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Grace over Entitlement (Matthew 20:1-16)
God does not deal with his people by the maths of entitlement, but by the generosity of grace.
Introduction
Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard confronts the way we naturally measure people. We instinctively compare effort, reward, usefulness, and status. But in the kingdom of heaven, God does not deal with people according to what they deserve. He is generous to the needy, and that turns our instincts upside-down.
1. God doesn't do the maths
The vineyard owner pays each worker what is needed, not what strict entitlement would calculate. The complaint of the first workers exposes a heart shaped by comparison and desert. But the parable shows that God's kingdom runs on generous grace, not on human scoring systems.
2. ...and neither should we!
Jesus tells this parable to reshape how his disciples see themselves and other believers. If God welcomes, forgives, and rewards by grace, then we must stop ranking people by effort, profile, or visible usefulness. Grace beats entitlement, so comparison and superiority have no place among God's people.
Conclusion
The gospel is the clearest proof that God does not do the maths. Jesus goes to the cross not to give us what we deserve, but to give us what we need: forgiveness, welcome, and eternal life. So whether we feel proud or insecure, the call is the same: stop doing the maths, and enjoy God's generosity in Christ.
Questions to think about...
1. Why do the first workers in the vineyard feel angry, and what does that reveal about their hearts?
2. What does this parable teach us about the way God treats people in his kingdom?
3. In what ways are you tempted to "do the maths" with yourself or with other Christians?
4. How does the grace of Jesus free us from entitlement, comparison, and insecurity?
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Matthew 20v1-16 - Grace over Entitlement
Grace over Entitlement
Matthew 20:1-16 | Richmond Church | 21 June 2026
Introduction
I want you to just take a look around you. Have a good look around at the people here today. Who are the most important people? The most impressive? The most valuable? Who are the least important, the least impressive, the least valuable? If you had a Richmond Church awards ceremony, who would win the trophies? And where do you see yourself in that mix? Who’s coming in first, and who’s dead last?
Does that make you a bit uncomfortable to think about? We don’t like those kinds of questions, do we? I think many of us instinctively react against them. What we want to say is: we’re all equal in this church; we’re all equal in God’s sight.
But if you’re honest, didn’t a few answers come to mind before you squashed them? Don’t we value certain people, certain kinds of people, more than others? “I wish there were more of this kind of person in our church, and not so many of this other kind.” Don’t we look up to some people more than others? “I wish I was more like this person, but not like that other person.”
We’ll all have our own particular ways of defining that, but there’ll also be ways you define that together as a community. Who’s in the inner circle and who’s more on the margins? How do you understand what it means to be a valuable member of God’s kingdom? Or, perhaps more importantly, how do you understand what it means to be a valuable member of Richmond Church?
How we honestly answer those questions will tell us what our values are as a community. More than what you put on your marketing material, how you actually define where individuals sit in the hierarchy will tell you what you really think makes someone valuable.
And if we want that answer to align with Jesus’, we need to hear this: the values of God’s kingdom are upside-down and back-to-front - or, as my little sister used to say, “front-to-runt.” They’re the opposite of what we expect, of the way we naturally think about things.
I’m continuing this series you’ve started called The Kingdom’s Values from Matthew chapters 19 to 23. Over these next couple of Sundays, I want us to explore two of these kingdom values that Jesus teaches and models.
We’ll start with this - grace beats entitlement.
God doesn’t do the maths...
The first thing I want to tell you is this: God doesn’t do the maths. [SLIDE] Now, I love maths. It was always my favourite subject at school, and I know there’s other maths fans here, too! I’m not wanting to disparage maths at all. Actually, God invented maths, and the fact we can describe our universe in mathematical terms is one of the strongest evidences for a logical mind behind creation! So what do I mean by “God doesn’t do the maths”? I’m going to leave you hanging on that question for a minute, because we need to get into the passage that was read and hear Jesus’ parable.
Imagine you live at the time of Jesus. [SLIDE] You get up at the crack of dawn, throw on your tunic and sandals, and walk the hot, dusty road into town. It’s 6am and the crowds are already arriving, people eager to find work for the day. You join the queue, doing your best to look like a strong, capable, reliable employee. You notice a gentleman-type, nicely dressed, looking for workers. A bit odd, as they’d normally have a manager to do this sort of thing rather than getting their hands dirty themselves.
But your attention is drawn away from him to the length of the queue. You start to do the maths in your head. How many people ahead of me? Average number of workers each manager is hiring? Total number of managers? As the crowds die down, you realise you’re not going to get a full day’s work today. That means no full day’s wages at the end of the day.
But you stick around, because, well, you can’t face telling the family they’re going hungry tonight. And something about that vineyard owner makes you hold onto hope.
Sure enough, he returns throughout the day to hire more workers, but never picks you. As 5pm rolls round he returns. This time he makes a beeline for you. “Why have you all been standing here all day doing nothing?” he asks. “Because no-one’s hired me,” you reply. “Then come and work for me!” he says.
