This week, we begin our study of biblical stewardship. Last week, we looked at the account of the feeding of the 5,000 in John’s Gospel. We saw the all-sufficiency of Christ. We saw that Jesus is enough; in fact He is more than enough for all of us. We saw that when we cling to Christ, then our fears about giving should be eliminated just like those of the young boy who gave of his basket of food. There will never be a time when we are without. This week, we turn to the teachings of Jesus during his earthly ministry, his parables; in particular, the parable of the talents found in Matthew’s Gospel.
First off, I need to say that there is more taught and referenced in this parable spoken by Jesus than we could hope to cover fully this morning. There are teachings about judgment, criticisms of Scribes and Pharisees, as well as the teaching that we are going to focus on this morning about investing what God gives us. Now, we will briefly touch on all of these other concepts, but what we are going to primarily pay attention to this morning is the responsibility that we have to use the gifts and the blessings that God gives us in order to glorify His name. To do so, we are going to look at the actions of the three servants and how their master responds to each of them upon hearing of how they have invested his money.
To put this parable in a much shorter manner; it is a story of a master who is going away on a vacation or to study abroad for quite some time. Now, this was a common practice of this time, and instead of letting his estate sit and dwindle and eventually die, he entrusts it to his servants in proportion with their abilities. He divides it up in portions of talents, and a talent is equal to about 20 years worth of daily wages for the average laborer. To one servant he gives 5 talents, one 2 talents, and to a third he gives 1 talent. Two of the servants double the money given to them and are praised accordingly. The third man invests nothing and finds condemnation.
Now I briefly mentioned that there was a trace of Jesus criticizing the Scribes and Pharisees in this parable. You see, they didn’t want things to change. They fought this man named Jesus who taught new things about God and claimed to be the second person of the Trinity. Christ was calling all to grow in the faith and to dig deeper into the things of God. The Scribes and Pharisees wanted to keep the status quo so-to-speak. They didn’t want any change to the way that religion was practiced in that day. Think about that for a second. These groups of religious leaders were not only not encouraging people to grow and dig deeper, but they were actually discouraging and condemning it. What if other areas of life refused to change? How far has medicine come because of a desire to be better? How far has technology come because of the desire to grow? Think about if we stopped in our Christian growth. What if what we learned as a child was as far as it went?
Let’s take this theme of growth and relate it to our current season of stewardship. This past week, I sent out a letter to all of you in preparation for our stewardship campaign, hopefully you all received it in the mail. As you read this letter, I hope that you saw that the focus our season of stewardship wasn’t that of “we have this amount of money that we need and our success is based on if we meet that need.” Instead, this church is choosing to base a successful stewardship campaign on whether or not there is growth, and not just growth in numbers, but real Christian growth and dedication.
In our parable, each of the three servants was given a sum of money by their master. Let’s just assume that the servants who were given 5 and 2 talents had shown their master that they had better financial sense than that of servant who was only given one talent. Honestly, this is just the way that it is sometimes. Amy is much more gifted than I am when it comes to financial matters. During a majority of our seven years of marriage, I have barely laid eyes on our bank account. For all I know she has been storing all of our money in an account with only her name on it. Her gifts are greater than mine in this area. I have no problem not spending money, but when it comes to savings accounts, IRA’s, investments, etc. I am terrible. If someone was going to put us in charge of their estate for a period of time, she would be a much better choice to handle a bulk of the estate to ensure that the money is being used effectively. So let’s don’t make a big deal out of the fact that the servants were given differing amounts of money because that isn’t what the focus of Jesus’ teaching is all about. What Jesus is trying to focus in on is not the amount that they were given, or really even the amount that was made, but what the servants did with what their master gave to them. We are all given different gifts and different amounts of talents. The fact that the number of someone’s gifts is less than the next person matters none. What matters is whether or not we invest those gifts to God.
Notice that the servants who invested their master’s money and made something out of it were praised, and praised equally. Regardless of the fact that one servant made 5 talents and the other only 2 talents the master’s response is the same. “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” Jesus is reminding us of something. He’s reminding us that He has furnished all of his people with personal resources for the sake of building up His kingdom. The Lord Jesus is reminding us that all of us have things in trust from God which He expects us to use for the building up of His kingdom and by which He will take an account at the end. We’re all given different amounts of money, talent, time, etc., but it isn’t about what we are given. The question is what are you doing with what you are given? Anything whereby we may glorify God is our talent. Our gifts, our influence, our money, our knowledge, our health, our strength, our time, our senses, our reason, our intellect, our memory, our affections, our privileges as members of Christ’s Church, our advantages as possessors of the Bible—all, all are talents. So you see, there is no shortage of things that we can give to God and use for the purposes of glorifying His name.
