Jordan M.

And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?‘ They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.‘ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too’ - the words of Christ in Matthew. From this text, we see a landowner, hired laborers, and those whom have yet to hired. Jesus here is talking about what the kingdom is like. Under the lordship of Christ, the King of kings, this is the reality. A landowner is seeking servants to hire. They do not come to Him. He must go to them. They are idle until He comes. Our Greek concordance shows us that argos means to be free labor, or at leasure. The meaning extends to being lazy, shunning the labor one ought to perform. This leasure is not the rest Christ gives when we come to Him weary laden with heavy burdens. We’ve been created to work, complete in our Lord, and rest, complete in our Lord. Leasure in Christ in a sense is the ultimate desire and reward of His redeemed. However leasure outside of Christ is fallen humanity missing its mark, futile in regards to the things of God. Work outside of Christ is no less of a futility, where I strive to attain for my own kingdom, whether practically or religiously. These souls in this story were not seeking this, to be their own bosses, they were waiting for someone to hire them. For a purpose. There are many landowners looking for laborers. The love of money is a big one, a big landowner. False religion is a landowner seeking laborers. There are many landowners, however if you trace the leases to these properties all the way up, all the land in this country is owned ultimately by one of two very powerful men. And if we are particularly interested in this matter of real estate, we find that the landowner spoken of in this story has actually founded the entire country, even and especially the land owned by the other less powerful landowner.

We want this landowner to approach us. We are waiting to be hired. We pray it’s Him, lest we find ourselves cheated and it impossible to gain the lost week of wasted labor. When it comes time of day when He approaches me, I know it is late (5pm!), but I’ve been hired! Something in me hates being idle! I dont know the landowner really all that well, and I dont know why He chose me. He hadn’t seen me work. Perhaps He knew that prior job training typically only inhibits. And what is this work that I’ve been hired to do? I would have guessed it would be going out and recruiting more workers, which would seem to me analogous to the kingdom of God, evangelism. However God does not specify in this story specifically what the work is. What we do see is a landowner Himself recruiting idle men, even right before the end of the workday.

God mobilizes His generation. Jesus Christ said that not all who say Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of God, but those who do His will. Jesus said His food was to do the will of God. I’m learning that life in Christ is the labor, and life in Christ is the leasure. That makes sense if true labor is what God does for His good pleasure, and we participate in this labor as we leasure in Him. Otherwise, our self-initiated labor actually inhibits true labor, His labor. That is, ministry without the true Minister, counterfeit.

I pray for continual salvation from idleness, to not be found a laborer leaning on his shovel. Oh to be chosen!!! That temptation to idleness can remain, and that is why we must remember that we were chosen for this reward, sought out. As we seek the kingdom of God for others, as we speak of Jesus and of the salvation of God, as we strategize, as we pray, as we pray, as we pray, it is God who is going out and seeking and hiring. Mobilizing a generation is commanded as our Great Commission in Matthew 28, and we remember how that passage ends.. surely I am with you, even to the end of the age. Speaking first to myself, oh to go only where His presence is, to rejoice in the mercy of our gracious landowner and His own means and purposes for whom He hires, that He would forbid we try and hire workers - even out of good motive to serve our landowner - but without Him, that noone would believe they had been hired, as they do work that is not His and receive not His reward at the end of the day. God mobilizes His generation. Let us rest in Him, a yoke easy and burden light, cast upon Christ. It is God who wills and works according to His good pleasure, and for His kingdom, His glory, which He desires for Himself more than we ever could imagine on this side. And His will is that noone should perish, but that all should come to the repentance, to the knowledge of Him. Oh praise Him, the great and merciful landowner.