Each man is called upon to work for the Lord, and in doing so he will find an abundant reward. The penny promised was sufficient maintenance for the day, and was regarded as a fair wage. No man shall ever have cause to complain that he served God for nought. Those are happiest who enter his service early in the morning.
Till we serve God we are idlers. However busy we may be we do nothing till we live for God.
The half of the day was gone, yea, three-fourths of it, and yet this patient householder engaged the labourers. If half our life, or even three-fourths, be gone, the Lord will still receive us, for his hirings are not after the manner of men.
This showed that the hiring of labourers in this case was not an act of necessity but of bounty, or surely the householder would not have hired men just as the sun was setting. In the Lord’s vineyard grace alone chooses, calls, hires, and pays the workers.
However late in life a man may be converted he shall enjoy the same privileges and promises as others. Free grace gives freely and does not upbraid.
This ungenerous spirit will creep in even among the servants of God, but it deserves to be cast out with detestation. We ought to rejoice in the richness of divine love to aged converts. Envy of another’s spiritual privileges is most unseemly in a child of God.
The sovereignty of God is vindicated as much in the enjoyments and privileges of saints as in their election to eternal life. In making all his people equally dear to his heart, equally safe in Christ, and equal in justification and adoption, the Lord as much displays his undoubted right to do as he wills with his own, as when he chooses a certain number of sinners, and allows others to continue in their sins.
Those who start in religion and promise great things frequently disappoint us, while others of whom we despaired bring forth good fruit. Many are called by the Gospel, but few are really elect of God, and so obey the call from the heart; and out of these only a remnant become eminent for grace. Choice men are rare even among the chosen.
While our days on earth are lengthen’d,
May we give them, Lord, to thee;
Cheer’d by hope, and daily strengthen’d,
May we run, nor weary be;
Till thy glory,
Without clouds in heaven we see.
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