Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Sep 05, 2021

Performance Review

Performance Review

Passage: Matthew 20:1-16

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: General Topic

Keywords: generosity, labor, reward, equal

In many vocations employees undergo “performance reviews”--comprehensive evaluations of their effectiveness. The most helpful ones take time to look beneath the surface to identify more than practices, but easily unnoticeable assumptions and motives. Jesus will tell his disciples a parable that functions something like a performance review. And it applies to us all. If our labor is genuinely for God what must be true of it?

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: “Call to Worship for Labor Day” from the Presbytery of the Cascades
LEADER: God said, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
ALL: But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord.”
LEADER: Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,
ALL: And I will give you rest.”
LEADER: We come in the name of the Spirit, resting from our labors,
ALL: Let us worship God this day!

CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 20:1-16
Matt. 20:1 “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. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ 5 So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ 8 And when 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.’ 9 And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first last.”

BENEDICTION: Based on Colossians 3:17
Leader: When you work,
work as though you are working for the Lord.
When you rest,
rest in the sovereign grace of God.
And when you celebrate,
celebrate as a people with the greatest reason
for love, joy, and celebration.

Go now in the grace and forgiveness of our Savior,
and in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The limitless grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you in all you do.

All: And also with you.

SCRIPTURES:

  • Deuteronomy 15:9 / Proverbs 23:6
  • Romans 9:15-24
  • 1 Corinthians 4:7

Illustrations:

InView Media Album 09.05.2021

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. In your line of work, did you ever have to undergo a performance review? If so, what were they like? How did you feel about them? Did they make any difference? What was your best? Your worst?
  2. What’s your first impulse once you’ve read the text? Confusion? Appreciation? Mildly angry? Something else?
  3. What in the previous paragraph might explain what led Jesus to compose this parable?
  4. Do a close read of every word and action of the landowner? How would you describe him?
  5. Why would those who’d worked the whole day deduce they were bound to receive more? What assumptions about their work led to that deduction?
  6. What does the landowner say that challenges those assumptions?
  7. If you had to guess what working in the vineyard of the landowner is a metaphor for, what would you say? Why that?
  8. What is the temptation we all are liable to which this parable is addressing?
  9. How does the gospel shape the way we think about our labor for its progress? Do you feel anywhere that struggle to think of obedience in that way? If so, how so?

QUOTES:

  • God is not answerable to man for what he does with his rewards. J.C. Fenton
  • [To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. - CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

SERMONS / TALKS: