Jesus Verse by Verse

an expanded commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

Jesus Verse by Verse...

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20:2 The penny represents salvation.
20:6 Those who don’t serve Christ are standing around doing nothing- no matter their intellect and full diaries. It was only the old and weak who were not taken by anyone to work. But they wanted to work- so they stood there all day in the hope someone might be desperate enough for workers that he would take them. God is desperate for workers, and we who are called to Christ in these last days are those weak workers. Like those called at the last moment in Lk. 14:23 are the street people and desperate. That’s us.
20:8 We are ‘called’ by the Angel appearing when Christ returns to gather us to judgment.
20:14 The implication could be that this man is ‘fired’- he must go his way, away from Jesus, because he thought that he was more worthy than the weak, sick, old or lazy workers who had also been hired. Such spiritual snobbism is so repellent to Jesus.
20:28 A radical inversion of human values. We are here to serve, to give; not to be served, get wealthy or receive some benefit for ourselves. The very opposite of the ‘prosperity Gospel’.
20:32 Why ask this, when the answer was obvious? To focus those men upon their own need. Jesus does the same with us; through His word and hand in our lives, He brings us to perceive how much we want what we say we want.