Title: God's Calculation Method/ Matthew 20:1~16
Contents God's Calculation Method/ Matthew 20:1~16
Key Verse: “Should I not do my will with what is mine? Do you look evil because I am good?” (verse 15).
Word: Everyone has their own way of calculating life. But the problem is that life doesn't just go by my calculations. How can I live a life of plus, not minus?
In today's text, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, we can learn God's calculation method. It is a calculation method according to the principle of grace. Above all, it is grace that a person like me was chosen. He chose me, who was a sinner, who had no choice but to die, justified me “by his grace through faith” and made me a child of God. Although the workers in the text have different times, just as they were called by the owner of the vineyard, it is grace that we are saved at any point in our lives. It is a greater grace if you were saved when you were a boy or a young man. There is no greater grace than this when you are saved at the last minute in your old age, old age, or even near death.
It is a calculation method based on the principle of sovereignty. God rules the world according to His will with amazing wisdom. He selects and guides humans in the economy that transcends human reason. There is no protest or objection here (verse 15, Romans 9:20-21). Even if we cannot understand it with our rational judgment, we can live a peaceful life when we trust in God and accept it as providence.
The culmination of this grace and sovereignty calculation is the cross of Jesus. It is the ‘calculation method of love’, in which even life is not spared.
This is a story from the Indian poet Tagore's collection of lyric poems, Gitanjali. The king's golden chariot stopped in front of a beggar. Suddenly, the king reaches out to the beggar. “What will you give me?” Confused, the beggar took a grain of rice from his bag and offered it to him. Then, when he returned home, he poured out his pockets like crazy. But what happened? A golden grain of rice is shining among the white grains of rice. He was sad and wept. “Why couldn’t you give the king all that rice, all the insignificant rice?”
Suddenly, reading this story, we find ourselves counting love. Love is never calculable. Yet we count before the Lord. Because it is a pity, I cannot give my time, health, wealth, and my entire life. Now, we must be blinded to the love of God, the cross of Jesus. So I have to give my whole life. Only then can you confess. “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all.”
Prayer: Help me to become a wise man who gives everything and lives a prosperous life through the calculation of love based on the principle of grace and sovereignty. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.