I presented this message on September 20, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, Nebraska.
A friend of mine recently retired after spending some thirty years with the same mom-and-pop manufacturing company. He knew everything there was to know about the company, including all the computer system set-up and what the machines needed with respect to maintenance and upgrades. He was the owner’s right-hand man. He did his best to train his replacement, but as you might imagine, it’s hard to replace someone like that.
He’s told me that they’ve called him a couple times after his retirement to help with different things where he may have had some historical knowledge or special expertise unique to the companies policies and capabilities. Being a solid Christian man, he’s obliged. Now I don’t know if they paid him for such consulting, but if I were in his shoes living on a retirement income, and I was the only one who knew how to fix a problem or address an issue, you can bet I’d negotiate for a pretty penny. Not extravagant, but it would have to be enough to make me want to give up a few days off. Sometimes when you need good help in a pinch, that’s going to bump up the cost of that help.
In our parable today, Jesus tells a story about a man who goes out to hire laborers for his vineyard. He doesn’t just go out once first thing in the morning; he goes out four more times to hire laborers, even toward the end of the day. Because it’s a parable, we don’t have any historical details about a fictional story, but I think it’s safe to assume that he really needed to get his vineyard harvested by the end of the day. In this parable, unlike the story I told about my friend, the vineyard owner doesn’t need anyone with special skills; he just needs bodies to get the grapes off the vine. And apparently, the closer he got to the end of the day, the more urgently he needed workers. We don’t know why it was so urgent. Maybe a storm was coming and he needed to save the grapes. Maybe he needed money to pay off debts. Maybe there was a big wedding coming up and he needed wine for the guests.
We’ll never know the answer to why, but maybe that’s the point of the story. As he’s telling this story I’m almost certain the people in the crowd have any number of situations that they could apply the principles of the story to in their lives. Parables are like that sometimes. We don’t get the details because the details don’t matter so much as the application to our respective life-situations.
Before we get into the parable itself, I want to take some time understand the opening line of this parable: “For the kingdom of heaven is like….” But what is the “kingdom of heaven”? Does it refer only to the heavenly realms? Does it refer to the people of God? Or is it some mix of both?
The first thing to note is that the phrase “kingdom of heaven” (ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν[1] hē basileia tōn ouranōn) is only found in Matthew’s gospel—32 times in 31 verses. The corresponding phrase in the other gospels is “kingdom of God”—14 times in Mark, 31 times in Luke, and twice in John, in addition to four times in Matthew. Because this phrase “kingdom of heaven” is unique to Matthew, I think it’s worth exploring for a few minutes so we can better understand Matthew’s perspective.
The first two occurrences of “kingdom of heaven” are found in Matthew 3:2, spoken by John the Baptizer, and Matthew 4:17, spoken by Jesus. Both of them use the same phrase: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near you.” Both of them use the phrase to kick off their respective preaching ministries. Later on in Matthew 10:7, Jesus instructs his disciples to use the same phrase. But Jesus puts more oomph into the instruction so his followers have a practical, visible way to demonstrate the kingdom of heaven is near: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”[2] Not that they were counting any of this (maybe Matthew the tax collector was!), but those are measurable events, actual signs of God working and moving in and among his creation.
In Matthew 11, Jesus speaks of this “here-and-now” nature of the kingdom of heaven:
11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.[3]
A few verses later (vs. 16), Jesus would confirm this “here-and-now” nature by asking, “To what can I compare this generation?” In 18:4–5, Jesus compares the little children to the kingdom of heaven:
“Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”[4]
Matthew 13 contains a series of seven parables that begin with the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…” but Jesus puts this group of parables in a slightly different context. Although all the parables could be considered true to life, Jesus tells his disciples they’re getting something special, something no one else has access to at that time.
“10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”[5]
This passage has nothing to do with money, by the way. That last verse may sound an awful lot like, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” However, the passage is about spiritual knowledge and insight. Of course, we see that the disciples themselves have questions about these parables, so they hadn’t gained immediate understanding. Jesus still had to explain a couple parables to them. Most of those parables relate to the coming kingdom, especially to those who are open to it and will inherit it.
