Questions about God: Is God fair?

Matthew 20:1–16 “Indeed the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ²After agreeing to pay the workers a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. ³He also went out about the third hour and saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace. ⁴To these he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will give you whatever is right.’ So they went. ⁵Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did the same thing. ⁶When he went out about the eleventh hour, he found others standing unemployed. He said to them, ‘Why have you stood here all day unemployed?’

⁷“They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’

“He told them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ ⁸When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last group and ending with the first.’

⁹“When those who were hired around the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. ¹⁰When those who were hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But they each received a denarius too. ¹¹After they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner: ¹²‘Those who were last worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have endured the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’

¹³“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not make an agreement with me for a denarius? ¹⁴Take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last one hired the same as I also gave to you. ¹⁵Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶In the same way, the last will be first, and the first, last.”

Salvation unto us has come By God’s free grace and favor Good works cannot avert our doom, They help and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone, Who did for all the world atone; He is our one Redeemer. (CW: 390 v1)

My wife, Shelley, and I took our high school senior, Lydia, to Kalamazoo, Michigan on Monday for a tour of Western Michigan University. She wants to go to Western Michigan to become an airline pilot. As part of our tour we scheduled lunch with the WELS campus pastor. At lunch, Pastor Timmermann asked Lydia is she ever had any questions of crisis; anything that caused her to doubt her faith; anything that made her question God.

Pastor Timmermann will make a good campus pastor for Lydia. He isn’t afraid to allow the college students to question God, to dig deeper into their faith, to build upon their knowledge from Catechism classes.

As we get older and have more life experience, we learn to not always take things at face value. We want to know more and go deeper. We begin asking questions.

Perhaps you were told at one time not to question God – just accept what you’ve been taught. I hope not. God invites your questions. He desires to answer your questions. That’s what this four-part sermon series is all about – Questions about God. Our first question is a great one – Is God fair?

If you look around you, it may certainly seem like God is not fair. Homes are indiscriminately destroyed by hurricanes or wildfires. Innocent people have their lifework torn apart by rioters. Businesses are closing and will probably never reopen because of Covid lockdowns.

More personally, you eat healthy and exercise regularly, but you are the one who suffers a heart attack. Your mom was a lovely, vibrant person who lost all that with her dementia. All you desired was a regular family, but it has been such a struggle since God gave you a child with special needs.

Sometimes life doesn’t seem fair.

Read through the Psalms. Many of them complain about the appearance of God’s unfairness, too.

Our world is supposed to be built on fairness – wages earned, debts collected and an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. That thinking even creeps into our Christianity. We begin to believe God owes us something.

If we are cradle Christians, we deserve to be recognized for our unwavering fidelity. We built the church, supported the Lutheran school and sat through the pastor’s long, boring Catechism classes. Now there are people who walk into church without giving their fair share, parents who use our school for free, and new members who didn’t have to go through the two years of arduous study.

If we are recent converts to Christianity, we feel we deserve a reversal of fortunes. Life should be going better for us now that God is in our lives. We shouldn’t have to live with the results of the bad decisions we made before we knew Christ.

God doesn’t seem fair!

That is exactly the point that Jesus is teaching in his parable of the workers in the vineyard. God’s Kingdom does not operate the way the world operates. God isn’t fair. And thank God he isn’t!

In Jesus’ day, landowners grew grapes and needed extra workers at harvest time, so they hired freelance laborers. The landowner in Jesus’ parable agrees to pay a denarius, which was a generous day’s wage for 12 hours of work. It is clear this landowner is in a hurry to get the harvest in. He’s in such a hurry that he goes out five times in a single day to find laborers. The sun is hot and the grapes won’t wait. As the day grows shorter, he doesn’t even stop to haggle over the wages. That will be settled later.

It is finally quitting time. The landowner must be in a very good mood. Full wages for everyone, no matter how long they worked. The latecomers are ecstatic. They never hoped to have such a wonderful reward. But the first group, the ones from the morning, they are ticked! Why? Because suddenly the generous day’s wage of a denarius doesn’t seem so generous anymore. They need one more thing. They want to receive more … or they want the latecomers to receive less. That way everything is fair.

Jesus’ parable is addressing the jealousy of the descendants of Abraham who assumed they deserved more from the Lord. It also addresses our temptation to believe God owes us something for how long and hard we’ve worked for him in his Kingdom.

The landowner’s response is critical: “Are you envious because I’m generous?”

It’s OK to question God about fairness. But do not charge God with being unfair. Think about it. Do we really want justice instead of mercy? Do we really prefer wages over grace? Do we really desire for God to treat us fairly?

If we want God to pay for what we have accomplished in his Kingdom, I don’t think we’ll be pleased with the wages. “The wages of sin is death.”

We work in God’s Kingdom – attending worship, saying an occasional prayer, giving a few dollars. We feel God owes us something. But all our actions – as godly as we believe them to be – are tainted with sin. What God owes us for our actions is punishment. What we deserve is banishment. What we have coming to us should be a life of misery and an eternity of hell.

Do you agree with me that this would be fair?

That would be exactly fair! Thank God that he isn’t fair!

In our Prayer of the Day we asked God not to be fair with us. “Lord God, forgive the wrongdoing of your people and be gentle with us in our weakness. Deliver us from the bondage of our sin and direct us to the path of righteousness.” We asked God to not treat us fairly – to not punish our wrongdoing but forgive our wrongdoing. To not crush us for our weakness but be gentle with us in our weakness. To not treat us as slaves but not treat us in the bondage of our sin.

We agree with St. Paul when he wrote in our Epistle lesson: “For God says to Moses: I will show mercy to whom I show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then, it does not depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Romans 9:15-16).

The reason the workers who put in 12 hours felt ripped off wasn’t because they weren’t treated fairly. The landowner was going to pay them the denarius they had agreed upon. The reason they were grumbling is because others were treated generously. The landowner put his finger on it when he asked, “Can’t I do what I want with my own money?”

God does whatever he wants with his generosity. He repays evil with good. He gives grace to the undeserving – which is all of us. He pours out his blessing on both the righteous and the unrighteous. He causes the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. He promises to make everything work out for his people’s eternal benefit.

This isn’t fairness. This is generosity.

This parable is about heaven. In our estimation it doesn’t seem fair if God welcomes a deathbed convert into heaven. It doesn’t seem fair that the angels rejoice when a murderer repents and confesses his faith in Jesus as Savior. It doesn’t seem fair that people can party their entire lives and indulge in every sinful perversion but then be welcomes into heaven because they renounced all that, repented and accepted God’s forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

It isn’t fair. And thank God it isn’t! It’s grace.

Our issue with fairness is that we compare ourselves to others. Instead, we should compare ourselves to Jesus – who he is, what’s done, and what he’s gave up for you.

Never once did he complain about entering the mess we made.

Never once did he grumble that it wasn’t fair that he was suffering for our sins.

Never once did he look at the heaven he gave up while he suffered our hellish torment on the cross.

Jesus rescued Ninevites who had treated the Jewish people without mercy.

Jesus rescued angry Jonah who was upset God was treating the Ninevites with mercy.

Jesus rescued the stubborn Jews and the pagan Gentiles.

Jesus rescued you with your inborn sin, your whining nature, your grumpy disposition, your gossipy mouth, your dirty mind, your coveting heart and your lazy butt.

If you want to compare yourself to someone, don’t compare yourself to the other workers in the vineyard. Compare yourself to Jesus Christ who literally had it all. And he gave it all up for you. He was righteous for your unrighteousness. He suffered for your sins. He died your death. He rose from the dead to give you his resurrection. He ascended into heaven to rule all things – not for your idea of fairness, justice or equality. To rule all things in mercy, grace and forgiveness. To be generous with his salvation.

Everywhere in the world it is, A’s first and Z’s last. My girls complain about this. How different it is in the Kingdom of God. With God it is Z’s first and A’s last. Everywhere in the world it is, “first come, first served.” How different it is in the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t matter when you come, you will be served. In the Kingdom of God, the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Everywhere in the world, you should be able to get what you deserve, but in the Kingdom of God you are shown undeserved mercy and grace. Everywhere in the world, you ought to get paid according to how hard you worked, but in the Kingdom of God, you are given the wages of eternal life because Christ worked your salvation all by himself upon the cross. This is a scandal to the worldly mind, but to the heart of faith that repents, it is the best news anyone can ever hear.

It’s good to ask questions about God. Hopefully, we answered a big one today. Is God unfair? Yes, he is. He is unfair in his generosity. He can do whatever he wants with his salvation. He is God after all. So there’s no reason to complain. Like those latecomers hired in the 11^th hour, you have not been given what you deserve. You’ve been given so much more.

Thank God for his unfairness. Amen.

All blessing, honor, thanks, and praise To Father, Son, and Spirit, The God who saved us by his grace—All glory to his merit! O Triune God in heav’n above, You have revealed your saving love; Your blessed name be hallowed! (CW: 390 v6)