Participants: Mike Leno
Series Code: FC
Program Code: FC000041
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00:30 Carlene Gallagher is a waitress at a swanky Chicago restaurant.
00:37 One day, she went to work feeling really blue. 00:40 Everything in her life seemed to be going wrong. 00:42 She was a single mother having to support a couple of boys 00:45 without any help from their father 00:46 and it just seemed like her life was going nowhere. 00:50 Well, waitresses are usually not supposed to pour out 00:53 their stories to their costumers, 00:56 but on this particular occasion, 00:58 the restaurant was not very busy 01:00 and there was a-- an executive there. 01:03 The owner president of a very wealthy company, 01:07 his name was John Bac. 01:10 And he was there in the restaurant 01:11 that day and Carlene was serving his table. 01:16 He apparently noticed that maybe she was not having 01:19 as good a day as she might, and so he asked her-- 01:23 he asked her to tell him what was going on 01:25 and she kind of hesitantly poured out her story. 01:30 Well, before his meal was even over with, 01:33 he handed her a tip of $1,000. 01:38 When she realized what it was, she came back to his table 01:42 and tearfully thanked him for what he had just given her. 01:48 Well, he reached into his wallet at that point, 01:51 pulled out a whole wad of credit cards and fanned them out like 01:55 playing cards and said, "Here, pick a card." 01:59 And Carlene, not knowing really what to expect next, 02:02 reached forward and slowly pulled 02:05 a VISA platinum card out of his hand. 02:09 "There you are," said John. 02:10 "Go give yourself a $10,000 tip." 02:14 She was overwhelmed. 02:16 How could this possibly be? 02:18 But it was true. 02:20 And, of course, you can be sure the credit card company 02:22 wanted to make sure it was legitimate too, 02:23 and they followed up and they checked on it and sure enough, 02:26 John Bac had just tipped his waitress 02:29 Carlene $11,000 02:32 in one day. 02:37 Grace is unfair. 02:41 Grace has nothing to do with fairness. 02:48 Grace belongs to a very strange economy, all its own, 02:54 because it's not based on what you deserve. 02:58 I'm sure there were a number of other worthy 03:02 restaurant waitresses that day, in that restaurant 03:06 as many--as well as many others in the same city. 03:10 And yet, Carlene got the $11,000 tip. 03:18 Had she earned it? 03:20 No, she hadn't. 03:22 Her client had simply given it to her because 03:26 he wanted to be generous. 03:29 He could have given his money to anybody else 03:30 but he gave it to her because he wanted to, 03:33 because he wanted to be generous. 03:39 The economy of grace is so different 03:43 than what we expect, that even back in the Old Testament, 03:46 God foresaw a time when he would explain 03:51 more completely his relationship with his people in ways 03:56 that didn't involve legal requirements. 04:03 Let's turn to Jeremiah 31:31 to 34, 04:09 "'The time is coming, declares the Lord, 04:10 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel 04:14 and with the house of Judah. 04:15 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers 04:18 when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, 04:21 because they broke my covenant, 04:23 though I was a husband to them,' declares the Lord. 04:25 'This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel 04:28 after that time,' declares the Lord. 04:30 'I will put my law in their minds 04:32 and write it on their hearts. 04:33 I will be their God, and they will be my people. 04:36 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, 04:38 or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' 04:41 because they will all know me, from the least of them 04:44 to the greatest,' declares the Lord. 04:46 'For I will forgive their wickedness 04:48 and will remember their sins no more.'" 04:54 In spite of failure, God does not give up. 04:58 He didn't give up on the Israelites, 05:00 He doesn't give up on you and me. 05:02 He wants something even better than before. 05:06 He wants a relationship where law and rules and control 05:13 are not imposed from that outside. 05:17 Rather he wants us to be so close to Him 05:21 that He can say that His law is written 05:24 on hearts and our minds. 05:27 He wants to move from external control to internal control. 05:32 So much so that it won't even be necessary for another person 05:34 to tell you to know the Lord. 05:36 You will know Him already. 05:38 You see, the kingdom of grace turns everything upside down. 05:42 It even changes the way we relate to law. 05:45 But where it changes things most, 05:47 is in the way we relate to God. 05:49 Remember the rich young ruler? 05:51 We talked about the rich young ruler in our last session 05:53 together and how his paradigm of merit just crumbled 05:57 when Jesus challenged it. 06:00 And he had to change to a paradigm of grace, 06:03 and when he couldn't do that, he went away feeling very sad. 06:07 Jesus was trying to point out that this system 06:09 of gaining salvation by your own effort was hopeless. 06:12 "As hard as trying to get a camel 06:15 through the eye of needles," said Jesus. 06:17 He then assured the disciples that, in fact, 06:19 they were part of His kingdom, 06:21 they had left everything and were following Him. 06:25 Why is it so hard to understand the kingdom of grace? 06:29 Maybe it's because like the rich young ruler, 06:30 we don't expect anything we don't work for. 06:35 "That's just the way life is," we say. 06:36 "You reap what you sow, no more no less." 06:39 "Don't do me any favors, don't give me any charity." 06:44 That's life, that's what we expect. 06:48 But what happens when we use that sort of logic with God? 06:51 I know that heaven is a good place, 06:54 and well, the alternative, I'd like to avoid that, 06:57 so I'll do what I need to do. 06:59 I'll buckle down, I'll put my nose to the grindstone, 07:02 I don't expect to like it but that's just the way life 07:05 is and maybe it'll be worth it someday. 07:09 Then, along comes Jesus telling stories that just blow 07:12 our little paradigms and logical system to bits. 07:15 He talks about children who haven't even lived long 07:18 enough to earn anything. 07:20 "Of such are the kingdom of heaven," He says. 07:22 He talks about crippled people, beggars, tax collectors, 07:25 even prostitutes as if it was easy to give salvation to them. 07:31 And then he makes things practically impossible 07:33 for a good clean young man who keeps 07:35 the commandments and is successful. 07:38 The kingdom of grace is unfair. 07:41 It turns everything upside down. 07:44 It's good news if you're a spiritual cripple, 07:47 but if you think you have it all together, 07:49 it's not good news at all. 07:53 Grace is so unfair that it actually 07:55 has nothing to do with fairness. 07:58 It has everything to do with God's love and the fact 08:00 that He's ready to give you salvation 08:03 right now as an outright gift, and it's a gift 08:06 worth far more than just an $11,000 tip. 08:12 But here's a question. 08:16 Why work if it doesn't pay anything? 08:18 In other words, if all my effort and all my work 08:21 and my keeping the commandments 08:23 and being a good little Christian and all of that, 08:28 if it doesn't pay me anything, then why do it? 08:32 Why be good if it's not worth it? 08:35 You see, there is a fear here, and it's a fear 08:39 that drives a lot of our controversies over grace. 08:41 And the fear is simply that, if we take away rewards 08:44 and punishments, the external controls 08:47 that we exert on people, we are afraid 08:51 we'll motivate people to be careless. 08:54 We're afraid of encouraging people to sin all the more. 08:58 After all, if you can sin and get away with it, 09:00 then what's stopping us? 09:04 On that particular point, Jesus told a very interesting story, 09:07 right after this encounter with the rich young ruler. 09:11 He talked about people getting paid out of proportion 09:14 to the amount of work they did. 09:16 Let's turn to that area of the Bible, 09:19 and this is found in Matthew 20 and this is the story 09:23 of the workers in the vineyard. 09:26 Jesus told a story of workers 09:29 who were hired early in the morning. 09:31 The landowner went down to the marketplace 09:35 and he looked for people who were out of work. 09:38 And he found some and he said, "Come work in my vineyard." 09:41 And so they started to work first thing in the morning. 09:44 He went down in the middle of the morning 09:45 and he found more people who were out of work 09:47 and he said, "Why don't you come," 09:49 and "why don't you go to work for me?" 09:51 And so they did. 09:52 He went down in the middle of the day and he found 09:54 more people who were out of work. 09:57 "Come to work," he said. "Okay." 10:00 He did this throughout the day and for each person 10:04 that he hired, he said "I will give you a certain wage." 10:07 And in those days, it was called a denarius 10:09 which was sometimes translated a penny, but, really, 10:13 it was what a full day's work was worth. 10:18 And for each person that he hired 10:20 throughout the day, no matter at what time he hired them, 10:24 according to Jesus' parable, he promised them a denarius. 10:29 So at the end of the day, he had a wide variety of people 10:34 who had been hired at different times during the day, 10:36 and according to the parable, the landowner 10:39 did this in a very interesting sequence. 10:43 He paid the people who came to work last, first. 10:50 So at the front of the line, everybody's 10:51 lined up to get their wages, at the front of the line 10:54 is a person who just came to work an hour earlier. 10:58 And he comes up to the table to get his wage, 11:00 and the landowner hands over his wages 11:03 and it's a full day's wage. 11:06 And he turns away just ecstatic, he's so happy. 