I can remember when I was a kid that my grandmother was always at the church working on something that was called the Chancel Committee. Now for those of you who don’t know, the chancel committee was entrusted with the responsibility of decorating the church, and the sanctuary in particular, for Sunday services. They also decorated the church for events in the life of the church like Easter, Christmas, funerals, weddings, etc. Now my grandmother didn’t have all the money in the world, she had what she needed to live, but it wasn’t as if money was there to just give it all to the church. And my grandmother loved her church, we always used to joke that she would have donated until she was completely broke if my grandfather hadn’t set money aside that she couldn’t give away. Instead of money, she had time. She was retired; she was still healthy enough to work, so she donated her time to the church. I point to this to show that there are so many things that we can give to God and do for our congregation in this coming year. Stewardship is so much more than money and figuring out the budget for the coming year.
So we see that we ought to follow the example of the two servants who invested what their master gave them. We ought to invest the blessings and gifts that our Master has given to us. Just like the servants in this parable, our investments into the Gospel will always offer a complete return. But what of the servant who did not invest the money that he was entrusted with. This parable condemns the man who will not try. It is very likely that the unworthy servant felt that it was not worth trying. After all, he only had one talent. Was it really worth the trouble to invest this mere 1 talent? I think that William Barclay answers this best by saying, “The world is not composed of geniuses. For the most part it is composed of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs, but these ordinary jobs must be done if the world is to go on and God’s plans worked out. It has been said with great wisdom, ‘God does not want extraordinary people who do extraordinary things nearly as much as He wants ordinary people to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.’” Furthermore, Abraham Lincoln once joked, “God must love the common people because He made so many of them.” The world depends on the man with the one talent.
My mom used to love to listen to Jeff Foxworthy’s tapes when I was younger. She especially liked the “redneck dictionary” segments that he did. One of her favorites was the word “usta-could”. You know, like I used to could do that when I was younger. How many things could we say that about in our lives? Think of the things that you have learned to do over the years and now you probably could not do even if your life depended on it. I have a college degree that required me to do complete high level courses in chemistry, physics, calculus, and other math-based subjects. I had trouble helping a Pre-Algebra class at a middle school when I substitute taught before coming to Houma. How could this be? Simple, I haven’t practiced. I have neglected something that I was given the ability to do. I have not used a skill that I learned. If we honestly examine our lives we will see that there is some talent which God has given us. It is death to hide that talent; it is life to use it in the service of men and of God.
Notice the reaction of the master and the unworthy servant once it is discovered that this servant has done nothing with the master’s money. Now it goes without saying that just like the master, our God is not happy when we don’t use what He has entrusted to us. But I want to pay attention for a brief moment to the reaction of the unworthy servant. You see, the servant doesn’t just own up to what he did; he doesn’t just say, “Master, I was lazy.” Instead, he pretty much turns around and blames anyone but himself. He primarily places blame on the master. I must admit that more times than I care to admit, that I have found myself in the role of the unworthy servant. I have made excuse after excuse for not using what God has given to me. I have blamed all kinds of things: the economy, my busy schedule, my family, my friends, my job, the uncertainty of the future, but I have rarely, if ever, just admitted to God, “Master, I am lazy.”
As we move forward during the season of stewardship how does this parable of the talents affect our thinking? As we gather together with our families and we try and figure out what we want to commit to God and to this church in the coming year, as we pray over what God is calling us to do, let’s keep in mind this fact: God wants us to invest what He has given to us. All that we have are gifts and blessings from God. God gives to each of us differently. Just because money is tight doesn’t mean that you have nothing to offer to God during this stewardship season. Remember, this stewardship campaign is focused on Christian growth. We all have ways that we can grow in our faith. And I promise you, investing in God and investing in the Gospel with a loving and joyful heart will bring you more delight than any other investment you could ever imagine. Glory be to God; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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