For one semester of my college career I majored in accounting—thinking I might make be able to make good money as a CPA. But honestly, I think one of the things that attracted me to this major was a brand new gadget that had just hit the market. It was called a “pocket calculator” and it looked like this. It was an amazing thing. It fit in your pocket—or the palm of your hand and people who needed to do a lot of adding and subtracting—like accounting students—could use it anywhere because they ran on batteries. I mean, the old bulky adding machines that weighed a ton and had to be plugged into a wall were no longer necessary. As you can see the read outs on these first pocket calculators were “high tech” red lights that formed lines that combined to make somewhat readable numbers. Another thing—they were very expensive. I bought mine at Sears for $85—a fortune in 1975—especially for a poor college student. What made my purchase hurt even more was two weeks after I bought mine they began to be mass produced and the price dropped to about $10.
But I digress—pocket calculators were wonderful because they were not only compact and portable—they were accurate. They helped you make sure everything from the figures in your check book to the columns of figures in your accounting classwork ADDED UP.
The reason I bring this all up is because many people who study about Jesus and His ministry might conclude that He needed a pocket calculator in His day—because there are many times—from our perspective—when His calculations just didn’t seem to add up. They didn’t make mathematical sense.
Philip Yancey points this out in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace. For example, there’s Jesus’ parable of the shepherd who left his flock of ninety-nine and headed out into the darkness to search for one lost lamb. As Yancey says,“[This is] a noble deed, but reflect for a moment on the underlying arithmetic. Jesus says the shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep ‘in the country.’ which presumably means they were vulnerable to rustlers, wolves, or a feral desire to bolt free. How would the shepherd feel if he returned with the one lost lamb slung across his shoulders only to find twenty-three others now missing?” Doesn’t make mathematical sense, does it!?
And then there is the scene in John’s Gospel where a woman named Mary took a pint of exotic perfume, expensive perfume, perfume worth an entire year’s wages, and poured it all on Jesus’ feet. Even the betrayer, Judas, saw that this did not “add up.” Surely Mary could have just put a little, an ounce perhaps, on Jesus’ feet and then sold the rest to feed the poor. I mean, our Lord would have smelled just as good. So, why overdo it? Why waste the entire jar when an ounce would have done the job?! This Mary must have flunked my intro to accounting class because in our way of thinking her calculations were way off.
Mark’s gospel contains a third example. After watching a widow drop two little coins into the temple collection plate Jesus belittled the larger financial gifts of more wealthy worshipers. He said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put MORE into the treasury than all the others.” (Mark 14:23) Well, what kind of ciphering did Jesus use to come up with that mathematical deduction? How could adding the value of those two little coins equal more than a handful of huge gold pieces? To put it in modern terms, how could two beat up pennies equal two fists full of brand new hundred dollar bills?
And then our text for today adds to all these confusing calculations with one final example to what Yancey refers to as, “the atrocious mathematics of the Gospel.” Turn to Matthew chapter 20 and follow along as I read verses 1-16. Jesus is speaking, teaching one of His parables.
1 – “For the kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
2 – He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 – About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
4 – He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’
5 – So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.
6 – About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 – ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 – 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.’
9 – The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour 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 men 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, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?
14 – Take your pay and go. I want to give the man 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.”
Now before we “load the free calculator app on our smart phones” and examine Jesus’ math in this parable, let’s review what has happened. At sunrise a farmer went to the place in the town where the day laborers gathered to seek work. He hired some to pick grapes in his vineyard. And we must understand—this was very hot work. In Palestine during harvest season the temperature is often above 100 degrees—not counting the heat index.
Another thing: grape harvest was usually a hectic, demanding time back then. You see, often there was just a narrow window of time during which the fruit of the vine was ripe and ready to pick before bad weather set in. After that the crop was not worth picking so the job had to be done very quickly. Well, perhaps in his haste to get the job done, at the third hour, 9 am, the farmer went and hired some more workers. He did the same at noon and 3 pm. Finally at 5pm, in order to get the harvest through the “home stretch,” he went and hired some more. Then, one hour later, at 6pm or the twelfth hour, this farmer told his foreman to blow the “quitting time” whistle and give everyone their pay, starting with those who were hired last. This must have made the workers curious because usually pay was doled out on a first-come, first-served basis so I’m sure they looked closely as the paymaster began to count out the payroll.
Well, the guys who had only worked an hour were paid how much? Look at verse 9. Right, they got one DENARIUS, which was a great wage back then. It was the same daily wage paid a Roman soldier, much more than a common day laborer would expect to get even for an entire day’s work, so the math didn’t add up even at this point. But the other laborers didn’t mind-yet.
I mean, I’m sure they were pleased with the farmer’s amazingly gracious generosity, especially those men who had been working since sun-up. They must have calculated and thought, “If these guys who only worked an hour get an entire denarius, imagine how much WE will take home! We’re going to get a bundle today!” But when they got to the paymaster, what was their salary? Look at verse 10. Right—they received the same as the other guys—ONE DENARIUS—and they were ticked because that didn’t seem fair to them. It didn’t add up. After all, they’d been sweating and slaving at high speed under that hot sun all day. According to “normal” math, they should have gotten 12 denari because 12 times 1 is 12! Yancey writes, “The boss’s action contradicted everything known about employee motivation and fair compensation. It was atrocious accounting, plain and simple.”
