The speaker introduces the concepts of grace and the Kingdom of God, emphasizing the biblical definition of grace as undeserved kindness and discussing cultural differences within the Kingdom.

Introduction to Grace and the Kingdom

The speaker emphasizes the importance of context in interpreting Jesus' parables, particularly focusing on Peter's question about rewards and the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.

Understanding Jesus' Parables

The speaker illustrates grace through the Parable of the Laborers, discussing the different groups of laborers, their agreements, and the master’s payment that challenges their sense of fairness.

The Laborers and Grace

The speaker reflects on how comparison leads to misery among laborers and discusses how aging Christians can become miserable if they feel owed by God.

Misery and Comparison

The message concludes with a reminder that grace is undeserved and should shape our attitudes, along with personal reflections on grace and marriage.

Grace and Attitude

A thought experiment presents the dilemma between justice and grace, using Monopoly as a metaphor to discuss perspective and its effects on feelings about winning and losing.

Justice vs. Grace

The speaker discusses the differences in God's economy, emphasizing the importance of embracing grace and the relational aspect of serving God.

God's Economy and Relationship

The speaker invites those unfamiliar with God's kingdom to join, emphasizing grace, belief in Jesus, and concludes with a prayer of thanks for grace.

Invitation to Embrace Grace

- Speaker addresses the audience on a Sunday morning, focusing on the theme of being a "miserable Christian."
- Emphasizes the importance of storytelling in teaching, particularly in conveying biblical lessons.
- Introduces the concept of grace as "undeserved kindness" and clarifies its biblical meaning.
- Shares personal experience as the international director for Youth for Christ, highlighting cultural differences encountered.
- Discusses the culture of the Kingdom of God, which is characterized by grace.
- References Ephesians 2 to illustrate God's grace and its significance in salvation.
- Mentions the dual nature of the Kingdom of God: present and future.
- Provides an analogy related to changes in accounting standards to illustrate the shift in understanding grace and the Kingdom's culture.

- Change was mandated by 2011, with early adopters embracing new standards.
- Emphasizes the importance of grace in the eternal kingdom for believers in Jesus.
- Encourages choosing to embrace grace now rather than resisting it.
- Discusses Peter's question to Jesus about rewards for following Him.
- Jesus reassures that sacrifices will be rewarded but flips expectations with the statement, "the first will be last, and the last will be first."
- Introduces a parable about laborers in a vineyard, highlighting differing arrival times and agreements.
- The parable illustrates the unpredictability of rewards in God's kingdom and challenges conventional notions of fairness.

- The video discusses the parable of the workers in the vineyard, highlighting issues of fairness and grace.
- Those who worked longer felt entitled to more pay and resented the equal treatment of those who worked less.
- Their misery stemmed from comparison and jealousy, despite receiving what they agreed upon.
- The speaker relates this to feelings of entitlement that can develop over time in long-term Christians.
- Emphasizes the importance of recognizing grace as undeserved kindness and avoiding the mindset that God owes us.
- Warns that entitlement leads to misery and contempt for others, contrasting with attitudes of gratitude and encouragement towards new believers.
- References the older brother in the prodigal son story as another example of resentment towards grace.

- The speaker reflects on personal experiences with grace and the struggle to accept it for others while desiring justice for oneself.
- Emphasizes that all blessings and good choices are due to God's grace, not personal merit.
- Illustrates the concept of grace versus justice using a Monopoly game analogy, highlighting how perspective changes one's reaction to outcomes.
- Encourages celebrating God's grace in others and recognizing it as a fundamental aspect of the Christian life.
- Warns against viewing God's grace as a transactional relationship and stresses the importance of submitting to His will.
- Concludes with a reminder that everything in God's kingdom operates differently and is rooted in grace.

- The speaker emphasizes trusting in the goodness of God rather than making deals with Him.
- A personal illustration involves grandchildren making Christmas cookies with their grandmother, highlighting the importance of relationship over perfection.
- The speaker reflects on the misconception that individuals can earn God's favor through their actions.
- Encouragement is given to those unfamiliar with the faith to join the Kingdom of God through belief in Jesus.
- The message concludes with gratitude for God's grace and a call to live out the principles of the Kingdom.

