches and they had to also start being churches and production companies.
[00:01:04] And so we send this out on a live stream and a lot of you who, when you can't make it here, watch online.
[00:01:11] And that takes people to click on things and to turn up volume and to panic whenever the sound's not on. And so we're very thankful for all those people who do all those things.
[00:01:25] I grew up. You're not going to believe this.
[00:01:28] A good kid.
[00:01:30] I was. I was a good kid.
[00:01:33] I am by nature or by race, probably nurture. I grew up in a church of Christ and I'm a rule follower.
[00:01:43] Not only do I want to follow the rules, I want to know the rules beforehand before I go into a place.
[00:01:51] What are the rules? What is expected of me? I want to follow the rules. I work really hard to get the rules right.
[00:02:02] Do y' all remember during COVID when they had arrows in the. In the. In the aisles at Walmart? They had arrows. You could only because.
[00:02:17] Because of COVID you had to walk one way.
[00:02:22] We listen. I jokingly. But like, we were doing the best we could. We were just.
[00:02:27] A lot of it was just like, well, hopefully maybe this will work. So it wasn't like anybody expertise saying, let's put air. But I. I walked by. I was pushing my grocery wagon by the aisle.
[00:02:42] That's what I call it. And there was a thing I needed right there.
[00:02:50] But the arrows were coming this way, y' all. I backed into that aisle and got the.
[00:03:03] That I didn't even think about it until afterwards. I thought, what? Just walk in there and grab it?
[00:03:10] But I thought, the rules. I've got to follow the rules.
[00:03:14] So I like. But they Give us structure, you know, I like, this is the way we're going to do things. And I would, we, there's, there's way that this helps. Rules help. They help me, they helped me. Growing up, my parents had a lot of rules about different. Like we couldn't stay the night at someone's house a Saturday night because I then wouldn't be able to go to church with my family.
[00:03:48] And my family wanted me to go to church with them, which I honor and celebrate. But also that kept me from really having friends.
[00:03:56] And so we didn't. So I just stayed at home Saturday nights. Enjoyed my family. We went to church on Sunday morning. You had certain things you could and couldn't do in church. No running.
[00:04:10] Do not run in church. I remember my dad would sit at the end of the pew and we couldn't laugh.
[00:04:19] You remember, back then, that was against the rules.
[00:04:24] But the problem was my brother and I particularly found things endlessly funny.
[00:04:31] Everything from the fact that the song leader, when he sat on the front row, he would often dip his head down like he was thinking or praying or looking at a song. And it looked like he had no head. It was just a collar and then nothing.
[00:04:47] It was so funny to us. We thought, oh, the song leader lost his head. We're gonna have to fill in.
[00:04:52] And we get to snickering.
[00:04:54] My dad would go, we just tighten up like, oh, God's watching. We forgot.
[00:05:02] Doesn't want that.
[00:05:04] You couldn't. There were certain things you couldn't do.
[00:05:07] And so I grew up following every rule, following every single rule. And I just, it was important to me to be a good person.
[00:05:23] And then I went to church camp and that was, that was great. I love church camp. You'd go and you'd be around all these people of like mind and you get to worship together and you get to study your Bible together and play sports together. It was great. And then I remember my junior year, we had a guy come in that hadn't ever counseled there before at that church camp. And it was time. They said, he's going to tell y' all his story.
[00:05:50] He was in his mid to late 30s, which at that time, as a, as a 17 year old, I thought was probably like, I thought he was 80.
[00:06:01] But he told his story and his story was one of being a. We'll just say this, pardon my French, a rascal.
[00:06:13] He was, he was a deviant.
[00:06:18] Just the story, the things he said he did, I couldn't even repeat here. We'll just say he Ran amok.
[00:06:28] A lot of amok was being run.
[00:06:31] And he had.
[00:06:33] He lived this crazy life and he talked about parties and trips and breaking the rules and I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you sounded a little fun at times.
[00:06:50] And he told the story and then he just had all these adventures. And then he came to Jesus later.
[00:06:58] And I just thought, like, I know the point of the story was you should have Jesus, but as a 17 year old, I thought, I didn't know this was an option.
[00:07:13] You know what I mean?
[00:07:15] Just to be honest with you, there was a part of me that was like, wait, hold on.
[00:07:21] You can just become a Christian later.
[00:07:28] You don't have to panic that you swore and lay in bed afraid that God's gonna take your life tonight because you swore at school that day and someone heard you and they might tell. Like all of. All of the. I just thought there's a. Does this seem like a better way now? Obviously I concluded that my way was the right way eventually, but there was a moment there and then I got frustrated with this guy.
[00:08:07] How dare you come in here with your tales of adventure.
[00:08:15] To us who have been trying to. Like I'd been a Christian longer than he was and he was a thousand years older than I was, and I had to.
[00:08:26] You shouldn't be teaching me. I should be teaching you.
[00:08:31] How dare he not follow the rules and also get Jesus.
[00:08:38] It really bugged me for a while.
[00:08:43] And I'll tell you, up until that point, and I had lived on this earth nearly 20 years, I had not heard this parable.
[00:08:55] And it's one that shakes me to my core. As a worker who's been in the field since 8am Some of you are. That you are workers who have been in the field since 8am let's read the parable. For the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus says, is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for the vineyard.
[00:09:30] After agreeing with the laborers on the usual daily wage, he sent them out to work in the vineyard.
[00:09:38] When he went out at about 9 o' clock, he saw others standing idly by in the marketplace. And he said to them, go out into the vineyard and I will pay you whatever is right.
[00:09:53] So they went.
[00:09:54] Horrible negotiators, these nine o' clock guys, but just I'll pay you whatever is right to pay you.
[00:10:01] Verse 5, it says when he went out again at noon and about 3 o' clock, and he did the same. So he's got these early morning people, he's got These nine o' clock people, these noon o' clock people and these three o' clock people.
[00:10:17] And he sends them all out and he says, I'll pay whatever you deserve, or I'll pay you what I pay you.
[00:10:27] And about five o' clock he went out and found others standing around. Still we got five o' clock workers.
[00:10:37] And he said to them, why are you standing here idle all day?
[00:10:46] They said, because no one has hired us.
[00:10:49] And he said to them, you also go into the vineyard.
[00:10:56] When evening came, the manager, the owner of the vineyard, said to the manager, call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the first, beginning with the last, and then going to the first.
[00:11:13] When those hired at about five o' clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage, not a five o' clock wage, usual daily wage. They got paid what you would typically get paid for working the whole day.
[00:11:30] Now, when the first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received the usual daily wage. So the people who'd been working since sunup and the people who had been working for just a couple of hours received the same amount.
[00:11:51] And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, these last people just worked one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the whole day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong.
[00:12:18] Did you not agree for the usual daily wage, take what belongs to you and go.
[00:12:29] I choose to give to the last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do, to choose what. I'm sorry? Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?
[00:12:56] We serve a good God, and that is an absolute benefit and a beauty in our existence. We serve and a good God, but man, it's frustrating to see him be good to those that we don't think deserve it, these five o' clock workers.
[00:13:26] Now, I'm saying that tongue in cheek, but I'm also saying it a little seriously, right? We have. We have a tendency as church people to compare stories. And our story usually is our way, usually is the right way, the correct story, story the way to go about it.
[00:13:45] But God has worked with and walked with people in certain ways and through up to certain points. God has seen them through. And he is a good God to people like me, and he's a good God to people like you.
[00:14:02] And no matter who God is good to, as he is good all the time, There is not an ounce of us, not a single one of us who deserves it.
[00:14:17] Where we see others get something and we say, well, I've been doing this better and longer than they have, so therefore I must be. No, God's goodness and God's grace and God's generosity is across the board, great to all who come and and seek.
[00:14:38] Is a blessing to have lived the life I've lived.
[00:14:44] And it's a blessing. I'll be honest with you. It's a blessing that my story's pretty boring.
[00:14:50] Until it wasn't.
[00:14:53] But for the most part, my upbringing was pretty boring. I had a dad and a mom who loved each other and it was very evident sometimes just get a. Get a room.
[00:15:08] But that impacted me in a good way, that my house wasn't anxious, that my family laughed together and enjoyed each other.
[00:15:21] I have a boring but joyful and generous story and other people don't have that.
[00:15:33] You know what's crazy? I didn't earn an ounce of it. Like, I just happened to be born in this family.
[00:15:40] Other people just happened to be born into that family, into that situation, into that story. It just sort of happens.
[00:15:53] And the goodness of God impacts every story, no matter where it begins.
[00:16:00] And God is willing to be generous and gracious to all, no matter when they picked up the plow, no matter when they started following Him. God's generosity and God's graciousness is unending.