They also show that the kingdom of heaven is not a universal promise to all of humanity. As in Romans, there is an emphasis in taking the message to heart and making the commitment to believe in and follow Christ with that “obedience of faithfulness.” We give up everything for the pearl of great price or the treasure in the field. We receive the word with joy and gladness and hand over the worries and cares of this life to the savior, since we are powerless in and of ourselves.
The parable of the net is the most obvious one that has to do with the final judgment, confirming that there will indeed be a separating of the wicked from the faithful at the end. In Matthew 7:21–23 says:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”[6]
This passage serves as a hinge to take a look at the future aspect of the kingdom of heaven, that is, our actual experience of heaven when our own work on earth is finished. Jesus speaks of this in his encounter with the Roman centurion whose servant was paralyzed:
“I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”[7]
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins at the wedding banquet. I won’t read the whole parable but I think you remember it well enough. Five of the virgins remembered to bring extra oil, while the other five did not. Those that forgot their extra oil had to go find more at the last minute, and completely missed out on the wedding banquet. All these parables in Matthew 13 suggest that intentional effort is needed to secure your place in the kingdom of God.
So there you have it: the kingdom of heaven embraces the now and the not-yet. It embraces the everyday and the extraordinary. It’s made up of the obvious truths of the kingdom and the not-so-obvious principles “hidden” in the parables. This brings us back, then, to our passage in Matthew 20 about the vineyard owner hiring workers for his vineyard.
I mentioned above that we really don’t have any details about why the owner had to keep going back and hiring laborers. If you think about it, though, this is probably the best way to handle this type of parallel, to leave such details vague and open ended so that the application isn’t narrowly limited to a handful of situations.
This parable itself would seem to be a follow up to Jesus’s final instruction in Matthew 9:37–38 before he commissions and sends out the disciples in chapter 10. Most of you are familiar with this passage:
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”[8]
The most obvious application, especially in the context of Matthew, is that we are called to do all we can to reach out to those who need to be brought into the kingdom before it is too late. This parable is the last one Jesus delivers before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s why the connection to the Matthew 9 passage I cited above is important. It closes the chapter on Jesus’s general ministry and sets the stage for the final week of his life.
I don’t think there is anything special about the five times the owner went out to hire people. Five is not a commonly used symbolic number in the Bible. The underlying lesson of the story, though, seems to be captured in the final verses of the story, especially when it comes to the order in which the workers get paid. We read that the late-comers got paid a denarius for their work, while the early birds got the same pay as the late-comers.
The final verse in the parable is “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”[9] Not only does that wrap the parable and give a high-level summary of what it was about, but if you read forward from there, you will see that this principle is important is addressing one final issues among his disciples before he enters Jerusalem.
Immediately after the parable, Jesus makes his third and final prediction of his death. This evidently gets a couple of his disciples (and their mother) to think, “Hmm, if he’s going to be killed, he’ll need a successor. We know just the guys!” In fact, immediately following that death prediction, James’ and John’s mother pleads with Jesus to make them his right- and left-hand men. You may remember that James and John were two of the earliest disciples to follow Jesus, joining their fishing buddies Peter and Andrew. So the mother of the sons of Zebedee figured since they had that kind of tenure being enduring, long-term disciples of Jesus, they deserved the first shot at succession.
Jesus was straight-up with them and said it wasn’t his decision to make who occupied those spots. Jesus went on to say that those who wanted to be great had to be servants. That seems to fit right in with “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” As a further point of emphasis to this principle, Jesus closes out chapter 20 by healing two blind beggars of their blindness. Are these beggars the final two “laborers” Jesus “hired” to proclaim the good news and get the crowd “ripe” for his triumphal entry?
For your own setting here at Mount View, I think this parable of the laborers has an important message. Never give up on reaching out. We have over 75 years of history here, a great history of having a full auditorium on Sunday morning and a vibrant youth group, both of which I experienced in my youth here. If you believe in the mission and the message of this congregation, and I know you do, consider what simple things you could do to help with the “harvest” of souls and bring them into this fellowship.
The harvest is still plentiful and we need more laborers. Let us pray and consider how we can help with that harvest. Amen.
[1] Aland, Kurt, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Maurice A. Robinson, and Allen Wikgren. 1993; 2006. The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[6] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[7] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[8] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[9] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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