- Speaker discusses the theme of being a "miserable Christian" on a Sunday morning.
- Highlights the role of storytelling in teaching biblical lessons.
- Defines grace as "undeserved kindness" and its biblical significance.
- Shares experiences as an international director for Youth for Christ, noting cultural differences.
- Explores the culture of the Kingdom of God, emphasizing grace.
- References Ephesians 2 to illustrate grace's role in salvation.
- Mentions the present and future aspects of the Kingdom of God.
- Uses an accounting analogy to explain the understanding of grace.
- Encourages embracing grace now and warns against entitlement.
- Discusses Jesus' reassurance about rewards and the parable of laborers in a vineyard.
- Highlights issues of fairness and entitlement among long-term Christians.
- Reflects on the older brother in the prodigal son story as an example of resentment.
- Stresses that all blessings come from grace, not personal merit.
- Uses a Monopoly analogy to illustrate grace versus justice.
- Encourages celebrating grace in others and warns against a transactional view of God's grace.
- Concludes with the importance of trusting in God's goodness and the relational aspect of faith.
- Invites those unfamiliar with faith to join the Kingdom of God through belief in Jesus.

It is good to see you all here on this delightful Sunday morning.

And for those of us that have dry basements, we are particularly appreciative this morning.

We are, I hope, going to have some fun this morning looking at the Word of God and being challenged a little bit in terms of our attitude.

So I have entitled my message, how to be a miserable Christian.

I thought this would just sort of, you know, just try to encapsulate what God is teaching us or what the Lord taught us in this passage by way of a story.

And stories are just such a powerful way to convey something.

And of course, Jesus is the master teacher.

You will also notice that on my opening slide I declare my age and some of you thought that meant it was my birthday.

What I am pointing out here is that you are hearing this message from an old man And that's going to be very relevant when you actually hear what this message is all about.

Now 1 other thing, I am going to be using the word grace a lot during this message.

And so I thought I should probably give us the biblical definition of grace.

Saying grace, that is 1 way, but that is not our core meaning of the word grace.

It is also not the extension of a deadline for a term paper.

For those of you that are in school, you might appreciate, and you could certainly see how it is in a certain sense grace.

They are extending to you a certain favor, and perhaps it is undeserved.

But I like undeserved kindness as a simple but I think deep definition of what grace is all about.

So as we go through the message this morning, whenever I use the word grace, think about it in terms of undeserved kindness or undeserved favor.

And as you hear that, the the key word of course is undeserved.

And that's what we struggle with, as you will see in this fun story.

I also propose that the kingdom of God is a very different culture.

Now, about 7 years ago, I took on the role of being the, the international director for Youth for Christ.

And Youth for Christ is a global organization.

So this took this Canadian guy that had spent pretty much all of his life in Canada and you know I would venture to the United States and I might even venture to Western Europe but I was pretty much a Western thinking guy and I was very happy and content in that Really felt that the whole world should think the way I think.

And then I took on this new role and I found myself dropped into all these different places all over the world where there are different mindsets, different ways of thinking.

And a loving older missionary directed me to a book called The Culture Map.

And in this book, which is readily available, you actually get to understand if you are from the United States and you are going to visit somebody from Singapore, then this is the mindsets that you will each have.

And so therefore, when you're trying to communicate together, understanding each other, understanding the cultures will help.

Clearly, this book is not very accurate, because it suggests the Canadians and Americans are actually very close in their culture.

But to make the point, we are, we, there are different cultures and, or different ways of thinking that are all over the world.

And a lot of trouble in the world comes from folks not taking the time to understand each other's mindset or culture or background or what frames their thinking.

So we end up at odds with each other often.

Well, part of what I'm going to be talking about today is the culture map of the Kingdom of God.

It's what is in fact part of this kingdom that you and I have been invited into as children of God.

Now, I would also say this message today is a family chat.

It is primarily for those of us that know and follow Jesus.

If you don't, I hope that as you hear this family chat today, you will be drawn into it and you will decide that in fact you want to become part of this family too.

But we'll see, and maybe we'll reference that again towards the end.

Well, I can sum it up as it's all, the culture is all about grace.

And grace, you remember, is undeserved kindness.

And that culture permeates the kingdom of God.

It affects our way of thinking, it affects our way of acting, it affects our day-to-day lives.

We are drawn in or we become part of this kingdom when we accept Christ as our savior, once we come into this kingdom, we find that in fact it is a kingdom that is saturated by grace.

It is summed up well in a passage of scripture in Ephesians chapter 2.