[00:16:22] Should do a couple of things for us.
[00:16:28] It should make me focus one, on how much God has indeed done for me.
[00:16:37] I have not earned an ounce of God's grace.
[00:16:45] I have not earned what God has given me.
[00:16:51] Now hear me. I'm not saying, as sometimes we can say, like, oh, I'm a horrible, horrible human being and we are deprived of any goodness. No, we're.
[00:17:04] I see people do great things, good things, loving things, kind things all the time. And those are good people. I'm proud of those people and I want to be like those people. I strive for that. But none of that makes God have to do anything.
[00:17:23] That God chooses to bless me, that God chooses to offer me his hope, his peace, his love.
[00:17:32] That is grace and generosity from God and from God alone.
[00:17:40] I can't earn that. I haven't and I won't.
[00:17:45] I have to sit still in that on a regular basis just to remind myself that I'm not anything special except for what God sees, how God sees me as special.
[00:18:09] I've devoted my life to ministry, but my goodness, God could do it without me.
[00:18:18] I want to be like Jesus. But it's only by the grace of God and through the power of his spirit that that can be successful.
[00:18:27] Even good works that come through my hands are grace from God.
[00:18:34] So we've got to know our place here. No matter where we start working, we're still working for the same generous God.
[00:18:45] And once we know our place and listen, you probably are going to have to spend some time with that. Once we know the place we've been offered and given by a generous and gracious God, we can start wrestling with the fact that we really wrestle with people who aren't like us.
[00:19:04] Not just not like us. Not. And you know, that's a. I mean, my goodness, that's a problem too.
[00:19:10] Different skin colors and nationalities and ideas and voting habits and like, all the difference.
[00:19:19] We wrestle with that.
[00:19:22] Now that's pretty natural. It seems like humanity's been wrestling with that for.
[00:19:28] For a long time.
[00:19:31] It's natural.
[00:19:35] But when you've been enveloped by the grace of God, once you've been surrounded by the grace of God, you've got to start letting that grace impact how you see the person next to you.
[00:19:50] Because grace hasn't truly worked its way through your bloodstream until it gets to your eyes and until it gets to how you see the world around you.
[00:20:04] People who are having a tough time.
[00:20:07] We want to evaluate everyone. We want to evaluate ourselves like we are in the middle of process and we want to evaluate everyone else like they're a finished product.
[00:20:19] We give ourselves the grace of a story and do others the injustice of a stagnant position.
[00:20:32] But their story is this complete thing that's happening from one point to another. And you're catching them at the worst moment, at the best moment, at their most worried, at their most joyful, at their most manic, at their most depressed.
[00:20:50] You're catching them in all situations. And your judgment is only godly if it's filled with grace, or your vision is only godly if it's filled with grace.
[00:21:03] You cannot see clearly their whole story.
[00:21:10] If we could walk a mile in someone else's shoes, we think we could get, maybe somehow solve their problems for them. But if you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, you get their parents, you get their school friends, you get the way they struggled in school, you get their dyslexia, you get their struggle, like all this stuff that, like, early on you remember back, like it wasn't long ago that if you just Something as simple as being dyslexic. My grandmother was dyslexic they just thought she couldn't read and tried to get her out of school as quickly as possible.
[00:21:48] Like that's a hardship out of the gate for a kid to think they're dumb.
[00:21:55] Now, that's a small little thing, but I want to throw a small little thing in there because small little things impact small little humans.
[00:22:04] And what you're looking at when you see the world is a world full of people who are at one point, small little humans being impacted by small little things, and they're growing up, being affected by all of that.
[00:22:20] My goodness. The complexity of the story of the human experience.
[00:22:25] Why in the world would we look at anybody in the world and anybody in the midst of their story, an incredibly complicated and hard to explain. And they probably haven't fully thought it out or fleshed it out or as their story, why would we look at them as if we can say, well, you're a 5 o' clock worker, you're a 12 o' clock worker, you're a morning like everybody's story can only be rightfully seen through an acknowledgement of our ignorance and a demonstration of God's grace.
[00:23:06] You. You don't know.
[00:23:13] The only time Paul really wanted to kick somebody out of a congregation, which I've never wanted to do that.
[00:23:24] But the only time Paul's ever wanted to kick somebody out of a congregation was when they were stirring up trouble.
[00:23:34] That congregation.
[00:23:36] Not when they were right or wrong or incorrect or correct or like arguing.
[00:23:43] They were going and making trouble.
[00:23:52] That sort of behavior is outside the vision of God's grace. For others to assume you know what's going on in someone else's existence, assume you know what's going on in someone else's story. To go out into our neighborhood, we're gonna have hopefully a bunch of people from our neighborhood come to our block party today. And they're gonna be coming from all over the place, every background, every experience. A lot of stories are walking through our parking lot today. And they only need not our advice, not our financial know how. They need our grace. And it's the grace we've sat in, in the presence of God and acknowledged we need ourselves.
[00:24:38] Jesus says, and this man. This hits me as a church kid.
[00:24:45] I was raised by church, felt very holy for a long time.
[00:24:54] God saying to his upset workers, am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
[00:25:04] Or are you envious because I am generous?
[00:25:11] One of the last steps to Christian maturity is just giving up envy at the goodness of God.
[00:25:20] God's going to expand God's grace to whom God pleases. And God is good.
[00:25:31] And you are.
[00:25:33] You don't want to be the person who's tempted to pull God aside when the kingdom of God fully comes and say, hey, I thought you said they weren't.
[00:25:52] What about them?
[00:25:55] I feel like you made a mistake.
[00:26:00] Sure, let's teach the way of the kingdom of God. But also know that while we stumble and we understand our stumbling, we know what other people have been through.
[00:26:19] While we stumble and we understand our stumbling, we don't really know what everyone else is going through. We don't know. Maybe right here, maybe this place where we see somebody else and we think, man, they're struggling. This is the best they've ever felt and the closest to God they've ever felt. And they're going to keep growing. If we don't judge them in this moment, if we offer them the grace of God from here on out, we've got to trust God to do good with the people God sends us.
[00:26:49] Got to trust him.
[00:26:52] And that grace gives up any envy for God's generosity.
[00:26:59] And then Jesus reminds them in verse 16. So the last will be first and the first will be last.
[00:27:09] This is the goodness of God, is that God sees all people, all workers.
[00:27:19] They get the wage God wants to give them, they get the grace God wants to give them.
[00:27:27] And it turns out we have a good, generous God.
[00:27:33] So experience that yourself. If you haven't experienced that yourself, that's going to take some time to know. You are broken, you are saved, you are loved.
[00:27:48] But I really think that sort of work is necessary to start seeing the world through a gracious eye, to start seeing the world through the perspective of God's grace, and to stop being envious of God's goodness and generosity toward others.
[00:28:09] We need to occasionally be set right in that aspect. And it's not just by loving others, but it is by experiencing God's love for me right here.
[00:28:25] Because in the end, I think I'm a rule follower.
[00:28:32] But I broke a lot of rules.
[00:28:37] But when I'm comparing my rule successes to other rule failures, then I look pretty good, don't I? CS Lewis says, we judge others by what they do and we judge ourselves by what we hope to do.
[00:28:54] We judge our motives and we judge other people's actions.
[00:28:59] Give up that, that's freeing.
[00:29:03] You don't have to do that, not at all.
[00:29:08] You don't have to judge other people's anythings.
[00:29:13] But if they experience the grace of God through your actions and your interactions with them.
[00:29:20] And that's the closest thing that they can experience to God in your presence.
[00:29:27] Because we serve a generous God.
[00:29:31] God's more capable than we are.
[00:29:34] So this morning, as the praise team joins us on stage this morning, I want us to sit in the presence of a generous and good God, knowing full well that if God is generous and gracious with me, then I should be generous and gracious with others.
[00:29:59] And that as God is generous and gracious with others, I should not get snippy about who is. Who God is getting being generous with.
[00:30:10] Because God's grace is not just for me, but God's grace is for the world.
[00:30:18] It's a world that needs it.
[00:30:21] And if God, God hopefully will send his kingdom into this world, he's sending us today into this world to be gracious to people who need to experience his grace. No matter their story, no matter where they are, God's goodness is for them.
[00:30:41] Let's pray together.
[00:30:42] Father, thank you for this time together, for your love and generosity to us.
[00:30:50] God, there are some of us who think we're quite special and some of us who think I'm not very special. And may we all know that in your presence you are good and gracious and that your generosity abounds.
[00:31:09] And may our experience with you impact our. Our interaction with others.
[00:31:18] May we be ruled by the gift of your grace, your forgiveness, your indwelling of the spirit, the hope we have in resurrection, and the kingdom we have through your son, the king. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Let's stand and sing together.
