According to what we see and hear on radio, television, newspapers, books and so forth, everyone wants to be a winner.  So how about you?  Are you a winner?  Before we explore the answer, perhaps we should first define, what is a winner?
 It would seem to me there are three kinds of winners. 
 

The first, and perhaps the kind of winner that comes most readily to most people’s mind, is the one who likes to win in football or politics or competing with someone to build the best of a particular kind of product.        The second kind of winner is the one who looks for and finds a need that is not now being satisfied.  Such a person might write a book on some new topic, open a hotel where one is needed and none is there to be found.  Or perhaps someone who opens a messenger service in a town which needs one but does not have one.      The best winner  is a person who has accepted the way, the light and the truth of  Jesus Christ  This winner has won everything, most importantly, his or her imortal soul.  We are taught how to be this kind of winner in the Book of John, Chapter 8.

      To begin, let’s talk about the first kind of winner.  The person who likes to compete in a game knows that there can be only one winner.  To be the winner someone else must lose.  If a prize is to be given to the winter, not only must one (or more) person lose, someone else must give up the prize that he has donated for this purpose.  In short, three or more people have to work to produce something and only one person gets to have that something.
      To understand the second type of winner,  let’s consider the story of a group of 200 people who have been stranded upon a desert island.  Each of these people has the ability to produce something,  One, for instance, might be a coal miner, another a shoemaker, another a doctor, another a baker and so forth. We could think of the goods and services each has produced as having been placed on a pile in the midle of the village. This pile contains everything available for the perople to eat, drink, wear, use to build a dwelling, and even, everything needed for recreation or just having fun.  
      The question then becomes how do we distribute the goods and services that these people have produced and are going to produce in the future.  We could hold athletic contests and the person who ran the furtherest or the fastest or something would get to take what he needs from the goods and services produced by a the stranded people.  Of course this means that three people have worked to receive something, only one gets it, and he isn’t the one who has produced anything.  A better way is to say each person will be entitled to take from the pile something equivalent to the value of what he has produced.  In this distribution system each person produces and each person receives the equavalent of what he has produced.  
      This looks very good! But how are they to decide who will produce what? That is, how do we choose what each person shall produce.  
       Believe it or not, Christ gave us to the answer to this with a story called: The parable of the talents.  In this parable a wealthy man has three servants.  Just before he goes on a long trip, the wealthy man calls all three servants together. He gives five talents to the first. (In this case  we are speaking of the ancient coin called the talent but will find that another definition can be taken from it later.)  To the second servant he gives two talents and to the third servant he gives one talent.  He then instructs the servants that they should take this money that he has given to them and do whatever they can do make the money grow until the wealthy man can return from his trip.
      On returning from the trip the wealthy man asks the first servant what has happened to the five talents with which he had been left in charge.  The servant hands his master 10 talents and tells his master that he used the money to buy goods in commerce and he has been able to sell those goods at a profit. The wealthy man tells the servant that he is a good and faithful servant and very highly thought of by his master.  Similarly the second servant tells his master that he has been able to turn the two talents he was left into four talents through another venture.  This servant to is told that he is a good and faithful servant and very highly thought of by his master.  The third servant says that he was afraid to risk the single talent he had been left and he therefore buried it in the ground making no use of it.  But he did have that single talent available to return to the master.  The wealthy man indicated to the servant that he was very displeased.  
       He then told them that he’d given them each three separate and different tasks to perform and that the first two have both performed to the best extent of which they were capable, given the talents that they had received. Please note, the reward to each of them was the same even though  the results were not equal.  The third had wasted this opportunity and gained nothing from the experience.
      Nearly all theologians agree that Christ’s intent was to say that God gives all of us talents with which we are to make the best possible use.  Those who make the best of whatever talent they have, will be considered good and faithful servants in the eyes of God.  It matters not whether the talent is great or small.  That is, if the talent you’re given is to become a great pianist then you should do it.  If the talent you’re given is to sweep streets then that you should do it the very best you are able. In either case God will be pleased with the results.  Thus, the question is answered as to how choices are made as to who will produce what.  That decision was made by God when we were conceived.  Our job then is to find what our talents are and then make use of them to the best that we are able.  

      We have not talked about the third kind of winner.  This is the person who has set about to know and understand the teaching of Jesus Christ.  This person,  having learned this, has made the decision to follow His teachings for the rest of his life and has gladly accepted Christ’s way.  This of course brings with it the requirement that the person, who has been thus saved, does his best to live as Christ has instructed.  Well, you say, the responsibilities that go with being a Christian take a lot of the “fun” out of life.  You can’t get drunk, you can’t go to wild parties, you can’t even dedicate your life to earning a great deal of money.  And besides, He has said that you will be accepted into his flock even if you don’t make the decision to follow Him until just before your death.
    To make this point strongly Christ  left us the parable of the vineyard.  In this parable the owner of a fine vineyard who had a deadline by which all the grapes must be picked.  He had a week in which to get them picked and he hired what he thought was an appropriate number of men. With each he had agreed to a certain per cent of  the proceeds from the crop.  However, when    
        Wednesday came around he found that it was going to require even more men. So, he contracted with each of them to receive that same percentage the first group were to receive. This, even though they would work only for the remaining three days.  Similarly on Thursday and even Friday more people were hired, and all of them promised the same percentage of the harvest.  At this point the men who were hired on Monday came to the owner said this is not fair. We worked hard for you for five days and our pay is no more than the men who worked only one day this just simply is not fair.  The owner of the field told them, “I made a contract with you and I have fulfilled that contract, you have nothing to complain about.”  Thus, Christ has said that if we will but acccept His way to salvation, He will give us eternal life. It doesn’t matter whether this happens when we were 10 or when we were 80 or even just a few hours before we die.  He has made a contract that if we will accept Him, He will give us eternal life.
      Now I’m sure that you, like the workers in the vineyard that started work on Monday, feel that this is unfair. Why should you have to resist the great temptations this life has to offer when others need only resist for a few hours.  
      The answer to this, I believe, lies in something that happened to me on an airplane flying from Denver to Dallas one evening.  The man I sat beside had just received his promotion to Elder within his church. He had been in the field for the requisite two years talking and preaching and doing his best to bring the good news to as many as he could.  I asked him if he had the same sort of belief I do, that you can look into the eyes of another Christian and see that indeed they are just exactly that.  He said yes he had had that experience and as a matter-of-fact many of the other Elders, with whom he said he had worked, had that same experience.  
       Therefore, I believe our answer to the riddle of the parable of the vineyard is that the moment we accept Christ, our lives becomes better every day, in a joyous way, no matter what its contents. When we follow Christ teachings, we find that every day we are delighted with what has happened and what we have managed to do.  On the other hand, if we have yielded to our temptations, we will feel badly even though we know that we will be forgiven.  And, talking with those who have not accepted Christ, we find that there is such a thing as a conscience and people who do break the rules don’t enjoy it as much as they had thought.  Further, the Christians who have not lied, cheated, stolen, attended wild parties and so forth, are much happier and lived much more fulfilling lives from the moment that they did accept Christ.
      [Pause]
       I remember there was once an old preacher who had been extremely successful in gaining people to follow Christ and when he was asked how he did it?    His response was,  “First I tell them what I’m going to tell them, then I tell them, and then I conclude by telling them what I told them.” 
       So therefore, let me conclude by reminding you of what Christ told us we we have only to ask and “It will be given unto us.”  Does that mean that if we want a million dollars tomorrow, we may expect that if we ask for it we can expect to  get it.. . . .probably not.  We want  to loose waite, can we ask him to take the pounds off with out us doing anything?  Of course not. 
      Then just what  may we ask of God  in our prayers and how should we do it?  Christ’s answer was reported both in the Book of Mathew, Chapter 6 and in Luke Chapter 11. We were told the first thing is, of course, to say with whom are we speaking and we began by saying “Our father which art in heaven.”  And then we remind ourselves of  His important to us as we pray, “Hallowed to be thy name.”  And then we start asking for the things which we may ask and begin with the most important one, for Him to help us understand  and accept His Plan for us when we state: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  
       God has told each of us what he wishes us to do by the talents that he has given us.  And, His son has assured us that that if we will live our lives as we have been instructed, not only will we have the reward of eternal life but our life here on earth will be one of great fulfillment.

[The choir and soloist sing The Lord’s Prayer.]