God’s Grace Is Always Extravagant: How to Get Under It.

Sunday August 17, 2025

Main Idea: Reward is for all believers who untether themselves from the flesh and the world. 

Intro:

Jesus wants us to be just like Him before we get to heaven. He is gracious and patient as we learn Him and how to be like Him.

We stick to the Scripture and let it take us along. Sometimes we’re going to be supremely challenged and feel uncomfortable, sometimes we’re going to be confused and uncomfortable again, sometimes we’re going to read the sweetest graces and feel elated.

As Jesus will teach us today, God’s greatest blessing can be mixed with pride and turned to evil.

You and I have to keep learning the Word. Remember that you’re learning it for the purpose of being like Christ. 

Psa 1:1-2

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor stand in the path of sinners,

Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! 

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

And in His law he meditates day and night. 

Here is the attitude that God is going for: 

Psa 145:1-3

I will extol You, my God, O King,

And I will bless Your name forever and ever. 

2 Every day I will bless You,

And I will praise Your name forever and ever. 

3 Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised,

And His greatness is unsearchable. 

You will follow and work for someone you see in that light!

Mat 20:1-16

Warm up: 

The idea of recompense enters the mind of those who have sacrificed certain things for the Lord’s ministry. 

Peter states: “We have left everything and followed You. What will there be for us?” 

Spiritual pride: the expectation of deserved reward for knowledge and work. 

Spiritual pride is a poisonous plant in the Lord’s vineyard.

Subordinate and always a branch from this poisonous plant are rewards in comparison with others.

Grace always gives extravagantly; more than could be imagined. 

Go by faith - untether yourself from the flesh and the world. 

Untethering (Luk 9:57-62, “hand to the plow and looking back).

Untethering is no more than faith turning the eyes of our heart to the one we love and going with Him to work in His fields.  

The parable: 

The land owner (Lord): Main character. He goes Himself (not sending a servant). That He goes Himself (God the Son incarnation) and several times through the day (the grace of God who seeks the lost). 

Workers: 

Early morning: most marketable, skilled.

9am and noon: pay what is fair. Begins the tension. What is fair? They go by faith. 

5pm. The most undesirable workers. They go by faith not expecting much. 

Rut 2:8-15

Isa 42:6-7; Isa 61:1 (This is all of us.) 

Since the motivation of love is such a huge factor (not amount or type of work) no one can at all calculate reward from God. 

Evening: judgment day. 

The Lord calls for the last first (good story telling and the theme - the last shall be first). 

A denarius is far more than they could have expected. 

The bargain making workers expected more - commensurate reward. 

Every principle gets to the heart of things: God’s attributes (Gal 6:14) Paul’s highest admiration was for the love of God.

We should not expect but just follow the Lord by faith.

The Lord convicts them: spiritual pride grumbles at grace to others. 

They demand justice: Can I not do what I choose with what belongs to me?

Questioning the sovereignty of God (Rom 9:20, Who are you O man…) 

God does not have to answer us, but out of love He does.

“Or is your eye envious [poneros - evil] because I am generous [agathos - good]. (Gen 4:6)

This question is for the legalist or spiritually proud. God’s goodness can actually become the seed of evil in our own hearts. 

Trying to comprehend in any measurable way how and why God blesses and rewards now and will reward in eternity is impossible (Isa 55:8-9). 

All we can do, indeed, all God wants us to do, is to untie ourselves from the world and the flesh and follow Christ, and when we sin, confess it and in humility turn away from it. The consistency in this is rewarded extravagantly. 

The meaning: The last will be first, and the first last. 

The last are the children, servants who only live for the Lord’s will and work. 

They have untethered from the world and the flesh (they still sin from time to time) but they are no longer friends with the world. 

No longer let anyone or anything come between them and the Lord’s will for them. 

Satan calls it legalism because it is the last place he wants you to find. 

Close: Application. 

The understanding of the truth in this parable will make the difference between a blessed and joyous life as a Christian or a frustrated Christian life of recurring frustrations and defeats. 

The blessed and joyous life, what everyone wants, is found by faith alone. 

Job 1:21; Rut 2:8-15; Mat 9:37-38 (why are the workers few? They put their hands to the plow and looking back - tethered to other things. (Psa 73:25 - context of envying the wicked)

The last becomes first, the humble follower becomes great because God can use them, they have ceased striving (Psa 46:10).

When we don’t serve the Lord we’re serving something or someone else (self at least). God will bring you to the realization that it is a dead end.  

The untethered life loves to see others graced out by the Lord. 

The one who loves God loves to see Him work and loves others to recognize His work (so many are blind to Him).