I won't comment much on it, but then we'll come back to it towards the end of the message because you'll see this enacted out, carried out, illustrated in the story.

So here it is, Ephesians chapter 2, looks like I didn't put the place on there, it is Ephesians chapter 2 and starting in verse 4.

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

That is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no 1 may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." There's the overall description and you hear grace, grace, grace.

You see that it is and it wraps everything in terms of God's plan for us This kingdom that has a culture of grace is both here and it's coming and it's really fun to see that in scripture.

In Luke chapter 11 Jesus said, but if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you or among you.

The kingdom of God is here when Jesus is here, and it is here when his followers live out the kingdom values and the kingdom principles and the kingdom way here on earth.

And yet at the same time, he said in the passage that we will read, he said, I tell you at the renewal of all things when the son of man sits on his glorious throne, he's pointing to a future day for the kingdom.

Now, I've got an illustration for this that Katie, my dear wife, who is listening right now, thinks is a bad illustration.

So I'm going to tell you, and then you tell me at the end, which of us was right.

So Back in 2009, the government announced that all publicly traded companies would have to change the way they do accounting.

Instead of following what we call the GAP, generally accepted accounting principles, we were going to have to change over to a whole new way of doing accounting, which was called IFRS, International Financial Reporting Standards.

And they told us that we had to change by 2011.

I, as an old dude in business, I much preferred the old.

And that is actually relevant to this subject.

But the new was coming, it was the way we had to do it, and we had to change.

There were some who chose to be early adopters.

And an early adopter is someone that voluntarily decided to embrace the new accounting standards early.

You and I are going to spend eternity, if we know and follow Jesus, we're going to spend eternity in heaven.

In the kingdom that will finally be here fully and completely when Christ returns and reigns, guess what?

Grace will be the standard, grace will be the way, grace will be the measure, grace will be everything.

You and I have a choice to be an early adopter or a late adopter.

So if we tend to fight it, all that's happening is we've chosen to be a late adopter.

But you will end up, if you are a child of God, you will end up oozing grace for eternity.

So we go to our context, context, context, as we were told by our dear brother, Doug Virgin.

When you're looking at 1 of Christ's stories, 1 of his parables, look at the context.

So in Matthew, we're going to start in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 19, and verse 27, and there it says, then Peter said in reply.

That's the next slide, If we can go to that.

Then otherwise it will show up in a minute.

Then Peter said in reply, Matthew 19 verse 27, see we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, in the new world when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

The setting is Peter says something really dumb.

And most of us just love Peter because we do it all the time and Peter has like Peter's followed Jesus he's been with Jesus he's enjoyed Jesus's presence in his company he's heard his words he's heard his teaching and Peter says what do we get?

You want to say to Peter, shut up, Peter, just listen.

He is what we tend to do over and over again.

Jesus says, you will, in fact, share my reign with me.

And you will be rewarded for the sacrifices that you have made.

And he puts his brackets around this story.

Many who are first will be last and the last first.

He says that at the beginning of the story, and then when you get to the end of the story, he says, many who are last will be first, and the first will be last.

So he just changes the order of it, just to mess with you.

But it's, first will be last, last will be first.

In other words, the order that you think?

We think ranking, we think order, we think all of that.

In the kingdom of God, It's all upside down.

Remember with parables, Jesus has a primary thing he is teaching us.

And it's 1 main thing, and it helps us to understand a principle by through story.

We've got lots of parables, 40-ish in the New Testament, and they give us different facets helping us to understand the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, Matthew 26 verse 30, and it says this, but many who are first will be last and the last first.

After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

Going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace and said to them, you go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right, I will give you.

Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.

About the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing and he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day?

They said to him because no 1 has hired us.

He said to them, you go into the vineyard too.

Anybody that's in HR can right away think compensation, you can think studies, you can think potential for miscommunication, for misunderstanding, all sorts of issues here.

But in this simple story, we actually have a 6 AM group, and then we have 4 other groups.

They have agreed with the master of the house for a denarius a day.

They have negotiated, they have come up with this, they've agreed on it, and now they're going out to work based on what they are entitled to, what they have been promised, and that's what they deserve for their work for the day.

I hope you're starting to catch, there are some of us that are naturally the 6 a.m.

We want everything to be structured and right.

Now, the next group, they arrive, kind of they just got their, you know, they got out of bed at 8.45 and they showed up at 9 o'clock.

