The Laborers in the Vineyard – Matthew 20:1-16 Day 20 #ProfessorHorner

Just read a few commentaries on Matthew 20:1-6, a link to one of them is below. Great reminder for me to be content  and not compare what I have been given with others.

The Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)

Bible Commentary / Produced by TOW Project

Matthew 20:1-16 (NIV)

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend.Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Footnotes:

  1. Matthew 20:2 A denarius was the usual daily wage of a day laborer.

About GettingCloserToOurGod

This blog is written by Todd Christenson. He was raised in Nebraska and currently lives on Long Island in New York. Though out my childhood, my family attended church. We prayed together at meals. I thought I was prepared for life. After college, I moved to New York City. Shy, unsure of myself, building an identity in worldly things, increasingly prideful, self-righteousness, a controlling nature. In 2013, God spoke through someone, suggesting I confess my sins. I did. I realized that every day, I’d been glorifying myself, not God. Today, God’s teaching me to have my identity in Him, only, my dependency in Him, not myself, being who He wants me to be, not the world, loving Him first, loving others as myself.
This entry was posted in Bible Verses, Greed, Self-Help and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s