Septuagesima – January 28th, 2024
Trinity Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Matthew 20:1–16
“By Grace Alone”
Theme: God’s reward for work in the vineyard is entirely by grace—not by works.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Bible often gives warnings against sin to all people in different vocations or situations. We should expect this—after all, we are all different, and yet also alike in some ways. There are men and women, old and young, and many more ways to divide each of us. We all are tempted with our own sins, but there are also tendencies of sin for various types of humans. Young men have different temptations than older women. Children have different temptations than men in their prime. As we approach and enter the Church’s season of Lent, our readings begin to look at our struggle against sins of various kinds.
The temptations that we will look at this week and next week are temptations for believers in particular. These are not sins that unbelievers are tempted to fall into. The devil does attack believers in different ways than unbelievers. His goal is to stop us from believing in Christ. His goal for unbelievers is to keep them from believing in Christ.
But he does attack those within the Church in different ways. Next week we will look how he attacks new believers particularly. Although, there will be applications for born and bred believers too.
This week is the opposite: we will look at the temptations for those who have been Christians their whole lives. If I’m not mistaken, that covers quite a bit of us gathered here, doesn’t it? It certainly covers me as well.
God has called each of us to work in his vineyard. Some of us he called from the very beginning of our lives as we were baptized shortly after birth, but others he has called later in life. We have been working in his kingdom, attending church and examining our lives according to the word of God We have been setting aside time and effort that could be spent in work or entertainment or in just sleeping in.
But there are some whom God calls in the eleventh hour. They are like the thief on the cross who was crucified with Jesus. If you remember, he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). This sort of person may have never worked in the kingdom. He did not help. Yet he receives the same forgiveness and welcome that we do. He was not our friend in the world. He might even have been our enemy, but now he is our brother. We ought to rejoice in this because this is what grace means.
There are two temptations for born-and-bred Christians when we look at the eleventh-hour Christians. The first is to think that we don’t need to work. If you can get into heaven in the last moment, then why not wait until then to call the pastor and ask him to visit you on your deathbed? We could despise the company of our family for friends in the world. We could become hedonists and lose the faith.
This is an easy error to fall into. It is easy to think that fornication or sleeping in on a Sunday morning or living like the Prodigal Son will have no real consequences. We can just show up a few times a year and get right with God. It is absolutely possible to do that, of course, but it is also possible to wait too long. Those who plan to repent at the 11th hour often fall dead at 10:30. Cinderella intended to return home by midnight but lost track of time. Addiction numbs the soul slowly.
The answer to this is to repent. Do not fall for the devil’s promises. You cannot have the best of both worlds, this world and God’s Kingdom. There is no “best” for you in vice or the sinful pleasures of the flesh. The good life is a life lived in forgiveness and in peace with God and men. It is not toil to work in the Kingdom, next to your brothers, with your father.
The second temptation that we can fall into is to despise the Eleventh Hour Christians. This is the error of the Pharisees in Jesus’s day. It is a temptation for the professionals, those who work in the Church, or for those who volunteer lots of hours or who never miss a service. Like the older brother of the Prodigal Son, we might be envious of our brother who has enjoyed the pleasures this world has to offer but only now is coming back. We might scoff at the thief on the cross who definitely deserves his punishment, but nonetheless attains Paradise because he converts at the last moment. We might think that we should get more from God for believing our whole life or doing a lot for the church or giving up a lot of things that sure look like fun.
God would call us to repentance for these beliefs as well. This parable teaches us about grace. It opens up for us that we all have failings, but God gives us eternity by grace. Those who worked the whole day should not have a bad attitude towards those who worked only one hour, and those who worked for only one hour should repent of their life of rejection of the call of the Master. We all have sinned, and we all need God’s mercy.
This is what the Gospel is and does: it forgives sinners, even the worst of sinners. Jesus paid the debt for all of us. He even died for those who won’t benefit from his sacrifice. He died for the most wicked and vile of men. If they would only believe, apart from any works at all, they would be saved, no matter what they have done or how they lived. It is free. It is there for them, for you. Everyone who believes and is baptized, who calls on the Name of the Lord is saved – no matter how tiny the faith or how short its duration.
The thief on the cross comes in by grace. So do we all or not at all. For what He gives cannot be earned or bought. It has never been deserved – not even by the greatest heroes and saints of the faith. It is certainly not earned or deserved by us. We are blessed to be here, to hear the Word, to know God’s love. It is always and only a gift, a mercy, a blessing from God upon beggars.
That brings us to the last point. We want to remain here, in the Kingdom, in faith. We do not want to be sent on our way. There is nothing in the world for us. Christ is all. Everything else fades or is destroyed. He and His Word are eternal. His sacrifice is complete and has been accepted by the Father. He is raised for our justification. His amazing grace does not fail or disappoint.
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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