*Title:* Life's Not Fair — Pastor Glenn Russell, September 19, 2026

When did you first realize life wasn’t fair? In this sermon, guest speaker Pastor Glenn Russell — a semi-retired theology teacher from Andrews University, fresh from a week of prayer at Ozark Adventist Academy — opens with the answers ordinary people gave to that question online: a high-school friend killed by a drunk driver, a father fired in a round of cost-cutting, a paramedic’s call to a home where a four-month-old had been abused to death — and, at the other end of the scale, a big brother who took a cookie when the speaker was four. Sooner or later, everyone learns it, he says, and the unfairness only grows: a Shenandoah park ranger struck by lightning not once but seven times in 35 years. “Life’s not fair. Just keep that idea in mind.”

The heart of the message is Jesus’ answer to that complaint, in the parable found only in Matthew 20. A vineyard owner hires workers at dawn, at nine, at noon, at three, and at five in the afternoon — and pays them all the same full day’s wage, the last hired first. The all-day laborers watch, expect more, and erupt: “That’s not fair. You’ve made them equal to us.” Pastor Russell doesn’t argue with them; he agrees. The master’s methods don’t make economic sense, because the parable isn’t about economics at all. The landowner gives not what the workers deserve but what they need — and still calls the grumblers “Friend,” reminding them they received exactly what they agreed to. Grace has a family story behind it, too: Russell’s own parents sailed for Africa as missionaries aboard the Zamzam in 1941, were shelled by a Nazi raider, and spent four and a half years in a prison camp after his father’s Bible — lost overboard, then floated back open to Isaiah 41:10 — carried them through. And years later in Zimbabwe, he baptized a woman 103 years old: “It’s never too late. Just come to Jesus.”

The sermon closes by turning the complaint inside out. We demand fairness mostly when it benefits us, Pastor Russell says; the better question is whether people have been treated fairly — and the 11th-hour workers, overlooked and aging with families to feed, were never lazy, only never given a chance. The world is genuinely unfair, and Christians are called to get their hands dirty for justice, caring for the marginalized as Leviticus 19:33 commands. But the parable itself deserves a new name: not the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, but the parable of the lavish grace of the heavenly Master. Salvation is not a paycheck, it’s a gift — and we are living in the 11th hour, with a plentiful harvest and few workers. Life’s not fair… but God is more than good.

*Key texts:* Matthew 20:1–16; Romans 6:23; Leviticus 19:33; Isaiah 41:10

*Watch:* https://youtu.be/NjiZLaDRaCQ · *Listen:* https://cloud-1de12d.becdn.net/media/original/334c86a5735eb93d12894e2f7ca609fb.mp3