How To Be A Failure

INTRODUCTION

SLIDE 1

- How many of us want to fail in our walk with Jesus? How many of us want to fail at life? How many of us want our children to grow up to fail?

- Failure is something that most of us want to avoid at all costs. We do not want to be known for our failures nor do we want to be known as a failure.

- What causes a person to be a failure in life? What causes us to fail in our relationship with Jesus? What causes the church to fail in her mission to spread the gospel of Christ to a lost world?

- I believe we do not plan to fail, but at times we fail to plan, which in turn will lead us down the path of failure.

- Today we are going to study the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25:14-30.

- In this parable, we have a story of three people with whom their master left them in charge of various amounts of money to manage while he was gone.

- This was not an uncommon occurrence in the ancient world. In many homes the slaves had close to total control of various aspects of their master’s home.

- The subject of this parable teaches us a lesson as to what we are to do with our time as we await the return of Jesus.

- It dovetails with the previous parable (The parable of the Ten Virgins), to show us how we are to keep watch during our wait for His return.

- In this story we will see that two of the servants were successful in the eyes of their master, while one was a failure.

- Why did the one fail while the other two servants were successful? Was the failure by accident? Did the master have it "in" for the failed servant, or was there more to it?

- Today we are going to look at three things the unsuccessful servant failed to do in his pursuit of being successful.

- Let’s turn to Matthew 25:14-30 as we look at "How To Be A Failure." As we look at this passage, we will see a lot of parallels to what Jesus wants us to be doing as we await His return.

- READ MATTHEW 25:14-18

- Matthew 25:14 - 18 (NASB) 14For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. 15To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey. 16Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents. 17In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more. 18But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

- SLIDE 2

SERMON

We can become failures when we:

I. LIVE LIFE WITH NO IMAGINATION.

- In the parable, Jesus talks about a man who is about to go on a journey. While gone on this journey of unknown length of time, the master gives three servants some money to manage while he is gone.

- Notice in verse 14, Jesus says the master entrusted his possessions to these three servants. This word translated "entrusted" means to "to deliver to one something to keep, use, take care of, manage"

- These men were given total control of what the master had given to them.

- God gives us the church; He gives us charge over spreading the good news about Jesus to a lost world. We are entrusted with something that is very valuable to God, the souls of those whom He loves.

- We see that the servants who were given the five and two talents went out and doubled what the master had given to them.

- The story makes it sound like they did this in a one time act. It most likely took a lot of creativity and imagination on the part of these two servants to do what they did, along with a period of time.

- When the master gave his possessions to the servants, there was an expectation on the part of the master that the servants were to work hard to make the masters possessions grow.

- SLIDE #3

- We do not know what the two successful servants did to double what the master gave to them, but we do know what the unsuccessful servant did, look at verse 18, he went away and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money.

- Once again, this was not an uncommon thing to do at the time; there were not banks on every corner like we have today.