The First Will Be Last. Matthew 19:27-20:16
The key to understanding this section from 19:25 to 20:16 is really an understanding of the fact that a principle is stated and restated. That is, that the first will be last. Some people come to this passage and look at this, and they look at what Jesus is teaching, especially in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (ch. 20) where there is a chronology. That chronology starts off with workers who are hired at dawn, another group hired at nine in the morning, and another group late in the day.
There is an illustration there about first and last but it doesn't apply in a chronological way in terms of the principle that is being taught in this section. We have to understand that analogy. The concept of first can be both first in order and first in quality or preeminence. The one who is last can be last in chronological order but it can also refer to those who were last in terms of quality.
When we look at this section, especially the parable that is coming up in the first 16 verses of chapter twenty, it cannot be divorced from what we have studied starting back at least in verse 13, and that of course cannot be divorced from what we have been studying throughout this whole section.
A brief review: In Matthew 18:1, which occurs after Jesus comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration, he discovers there is this argument going on amongst the nine disciples. The issue: who is the greatest going to be in the kingdom? Following that, Jesus begins to teach them that it is not about status, it is about service. The issue here in all of this section is not that we should be focused on what our rewards are going to be in heaven. We are to focus on the fact that we are to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in the body of Christ here in this life, and that we are to rest in Him to be generous and gracious in terms of whatever rewards come our way, because even the ability to serve Him is energized by God the Holy Spirit. So whatever we have that is accomplished for eternity is ultimately performed through God the Holy Spirit. Are rewards are not to bring honor or glory or prestige to ourselves but to reflect on Jesus Christ and all that He has accomplished in history, and we are just the insignificant means by which that is accomplished.
The last episode that comes up that is part of this narrative in Matthew 20, starting in verse 20, is a repetition of that same argument. But this time we get a Momma involved, the mother of James and John. She came to Jesus with her sons. Matthew 20:21 “And He said to her, 'What do you wish?' She said to Him, 'Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left'.” She is caught up with this status bug too, just like we all are at times.
In the last couple of verses that we come to in Matthew chapter 20 Jesus again repeats this principle that is stated in 19:30 and 20:16, then repeated again in 20:27: “and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. [28] just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” That is the pattern for leadership. The Christian church is not someone seeking status but somebody who, like Jesus, is willing to give up all of the position, power, prestige, wealth, all the details of life, because they are irrelevant for eternity. The focus is, are we willing to do whatever the Lord wants us to do in this life? That is the structure.
So within that structure if Jesus is talking about service and not status all the way through chapters eighteen and nineteen and into twenty, then when we come to this parable of the workers in the vineyard we have to interpret it within that structure. Very few people do that. As I have wrestled with this over the past weeks I kept looking at this framework and these books ends, and how this particular parable is bracketed by verse 30 of chapter nineteen and verse 16 of chapter twenty.
Now want we have to do is take these glasses off of the verses and the chapters and read it just straight through. That verse 1 starts, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner ...” “For” there is the Greek word GAR, which means is explaining what was said in the previous verse. So it is explaining this principle that Jesus is trying to teach about the one who is first will be last and the one who is last first, and He ends it. In literature this is called an enclusio, where you basically bracket the passage with similar statements so that people understand where the beginning and the end are, and often those statements tell us what the focal point is going to be.
We can't understand the parable if we haven't understood the episode with the rich young ruler aright because the parable is explaining the principle of the rich young ruler, which is the first will be last. The rich young ruler is first in the eyes of the world. He has three things going for him: wealth, he is young, he has power. He has everything in this life that is valued and what matters to people in this life that they think makes you significant and important. Jesus says he is the first but he is going to be last because he did not accept the challenge that Jesus had set before him, which was to sell what he has and give to the poor.
Jesus isn't saying this because giving everything that you have to the poor is somehow the key to spiritual maturity. It is not true for everybody but it is true for people who are grasping hold of that particular thing because they think that will also give them status down the road, that that has significance for eternity. He knows exactly how to punch the rich young rulers buttons and to get his attention.
For other people it is other aspects of life. It is other details of life that are the issue. It is the details of life that become our idols in our life and that separate us from consistent obedience to God. They are often “the sins that so easily beset us” (Heb. 12:1) and sometimes they are just the details of life that distract us and prevent us from truly focusing on the path to discipleship and spiritual maturity.
We have to understand again the structure of this episode with the rich young ruler. He came to Jesus and is asking Him: “Good teacher, what things should I do that I may have eternal life?” We have to understand that he is a regenerate man, already a believer, because the language tells us that he is not talking about how to get to heaven. Entering into life is entering into the rich, abundant life that Jesus has for those who are already saved. Jesus then interprets his core question in terms of rewards and status in the kingdom. This is seen in verse 21. Jesus says, “If you want to be perfect/complete ...” He doesn't say, “If you want to have eternal life.” The word translated “perfect” or “complete” is TELEIOS, which means mature. So Jesus understands that the question relates to maturity, not to how to be justified from our sins or how to go to heaven when we die instead of the lake of fire.
Jesus said: “If you want to be mature go, {and} sell your possessions and give to {the} poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” The phrase “treasure in heaven” is a phrase that relates to eternal rewards that will be distributed at the judgment seat of Christ. This is an important phrase that s emphasized several times in the Gospel of Matthew and the other Gospels.
Matthew 6:19 NASB “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” It is not about your bank account, the kind of car is in your garage or the clothes that you have. It is about what we have for eternity, because what we have in this life is less than a drop of water in the seas of all of the seas and oceans on the earth. Eternity is far beyond that; we can't comprehend it.
Matthew 6:20 NASB “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; [21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The focal point is that that which motivates you in this life, if it has to do with status, money, people, things, power or prestige, then you are motivated by the wrong thing, and what should motivate you as a believer and disciple in Christ is that you are focused on serving Jesus Christ in whatever capacity you find yourself in, and being willing to give up whatever you love in this life if that is what it takes to serve the Lord. The Lord often doesn't require that of us but He does want us to be willing to give up everything in order to serve Him.
Luke 12:21 NASB “So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” So when it is all said and done and your earthly remains are in the casket, and you are absent from the body and face-to-face with the Lord, the issue is going to be what you have stored up for yourself In heaven. That is the real retirement plan!
Luke 12:32-34 NASB “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” See, the issue here is not what is required in order to go to heaven when we die but what is going to be there in terms of our rewards that will impact eternity.
Colossians 3:24 NASB “knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance...”
Here is the catch phrase: Rewards are earned; salvation is free. So in this passage where Jesus says you need to be willing to sell it all and give it to the poor, that is works; that is not talking about justification or salvation. It is clearly understood that way so that when the disciples hear Him they are astonished. They cannot fathom what Jesus is saying and how significant it is. “Who then can be saved?” The way that is typically read is, who then can get into heaven? And then it is very likely that the next passage can conform to that when Jesus says, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” They make that sound like this is how you get to heaven; you can't save yourself, God does it.
But that doesn't make sense in the whole context, in the whole flow, and we have learned many times that the word “saved” can refer to three different phases or stages of salvation. The disciples here clearly understand that this is talking about rewards. We know this because of what Peter asks in verse 27.
Who, then, can really have rewards in heaven if we have to give it all up? The disciples can't comprehend it. Jesus says to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” The disciples are wrestling with the same kind of idea that many of us wrestle with.
I don't think there is a person who hasn't wondered: What is going to be there for me at the judgment seat of Christ? When all my works are burned up, what is going to be left in terms of gold, silver and precious stones? On what basis am I going to have any position, privilege, power and responsibility in the kingdom? Have I done anything that is going to be rewarded? We are asking that from a genuine humble position. We are not asking it like the rich young ruler because we are trying to get something and be somebody in the kingdom, we are asking it because we just want to make sure we serve the Lord. How do I know? That is what Peter is going to be asking here, and Jesus is addressing this when He says, “With men this is impossible”.
You and I can't figure it out in this life. We can't look at yesterday or even this morning and know how much time this morning we were walking by the Spirit. How much time was spent where my mental attitude and my focus was in obedience to the Lord. How much of that time was in fellowship, how much of that time was out of fellowship? I don't know; you don't know. Jesus says with men it is impossible. You can't evaluate your life and figure out what is going to be there in terms of rewards. But with God this is possible because He is omniscient. He knows when we are walking by the Spirit and when we are not. He understands out thinking, our motivation and what we want. We know on a good day that we don't want to be embarrassed or ashamed at the judgment seat of Christ (1 John 2:28).
The judgment seat of Christ is most specifically described in 1 Corinthians chapter three. There we read, [15] “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss [of rewards]; but he himself will be saved [glorified], yet so as through fire.” That is going into heaven but with nothing rewardable, nothing that qualifies us for service in the kingdom. That person is going to be there but that is pretty much it.
Jesus is saying that man can't figure this out, only God can, and He alone has the perfect logarithm, the perfect metric or however you want to describe it, that takes into account all of our heart desires, our motivation our walk by the Spirit, our overt obedience. Everything is understood by Him and He will reward us according to His grace and according to His generosity.
And that really is the key to understanding what is coming up in the next parable. Jesus is explaining that it is not about what is going on with the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler can in and asked the question: “What good thing shall I do that I might have eternal life?” He is asking about rewards. Basically he has this legalistic mindset that he wants to understand: What is the contractual relationship so that if I do X, Y and Z I will have A, B and C in terms of rewards in heaven. He wants a tight contract there so that he knows exactly what he is going to get in return for the investment of obedience.
It is critical to understand that. I don't think it is really something you grasp until you understand the significance of the parable that is coming up. In the parable there is a distinction between these three groups f day laborers. The landowner goes to the first group and sits down in negotiation with them at dawn. He says he needs them to work the fields for the day and negotiates what the precise wage is going to be: You do X, Y or Z and I am going to pay you a denarius. That first category of worker is the rich young ruler. They want to know exactly what they are going to get for what they obey. They are into this legal kind of contract and are not just trusting in God in terms of service to reward them out of His grace and our of His generosity.
Peter catches the drift of this. He sees that the Lord is saying that if you want to be a disciple you have to be willing to give up. It is not asceticism like the ancient monks, etc. Peter grasped that we are either serving the Lord or we are serving mammon. Mammon just stands for all the details of life. That doesn't mean that as a Christian you can't serve in places of employment in categories of labor and that that is not part of your service to the Lord. It is, what is the ultimate end game in your thinking.
When Jesus tells the rich young ruler that he needs to give it all up, sell it and give it to the poor and he would have treasure in heaven, Peter puts that together and says: “Lord, we have left all and followed you.” The Marxist comes along and says Jesus really doesn't want you to have anything you have to be impoverished. That is not what is going on here. Peter understood what the issue was with the rich young ruler: he needed to sell it all and give to the poor. But is that what the disciples did? Peter said, “We left it”. He didn't say, “We sold it”. They still had their fishing business, they still owned their fishing boats. He is recognizing that the issue that Jesus is asking is, are we willing to leave it all to serve the Lord and follow Him?
Peter said that was what they had done. They'd left it all and followed Him. What are we going to have? It is a question about rewards, no about eternal justification.
Matthew 19:28 NASB “And Jesus said to them, 'Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel'.”
“Followed me” is discipleship, not regeneration. “... you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Notice that this is in the dispensation of Israel. He is using a Jewish term, “in the regeneration”--Peter uses the phrase “times of refreshing” in Acts 3. It is talking about the kingdom, about going on into eternity. “When the Son of man sits ...” This is a messianic term coming out of Daniel chapter seven. The Son of Man, before He returns to the earth, goes to the Ancient of Days (God the Father), and at that point God the Father gives Him the kingdom. That is the same as the scroll, the title deed to the kingdom in Revelation chapters four and five. He takes the scroll and then proceeds to prepare the earth for His coming through the judgment and cleansing of the Tribulation, which is focused ultimately on preparing Israel to accept Jesus as the messianic son of David, the Son of Man promised in Daniel chapter seven.
When “ the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne”. He is not on His glorious throne now. We are not into this “kingdom now” theology; there is no kingdom now. The kingdom is a messianic kingdom when the Messiah, the son of David, sits of the throne of His glory in Jerusalem. Right now, according to Revelation 3:21, He is seated a the right hand of the Father on His Father's throne, not on His throne. He doesn't get His throne until He is given the title deed for the earth and comes and takes the earth for Himself. When that happens He establishes His kingdom and will give out rewards.
Matthew 19:29 NASB “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.” This isn't getting into heaven, this is inheritance. Notice the generosity there. That is the focal point in understanding all of this.
Matthew 19:30 NASB “But many {who are} first [who appear to have a fast track to a key position in the kingdom] will be last; and {the} last, first.” This is the introduction to the parable. They seem to look good by human viewpoint standards, but they are not. They seem to have priority but they will be last. But “the last”, i.e. those who have no standing in this life. The disciples were nobodys, and all but one of the were martyred.
This parable that is sandwiched between 19:30 and 20:16 is illustrating that which comes before verse 30. Verse 30 is the summary statement of why Matthew has put the rich young ruler in here and what he is teaching contextually. He is using the rich young ruler as an object lesson.
Now the illustration. Matthew 20:1 NASB “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”
The principle here is that those who are first, who think they have something to be honored, that they have a basis for being great in the kingdom, will be last because they don't have the right attitude, the right motivation. It sours what they have done. Then those who were last will be first. That is what this is talking about in terms of understanding this passage.