11:10 And the next person comes up, same thing. 11:13 The next person comes up, same thing. 11:14 And finally, the last person who had been working all day 11:18 in the vineyard comes up to the landowner 11:22 and is paid the same thing. 11:26 Now as you can imagine, there was a rather 11:28 interesting reaction amongst the workers. 11:31 And we read about that in Matthew 20: 11. 11:36 "When they received it, they began 11:37 to grumble against the landowner. 11:42 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' 11:45 they said, 'and you have made them equal to us 11:48 who have borne the burden of the work 11:50 and the heat of the day.'" 11:54 They were not happy with Jesus. 11:57 And Jesus, as He's telling the story, 12:02 you can imagine how the hearers are suddenly 12:06 realizing that Jesus is actually putting Himself 12:09 in the place of the landowner. 12:14 And if they were very perceptive, they realized 12:18 that what Jesus is actually talking about, 12:20 are people who've been in the faith all their lives. 12:24 Those are the ones who've been working in the vineyard all day. 12:27 And those who just come in, who just hear about 12:32 the message and who just become faithful 12:35 at the very end of the day, 12:38 those are the people who, in the parable, 12:40 are those who've been working just an hour. 12:44 Well, the landowner responds 12:46 and we find his response in Matthew 20:15. 12:52 "Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? 12:55 Or..." and notice this, "Are you envious 12:58 because I am generous?" 13:01 Verse 16, "'so the last will be first, 13:05 and the first will be last.'" 13:10 It's unfair. 13:12 I mean, who among us can't help but sympathize 13:16 a little bit, at least, with those workers 13:18 who came to work at the beginning 13:22 of the day and worked all day? 13:24 Who among us can't sympathize, at least a little bit, 13:28 with those who grumbled against the landowner 13:30 because he paid everybody the same, 13:31 no matter how much work they did? 13:34 Put yourself in the place of a worker who goes to work 13:37 at 6 o'clock in the morning and you work all day 13:41 until 6 o'clock at night, 12 hours. 13:46 And you have been out there in the heat of the day, 13:48 you've gotten dirty and dusty and your back is aching 13:54 and you receive your wage and it's the same thing 13:57 as someone else who worked only an hour. 14:04 I submit that that's exactly the reaction that Jesus 14:07 was trying to get from His hearers. 14:09 I suspect that there were two groups listening to Jesus. 14:13 There were people who were laborers but were out of work. 14:18 They wanted work but perhaps they couldn't get it. 14:20 They probably had difficulty getting a job 14:23 even when they needed one. 14:24 They understood how precious it was to have a job 14:27 in the vineyard and they could understand 14:29 the wonderful opportunity just to be given a job, 14:32 even if it was at the last minute. 14:35 They would have been grateful for their wages, 14:37 no matter what it was because they wanted a job. 14:40 But there was another group of people 14:42 that were probably listening to Jesus, 14:44 and these were the wealthy landowners 14:46 who used money to motivate their workers. 14:50 They expected laziness and insubordination. 14:55 They would not have understood the kingdom of grace, 14:57 especially in a vineyard context. 14:59 They would only pay people according 15:01 to how much work they did. 15:04 And these are the ones that would not have understood 15:06 what Jesus was saying and would have been scandalized 15:11 by Jesus' economy of grace. 15:17 Now I have to admit, I've had a hard time 15:19 explaining this parable sometimes. 15:20 I was teaching a group of junior high school students one time, 15:25 and we came to this parable and out of desperation, 15:29 I finally hit upon a way to explain 15:32 and I've discovered that adults also identify 15:36 with this in a certain way. 15:37 What I said to the kids was, 15:38 "I want you to imagine your fantasy job." 15:42 Okay, these are kids just in 9th, 10th grades, perhaps, 15:46 and I said, "Now I want you to imagine, 15:50 you can have whatever job you want, your fantasy job. 15:53 Is it a movie star, maybe a football star 15:57 or something like that. 15:59 I want you to imagine the fantasy job. 16:02 Now what if someone came to you right now and said, 16:05 'I'll hire you to do this job?' 16:08 Football star, jet pilot, movie star, whatever it is. 16:12 'I'll hire you for today. 16:14 You can have the job.' 16:16 And now let's suppose that you got that job 16:19 and you can hardly wait to get started. 16:20 But suppose that you didn't know about the job 16:23 until it was late in the afternoon, 16:24 the day is almost done but nevertheless 16:28 you didn't know anything about it and the person 16:31 doing the hiring comes to you and says, 16:33 'I know the day is almost over 16:34 but if you'll do this fantasy job, 16:37 I'll hire you for the rest of the day.' 16:40 Wouldn't you jump at the chance? 16:43 Would you care how much you were being paid? 16:45 This is the job of your dreams, 16:47 this is something you want to do. 16:51 And what would you feel that you missed out on, 16:54 if you were paid the same as someone 16:57 who started at the beginning of the day?" 17:02 Actually the amount paid really wouldn't matter. 17:06 If you were hired late in the day, 17:08 you would feel gypped because you would rather 17:12 have had that job for the whole day, instead of just part of it. 17:17 You see, those who value the job, 17:20 those who want to be in the master's vineyard, 17:25 for them, the wages are immaterial. 17:30 Those who reject grace because it takes away 17:33 the motive for doing good and not really 17:38 doing good anyway, certainly not out of the right motives 17:42 because their heart is not in it. 17:45 Grace does not take away the motive for doing good, 17:47 it only takes away the threat of punishment. 17:51 When you take away the threat of punishment, 17:52 you allow the possibility of doing good 17:55 because you want to, not because you have to. 18:01 This is the new covenant, a new way of relating to God. 18:06 No longer do we work in the vineyard 18:08 because we have to, we work in the vineyard 18:10 because we want to. 18:12 And that can only happen if you know 18:16 what kind of person the vineyard owner is. 18:19 If you need a God that threatens to zap you if you're not good, 18:22 if you need a God that's angry at you all the time, 18:24 if you need to know that you'll be rewarded for hard work 18:28 at being a Christian, then you do not understand grace. 18:33 To you, the Christian life 18:34 is just one obligation after another. 18:37 You do it because you have to, not because you want to. 18:41 Some say, "But I want to be under the control of God, 18:44 under the control of the Holy Spirit." 18:46 But how does God control you? 18:49 By winning your loyalty, not forcing it. 18:53 Jesus said in John 12:32, 18:55 "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, 18:59 will draw all men to myself." 19:04 Love is the most powerful force in the universe. 19:09 Love never forces obedience or growth. 19:12 If it did, it wouldn't be true obedience 19:14 from the heart anyway. 19:17 The ironic thing about human beings 19:19 is that when you try to force obedience, 19:22 you often get the exact opposite. 19:27 In the "Signs of the Times" 19:30 Ellen White wrote "A sullen submission 19:33 to the will of the Father 19:35 will develop the character of a rebel. 19:39 By such a one service is looked upon as drudgery. 19:42 It is not rendered cheerfully, and in the love of God. 19:45 It is a mere mechanical performance. 19:47 If he dared, such a one would disobey. 19:51 His rebellion is smothered, ready to break out 19:53 at any time in bitter murmurings and complaints. 19:56 Such service brings no peace or quietude to the soul." 20:02 Have you ever been forced into doing something? 20:05 Even if it was a good thing, 20:07 if you were forced into doing it, somehow it took 20:10 the joy and the pleasure out of doing it. 20:15 Not only that, we sometimes limit our own growth 20:22 and the growth of others when we try to use 20:26 external controls to produce growth. 20:31 Two Christian psychologists Henry Cloud 20:33 and John Townsend recently wrote a book called 20:35 "12 Christian Beliefs That will Drive You Crazy." 20:39 One of these beliefs is that just doing the right thing 20:41 is more important than why you do the right thing. 20:45 In other words, you can change your motives, your heart, 20:48 and everything else just by--just doing it. 20:52 This philosophy is full of accountability and correction. 20:56 Very well meaning Christian people live by this philosophy, 21:00 and they try to guide other people with it. 21:03 Well, John Townsend one of the authors, 21:04 remembers the time when he was in the first grade 21:07 and having trouble reading. 21:09 His family had recently moved and he was in a new school 21:12 and things were a little upset in his life 21:14 and so his mother was trying to compensate 21:17 for some problems that he was having in school. 21:20 And so every day, John would come home from school 21:24 and his mother would have him sit down at the kitchen table, 21:28 take out his reading book and read to her. 21:33 And while he was sitting there at the table reading, 21:35 she would be standing right behind him, 21:38 kind of hovering over him, reading along the words 21:40 at the same time he was, and every time he would make 21:43 the slightest mistake, she would interrupt him 21:45 and correct him and she was just hovering over him 21:49 all the time and trying to make sure 21:52 that he did everything just right and oh, 21:54 she was trying to be so protective and so helpful 21:57 and to correct him and... It made him nervous. 