<p>20:1&nbsp;<em>For</em>- The context is the end of chapter 19, about the first now being last in the eternal order of things to be established at Christ&rsquo;s return. The parable is therefore about the situation amongst believers in Christ. At 19:1 I presented a chiasmus plan, showing that this parable is to be read in the context of chapters 18 and 19 with their theme of the need to accept and not reject our brethren. That theme is to be found at the very end of the parable- insofar as the harder workers are inclined to reject their brethren who have not worked so long nor so hard. Many of the parables contain their essential point right at the end, and this parable does likewise. The end stress is upon the need for the harder working brethren to accept their weaker brethren, standing as they all do before the judgment presence of the Lord Jesus. The teaching that &ldquo;the last shall be first&rdquo; concluded chapter 19 and it concludes this parable (20:16). I suggested under 19:30 that the point of this is that the first in a secular sense&nbsp;<em>within the community of believers</em> will be saved only by grace and will be &ldquo;the last&rdquo; in the Kingdom. The phrase therefore talks of salvation by grace, and this is the theme of this parable too.</p><p>The context of the parable is Peter's comment: &quot;What shall we have therefore?&quot;, implying that the disciples ought to get a far greater reward than the spiritually immature rich people who refused to part with their wealth but could be saved anyway by the Lord's grace. The hard workers are thereby to be equated with the disciples and all who consider themselves spiritually superior to others- they &ldquo;expected that they should have received more&rdquo; (20:10 NIV), just as Peter likewise expected more. The parable suggests the Lord wanted to specifically reward the lazy and weaker workers. For they are called first to receive their penny- when surely appropriacy would demand that the harder workers were first in line. And yet the parable had wider relevance to the situation in the first century- and today. The harder workers somehow felt unhappy with the&nbsp;<em>basis&nbsp;</em>of contract upon which the lazier workers had been taken on and 'saved' by being given the same penny as they. But the basis of salvation was the same- for the zealous and for the lazy, for Jew and Gentile. And that basis was grace. The weaker workers showed perhaps more faith in the Master's offer- because it would've seemed unreal that they would be given the same pay as the stronger, longer workers. But they believed it- which is why they went to do their little work.</p><p>The impression we are left with is that the Lord was and is utterly desperate for workers- He is willing to take on any &quot;little ones&quot; prepared to believe His amazing offer. And the same impression is given in the parable of the street people being urged in to the feast. All they had to do was say yes- there was an urgency to fill the house. And surely we in these last days must perceive ourselves as the 11th hour workers, then ones taken on at the very last minute. That alone adequately explains the mixed bag which comprises the body of Christ in our times, and the weak state of that body.</p><p><em>The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house</em>- AV &quot;A man&quot;. The man, the head of the house, is clearly the Lord Jesus. And the Kingdom of God is like&hellip; Him. The grace of the Lord Jesus, His manner of being and judging amongst men, is the essence of the Kingdom both now and evermore.</p><p>Perhaps we are to connect this parable to the other parable about a&nbsp;<em>householder</em>&nbsp;who had a&nbsp;<em>vineyard</em>&nbsp;(21:33- the same Greek words are used). Putting the two parables together, God worked so hard to prepare the vineyard so that maximum spiritual fruit would be brought forth. But Israel rejected His prophets and murdered His Son- even though God was confident they would &ldquo;reverence My Son&rdquo;, actually they killed Him. The wonderful vineyard was therefore given out to the Gentiles, or at least, to others, whom the owner was likewise confident would tend it and bring forth fruit for Him. But this parable indicates that actually He had a major problem getting them to come work in it- meaning that much potential fruit was lost. And the parable of 21:28 says that the vineyard owner&rsquo;s very own sons were not much help either- one refused to go, and only later went to the work; the other said he would go and work, but never did. God&rsquo;s hopefulness for human response, and the tragedy of our paucity of response, is thus brought out yet stronger. It may be objected that the parables appear to be chronologically out of sequence if they are indeed intended to be read together. My response would be that we have in the Gospels a highly abbreviated record of the Lord&rsquo;s teaching, and likely He repeated His teachings and parables many times over. Perhaps the parable of the vineyard owner was told in full both parables put together several times, but we have just parts of the parable recorded on two separate occasions.</p><p><em>Who went out</em>- This is emphasized four times (also in :3,5,6). The Greek word is often used about the Lord Jesus &lsquo;going out&rsquo; to men with the Gospel; it is the same word in Jn. 8:42 &ldquo;I&nbsp;<em>proceeded forth</em>&hellip; from God&rdquo; and Jn. 13:3 &ldquo;He was&nbsp;<em>come from</em>&nbsp;&lsquo;went out from&rsquo; God&rdquo;. Rather than suggesting any personal pre-existence, this is simply a reference to the Lord&nbsp;<em>during His ministry</em>&nbsp;likewise &lsquo;going forth&rsquo; to men and women with the Gospel, seeking to engage men in the Father&rsquo;s service. The call of the Gospel, therefore, is not merely to believe the Gospel- it is a call to action, to harvest fruit, to work in the vineyard.</p><p><em>Early in the morning</em>- The very same Greek phrase is used about how the Lord &ldquo;went out early in the morning&rdquo; to pray about the calling of the disciples (Mk. 1:35). The language is also used about the earliest disciples &lsquo;going out&rsquo; from the tomb of the risen Lord, also &ldquo;early in the morning&rdquo;, to bring word to others. The message was ultimately not just passing on information, but an invitation to actually work.</p><p>The Lord Himself was noted for rising up early and praying (Mk. 1:35). The observant Jew prayed three times / day, the first and last prayers being merely the recital of the&nbsp;<em>shema</em>. Yet Jesus spent hours in those morning and evening prayers (Mk. 1:35; 6:46). Is. 50:4 prophesies of the Lord Jesus that morning by morning, God awoke His ear &quot;to learn as a disciple&quot;. That last phrase is surely to signal the intended similarities between the Lord's path of growth, and that of all disciples. The next two verses go on to predict that because of this morning-by-morning teaching process, &quot;I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting&quot; (Is. 50:5,6). Thus we come to the cross, the life of cross carrying, as the end result of our morning reflections. It was from His own experience that the Lord could bid us take up our cross-&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;cross- each morning.</p><p>Have you ever had to make yourself wake up before dawn, without an alarm clock? You can only do it by having a deep internal, subconscious awareness that you must get up early. You don't sleep well, you keep waking up and wondering if it's time to get up. So to make oneself rise up early was easily understood as a figure expressing great mental effort. And God did this&nbsp;<em>every day</em>&nbsp;for centuries... This figure of rising up early is surely the basis for the Lord's parable in Mt. 20:1- where God is likened to a man going out early in the morning to hire labourers. It is through the ministry of His word that God does this- each morning that word calls us to labour for Him in His vineyard. Israel didn't notice the huge effort God puts into His word- that every day He rose early and taught them. We can also misunderstand Biblical inspiration to mean that God effortlessly inspired &quot;the original autographs&quot; long ago, and moved on; but actually the whole process is an ongoing and incredible outgiving of God's energy in appealing to us. And... in our mismanaged, weakly disciplined lives, is it so that we don't even make time to read His word daily? If Job could value God's word&nbsp;<em>more</em>&nbsp;than His regular daily food... then for us too, regular contact with His word should be part of the atmosphere of life within which we live.</p><p><em>To hire</em>- Rom. 4:4 uses the same word in stressing that salvation is not our &ldquo;hire&rdquo; from God, it is the gift of grace. One wonders if Paul is alluding to the parable- to make the point that salvation is a gift, and yet in another sense we each receive a response for our labour. This is in that our labours now will receive eternal recognition in the form in which we will be throughout eternity.</p><p><em>Labourers for his vineyard</em>- Literally, &lsquo;toilers&rsquo;. There can be no mistaking the Lord&rsquo;s impression here- response to His invitation is not merely intellectual assent to the truth of Bible teachings, nor is it about painless involvement in the work of His church when, how and how far convenient to us. It&rsquo;s an invitation to toil and really work in His enterprise. The Lord had earlier lamented that the harvest was more plenteous than the few labourers (Mt. 9:37,38). He had asked the disciples to pray for more labourers- and the added detail of this parable is that those labourers were still not enough, and were weak nobody had wished to hire them and didn&rsquo;t in the end do much work. In this we see how the total conversion of others is limited by the preachers; for the Lord surely implies that there are more potential converts than there are preachers to bring them in. This passage paves the way for the giving of the great commission to us all later in Matthew- to work in the vineyard in harvest time, gathering the plentiful harvest. The &ldquo;Go&hellip;&rdquo; of :4 fulfils the same function. Elsewhere the Lord likens labourers to the preachers. He clearly saw a primary reason for our calling as to preach and help others to the harvest of the Kingdom. He called us in different ways to labour for and with Him in this work; not to merely passively hold various doctrinal truths in intellectual purity, or to dumbly attend church meetings of whatever sort.</p>