So the conclusion is going to be: So the last shall be first and the first last. The point is that the rich young ruler was first in this life--he had wealth, youth and power—but he held on to his earthly desire for status and he will be last. The disciples who we view as insignificant in this life are last, but they will be first. They are going to be granted twelve thrones to rule in the kingdom.
This is a pretty simple story to understand. There is a man who has a vineyard and needs some day laborers. He goes out at the crack of dawn and picks up enough day laborers that he thinks will accomplish the job. But they get out there and then begin to bargain. What are we going to get for our time? He barters for a denarius a day, which was the going rate for a day's labor, and they are the only ones n this group who have bartered for a set amount of return.
That is like the rich young ruler: If I am going to give you X, I want to know what I am going to get in return. I want to have this nailed down. He is not just trusting and serving the Lord with the attitude that whatever the Lord rewards me with will be based on His grace and generosity; my focus is serving Him, not on what I am going to get in the kingdom.
The first group represents the thinking of the rich young ruler—a desire for a bargain, a guaranteed return on their invested time of labor.
And he goes out at the third hour (9 am) and saw others standing idle in the market place. He says to go into the vineyard. Notice he doesn't bargain with them, he just says whatever is right I will give you. In other words, these have to just trust in his goodness, generosity and character to make things right. There is no set return on what they are going to do.
Again, he goes out at the sixth and the ninth hour. Then about the eleventh hour (5 pm) he goes out to find others standing idle and asks why they have been standing idle all day. He tells them to go into the vineyard and that whatever was right they would receive. The nine o'clock group, the twelve o'clock group, the three o'clock group and the five 'clock group are trusting in the goodness and the generosity of the landowner to pay them for what they do.
Matthew 20:8 NASB “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last {group} to the first.’” The last to the first. That phrase is critical to understanding the whole breakdown of this parable because of the structure stated in 19:30 and 20:16, that the last will be first. So he is going to start with the 5 'clock crowd.
Matthew 20:9 NASB “When those {hired} about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius.”
This is going to really aggravate the others. This isn't socialism: everybody gets the same pay no matter how little work they give. Jesus is teaching a principle of grace. This isn't salvation; this is a return on work. Whenever we see wages we are talking about working for something. Remember: salvation is free; rewards are earned.
Matt 20:10 NASB “When those {hired} first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius.” They got what they bargained for. [11] “When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, [12] saying, ‘These last men have worked {only} one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’”
Matthew 20:13 NASB “But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? [14] ‘Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. [15] Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? ...”
In other words, I have the right to spend my money the way I want to spend my money—without interference from the Federal Government or anybody else telling me how to spend my money.
“... Or is your eye envious [NKJV, evil] because I am generous?’” The evil eye is not some kind of black magic where somebody is looking at you and putting a curse on you. This is a Jewish idiom that runs throughout the Scripture and reflects on how you view your possessions. An evil eye person who is greedy, a tightwad, and is focused on getting all he can get for himself. A good-eyed person is a person who is open and generous and gracious.
What Jesus is asking here is, is your eye evil, are you just a stingy tightwad?
Proverbs 28:22, “A man with an evil eye hastens after riches, and does not consider that poverty will come upon him.”
Proverbs 22:9, “He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives of his bread to the poor.” Notice the emphasis here on grace and generosity.
The point of this parable is that Jesus is saying that the landowner is generous and gracious, and that the laborers who came later in the day, the ones who were last, were ones who were serving not on the basis of contractual agreement for what they were going to get out of it but were trusting in the generosity and the grace of the landowner to do what was right by them.
The issue for us isn't what am I going to get out of this, what am I going to get at the judgment seat of Christ, what am I going to get so that I know for sure what my role is going to be in the kingdom? We can't know; with man that is impossible. With God it is possible; He will know. But the attitude for us is to serve the Lord out of grace orientation, trusting in Him that when we are at the judgment seat of Christ He will treat us and deal with us on the basis of His love, His grace, and His generosity. We can rest in Him, not worrying how that is going to be, and just serve Him here and now.
Matthew 20:16 NASB “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
"For many are called, but few chosen” [NKJV] is not in some versions. But it is in the Majority Text and the evidence is weak for it being excluded from this passage. The word “chosen” is the word that should be translated “choice”. It is a word that is used many times in Hebrew and in Greek and is often used by people for a doctrine of election, but it is talking about their quality. Many are called but few are choice. Those who are willing to serve and be thought of as last, not seeking to be first, are the choice ones. These are the ones who have quality, the ones who are the premier believers, the ones who will be rewarded in heaven.