Okay, what is the point of all these “atrocious” payroll calculations? What is Jesus teaching us in this parable about a seemingly mathematically-challenged landowner? Well, to answer this question we must first understand that if we try to understand Jesus’ story on the basis of mathematics we’ll miss the point entirely. I mean, our Lord’s parable isn’t supposed to make economic sense. It isn’t supposed to add up. You see, in this story our Lord is giving us a parable about GRACE, and grace can’t be calculated like a day’s wages. Yancey puts it this way. “Grace is not about finishing last or first. It is about not counting at all.”
And he’s right. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5:19, in sending Jesus to die for our sins, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, NOT COUNTING men’s sins against them.” If God did COUNT our sins against us, if He did pay us according to what our sin earns us, we’d all be in trouble. Let me remind you of the accounting phrases in Romans where it says that, “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God—and the WAGES of sin is death.” (Romans 3:23; 6:23a) No—praise the Lord—the Gospel is good news because its central message is that God dispenses GIFTS not wages. As Romans 6:23b says, “The free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” Because of His great—and truly amazing-grace—people who respond to the Gospel do not get paid according to their merit.
It’s like what they used to call “the new math.” Remember all that stuff about “bases,” etc. Well, God’s “base” is GRACE. His actions are prompted not by math, but by His great all-encompassing, unconditional love. I’m saying the amazing grace-filled LOVE of God is the key to understanding the “atrocious mathematics” of the Gospel.
One of our Christmas gifts several years back was a devotional book based on Rembrandt’s masterpieces. In the section on Rembrandt’s depiction of this parable from Matthew 20, Pastor Robert DeMoor illustrates this principle with an example from his own childhood. He writes,
“Back in Ontario when the apples ripened, Mom would sit all seven of us down, Dad included, with pans and paring knives, until the mountain of fruit was reduced to neat rows of filled canned jars on the basement shelf. She never bothered keeping track of how many we did, though we younger ones undoubtedly proved to be more of a nuisance than a help—cut fingers, squabbles over who got what pan—apple core fights. But regardless of our output, the reward for everyone was always the same: we each received the largest chocolate ice cream cone money could buy. A stickler might argue that it wasn’t fair, since the older ones actually peeled apples. But I can’t remember anyone ever complaining about it. You see, a family understands that it operates under a different set of norms than a courtroom does. In fact, when my younger brother had to make do with a Popsicle because the store ran out of ice cream, we all felt sorry for him, despite his lack of productivity. (He’d eaten all the apples he’d peeled that day—both of them.)”
Well, in the family of God our Heavenly Father operates under a different set of norms than an earthly courtroom doesn’t He!? Because of God’s love, those of us who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior receive the gift of eternal, abundant life instead of the physical and spiritual death we all so richly deserve. But we have a hard time understanding this, don’t we? We often have trouble comprehending God’s grace because we are still programmed to think according to “man’s math.” I mean, grace baffles us because it goes against our mental calculators that say a price must be paid for our sin. And if you struggle with the “mathematics” of the Gospel then let me remind you a price WAS paid. As Romans 3:24 says, “We are justified freely by His grace—through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” In other words, God gave up His own Son rather than give up on humanity. Jesus paid our sin debt.
In the old Star Trek film: THE WRATH OF KHAN, there’s this classic scene in which Spock climbs into the highly radioactive chamber to fix the warp engines. In doing so he receives a lethal dose of radiation and when Kirk who is on the other side of a lead glass safety window asks him why he did this, Spock says, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” In other words Spock calculated that saving the lives of his crew were worth losing his own life. I’ve heard pastors use that as an illustration of the cross—I’ve even used it myself—but in my study this week it hit me that it doesn’t quite get there. Spock’s sacrifice wasn’t the same. There’s not really a parallel here. You see, Spock was dying for Kirk and Scotty and Uhura and Checov and Sulu—and 300 of his other crew-mates. He was dying for his friends—for people we would call “good”—educated people—professionals who were risking their lives to explore space for the benefit of all mankind.
And to us Spock’s sacrifice DOES make some sort of mathematical sense. If one man dies so that 300 GOOD people can go on living it’s tragic but it seems to add up to us. But that’s not what Jesus did. No—He died for ALL people—the “good person” who is nevertheless a fallen sinner” and the individuals who do things that make their sin more obvious. Jesus died for the brave explorers and generous philanthropists of the world but also for the murderers like those two escapees in New York and that young man who killed 9 Christians in Charleston. Jesus died for the corporate executives who stole the retirement funds of the people beneath them. Jesus died for the Hitler’s and the Saddam Hussein’s and the soldiers of Isis. As 1st John 2:2 puts it, “Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the WHOLE WORLD.”
And that DOESN’T add up to us. It doesn’t make mathematical sense for Jesus—sinless and perfect—to die for heinous sinners like the ones I’ve mentioned—not to mention fallen sinners like you and me. But this does add up to God because God’s love is inclusive and unlimited. As Jesus put it, God so loved THE WHOLE world. Paul summarizes it well in Romans 1:6-8 where he says, “Christ died for the UNGODLY. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” And in Romans 5:15 he says, “But the GIFT [of salvation] is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, ADAM—how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ overflow to the many.”
God’s grace is truly amazing isn’t it!?
We celebrate the math of God’s grace, through the ordinance of communion. As we do, let me invite all Christians present to partake with us. After all, even if you are not a member of this church, if you are a Christian, if you are His, this is yours.
THE ORDINANCE OF COMMUNION
Once we begin to grasp the “atrocious” math of the Gospel, once we experience the grace of God, we are truly driven to live for Him Who loved us and gave Himself up for us. This morning if our little math lesson drives you to make some sort of public decision now is the time to share it. As we stand and sing, come and share any decision the grace of God compels you to make, whether it is to join this church family, or to confess your faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord.