“For the last shall be the first and the first shall be the last.” Matthew 20:1–16
I was thinking about the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard - an easy thing to be thinking of here in Sonoma County with all the vineyards around us.
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is all about a householder hiring workers for his vineyard. He went out early in the morning, hired some guys for a penny a day, and sent them over to his vineyard.
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Around 9:00 am, he hired more guys for the same wage. And later in the day, around Noon, he saw some guys standing around the marketplace, idle. So the vineyard owner said, “Go ye also into the vineyard”. (It sounds better in King James English, doesn’t it?)
So those guys took off to the vineyards, too, and started working.
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He went out about 3:00 pm and again at 5:00 pm, each time hiring more guys, telling them, “Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive”. And off these guys went.
At the end of the working day, the householder called everybody in to pay them for their day’s work. He began with the last hired, and finished with the men who had worked since the early morning hours.
But everybody, regardless of when they had started work, got a penny. That didn’t sit very well with the men who had worked the entire day. They said, “Look: we started in the morning and these guys started at 5:00 in the evening and only worked one hour. We worked longer, We should get more than these other guys. You’ve made them equal to us.”
The householder told them, “Friends, you agreed to work for me for a penny. Take what’s yours. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
The meaning of this Parable is that the householder is God, and the workers are us. God doesn’t care how late you come to him. Your reward will be the same as someone who has lived with God all his life.
You need never worry if God is going to accept a “latecomer”. It’s never too late to bring God into your life!
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last…”
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