And they get set out into the field as well, but they're the first of the group that has no deal.

He saw others standing idle in the marketplace and said to them, you go into the vineyard too, whatever is right I will give you, so they went.

They are the first group that simply has to trust the heart of the owner of the household.

They're going to work from 9 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock at night.

They don't know what they're going to get.

And so there are those at noon, at 03:00, and at 05:00.

Now, the great fun here is, who do you identify with?

I think we see in this story a broad range of our personalities.

And we're all going to go out and we're going to work.

But we can probably plot ourselves in terms of where would I be in these various groups.

If you're part of that 6 AM group, this is going to be problems.

When the evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first.

Remember Jesus said in his kingdom the first will be last and the last first.

You're the 06:00 guy and not only did you work your butt off for 12 hours but now when it comes pay time he's calling in the guys that only started at 05:00 first okay you're already rattled right okay Beginning with the last up to the first, verse 9.

And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.

Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius.

And on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, these last worked only 1 hour, and you have made them equal to us who were born the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

But he replied to 1 of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong.

I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you, am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?

So the last will be first and the first will be last." Ouch ouch ouch.

Shama who's sitting back there, she knows 1 of our other daughters very well whose name is Jessica.

And from when Jessica was like 10 years old, she hated this story.

Because she has a very deep-rooted sense of justice.

They went out and did their work, they came back, they got paid, everything that was promised to them, and they're free to go home.

And you know it's all about their comparison.

It's all about them looking over their shoulder at the others and what those others got.

They were conscious of themselves and their work.

They had counted and assessed what they did.

We went out there and we worked right through the day.

Peter said, Lord, we've done all this and sacrificed all this for you.

And here in Jesus' story, he wraps it so well.

Different, different people have different, different sort of historians have different ideas of that denarius.

Was it a fair 1 day's pay, a decent 1 day's pay?

Others say it was actually good for 3 or 4 days' pay.

They, everybody seems to agree, it was, it was generous to pay for a day's, for a day's work.

They were the ones that had potentially insisted on an agreement.

Clearly the master of the house tends to just say go and work and I'll be fair to you.

So they seemed to be ones that had demanded an agreement in order to work.

They could measure it, articulate it, talk about it, and so naturally they were disgruntled by this grace that was shown to the others.

These other folks were dependent on this crazy thing that made no sense to them.

Like they actually despise the others and are in some ways jealous of them.

But they actually, it's funny because they're jealous of them and yet they wouldn't want to be 1 of them.

So it's kind of a, it's, it's a kind of a funny, it's a funny mentality.

But the most serious part of it to me is, they felt that the house owner, the master of the house, they felt that he was unjust.

So I wanna suggest here that Some of us struggle with this as we get older.

And this is how happy Christians become miserable Christians.

Because we start to think, Lord, I've really done quite a bit for you.

Like, I started following you, Lord, when I was 10 years old.

Lord, do you know how many camps I've done?

How many nights I've spent in stupid bunk beds, in crazy situations?

Do you know how many bales of hay I have?

And then we start to see God showing grace to others that come in a lot later.

Like, they didn't put up with, they didn't do all that.

They come to know the Lord later in life and they're coheirs with Christ like me.

And what started as a responsive act of love that was responsive to a recognition of all that Christ had done for me.

He has brought me into a relationship that He is my Father.

He has given me every blessing in Christ.

The Lord Jesus himself, all that he inherits, is shared with me.

And my serving him starts out when I'm young, out of a response to that.

But somehow over time there is this subtle shift that happens until I start to be thinking, God owes me.

And when we get there, brothers and sisters, we're in deep trouble.

Sad to say, for most of us that have been in the family of God for a long time, we can think of some that aged, and as they aged, they got really grumpy.

And you can think of others that aged, and as they aged, they got more thankful, more teary, more wanting to fan into flame the next generation, wanting to see that next generation go and blossom and really experience the grace of God.

There's not, I don't see too many down the middle.

It seems like we kind of go the 1 way or the other.

So this part of it is actually, I'm speaking primarily to those of us that are older and that's why I put my age up there at the beginning.

It's like and I was even praying as I was coming to church this morning saying Lord Where in my life am I thinking that you owe me?

When you start having this attitude, grace drives you crazy.

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Parables of Jesus: Parable of the Vineyard Workers