PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD WORKERS

Matthew was the only Gospel writer to include this parable. It’s another attempt to help the disciples understand what the invisible Kingdom of God is like.

The conversation that seems to prompt this parable is in the preceding chapter.

Jesus has just had the conversation with the rich young ruler who chose to keep his riches instead of following Jesus. And Peter – ever confident of his loyalty to Jesus – says,

“We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get?”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭19‬:‭27‬ ‭NLT‬‬

And Jesus tells them of thrones and positions of honor as judges.

“And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life. But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭19‬:‭29‬-‭30‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jesus then launches into the parable. It includes the idea of accepting the invitation to work in the vineyard, which the rich young man had just walked away from but Peter and the disciples have responded to.

Those in successive centuries who have responded to the Master’s call will receive the same eternal life enjoyed by the Apostles themselves. Even the Gentiles, who were “late to the party” of working for the Lord, will get the same Kingdom as the Jews; though the Jews were first and the Gentiles last. But the Gentiles who came last have far surpassed the Jews who came first in the impact of their labor for the harvest of souls.

Paul started working later than the other Apostles but a more powerful impact.

In the Kingdom, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong (Ecc. 9:11). The weak are strong, the poor are rich, and the last are first. At the fall of man, we fell on our heads and everything has been upside down to the Kingdom of God ever since.

We don’t need to be concerned about heavenly rewards any more than we are to be concerned about earthly riches. The Lord is generous and “whatever is right” (v4) He will pay us on the day of reckoning.

I have no idea if this blog will put so much as a single fleck of glitter on my heavenly crown, or if maybe it’s going to land me a raised Divine eyebrow. But if it’s worthy of a reward, the Lord will be right about whatever that reward is.

In his commentary on this parable (which is e-x-t-e-n-s-i-v-e), good ol’ Matthew Henry pointed out similarities between this parable of the vineyard workers and the parable we call The Prodigal Son.

Where the workers in this parable went to work in the Master’s vineyard, the wayward son also got a job…feeding pigs. And Henry said basically the same thing as Bob Dylan,

“…it might be the Devil, and it might be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Matthew Henry also pointed out the similarity between the laborers hired early in the morning and the son who stayed and worked for his father. Both were indignant about the grace and generosity shown to ones they felt were undeserving.

Those who have served the Lord all their lives must not begrudge the gift of eternal life to those who did nothing for the Master their whole lives and only responded to His call at the 11th hour before their own day of reckoning. The Judge of All the Earth shall do right, (Gen. 18:25).

Jesus ends the parable by repeating what He told the disciples in 19:30, “the last will be first and the first last.”

That statement has always made me wonder if “famous Christians” who are household names – authors, artists, preachers, theologians, reformers, (particularly the ones who are enjoying their rewards on earth now in the form of fame and vast wealth from book and album sales), if they will perhaps be a just normal Joes in a cookie-cutter house in the heavenly suburbs, while other saints who no one has ever heard of, but who have been faithful to Jesus in obscurity, are brought before the heavenly host and honored. I’d much rather be obscure on earth and honored in heaven than the other way around.

HEALING BLIND MEN IN JERICHO

In the ancient world, blindness was considered one of the most demeaning things a person could experience. That’s why sometimes a defeated leader, like Samson or King Zedekiah, would have his eyes put out.

This account is interesting because Matthew recorded 2 blind men while Mark and Luke recorded only 1. This oddity is a solid clue that the Gospel writers did not sit down and compare notes and “invent” the stories of Jesus. If they had, anomalies like this would not exist in the text. I suppose the Lord put them there to silence that argument.

I also wonder if perhaps Mark may give us a clue to the identity of the other blind man. His is the most detailed account.

In each Gospel’s version of this story, Jesus is just outside of Jericho and surrounded by a crowd walking with Him down the road. A blind man hears the commotion and asks what is happening. When he is told that Jesus is passing by, he shouts out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then Jesus calls the man, asks what he wants, and heals him.

The blind man (or men) call Jesus by his Messianic title “Son of David.” This is what the people will call Jesus during the “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, which is only a week or two ahead of Jesus at this point.

“And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭10‬:‭46‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Bar is Aramaic for “son.”

In English we have surnames like Ericson, Johnson, and Williamson. In Aramaic you would have Simon Bar-Jonah, or the false prophet in Acts 13:6, “Bar-Jesus,” or the thief “Bar-Abbas.”

The blind man is Bar-Timaeus. That’s basically his surname. We don’t know but he probably had a “first name.” What I wonder is if his father, Timaeus, was the other blind man.

Today, because of all our wonderful advances in vision correction, people who in Bible times would’ve been blind, can see. I’ve met plenty of people who would say, “I’m blind without my glasses.” I wonder if Timaeus and his son both had extremely poor vision. There are no contacts or corrective lenses for them. And it’s not unusual for poor eyesight to run in families. This is PURE conjecture, but not ungrounded. Mark mentions Timaeus by name as if the reader should know about him, but then seems to not include him in the narrative. But Matthew mentions 2 guys being healed. I just wonder if Mark is telling us who the other blind man was.

Those of you who know what it is to be unable to see without your glasses, you’d never attempt to cross a busy street or try to find someone in a crowd without them. If your glasses got knocked off in a crowd, you’d probably instinctively stop and grab your friend’s arm and say, “I lost my glasses!”

Bar-Timaeus can’t venture into this crowd. It’s all probably just a blur. So he shouts.

I admire his pluck. If someone were to shush me in a public place, I doubt I would get louder, but he does. And that challenges me. We shouldn’t let anyone or anything shush and shame us into embarrassment and silence when we need Jesus.

Jesus stops and calls the blind men. And I LOVE this little detail that Mark includes:

“And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭10‬:‭50‬ ‭ESV‬‬

This is obviously an eye-witness detail.

Bar-Timaeus was a beggar. Think homeless man pushing a shopping cart. To a homeless beggar, a cloak is important. It’s your blanket and pillow and coat. It might even serve as a shade, a tent, a towel, or seat cushion. Blind beggars lived in extreme poverty. A cloak was an essential piece of survival gear.

Now, maybe he was just thinking ease of movement as he was being led through the crowd. But I wonder if perhaps he threw off the cloak because he KNEW he was about to be healed and his begging days were about to be over and he was leaving his old life behind.

If that is the case, then throwing off his cloak was an act of complete confident faith. Both Mark and Luke record that Jesus said to him “Your faith has made you well.” He left his “security blanket” before he had even been healed because once Jesus had called him to come, he knew he wouldn’t need it anymore.