"With God All Things Are Possible": The Rich Young Ruler, the Camel, and the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 19:19–20:9)
“With God All Things Are Possible”: The Rich Young Ruler, the Camel, and the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 19:19–20:9)
Page: 30 | Passage: Matthew 19:19–20:9 | Generated: March 2026
DIRECT ANSWER BLOCK
The rich young ruler walked away sorrowful, and Jesus explained why: wealth makes entry into the kingdom nearly impossible — not because money is evil, but because it so easily becomes the thing we trust instead of God. When the disciples asked “Who then can be saved?” Jesus answered: not by human effort, but with God all things are possible. The parable of the vineyard workers then turns every assumption about merit upside down.
KEY VERSE
“But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
— Matthew 19:26 (KJV)
DEVOTIONAL BODY
The Young Man Who Walked Away
He had come running. He had knelt. He had kept every commandment from his youth. And when Jesus named the one thing remaining — sell your possessions, give to the poor, come and follow — “he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions” (Matthew 19:22).
The sorrow is important. He is not defiant. He is not dismissive. He wanted what Jesus was offering, and he could not bring himself to make the exchange. His wealth held him more tightly than he held it.
Jesus used the moment to teach: “Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:23–24). The image is deliberate and extreme. A camel through a needle’s eye is not a tight squeeze — it is an impossibility. Jesus wants no one to miss the force of the statement.
Oswald Chambers understood what the young man’s refusal revealed: “Our Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple; He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself — a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship.” The rich young ruler had arranged his relationship with God around his own security. He had a right to himself, and that right he could not relinquish. His sorrow was real. But his grip was tighter than his longing.
What money does to a soul is not always obvious. It rarely presents itself as an idol. It presents itself as prudence, responsibility, security — all reasonable things. But when Jesus asks you to lay it down and you discover you cannot, the arrangement becomes clear. The thing that felt like a possession turns out to be the possessor.
“Who Then Can Be Saved?”
The disciples were astonished. If a rich man — who had every resource to be generous, to give, to do good — could barely enter the kingdom, then “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). Their logic was sound by the standards of the age: wealth was a sign of God’s blessing. If the blessed could not enter, what hope was there?
Jesus changed the frame entirely: “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Salvation is not something a person achieves with sufficient resources, effort, or piety. It is something God accomplishes in a person who has stopped pretending they can manage it themselves.
Charles Spurgeon, reflecting on what it means to be sought and found by God, wrote: “we as lost sheep were so desperately lost, and had wandered into such a strange country, that it did not seem possible that even the Good Shepherd should track our devious roamings. Glory be to unconquerable grace, we were sought out! No gloom could hide us, no filthiness could conceal us, we were found and brought home. Glory be to infinite love, God the Holy Spirit restored us!” Impossibility with men is God’s ordinary operating territory. He does not wait for conditions to be favorable. He goes after the ones who are hopelessly lost.
Peter then pressed for the practical return: “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” (Matthew 19:27). Jesus did not rebuke the question. He answered it: twelve thrones, a hundredfold, everlasting life — and then He added a reversal: “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30).
The Vineyard and the Wage
The parable that follows is one of the most unsettling in the Gospels — not because it shows God as unfair, but because it shows God as differently fair than we would prefer.
A landowner went out early in the morning and hired workers for a penny a day. He went out again at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh hour, hiring more workers each time, telling them he would pay “whatsoever is right.” When evening came, the steward paid every worker the same — beginning with those hired last. “When they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny” (Matthew 20:9).
Those hired first expected more. When they received the same penny, they grumbled. The landowner’s answer carries the whole weight of the parable: “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” (Matthew 20:13–15).
The offense the early workers feel is the offense of grace. They received exactly what was promised. The late workers received more than could be expected. The landowner’s generosity did not reduce what anyone was owed; it simply refused to be constrained by the logic of merit. God is not obligated to measure His gifts by the length of your service.
This parable follows “the last shall be first” for a reason. The kingdom does not run on the economy of human labor and earned reward. It runs on the generosity of the One who owns the vineyard. The person who enters the kingdom at the eleventh hour — whether by dramatic late conversion or simply by the awareness that they have nothing to commend them — receives the same inheritance as those who have labored longest. Not because effort means nothing, but because the wage was never the point. The landowner’s character is the point.
CALLOUT
“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” — Matthew 19:26
This sentence is the pivot of the entire section. The disciples had just watched a good, earnest, morally serious young man turn away from Jesus. If he could not be saved, the disciples’ question was reasonable. Jesus does not soften the difficulty — He simply relocates where salvation comes from. Not from human capacity, however impressive, but from God who specializes in impossibilities.
APPLICATION
Three things Matthew 19:19–20:9 invites you to do:
- Identify what is your “great possessions.” It may not be money — it may be reputation, independence, plans, a relationship. Ask God to show you the thing you would walk away sorrowfully before surrendering. Then bring it to Him.
- Let “with God all things are possible” reach whatever situation feels hopeless to you. The disciples thought certain people were simply beyond saving. Jesus corrected them. Whatever seems impossible in your life or in someone else’s, bring it under this promise.
- Notice where you are calculating your spiritual merit. The early workers’ problem was not that they worked hard — it was that they expected the wage to reflect their effort rather than the landowner’s generosity. Receive grace as grace, not as a transaction.
FAQ BLOCK
Q: What does “a camel through the eye of a needle” mean in Matthew 19:24?
Jesus is using extreme hyperbole to make an unmissable point: wealth creates a nearly impossible barrier to the kingdom. There is no credible ancient evidence for a gate called “the needle’s eye” that a camel could squeeze through on its knees — that interpretation softens the image in ways Jesus did not intend. The impossibility is real; it is resolved only by the word in the next verse: with God, all things are possible.
Q: Why is wealth specifically so dangerous for the kingdom?
Because it provides an alternative source of security, significance, and control. The commandments the rich young ruler kept were largely about external behavior; wealth operates at the level of identity and trust. It is not that money is evil, but that it is uniquely effective at positioning itself as the thing you actually depend on — making the wholehearted dependence on God that Jesus requires genuinely difficult to maintain.
Q: Is the parable of the laborers unfair to the early workers?
No — they received exactly what they agreed to. The parable is not about taking anything from those who worked longer; it is about the landowner’s freedom to be more generous than the contract required. The workers’ grievance is not about being wronged but about the later workers being included on the same terms. The parable deliberately provokes that reaction to expose how easily merit-thinking can lead us to resent God’s grace toward others.
Q: What does “the last shall be first and the first shall be last” mean?
In the context of Matthew 19–20, it means the kingdom’s order of honor does not mirror the world’s order of status. Those who seem least — whether late converts, the poor, children, the overlooked — may find themselves first in God’s economy. And those who assume their long service or high position earns special standing may find their assumption undone. It is not a reversal of justice but a correction of the assumption that human merit determines kingdom standing.
CALL TO ACTION
The God of this passage specializes in the impossible. He goes after the ones who wandered hopelessly far. He opens the kingdom to those who arrive at the eleventh hour with empty hands. Whatever you are carrying — sorrow like the rich young ruler’s, or hope like the late workers’ — this is the God you can bring it to.
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