The Song of the One Who Entered the Vineyard at the Eleventh Hour (Matthew 20:1-16)

Rev. Kim Seong-hun (Grace Gospel Church, Daejeon)

Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16

1. For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
2. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
4. And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.
5. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
6. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?
7. They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
8. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
9. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
10. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
11. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,
12. Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
13. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
14. Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
15. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
16. So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

The Song of the One Who Entered the Vineyard at the Eleventh Hour

The word “faith” first of all means “to lean on.” To entrust myself to someone is like getting into a car and putting my body in its care. Faith is not needed for what I myself am able to do. Faith begins only when I am unable. When I realize I can do nothing on my own, I must collapse. Only a person who has utterly collapsed comes to rely on the Word. Is there really such a thing in this world as a person who has collapsed and a person who has not? In God’s sight, every human being has already collapsed — we simply have not realized that fact ourselves. Think of a rose that has been cut and placed in a vase. Is it alive, or is it dead? That flower is already dead. Within a few days it is destined for the trash can. Though it may look vivid for a moment, its true nature is already death. God sees the end of our lives. We cannot see it with our own eyes. Only through the Word can we see the reality of life.

The Gospel of Matthew is filled with the expression “the kingdom of heaven is like.” This is because human beings, taking only their own experience and the visible world as the whole of reality, do not know the reality of the kingdom of heaven. Many try to display their convictions through political slogans or outward actions, but true faith is not human effort — it is entrusting everything entirely to the powerful Jesus. When we have such faith, we discover an astonishing fact: the kingdom of heaven is not simply a future place we go to after death, but a present kingdom that begins within us the moment we receive Jesus as the King of our hearts. In the end, the purpose for which Jesus came to this earth, as John 3:16 says, was to rescue us from destruction and to make us live, from this very moment, the eternal life — “everlasting life.”

When human beings seize power, they inevitably rewrite the law to their own advantage and to make ruling easier. To be “under the law” ultimately means a state of heart in which I myself become the master and king, seeking to exalt myself. That is why, whenever we are under a law we ourselves have made, we inevitably sin. A life in which I am king and master is, in fact, a life at war with God.

Consider the case of King David. When did he sin? Not while he remained who he was in God, but precisely at the moment he made himself king and, by his own power, held absolute authority to say “come” and have someone come, or “go” and have someone go — that was the very moment he stepped onto the path of sin. That is why there is the famous saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is a timeless truth. When human beings gain power, they are bound to become corrupt. Adam, too, once given power, ruined the community through the foolish act of driving those who would have laid down their lives for him into battle to die.

What is the worst condition a human being can be in? It is the state of “pride.” Scripture makes clear whom God hates. Unlike other sins, Scripture declares, quite directly and firmly, “God hates the proud.” Ordinary people, even when they dislike someone, tend to speak indirectly, but God says outright, “I detest the proud.”

What, then, is pride? It is not merely acting proud. Refusing to acknowledge that God is King, and instead making oneself the master and king of one’s own life — that is true pride. Only when we understand this problem of pride can we finally see the meaning of the cross rightly. Of all the many ways to die, why did Jesus have to be nailed to a cross of all things? The cross was, at that time, Rome’s instrument of execution — used not for ordinary criminals, but specifically for “rebels who sought to make themselves king.” In other words, the cross is the very place where, in God’s sight, the most prideful — those who refuse to acknowledge God and seek to make themselves king — are nailed.

In the end, God planned one thing for us. Like the prodigal son who mistakenly believed there would be greater joy in leaving his father, the message of the whole of Scripture toward every hopeless human being who has left God to establish himself is only this: “Return to God.” In Matthew 20:1, the word that the master of the house went out early in the morning to send laborers into his vineyard shows us precisely that heart of God.

It is significant that the owner of the vineyard made no promise of wages to those who came in at five in the afternoon (the eleventh hour). He simply told them to go in — nothing more. These people did not go in expecting to receive something. Because they had been left idle and unwanted all day long, unhired by anyone, they went in simply hoping to catch the eye of a master who, even now, was willing to call them. For if they built this relationship with the master today, they could count on work tomorrow. And so the hearts of those who entered at the eleventh hour were filled with gratitude toward the master. Rejected by everyone else, was not this master willing to hire them? That they had finally met someone who noticed them was an overwhelming gift of gratitude. In this way, every letter and every stroke of Scripture carries meaning that matters greatly.

As evening fell, the owner of the vineyard instructed his steward to call the laborers and pay them their wages. But the order in which he did so was peculiar: “Beginning from the last unto the first.” He began paying wages with the very last to arrive — those who had come at the eleventh hour. When the work was finished, the laborers must have stood in a line. The master began his reckoning from the very back of the line, with the one who had come last.

And then something astonishing happens. To the one who had worked only one hour, he gave a full penny. That man had thought himself unworthy to receive anything, yet he received a full day’s wage. Verse 9 records: “And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.” People are naturally intensely curious about how much others receive. Is that not precisely why, in salary negotiations at large corporations, revealing to a colleague how much one earns is treated as strictly confidential? It is that sensitive a matter.

Those who came first, seeing the eleventh-hour workers receive a penny, naturally expected to receive more. If a man who worked one hour received a penny, surely they, who had labored a full twelve hours from six in the morning, deserved twelve pennies. But Scripture says: “and they likewise received every man a penny.” Having received their wages, they began to grumble against the master of the house: “These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day!” Their complaint erupted. Having toiled and sweated bucketfuls all day under Israel’s blazing sun, they protested fiercely, as if in demonstration, that it was unjust to be treated the same as one who had idled all day and shown up only briefly at the end. Then the master answers one of them quietly: “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?”

As I talk with our members, many confess that it was only when they reached the most hopeless place in life that the grace of God came and rescued them. In this way, the grace of God is always destined to come precisely to that place of despair where we have lost all hope.

In truth, all of us are people without hope — like the laborers in the parable of the vineyard who were called only at five in the afternoon, the eleventh hour. The problem is that many people live under the illusion that they entered at nine in the morning or three in the afternoon. Because of this illusion, what ought to be a matter for gratitude turns instead into grumbling and complaint. Those who entered early, in particular, entered into a contractual relationship with the master over “one penny,” and so came to be placed under “law” — and it was precisely that legal standard that robbed them of gratitude.

The master says to them, “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?” These workers had lost, in their hearts, the promise they had made with the master — that is, the “word.” Apart from the word, caught up in their own emotions and their spirit of comparison, they fell into grumbling. Scripture calls such people “those who belong to works.” Now, a character exactly like this grumbler also appears in Luke chapter 15 — the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son. Hearing from a servant that his younger brother had returned and that his father had killed the fattened calf, the elder son “was angry, and would not go in,” so his father came out and pleaded with him. The elder son answered his father: “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.”

This elder son’s grumbling is exactly identical to the grumbling of the vineyard laborers: “I have labored for so many years, yet you never killed even a young goat for me — but for that brother of mine who squandered your property, you kill the fattened calf? How can this be right?” At this, the father gives his son an astonishing answer — Luke 15:31: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” The elder son pleads his own lack, saying, “Have you ever given me so much as a young goat?” — but the father says, “I have already given you everything.” The son believes he has received nothing; the father says he has already given all. This deep gap is precisely the heart of the story.

The one who thinks he himself can accomplish something is precisely the one who relies on “works.” Returning to Matthew 20 with this perspective, the meaning behind Jesus’ words begins to come into sharp focus. In verse 14, the master says to the worker who came first, “Take that thine is, and go thy way.” This is, in truth, a fearsome statement. The word “thine” means that you received this as a rightful “payment” for the work you did under the agreed wage of one penny. So then — is this penny the master’s, or is it mine? It is entirely “mine.” Because it is my wage, rightfully earned through my own labor, it becomes my own possession, not the master’s.

By contrast, the penny received by the one who entered at the eleventh hour is something received that belongs to “the master.” It is never “mine.” Do you understand this difference? What is received by grace is not my possession — it remains entirely the master’s. In Scripture, a “thief” is precisely one who takes what belongs to the master and makes it his own. This is exactly what happens in the story in Luke 16 of the steward who wasted his master’s possessions. There, “to waste” means to use what belongs to the master as though it were one’s own — and this is precisely the mark of “one who belongs to works.”

This is a truly crucial matter for our faith. A person who believes he can accomplish something on his own will, in the end, grumble, lose grace, and become a person of complaint. But the one who says, “I am the one who entered at the eleventh hour. I have no hope of my own. I am like the woman caught in the very act of adultery” — the one who thus discovers that, apart from God, he has no hope at all, and who arrives at the very end of life — that is precisely the one who receives the grace of God. God is the one who gives such a person, by grace, the penny that belongs to “God Himself.”

The story of David proves this. When David acted like a king in his own right — deciding, judging, and acting as though he himself could do anything — he became a man who hurt those around him, a man of grumbling and complaint. In the end, God judged that David. However much David prayed, God did not listen, and the child born to him through Bathsheba died. The judgment of God had come.

When the sword of judgment struck David, he finally saw himself as one who could not escape God’s judgment. Only after enduring that severe judgment — the death of his son — was Solomon given to David. Scripture records that the son God gave in place of the dead child was Solomon. The name “Solomon” means “peace.” Peace came precisely to the very place where judgment had fallen. This is the law of God.

The moment Abraham was reckoned righteous was not because of his works. Scripture testifies that he received that promise “while yet uncircumcised” — before he was circumcised. Considering that circumcision was the sign marking the qualification of the chosen people, this means there was, in Abraham’s own body, absolutely no qualification to receive that blessing. It was in the very moment he regarded himself as “unqualified” that he was reckoned righteous by God. This was entirely “grace.” I cannot express how grateful I am for the fact that God has shown this same grace to you and to me.

I truly love our church. It is not a large church, but it is such a good place to remain within the grace of God. My wife recently injured her leg and has been somewhat inconvenienced by it, but through that very situation, I find myself feeling grateful instead. When she says, “I want to get better soon so I can cook for you again,” I am freshly reminded of just how great a happiness it was to eat the meals my wife prepared. Yesterday, when I tried cooking rice just once myself, I found that it was not easy at all. Simply the fact that my wife is by my side fills me with overwhelming gratitude. Yesterday I let our son watch me take care of his mother in her wheelchair. Whenever my wife gives some instruction or another, I shout “Yes, ma’am!” in front of our son and move immediately, saying, “Just give the orders — don’t hold back, ask me for anything.” My wife then said to our son, “You do the same for your wife someday. Did you see the demonstration of a well-trained soldier?” All of this everyday life is simply something to be grateful for.

That we are alive before God, that we have newly received this very day — this in itself is an immense gratitude. God desires to give us what belongs to “God Himself,” even if we are laborers called only at five in the afternoon. His grace is always flowing toward us.

The master says, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?… I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.” The deep meaning of this word is this: God gives what is His own to us as grace, but He does not wish it to become our own possession. Why is it grace? Because God desires that what belongs to “God” should come to us and still remain “God’s own.” He does not want what is heavenly to come to earth and be corrupted into something earthly — He wants what is heavenly to come to me and still remain heavenly. Of all that I have received, not one thing is my own; God delights that everything, as “God’s own,” remains with me always. I earnestly pray that this astonishing grace may overflow in your lives.