The sun’s nearly set, and he doesn’t promise payment, but what’s to lose? Maybe you can make a good impression and get work tomorrow? You follow him to his vineyard, where you see those he hired earlier, hard at work. [SLIDE] It doesn’t seem like you’re even needed, and you’ve not picked a handful of grapes before it’s too dark to continue.
The manager calls you all over, and you get in line again. But instead of starting with those who’d arrived first and worked the 12-hour shift, he starts with you. He reaches into his money bag and pulls out a denarius - a whole day’s wages! “This must be a mistake!” you say without thinking. “No mistake,” says the manager. “Boss’s orders.”
You head home to your family with a full day’s wages for 1 hour’s work. You’ll all eat tonight. How generous is this vineyard owner! You’ve been given far more than you deserve. You feel like dancing home!
But you hover just for a minute, to see what everyone else will get. The guys who’ve been there all day have seen what you got paid. They’re rubbing their hands together. You can hear them doing the maths - theirs will be a bumper pay packet! But as he goes down the line, the manager pays everyone the same. Those who’ve worked 3 hours - 1 denarius. Those who’ve worked 6 - 1 denarius. Those who’ve worked 9 hours - 1 denarius. And those who’ve sweated through 12 hours - also 1 denarius.
They’re furious! “We’ve done a full 12 hours of backbreaking manual labour, we’re exhausted and sunburnt from working through the middle of the day, and yet this is how you pay us? We’re worth much more than that!”
“Hold on, what did you agree to work for?” says the manager.
“Well, 1 denarius. But...”
“I’ve paid you exactly what we agreed. That’s enough to feed your family, isn’t it?”
“But how come they got a denarius as well?”
“They need a denarius to feed their families, too, so I decided to be generous with them. I’ve not been unfair to you!”
How are you feeling if you’re a 1-hour worker, who can unexpectedly put food on the table tonight?
How about if you’ve worked 12 hours? That’s a different story.
Two very different responses to the vineyard owner. Some are delighted by his generosity. Others are angry at his seeming unfairness.
Why does it seem unfair? Because they think they should be paid based on the amount of effort. [SLIDE] In their heads, the effort/reward graph should look like this - what we might call a “linear curve”.
But this employer has a different system. It’s not the amount of work they put in, but their need that determines their wages. [SLIDE] They aren’t paid what they deserve for their work, but generously given enough to feed their families.
For some of these guys, that works out at twelve times the going rate! Just consider for a minute how outrageously generous that is! [PAUSE] It’s like you’ve only been able to get a 3 hour shift this week, but been paid as if you’re full-time.
And do you see how it seems like this was his intention all along. This guy went out to find workers again and again, not because he needed them, [PAUSE] but because they needed him. [PAUSE]
You will have worked out by now that the vineyard owner in this story is God. The workers are Christian believers, and the vineyard is the kingdom of heaven - in other words, wherever God’s rule extends. For now, that’s limited to the church, but it’s expanding, and one day it’ll fill the whole earth. Jesus says this story, this parable, is meant to capture something of what the kingdom is like.
[SLIDE] And here’s his summary (v16): the last will be first, and the first will be last. The last will be first, and the first will be last. In other words, God’s kingdom is upside-down.
The last will be first, and the first will be last. God doesn’t do the maths. Notice how the first workers think in terms of fairness, of getting what they deserve. They’re focussed on the numbers, doing the maths. Here’s what I’ve done, here’s the effort I’ve put it and the hours I’ve worked, add them up and multiply and here’s what I should get.
So, when others seem to be getting more than they deserve, they’re angry. They’re unhappy at getting exactly what was promised to them, because others have got the same without having earned it! Can you relate to that? I know I can.
We tend to measure someone’s worth by their output, their activity, their effort, their value to us. Someone is more valuable if they produce more tangible value. I think we often measure ourselves that way, and we want to measure others that way, too.
Or look at it from another angle. If we want something, we’ve got to earn it through our efforts. The way we’re assessed in any walk of life is, in general, based on how much work we’ve put in and what we’ve achieved. Think exams at school, or your salary review at work, or the football league table... That’s how the world works, isn’t it? The first are first, and the last are last. Sure, it doesn’t always turn out exactly like that - but it’s how we expect things should work.
But Jesus is describing to us a completely different paradigm, a different vision of reality: he shows us a world where the last are first, and the first are last. He shows us a master who doesn’t consider for a minute what each worker deserves; one who is not overly-concerned with complete “fairness”; whose generous heart is focussed on fulfilling need, not rewarding effort. This is the character of God. God doesn’t do the maths. [SLIDE]
...and neither should we!
Now, let’s make this more concrete, and then start to apply it to ourselves here and now. We’ve seen that God doesn’t do the maths. [SLIDE] And so neither should we!
Why is Jesus telling this parable? He wants to show the disciples that they need to start seeing people in this upside-down way. You might remember back in chapter 19, Peter asks Jesus if there’ll be a reward for him, given he’s left everything to follow Jesus - and Jesus says to him “Yes! You will receive a reward for it.”
But now, in chapter 20, Jesus wants to clarify and nuance that. This promised reward doesn’t mean the disciples should see other followers of Jesus as less valuable if they follow him later on, or don’t have to make the same sacrifices.
Instead, they should see and value them according to this upside-down kingdom value: the last will be first and the first will be last. The least deserving will be ranked most highly! They will be first in line for God’s generosity, his grace. Grace over entitlement. And those who think they’re most deserving of God’s favour will end up last, because his grace to others makes them mad!
Now, Jesus doesn’t just teach this, but he puts it into practice. Without going too much into next week, we’ll see later in the chapter that some blind men come to Jesus: [SLIDE] (v30) “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” They aren’t asking Jesus to give them what they deserve, but to treat them mercifully, generously, according to their need. And Jesus does exactly that. “What do you want from me?” “We want to see.” And Jesus heals them. He wasn’t doing the maths, working out whether they deserved his healing - he saw them according to their need and dealt with them generously.
[SLIDE] And isn’t that precisely how he deals with each of us? Right after this parable Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection. Even as he’s teaching these things, Jesus is on a mission. He’s heading up to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross, to generously give his very life up for us. He isn’t thinking about what he deserves as the perfect, sinless Son of Man. He’s not thinking about what we deserve as sinful, rebellious creatures. No, his goal is to generously provide everything we need - forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, and eternal life with him.
This is how the gospel works. We enter into the kingdom of heaven not based on our own efforts, but based on God’s generosity. This is a kingdom value through and through. So it should be our own mindset when it comes to other believers. We need to prepare our hearts for payday, when God will reward people generously, when grace will take first place.
Sometimes, I can be just like those last workers. I do the maths. I’m not as good a Christian as her, but at least I’m better than him. Can you relate? We measure that in all sorts of ways - by the amount of church activities we’re involved in, or rotas we’re on, maybe how long we’ve been a Christian, or our biblical knowledge. Maybe it’s things like their kindness to us, or their politeness, or how well they pray.
Jesus is saying to the disciples here, and to us, don’t measure yourself and other Christians based on their efforts and achievements. Don’t focus on that. Don’t do the maths. Don’t focus on what you reckon you or they deserve from God. In reality we are all much more like the last workers than the first - we really deserve very little! But don’t be dismayed because remember: the last will be first! Because God is an outrageously generous boss!
In his kingdom, things are upside-down: to put it in mathematical terms, his reward calculation is not a function of what we deserve, but of what we need. [SLIDE] Or as Jesus says, the first will be last and the last will be first. And so, we should see everyone in that way, too - as recipients of God’s amazing generosity.
Let’s pick on that example of the number of activities someone is involved in - the Sunday rotas they’re on, their attendance at various meetings, the hospitality they provide, the one-to-one Bible studies they’ve got going on. And maybe you think you’re acing it in that department. You’re definitely above average. Not like a few others you could mention, who don’t seem to be pulling their weight. You would never say anything to them, of course! But it’s there, in your heart. You sense that, in some way, you’re winning.
When we think like that, we need our thinking renewed. That’s how the world works, but it’s not how the kingdom of heaven works. In the kingdom of heaven, the first will be last and the last will be first. When you find yourself thinking otherwise, maybe you could take a couple of minutes to confess that to God, to thank him specifically for the people you consider “last”, to thank him for his generosity to them, to pray that they would receive a great reward in heaven, and to remind yourself of the wonderful generosity God has shown to you in Christ. Let God’s grace take first place.
But maybe you’re on the other side of that coin. You feel a little on the outside of things. Whether that’s because of life circumstances, physical or mental health reasons, or lack of confidence, you feel like others are way more involved in the life and ministry of the church, and they’ve earned God’s pleasure and favour much more than you. You do the maths, and think you’re losing.
Jesus’ message to you in this parable is: don’t do the maths. Enjoy God’s generosity to you in the gospel! Live as one whose greatest needs have been met completely by his grace, not according to your effort, but according to your poverty. You can allow others who are more able to shoulder a greater burden of responsibility and involvement without having to think of yourself as inferior. When you see yourself in this way - in the way God sees you! - it brings a security, a peace, from which your sacrificial service of him will flow.
You won’t need to either be depressed about yourself on the one hand, or burn yourself out by taking on too much on the other. Instead, your life can be marked by a joy that overflows into appropriate effort and activity. Sacrificial, absolutely. But not thinking horizontally, in terms of comparison with others’ efforts; instead, thinking vertically, in terms of God’s generosity in welcoming you into his kingdom on the basis of Christ’s finished work.