22:02 In fact, it made him so nervous that he could hardly read 22:05 and he dreaded the time that he would go home 22:08 and have to read to his mother. 22:11 Well, John said that finally his mother got some advice 22:15 from her mother, from granny who had raised six kids. 22:20 And so the next day, John came home from school 22:24 and there was the milk and cookies on 22:25 the kitchen table, as usual, and he knew 22:28 that he was gonna have to get out his reading book. 22:32 So he got it out, but this time instead of mother hovering over 22:35 him from behind, she was beyond the table 22:40 with his back toward him while she washed 22:43 some dishes in the sink. 22:45 And she told John to go ahead and start reading. 22:48 Well, John started reading 22:49 and he wasn't a very good reader, 22:51 he was just in the first grade and he was having problems 22:53 and so he haltingly got through some of the sentences 22:57 and he expected his mother to jump in on him any time 23:01 and she didn't, she was just quiet. 23:03 She just stayed over where she was and she washed 23:06 the dishes and after a while, John realized that he needed 23:10 some help and so he asked his mother. 23:13 And every time he asked, his mother would answer 23:16 his question but she would never say anything 23:17 until he asked for something. 23:20 And after a while, after this went on for a few days, 23:23 John started to relax and as time went on, 23:26 he became a voracious reader, 23:28 something he said he still maintains to this day. 23:32 Later in life, he found out that as his mother was standing 23:36 at the sink the tears were rolling down her cheeks 23:40 and she was standing there 23:43 trying so hard to control herself, 23:46 not to jump in and rescue him, not to correct him 23:49 and try to keep her voice calm so that he would stay calm, too. 23:57 You see, you may be able to use fear and punishment 24:02 and correction to get people to do menial tasks and chores. 24:07 It's a reality of life that in order to protect society 24:12 and do business in the world, 24:15 some external controls are necessary. 24:18 But you realize that for the-- most important things in life, 24:24 love, unselfishness, self-sacrifice, 24:29 commitment, for the most important things of life, 24:35 you can't motivate with fear. 24:38 When you do, you get the opposite 24:41 of what you want. 24:44 In my own life, I have noticed that when people exert 24:51 external controls on me, when they use behavior 24:57 modification techniques, it will work for certain things, 25:01 especially if I agree to it ahead of time. 25:05 But when I'm under the threat of punishment, 25:08 in order to be exact or perfect or to do things 25:14 in the correct way, being under punishment creates 25:19 a whole new set of problems that I didn't even have before. 25:24 I think some Christians--well, let's be honest, 25:28 I think all of us have gone through this with God 25:31 at one time or another in our lives. 25:34 We have read the Bible, we've read the Ten Commandments, 25:38 we've gone to church, we've heard all of those sermons 25:43 about how good we ought to be and how we oughtto even 25:46 control our thoughts and how we have to be perfect. 25:52 And let's be honest with ourselves. 25:54 The harder people try to force us to be perfect, 25:58 the less perfect we are. 26:01 In fact, I dare say that, the more you feel threatened, 26:07 the more you feel under the threat of punishment, 26:13 and let's be honest, that's why the doctrine 26:16 of an ever burning hell was created. 26:19 It was to force people to be good. 26:22 The more people feel forced to be good, 26:26 the less good they are. 26:29 Now it may sound somewhat sacrilegious, 26:31 I don't mean it that way but it's true. 26:34 You will never get to heaven 26:35 by having the hell scared out of you. 26:38 What I mean by that is, if you are going to heaven, 26:43 if you are accepting the truth of Jesus Christ, 26:47 not because you are attracted to Christ, 26:50 not because you realize that God is so merciful to you, 26:54 but simply out of fear and terror 26:57 of what will happen in the judgment, 27:01 then I suspect that you are struggling even more 27:06 with trying to be good, with trying to be accepted by God. 27:12 You see, like the waitress 27:15 who received an $11,000 tip in one day, 27:19 you and I don't deserve salvation. 27:23 You see, grace is not fair. 27:25 It's--doesn't even have any thing to do with fairness. 27:29 It has to do with the generosity of God. 27:33 As the landowner said to his workers, 27:35 "Why are you jealous? 27:38 Are you angry at me because I want to be generous?" 27:41 Our heavenly Father wants to be generous. 27:45 He wants people who will be attracted to Him 27:47 and who will accept the free gift of His salvation. 27:52 He can't force it. 27:53 He won't force it. 27:55 He can't scare you into heaven. 27:58 He can only win you. |
Revised 2014-12-17