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SERVE AS UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS
MONDAY, APRIL 27
Matthew 20:1-16

Memory verse: Matthew 20:15

 

“Is it not lawful
for me to do what

I will with mine own?”

 

SERVE AS UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS
 
It is true that God rewards all His faithful servants, but rewards must never become the motive for the believer’s service. To serve for eternal rewards would render the service unacceptable to God. It becomes wood, hay and stubble to be burned up on Judgment Day. Peter asked a question in Matthew 19:27 on behalf of all believers. Believers have a tendency to serve for rewards as this has been the way of the world since the fall of man.
 
But for believers, their service must never be for rewards. They are to leave it to the Lord to give what is right, like all the servants except for the earliest group who served with a fixed agreed payment. Their sinful heart was revealed at day’s end when payment was made by the householder to all the servants. He deliberately began from the last to the first. He paid all the labourers one penny, from the labourers who worked from the eleventh hour to the one who worked from the third hour. All of them were contented since they accepted work based on the householder’s decision to give what he thought was right.
 
When the first group of labourers came, they thought that they would get more than one penny since they had worked the full twelve hours from 6am to 6pm. The householder gave them one penny too. They murmured against the householder. They said that the eleventh-hour labourers worked only one hour, but they had worked throughout the day including working under the hot sun. How could the householder pay the labourers who worked only one hour the same as them!
 
The reply of the householder was to one of them who murmured. He called him friend and said that he did not defraud him as he paid them according to what was agreed from the beginning. He told them to take their wage and leave. Is it not lawful for him to give whatever he desired from what he possessed? Is the eye of the first labourer evil because the householder is good? The labourer felt unfairly treated because he laboured for money. But to the ones who laboured unconditionally, trusting in the householder’s goodness, whatever payment they receeived was good since they accepted no payment when they laboured.
 
THOUGHT: Do I serve for rewards?

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, may I never compare with others.

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