The Company You Keep

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Let's get into Matthew chapter 20, verses 1 through 16. For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for denarius a day, he sent them into the vineyard. And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And to them he said, You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you. So they went. Going out about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour, he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, Why do you stand here idle all day? And they said to him, Because no one has hired us. He said to them, You go into the vineyard too. And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first. And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, Friend, I'm doing you no wrong. Do you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I gave to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first and the first last. Is that rubbing you a little wrong right now? Wait, we'll get there, man. I don't like to think about some of this. So this parable has been traditionally called the laborers in the vineyard. And if you have the focus on what the laborers are doing, then you're going to get infuriated with this parable. That's kind of like the me focus. I'm working, etc. Okay, what do I do? What do I get? Wait a minute. That's not fair. Now, there's also another focus. And Kenneth Bailey, who lived in the Middle East for 40 years, he's passed away, wrote some great commentaries, understood the peasant culture, understood what was going on, looked at all the Eastern Syriac versions of the texts, etc. Really got to what this parable is about a lot of the parables. And in it, he says, really, this parable should not be called the laborers in the vineyard, but the compassionate employer. And the focus is really on what that employer does, who represents God in the parable. And when you look at it from that angle, all of a sudden makes all the difference. And you start going like, wow. And you're amazed at the goodness and the compassion of someone like this. So that's the real question today. It's what is your focus? What's my focus? Most of the time, I don't even realize what my focus is, because I don't reflect on that. But if I do, you know what my focus is? Me. Even when I am serving other people, my focus is on me and how I'm serving those other people. Have you ever done that before? And even when I'm praising God and thinking my focus is on God, I'm going like, wow, look at how my focus is on God, and I'm focusing again on me. It's really hard not to be into self-worship and into self-focus throughout, and what I'm doing and what I should get and how I should work. And when that focus is up, when life is all about what I do and what I should get for what I do, and why others seem to get more than me who have done less than I have done, and what they should deserve, you know, you get into that, life is going to be one long, exhausting struggle, and you're going to often be offended. So today we're going to look at this parable in those two angles, and then try to figure out how we can get from the one to the other. So we're going to look at a me focus, the worker focus, then a God focus, the owner focus, or the employer focus, and then finally, how do you go from me to God? How do we get there? So the me focus. Now, I've kind of shared that already, but I don't remember this, and it's probably best I don't remember the lawyer who has this commercial on local television here. It is not the one you think. But he gets up and he says, in my family, I grew up in a family where hard work, yada, yada, yada, and I have worked for everything I earned, and I believe in that, and I will work for you, and I'm listening to this. Now, I analyze things way too much. I analyze movies, I can't sit there and go like, well, wait a minute, this makes no sense, and my wife and family go like, just enjoy something for a chain, and I keep analyzing. But I analyze this commercial, I'm going like, wait a minute, now you're saying that you grew up in this family, you've worked for everything that you deserve...