Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 664
Delivered on Sunday Morning, December 10, 1865, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Matthew 20:1,3, 5, 6.
WE have frequently observed that we do not think it right to neglect the context of Scripture. We have no right to tear passages of Scripture from their context and make them to mean what they were not intended to teach. And therefore I have, in the reading given you, according to my ability, what I think to be the immediate design of the present parable. It is a rebuke to those who fall into a legal spirit and begin calculating as to what their reward ought to be in a kingdom where the legal spirit is entirely out of place since its reward is not of debt, but of Divine Grace. I think I may now, without any violation of propriety, dwell upon one very distinct fact in connection with the parable. It is not right to violate the drift of the parable, but having already observed it and made it as clear as we can, we believe that we are now authorized to make use of one of the main circumstances mentioned in it.
This morning I intend to call your attention to the fact that the laborers were hired at different periods of the day, by which doubtless we are taught that God sends His servants into His vineyard at different times and seasons. Some are called in early youth and others are not led to enter into the service of the Master until declining years have brought them almost to the eventide of life. I must, however, ask you to remember that they were all called—by the mention of which the Savior would teach us that no man comes into the kingdom of Heaven of himself. Without exception, every laborer for Jesus has been called in one sense or another and he would not have come without being so called. They are all called.
Were a man what he should be, he would need no pressing and invitation to come to the Gospel of Christ. But since human nature is perverted and men put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, darkness for light and light for darkness, man needs to be called by the outward word. He needs to be invited, persuaded and entreated. He needs, to use the strong expression of the Apostle Paul, to be told that as though God did beseech him by us, we should pray him, in Christ’s place, to be reconciled to God. No, further than this, although some men come to work in a legal spirit in the vineyard through this common call of the Gospel, yet no man in spirit and in truth comes to Christ without a further call, namely, the effectual call of God’s Holy Spirit.
The general call is given by the minister—it is all that he can give. If the preacher attempts to give the particular call as some of my hyper-Calvinistic Brethren do—confining the Gospel command to a certain character and trying to be, themselves, the discoverers of God’s elect and to make that particular which is always universal—if the preacher acts thus and virtually endeavors to give the particular call—he makes a sorry mess of it and usually fails altogether to preach the Gospel of glad tidings to the sons of men.
But when man is content to do what he can do, namely, preach the commandment, “that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and that, “God commands all men everywhere to repent,” then there comes with the general call to the chosen of God a particular and special call which none hut the Holy Spirit can give, but which He gives so effectually that all who hear it become willing in the day of God’s power and turn with full purpose of heart unto the Lord! In what sense is it true that many are called but few chosen if none are to be called by the preaching of the Word but those who are chosen? There are two callings—the one is general to all who hear of Jesus and many who are thus called are not chosen. The other is personal and peculiar to the elect—“for whom He did predestinate, them He also called.”
To return to our point. All in the vineyard are in some sense called. There is not a solitary exception to this rule in the entire Christian Church. The doctrine of freewill has not a single specimen to show to prove itself. There is not a sheep in all the flock that came back to the shepherd unsought. There is not a single piece of money which leaped again into the woman’s purse—she swept the house to find it—no, I will go further and say there is not even a single prodigal son in the entire family who did ever say, “I will arise and go unto my Father,” till first the Father’s Grace, veiling itself in the afflicting Providence of a mighty famine, had taught the prodigal the miserable results of sin as he fed the swine and gladly would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, but could not do so.
I want you to notice another fact before I come to the subject now in hand, and that is that all those who are called are said to have been hired. Of course in a parable no word is to be construed harshly—we are to give the meaning according to the drift. But still, I think we may say that there is this likeness between hiring a servant and the engagement of a soul to Christ—a man hired has no right to serve another—he serves the master who has hired him. When a soul is called by Grace into the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, he cries, “O Lord, other lords have had dominion over me, but now You only will I serve.” He plucks off the yoke of sin, its pleasure, its custom, and he puts upon him that yoke of which the Master says it is easy, and he bears that burden which Jesus tells us is light.